Agreed, but it is not “the end” by any means - all things decline. It is a natural and healthy part of growth.
Turtle - if it’s any consolation, americans are constantly told that our lifestyle sucks and that our high standard of living is a myth. Probably we’d all be better off if we were more like the second-rate countries from which these comments come.
thank you faust. my lifestyle is great today.
i wouldnt live anywhere else.
but my mind tells me we are on the way down.
i am sad for all of us.
One could argue that forest fires are a natural response to conditions found in nature. They purge the system back to a manageable level. Sure, I would agree with this. I don’t find that point hard to grasp, and I think I understand the context you are coming from.
At this point nothing is of a slow evolution. While this is not what I propose, exactly something that is easily conceivable is the prevalence of the groups existing near the top that are altruistic. It’s quite within the realm of possibility to disregard the burdensome chaff in a metaphorical way. The view that you seem to hold seems to be that people - a lot of people - have to die. I’m not so sure that is the case.
What I’m proposing is looking at this in a way beyond ‘kill em all.’ I will try to explain why mine is a bit more involved.
I’m not going to get into all of this right now, but you’ve bought into a lie. The earth isn’t in as bad a shape as many people think. That fear is perpetrated for obvious reasons. The essence of the coming global revolution is the implemented psychology that mankind itself is to be the enemy. As I said, this is outlined, in nearly a comical level of detail, in ‘The Next Global Revolution,’ published by the Club of Rome. Chemtrails, global warming - it’s all in there. It’s a great read. This is all discussed in other books as well, but this is by far the most poignant.
This ties in with the last point. The human brain, the internet, and a few other things exhibit a trait where the system grows until it reaches a threshold point (in the brain this is the oxygen in the skull) where it stop growing in ‘outward’ size, but continues to grow in complexity/density, which in turns orders that system. Few things grow in complexity while increasing order. I believe humans have the ability to do this. The internet is us, essentially. We’re not a virus that will populate until everything is exterminated. That is just a lie put forth by movies like the Matrix. My suggestion is to question where, exactly, you developed that particular belief.
I can see how you might think that simply buying into the chaos theory might come across as intellectually lazy, but what I hope I have conveyed is that I am acting in accordance with chaos theory - that is, the aforementioned systems view - not simply hoping that some anomalous outcome will simply happen because they do from time to time. The evolutionary issue here isn’t finite material: elites culling off enough people to continue because we’ve naturally reached a point where the earth cannot handle us - no, not even close - the issue here is that we are dealing with a Jungian Animus complex: a world with abusive daddy issues. Until we can buff up and stand up to the drunk we’re going to continue to see ourselves as the enemy, as his drinking as our fault. When an abused mother simply says that she’s had enough, and stands up for herself, it doesn’t matter how or what the change is that might happen, it just matters that she -wants- change.
So I put it to you to back up, a bit at least, the assertion you seem to keep repeating, which to me comes across as: there is no inherent value to human life; it’s not even really worth much because it’s eating the planet; let’s just kill a bunch of people.’ I see that as not very thought through.
As I explained with the Daath thing, one can pass through the abyss, or one can unite all of their sephiroths. There is no right way, but to view paranoia as something that one is unable to recover from is… well I’m not sure how or why you would come to that belief outside of anecdotal evidence. To answer your question, though, one of the ways that it could be done is through drugs. In fact, if I could sum up an operative definition for drugs it would be just that: a tool for helping you re-establish thought patterns. This can be horribly self-destructive, or horribly self-enabling.
Was it Schopenhauer who said you can’t know your limits until you go past them? Regardless, this doesn’t really make sense to me. I would rephrase this as ‘paranoia is the act(ion) of reasoning through abolutism.’ In other words, it’s a psychological function concerned with preservation of self. If you learn, for example, that everything is a lie, then it’s natural to unconsciously assume everyone is lying until you can consciously sort out who is, and who is not. The people, imo, who can not figure that out, probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out basic problems anyways.
No, that is circular at best. Fear and anxiety, or desperation of doubt, is paranoia. When you take those things away, you are left with perception. They go over this - kind of- in the movie 300. Fear enhances your perception. It has a very demonstrable purpose. Don’t count it out.
Be wary of mandating sobriety as a prerequisite for the genuine, as sobriety is an abstraction. Achievement and effort are irrevocably linked. Very few people who were not idiots before do what you are suggesting. Very, very few. I’ve seen the ‘point’ to life several times, and the next day I wasn’t trying to write down some magum opus. Anyways, I think this is one of those fundamental points we disagree on. Some monks meditate all of their lives to catch a glimpse of what one can easily expedite by introducing a psychoactive. Doesn’t mean the monk is wrong, but it doesn’t mean the other person is either. Some shamanic tribes do all of the ‘authentic’ types of things you’re talking about – but then they add peyote, or whatever. The whole ‘drugs are inauthentic’ line is just too simple for someone like you to be using, let alone buying into. This is saying nothing about your usage.
Actually these comments often come from countries with far better standards of living than your own, many of which have a higher per capita income and are per GDP/capita far more technologically superior.
Typical American supremacist nationalist thinking I see. You still haven’t outgrown that habit sadly.
Yeah they are all just jealous. Of what you are shit? Kinda hard to be jealous of a country that doesn’t really work very well, has become an elitocracy, is riddled with social inequality and poor social mobility, is downright dangerous in many of its more populous citites, has a ghetoisation that is seemingly endemic, racist bigots and nationalist assholes, abandoned all its well meant liberal values, but thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Must do better see me. 
America tries too hard to be something it is not and falls to the elitist lobby groups. A wasted opportunity to be something great messed up by its own hubris.
You’re kind of a running joke over this side of the pond. 
If you want to find the American dream, best off not going to America, try somewhere where you actually stand a snowballs chance of hell of getting further than to your feet again when you are tossed into the gutter.
It was just another bash America post from somebody who doesn’t understand America until this. I have traveled extensively abroad (and still do so regularly) and have never run into this. Now it does, in fact, seem like jealousy. (too bad…ya reached just a little too far…)
I do not want, have a desire for, anyone dying. Quite the opposite in fact, I would desire that none of them have to die, as death is such a sad tragedy. However, this desire of mine to not have people die does not interfere with my ability to see the situation as it is, dispassionately and objectively - the earth is overpopulated, based on the needs (resource needs, generally speaking) of this population. Either a large number of people (mostly those who are unproductive) need to die, or the consumption needs of the average person needs to be severely reduced. We don’t get to have our cake and eat it too. The only reason our human systems are still going right now is because the top 30% or whatever is feeding on the slavery, poverty and death of the remaining 70%. In a very literal way, cheap oil, electricity, clothing, food, these are all predicated upon the enslavement, economic and otherwise, of the third world. The first world’s wealth and quality of life is entirely dependent upon the suffering and lack of quality of life of the third world.
Maybe you disagree with that? If you do disagree, then I can better see the paradigm from where you are coming, as you do not see an inherent sustainability problem in mankind’s population, population distribution (of people, of wealth, of power), as it currently stands.
I didn’t say the earth is in bad shape (although considering things like species extinction, the north pole melting, global temperatures rising, the size of the rainforests shrinking, I would not say the earth is in great shape either). I said our environment cannot handle supporting all of us, not for much longer at the current levels of quality of life (human consumption and production of goods and services).
Yes - and do these obvious reasons then mean that the fear is itself unjustified? Does the fact that these ideas are used for political ends mean the ideas have no truth to them? Of course not. In fact, the ideas are more useful politically the more true they are.
I do not believe mankind is a “virus”. Mankind acts like a virus in some ways, but so does all life - this is what it means to be life, to expand into one’s environment as far as possible. Some small groups of humans have, in the past, managed to maintain long-term balance with their environment (the Native Americans, for example), but this is the exception. Now, the fact that humans tend to expand, control and consume their environment, even to the point of irrationality (unsustainability) does not bother me, and it does not mean that man is “bad”. What it means is that man is a natural being, like any other life on this planet, and he acts according to natural needs and instincts. Our thoughts and feelings are entirely “natural” in this sense, a product of nature. Man is not morally to blame for how he is, because it is not man’s fault, man has yet to reach up and choose his destiny. Man has yet to define himself. Thus far man is a defined and determined animal, defined and determined by his past and by the demands of his environments. We do have the capacity to go beyond this, and in some ways we are already doing so, and starting to do so.
The point I am making is that man is not “the enemy.” However, there are aspects of human nature that should be viewed as “the enemy” if we desire to overcome the detrimental effects of letting these run wild and unchecked. Greed, lust for power, desire to consume without concern for the where, why or how of that which is consumed, valuing one human life over another merely because of the coincidence that we know that one life more than the other, ignorance of long-term consequences of behavior, irrational hope predicated on fairy tales and a psychological inability to look honestly at the situations we are faced with, merely believing “it will all work out fine in the end.” These are all natural facts of human nature - but if left unchecked they spell our doom. Our world has just grown too small now, too essentially closed in itself, to allow for such inefficiency and irrationality at the heart of the human. In the past, the effects of these were dissipated as man’s systems and environments were essentially open. That is no longer the case.
You are right that our systems are now turning inward and growing internally, in complexity, as a result of reaching the threshold of outward linear expansion. But what shape will this complexity take, if entwined with it are these irrationalities and unexamined problems in the nature of how man thinks, feels, desires, acts? Man is being organized, as a species, by technology - a direct consequence of the turning inward of the growth of the system. How are we to interpret the likely consequences of this being organized? We see that man is being mechanized, turned into a cog among machines, robbed of autonomy and the desire for autonomy, passified and over-conditioned to accept strict closed roles within the system. Media, in all formats, tells us what to think and how to think it. We resist, instinctively, but this resistance too is channeled and directed by the system, for its own ends. We are fed images to which we unconsciously conform and are limited, and then we are fed more images in which the instinctive resistance and psychological friction generated by this is released. Don’t like your nine-to-five wage-slave job? Go to a rock concert after work. Go drink some beer, or play a video game. Just don’t forget to pay your taxes on time. It’s all part of the same system, and as you say, it has grown extremely complex.
The question is, then, what are we to do about it? Perhaps the view that man is a virus, that man is the enemy is a needed simplification (deception) in order to subtly point man in the right direction. Every lie must contain a truth, and the best lie is that one which is itself nothing but truth.
Yes, I do see your position better now.
You touch upon what I deem to be the real problem here, and should be priority number one: parenting. As I have said before here, children should not be left in the hands of just anyone, and the fact that as a society we allow any random person off the street to have and raise children is absurdity at its finest. Our society is insane, but because everyone thinks and sees in the same way the insanity remains unnoticed. However, this being the case that I view the parenting situation so strongly, does not mean I am going to reduce all of our problems on a societal or global scale to “mommy and daddy issues”. This is one way of conceptualizing the problem and its root causes, but not a sufficient way, the problem goes way beyond this. For example, to education. Which would then be priority number two. But it would take sane, free-thinking people to implement radical changes in our systems of parenting and education, and these people are nowhere to be found - they exist, but they know there is no way to move the blind inert masses. Not willingly, anyway - these masses must be subtly guided, which you probably disagree with. You see a lot of hope and faith in the average man, to make better choices and to want to see truth; I do not have this same hope. I think the self-deception at the heart of man is absolutely essential, and is not a “bad thing”, it is part of his essential nature. In many ways, it keeps him whole, as a subject, and his ignorance (his will to ignorance) preserves his heart and soul. Religion is that by which man’s soul is preserved, but that the cost of remaining forever blind to himself – likewise, the will to knowledge in most men is nothing more than the careful refinement of the will to ignorance, so that this will attains an invisible status in the hierarchy of man’s drives and desires. The problem is not these (necessary) self-deceptions and ignorances at the heart of man, but rather that these have now come up against their own limit. Thus man must to some extent move beyond himself, beyond that which now essentially limits him.
But I digress.
“The planet” is not valuable in itself, it is valuable to us living beings that value it for specific reasons. Likewise with mankind itself - humans have no inherent value, we have conditional value in so far as there are things about mankind that we, value-creating beings, find valuable for specific reasons. Also, you mischaracterize my position as “let’s just kill a bunch of people.” That is not what I am saying. Even if this did occur it would not of itself be enough to raise man’s level of consciousness. In fact it would probably hold this natural growth of consciousness back somewhat by dissipating the friction therein. Rather, my point has nothing to do with my personal desires, something that I do not think you have still grasped: I don’t care what I want, regarding mankind; I care what I see as the case, the situation at hand - what is true about our predicament? My personal desires do not play into this assessment at all. I keep them wholly separate. In this way I can see the situation objectively, that is to say, truthfully, in so far as I am not coming from a position of undue bias.
I see that man the species needs a drastic evolution in consciousness if it is to survive itself - man has grown too powerful not to have this evolution, if he is to survive himself. As a corollary of this, man is overpopulated and destroying his environment and his fellow man - the first world feeds on the rest of the world to keep its excessive levels of easy consumption going. While this happens, the polar ice caps are melting, the rainforest is shrinking, global CO2 levels are rising, species are dying off left and right. These are all used by political “elites” in order to further control man and his social evolution, that is true, but it does not make these facts themselves untrue. And yes, I am fully aware of the debate over global warming. I am not “taking sides” one way or another, as such would be a foolishly unthoughtout and intellectually lazy position - both “sides” have truths to express. I am looking at specific facts within this debate, such as the amount of ice over the north pole or the measure of CO2 in the atmosphere. And these are all secondary concerns, to me, and they do not so much as give reason in themselves that “man is the enemy” or anything like that, but rather add support to the position that is already justified on its own, that man is reaching the limits, has already reached the limit of his ability to live on this planet in a mature, sustainable and responsible manner.
Again, these have not been my personal experiences, but I trust and accept that they have been yours. I am not concerned with paranoia or drug use here, those issues do not matter to me.
Knowing my limits and pushing past them has never involved paranoia, for me. Anxiety, pain, doubt, anger, hopelessness, confusion, these have all happened to one degree or another, but never paranoia.
That is not a logical response. It is never the case that “everything is a lie”, this is an oversimplification of the more refined truth, “many things are a lie.” Since I, moving from a “normal” paradigm of “most things are not a lie” (that most people occupy) into a more enlightened paradigm of “many things are a lie”, I instinctively recognize that to oversimplify this as “everything is a lie” would be to falsify is, to confront it inauthentically as a caricature, as a skewed image of itself. So I do not do this, I instinctively resist such inauthenticity in the encounter, and thus I do not get paranoia that “everyone is lying to me”, which would be an absurd thing to believe. Perhaps you never instinctively resisted the oversimplification of the opposite pole of knowledge as paradigm, when moving away from the “normal” view of the masses. If so, then I can see why you think paranoia is an essential part of the process of moving into greater and greater lucidity.
They are not the same, not at all. Paranoia is the active belief that “something” or “someone” is out to get you, it is fear/anxiety/desperation/doubt mixed with the immediate sense that one’s direct environment has become threatening in unknowable ways (this belief can of course be rational or irrational, not all paranoia is unjustified). This has not been my experience. But I accept that it has been yours. As you said, there is no “one right way.” We all experience this sort of thing in different ways.
Again, fear itself is not paranoia. They are two different things.
Where did I do this? I am not advocating or mandating sobriety. There are ways of getting out of “sobriety” that do not involve drugs - which is my point, really.
Yes, and yet drugs give you “achievment” with absolutely no effort. Does this not give you pause for concern?
Did I say that drugs are inauthentic? No. I said be wary of achievement that comes with little or no effort. If you find drugs useful, more power to you. I have nothing against “drugs” in themselves - even the label “drugs” is a misrepresentation and sloppy thinking. Read my points here regarding this issue as nothing more than a warning to think about whether the experiences one has while “high” on “drugs” are really as genuine, useful or truthful as they may at first seem.
How do you know that? I’ll put it to you another way: tell me which resource you think the earth is running out of, as opposed to being intentionally scarce.
There’s a whole bloody trail to the bank painted with people who have invented alternatives to oil. They don’t get implemented because the oil industries cannot make nearly the same type of profit from it. So this brings me back to the Jungian thing, the point of which I think you missed, so I will go back to it later. What I’m saying, though, is that this isn’t a problem of there not being enough resources. I have found no compelling evidence that is the case outside of the MSM. I’m not saying there are no ecological issues at all, but I don’t think it’s something which we cannot fix and keep the population we have. It is my stance that the desire to kill people is psychopathic paranoia at being unhinged from power dressed up as the green issue. There is a guy, Alan Watt, who is essentially a ‘it’s all the masons’ type figure, but he breaks down the green lie very, very well.
The animus refers to the male archetypal figure from the female pov, but I’m just using it sort of for both. There are different iterations of the animus, but one of them is the authority figure. Before you can move from authority to… guide, I think it is, one must sort of overcome or subsume authority. So going back to the drunk father example, what is going on is the media is saying ‘you’re fucking awful. Look what you did. You made daddy drink. He hates you, and needs to blackbag anyone who dissents because you drove him to this, you pathetic little peon…daddy only gives you a police state because he loves you’ when really, this isn’t our fault - Daddy really is a satanic occult drunk ritual sex party half-possessed psycho - and we need to overcome the fear of not having some archetypal psychological backdrop. The guide is waiting.
I somewhat disagree, yes. I do agree that the third world has to live in shit for us to live so well, given our current methods, but I think we can change the way we look at energy, and how technology can aid, instead of imprison, society. Benjamin Fulford is kind of a nutcase, but he proposed a global ‘contest’ to build up Africa and other nations, the winner of which gets something they would want - I forget what it was. The Venus project seems a little fishy, but again, it’s another way in which we can not just use a slaughter as a blanket answer.
Not necessarily. Take this example: planes spray the sky with chemicals, daily, worldwide, and it’s likely to cause the global warming in the fashion they said they would in that book I described. In The Next Global Revolution the Club of Rome says, literally, ‘Yeah we’ll heat up the earth with scientific techniques and then blame it on humanity’s irresponsibility’ (they even talk about how the original plan was ‘global cooling’ but they realized that heating would be easier to do with the aerosol approach.) Using a lie to spread justified fear is maybe justified. Spreading fear over a manufactured thread is less so.
The point that seems to keep quickly wearing off on you is the following: greed, lust, and uncontrollable consumption patterns are attributes pushed on the world by this plan. It’s sort of like you said, while man wasn’t the epitome of reasonable by any stretch, he was more or less at a balance with nature until England got into the mix. That’s why you might want to check out that book. They go through all of this. How they’re going to engineer man to hate himself because of the very social conditioning they enacted. The dialectic. We went through this.*
Now, I’m not saying ‘Oh let’s hope it will work out’ I take an active role. I do hope, but I am doing something about it as well. You’re not hoping for anything - fine, that’s kind of whatever - but you don’t seem to care, really, what, if anything happens. Is any outcome the next paradigm of evolution… I guess, yeah, but I would prefer certain ones over others. What I’m getting from you is ‘this is nature, so anything that happens is natural.’ Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is how it reads if we boil it down. That is, by simply waiting and watching what will happen (because there is no point in trying to change something so massive)* you’re serving some natural function. You’re serving the same function as the most unaware zombie. You’re just standing there, watching. So I see your stance as far less involved. My confidence in this comes from the fact that, despite your views on drugs, and facing things authentically, and intellectually, you’re still (seemingly) slightly clueless as to what is going on, and why. I’m kind of letting some stuff go. The irrationality at the heart of the human has been supplanted there, and your advocating we just step aside and wait for the people responsible for it to kill us and take away that irrationality.
I don’t see this as any more positive than you, but man was never meant to be some disorganized tribal person forever. We’re analytical: we order.
I can concede that, after you’re already engineered him to be that way, yes, suggesting he doesn’t want to be that way would be heading in the right direction. This is, quite to the T, the Hegelian technique I was talking about, though.
*I can see a bit better now what you meant by ‘the impossibility of stopping them being inherent to the idea’ when I say stuff like the above starred selections. All I can say is nothing is impossible. This time right now is quite precarious. They haven’t been able to shut the net off yet. Once they do I may be a lot more like you. Anyways, just because they have successfully implemented a fairly comprehensive multi-generational plan doesn’t mean it’s all sealed and delivered. As is the case with most basketball games, the last quarter is all that matters. Anyone who is of the mindset that the game is over, is on the bench. Yes, I will continue using bad sports analogies.
Ok, first off let me say that was very well written. I do not disagree entirely with what you’re saying. I’ve always had a strange fascination with Plato. There is validity to this Platonic approach in that some of us think broadly, some just walk on the broadways. All great feats of human ingenuity have involved some sort of power hierarchy. The Philedelphia Projects - well, really, any black ops science project - is a good example of compartmentalized ignorance that allows for the scientific soul to flourish. Most of these types are good people, learning/existing at their capacity, contributing to the collective knowledge pool.
I do see a lot of faith, though. I have a ‘tough love’ mentality. For example, purely hypothetically, drugging someone with a drug that would incapacitate their body for the purposes of raping them is, to me, sick, and malicious, and people like that should be locked up because society doesn’t benefit from that behavior; on the other hand, though, drugging someone for the purposes of them discovering some sort of potential within themselves, again, while not something I would do, or have done, is kind of funny and I would be OK with those people being out there. If you push someone over the proverbial edge most people are going to be alright.
The point is there is validity to this Platonic approach. I think we can agree on that. Each group inspires the other, in secret, I think, I just don’t understand why the general public has to serve as the springboard for a bunch of psychopaths. They’re a natural product of man, but they do not really represent humanity. They represent like 1%. We’re supposed to use them as the springboard: learn about our souls from the people who don’t have them.
This gets at what I just wrote above. I see a species, seemingly so soulful (I realize that is a poor philosophical term, but I think you get what I mean) as valuing things other than sending Patrick Bateman to the stars. It doesn’t have to be ‘life’ in general, or even human life, but I see it as being something vaguely related to ‘humanness.’
… We’ll get to this.
Yes, thanks, Tips. That point was not that literal, it was describing a psychological function that exists somewhere between conscious and unconscious. No one (or very, very few) people actually think, consciously, ‘everything is a lie’ but unconsciously, when faced with that general realization (wow, another sector of my life is a giant lie? Where does it end?) the conscious moves in accordance with emotion. This brings me to my next point, which is that you seem to be like an emotional jedi. I mean I think you realize at some level that paranoia, fear - any of these emotions - are not conscious decisions: no one really decides to exist in this ‘inauthentic’ (I have yet to conceptualize how you can know one from the other) manner any more than they decide to suffer from heartache. So… tell me your secrets?
Fair enough. I can see what you mean here. I can accept that definition.
Everything is drugs. Those ways you’re talking about are just mimicking the function of drugs; drugs mimic the function of certain… ways. My point is that it’s all the same. Like I said, I can’t really see how something in life can be any less authentic, fundamentally, then anything else. I had a pretty real dream last night.
They don’t, though. Who has told you that you can use drugs to get an immediate achievement? I do a lot of drugs and I’ve never heard that. That sounds like media nonsense. Ask any artist, ever, throughout history (cause a hi-- a large percentage of them were high) and they’ll tell you the same thing: anything worth having, or creating, requires work.
Fair enough. Something about this - all of this - just doesn’t sit right with me, though. When you take a psychoactive/hallucinogen (which is strictly what I’ve been talking about) you know implicitly it will be different than sobriety. You have to know that; it’s categorical. So fretting over whether something is authentic, or genuine — none of that makes any sense to me. I don’t really want to argue about drugs with you either, but I am interested to know how you feel you can step into this area of objectivity you’ve been describing in the past couple of posts, regardless of the drug part of it.
I feel like I’m in emotion, irrevocably, that we all feel it, but it’s knowing the techniques in which people use emotion which allows me to consciously analyze it. Likewise, just to use a topical example, if i know the ways in a drug influences the brain, I can, afterward, consciously analyze the way in which I use it. Anyways I feel like we’re probably talking about the same thing, but I am interested to hear how you put it into words. Also, maybe we are not talking about the same thing, in which case that would be even more interesting.
Of course everyone loves you really, even if they are all jealous.
Bush et al fucked up your reputation and now people are laughing behind your back.
I think its going to take a long time and a few less wars before you to repair your reputation tbh. Unfairly or not people just don’t trust or like the US atm. Some people never did but then you do insist on fighting wars you can’t win, and toppling democracies to institute autocracies and generally dubious behaviour. Then you have the gall to turn round and act offended when said countries tell you to fuck off. I loved it when the Venezaulan president said “I can smell sulphur” after meeting with Bush, made me laugh. Might even be what idiocy smells like.
America never had an Empire, but it does seem to act like a belligerent colonialist piece of shit anyway something we all know only too well.
America wasted its golden age post WWII and is still recovering from its pointless political and military posturing now. China will soon of course replace it as the worlds foremost economy, and most powerful state. The decline of the US is the fault of its government, you voted for these assholes though. I can sympathise we have laboured for the last 40 years under some of the worst and most incompetent pieces of crap ever to grace politics too.
Again jealous of what, you have got nothing? More sort of contemptuous and mocking of the worlds elitocratic clowns. It’s hard to be jealous of something you would rather die than be anything remotely even closely like really. I doubt even Zimbabwe is jealous of the US. Why would anyone be?
Things about the US no one wants to ape:
- Nationalism - generally indicated by over agrandizing your own worth and being contemptuous and underplaying everyone elses
- Massive ego
- over compensating
- One of the poorest social mobilities in the developed world
- government is basically run by big business
- Media is far worse than Pravda ever was, particularly Fox.
- Elitocracy - or should that be idiocracy.
- 5% of the population own most of the wealth
- endemic racism, although getting better
- tendancy to be a colossal political hypocrite - condemns Iran for having a nuclear program (which it badly needs and is perfectly entitled to have anyway), despite the US supplying it with its reactors in the first place. Being as the US also implemented a monarchist figurehead that replaced the democratic prime minister in a coup, which was itself implemented by the US to garner favourable Western oil concessions, when Mossedeg decided to try and lift the yoke of Western control over their oil fields. This seems a little rich. Europe supplied the centrifuge enrichment technology too btw.
- likes to sell arms to everyone and drugs if helps fund a war or two and then bitch at people who point there own guns atm (no need to mention it sells guns to future enemies such as Iran). Has penchant for covertly replacing Dictators with drug dealers and or scum and then condemning said countries.
- Doesn’t like to apologise to anyone for anything, particularly its war crimes, because its too good for that.
- Warmonger, tends to start wars at the drop of a hat and bs repeatedly about the reasons.
- Believes international law and the UN is an inconvenience, probably still believes Iraq was a legal war, despite the fact that it has veto powers so no one could say it pointedly. Signed a treaty on torture and then broke it, because it doesn’t seem to give a shit about its promises.
- Economically backward, labouring under uber capitalism
- Legally backward, holds more prisoners in its jails than any other country combined on earth, but still has high murder per capita and crime rates. Still institutes the death penalty, despite it having no value or function and costing way more than the alternatives. Has silly laws based on a game of basebal!? Which is supposed to deter crime but doesn’t work
- Still has some of the laws of the West, some Americans appear to think they are cowboys still.
- Claims to be the most culturally significant country in the world all the time, despite it being too young a country to have developed any discernible culture of its own, with the exception of maybe TV.
- Comedy sucks badly, and is all pretty much the same thing but with 4 slightly different people.
- Thinks everyone is jealous of their backwater hell hole
I can go on, but I think you get the point. Yes people are contemptuous of your country, and no seeing as they are doing much better than you they are not jealous. 
Yeah you’ve been everywhere, I’m pretty sure people aren’t going to joke about you to your face, you’d probably end up at war with them or at least try to sell them drugs or guns.
(Nope, no jealousy there…)
I guess this explains why emigration is such a huge problem for us. Oh, wait… 
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your jealous masses yearning to breathe free…”
shut up. You actually really believe anyone is jealous of your tin pot shit heap. 
No one likes you because you and your presidents have behaved like colonialist assholes and ruined your reputation for the next 50 years. It’s quite straight forward, you are the worlds bitch.
I wouldn’t you’ll spend far longer trying to reach the top in the US than anywhere else in the developed world.
It’s kind of like being jealous of a polished turd.
Do you really think that anyone is jealous of the US or is this just another manifestation of your seedy nationalist, racist dogma? Someone can only not like us because they are jealous it couldn’t be because the world is now a far mroe dangerous place than ever it was before your clown shoed presidents fucked it up, could it. Or the fact you delight in screwing over other countries with pointless posturing and silly costly wars. No couldn’t be that could it?
Send in the clowns.
yes Europe has no issues with emmigration either, in fact everyone seems to want to go there. What’s your point?
Cal, you sound angry.
Are you getting enough sleep?
(Can I call you Cal?)
Witness the demonstrations held recently all over he world, as anger over the unfunny americans erupted spontaneously in cities large and small. “Death to Ellen” was the chant in Tibet. “Seinfeld is the Devil” in Rio. In Zurich, they tried to hang Leno in effigy, but they couldn’t get the rope over the dummy’s chin. They do such precise work in Switzerland.
It’s true. The US has been caught looking in the mirror several times. And sometimes it won’t talk to people. Especially people whose verbal skills are so weak that they have to personify a nation in order to discuss it. I happen to know that it doesn’t respond to its mail if that mail uses emoticons, as well. Seems the US assumes that it must be talking to a minor, in that case. The US is a bitch that way.
Correct. Marshals and sheriffs have to wear white hats and bad guys are required by law to shave no more than once a week. Remember that in the airport - it could save your life.
Correct. You don’t even know he half of it. In addition to three strike laws, there’s the foul ball law - if your balls cross the line between being hidden and being seen in public, they are considered foul balls and you are committing a crime. Then there’s the Minor League Home Run law - if you hit a home run in league with a minor - you’re going to jail, podner. And of course there’s the Infield Fly Rule - if you’re going to unzip your fly in public, you’d better be out in a field, taking a pee.
Absolutely. It’s no wonder that Americans are sheep. They’re confused. Every possible point of view is represented in american media. How are you to know which propaganda to believe? Maybe you can start up an online news service, Calrid. You know, finally an unbiased approach.
Hey, by the way, if you need any guns or drugs, call me.
dear sniv and cal----did the british empire fall because of debt. from turt
Hi, turt. My understanding from what I have been able to learn here is that the British Empire is alive and well and ruling the world. -sniv.
My point here is that scarcity is a basic fact of material existence. All life reaches the point where its environment cannot sustain its growing population, and that population wanes as a result. Man temporarily skews this process by man’s use of technology to alter the conditions of his environment directly, allowing for more population than would otherwise be supportable. This is fine, except for 1) technology is inherently harmful just as it is inherently helpful, and the harm and potential for harm grows along with the benefits, 2) even technology cannot do away with scarcity as a basic fact, which is the same thing as saying that human global population cannot continue to grow forever. We are making the situation the worse for us the more dependent we become on our technologies. Likewise, even this dependency does not save us from the conditions of material existence. You point out that there is artificially induced scarcity of certain resources; I do not dispute that. But that is a secondary issue. Even if this were not the case, man would still face a limit to his population size and growth. Why does this matter? Because, artificial scarcity or not, man faces the specter of pushing beyond his environment’s ability to sustain him. What percentage of the world’s population is poor and starving? A significant percentage. Much of mankind has existed in poverty, misery and starvation with or without the help of “global elites” and human systems that manipulate resource availability, quantity and pricing. It is as if you think that were we to remove these draconian manipulating systems and groups from power, mankind would suddenly be swimming in excess of food, water, energy and resources, plenty and then some for everyone on earth. That is not the case.
So I circumvent the issue of artificial scarcity to look at the deeper, underlying problem of human population as such. I know you are more concerned with the former problem, and I am not belittling that problem here, only it is not my chief focus. Perhaps we just have different motives and intellectual investments here, which do not coincide enough for us to come to some sort of agreement in terms of how we construct our views and ideas on things.
Okay, we get back to the essential issue here, at least for me: the “green lie” is not a “lie”, man must become more responsible for the wellbeing of himself, his fellow life on this planet, and the planet itself. Man is a veritable God of the earth, over it and all life, and man must live up to this tremendous responsibility – so far, he is not living up to it, he is acting utterly irresponsibly, short-sightedly and greedily. You are trying to pin all of (okay, not all, but certainly most, or the most salient at least) humanity’s faults on man’s being manipulated and socially engineered by vast global conspiracies - in this way you are shirking mankind’s responsibility for itself. On an individual as well as group level. No, I am not saying such social engineering is not true. I accept it is true, in fact it is pretty much a logical given, even without reading any of the material out there, that such things can and do happen. But this does not absolve man for his personal responsibility over himself.
Now, I would be the last person to think that man as he is, now, is capable of such responsibility, as a whole, and so it makes little sense to “blame” him for not acting responsibly. But the problem persists however we distribute blame: man is pretty much a spoiled, selfish child that abuses his environment without regard for the long-term viability of this behavior, and without love for his fellow man, for other life on this planet, or for ecological concerns in and of themselves. Part of man’s maturing into a somewhat conscientious species would be his taking on concern for and direct responsibility for the state of the earth. Man has this within his power, but most people don’t care at all about such things - they just want to consume and feel good. Give your money to Greenpeace and buy a Prius, and they forget all about it. Well, that is not sufficient, of course, and it is only a masking of the real contempt and apathy regarding these issues. And yet, what does the fact that these people desire to give money to Greenpeace and buy Prius’s tell you, considering they do not actually care about these issues of environment at all? It tells you that these values, these ideals are spreading through human societies in a still unseen way. Man reacts to them, it becomes desirable to be seen, by others and by oneself, as caring about these issues, even if these issues are still too new to be fully accepted and realised, even if man is still too immature to understand their importance and accept it on a conscious level.
The point here is that the “green lie” is not a lie, we are facing real environmental problems. Consumption is not without consequences, scarcity is a fact of material existence. And if a certain amount of politicizing of the ecological issues is needed to force mankind to accept and understand these ideas, to learn in a personal and genuine way about what it means to be veritable Gods of the earth, and to take direct responsibility for this planet and for all that happens here, then these “lies” are entirely necessary and serve positive historical ends.
I see so many people, like yourself it seems, who understand that much of the “green issue” is predicated upon political manipulation and is ingenuine, and so they react against this in a crude and unthoughtful manner, and swing entirely to the other side, with “There is no green problem!! It’s all a lie!!” Well, that is of course equally false and an equally childish position. We need to get away from this sort of black and white reactionary thinking. The fact that issues are politicized does not render those issues without merit or truth. But the fact of politicization certainly does give otherwise motivated people a nice excuse to evade and ignore these issues, by clinging to the political side of it at the expense of the truthful side.
This may all be true. And yet, man is still for many reasons contemptible in his nature. Man is ignorant and immature. Why or how this is does not matter much to me. What I do care about is how we react to this situation - we ought not react with self-loathing or hate, as “they” would like us to do. Rather, we need to see man as a child, no more than an infant in terms of evolution of his consciousness, of self-awareness. We do not blame infants for their irrational and stupid behavior, we do not loathe them for their ignorance. And yes, children are certainly very easily manipulated.
If media is trying to get man to “hate and blame himself”, then of course I do not condone that. But that is not the real issue here, to me; again our interests do not necessarily coincide. I am concerned not with how man got to this situation or with who is trying to take advantage of it and why – I am concerned with how man is as he is, now, what this means in terms of the implications for man, his evolution and his survivability, and how man can reach the next stage of his evolution of consciousness. Do I really care that “they” are trying to cultivate man’s self-hatred by creating artificial environmental problems? No. Because there are real environmental problems that need addressing, and because man must, one way or another, come around into full consciousness of his responsibility for himself and for his planet.
I do not subscribe to Utopian notions. There is no “world Venus project” that will create some paradise on earth, and man is not going to come into a perfect land of plenty for everyone just by throwing off the yoke of oppressive political systems. But again, I am not using “slaughter” as a “blanket answer”. What I am saying is that if we want to come around into a position where the destruction of not just man and his cultures but also of the earth’s ecosystems themselves is not an inevitability, population needs to be brought under control. I think this will happen naturally, it always does with every species. One way or another man will be reigned in by nature, into a more manageable balance with his environment.
Yes, but again, I do not shift all the blame onto these entities. Man is responsible for his position on earth, for what happens here. Man needs to evolve. Now, are you saying that ALL of the environmental problems and socioeconomic problems on earth are caused by these “elites”? If so, then I can see why you focus so on them. In your mind, it must seem as if, if we could only get out from under their yoke, mankind would be ushered into paradise, peace and plenty for all (I am simplifying, of course). My point is that I do not share this paradigm of yours; I accept and understand much manipulation goes on, man is “blamed” for things that are not entirely his fault or even in his control. But this does not make the problem go away. With or without “their” plans and plots, man is still faced with the growing pressures of scarcity and overgrowth of populations, man is still faced with the burden of coming around into full consciousness of his responsibility for this world.
Okay, we identify the heart of our disagreements here: you place blame ENTIRELY on “them”. I do not. I see “them” as a part of the problem, a big part even, but not the problem as such. They are a manifestation of man’s deeper need for evolution in consciousness, and they are a mechanism toward this realization.
I think your shifting all the blame on “them” is a way for you to avoid placing blame on man himself, and a way for you to avoid facing the still present facts that man is in a precarious position regardless of “their” influences. I think you need to see “them” as THE bad guy in order sustain your paradigm here. Which is fine. But that is not what I am concerned with here, my concern is the state of things as such, as they are now, and where we are going and ought to go from here. I see “them” as part of the problem, but the are certainly not THE problem - they are a manifestation of “the problem”, which is man as he is, man’s nature and state of being in terms of his intellect, consciousness, conscientiousness, relative to where man ought to be given the state of his relationship to his environment.
I will check out that book; I have read many such books over the years. None of them convince me to absolve mankind of his personal responsibility and need for evolution in consciousness. They paint good pictures of what is “really going on”, yes, but that is supplementary material for me, it does not occupy the center of my sphere of concern here.
I can see that you still do not seem to grasp my position very well at all. That is regrettable.
Yes, but the problem with using this fact as a shield against the mechanization of human nature at the hands of technology is that it is not enough. The fact that man is analytical, that being a cog in a machine is not “natural” for man does not mean it still is not the case, or will not happen in a very real way. Human nature is always changing, up in the air, evolving over time as new ideas and passions and meanings are introduced, wax and wane in the soul. My point here regarding technology is really only that we cannot bank on technology to “save us”, in fact quite the opposite. I see the specter of technology as as a graver threat on the horizon than “them”, in so far as they are only a manifestation of the essence of what technology is, what it means for mankind. They will make use of technology, yes, but that technological spirit, that essential reality pervades and pushes into man, deep into his nature, changing him, remaking him. This is still very new, and we do not yet know what course this will take, but we can certainly form guesses. Science fiction has done much of that work for us, and we know how true science fiction tends to becomes with time.
Essentially, man needs to “wake up” collectively speaking and assert his Ego, his sense of “I”, Self, responsibility for his own being and for the beings that are entrusted to his care by virtue of his dominant position on this world. Man needs to find again that essential core to himself, that ground of Being which is his spirit and desire for life, love for life and for a better existence. All that has been built up around us by technology and by “them” could come crashing down to a halt where this to occur, were man to truly wake up. And yet, this does not happen, it cannot happen as of yet. That point is still off in the future somewhere, as a distinct possibility; likely, perhaps, but certainly not inevitable. But certainly ultimately outside of our individual ability to direct, control or influence in any real way. We can choose to be a part in this or that flow toward or away from such an “eventual” reality, that is our position of responsibility, of freedom of choice, that is how we participate and work toward these goals. But this is also why we need to conceptualize these goals and this work in more concrete, immediate real-world ways, because we intuitively know that we can only make such small differences in the moment, here and now, and that ultimately that final reality, that point at which mankind either enters or fails to enter into a new dimension of self-responsible consciousness, is outside of our hands. This anxiety of the unknown and the uncontrollable is what terrifies us, unconsciously. This unconscious anxiety is then fuel for our more real-world projects, for our motives to “fight the good fight” and thus feel as if we are “making a difference”.
Again, I do not shirk responsibility for man as he is, I do not avoid placing it where it stands now. I believe that your desire to see “them” as THE problem is your will to denial of the essential problem at the core of man’s existence here and now, in light of this man’s nature and its relationship to its environment and to the future. But I could be wrong – maybe it really IS all “their” fault?
Maybe I am just not paranoid enough to accept that? But I believe I have more than adequately laid out my reasons as to why this is not the case, why “they” do not constitute the sum of mankind’s essential dilemma.
I quite agree.
It always is. Each generation, each moment in history has its eternal struggle.
Your analogy is an adequate one. The game is not “set”, certainly, although the score going into the 4th quarter still makes a big difference. If the score is 15 to 120 at the beginning of the 4th quarter, well, sure it is still “possible” for the first team to win, but… you get my meaning.
That isn’t really what I was getting at with willed ignorance and self-deception being at the heart of the human – but I can for the most part agree with all that.
Yes, there is something valuable within humanity, its “humanness” as you put it. I describe this generally as the experiential subjectivity of consciousness, self-awareness (the consciousness of consciousness)… depth of Being.
I am not an emotional Jedi, at least not that I am aware of. But I do have deep insight into my feelings and emotional states. I sort of “see” the multi-layered nature of these states, objectively when I contemplate them and directly when I experience them. This is how I know that paranoia is not the root unconscious source of the otherwise “negative” reactions that occur when one moves from within the herd to outside of it.
It just depends on what that experience imparts to you, how this being-imparted lines up and coincides with your deeper essential nature - is the experience incorporated comprehensively into the sphere of our consciousness? Does it inform that sphere in ways that are productive of it, or destructive? Does it expand this sphere or contract it? Do these experiences on drugs impart knowledge that is consistent with your deeper self that core nature, thus edifying this nature, or do these experiences run counter to this, overcoding it, forcing this primal natural energy to flow into artificial and insufficiently conceived boxes where it becomes trapped and gives rise to prejudices, habits, unconscious mental blocks, a fundamentally un-openness to oneself?
If I work hard to achieve a philosophical insight, by reading, writing, thinking hard for a long time, if this clarity of insight and accompanying emotional euphoria arise from this part of myself, then I will be author of this experience, I will own it, my psyche will integrate it fully because it has already traced the inner nature of this experience from the beginning, it knows where and how it fits into by overall being. Whereas, if I just pop some acid, those philosophical insights are of a different quality. This is not to say nothing good can come of them, and it is not even to say that anything detrimental will come of them – it is only saying that the quality, the character of the experience and how it relates to me, to my “essential being”, are different. You draw the line where you want in terms of this relationship to self, and I will draw it where I want.
Experiences are always such potential tools, they are always utility to the subject. If you find great utility in drug-induced experiences, then wonderful. I can say that based on my own experiences with drugs, while pleasurable, they did not inform my philosophical insight or clarity of mind, they were never a substitute for introspection, deep thinking, reading and writing.