Miserable Women

I was at work and I caught some blip on the television. A typical trash news or entertainment news agency, whichever term you prefer, CNN, was going through the involuntary digestion and expulsion of the latest supposed news-worthy event. Some study came out that documents the rising unhappiness in the general female population that correlates with their rising equality over the past thirty years, I believe -- forgive me for not knowing the exact details. Men, on the other hand, are getting happier.

What does this mean? Why would women become more unhappy as they attain greater levels of social and economic freedom, slowly creeping up to men? It is a foolish and often abused idea stemming from an Enlightenment, rationalists understanding of human psychology that happiness and freedom are somehow related. They are not. Such a thought is dangerously simplistic and frighteningly out of touch with the last hundred years. A relinquishing of responsibility and engagement in the world is what allows for the greatest level of happiness. The dream that forever destroying institutions and beliefs that stand in the way of rationality will bring about a great joy is just that a dream -- utopian notions are as damning as the dogmatic institutions they fight. We've seen the rationalist's psychology fail in various rising and failings of fascist regimes. We've also seen it fail in the complexification and secularization of societies that often leads to, if I may borrow Durkheim's concept, anomie; a general sense of confusion, anxiety and isolation in regard to social expectations and society resulting in levels of sadness and unproductive behavior.

Another study that came out a couple years back, which furthers my point, is that religious persons often report the greatest levels of happiness compared to their secular neighbors. Simply believing in a god significantly reduces your anxiety and depression levels. While some bad theologians would like to build the idea that belief in Christ is actually liberating and allows for a greater level of freedom and responsibility, those with any decency in their psychological assessments will rebuke such a claim. The belief in god allows for an assumption of control and an appearance of patterns in the world that allows for false comfort, it also doubles the world allowing for one to remove themselves from their Earthly responsibilities and focusing on things as means toward a new, unseen world like Heaven.

But before we get too far into that tangent, in sum, the greater level of freedom and personal responsibility one brings upon themselves, the more miserable they will become. Anxiety and dread will be so unbound it will be tangible; this is the condition of modernity, and all of us honest, and not so honest, atheists are usually overcome by intense fits of despair. Touch your pills in the medicine cabinet if you take them, I'm sure if you don't everybody around you does. These are the little formed stalactites growing in our caves. The usage of medicines, illegal and pharmaceutical, are everywhere to relieve the mental anguish.

Why are women so sad? Because women are becoming more free through the growth of their material wealth, the development of their own self-interested identities, and their greater levels of intelligence through education and leisure. The responsibility is incredibly heavy.

They are also becoming more sad because the powers that have slighted women and always made them secondary voiceless, faceless beings to men have slipped away and returned in new forms. No longer is a woman controlled, regulated and manipulated as ruthlessly by the social expectations of fulfilling household work, but instead, many women are endlessly presented with images and displays of what the perfect woman is like. There is not a tough man, a father, a brother or a husband to use his economic and physical power against her, but rather, a social organization through an onslaught of media to show women -- you are free to do whatever you want and be happy! But the best women do these things: where you can list off a thousand expectations of what intelligent, beautiful, free, happy women do. Women are also more miserable now then ever because the things that once controlled them are waning but a new, very nuanced and very psychologically vicious control is taking place in the use of symbols and unspoken expectations. Women are self-regulating more than ever, and slowly driving themselves insane trying to attain all of these new goals that they expect for themselves and society expects for them as well.

The Rigor Of Spasticity

What is life? What is abstraction? How do we access pure becoming, pure presence that is not a crystallization and ultimately an alienation from the our real world? Each thought we conceive is one step away from the absolute truth that it was extracted from; how do we access that pure resource of life, of truth.

Our tools, technology must be more exacting; our steps must grow faster and we must attack aggressively, reaching out for this ultimate reality. The great prejudice of our age is that the rigorousness of language, a simpler language that is exactingly total, all encapsulating, is the key to reality; a man-made language like symbolic logic that captures the ultimate forms of human language and thought is the ground of epistemic fertility. The notion that theoretical physicists will write equations, with limited symbols that communicate the absolute truth of physical reality is one of the manifestations of this prejudice. The building blocks of the universe continue to get smaller, and more numerous, endlessly we find that which comprises, which comprises, which comprises, down into the limits of our latest exacting scalpel. We'll find that true, exact word that denotes that exact thing that comprises the entire world. Is it an atom, a neutron, a quark, what is next? Until then, let us blindly continue to let technology blossom like a stainless, serpentine flower, growing, coiling endlessly.

My philosophy is simple. For everything that has been thought and done, never assume that it cannot be done in the exact opposite way -- strike out to do the exact opposite of what is customary. The universe is comprised of energy as best as I can understand as a layperson. The categorization of that plastic, explosive, ubiquitous yet nonexistent energy is, as Nietzsche would term it, human -- all too human.

The universe can be counted endlessly, divided, dissected, added and multiplied, but, the universe is not any of those things. Humans are by their nature the ones that attempt to arrive at a number, a being, a thing in which they can think about, to manipulate and to use. But, looking into evolutionary patterns, we realize the formation of attributes and behaviors in a species has little interest in a definitive truth. Evolving a being into something that efficiently ascertains an external truth about reality with either its mind or body is highly complex and difficult. Evolution starts simple, and therefore, would evolve a being up until a point where its chaotic flailing and gesticulations would ever so often allow them to hit some cosmic truths to make them successful. Evolution did not create efficient beings, but rather, it create something simpler: many, many tiny buck shots, the hundreds of billions of tiny humanoid that have lived, that shoot out into reality and with many different slight variation in each member of the species, eventually allows for gradual trends in certain members of the species. One way in which our very distant ancestors came to be successful was by their mechanical adaptations that arbitrarily thrusted them out into reality, unaware of it, unattached but deeply embedded in it. Their random behaviors, basic mental tools that by successful combination eventually led to a very gradual development of the human mind that perceives the universe in its own highly evolved, yet comically simplistic way.

Mathematics seem as if they are highly complex, necessarily true by the access to reality they give us, but in truth, these mathematics that are locked in the natural structure of our brain are the end products of billions of years of senseless and arbitrary bodily deterministic mechanics being thrusted out into reality, eventually allowing for some of these mechanics to work and latch on to a tiny portion of reality. Our rigorous proofs, our basis for all science and empirical data, for all exacting languages -- is there any more of an exacting language than mathematics -- 1 = 1! -- could this all really be just the relatively successful baggage of highly evolved spastic machines waving their limbs and ideas out in the air of reality hoping to latch on to something to allow them to be successful?

What is that for truth? Is that truth? Could it not be that all we say and do is actually false -- 1 = 1 is not true, but rather, it is some false short cut that works like if a schizophrenic person kills somebody who is about to kill them, but they killed them because the voice in their head told them to, not because they perceived the threat and took care of their well-being. 1 = 1 works not because it is surely true, but rather, it works because it works. It has allowed us to do things, to survive and strike out successfully in the world, but it could be no different than a successful schizophrenic who by accident, induced by other causes in his unbalanced, spastic brain continues to make the right decisions unaware of the real decisions that need to be made. Sounds impossible, but consider if you have billions of year to fail over and over again, until the perfect failed system is able to exist perfectly, blissfully unaware resolving all of its issues by accident through shortcuts -- no =, not the pretty unity of thought and reality, but rather a giant explosive burst of mental excrement that shoots out into the world and hits the few nuances of reality by a luck that took billions of year to achieve.

Dare we do the unthinkable and abandon science for something else? What kind of truth might the language of poetry contain? Is poetry really the abstract medium?

Modality of Praxis

I want to develop this idea more, but like everything else I think and write, I'll just start with the cursory. I have rejected ethics and morality. I no longer believe that they are viable, true or beneficial. You can understand this assertion by reading through my blog. Simply, I wish to justify life with life, and never, justify any aspect of life with abstraction or idealization. I want a radical abandonment of metaphysics and any justification that requires a metaphysical framework.

Why are you vegetarian then? Does that not build a lifestyle on moral principles?

Yes, vegetarianism, the common-usage of the term, requires a moral framework to allow for it to sensibly exist. The issue that first needs to be clarified is what do I mean when I refer to myself as a vegetarian?

For one to be an individual, a novel thinker and a person that is not alienated from his own ideology, he must be highly idiosyncratic, which creates semantic difficulties when communicating your ideas. I use the term vegetarian loosely as a quick way to reference myself as a person identified with those that are concerned. The primary difference between a vegetarian, and its subgroupings, and those that eat traditional diets is an issue of concern. Vegetarian are motivated by the presence of new awarenesses and new relationships that occur when one becomes concerned. Traditional diets are monolithic, silent ruins that say nothing and simply exist; the transformative power of concern is not present. Alienation from particular realities are highly present in a traditional diet. The attempt to jump this chasm of alienation, brought to you through concerns is an essential feature of vegetarianism. This is why I use vegetarian to describe myself, because I am concerned, and I am made aware.

Language operates in generalities and labels provide simple summaries. For one to have a truly unique idea, to think differently and to be fully creative, one must invent a new language to accurately describe it. Fortunately for you, I am not Heidegger, and I am not going to spend 200 pages redefining numerous words idiosyncratically and explain them in order to just build my new philosophy. Vegetarianism works as a pragmatic term I use to differentiate myself from those that persist on traditional diets.

Ideology and Praxis
What is the nature of my brand of vegetarianism? There are two modes in which one can practice an ideology. I will label them the dogmatic/religious approach and the experimental/scientific (more in line with the broader, weaker Wissenschaft than the hard English term science).

What is the dogmatic approach? It assumes core axioms that are believed to be evident. In vegetarianism, we can arrive at this with the assertion that the consumption of meat causes environmental damage; environmental damage is wrong because it will cause suffering and death; therefore consuming any meat is wrong because it is causing suffering and death. Another one would be, all living beings have some formation of a nervous system which causes pain when killing the entity. Causing pain is wrong because of the Kantian universalization of the principle (i.e. the golden rule, do on to others as you would want on to you.) Therefore killing any living animal is wrong because it causes pain. These are the unfurling of logical arguments with axioms and justified consequences.

We suddenly enter a very structured prison. You can never consume meat ever in the dogmatic position. Your logic requires justifications, and a contradicting action unhinges the entire project. The person becomes rigorous, inflexible and highly insincere. Their behavior must always be justified beforehand by their deterministic logic, that they love as a ferocious shield against detractors, but malign when they feel trapped and hypocritical.

Humans, as humans, do not function well in this sort of system. It is unnatural, as the justification for the behavior seeks out abstraction and logic, when naturally human behavior is highly passionate, capricious and strange. The dogmatic approach demands us to deny the human, to deny the body, to deny life in the pursuit of ideals, metaphysics and logic. Humans do not operate long on mathematics though; numbers do not sustain; the entire project decays in the total denial of the human condition -- something like a vegetarian anorexia nervosa sets in, a paralysis like Christianity. Passion is lost and the world no longer justifies the person's existence. Wasn't that the whole point though, to save the world so we could have it? The dogmatic approach is a great irony, for it asks us to save the world by throwing it out from our hearts, but then why save it?

The experimental approach is how I've chosen to pursue vegetarianism. There are no axioms, no mathematics to build, no metaphysics to justify life. Life is life -- in absolute purity. One ceases to eat meat as a way of sharpening, intensifying life to strengthen it and make it a canvas of potential creativity. To merely choose and act thrusts you into the world, and allows for a host of realities to appear to you. Some choices allow for a greater expression and understand, while other choices are shallow and superficial and lead no where. To try vegetarianism, as a thing you try everyday in experiment, uncovers a world or perhaps creates a world of intense meaning, where one becomes more connected with their primary source of being in the world -- food. Fauna is different, flora is different, the world seems to be alive again because you are merely just more aware of it through concern. Nothing in the world changed though, you just dared to experiment to see the world differently like an unknown artist paints a tree in a way that it has never been painted before. You become directly invested and connected with life.

Rules are to be used as if rules in a poem form or in a style of artwork; this is what dead ethics can be, where misery is abound and nothingness reigns -- a great art blooms like graffiti on a Church's weathered steeple. The motivation for life reveals itself not as a mathematics, rather, the flux of becoming, the shadowy, black desires that are the vital forces of life and people begin to make their presence available. My vegetarianism was justified by many rational thoughts, but in reality, the rational thoughts were merely justifications for the much more complex and true-to-life passion that I felt for such a lifestyle. I chose to feel and think the way I did before I ever had a truly good justification for it; one seeks justification only after one has been convinced of its vital power in the world by coming in contact with it.

The terror of the nihilism that will onset once values and ethics reveal themselves to be hallow have been a main concern for the last century, but if we do the unthinkable, and dash the whole project and accept morality as hallow, we can suddenly use them again; no longer conceived as universal, necessary truths but rather as creative tools to strengthen our lives through discipline. Our passion and vital energies are no longer lost by the sickening structures of morality's mathematics; our rules are dumbbells that we may use to exercise our lives. We can touch what once belonged to God and manipulate them to rip them from the Heavens to benefit our vital human energies.

In my diet, I choose to eat fish on occasion. I am not a hypocrite because there are no axioms to contradict; only the perpetual experimentation of new ideas and new ways of being. What stays, what fades away? Like good art or an indelible poem there is something that is beyond words to justify why it is great. An experimental practice of something, allows for the eventual creation of something that works, just clearly works well by how it allows for life as life to exist in a meaningful, fulfilling and empowering way. There won't be a quiet abstract equation for life in the future, only a fertile and healthy human body engaged in life.

Jesus Will Return One Day: Nameless, Faceless, Nonexistent -- Who is Jesus?

The desire for equality is lecherous and self-destructive. The notion of equality is the affirmation of another's power, the establishing of yourself as the other to an absolute measure. If you are to be free, do not seek equality, fairness or justice. Seek an absolute individuation, a narration of self, become reclusive, refuse a dialectic that defines you relative to anything other than yourself. Eradicate language, create new languages through art, become joyfully mad, exactingly hysterical. New concepts, new modes of being paved by the un-thought words that appeared from nothingness into a naturalized, essentialized fact like Abraham's god. There is no God part of the human brain, no God gene, perhaps there is a predisposition for mysticism; all cultures have developed mystical thoughts, but only one main cultural source formulated a monotheistic notion of those primal feelings that developed into an metaphysical plague that ensnares every word and therefore everything thing. Ideas are alive by our unknowing and unwilling participation in their absolute permeating quality in every aspect of life. What if gods and passions reappeared to us one day by the force of a person madder than Abraham, as they float down from unknown worlds and sweep us into a cultural development that free us of our sickening, Christian (Gnostic, Zoroastrian, Platonic) relationships to the material world, to our bodies, to the primal, absolute realities of the complexes and dynamics of true life. A new metaphysics, a new mathematics, a new epistemology, a new ethics; it is bound to happen in our age of nothingness and meaninglessness. Everything is an empty cliche that has been coined by a slavish, vengeful, petty ghost from some Near East slum that the earth had rightfully quashed underneath its sands. These brittle, crystalline structures of language and meaning that shine unabashed, hide their empty caverns, and blind us from the reality that they will all cave in on themselves and new signs and symbols will be formulated again.

Texts and Oceans

The body is a text? Perhaps, but texts are written upon blank pages -- a tabula rasa. If we were to write upon the body as a text, suddenly there are signs, there is meaning bleeding through the pages. "I did not write this, I must erase it," thinks the theoretician, but upon erasing the inconsistency, the glaring and marring blood, new stains begin to seep through. We write incessantly, transforming the body, adorning the body, seemingly creating the body, but we keep losing what we have written in the pooling blood. The body speaks before we write, perhaps we should listen to it? It may be too hard to read the bloody runes of our body because once understood, once brought into a dialectic with our minds, it is like hearing the voice of God and being annihilated by the sheer power of his presence; one must accept the truth of mortality, of the runic blood and organs, the shit and sweat "penned" by billions of years of incessant, mouthless forces. The power of our wielded pen is made meaningless by the endless flux of constant becoming of billions of imperceptible, undefinable forces that hit an amusingly small lottery -- like a win of 5 dollars on a 2 dollar scratch ticket that allowed the imperfection of humanity to arise.

Every sign we adorn to the body, we think is a definitive mark and relegates the being and its behavior, but really, the mark is a romantic notion, and its study is the business of the romantic and painfully all-too-human philosopher. The mark is scrawled on a piece of parchment that floats on top of a ocean with unknowable depth and size. The waves move the piece of paper accordingly, the sign is washed away or remains by the force of the ocean, a rather trivial event if it stays or remains.

ClickclickClickClickclickClick = Beatles

What the hell was everybody celebrating a week or so ago? Beatles-mania was being foisted on to us by the media. It was the anniversary of something. I can't recall, nor would it matter because I just can't bring myself to give a shit.

Everybody loves the Beatles. Everybody pays homage to the Beatles. Everybody is indebted to the Beatles. It's all quite joyous and wonderful to be connected to the sire of popular music as we know it. The apex of two guitarists, one bass and a set of drums with its perfectly crafted verses and its undeniable chorus. Matching our jackets and hair, and putting forth an image that was designed to sell records. Our culture is secure. The harbingers of our highest cultural ascent made their way by selling themselves as the first boy band to diseased "little girls" that are incapable of a real sexuality because of the latent Victorian mores on sexuality that permeate. From the same population, young girls and women, that the cocaine-addled (perhaps rock star?) Sigmund Freud made his career and entered into our pop-cultural lexicon and thought patterns, so too did the Beatles -- perhaps the most well known band in the world. Where the impositions of human culture breed hostile, sterile and controlled lands, there's a black market of indecencies that become highly prized. The Beatles were like a bottle of cheap moonshine that makes you deaf, dumb and blind, but highly prized in the stifling air of prohibition. Everything human becomes pornographic -- the voyeurism of psychoanalysis and the relationship between the analyst and patient, alcoholism as an obsession and physical elation from the destruction of the senses, and the Beatles as an artificial sexual partner, something near a prostitute (always available, emotionally and relationally unresponsive, and a vessel for fetishistic fantasies, for pubescent girls that very often have no physical, cultural or symbolic modes of libidinal energy. The Beatles started their career as pornography.

So when I hear assholes talk about the Beatles, all I see is a bunch of servile cowards kissing their chains for providing such a convenient self-definition where musical expression is mechanically undertaken by the simple plucking of vibrations that form the specter of a chord progression that haunts our species eternally.

The Beatles are not musicians and are not artists. Maybe they were at one point, that's debatable, but it is irrefutable now that their works and image retain no likeness to that of legitimate artists. I fail to see the difference between Barbie and The Beatles at this point. They are highly marketed, vastly accessible, and quickly disposable commodities that ask no questions other than "how can I amuse you?" The lame attempt at spreading a sense of urgency or importance in regard to the Beatles was done seemingly so Guitar Hero could sell their new Beatles themed Guitar Hero pack. Now you too can play the "music" that you love so dearly by removing yourself from the creation of music into the mechanical, meaningless pursuit of adroit finger fondling to the sounds that has subjected us to a life of glorified elevator music.

Aural Fixation

Cannot stop listening to this song:


It's getting dark too soon
A threatening silence surrounding me
A wind comes up from the islands

When distance fades to stormy grey,
Washed out from the deep of the ocean,
Here I will stand to face your wrath,
While all the others are praying

Calm down, my heart - don't beat so fast
Don't be afraid, just once in a lifetime
Calm down, my heart - don't beat so fast
Don't be afraid, just once in a lifetime

No rain can wash away my tears
No wind can soothe my pain
You made me doubt, you made me fear
But now I'm not the same

You took my wife, my unborn son
Torn into the deep of the ocean
I don't pretend that I love you
Cause there is nothing left to lose

And when silence comes back to me
I find myself feeling lonely
Standing here on the shores of destiny
I find myself feeling lonely

I had a life to give, many dreams to live
Don't you know that you're losing so much this time?
Beyond the waves, I will be free
While all the others are praying

Calm down my heart

The love in you, it does not burn
There is no lesson you can learn
And there are sounds you cannot hear
And there are feelings you can't feel

Calm down, my heart - don't beat so fast
Don't be afraid, just once in a lifetime
I don't pretend that I love you

And this time I'm not scared of you

The Silence of the Ritual

Nobody believes in God anymore. There are moments of clarity in the throes of mental illness, of delusion, hallucinations, anxiety and terror. While the mind is swept up and clarity is lost, the totality of the personality of the Christian is atheistic; it must be because to live our lives in this time is an utter, unblinking confession to atheism. To touch the ground, and smell the air upon birth, is to feel a world and eventually witness a world that is totality devoid of God. Belief does not overtake the Christian, but rather, the mental anguish, the terror, the anxiety forces the actions of the person that wants to alleviate the pain of atheism. The obsessive-compulsive knows and believes their rituals are meaningless, and are embarrassed by them, they, however, must do them to alleviate the anxiety they feel when they haven't acted. The Christian is not far from this. They in truth know they do not believe, but the anxiety of not acting out their various rituals of mind and body overwhelm them with unending anxiety.

It nauseates me to hear thanks to God or a mention of God when people see something wonderful such as a beautiful landscape. All that is great is lost. The person that could have enjoyed the immediacy of the beauty must think of God. Perhaps the anxiety of being overtaken by something, something sublime that makes us feel small, meaningless and unimportant must be destroyed with the thought of God. It is like counting all that is in the world by 7 incessantly. All that is lost, all that is alienated and removed from you so you can in the most petty fashion silence your anxiety, your dread at the unknown. Christianity is a horrific mental illness, and mental illness in part seems to be based in a primordial need to possess, but to go far beyond that need and possess everything. The landscape that should be but a landscape becomes our landscape as created by God for us -- and what disgusting things await the land by these diseased animals through the sheer force of their broken, minuscule, gelatinous brains have taken the cosmos for themselves!

The Ontology Of What Not To Wear

I like to think of myself as very much a contemporary philosopher. The Modernist enterprise for what philosophy and any intellectual discipline should be seemed like a realm for intellectual and creative squalor -- too regimental, too specialized. Why can't pop-culture and theory have a comfortable relationship?

From this discomfort with Modernism, I've decided to bring you a new project within my blog called:
The Ontology of What Not To Wear: A Post-Modern Foray Into What Is Clearly And Distinctly Fierce

To start out with since we've stolen his epistemological terminology, I want to take a moment for Rene "Fashionably Late" Descartes.

I'm highly skeptical of God's existence being clear and distinct, but one thing that is clear and distinct is Rene needs a damn haircut, girl! I know you're busy pondering an absolute, irrefutable truth from which to build all other truths, but maybe you should look into whether or not a demon is fucking with that hair rather than that mind. This is what happens when you separate the mind from the body -- dualism and a bad hair day.

Now on to some more presuppositionless fashion criticism. One of my favorite thinkers is Nietzsche -- note that I said thinker, not dresser. Let's take a look at this hot mess:

Here's Nietzsche probably spying some hot Ubermensch. But he is forlorn because he's never going to get a date with a mustache that is so 1980s Oates from Hall and Oates. Watch out boy, he's not a proto-Nazi! Let's hope his theory of eternal return is flat out wrongbecause I don't think I could deal with having to see that mustache over and over again for all eternity -- God is dead and your mustache killed him -- oh damn!

Thus ends my highly rigorous, nearly mathematical analysis of two prominent philosopher's fashion senses. A truly post-modern endeavor into the unexplored realm of popular culture and philosophical theory.

Plastics and Ethics

The outright rejection of science is an unnerving statement to witness, but in truth, much of our lives go uninformed by higher principles of knowledge. I come to this realization often when speaking to people about their lives and general motivations. Ethics is a foreign notion outside of the burdensomely educated, and even in such a category of people, their knowledge and behavior are usually made distinct. All of our lives are highly fragmented, refined and categorized; it is difficult to relate the knowledge of higher education to the seeming baseness and simplicity of everyday life. It is a mistake, however, and an ailment to live such a way.

Wantonness belief, and I use wantonness assuredly, is a disastrous and destructive way to live. People engage in it daily with little consideration. From horoscopes, to angels, to God, to nearly any baseless claim that might be "affirmed" by anecdotal evidence or the prejudice of common sense is dangerous.

These beliefs are usually justified by the feelings of the believer, allowing them to at will associate any and all things. Human feeling is free to ascribe anything upon an object, and from there, fickle desire, conscious and unconscious, formulates an appearance of correlation. It takes little more than correlation to justify a causal explanation to an undignified and ultimately nihilistic mind. The process by which God gives us the heavens and the Earth is exactly the same as the process by which bald wizards hide poison in my cereal -- a free range of association.

Why are our lives uninfluenced by greater levels of truth?

Science belongs to scientists and ethics belong to half-nude men bathing with young boys. Life is highly fragmented and disjointed because of the naturalization of being, the specialization/professionalization and complexification of our reality. We are taught, we learn and we perceive the world as essential and beyond our grasp. A scientist, while the object ought to be neutral, is actually given to us as a gendered, racial, classed being. Not only do covert sociological categories keep many from an accessible relationship to science, science, through professionalization, remains beyond us as something that only those with a particular type of intelligence can attain.

History too is taught in such a way to reveal philosophy and ethics as something abstracted from our lives; a historical narrative that contains nothing biographical or illuminating to the concerns of a contemporary person. Those fortunate enough to receive a basic education usually never access a philosophical world beyond the epistemological concerns of Plato's cave, and the moral concerns of Aristotle's Nichomean ethics. Philosophy appears dead, cliche, useless and out of touch to most who receive a cursory knowledge of it.

Life aimlessly stumbles along uninformed by the isolated, separate realities of higher education. But the truth of knowledge is that it has existed solely for the desire to live one's individual life better. Ethics is merely the study of the right action to produce the best results in life, and it is informed by what truths we have from our bodies of knowledge. Post-modernity has seen the undaunted rise of nihilism in the form of radical Islam and evangelical Christianity who outright reject science and scientifically-based ethics; nihilism is also rampant in the seemingly opposite world of Scientism and hip liberalism that have not rejected science and ethics but have removed them from their daily lives through professionalization and essentialization. These lives are not informed by the useful, adaptable -- plastic knowledge of good science. Science that is accessible for all to question, consider and improve through epistemologically strict criticisms that cite inspired scientific research; they are rather informed by the free range of human feeling and association, and the total acceptance of an essentialist approach to science that leaves the everyday person outside the business of science, outside the greatest mean to truth we have created to date.

Depp + Bandana = Pirate

I saw some Johnny Depp movie a week or so ago. It kind of sucked, but whatever. It allowed me to realize that Depp's acting, while highly prized and rewarded, is actually a real lusterless turd -- even one so foul, it sinks and sneaks out of sight, ashamed. Well, no, he isn't that bad, but for all the recognition he's received, he deserves an extra special slap in the face for being such a poor actor in reality.

In order to capture Depp's acting, all we need is a typical picture of him doing his thing out in France or whatever country that allows him to live his life as pretentiously and ostentatiously as possible, all the while hypocritically demonizing Hollywood, the industry which supports his absurd lifestyle.

Ah, perfect Johnny, you are a handsome man with the facial hair of an 8th grade Puerto Rican kid. Now, your new movie role of this year will change by adding a hat, keep the sunglasses and the cigarette, and changing the backdrop to the appropriate context. I don't care if this is a movie about the French Revolution and sunglasses hadn't been invented yet! Leave the glasses on and give this guy a sexy ass car that goes with that facial hair!

We have a summer blockbuster on our hands. Depp always plays the same character, himself. It's time for us to stop celebrating this laureled Nicholas Cage. All Johnny Depp does is wear a different hat, and we pretend he's actually being a different character -- he's just being himself with a different hat! And my problem clearly is that at least Cage knows he's a loser and will be in any movie he's offered, but Depp things he's above Hollywood. Thespian? More like ugly mustachioed lesbian that won't make out on the Girls Gone Wild bus. Yeah, rhyming is more important than the semantics, even the syntax of your sentences. You learn that in the hard school of blog writing knocks.

If you want to pretend you're above us, you need to move outside of Nicholas Cage's school of acting, Depp.

Civilization and Its Discontent --ed Fat Kid

There's an invisible war occurring right now in the United States. Every year food, all food in its many shapes and sizes, becomes less of what it actually is and more of what money-hungry capitalist want food to be -- cheap, synthesized plastics. As we've allowed ourselves to become so removed from reality and so unforgivably lazy, capitalists have taken it upon themselves to create services and products that we never once needed before. Everything in our lives is becoming commodified and its true nature alienated from us, as we have no true connection to how things are made, how things exist. Borrowing from a great movie, Food Inc, I recommend you go see it, food is no longer sold as a true, material thing, but rather, it is sold as an idea or a concept of food.

Consider bread, perhaps one of the most prevalent staples in the Western diet. Not that long ago bread was made at home or at local, town bakeries. Now bread has been commodified on a global level of mass production, and many have no conception for how to make bread; they don't know the material being of bread, they're lost in a world of ideas and notions. Anything could be sold to them as bread, as long as you fulfill the notional ideas of bread that float around in mainstream culture. What has happened? Now a lot of bread is fiberless bleached wheat covered in pesticides, puffed up artificially, sweetened with GMO corn syrup, moistened with GMO soybean oil, filled with petri-dish emulsifiers because the product is so unnatural and unstable to hold a proper shape, and filled with two to three preservatives to give the bread a shelf life beyond normal bread that will harden or mold within a couple of days. Many breads also use a dough conditioner that is poisonous to humans, but luckily(!), it is cooked out during the baking process. A bit disturbing though isn't it? A traditional, typical loaf of bread before its commodificiation is yeast or sour dough, whole wheat or wheat flour, water and maybe butter and salt. 4 ingredients including water, so really 4. Processed bread contains roughly 22 ingredients, and no, I'm not fucking joking!!! Many of those ingredients themselves have to be highly processed with numerous other chemicals and processing plants, like corn syrup. The majority of those 22 ingredients are not found in nature, nor are they derived from natural sources; they're created with chemical compounds as much as a plastic trash bag is created. The primary chemical difference is one can be digested without any immediate, apparent health problems.

I'm just talking about bread. It really isn't the worst. A large percentage of your food in the grocery store are just variations of the abundant and cheap soy bean oil and corn syrup, shaped accordingly with soy lecithin and edible plastics to give it the desired shape. Colorants, many which are banned in Europe but legal in the United States, also go into the painting of your food dream, where like i said, you are merely eating soybean oil and corn syrup paintings of foods you think are normal, traditional and the things they present themselves to be.

But that's not it! Food is being taken even further beyond what deceptions exist today. And it's sad when I am nostalgic for old highly processed food because it wasn't as processed as it is today. When I was a healthy, well-preserved and emulsified fat kid, I loved good humor strawberry shortcake ice cream bars. I would slowly run around in excitement at the prospect of its sugary, creamy, oddly pink, weird bread crumb shit satisfying my fat kid desire. This is 15 years ago, not really that long in the grand scheme of things. I was in the grocery store a couple months ago, and I saw one of these bars. I hadn't had one in close to 15 years, at least I can't remember having one anytime recently. I went against my better judgment because I felt nostalgic for simpler times and my boyhood ignorance. Upon opening the packaging I realized that they made the bar about half the size, and yes, I compensated for the fact that I'm much bigger now. It somehow looked more fake, the coloring was wrong, the breadcrumb shit was nonexistent and had no bready-luster. I bit into it. It wasn't creamy at all; it was more like sherbet, but noticeably oily and crappy. They had clearly removed what little cream and sugar had gone into the original crappy ice cream bar. They made it smaller, and it's more expensive now then when I was a kid.

I couldn't believe it. In 15 years, shitty, highly processed food had somehow become even more processed and shitty. To think that kids will grow up and only know this trash. It's unnerving to think about how much food production could change with coming generations as they have no sense of what food really is. Hopefully something can be done now, as I believe we are the last generation that has some sense of what true food is beyond consumer capitalism's deceptive and wallet-filling notions of food.

Some Thoughts

I've had two great, burgeoning philosophical ideas of late. The first is the problem with the rejection of humanism and the loss of a system of rights. The idea of rights and ethical behavior have been dependent upon the notion of a soul or nature that all humans have; from this metaphysical existence, humans arrive at all their rights. But if we are to maintain our conceptions of nature post-Darwin and in a modern sense (i.e. nature is blind, accidental and not imbued with any human truths), and we wish to abandon the nihilistic plunge into the justiifcation of life by metaphysical constructs (i.e. the human body is sacred by the invisible soul that adheres to it mysteriously and in an unverifiable state) then we need to borrow loosely from Kierkegaard. We can transcend or break down the ethical approach to life that are based upon the notion of rights. Instead we enter into a pure relational subjectivity. As my mind and body is presented to me and your mind and body are presented to me as well, two total selves meet, we can enter into something relational that will justify and produce fruitful interactions beyond the pettiness, superficiality and artificialness of rights, ethics and humanism.

This obviously needs to be fleshed out much more, but a relational approach to life, rather than an ethical one, would allow us to escape many of the problems of humanism. One of the those problems being the excluding nature of humanism, where there is no guidelines for behavior toward animals. Humanism, in its various historical forms, has also historically and conveniently left out numerous unrecognized and disenfranchised groups of people; humanism was, in the ancient Greek notion of it, only to include Greek men of particular high-ranked families -- nobody else was deserving of or of the same type of being as them. Humanism is always thought to be the lifeline keeping us from wild, unrestrained madness, the key to civilization, but it has done much more to excuse abuses against those who were not considered humans.

Another idea I've thought about is something that's a mix of sci-fi daydreaming and the philosophical implications of technology. I've become convinced that the cyborg will be the next step in technology. Rather than the building of robots and the rapid development of technology that is outside of the human body, technology will shift and become increasingly incorporated into the human body and mind. It's already happening now. Think about headsets, bluetooth, cell phone, iphone, artificial limbs and the various medical steels and plastics they put inside the body when its damaged. We also live in a world where cosmetic surgery is becoming more and more acceptable, and the idea of the human body as mode-able plastic that can be changed and altered to fit the desire of the mind is a highly popular feeling and idea in our post-modern society; how strange is the endless presence of photo-shopped models and gyms?

Not only will technology become completely incorporated into the human body, it will also enter the brain and the mind. The internet and its endless growth and increasing presence is becoming more and more tied to our daily consciousness. At some point consciousness and the internet will become one. Think about the calculator for example. The human mind has always figured out math problems by the cognitive, mathematical abilities of its mind, but with the invention of the calculator, that use of that part of your brain has decreased and been replaced by an external cognitive tool. What if you could access a calculator at all times anywhere without your hands through the installation of a calculator or the internet directly into your brain? You would no longer use that part of your brain at all, you would use your mind to rapidly access the external technology. The merger of consciousness and the internet would produce a massive hive-mind and make human consciousness extremely flexiable and ever-present. Your mind could be at any part of the world at any time through an internet that exist at every street corner. It's difficult to capture the full reality of such an idea with words.

No Boltbus Stops At Arby's Till Brooklyn!

Well I did it. I slapped that pig Boston right in the face, and I shacked up with Brooklyn. Will be living in Brooklyn sometime mid August. I'm excited about it. There's going to be a lot of eating, as the food that I've had in Manhattan goes unrivaled in depth and complexity of flavor. Maybe there is something in the water that makes the pizza dough just right, and the people a little crazier than average. I do not know. All I do know is that I hope my body can withstand the hedonistic onslaught and the Brooklyn sewer system can withstand the aftermath.

The only thing I'm not excited about is being around Hasidic Jews. As a marvelously confusing half-Jew (ethnicity) and non-Jew (religious), I feel in small, sometimes superficial ways connected to these people. My weird if non-existent relationship with the reform Jewish community of the Andovers has filled my head with unfortunate, irrational emotions mainly through negative reinforcement and post-traumatic associations.

The little shits that used to torture me in hebrew school because I was a new kid would say things like "he doesn't look Jewish" in class further enforcing my feelings as the outsider half-Jew and new kid; yes, something like "you don't look Jewish" can be an insult with the right context. But now, thanks to facial hair, the "knot" between all men of Middle Eastern origin, I look much more Jewish than I did when I was a boy. Walking through Brooklyn I saw some of the Hasidic men had "copper-colored" beards -- like me! My freakish, unexplainable facial hair color is passing me here and there on the faces of men on the street! I share some weird biological link to these fancy hat mimes with beautifully conditioned locks flowing in the hot, browning soot of Brooklyn streets. It's odd for me to see all of this. It's even stranger to see a man dressed in clothes inspired by fashion statements, maybe necessities, from at least 300 years ago pushing fancy strollers around with modern conveniences (blackberries) and the modern inconvenience of addled, ADHD children locked in. I guess foodstamps for your 10 kids will lead to some cognitive difficulties related to malnutrition -- is Wonderbread kosher? NOT ON PASSOVER!!! Is there a foodstamps brand matzoh!?

What the fuck is going on here? Reform Judaism made me believe that all Jewish people go to college, have a maximum of 2 children and are one of the social groups that herald liberal, socialistic and enlightenment values -- and they all own an n64 that they got for Hanukkah -- and they all own your local bank that they got through THE GLOBAL ZIONIST MOVEMENT FOR WORLD DOMINATION LED BY JEWISH REPTILIAN ALIENS. Normal suburbia shit, right? These Jews though do nearly everything except white-collard jobs; they live in bustling cities usually right next to projects where rent is extremely cheap; and they are as conservative as your southern Evangelical Christian. Women do not work, they stay at home to raise the Wondermatzoh hordes and they must dress by strict guidelines. All members of this group bring their religion into every aspect of their lives, and they are completely informed by religious texts and religious charismatic leaders. They interact with the outside world pragmatically to meet occupational and financial goals, but they generally seem very standoffish and mostly concerned with only the people in their group. You can determine a hasidic apartment building complex by the presence of gates and barriers at every window and door; physical displays of a clear attitude and ideology -- surmised with "LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE!"

Their lifestyles seem to work pretty well for them. They've managed to live right next to the places where Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z grew up, and not one of those Hasidic Jews could go toe-to-toe with the Beastie Boys. Well, maybe Matisyahu, but he doesn't count since be was initially a Phish groupie/rasta-lovin' hippie musician before he was turned to the dark side by Darth Baal Shem Tov. Show me some Hasids rockin dreads for sideburns, getting their swagger on, ghost riding their 92 LeSabre with 5 baby seats, and looking in the mirror to say "what's up?" -- get money!!! It's frightening how impervious they are regarding many aspects of their environment and greater society.

I don't know how to end these thoughts or make them cohere, so I'll just finish it with one thought: Hasidic Jews are a good example of what happens when white people stop listening to what black people have to say. Hasidic Jews are locked away in their condo zoos across the street from a boisterous playground next to the projects. They study the "tremble-inducing rhymes" of YtothedashtotheHWH, but they have no time for hip hop. "With rhymes like those, Moses, I would have broken those shit stone tablets too!" Hasidic Jews are so troublesomely stimulating for me because of my loose relations to them, and their dual presence of embodying nearly every single aspect I hate about religion while retaining very few to none of the things I find condescendingly endearing.

Why Everybody Thinks Vegetarians Are Fascists:

*MS Paint Showing Mussolini's Approval of Heather Mill's Vegan Ruthlessness

Some dumb celebrity by the name of Heather Mills decided to buyout a seafood restaurant in England. The plan: close the establishment that was popular in the area and open up an all vegan restaurant called "V-bites." Oh, and whilst conquering the world with your endless celebrity resources, make sure you take no prisoners. She proceeded to fire every single staff member of the old restaurant without consideration. Slash and burn business ethics -- hmm, very fitting of a holier-than-thou, supposedly ethically-motivated vegan.

Now I support anybody's decision to pursue vegetarianism and veganism. I think it's damn great in most cases. I love vegetarian and vegan restaurants myself. I also love clearly marked vegetarian meal choices on menus at non-vegetarian restaurants so I can feel comfortable knowing that there isn't ground up horse balls in my soup. But, all is not well in our utopian, vegan fast-food chain world. There is a very essential principle that comes first before the well-being of the environment and animals. It is vital for people to choose free of coercion, threat and symbolic assault. Vegetarianism shouldn't be dogmatic, punitive and religious like it is when it's forced down people's throat in this manner. Without the volition of the individual to choose rationally, free of any threat is essential for a healthy vegetarian community and society -- a healthy society in regard to any issue.

V-bites which sells "veganized" fast-food is not a decision made by a community group or by the demand of the local people. It is some fucked up, vegan McDonald's that wants to force its product through any means necessary; well, almost any means, since this brand of vegetarianism that Heather Mill's subscribes to, something akin to PETA's praxis of their ideology, demands that while its ultimate goal is world-wide conversion to their ideology, it still can't help but play its loved role as the martyred victim; without failure, vegan stunts and identity would struggle to understand itself because its core need, in this brand of veganism, is a stuggled elitism that won't allow itself to be absorbed into greater society. V-bites will probably fail at least in some way or another if it doesn't completely shut down; it most definitely will not bring about any new converts of average omnivorous eaters that will feel alienated, attacked and resentful of Mill's symbolic condescension. It will also help to feed the fire that surrounds vegetarianism as a snobby, petty and militantly aggressive group of people that exist for the sole purpose to agitate greater society -- an outline for the mainstream's opinion about any group deemed "radical" or "leftist."

What vegetarianism needs is not public stunts and ploys that play into and use the very structure that birthed the injustices that forced vegetarianism to be form in response. How different is V-bites from a shitty Hardee's or a McDonald's? A veganized chain would significantly reduce animal cruelty, environmental destruction and may provide slightly healthier alternatives to standard meat-based junk food by cutting out all the excesses of the meat and dairy industry, but the entire order, the structure, the fast-food, consumer capitalist universe of easy, endless, efficient, thoughtless consumption is still being fed itself -- fed like the fat vegetarians that look a lot like the fat meat-eaters at McDonald's but fat off of cheap soybean oil and highly-processed food rather than drug-ridden animal fats disguised as meat. One of the main reasons people are so unhealthy, fat and live personally and globally destructive lives is because they're removed from their food. This type of vegan restaurant just perpetuates the initial attitude that is so destructive in consumerism by selling itself as another thoughtless, quick and cheap way to feed yourself. Vegetarians don't need and should be opposed to these consumerist institutions of how we eat, because they are founded upon the very principles that devastate what vegetarians claim to value.

What vegetarianism also needs is the endless patience to accept that it will be an undoubtedly long process to allow for traditions, power structures and personal habits to be broken down on a massive scale that would allow for a true paradigm shift. But this process has to be slow, has to be thoughtful and has to be rationally motivated and free of the alienating forces of coercion that groups like PETA have mastered in their agitating assault on the public through consumerist media. Its lengthy gestation is equal to the final depth and strength vegetarian will have in a thoughtful society.

And I leave this for you, PETA-type vegetarians and vegans: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - N-dawg

Brooklyn and why Boston sucks

I've been thinking about moving to Brooklyn. Way better apartment opportunities, jobs and a subway system that runs beyond 12:30 has sparked my interest. Also, I heard the Beastie Boys are looking for a fourth guy, and ain't nobody has seen as anybody as skilled as me. Pass the mic.

Boston is cool, but most of the city exists for rich people with strollers worth more money than I make in a month, e.g. Beacon Hill and Back Bay, and don't forget the tourists. Nearly all of downtown Boston: Fanueil hall area, Boylston street, Newbury street and the rest of it are variations of tourist traps or shitty places that are designed for people who visit the city once every couple months to either feed their fat worthless family or drink themselves to near death so they can tear the city up and get into fights. The restaurants and bars in Boston are culture-less pig troughs with their total worth illuminated by the ridiculous menu item I once stumbled upon -- truffle oil mac and cheese. Hmm, how can we appeal to fat idiots that dare leave the safety of their mac and cheese filled houses. Dare they try something new? No, they want variations of mac and cheese and buffalo-sauced meat, make sure you add some ridiculously expensive item so you can excuse charging 12 bucks for fucking durum wheat, water and some mild shitty cheese. I never go anywhere near downtown Boston on the weekend, and woe to the traveler that dares use the green line when the significantly rotund tourists are piled on. A lot of Boston has the cultural charm of a dilapidated Mid-western city but on a Manhattan budget. If you associate yourself with Irish culture even in the most superficial and insulting of ways, you have a go free pass to pretend your contributing to the culture and appeal of Boston. Though really, the bullshit Irish-ness is just contributing to Boston's faux-irish, chucky-cheese/disney world quality of artificialness.

Duck tours, fuck you.

Cambridge and Somerville are still cool though. Cool enough to maybe save Boston. If you ever come to Boston to visit, just say fuck you to the freedom trail, green line, Newbury street and duck tours and go to Central, Harvard or Porter squares in Cambridge, or Davis square in Somerville. That's where real people hang out.

San Francisco: Most Racist City In the World!!!

How long ago was it? I can't remember now, but I recall hearing about San Francisco eliminating the use of plastic bags. Hearing that I'm sure embarrassed most other progressively-minded people living in their hot bed of hip liberalism.

"Yeah, I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but my city is definitely the Mecca for cool, intelligent people. We have bike lanes, raw food restaurants and one giant windmill that's not hooked up to anything. I smoke American Spirits on the bench next to it. Sometimes I swear I can feel the pain of Native Americans when I smoke them... but, uh, anyway..."

"Oh, really? Wow, your city sounds pretty hip. Hey, I didn't introduce myself. *Knocks blond dreadlocks out of face* My name is Om, the Buddhist meditative mantra that starts with the first possible noise in the throat and ends with the last possible noise at the closing of the lips. It's like the most complete noise ever. I'm from San Francisco."

"Cool, San Fran, that's a pretty awesome place to live. I read on yelp that you have some great vegetarian restaurants and a burgeoning World Music Hip Hop scene."

"Vegetarianism is spiritually corrupt, and the entire ideology was orchestrated by Morningstar and Boca burger to sell their overpriced faux meat. I only eat stale donuts out of local donut shop dumpsters. Power to the people!"

"You're a fucking idiot."

Chinese person holding ten plastic bags filled with various vegetables that look like variations of bok choy shuffles by.

"Wait, dude, does this city still use plastic bags!? Wow, I had no idea New York City was such a dystopian wasteland full of culture-less slobs. San Francisco outlawed plastic bags, and I think single handedly saved the Earth and the Oversoul. New York is so uncool. I'm getting on my roadbike, because I don't own a car -- what's a car even, I'm from San Fran, I don't even know what that is -- and I'm riding my bike back home to San Fran. Later, bitch."

Another city dweller devastated by the fact that they're not as crazy cool and socially progressive as San Francisco. But, really, I got to thinking about this while on the MBTA. At the Chinatown stop on the Orange line, a lot of interesting Chinese folk get on with a ridiculous assortment of plastic bags, sometimes plastic bags in plastic bags. To the sensibilities of your average, cool, white and college-educated person, this seems wasteful and impractical. Why not just use sturdy, large reusable bags and save the planet from more garbage for garbage island floating out somewhere in the ocean? That's when it hit me. White people will self-regulate and regulate each other through informal social control. Informal social control is a sociological concept that explains the process by which closer knit communities regulate deviance. If you want to be in the white people gang, you have to do white people shit or we will make fun of you, glare at you, socially ostracize you and use a host of different methods that threaten your social well-being in a community. All groups do this. But informal control doesn't work on Chinese people who don't give a shit about your norms. Nobody in San Francisco who is white was excessively using plastic bags or even using any plastic bags. I'm pretty sure of that. In Boston alone, a progressive city but no where close to San Francisco in superficiality, a white woman without a reusable bag might as well just take a shit in the middle of the train during rush hour. San Francisco made the plastic bag law to force their norms on Chinese people -- formal, governmental control! Fucking racist assholes!!!!

Michael Jackson

His death has been on my mind much more than I thought it would be. That might have something to do with being subjected to 13 hours of listening to his singles on repeat because the bartender I work with came out of the closet as probably one of the most energetic Michael Jackson fans I've ever met. How a man can listen to the same songs for that long and still mimic Michael Jackson's signature cries and croons with the same level of vigor -- I'll never know!

But I think beyond the aural imprinting that may have occurred at work, MJ's death has made me realized that his music and persona were inescapably apart of my life and the lives of all those around me. Even when I had never considered myself a true fan, I'm still sort of a MJ fan because of the sole fact that I grew up in the US. His death feels significant as a historical event where a death of most other celebrities or public figures would just bring about a much more intellectual and isolated response in myself. There was a time before his death and a time after, and everything in some way feels shifted.

Sha'mon! WOOOOO!

Tell Me I'm The Only One

I'm thinking of broadening the scope of this blog to make it more dynamic and to facilitate routine, consistent updates. The idea of this blog originally started with the intention of having a relatively easy creative outlet for writing. Something that would inspire more effort, more clarity and more feedback beyond private writing. It was originally supposed to be themed as an autobiographical look into being a useless sack of shit college graduate in Boston, but the landscape where the blog started became virulently and uncontrollably political because of the urgency of Obama's bid for presidency. Those political musing evolved into a type of "metaphysics" for understanding and further fleshing out my own views on politics and current events. I started to drop some serious philosophy bombs that are probably equal in their profundity and amateurism.

In order to make this blog more approachable, more engaging and less like a post-traumatic flashback of that rambling, angry nerd in your philosophy class you hated, I figured I'd break down the little rigor I maintained on the blog and turn it into something like a "tumble blog" as my dearest friend JP has termed it. Though it will be much more substantive than the average tumble blog, and it will never be allowed to degrade in form to the nightmarish wasteland of twitter. I will never post about how "mad dope" Pizza Hut's -- oh, sorry, The Hut's pasta bowls are, or complain about my life with appropriate emoticon attached. It should loosen things up here and allow me to make more posts of varying degrees of entertainment and insight. In sum, this blog will act as a quasi-journal, readable inner-monologue, guide to the best parts of the Internet, and soapbox for when I fucking flip out about how stupid you're being.

LFO

My summer in 7th grade would have been so different if the lyrics of this song actually went "Chinese people make me sick." Pop acts should not only push the envelope on sexuality, they should also use race as an effective means to shock people and sell albums. The market remains untapped. Where sex would once get you arrested for obscenity, it is now a necessary, veiled element to sell popular music. I can see it all, a Britney Spears for an age of pop music that centers around forms of racism. "My new hit 'Auschwitz Ass Shake' is a real tease at how danceable a Jew-free world would be, but I'm not an anti-Semite -- look at my Star of David clad promise ring -- promise not to hate the Jews."

But this is all just speculation at what an alternate world of indecent pop music might be like. I still often wonder was I the only decent person in middle school? There was not enough hatred directed toward LFO's masterful piece of turd. Why must honest people be punished and friendless so that the rest of society can have their carefree, pop-cultural blasphemy against the human spirit? Now I follow most pop-culture with a bloodlust for its total destruction, its unhinging, for some chaos to emerge in its plastic formality.

I'm pretty tired of the confused heterosexuality and machismo of Hollywood movies these days. It seems the past 5 years have been inundated with movies directed at the early pubescent brains of teenage, violent, moronic boys. I swear every goddamn time I want to go see a movie, I'm forced to choose from a list that makes me feel like I'm rifling through some nerd's semen-covered comic book collection in his parent's basement. I suspect this is because the category of teenage boys has greatly expanded with the mainstreaming of video games, making unfulfilled manhood not only socially acceptable but also economically beneficial for those charging 50-60 bucks for one video game, and those that don't want to pay writers to write good screen plays for real movies. Now, those who should be men remain teenage boys well into their twenties and beyond, often avoiding the challenges and responsibilities of manhood. It's much easier to play video games for the rest of your life and fantasize about the masculinity you don't possess but find in the hyperbolic brutes like the historic, "gay/not-gay", frat guys/Spartans of the movie 300 and the claw-wielding bozo Wolverine. Wolverine, the movie, was marketed to the "expanded teenage boy group" by making sure Hugh Jackman's HGH and steroid-filled muscles were as glistening as possible to appeal to the closeted, homosexual arousal of said group. Though they can't quite conceive of it or understand it, there are many social factors at work repressing such a sexuality, their attraction to these buff super heroes is undoubtedly sexual. After getting all hot and bothered watching Wolverine, they probably then go on to play video games, bonding on their hatred of the abstracted "fag" that none of them are -- thank god! And that brings me onto another issue I have with our society, what absurd levels of contradictions we maintain!

The Last Supper of Christianity And Its Starvation

Christianity seeks to eliminate desire and passion. All passion is a sin outside of a passion for God. What would Christianity's highest ascent look like? The annihilation of the truly passionate man, and in his place, a tepid spirit of minuscule proportions -- no longer needing the severity of the threat from God's judgment and condemnation. Christianity was once a tangible force that struggled and succeeded to control the ferocity of barbarians with a threat of damnation so filled with dread and anxiety that those who once swore their life to battle, their identity paired to their legendary weapons, unrepentant, dangerous men became the sires of the Puritans. What turmoil the Germanic, Nordic and Slavic tribes must have undergone as they were slowly converted to Christianity. Christianity was alive and truly real as a parasite is when its host is virile and capable of withholding the unmitigated growth of the disease. But the spirit breaks, and the host's death is also the death of the parasite.

What should this ideal Christian fear when purged of all desire? Nothing. Christ has come again, and the Revelation has no snorts of wild and dreadful stallions that have come for vindication. It only has the total silence of passion and the cracking of marrow-less bones that sound much like the cry of a feeble Atheism of a person that is doomed to a spiritless, unchosen secularism. We've never known passion. Christianity has killed its host and is now dead. Modern people are without true passion and desire, sickened by Christianity to the point where there is no true sin that needs to be attacked by Christianity. The ability to feel the passion of love and bravery have become myth, the things of legends, the things outside of civilization for wild men because of Christianity's destruction of passion through its lechery. The truth is that the things of myth were the true lives of cultured men and women with incomprehensible societies. Christianity has become nothing by its own nihilistic accord. We are all starved Christians -- the full essence of Atheism.

Brain Like Meat

What kind of an argument is the statement that vegetarians secretly want to eat meat? A profoundly stupid one that is more telling of the quaint polemicist's baseness than the secret drives of all vegetarians. How does one arrives at a sweeping dismissal of vegetarianism by a smug revelation of the supposed desires of humankind?

One reoccurring ethic I encounter in confrontations about vegetarianism is "Meat tastes good; therefore, it is right to eat it, and I shall eat meat." But, can they show me how this thought process is different from "Rape feels good (for the rapist); therefore, by their hedonistic principle, rape is justifiable." Am I comparing eating meat to rape? Yes, it's not as outlandish as it seems in the context of the assertion that meat consumption can be justified by how good it makes one feel; this ethical principle allows for any action to be justified that feels good. You must justify your meat consumption by something outside of "it tastes good" in order to not be complicit with rapists. That I must clarify this to people is baffling. Most never ask "why?" in considering their behavior, and when they are forced to think, an irritating experience, they see no need to justify or explain anything. Meat is pleasurable. I do what pleases me.

The other argument: vegetarians are not outside a human nature that craves meat. Most, including myself, are unwilling to refute the argument that humans are physiologically omnivorous, making the deduction from our anatomical structure and the omnivorous eating-habits of closely related species such as the chimpanzee. Though, it should be considered that humans are built to be geared toward carbohydrate consumption, the main source of our energy. Nearly all mainstream councils on human diet have formulated a nutritional guideline with carbohydrates as the largest percentage of a diet compared to protein and fat; most traditional human diets before industrialized farming consumed many more grains, fruits and vegetables than the much more difficult to acquire meat. Have humans always desired meat as they desire it now?

We begin to unravel nature as a historical event. When we speak of desire, can it be something universal, written into our biology? History says otherwise. The human body, its nature, has a measurable history. A history that cannot be refuted if we are to consider the measurable consequences of the body in dialouge with humanity.

An incessant need to consume meat at every meal is not natural, but rather, it is a manipulation of the omnivorous human by a consumerist economy. How have humans become more obese than ever before in human history? Has this natural desire the polemicist speaks of always existed in human nature? Something in history has changed to make people fatter, and this something must be outside of human nature. Meat, and the desire to eat meat, do not exist in our current world as a natural phenomenon. The formation of identities by corporations through mass-marketing (i.e. commercials, etc.), the supplier controlled market, and government-industry alliances have formulated a world view from which all of us peer. A way in which we view our bodies, exist with our bodies, and formulate a nature which dictate our bodies in a dialogue of restless conflict. Not being able to fit into your pants and dying from heart disease are not only everyday physical events for a large percentage of Americans, but also the physical unfolding of metaphysical events occurring between a human body that has its own physiological reality and the human-made nature from which we attempt to analyze and contort the body. Unprecedented profits and government subsidies make industries such as the meat, dairy, and corn incredibly wealthy and their product abundant; therefore, their wealth buys them political power in the form of lobbyists, and market power in their ability to sell their goods at the cheapest prices ever in history. An entire system is born of this power, and it produces a mindset, a way to view, a way to view the world. Human nature is formulated as a human idea in the context of a society and historical period.

What is the new "innate" nature? Buy. Buy. Eat. Eat. Consume. Consume. It is your nature, and it is who you are! How convenient this identity works to the fattening of wallets. Hmm, suddenly the oh-so-important human nature, the genetic structure that predetermines all of our actions seems to be taking a backseat to the economic-driven rape of our supposed nature with the intention of gaining as much profit and power as possible.

But what of nature? We have the highest ability to overcome our nature, to manipulate nature to our needs, to needs distinctly above and beyond nature. In a sense, we can destroy our nature; we destroy nature daily at an alarming rate -- why not our own!? Meat tastes good, meat is good -- but I am no longer human by your American estimation if I deny my love of meat -- I'm vegetarian! I am seizing my own nature and saying that I am going to cease to be omnivorous. I will be vegetarian, seizing nature, reforming it to my needs, and wrenching it from the hands of a society that attempts to quietly manipulate nature by recreating it to their benefit and profit.

Zeno's Martial Truth

"Zeno stretched out his fingers, and showed the palm of his hand, - 'Perception,' - he said, - 'is a thing like this.'- Then, when he had closed his fingers a little, - 'Assent is like this.' - Afterwards, when he had completely closed his hand, and showed his fist, that, he said, was Comprehension. From which simile he also gave that state a name which it had not before, and called it katalepsis. But when he brought his left hand against his right, and with it took a firm and tight hold of his fist: - 'Knowledge' - he said, was of that character; and that was what none but a wise person possessed."

How might I read this? The world remains formless and flows undistinguished. There is no use but only the witnessing of appearances. The hand remains without purpose; it is a crystallization of its nature. Then the world takes form slowly as things are ripped from the flow of appearance to be dissected; the hand begins to form into something of use. Finally the fist is clenched; things are known, a thing is distinct, a truth emerges from the flow of appearances. What do we do with this fist of truth? We attain it, as wise people, strike out and use it in the world. Truth is not truth if it is as useless as an opened, unmoving hand. For knowledge and truth are not abstractions removed from the body and the world, lofty, feathery things to drift in some deaf, dumb and blind dream. Truth and knowledge command us to act, to use them, and a truth that does not demand action, is nothing but the meaningless, useless flow of appearance. Only in the use of truth do we find out if its fist is strong and healthy enough to shatter the fallacious; without this exercise of truth, this pugilistic match, knowledge and truth remain the fallacies of sickly cowards.

But are the fists rough and brutish like a boxers? No, while the striking out in the name of truth may require a degree of crudeness and a willingness to become dirty, the pugilism of truth can be sheer starkness of a lived ethic in the face of a spiteful crowd of denouncers. Our truth is measured by the strength of a the fight, the strength of the truth, not by the brutality of the fighter.

Humanism Wanting

Often we are commanded directly by threat or didactically through the judgment of others to act humanely. What is threatened? What is being judged? Your essential nature, a secularized soul, that is grounded in the assumed qualities of what forms a human; to act in a way that is inhumane is to risk your status as a human. As you deny the rights guaranteed humans, so you go on to deny your own humanity in the eyes of others.

For example, consider what you have thought and have heard others say about arraigned killers -- all acts become permissible in conversation against the dehumanized "it" that was once a person. Our own behavior reveals a startling irony. We go about requesting the decency of being humane, to subscribe to the core properties that compose a human as a full social being, but how can one request a nature?

A nature is static, permanent and self-sufficient, producing a deterministic teleology. The very request to be humane, to subscribe to a type of humanism, tacitly reveals there is no nature. For how do you request a person to choose his or her nature? There is not a human soul, a human nature, or a true humanism in which to subscribe to. The request uncovers a nothingness in the human. His obsessive concern with being human points to his true composition. He is paradoxically naturally unnatural. The nothingness as if a vacuum hungrily sucking up anything in the outside world to fill it and form it into something more tangible to humanity. Humanism, those that request you be humane to others, it comes from the initial nothingness of the person that desperately seeks out something.

Did I just tell you to go out and slaughter everybody because there is no humanism to build a system of rights and ethical behavior? Unfortunately for the more violent members of our species, no. A denial of human nature and the revelation that humanity's core is a "nothingness seeking outward" allows for a host of new ways for humans to relate. A more truthful analysis and thus a better practice concerning daily human interactions can be achieved if we rid ourselves of the abstractions in the humanism of nature and right. Has it not been so dishonest that we acknowledge a worldly humanism, but at the first opportunity, tear our enemy's children into bloody ribbons and excuse it with the call "war"? Isn't the idea of world love between all nations so insincere it is nauseating? A truer understanding of humanity allows for something like a love to exist in a purer sense. Love can exist without a humanism though that may sound strange. Love is actually strangled and blinded by the false notions of a human nature. To end a sham marriage, two lovers must reveal their true "selves" to each other -- that they are both grasping nothings desperate to be affirmed by each other -- and human touch becomes more real than it has ever been before.

Opiate of the Masses? More like White Trash Turpentine Cocktail!

Christianity, and any revelatory religion, have been the meeting ground of two distinct types of people -- psychotics and conformists. A few individuals encounter god, daring enough to break rules and declare their waking dreams a reality. Then those who are unwilling to protest by the decency of their intelligence go to work organizing and establishing the new religions and communities. All religions and all traditions not based in sensible purpose start as mendacious, indecent, violent cults; it is only through the hardening of history, even, surprisingly, an illuminating, embarrassing history of unprecedented human folly and shame, that these cults becomes proper, acknowledged religions and traditions. The cult of the weak, sick and dying known to the Ancient world as Christianity is the inescapable, pervasive glue of Western society for nearly 2000 years -- this is our legacy!?

And those few that are not psychotics and conformists, must sit hopelessly with their nausea from the cursed fortune of intellectual decency, knowing their culture is the Scientology of a glaringly observable past.

Post-Luddite

Through the scalpel of love, its undisciplined brutality as a general abstraction, the monotheist severed the Earth from himself. Could history have birthed itself as merely a first, accidental thought of history in humans, blooming forward by the strength of its own roots -- "there is history" -- a thought, and so, it came to be from humans, but instantaneously hardened as a thing-in-itself. Such an idea as a linear history of progression could not be un-thought. The idea hardened and grew in the fertile soil of humanity's collective consciousness as an especially virile meme.

The idea of history simply needed to be thought, and, like a spark in a dried, golden forest, everything became ablaze and forever altered. Was it the monotheist that thought beyond the polytheist's circularity of nature which tore the world into a beginning and an end? The love of God denies the material world, and in doing so, allows space for the idea of history to exist supernaturally. The idea of history itself was enough to propagate history through the humans who believed in a history and acted as physical vessels for the idea to express itself. The idea was created through one material brain, but upon its creation, it became a self-sufficient creator by the very composition of the thought; and, as Hegel philosophy illuminates, the Idea finds itself revealed through acts of man that formulate history, leading to the eventual fullness of the Idea -- Providence.

For a moment, let us suppose all of this is true. We can say the accelerating advancement of humanity since the formation of a progressive history through a first, creative, accidental thought of history distinct from earlier pagan or tribal notions of repetitive, circular history is actually not the Godless, absurd and meaningless age of science and technology as it is popularly thought. We live now in the highest ascent and fulfillment of Providence. For doesn't modern man find himself slowly disappearing as a thing of nature, doesn't he forsake the Earth, the body, and death in the name of ideas and abstractions? The many ways we can alter the body through technology, the way we can manipulate the Earth to our goals, and the way we exist as a disembodied mind throughout the globe through the Internet are defining features of our age. Is not all technology the manifestations of ideas beyond the material? Do we not find that this technology of the abstract is also rapidly taking up less and less material space and doing more and more immaterial, abstract things? The days of vacuum tubes have been replaced by an age of microscopic chips. Within only a few decades, the physical size of technology has shrunk to unprecedented proportions.

We are not in Godless times (!) to contradict most believers that scream about secularism and dwindling attendance at church. We have become so pious, and abstraction has become so powerful that it has been normalized; we are so blind and removed from a pre-historical and non-monotheistic world that we deem ourselves Godless and atheists out of sheer inability to see with eyes that are monotheistic but cannot glance upon themselves to see who the bearers really are. Science and technology as they are today are the unveiling of an idea that began with the love of God. These silent, silicone saints that appear in every human space and room now, sanctify them, connecting them to something greater -- this may be the unrealized legacy of the monotheist's God. Technology's highest pursuit is the development of more, refined technology, and science's is the development of an pure science -- technology for the sake of technology and science for the sake of science.

Then what does it mean to really be an atheist? Atheism has one virtue and one belief, which is the belief and desire to experiment. It is no longer the senseless adherence to science and the hope of technological salvation, nor was it ever. Any notion of salvation, a belief found in modern conception of technological advancement, is undeniably monotheistic. It founds itself on the belief that there are things in the world that must be rebuilt (redeemed), and tacitly, there are things that are broken (sinful). Atheism in its true sense should be the daring, the striving to live without the societal monolith of God and his many hidden, faceless angels that populate our world in the most beguiling of forms. Atheism must be a willingness to find through experimentation what few pockets remain of an untouched, unhistorical, old-yet-new world exist and to grow these pockets.

How will we receive the Earth again? It is not with a belief in technology and science as redeemers. The atheists that proselytize in the name of science are the purer Christians that harbor such disdain for their old world brothers thumping their Bible's. How will we reunite ourselves with a Godless nature and the purest witness to the material we can achieve? Can we stop the eventual outcome of our total convergence with technological Providence and absolute loss of our material selves, becoming so pious that we no longer have eyes to see that which is beyond pious?

The modern day needs barbarians, not of the North, South, East or West, but barbarians of the spirit that are willing to lose everything in the name of what modern man and his technology has deemed worthless -- dust.

Part I: Escapist's Care

What is the greatest act of political revolution? To cease being yourself.

Joining political movements, solidarity amongst the disenfranchised, acts of terrorism and violence, they will continuously come short of their goals. History of the past 150 years have told that story much better than I. Do we even really know our transgressors anymore? There is no longer a boss to strike against but only pathetic lackeys of the management class, that deserve pity sooner than revolt; the state dissolves daily under the pressure of globalized capitalism's transnational corporations and no longer does it make sense to hold your own government accountable for what are now global problems, far outreaching the abilities of the state; our "comrades" are hungry imbeciles assembling poisonous toys for our children in the pursuit of an anonymous currency. Knowledge, where once a bringer of enlightenment and freedom, is now revealed as the cruel servant of vicious powers that extend the vision and space of exercised power.

Power and the powerful are vanishing horizons rapidly disappearing, and we are the senseless cartographers scrambling to capture the outlines of our enemies. But we can still grasp one thing in the darkness and revolt against it -- the self. One's own identity, the self, the I is taken traditionally to be natural manifestation of an essence; originally, a person's essence came from the Christian notion of the soul, now, in the age of Scientism, the new, unbridled dogmatism births identity from the genome. The resulting layperson's response to Scientism is that "I do these things because it's essentially my biological nature." This person, in his mind, cannot cease to be himself or herself; they are without control of their identity. They reject the call to cease to be yourself.

But biological essentialism cannot explain identity truly. Biology can explain why a human eats eggs instead of rocks, but it cannot explain why a person would choose to eat rocks instead of eggs. Biology and the rigorous sciences wrongly assume that their development and success have been the death knell and eventual destruction of philosophy or Wissenschaft (i.e. soft science). Biology is limited by material facts which are finite, and must have ideally one causal explanation to remain rigorous and objective; the rigorous sciences will, given enough time, develop an ultimate mathematical theorem to explain everything, ending science, but an unwritten conclusion of the theorem will be it was written. The conclusion of science in its final, complete theorem will end with drinking and conversation -- philosophy in its purest mode!

Identity is comprised of the accidents, the choices, of history and culture. Identity has no natural history, but rather, it is a secondary physical reality, a mode of the material, that exists in a near imperceptible way between people that offers no proper quantities to be measured. As the qualitative experience of a color does not make itself measurable to science, history and its resulting formation of identity is qualitatively relational and does not offer itself up to a rigorous science.

(More to come -- like a good torturer I add an artistic pause between the pain)

Iraq War: A Crusade

Are we not to blame for the Iraq invasion regardless of political affiliation? Conservative or liberal, and the blurriness between that is so often polled senselessly by the media, the independent -- what are their responses, what is their response in total to the question: what government is best? They speak democracy in varying degrees of quietness realizing the looming trickery in such a simple question. Why is it the best? It manifests the ideals of freedom and fairness. All citizens vote, each vote counts equally, and the majority wins.

But, leaving this initial sketch of democracy uncriticized, to what extent should we support a democracy or a move toward democracy outside of our own country? If a country has a totalitarian regime, should it be replaced by a democracy? Most Americans would answer with a variance of yes, but emphasize their wariness of ambiguousness of "replaced." Most are pro-democracy but fearful of the ironies of forcing democracy on others.

While many abhorred Bush and his foreign policy, the neo-conservative force in this country, now in its wanning phase, was partly the end result of liberals being unable to clarify their position. What kind of government is best? A democracy. How do we achieve this for other countries? A question never honestly answered.

While some talk of education, others of economic improvements, others of international communities to provide networks of support for democratically developing countries, the underlying fact remained that to "give" an undemocratic country a chance to be democratic, sovereignty is ignored and the freedom of the nascent democrat is considered merely senseless ignorance that must be stomped out by the truth of democracy; the irony is rich when democracy must first be given by force.

Neo-conservatives took this ideology of international democracy and militarized it. Democracy is the best form of government, and the most effective way to provide a country an opportunity to become a democracy is to overthrow the country's government by military force. Would this have been an existent ideology and resulting foreign policy if we were more honest about the nature of power in democracy?

The first intellectual step towards avoiding another Iraq war is to begin a sincere analysis of democracy and its relationship to power. The religiosity, the dogmatism, the idolization of democracy brings about justifications for violence on both symbolic and physical levels. Democracy needs to be pulled from the naiveté of Enlightenment thinking from which it was born in its current conception. Because of its god-like status in the West, its untouchable secular holiness, a truth and a belief for all regardless of tribe or religion, a total system as if a mathematics or science of government, people have left it unscathed as an ideology for hundreds of years. The revelations from Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, to name the big names among many, have contributed to the total annihilation of Enlightenment thought's universally rational, ahistoric, bodiless, individualistic chooser. In most contemporary thinking and academic thought, those that are not regressive in their ideologies, talking about the individual and their mind can no longer be free from the contexts of power, history, biology, economy, among other pertinent issues. Yet, democracy asks us in bad faith to suspend all that we have learned about the human being, and to assume, that we are all freely rational agents choosing without coercion by any force outside the self. But, even beyond the initial problems of outside power undermining the free chooser, can we be so sure that the self, the foundation from which all choices, all thoughts are made, is anything beyond a manifestation of or a discovery by coercive power?

And it seems more and more, upon reflection, that democracy, like church, asks us to suspend all knowledge in the glimmering hope of belief. What new crusade awaits its believers?