Phew, mouthfull of a title, eh?
Okay, so, 10 rants later, we're back to this one.
So, where'd we leave off?
We speculatively supposed, what if The Bullshit Busters succeeded in busting King-Kong and Godzilla, what would the world look like?
Well, we quickly figured out, you can't kill Godzilla, so you'd have to build a society to pen Godzilla in, and try to make him behave, and this has pretty much already been done, but at the cost of a lot of bullshit.
So, I concluded, a society that values liberty can't be having people in mental shackles, people need to know the score, so, we need a society minus the bullshit.
So, I recapped the slogan rants, and gave ways to recognize, avoid, and dismantle the bullshit.
Which I condensed into this one rant here.
All of which pretty much answered the questions I set out on with the first of these inner-space rants, so, I brought that full circle in the last rant, and now we're back up to here.
So, that takes care of the bullshit, now back to "Godzilla".
Well, I already had that largely covered in the recap for "meaningless slogans".
It pretty much comes down to, power is given to the powerful by the stupid.
That's what power is, lying to the dumb.
Society herds "Godzilla", but "Godzilla", is a minority of dickheads and morons, and we all suffer bullshit because of them.
Both the smart, and the harmless morons who manage not to be dickheads.
So, if you're a violent reactive moron, next time you pitch a fit about traffic, or the lines at the DMV, know it's all because of you.
It's yours, you earned it, enjoy.
But, just because society was made to cage you, doesn't mean we're going to let it be geared to you.
That's how we got The Politics Of Godzilla, and well, fuck you, enough of that shit.
It's been a crashing failure, the lies are exposed, and there's no more bullshit arguments to shore it up anymore.
It's been disinfected by sunlight.
So, moving along, how to pen the lizard-brained in once and for all?
Well, the Obama-hate shit is keeping their stubby little typing fingers busy.
Let 'em have at it.
Long as they're busy with that stupid shit, they ain't out punching a woman, or filling a terrier up with firecrackers.
Hell, while they're at it, let 'em write a bunch of shit about brown people, and the homeless too.
Long as they're writing it, they ain't doing it.
Once again, the internet proves useful.
This time, as a Godzilla cage.
The Bullshit Buster Containment Unit.
The forums, the blogs, the more there are, the more this toxic crud gets sponged up, and rendered harmless.
Fuck, it's only a damned shame there was no internet in 1930's Germany.
The harm that could've been prevented.
Just saying.
So, anyhoo, while they're busy in their self-imposed little mental prisons, let's set about spreading the Light Of Reason, and taking our damned world back.
Well, again, society may be geared downward to this lower 80% to contain the lower 20% of lunatic assholes, but that doesn't mean you and I have to put up with it.
All the meaningless slogan shit, that's the poisonous lava that vomits perpetually from the heads of the herded.
Fuck it, fuck them.
Avoid it.
It's not for you.
All you and I can hope for, is to wake up as many people out there we can, and maybe lower that percentage down, and take some of the power away from the herders.
Because, again, the herder class has been infested with Godzillas.
Gotta look out for that.
Eternal vigilance, and all that jazz.
Everything above, including the linked rants, that's the phase 2 I mentioned in the last one.
Especially the bit about taking our world back.
That, and what comes next.
So, on to that....
Read More......
Friday, July 31, 2009
Inner-space part 15- Back To The Brain.
So, we come full circle back to part 1 of this series, having (hopefully) fleshed out the core ideas a little bit...
So, where did we leave off?
Ah, yes, we pondered if the hindbrain, our old buddy here...
....was the sole source of all the mischief in the world.
Well, no, there's also bullshit, and that bit of bad software creeps in through the higher brain.
So, we sought to dissect that as well.
And dissect it we did.
It comes down to two things.
We're a pattern finding animal, and like all Darwinian lifeforms, we seek to survive.
And Darwinism isn't too ethically picky about how you survive.
At an animal level, you can go ahead and deceive if you need to, look at the stick insect.
And I used that as the launch off point for "the descent of bullshit".
And in that little essay, I pointed out that where the stuff we call bullshit creeps in, is the added layer of self-deception.
But, the core of that comes down to pattern finding.
Finding the wrong pattern, and hanging onto it like grim death.
Now, this stubbornness has survival value.
If you can't hang onto the pattern of "eat those funny white berries, you die", well, you die.
So, we have to be able to dig our feet in on some sort of reality.
The problem comes in when you interpret the wrong fucking thing the wrong fucking way, and dig in on that.
I'm reminded of one time when I was a kid at school, and got blamed for something I didn't do.
I kept saying "I didn't do it", and I pointed out how they had no evidence that I did it, no witnesses that I did it, that it was just literally out of thin air they thought I did it.
Didn't matter, the answer each time was "well, I think you did it".
I can still hear it, this almost unbroken droning chain of "well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it...".
It was exactly like that.
Almost 10 mindless repetitions at least.
Objective reality didn't matter, they just picked someone, and dug in their feet.
And this has happened in the legal system.
Still happens.
Convictions overturned by DNA evidence, and the victim/witness still swears to the core of their being that the person did it.
The brain is faulty, the mind literally plays tricks.
But, the very fact we're discussing this, means we have the capacity to reflect, and revise, and shrug off the patterns that don't work.
To get at the objective truth through the fog of white noise.
We can take a whole damned WORLD that doesn't work, and throw it out if we want.
That's what this series is really about.
The world we've got, is a world that literally accidentally stumbled together millennia ago, and our ancestors mindlessly ran with it.
We don't have to take it.
It's all made up.
We can make something else up.
Any damned time we want.
That's our power, it's our right, and it's our job.
So, that's what I've been getting at with all the rants prior to this.
Let's put it all together.
After beating the King-Kong/Godzilla metaphor to within an inch of it's life (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) I recapped the slogan series, and boiled that recap down to a series of possible solutions.
Amongst those solutions, an outline of possible ways to lash out, and fight back against this illusory world that's piped at us.
And the core of all of those solutions, is critical thinking, and humor/laughter.
Our brains literally do possess an anti-virus against the bullshit.
The wrong patterns that creep in, and become destructive to us, yet we hang onto them despite them being obsolete and irrelevant.
That's been the struggle of human history.
But, IMHO, despite numerous delays, and reversals, it's still been a slow upward curve.
As I illustrated with this exhaustive little progression chart.
Well, illustrated a bit sloppily, anyway, but still....
So, all of that is the toolkit for fighting bullshit.
But how to whup "Godzilla"?
Well, we cliff-hanged on that here, and I'll be getting back to that finally in the next rant.
Stay tuned.
:)
Read More......
So, where did we leave off?
Ah, yes, we pondered if the hindbrain, our old buddy here...
....was the sole source of all the mischief in the world.Well, no, there's also bullshit, and that bit of bad software creeps in through the higher brain.
So, we sought to dissect that as well.
And dissect it we did.
It comes down to two things.
We're a pattern finding animal, and like all Darwinian lifeforms, we seek to survive.
And Darwinism isn't too ethically picky about how you survive.
At an animal level, you can go ahead and deceive if you need to, look at the stick insect.
And I used that as the launch off point for "the descent of bullshit".And in that little essay, I pointed out that where the stuff we call bullshit creeps in, is the added layer of self-deception.
But, the core of that comes down to pattern finding.
Finding the wrong pattern, and hanging onto it like grim death.
Now, this stubbornness has survival value.
If you can't hang onto the pattern of "eat those funny white berries, you die", well, you die.
So, we have to be able to dig our feet in on some sort of reality.
The problem comes in when you interpret the wrong fucking thing the wrong fucking way, and dig in on that.
I'm reminded of one time when I was a kid at school, and got blamed for something I didn't do.
I kept saying "I didn't do it", and I pointed out how they had no evidence that I did it, no witnesses that I did it, that it was just literally out of thin air they thought I did it.
Didn't matter, the answer each time was "well, I think you did it".
I can still hear it, this almost unbroken droning chain of "well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it, well, I think you did it...".
It was exactly like that.
Almost 10 mindless repetitions at least.
Objective reality didn't matter, they just picked someone, and dug in their feet.
And this has happened in the legal system.
Still happens.
Convictions overturned by DNA evidence, and the victim/witness still swears to the core of their being that the person did it.
The brain is faulty, the mind literally plays tricks.
But, the very fact we're discussing this, means we have the capacity to reflect, and revise, and shrug off the patterns that don't work.
To get at the objective truth through the fog of white noise.
We can take a whole damned WORLD that doesn't work, and throw it out if we want.
That's what this series is really about.
The world we've got, is a world that literally accidentally stumbled together millennia ago, and our ancestors mindlessly ran with it.
We don't have to take it.
It's all made up.
We can make something else up.
Any damned time we want.
That's our power, it's our right, and it's our job.
So, that's what I've been getting at with all the rants prior to this.
Let's put it all together.
After beating the King-Kong/Godzilla metaphor to within an inch of it's life (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) I recapped the slogan series, and boiled that recap down to a series of possible solutions.
Amongst those solutions, an outline of possible ways to lash out, and fight back against this illusory world that's piped at us.
And the core of all of those solutions, is critical thinking, and humor/laughter.
Our brains literally do possess an anti-virus against the bullshit.
The wrong patterns that creep in, and become destructive to us, yet we hang onto them despite them being obsolete and irrelevant.
That's been the struggle of human history.
But, IMHO, despite numerous delays, and reversals, it's still been a slow upward curve.
As I illustrated with this exhaustive little progression chart.
Well, illustrated a bit sloppily, anyway, but still....
So, all of that is the toolkit for fighting bullshit.
But how to whup "Godzilla"?
Well, we cliff-hanged on that here, and I'll be getting back to that finally in the next rant.
Stay tuned.
:)
Read More......
Labels:
society
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Reading/Viewing List.
Well, this is by no means complete, but I packed as much in as I could.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
Margaret Wander Bonanno books (part 1, part 2)
Read More......
Satiristas!
Fast Food Nation.
Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food.
Candide, Zadig, and selected stories- Voltaire.
Philosophical Dictionary- Voltaire.
Dialogs and Natural History of Religion- David Hume.
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings.
Best Of Robert Ingersoll.
Some Mistakes of Moses- Robert Ingersoll.
The Bible According To Mark Twain.
The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories- Mark Twain.
Mark Twain On Religion: What is Man, The War Prayer, Thou Shalt Not Kill, The Fly, Letters from the Earth.
Why I Am Not A Christian, and other essays- Bertrand Russell.
Gulliver's Travels, and Other Writings- Jonathan Swift (contains "A Modest Proposal")
Origin Of Species- Charles Darwin.
A Brief History Of Time- Stephen Hawking.
Demon Haunted World- Carl Sagan.
Breaking The Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon- Daniel C. Dennett.
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's answer To Christian Fundementalism- David Mills (with a forward by Dorian Sagan)
God: The Failed Hypothesis- Victer J. Stenger.
Quantum Gods- Victor J. Stenger.
Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders- Jamie Whyte.
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq- Stephen Hinzer.
The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World- Dominique Moisi.
Guns, Germs, and Steel- Jared Diamond.
Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed- Jared Diamond.
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet- Edward Humes.
The Better World Handbook- Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, Brett Johnson.
On Bullshit- Harry G. Frankfurt.
Intellectual Impostures- Alan Sokal.
Bad Science- Ben Goldacre.
Me Of Little Faith- Lewis Black.
3 Times Carlin: An Orgy Of George- George Carlin.
George Carlin: Last Words.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- Douglas Adams.
Discworld series- Terry Pratchett.
Factoid Books series- Various artists, writers.
MAD for decades.
Other media-
Network.
A face in the crowd.
Food Inc.
Monty Mython Holy Trinity (Holy Grail / Life Of Brian/ Meaning Of Life)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (TV Series)
Letting Go Of God- Julia Sweeney (CD and booklet)
Letting Go Of God- Julia Sweeney (DVD)
Religulous- Bill Maher.
George Carlin: All My Stuff.
George Carlin: It's bad For Ya.
Bill Hicks Live.
Arizona Bay- Bill Hicks (CD)
Rant In E Minor- Bill Hicks (CD)
Richard Pryor: Here And Now/ Live On The Sunset Strip.
Idiocracy.
Guns, Germs, and Steel- Jared Diamond (documentary version)
Penn & Teller: Bullshit.
Chappelle's Show.
The Twilight Zone.
Star Trek.
Walter Cronkite Remembers.
The Stunt Man.
Real Life- Albert Brooks.
The Great Dictator- Charlie Chaplain.
Duck Soup- Marx Brothers.
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- Peter Sellers.
Shock Corridor.
Free to Be You and Me- Marlo Thomas.
(Subversive hippie stuff for your little kids *wink*)
Fast Food Nation.
Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food.
Candide, Zadig, and selected stories- Voltaire.
Philosophical Dictionary- Voltaire.
Dialogs and Natural History of Religion- David Hume.
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings.
Best Of Robert Ingersoll.
Some Mistakes of Moses- Robert Ingersoll.
The Bible According To Mark Twain.
The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories- Mark Twain.
Mark Twain On Religion: What is Man, The War Prayer, Thou Shalt Not Kill, The Fly, Letters from the Earth.
Why I Am Not A Christian, and other essays- Bertrand Russell.
Gulliver's Travels, and Other Writings- Jonathan Swift (contains "A Modest Proposal")
Origin Of Species- Charles Darwin.
A Brief History Of Time- Stephen Hawking.
Demon Haunted World- Carl Sagan.
Breaking The Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon- Daniel C. Dennett.
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's answer To Christian Fundementalism- David Mills (with a forward by Dorian Sagan)
God: The Failed Hypothesis- Victer J. Stenger.
Quantum Gods- Victor J. Stenger.
Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders- Jamie Whyte.
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq- Stephen Hinzer.
The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World- Dominique Moisi.
Guns, Germs, and Steel- Jared Diamond.
Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed- Jared Diamond.
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet- Edward Humes.
The Better World Handbook- Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, Brett Johnson.
On Bullshit- Harry G. Frankfurt.
Intellectual Impostures- Alan Sokal.
Bad Science- Ben Goldacre.
Me Of Little Faith- Lewis Black.
3 Times Carlin: An Orgy Of George- George Carlin.
George Carlin: Last Words.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- Douglas Adams.
Discworld series- Terry Pratchett.
Factoid Books series- Various artists, writers.
MAD for decades.
Other media-
Network.
A face in the crowd.
Food Inc.
Monty Mython Holy Trinity (Holy Grail / Life Of Brian/ Meaning Of Life)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (TV Series)
Letting Go Of God- Julia Sweeney (CD and booklet)
Letting Go Of God- Julia Sweeney (DVD)
Religulous- Bill Maher.
George Carlin: All My Stuff.
George Carlin: It's bad For Ya.
Bill Hicks Live.
Arizona Bay- Bill Hicks (CD)
Rant In E Minor- Bill Hicks (CD)
Richard Pryor: Here And Now/ Live On The Sunset Strip.
Idiocracy.
Guns, Germs, and Steel- Jared Diamond (documentary version)
Penn & Teller: Bullshit.
Chappelle's Show.
The Twilight Zone.
Star Trek.
Walter Cronkite Remembers.
The Stunt Man.
Real Life- Albert Brooks.
The Great Dictator- Charlie Chaplain.
Duck Soup- Marx Brothers.
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- Peter Sellers.
Shock Corridor.
Free to Be You and Me- Marlo Thomas.
(Subversive hippie stuff for your little kids *wink*)
Labels:
blog stuff,
literature,
pop-culture,
society
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Inner-space part 14- Fighting Back.
Whelp, previously, I boiled it down to that the core natural way our brain has been given as an anti-virus to bullshit, is laughter.
And in boiling down the slogan recaps, it boils down to that bullshit, particularly American bullshit, is all pretty much mutated strains of advertising.
So, let's tackle advertising with laughter, and go from there...
Here's a fun little strategy, and it's fairly passive.
Treat commercial breaks like they're all one show.
All one big, unbroken, loony, pseudo-science, paranormal/sci-fi show.
With hideous acting, and horrible soundtracks.
Cuz, given that shit's the reason TV really exists, why not see it that way?
Watch it as a stream of absurdist Dadaism, at least you can get a laugh out of it.
Or, don't be passive, engage your mind a little bit, and try this out.
Mentally string the commercials into a storyline.
Particularly enjoyable if you somehow swing it, so that the people in the last ad all get killed by the product in the next ad.
Ah, the fun you can have with a TV.
Or, if you want to get fully engaged, here's a little activity.
Next commercial break, on a piece of paper, or in a notepad, jot down each product, and then jot down if it made a pseudo-science or impossible claim, was a flat out scam/piece of junk, or if it put on a CGI puppet show without displaying or explaining the product.
If it used sex at all, that counts.
Then, next to that, a quick adjective of the overall ad "funny", "annoying", "evil shit", whatever.
Next commercial break after that, put a check on the list next to which ads repeat.
Do this for at least a whole 1 hour of programming.
Note with grim intellectual satisfaction if the ones that repeat the most are the most annoying and/or pseudo-scientific.
Or, shit, react with dumbstruck awe if the most repeated are ones that you actually like.
Either way, you're already getting more emotional response out of TV than most of those fucking shows will.
Blog about this experience, and tell me, and I'll link it.
At the very least, the resulting list, and bumped up mental perspective, will give you fodder for better playing the "imagine it's all a bad show", game.
Or, here's one that's sort of a spinoff of the "all get killed", game, that sort of makes it into a video game.
Pick a topic, say "pseudo-science", or "military industrial complex", and when an ad comes on involving one of these topics, flip channels.
Repeat this process until you come back to your original channel.
If you come back at the original topic, or especially a rerun of the original ad, you "win", and everyone involved in the intervening ads was killed.
The military by friendly fire, or spending cuts, the pseudo-science assholes by their own poison, whatever you want to dream up.
Play around with this one as much as you want.
Make a points system for how fast you work back to your channel, or how many ads it takes to do it, or whatever.
Make up your own topics, invent creative modes of death that have to do with the ads involved, get crazy with it.
TV is supposed to entertain, well, get your money's worth out of that fucking appliance.
Blog, e-mail me, or post here, and tell me what you come up with.
Playing one or more of these games, will bump your perspective up, and knock you out of the stupor you usually need to tune this shit out.
Take that perspective, and apply it to oh, say, the 700 Club.
Course, this means you'll have to watch the 700 Club, but eh, what else were you watching?
TV sucks, let's have fun with it for a change.
Do the same with an hour or two of Fox News.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking "but they're not advertising!".
Like fuck they ain't.
Religion is an ad for the ultimate snake oil.
Eternal life.
And it's as pseudo-science fake as Extenz, and Enzyte, and John Edward.
Any religious program, especially one with greasy-haired, lizard-grinning evangelists, is an infomercial for this sham product called eternal life.
And what should tell you right off you have a sham product, is to receive this eternal life, you have to fucking die.
And no one ever comes back to give testimonials of it working.
So, it's exactly like they're selling you an empty box.
If this was a product from any other business outfit, they'd go out of business in a fucking week.
If a corporation sold an empty box with a false promise, they'd be blasted to bits with ridicule, media exposes, and huge blood-draining class-action lawsuits.
Yet, this isn't happening with religion.
That's SOME fucking sales pitch they've got!
But it is a sales pitch.
Treat it as such.
Blend it into the big pseudo-science sci-fi show made up of all the other commercials.
It's more amusing and wacky than Sci-Fi Channel these days.
And Fox News? Same thing.
They're a 24/7 infomercial for a political point of view.
And part of their bullshit, is shoveling fake patriotic crap.
And fake patriotism is an ad campaign for the nationalism cult.
Real patriotism is a feeling that lives in your heart, it comes from within.
When someone's externally bludgeoning you with these packaged platitudes, they're selling you something.
Usually a war.
And if they're selling it to you with bullshit, it's usually a crooked war.
A crooked war is a worse product than religion's empty box.
Crooked wars needlessly and foolishly kill people.
It's a worse product than cigarettes.
We have PSA's that go after smoking, we ought to have some against patriotism.
Don't look for it to happen.
Not on TV.
TV is owned.
Read books.
And there's the final stage, when all these games become tiresome, and lose their educational value, turn the fucking TV off.
Go read a fucking book.
I'll recommend some in an upcoming post.
Anyway, as I said at the outset, you tackle advertising by laughing at it, you tackle everything, because all bullshit ties to advertising.
The slogan rants all break down to patriotism, or superstition, and those break down to advertising.
Ah, but that's TV, how about life?
Well, first of all, know that a lot of yahoos got their ideas off of TV, so they're walking TVs.
If they're not a walking TV, then they're readers.
Readers typically aren't full of bullshit.
But given given the rampant illiteracy in this country, most people swallow the dopey fake little world that's fed to them, so they're full of shit.
Just like TV.
So, mentally play some of the commerical games when listening to their shit.
Imagine them with a big comic car salesman tie, and a televangelist pompadour, cuz they're selling some bullshit.
Or hell, play the notepad game with their shit.
Don't let anyone find the notepad though.
Until you blog about it.
*Evil grin*
Have fun with all this shit.
That defangs it.
Makes it fun and harmless.
Gotta laugh at it, or it fucking poisons you.
Life is too short, fight back.
Use your anti-virus software.
Or, more aptly, your ad-blocking software.
Read More......
And in boiling down the slogan recaps, it boils down to that bullshit, particularly American bullshit, is all pretty much mutated strains of advertising.
So, let's tackle advertising with laughter, and go from there...
Here's a fun little strategy, and it's fairly passive.
Treat commercial breaks like they're all one show.
All one big, unbroken, loony, pseudo-science, paranormal/sci-fi show.
With hideous acting, and horrible soundtracks.
Cuz, given that shit's the reason TV really exists, why not see it that way?
Watch it as a stream of absurdist Dadaism, at least you can get a laugh out of it.
Or, don't be passive, engage your mind a little bit, and try this out.
Mentally string the commercials into a storyline.
Particularly enjoyable if you somehow swing it, so that the people in the last ad all get killed by the product in the next ad.
Ah, the fun you can have with a TV.
Or, if you want to get fully engaged, here's a little activity.
Next commercial break, on a piece of paper, or in a notepad, jot down each product, and then jot down if it made a pseudo-science or impossible claim, was a flat out scam/piece of junk, or if it put on a CGI puppet show without displaying or explaining the product.
If it used sex at all, that counts.
Then, next to that, a quick adjective of the overall ad "funny", "annoying", "evil shit", whatever.
Next commercial break after that, put a check on the list next to which ads repeat.
Do this for at least a whole 1 hour of programming.
Note with grim intellectual satisfaction if the ones that repeat the most are the most annoying and/or pseudo-scientific.
Or, shit, react with dumbstruck awe if the most repeated are ones that you actually like.
Either way, you're already getting more emotional response out of TV than most of those fucking shows will.
Blog about this experience, and tell me, and I'll link it.
At the very least, the resulting list, and bumped up mental perspective, will give you fodder for better playing the "imagine it's all a bad show", game.
Or, here's one that's sort of a spinoff of the "all get killed", game, that sort of makes it into a video game.
Pick a topic, say "pseudo-science", or "military industrial complex", and when an ad comes on involving one of these topics, flip channels.
Repeat this process until you come back to your original channel.
If you come back at the original topic, or especially a rerun of the original ad, you "win", and everyone involved in the intervening ads was killed.
The military by friendly fire, or spending cuts, the pseudo-science assholes by their own poison, whatever you want to dream up.
Play around with this one as much as you want.
Make a points system for how fast you work back to your channel, or how many ads it takes to do it, or whatever.
Make up your own topics, invent creative modes of death that have to do with the ads involved, get crazy with it.
TV is supposed to entertain, well, get your money's worth out of that fucking appliance.
Blog, e-mail me, or post here, and tell me what you come up with.
Playing one or more of these games, will bump your perspective up, and knock you out of the stupor you usually need to tune this shit out.
Take that perspective, and apply it to oh, say, the 700 Club.
Course, this means you'll have to watch the 700 Club, but eh, what else were you watching?
TV sucks, let's have fun with it for a change.
Do the same with an hour or two of Fox News.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking "but they're not advertising!".
Like fuck they ain't.
Religion is an ad for the ultimate snake oil.
Eternal life.
And it's as pseudo-science fake as Extenz, and Enzyte, and John Edward.
Any religious program, especially one with greasy-haired, lizard-grinning evangelists, is an infomercial for this sham product called eternal life.
And what should tell you right off you have a sham product, is to receive this eternal life, you have to fucking die.
And no one ever comes back to give testimonials of it working.
So, it's exactly like they're selling you an empty box.
If this was a product from any other business outfit, they'd go out of business in a fucking week.
If a corporation sold an empty box with a false promise, they'd be blasted to bits with ridicule, media exposes, and huge blood-draining class-action lawsuits.
Yet, this isn't happening with religion.
That's SOME fucking sales pitch they've got!
But it is a sales pitch.
Treat it as such.
Blend it into the big pseudo-science sci-fi show made up of all the other commercials.
It's more amusing and wacky than Sci-Fi Channel these days.
And Fox News? Same thing.
They're a 24/7 infomercial for a political point of view.
And part of their bullshit, is shoveling fake patriotic crap.
And fake patriotism is an ad campaign for the nationalism cult.
Real patriotism is a feeling that lives in your heart, it comes from within.
When someone's externally bludgeoning you with these packaged platitudes, they're selling you something.
Usually a war.
And if they're selling it to you with bullshit, it's usually a crooked war.
A crooked war is a worse product than religion's empty box.
Crooked wars needlessly and foolishly kill people.
It's a worse product than cigarettes.
We have PSA's that go after smoking, we ought to have some against patriotism.
Don't look for it to happen.
Not on TV.
TV is owned.
Read books.
And there's the final stage, when all these games become tiresome, and lose their educational value, turn the fucking TV off.
Go read a fucking book.
I'll recommend some in an upcoming post.
Anyway, as I said at the outset, you tackle advertising by laughing at it, you tackle everything, because all bullshit ties to advertising.
The slogan rants all break down to patriotism, or superstition, and those break down to advertising.
Ah, but that's TV, how about life?
Well, first of all, know that a lot of yahoos got their ideas off of TV, so they're walking TVs.
If they're not a walking TV, then they're readers.
Readers typically aren't full of bullshit.
But given given the rampant illiteracy in this country, most people swallow the dopey fake little world that's fed to them, so they're full of shit.
Just like TV.
So, mentally play some of the commerical games when listening to their shit.
Imagine them with a big comic car salesman tie, and a televangelist pompadour, cuz they're selling some bullshit.
Or hell, play the notepad game with their shit.
Don't let anyone find the notepad though.
Until you blog about it.
*Evil grin*
Have fun with all this shit.
That defangs it.
Makes it fun and harmless.
Gotta laugh at it, or it fucking poisons you.
Life is too short, fight back.
Use your anti-virus software.
Or, more aptly, your ad-blocking software.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Inner-space part 13- Elvis has left the building!
The original.
Okay, this is the one where I drew the slogan series to a finale, by tying not just all the slogan series topics, but all the prior rants, and thus the whole damned blog up to that point together.
Kind of a Dicky-Pedia rant for the whole blog.
Took me almost a month to pound that together.
Dayum.
Well, let's do a smaller version of that with these slogan recaps.
But first, lets start with the overarching point I made with slogans 7.
After all, this is the revisiting of that topic.
Well, the basic premise of that one was, bullshit wastes our potential as a people and a species, and there's no fucking need of it.
If there is a need for it, we're fucked.
But I don't think so.
Then, I went on to say I'd be lashing out at that mindset with stubborn hope, and that's what I've been doing with this "inner-space", chapter.
So, full circle. :)
So, with these slogan series recaps, I've been sifting out positive things one can do about the bullshit.
Meaningless slogans?
Think.
Read and participate in the internet.
Learn and practice critical thinking.
Advertising?
Tune out the stupid ads (I'll have more creative/fun ways to do this coming up next).
Hold irresponsible corporations to account by boycotting them.
Use the internet to organize boycotts.
Use the internet for investigative journalism to catch out irresponsible corporations, and spread the word about them.
Cries of "elitism"?
Fuck 'em.
It's an appeal to ignorance.
People who make it are insecure, or brainwashed, or both.
Guiltlessly ridicule the stupid, especially if they mean harm, and/or seek power.
Use the internet to catch out their shenanigans, and spread the word.
And again, keep it up with the critical thinking.
Superstitions?
Same as the answer to meaningless slogans.
That, and laughter.
Cries of "you hate America"?
Fuck 'em.
Same as "elitism!", more brainwashed insecurity bullshit.
Those two are all part of the meaningless slogan mess.
Just mindless indoctrinated obedience crap.
See the answers to meaningless slogans, and superstitions.
Vidya games?
Harmless, possibly even beneficial, if you mentally sift out the military shilling.
Consider that aspect another layer of advertising, and handle it the same way.
Again, I'll expand on this next.
So there, not just complaining, but solutions.
Something else my critics can blow out their asses.
And it all boils down to thinking.
Goes back to "let's recap", and the start of "innerspace".
These battles are won in the mind.
You can't shoot bullshit.
It has to be thunk away.
Well, we're doing that now, you and I.
Thanks for letting me be your tour guide thus far. :)
Read More......
Okay, this is the one where I drew the slogan series to a finale, by tying not just all the slogan series topics, but all the prior rants, and thus the whole damned blog up to that point together.
Kind of a Dicky-Pedia rant for the whole blog.
Took me almost a month to pound that together.
Dayum.
Well, let's do a smaller version of that with these slogan recaps.
But first, lets start with the overarching point I made with slogans 7.
After all, this is the revisiting of that topic.
Well, the basic premise of that one was, bullshit wastes our potential as a people and a species, and there's no fucking need of it.
If there is a need for it, we're fucked.
But I don't think so.
Then, I went on to say I'd be lashing out at that mindset with stubborn hope, and that's what I've been doing with this "inner-space", chapter.
So, full circle. :)
So, with these slogan series recaps, I've been sifting out positive things one can do about the bullshit.
Meaningless slogans?
Think.
Read and participate in the internet.
Learn and practice critical thinking.
Advertising?
Tune out the stupid ads (I'll have more creative/fun ways to do this coming up next).
Hold irresponsible corporations to account by boycotting them.
Use the internet to organize boycotts.
Use the internet for investigative journalism to catch out irresponsible corporations, and spread the word about them.
Cries of "elitism"?
Fuck 'em.
It's an appeal to ignorance.
People who make it are insecure, or brainwashed, or both.
Guiltlessly ridicule the stupid, especially if they mean harm, and/or seek power.
Use the internet to catch out their shenanigans, and spread the word.
And again, keep it up with the critical thinking.
Superstitions?
Same as the answer to meaningless slogans.
That, and laughter.
Cries of "you hate America"?
Fuck 'em.
Same as "elitism!", more brainwashed insecurity bullshit.
Those two are all part of the meaningless slogan mess.
Just mindless indoctrinated obedience crap.
See the answers to meaningless slogans, and superstitions.
Vidya games?
Harmless, possibly even beneficial, if you mentally sift out the military shilling.
Consider that aspect another layer of advertising, and handle it the same way.
Again, I'll expand on this next.
So there, not just complaining, but solutions.
Something else my critics can blow out their asses.
And it all boils down to thinking.
Goes back to "let's recap", and the start of "innerspace".
These battles are won in the mind.
You can't shoot bullshit.
It has to be thunk away.
Well, we're doing that now, you and I.
Thanks for letting me be your tour guide thus far. :)
Read More......
Labels:
society
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Inner-space part 12- Vidya Games Revisited.
The original.
All right, my original speculation, was/is that video games are subtly tied into the military industrial complex somehow.
I can't prove anything, so I don't want to get into tinfoil town by foot-stomp asserting it's positively so, but there's enough weirdness around the edges to be worrisome.
And in the end of that one, I concluded, if that is going on, it can be fought off by just being aware of it.
So, even with that noise mentally blocked out, as I concluded in this rant, if it can be an outlet for aggressive impulses, along with hunting, and sports, then so be it.
Part of a nutritious breakfast for the taming of Godzilla, so we can live in a Jet Jaguar world.
Hmm, speaking of there being a funky bleed-through between the worlds of gaming, and the military, anyone seen this ad?
Interesting.... Food for thought. Anyhoo, breaking the fourth wall a bit, this one shouldn't have really been part of the "slogan series", but I was just starting out with the blog, and I was finding my way of what to rant about, and I was segueing into other topics, and slapped a number 6 on this, so that meant when I went back to the Slogan Series, I had to make the compilation rant part 7, so...yeah, it just was a buncha stuff that happened, and here we are. But, I can easily enough weave this game stuff into the fabric of what I'm building to, so.... Anyway, in the end, it ties into how to handle any advertising. And I'll build on that too. Gimme a couple more rants.... Update: (here) Read More......
All right, my original speculation, was/is that video games are subtly tied into the military industrial complex somehow.
I can't prove anything, so I don't want to get into tinfoil town by foot-stomp asserting it's positively so, but there's enough weirdness around the edges to be worrisome.
And in the end of that one, I concluded, if that is going on, it can be fought off by just being aware of it.
So, even with that noise mentally blocked out, as I concluded in this rant, if it can be an outlet for aggressive impulses, along with hunting, and sports, then so be it.
Part of a nutritious breakfast for the taming of Godzilla, so we can live in a Jet Jaguar world.
Hmm, speaking of there being a funky bleed-through between the worlds of gaming, and the military, anyone seen this ad?
Interesting.... Food for thought. Anyhoo, breaking the fourth wall a bit, this one shouldn't have really been part of the "slogan series", but I was just starting out with the blog, and I was finding my way of what to rant about, and I was segueing into other topics, and slapped a number 6 on this, so that meant when I went back to the Slogan Series, I had to make the compilation rant part 7, so...yeah, it just was a buncha stuff that happened, and here we are. But, I can easily enough weave this game stuff into the fabric of what I'm building to, so.... Anyway, in the end, it ties into how to handle any advertising. And I'll build on that too. Gimme a couple more rants.... Update: (here) Read More......
Labels:
pop-culture,
society,
videos
Friday, July 17, 2009
Inner-space part 11- "You STILL hate America!!".
The original.
No, I don't hate America, but I admit I hate some stupid people's nightmare apocalypse vision for it.
And no Bizarro-America is as joyless, hopeless, bleak, scary, stupid, and despair ravaged as the one the "you hate America!!", bunch would inflict on you.
Look, dipshits, if you have to undermine my patriotism, and possibly even citizenship, to win points in the debate, that instantly says everything about your arguments, and thus your worldview, and thus your scurrying little machinations.
But, good thing about the crazies in these groups, is they put the cards on the table; there's no chin scratching over what's going on in their fevered little minds.
They lay it all out there for you.
In the latter part of this rant, I picked over Glenn Beck's little list for his vision of a "real American".
Fuck you, Glenn.
And mega fuck you for co-opting Tom Paine's "Common Sense", for your shitty book.
Let's see your Christian ass dig into "The Age Of Reason".
You wouldn't go anywhere near it.
History re-writing little snake.
But I digress....
This is all just another flavor of the insincere and empty indoctrination-patriotism I covered in the meaningless slogans recap.
It all kind of ties into advertising, because it's really all a cynical ad pitch.
It would be bad enough that it's all a sick ad campaign, but the part that pisses me off, indeed infuriates me the most, is how UNIMAGINATIVE, and BAD, an ad campaign it is!!!
As a writer, I'm appalled at just how LAME it is.
And how UGLY and STUPID and flat out BAD the imaginary product they're selling is.
As good as America is, and can be, the sales pitches are such UTTER BULLSHIT!
And it's not even GOOD BULLSHIT!!!
THAT'S the part that galls me!
Compared to all the imaginative, and well constructed, and pleasing bullshit that's out there to choose from, like movies, and fiction writing, the American sales pitch is FUCKING HORRIBLE!!!!
The American sales pitch, (usually in combination with the Bible I find) tells a HORRIBLE STORY!!
And that gets at the part that really annoys me, the product they're selling ISN'T AMERICA!!
It's not the America I know!
It's not the America I signed on for.
It's not the America that raised and nourished me.
It's not the America in the writings of Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, and The Constitution.
I don't know what this fucking beast is, but it ain't America.
The THING in the ad campaigns, that demands obedience, that makes kids say pledges, that thing, I have no fucking relation to.
That's some fucking cult or something, I don't know what the fuck that is.
It's a free country, you're welcome to go live like that, but leave me out.
Wanna have your little cult within America, fine, but stop calling your cult "real America".
There ain't no "real America", that's the point of America.
And that's another thing I'm sick of, this one-size-fits-all notion of "the American dream".
That's something else that's been warped into an advertising buzzword for a narrow little cult.
I've foraged around for answers, and nearest I can figure, what this "American dream", really amounts to, is a chance at prosperity.
That's it, that's what we're selling to all the immigrants who come here.
I like that American dream.
But domestically, it seems to mean this more detailed involved thing to do with fevered and relentless consumerist acquisition, and self-seeking opportunism, and status climbing, and corporate dominance, and just the whole greed-bag thing.
And I don't relate to that.
My dreams don't involve boardrooms, and backstabbing, and wheeling and dealing, and conspicuous consumption.
But if you're not into that, that sub-cult doesn't consider you American.
And I, like a lot of Americans, got mentally twisted up in the prongs of that mess, and tried to relate to it, tried to conform to it, but I couldn't, because again, the sales pitch is SO FUCKING AWFUL!!!
The only one who even TRIED to make a really good stab at selling that America, was Ayn Rand.
I think her propaganda is fallacy ridden, and illogical, and awful, but at least she TRIED.
Everyone else into the money-chasing game will just give you the "shut up and get on board, or five across the eyes, mothafucka!", routine.
Yeah, that encourages me!
Might motivate you, like someone chasing you with a cattle prod, but it doesn't teach to you to love anything, much less this country.
And how can something be your "dream", if you don't love the fucking thing?
Sorry, I'm not wired like that.
I tried, I tried really fucking hard.
Like I tried with the whole God thing.
If you folks out there reading this are wired like that, kudos for you, you're fucking lucky, because boy, this is the country for it.
But, if you're reading this, and you're like me, a status ambivalent, frugal, artsy, geek, you feel my pain.
Well, I'm here to tell you, you're not fucking crazy.
There's no "real America", and no "real Americans".
It's yet another ad campaign.
And just like I said in the advertising section, vote with your dollars and channel clicker.
Don't like it, don't support it.
Life's too short.
Be who you are.
They try to make you forget all that.
Anyway, fuck propaganda, the propaganda all sucks.
And America deserves better than shitty propaganda.
That's real patriotism.
To say that America deserves better than this puke.
If America must have propaganda, let's make it worthy of this country.
Read Tom Paine.
It's all there.
But see, this goes back to "Meaningless Slogans 3", and the chipping away at education, and sowing illiteracy and anti-intellectualism.
You have to read books for the good shit.
It doesn't come on fucking bumper stickers and t-shirts.
And it ain't ever gonna be on your fucking TV.
TV and bumper stickers are going to sell you narrow prejudices of a sub-group.
And that's what America is, a gathering of sub-groups.
Some you'll like, some you won't.
But ultimately, none objectively superior to another.
So beware the ones who say there's a "real America", out there.
Their utopia is Hell for someone else.
And clearly, they couldn't give a shit.
And THAT'S un-American and un-democratic.
Yeah, if that shit's America, I hate that, but it's not, so eat me.
Hmm, lost the "inner-space", angle...I guess it's just know it's bullshit, believe in yourself, and apply the lessons of the advertising chapter to the bullshit.
Read More......
No, I don't hate America, but I admit I hate some stupid people's nightmare apocalypse vision for it.
And no Bizarro-America is as joyless, hopeless, bleak, scary, stupid, and despair ravaged as the one the "you hate America!!", bunch would inflict on you.
Look, dipshits, if you have to undermine my patriotism, and possibly even citizenship, to win points in the debate, that instantly says everything about your arguments, and thus your worldview, and thus your scurrying little machinations.
But, good thing about the crazies in these groups, is they put the cards on the table; there's no chin scratching over what's going on in their fevered little minds.
They lay it all out there for you.
In the latter part of this rant, I picked over Glenn Beck's little list for his vision of a "real American".
Fuck you, Glenn.
And mega fuck you for co-opting Tom Paine's "Common Sense", for your shitty book.
Let's see your Christian ass dig into "The Age Of Reason".
You wouldn't go anywhere near it.
History re-writing little snake.
But I digress....
This is all just another flavor of the insincere and empty indoctrination-patriotism I covered in the meaningless slogans recap.
It all kind of ties into advertising, because it's really all a cynical ad pitch.
It would be bad enough that it's all a sick ad campaign, but the part that pisses me off, indeed infuriates me the most, is how UNIMAGINATIVE, and BAD, an ad campaign it is!!!
As a writer, I'm appalled at just how LAME it is.
And how UGLY and STUPID and flat out BAD the imaginary product they're selling is.
As good as America is, and can be, the sales pitches are such UTTER BULLSHIT!
And it's not even GOOD BULLSHIT!!!
THAT'S the part that galls me!
Compared to all the imaginative, and well constructed, and pleasing bullshit that's out there to choose from, like movies, and fiction writing, the American sales pitch is FUCKING HORRIBLE!!!!
The American sales pitch, (usually in combination with the Bible I find) tells a HORRIBLE STORY!!
And that gets at the part that really annoys me, the product they're selling ISN'T AMERICA!!
It's not the America I know!
It's not the America I signed on for.
It's not the America that raised and nourished me.
It's not the America in the writings of Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, and The Constitution.
I don't know what this fucking beast is, but it ain't America.
The THING in the ad campaigns, that demands obedience, that makes kids say pledges, that thing, I have no fucking relation to.
That's some fucking cult or something, I don't know what the fuck that is.
It's a free country, you're welcome to go live like that, but leave me out.
Wanna have your little cult within America, fine, but stop calling your cult "real America".
There ain't no "real America", that's the point of America.
And that's another thing I'm sick of, this one-size-fits-all notion of "the American dream".
That's something else that's been warped into an advertising buzzword for a narrow little cult.
I've foraged around for answers, and nearest I can figure, what this "American dream", really amounts to, is a chance at prosperity.
That's it, that's what we're selling to all the immigrants who come here.
I like that American dream.
But domestically, it seems to mean this more detailed involved thing to do with fevered and relentless consumerist acquisition, and self-seeking opportunism, and status climbing, and corporate dominance, and just the whole greed-bag thing.
And I don't relate to that.
My dreams don't involve boardrooms, and backstabbing, and wheeling and dealing, and conspicuous consumption.
But if you're not into that, that sub-cult doesn't consider you American.
And I, like a lot of Americans, got mentally twisted up in the prongs of that mess, and tried to relate to it, tried to conform to it, but I couldn't, because again, the sales pitch is SO FUCKING AWFUL!!!
The only one who even TRIED to make a really good stab at selling that America, was Ayn Rand.
I think her propaganda is fallacy ridden, and illogical, and awful, but at least she TRIED.
Everyone else into the money-chasing game will just give you the "shut up and get on board, or five across the eyes, mothafucka!", routine.
Yeah, that encourages me!
Might motivate you, like someone chasing you with a cattle prod, but it doesn't teach to you to love anything, much less this country.
And how can something be your "dream", if you don't love the fucking thing?
Sorry, I'm not wired like that.
I tried, I tried really fucking hard.
Like I tried with the whole God thing.
If you folks out there reading this are wired like that, kudos for you, you're fucking lucky, because boy, this is the country for it.
But, if you're reading this, and you're like me, a status ambivalent, frugal, artsy, geek, you feel my pain.
Well, I'm here to tell you, you're not fucking crazy.
There's no "real America", and no "real Americans".
It's yet another ad campaign.
And just like I said in the advertising section, vote with your dollars and channel clicker.
Don't like it, don't support it.
Life's too short.
Be who you are.
They try to make you forget all that.
Anyway, fuck propaganda, the propaganda all sucks.
And America deserves better than shitty propaganda.
That's real patriotism.
To say that America deserves better than this puke.
If America must have propaganda, let's make it worthy of this country.
Read Tom Paine.
It's all there.
But see, this goes back to "Meaningless Slogans 3", and the chipping away at education, and sowing illiteracy and anti-intellectualism.
You have to read books for the good shit.
It doesn't come on fucking bumper stickers and t-shirts.
And it ain't ever gonna be on your fucking TV.
TV and bumper stickers are going to sell you narrow prejudices of a sub-group.
And that's what America is, a gathering of sub-groups.
Some you'll like, some you won't.
But ultimately, none objectively superior to another.
So beware the ones who say there's a "real America", out there.
Their utopia is Hell for someone else.
And clearly, they couldn't give a shit.
And THAT'S un-American and un-democratic.
Yeah, if that shit's America, I hate that, but it's not, so eat me.
Hmm, lost the "inner-space", angle...I guess it's just know it's bullshit, believe in yourself, and apply the lessons of the advertising chapter to the bullshit.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Inner-space part 10- Superstitions: The Awakening!
The original.
Well, here's another one I don't take back.
Superstitions are still dumb, and bad for you.
And when it's the other guy's superstition, everyone including the superstitious agrees with me.
Well, this original rant summed it all up, really.
But, I had to (at least felt I did) pump out a crapload of other rants on religion to hammer down all the religious arguments I was having to repeatedly answer at RD.net that I was getting sick of; and to preempt some really stupid ones floating around.
That way, I can just cut and paste the fucking things when I need to.
Anyway, all of that boiled down to Dicky-pedia, which boiled down further to the Dicky-pedia rant.
Which I retroactively consider the sequel to the superstition rant.
Which would make this the threequel I guess.
So anyway, I said it all, and beat it to death on religion.
In the end, like the end of Scooby Doo, when you look at it, it's always some asshole in a mask.
And, the debates on religion all boil down to this.
That's my big take-away on religion.
I spent a long time gawking at it.
Not like I didn't give it a chance.
So anyhoo, the antidote to it, at least for some people, it was for me, and several others, is critical thinking.
And since I wrote the original superstition rant, I devoted a whole label section to critical thinking, and have stuffed it full of wonderful goodies.
Enjoy.
Anyway, the roots of religious superstition, come from how our brains work, and this video in the critical thinking section shows it all better than I could.
Why we believe in Gods.
But, given the brain is so fundamentally prone to illusions, I don't ever expect to live in a world free of religion, much less superstition, in my lifetime.
But it can be managed.
We can spread the word, get closet atheists to come out, get fence sitters to jump off the fence on the side of rationalism, and spread skepticism and encourage the scientific way of thinking to everyone, religious or no.
Oh, and of course, fundie-whacko religious shit has has to whupped in the political debate.
There are religious moderates who can agree there.
That's the thing, there has to flat-out be more skepticism in the discourse, period.
Too long have the Miss Cleos, and the Jonathan Edwards's been allowed to run amok in our culture.
It's getting really fucking bad when History, and Discovery, are getting taken over by ghost shit, and UFO shit, and Bigfoot shit, and there's a Ghost-Hunter show on Sci-Fi Channel.
Shit, Nickelodeon has a show with children Ghost-Hunters.
Horrific.
Skepticism is needed badly.
Everywhere.
Superstition is probably never leaving us as a species, but that doesn't mean we can't try to mitigate its influence.
We have lots of other primal impulses, but we mitigate those to have a society.
Fine, believe the world is flat, and that swarms of mosquito sized Pegasuses swarm around your head.
But when the Pegasuses ask for money, or blood, or the minds of children, time to throw tomatoes at you.
S'all I'm saying.
Read More......
Well, here's another one I don't take back.
Superstitions are still dumb, and bad for you.
And when it's the other guy's superstition, everyone including the superstitious agrees with me.
Well, this original rant summed it all up, really.
But, I had to (at least felt I did) pump out a crapload of other rants on religion to hammer down all the religious arguments I was having to repeatedly answer at RD.net that I was getting sick of; and to preempt some really stupid ones floating around.
That way, I can just cut and paste the fucking things when I need to.
Anyway, all of that boiled down to Dicky-pedia, which boiled down further to the Dicky-pedia rant.
Which I retroactively consider the sequel to the superstition rant.
Which would make this the threequel I guess.
So anyway, I said it all, and beat it to death on religion.
In the end, like the end of Scooby Doo, when you look at it, it's always some asshole in a mask.
And, the debates on religion all boil down to this.
That's my big take-away on religion.
I spent a long time gawking at it.
Not like I didn't give it a chance.
So anyhoo, the antidote to it, at least for some people, it was for me, and several others, is critical thinking.
And since I wrote the original superstition rant, I devoted a whole label section to critical thinking, and have stuffed it full of wonderful goodies.
Enjoy.
Anyway, the roots of religious superstition, come from how our brains work, and this video in the critical thinking section shows it all better than I could.
Why we believe in Gods.
But, given the brain is so fundamentally prone to illusions, I don't ever expect to live in a world free of religion, much less superstition, in my lifetime.
But it can be managed.
We can spread the word, get closet atheists to come out, get fence sitters to jump off the fence on the side of rationalism, and spread skepticism and encourage the scientific way of thinking to everyone, religious or no.
Oh, and of course, fundie-whacko religious shit has has to whupped in the political debate.
There are religious moderates who can agree there.
That's the thing, there has to flat-out be more skepticism in the discourse, period.
Too long have the Miss Cleos, and the Jonathan Edwards's been allowed to run amok in our culture.
It's getting really fucking bad when History, and Discovery, are getting taken over by ghost shit, and UFO shit, and Bigfoot shit, and there's a Ghost-Hunter show on Sci-Fi Channel.
Shit, Nickelodeon has a show with children Ghost-Hunters.
Horrific.
Skepticism is needed badly.
Everywhere.
Superstition is probably never leaving us as a species, but that doesn't mean we can't try to mitigate its influence.
We have lots of other primal impulses, but we mitigate those to have a society.
Fine, believe the world is flat, and that swarms of mosquito sized Pegasuses swarm around your head.
But when the Pegasuses ask for money, or blood, or the minds of children, time to throw tomatoes at you.
S'all I'm saying.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Inner-space part 9- "Elitism", STILL homespun bullshit.
The original.
Whelp, the elections are past, and Joe The Plumber has slithered back into his sewer grate, so you don't hear this "elitist", crap being flung about anymore.
There's fresh new fear to bark at.
So, let's look back at this shit from the vantage of almost a year ago.
Whelp, like I said in the first of these slogan rant recaps, looking it over, I don't take any of this shit back.
Still as valid now.
Insecurity, fears, political manipulation, credulous masses, anti-intellectualism, all still a problem.
And we ended up with a crazy retard for vice president, but they largely keep him locked up in the time out room, rather than trotted out as the show-pony the other crazy retard would've been.
Oh, wait, she's still trotting...nevermind...
Anyway, what to do about this shit?
Well, same thing I concluded last time, keep pimping critical thinking, and enlightenment.
And tear down the illusions that separate people from their potential.
Since I wrote what's now the prequel to this, I think I've covered all the big ones.
All the big sources of bullshit brainwashing, and toxic head-games.
Religion, politics, advertising, culture, media, and day to day fucking assholes in your fucking life.
And sex hangups.
Wish I'd thrown that in with the slogan rants, but eh, whaddya gonna do?
And I covered the others in the slogan rants.
And a bunch of the other rants, which I boiled down into the 7th rant.
So, I've kept talking, and I'll keep talking.
Keep doing my special work.
Not much more to add to this one.
Except, y'know, if it was too oblique for you last time, I hate Sarah Palin.
Sorry, don't like the idea of anti-science morons too close to supreme executive power.
I'm funny like that.
I'm relieved, and emboldened that I don't have to vomit blood for the next 4 years.
So, that's always good.
Sorry I didn't have a special extra "innerspace", take on this particular rant, but eh, it's because I've been doing a pretty good job.
Talk about power of the internet, and people with minds, um...hey...no Sarah Palin.
Yay.
It's working.
You're welcome.
:)
We can pretty much keep kicking the forces of stupid from there.
So yeah, no down note on this one.
Read More......
Whelp, the elections are past, and Joe The Plumber has slithered back into his sewer grate, so you don't hear this "elitist", crap being flung about anymore.
There's fresh new fear to bark at.
So, let's look back at this shit from the vantage of almost a year ago.
Whelp, like I said in the first of these slogan rant recaps, looking it over, I don't take any of this shit back.
Still as valid now.
Insecurity, fears, political manipulation, credulous masses, anti-intellectualism, all still a problem.
And we ended up with a crazy retard for vice president, but they largely keep him locked up in the time out room, rather than trotted out as the show-pony the other crazy retard would've been.
Oh, wait, she's still trotting...nevermind...
Anyway, what to do about this shit?
Well, same thing I concluded last time, keep pimping critical thinking, and enlightenment.
And tear down the illusions that separate people from their potential.
Since I wrote what's now the prequel to this, I think I've covered all the big ones.
All the big sources of bullshit brainwashing, and toxic head-games.
Religion, politics, advertising, culture, media, and day to day fucking assholes in your fucking life.
And sex hangups.
Wish I'd thrown that in with the slogan rants, but eh, whaddya gonna do?
And I covered the others in the slogan rants.
And a bunch of the other rants, which I boiled down into the 7th rant.
So, I've kept talking, and I'll keep talking.
Keep doing my special work.
Not much more to add to this one.
Except, y'know, if it was too oblique for you last time, I hate Sarah Palin.
Sorry, don't like the idea of anti-science morons too close to supreme executive power.
I'm funny like that.
I'm relieved, and emboldened that I don't have to vomit blood for the next 4 years.
So, that's always good.
Sorry I didn't have a special extra "innerspace", take on this particular rant, but eh, it's because I've been doing a pretty good job.
Talk about power of the internet, and people with minds, um...hey...no Sarah Palin.
Yay.
It's working.
You're welcome.
:)
We can pretty much keep kicking the forces of stupid from there.
So yeah, no down note on this one.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Inner-space part 8- Advertising: The Reckoning!
The original.
Advertising.
Here's how it's supposed to work.
You're a company, or a private person, who has a product or service you want the public to know about in order to increase sales.
So, you put out a little message letting said public know about said product or service.
A flyer, a TV spot, a radio ad, etc.
"Drink soda, it's good".
That'd be the ads in my world.
Most of 'em these days are as harmless as that.
Easy enough to tune out.
But, then there's the insidious shit.
Anything involving pills has been pretty creepy lately.
Anything to do with sex has been pretty blatant in playing on people's insecurities.
And in a very nasty playground/locker-room kind of way too.
Combine sex and pills, and forget about it.
And it's not by accident, as I showed in the original advertising rant, these companies employ social psychologists to find the mental soft spots to poke at.
It's not enough that they tell you what they've got, they want to mind-fuck you into wanting it.
Now, you and I don't fall for this shit.
Probably no one you know either.
But someone out there is buying this shit, or they couldn't afford the next commercial, and the next, and the next.
So, that I've had to suffer the "Extenz",and "Enzyte", ads for the past decade, despite that studies have shown (never mind just plain common sense) that the shit doesn't do anything, is a pretty clear indicator that there are just enough fucking morons out there to fuck things up.
But, we knew that.
Anyone who pays attention to elections knows that.
We vote with our dollars.
We've been made to forget that somehow.
Here's a controversial statement that shouldn't be controversial.
Corporations that can't or won't serve the public responsibly ought not exist.
It's not commie to say that.
We've forgotten that in our corporatist indoctrination drubbing.
Corporations don't have an inherent fiat right to exist because they will it.
Either they give you what you want, or they die.
That's the market.
That's how it's supposed to work.
And see, they can die.
And things that can die can starve.
And things that can be starved can be stabbed in the wallet.
So, power is still with the people.
We can bring them down any time we want by not buying their shit.
That's something else we've forgotten.
We forget, because advertising, combined with the mind-numbing effects of work-a-day life break us down, and get us to mindlessly consume this shit.
Well, I'm here to wake you up and remind you.
Stop forgetting.
These fucking companies exist at our pleasure, not the other way around.
Punish the bad, reward the good.
That's the market.
That's what they're pimping on all those fucking financial shows.
Hold them to it.
Hold their feet to the fire.
Let's see it.
And let's see 'em preach it if/when someone evil like Monsanto goes down.
And if they don't, fuck 'em, at least Monsanto goes down.
We don't need written permission to exercise our dollar votes.
Pisses someone off, then tough, fuck 'em.
Comes back again (and you knew it would) to the power of the internet.
Boycott power, folks.
The internet is cosmically powerful for marshaling it.
Monsanto, look 'em up, don't buy their shit anymore.
Kill 'em, kill 'em dead.
No one needs "Weed B Gone", or Nutri-Sweet bad enough to put up with their shit.
Fuck 'em.
Fuck these companies that think they deserve Ducal powers over you just for drawing breath.
I say again, they exist at our pleasure, not the other way around.
That's the harm advertising does.
It slowly chips away at your self-esteem, and makes you forget this.
Advertising, especially of the insidious variety, is basically begging.
Never forget that.
Someone who begs is not your master.
They've tried to reverse that relationship for the past 30-50 years.
Fuck 'em.
But, I'm probably preaching to the choir.
My audiences tend to be bright bulbs.
The ones who don't read this blog, the ones out buying Enzyte, and Weed-B-Gone, there's just enough of them to really fuck things up.
Maybe it's a herding Godzilla thing.
Maybe all this mindless, poisonous (literally , in the case on Monsanto), consumerism is to feed the insane growth cycle needed to feed the Rampaging Debt Monster of the doomed Fractional Reserve System.
Well, fuck it, it's doomed anyway.
I'm not playing any little game of being a corporate serf for anyone's benefit.
I kneel to no man.
And neither should you.
Well, between this rant, and the original, I've gone and ruined the big plan again.
Economy is gonna collapse tomorrow without Monsanto.
We're gonna be commies now.
I've ruined it all.
Me.
Guess my head is gonna burst in a motorcade now.
Or, maybe it's bullshit, and we can just tell bad companies to fuck off.
Let's take the fucking risk, huh?
How 'bout that?
Same as the conspiracy shit, let's take the fucking risk.
The arms race was supposed to end the world, and it didn't.
Let's boycott some evil companies.
And some stupid ones too.
No more stupid shit, no more evil poison-mongers.
How about that be a goal on the list for this new century, eh?
Imagine the weight that'll lift off the core of your being, when you can put a checkmark next to it.
Shit, just imagine the weight that'll lift when just the commercials are gone.
Remember the day Miss Cleo finally went up in smoke?
The unclenching of your intestines?
Imagine that for every commercial you hate.
Sweet huh?
Let's do it.
Let's go, Bullshit Busters.
Bustin' makes me feel good.
Read More......
Advertising.
Here's how it's supposed to work.
You're a company, or a private person, who has a product or service you want the public to know about in order to increase sales.
So, you put out a little message letting said public know about said product or service.
A flyer, a TV spot, a radio ad, etc.
"Drink soda, it's good".
That'd be the ads in my world.
Most of 'em these days are as harmless as that.
Easy enough to tune out.
But, then there's the insidious shit.
Anything involving pills has been pretty creepy lately.
Anything to do with sex has been pretty blatant in playing on people's insecurities.
And in a very nasty playground/locker-room kind of way too.
Combine sex and pills, and forget about it.
And it's not by accident, as I showed in the original advertising rant, these companies employ social psychologists to find the mental soft spots to poke at.
It's not enough that they tell you what they've got, they want to mind-fuck you into wanting it.
Now, you and I don't fall for this shit.
Probably no one you know either.
But someone out there is buying this shit, or they couldn't afford the next commercial, and the next, and the next.
So, that I've had to suffer the "Extenz",and "Enzyte", ads for the past decade, despite that studies have shown (never mind just plain common sense) that the shit doesn't do anything, is a pretty clear indicator that there are just enough fucking morons out there to fuck things up.
But, we knew that.
Anyone who pays attention to elections knows that.
We vote with our dollars.
We've been made to forget that somehow.
Here's a controversial statement that shouldn't be controversial.
Corporations that can't or won't serve the public responsibly ought not exist.
It's not commie to say that.
We've forgotten that in our corporatist indoctrination drubbing.
Corporations don't have an inherent fiat right to exist because they will it.
Either they give you what you want, or they die.
That's the market.
That's how it's supposed to work.
And see, they can die.
And things that can die can starve.
And things that can be starved can be stabbed in the wallet.
So, power is still with the people.
We can bring them down any time we want by not buying their shit.
That's something else we've forgotten.
We forget, because advertising, combined with the mind-numbing effects of work-a-day life break us down, and get us to mindlessly consume this shit.
Well, I'm here to wake you up and remind you.
Stop forgetting.
These fucking companies exist at our pleasure, not the other way around.
Punish the bad, reward the good.
That's the market.
That's what they're pimping on all those fucking financial shows.
Hold them to it.
Hold their feet to the fire.
Let's see it.
And let's see 'em preach it if/when someone evil like Monsanto goes down.
And if they don't, fuck 'em, at least Monsanto goes down.
We don't need written permission to exercise our dollar votes.
Pisses someone off, then tough, fuck 'em.
Comes back again (and you knew it would) to the power of the internet.
Boycott power, folks.
The internet is cosmically powerful for marshaling it.
Monsanto, look 'em up, don't buy their shit anymore.
Kill 'em, kill 'em dead.
No one needs "Weed B Gone", or Nutri-Sweet bad enough to put up with their shit.
Fuck 'em.
Fuck these companies that think they deserve Ducal powers over you just for drawing breath.
I say again, they exist at our pleasure, not the other way around.
That's the harm advertising does.
It slowly chips away at your self-esteem, and makes you forget this.
Advertising, especially of the insidious variety, is basically begging.
Never forget that.
Someone who begs is not your master.
They've tried to reverse that relationship for the past 30-50 years.
Fuck 'em.
But, I'm probably preaching to the choir.
My audiences tend to be bright bulbs.
The ones who don't read this blog, the ones out buying Enzyte, and Weed-B-Gone, there's just enough of them to really fuck things up.
Maybe it's a herding Godzilla thing.
Maybe all this mindless, poisonous (literally , in the case on Monsanto), consumerism is to feed the insane growth cycle needed to feed the Rampaging Debt Monster of the doomed Fractional Reserve System.
Well, fuck it, it's doomed anyway.
I'm not playing any little game of being a corporate serf for anyone's benefit.
I kneel to no man.
And neither should you.
Well, between this rant, and the original, I've gone and ruined the big plan again.
Economy is gonna collapse tomorrow without Monsanto.
We're gonna be commies now.
I've ruined it all.
Me.
Guess my head is gonna burst in a motorcade now.
Or, maybe it's bullshit, and we can just tell bad companies to fuck off.
Let's take the fucking risk, huh?
How 'bout that?
Same as the conspiracy shit, let's take the fucking risk.
The arms race was supposed to end the world, and it didn't.
Let's boycott some evil companies.
And some stupid ones too.
No more stupid shit, no more evil poison-mongers.
How about that be a goal on the list for this new century, eh?
Imagine the weight that'll lift off the core of your being, when you can put a checkmark next to it.
Shit, just imagine the weight that'll lift when just the commercials are gone.
Remember the day Miss Cleo finally went up in smoke?
The unclenching of your intestines?
Imagine that for every commercial you hate.
Sweet huh?
Let's do it.
Let's go, Bullshit Busters.
Bustin' makes me feel good.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Monday, July 13, 2009
Inner-space part 7- Meaningless Slogans: The Revenge!
First, the original.
Okay, I don't take any of this shit back.
All the dopey-ass slogans I tore into there, are targeted to keep you from thinking, and to get you to fall into line with the herd.
Apparently, the best that those in power could come up with to put a leash on Godzilla, was to try to leash everyone.
Yeah, that's equitable.
That's trusting you to decide what's right.
That's "liberty and justice for all".
Uh huh, yeah...
See, THAT'S elitist contempt.
Not me pointing out that bumper-sticker-patriotism is insipid child-minded bullshit.
Well, anyway, I deconstructed the fuck out of this, so I guess the plan is ruined.
Now you're all going to go out to black masses, and kill babies.
Right?
No?
Okay, so it's bullshit.
But see, I think there's a place for patriotism.
Fine, love your country.
But see, the way they should get you to love this country, is to make it a country worthy of being loved.
And you don't do that with zombie indoctrination.
People who really love you, don't seduce and brainwash you.
So why should the standard be different for your country?
That insidious forces want to drive obedience into you, means they know they won't be worthy of earned respect.
Which begs the question "um...why won't they? What the fuck are they up to?".
There you go, the mindset instantly exposes itself.
Same for the unearned pride stuff.
They want yahoos to have unearned pride, because they don't think them capable of earning it.
Again, contempt.
And whence the contempt?
They see you as Godzilla.
Well, are you out hurting anyone?
Anyone you know?
Anyone in your family?
It's a minority of assholes.
Apparently, we all have to suffer stupid nationalist and religious bullshit, because a handful of misanthropic misfits can't keep their marbles together.
And lemme tell you, saying the pledge, or the lord's prayer, a trillion times wasn't going to fix what was wrong with John Wayne-fucking-Gasey.
So, it's really not even about that.
It's about power.
...but....people still kick up protests, and pitch the occasional fit, and have these little tea party shindigs.
So...it's really about the illusion of power.
Some old over-privileged entitled white men wanted to feel safe, so you have to have droning mindless mantras taught to you in school.
Then continued into adult life in the bullshit you hear during elections.
Course, the tea parties seem to be mindless noise with no teeth, so, maybe they're actually on to something.
But does it tame Godzilla?
No.
Not in a way you and me give a fuck about.
At best, it protects the minority of dirty pols.
In fact, the dirty pols are part of the Godzilla mess we need to watch out for.
So, the mechanisms of society only do so much, it's up to you and me.
But, that comes back to being Bullshit Busters, and the power of the internet.
But, I'm getting the sense already it's all going to boil down to that.
Knowledge is power, the internet brings that power to the people, power to the people is liberty, so knowledge is liberty.
It all comes down to education, and they can't keep it from you anymore.
The jig is up.
Read More......
Okay, I don't take any of this shit back.
All the dopey-ass slogans I tore into there, are targeted to keep you from thinking, and to get you to fall into line with the herd.
Apparently, the best that those in power could come up with to put a leash on Godzilla, was to try to leash everyone.
Yeah, that's equitable.
That's trusting you to decide what's right.
That's "liberty and justice for all".
Uh huh, yeah...
See, THAT'S elitist contempt.
Not me pointing out that bumper-sticker-patriotism is insipid child-minded bullshit.
Well, anyway, I deconstructed the fuck out of this, so I guess the plan is ruined.
Now you're all going to go out to black masses, and kill babies.
Right?
No?
Okay, so it's bullshit.
But see, I think there's a place for patriotism.
Fine, love your country.
But see, the way they should get you to love this country, is to make it a country worthy of being loved.
And you don't do that with zombie indoctrination.
People who really love you, don't seduce and brainwash you.
So why should the standard be different for your country?
That insidious forces want to drive obedience into you, means they know they won't be worthy of earned respect.
Which begs the question "um...why won't they? What the fuck are they up to?".
There you go, the mindset instantly exposes itself.
Same for the unearned pride stuff.
They want yahoos to have unearned pride, because they don't think them capable of earning it.
Again, contempt.
And whence the contempt?
They see you as Godzilla.
Well, are you out hurting anyone?
Anyone you know?
Anyone in your family?
It's a minority of assholes.
Apparently, we all have to suffer stupid nationalist and religious bullshit, because a handful of misanthropic misfits can't keep their marbles together.
And lemme tell you, saying the pledge, or the lord's prayer, a trillion times wasn't going to fix what was wrong with John Wayne-fucking-Gasey.
So, it's really not even about that.
It's about power.
...but....people still kick up protests, and pitch the occasional fit, and have these little tea party shindigs.
So...it's really about the illusion of power.
Some old over-privileged entitled white men wanted to feel safe, so you have to have droning mindless mantras taught to you in school.
Then continued into adult life in the bullshit you hear during elections.
Course, the tea parties seem to be mindless noise with no teeth, so, maybe they're actually on to something.
But does it tame Godzilla?
No.
Not in a way you and me give a fuck about.
At best, it protects the minority of dirty pols.
In fact, the dirty pols are part of the Godzilla mess we need to watch out for.
So, the mechanisms of society only do so much, it's up to you and me.
But, that comes back to being Bullshit Busters, and the power of the internet.
But, I'm getting the sense already it's all going to boil down to that.
Knowledge is power, the internet brings that power to the people, power to the people is liberty, so knowledge is liberty.
It all comes down to education, and they can't keep it from you anymore.
The jig is up.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Inner-space part 6- The Bullshit Busters vs. King-Kong & Godzilla: Aftermath.
So, let's now fast-forward this little allegorical narrative to it's desired conclusion, and see where it takes us.
And so, the bullshit busters all got together, and aided by time-copies of various extraordinary persons, and armed with Tesla-built super-weapons...
.....toasted Godzilla....
....and flattened King-Kong.
...but now what?
The beasts that have buggered up human history for so long were finally toppled, humbled, and caged, but now what?
What to do with them?
Godzilla is obviously the nastier of the two, having such a hard time playing well with others.
He'd need to be dealt with first.
Well...what? Kill him?
Well, no, he's the limbic brain, what do you do, run around lobotomizing people?
Doctor Mengela time, nope.
Besides, even if you could dull the Godzilla impulses in humanity with a pill or something, it would fuck up humanity.
Sure, those drives cause the occasional woman to get punched around the kitchen now and again, but they also have our drive, ambition, passion, and romance.
Tough to sift out.
Perhaps breed it out?
Select for people with bigger "Jet Jaguar", lobes, and/or smaller Godzilla lobes so they'll be more in control, and less apt to be sent to the special camp?
Nope...then we're in eugenics town, and back to Mengela.
Well, then we'll just have to construct a system to manage these impulses, to guide them, to give them outlets.
Which is what poor King-Kong took a stab at.....
A sloppy, sad, primitive, monkey-imagined stab at it.
Nice try, King-Kong, heckuva try, but entropy converted it to bullshit pretty fucking quick.
Hence the need for Bullshit Busters.
And what to do with King-Kong?
Can't lobotomize out the bullshitter lobes without killing human imagination, innovation, hopes, dreams, etc.
So, the emergent Jet Jaguar properties are forever trapped, between bullshit, and fear.
What to do?
Can anything be done?
Well, we know from the simple act of humor, bullshit bubbles can be popped.
So bullshit can be opposed.
If it can be opposed , it can be whupped, if it can be whupped from without, it can be whupped from within, if it can be whupped from within on a mass scale, it can be mitigated and controlled.
And without bullshit, Godzilla is sunk.
Without bullshit, all Godzilla has in his intellectual arsenal is "RAARRRRR!!!", and try winning a debate with that shit.
Humor is more merciless to Godzilla than it is to King-Kong.
But, it doesn't have to be humor, everyone can't be a comedian.
But, humor, as observed before, is the consequence of applying observation, and critical examination to human behavior, but particularly the bullshit.
So, not everyone can be a comedian, but everyone can be a critical thinker.
Well, not everyone.
There will always be these natural born limbic-thinkers.
If you can call that thinking.
And your natural born bullshitters.
And stuck in between them, the credulous.
And some of the credulous, you can cure, but a lot you can't.
So, what you can try to do, is at least keep them out of the jaws of Godzilla.
And/or sinking in a lagoon of bullshit.
And that goes back to Bullshit Busting, and I and others are already doing what we can there.
But that still leaves you with what to actually do with King-Kong, and Godzilla.
Well, when a Baby Godzilla gets out of line, you can send him away to Special Camp, and we already do that.
But what to do in the way of prevention?
Well, some people are just too fucked up to be fixed, and you can't catch 'em all in time, they're gonna be naughty, and they're going to have to be sent to Special Camp afterward.
The sad part is the victims.
Ya can't save 'em all.
If ya could, there'd be no need for Special Camp.
Now, a lot of Baby Godzillas find religion in Special Camp, so maybe King-Kong was on to something.
But...it's a sloppy system to put it mildly.
It doesn't work on all the Baby Godzillas, and it sprays like a shotgun, and hits innocent targets.
It saddles innocent people who would never in their life have to worry about being sent to Special Camp with fear and guilt.
And those twin fangs of fear and guilt suck the joy out of your life.
And why? Because ages ago King-Kong couldn't tell who the Dahmers were, so lazily decided to pepper everyone?
Nope, reeks of bullshit, folks.
Gotta be a better way.
The Baby Godzillas that religion theoretically keeps in line, they've gotta be a tiny fingerful of the population.
When you even do the math sloppily with lots of averaging, and rounding, it doesn't even come in close for religion's favor of being an efficient system for mitigating the nastier limbic impulses.
It's doing a baaad fucking job.
So, sorry, King-Kong, nice try, good intentions, but it's Jet-Jaguar's turn.
Okay, so let's imagine the world as a blank sheet of paper, and let's start over.
You've got Godzilla, and King-Kong, and we can't kill 'em.
And the bullshit King-Kong came up with to herd Godzilla doesn't work so well.
And all we've got for the worst Godzilla-cases, is Special Camp.
More critical thinking, and humor would deflate a lot of it.
And the internet can help spread that.
But, you've still got your bullshitters, and limbic-cases that fuck up society, and don't get sent to Special Camp.
A lot more politicians, clergy, and businessmen need to be going there.
But they aren't.
Now, ideally, critical thinking, and the scientific worldview, would be exalted, and a table built to it, and a hall built around the table, and a castle built around the hall, and a city built around the castle, and we would gild it all in gold, and call it Camelot.
And we sorta tried that with America.
But...too many compromises had to be made, we kept slavery, and no one had the balls but Tom Paine to take on religion, and he got ruined for it, and..bleh....
But....slavery is gone, we've got a black president, the dialogue on religion is being opened up, the blogosphere is booming....
What else are we waiting for?
So, okay, we're starting to live in that world, yay.
...so why are things still fucked up?
We've still got bullshitters, credulous sheep, and violent stupid assholes.
Okay, back to the blank sheet of paper...
Well, how to divert some of the violent stupid assholes, and bleed some of that off?
Well, let's jingle keys at them.
Distract them with bread and circuses.
And we already do that.
Not that everyone who engages in, or is a spectator to these things is a violent stupid asshole, but you gotta figure it dampens down the activities of such people in that they're not out on the street with idle hands.
And maybe everyone needs to blow off steam, we all have our inner-Godzilla.
So, maybe I was a little too harsh on video games.
And maybe that's part of the plan, and maybe the game programmers are on my side.
Or, some of 'em anyway.
And a good rant blows off steam, so I'm doing my part. ;)
And for a society to work, stuff needs to get done, and people like stuff, so, society should make stuff, and people need a way to get stuff, and barter is cumbersome, so let's have money.
And then we'll have jobs, and commerce, and the gears of our little world we've built on the blank piece of paper are turning, and it's all lovely.
And see, I got no beef with capitalism at that basic level.
It's when bankers, and Wall Street, and all that horseshit start to stick their dicks in, it becomes a sick stage illusion.
And not enough of those fucking people get sent to Special Camp.
But, the jobs are real, and the stuff is real, and the society made up of the turning gears is real, so, fuck those people.
Even with money being imaginary, and ruined, and assuming the worst case, that it all went to shit tomorrow, we'd have to do stuff, so we'd have to use stuff as money again, whether it were rocks, or clamshells, so why not green pieces of paper?
And why not apply that thinking to the day-to-day today?
At the cash register level, I believe in capitalism.
We all do.
So, I mentally separate our activities from the banker shit, and tune it out.
Fuck 'em.
Yeah, it's sick to watch CNBC, and watch the "oh no, the casino gamblers are a-scared, you're going to lose your real job, cuz the fake gamblers are scared!!", show.
But eh, fuck it, treat it like weather.
Well, anyhoo, with people buying shit, and going to jobs, you got less time for Godzilla to run amok.
And society's shit is getting done.
And it's already like that.
And most people play by the rules.
But....most people also buy into some brand of bullshit,...or buy into this society not on informed choice, but because of blindfolded bullshit.
Bullshit beat into you from childhood upward.
And I happen to think that's an important difference.
I think it's a difference that matters.
A nation that claims to value liberty shouldn't be seducing and/or brainwashing people.
And that's what bullshit is, and does.
And that's what the slogan rants were about.
And as part of this series, I'll be revisiting those.
Right up next, actually.
And tearing into those from this "innerspace", vantage is phase 2 for the Bullshit Busters mission.
Read More......
And so, the bullshit busters all got together, and aided by time-copies of various extraordinary persons, and armed with Tesla-built super-weapons...
.....toasted Godzilla....
....and flattened King-Kong.
...but now what?The beasts that have buggered up human history for so long were finally toppled, humbled, and caged, but now what?
What to do with them?
Godzilla is obviously the nastier of the two, having such a hard time playing well with others.
He'd need to be dealt with first.
Well...what? Kill him?
Well, no, he's the limbic brain, what do you do, run around lobotomizing people?
Doctor Mengela time, nope.
Besides, even if you could dull the Godzilla impulses in humanity with a pill or something, it would fuck up humanity.
Sure, those drives cause the occasional woman to get punched around the kitchen now and again, but they also have our drive, ambition, passion, and romance.
Tough to sift out.
Perhaps breed it out?
Select for people with bigger "Jet Jaguar", lobes, and/or smaller Godzilla lobes so they'll be more in control, and less apt to be sent to the special camp?
Nope...then we're in eugenics town, and back to Mengela.
Well, then we'll just have to construct a system to manage these impulses, to guide them, to give them outlets.
Which is what poor King-Kong took a stab at.....
A sloppy, sad, primitive, monkey-imagined stab at it.
Nice try, King-Kong, heckuva try, but entropy converted it to bullshit pretty fucking quick.Hence the need for Bullshit Busters.
And what to do with King-Kong?
Can't lobotomize out the bullshitter lobes without killing human imagination, innovation, hopes, dreams, etc.
So, the emergent Jet Jaguar properties are forever trapped, between bullshit, and fear.
What to do?
Can anything be done?
Well, we know from the simple act of humor, bullshit bubbles can be popped.
So bullshit can be opposed.
If it can be opposed , it can be whupped, if it can be whupped from without, it can be whupped from within, if it can be whupped from within on a mass scale, it can be mitigated and controlled.
And without bullshit, Godzilla is sunk.
Without bullshit, all Godzilla has in his intellectual arsenal is "RAARRRRR!!!", and try winning a debate with that shit.
Humor is more merciless to Godzilla than it is to King-Kong.
But, it doesn't have to be humor, everyone can't be a comedian.
But, humor, as observed before, is the consequence of applying observation, and critical examination to human behavior, but particularly the bullshit.
So, not everyone can be a comedian, but everyone can be a critical thinker.
Well, not everyone.
There will always be these natural born limbic-thinkers.
If you can call that thinking.
And your natural born bullshitters.
And stuck in between them, the credulous.
And some of the credulous, you can cure, but a lot you can't.
So, what you can try to do, is at least keep them out of the jaws of Godzilla.
And/or sinking in a lagoon of bullshit.
And that goes back to Bullshit Busting, and I and others are already doing what we can there.
But that still leaves you with what to actually do with King-Kong, and Godzilla.
Well, when a Baby Godzilla gets out of line, you can send him away to Special Camp, and we already do that.
But what to do in the way of prevention?Well, some people are just too fucked up to be fixed, and you can't catch 'em all in time, they're gonna be naughty, and they're going to have to be sent to Special Camp afterward.
The sad part is the victims.
Ya can't save 'em all.
If ya could, there'd be no need for Special Camp.
Now, a lot of Baby Godzillas find religion in Special Camp, so maybe King-Kong was on to something.
But...it's a sloppy system to put it mildly.
It doesn't work on all the Baby Godzillas, and it sprays like a shotgun, and hits innocent targets.
It saddles innocent people who would never in their life have to worry about being sent to Special Camp with fear and guilt.
And those twin fangs of fear and guilt suck the joy out of your life.
And why? Because ages ago King-Kong couldn't tell who the Dahmers were, so lazily decided to pepper everyone?
Nope, reeks of bullshit, folks.
Gotta be a better way.
The Baby Godzillas that religion theoretically keeps in line, they've gotta be a tiny fingerful of the population.
When you even do the math sloppily with lots of averaging, and rounding, it doesn't even come in close for religion's favor of being an efficient system for mitigating the nastier limbic impulses.
It's doing a baaad fucking job.
So, sorry, King-Kong, nice try, good intentions, but it's Jet-Jaguar's turn.
Okay, so let's imagine the world as a blank sheet of paper, and let's start over.
You've got Godzilla, and King-Kong, and we can't kill 'em.
And the bullshit King-Kong came up with to herd Godzilla doesn't work so well.
And all we've got for the worst Godzilla-cases, is Special Camp.
More critical thinking, and humor would deflate a lot of it.
And the internet can help spread that.
But, you've still got your bullshitters, and limbic-cases that fuck up society, and don't get sent to Special Camp.
A lot more politicians, clergy, and businessmen need to be going there.
But they aren't.
Now, ideally, critical thinking, and the scientific worldview, would be exalted, and a table built to it, and a hall built around the table, and a castle built around the hall, and a city built around the castle, and we would gild it all in gold, and call it Camelot.
And we sorta tried that with America.
But...too many compromises had to be made, we kept slavery, and no one had the balls but Tom Paine to take on religion, and he got ruined for it, and..bleh....
But....slavery is gone, we've got a black president, the dialogue on religion is being opened up, the blogosphere is booming....
What else are we waiting for?
So, okay, we're starting to live in that world, yay.
...so why are things still fucked up?
We've still got bullshitters, credulous sheep, and violent stupid assholes.
Okay, back to the blank sheet of paper...
Well, how to divert some of the violent stupid assholes, and bleed some of that off?
Well, let's jingle keys at them.
Distract them with bread and circuses.
And we already do that.
Not that everyone who engages in, or is a spectator to these things is a violent stupid asshole, but you gotta figure it dampens down the activities of such people in that they're not out on the street with idle hands.And maybe everyone needs to blow off steam, we all have our inner-Godzilla.
So, maybe I was a little too harsh on video games.
And maybe that's part of the plan, and maybe the game programmers are on my side.Or, some of 'em anyway.
And a good rant blows off steam, so I'm doing my part. ;)
And for a society to work, stuff needs to get done, and people like stuff, so, society should make stuff, and people need a way to get stuff, and barter is cumbersome, so let's have money.
And then we'll have jobs, and commerce, and the gears of our little world we've built on the blank piece of paper are turning, and it's all lovely.And see, I got no beef with capitalism at that basic level.
It's when bankers, and Wall Street, and all that horseshit start to stick their dicks in, it becomes a sick stage illusion.
And not enough of those fucking people get sent to Special Camp.
But, the jobs are real, and the stuff is real, and the society made up of the turning gears is real, so, fuck those people.
Even with money being imaginary, and ruined, and assuming the worst case, that it all went to shit tomorrow, we'd have to do stuff, so we'd have to use stuff as money again, whether it were rocks, or clamshells, so why not green pieces of paper?
And why not apply that thinking to the day-to-day today?
At the cash register level, I believe in capitalism.
We all do.
So, I mentally separate our activities from the banker shit, and tune it out.
Fuck 'em.
Yeah, it's sick to watch CNBC, and watch the "oh no, the casino gamblers are a-scared, you're going to lose your real job, cuz the fake gamblers are scared!!", show.
But eh, fuck it, treat it like weather.
Well, anyhoo, with people buying shit, and going to jobs, you got less time for Godzilla to run amok.
And society's shit is getting done.
And it's already like that.
And most people play by the rules.
But....most people also buy into some brand of bullshit,...or buy into this society not on informed choice, but because of blindfolded bullshit.
Bullshit beat into you from childhood upward.
And I happen to think that's an important difference.
I think it's a difference that matters.
A nation that claims to value liberty shouldn't be seducing and/or brainwashing people.
And that's what bullshit is, and does.
And that's what the slogan rants were about.
And as part of this series, I'll be revisiting those.
Right up next, actually.
And tearing into those from this "innerspace", vantage is phase 2 for the Bullshit Busters mission.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Saturday, July 11, 2009
He's back (the man behind the mask)
There we go.
Good companion to the Freddy one.
I seriously didn't know this ditty ever had a video.
Hmm, about as good as Dream Warriors, video wise.
Hey, why haven't I posted Dream Warriors?
Huh.
Anyhoo...
Read More......
Good companion to the Freddy one.
I seriously didn't know this ditty ever had a video.
Hmm, about as good as Dream Warriors, video wise.
Hey, why haven't I posted Dream Warriors?
Huh.
Anyhoo...
Read More......
Inner-space part 5.5- Godzilla & King-Kong Across History 2.
So, I said in the last part, that I'd zoom in on a slightly more detailed look at human history.
Well, here goes.
So, Godzilla and King-Kong raged across human history...
Let's look at that struggle now.
King-Kong...
....Godzilla.
King-Kong....
...Godzilla.
King-Kong....
....Godzilla. (ahem)
King-Kong....
.....Godzilla.
King-Kong.....
.....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....King-Kong.....
.....Godzilla.
King-Kong.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....King-Kong.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
King-Kong...
....Godzilla.
King-Kong....
...Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla...
....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
...King-Kong....
....Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar...
...Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar...
....Godzilla.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla.....
...Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla....
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
.....Jet Jaguar.
Read More......
Well, here goes.
So, Godzilla and King-Kong raged across human history...Let's look at that struggle now.
King-Kong...
....Godzilla.
King-Kong....
...Godzilla.
King-Kong....
....Godzilla. (ahem)King-Kong....
.....Godzilla.
King-Kong.....
.....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....King-Kong.....
.....Godzilla.
King-Kong.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....King-Kong.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
King-Kong...
....Godzilla.
King-Kong....
...Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla...
....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
...King-Kong....
....Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar...
...Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar...
....Godzilla.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla.....
...Jet Jaguar.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar.....
....Godzilla.
Jet Jaguar....
....Godzilla.
Godzilla....
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
...Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla....
.....Jet Jaguar.
Godzilla...
.....Jet Jaguar.
Read More......
Labels:
society
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