liberation is not possible

I'm trying to do Foucault and Derrida here, I would love your feedback. And by feedback I mean argue with me, don't ever tell me i'm right, i'm always wrong, tell me why please. ty

The liberation ideals of Marxism have been elaborated over the years. Not only is human's relationship to production key in systems of oppression, but we have learned that class is not the only apparatus. Race, nationalism, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Are all structures of oppression that are just as important as class. Marx's arguments have been shown to have different effects in the long term, over production has led to over consumption. Fashionable consumption which sells us shit we don't need made by slaves shipped back and forth across the world in carbon energy wasting airplanes. Your Ipod which needed lithium which was mined by slaves in Bolivia. No there is no social mobility for these slaves, if they ever demand a living wage the multi-nationals will find slaves in another country. In the case of lithium though Bolivia being one of the only real sources, instead of finding new slaves, the IMF owned government will send paramilitaries to gas and kill some slaves to prevent them from organizing. The slave's children will need to be pulled out of school and put to work in order to keep their family alive and then get injured putting them out of work because of unsafe working conditions leading to an endless cycle of poverty and suffering, I mean shit we've all read The Jungle here. For the most part though these slaves are coming from rural areas where their subsistence farming has been ended by the encroachment of massive factory farms, overpopulation(you leave the family farm to two kids, and neither of them will be able to raise a family on half the land), and the endless fight between the peasants and the patrons. Peasants make their way to the city, become proletarianized: separated from the product of their work, selling their life away in one hour increments, and falling prey to the endless scams of the thieves who use a pen to steal.

We all see the immediate effects of the present crisis. We can call it by the umbrella term "globalization" but that means something different to everyone. To me it is the name given to the capitalist project and its' domination of the entire world.


Many of you may self-identify as anarchists, but modern anarchist theory is totally rooted in a para-marxist or neo-marxist analysis. Modern anarchist theory relies on historical materialism, it relies on mindset changes, and it relies on the myth of the rational individual. All liberation theories rely on the myth of the rational person and they all rely on immutable ideals.

There is nothing immutable in this world.

The myth of the rational person is a holdover from the Stoics, we all know now that a person who acts only according to cold rationality is a sociopath.

Liberation is not possible with current methods.

Look at Rome, the USSR, american revolution, french revolution. Things always end up the same. Liberation ideals theorize that this is due to institutions. To destroy the institutions would bring humans liberation. This is where you might find your anarchists, your illichs, your heideggers. . These people are only partially correct. The tools of the human have enslaved the human to a certain extent, but the oppression, coercion, etc. emanating from these institutions only represents efficiency in normalizing. To destroy the institutions, would still leave us at square one dealing with how to liberate ourselves from eachother in a new era of primitivism. A primitivism that cannot help but be born from the norms of a humanity that depended on their Tool Masters. Humans are too fucking stupid to survive without all the shit we at first didn't need, but we all bought it. Now as it turns out we literally cannot survive without it. I guess i'm kind of proving that the normalizing of an entire world to liberate themselves from institutions of states, banks, hospitals, schools, etc etc etc. would basically never happen, but i'm going to fiat its existence just for the sake of the point i'm trying to make in a very roundabout fashion. So anarchists and marxists win, every human has simultaneously stripped the institutions of power, shed the normalizing aspects of the juridico-political system, overcame racism, overcame sexism, overcame homophobism, and just for the hell of it: there is no such thing as an STD anymore.

Will this moment last? NO. NOTHING, NOTHING is immutable, nothing. Absolutely nothing is immutable. Everything changes, the present is an illusion. It is only a fleeting feeling, a sound, a snapshot that will fall in to the next in an endless series of repititions until you die. Nothing is immutable.

We just keep building the same damn thing over and over. Who is to say your(anyone, not just the subjects of these past paragraphs) group will be any different?

So maybe you've gotten point number one by now: Immutability is a lie. Anyone or anything that claims to know the truth is lying, because the truth does not exist. The closest to the truth we can get is a series of snapshots, and endless parade of truth. A constant study, a constant worldwide dissemination. I will not sully such an idea with a broken down word like democracy. What I speak of is a global web of connections where information is completely liberated, and that we all work together in a constant process of interpretation and opinion. The more people that hear truth(not universal truth, the truth I speak of above) the more people will be correct in how we handle anything. Is the issue human extinction? Is the issue Justice? Who the fuck knows, the question will always change, the truth will always change, and jesus will never fly down with a sword to seperate the non-believers. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no winner's circle, and there is never a point in time where humanity can be liberated. Liberation would be an endless process itself, in which no immutability would exist. The word liberation would change its' meaning, what it signifies would be understood to be something different, in the process certain norms might be established that give rise to a counter-hegemony that would flip the idea of liberation upside-down. There is always an agent in modern ideals of liberation. Someone always must lead, there must be a spark for the powder keg, there must be an intellectual class, there must be some sort of leader of the biggest brigades, there must be someone that is the least hated of everyone, any random person who is seen as charismatic, intelligent, or attractive. Always a leader in ALL modern liberation movements. Always an ideology, who helped reproduce that ideology in order to normalize it as knowledge to a broad enough base that such an ideal for liberation became widespread? A newspaper? Internet Site? journalist? artist? There is always an agent in these broad liberation movements, there is always someone willing to seize the rein of power and thousands others to support it.

So that was supposed to be my conclusion but I didn't mean to skip point two. All modern liberation ideals derive from a rational choice model. Humans who act entirely rational are sociopaths. Humans make decisions through a combination of socio-emotive and material(rational) motivators. There is very good evidence of this, social psychology is filled with it, any mid-size group is evidence of it, the many "phineas gages", sports teams, any altruistic act, etc. Essentially you're going to have to market the revolution. And it seems that most modern liberation movements are based on repressions: capitalism represses empathy, marxism represses greed, anarchy represses the impetus to create the state, primitivism represses technological discoveries, feminism represses masculinity. I mean how long do I have to keep this up for. There is always an enemy.

So I figured out how to create a new conclusion, and this will be even more betterer than the last one.

Human brains are made to exist in an environment filled with other human brains. Humans have evolved as social animals, depending on eachother to survive against stronger foes. This is only a suggestion I do not claim it to be fact, but it seems that humans are stuck in the way their brains function, due to evolving in social groups, to identify with a group identity.

If any of you don't know what "alterity" means I suggest you check it out. The ideal of anarchism is to bring the entire global humanity in to the unity of a better idea. This idea that we are all the same, we're all in this together, we can survive without oppression and war, to make all humans value eachother as humans. This is intelligent, because alterity is necessary for murder. One does not kill a human without othering them first.

By removing the other from the political equation, anarchists intend to create a world better suited to survival and justice.

But without an other, any one individual has no identity. Without an other, you are not a self. Or at least cannot construct an identity without something to define yourself as NOT. You demarcate a boundary between self and other those boundaries are important for your identity.

"There is no universal truth" is an untrue statement. It seeks to disprove what it proves simply by being posited. Immutability being a constant is the exact same idea. Alterity may be an anomaly that is a result of some universal normalizing process that possibly can be changed, but unless it can be changed humanity is fucked. If it cannot be changed than othering is what makes us human, and humanity won't be able to survive without.....whos read Watchmen?

Habeas Corpus again

This is a draft I never finished, but I'm gonna publish it anyway without reading it over. There may be a link or piece of info that is interesting.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo14-2009nov14,0,4700402.story

I would like to do something with this text: deconstruct, dissect, analyze, interpret, etc.

The first Sentence is "Setting the stage for a historic criminal trial, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Friday that the government would prosecute the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and four others in a civilian courthouse just blocks from the scene of their alleged crimes."
The first part of the sentence argues that this is a "historic criminal trial", this is not true with a basic look at verifiable facts. When the law is broken by a person in the United States they are tried for their crimes and the decision of the individuals guilt or innocence is decided by a jury of his or her's peers.

The individuals being tried are not part of a war. I understand that the idea was packaged as a war, but just like the war on drugs and the war on poverty. It seems to just be an effective way to rally political capital, by attaching the significance and all the weight of the word "war". There was no war declared, congress passed the authorization to use military force. The AUMF authorized the executive to send the military anywhere it deemed necessary to find terrorists. OIF and OEF were not wars that were ever declared, there is no actual "war on terror", because war can only take place between two state entities. War cannot take place between two guys standing on the street. When Scarface yells "do you want to go to war?" he does not actually mean hes going to fight a conventional war, because he is not a state entity.

If these individuals have committed a crime they should be tried in a court. This is not historic the United States has prosecuted numerous "terrorist" trials. Even though the word "terrorist" is not a crime, one cannot be charged with one count of terrorism anywhere. If these individuals are responsible for 1st degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and I bet a whole mess of further crimes then bring them to trial and convict them just like we have always done. How is this trial historic? Google FLorence ADX (I think thats what it is) its a supermax prison which is basically the real life arkham asylum. Its got every "terrorist" your friend teevee ever showed you. This trial is not historic.

The other statement I have an issue with is "self-proclaimed architect of the sept. 11 attacks". I'm not a doctor or anything, but I'm preeeeeety sure any human alive would say anyfucking thing in the world in order to stop being tortured. The paper already told you he is guilty. Do you truly believe he is guilty without seeing any of the evidence? I will only believe he is guilty after he is given a trial and I can see the information the jury saw, and decide for myself. Hes already convicted, its a media circus before its even started.

So Holder did good he brought some people to trial, but it really isn't good enough. Everyone who committed crimes in violation of United States law should be tried. But of course if john mccain had won NOBODY would have gotten a trial. So if I conclude that this decision would rest with the executive, and our choice for executive is always limited to two, then isn't this the best possible outcome we could hope for? But its still not everyone, gitmo is still up, they're going to use the archaic death penalty and make everyone a martyr. Things could be better, but at least Holder did a little.

Then the article goes to this guy "...top Pentagon lawyer in the George W. Bush administration...". oh noo!! they're gonna use counterintelligence!! pew pew, spies and stuff, its like totally super secret. WTF is it, its been 8 years you dumb bastards, is there seriously still shit in there that compromises counterintelligence 8 years later? What kind of crazy deep cover shit are you doing and why does it suck so much fucking ass? What is your counterintelligence worth in balance with the U.S. constitution, fuck your counter-intelligence. Give the information to the public, don't do this bullshit.

top Pentagon lawyer in the George W. Bush administration: They're guilty! But the damning evidence is really super secret!

defense attorney: Secret evidence is awesome! just take his word for it, why would he lie? He doesn't have any type of legal questions surrounding his administration's treatment of prisoners.

top Pentagon lawyer in the George W. Bush administration: Jury, look at that guy, hes clearly a Muslim. And like I said I've got awesome evidence, its like 100% completely conclusive evidence, and I would show it to you I would...but its just this national security. Its counterintelligence, let me just give you a taste of how deep our cover goes, we have an inside man at the top rung of the ladder. I mean Bin Laden is actually our guy hes just spying on whos going to follow him after he did a big attack. That way we'd know who the next bin laden was if we created the first one, I mean thats how deep that cover is. We can't be blowing that type of cover can we?

Defense Attorney: And if we let people know who the snitches are, then nobody will trust us with their snitching needs. Then how are we supposed to tell who to torture until they confess? answer me that mr. big shot jury!


Oh they will spew propaganda!! oh no!!! fuck, grow up. The judge will do what they always do with disruptive defendants.


A few more paragraphs down the article contradicts itself. "The detainees are expected to be held at the same federal prison in New York that housed other suspected Al Qaeda operatives before trials related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the embassy bombings in Africa and other terrorist plots. Virtually all of those men were convicted in trials marked by heavy security and now are serving long sentences in federal prisons around the United States."
Well damn that sounds pretty similar to this trial...why the fuck is it historic, why does the text separate this trial with historic

not gonna finish his here are the 5 that aren't getting trials
The other detainees slated to appear before military commissions are Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi, Omar Khadr, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi and Noor Uthman Muhammed.


the 5 getting trials: ksm
Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali will do the same in civilian court.



I look forward to the information that will be made public by this trial. I look forward to the chance for the United States to re-affirm its values if only in a half assed way.

crap

Apparently I need to write in order to survive. Not for any economic reasons, but for sanity? I’m not sure if it is that or fostering a delusion of meaning in my mind. If this life is all there is, ha I ask like the answer can ever be found. I will never know if this life is all there is, but I can use rational thought to look at the scurrying homicidal humans and understand where some of the ideas come from. I can see that they coddle eachother and manipulate with ideas like religion, so this life most likely is all that there is. The entire idea that this life is not all there is was created in order to sell religion. The religion was sold so well, because of our epistemological limitations on knowledge. We can never know if this is all there is, we will never know when consciousness first manifested or even if consciousness is just reified human superiority complexes. What if all animals possess a consciousness, why can I read the facial language of a dog or cat? Haven’t I seen a dog’s attempts at stifling their expression of guilt in order to avoid being blamed for something they thought they could get away with? How did life come about, we have good rational ideas on this, some good theories. But the fact of the matter is that we can never have the answers to these questions.
If this ignorance is a part of the human condition, then I can see why religion springs up. By looking at the lessons of religion, by looking at the stories of gods and goddesses, and through etymology of deity’s names we can see the imprint of family. Although these stories come to us only because they have been transcribed, which besmirches them with an earthly impurity, this means that the individual was literate which represents a class indication. We each have our own creators our own Mom and Dad. Our own mother earth and father sun in each of our subjective worlds. Odds are our creators will die before we the offspring have died. The creators of the past on most occasions would teach their offspring how to survive and would pass on their mythos. Where did these mythos come from? The creator’s creator of course! Contemporary forms of ancestor worship such as Shintoism represent a background of one of the first examples of sacred ideas.
The reason these stories must have been told is in order to focus the mind on survival in order to continue the process of creation. If the human condition is uncertainty(epistemological limitation that science claims to have overcome), passionate ambivalence(Philip k. Dick’s short story The Chromium Fence), or contradiction(Dostoevsky’s theme); then it seems reasonable to understand the mythos of humanity as a survival tool. First of all to encode key cultural rituals of a certain time/space in to a sacred mythos(such as a prohibition on the eating of pig) is in order to protect the family/tribe. Humans are not eating if they are paralyzed by uncertainty.
Parents are gods, after all they created you. If living gods tell you a sacred idea, how can you disparage it? This worship of ancestors, because our creators are most often our teachers became canon. As the cycle continues down the line, until someone codifies the sacred idea and the idea becomes a millstone necklace. The idea is used as a cudgel and the idea is used as a mask for its’ antithesis. The codification of the idea transmutes it from sacred to profane.
What was once the internal strength of a tribe/family and a set of encoded morals and survival rituals becomes a tool used to fight the world outside the tribe/family. To seek power in the classical realist terms, to subjugate other families. The families at this point are controlled by the class of people that could codify the ideas in the first place.
But it doesn’t fucking work. There is idea trading, there is language trading, there is genetic material traded in the form of miscegenation, a word that would not exist if it weren’t for man’s innately(for lack of a better contemporary word) racism. It becomes apparent that we don’t have a good word to unmask the idea of racism. Which in a dictionary means prejudice, discrimination, or hatred towards a different “race” I am using this word here to mean the hatred of any “other”.
The tribes are illusory they were a necessary construction for humans’ early survival along with their mythos. Survival tools, tools meaning they were created by humans for humans. It is not a tool that humans innately respond to group identities. Response to group identities is an a priori or instinctual feature of the human condition.
The “race” is illusory, to argue that the 200,000 years that represent the human diaspora and subsequent collapsing back in have left some kind of different “races” is based on a confluence of nationalism(which I use as synonymous with group identity in the context of this crap) and fear of those different than self. Language is a very strong divider among humanity, but we all speak a language that is derived from the same source. Physical appearance is a very strong divider among humans, but we all came from the same original adam in Africa and eve in southeast Asia. The idea that the social construct of “race” can first of all be readily identified, and that second of all it should be considered sacred is as old as human tribes/families. Who is the one making these judgments? Who decides who is what race?
Race is not a social construct they say! DNA they say! Well how many races are there? Then you must elect a single person’s genetic structure THE structure of the (insert racial label here), then what? Is it a spectrum? The idea is absurd. I only obsess about race because it is one of the tools that is pervasive in this time/space I exist in. Many will say otherwise, the country I am a citizen of outlawed slavery over one hundred years ago, my country outlawed de jure segregation 65 years ago, my country outlawed de jure discrimination 45 years ago. But in that past 45 years the prison population has quadrupled. The joke that a “black” human says to another “black” goes something like this: “Justice? Yep, go to prison and you’ll see that: just Us”.
The idea of an Us and Them, is not a tool. The idea of statehood, sovereignty, the western conception of the social contract; they’re all constructs. They are tools created to achieve some end. There are those that argue our institutions as tools have failed us. That the institutions we have created are not like the Golem or the Frankenstein monster, but instead like a fleet of slave machines that slowly gained self-awareness. What if the human brain just represents a controlled set of patterns? If a tool we created was stuck in its’ own loop or pattern, couldn’t this be understood as simulated brain activity?
Because it is naïve to believe that some one or some cohesive group is controlling these patterns. Why in 2001 were 74% of people incarcerated for drug crimes “African-American” when this social category makes up 13% of the United States population?
There is not some demagogue out there paying off police, judges, and juries to bust dark skinned united statesians. They are not told at their jobs(at least in most situations, and it is prosecutable) to seek out dark skinned united statesians. Then why is it this systematic re-enslavement of dark skinned united statesians is taking place?
It is my belief that the phenomenon referred to as “racial profiling” is a scar left on the psyche of the united statesian. A people were taught to believe it was ok to enslave other people that were proclaimed “others”. They were taught that these humans were actually sub-human, they were animals so it is ok to treat them as such with slavery. Then when justice was sought, in the babysteps justice takes(which I am not criticizing, if a few things had been different we would still be living under the totalitarian spectre of “racial hygiene”), when these sub-humans were given equal protection under the law, the group did not internalize the change. To many these dark skinned united statesians represented animalistic tendencies, sub-human qualities. They had been taught this for so many years and this assumption was used to justify social control measures such as narcotic and anti-immigrant laws, the dark skinned united statesian retained its image as the model of the criminal.
Now we are stuck, we are mired in the reified diarrhea of our ancestors’ mythos. How are we to break away from this social construct of race in order that it not be used to prosecute ends of murder and oppression if we are still so stuck in it that we need to reform what the idea of justice means?
Has not the institution of slavery then enslaved or at least imprisoned our minds? We cannot let people be incarcerated because of their race, this is genocide in the long term. But if we must remain ever vigilant how are we to transcend race?
I just used the word genocide, but if race is a social construct doesn’t that make genocide an obsolete idea? My response to this is that race being a social construct, it can only be ascertained through self-identification. Of course the limitations on this are myriad, and the most pronounced of which is that in order to self-identify the category must already be an idea. Most likely in the process of self-identification an individual(in our mechanized world) would be choosing a box next to words that represent a “multiple choice” of racial identity. For many years there was not a “multiracial” box on these forms.
It is much easier to understand my main point by looking at the idea of the multiracial box. An individual with one parent who self-identifies as “black” and another parent who self-identifies as “white” is presented with an insurance application/job application/tax form/loan application/housing application/driver’s license application. This form has options for black or white, but what is he/she?
The individual either chooses one thusly attempting to suppress part of their own self-identity and fosters an idea that this individual is an “other”. They are an other in their own home, they do not have a “race”. Thus implying that the institution who created the form judges multiracial individuals as less than human, because they do not have something every other human has: a race.

Trusting the past and not scrutinizing the tools is has left us may turn us in to the machine.

I do not offer this critique without an alternative. The alternative I offer is a way to use our tools to sublimate our nature. A world government, a supranational entity much like the EU(before the EU created an office for a president[big mistake]). An entity founded upon a written set of laws limiting the power of the entity. The entity would be incorporated through plesbicites in any country that wanted to participate. In this fashion we could use the tool of the state to harness the power of nationalism in order to foster the idea that all humanity is one family/tribe.
This is of course just another crusade or religion. This idea is just another idea that if it took hold in a few countries would not be voluntarily adopted by so many countries that it would just create another division. This division would be used to prosecute wars in the furtherance or “defense” of the supranational entity. Although this idea seems to be the antithesis of anarchism, it seems to have a lot in common with anarchism. Both ideas would need a mindset change among humanity as a whole, the only difference being that in order for anarchism to work every human would have to experience a mindset change, in order to establish a supranational world government only a majority of each state would have to experience a mind change. Both options are idealistic unfortunately.
How would one cause a mindset change? We argue and disseminate ideas, we convince and evangelize. We’ll reason with people and show them logic. This is all fucking bullshit, its propaganda and it always is. The only way a mindset change like either of these things would happen is with a massive and I mean MASSIVE media apparatus to condition humans over and over and over. You can call it convincing, or marketing, or preaching, but its all conditioning. Every one of us in our own little skinner box, in our case pushing the button to change the channel rather than get the cheese.
So if you ever see anarchy or world government on the rise, just remember that the only way that is possible was with a huge effort at mind control/marketing/conditioning. The only way such an effort is possible in our current reality is with huge amounts of “money” another tool that has imprisoned us. So question their motives, because the people at the helm of such an effort are the same ones destroying the world in furtherance of greed.
Any solution I have of course is just from the frying pan in to the fire. I just see that our current system is clearly broken, capitalism is so inherently contradictory its sickening. While we think that we’re fine tuning this institution, there are so many suffering that the institution must be broke. The organizational basis of humanity at this point in space/time is personal greed/objectivism. If we came up with another way, wouldn’t that way still be rife with contradictions?
Then am I at odds with our means of social organization, or am I at odds with humankind because of the epistemological limitation on our knowledge that is a universal feature of the human condition?
Is my ambivalence and disillusion in itself a microcosm of the globicidal social organizing principles whether they be based on greed, love, hate, etcetera?
Then is this all just my own simulated brain pattern/loop of solipsist masturbation?

CELEBEGEDDON 2009

I just wanted to finish this comic i've been reading, i guess technically its a manga called Gantz, I foud the anime somewhere and dug it so now i figure out its still being published: pretty sweet, so i'm trying to catch up. I have a cut on my finger so it causes a light amount of pain whenever i strike a key with my middle finger, but sometimes i just want to respond with words to the stimuli i receive and this place works for that.

So obviously i'm not paying to read the comic there are myriad free manga sites, but no such thing exists for the english counterpart. Although most of the good comics(I just can't say graphic novels without feeling like a douchebag) at least recent ones and the classics are available in torrents (isohunt is the shit for ebooks and comics). Of course the cost of getting something free is usually that you have to deal with some advertisement, which is cool if thats what you choose to do, but if you're getting advertised to and you're not getting something for free? You're a mark.

The advertisement is for a cosmetic pharmaceutical for women(i suppose it would work for men as well, but that is obviously not a large enough demographic to market to, nothing this: their marketing director may be looking for a new job after advertising women's beauty consumption on a manga site) this product "lengthens, thickens, and blackens"; now before you draw the conclusion that i'm being paid to guerrilla market on my blog(no ads on any of my sites), I feel like this is an interesting time to talk about this type of consumption and marketing. Especially because judging by the sales numbers of magazines like maxim, vogue, etc there are a lot of easy marks out there willing to pay you money to hand them a packet of advertisements. Shit these people are paying more than a meal for a single person, more than a pack of cigarettes, more than 3 gallons of gas, more than... you get the picture.

We are waiting for the nickname for this week lets see if I can without any actual physical effort (besides happening to read every headline thrown my way) list the paragons of humanity who have been sent up to dog who art: farrah fawcett, micheal jackson, billy mays and ed mcmahon(I had to go to google to remember ed mcmahon, YOU ARE CORRECT SUH![i definetly saw more phil hartman than ed mcmahon in my life]. So despite the fact that when you die: all your victims become unmolested; United Statesians are ' superficial to the fuckin Nth degree! For fucks sake there are people crying??? Michael Jackson was a civil rights hero?!?!?!?!?! WTF!!!!!! So in order to profit from the deaths of others I think we have to come up with the perfect catchphrase for this week and patent it quickly. If we get it in time before the news cycle ends all we need is one single headline and it has to be witty and/or funny, then bam every publication in the country will be using it and we start the court proceedings against 'em. We can come up with a reason why its not naked self-interest for the media, first of all anyone who wants to contribute and work together in making this you have to know that you have to be extremely attractive and bisexual, this way we can use you as the face for the media and you can sleep with the attorney to pay for all of our suing. I think i got a pretty suitable solution to why we are so intent on creating a catchphrase and getting money for it, its not the money or that we'll not have to wait in line for anything anymore. To create a catchprase is actually completely and totally altruistic because it may become an institution and pretty soon celebrities will start getting culled on an annual basis every last week of june, this would create a much better world for everyone, possibly causing many useless people (who only keep breathing in order to live vicariously through a celebrity) to start thinking orrrrrr...maybe do themselves in...arguably a win-win. So these are a few we've been kickin' around the office:
Celebicide(although we decided this one could be too easily associated with suicide)

Celebegeddon(I think this is the winner so far, so I'll throw it in the title)
Celebrity Deathmatch(we may have problems trademarking that one)

Celebritydeathapalooza
The Celeb Slayer(This is one where we have to get a media headline alleging that all the deaths were murders, and they were all...done...by........THE SAME PERSON!(were u n suspense?)
The Great Celebrity Die Off
Quadcelebritydeathweek
"Fame more dangerous than cancer"(this is where we get a headline saying a ridiculous statistic that is actually quite spurious[you've seen 'em they're in every paper or magazine you ever read])

thats all i got


Our world is very strange, our modern world, because there is no real truth.

There is no philosopher-king to determine whether it is right or wrong to spend the wealth we have on compulsive vanity or over anxious insecurity. There is no oracle to consult on whether or not it is right to use our resources to build bigger and more efficient tools for murder instead of using our resources to prevent death and suffering. There is no priest to answer whether using the great minds of our generation to create anti-male balding, penis enlargement, "erectile dysfunction", or lash thickening pills rather than work towards something that brings humanity closer to fulfilling its potential.

We know that all those recipients of inquiry are just more assholes, just like the people you walk past on the street every day, friends, family, everyone you've ever seen, nobody knows any more than anybody else about the REAL questions, the eternal questions, nobody even knows the answers to the ethical and moral questions!!!! "Idiocracy" is humanity's future if it proceeds along the same trajectory it is currently on.

Humans: There is nobody to turn to but yourselves.

In order to survive humans need to learn to read again. I do not know the truth that will be your truth in regards to climate change, overpopulation, kim jong il's death rattle missile launch, Iranian british relations souring, or even something as simple as good and evil. Only you yourself can figure that out, and thusly only every single other human on the planet has to learn reality themselves. Reality to the self is objective, but that objectivity transmogrifies in to a subjective, preachy and evangelistic..............OPINION, there I said it. Nobody on earth knows a fucking thing, but everyones got an opinion. Now if there is an actual objective reality that exists apart from objects perceiving it or in a vacuum (whatever helps wrap the head around what i'm sayin) that means that there is an actual objective truth(if this is true that truth is god in my opinion). This means that most likely one or more out of the many many people's OPINIONS that exist out there are actual statements of objective fact.

The challenging part is that we cannot check this objective fact, reality does not fit into our mathematics, not yet. Maybe one day we will have such fast computers and such vast amounts of storage that someone can create a program to predict human action based on algorithms obtained from the observation and study of the effect of every stimuli possible. These effects may be replicated and sequenced, observed, tested, and pretty soon human action becomes an equation, but until then there is no way to check our math the earth(the reality we have so far managed to bring under human dominion) is too damn complicated.

So far in this hypothesis we have a world that we assume objective truth exists in. Next you take a large number of people who after research have a theory about...lets say...molemen invading from the center of the earth. There are scientists, and professors and all kinds of other assholes writing about the evidence of the molemen and their zealous belief in manifest destiny over the surface.

Now if these individuals are correct, we(being the omnipotent creator of this hypothetical world know they are correct, and that molemen ARE going to invade, and in fact we know they'll invade in 3 and half years, they're just building the last of their drills.) can take a look at two different groups which I will arbitrarily fiat.

The first group being the humans on the hypothetical world I first mentioned, but with the qualifier: all the people in group one researched the possibility of moleman invasion.

The second group being the humans on the hypothetical world I created, but with the qualifier: NOT all the people in group two researched the possibility of moleman invasion.


Here is the question I pose to you: Which of those groups/worlds are more likely to see the survival of humanity, which of those groups is more likely to see the enslavement of humanity?


Although this is a futile scream in to the emptiness, I do feel that in my OPINION every single living human should take an active interest in seeking the truth about reality, about themselves, and about their fellow humans. The prescription that humanity really needs is the one that causes Reading, Thinking, and Talking. Or maybe what we need is a week every year where celebrities are open game, and maybe one day there will be no airbrushed exhibitionist to live vicariously through.

But what we need and what we get aren't always the same.
shittyblogbutatleastiwrotesomething

The New Obama!

This is a quote from the blog I wrote on January 23rd:

"First of all I just want to say that this the first time in my life I've been actually surprised in a good way about a sitting president. I was worried that Obama would be all talk, but instead he dove right in from day one. He set in motion progress on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, ended extraordinary rendition, ended Bush's spending freeze on overseas family planning, stopped legally sanctioned torture, and stated that Gitmo must be closed within a year."


It WAS too good to be true!

HOW YOU GUYS LIKE NEW OBAMA?!?!?
Remember how Obama signed that executive order 2 days in to office holding up his campaign promise?
Do you remember the eloquent language with which he simultaneously brought justice to those in need of it in the form of Habeus Corpus, as well as invoked a stern didactic tone concerning the constitution?
Well thats not Obama.
Thats OLD Obama. There is a new Obama in office, I’m not going to post a link you should all keep up with the news if you’re not a fool. Apparently a trial is too good for certain prisoners. Have you also heard that extraordinary rendition is essentially going on under a different guise? If we are able to store our prisoners overseas we can be assured they are doing so for one or both of the following reasons:
1. protect themselves from legal prosecution
2. to engage in torture
Although the federal government is still engaging in holding prisoners overseas, that is apparently ALSO too damn good for certain people currently locked up in Gitmo.
So lets get down to the info. There are apparently THIRTEEN individuals currently in gitmo who can’t POSSIBLY EVER BE TRIED IN A COURT!!!! Our courts are too weak for terrorism, they don’t have the stomachs!! and the ladies?!??!! and the children?!? how can we protect them from the blasphemy and coarse language of the terrorists????? Obviously the only answer is secret military tribunals. But we’re marketing a fuzzier name, and we're gonna market it with a little more effort than we did for “tribunal”. From here on out these secret military tributnals are “Commissions”. Did you know that the EU has a council of “Commissioners” they make up the most intense concentration of power vested in single individuals in the entire EU system? I mean whats wrong with a little commission? Its like we're all salespeople now, we all get a piece of the commission. Baseball for example is run by a commissioner and thats america's god damn pasttime! There was a show “the comish” or something right? or a movie? Whatevever it was, it was good wholesome fun for the whole family! I mean this secret kangaroo court is like a household name already, so back to american gladiators!

But of these 13 (whom I cannot find all the names of btw), 4 of them are charged with THE CRIMES OF related to THE ATTACKS OF THE TERRORISTS OF FOREIGN LANDS UPON THE HOMELAND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NEW YORK ON THE DATE OF NINE ELEVEN IN AN EGREGIOUS ACT OF COWARDICE. So seriously, don’t question it.But wait a second, they're not "charged" with anything...they are "involved" or "connected to" (or something along those lines) to NINE ELEVEN in the articles of the mainstream media. Well I'm not a doctor or anything, but if they're so wholly convinced that this individual is complicit with 9/11 shouldn't they have been tried and either acquitted or sentenced by now? Why won't we try to bring some justice to the perpetrators of 9/11? And by that I don't mean lock someone up without a fucking trial! That is an injustice, we cannot move forward if we are constantly reacting to injustice with further injustices. These people that are connected to 9/11 how are they connected? All we have been told is that they knew bin laden or are in al qaeda or some shit. If people are so secure in these individuals' guilt that they imprison them, shouldn't their evidence be good enough to convict the individual?

Of course not. And we all know that no matter where you fall on the political spectrum we all know that if cops, military, or intelligence agencies were allowed to just imprison people they thought were guilty, it would VERY OFTEN be an individual who would not be convicted by a jury of their peers.



But the praises continue to be sung, the veneer of unity and the brand name of being different than bush are still holding up.

The truth is that very little has changed in the substantive issues, and by that I mean issues relating to the constitution, geneva conventions, and military aggression. Maybe the torture won't continue on american soil...wait...bush never even tortured people on american soil(at least not the continental US[gitmo]). So......I ask everyone: what changed?
A sane tax system is good, credit card legislation, etc. but these have very little to do with moving away from the dangerous policies of bush.



The change offered by Obama is superficial at best.



And Obama I had kept my hope low, but you didn’t even live up TO YOUR OWN hope. so fuck you


And What the fuck is the deal with cheney? He actually has influence on Obama, apparently a SHIT TON! Just put cheney on fox news a few hours a day complaining about terrorists being about to attack trying to scare americans and all of a sudden obama doesn’t care about torture, extraordinary rendition, or even habeus corpus, we have not seen an improvement over Bush in the stubstantive issues.
Wait obama scared of cheney’s dire prognostications of terrorism…hmm….I wonder if there is a reason for Obama to be so scared….what do you guys think Cheney is capable of? ;)


Is it truly a radical concept for people to be charged with a crime and given a trial if they are to be imprisoned but are not prisoners of war?

Just charge them with a crime, or do not

First of all I just want to say that this the first time in my life I've been actually surprised in a good way about a sitting president. I was worried that Obama would be all talk, but instead he dove right in from day one. He set in motion progress on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, ended extraordinary rendition, ended Bush's spending freeze on overseas family planning, stopped legally sanctioned torture, and stated that Gitmo must be closed within a year.

The last thing is what I wanted to write a few paragraphs about. Most importantly why the fuck is it that we are just NOW having this debate? When we are finally going to start bandaging this wound, thats when all of a sudden the press makes the public aware of the details.
Here is a quick summary:
-Gitmo stands on a territory that the US never gave back to Cuba after driving the Spanish out in the very late 1800s. They pay a pittance in lease, which is why there can be a US military facility in a country that the US has an embargo on.
-Gitmo was chosen as the camp for captured "enemy combatants"
-Gitmo was chosen because it lay outside of any state, commonwealth, or province of the United sates. This meant that it could be argued that civilian law or even federal courts were outside their jurisdiction to regulate it. (Obviously this is fail, the federal government has jurisdiction over all military bases and BIA reservations, etc. basically everything in between)
-There is no such thing as an "enemy combatant", it is nowhere in the Geneva conventions. It was created so that the captured individuals would not be "prisoners of war" and thusly be protected under the Geneva conventions(that treaty everyone signed to prevent Naziesque atrocities from being committed in the future).
-Can't remember which legal stooge came up with this bullshit (my guess is either gonzalez, thurmond's scion, or the taft scion) but they wanted to ensure they wouldn't be prosecuted for the warcrimes they were going to commit. If these attorneys had come in to a possession of a pair of testicles at any point they could have written the exact opposite and these chickenhawks probably would have never tortured in the first place for fear of punishment. That of course assumes they weren't just told what their legal justification should say. The point is they argue that because Afghanistan is a "failed state" that makes the people captured "enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war". Precedent? Fuck precedent!
-A brand new secret military tribunal process was set up to try "enemy combatants" just for the war on terror.

So now that Gitmo is going to be shut down, all of a sudden the media finds it journalism to write about what Gitmo was in the first fucking place. So now the debate is: Where will they go?

The first suggestion comes from Christopher Bond(R-Missouri) to reopen Alcatraz. Ok...so I guess the Republicans aren't still salty about their loss(sarcasm). Ok so apparently the Republicans think that incarceration in a maximum security federal prison is a terrible idea, because the prisons will become magnets for attacks! Firstly it gave me pause that any Republicans would have have concern for the lives of a prisoner. Like there would be planes flying in to supermaxs all over the country. I realized that they could be arguing it would put the guards lives at risk, which I suppose is understandable. The argument though is ridiculous, prisons are made to hold criminals, they act like this is the first time prisons have been used to house criminals. Mcveigh, Unabomber, Moussaoui, Abdel-rahman(the blind sheikh), etc are all in the ADX Florence and they haven't gone through a terrorist attack or a terrorist break out.

How about if you fucking idiots stop making shit up and creating new laws for this and that, new exceptions to why we can't possibly live like we used to, and how the post 9/11 world will destroy us all?

Have a Federal prosecutor's office evaluate the cases and decide whether or not to charge these individuals with crimes. If they have committed a crime then have a trial.

OR

Establish that they are in fact prisoners of war, and go through the maritime/military law.


Where will they go?? They're not fucking superheroes we don't need to build an Arkham Asylum here or a fucking "negative zone", just put them in a cell. Like abdel-rahman already is in a fucking cell, just like binalshibh is already in a fucking cell, and just like every other CRIMINAL that has been convicted is in a cell.

I hope Obama keeps going. This is the kind of shit that Clinton would never do for fear of being labeled liberal. Obama knows what he wants, and how to get it, I just hope that what he wants is what he has been talking about. Most importantly we need an exit strategy immediately. I hate presidents, but honestly I have to say this was good shit the past few days.

generic title #1

So I've been away from this blog for awhile, but for some reason I'm drawn back to it after a long time. I read it every once in awhile, the realization that blogging is largely masturbatory is important. Fuck i've been writing too formally recently, I wanted to start a sentence, but I don't wanna start the sentence with I, even though I didn't capitalize the I in "i'm" back there. I haven't written a blog in awhile, I had deceived myself in to thinking I was somewhat anonymous on this site, but that is largely not true. I thought it would help if I created random blogs post a couple things and forget about it, this would make me truly anonymous meaning I could speak however the fuck I wanted, could express my deepest emotions and sentiments...Didn't really work...largely masturbatory. So with that in mind I like coming back here to read the bullshit I believed a long time ago. This is evidence of both my recalcitrance and my willingness to keep an open mind for the sake of learning. How it can evidence two contradictory aspects of myself?
I read it seeing how fucking self-righteous I was, and this is not historical. This aspect of the writing maybe is who I am, I can be nice to myself and call it passionate or rejection of nihilistic aspects of post-modernism. It is only evidence that I'm a stubborn arrogant asshat. This evidences my stubbornness.
I also read the posts and see the things that I thought I knew and today I...know better. Things I believed that are incorrect, but it would be wrong to go back and edit them, they're not fucking eternal permutations of one message they're a snapshot of what one asshole thought at that time.

I got my password back, emailed google or something and logged in and here I am, I had something I was going to write about...was profound...probably won't come back to me. Ok so it came back to me, but its not really profound, but in the spirit of being a stubborn arrogant asshat i'm not going to delete the above.
I found this killer search tool :
http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/

Its great for finding free e-books. If its pirating its pirating, but I don't have the money to buy 'em and the library never has the shit I want to read. Anything that is in your library can for the most part be found on: http://www.gutenberg.org (an Australian non-profit that legally puts e-txts on line) and http://www.manybooks.net
At my job I'm in front of a computer and one never knows if that day will be filled with endless downtime watching the seconds tick or non-stop action standing all day so I generally look for shit to read, because online games do get boring (but still fun http://www.nintendo8.com).
Ok so to get back to the point, I found this cool video:



Its the Tool song Lateralus and the narrator has some theories about the song. So my roommate and I passed a little time reading about "synchronicity" which is supposedly a word that Jung invented. Tool allegedly make a lot of their music with themes from Jung. So we both talked about the synchronicity we would enjoy in college which was watching the movie "Legend" and putting the Aenima album by Tool on pressing play right when the title of the movie appears in the opening credits. Tool's music is very open to synchronizing with stuff youtube has two videos of different fantasia's synching with the same song. But the thing is we heard about this years ago and assumed that many other people have heard of it. The "darkside of Oz" is well known, and is pretty cool, but not as good as Tool's music with a visually exotic Ridley Scott film. Apparently though nobody has ever heard of it as a long perusal of numerous google links, wikipedia entries, and even a site dedicated to these things(to the extent people have elaborate instructions on cd changer timing for multi-disc changing and complex instructions for random combinations of songs[even from separate albums/artists]and movies). So whatever, interesting stuff I like the archetypes, I always think of that Philip K Dick short story "beyond lies the wub" where the wub reads the guys mind and says something like "we have something similar to your Odysseus in our mythology" good shit, but I don't really but it. I still find the theory very interesting and want to explore it further.

THIS is why I wrote this: I have this desire to learn, I don't know if it is a mental instability, some fucking chip on my shoulder, part of my arrogance, genetic, or whatever, but I want to know more things. I want to read like crazy all different things, not finishing lots of them, but Reading shit tons of random stuff. This always makes me think of the Self Taught Man in "Nausea" (who turns out to be a pedophile). This character had a mission to read through all the books at the library, starting at A and going to Z (apparently this is before the dewey decimal system[i made a blog joke]). He talks about this person's purpose his essence, which was reading these books, but what the fuck would he do when he finished, what would he be without this purpose? Could be my human instinct that piece of our brain that makes us fucking regress to cavemen seeking for meaning through purpose, some divine thing to believe in. I mostly think that anyone who tells me I'm chosen, or have the opportunity for heaven or immortality, or that I have a piece of divinity in me just wants my money to sell me false hope. Life has no significant meaning, it is a mandala(which I found out is another fucking Jungian theme[holy shit synchronicity!]). Its nice to write informally again, but anyway I've been going to school spending all my money trying to get another piece of paper, there are various reasons and I won't go in to them here, but I think this is good that I'm spending all my money apart from rent/food/bus/bills on school. Its nice to be in class learning and being given deadlines, that is the key for me, fuck what the teacher tells me is truth I never kiss their ass, I don't got confrontational but I say what I know and back it up with reasoning/evidence. Ivan Illich was dead on in many of his critiques on schooling, but the deadlines make me finish something which is good.

So all my downtime is dedicated to reading shit for class, for example "UN Human Development Reports" holy shit I've had to read a lot of these, and the semester is only like halfway in. I suppose this is the extreme, lots of the other readings are interesting, but these reports are shit
So I want to read about Jung, because thats what I stumbled upon and I'm always trying to read more about Foucault and this PDf searching thing just returned like 100 fucking things and I want to read all of them!

Through participation in formal schooling, my self-education has been retarded, mainly due to the fact that time is zero sum game.

oh the urge to delete it all and close the box! haha, crave the anxiety of being open it seems.
Thats it, just downloaded Existenz gonna go check it out, never seen it before heard it was really loosely based on "Ubik" later.

blogging sucks

I've been watching some 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest', great flick and its on a channel that has commercial breaks in the movie. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the advertising symbolism, the sales heuristics and the plot of the movie. If you've seen the movie or read Kesey's book the part that strikes me about the asylum is of course the power relationship and the fact that the real asylum is on the outside. They keep saying 'they're not ready' to leave the hospital and the truth is nobody is ever ready to leave the hospital. None of us are ready we're all just floating through this universe trying to survive. The nurse wielding power and loving that she is overlord of these poor patients. Ratchett(rat shit) seeks this power, she gets off on it. She is a metaphor for the power everywhere, authority without legitimacy, she is ruler 'just cause' and her word is final. Outside of their world is our crazy world where things are no different. Tradition, faith, nationalism, etc. the blind leading the blind. Our world is one big insane asylum where the good guys always lose and the our prophets are killed in front of us as we cheer. Foucault and R.D. Baird talk about insanity being a social construct. The point is if you define insanity, we are really defining sanity in opposition to what we define as "insane" which is another way of saying "abnormal". It helps us to retain normalcy (a made up word, created during our depression, to "modulate distress" a powerful sales heuristic) to point out a group of "others" that are not "normal". I remember my cousin who had a large chunk of his leg burnt off in a car accident that killed his father and caused his sister to have to amputate her leg below the knee. Just in case he ever forgets that his Father is gone forever, god(I do not believe but I make mention, cause god is one sick son of a bitch to do this to anyone, let alone a child, so if by chance there is a god, he/she deserves to be chastised for what he/she did to this individual[and not just my cousin, but every child in that burn ward and every child in that hospital]) left a large burn scar on his calf that he needed to have grafts on in order to keep enough skin and muscle to avoid amputation. In summer camp I was told by my Grandmother that a boy was picking on my cousin by making fun of his scar. When my cousin informed him that that's not cool because his dad died in the accident that caused that burn, the teasing turned toward the fact his father was dead. What others thought around me when this story was relayed was how cruel the boy was and how his parents must be something like escaped nazis. What I said was this was nothing new all the people judging this boy did the same thing every day. They identified someone else as the outsider and possibly aurally decried said individual as an outsider. By doing so they artificially defined themselves as in the group that is not involed with the outsider. This individual created an "us" and "them" quickly and easily in sweeping motions. Although the us and them was completely illusory and poorly distinguished he tricked himself in to thinking that he belonged by ostracizing the kid with the scar. By defining him as the outsider he defined in opposition to that, making him if not an insider at the very least not an outsider.

The commercials though are like the power that Ratchett seeks. They sell products, but what they're really selling is emotions or even states of mind. The late night commercials are so overt in this it is incredible, if one were an extra- terrestrial observer one would conclude that 99% of our population were mentally retarded. Doing whatever we are told, staring at the flashing lights, and never using reason. A commercial for a penis enlarger showing a woman explaining how the medication works. You are buying confidence, you are buying sexual prowess, and you are paying for love in the end. I like Mazlowe's hierarchy, very poignant, and so easy to exploit now that its out there. So many genies out of so many bottles, we as consumers are always one step behind. Now another commercial telling me that I can talk to beautiful women who are tanning poolside over a telephone. She will be impressed and interested in everything I say, and sexually aroused at the sound of my voice. I am a stallion, an Adonis...oh it was all a dream...worse it was all a lie and now I've got buyers remorse. Five bucks down the drain half an hour of work, and that's because I'm lucky, that would be a full hour of work for most people, you know the ones on minimum wage that run just about fucking everything. But the only people on the phone conference were guys, and the penis enlarger was a sugar pill! Not to fear there is an aerosol can full of 5 cents of actual garbage culled from various sources. Well now its a body spray and its 8 bucks and unless you hose yourself down in the plastic scent of consumerism women will not fuck you. Did people want body spray 6 years ago? No, but they held a few focus groups and they realized (just as our alien observer would rightfully conclude) holy shit this place is filled with stupid people that do whatever you tell them to do. They believe you every time you make them a promise. Another commercial for a weight loss drug actually stating verbatim "we couldn't say it on tv if it wasn't true" the sheer audacity of this statement made me laugh out loud at first. I realized though that they are making this statement, because they're playing(as any salesperson will tell you) the 'law of averages'. If they show the commercial to 2 million people roughly 1.999 million of them are dumb enough to believe it, see? So it works perfectly, the law of averages. Now this chubby lady is saying she was even fatter before she had a plastic ring placed around the top of her stomach, it can be adjusted for tightness. It lost her weight, it made me think about getting some kind of surgery to open up my stomach so I could be the bane of all you can eat food deals everywhere, but I digress I was rambling about something wasn't I? Oh yah, the jist of ALL these fucking commercials is what mazlowe was talking about. People may not believe they are unattractive, obese, or posses diminutive genitalia. This is why you have to tell them that they lack any of many positive characteristics. Then make it apparent that if they can just purchase your product they can alleviate, if only temporarily, their disability.
They sell us what we want and never what we need. Television doesn't even write stories anymore its all half improv-half scripted and called "reality". I wish that Guy DeBord could have witnessed the phenomenon that is "reality television". We have made a spectacle of our spectacle, and now we love the cameras we are all voyeurs and exhibitionists. We want "fame", for some reason all or most of us are willing to go out on a limb so that people you've never met will know who you are.
The beer commercial shows a famous sculpture of a man with his fist on his head, in deep thought. One of the most simple and simultaneously amazing pieces of art. Its nothing more than a thinking monkey, but that's the point. He is just thinking and he can because he is human it is cartesian before Decartes. Well in this commercial the sculpture comes to life and goes to get beer. Now I have seen this sculpture in pictures before it is famous, but how many times have I possibly seen it in my life? 10..20? at the most, well by the time I've seen this commercial for the 30th time, I will associate this famous sculpture with a certain brand of beer. Or how about that beatles song, the led zeppelin song, or the rolling stones song? They are all associated with different models of cars and now when you flip on the radio cadillac or pontiac or whatever the fuck it is just got free time in your brain. Adbusters states it most concisely: "Advertising is imperialism of your brain". Vast sums of money are being tossed around and they are fighting over your mind...well not really...but they're definitely at war for all the stupid people's minds.

This scientologist was explaining why his religion was good he used the same words as a mormon television commercial, and as it turns out the same words as a pharmaceutical commercial. "Have you ever been depressed?" "Have you ever felt sad?" "Have you ever felt alienated?". Well let me tell you something folks: If you haven't felt sad, alienated, or depressed a few times in your life, guess what? It turns out you're an android, go get your voigt-kampff. Religion may be the most dangerous of all, because it does not promise you temporary pleasure, reprieve, release. Religion actually promises eternal happiness, paradise, whatever you wanna call it. This is what I used to think religion was a poison above all others, but it is apparent that the allure of pseudo-science, the use of scientific terms sways individuals as well. Ritalin and SSRI anti-depressants are 2 of the most over prescribed drugs on the market. Ritalin is pushed in to kids at a young age, teachers play a part in picking out the "disruptive" ones. And what a surprise in our patriarchal world the teachers would give it to females more than males, because women who speak when not spoken to are quite undesirable and they'll never make a good housewife. So dope 'em up and sit 'em back in class, It wasn't because you've been talking about some random stupid fucking lesson for an entire week that they were bored, its because they're all ADHD. Every commercial break there is an effort to get you to want some kind of medication. Allergies, sleep, depression, anxiety, weight loss, impotence...

It seems that much like the cruel child we have told ourselves that we cured unhappiness, and believed our lie in order to alleviate some fleeting feeling. We reach for our mood organ, but we entertain no thoughts of self-reflection. "Great happiness begets tragedy" is the Eastern saying. The time we live in..."the present" is no different than it ever has been. One cannot control their emotions, which is why it is unfair for these commercials to manipulate us, tell us to buy things we don't need and can't afford. But we can put our ability as the hard thinking monkey in to use, we can understand that if we feel dark, morose, or depressed it is only one more emotion on the path of life one of millions we will experience and most importantly it will fade in to the next emotion.
The only thing constant is change, Buddhists got that one right, impermanence is everything. It will not help us to pretend we are a mental construct like "normal" or a fleeting emotion like "happy".
Socrates said call no man happy until he is dead, because nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. It is one of the more existential things Socrates said and it is a good reminder that no matter what chemical is ruling your brain at the present moment the grass is not always greener on the other side.

School vs. Prison

So why not write about what I see as two similar institutions in United Statesian life. The first being the School and the second being prison. In order to proceed first we must provide an operant definition of both institutions.

School for the purpose of this essay is to include public and private schooling from preschool to at least the end of secondary education. I shall elaborate on the reasoning behind this definition as we proceed.
Prison for the purpose of this essay is the entirety of Corrections or Incarcerations, whether public or private.

Schools are similar to Prisons in many ways the first of which being they are both compulsory. It is illegal for an individual to not attend school until they are 16, which is the age they are given the choice to discontinue schooling. Incarceration is punishment by a court of law for a violation of the codified universal moral code, or temporary imprisonment before trial for infractions. If one chooses to discontinue their education prior to 16 they can be incarcerated for choosing to do so.

Before Columbine, schools were mainly afraid of one thing: black kids. I mention this merely to point out that one focal point of the wholesale of fear leads to another. I have not been to secondary school in some years so I do not know if today it is not Columbine, but Islamic militants which are the focal point of paranoia transforming the public school in to a panopticon. When I first started attending Secondary School the news would let us know that gang members(Politically Correct speak for “black male youth”) were shooting people in schools. Spawning films about the heroism of Kipling’s “white man’s burden”, white woman or white man saves the savages from cannibalism, just without evangelism(i.e. "Dangerous Minds", I don't feel like dedicating the percentage of my brain it would take to remember the names of the other ones which were basically all the same plot). Then, an event: two angry youth decided to use their freedom which granted them easy access to a large amount of power(i.e. firearms) to hurt others. The ability has always been there and it always will, as we move forward in time weapons will become more powerful and it will become even easier for one person to gain life taking powers of greater magnitude.

This is one cost of freedom, but after it happened black youth were no longer the boogeyman, instead the kids who others picked on, they were dangerous. The kid that just wanted to be left alone, cause people talked so much shit to him was the boogeyman. So cameras had to be put up, to use the language of our contemporaries each and every school in North America had been infiltrated by splinter cells of murder-suicide militant activists. Willing to use violence to push their agenda of murder-suicide, so cameras needed to be put everywhere. In ETHS on the very sign there are more than 3 cameras. Wait I want to write this again so you can read it twice: This high school had 3 cameras on their front yard sign, you know the ones with all the landscaping around them? Well if you look on either side of the name just above the flowers you’ll see the dead eye of hal-9000 staring right back at you. Just as Bentham said and Foucault expounded upon the panopticon coerces by means of the illusion of omniscience. As long as there is an electric eye somewhere the individual assumes they’re being watched whether or not someone is manning the control room. So they act as the individual possessing power on the other side of that eye wants them to act.

Now one of my favorite similarities is of course the objective of prisons and secondary schools: getting their visitors a GED! Many prisons claim they don’t let a prisoner go until they have taken the required classes to get their GED. At the very least most prisons have literacy programs, sorry most PUBLIC prisons.

Which brings us to our next similarity they are both just SO damn marketable! With Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America making a set contracted amount, then making money off each bed it fills, and even beyond that money they are publicly traded on wall street! I know, I know you’re thinking “Shit! I’m quitting my job and selling my possessions to get in on that business!”
Well hold on there may be a more lucrative opportunity in a different private sector job: schools are also marketed, in most cities around the country private schooling is the only decent education there is. Which means its great business and people gotta get educated so who cares how high tuition is, they’ll always pay it, classes will always be filled, and hell they’ll even thank you for allowing them to pay the king’s ransom. They'll love you forever for allowing you to pay them 20thousand a year, because their child was "admitted". Not only that but if you are a religious school you don’t even have to pay taxes! Oh wait it gets better, just like government efforts to encourage more private prison, many plans circulate (some have been passed at city and statewide levels) for “vouchers” or government subsidies. These “vouchers” are a pittance when compared with a single semester’s tuition, but its free money from the government…Even if you’re a religious school, Establishment clause be damned!

The best critique on compulsory schooling out there is Ivan Illich who wrote “Deschooling Society” and pointed out the inherent power relationship between student and pedagogue in the classroom environment of compulsory schooling. Foucault also expounded upon the relationship between truth and power which grants credence to Illich’s conclusions. The student believes the teacher, the teacher could say anything and because the teacher is not only in a position of power and is therefore correct and should be obeyed (A la Stanley Milgram), but also the teacher actually has the power to punish for not believing their truth. I mean i'm not talking go sit in the corner or go to the principal's office, corporal punishment is still legal in most places.



So being a successful student or prisoner means training in one or both of two things:

1. Evasion, pretending to agree in appearance, but disagreeing and keeping your mouth shut. This quality is key for any population that will accept a totalitarian state, knowing things you see are wrong yet still keeping your mouth shut and shuffling onward is needed to get through school or prison with less punishment.

2. Blind acceptance more easily understood as “faith”. My dad always said his dad always used to say “never trust a person that says ‘trust me’”. To me this meant that one should not just believe blindly, instead one should think critically and evaluate the credibility of anything for yourself. Instead to get through schooling, one memorizes the “facts” declared as truth by the teacher. This student will fail if they spend time questioning instead of memorizing and answering, because there is only so much time for research in a day. Not only that but it becomes a social acceptance issue and a competition issue among your peers. One is stupid or smart in these worlds, very black and white. Tests are administered to gauge the extremity of the students' intelligence or stupidity, in direct relation to the other students.

In conclusion prison and schools are so similar, because their money making potential was recognized years ago by the same individuals who sit on top of the largest companies profiting from them. Prisons suck money out of our pockets when all we have to do is end prohibition. Schools are a place to learn, you should not forfeit your constitutional rights at the door to quote Tinker. Leave the kids alone and let them do their thing.

Don’t get me wrong I am not for dismantling the education system entirely at this point, I’d say it needs dramatic reform. Fortunately the means are already available its called the fourteenth amendment. If the system cannot be reformed then yes it is true that the internet provides an alternative to schooling through its’ vast forums which can be used as “learning networks” as Ivan Illich describes them. All their needs to be is a site that allows the free expression of ideas without any form of censorship.
Now after wading through my bullshit here is your reward: Some of you will say this represents an extreme example, but this is the norm of modern schooling especially in the ‘inner-city’ a.k.a. minority districts. It seems this school took its preparation for acceptance of a police state to a higher level. We can only say this because this is the only example we have footage of. The reason we have the footage is someone with access to it actually had a conscience, and probably lost his or her job, because of their morality.

There are simple ways to reform both the education and justice systems. First is the justice system the first step that must be taken is to end prohibition and record racial information of individuals searched, arrested, or pulled over. As the very specific evidence regarding how disproportionally the law is enforced come to light policy reformation will logically follow. Although simple steps towards prohibition would be nice, the end result is to decriminalize victimless crime. Abolition of Mandatory minimums sentencing, legalization of medicinal marijuana, or spending more money on treatment and education than incarceration for drugs. To accomplish the positive effects of all these one would only need to abolish prohibition. End the drug war and positive effects would be forthcoming, such as the crippling of all street gangs and the entropy of many militant groups across the globe.

The other element schooling can be reformed through a case that already exists called Rodriguez vs. San Antonio Independent School District. In which, under a 14th amendment argument, the district court decided that in order to receive equal protection under the law(equal public education) funding had to be comparable. The case was overturned on appeal, but the logic, morality, and overall legality of the original decision still holds water in my opinion. As I argued in the last essay unless the funding is comparable the education won't be. Instead of local property taxes being the funding for local schools creating little suburban bastions of gated communities and public schools that can actually afford decent teachers, there should be a state fund that is divided proportionally. Per capita, or per school, or per teacher needed; if funding is made somewhat comparable then we would see a rebirth of intelligence in our country. The Ingenuity gap that Thomas Homer-Dixon talks about would be hurdled in a single generation.

Although these 2 simple, morally sound, and easy to implement plans will have the positive effects I listed and have almost no negative effect, the odds of them ever being adopted are minute. These reforms are deemed radical, most likely by the individual even reading this. The first one is "radical" because "drugs are bad" just like "ford is in his flivver". Just another post-hypnotic suggestion, a "normal" ideal, a "tradition", or just another way to say faith.
The second would be seen as "communist". Our culture is still recovering from the cold war, which was nothing but a propaganda war. The Governments bullshitted both their enemies and their own people. They had to make their own people believe that a massive theft of wealth from the entire spectrum of people to the individuals who own the defense contracting corporations which have the best relations with the ruling faction was necessitated. So now any attempts at social justice, welfare, or just to alleviate the suffering of those who are not from the middle or upper class are seen as "Communist" or "Socialist". Truth is, social justice has more than altruistic consequences it has utilitarian and social consequences that effect everyone,

Rome for the Romans

The job I recently started used to belong to a Mexican.

Take that immigration critics.

Everyone one of you had some ancestor that was an immigrant in the first place, its very likely you've all had an illegal immigrant for an ancestor.

Unless you're 100% "American Indian" this country is just as much yours as someone that speaks spanish.

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I went in to a 7-11 with 2 of my freinds. It seems we've become quite smitten by a beer called Hacker-Pschor Weise. So the nearest distributor of pint bottles of the beer is this 7-11 near a cop station so its always filled with police cruisers getting coffee/doughnuts and its in a somewhat diverse neighborhood. And when I say diverse I don't mean it is somewhere on the spectrum of gentrified or shared between latinos and whites or blacks and whites. I mean there are many different languages spoken around the area, as well as people from all over the globe.

Anyway I got off subject. So we walk in to grab a buncha beers and I notice a guy behind us coming through the door. He got out of a white van and had a comcast hat on, so at first I assumed he was a cable guy or something. Then I noticed how obviously drunk he was and how he had a lady with him. He wasn't a cable guy just some dude getting some beers for him and his lady to continue drinking while driving.

Walking in to the store we pass by the owners of the 7-11 who are of middle eastern descent and speak with an accent that shows English is a second language. Going around the counter we pass by a young mother with a few kids. They speak spanish to eachother the siblings teasing and playing with one another, just bear cubs.

Walking through the turnstile in to the beer section I point out the vast reserves on display of the moment's favorite beer. Turning to consult with my 2 cohorts on how many beers we shall procure-comcast guy sez to someone around him "I'm sick of this Ishmael shit."

Looking me directly in the eye he asks "Know what I mean?".
Normally I ignore the drunk look straight through him and while looking straight through him say something to my freind behind me or say "excuse me" and closely examine the bottles on the other side of him.That day I was in a weird mood and plus I get tired of individuals shitting on certain groups of people.

So I said "What are you talking about?"

He said "You know America...This is America...speak the language."

I said "What America are you talking about? America is the whole of the western hemisphere, do you mean the United States of America?"

"oh getting technical" he says with a twinkle in his eye that I interpreted as foreboding. "I like that"

"Well its true" I said as I looked through him, focusing once again on my task of making him disappear.

He muttered to his ladyfreind then audibly "I was in the marines for some years."

Remembering my interpretation of his stare, I bit my tongue before I could ask him if he thought it was worth it.

I paid for my beer and exited the store. Looking to my left were 2 polish guys jabbering away in their native language.

***************************************


Sometimes it makes you feel good to be a smart ass....well maybe all the time. When I was doing door to door sales we went to this shop that had a sign on the cash register:
"You're In America, Speak English".

I said to her "shouldn't the sign say 'you're in England speak English'?"

The sheer stupidity of the sign had not dawned on her
"Real funny" she said with a 'shut yer smart ass up' tone of voice.
Not only is America the whole of the western hemisphere so there are more Spanish speakers than English, but English is not even from the United States, which is what her sign is assuming people interpret "america" as. Is that the mainstream? Am I just out of the mainstream? Or is this lady actually that stupid? Or was it the nationalism requiring faith thusly overwhelming reason.

This woman worshipped America, but didn't even know what it was.