Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Hoopla Audiobooks

This is a follow-up to:
https://koreanseoulfood.blogspot.com/2022/04/audiobooks.html


The Hoopla app allows you to check out for free digital media from any libraries to which you are a member. Some of the audiobooks I've listened to recently:

Upheaval by Jared Diamond

Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14643256

This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11752639


Decline and Fall by John Michael Greer https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15093790

The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15095805

Future Earth by Eric Holthaus

The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal by Noam Chomsky

Animal Liberation by Peter Singer https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12300575

Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

Biomimicry by Janine Benyus

The Edible Ecosystem Solution by Zach Loeks https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14888116

Patterns of Connection by Fritjof Capra https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14596469

The Ecology of Law by Fritjof Capra https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11827859

How the World Works by Noam Chomsky https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12624247

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11822987

American Fascists by Chris Hedges https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/10756830

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/10755075

The End of Faith by Sam Harris https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11902370

Humanists in the Hood by Sikivu Hutchinson https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13581361

What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13805122

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12025813

Reclaiming Native Culture by Winona LaDuke https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14206830

Earth Magic by Starhawk

The Druidry Handbook by John Michael Greer https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14095268

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12036674

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11872743

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler 


Bigger Than Bernie by Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12837342

Black Marxism by Cedric J Robinson https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14102611

Decolonial Marxism by Walter Rodney https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14586008

Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen

Dollars for Life by Mary Ziegler https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15139754

WikiLeaks by David Leigh

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12693315

The Attachment Parenting Book by William and Martha Spears

Teaching To Transgress by Bell Hooks https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12315281

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11187579

Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom by Kerry McDonald

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11586893


Feminism Is for Everybody by Bell Hooks https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12315141

Ain't I a Woman by Bell Hooks https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12300838

Black Feminism Reimagined by Jennifer C Nash https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12373135

The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13539739

In Case You're Curious by Planned Parenthood https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14316236

Opening Up by Tristan Taormino

Porn - Philosophy for Everyone by Various https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13695909

SM 101 by Jay Wiseman

See also:

My Goodreads profile:

My Youtube playlist Audiobooks:

My Amazon Audible Wishlist:

My Social Media Links:
at No comments:

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Advanced Persistent Threat

HALP!


(Put on your tin foil hats first.)


I have been the victim of an advanced persistent threat. As crazy as this sounds, I have reason to believe the perpetrators are none other than the US Intelligence Community.


For instance, on multiple occasions my iPhone geolocation was improperly masked. A few times I caught my Google Maps and Google search results location indicating that I was in northern Virginia when I was in fact 30 miles away. Nor had I ventured to Northern Virginia in the recent past at the time. Oddly, both quickly reset to my actual location.


You can see another example attached. I was trying to reset my Apple ID password after all of my accounts, including LastPass password manager, were hacked, logged out of my devices remotely, and passwords and reset information changed. I'm struggling to recoup my digital identities.



In the example attached, Apple sent me an automatic reply when I attempted to recover my account. (Apple never did follow up with recovery help.) Again, the geolocation provided was not my actual location. Apple said I made my reset request from Annapolis Junction, which is the home of NSA and other IC field sites. I actually made the request from home over 20 miles away, and I had not ventured from home in many months, nearly a year. Nor had I been to Annapolis Junction since late 2019.


Clearly my cell phone data is being proxy forwarded and then masked, though the US Intelligence Agencies are incompetent fools.


I have two questions:


1. WHAT THE ACTUALLY FARQ?! Mass surveillance is illegal, unethical, and immoral (thank you, Ed!), but specifically targeting an individual US citizen goes factors beyond. What do you recommend that I do?


2. How the heck can I recover my online identities given that the login information, passwords, and password resets have been changed on most of my accounts? I was able to recover two of my email accounts because of phone number TFA, but in many cases this is either not an option or fails to work as it should (eg, Apple ID).


Also, people at times enter my home when I leave. I don't want to discuss this right now, but I have evidence and a sheriff's report I filed when this first started happening. However, the last time I spoke publicly about this I was persecuted.


Law enforcement entered my home without a warrant to serve an Extreme Risk Protection Order based on false and misleading information. They eized my firearms and did not provide a receipt as required by court order. They then handcuffed me even though I was cooperating and drove me to a Carroll Hospital Center where I was confined in a small room for 45 hours in violation of the court order. I was never examined by a mental health professional, much less within the 6 hours as required by the court order. I indicated this to hospital staff, who ignored me.


I was then transported to Brooklane in Hagerstown against my signed "do not consent" where I was coerced to take medication and voluntarily admit myself, both of which I consistently refused. Upon discharge, I discovered by accident that I had been diagnosed with a serious illness, yet no one ever discussed this with me, and indeed I only had two consultations with a doctor for less than five minutes total, inadequate to make a diagnosis for such a serious illness. I dispute this diagnosis, but was not allowed to speak to the doctor.


Thereafter, law enforcement harassed me at my home one to three times a day between 8am and midnight, calling my phone, ringing the doorbell, banging on the door and windows, and shining spotlights inside my home at night. This happened approximately 30 times over a nearly consecutive 15 day period. I conducted open source research on the phone number and discovered this 443 area code was registered in Grimesland, NC. Nothing exists in Grimelsand except a Voice of America station where Foreign Service Officers receive 6 months of training.


See https://koreanseoulfood.blogspot.com/2022/03/unwelcome-visitors.html


The court order has expired and law enforcement refuse to return my forearms and ammunition to me in accordance with the court order.


Therefore I refuse to leave my house any more until I get figure this out, protect my property, and somehow receive compensation for damages and pain and suffering. The attacks I described above are actually, almost unbelievably, only a small fraction of the many other attacks I have endured. This is not the forum to discuss those other attacks for reasons I have discussed above. Here, I can only say that it is at least analogous to CIA MKUltra brainwashing torture, psychological warfare, and, for lack of better understanding, something that can only be described of as psionic warfare. Needless to say, the past several years have been perhaps the worst nightmare I could possibly imagine.

at No comments:

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Favorite Quotes & Lyrics

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

"In an insane world, a sane man must appear insane" - Kurt Vonnegut


"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - Rita Mae Brown (not Einstein)


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw


"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” - Henry David Thoreau


"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein


"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." - Benjamin Franklin


"The remedy is worse than the disease." - Francis Bacon


"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller


"An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr


"Nobody is free until everybody is free." - Fannie Lou Hamer


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead



“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire

“The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.” - Thomas Paine

"My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own." - Sam Harris

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trussed Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking after all, 'tempting' Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such a psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: 'I was only obeying orders.' Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion


Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon, Imagine


When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh, joyfully, oh, playfully watching me
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical
Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I said, now, watch what you say, they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
Oh, won't you sign up your name? We'd like to feel you're acceptable
Respectable, oh, presentable, a vegetable
Oh, take, take, take it, yeah

But at night, when all the world's asleep
The questions run so deep For such a simple man
Won't you please (oh, won't you tell me)
Please tell me what we've learned?
(Can you hear me?) I know it sounds absurd
(Oh, won't you tell me) please tell me who I am
Who I am, who I am, who I am

Ooh
Hey

'Cause I was feeling so logical
Yeah
D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Digital
Yeah, one, two, three, five
Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah
Ooh, it's getting unbelievable
Yeah
Getting, getting, yeah, yeah
Uh, uh, uh, uh

Supertramp, Logical Song
at No comments:

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Degrowth

I like this article.

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/degrowth-is-the-only-path-to-a-sustainable-future

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. - Henry David Thoreau

 "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein

at No comments:

News: Religion and Russia

Why religions care more about membership than they do about people's well being:

"Some scholars say that it's just an inevitable consequence of development for societies to secularize. Once there are strong secular institutions, once people's basic needs are met, there's less need for religion," Kramer said.


This explains why religion tends to fear and attack secularism: people will no longer need religion. True spirituality would not care how people's well being is improved.

This also explains the contradiction of conservative religion: they want to improve people's lives only enough so that they are dependent upon the church, but not enough to liberate them from dependencies altogether.

This is why I subscribe to ideas such as atheism, secular humanism, libertarian socialism, eco-socialism, and green anarchy.


Modi tells Putin "Now is not the time for war".


Rarely is there a time for war. War is unnecessary suffering, senseless destruction, and a stupid waste of resources. Imagine how much better everyone could be educated, housed, and medically treated without military-industrial complexes or arms trade!

Currently, world leaders police each other in such a way that allows the club to get away with crimes against humanity. They shield each other from prosecution in the world court. Every nation should be subject to the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, without exception.

The UN Security Council must undergo a major reform. At a minimum, the veto must be abolished and Southern Hemisphere countries given permanent membership. I recommend Brazil, Kenya, Egypt, and India. Or each world region could be allotted permanent membership seats for non-renewable terms, and only after nomination is approved by the General Assembly.

Russia was wrong to attack Ukraine. All conflict should be approved democratically by the world, and unilateral action should receive the full force of the world. But so was NATO wrong to expand to Russia's borders. How would the United States react if the Warsaw Pact expanded to Canada and Mexico? NATO and all other military alliances should dissolve, leaving one pact of UN Peacekeepers, to which all nations pledge.


Texas and Florida ship migrants out of state:


1. This lacks compassion. Human species are one family.
2. US foreign policy created the migrant refugee crisis through CIA secret wars since the 1950s and other US foreign policy failures before then.
3. Rejecting refugees is anti-American

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

4. The American economy thrives on migrant labor, especially Texas and Florida!
5. This is an inefficient, costly way to re-home migrants.
6. This is merely a political stunt that hurts people who are used as pawns to score points for their racist, xenophobic constituency.

I woke up in Idiocracy. This is a dystopia. I'm just waiting to leave this stupid biblical apocalypse story, sue the directors and producers, and bankrupt the studio.
at No comments:

Friday, September 16, 2022

What If

What if the world's richest take a joy ride to outer space, but it explodes, killing them all? And they had all left all of their wealth to charities that benefit the most vulnerable and marginalized?

Sorry, just dreaming over here...
at No comments:

Monday, September 12, 2022

White Fragility

How does a person of color become an apologist for white fragility?



I don't understand this Uncle Tom/Clayton Bigsby stuff. 


Anyone who knows anything about social studies will tell you that there is institutionalized, systemic racism in the United States and throughout most of the world. In fact, monopolizing the levers of societal power and unfairly discriminating to maintain, consolidate, and increase unfair power differentials is based on a number of factors.


Intersectional feminism shows how disadvantages stack or compound. The classic example is how black women are treated worse than both white women and black men, but many other variations of interpolated disadvantages exist.


Conversely, societal advantages stack or compound. Thus, those at the top of the pecking order are typically wealthy, white, conservative, religious men.


None of these advantages or disadvantages are fair. We all know the saying, "Life isn't fair". No, it isn't, but it should be. It is incumbent upon all of us to strive for a fair and just society. What is is no excuse for not striving for what could be, even should be.

As a middle-class white male, I have privileges. It is no attack upon me to recognize this, and I feel no "white guilt" about it. I did not choose to be white or male, and even my economic status is largely an outcome of the status into which I was born.

Other traits are at least more inherited than chosen, if not entirely so or even if somewhat environmentally influenced, such as gender and sexual orientation. Therefore, a straight person should not feel guilty for being straight any more than a queer person should feel guilty for being queer. A cis person should not feel guilty for being cis any more than a transgender person should feel guilty for being transgender.

And a white person should not feel guilty for being white any more than a person of color should feel guilty for being a person of color.

Since you should not feel guilty, that does not mean we should protect irrational fears or irrational guilt by failing to address the unfair advantages and disadvantages. White fragility is no excuse to maintain unequal access to power. Same goes for all other categories of unfair inequalities.

How would you feel if it were you: if you were a poor, black, disabled, atheist lesbian, for example? Treat others as you would want to be treated if you were them; Golden Rule stuff. That's why I really don't understand these Clayton Bigsby people who justify white fragility, or poor folk who justify billionaires and corporatist capitalism. It's almost as if they are disguised provocateurs or something.

It is only by teaching critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and similar self-reflective critical examinations that we have an opportunity to improve society, thereby forgoing any need to fee guilt for inherent traits. It is only through enlightenment of the truth that we can correct injustices. Ignorance of injustice only perpetuates injustice.


I don't understand how the moniker "woke" ever came to be used in a derogatory way. I would much rather be aware of ugly truth so that I can help fix problems than blissfully unaware while problems persist.


I woke ip in Idiocracy. This is a dystopia. I am waiting for the apocalypse to end and the director of the story to be fired.
at No comments:

Freedom

Words have power. Power can be, and often is, abused to exploit the vulnerable. Therefore, power must be regulated in order to ensure a fair and just society.

Makes sense, right?

The more power is consolidated, the stronger it becomes. Therefore, power should be optimally decentralized. Global society is far too hierarchal, like many skyscraper pyramids. Power should be distributed to the lowest efficient and effective levels, like a rhizome or neural net. Rolling hills, not monolithic mountain peaks.

Every action is good for some and evil for others. Best solutions are more than "the most good for the most people". Sometimes the minority must be protected from the tyranny of the majority. It all depends on how the power is used, by whom or what, towards whom or what, and what the consequences are.

This is the balance between positive liberties and negative liberties.

Take, for instance, the often cited claim that the US Civil War was about states' rights. This is a misdirection from the underlying reasons. It is deceptive by omission of the fact that the the South wanted their states' rights to spread chattel slavery, an evil institution, not a peculiar institution. So the question must always be asked: what freedom does your freedom infringe upon?

Years ago you could smoke anywhere, thus subjecting non-smokers to carcinogens. There was a big hullabaloo about smoker's rights and business owner's rights when non-smoking areas were legislated. The right to not be subjected to carcinogens won over the right to pollute the environment with carcinogens.

I'm waiting for the EPA to catch up...

The same is applied to weapons. Guns advocates want anyone to have any weapon, even though the drafters of the Amendment could jot possibly imagine the easily attainable technology that is available today. (Plus, let's not forget that bit about a well-regulated militia; ie, National Guard). Clearly society is not as safe when civilians can own an armored tank or tactical nuclear device or a military-grade rifle that rapid fires high-velocity muzzle rounds specifically designed to cause maximum carnage.

Therefore, society's right to be safe must win over a gun advocate's right to fantasize about an apocalypse and/or coup.

How about law enforcement? Their right to unionize and protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits must not win over the public's right, especially minority communities, to protect themselves from over-policing, profiling, police brutality, and extrajudicial killings. Qualified immunity and other protections of the "thin blue line" violate the principle of consolidated power. Representative communities must police the police; the police can never police themselves.

Let's try speech. You cannot yell fire in a theater or "Hi, Jack" in an airport. That would cause terror. People's right to not be terrorized wins over an insane clown's right to say anything they want.

You cannot intentionally deceive the public. This is called slander and libel. People's right to truth and protection from falsehood wins over psychopaths rights to mislead. I'm waiting for the FCC to break up the media monopolies and shut down Faux News.

You also cannot incite people to riot. People's right to civility wins over Donald Trump's wet dream to illegally stay in power. I'm curious what he will be convicted of.

You also cannot tell the public that a tragic disaster never happened, thus subjecting the victims to yet more potential harm from unenlightened believers. The right not to be the subject of hate speech wins over the right to spew hate. Alex Jones, QAnon, and the alt-right have no market in a fair and just society.


Words have power. Freedom to is limited by freedom from. There is a balance that must be judged rationally.

I woke up in Idiocracy. This is a dystopia. I'm just waiting for the apocalypse to end and the director to be fired.

Quick update, just read this article:


There is a balance between freedom to and freedom from. The freedom to be educated in a safe space is more important than the freedom to dehumanize someone. The freedom to exchange ideas is more important than the freedom from being merely offended.

Clearly, the difference is a matter of debate, but the one example cited in the article is ridiculous. It is dehumanizing to refuse to refer to someone by the gender pronouns they identify with. It is no great inconvenience. Conservatives have become the over-sensitive snowflakes!

Religion does not provide shelter to discriminate or hate. Religion that discriminates and hates is not spirituality, but a toxic cultural virus; a toxic meme. We are not required to tolerate intolerance.
at No comments:

Sunday, September 11, 2022

9/11

The attacks on 9/11 21 years ago killed 2,977 people, including the 19 hijackers. Since then, the War on Terror has cost $6 trillion dollars and killed nearly a million people.


In terms of cost-benefit, the War on Terror is clearly not only not worth it, but incredibly stupid and morally vile.


We should not justify attacks against civilians, but the supposed 9/11 attackers did have legitimate concerns regarding western imperialism.


How hypocritical, then, that our "counter-attack" killed many more innocent civilians by orders of magnitude, to include by drone strikes that violate sovereignty, than the original 9/11 attacks!


Not to mention many unresolved questions regarding the 9/11 attacks, which launched a manufactured clash of civilizations and a forever war against an abstract idea while enriching the military-industrial complex imperial capitalists!


Instead of appropriately addressing the legitimate concerns of the attackers, thus deescalating tensions and preventing motive for future attacks, the US of Merca coerced and manipulated most of the world into unjust wars. Therefore, we instigate global resentment of US of Merca imperial power and oppression, and as a result give cause to future attacks!


Rep Barbara Lee and Roger Moore are two of the few voices of reason and morality who were against the Forever Wars.



Tragically ironic, we have become the terrorists, killing and injuring far more innocent civilians than the 9/11 attacks themselves.




We are guilty of many war crimes and crimes against humanity.


This includes the CIA, which has a long history of torture, secret wars, and violations of international law.



No wonder the US of Merca is considered the greatest threat to global peace to democracy!


Many of these crimes would not have been known if it were not for the courage of Wikileaks and whistleblowers, who are wrongfully vilified for sharing the truth:


And as result of the War on Terror, global mass surveillance has increased and liberties have diminished. It has become an excuse for other nations besides the US of Merca to unilaterally enter conflict and violate human rights and international law.


When will these descendants of a common ape ancestor learn to live cooperatively in peace?!



at No comments:

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Hope

I just want to highlight one of my Youtube playlists:

Hope
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy1Yl-f8BHjZRfO-QtAEkLAq8_8AsAVJi



















at No comments:

Morality & Abortion

Many ancient religions, long before Christianity, advocated for some sort of Golden Rule.


There is no need for prophets, actually, as humans probably evolved altruism as a smart cultural adaptation. Living in small affinity groups that interacted with many other small affinity groups, cooperation became an evolutionary advantage over excessive competition.


Gift exchange was their form of trade and economy. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(cultural_anthropology)

Therefore, there is not much in the way of moral universalism, except for very basic Golden Rule concepts. How that code extrapolates varies greatly by group, time, and place.


Therefore, the idea of needing prophets to remind people of how to live is quite ridiculous. There is no "One Right Way" to live. However, moral hypocrisy (Do as I say, not as I do) tends not thrive, and survives only to the extent that the powerful hypocrites can exert oppression upon the enlightened revolters. (The non-enlightened can presumably be duped into submission).

So morality is more about what works well for groups of people and groups of groups of people. The lowest common moral denominator can be the only universalism. So what is the lowest common moral denominator? Some form of the Golden Rule is probably all there is:

Treat other people how you would want to be treated if you were them.

This can also be considered as a balance of your individual rights and the rights of others you interact with, insofar that they differ and there is chance of some sort of conflict.


Again, this is intuitive. Every toddler understands this, and lives more or less as such unless they have unresolved pain; ie, were neglected or abused.

Our culture, which I define as this particular global civilization, is one that perpetuates neglect and abuse. Not all civilizations have or need to. But this one is especially so, and this generational pain is built up and passed on, growing in time.

We see this in hyper-individuality such as conservatism and capitalism; in destruction of war, genocide, ecocide, consumption, and industrialism; in totalitarian systems such as organized religion, statism, and mass surveillance; in our health and education; and in our parenting, to name but a few broad examples. We are completely divorced from from our nature, from ways of interacting with reality that we have successfully evolved over past three million years.

No wonder people look for a savior. We don't need a savior. We don't need prophets. We need to rediscover who we actually are beneath the conformity to the current culturally suicidal hers behavior.

Back to morality: so when it comes to things such as abortion, we must realize two things: that there is no universal norm, so the most liberal should be preferred, and how would you feel if it were you. Therefore, it's nonsense that men even legislate or judge on this at all. Until such a time that men can conceive a child and carry to term, or until such a time that humans develop extraordinary empathy, the opinion of men is completely irrelevant, or enough so that they should abstain.

And it just so happens that women who are anti-abortion suddenly become supporters when they realize that they could be in the position to want one. 

How much easier all of this would have been if everyone simply applied the Golden Rule from the very beginning.

However you judge another person or rule on the appropriateness of their freedom, remember: what if you were them?


at No comments:

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Violation of Anonymity

When I was younger we played games like, "What's most important to you: money, love, sex, fame, intelligence, kindness, justice, respect, athleticism, etc". I never answered fame. I would never want to be famous.

Most famous people probably do not want to usually be recognized in public. Celebrities do not want others asking if they are who they think they are, or requesting an autograph, or gossiping about their lives within earshot, even if they use "coded speech".

No wonder so many celebrities are recluses!No wonder so many child stars suffer emotionally (even when not exploited by family and managers)!

It is such an invasion of privacy. Anonymity should be a right. Imagine how wonderful it would be if celebrities did not have to hide away in mansions of gated communities, but instead lived among everyone else. Imagine if, except at certain events, people either did not know them or treated them just like they would anyone else. 

If you ever recognize a celebrity in public, don't.

(Which reminds me that I support mixed-income development, as well as other new urbanism concepts such as mixed-use, transit oriented, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, and valuing historic, natural, and wild spaces, etc).

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Saturday, September 3, 2022

3 = 3.88 Billion

Five years ago a mere eight people owned as nuch wealth as half the world.


Covid has increased that grotesque wealth disparity:


And now only three people own as much wealth as half the world:


I woke up in Idiocracy. This is a dystopia.
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Friday, September 2, 2022

Gambling Addiction

Christianity: I bet I can coerce a rational, empathetic being into converting to our cult of irrational narcissism.

Bookie: I bet you can't.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses).

Christianity: Best two out of three.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses).

Christianity: Best three out of five.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses).

Christianity: Best four out of seven.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses).

Christianity: Best five out of nine.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses).

Christianity: Best six out of eleven.

(Draw results and Cult of Christianity loses. Bookie continues to get richer and Cult of Christianity continues to get poorer, entirely of their own free choice.)
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