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Perfectly Dysfunctional |

October
2005 |
Gorillas in the Midst
You can't
create a society without empathic capacity residing in the
individuals of that population. In fact I think it could be
reasonably argued that all culture, and social bonding in
general is perpetuated through females; sort of a virtual
equivalent of mitochondria DNA. Men don't bond together to
perpetuate stability, they connect to form bonds of convenience;
imagine modern day Afghanistan or Liberia - a grinding hell of
drug abuse, chronic warfare and violence where men and boys
desperately fight each other over increasingly depleted
resources. Why is this?
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A
cluster of people without empathy or ability to grasp the
emotions and sensations of others is a cluster of
psychopaths; they don't build a society they destroy
it. Think about it, this is why America today has the
highest incarceration level in the world - vast numbers of
unemployed or unemployable young men, many of which are
immigrants, with either an inborn or inculcated inability
for empathy or reciprocal socialization. |
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Welcome to Liberia, or what's left of it... |
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Modern
society has no use for these people, brute labor is no longer
needed because it's been replaced by machines. And in fact
they're not just redundant but act like acid on a stable society
and just like using acid in a laboratory a little bit goes a
long way; hence, the only 'moral' solution is to use what they
naturally do, all they can do - antisocial acts - as a pretext
to lock them away for long periods of time. These males are all
action and no thought, all impulse without any mitigation or
forward planning involved; this is a definition of the animal
mindset of instinct over intellect. Animals should be treated
like animals and blaming them for being what they are is as
deluded as expecting them to be reformed by judicial reprimand!
Over-population of young males used to be one of the primary yet
unstated reasons for wars - it stabilized society by
re-balancing the male-female ratio. As technology progressed in
complexity military firepower become too powerful to keep it on
the battlefield, to the point today where warfare spares no one,
be they
soldier or innocent non-combatant. Perhaps what we
need is another Australia (but not THE Australia) to ship them
all off to where they can happily kill each other or mellow out
when and if they get older because the financial drain from the
productive parts of society to support the prison system is
rapidly reaching a crisis point. 05.09.03
Apologies to real
Gorillas (who are mostly non-violent) for the title pun.
Winners are just the first losers
in a foolish competition |

November
2004 |
Brain Schism
The Sims computer game is
different in the way it appeals to game players of both sexes
and not surprisingly is one of the biggest sellers around. The
Sims popularity can be attributed to the fact it has a relationship base
rather than the more typical object based game structure.
Women
think based on relationships, how things are related to another,
whereas men tend to think based upon objects and what they are
in and of themselves. Of course any generalization is only
useful until one looks too closely but it's still safe to state
that women think in relationships and men in objects.
This brain design can also
be seen in how the two sexes manipulate to gain power. Men will
collect and order while women will map connections and relate
objects to others knowing 'who's who' hence gossip and other
stereotypes. In a worldview composed of relationships nothing
can exist apart from everything else, which is why social
connections (as well as the necessity of maintaining
pre-existing bonds even regardless of their value or benefit!)
are more important to females than males.
Every secondary trait
follows from this such a increased verbal and general
communications skills and the thinking portions of the brain
necessary for remembering names, dates, etc. Social position and
status are important because relationships are inherently
hierarchical, whereas objects can remain independent or even
value neutral.
Although both have their
place, I think that the female mind-mode is more balanced and
robust in the long run because it more accurately depicts the
true state of events in that it properly defines meaning through
connections rather than through singular points. All meaning is
relative, it is relational. Take anything out of context and it
loses it's meaning and becomes absurd. This is why meaning seems
so transient and difficult to define, it is not a 'something' it
is a 'because of' (derivative). Trying to find meaning through
collecting cars or gaining money is a guarantee of ending up
unhappy and defeated because it's an inherently meaningless
endeavor. Relationships are dynamic and self-perpetuating but
objects are at best static and usually decay quickly. But
building, defining, understanding connections is not, it is the
opposite of trivial pursuits because it is not transient and it
has human value, social value. 01.09.03
In an
insecure society people strive to be what they are not.
The Breakdown of the [Mythical] Family
Consider the
prevalence of institutionalized torture and
similar senseless brutality within for example
the period 0-1900 AD in Europe, where the police
of Church and King gouged out eyes and severed
limbs for stealing bread. Torture to address
trivial crimes served no rational purpose because
the crimes were motivated by structural socio-economic
forces. The only sense it makes was as
entertainment and the raw thrill of exerting
power over helpless elements.
Yet
it's well established that this thrill, the
general desire to torture others is a product of
childhood abuse. The socio-anthropological
evidence points to a rainbow of serious and
chronic child and intra-family abuse from verbal
to sexual. In other words abuse was more than
common throughout at least the past 2000 years of
conveniently well documented western history and
likely wherever urbanization has set in forcing
people together to survive yet simultaneously
making that survival dependent on larger social
institutions and authority forces.
If you were
unfortunate and average enough to be cursed with
atrocious parenting, what recourse was open to a
small child? Virtually none unless you were to
runaway and find benevolence before starvation or
being sold into slavery. And I would posit with
emphasis that such abuse was much more common
than today. Dickens may have been a romantic in
his portrayal of child abuse in England but the
chronological era is not far from our own and
they had the benefit of industrialization with
the concomitant employment opportunities (such as
they were). Perhaps also a strong element of the
overly masculine culture priding itself on power
over the powerless and domination of weaker
elements. That certainly works to promote and
justify violence within the family and within
society as a whole. The 'I was abused so I'll
abuse everyone smaller than me,' concept.
Families are not
quite the natural everlasting institution
envisioned by the moral majority, for families
seem much more a simple product of necessity than
sacrosanct institution; a flawed and unpleasant
collection one seeks extrication from as soon as
possible. A healthy distance between family
members rarely hurts relations.
And indeed for
millennia that was not possible, families were
stuck together by a collective fear of solitude
in a very hostile and hungry world. Today that is
simply not the case and indeed the family breaks
down often because of the lack of compelling
outside environment forces holding them together.
So the breakdown of the family so lamented by
vociferous conservatives is not the fault of lack
of religion or even negative social influences
it's just a manifestation of the inherent flaws
of the nuclear family exposed by a milieu of
greater freedoms and economic prosperity.
The traditional
family structure may not be obsolete but its
obsolescence is painfully obvious. The true issue
becomes one of replacement or at least
modification, preferably one generating a
superior product. In other words I think it wiser
to worry less about the details of family
structure and more about the care, training and
education the child is receiving; product over
process just as it should be. 20.08.01
* * *
Torture is the mentally-damaged mind’s way of taking internal,
intangible hurt and turning it into a visible form by
transferring it onto another in order to express, control and
externalize that pain. Self-inflicted injury is the same pain
and mental sickness being directed not at others but onto the
self for the same basic reasons – to manifest psychological
injury and suffering into a physical form as a distorted way of
trying to externalize, cope with and manage that pain. Both
humans and animals are known to intentionally inflict injury
upon themselves due to extreme stress as well as physical and
mental abuse they may be exposed to, however only humans are
capable of institutionalizing pain and suffering in order to
intentionally perpetuate it. 30.10.04
Give
Hate A Chance
It used to be one
was called 'reactionary' or 'fascist' when
certain types didn't like your ideas. Now it's
the ever-so-modern 'hater' or hate criminal. And
although the derogatory terms have just as little
meaning as before, the damage to the collective
ability to freely communicate is more pernicious
because the actual language is being acutely
distorted. This is the abuse of hate. And indeed if banned
outright as politico panderers and moralists
wished they would merely be forced to concoct
some new evil to save us from. All this displays
a clear ignorance of the need for hate, a
facet of a whole equally as crucial as love! For
there can be no God without Satan and no good
without bad.
Truly ignorance and
arrogance are a positively nefarious combination,
a deleterious synergy increasingly fueling the
vociferous moral guardians of society from both
the left and right. You know, the types that
stage a protest when trees are cleared out only
to have their houses burn next summer when the
ultra-combustible brush and overgrowth bursts
into flames. Why these loudmouthed fools are the
ones driving policy should be a forefront
question to every sane individual. 27.02.01
Party Tricks Volume
II
If you pay close
attention in a room full of conversing people
you'll notice how they start out at minimal
volume level of soft tones. Yet as soon as the
background level increases even slightly or one
person begins to laugh or speak louder -
instantly everyone else increases their own
conversational volumes. This creates a feedback
loop and within a matter of seconds the room goes
from soft tones to a loud roar. It's like a
permanent release of potential energy akin to an
avalanche. Yet the question remains, how to return
everyone to the quiet conversational volume? 04.06.01
The Trolls of
Revenge
Isn't it curious how
individuals that are guided by hatred, by a
monomaniacal desire for revenge against everyone
they despise, always end up in trouble? The
perception of enemies and friends is often
capricious but often broadly inclusive. Even the
slightest trifles can generate infinite desire
for payback a thousand fold. People whose lives
are guided by revenge hold a one way ticket to
prison or social ostracism, unless they're
wealthy enough to pay their way out or buy
friends.
Anger as a
sociological concept is not entirely useless,
just usually misdirected. Vindictive venom
injected into enemies rarely achieves the desired
result for the aggressor. But this only fuels a
self-punishing cycle because as they see that
their enemies are left incompletely destroyed
they have more need for attack. After all an
enemy less than 100% punished has won! This is
why the vengeful usually fail and when up against
righteous individuals aware of their self-worth
will always lose. Anger and hatred has to
have visible effect for it to have any value to
the aggressor. A person that can walk away or
rise above their attacks has succeeded in
deflecting the anger back against the angry
because they avoid displaying signs of damage. To
be solely motivated by revenge may well yield
concrete results but those results will have
little strategic social or even personal
significance.
The singularly
vindictive Trolls afflicting everyday life
generally don't need more punishment than they
earn themselves as they're remarkably adept at
digging their own grave, so to speak. Eventually
enemies outnumber the friends and even wealth
loses it's luster when it can so easily be gained
elsewhere in less offensive company. Since
truthfully these wrathful types will create a
horde of foes in even the most benign
surroundings it seems wise to let them boil in the
hottest crucible they can make to vaporize
themselves all the quicker Rumpelstiltskin style.
27.12.00
Within American(ized)
culture(s) isn't it curious how men want women to
act like women but women want men to act like
women? Example, women expect men to have all the
politeness of tactful, non-offensive social
interaction yet actions and behaviors that are
standard for males simply aren't acceptable
within the presence of women. Yet for men they
don't really care how others act around them be
it crude or polite but generally they accept men
to be crude and women to be polite. This is why
anywhere women go the atmosphere changes; good
examples include, military and law-enforcement
but I'm sure anyone could think of equally
compelling alternates. The mood and even the
goals change to suit women, perhaps slowly and
subtly but undeniably still. In some cases for
the worse but often for the better...
Mind
Modes
The more one studies
it the more astounding the human mind becomes,
really a programmable computer that has unlimited
memory despite finite size. Continuing the
analogy it's a machine that we program every day
of our lives through events, interactions and
learning. So I guess one could say that living
life is an exercise in chronic self-improvement,
or at least the positive aspects.
The really amazing
thing is that the modern human mind came about
only 40,000 years ago thanks to the intense
selective pressures of the Ice-Age(s). But still
my first reaction is how can it be improved? The
physical structure of humans is good enough to do
just about whatever we need to accomplish.
Certain edges could be polished a little sure,
but also some limitations would be difficult to
overcome such as the ratio of the size of the
head to that of the birth-canal. Already a narrow
margin for modern woman even to the point of
requiring surgery for some. But since we only use
a fraction of our brains anyway I think what we
have to work with is enough... to start with
anyway.
And I think that
humans need to be improved. The problem is no one
wants to do it the old fashioned way, grueling
survival lifestyles under intense evolutionary
stresses. So the only reasonable way to do it is
cut and paste, selective enhancements, genetic
engineering. Remember the Holological principle,
every generation should be better than the
previous. If it can be done it will be done. I
say it should be done.
Aggression, violence
and physical competition may well be
counterproductive historical relics of an
animalistic evolutionary era, rather than modern
necessities. If improvement now comes from
surgically precise, planned genetic engineering
rather than blind and blunt, competitive
evolution then those old vestiges should be
excised from society or at least mitigated. And
to say that one sex can't do this or one sex
can't do that is specious. Civilized life no
longer requires brawn and brains to
succeed. Physical strength is not a guarantee of
success although it still often has vestigial
social attraction. So I think that the major
difference existing between the sexes is now
irrelevant. Success is dependent on the ability
to reason, to use the mind to manipulate symbols.
Brain chemistry is not the same in both sexes but
neither does that preclude either one from
success or failure in any mentally challenging
endeavor; it's merely different ways of doing
things. Future collective success will come not
from 'dog eat dog' but 'dog helping dog', from
cooperation and intelligent decisions rather than
from mutually destructive competition.
One obstacle is
cultural and that is neither female nor male
mindset presently has the maturity to handle
either tactic with even a modicum of aplomb. Not
that they can't just that we have no
experience or training to do so. Well I guess
both are pretty good at the mindless competition
part. But anything more socially responsible will
definitely take some competent cultural
inculcation to get both sexes on the right track.
04.12.00
The
Poison in Our Daily Bread
No matter what you
do or how magnificently well you do it if it's
conducted within a box, a vacuum, it has no
profitability, no ability to sustain the-self.
Thus every endeavor must have a means of
communications with the outside world. Every
product must have a marketplace.
Second, in order to
make it worthwhile the exchange must be
beneficial for both parties. In other words, one
must want the product and the seller must get a
benefit from selling it.
Herein lies a
paradox, one that bedevils everything. No matter
how brilliant and creative one may be, if no one
else feels the same way about it one can't use it
to further the self economically. Being
economically dependent means being socially reliant on others.
The reverse of that is to find what
others want and cater to it, but that requires destroying the
self and negating your own values in favor of foreign values.
This is the trap, the societal pit, the loss of identity
inherent within social participation. No one really has the
ability to be themselves, they must always sacrifice
self-interest for survival. Even the rich must sacrifice in
order to keep their business and their money and do whatever it
takes to stay in business; really the company owns them and
they're servants to the machine. However the chains aren't
nearly as painful as for the wage slave.
Most people exchange
time as labor for money. They perform a service
for a corporate entity in exchange for salary.
They gain only immediate sustenance while the
corporate entity gains both short term profit as
well as interest income to include things like
patent rights.
Some create a product
and market it, inventors, artists, musicians.
They have an advantage in their creativity and
the marketing potential of their names. By taking
something ordinary (cheap) and making it unique (expensive)
such as turning words into novels or paint into
paintings, taking a rock and carving it into
sculpture or notes into music. This is value-adding
to an existing product. Once it is unique it has
value and can be marketed. But once again they
can only trade products within a marketplace and
every marketplace is ruled by the buyer's
interests and needs, not the artist's. Therefore
the best relationship would be an artist that
makes a product that is of mutual interest to
both buyer and seller.
But this analysis
misses the underlying fundamentals. Marxism and
related theorems merely exchange societal roles.
Addressing the problems of identity and personal
purpose that are so critical to individual and
group health requires more than mere economic
posturing. Unfortunately, presently the only
value a citizen has in our modern culture is
measured by what they do. It's like Jeopardy
when they introduce the contestants and each
one is preceded by their occupation. Think of a
agrarian culture where farming and animal
husbandry are the sole employers, how would they
introduce everyone on Jeopardy then?
"Jack Jones a farmer from Topeka Kansas,
Jill Smith a cloth maker from Podunk Virginia..."
It doesn't have the same meaning because then it
didn't matter what you did; everyone did the same
thing - try to survive! That could mean doing
anything from veterinary medicine to bricklaying.
Today we're so specialized and mechanized that who
we are is no longer relevant, rather it's what we
DO, what service we provide to the
collective that matters. When one is unemployed
they are worthless, they are robbed of identity,
they have no value because they are not
benefiting the system. However if you are rich
and unemployed than clearly you are so by choice,
and your wealth is being used to support the
system (if by no other means than taxes) and you
now have value. This concept is so insidious, so
horrendously degrading, it's astounding that
nearly everyone accepts it as inviolate fact,
submitting themselves to the indignity and
humiliation of a self-destructive order.
It's not sufficient
to merely exact revenge against the traitors and
profiteers of our present order, nor to demolish
the political and legal frameworks they exist
within. Our culture as a whole is as much a part
of the cancerous infection that is slowly killing
us all. Until an ample breadth of the populace is
even aware of the toxic qualities of our
cultural habits and daily interactions, the
poison in our daily bread, they will never be
able to change anything for the better even if
our Evil Empire were to crumble to dust tomorrow.
The answer is a question, question everything. 19.09.00
Sex
is fun
The social
deregulation of sexuality seems an assault on
traditional mores but then the Church edicts
covering the topic have been remarkably
restrictive for centuries. Just think of ancient
Rome or Greece where graphic sex acts adorned
public walls and phallic monuments littered the
countryside. Sort of a breakdown in the double
standard because even when sex is culturally
closeted it still happens.
The emotional
intertwining of love and sex has similarly
disintegrated. Sex now manifests as a mechanized
action on the level of the primal compulsion, a
structured mode of rape whether either side
realizes it or not (because it's purely self-gratification).
So the establishment's edicts on sexual conduct
haven't vanished they've merely been rewritten.
The credulity of the
masses is such that they lap it up as roaches
would a pool of blood from a slaughtered beast.
Sex is free and fashionable; consequent disease
and emotional/psychological damage an
unpleasantry something akin to a flat tire on the
freeway, easily rectified with a quick fix-up;
then back to the party cuz that's what life is
for, right?
Like a harlot and a
dog - better not look up dude cuz you've been
debased and the jokes on you. 05.08.00
Cheating
the System
Altruism and
generosity, the ability to work together and sacrifice immediate
desires for long term goals, builds civilization. But the catch
is that within such a system non-altruists or false-altruists
have a distinct advantage because they can get the benefits
without the work or sacrifice that the others must endure, they
cheat the system. But if too many cheat the system at once then
the whole thing collapses and your civilization falters turning
into a mob of nearsighted subsistence serfs. This is very simple
game-theory reasoning but the consequences are enormous. The
solution lies in how to maintain order when cheating is
profitable.
Clearly, one method is to make
cheating unprofitable hence the criminal justice system. This
works as long as cheating isn't endemic throughout society,
since most of the criminal justice system relies on example
punishment and fear of consequences (in other words it's an
illusion, something like using fire and loud sounds to keep a
superstitious native population in line).
Another thing remiss
to ignore would be that certain groups,
ethnicities are more inclined to generosity than
others. The flip side to this benefit is that
they're easy targets for the cheaters. Honest
people are too often simply rubes. American's are
your typical rubes, they are, or are from honest
and hardworking self-starters (the European
middle and lower classes) that with remarkable
ease joined together to build both an
infrastructure rich country and a representational
government. They willingly sacrificed time and
effort to participate in community and to
reliably over-perform their jobs. In fact the
Republic became so successful that its surfeit
enabled the existence of an entirely new class of
people, the cheaters. In other words it became
easy and even respectable to gain subsistence
without payment or participation in community or
honest employment. Human nature has it that
everyone would rather not work at all if they can
get it for free, thus an opportunity is quickly
tapped.
Employee altruism of
yesteryear is so completely absent from the
modern marketplace that we simply laugh at the
idea, in other words if I'm working overtime you
better pay up or I walk. Part of this is due to
fleeting contemporary aspects such as labor
shortages and greater opportunities true, but
it's also true that the attitude of work has
changed. Now it's a matter of resource extraction
- get as much out of the worker for as little as
possible and the employees respond in kind. It
turns out that within the formula of
civilization, the factor of forcing someone to
give versus the people donating spontaneously, does not
yield the same quantity. When civilization
declines to the point that no one is willing (or
stupid enough) to give anything away without
compensation you end up with a system such as in
China or Russia today. Dishonesty and
disingenuousness are rampant. However, this is a
bilateral mechanism in that authority is corrupt
and the people because of it.
So a civilization is
built on:
1) The inherent
quality of the people defined by a natural
inclination to offer more than they receive into
the system.
2) The level of ambient honesty within society.
In other words how much do I trust my neighbor?
3) Technology and or
the intelligence to invent it.
The first point is
fairly straightforward, some have it some don't.
The second point is the crux of the issue: "Do
I trust my neighbor?" Indeed
civilization really hinges on this factor. If the
answer is yes without qualification you have the
makings for order and prosperity. If it's NO then
what do you think you'll have? What would you
answer? I know what I would answer: you can't trust
anyone, the lawsuits alone are enough to think twice about apologizing in public!
Did those
lawyers screw us all, again?!
But to blame the
cheaters is futile, because ultimately anyone can
be a cheater, exploiting an opportunity isn't
wrong; creating opportunities for cheating through intention or
negligence is, however.
So now we can blame the politicians too!
This is why
legislation is a process best exercised
infrequently if at all, because as every lawyer
knows, laws are opportunities. In a greater sense
the matter of neighborly relations, the sense of
community or group interest is what's failed. And
it's not something complex either. One person
surrounded by several clones of themselves would
make a fairly cohesive community at least for the
purposes of experimentation. Ignoring any laws
that would interfere with this example (cuz I
know that bastard clone #11 would sue my for
every penny if they ever got the chance!), the
reason for such a communal sense is that each
person understands the other, their thought
process, their motivations and feelings. Not to
say that one won't steal from the other but at
least one has a pretty good idea of when they're
likely to get ripped-off. Community and trust is
intricately related to similarity which includes
religion, ethics, morality, etc. But that is just
a dodge for the ultimate glue - genetic
similarity meaning ethnicity and race.
Therefore the most
successful civilization is one formed of
intelligent people of similar backgrounds and
bloodlines who are naturally inclined to help one
another.
Now imagine the
opposite.
The factional
realities of our present order are simply
anathema to civilization building. Despite the
efforts of authority to splinter and conquer the
populace, given freedom of movement the people
have a remarkable affinity for their own kind.
The option is manifest, attempt to rule over
numerous disparate cliques? Or release them to
rule themselves as they see fit? Which choice
will our "global village elders" pick?
29.07.00
Generation
Peak
The great
generation lived during troubled times. Two
world wars and a great depression, they struggled
against outside forces confident that a better
world was being drafted through their sweat and
blood. Their descendants the boomer
generation existed on a historical cusp, a world
of prosperity and peace completely unheard of
before. Their enemies were a combination of
external and internal forces, Korean and Vietnam wars,
social crisis', but those didn't pose a tangible,
serious threat to national security and future; the Cold
War was psychological, a war of words and threats
that neither side truly dared to carry out
because it was impossible to win anything. This
generation generally believed that a brighter
future awaited them, especially given their
history and the things they have seen, miracle
drugs, cures for crippling disease (like polio)
and financial prosperity. Their descendants have
parallels to the 'great generation', their
grandparents. Theyre struggling against
enemy forces but not external ones; these enemies
are domestic - gangs, drugs, disease and economic
inequality. They have a much dimmer view of the
future as being a never ending upward climb into
utopia. Indeed with the same vigor that their
grandparents believed the future was bright many
of these people see the future as dim.
After working to
achieve all the things they want but shouldnt
have we are left with a dilemma of our own
creation. A generation spoiled, or more
accurately so used to getting what they want that
they become increasingly incapable of dealing
with the minor annoyances, stresses and
difficulties of everyday life. Microwave
mentality, petty violence, anger and self-centered
viewpoints. For example in 1950 they claimed the
greatest problems in 2000 would be smog but turns
out its road rage. Why care about anything
beside myself when thats all that matters
right? Culture and consumerism panders to the
self, compounding social psychological
dysfunction. Could it be that this cusp of our
civilization has been reached with the present
power generation, the Clinton presidency and the
CEO world economic dominance culture? The masters
of the world who care not a bit for things beyond
their 401k and stock portfolio? And what of the
reverse slope Generation-X, the Pepsi generation,
sold-out and bought up; they have too much and
yet not enough. 28.12.99
Looks
Arent Everything
I think that
physical appearances are over-valued in our
society. Really unless youre a freak or
super beautiful then youre average with all
the little flaws that everybody has
to varying degrees, it just doesnt matter
because people judge a person by the words they
speak not so much physical appearance which is
two-dimensional and doesnt convey
personality.
Thus what a person says
is a more critical judgment factor in social
settings. Evidence the fact that if you say
little or nothing you will feel invisible
in social settings because others have no handles
to attach to you and judge you.
Most people dont
have any physical features that stand out, theyre
average; and average doesnt mean anything
by itself. Its like white on white. In
order for personality to be expressed people have
to see some black on top of that white background.
That black takes the form of verbal
communications. This is why the fast talkers and
actors become the most admired people in social
settings not for their appearances which
are generally quite average; this is despite what
the print media wants us to believe and indeed
what our cultural common sense tells us. And in
fact I would posit that beauty may even be a
byproduct of verbal personality. Example Bill
Clinton who is certainly an average looking
individual but his verbal-personality ratings are
sky-high, and this creates an aura that even
makes him attractive (to some)! 16.03.99
Uniqueness
and character
It seems that the U.S.
social order carries with it a distinction among
the societies of the world. That distinction
being that one can be unique or 'different' and
not be a social outcast, or at least to a greater
extent than anywhere else. Homogeneity and group
consensus are tantamount to normalcy in nearly
every other society. In many ways that is
beneficial to the U.S. because it promotes growth
and change, but really that's just confusing the
circumstance with an unintended benefit! Our
American culture is riddled with so much
distortion and perversion we don't even notice it.
No matter how hard we try to ignore it or
distance ourselves we can't. It affects each of
us in different ways forming a cosmopolitan
vibrancy that's most amusing from a detached
distance but often deadly at close range. 10.02.98
Communications
Breakdown
Speaking from the
frustrations of personal experience it seems like
our civilization has an ever increasing plethora
of avenues for communications, yet communicating
only gets more difficult. 20 years ago it was
'snail' mail and the telephone, then came the fax,
e-mail, Internet, voice-mail, and on and on. But the busy signals only get more common
and everyone knows about being put on hold or
waiting for a customer assistant, and what about
the endless dial options of an automated system?
Telephonic
infrastructure growth is minimal but the number
of telecomm companies vying for customers grows
exponentially! I guess it's cheaper to sell
access to something than to build the physical
infrastructure. Despite the agitation it seems
like this policy is really spreading our tenuous
technological civilization exceedingly thin,
especially given the known weaknesses of the
system. Eventually any long term investment such
as telecomm infrastructure building will become
so costly that no one will risk it except a few MNCs; growth will cease and the only thing left
will be services (actually that's the way it
already is in the modern world, the undeveloped
nations are the only ones that get new
infrastructure). These service oriented companies
will grow and aggregate but nothing will really
improve or change. The biological equivalent would be maximum
carrying capacity?
03.02.98
The
metaphors of language betray the underlying
motives. Example the use of the word 'cute' to
mean eligible or highly acceptable male, the
female motive is that adult male could be
exploited to yield an infant of cute qualities,
one with successful, malleable properties and
attributes. The tenacity of Christian morality
has failed to reach the depths of language as
evidenced by common phrases like the undesirable
nature of weakness, weak used to refer to the
quality of coffee or a film plot. Stupid being
another one, an undesirable human trait or a
faulty device, etc.
"Married
Paramedics Bickering Over Best Way To Restart Heart" -
Onion faux newspaper headline.
Relationship
Once there was a
terrible comedian and a persistent heckler.
Everywhere the comedian would go, every stage
played on, the heckler was right there in the
front row shouting demeaning phrases like "you're
not funny" and "get of the stage"
- just being about as obnoxious as possible.
Finally in one town a review journalist for a
local paper went to see the standup routine and
was surprised to find the comedian playing to an
audience of one - the heckler. The comedian just
kept going on despite the relentless barrage of
taunts and insults quipping away one lame gender
comparison, one lame wisecrack after another -
'women be different than men!' After the
performance was over the reporter asked the
comedian why they tolerated that heckler night
after night and then did an entire routine with
no one else even in the crowd. The comedian
responded "are you kidding, that's my most
reliable audience!" Clearly wondering how
serious the comedian was and equally troubled as
to what he'll be able to write for the paper
through this entire charade he went to the
heckler and asked "why do you spend so much time
badgering this one comedian?" The
heckler replied, "are you kidding, this is my
favorite comedian!"
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