Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard.
And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob.
Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf.
Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf--that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination.
Thereupon the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their own. Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant.
Great empires like the USA are not conquered. They decay from within. We are corrupt because we have lost social consensus. To understand that, you will have to first realize that not all of the humanities are BS and that politics/philosophy is a discipline as structured as programming. Until you overcome that bias, it will all be Greek (heh heh) to you.
If your ideology goes against the dominant paradigm, beware: 5% of you will be true believers and the rest will be angry monkeys with revenge in their eyes.
Back when I was a liberal, I was a true believer. I was young, idealistic, naive, probably stupid, etc. and wanted to love the whole world and make everything better. At some point I woke up and realized very few of the people around me wanted that. They wanted death to the rich, to screw the middle class, to burn the bankers, to kill the politicians, to blow up The Power, etc.
My thinking was forward: let's invent a better world.
Their thinking was backward: let's use the excuse of inventing a better world to destroy all things that anger us.
I've now come to identify this in people and use it as my first line of defense. Backward thinking? I'm outta there.
This is not to say "don't be idealistic." It's awesome to try to make things better. FOSS can kick ass when it's not busy cloning commercial apps. We can improve everything here on earth and really should. But be realistic, both in what you intend to achieve, and in assessing the intent of those around you.
Of course, Russian rule in the Baltics -- Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia -- was so oppressive that these nations are resisting to the death. Russian rule destroyed their prosperity, wounded their culture, and resulted in many of their intellectuals and leaders being killed. They are ethnically and culturally different from their Slavic neighbors.
Russia will continue this kind of passive-aggressive pseudo-warfare (hah, take that, internet pseudo-intellectuals) in order to provoke a conflict which enables them to storm in and seize more lands.
I can't blame Russia. That's how you get to be a superpower.
In the 1980s, Apple users would berate Amiga users and claim Apples were technically superior. They weren't.
Apple's business model is based on selling high-priced computers with the illusion that they are better-engineered or their interface makes them more enlightened.
Real world gains are few.
As a result, Apple users turn to a cognitive dissonance fueled religion of Apple superiority: it's the computer for artists, Progressives, free thinkers, etc.
Consequently, they're not much fun to be around and the computer has a slow, super-simplified interface that makes common tasks easy for morons but complicated tasks annoying for non-morons.
Summary: Apple shout eat 10,000 dicks and jump in a woodchipper.
Friendrich Nietzsche uses perhaps my favorite metaphor: "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness."
Why do people like the idea of free will?
It puts them in control. "I decide" sounds more empowered, egalitarian, positive and self-glorifying than "it was my option to."
It is the ethic of convenience and pretense of a species of monkeys who, having evolved enough to be proud of their new brains but not enough yet to find a use for them, are busy fiddling while Rome burns regarding climate, overpopulation, consumerism and other soul-deaths we daily endure.
I passed out drunk and naked on my front porch to protest public anti-naturism statutes.
Come on, let's stop calling petty acts "activism" because all they do is cause annoying drama. Activism is getting a PAC together to change laws, or a voting block, or even picking up a rifle and seeing how many you can bag before the snipers drop you.
It's not posting links on Wikipedia (which, thanks to Google's sponsorship, has an importance far advanced of the quality of its content).
[quote] That attitude is why America is in the hell-hole it is in. Morality is the compass. Try it, you might just be amazed. [/quote]
I disagree. First, I disagree that America/the USA is a hellhole. I think it has mixed attributes between what I'd consider "good" and "bad."
Second, I think morality is why most of those negative attributes come about. We spend too much time thinking about the emotions of "the crowd" and not enough focusing on pragmatic, scientific solutions.
I believe this extends to religious people as well: there is no God greater than the one whose mind encloses science.
With morality, you have a series of negatives -- you cannot do this because it is immoral, or offends someone, and so on. People are constantly sabotaging each other by claiming X or Y act is immoral, which is hard to define as there's no clear goal, yet we cannot define one because that will offend someone or make someone think it is immoral. Morality is a consensus-destroyer.
With logical thinking, you set a goal, establish which behaviors support that goal and which don't, and everything else is OK. Logic is a consensus-builder.
Morality is a tool for the herd to feel more important than their leaders. Instead, get pragmatic: how can you make this business work for most people?
You probably want heavy downloaders to use another service, anyway. You might even consider setting up two plans, one for ueber-users and one for normal users.
However, I would prioritize traffic. Email, web, SSH, et al come first; after that, all p2p protocols in order of usefulness.
You need to define your business audience. If it's people who are going to check the mail and web surf, and 5% of your customers are p2p users, cut out the p2p users and focus on the people you want to serve.
The only way you keep people from going crazy over a free service is to put in a per-use charge or some kind of hardcoded limit. The former is annoying with commercial cell phone providers and their text message charges, and the latter is really annoying when your ISP flags your account for sending that funny link to 25 friends instead of the 24 you usually email(*).
* - I now have Mailman set up for this purpose, as it's the legal and ethical thing to do. But the point stands.
I wish they'd approve holidays for subcultural groups, like the "National Day of Slayer" (National Day of Prayer needed a counterpoint). It's for metalheads and anyone else who appreciates that Slayer is like Dvorak with balls.
It's inevitable that space and the internet are going to be militarized.
If I were our government, I'd use big media for military purposes: convince the youth of other countries to engage in selfish, yet self-destructive, activities.
That's how you make a Crowd happy. Of course, to do that you, you have to be a cynical bastard. That's why most Revolutionary leaders are corrupt people who plunge their countries into New Dark Ages.
Obama, coming from the most corrupt political machine in North America (the Chicago machine), is undoubtedly aware of all these things, and knows how to manipulate them for personal gain. Again, very cynical. But that's the RealPolitik(tm) when you have a huge crowd of people out there who vote with their emotions, based on the appearance of realities they're too lazy to research.
Last week, when Steve Jobs announced that his recent weight loss was due to "a hormone imbalance," I got calls from reporters and others (which, I must admit, I ducked) asking me if that was the medical problem he had confessed to when he and I had had our infamous phone call last summer -- the one where he called me a slime bucket and denied that he had a recurrence of cancer. The answer is no, it wasn't. It was something else -- which of course I still can't disclose because the conversation was off the record.
In cooperation, we support each other and do not require institutions and Nanny State/Authoritarian governments to tell us what not to do. It's obvious murder is wrong, if you get something give something, etc. PROBLEM: cooperation requires the ability to kick out or kill non-cooperators, and it requires a strong innate culture, an "organic state."
In control, enough people are reckless with their desires that a strong institutional state emerges, mainly to tell them what not to do. Don't kill, don't steal, no nonconsensual sodomy, etc. They're ideal for unifying a whole bunch of people of unknown values. PROBLEM: control requires increasing amounts of control, because people learn to expect society to wipe their asses and so they stop thinking critically about their own actions, making them more not less reckless.
I know which one I'd prefer. (Portions of this message are paraphrases of the text of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, approximately page 112 in the new edition.)
If they're intelligent beasts that can talk, I'd say that's pretty good evidence that they can think. And if they can think, doesn't that make them people?
You have low standards. Speech doesn't require a high IQ; accurate speech does. Our society is awash in talking apes with car keys. Do we care if they're human, or just stupid? There's nothing so sacred about humans that we should forget we're just slightly more intelligent apes, excepting those rare geniuses like Ludwig van Beethoven and James Watson.
I think in all of us who have read history, there is a desire to find again a sacred order of life as existed in ancient times.
Part of that is knowing who your tribe are and living among them, people like you, and not others. That tribal definition comprises values, language, customs, and -- uh oh -- heritage.
To a modern people, told that the only morally correct(tm) society is a pluralistic, multicultural, "freedom"-based one, that is blasphemy. Heresy. Ultimate evil.
However, many of us -- especially those who read history, and know science and philosophy -- it's clear that our modern civilization is moribund and even more, isn't a pleasant place to live. It rewards the idiotic and subjects us all to it in the name of equality.
I think it's possible to want a traditional order, including ethnic nationalism, without hating others. It isn't "we're excluding you because you're inferior." It's that we want to live among our own, and that requires we exclude everyone, whether they claim to be superior or inferior.
That's only one part of the social order we'd desire. One of the neat things about feudal societies like those in The Hobbit is that everyone has a place, and there's a clear social order. You don't just plop down a McDonald's anywhere you feel like it, or ignore reality. Society is an organic framework that works together.
I think we all avoid talking about differences between people to keep the peace. We extend that to ethnicity, and endorse multicuturalism, as a result. We think that supporting pluralism, or the coexistence of many different viewpoints at once, is healthy and not chaotic.
My readings of history suggest exactly the opposite: these things are an absence of order and a desacralization of life, and all societies that have adopted them are heading downward into disorder and eventually, third-world status. (This third world status is not related to ethnicity, but the kind of corruption, disorganization, apathy, etc. you find in failed states, always accompanied by third-world poverty and development levels.)
I know my views on this are taboo, but it's important to tell the truth at all times, because otherwise we can easily lie to each other and end up in failure.
The customer accepts a low standard because it's prevalent everywhere. People who get hired to do $8-$12 an hour jobs tend to have IQs under 115 and thus be basically glorified bonobos. (There are a few -- a very few -- exceptions.)
I realize that's offensive, but it's also more realistic than what else is said here.
Customer service is expensive. Doing it right is even more expensive. If your competitors don't do it right, your customers are not going to pick you just because of your good customer service -- they're going to go with the cheaper option.
Your problem, in a nutshell, is uninformed, lazy customers, and a lack of intelligent, dedicated people to hire for really cheap.
As a published author, I would prefer that people read my book than that they pay for it.
In the long run, this builds me an audience, which may also be monetarily worth more than a one-time payment.
If the book is not available... pirate it.
Death metal, a tiny musical genre that thrived from 1985-1995, has many classics out of print. Our solution at the metal site for which I write (the Dark Legions Archive, I'm a blogger) is to make FLACs available of out of print classics.
The reason is simple: it's better that the artists have a new listener, than that the potential listener is thwarted by the chaos of record publishing.
Technically, it is against the law. However, from artists, we have heard nothing but encouragement. There are now new generations, new fans and new life for their art. I don't think anyone can reasonably complain about that.
1984 - The Mac is friendly, it's the future, lalalala. Reality: 128k machine with 4 pieces of known software.
1987 - The Mac is more efficient than IBM PCs, it's the future. Reality: It's four times as expensive and people quickly learn windows.
1995 - The Mac is a better operating system than Windows, it's the future. Reality: holding down the mouse button suspends the entire operating system.
2000 - The Mac is superior, it uses the PowerPC family of chips and custom hardware. Reality: it's slower and Apple acquiesces to this fact a few years later, making Intel machines.
2008 - The Mac is superior, it's "green." Reality: it's still a hunk of plastic you chuck in the landfill, and being made by the world's most neurotic computer company, it's more likely to break.
I used to believe in Apple; eventually I saw that, like most things hyping "hope" and "change," they were marketers and not revolutionaries. They sold a lie.
Now I prefer the world of open hardware and open source + Windows. I can buy any motherboard I want, and I assemble machines that last years longer than any Macintosh. For people who want the bulk of mainstream software, there's Win XP or Windows Vista (which many people do like), but for those with more experience, there's OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux.
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the Stateâ"and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes; the saying is in everybodyâ(TM)s mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduce the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
{ snip }
And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.
Yes, he said, I know it too well.
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.
Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step?
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracyâ"the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
{ snip }
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.
Yes, that is their way. This, and no other, is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
{ snip }
And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favorite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow-citizens; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolfâ"that is, a tyrant?
And it says that the U.S. dollar will continue to weaken and fall from favor as a top world currency.
Thomas Fingar, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council predicts water shortages, disruptions to delicate agricultural patterns, continued unrest in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the continued emergence of China as America's greatest economic rival.
And from the report summary itself:
The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
There'll be challenges on all fronts. Climate changes from global warming will lead to shortages of food and water in dozens of countries. That, coupled with a projected population spike of 1.2 billion people worldwide could lead to wars over increasingly scarce resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard.
And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob.
Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf.
Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf--that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by lawful means, they plot his assassination.
Thereupon the friend of the people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their
own. Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away again if he does not do so then. And the Great Protector, having crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a full-blown tyrant.
Plato, The Republic
Full explanation: How we'll move into tyranny
Great empires like the USA are not conquered. They decay from within. We are corrupt because we have lost social consensus. To understand that, you will have to first realize that not all of the humanities are BS and that politics/philosophy is a discipline as structured as programming. Until you overcome that bias, it will all be Greek (heh heh) to you.
If your ideology goes against the dominant paradigm, beware: 5% of you will be true believers and the rest will be angry monkeys with revenge in their eyes.
Back when I was a liberal, I was a true believer. I was young, idealistic, naive, probably stupid, etc. and wanted to love the whole world and make everything better. At some point I woke up and realized very few of the people around me wanted that. They wanted death to the rich, to screw the middle class, to burn the bankers, to kill the politicians, to blow up The Power, etc.
My thinking was forward: let's invent a better world.
Their thinking was backward: let's use the excuse of inventing a better world to destroy all things that anger us.
I've now come to identify this in people and use it as my first line of defense. Backward thinking? I'm outta there.
This is not to say "don't be idealistic." It's awesome to try to make things better. FOSS can kick ass when it's not busy cloning commercial apps. We can improve everything here on earth and really should. But be realistic, both in what you intend to achieve, and in assessing the intent of those around you.
Russia wants former Soviet territories back.
Of course, Russian rule in the Baltics -- Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia -- was so oppressive that these nations are resisting to the death. Russian rule destroyed their prosperity, wounded their culture, and resulted in many of their intellectuals and leaders being killed. They are ethnically and culturally different from their Slavic neighbors.
Russia will continue this kind of passive-aggressive pseudo-warfare (hah, take that, internet pseudo-intellectuals) in order to provoke a conflict which enables them to storm in and seize more lands.
I can't blame Russia. That's how you get to be a superpower.
In the 1980s, Apple users would berate Amiga users and claim Apples were technically superior. They weren't.
Apple's business model is based on selling high-priced computers with the illusion that they are better-engineered or their interface makes them more enlightened.
Real world gains are few.
As a result, Apple users turn to a cognitive dissonance fueled religion of Apple superiority: it's the computer for artists, Progressives, free thinkers, etc.
Consequently, they're not much fun to be around and the computer has a slow, super-simplified interface that makes common tasks easy for morons but complicated tasks annoying for non-morons.
Summary: Apple shout eat 10,000 dicks and jump in a woodchipper.
The book On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Wisdom, And On the Will In Nature is in my opinion the best introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer's thought. In it, he details how each event has a cause and a chain of causes before it and how as a result the idea of free will implies an event without a cause.
Friendrich Nietzsche uses perhaps my favorite metaphor: "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness."
Why do people like the idea of free will?
It puts them in control. "I decide" sounds more empowered, egalitarian, positive and self-glorifying than "it was my option to."
It is the ethic of convenience and pretense of a species of monkeys who, having evolved enough to be proud of their new brains but not enough yet to find a use for them, are busy fiddling while Rome burns regarding climate, overpopulation, consumerism and other soul-deaths we daily endure.
I passed out drunk and naked on my front porch to protest public anti-naturism statutes.
Come on, let's stop calling petty acts "activism" because all they do is cause annoying drama. Activism is getting a PAC together to change laws, or a voting block, or even picking up a rifle and seeing how many you can bag before the snipers drop you.
It's not posting links on Wikipedia (which, thanks to Google's sponsorship, has an importance far advanced of the quality of its content).
[quote]
That attitude is why America is in the hell-hole it is in. Morality is the compass. Try it, you might just be amazed.
[/quote]
I disagree. First, I disagree that America/the USA is a hellhole. I think it has mixed attributes between what I'd consider "good" and "bad."
Second, I think morality is why most of those negative attributes come about. We spend too much time thinking about the emotions of "the crowd" and not enough focusing on pragmatic, scientific solutions.
I believe this extends to religious people as well: there is no God greater than the one whose mind encloses science.
With morality, you have a series of negatives -- you cannot do this because it is immoral, or offends someone, and so on. People are constantly sabotaging each other by claiming X or Y act is immoral, which is hard to define as there's no clear goal, yet we cannot define one because that will offend someone or make someone think it is immoral. Morality is a consensus-destroyer.
With logical thinking, you set a goal, establish which behaviors support that goal and which don't, and everything else is OK. Logic is a consensus-builder.
Morality is a tool for the herd to feel more important than their leaders. Instead, get pragmatic: how can you make this business work for most people?
You probably want heavy downloaders to use another service, anyway. You might even consider setting up two plans, one for ueber-users and one for normal users.
However, I would prioritize traffic. Email, web, SSH, et al come first; after that, all p2p protocols in order of usefulness.
You need to define your business audience. If it's people who are going to check the mail and web surf, and 5% of your customers are p2p users, cut out the p2p users and focus on the people you want to serve.
The only way you keep people from going crazy over a free service is to put in a per-use charge or some kind of hardcoded limit. The former is annoying with commercial cell phone providers and their text message charges, and the latter is really annoying when your ISP flags your account for sending that funny link to 25 friends instead of the 24 you usually email(*).
* - I now have Mailman set up for this purpose, as it's the legal and ethical thing to do. But the point stands.
I wish they'd approve holidays for subcultural groups, like the "National Day of Slayer" (National Day of Prayer needed a counterpoint). It's for metalheads and anyone else who appreciates that Slayer is like Dvorak with balls.
National Day of Slayer
It's inevitable that space and the internet are going to be militarized.
If I were our government, I'd use big media for military purposes: convince the youth of other countries to engage in selfish, yet self-destructive, activities.
Oh wait, someone beat me to it!
Flatter them.
Promise them big ideas and big, vague solutions.
Tell them that everyone is equally important.
That's how you make a Crowd happy. Of course, to do that you, you have to be a cynical bastard. That's why most Revolutionary leaders are corrupt people who plunge their countries into New Dark Ages.
Obama, coming from the most corrupt political machine in North America (the Chicago machine), is undoubtedly aware of all these things, and knows how to manipulate them for personal gain. Again, very cynical. But that's the RealPolitik(tm) when you have a huge crowd of people out there who vote with their emotions, based on the appearance of realities they're too lazy to research.
Hope! Change! Hope! Change!
Last week, when Steve Jobs announced that his recent weight loss was due to "a hormone imbalance," I got calls from reporters and others (which, I must admit, I ducked) asking me if that was the medical problem he had confessed to when he and I had had our infamous phone call last summer -- the one where he called me a slime bucket and denied that he had a recurrence of cancer. The answer is no, it wasn't. It was something else -- which of course I still can't disclose because the conversation was off the record.
http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/its-time-for-apple-to-come-clean/?hp
This has caused at least one reputable news source to report that Steve Jobs is dying of AIDS.
Today's conflicts are won by public opinion.
Now is the time to be active and voice Israel's side to the world.
http://www.giyus.org/
I think it's a good idea for any political organization to do this.
Judging by results on Reddit, Barack Obama's campaign had a similar idea.
Humanity has two basic options for government:
Cooperation and control.
In cooperation, we support each other and do not require institutions and Nanny State/Authoritarian governments to tell us what not to do. It's obvious murder is wrong, if you get something give something, etc. PROBLEM: cooperation requires the ability to kick out or kill non-cooperators, and it requires a strong innate culture, an "organic state."
In control, enough people are reckless with their desires that a strong institutional state emerges, mainly to tell them what not to do. Don't kill, don't steal, no nonconsensual sodomy, etc. They're ideal for unifying a whole bunch of people of unknown values. PROBLEM: control requires increasing amounts of control, because people learn to expect society to wipe their asses and so they stop thinking critically about their own actions, making them more not less reckless.
I know which one I'd prefer. (Portions of this message are paraphrases of the text of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, approximately page 112 in the new edition.)
Things have multiple traits.
You can be members of the following groups:
* Genders
* Races
* Ethnicities
* Classes
* Sexual Orientations
and many more! Even better, you can be members of multiple groups at the same time.
I thought they taught this stuff in introductory science classes.
Most people have no idea what race is or how to talk about it. Here's a sampling of common sense:
The Race FAQ
In any topic, it's best to listen to those who have studied it in a disciplined way, and ignore the wailing of the Crowd.
If they're intelligent beasts that can talk, I'd say that's pretty good evidence that they can think. And if they can think, doesn't that make them people?
You have low standards. Speech doesn't require a high IQ; accurate speech does. Our society is awash in talking apes with car keys. Do we care if they're human, or just stupid? There's nothing so sacred about humans that we should forget we're just slightly more intelligent apes, excepting those rare geniuses like Ludwig van Beethoven and James Watson.
I think in all of us who have read history, there is a desire to find again a sacred order of life as existed in ancient times.
Part of that is knowing who your tribe are and living among them, people like you, and not others. That tribal definition comprises values, language, customs, and -- uh oh -- heritage.
To a modern people, told that the only morally correct(tm) society is a pluralistic, multicultural, "freedom"-based one, that is blasphemy. Heresy. Ultimate evil.
However, many of us -- especially those who read history, and know science and philosophy -- it's clear that our modern civilization is moribund and even more, isn't a pleasant place to live. It rewards the idiotic and subjects us all to it in the name of equality.
I think it's possible to want a traditional order, including ethnic nationalism, without hating others. It isn't "we're excluding you because you're inferior." It's that we want to live among our own, and that requires we exclude everyone, whether they claim to be superior or inferior.
That's only one part of the social order we'd desire. One of the neat things about feudal societies like those in The Hobbit is that everyone has a place, and there's a clear social order. You don't just plop down a McDonald's anywhere you feel like it, or ignore reality. Society is an organic framework that works together.
I think we all avoid talking about differences between people to keep the peace. We extend that to ethnicity, and endorse multicuturalism, as a result. We think that supporting pluralism, or the coexistence of many different viewpoints at once, is healthy and not chaotic.
My readings of history suggest exactly the opposite: these things are an absence of order and a desacralization of life, and all societies that have adopted them are heading downward into disorder and eventually, third-world status. (This third world status is not related to ethnicity, but the kind of corruption, disorganization, apathy, etc. you find in failed states, always accompanied by third-world poverty and development levels.)
I know my views on this are taboo, but it's important to tell the truth at all times, because otherwise we can easily lie to each other and end up in failure.
The customer accepts a low standard because it's prevalent everywhere. People who get hired to do $8-$12 an hour jobs tend to have IQs under 115 and thus be basically glorified bonobos. (There are a few -- a very few -- exceptions.)
I realize that's offensive, but it's also more realistic than what else is said here.
Customer service is expensive. Doing it right is even more expensive. If your competitors don't do it right, your customers are not going to pick you just because of your good customer service -- they're going to go with the cheaper option.
Your problem, in a nutshell, is uninformed, lazy customers, and a lack of intelligent, dedicated people to hire for really cheap.
As a published author, I would prefer that people read my book than that they pay for it.
In the long run, this builds me an audience, which may also be monetarily worth more than a one-time payment.
If the book is not available... pirate it.
Death metal, a tiny musical genre that thrived from 1985-1995, has many classics out of print. Our solution at the metal site for which I write (the Dark Legions Archive, I'm a blogger) is to make FLACs available of out of print classics.
The reason is simple: it's better that the artists have a new listener, than that the potential listener is thwarted by the chaos of record publishing.
Technically, it is against the law. However, from artists, we have heard nothing but encouragement. There are now new generations, new fans and new life for their art. I don't think anyone can reasonably complain about that.
1984 - The Mac is friendly, it's the future, lalalala. Reality: 128k machine with 4 pieces of known software.
1987 - The Mac is more efficient than IBM PCs, it's the future. Reality: It's four times as expensive and people quickly learn windows.
1995 - The Mac is a better operating system than Windows, it's the future. Reality: holding down the mouse button suspends the entire operating system.
2000 - The Mac is superior, it uses the PowerPC family of chips and custom hardware. Reality: it's slower and Apple acquiesces to this fact a few years later, making Intel machines.
2008 - The Mac is superior, it's "green." Reality: it's still a hunk of plastic you chuck in the landfill, and being made by the world's most neurotic computer company, it's more likely to break.
I used to believe in Apple; eventually I saw that, like most things hyping "hope" and "change," they were marketers and not revolutionaries. They sold a lie.
Now I prefer the world of open hardware and open source + Windows. I can buy any motherboard I want, and I assemble machines that last years longer than any Macintosh. For people who want the bulk of mainstream software, there's Win XP or Windows Vista (which many people do like), but for those with more experience, there's OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux.
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the Stateâ"and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes; the saying is in everybodyâ(TM)s mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduce the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
{ snip }
And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to care
even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.
Yes, he said, I know it too well.
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.
Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step?
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracyâ"the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and
this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
{ snip }
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.
Yes, that is their way. This, and no other, is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
{ snip }
And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favorite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow-citizens; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same
time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolfâ"that is, a tyrant?
The Republic, Plato
And it says that the U.S. dollar will continue to weaken and fall from favor as a top world currency.
Thomas Fingar, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council predicts water shortages, disruptions to delicate agricultural patterns, continued unrest in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the continued emergence of China as America's greatest economic rival.
And from the report summary itself:
The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
What did I miss, again?
Others have noticed, too:
There'll be challenges on all fronts. Climate changes from global warming will lead to shortages of food and water in dozens of countries. That, coupled with a projected population spike of 1.2 billion people worldwide could lead to wars over increasingly scarce resources.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/20/world/main4622166.shtml
And from a commentator:
There are other factors: aging baby boomers, changing demographics, weakened economy, massive debt and greater internal chaos.
http://penetrate.blogspot.com/2008/11/us-power-fading-by-2025.html
I'm sure I'll get called unpatriotic(tm) for this, but it's politics in that land disillusioned underachievers never see, called "reality."