Category Archives: The Human Condition

No cost to telling lies

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…might be one summary of the current phenomenon we know as “social media” these years. Before even going to the concept of misinformation (or rather, disinformation), we ought to be able to agree that social media is replete with falsehoods and outright lies.

How will you put the brakes on the wanton spread of harmful falsehoods online? If we value truth – or approaching the subject from a different angle – acknowledge that viral falsehoods has a potential to harm individuals, groups or even society as a whole, then we must also realize that we cannot slow the online (dys-)culture of lying, if lies told do not come at a cost; that is, if people are willfully able to tell lies with no inhibition, pause or remorse whatsoever.

Political retirement age

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Both Biden and Trump should be summarily dismissed from office on age infirmity grounds.

Retirement age ought to apply as much to politicians as to workingmen, moreso in fact; as soon as you turn 70 years of age, you should automatically be barred from office, except lesser advisory positions.

Political office today is an extremely demanding post, which you need to be a nearly supremely capable, energetic and mentally focused individual to hold in a way that respects the needs and interests of an electorate that puts its trust in you.

Oh, America!

So… you guys have that prez race going on at what nears a crescendo, having had to listen to the above-the-usual political racket for over a year.

What can be said on that whole affair? What HAS been said? Lots. Oodles. Far more than a single Library of Congress can encompass. More than the Bush elections and drama ever elicited. Lots. Whatever.

My summary for now is that Trump is a self-made stand-up comedian, and Hilary is the best president you can buy for money.

People with a flair for the cringey, embarassing and scary (think Plan 9 From Outer Space, only in colour) should hoard popcorn the way preppers hoard bullets. More to come.

That R word…

Some say that strife between this or that group of ethnicity or national/popular group identification isn’t racism, because we are all part of the same race, that being the H.S.S. : Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Thinking Homonids).

While this is slightly true, it must be understod that the word “racism” has its roots in the word and concept “race”, which since ancient time has referred to “a people”, ie. any significant group identification (from within or without), and since most people since then of at least something differing skin colour have tended to be of a different ethnic group (and thus likely of a different cultural makeup) that the, “race” has thus extended to referred to “different culture”. (The Romans called themselves “the Toga-clad Race”. Hmmm!).

The 19th and 20th centuries have seen a massive upheaval in the conception of “races”, in form of our understanding of cellular composition and function, upwards through physiological and bodily workings, towards ethnology and anthropology, but even more so a push to even out human differences, be it material shortcomings to inter-cultural depredations. That much is fine; increase knowledge to push back the darkness, reduce sharp differences to ease group tensions.

Considering the scientific and ethnological advances the word “Racism” has thus come to means, in its modern and precise form, an active discrimination and persecution of other ethnicites.

However. While it is traditionally thought that the “right” (on the foolish one-dimensinal Left-Right scale of political identity/allegiance) is solely where racism is found, most actual racists would call themselves “rightists”, if not explicitly so, then state their enemies to be “leftists”. So; they are easily pigeonholed. (Human sapience at its finest, si?).

In that the “right” ostensibly harbours racism, and the “left” likewise ostensibly fights it in its mission to equilibrate the entire world, the concept of racism has been extended:

The extended definition of racism, is one which is morphed into whatever form and fine-grainedness the accuser wants it to be, which means that anyone can become a “racist” at 5 seconds notice. This is particularly used to browbeat Western critics of Islam, or at least any non-liberal+moderate branch/form of Islam, at which 9-tailed-self-and-other floggerds will of course never skip a beat to do. Discrimination of speakers of different languages also tend to fall under this smear. ( I have however only on a bare few occasions seen “racism ” applied to cases of discrimination irt. sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and such. Most leftists and far-leftists are not deranged enough to extende the already distended concept that far, most are perfectly content to use other ‘isms’ to attack and smear their purported opponents. Oh, wait. Those naughty Speciesists.)

So while these parrots have added to the mandatory operational vocabulary these emotionally laden semi-specious-concepts to attack any ideological heretic for being ‘racist’, they have in the process managed to impose such a massive inflation to the word that it has partially become meaningless. It has lost most of its descriptive valus, and become an emotional attack on whomever. Anyone can at all times be publicly flogged for their transgressions of thought. All dissidence will be crushed, any humans, esp. those with somewhat wayward conceptions of the world must learn through degradation and punishment.

So, not only are these leftists and extremist-leftists are not only verbally (and worse) abusing those they hate so, they are especially doing damage to those who could be educated to alter their mindset. If the goal is to enlighten “the human race”, these leftists are the ones that must be flattened.

Oh, and one peculiar thing. Once again, while the leftists are expected to decry national identification (amongst white westerners of course…) and other forms Western tribalism of whatever form, ie. peple flying their ethnicity under banners of varying shapes and colours, did it occur to anyone that these leftists are themselves a tribe, marching under a particular banner* of a Red hue? Is it not perculiar how these wayward beings hate everyone else so, but their own tribal identity and their own incandescent hatred is excepted from examination and censure?

*) I am generalizing. The “Red banner” is in fact a rag-tag collection of brutal, abusive, and madly purist ideologial identities, and they have been on each others throats for decades, if not a century: The Stalinists hate the Trots, the Trots hate the Anarchists, The Anarchists despise the Communists, The old Marxists consider the Marxist-Leninists to be fundamentalists AND the fucking Bernsteinites to be revisionists (in its decidedly negative form), the REAL *ahem* Marxist-Leninists dislike the Marxist-Leninist-(Stalinists) though some concede that Stalin had the right intentions, the Maoists are out back saying “WTF mate?”, the AnarchoCommunists are sitting in their cubbyhole grownling at eveyone else on the battlefield for shaking their heads at them and then running elsewhere, the Hoxhaites are all dead or hiding in a closet somewhere… most Reds are hugging Fidel’s image (and crying that the Imperialists gave Che lead imfusions, all at the same time as their icon is endlessly imprinted on Capitalist-distributed T-shirt in pretty red, Salot Sar-ites (revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist anti-imperialism-nationalism…. damn, this is good stuff.) are also hiding in the closet (I think Noam Chomsky learned from his youthful follies) together with Shining Path-wanderers, most Reds, esp. the Hipsters cheered the revolutionary fervor of Hugo Chavez all while he was enriching himself and his own clan from “his” nation’s (omg, tribal identity! destroy!) oil riches and rich landed estates (State-Capitalism, right?) … now that he’s dead, they still keep his memory revered as a monument to the resistance of American Imperialism. There are even a couple of Juche-ists sprinkled around the world, oh, by the way FUCK JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, the savior of Capitalism! Oh, re. State-Capitalism, since it was shown that all the mass-murdering Communist states were actually State-Capitalist states, most Reds worth their salt HATE THEM AS WELL!

Who said ideology is no fun?

Global Happiness

Stumbling across this:

http://www.livescience.com/51325-happiest-countries-2014.html

In the survey, researchers asked more than 146,000 people all over the world questions about five aspects of their well-being: their sense of purpose, social relationships, financial situations, community involvement and physical health. Based on their responses, participants were considered “thriving,” “struggling” or “suffering” in each of those five aspects.

My excerpt of the highest 7 scorers:

The other countries in the top 10, ranked by the percentage of people who were thriving in three or more aspects of well-being, were:

  • Costa Rica: 47.6 percent
  • Puerto Rico: 45.8 percent
  • Switzerland: 39.4 percent
  • Belize: 38.9 percent
  • Chile: 38.7 percent
  • Denmark: 37.0 percent
  • Guatemala: 36.3 percent

Since I’m in Denmark, I’m not that surprised that we are in top of the global happiness pile – and this has been remarked upon several times in the American press over the past couple of years. Compared to the more pronounced stratification/inequality and higher incidence of poverty of the American society, the relative economic homogeneity of Denmark does concievably make people feel more alike and ‘together’.

Now, the puzzling thing is how several Latin-American countries pop to the top of the list, despite their less materially properous society. This alone indicates that absolute material abundance does not automatically carry with it happiness in life. Of course, it has been known for a while that meterial abundance for individuals and households only increases happiness up to a certain point, as which it does nothing at all.

Be that as it may, what caught my more sarcastic side wa the bottom of the pile:

The lowest ranking country, Afghanistan, had 0 percent of residents thriving in at least three aspects of their well-being, according to the findings. Other countries at the bottom of the rankings included:

  • Bhutan: 3 percent
  • Cameroon: 3.1 percent
  • Togo: 3.9 percent
  • Tunisia: 4.0 percent
  • Congo Kinshasa: 4.1 percent

Why point this out?

Because Bhutan decided to abolish accounting their national prowess measured in GDP some years ago, and instead go with “Gross Domestic Happiness”. Judging from this, they failed miserably, with only Afghanistan scoring worse. Epic fail as they say.

What’s more is that Bhutan is a Buddhist country, something that would – naively – lead me to believe that it is nation of happy and content people, since Buddhism is as system of not as much acceptance of the state of things (which I would think leading to a degree of indifference towards material wealth), but rather insight into the state of things internal as external, and that this could lead to a generally more accomplished pursuance and achievement of the goals that pertain to the necessities of human life and happiness.

Apparently not. Of course, Buddhism nor any religion for that matter, in its various forms and interpretations is not (automatically) a shining … road… to happiness and peace, on the individual level or the societal level.

Yet we are all individuals, imperfect, confused, largely unknowing of the many intricacies of life and existence. And the execution of statecraft (as libertarians and anarchists know 🙂 has a life on its own,  tending to bend and pervert the principles it is founded upon, or upheld by its constituent populace.

Any Buddhism does not define its followers, or those who live in its vicinity. So while I know know that n-Buddhism is certainly imperfect, the fact that a country with a populace of plenty of deprivation and discontent, is formally Buddhist, is not an indictment of that belief system.

So there. Enough pocket fluff for now.

This due to that

Various religious scriptures are in its contents, as well as the uttered wisdom of holy men, often boiled down to the slogan ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’, which is on appearence reasoanle enough.

Did it occur to you that this summation is a good analogue of Axelrod’s game-theoretic strategy of ‘Tit-for-Tat”? This is fascinationg in that the TfT approach to games (i.e. interactions between conscious agents, leading up the ladder to human interaction on a given scale)  is as per current theory, experiment and evidence available, the method of cooperation which in its process is the most stable and as well provides the best results; that is the least conflict.

‘Do unto others…’ may not (seem to) work that well for individuals, but if applied on the larger scale, it is  likely to produce the result of a lasting, low degree of social agression.

The irony of this is of course that successfully applying this on a larger scale is precisely predicated by that of individual adopting it.

The Blitz, 75 years in retrospect and perspective

7th of September, 1940 – on this month, it is 75 years since London (and other major United Kingdom cities) started bearing the brunt of the of the Nazi-German ‘Blitz’, a series of massive bombings of industrial facilities, but more known for its purposeful targeting of the civilian populace, aimed at demoralizing the population up to the expected invastion (operation Zeelöwe / Sea Lion) of the island.

While the loss of life was great, with well over 44,000 lives perished, the devastation of the cities was likewise massive. The effect of the Blitz however was the opposite of the intended demoralisation; it galvanised the popular spirit of the war effort under Winston Chuchill’s resistance of the Nazi war machine, which eventually was smashed and the totalitarian system and ideology behind it, utterly crushed.

However the British were not the only ones to suffer the terror of war atrocities – as the tides of war turned, the Allies were increasingly raiding the Nazi production capacity, and one centre of such was Hamburg. The city was air-raided over the span of a week in late July 1943, with terrible conseqences – over 42,000 dead due to firestorms due to incendiary bombs igniting the dry lands, resulting in the formation of a enormous firey vortex that did not only torch the housing like a blast furnace, but claimed lives by the absolute horror of its victims being sucked into the vortex due to the underpressure created by the superheated air rising rapidly into the skies.

Likewise, the raid of Dresden in Feburary 1945 – 70 years ago – was an example of wartime terror, claiming up to 25,000 lives.

In the Sino-Pacific theatre, there was the Rape of Nanking / Nanjing which claimed at he very least 40,000 lives and untold human suffering due to unrestrained rape of it inhabitants at the hands of the Japanese. Conversely, the American firebombing of Tokyo, considered the most destructive conventional air raid in history with at least 88,000 dead and over a million left homeless, the raids on Japan culminating in the Nukes over Nagasaki and Hiroshima with its over 100,000 dead, are likewise examples of the enormuous bloodshed and destruction inherent to war. (Additionally, compare these casualty counts to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, military and civilian, in the embittered and supremely intense fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa).

In war, there will be variations of the brutality on the different sides, but there are no single party that are exempt from perpetrating atrocities.