I am often one to base my arguments in the best thing we have to judge events by, history. I'm a Presentist: One who studies history primarily for the benefit of the present.
1941 Germany, Russia, Italy, or Spain, or 1982 Iran or 1995 Afghanistan or Iraq, or present-day North Korea.
Imagine you have a young kid, you are a political dissident, and your kid asks you why things are so bad. What do you say?
My goal in asking this question is to prepare for the future, if recipies for political disaster materialize, as they are brewing now.
Imagine, in 2008, again, 61% of the electorate do not vote in either primary, and the religious RWAs (see previous post) vote for Sam Brownback.
Two years pass (it is now 2010) and things have turned for the worse. How do you explain to your kid, who, by this time, at 10 years old, is familiar with American ideals of individualism? "Daddy/Mommy, why is this happening?"
How would you explain that in the past two elections (the future, now), the majority of Americans were not paying attention, were not concerned for the applicable security of their freedoms, as one branch was invertebrate and schizophrenic, the other was megalomaniacal, and the last was too passive.
Before WW1, industrialists knew what the conditions of the Great Powers truly meant (militarily, industrially), that the war would last for a long while. They did speak up, but were silenced by ignorant right-wing pro-war critics caught up in the "spirit of adventure." Some stay against boredom they got themselves into. What did these industrialists tell their teenagers off to the front?
Here's a little bit of totalitarianism: Word is that the term "nig---" is being "banned" in some townships, including NYC. Yes, it is an ugly word, an important part of our heritage. But we cannot "ban" a word! How can we enforce such a thing? The chaos that would ensue if we had censors doing WordFind on Harper Lee, Frederick Douglass, William Faulkner, etc? Isn't that what America is? And history books! How are students to know the full extent of the horror upon Blacks/*African-Americans inflicted by the wonderful US of A over the period of 300+ years if the terms by which they were described in that time are barred from use?
Worse yet (and even more bizarre) is that that poetic word is used as a term of endearment between many Blacks/African-Americans!
Look, it is an ugly word, a very degrading word, but this is supposed to be America, not 1940s Germany. The possible methods of enforcement are terrible and the consequences far outweigh any possible "good" that the law might do. We've already much betrayed our individualist ideals, let us not continue down that path further.
The government cannot cure hate through legislation. Hate has a source that needs to be addressed through education and the broadening of individual horizons. At best, the government largely profits from hate.
*: Some people prefer one term or the other, I am doing my best to please both.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Aldous Huxley and the Future of Man
Aldous Huxley predicted many things in his 1932 novel Brave New World, including stem cell research, genetics and helicopters, but there was one thing that has come to pass that is key both to his novel and message and our suvival as individuals, nations, and a species.
Mr Huxley, in BNW depicted the humans in his dystopia as child-like, and that is what we are now. Human beings, particularly in the United States, no longer have the intellectual and emotional capacity to face the reality that they themselves have created, which is why these adult children so often turn to the one thing that keeps real-world consequences from their sight: Religion. Self-Explanatory. I'm sure, if you're smart, you'll know how it works in this way. The more important thing right now is the consequences of these adult-child humans.
In the beginning of World War 1, the populations of boh the Axis and Allied powers believed that the war would last for days, weeks, or months, and had no idea that the circumstances that existed between the Great Powers (industry, economy, military power were more or less equal between them) would force the war to go on and cost as much (in human life and economic devastation) as it did. When the war ended, the surviving veterans were viewed with malice and shame. Why? Because of reality. These men and women (medics, some fought on the front) that saw and experienced the holocaust of the front and makeshift hospitals had something inside of them that was a serious threat to the sheltered civilization, even though it was supposedly for them that these millions of men and women were sacrificed, and now that they have returned, they presented a threat to the masses' normal, sheltered pseudo-reality.
Jump ahead 27 years, the atom bombs were dropped on Japan. It takes less than 5 years for the USSR to develop their atom bombs. It was seldom realized that humanity was capable of such wanton horror (historical events are soon forgotten!), but Hitler's domestic policies are soon uncovered, and the masses cried (and some still do, for various and dubious reasons) that such a thing was morally impossible. But Hitler and his subordinates kept meticulous records.
How is it that people can say that such a thing cannot be done after History has proved, time and time again, that it can and often does? The ones that deny it are often the ones with a desire to repeat it. Didnt they, the deniers around 1945-1950, slaughter 100,000-200,000 Japanese, and, earlier, order 1.2-2 million men and women to die half-buried in the ground? And before that, for centuries, force Africans to work for them under extremely harsh conditions without regard for their quality of life and continue, to this day (though subtlely) to discriminate against them?
To the present, now. Our government and other authorities treat adults like children, church attendance is at an all-time high. Our President has appointed a theocratic nincompoop as the head of the women's health organization, the FDA has made (until recently) decisions based upon theocratic "principles" in regard to contraceptives and information about sexual health. A large percentage of the population (31% according to Time Magazine) is more concerned with The Book of Revelations, gay marriage, and the submissiveness of women than national economic prosperity, human health and the quality of human life here and abroad.
Why must we, unless we are adult-children, be so terrified of sex? Why does our government (thanks to a significant constituency that is that 31% from Time Magazine) believe that it should tell adults what to do with their bodies, criminalize certain therwise normal activities (like oral sex and anal sex, which are on the books as illegal in some Midwest and Southern states), and provide blatant misinformation ("Abortion causes breast cancer," a statement from the theocrat who was put in charge of the federal organization of women's health)?
AIDS in Africa. What are we doing about it? Basically nothing. Nothing effective, that is. Our government, attached to that same 31%, has decided to preach Abstinance Only, continuing the slaughter of human beings by a microorganism. Remember the 70s and 80s? "AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuals." Well, now it's "God's punishment for female infants in the wrong place at the wrong time." That's right: A popular myth in AIDS-devastated Africa is that to cure AIDS, rape a virgin. The only virgins left, really, are small children and infants. The Catholic church is debating (now this is sad) whether or not to drop the anti-contraceptive stance because of this crisis. If you weren't a religious conservative, this would be a no-brainer. I'd entrust this decision to a 2-year-old, but not an authoritarian attatched to an organization with a deplorable history. Sam Harris said to Stephen Colbert, that it is "genocidal stupidity."
This over-attention to religion, according to many sources, including Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy, is going to contribute to our demise as a superower. This is where Huxley and BNW come in. Since the Cold War: 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now, anti-intellectualism has dominated popular sentiment, and now, as college is becoming less and less affordable, it is becoming easier to rebel against academia. Non-accredited evangelical colleges, like (un)Liberty are springing up by popular demand. Standards are lowering for job applicants and business graduates. Even medical students are less and less required to acknowledge Darwinian Theory and basic facts in anthropology.
This extends not just to the social level, but the individual level as well. Escapism has become too widespread. A friend said to me, "What happens when a society is too afraid to lift the cover on the shi- they buried?" What happens when people are terrified to face the consequences of the realities they've created? Again, religion plays into this, the same way it did earlier in my essay. I've been reading this book in PDF format about Right-Wing Authoritarians and fundamentalists and evangelicals. Their "compartmentalized mind" and blind faith in a book a significant majority of them have never read allows them to easily find comfort in Jesus while commiting what would normally would be called a "sin" without any blip of remorse at all(Altemeyer). Does Ted Haggard feel any guilt from cheating on his wife, even worse, with another male? I dont think so, nothing genuine. Does he sincerely understand what his wife possibly feels? Does he care to? I'm not sure. Why is this so? We know why. If you forget, read the second paragraph again.
It's being a kid, having mommy and daddy (in adult cases, an imaginary friend named Jesus) to pick up the pieces. In Altemeyer's book, he writes that the religious RWAs almost never confront the one they've sinned against about the issue. That's what I mean by those parentheses. That is what I mean by adults being children. And there are those who come by and see the naked shards of the glass globe on the living room floor, telling the destructor, "Look what you did! You have to pick up the pieces," but the destructor states, in delirium, "It's OK, Jesus will pick up the pieces. Everything is fine."
What I haven't gotten to is why we can't afford to exist like this. It is easy to deny one's reality, and seductive too. But the world isn't going to be fixed that way, is it? It is also easy to understand why we cannot survive in a fictionalized, "safe" world. It would be easy to believe everything the government, or anyone else ever told you, right? But we can't. Yet a lot of us are, and we're declining because of it, socially and politically. Relationships deteriorate because people believe what others say (remember Othello?) about sex, that certain otherwise normal, things are bad, that this country is the best in the world, even though we are discriminatory and very repressive (authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald fled to Europe because they are more tolerant).
You know all of the ridiculous commmercials and advertisements on TV? Or the tabloids? Can you imagine if people believed them? People do. And I never thought about Brave New World in that light before yesterday.
Works Cited:
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips 2006
Time Magazine week of October 31st 2006- early November 2006
The Authoritarians by Bob Alemeyer http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Mr Huxley, in BNW depicted the humans in his dystopia as child-like, and that is what we are now. Human beings, particularly in the United States, no longer have the intellectual and emotional capacity to face the reality that they themselves have created, which is why these adult children so often turn to the one thing that keeps real-world consequences from their sight: Religion. Self-Explanatory. I'm sure, if you're smart, you'll know how it works in this way. The more important thing right now is the consequences of these adult-child humans.
In the beginning of World War 1, the populations of boh the Axis and Allied powers believed that the war would last for days, weeks, or months, and had no idea that the circumstances that existed between the Great Powers (industry, economy, military power were more or less equal between them) would force the war to go on and cost as much (in human life and economic devastation) as it did. When the war ended, the surviving veterans were viewed with malice and shame. Why? Because of reality. These men and women (medics, some fought on the front) that saw and experienced the holocaust of the front and makeshift hospitals had something inside of them that was a serious threat to the sheltered civilization, even though it was supposedly for them that these millions of men and women were sacrificed, and now that they have returned, they presented a threat to the masses' normal, sheltered pseudo-reality.
Jump ahead 27 years, the atom bombs were dropped on Japan. It takes less than 5 years for the USSR to develop their atom bombs. It was seldom realized that humanity was capable of such wanton horror (historical events are soon forgotten!), but Hitler's domestic policies are soon uncovered, and the masses cried (and some still do, for various and dubious reasons) that such a thing was morally impossible. But Hitler and his subordinates kept meticulous records.
How is it that people can say that such a thing cannot be done after History has proved, time and time again, that it can and often does? The ones that deny it are often the ones with a desire to repeat it. Didnt they, the deniers around 1945-1950, slaughter 100,000-200,000 Japanese, and, earlier, order 1.2-2 million men and women to die half-buried in the ground? And before that, for centuries, force Africans to work for them under extremely harsh conditions without regard for their quality of life and continue, to this day (though subtlely) to discriminate against them?
To the present, now. Our government and other authorities treat adults like children, church attendance is at an all-time high. Our President has appointed a theocratic nincompoop as the head of the women's health organization, the FDA has made (until recently) decisions based upon theocratic "principles" in regard to contraceptives and information about sexual health. A large percentage of the population (31% according to Time Magazine) is more concerned with The Book of Revelations, gay marriage, and the submissiveness of women than national economic prosperity, human health and the quality of human life here and abroad.
Why must we, unless we are adult-children, be so terrified of sex? Why does our government (thanks to a significant constituency that is that 31% from Time Magazine) believe that it should tell adults what to do with their bodies, criminalize certain therwise normal activities (like oral sex and anal sex, which are on the books as illegal in some Midwest and Southern states), and provide blatant misinformation ("Abortion causes breast cancer," a statement from the theocrat who was put in charge of the federal organization of women's health)?
AIDS in Africa. What are we doing about it? Basically nothing. Nothing effective, that is. Our government, attached to that same 31%, has decided to preach Abstinance Only, continuing the slaughter of human beings by a microorganism. Remember the 70s and 80s? "AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuals." Well, now it's "God's punishment for female infants in the wrong place at the wrong time." That's right: A popular myth in AIDS-devastated Africa is that to cure AIDS, rape a virgin. The only virgins left, really, are small children and infants. The Catholic church is debating (now this is sad) whether or not to drop the anti-contraceptive stance because of this crisis. If you weren't a religious conservative, this would be a no-brainer. I'd entrust this decision to a 2-year-old, but not an authoritarian attatched to an organization with a deplorable history. Sam Harris said to Stephen Colbert, that it is "genocidal stupidity."
This over-attention to religion, according to many sources, including Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy, is going to contribute to our demise as a superower. This is where Huxley and BNW come in. Since the Cold War: 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now, anti-intellectualism has dominated popular sentiment, and now, as college is becoming less and less affordable, it is becoming easier to rebel against academia. Non-accredited evangelical colleges, like (un)Liberty are springing up by popular demand. Standards are lowering for job applicants and business graduates. Even medical students are less and less required to acknowledge Darwinian Theory and basic facts in anthropology.
This extends not just to the social level, but the individual level as well. Escapism has become too widespread. A friend said to me, "What happens when a society is too afraid to lift the cover on the shi- they buried?" What happens when people are terrified to face the consequences of the realities they've created? Again, religion plays into this, the same way it did earlier in my essay. I've been reading this book in PDF format about Right-Wing Authoritarians and fundamentalists and evangelicals. Their "compartmentalized mind" and blind faith in a book a significant majority of them have never read allows them to easily find comfort in Jesus while commiting what would normally would be called a "sin" without any blip of remorse at all(Altemeyer). Does Ted Haggard feel any guilt from cheating on his wife, even worse, with another male? I dont think so, nothing genuine. Does he sincerely understand what his wife possibly feels? Does he care to? I'm not sure. Why is this so? We know why. If you forget, read the second paragraph again.
It's being a kid, having mommy and daddy (in adult cases, an imaginary friend named Jesus) to pick up the pieces. In Altemeyer's book, he writes that the religious RWAs almost never confront the one they've sinned against about the issue. That's what I mean by those parentheses. That is what I mean by adults being children. And there are those who come by and see the naked shards of the glass globe on the living room floor, telling the destructor, "Look what you did! You have to pick up the pieces," but the destructor states, in delirium, "It's OK, Jesus will pick up the pieces. Everything is fine."
What I haven't gotten to is why we can't afford to exist like this. It is easy to deny one's reality, and seductive too. But the world isn't going to be fixed that way, is it? It is also easy to understand why we cannot survive in a fictionalized, "safe" world. It would be easy to believe everything the government, or anyone else ever told you, right? But we can't. Yet a lot of us are, and we're declining because of it, socially and politically. Relationships deteriorate because people believe what others say (remember Othello?) about sex, that certain otherwise normal, things are bad, that this country is the best in the world, even though we are discriminatory and very repressive (authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald fled to Europe because they are more tolerant).
You know all of the ridiculous commmercials and advertisements on TV? Or the tabloids? Can you imagine if people believed them? People do. And I never thought about Brave New World in that light before yesterday.
Works Cited:
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips 2006
Time Magazine week of October 31st 2006- early November 2006
The Authoritarians by Bob Alemeyer http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The Nature of Fiction
My friends disagree, but what I like most is for fiction to say something about the real world, to present an idea or ideas. This extends to movies as well.
New Criticism focused on the work itself, without even the author, and said that there is one specific idea in any body of work that the reader is supposed to "get." It is not until we get to Historical/Cultural/Biographical Criticism where we not only have the author, but we have The Real World aside from the work itself. HG Wells, prior to WW1, wrote many science-fiction novels on what he believed what the "Great War" was to look like, with planes and even tanks. There was a novel, which we read parts of, called "When William Came," a right-wing propaganda tale of British neglect of European politics and a certain "softness" that resulted in Britain's fade from the world stage, when the Britons begin to speak German (WW1-era).
In movies, an excellent example is THX-1138, George Lucas' first film made in 1971. It was a science-fictionalization, set in the year 2550, of how he sees the world in the 60s-70s, and he mocks Communism, religion, industry, and explores society's perception of love and sex. Accurate? I think so.
My other friend is getting into the Cyberpunk novels of the 70s, specifically Philip K Dick. Cyberpunk is described as a science fiction sub-genre depicting "high-tech low-life," advanced dystopias rich with high crime rates, and Soviet-level corruption in pseudo-democratic (more fascist-leaning) governments. Examples would be: To a certain extent, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, Equilibrium, Armitage, Armitage III: Polymatrix and Blade Runner, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star.
Maybe I should find a good cyberpunk novel. I might like it.
One of my friends, in the group of friends first mentioned here, can watch Kingdom of Heaven, his favorite movie, and not even consider what the director is trying to say about religion and political power. If you want to offend me, read a big name piece of literature and say, after I ask about it, "so?"
"It's just a book." "It's just a movie." Lots of books are "just books." Lots of movies are "just movies." But other books and movies try to be more than that, an idea. It is those books and movies that I read and see. Because I want something out of them, that idea, the reason that they exist. Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, countless Romance and mystery writers simply write to make money or to entertain Falwell's "flock." But others, though they needed money (like Dostoevsky), did communicate profound things through their work. Dostoevsky was a compulsive gambler and wrote, "The Gambler" to get debt money and rushed the end of Crime & Punishment because of an issue with his publisher and he needed his advance.
New Criticism focused on the work itself, without even the author, and said that there is one specific idea in any body of work that the reader is supposed to "get." It is not until we get to Historical/Cultural/Biographical Criticism where we not only have the author, but we have The Real World aside from the work itself. HG Wells, prior to WW1, wrote many science-fiction novels on what he believed what the "Great War" was to look like, with planes and even tanks. There was a novel, which we read parts of, called "When William Came," a right-wing propaganda tale of British neglect of European politics and a certain "softness" that resulted in Britain's fade from the world stage, when the Britons begin to speak German (WW1-era).
In movies, an excellent example is THX-1138, George Lucas' first film made in 1971. It was a science-fictionalization, set in the year 2550, of how he sees the world in the 60s-70s, and he mocks Communism, religion, industry, and explores society's perception of love and sex. Accurate? I think so.
My other friend is getting into the Cyberpunk novels of the 70s, specifically Philip K Dick. Cyberpunk is described as a science fiction sub-genre depicting "high-tech low-life," advanced dystopias rich with high crime rates, and Soviet-level corruption in pseudo-democratic (more fascist-leaning) governments. Examples would be: To a certain extent, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, Equilibrium, Armitage, Armitage III: Polymatrix and Blade Runner, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star.
Maybe I should find a good cyberpunk novel. I might like it.
One of my friends, in the group of friends first mentioned here, can watch Kingdom of Heaven, his favorite movie, and not even consider what the director is trying to say about religion and political power. If you want to offend me, read a big name piece of literature and say, after I ask about it, "so?"
"It's just a book." "It's just a movie." Lots of books are "just books." Lots of movies are "just movies." But other books and movies try to be more than that, an idea. It is those books and movies that I read and see. Because I want something out of them, that idea, the reason that they exist. Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, countless Romance and mystery writers simply write to make money or to entertain Falwell's "flock." But others, though they needed money (like Dostoevsky), did communicate profound things through their work. Dostoevsky was a compulsive gambler and wrote, "The Gambler" to get debt money and rushed the end of Crime & Punishment because of an issue with his publisher and he needed his advance.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Stuff Not Covered in First Post, Christianism
-I read...A LOT. Not just dystopian fiction, but also Russian literature (pre- and post-Revolutionary) and old American classics such as The Scarlet Letter (I love Hawthorne :) )
Yes, I have a "thing," a sort of infatuation with Russian literature, which has manifested into an interest in anything Russian, including music (Regina Spektor) and movies (Nightwatch). I really like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I also enjoy Russian-American authors such as Vladimir Nabokov (recently finished Lolita and Invitation to a Beheading) and especially Ayn Rand.
I also read political science texts. I have, in my room, finished, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, American Theocracy, and What's the Matter With Kansas? Ironically, AT and WtMWK? are both written by Republicans!
On End of Faith: I have been a radical atheist before I read this book, thanks to history classes, independent study, and attention to politics. Sam Harris merely verbalized and clarified (thank you Mr Harris!) my sentiments, scaring the crap out of me all the while. What I knew little of at the time was that Jesus was not as "white" (pure) as Elmer Gantries and Grand Inquisitors make him out to be.
However, I think the book is mistitled: "The end of reason," because if these invertebrates and schizophrenics take over, all expressions of reason (Socrates, Rand, Darwin, into the bonfire, Nazi-style or F451!) and even (especially) loving sexual expression will be illegal, replaced by government-sanctioned schizophrenia and by rape between Offred and the Commander. Would there at least be a "Jezebel's," some remnant, though cheapened, sexual outlet? [See The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.]
I had a dream last night that I was a horrific monster. I only got a glimpse of myself but I think I looked something like the Overmind in StarCraft. It was pretty cool.
I have to tell you that I'm big into history. I'm particularly interested in the totalitarian regimes in the pre- and post-WW2 eras, from Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Franco, to Ayatollah Khomeini and the rising fascist* faction of the Republican party. My interest is not at all in support of or the desire to repeat their actions, but instead to prevent them from happening again. I will not say anything bad about them because their actions speak for themselves, but the formulas and conditions that led to such tyranny are almost textbook, from the Bolsheviks to Stalin, from the Muslims to Khomeini.
Radical sentiment is enormously high. A figure rises up as a champion of the cause. That figure obtains political power - and betrays everything. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When I look at people under the spell of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc., I am absolutely terrified because I know how those leaders really feel: They merely want power. Falwell recently described his followers as a "flock." This might have largely gone unnoticed, but I'm going to deconstruct it.
Flock: A group of sheep. What are sheep (for those unfamiliar with human or animal behavior)? Sheep are basically passive animals who do whatever they are told (by a shepherd or vicious dogs on a farm), or sit and eat, minding their own business.
Does anyone see where I'm going? Is there anyone who wants me to keep going?
Ted Haggard expressed anger at evolutionists' description of humans as "animals" (which we are, when everything is boiled down), but the ironic thing is that he and these men capitalize on the unthinking nature of their followers, and treat their followers exactly like the lowest of animals by playing "Follow the Leader." He and others profit because in intellect and self-worth, these people are animals, specifically either sheep (if the activities are benign, which is rare) or lemmings (taken into consideration the political implications of sheep-dom).
"The most dangerous people, I think, are those that either deny, or are wholly ignorant of the consequences of what they advocate." I said these words to an email to my father, and I would like them spread to the minds of every intelligent, critically-thinking human being on this planet. This is why democracy worldwide is in dire straits, from European militant Muslims to Christian Nationalist Americans (Michelle Goldberg).
*Fascist: A significant faction of the Republican party (the Religious Right/Christian conservatives) has no regard for individual thought and power over his or her own life. They seek to shove Christian doctrine and dogma (sexual suppression, misogyny, xenophobia, IGNORANCE) down the throats of every American, as Khomeini did to every Iranian in the 1980s. A Washington correspondent for the NY Times even titled his book American Fascists.
Yes, I have a "thing," a sort of infatuation with Russian literature, which has manifested into an interest in anything Russian, including music (Regina Spektor) and movies (Nightwatch). I really like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I also enjoy Russian-American authors such as Vladimir Nabokov (recently finished Lolita and Invitation to a Beheading) and especially Ayn Rand.
I also read political science texts. I have, in my room, finished, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, American Theocracy, and What's the Matter With Kansas? Ironically, AT and WtMWK? are both written by Republicans!
On End of Faith: I have been a radical atheist before I read this book, thanks to history classes, independent study, and attention to politics. Sam Harris merely verbalized and clarified (thank you Mr Harris!) my sentiments, scaring the crap out of me all the while. What I knew little of at the time was that Jesus was not as "white" (pure) as Elmer Gantries and Grand Inquisitors make him out to be.
However, I think the book is mistitled: "The end of reason," because if these invertebrates and schizophrenics take over, all expressions of reason (Socrates, Rand, Darwin, into the bonfire, Nazi-style or F451!) and even (especially) loving sexual expression will be illegal, replaced by government-sanctioned schizophrenia and by rape between Offred and the Commander. Would there at least be a "Jezebel's," some remnant, though cheapened, sexual outlet? [See The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.]
I had a dream last night that I was a horrific monster. I only got a glimpse of myself but I think I looked something like the Overmind in StarCraft. It was pretty cool.
I have to tell you that I'm big into history. I'm particularly interested in the totalitarian regimes in the pre- and post-WW2 eras, from Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Franco, to Ayatollah Khomeini and the rising fascist* faction of the Republican party. My interest is not at all in support of or the desire to repeat their actions, but instead to prevent them from happening again. I will not say anything bad about them because their actions speak for themselves, but the formulas and conditions that led to such tyranny are almost textbook, from the Bolsheviks to Stalin, from the Muslims to Khomeini.
Radical sentiment is enormously high. A figure rises up as a champion of the cause. That figure obtains political power - and betrays everything. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When I look at people under the spell of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc., I am absolutely terrified because I know how those leaders really feel: They merely want power. Falwell recently described his followers as a "flock." This might have largely gone unnoticed, but I'm going to deconstruct it.
Flock: A group of sheep. What are sheep (for those unfamiliar with human or animal behavior)? Sheep are basically passive animals who do whatever they are told (by a shepherd or vicious dogs on a farm), or sit and eat, minding their own business.
Does anyone see where I'm going? Is there anyone who wants me to keep going?
Ted Haggard expressed anger at evolutionists' description of humans as "animals" (which we are, when everything is boiled down), but the ironic thing is that he and these men capitalize on the unthinking nature of their followers, and treat their followers exactly like the lowest of animals by playing "Follow the Leader." He and others profit because in intellect and self-worth, these people are animals, specifically either sheep (if the activities are benign, which is rare) or lemmings (taken into consideration the political implications of sheep-dom).
"The most dangerous people, I think, are those that either deny, or are wholly ignorant of the consequences of what they advocate." I said these words to an email to my father, and I would like them spread to the minds of every intelligent, critically-thinking human being on this planet. This is why democracy worldwide is in dire straits, from European militant Muslims to Christian Nationalist Americans (Michelle Goldberg).
*Fascist: A significant faction of the Republican party (the Religious Right/Christian conservatives) has no regard for individual thought and power over his or her own life. They seek to shove Christian doctrine and dogma (sexual suppression, misogyny, xenophobia, IGNORANCE) down the throats of every American, as Khomeini did to every Iranian in the 1980s. A Washington correspondent for the NY Times even titled his book American Fascists.
Friday, February 16, 2007
First Post
A few things before I begin:
-Anything put on the internet is NOT AT ALL "private"
-Anything one says may be misquoted and used against the poster by uncivil tyrants
-Things could get ugly (intelligent), as I'm terrified of the current government and its anti-individualist, anti-intellectual (anti-American) policies, and not afraid to say it.
That being said, Welcome!
I'm concerned about politics because my government currently seeks to make people fit into tiny little Christian boxes and is starting to very much resemble the horrible regimes that existed in Europe in the 1940s and 1980s Iran, while ordinary citizens desperately try to preserve their comfortable, falsified realities even as one by one they go to war for oil profits.
I refuse to live in such a dystopia as this. It is bad enough as it is, we need to stop it from further resembling the dystopian novels I read, specifically The Handmaid's Tale and 1984.
I regard my own life as boring, and to escape I read books. "Bad" books, about societies worse than ours. My English professor 2 semesters ago called such books "bad" for me because they make me paranoid. But they don't: It's that I see the resemblance between The Handmaid's Tale and our current lifestyle(s). Remember the reaction to the Kinsey Report? Remember Terri Schaivo? Sam Brownback is running for President on Christian misogyny and homophobia.
So if things get worse, I'm going to Europe. I haven't decided where yet (my prospects for Australia was crushed when I discovered that the PM of Australia was "butt buddies" of our Commodus*), but I'm running out of time.
Ahh this is about me. I give up. Theres not much to be said, especially on the internet. I have little in common with other people, always trying to better myself, patch up any contradictions in my philosophies, reading a lot. How many kids in college (or adults for that matter) have a respect for Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Where the hell am I? What am I doing? No.. I know what I'm doing. What the hell is everyone else doing? How many people in the United States have any decent critical thinking capacity? Based upon the Peter Principle, I'm simply not going to get anywhere. I bitch and moan about what others are doing, but am I going to be heard? Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged about spineless invertebrates providing fierce resistance against the advancement and betterment of mankind. Nabokov's Bend Sinister touches on the same subject.
That's why I'm so upset, that's why I hate the world I live in. Incompetents govern my world, like some Kafkan nightmare. It's not funny. How long to democracies/republics last? Steeped in corruption, Greece imploded. *Commodus single-handedly opened the gates to Germanic invaders because of his ineptitude and possible mental illness (I wrote a paper on the Fall of Rome and attributed it to him and received an A).
"I'm so SIIIICK!!!!" ~ Flyleaf.
I cannot think of many times in which I'd rather live. History is not filled with fairy gardens and roses. History isn't good enough for me: It's getting there, Aristotle, Plato, and particularly Socrates started the snowball, but we're not at the point at which I would be satisfied, in which logical and intelligent philosophies were guides to political policy, where objective ethics guided Senate decisions and the respect for the individual, upon which this nation was principally founded, strongly influenced policymakers.
We don't live in such an age. I'm dreaming. I can dream. I can scream it all away, I can run.
I'm scared, as the Swastika is pulled behind the Cross. Inside, I'm a dreamer, a hopeless romantic terrified of those in power, as zoo visitors would be afraid of a chimp with a pistol.
I've been looking for romantic novels. I never read one. Jane Austen had too much fluff. I'm trying Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger, though I'm not sure what it is about yet. I've never been in love, I'm not sure that it exists. High school showed me that love is a fool's dream and college has yet to restore my belief in the integrity of human beings.
What would humans be like if there were no chains binding them? No god(s) or tradition or tyrannizing government, but only the limits of their own imagination upon their creativity? What if the government held the individual as sacred, instead of a few cells in a Petri Dish? What if the people were educated? What if they were helped to learn to think critically and distrust the government? What if high schools didn't crush the creative drive? What if young teens weren't lied to about sex/sexuality/sexual expression or love? Would there be inequality between the sexes?
Other societies merely chained men together, or to religious tyrants, but what if one were to come along and destroy the chains altogether? Maybe someone can rise up and take lessons from history: Not to repeat it.
I want something better. I want not to be bitter. I want to live. I want to love. On my own terms.
I want to be free.
-Anything put on the internet is NOT AT ALL "private"
-Anything one says may be misquoted and used against the poster by uncivil tyrants
-Things could get ugly (intelligent), as I'm terrified of the current government and its anti-individualist, anti-intellectual (anti-American) policies, and not afraid to say it.
That being said, Welcome!
I'm concerned about politics because my government currently seeks to make people fit into tiny little Christian boxes and is starting to very much resemble the horrible regimes that existed in Europe in the 1940s and 1980s Iran, while ordinary citizens desperately try to preserve their comfortable, falsified realities even as one by one they go to war for oil profits.
I refuse to live in such a dystopia as this. It is bad enough as it is, we need to stop it from further resembling the dystopian novels I read, specifically The Handmaid's Tale and 1984.
I regard my own life as boring, and to escape I read books. "Bad" books, about societies worse than ours. My English professor 2 semesters ago called such books "bad" for me because they make me paranoid. But they don't: It's that I see the resemblance between The Handmaid's Tale and our current lifestyle(s). Remember the reaction to the Kinsey Report? Remember Terri Schaivo? Sam Brownback is running for President on Christian misogyny and homophobia.
So if things get worse, I'm going to Europe. I haven't decided where yet (my prospects for Australia was crushed when I discovered that the PM of Australia was "butt buddies" of our Commodus*), but I'm running out of time.
Ahh this is about me. I give up. Theres not much to be said, especially on the internet. I have little in common with other people, always trying to better myself, patch up any contradictions in my philosophies, reading a lot. How many kids in college (or adults for that matter) have a respect for Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Where the hell am I? What am I doing? No.. I know what I'm doing. What the hell is everyone else doing? How many people in the United States have any decent critical thinking capacity? Based upon the Peter Principle, I'm simply not going to get anywhere. I bitch and moan about what others are doing, but am I going to be heard? Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged about spineless invertebrates providing fierce resistance against the advancement and betterment of mankind. Nabokov's Bend Sinister touches on the same subject.
That's why I'm so upset, that's why I hate the world I live in. Incompetents govern my world, like some Kafkan nightmare. It's not funny. How long to democracies/republics last? Steeped in corruption, Greece imploded. *Commodus single-handedly opened the gates to Germanic invaders because of his ineptitude and possible mental illness (I wrote a paper on the Fall of Rome and attributed it to him and received an A).
"I'm so SIIIICK!!!!" ~ Flyleaf.
I cannot think of many times in which I'd rather live. History is not filled with fairy gardens and roses. History isn't good enough for me: It's getting there, Aristotle, Plato, and particularly Socrates started the snowball, but we're not at the point at which I would be satisfied, in which logical and intelligent philosophies were guides to political policy, where objective ethics guided Senate decisions and the respect for the individual, upon which this nation was principally founded, strongly influenced policymakers.
We don't live in such an age. I'm dreaming. I can dream. I can scream it all away, I can run.
I'm scared, as the Swastika is pulled behind the Cross. Inside, I'm a dreamer, a hopeless romantic terrified of those in power, as zoo visitors would be afraid of a chimp with a pistol.
I've been looking for romantic novels. I never read one. Jane Austen had too much fluff. I'm trying Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger, though I'm not sure what it is about yet. I've never been in love, I'm not sure that it exists. High school showed me that love is a fool's dream and college has yet to restore my belief in the integrity of human beings.
What would humans be like if there were no chains binding them? No god(s) or tradition or tyrannizing government, but only the limits of their own imagination upon their creativity? What if the government held the individual as sacred, instead of a few cells in a Petri Dish? What if the people were educated? What if they were helped to learn to think critically and distrust the government? What if high schools didn't crush the creative drive? What if young teens weren't lied to about sex/sexuality/sexual expression or love? Would there be inequality between the sexes?
Other societies merely chained men together, or to religious tyrants, but what if one were to come along and destroy the chains altogether? Maybe someone can rise up and take lessons from history: Not to repeat it.
I want something better. I want not to be bitter. I want to live. I want to love. On my own terms.
I want to be free.
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