Our entire society is rotting from too much entertainment, and history shows that typically populations just don't disengage in time from these sorts of influences to prevent the death of a society
Citation required. All I can think of is you're channeling Gibbons, or perhaps some Heinlein-esque scifi worlds. I'm 48 and a lifelong reader of History, and it's not clear to me at all what you're basing that assertion on, so please illustrate.
What are you looking for citation regarding? If it's the rotting from too much entertainment, then that's my opinion based on observation and I'm not going to bother trying to back it up by hunting down research which happens to agree with me. I know that makes it next to worthless in a scientific sense, but I'm happy to accept that. I am confident in my powers of observation and pattern recognition, and I would be happy to discuss the value of my observations if you like.
If, however, it's the historical claim you want citation of, then given that you're a life-long reader of history, I'll have to respectfully bow to your learning, because I am probably not as well versed as you on the subject. I'm just repeating commonly accepted wisdom, which may indeed be incorrect. So what are your views regarding the reasons behind the fall of past civilizations? Did laziness and hubris and the seeking of trivial entertainment over useful social involvement not play a part in populations allowing corrupt forces to destroy their societies? Is there nothing at all to the whole, "Bread & Circuses" thing?
(BTW, smoking doesn't enhance awareness. It's a deadener, which is why it's used to 'calm the nerves' in a shock situation - very common for both smokers and non-smokers in the recent past like WW2. For the already addicted, it becomes an awareness enhancement only insomuch that getting your next hit shuts up the brain's screaming for nicotine. Which is why I'm having a morning drag of the damn weed right now.)
Hm. I've experienced both the calming you describe but also at the same time what might be best termed, "thought floods". Often when working, I'll find that smoking will result in solutions and cool ideas leaping to mind. Happened almost every time I lit up. There's also another aspect to smoking I found curious; it seemed to put me in a constant, light kind of dream-state, where I could still interact with the world without difficulty, but wherein everything seemed to take on an extra degree of thoughtful awareness. I was smoking organic tobacco with no hundred or more extra 'additives', so maybe that had something to do with my experience versus what you report.
Anyway, according to the research I've read on this, (no citations again, I'm afraid. You'll have to go look for them yourself if you're interested), the nicotine simulates a neurotransmitter called, 'acetylcholine', which is linked to memory-forming and other brain functions.
I was about to say, "Yeah, but people have been spending money on video games ever since "Space Invaders". But I quickly realized that there are a couple of significant differences between this and the 80's coin-op arcade.
1. You can burn a LOT more time for a lot less money today.
2. Pac Man and Donkey Kong were interactive puzzles which only took a few minutes to play in most cases. They were carnival attractions which you visited for a laugh and then left behind. Games today are more like extended dream states which offer much stronger and much more quickly realized psychological rewards than real life does. --Which is why many people spend more of their waking hours and useful energy on virtual worlds than they do in the real world. It's REAL escapism.
It is habit forming, and this means that on a certain level it is also chemically addictive. But it's also relatively easy to choose against if you wish. But like Television, nearly everybody is addicted and so addiction is considered culturally normal, and thus to choose against it is actually counter-intuitive in the sense that we are all pack animals with a hard-wired feeling of comfort when everybody is mimicking each other's behavior.
For people to disengage, it will take public discussion of it as a problem, rather like the whole tobacco thing. (But since tobacco enhances awareness and video games erode it, I doubt we'll be seeing any such movement; certainly not from the government in any significant way). Our entire society is rotting from too much entertainment, and history shows that typically populations just don't disengage in time from these sorts of influences to prevent the death of a society. It's happening all around us right now!
Buying pretend tractors is just a tiny piece of the whole enchilada.
Sherman Alexie is funny, witty and well-spoken. I have read a smattering of his works and find him to be erudite and informative. In fact, I would never have even given a second thought about the guy unless I had not run across him on the Dec 1st, 2009 Colbert Report. His remark about open source being such a problem floored me for the depth and breadth of it's stupidity.
I know!!!
You'd think that writers, the people whose job it is to see and think and report back on their insights to the rest of culture. . , that such people should be above silly notions. Erudite and informative? How can this be? Fear clearly makes fools out of even the best of us. --He's worried not about culture or about social justice, but rather, (I strongly suspect as it always boils down to this), about his ability to feed himself and his family (if he has one). When you start poking at those base brain coils, you get base auto-responses. It apparently takes frickin' Jedi reflexes to out-smart one's own fear.
The banks and their monopoly money rat trap have us by the short hairs when they can so easily turn smart people into savages.
They can always get the money. The US military has "black budgets". The US Federal Reserve refuses to disclose where trillions of US dollars has gone to and only a few people are kicking up a fuss about it (there's a persistent senator and even Bloomberg has tried, but they're not getting much traction - the citizens care more about the notorious bonuses which are much smaller in amount).
Hm. Yeah.
From what I gather about black budget projects comes from looking at the evolution of the development of military technology. But of course similar rules would also apply to intelligence. With military tech, the real and/or perceived need for secrecy turns into a black budget project which, after enough time, even a lowly office like the president is not always automatically briefed on, especially if the party values change flags from those which originally implemented the secrecy. The power shifts to the private sector where the lack of public oversight makes keeping secrets much easier. The problem is that this is a double-edged sword. The flow of money is not accounted for, and so putting money into one program doesn't mean it won't move to other programs which aren't even on the secret books. With enough money, advanced technology and paranoid self-protection, and with high level financial institutions and the media getting pulled into the act, (as has been shown beyond any question through FIOA documents), then secret industrial concerns gather steam and grow beyond public control altogether.
When the lobbies are connected to the very agencies funded by black programs instigated by the government itself, what is a humble Mister Smith in Washington supposed to do? The whole game gets massively complicated and paranoid and dead-locked into a certain type of momentum. The few un-corrupted politicians out there find that it's easier to just go with the flow because it's impossible to ever be informed enough to make an intelligent decision. Throw into that the ever-present element of psychopaths drawn to power, and the whole thing gets very, very ugly. That child prostitution ring involved at the White House (which nobody likes to recall or talk about) was just a small fin of the leviathan poking above black water.
I do remember, a couple of years ago now, trying to work out who originally provided seed capitol for Google and what their control stake was. I seem to remember that it came from three or four significant sources, and at least one was linked directly to names which were tightly involved with early microchip pioneer development, which in turn had deep roots in the clandestine miasma of WWII surveillance and radar technology. There was a great deal of hidden money, hokey-pokey spy stuff going on throughout those early days, and Google is only about three or four handshakes away from that bunch of Kevin Bacons.
But that was just a day of me thinking, "Oh dear! Look at all of these connected names and influences." Nothing solid, of course. Though, I do have a friend who was tight with management at a very high profile software company during the tech boom when everybody was playing fast and loose, and he assures me that Facebook has significant links to the intelligence community. I never tried to check up on that, but the basic premise seems altogether too likely to cast aside.
I'd still very much like to believe that Google the Good is what they say it is and that there are no dark tendrils woven into the mix.
On the bright side. ..
Even if there is a corrupt element, for such a vast snooping program to function, people need to feel open and unrestricted on the internet. And that level of connection allows positive energies to build as well. --And positive energies build geometrically; they are based on knowledge accumulation. (Two facts can automatically self-connect to reveal information which is otherwise hidden, and the more knowledge which gets fed into the network, the more quickly this kind of information combustion occurs.) The Da
When 'free' web services which are obviously tremendously expensive to maintain and which feature only a token handful of banner ads. . .
I don't know the economics of Facebook and Yahoo and Google, but it certainly seems that there would be a TON of money available for the kind of information they pull in. Do corporations actively resist selling a constantly renewable resource they specifically crafted their web sites and web applications to generate? I have no trouble believing that Facebook is selling everything they glean about you to the highest bidder. It's Google that I find myself wondering about; their "Don't Be Evil" thing is so effective that even I have the slogan burned into my mind.
But do those Google ads REALLY pay for entire data centers and dedicated trunks and hundreds of miles of fiber optics?
No, you moron. The point is that it's obvious to everyone that you were making up that nonsense about how you, like, totally know a whole bunch of doctors, in a transparent attempt at lending your position a credibility you're not capable of giving it legitimately.
Ah. I think I'm beginning to see now what's been going on; this is how you actually think reality is for everybody. That knowing people for you really IS some sort of difficult stunt.
Here's what I'm guessing: You have difficulty believing that I might know people who are dentists because YOU don't know people who are dentists and you think your experience in the world is normal. . .
As it happens, lots of people I went to school with went on to hold interesting jobs. But that's just for starters. Since I left home, I've met many, many people in all manner of profession. I get out and enjoy the simple pleasure of conversation. I enjoy talking with my Dentist about more than just teeth. Haven't you ever talked with your dentist? Haven't you ever switched dentists or doctors because you didn't like who they were or how they treated you? It's hardly a mystery. This is how the world really works when you're not stuck in an introverted head-space.
--But more than that; I've met politicians and truck drivers and scientists and all kinds of doctors. I know soldiers and athletes and actors and journalists and pilots and. . , well you get the idea. Just all kinds of different people, all simply by walking out my front door and making the effort to connect with the rest of humanity. It's not hard at all. If you are open to connections, then going to something as simple as a wedding will put you in close quarters with a dozen or more fascinating individuals. If you try, you might meet some interesting people yourself and have some insightful conversations. But first you'll have to stop squinting at everybody so suspiciously, stop sitting quietly by yourself and stop assuming that everybody in the world plays by the limited and paranoid rules of social interaction you seem to have accepted as normal. Because while it may be normal for some people, it is not by any means necessary.
No tricks. No mystery. No attempt to inflate my claims. No need for complex analysis. Because really, sometimes a Dentist is just a Dentist.
Depends, did you vote for tax cuts in the last year? Support for libraries will little or no fees with expanded hours is the key. Some libraries are closed Sunday and Monday here, and we can't borrow books from out of county. The rest have odd hours that make it difficult for someone working 8-5 to utilize.
I think I'd be happier paying taxes if I was allowed to indicate on a long check list where I wanted my money to go. Restrict dollars to the Halliburton "cost plus" burn pits and increase spending on public transit, green infrastructure, (which I mean literally; more trees in cities), and libraries. I bet taxes would go down this way, too.
Well THAT was a rather intense over-reaction. Deep breath and count to ten? Do you see what the other poster did? He asked a question in order to find clarification. That's a noble quality.
You do realize how crazy you sound, right? You sound like you're supposing that the Dollhouse sends out incompetent terrorists to scare the public into supporting restrictive government policies and persecuting "geeks", "misfits" and engineers. Note that this requires presupposing the existence of a Dollhouse or similar organization.
So you've basically never done an inch of research on this subject, have you?
People are constantly functioning under conditions of mind-control. Everybody from the housewife who feels dirty when she doesn't shave her armpits, all the way to cult victims. Heck, when I was a kid I learned that I could convince people to do stupid things just with words. (Luckily for the world, I quickly realized that manipulation is a violation of Free Will, and therefore Evil and felt due shame. I'll debate with people on any number of subjects, but I won't try to abridge their Free Will.)
In any case, when you apply drugs and abuse and forced confinement to the equation, you can very easily produce assembly-line agents. If you don't realize this, then it simply means you've never bothered to study the whole (very) ugly subject. --But it is necessary to know this stuff if you want to protect yourself against manipulators and propaganda. Very simply, if you force a person to dissociate, (it works best at a young age when it happens naturally as a defense mechanism to trauma), then you can deliberately split the personality and program people like computers. But even if you don't know what you are doing, you can convince a person to do something stupid if you hammer at them long enough and restrict contact with rational people.
Every now and again on those occasions when suicide bombers or whoever are caught when their explosive device failed and they didn't terminate, you'll see it reported that they are taken away with what is described as a confused, glazed or drugged look in their faces. In fact, this burning pants guy from a few days ago is just such an example. . . The guy who tackled him had this to say. ..
"He was shaking. He didn't resist anything. It's just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid."
Joss Whedon's Doll House is a giant, over-the-top metaphor, but it's a good one. It talks about things nobody wants to hear.
Do you have any idea how many engineers, scientists, and other "geeks" are just normal people with some more intelligence and curiosity added on?
I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make with this. Sure, geeks are people too. They just happen to be the people who become engineers and scientists, who are responsible for all the countless systems which keep you and me and our entire society alive and functioning.
If your bizzaro worldview was correct, I'd have to ask why the bloody hell geeks aren't systematic killers. In your world we've certainly got the right to liberation and retribution for the "Pavlovian programming" and "mind-control patsies".
This is what I've been saying for years. Minus the violence. Violence is bad for the Karma. There are other ways of resisting. Like everybody deciding all at the same time to not pay taxes. The French do massive, country-wide strikes which seem to be quite effective.
Except that we're not dealing with a fascist system. It was in danger of going fascist for a while, but now society has managed to get itself back onto track: a technologically-advanced material-rich capitalist society collapsing into corporate feudalism.
otherwise you would understand that this is why a complete stranger on the internet has been able to analyze you with perfect accuracy
Ah. So NOW you're a "complete stranger" performing an analysis with "perfect accuracy". Before, you had implied that you knew all of my personal associations well enough to call me a liar regarding the people I went to school with. Which is it? Are you going to creep up behind some random guy you think you know and confront him? (And then construct for yourself a story about how he was only pretending to not know you?)
You have already stated with categorical 100% certainty several things about me which are quite false. People who are truly in love with science and critical thought strive to avoid making such statements because there is always a chance they might not be correct or that there is some factor they have overlooked. But there IS a type of person who does make absolute statements and believes in the fiercely. . .
The paranoid/schizophrenic thinks that everything is about him. He sees connections and patterns where there are none and he believes his analysis of the world to be entirely beyond reproach. His own sanity is the last thing he questions. Watch that film, "A Beautiful Mind", (though you'll find no beauty there; only tragedy). It portrays this kind of sickness quite well. Interestingly, I note that you are familiar with maths and/or computer programming. Programmers, I've found, tend to be more subject to this kind of tunnel thinking and subsequent social malady than others.
Look, I apologize for making fun of you. Maybe you're genuinely nuts or maybe you just need to spend a few days outside clearing your head, but right now there's obviously something out of whack in your brain. And that's nothing to be ashamed of, but it IS worth fixing. --Stop and think back to all the people who looked at you oddly when you flew off the handle. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with them. Remember, you are the common factor in all of your relationships.
Hopefully it's just a matter of too little sunshine, but even if you are sick, there is help. From the cases I've seen which you remind me of, I've noted that a good diet and exercise helps a great deal to ground one's mind.
Having read through their explanation of the sample of 404 "known terrorists" they derived their figures from, I have to say that they are clearly jumping to conclusions. ..
One could question the validity of our result. The list of names and the subset of individuals in it on whom we found information are both selected by the public availability of data, which in turn depends largely on whether the individuals came to the attention of the authorities because they were killed, captured or investigated. However, the chances of finding engineers relative to the chances of finding graduates in any other 13 subject should be unaffected by these selection biases. For a bias to occur we would have to assume that engineers are more likely than other educated individuals to be killed, caught or investigated because of greater incompetence. This seems implausible; if anything the opposite should be the case. If they fell into the investigative net they arguably did so because they were particularly active, prone to violence and able to use it, which would indeed show the existence of the correlation that interests us.
Here's the thing; If you are an engineering type, then chances are you are comfortable with information technology to a higher degree than others. --I've known a lot of different kinds of students and not all of them are computer savvy. Further, if you are an oil worker or a baker or an unemployed man whose house has been run over by a tractor and you have notions of social justice through violence, how much awareness of you are the secret services going to have versus an engineer with an internet connection? --You know, a guy whose Google search footprint and subsequent psychological profile screams, "Malcontent!" --Surveillance is easy when you don't have to leave the Homeland office to build your suspect list.
And a sample of 404 people, (nearly all taken from internet sources, I might add), for such a squishy study is, while interesting, hardly damning proof of anything. --I mean, just the definition, 'terrorist' is a bullshit one these days. Every time a military bomb wipes out a village, it is usually reported that most of the people killed were conveniently, "Terrorists". I had no idea the world had so many engineers! And frankly, based on everything I've read, (and I've read a truckload on this), I happen to believe that a lot of high-profile 'terrorism' is performed for false-flag purposes by mind-control patsies of one sort or another. Heck, the kid who set his pants on fire just a few days ago aboard an international flight, when you dig into that highly suspicious story, appears to have been in zombie-mode and to have had several handlers who put him on the flight, by-passing security.
I would be VERY cautious about taking a study like this one at face value. I mean, yes, engineers do tend to carry certain social characteristics, and as I've always said, they are one of the most powerful groups on the planet because they make everything work. They define reality. And as such, the military industrial complex has a vested interest in making damned sure all the Pavlovian programming has well and truly taken hold in that group, with regular inoculations, so that they are easily controlled. Top priority slaves, as it were, making slavery as a way of life possible.
Geeks have been punished and programmed and used by society their whole lives exactly because of their social traits. But that doesn't make them prone to becoming systematic killers. Who got blamed during that Columbine massacre? The misfits. But upon closer inspection, it turns out those trench coat kids were not your or my kind of misfit. They didn't hang out in the computer lab and their bombs didn't work. --When it comes to labeling a social group, I'd be more worried about those Tea Party people with their guns and down-home religion, conservative rage and neighborhood mili
When did I ever say anything about myself? I'm talking about people in general, society and so on. What I'm like and what you're like doesn't matter, it's the other 6+ billion people which really matters. You're apparently not only incapable of understanding that other people aren't like you but also that anyone would be capable of possessing such understanding.
I'm sorry. I made the assumption that you were studying medicine. It was both a bit of generosity and gross error on my part. I must say you didn't seem altogether suited for such study, but I prefer to assume heart and intelligence in the people I'm talking with and then adjust accordingly as they reveal themselves.
Learn it well? It takes 10 years to even begin learning to be a doctor, school doesn't teach you much you know. That's 10 years of making no money and spending probably 80 hours a week on it.
Yeah. That's about right for most difficult skills. Ten years of hard practice before the difficulty of re-learning things well enough to function effectively as a professional. Becoming a doctor takes work. What's your point exactly? That this makes it okay for a person to become a greed-driven monster who puts his/her welfare above others? We're talking about healers here, right? Hell on earth is where doctors serve out of greed rather than compassion.
You know what most people really have a passion for? Their family. Not their job, not society, not humanity. They'll deal with the worst job in the world to help put food on the table. If money isn't an issue they'll pick whatever job lets them spend the most time with their family.
Yes. This is where mob families come from. Putting your clan first rather than society in general. The ability to have compassion for one's family does imply something above the baby-eating crocodile, but it is also a few levels beneath the ultimate evolution of human awareness we are capable of. We are all one, after all. But this not something everybody is even capable of accessing, let alone practicing.
Socialism only works when the crocodiles and mobsters have been weeded out. It won't happen, and thus we will always have slavery. And scary doctors who sell Palestinian livers.
I do have that knowledge. Your writing style reveals more about you than you realize. You're about to try turning this back on me, but you're simply not smart enough to make it work.
Uh huh.
My writing style reveals *everything* about me; always has, always will. But you're either faulty of memory or you don't know how to read anywhere nearly as well as you think you can. Either way, you're in gross error. But this is only to be expected; the time of the Mercury Retrograde is upon us! All the false crap we've spent time believing to be true gets hauled out into the light during such a phase. I've learned to go limp and roll with the punches during these times; there's a lot which can be learned about oneself when illusions come crashing down. (For instance, I learned that dentists are not at the top of the list of suicidal doctor types.) Are you ready to learn your lessons?
No, you're just angry because you've been shown to be taking old wives' tales at face value. It is absolute and undeniable proof that you are gullible and stupid. That knowledge sends you into screaming fits, which you ineptly attempt to cover by feigning amusement because that's what you see people do on television.
Screaming fits? Wow. Whoever it is you think I am sounds like a real piece of work. I certainly feel silly when I make an error, and I generally like to rebound with a joke, but I've also become pretty good at laughing not just at others but at my own ego as well. I've been wrong many times before and I will be again. Humor is pretty much required to combat the ego.
Now. . , are you sure you're not looking inward a bit here? Because if I may say so, your own writing style and, "absolute, undeniable proof of my gullibility and stupidity" is beginning to sound a little 'off'. Are you by any chance the type of person who threw tantrums on the T-Ball pitch before overwrought parents inquired about medication? Paranoid/manic-depressive/schizoid/borderline personalities; I've had occasion to experience several of those up close over the course of my life. (Along with Jewish dentists. Believe it or not.)
It isn't damning at all. You've shown no causal link of any kind, preferring instead to take refuge in the "correlation == causation" fallacy, something else that proves you to be identical to the "mindless masses" to whom you want to think you're superior.
Oh dear! Look up "hyperbole" and get back to me. We "superior beings" make regular use of the stuff when poking the lunatic fringe.
I believe James Cameron has said the core concept has floated around his head for 20 years now. But the film as he made it today seems to have a strong Iraq message.
I agree it did, but again I don't think it was entirely deliberate. I remember reading an old version of the script/treatment around the same time as the Iraq invasion and with a few exceptions, (like the weirdness of the alien life), this film held very true to what I read.
Though. . , now that I think of it, the script was somewhat more believable with regard to the human military defeat. --The planet basically swallowed the entire Terran base at the end; the planet basically treated the human incursion as an infection and the alien life which was attacking the base 24/7 since the beginning of the story were the activated anti-bodies. (The alien life forms, while ferocious near the base, were presented at quite calm and friendly once the story ventured into the jungle.
The human military didn't have a chance. That change might be taken as a statement about Iraq, I suppose. --All media being a product of the global sub-conscious on one level.
Did anybody else at the end of the film feel depressed? --Rather than elation over the blue alien victory, I just felt dread.
I mean, we've seen this pattern before; Corporate invasion power doesn't just go home when it's lost a battle. Not when there remains huge profit to be had. It just sends out another battle ship. The blue guys barely won the 'final' battle as it is. There was a lot of luck involved, and they lost many of their best warriors.
And didn't the human forces have a massive space platform in orbit around the planet? They sent home all the human survivors, with all of their intimate strategic intelligence about the planet. Ugh. --I recall another quote from a James Cameron film. . .
"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
There's no way that story ends happily. The credits just happened to roll on an up-tick.
When glancing back at American history, I seem to recall noting plenty of Indian massacres when the old-West was settled, but in the end, the interlopers with the boom-sticks always win.
I came out of Avatar into a massive parking lot which played home to a dozen box stores and felt two things; "Wow! Cool effects" and "Life sucks!"
Why not go the whole way and invent all your own words? Quthiaz, cnubto quthiaz!
Oh My GAWWWWWWD, LOL, ROFL, you pawnzed that biyatch!
I mean, wow, just wow!
--That's acting. That's all it ever is. It's not expressing anything genuine. It's simple pack mentality exerting itself. Punish the little chicken in the pecking order using group-sanctioned attacks. It's the lowest form of human existence. We were built to be more than moronic highschool popularity brats. In a teenager still learning how to be human, this is okay. It's a lesson. If you are older, then it passes into the zone of embarrassing.
Words are tools which, while inadequate most of the time, can be used to express one's thoughts. If your 'thoughts' can be contained in pre-constructed expressions you heard somewhere else and want to try on, then your thoughts are probably not terribly genuine either.
All I'm saying is that if you don't think before you type, then it's easy to wonder if you're thinking at all.
Self-interest IS human nature. A species that does not have self interest does not survive, it's genes die off and are replaced by those that do have self-interest. Welcome to life. Deny it all you want but that's the truth.
Well, we have crocodiles and elephants. One will eat their own babies and the other will help animals which are not even the same species out of mud holes. Yes, we all eat to live, and that means killing, but there are degrees across the scale. You sound like you've chosen to lean more towards the reptilian approach.
And yes, it takes about 10 years to learn any craft or skill really well. And it is indeed nearly always grueling and difficult. I've bloodied myself and endured all manner of hardship while mastering my professional skills. Why anybody would choose to embark on a course of study they aren't attracted to from a soul level is due largely, I think, to ignorance regarding the nature of free will and internal passions.
Um, yes actually, I do. I went to highschool with one in particular. Greedy. Shit. I might mention that he was also a member of the burgeoning Jewish community, fulfilling the stereotype in that manner which is painfully awkward for observers to be near. But do go on and pretend you know more about my life than I do. Do you find that sort of delusion necessary in order to maintain your existence? Just how horrid is the truth of your life that you have to pretend knowledge you can't possible have?
No, they don't. For someone who likes to bloviate about what the stupid common masses think, you're awfully eager to repeat things that "everybody knows" like one of them.
Aw, you're just angry because four out of five dentists agree with my misinformation. In any case, this quote from your article is rather more damning. . . "Suicide among white male American dentists is higher than average but not as high as among white male American doctors."
So I guess any medical profession will do for our subject. Just as long as he removes himself from the gene pool quickly so that we have one less greed-motivated practitioner to deal with in the world.
And when all the little socialists are dying of disease because no one wanted to spend 12 years becoming a doctor only to get as much reward as the guy who became a janitor I'll be sure to come around and laugh at them.
Uh huh. Yes, greed is the only reason anybody would ever want to become a doctor. That is sick.
--I know excellent healers of all different stripes who became healers because that is what they love. I also know greedy shits who became dentists because they wanted to make a lot of money. Interestingly, dentists have one of the higher suicide rates among the various professions.
Ugh. What's up with, "wow, just wow" guys? I'm sorry, but if you want to express personal surprise, maybe try to come up with a personal way of doing it. Regurgitating common expressions of surprise indicates zero thought, which calls into suspicion the force making your knee jerk in the first place. Are YOU reacting or are you just acting out some canned bit of crap you saw on TV?
But that's just a personal gripe.
The comments regarding balance you offer are spot-on and I actually agree with them. Look up, "Hyperbole" before getting all "Wowed" out next time.
You're displaying your ignorance. Socialism is when the state controls the distribution of resources. If an employer decides to treat their employees right and pay them well, that's still capitalism because it is a private individual and not the government making the decision. You don't even seem to understand the basic thing that define socialism vs capitalism, that being state vs private ownership.
Nah. That's a bullshit definition of Socialism. Why use it? --Let's redefine it to the one everybody understands in the cockles of their hearts anyway; "Don't be a greedy dick. Think of others. Recognize that a society works better when people help each other."
After all, THAT'S what everybody has been programmed to reject.
In any case, nobody is using the technically correct definition for "Capitalism" either. I mean, come on, you know as well as I do that when people say, "Capitalism" they don't mean, 'If an employer decides to treat their employees right and pay them well, that's still capitalism because it is a private individual and not the government making the decision.' Heck, your friend was surprised by your explanation for a reason. It's because the debate has been rigged with bum words. When people say, "Capitalism" They mean, "Absolute, unbridled, no-holds-barred competition." But when quizzed upon it, the FOX commentator can innocently fall back to the text book definition as you offer. So there are two levels at work. The bullshit definition level, and the real one where the war is actually being fought.
And that IS the war. Self-Service v.s. Service-to-Others.
The text-book definitions, (which I am quite of aware, thank-you very much), have been carefully selected and emotionally-defined and as such are useless in debate. There's no handy word on the political card table for, "Hey, I know! Let's play nice." All we've got is "Socialism", because the argument has been restricted to black & white terms by the Lords of Reality. One possible key is to redefine the logical and emotional content of the terminology so that it matches the actual problem. --And to ignore those who are caught up in explaining why Coke is better than Pepsi rather than in looking for a drinking fountain.
But if we want to look at the strict text book definitions. . . Capitalism and Socialism work out to the same net result; Governments infested with psychopaths game whatever system is in place to reach a state where they control everything and enslave everybody. Noble concepts like Capitalism and Socialism, I think, could both work well if we first purged governments of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals. I'd love to see mandatory testing and psyche evaluations of everybody in government, the results made public and then appropriate courses of action taken. We won't see that, but if we grow an awareness that such a problem exists and in fact defines the activity of our entire race, then we have new options open up to us; it allows us to make rational choices.
In my opinion, the system you advocate will eliminate personal generosity, breaking down the relationships that make us a society. You want to replace generosity between people with subservience to and dependence on the state.
Only if you play by the rulebook you've been handed. I reject it. It needs re-writing.
The psychopath is by default a self-centered greedy dick who wants his/her environment to make that mode of existence as easy as possible. Thus s/he will latch on to and hold up definitions which encourage greed-based thinking and further mire down the debate until we are all. . , well, until we are all exactly where we are right now. There's a reason why everybody hates lawyers.
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won Monopoly and turned the world into slave-land, I'll remind them when they come asking for a bread crust. "Look around you! This is YOUR fault. Are you beginning to learn yet why self-service doesn't work? --Or do you want to be stupid livestock for another dozen life times? We WILL repeat this until you learn."
I'm all for idiot FOX viewers being punished for being idiot FOX viewers, but I am not content when others have to put up with the fallout from the knuckle-dragging propaganda-swallowing moronics of the pack man.
Humn. Pac Man. I just got that. That only took twenty years. --The pie-shaped dude is the archetypal pack animal, locked into a state of stupid because his genetics make him easy to subjugate into a ridiculous life-long race after crumbs through a rat maze. The Ghosts. . ? Ha! That actually makes sense too, but it's an idea too alarming for most people to deal with so I'll pardon myself from trying to explain.
You know; the diseased try to eat your brain so that you become one of them? I think the shotgun solution is rather extreme. . , though it IS just a metaphor. . .
Zombies certainly have forsaken the ability to be reasoned with.
Faith is fine and wonderful and very powerful, but putting faith into something without first exercising one's powers of observation and logical deduction, (and the ability to disengage the ego when observation and logical deduction tell you things which you find upsetting), then using faith is just foolish. It's like using a hammer while blindfolded. It is necessary to use one's other faculties to determine the existence of a nail before throwing the full weight of certainty behind the swing. Otherwise, you're just doing what a long lineage of psychopathic cult leaders instruct you to do. Doesn't it make sense to research the source of a text you plan to base your entire life on? And the source of that source? Do that correctly and you'll drop religion like the hot rock it is.
There's a reason everything religious has the same vague feel and smell of an infomercial / blissed-out con job.
Yes, we have lots of zombie games already, thanks.
Scientology, like all religion, exists to get the idiots to willingly identify who they are, so rational folks can develop a proper avoidance strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
Citation required. All I can think of is you're channeling Gibbons, or perhaps some Heinlein-esque scifi worlds. I'm 48 and a lifelong reader of History, and it's not clear to me at all what you're basing that assertion on, so please illustrate.
What are you looking for citation regarding? If it's the rotting from too much entertainment, then that's my opinion based on observation and I'm not going to bother trying to back it up by hunting down research which happens to agree with me. I know that makes it next to worthless in a scientific sense, but I'm happy to accept that. I am confident in my powers of observation and pattern recognition, and I would be happy to discuss the value of my observations if you like.
If, however, it's the historical claim you want citation of, then given that you're a life-long reader of history, I'll have to respectfully bow to your learning, because I am probably not as well versed as you on the subject. I'm just repeating commonly accepted wisdom, which may indeed be incorrect. So what are your views regarding the reasons behind the fall of past civilizations? Did laziness and hubris and the seeking of trivial entertainment over useful social involvement not play a part in populations allowing corrupt forces to destroy their societies? Is there nothing at all to the whole, "Bread & Circuses" thing?
(BTW, smoking doesn't enhance awareness. It's a deadener, which is why it's used to 'calm the nerves' in a shock situation - very common for both smokers and non-smokers in the recent past like WW2. For the already addicted, it becomes an awareness enhancement only insomuch that getting your next hit shuts up the brain's screaming for nicotine. Which is why I'm having a morning drag of the damn weed right now.)
Hm. I've experienced both the calming you describe but also at the same time what might be best termed, "thought floods". Often when working, I'll find that smoking will result in solutions and cool ideas leaping to mind. Happened almost every time I lit up. There's also another aspect to smoking I found curious; it seemed to put me in a constant, light kind of dream-state, where I could still interact with the world without difficulty, but wherein everything seemed to take on an extra degree of thoughtful awareness. I was smoking organic tobacco with no hundred or more extra 'additives', so maybe that had something to do with my experience versus what you report.
Anyway, according to the research I've read on this, (no citations again, I'm afraid. You'll have to go look for them yourself if you're interested), the nicotine simulates a neurotransmitter called, 'acetylcholine', which is linked to memory-forming and other brain functions.
-FL
I was about to say, "Yeah, but people have been spending money on video games ever since "Space Invaders". But I quickly realized that there are a couple of significant differences between this and the 80's coin-op arcade.
1. You can burn a LOT more time for a lot less money today.
2. Pac Man and Donkey Kong were interactive puzzles which only took a few minutes to play in most cases. They were carnival attractions which you visited for a laugh and then left behind. Games today are more like extended dream states which offer much stronger and much more quickly realized psychological rewards than real life does. --Which is why many people spend more of their waking hours and useful energy on virtual worlds than they do in the real world. It's REAL escapism.
It is habit forming, and this means that on a certain level it is also chemically addictive. But it's also relatively easy to choose against if you wish. But like Television, nearly everybody is addicted and so addiction is considered culturally normal, and thus to choose against it is actually counter-intuitive in the sense that we are all pack animals with a hard-wired feeling of comfort when everybody is mimicking each other's behavior.
For people to disengage, it will take public discussion of it as a problem, rather like the whole tobacco thing. (But since tobacco enhances awareness and video games erode it, I doubt we'll be seeing any such movement; certainly not from the government in any significant way). Our entire society is rotting from too much entertainment, and history shows that typically populations just don't disengage in time from these sorts of influences to prevent the death of a society. It's happening all around us right now!
Buying pretend tractors is just a tiny piece of the whole enchilada.
-FL
Sherman Alexie is funny, witty and well-spoken. I have read a smattering of his works and find him to be erudite and informative. In fact, I would never have even given a second thought about the guy unless I had not run across him on the Dec 1st, 2009 Colbert Report. His remark about open source being such a problem floored me for the depth and breadth of it's stupidity.
I know!!!
You'd think that writers, the people whose job it is to see and think and report back on their insights to the rest of culture. . , that such people should be above silly notions. Erudite and informative? How can this be? Fear clearly makes fools out of even the best of us. --He's worried not about culture or about social justice, but rather, (I strongly suspect as it always boils down to this), about his ability to feed himself and his family (if he has one). When you start poking at those base brain coils, you get base auto-responses. It apparently takes frickin' Jedi reflexes to out-smart one's own fear.
The banks and their monopoly money rat trap have us by the short hairs when they can so easily turn smart people into savages.
-FL
They can always get the money. The US military has "black budgets". The US Federal Reserve refuses to disclose where trillions of US dollars has gone to and only a few people are kicking up a fuss about it (there's a persistent senator and even Bloomberg has tried, but they're not getting much traction - the citizens care more about the notorious bonuses which are much smaller in amount).
Hm. Yeah.
From what I gather about black budget projects comes from looking at the evolution of the development of military technology. But of course similar rules would also apply to intelligence. With military tech, the real and/or perceived need for secrecy turns into a black budget project which, after enough time, even a lowly office like the president is not always automatically briefed on, especially if the party values change flags from those which originally implemented the secrecy. The power shifts to the private sector where the lack of public oversight makes keeping secrets much easier. The problem is that this is a double-edged sword. The flow of money is not accounted for, and so putting money into one program doesn't mean it won't move to other programs which aren't even on the secret books. With enough money, advanced technology and paranoid self-protection, and with high level financial institutions and the media getting pulled into the act, (as has been shown beyond any question through FIOA documents), then secret industrial concerns gather steam and grow beyond public control altogether.
When the lobbies are connected to the very agencies funded by black programs instigated by the government itself, what is a humble Mister Smith in Washington supposed to do? The whole game gets massively complicated and paranoid and dead-locked into a certain type of momentum. The few un-corrupted politicians out there find that it's easier to just go with the flow because it's impossible to ever be informed enough to make an intelligent decision. Throw into that the ever-present element of psychopaths drawn to power, and the whole thing gets very, very ugly. That child prostitution ring involved at the White House (which nobody likes to recall or talk about) was just a small fin of the leviathan poking above black water.
I do remember, a couple of years ago now, trying to work out who originally provided seed capitol for Google and what their control stake was. I seem to remember that it came from three or four significant sources, and at least one was linked directly to names which were tightly involved with early microchip pioneer development, which in turn had deep roots in the clandestine miasma of WWII surveillance and radar technology. There was a great deal of hidden money, hokey-pokey spy stuff going on throughout those early days, and Google is only about three or four handshakes away from that bunch of Kevin Bacons.
But that was just a day of me thinking, "Oh dear! Look at all of these connected names and influences." Nothing solid, of course. Though, I do have a friend who was tight with management at a very high profile software company during the tech boom when everybody was playing fast and loose, and he assures me that Facebook has significant links to the intelligence community. I never tried to check up on that, but the basic premise seems altogether too likely to cast aside.
I'd still very much like to believe that Google the Good is what they say it is and that there are no dark tendrils woven into the mix.
On the bright side. . .
Even if there is a corrupt element, for such a vast snooping program to function, people need to feel open and unrestricted on the internet. And that level of connection allows positive energies to build as well. --And positive energies build geometrically; they are based on knowledge accumulation. (Two facts can automatically self-connect to reveal information which is otherwise hidden, and the more knowledge which gets fed into the network, the more quickly this kind of information combustion occurs.) The Da
When 'free' web services which are obviously tremendously expensive to maintain and which feature only a token handful of banner ads. . .
I don't know the economics of Facebook and Yahoo and Google, but it certainly seems that there would be a TON of money available for the kind of information they pull in. Do corporations actively resist selling a constantly renewable resource they specifically crafted their web sites and web applications to generate? I have no trouble believing that Facebook is selling everything they glean about you to the highest bidder. It's Google that I find myself wondering about; their "Don't Be Evil" thing is so effective that even I have the slogan burned into my mind.
But do those Google ads REALLY pay for entire data centers and dedicated trunks and hundreds of miles of fiber optics?
Really?
-FL
No, you moron. The point is that it's obvious to everyone that you were making up that nonsense about how you, like, totally know a whole bunch of doctors, in a transparent attempt at lending your position a credibility you're not capable of giving it legitimately.
Ah. I think I'm beginning to see now what's been going on; this is how you actually think reality is for everybody. That knowing people for you really IS some sort of difficult stunt.
Here's what I'm guessing: You have difficulty believing that I might know people who are dentists because YOU don't know people who are dentists and you think your experience in the world is normal. . .
As it happens, lots of people I went to school with went on to hold interesting jobs. But that's just for starters. Since I left home, I've met many, many people in all manner of profession. I get out and enjoy the simple pleasure of conversation. I enjoy talking with my Dentist about more than just teeth. Haven't you ever talked with your dentist? Haven't you ever switched dentists or doctors because you didn't like who they were or how they treated you? It's hardly a mystery. This is how the world really works when you're not stuck in an introverted head-space.
--But more than that; I've met politicians and truck drivers and scientists and all kinds of doctors. I know soldiers and athletes and actors and journalists and pilots and. . , well you get the idea. Just all kinds of different people, all simply by walking out my front door and making the effort to connect with the rest of humanity. It's not hard at all. If you are open to connections, then going to something as simple as a wedding will put you in close quarters with a dozen or more fascinating individuals. If you try, you might meet some interesting people yourself and have some insightful conversations. But first you'll have to stop squinting at everybody so suspiciously, stop sitting quietly by yourself and stop assuming that everybody in the world plays by the limited and paranoid rules of social interaction you seem to have accepted as normal. Because while it may be normal for some people, it is not by any means necessary.
No tricks. No mystery. No attempt to inflate my claims. No need for complex analysis. Because really, sometimes a Dentist is just a Dentist.
Happy New Year.
-FL
Depends, did you vote for tax cuts in the last year? Support for libraries will little or no fees with expanded hours is the key. Some libraries are closed Sunday and Monday here, and we can't borrow books from out of county. The rest have odd hours that make it difficult for someone working 8-5 to utilize.
I think I'd be happier paying taxes if I was allowed to indicate on a long check list where I wanted my money to go. Restrict dollars to the Halliburton "cost plus" burn pits and increase spending on public transit, green infrastructure, (which I mean literally; more trees in cities), and libraries. I bet taxes would go down this way, too.
Happy New Year.
-FL
I covered this briefly in an adjacent post here.
Please ignore the tone of childish argument going on there. The fellow I was responding to seemed to want to play it that way.
-FL
Well THAT was a rather intense over-reaction. Deep breath and count to ten? Do you see what the other poster did? He asked a question in order to find clarification. That's a noble quality.
You do realize how crazy you sound, right? You sound like you're supposing that the Dollhouse sends out incompetent terrorists to scare the public into supporting restrictive government policies and persecuting "geeks", "misfits" and engineers. Note that this requires presupposing the existence of a Dollhouse or similar organization.
So you've basically never done an inch of research on this subject, have you?
People are constantly functioning under conditions of mind-control. Everybody from the housewife who feels dirty when she doesn't shave her armpits, all the way to cult victims. Heck, when I was a kid I learned that I could convince people to do stupid things just with words. (Luckily for the world, I quickly realized that manipulation is a violation of Free Will, and therefore Evil and felt due shame. I'll debate with people on any number of subjects, but I won't try to abridge their Free Will.)
In any case, when you apply drugs and abuse and forced confinement to the equation, you can very easily produce assembly-line agents. If you don't realize this, then it simply means you've never bothered to study the whole (very) ugly subject. --But it is necessary to know this stuff if you want to protect yourself against manipulators and propaganda. Very simply, if you force a person to dissociate, (it works best at a young age when it happens naturally as a defense mechanism to trauma), then you can deliberately split the personality and program people like computers. But even if you don't know what you are doing, you can convince a person to do something stupid if you hammer at them long enough and restrict contact with rational people.
Every now and again on those occasions when suicide bombers or whoever are caught when their explosive device failed and they didn't terminate, you'll see it reported that they are taken away with what is described as a confused, glazed or drugged look in their faces. In fact, this burning pants guy from a few days ago is just such an example. . . The guy who tackled him had this to say. . .
Joss Whedon's Doll House is a giant, over-the-top metaphor, but it's a good one. It talks about things nobody wants to hear.
Do you have any idea how many engineers, scientists, and other "geeks" are just normal people with some more intelligence and curiosity added on?
I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make with this. Sure, geeks are people too. They just happen to be the people who become engineers and scientists, who are responsible for all the countless systems which keep you and me and our entire society alive and functioning.
If your bizzaro worldview was correct, I'd have to ask why the bloody hell geeks aren't systematic killers. In your world we've certainly got the right to liberation and retribution for the "Pavlovian programming" and "mind-control patsies".
This is what I've been saying for years. Minus the violence. Violence is bad for the Karma. There are other ways of resisting. Like everybody deciding all at the same time to not pay taxes. The French do massive, country-wide strikes which seem to be quite effective.
Except that we're not dealing with a fascist system. It was in danger of going fascist for a while, but now society has managed to get itself back onto track: a technologically-advanced material-rich capitalist society collapsing into corporate feudalism.
Ha ha. You're as optimistic as
otherwise you would understand that this is why a complete stranger on the internet has been able to analyze you with perfect accuracy
Ah. So NOW you're a "complete stranger" performing an analysis with "perfect accuracy". Before, you had implied that you knew all of my personal associations well enough to call me a liar regarding the people I went to school with. Which is it? Are you going to creep up behind some random guy you think you know and confront him? (And then construct for yourself a story about how he was only pretending to not know you?)
You have already stated with categorical 100% certainty several things about me which are quite false. People who are truly in love with science and critical thought strive to avoid making such statements because there is always a chance they might not be correct or that there is some factor they have overlooked. But there IS a type of person who does make absolute statements and believes in the fiercely. . .
The paranoid/schizophrenic thinks that everything is about him. He sees connections and patterns where there are none and he believes his analysis of the world to be entirely beyond reproach. His own sanity is the last thing he questions. Watch that film, "A Beautiful Mind", (though you'll find no beauty there; only tragedy). It portrays this kind of sickness quite well. Interestingly, I note that you are familiar with maths and/or computer programming. Programmers, I've found, tend to be more subject to this kind of tunnel thinking and subsequent social malady than others.
Look, I apologize for making fun of you. Maybe you're genuinely nuts or maybe you just need to spend a few days outside clearing your head, but right now there's obviously something out of whack in your brain. And that's nothing to be ashamed of, but it IS worth fixing. --Stop and think back to all the people who looked at you oddly when you flew off the handle. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with them. Remember, you are the common factor in all of your relationships.
Hopefully it's just a matter of too little sunshine, but even if you are sick, there is help. From the cases I've seen which you remind me of, I've noted that a good diet and exercise helps a great deal to ground one's mind.
-FL
Having read through their explanation of the sample of 404 "known terrorists" they derived their figures from, I have to say that they are clearly jumping to conclusions. . .
Here's the thing; If you are an engineering type, then chances are you are comfortable with information technology to a higher degree than others. --I've known a lot of different kinds of students and not all of them are computer savvy. Further, if you are an oil worker or a baker or an unemployed man whose house has been run over by a tractor and you have notions of social justice through violence, how much awareness of you are the secret services going to have versus an engineer with an internet connection? --You know, a guy whose Google search footprint and subsequent psychological profile screams, "Malcontent!" --Surveillance is easy when you don't have to leave the Homeland office to build your suspect list.
And a sample of 404 people, (nearly all taken from internet sources, I might add), for such a squishy study is, while interesting, hardly damning proof of anything. --I mean, just the definition, 'terrorist' is a bullshit one these days. Every time a military bomb wipes out a village, it is usually reported that most of the people killed were conveniently, "Terrorists". I had no idea the world had so many engineers! And frankly, based on everything I've read, (and I've read a truckload on this), I happen to believe that a lot of high-profile 'terrorism' is performed for false-flag purposes by mind-control patsies of one sort or another. Heck, the kid who set his pants on fire just a few days ago aboard an international flight, when you dig into that highly suspicious story, appears to have been in zombie-mode and to have had several handlers who put him on the flight, by-passing security.
I would be VERY cautious about taking a study like this one at face value. I mean, yes, engineers do tend to carry certain social characteristics, and as I've always said, they are one of the most powerful groups on the planet because they make everything work. They define reality. And as such, the military industrial complex has a vested interest in making damned sure all the Pavlovian programming has well and truly taken hold in that group, with regular inoculations, so that they are easily controlled. Top priority slaves, as it were, making slavery as a way of life possible.
Geeks have been punished and programmed and used by society their whole lives exactly because of their social traits. But that doesn't make them prone to becoming systematic killers. Who got blamed during that Columbine massacre? The misfits. But upon closer inspection, it turns out those trench coat kids were not your or my kind of misfit. They didn't hang out in the computer lab and their bombs didn't work. --When it comes to labeling a social group, I'd be more worried about those Tea Party people with their guns and down-home religion, conservative rage and neighborhood mili
When did I ever say anything about myself? I'm talking about people in general, society and so on. What I'm like and what you're like doesn't matter, it's the other 6+ billion people which really matters. You're apparently not only incapable of understanding that other people aren't like you but also that anyone would be capable of possessing such understanding.
I'm sorry. I made the assumption that you were studying medicine. It was both a bit of generosity and gross error on my part. I must say you didn't seem altogether suited for such study, but I prefer to assume heart and intelligence in the people I'm talking with and then adjust accordingly as they reveal themselves.
Learn it well? It takes 10 years to even begin learning to be a doctor, school doesn't teach you much you know. That's 10 years of making no money and spending probably 80 hours a week on it.
Yeah. That's about right for most difficult skills. Ten years of hard practice before the difficulty of re-learning things well enough to function effectively as a professional. Becoming a doctor takes work. What's your point exactly? That this makes it okay for a person to become a greed-driven monster who puts his/her welfare above others? We're talking about healers here, right? Hell on earth is where doctors serve out of greed rather than compassion.
You know what most people really have a passion for? Their family. Not their job, not society, not humanity. They'll deal with the worst job in the world to help put food on the table. If money isn't an issue they'll pick whatever job lets them spend the most time with their family.
Yes. This is where mob families come from. Putting your clan first rather than society in general. The ability to have compassion for one's family does imply something above the baby-eating crocodile, but it is also a few levels beneath the ultimate evolution of human awareness we are capable of. We are all one, after all. But this not something everybody is even capable of accessing, let alone practicing.
Socialism only works when the crocodiles and mobsters have been weeded out. It won't happen, and thus we will always have slavery. And scary doctors who sell Palestinian livers.
-FL
This is a lie.
Believe whatever you want.
I do have that knowledge. Your writing style reveals more about you than you realize. You're about to try turning this back on me, but you're simply not smart enough to make it work.
Uh huh.
My writing style reveals *everything* about me; always has, always will. But you're either faulty of memory or you don't know how to read anywhere nearly as well as you think you can. Either way, you're in gross error. But this is only to be expected; the time of the Mercury Retrograde is upon us! All the false crap we've spent time believing to be true gets hauled out into the light during such a phase. I've learned to go limp and roll with the punches during these times; there's a lot which can be learned about oneself when illusions come crashing down. (For instance, I learned that dentists are not at the top of the list of suicidal doctor types.) Are you ready to learn your lessons?
No, you're just angry because you've been shown to be taking old wives' tales at face value. It is absolute and undeniable proof that you are gullible and stupid. That knowledge sends you into screaming fits, which you ineptly attempt to cover by feigning amusement because that's what you see people do on television.
Screaming fits? Wow. Whoever it is you think I am sounds like a real piece of work. I certainly feel silly when I make an error, and I generally like to rebound with a joke, but I've also become pretty good at laughing not just at others but at my own ego as well. I've been wrong many times before and I will be again. Humor is pretty much required to combat the ego.
Now. . , are you sure you're not looking inward a bit here? Because if I may say so, your own writing style and, "absolute, undeniable proof of my gullibility and stupidity" is beginning to sound a little 'off'. Are you by any chance the type of person who threw tantrums on the T-Ball pitch before overwrought parents inquired about medication? Paranoid/manic-depressive/schizoid/borderline personalities; I've had occasion to experience several of those up close over the course of my life. (Along with Jewish dentists. Believe it or not.)
It isn't damning at all. You've shown no causal link of any kind, preferring instead to take refuge in the "correlation == causation" fallacy, something else that proves you to be identical to the "mindless masses" to whom you want to think you're superior.
Oh dear! Look up "hyperbole" and get back to me. We "superior beings" make regular use of the stuff when poking the lunatic fringe.
-FL
I believe James Cameron has said the core concept has floated around his head for 20 years now. But the film as he made it today seems to have a strong Iraq message.
I agree it did, but again I don't think it was entirely deliberate. I remember reading an old version of the script/treatment around the same time as the Iraq invasion and with a few exceptions, (like the weirdness of the alien life), this film held very true to what I read.
Though. . , now that I think of it, the script was somewhat more believable with regard to the human military defeat. --The planet basically swallowed the entire Terran base at the end; the planet basically treated the human incursion as an infection and the alien life which was attacking the base 24/7 since the beginning of the story were the activated anti-bodies. (The alien life forms, while ferocious near the base, were presented at quite calm and friendly once the story ventured into the jungle.
The human military didn't have a chance. That change might be taken as a statement about Iraq, I suppose. --All media being a product of the global sub-conscious on one level.
-FL
Did anybody else at the end of the film feel depressed? --Rather than elation over the blue alien victory, I just felt dread.
I mean, we've seen this pattern before; Corporate invasion power doesn't just go home when it's lost a battle. Not when there remains huge profit to be had. It just sends out another battle ship. The blue guys barely won the 'final' battle as it is. There was a lot of luck involved, and they lost many of their best warriors.
And didn't the human forces have a massive space platform in orbit around the planet? They sent home all the human survivors, with all of their intimate strategic intelligence about the planet. Ugh. --I recall another quote from a James Cameron film. . .
"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
There's no way that story ends happily. The credits just happened to roll on an up-tick.
When glancing back at American history, I seem to recall noting plenty of Indian massacres when the old-West was settled, but in the end, the interlopers with the boom-sticks always win.
I came out of Avatar into a massive parking lot which played home to a dozen box stores and felt two things; "Wow! Cool effects" and "Life sucks!"
-FL
Well, the script for this film has been floating around for longer than the Iraq war, I believe.
I think it's simply that the pattern of Imperialism is what it is. Predictable and tragic.
-FL
Why not go the whole way and invent all your own words? Quthiaz, cnubto quthiaz!
Oh My GAWWWWWWD, LOL, ROFL, you pawnzed that biyatch!
I mean, wow, just wow!
--That's acting. That's all it ever is. It's not expressing anything genuine. It's simple pack mentality exerting itself. Punish the little chicken in the pecking order using group-sanctioned attacks. It's the lowest form of human existence. We were built to be more than moronic highschool popularity brats. In a teenager still learning how to be human, this is okay. It's a lesson. If you are older, then it passes into the zone of embarrassing.
Words are tools which, while inadequate most of the time, can be used to express one's thoughts. If your 'thoughts' can be contained in pre-constructed expressions you heard somewhere else and want to try on, then your thoughts are probably not terribly genuine either.
All I'm saying is that if you don't think before you type, then it's easy to wonder if you're thinking at all.
-FL
Self-interest IS human nature. A species that does not have self interest does not survive, it's genes die off and are replaced by those that do have self-interest. Welcome to life. Deny it all you want but that's the truth.
Well, we have crocodiles and elephants. One will eat their own babies and the other will help animals which are not even the same species out of mud holes. Yes, we all eat to live, and that means killing, but there are degrees across the scale. You sound like you've chosen to lean more towards the reptilian approach.
And yes, it takes about 10 years to learn any craft or skill really well. And it is indeed nearly always grueling and difficult. I've bloodied myself and endured all manner of hardship while mastering my professional skills. Why anybody would choose to embark on a course of study they aren't attracted to from a soul level is due largely, I think, to ignorance regarding the nature of free will and internal passions.
-FL
No, you don't.
Um, yes actually, I do. I went to highschool with one in particular. Greedy. Shit. I might mention that he was also a member of the burgeoning Jewish community, fulfilling the stereotype in that manner which is painfully awkward for observers to be near. But do go on and pretend you know more about my life than I do. Do you find that sort of delusion necessary in order to maintain your existence? Just how horrid is the truth of your life that you have to pretend knowledge you can't possible have?
No, they don't. For someone who likes to bloviate about what the stupid common masses think, you're awfully eager to repeat things that "everybody knows" like one of them.
Aw, you're just angry because four out of five dentists agree with my misinformation. In any case, this quote from your article is rather more damning. . . "Suicide among white male American dentists is higher than average but not as high as among white male American doctors."
So I guess any medical profession will do for our subject. Just as long as he removes himself from the gene pool quickly so that we have one less greed-motivated practitioner to deal with in the world.
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And when all the little socialists are dying of disease because no one wanted to spend 12 years becoming a doctor only to get as much reward as the guy who became a janitor I'll be sure to come around and laugh at them.
Uh huh. Yes, greed is the only reason anybody would ever want to become a doctor. That is sick.
--I know excellent healers of all different stripes who became healers because that is what they love. I also know greedy shits who became dentists because they wanted to make a lot of money. Interestingly, dentists have one of the higher suicide rates among the various professions.
Maybe you should become a dentist.
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WOW, just WOW
Ugh. What's up with, "wow, just wow" guys? I'm sorry, but if you want to express personal surprise, maybe try to come up with a personal way of doing it. Regurgitating common expressions of surprise indicates zero thought, which calls into suspicion the force making your knee jerk in the first place. Are YOU reacting or are you just acting out some canned bit of crap you saw on TV?
But that's just a personal gripe.
The comments regarding balance you offer are spot-on and I actually agree with them. Look up, "Hyperbole" before getting all "Wowed" out next time.
-FL
You're displaying your ignorance. Socialism is when the state controls the distribution of resources. If an employer decides to treat their employees right and pay them well, that's still capitalism because it is a private individual and not the government making the decision. You don't even seem to understand the basic thing that define socialism vs capitalism, that being state vs private ownership.
Nah. That's a bullshit definition of Socialism. Why use it? --Let's redefine it to the one everybody understands in the cockles of their hearts anyway; "Don't be a greedy dick. Think of others. Recognize that a society works better when people help each other."
After all, THAT'S what everybody has been programmed to reject.
In any case, nobody is using the technically correct definition for "Capitalism" either. I mean, come on, you know as well as I do that when people say, "Capitalism" they don't mean, 'If an employer decides to treat their employees right and pay them well, that's still capitalism because it is a private individual and not the government making the decision.' Heck, your friend was surprised by your explanation for a reason. It's because the debate has been rigged with bum words. When people say, "Capitalism" They mean, "Absolute, unbridled, no-holds-barred competition." But when quizzed upon it, the FOX commentator can innocently fall back to the text book definition as you offer. So there are two levels at work. The bullshit definition level, and the real one where the war is actually being fought.
And that IS the war. Self-Service v.s. Service-to-Others.
The text-book definitions, (which I am quite of aware, thank-you very much), have been carefully selected and emotionally-defined and as such are useless in debate. There's no handy word on the political card table for, "Hey, I know! Let's play nice." All we've got is "Socialism", because the argument has been restricted to black & white terms by the Lords of Reality. One possible key is to redefine the logical and emotional content of the terminology so that it matches the actual problem. --And to ignore those who are caught up in explaining why Coke is better than Pepsi rather than in looking for a drinking fountain.
But if we want to look at the strict text book definitions. . . Capitalism and Socialism work out to the same net result; Governments infested with psychopaths game whatever system is in place to reach a state where they control everything and enslave everybody. Noble concepts like Capitalism and Socialism, I think, could both work well if we first purged governments of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals. I'd love to see mandatory testing and psyche evaluations of everybody in government, the results made public and then appropriate courses of action taken. We won't see that, but if we grow an awareness that such a problem exists and in fact defines the activity of our entire race, then we have new options open up to us; it allows us to make rational choices.
In my opinion, the system you advocate will eliminate personal generosity, breaking down the relationships that make us a society. You want to replace generosity between people with subservience to and dependence on the state.
Only if you play by the rulebook you've been handed. I reject it. It needs re-writing.
The psychopath is by default a self-centered greedy dick who wants his/her environment to make that mode of existence as easy as possible. Thus s/he will latch on to and hold up definitions which encourage greed-based thinking and further mire down the debate until we are all. . , well, until we are all exactly where we are right now. There's a reason why everybody hates lawyers.
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I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won Monopoly and turned the world into slave-land, I'll remind them when they come asking for a bread crust. "Look around you! This is YOUR fault. Are you beginning to learn yet why self-service doesn't work? --Or do you want to be stupid livestock for another dozen life times? We WILL repeat this until you learn."
I'm all for idiot FOX viewers being punished for being idiot FOX viewers, but I am not content when others have to put up with the fallout from the knuckle-dragging propaganda-swallowing moronics of the pack man.
Humn. Pac Man. I just got that. That only took twenty years. --The pie-shaped dude is the archetypal pack animal, locked into a state of stupid because his genetics make him easy to subjugate into a ridiculous life-long race after crumbs through a rat maze. The Ghosts. . ? Ha! That actually makes sense too, but it's an idea too alarming for most people to deal with so I'll pardon myself from trying to explain.
What a depressing metaphor. Sigh.
Happy New Year.
-FL
You know; the diseased try to eat your brain so that you become one of them? I think the shotgun solution is rather extreme. . , though it IS just a metaphor. . .
Zombies certainly have forsaken the ability to be reasoned with.
Faith is fine and wonderful and very powerful, but putting faith into something without first exercising one's powers of observation and logical deduction, (and the ability to disengage the ego when observation and logical deduction tell you things which you find upsetting), then using faith is just foolish. It's like using a hammer while blindfolded. It is necessary to use one's other faculties to determine the existence of a nail before throwing the full weight of certainty behind the swing. Otherwise, you're just doing what a long lineage of psychopathic cult leaders instruct you to do. Doesn't it make sense to research the source of a text you plan to base your entire life on? And the source of that source? Do that correctly and you'll drop religion like the hot rock it is.
There's a reason everything religious has the same vague feel and smell of an infomercial / blissed-out con job.
Yes, we have lots of zombie games already, thanks.
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Scientology, like all religion, exists to get the idiots to willingly identify who they are, so rational folks can develop a proper avoidance strategy.
Well put.
-FL