Category: Ethics

I’m a little tired of prison rape jokes, sue me.

While yes censorship sucks and everything is fair game for making fun, in my opinion before you can make fun of something horrific you should at least know enough to be on the ethically correct side of an issue first when it comes time to be serious.

I’m thinking a bunch of upper class white nerds that make jokes on the computer for a living know as much about prison rape as I know about Nascar.

This may be obvious but making rape a part of prison, which is what we in effect do by keeping it trivial with jokes, is unconstitutional.

You may think prison isn’t harsh enough without rape and torture, but if you call yourself a real American, then too fucking bad, because this isn’t Egypt and our wacky constitution protects EVERYONE from cruel and unusual punishment.

But then again, we’ve made such a laugh riot of the whole thing it seems the second part may no longer apply.

In short, if you really don’t have a problem with prison rape because you think they deserve it, I hereby hope you get a pound of weed and a bunch of cash planted in your trunk and you get wrongfully convicted so that you can find out first hand just how serious the other side of prison rape is. (And how worthless our court system is.) 20 bucks says when you feel your anus tear you’ll think to yourself “i don’t deserve this” but guess what, you’re just a dumb druggie now, and you’re in prison, so obviously you did something and you deserve what you get, hell its not even like you’re really a human… right?

Individualism serves to allow atrocity. This is obviously not the ONLY thing it does but it is one of the things it does.

It allows us to blame presidents instead of the governments, CEOs instead of companies and, Popes instead of religions.

Note that all of those are people taking bullets for system. This is not a coincidence any more than the golden ratio.

Perhaps we should consider universal culpability. Ultimately we allow these things to occur, are we not all partly to blame?

We should focus on prevention and understanding, not blame and punishment.

Criminal behavior is all sourced by the same demons that haunt all of humanity. As Clive Barker said, all who do evil are suffering.

The process has been generally and philosophically understood for recorded history, the only thing that changes is how it is stated and what is done as a result. All humans have needs, and if those needs are not met we turn into the most frightening predator we have yet seen. A predator that will pursue those needs with ruthless and fearless determination that knows no pain or death. A predator that delights in the utter annihilation and torment of whatever we perceive to be standing in the way of our fulfillment of that need.

But, we also have a near infinite capacity for compassion, forgiveness, and change. The need for revenge is a relic from our primordial past, a way to cohere a group through tough times that cannot be controlled.

As Nicole Kidman said in the interpreter, vengeance is a lazy form of grief.

What that means is that in being wronged we have lost something. Something that can never come back. Figuratively if not literally something dear to us has died. And rather than face the grim reality of the fact that it is gone and there is nothing we can do to erase that act we think we can control the situation from the other end.

We think we can inflict suffering that we perceive to be equal on those that have wronged us and that is justice. But in the end, once our vengeance is satisfied, as rarely as that occurs, we still must face our grief.

In a classic impact bias we think that once we’ve had our fill of torture porn, our righteous indignation, our base animal needs indulged with a guilt free excuse, our bloodlust sated, the pain will be removed, or seriously lessened. But this is wrong.

What actually happens is that our grief was always there, waiting like a patient vulture until only it remained. Indulging in vengeance is like taking heroin for a bullet wound. Sure you feel better for a time, but the wound is there, waiting. Perhaps even killing you.

The real solution is to prevent future pain, and not in some brutal torturous show. There is no deterrent but prevention and obviation. Vengeance never saved lives, it always takes them. Granted killing a killer can be the best action to take but by definition we will never know. In not knowing the future we never know if this was his last kill after he goes on to cure cancer.

Once the harm stops, once you are safe to indulge in vengeance. That is the time to grieve, and make peace with your loss. Once that is done you can approach they or it who wronged you in strategic way, and save our children from the same pain in the future.

The best option is to understand why the thing happened and work to remove that reason from society for all time.

And that is what I have done. And that is what I am doing.

Like I’ve never heard that before, and always from the people utterly terrified by my conclusions.

Well writing IS what I do. And like speaking it can have a HUGE impact on the world, especially given that writing is immortal. Candy striping a cancer ward is going to do nothing but make me feel good about myself in the long term. I’m trying to educate people (or learn about it myself via contradiction) on the nature of the system as a whole. And before you assume I don’t engage in your worthless idea of charity, ask yourself which one of us spent Christmas in a nursing home despite the absence of any relatives in a nursing home.

The system is evil, you can’t just go out and help people without helping it. The problem is not that simple. Soup kitchens by and large are run by churches, and I don’t have the funding to start an agnostic one, and I’m not gonna play a game that is corrupt from the start with some kind of bullshit ‘the ends justify the means’ logic just so I can go into moral debt to get out of a fiscal one.

No, there is nothing to be done quickly and easily except exit and educate, and that’s what I am doing.

Rude? So whats the flaw here, my honesty?

Why should I pretend to do the impossible just because other people like hearing about themselves?

My perspective is the only one I have 100% authority to discuss.

I will not perpetuate the illusion of selfless action just because you think “honesty” and self interest are rude.

I debate people not to try and change them but to get them to drag positions out of me, I work best in concert with another mind.

Think fencing, it sucks versus a tree.

It’s quite simple really. No words justify assault barring contrived circumstances. There is nothing I can say to you that makes it ok for you to hit me. If you are an American I’m not surprised that you miss this. America is a country where most children get hit and raised in a religion that assures compliance through bribery and fear. Under those conditions it’s as impossible for you to spontaneously understand as it is for me to spontaneously speak Japanese.

Words are merely thoughts shared. And no thought waives your right to protection from physical assault. Only actions can do that.

Now I’ll grant in many ways writing is an action, thus I grant the possibility that maybe a situation exists where what you write can constitute an action as dangerous as potentially lethal assault, and thus justify a physical response, but in my opinion a situation like that is so unimaginably rare as to be discounted from reality as firmly as the chance of winning the lottery and being struck by lightning every day for a whole year.

I could be a total raving lunatic but that doesn’t change the correctness or incorrectness of any given point.

I wish they taught logic and critical thinking in what passes for school these days.

The fact is, if you think it through and are consistent about the application of your ethics, you probably agree with me.