Psychology – Page 11

Comments on Season 3 of American Horror Story

TLDW?: Everyone goes to hell, no one deserves it. (no not even her)

Your revenge fantasy is not worth even in theory the opportunity cost or the ethical cost.

In the context of this show it would seem that hell gets everyone. Perhaps that’s partly because everyone is so keen on vengeance and punishment. Ironic that the deserve to punish should manufacture justification to punish. Makes me ask who benefits. Who setup this cyclic system of never ending karmic debt? And why is no one opposing it?

Complaining about a tv show, letting it get to me, it’s not as trivial as you think because any story about magic could be a story about technology and like it or not these options will be presented to our species, and as we open up and grow we may learn that some of these concepts of existential context, hells, heavens, spirit worlds, could have real world analogs and we will have to deal with them.

I like having at least some idea of what I’ll do in basic classes of strategic eventuality and in the context of this show the lack of vision and stupidity is appalling. Firstly you have a pointless adherence to tradition which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what tradition is and therefore a profound degree of stagnation.

The seven wonders, among which are telekinesis, pyrokinesis, divination, resurrection, etc is one where they visit hell and come back. The achievement being the escaping part. One of their friends doesn’t escape. The didn’t do this test last. They admitted to reordering the test schedule at whim, it did not occur to them to sort the tests in order of failure lethality.

Imagine the stupidity and psychopathy that betrays. In this context if that’s how witches are, then they should be killed. It makes you wonder if the hunting organizations are actually a good idea.

How do they not declare war on hell? How do they not invade it to recover their friend? And if they utterly cannot by dint of cosmic law, they why on earth would they put such a risk before actions as trivial as setting a fire, or playing hide and seek, or teleporting?

The take away from the whole series is as is often the case a reminder that either people are really really stupid, or mean, or tv thinks why are. The fact that I am basically the only one that I know of that writes this way tell me it’s not merely that third one.

The take away feeling is one of disgust on many levels.

Feminists should hate it for the lack of intellect alone of the supposedly immortal female characters, let alone the rest of the cast.

At one point a character demands to be executed for her crimes for an internally valid political reason, but the response reminds me of school in that we have a demonstration that it is not the administrators that are in charge but rather the bell on the wall.

The autocrat of the witches political structure does not even consider simply decreeing a change of tradition. A rather mind numbingly stupid tradition I might add. At the very least they could update the method of execution to something both more effective and less barbaric, and perhaps most importantly, less sycophantic. Why duplicate the simplistic thuggery of your prejudicial foes? Especially considering that the one being executed had already been executed once.

I think I’m coming to grips with the fact that I simply no longer believe democracy is a good idea. I look at the world and this notion of collective self rule is proved a sham on every continent. Always some minority rules the majority by deception or force. At what point would we even in theory admit that it’s unworkable? That like all difficult tasks a specialist, preferably one trained from the cradle for it, would be best at it?

There is a lot wrong with this show.

I tried to publish this also as a netflix review but got the disgusting “Reviews must not exceed 2,000 characters.” How pathetic.

Personal Serenity

“The time when our connection to others defined us is gone. We’ve lost all sense of self. In this world where we’re watched over by the system, and live by it’s standards, a community is no longer needed, it’s not even relevant. We all live in our own little cell, and the system tames us by giving each of us our personal serenity.” ~Shogo Makishima, Psycho Pass

Who owns your limbic system?

American Exceptionalism

Apex So much of my life was spent believing in a kind of American exceptionalism. An earned kind, where America’s fundamental nature was so different and new that it amounted to social innovation akin to the steam engine, and therefore, was exceptional.

But the more I learn from experience and disparate sources, the more I realize America is just another country, as petty and infantile as any in history with only a small margin of difference in which to play.

We are worse than some nations, better than others, as a whole, or on an issue by issue basis. But the behaviors school children typically would dismiss as things only other countries would do, like torture, hydraulic despotism, murder, rewriting history, etc, are well within the scope of action for our country.

And that’s not even touching on the mythology and lies about our founding. Or the causes of our various wars, or our behavior during them.

As time goes by I feel less like an American, and more oddly enough, like a Kentuckian.

Literal Slavery, Original Debt, and the Reality of Choice

Homeless_Man

Some have argued that slavery is defined by the ability of a slave owner to steal and sell children and that therefore wage slavery is a whiny emo term because McDonald’s can’t sell their employees children to Wendy’s. But the fact is the 1% DO buy and sell (y)our children because it saddles them with original debt and gives them a false choice every bit as loaded as the choice a slave faces: Suffer profitably for us, suffer punitively, or die.

The Tyranny Of Compulsory Schooling

I for example, having ethics and will power, decided while still a virgin to never have children until I could afford to have them as a free person. That means not being dependent on the whim of an employer or a public school system with regard to how that child develops. This is a freedom that actually only the very rich in today’s world have.

Virtually no one in the developed world has that freedom. And the few that potentially might, have been brain wiped by that same education system and media such that they think indenturing their children to this system is not only wise, but morally urgent. Many of the rich are keen to indoctrinate their larva, saddling them with a different kind of original debt.

Original debt is the original sin of the modern world’s church.

Children are born non-people (as proved by the facts that they can’t vote and they can legally be whipped at will virtually anywhere on earth) and they even if considered citizens would still be considered worthless because by default they are “uneducated.” Which as Frank Zappa and Ray Bradbury will tell you, just means mostly unburdened by student loan debt.

People of the bootlicking variety are keen to point out how awesome compulsory education is simply because it’s costly to impose but free for the victim. But that’s the first step of original debt. It’s the collective version of the cliche abusive guardian railing about how hard it is to feed/cloth a child, therefore they should be grateful and obedient.

Which would make sense to some degree if it was an actual choice for the ward. That lack of choice is the essence of slavery.

This concept of owing a debt to your owners flies in the face of any objective non-arbitrary definition of human rights because it attaches a price tag to being born as if it was a choice.

In a sense a pet literally has more choice because a dog or a cat actually can choose to leave and the result doesn’t necessarily mean torture and death, though for a pet deep in human controlled territory or a harsh setting it could mean that.

Put simply, I didn’t ask to be born. There are two ways generally you can parse that. You can either kill me when I don’t comply. (Amusingly acknowledged with the cliche threat, I brought you into this world I can take you out.) Or you can recognize that my being alive is a debt to be paid by someone other than me. In my case the debt is paid by my parents but this isn’t fair for several reasons. Firstly, all three of us live under government rule. They ultimately have authority over every aspect of our lives. I am not allowed to so much as build a fire in my front yard or dig a well without a permit. (They have literally gone so far as to demand I paint my house a certain color.) Thus I have been utterly stripped of any real ability to provide for myself independently.

Both for ethical reasons and for diversity reasons participation in the “job” market needs to be a real choice between two or more viable alternatives.

It is morally urgent for society to accept responsibility and allow for the choice to opt out. Anything else is by definition true slavery. I should as a human by default own a share of the planet’s value equal to it’s total value divided by it’s population. “The per capita PPP GWP was approximately US$12,400.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

If I were given that by default in exchange for playing by the rules, then we could talk about employment being a choice. We could then talk about capitalism in Horatio Alger pluck and determination terms. All the self improvement and ambition rhetoric would apply.

But it doesn’t so long as the choice is dental torture and slow starvation, or being a wage/debt slave.

If my “choice” is choose an owner, be it corporate, clerical, or government, or be homeless, excommunicated, or imprisoned, then I had about as much choice as the slave who could at best choose who caused their death, or which form of torture to endure.

Until it’s actually possible for someone to live in society at the expense of society as a kind of collective inheritance, then “citizens” are nothing but slaves, with varying degrees of perks.

One Possible Solution

Support “our” troops? Ha! No.

(Repost from G+)

This essay is a response to a picture posted of a solider crying over his baby. This photos was labeled “What love looks like.” Here is my response.

Uhhh, no, love is not putting yourself in front of a bullet for money or ego, doubly so when you have people depending on you. Triply so when the employment chosen is not only potentially lethal but murderous. When our country goes back on the meds and our solders get back to being defenders and not profit margin protecting assassins, then maybe that will change, until then, at best, this guy is a victim of a brutal scam or economic exploitation.

At worst he’s a sadistic thug.

“Service to our nation” is crap unless his primary jobs have been hurricane cleanup and the like, but given our military spending break downs, odds are his job has been to facilitate the murder of brown people with the express purpose of perpetuating what is rapidly becoming a holy war.

I am an American, and this service is NOT on my behalf. I will not be a party to littering a desert populated by (now parentless) children with over priced unexploded bomblets that happen to look like toys because defense spending lobbyists and blood thirsty and racist right wing politicians and soulless banking magnate arms dealers define foreign policy in this country and have managed to convince the weaker minded among us that blowing up those who are different, and who can often barely scrape up a glass of clean water, makes us tough.

Grow some spine people. Speaking out about this feel good crap for what is essentially advertising for something that is to put it mildly, ethically criminal, is our damn civic duty at this point. Especially since all this murder inc. garbage has gotten so out of hand its about to wreck our ability to keep the lights on.

Go find a picture of a fireman hugging his kid. Get doe eyed about that. Oh but that’s different, it’s not like running into a burning house is lethal. Oh wait. It COMPLETELY is. This kind of photo is just defense contractor P.R.

This crap makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s deliberately promulgated to make it seem as those being anti-murder is somehow anti-baby. “Awww isn’t she cute! I better vote for the guy that wants to raid the social security budget for another shipment of predator drones.”

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.” ~Albert Einstein

If you’re actually capable of being a solider you’re damn sure capable of being a fireman, or an EMT or something, anything, else.

This attitude that it doesn’t matter how evil you have to be to make sure your family has money is about as ethically bankrupt as “I was just following orders.” Getting money when you’ve abandoned ethics is a cake walk, whats really hard is doing it and keeping your soul at the same time. Lets see some photos of the guy that’s a career janitor or a career trash man hugging his kids.

Life isn’t a fucking action movie.

Just because you’re profit sharing with an infant doesn’t mean you’re by definition doing good. Especially if your job is ultimately to facilitate killing people, including someone else’s infants.

This crap makes my blood boil. I can’t imagine how that kid is going to feel when she finds out what was done in her name. I almost hope she’s successfully indoctrinated by then just to spare her the guilt of breathing and the shame of being an excuse for murder.

And all that’s on top of the injustice perpetrated by the system that would take a father away from his family and send him into the desert to murder people. It’s like all these religious fanatics that say “Thank god, it’s a miracle!” when a truck load of orphans explodes and one manages to crawl from the burning wreckage instead of “Fuck god for letting a truck full of orphans explode!”

We let the country, which exploits loyalty and patriotism to protect a profit margin and an exploitative way of life, rip away that father from his child and then get all misty eyed and patriotic when someone manages to survive and someone snaps a photo of him given back what was in effect stolen.

How many rich people’s kids are in Afghanistan or somewhere similar right now? Yeah, that’s what I thought, it’s always poor people’s kids that gotta step in front of the bullet or worse drop a bomb on a terrorist training facility (or pre-school, whatever, same dif, right?)

You care about this country? You care about soldiers? You care about children? Then elect someone that will bring them home RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

How about we use all that money to build some schools and hospitals and solar facilities and water purification facilities and farms.

Wake up. Shit like this has let people with the morals of a roundworm turn this country into the bad guy.

The only silver lining is that if we don’t fix it and I mean damn quick it will economically implode anyway.

The Final Underclass

See also: https://newrepublic.com/article/145734/costs-millennial

On this father’s day, I’d like to take a moment to briefly challenge the world and to make my position clear for peer (and not so peer) review.

Put simply I think the civil rights division of children and adults needs to be effectively abolished.

There is a false dichotomy implicit in the assumption that children must be treated as property, or allowed to destroy themselves and society with complete freedom.

I believe that a person should be born a full and complete citizen of the species with all the default human rights and liberties. Not as an infant, property of parents and the state for some arbitrary time.

So what is the alternative?

Simply treat them exactly as we treat newly awakened coma patients with good prognosis.

Think about what a coma patient is. A blank adult. An adult in need of orientation and (re)education.

Functionally and qualitatively I can see no substantive difference between such an adult and a child. The legal frame work is already in place.

There are guardians with enhanced temporary authority, but ultimately the patient in question is still a person. No one has the right to beat them, or arbitrarily control them. Their treatment must always take into consideration their default rights as human beings.

This is exactly how children should be treated because that is exactly what a child is.

A coma patient isn’t assigned a religion, or a social role, they are given empowerment and choice. They are protected from themselves but that protection ends not on an arbitrary date, but based on objective criteria of development and ability.

Explain to me if you can how the current treatment is ethically or functionally superior.

We don’t need schools, we need habilitation facilities and libraries. The term for this in one case is particularly brilliant.

The Awakening Unit of the St John the Baptist Hospital, Rome, Italy, which opened in 1997, has the usual radiology and diagnostic equipment for assessing patients with head and brain injuries, and those in a coma. But also the medical staff specialize in rehabilitation, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, aimed at helping patients to recover from their injuries.

Instead of raising children, we should Awaken them.

The future could be so wonderful. If only I could make you see.

I’ll spare you the links you wouldn’t click anyway. 🙂

West Wing Children’s Suffrage (pro-vote) Segment. (Edited for continuity and focus.) on Vimeo.

Addition 2015-08-22 0705 AM:

It needs saying, I suppose, that you could give kids the vote without playing with any other laws. (Age of consent for example.) After all, society is layered with such age specificities. Gun ownership, drinking, driving, consent, trial as adult limits (if any) etc. I see no reason why society couldn’t parse children as voters. Hell, voting often happens in school gymnasiums anyway.

I’m sure adjusting those age ranges would be among the many issues that children would be disproportionately interested in. And hey, that’s politics for you so I’m fine with that. Along with the issues noted in the West Wing episode, like longer term environmental policy, education, etc.

While I’m talking about it, I think the best reason to give kids the vote from a practical standpoint is civics education and future engagement. It’s sort of silly to take them on field trips to Washington DC and the like when everyone in the room knows they are essentially pigs as far as our legal system is concerned.

I, for one, would like to see all that change.

We live in a man hating culture, and if others are honest the first thing they think of when a white nerdy pudgy guy with glasses talks about empowering children is, stranger danger, complete with vans and sweaty trench coats.

(Never mind the statistical realities of child abuse. We all know facts are 99% irrelevant anyway.)

Beyond that the hideous fact is this: We, as a society, love having a domestic slave class to whip and command. We’re not morally ready to treat children like human beings yet. When we start to be, you’ll see more movement on this issue.

Addition based on modified comment.

I totally understand where the child human trafficking market comes from. It’s literally just an extension of what amounts to average parenting logic. Really think about this. I mean, if I have the right to basically plan “my” “child’s” entire life such that I can force them to live however I want them to live for eighteen years with the backing of the state, up to and including beating them and drugging them when they deviate (!) why shouldn’t I be able to sell them? Especially when there’s such a huge foster adoption market. The ONLY difference between the average American parent and a human trafficker is degree, supply chain, and commitment to the logic.

Well, I’m the other end of that logical consistency. I want the entire concept of “child” removed in the EXACT same way it’s removed for adults with the minds of children and adults recovering from brain injury. It is 100% possible to “awaken” a child instead of raise it.

http://underlore.com/the-tyranny-of-compulsory-schooling/ (I didn’t write this one, but I adore it. I suspect you won’t read it. Too scary.)

The entire “parenting” position is one of submission defense and the desire to force it on the next generation. It’s literally no less cliche than “well I had to walk uphill in the snow to school and so should you, builds character.”

How I would raise a child today is exactly like how I’d take care of my father if he had a stroke and forgot everything. I’d care for him and love him and do everything I could to protect and awaken him. The implied need to oppress and control a “child” is 100% myth. It simply does not exist for the same reason I would have no need to apply that treatment to this hypothetical version of my father.

This is not hard to understand, it’s just inconvenient because we’d have to give up our slaves.

As for how I’d structure society, that’s a big question and it’s subject to a lot of change and further learning. underlore.com/emperor-innomen/

But in the case of children it’s actually very simple. I would simply remove the concept of “child” as a legal entity and instead parse them, again legally, as adults with a regenerative brain condition. Everything about their handling would include the dignity and human rights implied thereby. Would those children turn out radically different from me? Of course they would. Am I crapping my pants in terror at the change that implies? No I am not. Because look around outside your bubble. Change is NEEDED.

I’m not trying to FORCE all future humans over which I have opportunistic power to become copies of me. Why would you?

‘If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.’ ~Frank Zappa

Sexual Consent

Lets just get this out of the way because it comes up 100% of the time eventually whenever I talk about liberating the child caste.

People always eventually balk at the idea of children having citizenship because of the idea that they could be manipulated into legally consenting to sex long before they are ready. False consent basically. Here is my response to that:

We do not have to enslave people to protect them from sexual predation. That argument is absurd. We’ve already solved this problem. For example, go try having sex with someone in a coma, or an adult with the mind of a 10 year old being properly cared for, or any other vulnerable adult in a sanctioned functional setting, and see how many layers of protection those fully adult recognized citizens have.

It’s conceptually trivial to protect people, and honor their rights at the same time.

The argument is bankrupt because it implies an exchange of liberty for security is required and that is famously not the case. Implying that the desire to liberate children is equivalent to the desire to legalize raping them is specious to put it gently.