Diatribe: Philosophy and Capitalism

It’s about time that we looked at the rot that has been eating away at the base values of America: hyper-capitalism. Milton Friedman and other “let the market self-regulate” believers (and make no mistake, it is a belief, a la faith, because no matter how many historical fiascos are used as evidence against this idea, they will inevitably claim that they came about due to too much regulation) have corrupted, or more accurately shunted aside, the middle-class values that are the core of a reasonably prosperous society. Allow me to elaborate.

First of all, some people, those who I expect think of themselves as rationalists, see a strange and wondrous force in the world of economics. Supply and demand, micro and macro, imports and exports – the numbers dance across the world and commerce occurs. It seems so wonderful. And all these basic principles are absolutely self-regulating – or so the lie goes. Follow the money: capitalism is a system whereby those who succeed in acquiring capital become more powerful – in fact, pure capitalism demands that you acquire more stuff than your competitors to distinguish yourself from them. Money is the only measure of success in a purely capitalistic society. Therefore, a high-paying job is not simply a means to and end: i.e. raising a family, retiring mad early, etc. but a status symbol in itself. After all, your job is literally how much you are worth to somebody, or to the system at least.  See how these egotistical wall-streeters became that way? They have been taught to value money as an end in itself. They honestly believe they are worth the mind-boggling money they bring in. They’re not. I’m not just saying this because I hate these people. Most of the high-risk products that these people work in are high-risk, high yield but they hide the risk in this composite derivatives system – literally allowing ordinary banking institutions to gamble with money that, on the surface, appears to be safely invested. But as you can see, all this wheeling and dealing can have negative consequences when these derivatives turn out to be the illusion that they are. Because these people could not rake it money fast enough the safe way, they figured out a treacherous back door (Paul Krugman has called it “shadow banking”) so they could keep paying themselves obscene amounts of money. This sort of money shifting does not produce anything of value, it’s simply rearranging money and skimming off a hearty portion for yourself. Sounds a bit like the health insurance industry, doesn’t it?

If you tack on some of Ayn Rand’s “rational selfishness” onto this economic fairy tale – suddenly you have what appears to be a philosophy that allows you to loot other people blind and yet you are perfectly justified in doing so. In fact, this poisonous philosophy is often waved about by right-wingers without any real understanding of the issues at hand. They bludgeon people with “Atlas Shrugged” not realizing that they themselves are the very dross that the industrialists in the book abandon utterly. This has a lot to do with this pernicious idea that Republicans have thrown around: you can’t tax the wealthy because one day you’ll be rich too! However, most people don’t end up hitting it big – certainly not enough to justify this me-too chicanery. Taken as a portion of the population, holding up a meager 1 or 2% as a model simply due to their socioeconomic status is completely nonsensical. You won’t be likely to find the average American there – but somehow that’s what they want us to believe.

Into this seething cauldron of greed for greed’s sake let’s add the funtastic world of the Christian fundamentalist. You really double the issues all over again when you’re dealing with people that believe their fortunes in life are handed out by a third party. Why, surely what happens to others can hardly be your fault – God gave them their due in life. You’re only the lucky one because God likes you.

Note the lack of the trademark Christian compassion? True followers of Christ would reject this wealth-mongering out of hand, but there’s nothing that bastards like Robertson and his ilk can’t corrupt and twist to suit their ends. If you don’t believe that Christian fundamentalism is part of this composite hyper-capitalistic plague, you should check out the Family – not the mafia, but rather pseudo-Christians who believe that Jesus had a separate message to the rich and powerful – the movers and shakers of the world. That message was to due whatever it takes and take whatever you want. Members of this delusional and filthy cabal are in some of the most powerful positions in America, both public and private. And they command legions of brain-dead frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalist Christians who will maim and kill in the name of peace and love.

Really, does it take any more than this utter defilement of what is (or was, originally) a pretty chill religion to prove that there is nothing sacred about religion? Indeed, that they are constructs of man and are (as they always have been) used to control people who like easy answers over tough choices.

I wish I could say I was overstating my case here. I am being a bit hyperbolic, but the danger that this venom represents to American values is very real indeed. The decline of these values is inextricably linked with our vanishing middle class. You see, the basic idea of the middle class is you have a job where you can work hard, raise kids, retire, and all in all leave your kids a little bit better off than you were. This pattern repeats, and it does (as it did from the 50’s to the 80’s) bring about huge GDP growth in America because while it is slow, it is very, very steady. The trick in these sorts of values is that other than perhaps a few aspirations towards property ownership and perhaps some retirement-oriented investing, money is not the main goal per se, rather it is the means towards and end. As long as you have a decent job, you should be able to accomplish these things. Remember when single-income households used to be the rule, rather than the exception? That’s because living wages were all the rage back in the distant past.

But hypercapitalism demands profit – so much so that we have to go overseas and employ foreign workers because how can we honestly expect to make money when we have to pay for things like health insurance for workers (note: I realize that this system is a rip off for employers too), vacations and so forth? How many more handouts could our drones possibly want? They should feel lucky just to have a job! Especially when they’re just a hair’s breadth away from having their job done for them in Thailand!

The automakers were one of the few remnant companies that made any effort to bolster the middle-class standard of living in the face of these transnational money-whore megacorporations. They actually tried to insure and provide pensions to everyone, which is one of the the reasons why they tanked (other than extremely poor marketing decisions regarding fuel mileage). Now if we had single-payer government healthcare, employers wouldn’t have to pay out monstrous amounts of money to companies who are literally delivering sub-standard coverage and pocketing the difference.

It’s amazing how everything is related isn’t it?

But from the very beginning of life these days, children are inundated with how they should get a high paying job so they can afford a bunch of stuff that they don’t actually need. The lifestyles of the extraordinarily wealthy are held up as some sort of guide for the rest of us to aspire to, rather than treated as the extreme minority of the population that they actually are. The consumer culture in America may be responsible for a great deal of it’s growth, but it also encourages people to live beyond their means in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. Hence, credit card debt for all. By the way, credit is not counted as “real money” by the Fed’s market calculation – since you’re technically just moving money around, credit does nothing to improve the GDP from an individual lendee perspective (it does for companies inasmuch as credit allows them to actually function at all, but that is an indirect result).

So here I am, feeling extremely countercultural with no viable options. There are two political parties – The Corporate Fascists, and The Corporate Fascists Lite. They drown out sensible people like Dennis Kusinich – one of the few people who actually expresses outrage at the tepidity of recent health care reform, since he knows full well we could create a fantastic, efficient, and money-saving single-payer healthcare system if these fallen politicians would stop fellating their corporate masters for two goddamn minutes.

I’m gonna have to start voting third party. It may be a joke, but I refuse to vote for these hyper-capitalistic whores for even one more goddamn minute. I’m sorry to good old Dems like Mr. Kusinich, but you’re being drowned out by obstructionists who aren’t even trying to hide their utter contempt for the fates of their constituents or their shameless endorsement of all things corporate.

What is it like to wake up one morning and realize that the evil empire was really us, all along?

Later.

Speed Screed: Imagining the Tenth Dimension

One problem with dividing everything into “rants” and “raves” is that I don’t really have a neutral category. Obviously lumping things into “love” or “hate” is gross oversimplification that I use as a cheap draw. I may have to invent a new category for stuff that is simply interesting or informative, but that I don’t have a particularly strong opinion about. If I don’t have a strong opinion, you may find it boring, but at least I don’t have to pretend something is either wonderful or abhorrent. Not that I have yet. That’s called integrity. Ahem.

Anyway, I recently checked out this interesting video called “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” which was posted by the writer of a book of the same name, Rob Bryanton. It’s basically a technique that helps you wrap your head around some of the possibilities of the dimensions beyond the three (or four) that we experience, by using lower-dimensional analogies.

For example, if you collapse all of space into a point (i.e. three dimensions) then a line segment moving from that point to another is movement in the fourth dimension, which is roughly described as time (in truth I think it’s more complicated than the way it’s presented; the way the exercises handle time is a little too flippant) It’s an interesting exercise and I highly recommend it.

As a cautionary note though, this whole experience is really an exercise in philosophy and imagination than any sort of scientific model. I somehow doubt that a string theorist who works on Calabi-Yau spaces really considers the sixth dimension as movement between logically inconsistent realities. String theorists have more or less no physical evidence for their claims (though I still think the theory is a good one) so they use higher dimensions as a way to get the equations to balance out; in other words, string theory becomes a usable model when there is an assumption of ten (or eleven) dimensions, but I think they are viewed mathematically and not as “lines of travel” which is what this mental exercise basically assumes.

The author more or less admits that he is trying to reconcile philosophy and science in a certain fashion, but his spiritual and aesthetic side somewhat damages his scientific credibility. He also produced a series of songs that supposedly outline the key concepts of his book – but the man is not a professional songwriter so I felt mostly confusion at his attempts to use music. I felt that he was once again trying to blur the lines between rational discourse and intuitive spiritual belief. I personally believe that there is no such thing as an informative song – songs are not about transmitting information, at least, not in a form where it has any real-world use.

In short, I believe this is a good thing to watch in order to understand how lower-dimensional analogies can be useful in wrapping your head around things that seem impossible, but to take the entire thing with a grain of salt. Particularly telling was the way that he shaped the 10-dimension symbol like the Sefirot, the Tree of Life from the Jewish mystical tradition of Qabalah. Jumping to premature conclusions much?

Today’s Rant: Yes on Proposition 8??!!

I hate the Mormon church. I mean, the religion is Amero-centric Christianity that basically insults Jews and Native Americans via its core tenets, but my issues are not with the religion itself, but rather the church’s insistence on theocratic rule. The Mormon church is one of the most arrogant attackers of our basic freedoms, consistently throwing bad money after bad in an attempt to get the law to reflect their outrageously outdated (as if it was ever not outdated) moral code.

I want to make it clear that I do not hate any individual Mormon per se (except some of the assholes involved with turning the Boy Scouts into the publicly-funded discriminatory club it is today). But the institution of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints can go and crawl back up Joseph Smith’s ass, where it originated. As I speak, the Mormon church. based in Utah, is literally throwing money at Proposition 8 supporters in California so that we can overturn the state constitution and ban gay marriage which was only recently fully legalized here.

Other than the fact that these people are trying to warp our country to their insane world view, let us first look at the facts: the Mormon church is the most blatantly anti-gay Christian denomination, or at least the one with the biggest combination of hate and influence. They came up with such memorable catch phrases as “God hates fags,” possibly one of the most offensive, fatuous, and cruel three-syllable hate-mongering credos to ever issue from the putrid maw of this excrescent institution.

We have no place for fucktards like this in the United States of America, where people supposedly have certain fundamental rights like not having your neighbor cram his Book of Mormon down your throat. As far as I’m concerned, the right to bear arms should also include being able to point a gun at Jehovah’s Witnesses and other nuts who come to your door. You can’t shoot them, obviously. That would be murder. But I don’t want any of that mindless life-ruining brainwash within 100 feet of my property. If I can help it, no kid of mine is going to be gullible enough to fall for that crap, but I’m not taking any chances. Sign on front lawn:

EVANGELISTS WILL BE SHOT

I suppose I might be prosecuted for that. How about:

EVANGELISTS WILL BE MENACED SEVERELY WITH A LOADED KALISHNIKOV (COMMUNIST ASSAULT RIFLE)

I like that one. Anyway, every time I think I can finally leave religion truly well alone (pure fantasy, even for a straight minute) some other group decides its time that America got right with God, instead of its citizens. Can we at least tax these fuckers like every other America-raping corporation? With their blatant interference in politics, it is clear that spirituality is not nearly high up enough on the list to warrant any sort of free pass from the government.

To date the Mormon church has thrown millions (at least four million) at idiots in California who make denying other peoples’ constitutional right to happiness their personal crusade, who have made spurious claims about gay marriage being taught in schools unless people vote to ban it, as if education has anything to do with it. I am unable to see why you would be against having an actual fact of life (i.e. the fact that gay people exist) taught in schools, but notwithstanding that, they don’t teach kids about marriage in school. They just don’t. But the commerical features this kid coming home with a book that’s entitled “The King and King” or something and saying something like “Mommy, Mommy! We learned in school today that boys can marry boys!” I doubt the kid is old enough to care or understand the implications of marriage anyway, but the idea that this in itself  is cause for alarm is unbelievably dumb. How is this an argument against preserving our fundamental rights? It isn’t, because it would never work if they said the truth: that passing this proposition is legalizing discrimination. Instead they obfuscate the issue by throwing children into the mix, which the other ads point out is just plain wrong. Like, morally and factually wrong.

The Mormons are also, as I implied earlier, the biggest donor to the Boy Scouts of America and are the main reason why the Boy Scouts eventually started making it a stated policy to exclude gays and atheists: God hates both of them, so if you hate them you’re doing God’s will.

What an awful message. What a terrible lesson to teach impressionable kids looking for role models. Sometimes I wish there were a God, so that He could come down and beat the shit out of people who use His supposed holy word to spread hate and intolerance. The fact that these twisted bastards aren’t smitten down for their blatant misuse of the Bible is proof enough there is no God, as far as I’m concerned. And if there’s a Hell, I know these self-righteous pricks are going to it.

And if I am too, maybe I’ll manage to get in a few chuckles at them between screams of agony.

Here’s hoping.

Today’s Rave: Religulous

If you haven’t seen Religulous, the more or less anti-religious pseudo-documentary movie by Bill Maher, I recommend it to you without qualification. It essentially points out the inherent and fundamental danger in allowing anyone with transcendental beliefs to make any real-world political decisions whatsoever. He does this by continually pointing out inconsistencies, holes, and generally just taking to task any arguments that religion is at all a good thing. While the whole thing is definitely comedic in nature, he drops the act at the very end and clearly and severely addresses the audience to cast aside their childish superstitions and “grow up.”

Bill Maher is my hero.

He is not an atheist as such, but he is an agnostic with an agenda. Sometimes I feel like people use agnosticism so as not to get verbally burned at the stake by religious people. In his case, his use of “I just don’t know” agnosticism gets religious people to open up to him because he seems to be a lost lamb rather than simply lost. That means at the end people pray for you rather than chase you out of the building.

Technically, I’m agnostic (I don’t care whether there’s a God since I consider the question irrelevant) but I usually call myself an atheist because I really don’t think there is a God, and I like to piss off religious nuts. I’m not adamant about the non-existence of God, I can conceive that there could be a God, but I think there isn’t one.

Doubt is the default of the skeptic.

In any case, the movie is a somewhat personal one as Maher describes his own religious background and how he eventually came to be the atheist that he is. It was, more or less, because his family just suddenly stopped going to church. Without constant indoctrination, most religions tends to fall apart as things like rational thought suddenly intrude on your blissful dream of life after death.

But of course, I don’t have any problem with religion as long as you keep it to yourself. But it is not only morally wrong to force your views into politics, government, or society, it is extremely dangerous, as Maher points out consistently. Keep your goddamn commandments out of my schools, your Christian worldview out of my Oval Office (it’s our goddamn office by the way, we’re letting the President use it) and your religiously zealotry away from my high-rise office buildings.

Only transcendental thinking could possibly result in someone justifying the taking of their own life and the slaughtering of thousands of innocent people. If you don’t believe in a God or an afterlife, the only reason you would do something like that is if you were absolutely insane.

Oh wait. As Maher points out, there is no inherent difference between schizophrenia and hearing the voice of God (as so many Christians claim to have done). But we get these people help because it’s religion, and you can’t touch religion.

The world would be so much better off if we would take out eyes off the heavens and start looking around us so that we can build a better world here and now.

It is this that Maher communicates so clearly. Watch this movie, you’ll laugh, and you’ll get angry. Maher says we need louder atheists. Louder and more pissed-off.

Sounds good to me.

Today’s Rant: To Win, At Any Cost

Think about all the fatuous, delusional people who are actually gullible enough to believe that Barack Obama has some sort of connection to terrorists.

First, let me say that these people are especially delusional because if there was any credence to the connections, don’t you think every branch of the government would be up in arms investigating his so-called “connection?” If he had a dubious background he never would have made it to Senator in the first place! The insularity of these people is so astonishing; they just believe whatever they’re told/want to believe, and cry out “Terrorist!” when everyone else with a grain of reason sees this McCain garbage for what it is: a dangerous and even more outrageous campaign than the swift-boating of John Kerry.

This win-at-any-cost policy causes me violent nausea. Who cares who they step on to get into the White House? They are disgrace to democracy, to America, and to every right-thinking citizen who believe in the democratic process. For all the Evangelical nonsense about common decency these mudslingers like to pretend they have, they sure do a lot of judging, despite the fact that they might be judged in turn. Of course, the Christian Wrong finds it easy to look away when it suits them. None of these really, really loud bastards are Christians in any meaningful way (other than the most superficial aspects, such as going to church five days a week). Any true Christian would deplore McCain’s sleazoid tactics, lack of compassion, and unabashed hunger for power. While these so-called “Christians” believe Mr. Obama is a literal “plague” that God has sent down to punish us for allowing gay marriage.

I got off topic a bit, but the point I’m trying to make is that when Obama wins, there’ll be a small but significant proportion of the country who will actually believe we elected a terrorist to run the country. These tiny-minded morons have had their whole life run by fear because apparently they are unable to reason their way out of a paper bag. It was easy for them to carry their fear of terrorists back home into the arena of politics, and so it suddenly seems feasible that these insidious Arabs (ah, racism at its finest) somehow managed to get a Manchurian candidate in place.

Do you see the value of education now? Frustration and horror!

The fact that the McCain may have formed a small cadre of people who believe it would be their civic duty to kill our next President is quite possibly the most horrible thing any person could do. I like McCain so much less than Bush despite the fact that he hasn’t done anything yet. You see, Bush never had any principles to sacrifice. He didn’t really have anywhere to fall, and I still believe that he is merely the crest of a wave of Neoconservatism that he only believed in because it was all he knew. I’m not absolving him of culpability, but I’m saying that the rot was so much deeper than simply the Presidency. McCain, on the other hand, previously known as a senator with some decency and principles, has thrown them away whole hog in a pathetic grab for a presidency that he has conclusively proved he doesn’t deserve. Bush was a tool his whole life, but McCain wasn’t, and that’s why McCain pisses me off more than Bush.

The new “pro-America” rhetoric that Palin has busted out is manifestly pathetic and once again dangerous. Yeah, I’m sure certain parts of America are “anti-America,” like, none of it. We all live here, bitch, we all pay our taxes, and we’re ALL pro-America. This is our country, and I’ll be damned if some moose-hunting governor from Alaska comes down here and tells 80% of America that we’re somehow unpatriotic because she’s never lived in a town with a population bigger than 40,000. The Republicans have stopped calling being against the administration unpatriotic – now simply by living in places with large number of electoral votes makes you unpatriotic.

This has been the darkest chapter in American politics and perhaps history, and the GOP has decided to cap it off in an orgy of sleaze, hatred, and division. Obama’s message of unity is so much more than an empty slogan. It is an absolute necessity to move past these fear-and-hate mongers and leave them far behind.

I’m so glad that no one except a tiny group of idiots is buying any of his crap. The era of win-at-any-cost politics is coming to a much belated end. At least until the country is doing well again. Then we’ll get resentful that we’re paying money for things like roads and schools, when we could use that money to buy Dancing With The Stars Season 3 on DVD. Then it’s back to the ‘Pubs.

Let’s hope that, by then, they’re not the same assholes they used to be.

A person is smart, but people are stupid.

Weird Poetry V: Sleeping In

God declared the Seventh Day
To keep those godly blues away
A day to lay about and rest
The Lord himself has thought it best

The sabbath day is holy, right?
Morning, afternoon, and night
Thou shalt not work, but slouch about
Lazy are the true devout

I take this sacred creed to heart
And play an even greater part
While some rest just one day a week
Seven days is my technique

Some people shun my ways and say
Tis not God’s will to waste a day
But I reply to them with glee
What’s good for Him is great for Me

Today’s Rant: True Faith

I am so pissed off at creationists who think that public schools ought to teach “intelligent design.” There are a hundred reasons why this should offend everyone, even Christians, but rather than rattling them off, I will approach this from the opposite angle.

Evangelists and their ilk have, in my opinion, an extremely weak faith in God. You would think, due to their
rabidity in defense of their faith, they must be the most brainwashed people in the world. I actually think it’s the opposite: their faith is so weak they need the society to reinforce their views, or it all falls to hell. Literally.

People who have true faith in God would not be threatened by evolution, nor by its being taught in schools. In fact, people of true faith would not go around trying to superimpose their will on you because they ought to be supremely confident that they have it right and don’t need to worry about what the rest of society thinks. They ought to hold firm in their belief. This is what FAITH is all about. It’s about having belief in something for which there is NO proof. That is the POINT.

Creation scientists looking for “proof” of a supernatural creator are extremely poor Christians, in my opinion, because they shouldn’t need scientific evidence – their faith should be enough. God would surely consider it a waste of the faithful’s time to go and look for proof when the Bible is sitting right there on their goddamn bookshelf.

I know that Evangelism (i.e. the religious tenet that spreading your faith is part of being a Christian) throws a wrench in this a bit, but I do think part of the popularity of Evangelism is that people do realize that religion is falling apart in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So they have to buttress the crumbling edifice by quickly converting others and trying to shut out the evidence that their religion (as they see it) is nonsense.

The only reason it is falling apart is because you simple-minded drones insist on taking the BIble literally. The intelligent, real Christians who care about getting on with their lives rather than making everyone else conform to their views have long ago reconciled evolution and creation. It isn’t hard. Even I can fucking do it. Earth was created in 6 days right? Well, assuming a “day” with no existent sun (the sun wasn’t created until later in the “week”) is an arbitrary amount of time, you can easily assign any number of geological eras to a day. And as for evolution, don’t they say that God works in mysterious ways? So God set the spark in motion that eventually resulted in evolved man being created in his image. Remember, we’re talking about an OMNIPOTENT god here. It is equally easy for God to wave a hand and create a man out of thin air or to set a nearly infinitely-complex system in motion and yet predict the exact result unerringly. This is God, people. Jesus. The Christians don’t seem to realize powerful the Lord is. He is Almighty. Remember?

All I’m trying to say is that real faith involves being able to adapt your views to new information and yet never falter in your belief. To reject the evidence in front of your eyes is foolish and almost certainly not what God, who gave you your brain, would want you to do. What would impress God (assuming he can be impressed, which is unlikely) would not be the empty-headed drones who sequesters themselves from the real world because he or she can’t grasp the fact that the Bible is not a literal document, but the people who keep their faith in the face of the evidence to the contrary. That’s real faith.

And speaking of literal interpretation of the Bible, the Jews (or at least those that study the Kabbalah and to a lesser extent Talmudic scholars) would think it laughable that divine wisdom could be comprehensible in a book of simple (and some admittedly pointless) stories. The Kaballah works at getting at the true divine meaning out of the Torah which is absolutely not apprehensible at face value. And Rabbis spend their entire lives mulling over the meaning of this document. The Torah is a living work, not a dead tome of endless rules and regulations. In this way, I believe, Judaism is a model faith because literalism is generally frowned upon (even though Orthodox Jews may take more tenets of faith directly, they still study the Torah like mad.)

Why some Christians can’t wrap their heads around the fact that God’s wisdom may not simply be a book of fairy tales is beyond me. Let me assure you that I am an atheist, but I can get a better grasp of dynamic faith than these supposedly faithful people. Rationality and faith aren’t incompatible! You just need to put rationality first, and all can be put right.

If you put rationality first, then you assholes wouldn’t be stepping all over our rights as American citizens. Off to New Plymouth Rock with you. You can keep your isolation and indoctrination, and we’ll keep all of the wonderful freedoms that we enjoy on a daily basis. Have fun!

Today’s Rant: Euthanasia and the Christian Wrong

Euthanasia illegal? This must be the work of those sneaky Puritanical bastards yet again. The only justification for not ending someone’s suffering by their consent must be a transcendental one. Okay. Maybe this is a bit more complicated than that. Apparently there is a great deal of moral difference (at least to a doctor, and perhaps interested parties such as the one mentioned above) between passively allowing a patient to die and actively aiding them to do so. All doctors theoretically follow the credo “first, do no harm” so technically speaking it violates the Hippocratic Oath to help a patient die. For doctors, at least, I can see some logical reasons behind the hesitation to legalize it, even if I don’t ultimately agree with them.

Unfortunately, this article is about to deteriorate into another tirade against the Christian Wrong. I find it patently ironic that my name is Christopher, which is taken from Greek for “Christ-bearer” Think about it. Change one letter and you get “Christ-beater.”  Boy am I going to hell.

The Puritans apparently argue that you’re still committing a sin in killing someone before God has deemed it is their time to die, even if morally you can hardly stand to allow this person to suffer anymore. Check out this nonsensical religious rejection of assisted suicide (courtesy of the Wikipedia article on Euthanasia in the U.S.A.):

Many people also believe that suicide is “considered as a rejection of God’s sovereignty and loving plan,” because He is the one who gives life, and therefore should be the one who takes life. Not only would suicide be against God’s plan but keeping PAS illegal could be positive for the patient, and thought of as “a divinely appointed opportunity for learning or purification.” This could be positive for any member of a faith group because they would relate their suffering to the “sufferings of Christ crucified,” (12). Since life is cherished, many believe it would be unethical to assist in suicide because the patient’s health care is expensive and inconvenient for the doctor (13)

The sheer arrogance of these people is insulting. Their opinions should be laughed to scorn and they should go find a new goddamn Plymouth Rock – America has no place for their kind anymore. It practically never did. I can barely breathe I’m so pissed off. Not everyone is a Christian you assholes! Oh yeah, it will be redeeming to endure agonizing pain for days on end as a cleansing rite before you pass on to your Eternal Reward courtesy of Our Lord and Savior.

These supposedly religious people can’t even get their own freaking religion right: Jesus died for our sins to prevent our suffering, not to cause it. Jesus would never be in favor of needless suffering if you actually believed anything you read about him. But why read the damn book when you could just smash people over the head with it?

So that was fun, right? I will forever be referring to these religious numbskulls as either the Puritans or the Christian Wrong. But please allow me to clarify: I have nothing against Christianity itself. It’s the moral minority of people who want to theocratize this country that draw my ire. Jesus had many solid moral principles to teach (none particularly more spectacular than that elusive skill known as common sense); but they need to be combined with your own experience and critical thought, not bandied about loudly so you can get your way. This tactic doesn’t work on atheists. And there are surprisingly many these days. Why?

My theory is that so many people watch the horrible things done “in the name of God” and conclude that either God can’t exist if he allows these drones commit atrocities on a daily basis or if God does exist, he is unworthy of any sort of worship. Either one works for me.

Peace.

Today’s Rave: Taoism

Having just read through the Tao Te Ching for the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, I just thought I would say a few words on a slightly inscrutable subject: Taoism. While I am hardly any better than the average person at interpreting this highly esoteric subject, I believe I can shed light on few of the genuine basic tenets, as well as dispel some of the common misconceptions about it, mostly because I used to share them myself. Note that I have this post marked as philosophy and not religion, as Taoism makes essentially no transcendental claims whatsoever. Those who think Taoism is a religion are mistaken, although it does prescribe a code for living like may religions unfortunately do. The simple goal of this way of living is harmony, not reward in the hereafter or avoiding damnation.

In the particular translation I am reading, one of the key concepts is translated as “non-Ado.” I will try to clarify. Ado in this case means bother or fuss. The Tao Te Ching says (I’m paraphrasing all these) “the sage does his work, but sets no store by it.” Additionally, “the secret of the Tao is this: when you have done your work, retire!” What the book is trying to get across is the idea that you should be able to get things done without constantly marking off your achievements, as this interferes with work for its own sake (something Taoism shares with Zen Buddhism). In order to live harmoniously, one must be able to do things essentially without taking credit for them, or at least not caring about credit whether you receive it or not.

While you (and I) may balk at this idea, it is this insistence on ego gratification and ego context that makes everything such a goddamn trial. The simple joy of getting things done should in theory be enough. In fact, without all the fuss over a task, it becomes automatic, as if nothing is being done at all. After all, something is only “work” if you have to force yourself to set about doing it. If it is as natural as breathing, it can’t really be considered “work” in the usual sense. This is the true meaning of “The sage does nothing, yet nothing is left undone.”

This is closely tied to the misconception that Taoism is a philosophy for lazy people. Unfortunately this is far from the truth, unless you are so good at being lazy (and we’re talking The Dude from the Big Lebowski here) that it doesn’t inconvenience anyone else. Essentially, if one can live life in the most genuine sense possible (this is a big philosophy issue, but Taosim does attempt to address it), then the Tao will naturally follow.

It is true, however, that Taoism does teach you to relax, and live in the moment. People’s minds are always in the future or past, but rarely trained on the present. For Taoism, harmony is something in the present, and one must work in one’s current circumstance to achieve harmony.

I would caution you, though, that Taoism, like its social counterpart Confucianism, is predicated on (or perhaps the cause of) the passive-mode morality of most Asian civilizations, which stresses that leaving people alone will usually do them more good than you sticking your nose in their business. This is why Taoism says it is better for people to be stupid than smart, and better to fill their stomachs with food than their minds with ideas. This is better for the state as a whole, even if the overall average person is worse off.

Though I don’t necessarily agree with everything it posits regarding statecraft, I am partial to this passive mode of live-and-let-live myself, and in a very real sense this is what the Constitution is all about. However, the Puritanical crowd have superimposed their active-morality Golden Rule onto our politics, and are working to overturn individual’s rights to match their outdated moral code. We all can see the inherent danger here. I’ve talked about this a hundred times before, so I won’t bore you to death with it.

In summation: Taoism is very interesting. Read about it. Bye.

Today’s Rant: Foreign Policy and History

Here’s a tip for all you political science-oriented people. If you want to go into foreign policy, don’t get a poli-sci degree. Get a history degree. I wish I were kidding. But quite frankly, anyone in my Modern Middle Eastern history class back in college could easily have predicted the current state of affairs in Iraq simply because they know what Iraq actually is, i.e. a series of disparate regions cobbled together into a single “country” by Britain when they realized they’d rather take control of the greater Middle Eastern area rather than grant it to Faisal as part of his “Greater Arabia” they had originally promised him (or his father, I can’t quite remember) for aid during Word War I. In other words, they took three regions which had never been unified in any way and whose population could not be more different (Sunni, Shia and Kurdish), called them a state and installed Faisal as a puppet until Britain granted Iraq independence in 1932.

The funny thing is, Faisal actually managed to keep it together pretty well, mostly through exceptional decentralization and heavy kowtowing to religious conservatives. However, when our good friend Sadam and his secular Baath party seized Iraq (it had been a military republic for about 20 years at this point) and suppressed religion in ‘79, they had to do it with the iron boot (and a great deal of poisonous gas), since historically it had been quite a religious area. As horrible as that fact is, it makes perfect sense given the tensions that would occur.

So now we go in guns blazing, remove the iron boot, and people start killing each other over all the religious fervor that had been brutally suppressed over the decades, and we sit here scratching our heads and wondering what the hell is going on. As I said, ANYONE with even a moderate dose of middle eastern history would easily have seen this coming. The only reason I didn’t predict it would happen is I assumed, wrongly, that the heads of state who make these decisions MUST be better at foreign policy than me.

This is an extremely sad state of affairs, when a smart-ass 20-something year old college kid is a better foreign analyst than our big government honchos. And yet I’m relegated to stuffing envelopes. Life is funny isn’t it? And let’s not forget about the big honking example of Vietnam looming only 3 decades ago. But I guess our illustrious administration’s memory is awfully short, especially since they all managed to get out of going to ‘Nam. This war was colossal idiocy for so many reasons. We all think, hope, pray that it is not so easy the take a trillion-dollar military out for a joyride/bloodbath but that’s exactly what Rove/Rumsfeld/Cheney and their asinine sycophants managed to do. And we have people that are willing to die for this country! We owe them a minimum of never putting them in harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary. 4000 and counting. This administration should be hung for treason.

Never again.