NSFW Links: March 29, 2013

These links are NSFW.

Assorted BJs- Set 1: Mar 29, 2013 – Assorted POV BJs

Assorted BJs- Set 2: Mar 29, 2013 – More assorted POV BJs

Assorted BJs- Set 3: Mar 29, 2013 – Even more POV BJs

Assorted BJs- Set 4: Mar 29, 2013 – And one more set of POV BJs

Enjoy! Comments?

Music Video: Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines ft. T.I., Pharrell

A slightly NSFW version of a new music video.

http://www.vevo.com/watch/robin-thicke/blurred-lines-unrated-version/USUV71300526

Enjoy! Comments?

Understanding the Delusion of Institutional Competence

One of the most peculiar beliefs exhibited by human beings, especially when acting in large groups, goes something like this..

“Institutions that appear to be big, powerful or long-lived are especially competent and capable at what they claim to be doing.”

But is that true? Are such ‘successful and persistent’ institutions really competent and capable, or are other factors at work? What makes some institutions bigger, more powerful and long-lived than others? I am trying to compare and contrast what can be observed in the real world to what many people (even the ‘smart’ ones) apparently believe. So let us begin by asking a few simple and related questions- Do institutions, successful or unsuccessful, really give a shit about so-called ‘sacred’ concepts like meritocracy? Do they actually hire and promote the most competent and visionary? How do they become successful, bigger and long-lived?

I have noticed that most human beings desperately want to believe that we live in a ‘just world, because the alternative to that simple-minded belief is pretty depressing. But the universe we live in is not bounded by our models about its functioning. Therefore most people have to regularly perform extensive and often unconscious revisions to the narratives they want to believe. Almost nobody wants to admit that they made incorrect, hasty or bad decisions. Even fewer want to admit that they were short-sighted, greedy, stupid, cowardly, arrogant or driven by the decisions of people around them. It is psychologically much easier to be wrong like almost everybody else that right like the heretic who thinks differently.

Of course, being wrong like everybody else has never been particularly desirable or profitable. The quality of human existence throughout most of history and pre-history was so poor precisely because people preferred to be wrong and stupid like everybody else.However, people tend to have a short and selective memory about that sort of stuff. I would go so far as to say that we celebrate the bad decisions, simple mindedness, deprivations, stupidity and shortsightedness of yesteryears under the guise of tradition.

So what does all of this have to do with belief in institutional competence?

The answer lies in how people explain the surrounding world to themselves. If you believe in a ‘just world’ driven by meritocracy and existing for a higher purpose, you might also believe that apparent success in that world is due to real or intrinsic superiority and competence.

For example- The longevity of the Catholic or Orthodox Churches could then be interpreted as a sign of the intrinsic superiority, competence and timelessness rather than luck, chance and the result of human stupidity and credulousness. Similarly the dominance of Microsoft in certain sectors of the software market could pass as a sign of intrinsic competence and guile rather than a series of lucky breaks and mistakes by potential and often superior competitors.

Another example is the supposed superiority of the american socio-political system and ideologies. It is easier for most people to believe the ideologies and behaviors which supposedly make it so, are superior as long as the system can deliver some token and highly publicized signs of its ability. But as we have seen in the last decade, but especially in the last 5 years, it is increasingly obvious that the whole system and ideologies underlying the facade were rotten, defective and full of lies and fake promises.

Sooner or later, all human institutions run out of the ability to repair cracks in the facade and put on impressive-looking shows to distract the willingly gullible majority. However most people will never lose their belief in institutions till they literally collapse in front of their eyes, and even then a few will never accept that they were willing participants in their own deception. Why wake up from a dream that almost everybody around you also seems to enjoy? But a dream is just that- a dream.

What do you think? Comments?

Factors Underlying the Worldwide Decline in East-Asian Fertility

Some of you might have recently heard that the Chinese government in considering changes to its one child policy. While many see this as a reasonable attempt to reverse the demographic decline, a few commentators have expressed doubts about whether such a change would have any effect on the willingness of the Chinese to have more children. They point out that ethnically and culturally similar neighboring countries have fertility very similar to those in China, even though they lack an official one-child policy. If anything, China has a slightly higher fertility rate (1.6) than more affluent east-asian countries such as South Korea (1.2), Japan (1.4) and Taiwan (1.1). Even many culturally similar but not that affluent countries in the region have pretty low fertility rates; Vietnam (1.8), Thailand (1.6). Only the war-ravaged, poor or extra-religious countries (Laos, Cambodia, Philippines and Malaysia) in East-Asia have fertility rates above 2.

So what is going on? Why do so many east-Asian countries have such low fertility-rates in the modern era? Was it always so? When did it start to change and why?

Conventional explanations for this phenomena have tried to spin this low fertility rate as evidence of East-Asian intelligence, thoughtfulness, conscientiousness or degree of investment in their offspring. There is however a very big problem with any such “positive” explanations for this precipitous drop in fertility in that region. For almost all of recorded history, fertility rates in East Asia were freakishly high. Furthermore the general living conditions, levels of over-crowding, frequency of food shortages and mortality from infectious diseases etc were much bigger problems in the past than they are today.

Any hypothesis based on the idea that East-Asians are devoted parents would have a hard time explaining why so many of them are having no children or just one token child. But aren’t we all told that East-Asian parents are very devoted to the welfare of their kids and deeply involved in the lives- maybe a bit too deeply? Why would a socio-cultural-ethnic grouping with such a strong tradition of having children and raising them “properly” stop having them at the very time in human history when doing so has become very easy and safe?

Even more curious than the low-fertility rates of East-Asians in modern times is a look at what factors are associated with having the least number of kids. Other than higher levels of education, it is wealth and status that are associated with few or no kids. While this correlation has been previously observed in other developed countries, it is especially striking in East-Asian countries where the combination of a first-world lifestyle and high levels of education almost always translate into one or no kids. So what else can explain the precipitous drop in fertility rates in East-Asia in the last 60-70 years? Why haven’t the rates stabilized or recovered to levels of around 2- even in countries which have enjoyed reasonable economic stability? Why are economic incentives so ineffective at getting them to have more kids?

There is another way to look at this issue. However taking that route involves killing many ideological ‘holy’ cows and beliefs about what human beings are and are not.

Most of us want to believe that human beings are fundamentally intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable, capable of objective thought and largely rational in their actions. However a brief reading of human history or even short interactions with a few people around you will show that it is not the case. I could write entire books on why the self-image of human beings is so at odds with reality, but that is something for another day. For the purpose of this post, let us concentrate on the effects of such self-delusion on humans and the societies they live in.

While most human beings want to have children of their own, the mix of reasons and beliefs that drive them to have kids is sensitive to their circumstances and true motivations. People who used to live as hunter-gatherers or in small agriculture-based communities wanted kids for company, help, status and future care. Since accumulation of money was either absent or irrelevant in such communities, their motivations for having and caring for kids were not tainted by such extraneous considerations.

“Civilization” changed that.. Large scale agriculture, even in the pre-industrial era, created highly hierarchical societies which depended on a constant supply of naive and disposable workers who could be conned into working hard with the promise of a better future. While slaves and indentured laborers were one option, having more children was a much better option. It is not an exaggeration to say that people who belong to long-lived civilizations are far more likely to see other humans, but especially their own kids, as the principal means of improve their monetary and social status regardless of the cost of such behavior on their kids.

A lot of the ‘peculiarities’ in East-Asian parenting styles make sense if you are willing to consider the possibility that the relationship between parents and their children in those cultures is far closer to an employer and their employees.

The ‘tough love’, striving for higher productivity and ‘quantifiable’ achievement at all costs, enforced conformity and obedience, unspoken rules and protocols in everyday behavior that seem to characterize relationships between East-Asian parents and their children are exactly the things you expect in work relationships. This commercialization of the parent-child relationship is however not without its drawbacks and problems. For one, it creates damaged and very unhappy human beings who require constant threats and external pressures to behave “properly”.

The system worked for as long as it did because of the lack of effective contraception. The introduction and spread of effective contraception made it easier for unhappy and dysfunctional people to avoid having children. Also women can now make decent money by working and can thus achieve all of their material goals without the inconvenience of having kids. Since East-Asians, more than any other group, have seen kids principally as a means to attain their own material goals- it stands to reason that they would have far fewer kids if other (and easier) avenues to reach those goals were available.

What do you think? Comments?

What RooshV Does Not Understand About Human Organizations

I recently saw a post by RooshV in which he wrote about how communication technology based surveillance, data mining etc would somehow create a revolution- and disintegration- proof conformist society, rather like a lite version of 1984. As it turns out, I had considered these issues and written about them in some of my older posts.

My overall conclusion was that attempting to pull of such a thing with any degree of sincerity would mark the end of viable society. Note my choice of words- ‘viable’ not ‘optimal’, ‘functional’ or ‘dysfunctional’.

Let us begin by looking at the topic through the prism of history. The idea of creating conformist societies in which everyone spied on each other and snitched for an extra helping of food or other favors has been tried since the beginning of ‘civilization’. So how have these past attempts fared? Have they delivered stability or have their leaders (or elites) been able to retain power over any significant length of time?

The simple answer to the above stated questions is that any serious attempt to pull of such things almost inevitably causes the destruction of that system- typically after 1 generation of economic stasis. If you could engineer social and regime stability through repression, snitching and surveillance- the USSR would still be a viable entity and East Germany with its extensive snitch-based spy apparatus would still be around. China would not have to spend all those resources trying to patrol the internet within its borders nor would North Korea be so concerned about keeping up its ‘image’ with the home audience.

But have you wondered why oppression-based societies wither, fail and come apart? They certainly do not have to worry about the opinions or ideas of heretics and they can use any combination of hard and soft force to put down internal dissent and rebellion. They can even control news about important event and restrict what people can say in the public and often in the private. So why do they progressively become more fragile and dysfunctional?

The answer to that question is not found in the goodness of the human soul (if something like that even exists) or the human need for freedom. The increasing levels of fragility, dysfunction and ultimate failure of all oppression-based regimes are largely due to a set of factors and dynamics that escapes paid ‘intellectual’ shills.. I mean ‘famous’ thinkers and ‘great’ philosophers.

Oppression-based societies fail because of the nature, staffing, growth and evolution of organisations which implement those policies. These issues (or systemic defects) are fundamentally uncorrectable because they are part and parcel of the structure, functioning and evolution of any hierarchical organisation. I should add that human attitudes and tendencies also contribute to the trajectory, stages and end results of societal failure in oppression-based societies.

The first clue to what can go wrong in oppression-based societies comes from understanding the actual working dynamics of mature information gathering and intelligence services. Irrespective of the degree of automation and computerization used for intelligence gathering or processing, these organisations are shaped by the limitations of those who work for them and fund them.

So what kind of person ends up working for such organisations?

Contrary to what most of you think- almost no person employed by these organisations is a genius, a creative thinker or even highly motivated. The stifling bureaucracy, political intrigue, pettiness and hierarchy inherent within such organisations does a very good of excluding the truly intelligent, competent and capable. The average ‘successful’ employee in these organisations is therefore almost always a moderately clever but supremely mediocre and risk-averse person whose sole purpose in life is to get a steady pay, obtain a few promotions and then retire with a nice pension. They have no real motivation to do, or even think about, anything beyond what is necessary to achieve their personal goals.

Even the adventurous and enthusiastic ones quickly realize that it is easier, safer and much more profitable to sit in an air-conditioned office in some government building than stick to their youthful dreams of adventure and fame.The upper levels are no better and usually staffed by people with considerable expertise in self-promotion, back-stabbing and saving their own asses. While they try to convey an image of competence, reach and omnipotence; it is rather clear that they are anything but what they claim to be.

It is also important to understand that large organisations are hostile and impersonal environments in which careers are linked to largely worthless and frequently counterproductive metrics of performance. The success or failure of people in organisations depends on their ability to game metrics or create new ones to justify their job or acquire more power and resources. Since we still pay people to be busy or at least appear so, the ‘successful’ ones try their best to do so- even if that causes more problems than it solves. It is therefore no wonder that people who are paid to solve problems create more of them and increase the cost of solving them. The people paid to suppress dissent and monitor others therefore have a lot of incentives to create or imagine more problems than try to do their job.

So what happens when deteriorating external conditions make those who fund such organisations put their foot down and make them actually do what they claim to be able to do?

The short answer is that it exposes their incompetence and inability to perform their jobs, but the longer answer is far more interesting and revealing. It begins with understanding why the rulers or elite in any society would want to increase oppression inspite of the well-known risks of doing that to their own futures. Elites demand more oppression at home when they sense that they cannot maintain their current or expected lifestyles and positions through ‘normal’ levels of exploitation. This usually occurs after the existing socio-economic paradigm has started to fail in a visible manner, often for reasons beyond human control. The first instinctive response to reductions in economic rent and wealth transfer is simply ramping up plain oppression and propaganda and try to make everybody else work harder for less. The ‘simple intensification’ approach will however quickly reach a plateau necessitating the next step- namely extensive and systemic repression. However doing so starts a chain of events which ultimately causes that society to come apart.

It starts with an expansion of intelligence gathering, interpretation and law enforcement capabilities which in turn requires the recruitment of more personnel to work in those organisations. While filling these positions is usually easy, especially in times of general economic stasis and decline, increased recruitment in these areas creates a few problems. Firstly, it is necessary to create a constant stream of more work to justify the continued existence of these new positions. Therefore these agencies become increasingly obsessed with seeing and creating problems where none exist. Secondly, the extra powers and perks given those who work in these organisations become addictive and often result in more power grabs and abuses. These changes are not ignored by the rest of society and the organisations which benefit from them are increasingly seen as vile, extortive, corrupt, incompetent and harmful- even by those who used to support them.

The rapid loss of public trust and respect is however not a concern for these organisations as they simply don’t care about the opinions of ‘other’ people. Moreover, there is no shortage of people who want to work for them, due in large part to the generally bleak prospects of employment outside the “spying-law-order” complex. The continued increase in employment in this sector does however worsen the general social dysfunction and loss of trust in the overall system mentioned in the previous paragraph. At this stage, the routine operations of these organisations starts to adversely affect the normal functioning of other institutions and organisations which are critical to the viability of that society.

Eventually this dysfunction results in an abrupt and unpredictable (but inevitable) cascading failure of the core networks, facilities and institutions which keep that society viable. It certainly does not help that almost none in such a society has any desire or interest in resurrecting the previous status quo. While large and hierarchical organisations are very capable of exploiting orderly societies, they are unable to do so once those societies lose order for more than a few months.

What do you think? Comments?

NSFW Links: Mar 5, 2013

These links are NSFW.

Itty Bitty Titties: Feb 23, 2013 – Nubile cuties with proportional titties.

Average POV BJs: Feb 23, 2013 – Average chicks blowing their guys.

Enjoy! Comments?

A Morbid and Hilarious Make Work Idea

While writing a couple of longish posts, I took a break and completed one of my older short posts. This one is about a morbid but hilarious make work scheme that is very feasible.

What if we paid young people (especially non-whites) to dig up and destroy the graves of dead old white people?

Now some of you might see this as an attempt to desecrate the graves of dead old white people, but I don’t. Desecration involves damaging something to such an extent that it cannot serve its previous function, yet is still recognizable as such. So breaking gravestones, digging out corpses and piling them up in the center of the graveyard would be desecration. What I am proposing is however far more thorough.

The scheme starts with paying people to destroy gravestones and disposing them in a manner that no future archaeologist could piece back together. Then the workers will dig out the corpses of dead old white people and ‘process’ them such that they are unrecognizable at organic remains- perhaps with high temperature incineration. The next step involves digging and refilling the whole graveyard (disrupting the soil) to remove all tell-tale signs of its previous history. The area can then be planted with vegetation to make it contiguous with the surroundings. As you can see, the scheme involves much more than simple desecration which is fast and not that labor intensive. In contrast, the “grave annihilation” scheme is slow, methodical, thorough and labor intensive.

First you have to locate all of the graveyards and come up with the best plan of action for each class of graveyards. Some gravestones, mini-mausoleums and grave ornaments might be harder to destroy beyond recognition than others. Then there is the logistics of transporting the fragments for disposal.

While digging up corpses is easy, processing them requires transportation to sites with high temperature incinerators. Then there is the issue of quality control, as all of this effort would be for naught if the corpses cannot be reliably processed to a form unrecognizable as human remains. We also cannot ignore the logistics and planning involved in proper disposal of the residual solid end-products of the process.

Proper land reclamation requires a considerable amount of surveying, planning and execution. Removing all traces of its previous usage will involve a lot of digging of the whole area, removal and disposal of some soil that may contain identifying artifacts, transportation of equivalent soil from adjacent areas, putting back the soil layers such that they are contiguous with the adjacent areas and then planting vegetation that will blend with the surroundings.

Then there is the issue of removing all official records of the existence of these people from history. It will require a lot of manpower to go through all of the archives and records to ensure the removal of all official evidence of their existence from history. It will however not be necessary to rewrite history, as nobody will care about their existence (or non-existence) after a few years.

What do you think? Comments?

Everything Does Not Happen For A Reason

The human mind has a predilection for seeing patterns and connections in all sorts of phenomena and occurrences. Sometimes these hunches turn out to be true and are verifiable, but at other times these apparent connections are based in chance, luck and probabilities. However our ego wants to ignore the fact that we are not always correct or infallible. Therefore, rather than factor in our obvious limitations we do the opposite and build grand mental schemes or models of the universe based upon the absolute truth and certainty of our beliefs and insights. While this ego-based grandstanding might at first glance appear harmless, it has caused untold misery over the millenia.

Almost all of our bizzaro beliefs from religions with vengeful sky-dudes and dudettes, planning events based on astrology, belief in witchcraft or black magic are based on such worthless and harmful models of the universe. Even many apparently secular beliefs from various schools of economics, how we structure our societies, write and enforce our laws to belief in the desirability of eugenics.. I mean HBD.. are based in the absolute validity of some model of the universe.

Over the centuries, our mental models of the universe have become less bizarre, but the newer versions still have a lot of basic similarities with the older ones. As an example- one of the main, if not the most important, core belief in almost all secular models of the universe goes something like this-

Everything happens for a reason.

I consider this particular belief to be the secular version of belief in god. You might have noticed that religious people ascribe every occurrence in the universe to an all-powerful and omnipotent god. Frequently they also claim that the desires, wishes or plans of ‘god’ are mysterious or beyond human comprehension. The secular and ‘scientific’ minded types dismiss such religious beliefs as simple-minded and irrational, however they themselves believe in a similar fallacy- though they deny doing so when confronted about it. Let me explain that with a few examples.

If you have read any general biology textbooks, you might get the impression that things like viruses, parasites and diseases such as cancer or aging are ‘normal’, ‘inevitable’ or serve some important ‘purpose’. But do they? Does even the very presence of life on earth have any ‘purpose’ or ‘reason’? I don’t think that the other rocky planets in our solar system (or any other) which do not have any life-forms are worse off than earth. And what is ‘worse off’ anyway? It is not like these large spheres of rock are sentient- as we currently understand.

The reality is that different species of cell-based organisms have vastly varying loads of, and susceptibility to, viruses. Both are linked to the probability of successful transmission from one host to the other. Species with a small number of individuals who live in widely dispersed and small groups are far less likely to have viral infections and diseases than those that live in proximity to each other. It is therefore no accident that the rise of many viral diseases from smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chicken pox, influenza etc was linked to the rise of ‘civilization’ which led to poorly nourished people living in cramped quarters with domesticated animals. The same is true for many human specific bacterial diseases from syphilis and human tuberculosis to typhoid. But as our scientific knowledge and public health measures became more effective (especially over the last 100 years) these “common” and “inevitable” diseases became uncommon, rare or just plain extinct.

The same is true for parasites, be they protozoans like various versions of malaria and leishmaniasis or any species of round worms, flukes and tapeworms that can infect humans. They all have no intrinsic purpose or reason for existence- just like all the other infectious diseases that affect other animal and plant species. However evolutionary biologists frequently claim (often via non-obvious arguments) that such pathogenic microbes have a ‘function’ or ‘reason to exist’. I, for one, fail to see any intrinsic and necessary purpose inherent in the existence of pathogens or parasites in any species. Similarly cancer and aging are not ‘inevitable’, ‘necessary’ or part of some ‘grand plan’ or ‘scheme’. We know of more than a few animal species that do not age in any measurable way. We are also aware of animal species which do not develop cancers- even when we try to induce neoplastic processes in them.

Let us now turn to “macro” events such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, comet strikes and other disasters caused by large physical forces largely beyond human control. As most of you are well aware, people of a more religious mindset used to see such events as punishment for ‘sins’, ‘immorality’, ‘greed’ etc. We know better now, and modern technological developments offer many avenues for mitigating the material loss and casualties resulting from the rare but big events. While these events are caused by a chain of smaller and larger events occurring in certain sequences, they are by no means necessary, inevitable or part of the grand scheme of things.

Similarly socio-economic problems such as widespread poverty, material deprivation, tyrannical law enforcement, ineffective or corrupt legislative processes, incompetent administration, institutions that do the opposite of what they are supposed to be doing etc are neither ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’ or ‘part of the human condition’. There is nothing ‘natural’ about ‘the marketplace’, ‘capitalism’, perpetual growth based economic models or even people having ‘jobs’ to have a decent and largely fulfilling existence. These bizzaro concepts do not exist because they have any ‘cosmic role’,'purpose’ or place in the grand scheme of things. They need to be methodically destroyed in a manner that address the defects and shortcomings which allow them to exist in the first place. This is worthwhile even if doing so would cause very significant collateral casualties and damage.

What do you think? Comments?

Funny Video: The Women of LA

A funny video which, while somewhat specific for women in LA, is also broadly true for most large cities in North America.

PS: Women in NYC are no better, unlike what the video tries to imply.

Enjoy! Comments?

The Link Between Drug Use and Suicidal Tendencies: An Alternative Explanation

It is common knowledge that artists, actors, singers and comedians are much more likely to die through some combination of drug use and suicide than ‘normal’ people. But why is that so? These creative types also have a higher incidence of mental ‘illness’ especially depression and mania. But why? Is there something about being creative that makes them more susceptible to mental illness and drug abuse or are un-’normal’ states of mind necessary for being creative? The conventional explanations put forth by charlatans.. I mean ‘experts’.. range from denying that this phenomena is true using creative statistical fraud to acknowledging the link but talking about treating these ‘diseases’ and helping them become ‘normal’ again.

But what is ‘normal’ and why would anyone aspire to be ‘normal’ if their self-image, desires and lives are built around being un-’normal’?

One of the distinguishing characteristics of being creative is the ability to perceive, think up or do something that is beyond the mental abilities of most people. I am not implying that ‘normal’ people are any worse than creative-types at doing arithmetic, making grocery shopping lists, cooking food, having vanilla sex, working in an office or even playing musical instruments. But ‘normal’ people are dismal at seeing, thinking or doing things that go beyond their very and rigid mental and social models of the world around them.

There are tons of Asian kids who can play some piece of western classical music on the violin, piano or cello- but how many can play an electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Artists such as Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali might have very unconventional personal lives, but they were also vastly more creative than all the Asian artist workers who can make very good copies of famous artworks. We are also unlikely to see an Asian version of Mozart, Schubert or Beethoven or their more contemporary versions. There are tons of famous Jewish and Black stand-up comics, but hardly any Asian ones. Why? and what does this have to do with high rates of drug use, mental illness and suicide among those who are creative?

All forms of creativity require you to step outside of your normal comfort zones- both personal and social. However doing that requires you to think and perceive the world in ways that is contrary to what society expects out of you or tries to tell you. You have to also question whether what you were taught to believe in or whether the ‘norm’ is even right, worthwhile or desirable. People without a strong sense of self (aka conformists) don’t or cannot and would rather be ‘pretend happy’ automatons pumping out more automatons. While some of them can recognize the dystopic nature of their existence they either ignore it, suppress it or perform a half-hearted and token rebellion to feel better.

The truly creative ones, on the other hand, go beyond half-hearted attempts to think differently and assert themselves. They are willing to take paths that few dare follow or which frequently do not even exist at that moment. Whether they are successful in their endeavors, or not, is another issue that we will come to shortly. However the very willingness to go against conventional social beliefs and mores in one area often makes them question the validity of ‘conventional wisdom’ in other areas.

Furthermore, thinking about human behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, relationships and society from a somewhat detached perspective cannot but make you angry, depressed, cynical and nihilistic.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself- What is good about schools or universities? Do people really learn anything worthwhile in them? Do they enjoy their time- especially in school? Isn’t that odd that children like to learn new things all the time but hate school. What about conventional dating? Is it worth the time, expense and effort? What about marriage? Is there a more expensive and fucked up way to get ‘free’ sex. What about jobs? Do you like working your ass off for someone who looks down upon you and will steal from and betray you at the first chance to do so. What about the socio-economic paradigms we live in? What is natural about a society where most people live a precarious existence to enrich those who have more than they could possibly spend in the rest of pathetic lives? What about the myriad laws and regulations which pretend to enforce fairness, but achieve the opposite- which is their real purpose anyway. I could go on.. but you get my point.

There is nothing natural, rational or desirable about a ‘normal’ life.

I see the high rates of recreational drug use by creative types as a way to help them function somewhat normally after realizing the truth about what most people, societies and humanity are in reality. Drug use by creative types is really a form of self-medication that allows them to escape or tolerate the mediocre, stunted and frequently bizarre nature of ‘normal-ness’. Drug use also allows people to make themselves feel better than they could in ‘real’ life. The experience of drug use, if anything, consolidates their views that ‘real’ and ‘normal’ life is shitty, boring, highly dysfunctional and meaninglessness.

I believe that a significant number of creative types, especially those who have achieved some success, realize that ‘normal’ life is actually worse than death.

Would you re-enter the matrix even if you could, especially if you left if because it was intolerable in the first place? Would you like to be an average pussy-whipped white guy moving his lawn and slaving away for his ugly and ungrateful wife who is trying her best to make the rest of his life as miserable as possible? Do you want to work around one set of mediocre weasels at work and hang out with another set in your sad ‘social’ life? Do you want to spend your life slaving away for something that you will almost certainly be yanked away at the last moment? Do you want to keep on pretending that you are ‘normal’ and a team-player when you despise every moment of it?

On another note, why are the most creative minds often described as weird, odd or mentally ill? What does that say about the society which curiously (and often later) celebrates them as the paragons of human intellectual achievement? and how come people with actual mental retardation, brain injury or damage almost never end up as famous creative types? Odd isn’t it?

What do you think? Comments?

Societies, not Individuals, are Mentally Ill

The huge increase in diagnosed psychiatric illnesses since WW2, but especially during the last 30-40 years, has been one of defining characteristics of our era. The “conventional wisdom” of “experts” attributes this increase in diagnosed mental illness to advances in the field of psychiatry, better access to medical care and advances in drug therapy of mental illnesses.

But is that really the case? What if the very nature and structure of contemporary societies is not quite right? What if the rules, expectations and mores of societies and the institutions within them are bizarre, sociopathic and irrational?

Let me start by talking about one of the more sensational categories of “crime” in our era- spree or mass shootings. We can certainly pretend that such crimes are the result of evil and mentally sick people having ‘assault’ rifles and ‘semi-auto’ handguns. Many morons seem to think that guns (especially the ‘scary’ looking ones) have powers similar to the one ring of Sauron in LOTR. But if that were the case why didn’t we see spree shootings in previous eras? How many of the returning and war-scarred veterans of WW1, WW2, Korea or even Vietnam went about shooting up movie theaters or 1st grade classes? How many went to a university and killed over 30 people with handguns alone? So what changed? Why didn’t any of them go Holmes, Lanza or Cho? what about going Breivik?

How do smart men from very middle-class backgrounds with no worthwhile criminal record end up killing with more enthusiasm, planning, skill and ruthlessness than trained killers?

The conventional explanation by “experts” is that all of these spree shooters were mentally ill. They blame everything from adolescence-onset schizophrenia to autism and major depressive illnesses to ‘explain’ these occurrences. What is a few more epicycles between fellow Ptolemians? But why didn’t we have such events in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s or even the early 1980s? Those decades had more young adults as well as much higher rates of ‘crime’ and murder. Surely there must have been equivalents of Homes, Lanza, Cho and Breivik in those years.. but for some odd reason spree shootings of the type that occur nowadays were almost unheard of? So what changed? What are spree shooters mad about anyway? Isn’t it odd that they kill people based on the symbolism and social connections rather than personal grudges?

We have also seen a huge rise in the number of children, especially boys, diagnosed with various mental illnesses and behavioral conditions such as ADHD. But is that increase based on any real change in human biology within 30 years? How much of this increase in diagnosed mental illnesses and conditions in children driven by profit and changing artificial definitions of “normal” behavior. What is ‘normal’ behavior anyway? How much of what was once considered ‘normal’ childhood behavior has been deemed “un-normal” by committees of ‘experts’, administrators, legislators and ‘concerned citizens’? and to what end? Does it help those displaying “un-normal” behavior or improve their lives? Does society at large benefit from the ‘treatment’ of “un-normal” behavior? If neither the “affected” persons or general society benefit from ‘classification’ and ‘treatment’- who does?

The rise in the rates of diagnosed depressive illnesses is another intriguing part of our era. While the diagnosed rates of other major mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, mania or bipolar disorders have also increased over the last 60-70 years, the increase in diagnosis for depression has been nothing short of phenomenal. While the availability of reasonably safe (but not that efficacious) drugs has made treating depression very profitable, there is more to the story than a simple profit motive. What makes so many people, especially women, seek medical attention for depression? There is more to this increase than profit, fashion or attention-seeking behavior. Most people who end up taking anti-depressants don’t just go out and get them to party.

So what is happening? Is there something increasingly wrong with human mind? Or is contemporary ‘society’ mentally ill?

I tend to favor the later explanation as there is considerable historical evidence that human ‘societies’ are more likely to be weird, unhinged and deranged. Societies through the ages have encouraged its members to believe in all sorts of crap from omnipresent anthropomorphic gods and divine revelations to the infallibility of the marketplace. We have religions based on the stated beliefs of people who claim to have heard the word of ‘gods’ and ‘angels’ or felt their presence. Societies encourage and support religious rituals which look awfully similar to obsessive-compulsive disorders. Belief in witchcraft, black magic, spells and curses has been rather universal throughout human cultures. Societies have fought long and vicious wars, enslaved or killed millions of other people or repeatedly shot themselves in the foot because of beliefs that are indistinguishable from the manifestations of serious mental illness.

Maybe the problem with contemporary society and its institutions is that they are almost totally divorced from what human beings really are and what we truly desire. While our standards of material living are better than any other time in human history, the same cannot be said about the rules, expectations and mores of societies and the institutions within them. They enforce scarcity of resources and opportunities even though technology has ushered in an era of plenty. They try hard to degrade, humiliate and screw over an ever-increasing number and percentage of people- even though there is no rational reason to do so. They try to destroy and cripple the personal lives and relationships of those who would have otherwise supported the system- once again, for reasons that are not rational. They try to destroy the lives of an ever-increasing number of people over utterly trivial and farcical reasons- even though they don’t stand to gain from such actions.

The funny thing is that, after doing all of the above, contemporary society and its institutions expect people to happily and willingly go along with the increasingly bizarre and irrational demands placed upon them by sociopathic morons. They believe that the choice and information matrix of people today is the same as it was 30-40 years ago. They seem to believe in their ability to keep on dishing ever-increasing amounts of the same shit forever and without consequences.

Maybe it is contemporary society and its ‘trusted’ institutions, not individuals, that are mentally ill.

What do you think? Comments?

Garfunkel and Oates – The Fade Away

One of the better (especially sound quality) live performances of ‘The Fade Away’ by Garfunkel and Oates. Try to view it in HD if possible.

Enjoy! Comments?

The Similarities Between Corporate Drones and Biological Viruses

I have previously written about how present-day corporate drones are rather similar to those employed by the Third Reich. Let us take that idea one step forward and ask ourselves..

What class of biological organisms do corporate drones most resemble?

Some of you might say that corporate drones resemble classical multi- or uni- cellular parasites, that is not quite correct. Every species of parasitic worms, flukes and protozoas evolved from organisms that were not parasitic and have many cousin species that are either free-living, commensal or symbiotic. They themselves got into the ‘parasite’ lifestyle because a series of events based in probability (mutations) and chance (opportunity). Their parasitism is therefore a side-effect of evolution and not the defining characteristic of their biological potential. Even every species of pathogenic bacteria have dozens if not hundreds of harmless cousin species who mind their own business.

One class of organisms, however, came into being (and have remained) obligate parasites. Viruses, of all types, are incapable of reproducing without misusing the biochemical machinery of a host cell- be it a bacteria or a human.

The obligatory parasitic nature of viruses is also the defining characteristic of their biological and evolutionary potential.

While all biological organisms want to reproduce themselves, viruses alone exist for the sole purpose of reproduction. Viruses cannot be anything other than or beyond viruses. They are fundamentally incapable of a free- living, commensal or symbiotic existence. Viruses cannot evolve into anything beyond another strain or species of viruses, unlike cell-based organisms which can and do evolve into something beyond their current selves.

Consequently viruses have no true utility to the rest of biological life on earth. Can you think of a single cellular species that would miss their existence? Would the process of biological evolution on earth be crippled if every single virus on earth just disappeared? Viruses exist because they can, not because they must or should. Do humans miss the disappearance of the smallpox virus or the polio virus? Do cattle miss the rinderpest virus?

Unlike all other type of biological lifeforms, the continued existence of all viral types and species is a net negative.

Now let us turn our attention to corporate drones. What are their defining features? How are they different and distinct from other human beings? Are corporate drones really human beings?

The most obvious and distinguishing feature of corporate drones is their willingness and efficiency in carrying out tasks without regard to the outcome or utility. They either lack the ability to comprehend the consequences of their actions or seem to willfully ignore them. The sole purpose of their existence seems to be having kids with a similar mentality. They do not have aspirations beyond survival and promotion in the group they supposedly ‘belong’ to. Nor do they exhibit the type of spontaneous intellectual curiosity and imagination characteristic of even the most ‘primitive’ human beings.

Though similar to sociopaths in many respects, they lack the superficial charm, exciting lives and intellectual abilities that characterize sociopaths – especially the successful ones. Corporate drones are blander than bland. Their personal lives are so predictable and mundane that calling them ‘beige’ is an insult to that color. They are almost never involved in making, building or creating anything that is necessary, useful or innovative. They are also never involved in any innovative activity- be it social, cultural or intellectual. They even lack the position and guile to steal from others like the rich.

Their lack of intelligence, talent, creativity and lack of human decency does not however translate into unemployment. Indeed, the converse is true as they are favored henchmen for high-flying sociopaths. It would not be an exaggeration to say that almost every single person in middle to upper management, administration, human resources, accounting etc in private corporations or public organisations is a corporate drone. So are lawyers, law enforcement and a significant number of people in the educational and medical professions. They are the people who make it possible for the rich and powerful to be overtly sociopathic and screw over the rest of society. They man (and increasingly woman) the systems that make oppressive, dystopic and plain fucked-up societies possible. Hitler, Stalin or Mao would have been nothing without these creatures, nor would your favorite ‘self-made’ and ‘honest’ billionaire be what they are without them.

It is important to realize that their continued existence is not beneficial to anybody except their own viral selves. Corporate drones also lack the ability to change significantly or evolve beyond their pathetic, bland and toxic selves. They only persist because their kids reach reproductive age and have more kids- thereby perpetuating these human equivalents of biological viruses. But just like viruses, they can be made extinct.

What do you think? Comments?

Valentine’s Day for Most of You

I believe this impromptu performance by ‘Garfunkel and Oates’ best sums up Valentine’s Day (February 14) for most of you. The banter before the song in combination with their facial expressions and body language during the song make it a great performance.

What do you think? Comments?

Asymmetric Warfare and Christopher Dorner

I am guessing that most of you must have heard about the ongoing modern version of ‘Django Unchained‘.. I mean ‘Dorner Unbadged‘. You might have also heard about his 20-21 page manifesto – link to uncensored version. While you can find lots of information about his past (both good and bad), it is hard to deny a few basic things.

a. The guy has eluded thousands of cops with military style gear and vehicles, helicopters and drones.

b. A combination of his manifesto, the abysmal public reputation of the LAPD, their trigger happy cops and their continued inability to find him have become a major public relations disaster for the LAPD.

c. A lot of people are now rooting for the guy over the LAPD. A rapidly increasing percentage of his supporters are not black.

So what is this guy trying to achieve other than what he has already stated in his manifesto? What is his real strategy? Here are my thoughts on those issues.

1. It is very odd that Dorner did not kill more people on the day (or night) he started his crusade. The guy was obviously stalking a lot of his targets for some months, maybe years. When he made the first move, he had the element of total surprise on his side. While this might appear lazy or stupid under normal assumptions of revenge, it makes a lot of sense given the contents of his manifesto. The guy is not going for a simple medium body-count shootout. He is very conscious about his legacy and how the world will see his actions. He wants to be seen and remembered as the hero and he probably will be.

2. You might have seen reports of this guy all over southern California doing everything from burning his vehicle near a ski resort and throwing extra loaded gun magazines in dumpsters. While that might appear stupid and short-sighted, he has probably accumulated and hidden many guns, lots of bullets and significant amounts of survival provisions all over South California- or maybe beyond it. This might sound weird, but I think that Dorner is trying to get the maximum numbers of cops and police departments involved in his manhunt. One of the signature feature of an asymmetric war is the amount of money and resources a weaker foe can get their adversary to commit to the fight.

3. He is trying to get the LAPD into an over-reaction mode, and so far he has succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. The very fact that they have shot up pickup trucks with old hispanic ladies, a thin white surfer dude, arrested more than a few big black guys in pickup trucks and gone on house to house searches in mountain resort towns and used helicopters and drones to try find him tell me that he has got to them. Dorner is trying to enrage them into committing an ever-increasing number of mistakes and acting like the arrogant and dumb people they really are. I have to say that everything that has happened till now has gone according to his plan.

4. I think he is going to keep on ‘stoking the fire’ with enough force to get their attention and keep them on continued high alert but not enough to endanger him, at least immediately. I expect that he will pull of a couple of isolated hits on cops in the next week or two- just to keep them on their feet. It seems that the guy is trying to degrade the ability of the LAPD to function as an effective organisation with some degree of public legitimacy. The people he has killed and will kill in the near future are just a bonus.

He is trying to pull an ‘Iraq’ or ‘Afghanistan’ on the LAPD and so far it appears that he will succeed, even if he does not live to see it.

What do you think? Comments?