Death – Underlore

Support “our” troops? Ha! No.

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.

Scolding and a false dichotomy.

“I see a lot of the things you post. There is always a negative “poor me” spin on it.”

This is just one example of something I get privately a lot.

I resent having my pain trivialized simply because I may have less of it than you. Also of course the suffering of males is completely socially irrelevant. I am expected to “man up” and pretend that suffering is something only weaker other males experience.

Many with objectively worse luck than me resent me for experiencing pain from a position of lesser pain than theirs. How dare I experience suffering without having cause equal to theirs?

Impact bias and hope forces all who suffer to project on anyone who suffers less than they as living a life in the constant state of joy we ourselves would (wrongly) expect to experience if suddenly elevated to that state.

The reality is far more terrifying and far less satisfying as should be obvious from the evidence, yet the brain ignores evidence, hence the many cognitive fallacies to which we are susceptible.

“What are you looking for? A giggling glitter girl or a woman you is going to challenge your reality and hold you accountable for your own happiness?”

Being “accountable” for “happiness” is just concept which allows you to blame the victim and dismiss the suffering of others.

Older women often resent young healthy (sexy) women for being desired more than they, despite the strong belief that they are superior and that beauty cannot possibly come with intelligence or wisdom. They look back on their “mistakes” (by which they so often mean failure to parley temporary beauty into more lucrative contracts) and they assume that all young women are stupid for not sharing their bitter mercenary outlook.

They also often choose to scold men for their desire, as if wanting a young and fit mate is both a choice, and a sleazy personal flaw. As if a more healthy and righteous choice would be to sexually desire decay and age.

This is a defeatist attitude. Aging itself is the enemy, not those who select against it.

Monogamy forces women to be sex objects and men to be walking tax returns for the purposes of attracting a mate because it always makes sense to sort by the rarest traits first when sifting a large set for a single best choice.

The fact is that minds are somewhat software. As a successful monogamous male it simply makes sense to sort the potential mate pool, since you know each will force you to disclaim all others on par with enforced monogamy, by youth and sex appeal.

The crass fact of the matter was best summed up by the following quote:

“You can teach them to type, but you can’t teach them to grow tits.” ~Charlie Wilson’s War

It’s amusing because some of these women also often point out that over time they learned to become these internally superior creatures. But if that’s true, if I know that sexy little (apparently stupid) things turn into deep, wise, (and sexually unappealing yet somehow superior and more fulfilling) things with time then why would I skip that phase? Put simply, if life is going to teach you to type anyway, why not demand tits up front? (Pun intended.)

The problem is that while money piles up, if you ever had it, beauty (for now) always fades. The snide comment above, who’s source I am obviously not revealing, betrays a common false dichotomy. I see in it raging envy. Which I understand and which I recognize as a choice, and as a wound.

Granted, rarely does youth come with genius and wisdom, but life, as we should have noticed by now, is not fair. (Karma is a myth, and there is no god. That people still believe is a testament to our ability to ignore evidence.) The fact is that some very few people, are genetic lottery winners. As well as being physically astonishing they are equally mentally amazing.

There are people better than you by your own standards. (David Pierce is a better human than me, point blank.) And people who have better luck than you suffer also because the entire game is rigged. This is why hate and vengeance are futile. The solution is to change the system, and aid the life and joy of ALL humans without exception. (Trolly problems and quarantine exceptions of course not withstanding, so long as death and pain are lords of life, sometimes, far more rarely than we pretend, death and pain must be deployed to serve life and joy.)

This is why I don’t hunt billionares for sport/fun despite the harm they do merely existing. As a primate, I obviously want to. Bashing a predator with a rock is genetically satisfying. But as an intelligent primate, I know not to use a rock, and I know that even if I did, that wouldn’t solve the actual problem.

(Specifically and immediately, the solution is an exponential progressive tax funding a UBI. http://underlore.com/one-possible-solution/)

The solution is not to scold and try to force those whom you resent to live in guilt and reverence, that will never happen and it is beyond them, at best you could force them to fake it while you are around.

The general solution is to attack suffering and death at the root until what remains is tolerable to all.

Pain and death are not invincible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain

http://www.hedweb.com/transhumanism/neojainism.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence

“They could be shown the mastery of their minds and bodies, so that they could achieve the full expression of their powers, not spend their lives like ineffectual ghosts trapped in a marvelous machine beyond their skill to operate. They could break the domination of pain, so that it became a sentinel and not a tyrant, sending messages which the rational mind could accept or ignore as it pleased. Above all, they could choose to die only when they wished; they would be shown the many paths that led beyond the grave, and the price that must be paid for immortality in all its forms. A vista of infinite time would open up before them, with all its terror and promise. Some minds could face this, some could not; here was the dividing line between those who would inherit the universe, and those who were only quick-witted animals.” ~Arthur C Clarke (Via character.)

Critical Differences and Why I am Alone

“Once I am human I will talk to you about things that are of little or no importance! I will avoid religion and politics because if we disagree, you will not like me any more!”

~Mal, Borderlands 2

Most everyone I’ve ever lost so far I’ve lost due to disagreement. I don’t mean just mates. It’s the price of asking after things that truly matter.

If my mind was composed of ice cream preference and game strategy perhaps it would be easier for I and those I speak to to tolerate disagreement.

But I choose to live in spaces where choices matter. I choose to ask real questions, with real answers, that would have real consequences.

I did not have my self-esteem systematically crushed as the vast majority of my peers did. I am therefore incapable of flippantly dismissing my view of truth simply to fit in and play nice.

I only retain friends because they are in parity with me on the subjects that matter, or their awareness is superior to my own and they shape my opinion to match theirs, or I am unaware of a critical difference.

These differences mean life and death. Torture and joy. I cannot be friends with someone who ultimately, whether they are aware of it or not, are agents of death and pain.

I’m routinely called arrogant and a host of other negative things for this and my culture has seen fit to isolate me, leaving me in the hands of my family because of this. Offering only a trickle of food money as a token gesture of solidarity with me as a member of the species. Otherwise I feel like I’m in solitary confinement.

This sense of being alive, this sense of ethical responsibility, is openly treated as a mental illness. They tell me to treat life as a gift, but what they mean is juggle faberge eggs like they do, confident that either they are immortal, or that death and disaster will only arrive after they have left.

They prove this every time they get into a car. If they really thought life was a gift they’d act so differently. They’d act more like me. They’d respect the lives of others instead of dismissing the suffering of those same others.

It’s ironic and paradoxical, but one of the reasons disagreements with me are so critical is because I’ve trimmed the fat. I am more able to tolerate trivial and cultural differences than most other humans. Race, faith, social status, nationality, age—these things don’t matter to me as long as you are an agent of joy and life.

I am seen by some as cold and mean precisely because I feel so keenly and try so hard to be nice, not just to the people in my field of vision or those that “deserve” it, but all people, everywhere, forever.

Everyone is so quick to give me a life lesson or ignore me as a toxic failure precisely because I have so much to teach and have come so close to the ethical ideal.

All things considered, I believe I have averted more suffering and death, and enabled more joy and life on balance than anyone else could have under the same conditions. But the problem is so wildly complicated, and each life so unique, that I’ll never be able to prove it.

At best I can only hope that the tools I try to share are picked up by people under better conditions, sufficient to contribute to a positive feedback spiral, hopefully reaching, at some point, a suffering and death escape velocity.

Or I’m just wildly insane and full of toxic memes, and my culture is right to more or less quarantine me. And just in case that’s so, I always try to advocate for mercy and forgiveness for others. So that if that is the case I’ll be worthy of it myself, so that I can continue to be thankful, at least, for things not being much, much worse.

Update: 2016-04-22 0337 PM

I’ve been asked to make a list of those positions which tend to alienate.

Let’s start by saying that philosophically I’m essentially a Utilitarian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

For more complete less personal version of this list with reasons and links:

Emperor Innomen?

I personally believe: (In/That)

Nuclear power is the safest best form of power so far.
AI should be preemptively given full citizen rights.
Universal suffrage.
Genetic engineering/GMO/Synbio.
Geoengineering.
A UBI.
A cap on wealth.
Cloning and cloned meat for food.
Selling sex should be like selling any other service.
The removal of race, religion, age, and gender status as policy designations.
Nationalizing infrastructural enterprises that are too big to fail.
Permitting unlicensed fully disclosed medical care.
Corporate execution as a legal judgement option.
Cryogenics.
Punitive prisons are bad policy and ethically repugnant.
Political parties should be treated legally like religions.
Officially enforced monogamy and all marriage law should abolished.
Gun law should be abolished.
Drug law should be abolished.
Patents and copyright should be abolished.
State and local law should be abolished.
Crime should be treated as only mental illness and/or desperation.
The wage gap is more a product of disposition than oppression.
LNT model is wrong.
Vengeance is wrong.
Life likely didn’t originate on Earth.
Communal schooling should be abolished.
The brain in some can act like an organic transceiver.
Time is an illusion.
The hidden variable theory is correct.
There is no free will.
The MRA movement has many legitimate grievances.
Democracy objectively might not be a good idea.
Deterrence is mostly a fig leaf for sadism.
Some species should be wiped out or reduced to freezer samples/records.
Parents do not own their children.
Children are oppressed second class citizens deserving of full rights.
The animal kingdom needs to be radically reshaped to end suffering.

This list is likely incomplete or will change over time.