Alright, there's been quite the campaign of late to bring nuclear energy to Alberta, predominantly to power Alberta's already over-extended industrial sector, and I think I must point out that this is absolutely, completely, without a shadow of a doubt, total stupidity.
The idea is that the water flow from the Peace river will be enough to operate a CANDU reactor (that is, Deuterium - Uranium - the materials they use for nuclear fission; the CAN stands for the fact it's Canadian made) which will provide power for oil sands operation with no greenhouse gas emissions.
However, greenhouse gas emissions are generated throughout the process. The mining of uranium, as well as the purification of Deuterium (a heavy isotope of water used in the fission reaction) are both heavy in greenhouse gas production. This does not include the greenhouse gases generated in moving the various nuclear fuels from province to province.
A fission reaction occurs when you throw neutrons at an atom to break it apart, and you capture the energy released by that atom. A nuclear bomb is essentially an uncontrolled reaction.
All this is fine and dandy, but where did fission reactions occur naturally, before physicists figured them out?
Well, that would be the surface of the sun, about 92 million miles away.
Stars are gigantic atom smashers. They sit there, orbiting the cosmic center of our galaxy (a black hole, awesomely enough) more or less digesting atoms as simple as hydrogen and as complex as the rest of them millions of times a minute, bursting energy out in the form of heat, light and radiation.
92 million miles away, on a very large rock covered in water, that energy is enough to keep the Earth warm enough to sustain life.
The waste of a nuclear reactor has to be stored under hundreds of liters of water for five years to prevent melting through the bedrock, which needs to be very solid to withstand the intense heat of a fission reaction (again, surface of the sun). After that, the waste needs to be stored for an additional 5,000 years deep underground before it is believed it will be safe to recycle into the biosphere.
5,000 years ago, the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations were in their infancy. The first pyramids had not been built yet. If Julian James' work "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is to be believed, consciousness hadn't even developed in humans yet.
5,000 years is roughly 250 generations.
To suggest that we, as a people, have the right to burden our descendants with the waste of a few fleeting moments of prosperity is preposterous, especially when you consider that we'd be doing it to avoid burdening our descendants with the waste of a few fleeting moments of prosperity.
If oil sands production is so important, there has to be a less permanent means of acquiring the energy to fuel it. Even hydroelectric, with it's habitat/farmland flooding tendency, would be less devastating in the grand scheme of nature than a nuclear plant.
If you agree with me, or even if you disagree with me, you should take this link to the Alberta government's public survey and tell the government what you think. Don't believe me. Do the research yourself. Examine as many sources as possible. Weigh the arguments.
http://www.innovativeresearch.ca/alberta/
We're talking a decision that's going to result in over 5,000 years of commitment. This is something to be taken seriously.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Just buy GM already, Barack
With recent news that Barack Obama's administration asked GM CEO Rick Wagoner to step down as part of negotiations for an additional bailout (after already receiving over $12 billion dollars in tax dollars already), and since GM's own auditor has said that the company cannot survive as it currently exists, it is beginning to seem a bit redundant to keep GM as a privately traded corporation. It also seems apparant that the old market addage of 'laissez-faire' was really just a fancy line to pacify the workforce; the grand kings of capitalism are perfectly happy to accept government assistance and be propped up if needed. The US government should simply buy-out GM's shares and run it at a loss while it restructures the company. It would probably be cheaper than a couple years of continual bailouts as is currently being devised.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly down with government wasting my tribute on big statues, art films, building projects, science grants, etc. Things that can't and really shouldn't be making it on the market. That's fine and dandy; it's what government is there to do. But let's just examine what has been more or less implied in our rather multiple personalities oriented society.
The consumer has essentially failed, by not providing enough capital to keep the market in function. This is primarally because the market, being gluttonous in nature, will eventually self destruct if left to its own devices. Anyone who has ever owned a fat cat can attest to this.
The institutions involved and essentially determining these outcomes can't really be blamed, since they're institutions filled with people. The people working in the institutions can't really be at fault either; they simply fit into their institutional roles, doing exactly what they were paid to do and responding accordingly. If a CEO of one of the big 3 auto had decided to switch to totally green cars on his own accord, he probably would have been fired by the shareholder's association for damaging their stock.
The problem is the way this free market society is set up, eventually the market gets so big and expensive to maintain that the society can't maintain it anymore. The unavoidable collapse is then quite intense.
So now, since the consumer couldn't afford the market anymore, the market has gone to the government, which is taking from the taxpayer. Massive deficits are being reapped (is it me or does the White House have an essentially infinite budget?) to keep these private organizations alive.
What's basically happened is that the 'free' market wasn't 'free' at all. Since the taxpayer and the consumer are the exact same person, the corporate institutions are getting the money you get up and spend 8 hours a day earning whether you wanted to give it to them or not!
If these private organizations are so important to the continental infrastructure (and they are) then government should do the responsible thing and take over these organizations so it can at least waste public money the way public money should be wasted.
Canadians are actually fairly used to this idea; both federal and provincial governments have created and/or bought and eventually sold corporations for most of Canada's history. The formation of Liquor Boards throughout the nation and the dissolution of them in Alberta is an example. Anyone remember Ed-Tel and AGT, both government corporations that were sold off and formed the domineering Telus?
Canadian National Railways (which more or less is the backbone of Canadian industry) was formed as a crown corporation after the federal government bought out several bankrupt railways and reformed them into CN. In 1995 the Federal Liberals under Jean Chretien privatized the company, and it is now traded internationally.
If GM is going to survive as a North American institution, it needs to do things that it cannot do legally as a privately traded company. It needs to run at a loss. It needs to restructure itself from the ground up. No megacorporation can actually do this without facing massive lawsuits (far worse than environmental infractions, sadly.)
Bush II already demonstrated that the President of the United States currently has the power to do whatever he wants, and most of the western nations will tag along and Congress cannot stop him. So just do it and save everyone the trouble, it'll still be cheaper than Iraq's going to turn out to be with far more popular responses. It's not like the government can't re-privitize GM at a later date when the venture is actually profitable.
Just buy GM already, Barack.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly down with government wasting my tribute on big statues, art films, building projects, science grants, etc. Things that can't and really shouldn't be making it on the market. That's fine and dandy; it's what government is there to do. But let's just examine what has been more or less implied in our rather multiple personalities oriented society.
The consumer has essentially failed, by not providing enough capital to keep the market in function. This is primarally because the market, being gluttonous in nature, will eventually self destruct if left to its own devices. Anyone who has ever owned a fat cat can attest to this.
The institutions involved and essentially determining these outcomes can't really be blamed, since they're institutions filled with people. The people working in the institutions can't really be at fault either; they simply fit into their institutional roles, doing exactly what they were paid to do and responding accordingly. If a CEO of one of the big 3 auto had decided to switch to totally green cars on his own accord, he probably would have been fired by the shareholder's association for damaging their stock.
The problem is the way this free market society is set up, eventually the market gets so big and expensive to maintain that the society can't maintain it anymore. The unavoidable collapse is then quite intense.
So now, since the consumer couldn't afford the market anymore, the market has gone to the government, which is taking from the taxpayer. Massive deficits are being reapped (is it me or does the White House have an essentially infinite budget?) to keep these private organizations alive.
What's basically happened is that the 'free' market wasn't 'free' at all. Since the taxpayer and the consumer are the exact same person, the corporate institutions are getting the money you get up and spend 8 hours a day earning whether you wanted to give it to them or not!
If these private organizations are so important to the continental infrastructure (and they are) then government should do the responsible thing and take over these organizations so it can at least waste public money the way public money should be wasted.
Canadians are actually fairly used to this idea; both federal and provincial governments have created and/or bought and eventually sold corporations for most of Canada's history. The formation of Liquor Boards throughout the nation and the dissolution of them in Alberta is an example. Anyone remember Ed-Tel and AGT, both government corporations that were sold off and formed the domineering Telus?
Canadian National Railways (which more or less is the backbone of Canadian industry) was formed as a crown corporation after the federal government bought out several bankrupt railways and reformed them into CN. In 1995 the Federal Liberals under Jean Chretien privatized the company, and it is now traded internationally.
If GM is going to survive as a North American institution, it needs to do things that it cannot do legally as a privately traded company. It needs to run at a loss. It needs to restructure itself from the ground up. No megacorporation can actually do this without facing massive lawsuits (far worse than environmental infractions, sadly.)
Bush II already demonstrated that the President of the United States currently has the power to do whatever he wants, and most of the western nations will tag along and Congress cannot stop him. So just do it and save everyone the trouble, it'll still be cheaper than Iraq's going to turn out to be with far more popular responses. It's not like the government can't re-privitize GM at a later date when the venture is actually profitable.
Just buy GM already, Barack.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The new image of pot heads
There was a time, long ago, back in the ancient world we grew up in, when pot users were stereotyped into freeloaders, obese and greasy, reeking of pizza and cheetos. Faces unshaven, dragging back bong hit after bong hit, watching sesame street and having realizations about their lives.
Not anymore.
14-time Olympic champion Michael Phelps has, hopefully, shattered the global media's representation of pot and shown the world what pot users have known for years: Anyone and everyone can be a pot smoker.
After all, if a marijuana user can win 14 gold medals, what else can potheads do beside grow pot?
Search hard enough and you will find pot smokers in every field of society. Athletics, Education, Government, Policing, Military, Lawyers, Space travel, Rescue Operations, Manufacturing, Retail, the list is ongoing.
Most pot smokers are wise enough to not smoke pot on the job, but their recreation has always been their own business and is enjoyed as such.
It's high time we realized that drugs (and alcohol is included in that definition) and various mind altering chemicals have always and always will be a part of society. Digs have shown that the first crops to be regularly harvested could have been used to make alcohol, the first piece of writing known is an egyptian papyrus made of hemp (ie cannibis, marijuana, ganja, etc.)
Why, pray tell, would you go from travelling from place to place, learning to co-exist with a variety of exotic animals, following the good weather and sunshine, as well as the abundant food, not having a huge family to care for and generally being free, trading and meeting different people as you go -- to being forced to stick to a plot of land to ensure a crop grows, having huge families of whiney kids and having to fend off people off the previous persuasion who are trying to steal your hard worked for crops?
Agriculture is regarded as the birth of civilization for a reason; after agriculture, people became linked to the land they tended; prior to agriculture people lived in small populations and travelled around with the good weather, following the big herds they harvested for their meat, furs, etc.
Indeed, almost every collapse of society known usually begins with a large drought, which is what makes the environmental changes currently taking place somewhat alarming.
The key point here remains, people did not settle down and become farmers until they had a solid incentive to do it. Food wasn't an issue, you followed the herds and the environment had stablized since the ice age by that point anyway; water, same thing, you followed the river flows. Sex was abundant, you raised as many children as you needed and most cultures probably possessed an indepth knowedge of herbs they'd encounter depending on where they were.
The only logical reason people stopped living a lifestyle like this was so they could grow their drugs.
Addiction is a powerful thing, so powerful that it may be responsible for civilization.
Excavations of the pyramid builders (that being, the thousands of willing, paid egyptian labourers that built the massive buildings) show that they were supplied with a near-infinite amount of beer for their efforts. Afghanistan was one of the earliest lands of agriculture, it is theorized to be the original garden of eden, in fact, and is the opium capital of the planet. Coincedence? Probably not.
Similarly, Greek Olympians and Olympic watchers were completely fine with potions, ointments, enemas and so forth that were said to give bursts of strength and muscle. Ancient mystics, alchemists and apothecaries alike produced potions to stimulate and build athletes, selling ancient varieties of modern steroids, uppers and amphetamines.
The Inca empire spanned the Andes, a mountain range, and covered an area the from Vancouver to Whitehorse without horses or locomotives. Messengers ran from city to city, every day serving the function of trucks and trains in our modern empire. How? Chewing the coca leaf, an ingredient in modern cocaine.
Tobacco has formed a link to the spiritual world for numerous North American native tribes for several millenia.
What was shocking to some was silly to most.
So an olympian is a pot head.
Join the club.
Not anymore.
14-time Olympic champion Michael Phelps has, hopefully, shattered the global media's representation of pot and shown the world what pot users have known for years: Anyone and everyone can be a pot smoker.
After all, if a marijuana user can win 14 gold medals, what else can potheads do beside grow pot?
Search hard enough and you will find pot smokers in every field of society. Athletics, Education, Government, Policing, Military, Lawyers, Space travel, Rescue Operations, Manufacturing, Retail, the list is ongoing.
Most pot smokers are wise enough to not smoke pot on the job, but their recreation has always been their own business and is enjoyed as such.
It's high time we realized that drugs (and alcohol is included in that definition) and various mind altering chemicals have always and always will be a part of society. Digs have shown that the first crops to be regularly harvested could have been used to make alcohol, the first piece of writing known is an egyptian papyrus made of hemp (ie cannibis, marijuana, ganja, etc.)
Why, pray tell, would you go from travelling from place to place, learning to co-exist with a variety of exotic animals, following the good weather and sunshine, as well as the abundant food, not having a huge family to care for and generally being free, trading and meeting different people as you go -- to being forced to stick to a plot of land to ensure a crop grows, having huge families of whiney kids and having to fend off people off the previous persuasion who are trying to steal your hard worked for crops?
Agriculture is regarded as the birth of civilization for a reason; after agriculture, people became linked to the land they tended; prior to agriculture people lived in small populations and travelled around with the good weather, following the big herds they harvested for their meat, furs, etc.
Indeed, almost every collapse of society known usually begins with a large drought, which is what makes the environmental changes currently taking place somewhat alarming.
The key point here remains, people did not settle down and become farmers until they had a solid incentive to do it. Food wasn't an issue, you followed the herds and the environment had stablized since the ice age by that point anyway; water, same thing, you followed the river flows. Sex was abundant, you raised as many children as you needed and most cultures probably possessed an indepth knowedge of herbs they'd encounter depending on where they were.
The only logical reason people stopped living a lifestyle like this was so they could grow their drugs.
Addiction is a powerful thing, so powerful that it may be responsible for civilization.
Excavations of the pyramid builders (that being, the thousands of willing, paid egyptian labourers that built the massive buildings) show that they were supplied with a near-infinite amount of beer for their efforts. Afghanistan was one of the earliest lands of agriculture, it is theorized to be the original garden of eden, in fact, and is the opium capital of the planet. Coincedence? Probably not.
Similarly, Greek Olympians and Olympic watchers were completely fine with potions, ointments, enemas and so forth that were said to give bursts of strength and muscle. Ancient mystics, alchemists and apothecaries alike produced potions to stimulate and build athletes, selling ancient varieties of modern steroids, uppers and amphetamines.
The Inca empire spanned the Andes, a mountain range, and covered an area the from Vancouver to Whitehorse without horses or locomotives. Messengers ran from city to city, every day serving the function of trucks and trains in our modern empire. How? Chewing the coca leaf, an ingredient in modern cocaine.
Tobacco has formed a link to the spiritual world for numerous North American native tribes for several millenia.
What was shocking to some was silly to most.
So an olympian is a pot head.
Join the club.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
From Insurrection to Election
When it became clear that the Conservatives could smell a majority in Parliament, I began to get nervous, jittery, perhaps even a little faint. The concept that this band of Alberta cowboys, Ignorant 19-year-olds, Crazed Anti-abortionist Moms and disgusting Oil Barons could have undisputed control of Canadian Law caused my spine to twist on it's base and fold me back into a contorted near death pose.
Gone would be the lax court treatment for Canada's archaic marijuana laws. Gone would be any hope whatsover of cleaning up the already propped up economy that continues to vomit cancerous wastes all over our lands, our air, our oceans and our own personal bodies. Onward would come privitized health insurance, greater involvement in Bush's wars, harsher sentences for victimless crimes and all sorts of other horrible things.
Around this time, my friend and associate Andrew Paul of SEE Magazine contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in being in a roundtable discussion about politics. Of course I accepted.
At the time I had just begun a job, that I was swiftly fired from, and was given a phone call by my local New Democratic Party. Suddenly unemloyed and eager to stop the Conservative Majority however I could (which amounted to trying to stop them in local ridings, a daunting task when you consider the Conservatives swept the entire province last time around) I signed up and began doorknocking.
Doorknocking is what you could call the rawest and purest form of politics. There's just you, your little pamphlet, your smattering of points on the candidate you just met ten minutes earlier and why they're the best choice for the riding, and the nazi-redneck's rottweiler chasing you across the yard.
Actually, for the most part, people are pretty Canadian around here; they come to the door, even if they're on the phone, and listen to you say your piece, and politely tell you no. Quite pleasant, really. However, you always get those bad apples who slam the door in your face, call the police on you or bug you for cigarettes.
Personally, I have no problem with people smoking tobacco whatsoever, it's when I have to continually deal with people asking if they can buy a cigarette off me that gets kinda annoying.
The other day, while waiting for the bus, I saw a homeless looking guy inhaling finesse hair spray, on the ratio of once every eight minutes.
So night after night, I braved the scary unknown yards and apartment buildings, knocked on doors, took down numbers, turned fence sitting Liberals (which I myself was) and generally did my best to take out two Conservative MPs - Rahim Jaffer and Peter Goldring, both notable for having done absolutely nothing in several terms of office.
By the time election day came near, I was pretty confident that in the two ridings I was in, the NDP had a chance of turfing the Conservatives, stopping two seats from going blue. Granted, two seats out of 155 needed to not be Conservative is merely a drop in the bucket, but it's a needed drop.
So then the article in SEE comes out.
Now, the consensus I've had is that this article was a bad move by myself, but I still don't see what is so horrible about anything I said besides the fact I wasn't towing the party line. The article was about young adults and what they thought, not about young adults representing political parties.
But, someone in the NDP didn't see things that way, and when I went into the office for that final push over the Thanksgiving day weekend, I was informed I was no longer needed.
So I took the rest of the election (3 days) off and cast my vote.
In the end, one of the New Democrats I was plugging, Linda Duncan, defeated Rahim Jaffer by 442 votes. The other, Ray Martin, lost to Peter Golding by over 8000 votes.
Sitting back and watching the election, two things became clear to me. One, we, the very divided left, had managed to hold the Cons to another minority despite our own infighting. Two, when the Liberals take the worst loss they've had in over fifty years, they still end up with double the seats that the NDP managed to get with what was probably their strongest campaign ever.
Similarly to when the PCs and the Reform split back in the 90s, the left now sees the same symptom - when the larger, dominant party is weak, the other parties grow exponentially.
Chances are this is as close to a majority that either the Conservatives or the NDP are going to get; the Liberals are going to turf Dion and either Ignatieff or Rae is going to take the helm, and either of those leaders should have enough presence to restore the Liberal Party to a higher seat count within two years. Unless the Liberal party bankrupts itself in the process.
Either way, that's going to be the politics to watch over the next year. Let's see if the Liberals can reinvent themselves.
Gone would be the lax court treatment for Canada's archaic marijuana laws. Gone would be any hope whatsover of cleaning up the already propped up economy that continues to vomit cancerous wastes all over our lands, our air, our oceans and our own personal bodies. Onward would come privitized health insurance, greater involvement in Bush's wars, harsher sentences for victimless crimes and all sorts of other horrible things.
Around this time, my friend and associate Andrew Paul of SEE Magazine contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in being in a roundtable discussion about politics. Of course I accepted.
At the time I had just begun a job, that I was swiftly fired from, and was given a phone call by my local New Democratic Party. Suddenly unemloyed and eager to stop the Conservative Majority however I could (which amounted to trying to stop them in local ridings, a daunting task when you consider the Conservatives swept the entire province last time around) I signed up and began doorknocking.
Doorknocking is what you could call the rawest and purest form of politics. There's just you, your little pamphlet, your smattering of points on the candidate you just met ten minutes earlier and why they're the best choice for the riding, and the nazi-redneck's rottweiler chasing you across the yard.
Actually, for the most part, people are pretty Canadian around here; they come to the door, even if they're on the phone, and listen to you say your piece, and politely tell you no. Quite pleasant, really. However, you always get those bad apples who slam the door in your face, call the police on you or bug you for cigarettes.
Personally, I have no problem with people smoking tobacco whatsoever, it's when I have to continually deal with people asking if they can buy a cigarette off me that gets kinda annoying.
The other day, while waiting for the bus, I saw a homeless looking guy inhaling finesse hair spray, on the ratio of once every eight minutes.
So night after night, I braved the scary unknown yards and apartment buildings, knocked on doors, took down numbers, turned fence sitting Liberals (which I myself was) and generally did my best to take out two Conservative MPs - Rahim Jaffer and Peter Goldring, both notable for having done absolutely nothing in several terms of office.
By the time election day came near, I was pretty confident that in the two ridings I was in, the NDP had a chance of turfing the Conservatives, stopping two seats from going blue. Granted, two seats out of 155 needed to not be Conservative is merely a drop in the bucket, but it's a needed drop.
So then the article in SEE comes out.
Now, the consensus I've had is that this article was a bad move by myself, but I still don't see what is so horrible about anything I said besides the fact I wasn't towing the party line. The article was about young adults and what they thought, not about young adults representing political parties.
But, someone in the NDP didn't see things that way, and when I went into the office for that final push over the Thanksgiving day weekend, I was informed I was no longer needed.
So I took the rest of the election (3 days) off and cast my vote.
In the end, one of the New Democrats I was plugging, Linda Duncan, defeated Rahim Jaffer by 442 votes. The other, Ray Martin, lost to Peter Golding by over 8000 votes.
Sitting back and watching the election, two things became clear to me. One, we, the very divided left, had managed to hold the Cons to another minority despite our own infighting. Two, when the Liberals take the worst loss they've had in over fifty years, they still end up with double the seats that the NDP managed to get with what was probably their strongest campaign ever.
Similarly to when the PCs and the Reform split back in the 90s, the left now sees the same symptom - when the larger, dominant party is weak, the other parties grow exponentially.
Chances are this is as close to a majority that either the Conservatives or the NDP are going to get; the Liberals are going to turf Dion and either Ignatieff or Rae is going to take the helm, and either of those leaders should have enough presence to restore the Liberal Party to a higher seat count within two years. Unless the Liberal party bankrupts itself in the process.
Either way, that's going to be the politics to watch over the next year. Let's see if the Liberals can reinvent themselves.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
What a ride
Four years of love. What an awesome experience.
I'm not sure if people thought we would last this long, Tanja and I. Indeed, the challenges to our relationship have been strong and fierce. From struggles with friends to struggles with cash, we have endured the full range of emotions in our love for each other.
What has kept us together?
I think it's because we both realize the qualities of each other which sometimes irritate us also are those same qualities we adore about each other. Neither of us will take shit from authority, even each other. We both love adventure and novelty. Neither of us like to be cooped up or stuck in one spot...
So this is my thanks to my love for staying the course with me.
I love you Tanja.
I'm not sure if people thought we would last this long, Tanja and I. Indeed, the challenges to our relationship have been strong and fierce. From struggles with friends to struggles with cash, we have endured the full range of emotions in our love for each other.
What has kept us together?
I think it's because we both realize the qualities of each other which sometimes irritate us also are those same qualities we adore about each other. Neither of us will take shit from authority, even each other. We both love adventure and novelty. Neither of us like to be cooped up or stuck in one spot...
So this is my thanks to my love for staying the course with me.
I love you Tanja.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
25 years
Wow.
It's one of those things. Realizing that I've been on this supermassive chunk of rock for 25 of it's laps around the sun.
During my life the earth has spun on it's axis 9131 times.
So what events have I been blessed to see on this chunk of rock spinning through this spacious solar medium?
Whilst I was growing up and playing with my friends or with my legos or video games and not especially concerning myself with or even really conceiving the earth in general, the Soviet Union, that first social experiment inspired by the writing of Karl Marx, collapsed. In it's wake first was a violent anarchy but from that now emerges a new neo-fascist state.
American backed dictator Saddam Hussein, called "a friend of the American People" by Ronald Reagan, invaded Kuwait and became "Hitler Incarnate" as refered to by George Bush I. The United States invaded, reached an objective, and pulled out, leaving their allies, the northern Kurds, at the mercy of a very angry dictator. Many laps around the sun later, George Bush II returned to finish the job, plunging the region into anarchy and likely initiating the collapse of the European drawn borders of the middle east and a turn to more sectarian lines - which will be a major blow to the west's ability to control the region.
When I was five, the people of Myanmar held a general election and elected Aung San Suu Kyi. The military Junta didn't like that and massacred the people and imprisoned her, and then moved her to a house arrest. This house arrest, interestingly enough, ends at midnight this Saturday May 24th.
Before I had even finished elementary, the grunge movement had risen, sold out and died. My greasy teen years were spent mainly in video game world, and so while in Croatia and Yugoslavia a rather confusing genocide played out, I played Chrono Trigger and Zelda and argued about whether Square should stay with Nintendo or not.
In a region smaller than the southern part of Alberta, a genocide broke out where millions upon millions died while the world watched the OJ simpson trial.
My life has seen the emergence of two new nuclear powers; India and Pakistan.
My high school years gave me the freedom to be as in your face as I could; I spent most of it screaming for fun, irritating school authority figures, playing contact sports, getting really drunk with my punk rock buddies, hanging out in the music and drama departments and in the later parts of it, trying to meet women.
For the first time in history, a blowjob made international headlines across this entire chunk of rock.
In South America the next Marxist social experiment became underway, with the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and other left-leaning leaders in neighboring countries.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I am blessed/damned to see, however, is the transformation of our climate.
From the time I was born onward, the environmental movement has grown and transformed from extremist hippies to a worldwide phenomenon.
No one would even suggest the idea of quoting Greenpeace in an actual news story back then. Today, they're comments are sought on anything to do with the environment.
All this history - and far more that I'm sure I have missed - happened since I was alive. The world continued to spin while I learned how to: walk, speak, care for others, read, write, tell stories, masturbate, get along with others, distrust authority, drink, smoke, make love, dance, take photos, and many other skills.
So it's been an action packed 25 years, and I'm pretty certain I'm just now getting to the good parts.
Carpe Diem my friends, Carpe Diem.
It's one of those things. Realizing that I've been on this supermassive chunk of rock for 25 of it's laps around the sun.
During my life the earth has spun on it's axis 9131 times.
So what events have I been blessed to see on this chunk of rock spinning through this spacious solar medium?
Whilst I was growing up and playing with my friends or with my legos or video games and not especially concerning myself with or even really conceiving the earth in general, the Soviet Union, that first social experiment inspired by the writing of Karl Marx, collapsed. In it's wake first was a violent anarchy but from that now emerges a new neo-fascist state.
American backed dictator Saddam Hussein, called "a friend of the American People" by Ronald Reagan, invaded Kuwait and became "Hitler Incarnate" as refered to by George Bush I. The United States invaded, reached an objective, and pulled out, leaving their allies, the northern Kurds, at the mercy of a very angry dictator. Many laps around the sun later, George Bush II returned to finish the job, plunging the region into anarchy and likely initiating the collapse of the European drawn borders of the middle east and a turn to more sectarian lines - which will be a major blow to the west's ability to control the region.
When I was five, the people of Myanmar held a general election and elected Aung San Suu Kyi. The military Junta didn't like that and massacred the people and imprisoned her, and then moved her to a house arrest. This house arrest, interestingly enough, ends at midnight this Saturday May 24th.
Before I had even finished elementary, the grunge movement had risen, sold out and died. My greasy teen years were spent mainly in video game world, and so while in Croatia and Yugoslavia a rather confusing genocide played out, I played Chrono Trigger and Zelda and argued about whether Square should stay with Nintendo or not.
In a region smaller than the southern part of Alberta, a genocide broke out where millions upon millions died while the world watched the OJ simpson trial.
My life has seen the emergence of two new nuclear powers; India and Pakistan.
My high school years gave me the freedom to be as in your face as I could; I spent most of it screaming for fun, irritating school authority figures, playing contact sports, getting really drunk with my punk rock buddies, hanging out in the music and drama departments and in the later parts of it, trying to meet women.
For the first time in history, a blowjob made international headlines across this entire chunk of rock.
In South America the next Marxist social experiment became underway, with the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and other left-leaning leaders in neighboring countries.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I am blessed/damned to see, however, is the transformation of our climate.
From the time I was born onward, the environmental movement has grown and transformed from extremist hippies to a worldwide phenomenon.
No one would even suggest the idea of quoting Greenpeace in an actual news story back then. Today, they're comments are sought on anything to do with the environment.
All this history - and far more that I'm sure I have missed - happened since I was alive. The world continued to spin while I learned how to: walk, speak, care for others, read, write, tell stories, masturbate, get along with others, distrust authority, drink, smoke, make love, dance, take photos, and many other skills.
So it's been an action packed 25 years, and I'm pretty certain I'm just now getting to the good parts.
Carpe Diem my friends, Carpe Diem.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Century of Failure
When all has been said and done, the 20th century will be remembered as the century where humanity failed in its every respect. More people died in genocides, ideological wars, under the reigns of both capitalist and socialist tyrants, and of disease and hunger than ever before in recorded history. From the World Wars to Global Warming to the collapse of western democracies in the wake of rampant capitalism, the 20th century will be doomed to be remembered as the century of failure.
What none of us are old enough to remember is that even as it was becoming clear a global war that would engulf most of the populated world was on the horizon, the western world had intense optimism coming out of a bloody 18th century. The rational, literate, free thinking French and English and German and Japanese had freed themselves of the oppressive chains of the nobility and the church. No longer would Kings be ordained by the pope, no, the government would be the will of the people! Science had already solved just about every problem of the medieval world, including smallpox, and soon it was going to take us to other planets and onward into utopia. Clearly evolution had cumulated into this great entity, the industrial European/American, and these people took up the "White Man's Burden" and spread their so-called enlightened literate European democracies across the planet.
Then of course, everything fell to shit in Europe again, dragging all of the European colonies in Africa, Asia and South America into five years of freestyle slaughter. A spanish flu epidemic immediately filled the evolutionary niche that smallpox had previously occupied, and killed between 50-100 million people. The global market came to the natural end of its cycle and crashed, and overfarming created drought conditions across North America. Soon everyone started to doubt just how smart they thought they were. That could not do, so soon populist movements sprang up across the great enlightened nations of Europe and North America. Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, my oh my! So of course, the frightened majority turned to the reactionary "blame-everyone-but-us"es, as human nature is so inclined to do, and thus Fascism, backed by industry, the media it owned and the ignorance of the masses, far too depressed with reality to actually pay attention, overtook numerous countries. And so humans had to go have another global war that dragged everyone into it.
You see, humans are primates. Because of this, our natural social behavior is to either appoint a leader of the pack, or follow one that more or less takes the roll. When more than one person wants that job, you have what is known as a power struggle. Most mammals do this in some manner or another. Our advanced transportation and communication technology allows us to now have tribes that could potentially span the globe, but still we use that technology to create the same social circles and societies we always have. We still pick "heroes" or "leaders" or "gods" or whatever you want to call them, instill our own values onto them and then expect them to solve all our problems for us. Our loyalty to this structure and the beauracracies it spawns oftentimes overrules our good judgement because, simply put, making serious decisions is quite often scary.
So, after another six years of freestyle slaughter, and the first known nuclear reactions - previously only known to occur on the surface of the sun -to have happened on the surface of the earth, we'd learned our lesson. As the Russian socialist dictators, pretending to be the people's guardian against the rich, and American somewhat democratically elected presidents, pretending to be the people's guardian against dictators and anti-human socialism, postured and boasted, both had reached a standstill. It is both a beautiful and a horrible thought to realize the greatest accomplishment of this century was that we managed to NOT nuke ourselves into oblivion.
However, we felt that we'd learned our lesson, and so rather than nuke the human race into extinction, the two new superpowers did as all superpowers have done in the past and assumed that they knew everything and started to meddle in everyone else's affairs, just as the European nations did in the lead-up to and the first part of the century. So the United States overthrew elected socialist governments and propped up corrupt, bloodthirsty dictators that would sell them cheap resources like oil and coal. The Soviet Union installed and supported Communist governments across the planet, which then almost always outlawed other political parties and killed or imprisoned any political dissidents.
Scientists of course continued to believe they were on the verge of something big. Men were walking on the moon. Plastics would soon make every natural fibre obsolete, oil would allow us all to drive Mustangs and Capitalism would lead us all to live like kings. Flu vaccinations would prevent any epidemic from ever occurring again. Polio was even looking like old news.
But all was not well in the two gems of civilization, and they both dealt with their problems remarkably similarly. Russia committed massive genocides on rebels in many of its satellite countries, and the United States assassinated numerous political figures involved in the civil rights movements, the hippie movements and anti-war movements.
Nations that were supposedly "freed" after we learned our lessons from world war 2 of course found themselves increasingly forced to choose a side or have a side chosen for them. From the 1950s to 2000 there were wars in almost every nation that had been brought "civilization" by the Europeans, and the western world immediately looked at them condescendingly and attempted to avoid any responsibility.
Near the end of the century the Soviet Union's top-heavy system had run itself out and it collapsed, ending a conflict of ideas. The western states grew smugger, even as Scientists realized that not only had they found something, they discovered we were creating our own destruction with the prosperity we thought we were having. But by this point no one believed the scientists anymore. The world was too depressing, so no one wanted to pay attention to it.
It was around this point that the United States decided it was the most enlightened, bad-ass and intelligent society around and that it ruled the planet. For the rest of the century and this day, close allies of the American way of life, including oligarchs of its former enemy Russia, would benefit from the globalized, americanized, civilized market thanks to such great inventions as the satellite and the internet, while in many countries water is privitized and taken from the people that rely on it to drink and bathe, and sold to people in stadiums half around the world. People now believe the scientists, though few seem especially eager to do something about it. Now, no one believes the leaders or the media, perhaps rightly so.
Today, oddly enough, the problems of the human race are remarkable similar to but far worse than before; global epidemics of cancer, malaria and AIDS are killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The planet is, according to both scientists examining weather patterns and shamans communing with spirits alike, about to open up a can of whoopass on us. We are facing a global water shortage in the wake of the global water market. The last president of the United States was not elected, and his foreign policy decisions will be influencing events for at least two decades. Fear of yet another genocide, this time in Sudan, is being met yet again with a blind eye from the global powers we have instilled with our lives.
Why does it seem we aren't really going anywhere except towards self created oblivion? Most humans today seem to recognize that society is fucked because most humans today cannot deal with reality in its entirety. Most people cannot consciously deal with the burden they now have thanks to a century of "enlightenment." So they don't bother.
Clearly we missed the mark on what being an enlightened society and an unenlightened society is. There were plenty of cultures that were doing just fine before Western Cultures went in and gave them "civilization."
The problem is in part the aforementioned natural social order. Because we are naturally hardwired to create these organizations, many of us will often believe an alpha male even if he is lying to us, and no amount of facts seem to be able to shake that loyalty. If we are unconscious of this natural reaction, we follow it without question. When we examine this reaction consciously, however, we often logically override it.
Few people who supported George W. Bush on his march to Baghdad will still stand by him now that its impossible to escape the fact that his whole reason for going was completely bogus from the start.
No one remembers Hitler the way Hitler wanted to be remembered.
But hindsight is always 20/20. How do we stop ourselves from fucking up history while its happening?
Most humans on the planet have managed to get a hold of the natural reactions of "Hot - Must Fuck Now" and "He insult me kill." While an enormous amount of literature and mythology exists to placate these instincts, the day to day of civilization is relatively peaceful. It is when the culture that placates these reactions collapse that they begin to quickly re-assert themselves. Perhaps this is an inevitable part of human nature.
But perhaps there's another answer, perhaps if we, as a people, come to realize that we are all equal, and that no powerful figure exist without the support of his followers, and that most people, when require to be so, are intelligent and reasonable people, perhaps we can create a society that replaces our traditional alpha-male of the pack society with something truly democratic.
This can only happen when each and every one of us is willing to rigourously examine ourselves. We need to teach ourselves to handle democracies properly with critical examination of the facts, not selecting our leaders on the mammalian politics of the past. We each need to understand how our emotions work, what they were designed for, how they play into modern society, and how we can control them to improve ourselves and not let them lead us on their own trails. Only then I think can we escape the madness we are currently in.
We have a nearly 6000 year record showing the results of a alpha-male dominated society. We have a 6000 year record showing the results of letting our emotions guide our decisions. We have a 6000 year recording showing both the genius of our brains and the follies that result when we choose to not use it.
I think the results of the experiment are pretty conclusive. Its time we tried a different experiment. But that has to begin with individuals like you and me. No government, corporation or public society can make us enlightened for us. You must learn who you are, and why.
What none of us are old enough to remember is that even as it was becoming clear a global war that would engulf most of the populated world was on the horizon, the western world had intense optimism coming out of a bloody 18th century. The rational, literate, free thinking French and English and German and Japanese had freed themselves of the oppressive chains of the nobility and the church. No longer would Kings be ordained by the pope, no, the government would be the will of the people! Science had already solved just about every problem of the medieval world, including smallpox, and soon it was going to take us to other planets and onward into utopia. Clearly evolution had cumulated into this great entity, the industrial European/American, and these people took up the "White Man's Burden" and spread their so-called enlightened literate European democracies across the planet.
Then of course, everything fell to shit in Europe again, dragging all of the European colonies in Africa, Asia and South America into five years of freestyle slaughter. A spanish flu epidemic immediately filled the evolutionary niche that smallpox had previously occupied, and killed between 50-100 million people. The global market came to the natural end of its cycle and crashed, and overfarming created drought conditions across North America. Soon everyone started to doubt just how smart they thought they were. That could not do, so soon populist movements sprang up across the great enlightened nations of Europe and North America. Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, my oh my! So of course, the frightened majority turned to the reactionary "blame-everyone-but-us"es, as human nature is so inclined to do, and thus Fascism, backed by industry, the media it owned and the ignorance of the masses, far too depressed with reality to actually pay attention, overtook numerous countries. And so humans had to go have another global war that dragged everyone into it.
You see, humans are primates. Because of this, our natural social behavior is to either appoint a leader of the pack, or follow one that more or less takes the roll. When more than one person wants that job, you have what is known as a power struggle. Most mammals do this in some manner or another. Our advanced transportation and communication technology allows us to now have tribes that could potentially span the globe, but still we use that technology to create the same social circles and societies we always have. We still pick "heroes" or "leaders" or "gods" or whatever you want to call them, instill our own values onto them and then expect them to solve all our problems for us. Our loyalty to this structure and the beauracracies it spawns oftentimes overrules our good judgement because, simply put, making serious decisions is quite often scary.
So, after another six years of freestyle slaughter, and the first known nuclear reactions - previously only known to occur on the surface of the sun -to have happened on the surface of the earth, we'd learned our lesson. As the Russian socialist dictators, pretending to be the people's guardian against the rich, and American somewhat democratically elected presidents, pretending to be the people's guardian against dictators and anti-human socialism, postured and boasted, both had reached a standstill. It is both a beautiful and a horrible thought to realize the greatest accomplishment of this century was that we managed to NOT nuke ourselves into oblivion.
However, we felt that we'd learned our lesson, and so rather than nuke the human race into extinction, the two new superpowers did as all superpowers have done in the past and assumed that they knew everything and started to meddle in everyone else's affairs, just as the European nations did in the lead-up to and the first part of the century. So the United States overthrew elected socialist governments and propped up corrupt, bloodthirsty dictators that would sell them cheap resources like oil and coal. The Soviet Union installed and supported Communist governments across the planet, which then almost always outlawed other political parties and killed or imprisoned any political dissidents.
Scientists of course continued to believe they were on the verge of something big. Men were walking on the moon. Plastics would soon make every natural fibre obsolete, oil would allow us all to drive Mustangs and Capitalism would lead us all to live like kings. Flu vaccinations would prevent any epidemic from ever occurring again. Polio was even looking like old news.
But all was not well in the two gems of civilization, and they both dealt with their problems remarkably similarly. Russia committed massive genocides on rebels in many of its satellite countries, and the United States assassinated numerous political figures involved in the civil rights movements, the hippie movements and anti-war movements.
Nations that were supposedly "freed" after we learned our lessons from world war 2 of course found themselves increasingly forced to choose a side or have a side chosen for them. From the 1950s to 2000 there were wars in almost every nation that had been brought "civilization" by the Europeans, and the western world immediately looked at them condescendingly and attempted to avoid any responsibility.
Near the end of the century the Soviet Union's top-heavy system had run itself out and it collapsed, ending a conflict of ideas. The western states grew smugger, even as Scientists realized that not only had they found something, they discovered we were creating our own destruction with the prosperity we thought we were having. But by this point no one believed the scientists anymore. The world was too depressing, so no one wanted to pay attention to it.
It was around this point that the United States decided it was the most enlightened, bad-ass and intelligent society around and that it ruled the planet. For the rest of the century and this day, close allies of the American way of life, including oligarchs of its former enemy Russia, would benefit from the globalized, americanized, civilized market thanks to such great inventions as the satellite and the internet, while in many countries water is privitized and taken from the people that rely on it to drink and bathe, and sold to people in stadiums half around the world. People now believe the scientists, though few seem especially eager to do something about it. Now, no one believes the leaders or the media, perhaps rightly so.
Today, oddly enough, the problems of the human race are remarkable similar to but far worse than before; global epidemics of cancer, malaria and AIDS are killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The planet is, according to both scientists examining weather patterns and shamans communing with spirits alike, about to open up a can of whoopass on us. We are facing a global water shortage in the wake of the global water market. The last president of the United States was not elected, and his foreign policy decisions will be influencing events for at least two decades. Fear of yet another genocide, this time in Sudan, is being met yet again with a blind eye from the global powers we have instilled with our lives.
Why does it seem we aren't really going anywhere except towards self created oblivion? Most humans today seem to recognize that society is fucked because most humans today cannot deal with reality in its entirety. Most people cannot consciously deal with the burden they now have thanks to a century of "enlightenment." So they don't bother.
Clearly we missed the mark on what being an enlightened society and an unenlightened society is. There were plenty of cultures that were doing just fine before Western Cultures went in and gave them "civilization."
The problem is in part the aforementioned natural social order. Because we are naturally hardwired to create these organizations, many of us will often believe an alpha male even if he is lying to us, and no amount of facts seem to be able to shake that loyalty. If we are unconscious of this natural reaction, we follow it without question. When we examine this reaction consciously, however, we often logically override it.
Few people who supported George W. Bush on his march to Baghdad will still stand by him now that its impossible to escape the fact that his whole reason for going was completely bogus from the start.
No one remembers Hitler the way Hitler wanted to be remembered.
But hindsight is always 20/20. How do we stop ourselves from fucking up history while its happening?
Most humans on the planet have managed to get a hold of the natural reactions of "Hot - Must Fuck Now" and "He insult me kill." While an enormous amount of literature and mythology exists to placate these instincts, the day to day of civilization is relatively peaceful. It is when the culture that placates these reactions collapse that they begin to quickly re-assert themselves. Perhaps this is an inevitable part of human nature.
But perhaps there's another answer, perhaps if we, as a people, come to realize that we are all equal, and that no powerful figure exist without the support of his followers, and that most people, when require to be so, are intelligent and reasonable people, perhaps we can create a society that replaces our traditional alpha-male of the pack society with something truly democratic.
This can only happen when each and every one of us is willing to rigourously examine ourselves. We need to teach ourselves to handle democracies properly with critical examination of the facts, not selecting our leaders on the mammalian politics of the past. We each need to understand how our emotions work, what they were designed for, how they play into modern society, and how we can control them to improve ourselves and not let them lead us on their own trails. Only then I think can we escape the madness we are currently in.
We have a nearly 6000 year record showing the results of a alpha-male dominated society. We have a 6000 year record showing the results of letting our emotions guide our decisions. We have a 6000 year recording showing both the genius of our brains and the follies that result when we choose to not use it.
I think the results of the experiment are pretty conclusive. Its time we tried a different experiment. But that has to begin with individuals like you and me. No government, corporation or public society can make us enlightened for us. You must learn who you are, and why.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The need for a united left
Alright, since the numbers began pouring in I've been contemplating what the hell went wrong here. By all means, the NDP should have picked up at least two seats, and the liberals should have had at least six or more, by the worst case scenario.
Aside from the obvious fact we were too optimistic and fell in love with the various random sampling polls, there are some clear points about this election.
1) Only around half the population voted, and of that half only half voted Con, so the current government has the support of around 25% of the population.
2) There is an epidemic of rather spoiled young people who continually use the mantra "I don't vote because I don't understand the issues." but can tell you thousands of facts about their sports team, favourite tv shows or video games.
3) We could have won without them anyway, or at least restricted the cons to a minority.
The main problem was that the Cons etched by in a lot of ridings because either the Liberals had around 4500 votes and the NDP 1000, or the other way around. The two parties spent so much time fighting each other for whatever reason that they completely missed the opportunity to actually accomplish something. So now, because they got greedy, we now have another 3+ years of Con rule, we will live to see the "celebration" of 30 years of one party government, oil companies will continue to pollute our rivers and our air and spread cancer across our first nations while paying resource royalties lower than anywhere in the United States or in any country that isn't currently experiencing a civil war, for that matter. Oil sands development will continue at full speed ahead, dragging already overstrained infrastructures, education and health care systems along the pavement with it.
So, whoever inherits this mess of the left after this fallout, enough infighting. There are not enough left thinkers in this province that the NDP, Liberals, Greens and anyone else can fight each other for votes. Isolate the ridings where the NDP did best, only run NDP candidates instead of NDPs, Liberals and Greens. Isolate the ridings where the Liberals did best, don't run NDPs and Greens. I think it's a reasonable assumption that most Liberal voters, NDP voters and Green voters would much rather have a coalition government of Liberal, NDP and Green MLAs than the Conservatives.
Its high time that the Alberta left decide whats more important to them; their chosen club or the actual problems at hand.
Aside from the obvious fact we were too optimistic and fell in love with the various random sampling polls, there are some clear points about this election.
1) Only around half the population voted, and of that half only half voted Con, so the current government has the support of around 25% of the population.
2) There is an epidemic of rather spoiled young people who continually use the mantra "I don't vote because I don't understand the issues." but can tell you thousands of facts about their sports team, favourite tv shows or video games.
3) We could have won without them anyway, or at least restricted the cons to a minority.
The main problem was that the Cons etched by in a lot of ridings because either the Liberals had around 4500 votes and the NDP 1000, or the other way around. The two parties spent so much time fighting each other for whatever reason that they completely missed the opportunity to actually accomplish something. So now, because they got greedy, we now have another 3+ years of Con rule, we will live to see the "celebration" of 30 years of one party government, oil companies will continue to pollute our rivers and our air and spread cancer across our first nations while paying resource royalties lower than anywhere in the United States or in any country that isn't currently experiencing a civil war, for that matter. Oil sands development will continue at full speed ahead, dragging already overstrained infrastructures, education and health care systems along the pavement with it.
So, whoever inherits this mess of the left after this fallout, enough infighting. There are not enough left thinkers in this province that the NDP, Liberals, Greens and anyone else can fight each other for votes. Isolate the ridings where the NDP did best, only run NDP candidates instead of NDPs, Liberals and Greens. Isolate the ridings where the Liberals did best, don't run NDPs and Greens. I think it's a reasonable assumption that most Liberal voters, NDP voters and Green voters would much rather have a coalition government of Liberal, NDP and Green MLAs than the Conservatives.
Its high time that the Alberta left decide whats more important to them; their chosen club or the actual problems at hand.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Enough of this bullshit morality
Recent events in my life have lead me to believe that not enough has been said about the realities of human sexuality and behavior.
Humans are extremely variant creatures sexually. Some humans are devout monogamists. Some humans are total polygamists. Some humans make porn. Some humans form sexual communes. Some humans clothe themselves in heavy duty robes and rarely show any skin at all. Some humans rarely wear clothes. Some humans get off on certain types of clothes. Some humans like to have sex in bunny suits. Some humans like to tie each other up and whip each other. Some humans want to be sexually dominant all the time. Some humans want to be submissive all the time. Some humans get off on some really strange activities. Some humans just want to have sex and pass out.
The point here is that there really is nothing wrong with any of these behaviors. So why do people feel the need to superimpose their sexual morality on others? This is how wars get started.
Historically speaking, every attempt to control sexual behavior has failed miserably. There are numerous accounts of the absurd underground sex world of Victorian England, one of the more sexually repressive societies; the vast majority of marriages these days end in divorce, and one of the main causes of divorce is infidelity.
So can we please stop judging each other's sexualities? Whether we like it or not most humans have free will on how they behave sexually - one can do what feels right to themselves or one can be constrained by the morality of some other person or religion or some bullshit ideal that doesn't actually exist.
The sooner we learn to live and let live as a species and focus our energies elsewhere from judging each other, the sooner we'll actually accomplish something worthy of our actual intelligence.
To quote from Schroedinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson:
"Benny had actually read Darwin once in college a long time ago, and had heard of sciences like ethology and ecology, but the facts of evolution had never really registered on him. He never thought of himself as a primate. He never realized that his friends and associates were primates. Above all, he never understood that the alpha males of Unistat (The United States) were typical leaders of primate bands. As a result of this inability to see the obvious, Benny was constantly alarmed and terrified by the behavior of himself, his friends and associates and especially the alpha males of the pack. Since he didn't know it was ordinary primate behavior, it seemed just awful to him.
Since a great deal of primate behavior was considered just awful, most of the domesticated primates spent most of their time trying to conceal what they were doing.
Some of the primates got caught by other primates. All of the primates lived in dread of getting caught.
Those who got caught were called no-good shits.
The term no-good shit was a deep expression of primate psychology. For instance, one wild primate (a chimpanzee) taught sign language by two domesticated primates (scientists) spontaneously put the words together the signs for "shit" and "scientist" to describe a scientist she didn't like. She was calling him a shit-scientist. She also put together the signs for 'shit' and 'chimpanzee' for another chimpanzee she didn't like. She was calling him a shit chimpanzee.
'You no-good shit," domesticated primates often said to each other.
This metaphor was deep in primate psychology because primates mark their territories with excretions, and sometimes they threw excretions at each other when disputing over territories."
- From the Universe Next Door, Page 15-17, by Robert Anton Wilson.
Humans are extremely variant creatures sexually. Some humans are devout monogamists. Some humans are total polygamists. Some humans make porn. Some humans form sexual communes. Some humans clothe themselves in heavy duty robes and rarely show any skin at all. Some humans rarely wear clothes. Some humans get off on certain types of clothes. Some humans like to have sex in bunny suits. Some humans like to tie each other up and whip each other. Some humans want to be sexually dominant all the time. Some humans want to be submissive all the time. Some humans get off on some really strange activities. Some humans just want to have sex and pass out.
The point here is that there really is nothing wrong with any of these behaviors. So why do people feel the need to superimpose their sexual morality on others? This is how wars get started.
Historically speaking, every attempt to control sexual behavior has failed miserably. There are numerous accounts of the absurd underground sex world of Victorian England, one of the more sexually repressive societies; the vast majority of marriages these days end in divorce, and one of the main causes of divorce is infidelity.
So can we please stop judging each other's sexualities? Whether we like it or not most humans have free will on how they behave sexually - one can do what feels right to themselves or one can be constrained by the morality of some other person or religion or some bullshit ideal that doesn't actually exist.
The sooner we learn to live and let live as a species and focus our energies elsewhere from judging each other, the sooner we'll actually accomplish something worthy of our actual intelligence.
To quote from Schroedinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson:
"Benny had actually read Darwin once in college a long time ago, and had heard of sciences like ethology and ecology, but the facts of evolution had never really registered on him. He never thought of himself as a primate. He never realized that his friends and associates were primates. Above all, he never understood that the alpha males of Unistat (The United States) were typical leaders of primate bands. As a result of this inability to see the obvious, Benny was constantly alarmed and terrified by the behavior of himself, his friends and associates and especially the alpha males of the pack. Since he didn't know it was ordinary primate behavior, it seemed just awful to him.
Since a great deal of primate behavior was considered just awful, most of the domesticated primates spent most of their time trying to conceal what they were doing.
Some of the primates got caught by other primates. All of the primates lived in dread of getting caught.
Those who got caught were called no-good shits.
The term no-good shit was a deep expression of primate psychology. For instance, one wild primate (a chimpanzee) taught sign language by two domesticated primates (scientists) spontaneously put the words together the signs for "shit" and "scientist" to describe a scientist she didn't like. She was calling him a shit-scientist. She also put together the signs for 'shit' and 'chimpanzee' for another chimpanzee she didn't like. She was calling him a shit chimpanzee.
'You no-good shit," domesticated primates often said to each other.
This metaphor was deep in primate psychology because primates mark their territories with excretions, and sometimes they threw excretions at each other when disputing over territories."
- From the Universe Next Door, Page 15-17, by Robert Anton Wilson.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Kinky Robot Sex makes the world go 'round
Alright, so apparently an Artificial Intelligence expert recently wrote a book that argues that humans and robots could be having sex in as early as forty years.
Wow, really? Like, who's surprised? Humans have sex with anything they can. There are more documented cases of bestiality than any society would care to admit. Human sexual behavior is so deviant that religion was developed in part to safeguard against it. It only stands to reason that once robots are contributing members of society, there will be humans who will fall madly in love with them and have wild and beautiful sex that the global media will come all over with journalistic fervour.
The real question is what the human-robot relationship is going to be. Are we talking about creating conscious, thinking, caring, creative beings - and then using them as sex toys that we can reprogram at our will? Isn't that going backwards?
The Nazis took the prettiest girls from the concentration camps for their soldiers' brothels.
Or we could be talking about something similiar to what we have today, maybe with impoverished robots selling themselves, or possibly robots designed as porn stars.
Maybe we'll have gigantic tentacle robot monsters that go apeshit and have sex with every girl in the vicinity like in some animes.
The point is that we're tinkering with really powerful magic here, and we really should think about the actual possibilities before charging gungho into the abyss. Once robots come all over human society's face they're going to be here to stay, so we should do this right the first time.
Wow, really? Like, who's surprised? Humans have sex with anything they can. There are more documented cases of bestiality than any society would care to admit. Human sexual behavior is so deviant that religion was developed in part to safeguard against it. It only stands to reason that once robots are contributing members of society, there will be humans who will fall madly in love with them and have wild and beautiful sex that the global media will come all over with journalistic fervour.
The real question is what the human-robot relationship is going to be. Are we talking about creating conscious, thinking, caring, creative beings - and then using them as sex toys that we can reprogram at our will? Isn't that going backwards?
The Nazis took the prettiest girls from the concentration camps for their soldiers' brothels.
Or we could be talking about something similiar to what we have today, maybe with impoverished robots selling themselves, or possibly robots designed as porn stars.
Maybe we'll have gigantic tentacle robot monsters that go apeshit and have sex with every girl in the vicinity like in some animes.
The point is that we're tinkering with really powerful magic here, and we really should think about the actual possibilities before charging gungho into the abyss. Once robots come all over human society's face they're going to be here to stay, so we should do this right the first time.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The spot can be a good place to be
I'm currently in a class called "Writing News for Radio" where we spend an awful lot of time training our voice and writing styles for those 30 second news updates or whatever. I actually enjoy it a lot, it's high energy but fairly relaxed... and easy. At least so far.
Our professor, Eileen, is one of the news anchors for local stations 630 CHED and Cool 880, so she decided to have an optional field trip to her station. I, of course, couldn't resist getting to wander around the halls of a major news station, so I was in for sure.
It was a cool day, I got to meet a number of news people that I've never heard of, and they were chock full of advice for the aspiring journalist.
What was also neat was were were taken to the on-air booth of the Chuck Chandler show, the morning show on Cool 880 (I didn't know that until this morning.) So he asked if any of us were actual eager disc-jockeys. My professor immediately pointed to me, and the next thing I know I'm sitting with my lips nearly pressed against a gigantic radio microphone, announcing the Chuck Chandler show on live radio.
What was really freaky about the experience was I had about five seconds to figure out what I was doing, which involved figuring out what the guy's name was, memorize what I was going to say and stop the orgy of butterflies swarming through my insides, and then I did it, and it was apparently perfect.
Now, no one I know listens to Cool 880 in the mornings, so chances are no one I know heard me. But still, it's a great feeling to know that I can be thrust into a totally foreign position like that and produce something resembling brilliance. So much so that I think I actually got a bit of a body-stone from the experience.
Life is good.
Our professor, Eileen, is one of the news anchors for local stations 630 CHED and Cool 880, so she decided to have an optional field trip to her station. I, of course, couldn't resist getting to wander around the halls of a major news station, so I was in for sure.
It was a cool day, I got to meet a number of news people that I've never heard of, and they were chock full of advice for the aspiring journalist.
What was also neat was were were taken to the on-air booth of the Chuck Chandler show, the morning show on Cool 880 (I didn't know that until this morning.) So he asked if any of us were actual eager disc-jockeys. My professor immediately pointed to me, and the next thing I know I'm sitting with my lips nearly pressed against a gigantic radio microphone, announcing the Chuck Chandler show on live radio.
What was really freaky about the experience was I had about five seconds to figure out what I was doing, which involved figuring out what the guy's name was, memorize what I was going to say and stop the orgy of butterflies swarming through my insides, and then I did it, and it was apparently perfect.
Now, no one I know listens to Cool 880 in the mornings, so chances are no one I know heard me. But still, it's a great feeling to know that I can be thrust into a totally foreign position like that and produce something resembling brilliance. So much so that I think I actually got a bit of a body-stone from the experience.
Life is good.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
That strange feeling of calm
Well, I've certainly felt the whole range of human emotions in the last two days. I felt the sting of failure, the testicle compressing castration of rejection and the sudden relief of calm. A series of tragic disappointments resulted in my falling into a oozing vat of sorrow only to be saved by grasping a passing olive branch.
A few weeks back, it was suggested by my photography professor that I might be able to get a job at local weekly SEE Magazine.
Naturally, I was excited, even a little elated, that I might have a foot into the door of the media industry. Zealously, I looked through my thousands of photos for those perfect five that would describe me as a photographer. I looked through my Wainwright photos, I looked through my fashion photos, my sports photos, everything I had done to date that was of any admiration.
Finally, I narrowed it down to 15 photos and took them to my professor to help me pick out five. Here, I should have seen the impending signs of doom by his lack of enthusiasm for the photos I had shown him. However, naive and full of fresh and greasy hope, I took my top five and produced a portfolio CD for the Artistic Director of SEE Magazine.
All was quiet.
Finally, after two weeks of suspense, I finally emailed him. What I recieved in response was a crippling critique, the first I had heard since I had picked up a camera. My portfolio, according to him, was "incredibly weak." He assured me that he saw potential, but that I was at that point not cool enough to play in his sandbox.
This followed an earlier incident of personal failure when, running on three hours sleep and two weeks of frustration, I handed in my (IMO Shitty) bathroom attendant story, only to recieve a mark on a story I had written earlier about Oil Royalties that was near dismal, barely passing with a 28/50.
Overburdened with frustration and fatigue, and completely devoid of any sense of self confidence, I succummed into slumber and began constructing vulgar metaphors.
Today, after returning from my radio class, I remained crippled with self disillusionment. Each click of the mouse in my search for contacts for my next story, not editor approved (naturally), was like pushing a boulder up a hill; I could hear my moans of displeasure as I asked that eternal question...
"What the fuck am I doing this for?"
However, determination will always solve the problems of the human race. In spite of the complete collapse of my self-esteem, I wrote down contacts and finally aquired the will to phone them.
I now have interviews set up with both the spokesman of the Canadian Atomic Veterans Association and the Ministry of Defence. With this in hand, my feelings of helplessness and failure seemed to wash away like a spot of dirt.
And now, there is calm.
There is balance in nature.
A few weeks back, it was suggested by my photography professor that I might be able to get a job at local weekly SEE Magazine.
Naturally, I was excited, even a little elated, that I might have a foot into the door of the media industry. Zealously, I looked through my thousands of photos for those perfect five that would describe me as a photographer. I looked through my Wainwright photos, I looked through my fashion photos, my sports photos, everything I had done to date that was of any admiration.
Finally, I narrowed it down to 15 photos and took them to my professor to help me pick out five. Here, I should have seen the impending signs of doom by his lack of enthusiasm for the photos I had shown him. However, naive and full of fresh and greasy hope, I took my top five and produced a portfolio CD for the Artistic Director of SEE Magazine.
All was quiet.
Finally, after two weeks of suspense, I finally emailed him. What I recieved in response was a crippling critique, the first I had heard since I had picked up a camera. My portfolio, according to him, was "incredibly weak." He assured me that he saw potential, but that I was at that point not cool enough to play in his sandbox.
This followed an earlier incident of personal failure when, running on three hours sleep and two weeks of frustration, I handed in my (IMO Shitty) bathroom attendant story, only to recieve a mark on a story I had written earlier about Oil Royalties that was near dismal, barely passing with a 28/50.
Overburdened with frustration and fatigue, and completely devoid of any sense of self confidence, I succummed into slumber and began constructing vulgar metaphors.
Today, after returning from my radio class, I remained crippled with self disillusionment. Each click of the mouse in my search for contacts for my next story, not editor approved (naturally), was like pushing a boulder up a hill; I could hear my moans of displeasure as I asked that eternal question...
"What the fuck am I doing this for?"
However, determination will always solve the problems of the human race. In spite of the complete collapse of my self-esteem, I wrote down contacts and finally aquired the will to phone them.
I now have interviews set up with both the spokesman of the Canadian Atomic Veterans Association and the Ministry of Defence. With this in hand, my feelings of helplessness and failure seemed to wash away like a spot of dirt.
And now, there is calm.
There is balance in nature.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Origin of War repost
We, as a civilization, continually make the same mistakes over and over again. A good study of history would make one realize that most humans were in a near constant state of war for the the last 30,000 years. Most likely, it all started when bacteria "A" ate bacteria "B"'s food particle, and we've been fighting ever since.
Thus, evolution began.
With the declaration of war by bacteria B, the three billion year war began. 10^114 innocents were raped. 10^99543 were killed, often eaten alive. At first it was between those that wanted to eat their food particles in peace and those who wanted to hoard food particles for themselves. At first, the two sides were evenly matched, but the hoarders ate more and got bigger, until they started to see the pacifists as food. Thus the war became more intense. The pacifists now needed a means to protect themselves from the predators. They opted for a variety of defenses, poisonous gases, calcium spikes, gorging on food particles themselves, but the wiley predators were always a step ahead of them. For three billion years the two sides battled, although the battlefield changed dramatically through that time. At first, the sides were clearly drawn, but as the conflict raged on, it was eventually forgotten what the fuss as all about. This took approximately two weeks. However, some three billion years later, a sign of change has arisen. For the first time in known history, a peaceful resolve is brewing amoung many of the thousand sides. People now willingly march in the streets and tell the alpha males to merrily fuck off when the they tell \ them to send their children to die. It's a start, more work is needed, but for the first time, the conflict between those who have enough and those who want more is beginning to be resolved. Let us push on in this effort!
Thus, evolution began.
With the declaration of war by bacteria B, the three billion year war began. 10^114 innocents were raped. 10^99543 were killed, often eaten alive. At first it was between those that wanted to eat their food particles in peace and those who wanted to hoard food particles for themselves. At first, the two sides were evenly matched, but the hoarders ate more and got bigger, until they started to see the pacifists as food. Thus the war became more intense. The pacifists now needed a means to protect themselves from the predators. They opted for a variety of defenses, poisonous gases, calcium spikes, gorging on food particles themselves, but the wiley predators were always a step ahead of them. For three billion years the two sides battled, although the battlefield changed dramatically through that time. At first, the sides were clearly drawn, but as the conflict raged on, it was eventually forgotten what the fuss as all about. This took approximately two weeks. However, some three billion years later, a sign of change has arisen. For the first time in known history, a peaceful resolve is brewing amoung many of the thousand sides. People now willingly march in the streets and tell the alpha males to merrily fuck off when the they tell \ them to send their children to die. It's a start, more work is needed, but for the first time, the conflict between those who have enough and those who want more is beginning to be resolved. Let us push on in this effort!
On Stupidity - Repost
So let's see, the lame word of the day is stupid. People use this word and variations a lot. It's, well, stupid. I've heard the word stupid to describe a wide variety of activities, most of which aren't stupid. Most things are not stupid. What is true is that people have specialized intellects. Due to the conditions one endures (or concieves to endure) and the tasks one feels that they need to learn to please their food providers (usually parents.) These conditions are quite varied, and by adult age these lessons and methods of survival are quite engraned. People raised on TV and Books are not necesarily athletes and the memorization of motor controls is somewhat difficult, and stopping and relaxing and thinking activities through and reading and such is somewhat difficult to those who relied mainly on physical activities to get their "perks" and food. Consequentially, things that occur to some under some circumstanes do not occur to others. Remember, no one sees the world in the same manner; and it's primarally because of this. Our entire minds are the products of everything we've experienced. No one is stupid.
Okay, since we've established that people aren't actually stupid, why are so many people identified as "idiots"? It is because most people attach their egos, that being the part of our mind that we use to interact with the universe ie other people, social roles, dealing with others. Most people say someone else is stupid because they don't agree with them on how to acomplish various tasks. So stop doing that. Every idea is worth a minute of rational analysis. Take time to breathe and think. It helps the head.
Okay, since we've established that people aren't actually stupid, why are so many people identified as "idiots"? It is because most people attach their egos, that being the part of our mind that we use to interact with the universe ie other people, social roles, dealing with others. Most people say someone else is stupid because they don't agree with them on how to acomplish various tasks. So stop doing that. Every idea is worth a minute of rational analysis. Take time to breathe and think. It helps the head.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Historical Trends/Talking out of my ass
Today I'm going to examine three different epochs with my general knowledge (far from complete) and try and highlight some of the major differences between them.
Roughly six thousand years ago, "western civilization" (roughly from the Euphretes to the Atlantic coast, and a totally symbolic and meaningless definition, but we'll use it for convenience) was in the midst of the bronze age. Now, although the elements they possessed showed great variety with the geography of that particular culture, bronze age cities all seemed to possess similiar elements; They all seem to have a "God House" as a central hub of activity for that particular city, usually having a great symbol or statue of that particular God or Goddess. Almost everyone carried an idol, usually with a large open mouth. They were huge fans of hyperbole (The cities of Sumer have at least five self titled "Kings of the Universe" and the trend lasted for millenia, and the historic accounts from the period describe people living for tens of thousands of years, and single kings killing armies of thousands with their bare hands, etc.) Mentally, the mind is arranged in such a way that is called by some the Bicameral Mind which more or less implies that everyone was Schizophrenic, so they were visually and mentally "hallucinating" (for the record, you're hallucinating right now) voices and images, and lacked an identity as defined as ours. The idea is essentially that humans in bronze age cultures experienced the Gods in reality as a result of functions in the right side of the brain. According to Julian, this functioned as their decision making process. It is also believed that the people of these cultures believed that their world was paradise, and heaven was literally right next door to them (usually placed on top of a mountain or thought of interchangably with the sky) and their chief purpose was the service of the gods, preparing sacrifices, doing their will, and so forth.
This mental state supposedly began to break down with the advent of writing, which is also credited with a technological boost over the peroid after it appears. Writing was first seriously utilized by the First Babylonian empire (not to be confused with the much later Babylonian empire that is mentioned in the old testament) under the King Hammurabi. This technological boost results in a few neat and new things, such as chariots and horseback riding, and iron. Iron appears roughly 1500 BC, credited to the Hittites, who quickly put together a massive empire. Also around this period of time, the island of Gnossis erupts/explodes, bringing an end to Minoan culture, dramatically changing the climate, displacing millions. Around this time, the first and very short lived monotheist god appears in Egypt under the reign of Phaeroh Nephretiti (one of the few female Phaeros.)
This "iron age" world is dramatically different from bronze age culture. It is here that the first literal and historical records of betrayal commited by humans appear (which is really weird when you start to think about it.) It is during this period a new form of thought (or rather, several) is developing. The first and probably most important is that paradise has now been thought of as lost. No longer do Gods and Men walk toghether, we now walk the earth as punishment for some abhorrent sin. The Gods are now lofty beings that must accessed through mediums and oracles. In one culture particularly, an idea that instead of many Gods running the universe in it's different part, there instead could be one God responsible for the whole thing. This idea later gets merged with a seperate idea that humans could freely choose their Gods, an idea originated in Greece and made possible for all by the Iron age megaculture, Rome. Rome was the so called "height" of iron age culture, encompassing the mediterrainian sea and having influences all the way back to the Euphretes. There is a record of a Buddhist Monk visiting Athens around 150 BC or so. The idea that one could willing choose to worship a God or not matured into Christianity and later Islam, where one could accept Jesus and be saved or not be saved, although the concept later became symbolic with the fall of Rome and the gradual conversion of Europe and Africa to either/or, when majorities swung in either direction.
The key thing was that the literature and records went from the perspective a culture walking hand in hand with the gods and living in paradise to the perspective of having had lost paradise and drifting further away from it, thus the meaning of life was to reach that paradise, and numerous methods appeared to fufill that mental goal. Paradise/Heaven was now this aloof place one needed to reach through one's life actions, God was an aloof being who was listening (hopefully) but wouldn't neccesarilly talk back, but one could interpret his will in life phenomina. This was the era where humans were in control, God was merely watching over them. This mindset was a very successful one, because it's still around today in rather large numbers. But this is no longer the iron age.
The late iron age heralded the rise of industrialization. Large workforces did simple jobs in succession to produce products en mass. The thousand year old nobility, ordained by God who was watching over us and the power holders since the fall of Rome, were suddenly rivaled by a new class, the bourgois/wealthy entrepeneurs. An "industrialized" version of the societal model appeared in Adam Smith's concept of capitalism, where the "invisible hand" of God guides the markets in a manner that promotes overall wealth. This modified feudal system begins to replace the older system in the 1700s. This newer system revives the older concept of freedom to choose, and the idea that God does not or never did exist can begin to be stated by the mid 1800s without certain death.
Now, we're still technically in this world, but we seem to be on the tail end of it. Most of western society operates on steel (made of iron and nitrogen, among other things). Christianity and Islam still account for the vast majority of the world's population, with newer religions such as Wicca, Mormonisn, Aethiesm, Neopaganism, Darwinism etc. making up the minority. But this is a minority that is beginning to hold a lot of sway in global politics and, perhaps moreso, technology. At this point in history, a professor in Britain has successfully connected his nervous system to the internet. Whereas children a thousand years grew up on stories and playing in the fields, today children grow up piloting digital bodies throughout virtual fantasy worlds. Where a thousand years ago the best one could hope for was a year or so to cross Europe, today we can do it in weeks. While first charcoal production was needed en mass to produce the stock needed for a market, then factories and now the Rapid Prototyper, a device under development that can reproduce an item in actual space from a mathematical formula. Our model of the universe covers trillions of trillions of miles. And the dominant idea among the power elite is that we are moving towards paradise. No longer have we been lost, we're coming towards it. Dozens of books have been published claiming that immortality is just around the corner, that disease will someday be a memory. It's all boulderdash, but it's a good motivator. The point is that we are on the verge of a very significant mind change than what you or I are used to.
If we are able to connect our nervous systems to the internet, and mentally "surf it" or push a button to activate an electrode to stimulate instant happiness, if a person can control a machine seperate from their body as if it were attached to them, if a person can mentally "email" someone, this is essentially telepathy.
Imagine a world totally oriented towards this. Humans are connected to the internet at the youngest age possible. Video games are now played with the mind, perhaps the individual is able to download a game into his brain and play it in a field or perhaps areas are set up for children to play properly; the game itself is experienced in reality, as if it actually happens. Everything is connected to the internet, people can activate devices with a thought. From the outside perspective it would appear that everyone is a jedi or some sort of scifi superbeing, conjuring objects around them as if with their mind, just as the Aztecs thought Cortez and the Horse he rode were the messengers of the god Quetzalcoatl. I envision a world where machine and human live in unison, with machine providing and controlling, more likely. Wars would likely decist since such a culture could probably exist across an entire globe, probably replaced by some other fucked up form of population control. Maybe this will be the culture that finally places humans in space permenantly.
This future appears technologically possible from the technology under development today. The real question is what kind of mentality would operate in this enviroment? Surely with technology covering so many life functions, functions in the brain would cease, freeing up energy for development elsewhere?
Okay, I'm done for now.
Roughly six thousand years ago, "western civilization" (roughly from the Euphretes to the Atlantic coast, and a totally symbolic and meaningless definition, but we'll use it for convenience) was in the midst of the bronze age. Now, although the elements they possessed showed great variety with the geography of that particular culture, bronze age cities all seemed to possess similiar elements; They all seem to have a "God House" as a central hub of activity for that particular city, usually having a great symbol or statue of that particular God or Goddess. Almost everyone carried an idol, usually with a large open mouth. They were huge fans of hyperbole (The cities of Sumer have at least five self titled "Kings of the Universe" and the trend lasted for millenia, and the historic accounts from the period describe people living for tens of thousands of years, and single kings killing armies of thousands with their bare hands, etc.) Mentally, the mind is arranged in such a way that is called by some the Bicameral Mind which more or less implies that everyone was Schizophrenic, so they were visually and mentally "hallucinating" (for the record, you're hallucinating right now) voices and images, and lacked an identity as defined as ours. The idea is essentially that humans in bronze age cultures experienced the Gods in reality as a result of functions in the right side of the brain. According to Julian, this functioned as their decision making process. It is also believed that the people of these cultures believed that their world was paradise, and heaven was literally right next door to them (usually placed on top of a mountain or thought of interchangably with the sky) and their chief purpose was the service of the gods, preparing sacrifices, doing their will, and so forth.
This mental state supposedly began to break down with the advent of writing, which is also credited with a technological boost over the peroid after it appears. Writing was first seriously utilized by the First Babylonian empire (not to be confused with the much later Babylonian empire that is mentioned in the old testament) under the King Hammurabi. This technological boost results in a few neat and new things, such as chariots and horseback riding, and iron. Iron appears roughly 1500 BC, credited to the Hittites, who quickly put together a massive empire. Also around this period of time, the island of Gnossis erupts/explodes, bringing an end to Minoan culture, dramatically changing the climate, displacing millions. Around this time, the first and very short lived monotheist god appears in Egypt under the reign of Phaeroh Nephretiti (one of the few female Phaeros.)
This "iron age" world is dramatically different from bronze age culture. It is here that the first literal and historical records of betrayal commited by humans appear (which is really weird when you start to think about it.) It is during this period a new form of thought (or rather, several) is developing. The first and probably most important is that paradise has now been thought of as lost. No longer do Gods and Men walk toghether, we now walk the earth as punishment for some abhorrent sin. The Gods are now lofty beings that must accessed through mediums and oracles. In one culture particularly, an idea that instead of many Gods running the universe in it's different part, there instead could be one God responsible for the whole thing. This idea later gets merged with a seperate idea that humans could freely choose their Gods, an idea originated in Greece and made possible for all by the Iron age megaculture, Rome. Rome was the so called "height" of iron age culture, encompassing the mediterrainian sea and having influences all the way back to the Euphretes. There is a record of a Buddhist Monk visiting Athens around 150 BC or so. The idea that one could willing choose to worship a God or not matured into Christianity and later Islam, where one could accept Jesus and be saved or not be saved, although the concept later became symbolic with the fall of Rome and the gradual conversion of Europe and Africa to either/or, when majorities swung in either direction.
The key thing was that the literature and records went from the perspective a culture walking hand in hand with the gods and living in paradise to the perspective of having had lost paradise and drifting further away from it, thus the meaning of life was to reach that paradise, and numerous methods appeared to fufill that mental goal. Paradise/Heaven was now this aloof place one needed to reach through one's life actions, God was an aloof being who was listening (hopefully) but wouldn't neccesarilly talk back, but one could interpret his will in life phenomina. This was the era where humans were in control, God was merely watching over them. This mindset was a very successful one, because it's still around today in rather large numbers. But this is no longer the iron age.
The late iron age heralded the rise of industrialization. Large workforces did simple jobs in succession to produce products en mass. The thousand year old nobility, ordained by God who was watching over us and the power holders since the fall of Rome, were suddenly rivaled by a new class, the bourgois/wealthy entrepeneurs. An "industrialized" version of the societal model appeared in Adam Smith's concept of capitalism, where the "invisible hand" of God guides the markets in a manner that promotes overall wealth. This modified feudal system begins to replace the older system in the 1700s. This newer system revives the older concept of freedom to choose, and the idea that God does not or never did exist can begin to be stated by the mid 1800s without certain death.
Now, we're still technically in this world, but we seem to be on the tail end of it. Most of western society operates on steel (made of iron and nitrogen, among other things). Christianity and Islam still account for the vast majority of the world's population, with newer religions such as Wicca, Mormonisn, Aethiesm, Neopaganism, Darwinism etc. making up the minority. But this is a minority that is beginning to hold a lot of sway in global politics and, perhaps moreso, technology. At this point in history, a professor in Britain has successfully connected his nervous system to the internet. Whereas children a thousand years grew up on stories and playing in the fields, today children grow up piloting digital bodies throughout virtual fantasy worlds. Where a thousand years ago the best one could hope for was a year or so to cross Europe, today we can do it in weeks. While first charcoal production was needed en mass to produce the stock needed for a market, then factories and now the Rapid Prototyper, a device under development that can reproduce an item in actual space from a mathematical formula. Our model of the universe covers trillions of trillions of miles. And the dominant idea among the power elite is that we are moving towards paradise. No longer have we been lost, we're coming towards it. Dozens of books have been published claiming that immortality is just around the corner, that disease will someday be a memory. It's all boulderdash, but it's a good motivator. The point is that we are on the verge of a very significant mind change than what you or I are used to.
If we are able to connect our nervous systems to the internet, and mentally "surf it" or push a button to activate an electrode to stimulate instant happiness, if a person can control a machine seperate from their body as if it were attached to them, if a person can mentally "email" someone, this is essentially telepathy.
Imagine a world totally oriented towards this. Humans are connected to the internet at the youngest age possible. Video games are now played with the mind, perhaps the individual is able to download a game into his brain and play it in a field or perhaps areas are set up for children to play properly; the game itself is experienced in reality, as if it actually happens. Everything is connected to the internet, people can activate devices with a thought. From the outside perspective it would appear that everyone is a jedi or some sort of scifi superbeing, conjuring objects around them as if with their mind, just as the Aztecs thought Cortez and the Horse he rode were the messengers of the god Quetzalcoatl. I envision a world where machine and human live in unison, with machine providing and controlling, more likely. Wars would likely decist since such a culture could probably exist across an entire globe, probably replaced by some other fucked up form of population control. Maybe this will be the culture that finally places humans in space permenantly.
This future appears technologically possible from the technology under development today. The real question is what kind of mentality would operate in this enviroment? Surely with technology covering so many life functions, functions in the brain would cease, freeing up energy for development elsewhere?
Okay, I'm done for now.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The War on Trolleys
Councilors attacking trolleys
For crying out loud, we replace the trolley fleet in two years. What on earth would we gain by scrapping them and establishing a new system of routes, requiring adminstration costs as well as loss of work hours due to people getting used to the new system. Sure they're old, they cost a bit to maintain, but traffic can easily flow around them.
Putting more fast large vehicles on the road isn't going to solve anything. The traffic still has to stop ever fourty feet or so every five or so minutes. Dumping a couple tons more of diesel fumes a day just so council can budget itself raises is absolutely retarded. I personally would rather know exactly when the bus is coming so I can plan around it. There are way better ways to cut costs in city operations. Let the trolleys finish their job.
For crying out loud, we replace the trolley fleet in two years. What on earth would we gain by scrapping them and establishing a new system of routes, requiring adminstration costs as well as loss of work hours due to people getting used to the new system. Sure they're old, they cost a bit to maintain, but traffic can easily flow around them.
Putting more fast large vehicles on the road isn't going to solve anything. The traffic still has to stop ever fourty feet or so every five or so minutes. Dumping a couple tons more of diesel fumes a day just so council can budget itself raises is absolutely retarded. I personally would rather know exactly when the bus is coming so I can plan around it. There are way better ways to cut costs in city operations. Let the trolleys finish their job.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
More war stuff
Well, I have been quite entertained by myself and my own blindness over the last months. Like most people in this country, I fell for the same cultural illusion that, since Canadian troops were not in Iraq, Canada was not involved in President Bush II's crusade. But of course, we were in Afghanistan since the beginning, first as "Peacemakers." But somewhere along the line, we ended up invading some insurgent territory, also known as people who don't want foreign rule and have united under a ferocious warlord in terror. So we've been fighting the war on terror, and in the process terrorizing people to unite under warlords, and now we're going to take out those warlords by killing those same people we terrorized, who are supposed to be the people the army is there to save.
Harper of course will not discuss this; he won't even examine the issue critically, he simply argues that we must "support our troops." Sound familiar?
The forces' mission is up in Feburary. That's less than a year. We should be discussing this now because it's going to take a long time for all the information to make it through the labrynth of government. We need to know who is benifitting, who is suffering, and what ultimate purpose this is serving, and if any of the logic it is based on makes any sense at all and isn't drawing from the same wealth as the logic of bombing a nation to make them revolt on their leader, for spreading democracy by the point of a gun. The Bush regime continually points out that Iraq is not Viet Nam, and I'll point out that Afghanistan isn't Holland. This is not an allied democracy that was occupied by enemies and we are not necesarilly being interpreted as liberators, and our military is small enough that we really should be considering the lives of Canadian soldiers seriously, and not wasting them on wars that are primarally benifitting Haliburton and oil barons. It is not that we do not respect our forces or want to harm their morale, we don't want their lives wasted needlessly for a war that appears to be more suited to benifitting the billionaire's club than the people who actually make the nation function.
Since Harper so far has already thumbed his nose at the ethics commisioner and is apparantly putting restrictions on his MPs vocal chords, it's becoming pretty clear that his "Moral Authority to Govern" was only a sound byte, and I am really getting sick of being taken for an idiot by government. Clearly the Cons are no different from the Grits, except the Grits are willing to call inquiries sometimes. But then again, we just spent two years pretending we weren't part of the coalition of idiots and we destroyed a government over a scandal that cost us five dollars each, goaded by Harper. So I suppose Harper's view on us is somewhat justified...
Harper of course will not discuss this; he won't even examine the issue critically, he simply argues that we must "support our troops." Sound familiar?
The forces' mission is up in Feburary. That's less than a year. We should be discussing this now because it's going to take a long time for all the information to make it through the labrynth of government. We need to know who is benifitting, who is suffering, and what ultimate purpose this is serving, and if any of the logic it is based on makes any sense at all and isn't drawing from the same wealth as the logic of bombing a nation to make them revolt on their leader, for spreading democracy by the point of a gun. The Bush regime continually points out that Iraq is not Viet Nam, and I'll point out that Afghanistan isn't Holland. This is not an allied democracy that was occupied by enemies and we are not necesarilly being interpreted as liberators, and our military is small enough that we really should be considering the lives of Canadian soldiers seriously, and not wasting them on wars that are primarally benifitting Haliburton and oil barons. It is not that we do not respect our forces or want to harm their morale, we don't want their lives wasted needlessly for a war that appears to be more suited to benifitting the billionaire's club than the people who actually make the nation function.
Since Harper so far has already thumbed his nose at the ethics commisioner and is apparantly putting restrictions on his MPs vocal chords, it's becoming pretty clear that his "Moral Authority to Govern" was only a sound byte, and I am really getting sick of being taken for an idiot by government. Clearly the Cons are no different from the Grits, except the Grits are willing to call inquiries sometimes. But then again, we just spent two years pretending we weren't part of the coalition of idiots and we destroyed a government over a scandal that cost us five dollars each, goaded by Harper. So I suppose Harper's view on us is somewhat justified...
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Neo Nazis assult cool guy; R.I.P Beach House
Edmonton Sun Article
I'm good friends with Pat. We smoked a lot of weed together. We've had some really awesome times. I've also had a great relationship with this particular house, my current girlfriend lived there when I met her, and my friend Pat lived there up until last night.
Now, according to him, he was assaulted by Neonazis before the home was firebombed. They knocked on his door and began to question his Soviet Flag in the window, and then forced their way in and proceeded to break a number of his blues CDs, calling it "Nigger Music", and scratched a swastika into his stereo. They made him take down the flag and busted up a number of his instruments. Later, after the firebombing, everything was lost.
But he has survived. Therefore, this act of hate has failed. I am now in the market for a Soviet flag to wave gloriously in defiance of these assholes. Anyone with me?
I'm good friends with Pat. We smoked a lot of weed together. We've had some really awesome times. I've also had a great relationship with this particular house, my current girlfriend lived there when I met her, and my friend Pat lived there up until last night.
Now, according to him, he was assaulted by Neonazis before the home was firebombed. They knocked on his door and began to question his Soviet Flag in the window, and then forced their way in and proceeded to break a number of his blues CDs, calling it "Nigger Music", and scratched a swastika into his stereo. They made him take down the flag and busted up a number of his instruments. Later, after the firebombing, everything was lost.
But he has survived. Therefore, this act of hate has failed. I am now in the market for a Soviet flag to wave gloriously in defiance of these assholes. Anyone with me?
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
We can be heroes
I am concerned about the apathetic stance my peers appear to take on most issues. I have a friend who is being informed and telling that a super secret power elite are planning a population cull around 2012. I assume he doesn't actually believe this, but still is just interested in reading it. But you never know, I'm not him. Anyhow, while we were discussing this at work today, I responded by saying " Don't worry, we'll stop them." attempting to get my optimism back online after the sudden seizure of the Commons by the facists (more on that later.) Another friend of mine then went on to rant that we were pawns. I again reiterated that we would overcome the facists, noting that we didn't spend our youths playing games about great heroes who defy the man. He crabbed that those were just stories and reality wasn't like that.
Obviously I have a problem with this view. It's self defeatist, it stops the mind from even considering the possibility of trying. Psychologists, physicians and mystics alike are now all spouting the same message; "If you don't believe you can do it, you won't." If you don't believe you can fix the stove, then you never will. If you believe you can, then you can. If you're determined, you'll figure out a way. Not necesarilly the best way, but a way. Similarly, the Wright brothers believed they could fly, and guess what? They could.
Arguing that we can't possibly overcome the empire is a waste of energy, and that brings me to point two of the day; the Cons are in power! Now, here in Canada, we can be united in fighting the man; let us walk together my brothers, vive la resistance!
Remember; we've all overcome the evil Bowser, king of the vile Koopas. How much harder can Bush, Harper and the rest of the aristocracy be?
Obviously I have a problem with this view. It's self defeatist, it stops the mind from even considering the possibility of trying. Psychologists, physicians and mystics alike are now all spouting the same message; "If you don't believe you can do it, you won't." If you don't believe you can fix the stove, then you never will. If you believe you can, then you can. If you're determined, you'll figure out a way. Not necesarilly the best way, but a way. Similarly, the Wright brothers believed they could fly, and guess what? They could.
Arguing that we can't possibly overcome the empire is a waste of energy, and that brings me to point two of the day; the Cons are in power! Now, here in Canada, we can be united in fighting the man; let us walk together my brothers, vive la resistance!
Remember; we've all overcome the evil Bowser, king of the vile Koopas. How much harder can Bush, Harper and the rest of the aristocracy be?
Why you should care about the enviroment
Alright, let's see if I can convey my concerns in an orderly fashion.
1. Humans are a part of nature.
2. Humans are animals.
3. Humans therefore are subject to the laws of nature and function in the same manner as animals.
Typically in nature, when an animal population thrives, it grows at an exponential rate. This occurs for a period known as the "Net Growth" phase. This occurs until one or both of the following conditions are met: 1) There is little or no food left, or 2) There is so much waste that an outbreak of disease wipes out the majority of the population. Once this happens, we enter a period known as the "Net Death" phase, where the population collapses almost as fast as it grew.
The human population has tripled in the last century. There are now over 6 billion homo sapiens, most of them want to breed. Most of them want to eat. You see the problem here now, correct? If we divide that 6 billion into 4 assumptive factors: males, females, children, elderly, we have at least 3 billion potential babies. Within a generation or two, we'll have nine billion humans. Then 12. Then 18. Then 24...
There has to be a point when we reach one of those conditions. Some argue we already have. I prefer not to be as fatalistic.
The reality of the matter is that our industrial society is based on disposability and convenience, both have terrible consequences for both health and the enviroment. We are now generating more waste than the enviroment can handle. This is chiefly because we are demolishing the biosphere's ability to "digest" our wastes effectively at an alarming rate.
For the first time since anyone, including the resident amazonians apparantly, can remember, there is a drought in the rainforest. In an ecology that depends on rain to fall daily for months on end, this is catastrophe. For us, this the beginning of the sacrifice of 10-20% of the world's oxygen for the richness of a few and the ever needed "job" for everyone else.
This is why you should care; the economists and the cons and energy industries seem to think they can go on expanding and building products for your consumption forever. They seem to have no concept that all that paper is coming from wood, all that beef is coming from farmland from demolished rainforest, all that mercury is pilling up in oceans, etc. They don't see that resources can only be consumed at a rate they can be recovered at.
So what can you do? Recycle, recycle, recycle. 90% of people's garbage is recycleble (is that a word?) If it's paper, you can recycle it. If it's plastic, recycle. Food, you can garbage or compost. Something simple as recycling and using recycled paper can prevent trees from being cut down, providing us with more Carbon Dioxide (Greenhouse Gas emissions) breathing and oxygen exhaling trees to slow the tide of global warming.
The alternative concept is fairly easy to imaging. If we continue on our present course, eventually the weathern patterns will be altered enough to promote large scale drought conditions. Without food, people will stop being concerned about silly things like cds and movies. The economy will collapse. Governments will lose control. People will flock around those who can provide them food and protect them from preditors. These protectors will quickly become warlords. One of these bozos would eventually aquire the leftover nuclear warheads from our glorious civilization, and that's where the real problems would begin.
Nations less affected will of course also try to seize any nuclear assets left in the wake of a superpower crushed by famine. War would quickly follow a serious famine.
This is not doomsayer paranoia. This has happened to civilizations before. Mayan cities, the old kingdom of egypt, the Anazazi, the Nordic Greenland colonies; all these cultures appear to have fucked with their local ecologies (whether consiously or not) and made their lifestyles unlivable.
So there you have it. Remember, we are nature, we are natural beings, but we also are rational beings. Societies have changed before to suit new circumstances, and we can too. Just worry about what you gotta do, and the rest will work out fine.
1. Humans are a part of nature.
2. Humans are animals.
3. Humans therefore are subject to the laws of nature and function in the same manner as animals.
Typically in nature, when an animal population thrives, it grows at an exponential rate. This occurs for a period known as the "Net Growth" phase. This occurs until one or both of the following conditions are met: 1) There is little or no food left, or 2) There is so much waste that an outbreak of disease wipes out the majority of the population. Once this happens, we enter a period known as the "Net Death" phase, where the population collapses almost as fast as it grew.
The human population has tripled in the last century. There are now over 6 billion homo sapiens, most of them want to breed. Most of them want to eat. You see the problem here now, correct? If we divide that 6 billion into 4 assumptive factors: males, females, children, elderly, we have at least 3 billion potential babies. Within a generation or two, we'll have nine billion humans. Then 12. Then 18. Then 24...
There has to be a point when we reach one of those conditions. Some argue we already have. I prefer not to be as fatalistic.
The reality of the matter is that our industrial society is based on disposability and convenience, both have terrible consequences for both health and the enviroment. We are now generating more waste than the enviroment can handle. This is chiefly because we are demolishing the biosphere's ability to "digest" our wastes effectively at an alarming rate.
For the first time since anyone, including the resident amazonians apparantly, can remember, there is a drought in the rainforest. In an ecology that depends on rain to fall daily for months on end, this is catastrophe. For us, this the beginning of the sacrifice of 10-20% of the world's oxygen for the richness of a few and the ever needed "job" for everyone else.
This is why you should care; the economists and the cons and energy industries seem to think they can go on expanding and building products for your consumption forever. They seem to have no concept that all that paper is coming from wood, all that beef is coming from farmland from demolished rainforest, all that mercury is pilling up in oceans, etc. They don't see that resources can only be consumed at a rate they can be recovered at.
So what can you do? Recycle, recycle, recycle. 90% of people's garbage is recycleble (is that a word?) If it's paper, you can recycle it. If it's plastic, recycle. Food, you can garbage or compost. Something simple as recycling and using recycled paper can prevent trees from being cut down, providing us with more Carbon Dioxide (Greenhouse Gas emissions) breathing and oxygen exhaling trees to slow the tide of global warming.
The alternative concept is fairly easy to imaging. If we continue on our present course, eventually the weathern patterns will be altered enough to promote large scale drought conditions. Without food, people will stop being concerned about silly things like cds and movies. The economy will collapse. Governments will lose control. People will flock around those who can provide them food and protect them from preditors. These protectors will quickly become warlords. One of these bozos would eventually aquire the leftover nuclear warheads from our glorious civilization, and that's where the real problems would begin.
Nations less affected will of course also try to seize any nuclear assets left in the wake of a superpower crushed by famine. War would quickly follow a serious famine.
This is not doomsayer paranoia. This has happened to civilizations before. Mayan cities, the old kingdom of egypt, the Anazazi, the Nordic Greenland colonies; all these cultures appear to have fucked with their local ecologies (whether consiously or not) and made their lifestyles unlivable.
So there you have it. Remember, we are nature, we are natural beings, but we also are rational beings. Societies have changed before to suit new circumstances, and we can too. Just worry about what you gotta do, and the rest will work out fine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)