High Pitched Noise

Novelty

2010-11-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

I believe the defining characteristic of existence is novelty. This may explain why existence occurs over nothing at all. This may explain why we appear to be able to make a choice, and at the same time live in a system where choice is seemingly impossible. A way to view choice logically is to consider it real insofar as it creates novelty. If it doesn't it's just an illusion. This may explain why some decisions, no matter how inconsequential, feel more important than others. It explains why chaos has order.

The reason why academic philosophy may have ground to a halt is because of the occult. The very nature of a global society which large conceptual gaps. Secret societies have, thus far in this history, served as a conduit to pass on certain truths. The world is run by these secret societies in the sense that they use certain scientific laws that exist outside of the public's conceptual base, and hence public science. One of the things that the public is shielded from is the fact that the laws of physics actually change depending on who, and how many people, are involved. This is why many self-professed psychics have demonstrably failed in front of an audience of skeptics, and why weird shit goes on around religious people. A group of 10 children holding hands can, and have, instantly killed entire villages of people. I have personally partaken in timed meditations aimed at one specific person (usually in distress) and seen the effects that a couple minutes of intention can achieve when multiplied by enough people. Imagine what a global consciousness still caught in the throes of self-actualizing as sentient beings would result in. When you imagine that type of a global consideration you perhaps start to realize why these truths are kept hidden in the first place. This is the function of Masons, Templars, and all the rest of those funny handshake henries.

If you look hard enough you will find evidence for the existence of a past civilization(s). The macro evolution theory is an elaborate lie, essentially, designed to limit conceptual areas of thought in the manner that keep people from realizing the true power the hold. If you tell people they come from apes they will act like apes, and we do. Regardless of whether or not you accept that, this is not the first time that we've done this. The question is whether the preexisting 'Atlantean' society annihilated itself from existence finally, or in the sense that collectively they existed this, what is for the most part a linear, mechanistic dimensional framework, and moved onto something else---ironically enough this seems to be the subconscious direction of any good, well-intentioned person: the desire for a sort of relatively Utopian experience. The existence of the psychopaths who, in their desire for power over a chaotic universe, unknowingly facilitated our collective arrival to this point in time is explained by novelty.

In accordance with novelty all things which are hidden eventually become unhidden. Terrence McKenna, aided by a sort of channeled insight induced by magic mushrooms while living in South America was able to decode the fractal nature of the I-Ching---one of, if not humanities oldest puzzle. The consequence of this decryption was an algorithm he called the Timewave, a literal wave function, which, when mapped onto human history, spikes at moments of retrospective moments of novelty: renaissance, splitting the atom, internet, etc. This matches up perfectly with the Mayan conceptualization of time and the workings of the universe, which of course points to some sort of a threshold event around the end of 2012. There has been endless speculation regarding 2012 but I think the novelty explanation is the best, currently. McKenna says that the time leading up to 2012 will get exponentially more novel, compounding all the the novelty of all human history into the last second before the wave function goes flat. If, globally, we realize that the laws of physics literally obey our commands that would be pretty novel now wouldn’t it?

In the Psychopath We Trust

2009-11-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

A psychopath is traditionally characterized by someone who has no conscience. This is a clinically recognized condition, but the psychopaths in society often go overlooked as such. While a lack of empathy has certain drawbacks, it can also enable a sort of hyper-intelligence. To have a total moral disregard is a sort of labyrinthian freedom.

The Healer

I was recently watching an episode of House wherein an interesting moral dilemma takes place. To explain it let me first put the show into context: This medical drama is centered around the protagonist, Gregory House. When it comes to diagnostic medicine, besides being a drug addict and a total jerk, House is considered ‘the best.’ Despite his unorthodox approach, and rough exterior, he and his team always solve the case.

In the fifth season episode Teamwork this moral dilemma comes to a climax. Cameron, one of the female doctors, confronts House to tell him she is leaving both him and her husband. She expresses the love she had for both of them, and why it has now faded into pity. Her character represents the moral purity, consistently identifying with the patients at a humanitarian level, whereas House is a moral subjectivist; a pragmatist.

Cameron: “Motives matter. Lives have to come first”
House: “He’s alive, that’s what matters.”
Cameron: “Not to you...”

Camerson is right; House is shown to use the human life as leverage for his own personal aims time and time again. In the end, however, he always saves the patient. He’s the best; and hence the problem for Cameron: the pragmatic good seems to out-weigh a view in which there is an innate value on the human life if it can deliver. House scoffs at her religious proclivities as dogmatic thinking falls short, analytically, to emotionless deduction--and it is emotionless. The true extent of that void is exhibited in his failure to really convincingly love anyone.

Cameron’s leaving is the bitter result of her husband Chase, who also worked under House, killing a ruthless dictator in cold blood (that is, under the guise of medical treatment.) When Chase refuses to leave the hospital as they had previously planned, instead finding purpose in his brand of justice, and even telling Cameron “I’d do it again,” the moral counterargument crystalizes for Cameron. She addresses House in her final soliloquy:

“You ruined him, so that he can’t even see right from wrong; can’t even see the sanctity in a human life anymore. I loved you, I loved Chase. I feel sorry for you both. For what you’ve become, because there is no way back for either of you.”

That is, House has no definitive moral anchor and holds god-like power in his hands. Despite his tremendous capacity to save a life, this is vicarious intent; a flippant miracle. Psychopathic doctors exist, of course, and that is generally how it goes. Once one starts down the slippery slope of subjugating spiritual precepts to the excusatory power of cold reason there is, as Cameron points out, no way back. When you elevate logic above the divine, above all emotion, logic never lets you find a reason to put it back down.

Still, when faced with the decision of which doctor to choose, wouldn’t you want the best?

The Killer

One of the premiere traits of the psychopath is that they are attracted to positions of power, as their locus of being is set irrecoverably within baser desire to manipulate and control. While House gets off on knowing people better than they know themselves, a figure like James Bond gets off on knowing what society needs better than the democratic process knows itself. What were seen as collateral hurt feelings in the diagnostic procession above are replaced here by dead people, innocent or not, as beyond the glamour James Bond is surely a serial killer by definition.

The moral counterweight in the Bond paradigm is not as easy to track down; there is, however, one thing which always seems to remain constant. Through all of the bloodshed, clandestine hacks at democracy, and all the rest of the action sequence antics, the damsel-in-distress not only doesn’t seem to mind this machine, he turns her on. For the damsel, and the audience vicariously, there is the sense in which when you are exposed to the true nature of the cloak and dagger ‘big decisions’, there is an instant infatuation with someone can pull the trigger so unflinchingly. To someone with any shred of compassion this life beyond the thin facade of ‘government’ is simply unthinkable, and the giant who can burden such a load is surely a demi-god, with the right to ravage any self-respecting woman.

It is interesting to note that the psychopathic pragmatism, of course, posits values as subjective and contextual. With that in mind, it seems Bond cannot say he is doing the ‘right’ thing, merely what his orders are. If that is the case then the ‘enemy’ is logically no more evil than he is, just of another geo-political context. To them, Bond is demonic; the grim spectre of death itself.

So long as Bond is fighting on our side, however, he’s as sexy as hell, isn’t he?

The Face

Psychopaths make up a fairly small percent of society, the coherent and noteworthy hyper-ability enabled by a lack of conscience being even fewer among those individuals.

For the most part there is nothing romantic about the Psycho; the sexy veneer is but a haunting evolutionary cologne. They can, and usually are, ruthless, vicious people, despite the romanticized Hollywood portrayals. (The show Dexter, for example is about an admitted psychopath serial killer...who is a cop). When we look at society we see the morality of these exceptions to the rule applied everywhere else. That is, they are becoming less exceptions to the rule and more the norm. Integrity requires a moral constant; the dissolution of moral fibre can largely be attributed to the propensity to translate being pathetic into some iconic justification. That is, by magnifying the nature in which most people are inherently incapable of operating, the general public gains a learned lack of self-worth; it makes them invite the Id to rise up in that place to defend any criticism. Under the facade of an over-exuberant lack of lethargy, the apathy remains: the divide between the general person and an ‘expert’; that is, the sense in which common sense (global) problems are too much of an effort, and require the aid of some high-functioning con-artist.

Insofar as we can say that psychopaths are attracted to positions of power, this is would seem to be the meta-con.

If you place you trust in a psychopath you must do so with the implicit recognition that this person has no emotional investment in your well-being--no conceptual definition of such a thing. That is, these people, in the wider lens, need some form of help. Praising and rewarding spiritual arson as genius, or artistic, does the individual, nor society, any good.

Uncommon Sense

2009-07-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Talking to people I’ve discovered many tend to downplay intuition. Why bother worrying about it right? "Oh, it's just some subconscious thing. Whatever." Functionally, this does work in the short term, but philosophical questions persist because certain thoughts persist. Hunches. Unusual feelings, they casually nod in a particular direction.

To me intuition seems to underlie creativity, memory, everything. It is the tether to the unconscious and the subconscious below. A distinct mental component, and for all our advancements, we still don’t know that much about this strange, powerful place. We acknowledge it scientifically, but we don’t know it personally. I mean, we never finished mapping--which is a shame, really.

Do you find it odd, sitting on your bed, waking up? What just happened there? This is a third of our lives.

We cruise around, a conscious observer to some linear attention span, but the unconscious mind takes it all in without bias. It’s all there. To enter the unconscious is to enter the entirety of your life. Is there even a past or future in this place? One would hope this to be not inferior or irrelevant, but the second half of the human experience. Complete, holistic; the lines between time up here. The difference between knowledge and information, learning and understanding. Between personal formation, and in-formation.

The world today surfs the crest of potential manufactured. The amount of raw data which now exists in autopoesis is staggering to what has come previous, and still continues to grow rapidly. This is the age of information, surely, but quickly overlooked is what it has done to us, still stumbling near the darkened cave of ignorance. We sometimes act as if we didn’t just find the exit. We have watched the (sub)cultures of the world unite, transforming with each other, but a subversive nihilism seemed to blossom. Where people once felt constrained by the tradition and politics of the locality, modernity brought an exit to anywhere else: the global view. We filled the gaps, but it seems that regional ethical systems, while arguably faulty, were replaced with a lack of morality at all--a sort of go with the flow hedonism. We’re all famous now. Songbirds.

Here we are, connected so well.

What I want to talk about is common sense, but more importantly is our sense; where we want to go as a species. Historically, the windows of opportunity which lead to peace and abundance often close long before the coming nightfall. While it is still light out. I do not mean to sound like sound epic orator, but we’re all here--a global system, self aware--and if we mess it up, future generations will never forgive us. To climb so close to heaven, only to have drunken daddy crash the car on the family trip.

So I propose we just look at the basics here--the general day to day, what's up, who won the game? you’re late for work type stuff--because there is something I don’t understand. Why does this part take so much priority? I mean I love joking around and keeping things light, but this is a big part of life and we rest on it--as much as sleep. Now look at the logical structure underneath the everyday: common sense. Where one is told to use some common sense they are confronted by a statement which exists outside of self. Some sort of communal logic stall frequented by all. It works in theory, but is often clogged or gross. Sometimes someone tells me to use some common sense and it feels like they just dropped a turd for a trump card. The crowd gasps. Why abandon your own developed view if you think it is logically sound? For the collective? Are they right? Remember that people go to school to escape common sense, and all new ideas are nonconformist. Sometimes it’s just bad news. This useful illusion is so real a gatekeeper of knowledge. It is often a hand to the mould of the social mind. How much of our culture still rests on common sense? How much of science, even? Alphabet news, iconic ideologies; some things by their very nature point to common by design.

We see such an emphasis on the external world, but what of the inner world? That intuitive guidance is something some of the accomplished people often swear by. The ones who seem to just live in the right spot. It is perhaps the birthplace of grace.

“How did I make my millions? Just trusted my gut.”
“I dunno, when I play I get into this zone where it’s like I’m not even thinking.”
“All good art is familiar.”
“When I dance I feel everything.”

Most accept this force because most seem to feel it. It persists. Just like those odd thoughts we have from time to time. Urges, curiosities, the hunches that lead some into detective work, or deeper into the scale of possibility, perhaps some all-out clairvoyance, an arbiter of the veil.

I guess my point is that when we look around in apathy, thinking that all of our problems are so large, and complex, I have the feeling that they scatter like darkness at sunrise as we slip into sleep and into our personal worlds. Maybe we know all the answers to that which trouble us already? Maybe it’s all there? There is always the possibility that we’ve just been looking in all the wrong direction. It’s funny: some people claim that the needy and easily manipulated should ‘wake up’ to the various power eventualities, but really we need to go down. Down. Further, to the planet whereupon stands the God of War. In this place we are the supreme being.

Further Exploring Cannabis: The Panacea

2009-04-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

Outside of Halifax in one of the more rural areas lives a man named Rick Simpson. This man grew and cultivated hemp into a highly concentrated oil form for several years, which he gave to people with pain or disease. The following will be a brief summary of the events which transpired leading up to and during the conference he gave at Dalhousie University this past Sunday.

The main thing to keep in mind about hemp is that this is a 100% natural substance. The science behind cannabis in recent years has become quite interesting. It has breached the scientific field with its complexity and explanatory superiority in biology. It is losing its taboo, seemingly, as this new generation take on more and more research positions.

The first time I looked at Rick the first thought I had was 'radiant.' He explains why: "It's pretty straightforward" he says, a small grin on his face. "You take 60g of oil over a thee month period (You need about a pound for this, which is quite a bit) and whatever is ailing you will go away. This isn't like smoking; 90% of the medicinal properties of cannabis literally go up in smoke when you chose that method."

He recounts the thousands of people of varying diseases like aids, cancer, MS, and some other ones which have no known cures that he's seen cured from people's bodies, sometimes in as little as three weeks using his method. He explains his own arthritis which used to plague him is nothing more than a nostalgic comedy as he dances about the room.

I am looking around the room to see what everyone else thinks -- alright, question period time. Skeptics go nuts, let him have it. "This man saved my life" one man recounts in tears, explaining how he had two months to live before he saw Rick. Another man just smiles as he explains his chronic back spasms affect him no longer. Really the only thing that the students could really muster up as a skeptical defense was the suggestion that he needs to get some proper data on the books. I mean surely this man is wrong somehow, and he hasn't discovered some cure all? Surely there is some clerical mistake... This seemed to be the logic in the student camp.

So is this a mistake? I mean if he had discovered such a cure, surely you would have heard about it, right....? Well, maybe. What has Rick been doing all this time besides allegedly curing people? If not legitimate research, then what? Well Rick's been in court. You see, this is all illegal. I don't mean in the conventional sense. It's perfectly legal for people to, with a government approved medical exemption, grow or license someone else to grow cannabis in Canada. It has medicinal value, after all. You can smoke it out in the cold, partially chastised, to get rid of your chemotherapy sickness.

What is illegal is the oil. Which is unfortunate. It would seem that the government law preempted this apparent medical aid. Rick claims, while promoting anti-weed propaganda externally, the pharmaceutical companies may have learned about this on the inside a long time ago. Seems plausible, but either way the oil is legally forbidden for now.

So what came out of Rick's eventual arrest? Thankfully fate afforded us a judge with a conscience. Rick was fined $2000, probably just to cover court fees. "This man is guilty, but a healer" the official ruling.

So what is Rick Simpson up to these days? He will be touring in Europe with the most well known cannabis icon on the planet, Jack Herer, who is among the list of people that he has cured. Yes, it seems like the cat has been definitively let out of the bag with this one. This process is starting to catch on all over the world.

In closing: Some things are not too good to be true. The blessings of nature are available as always; now in the modern age health and happiness should be the watermark.

Resources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cSg5CW6PQ -- Dr. Robert Malamede, University of Colorado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsK21EJDAPc -- Rick Simpson's 'The Run from the Cure' Documentary

200 People

2009-04-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

As reported in 'In Search of the Miraculous', Gurdjieff has said that 200 people belonging to the esoteric circle of humanity could greatly change the world if they so chose. Perhaps this is false, or there are not yet 200 of these individuals. This whole threshold concept has conceptual friends, like the 100th Monkey Syndrome. The validity of these things can relate to the nature of timing. They don't necessarily have to, but that is where I want to focus.

The word exoteric means outer. Outside the mind; public. The word esoteric relates to both inner experience, and also the inner aspect of society. Hidden; introspection at one level or another. A buddhist monk is a cliched but accurate example: some truths are inexpressible, but it doesn't mean they are not there.

Most esoteric schools of thought maintain there are objective dynamics to things, (even if ever-changing) that of course the universe is not some public school random happenstance of things. What's further, most see the current time as the fulcrum of future existence; a window of opportunity which can only occur at specific times. The Yuga Cycle, in Hinduism, for example, holds that existence flows through four different Yugas which correspond to the nature of the soul. The ever-shifting legs of the Dharmic bull. Repetition, filtering.

So this brings me to timing. It is something which has always nagged at me.

I remember when I was a kid, playing video games, there were invariably these things which only occurred once during the game and if you didn't do it, or failed, you couldn't go back and do it again unless you started another game. No saves. You get the idea. When I failed on those things I got this feeling which seemed to extend beyond video games and my life itself. It made me think: This is only a game, but so is life. Many esoteric schools and some religions hold this to be true. The sense in which, if we do not get say, 200 individuals by a the time the 200 dark elites of the social consciousness do, and ultimately themselves, then we will have to start at the beginning again.

...there is another option: there are now 200 of these individuals but they choose not to intervene with your free will. For in the end, is it the decision of 200 people anyways? Would they be any better than those 200 directing the social agenda? If someone would rather re-start, then who am I to tell them it is wrong? Who would listen?

The Dharmic bull steps; it waits for no one.

The 11th Hour

2009-03-05T23:51:00.001-08:00

The other day I watched a video of an interview with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He is an interesting man because he belongs to a group of people who are retired from politics formal, but who essentially continue to work twelve hour days in some geopolitical fashion or another. I don't refer to any group in particular; just look around the world and you'll find the Kissingers, the Brezinski's. They're simply there, working hard. The particular video in question was filmed in 2007, when Kissinger was eighty-four years old.

World elites such as Henry seem to be striving towards “the rule of law, as opposed to that of the jungle” as George Bush Senior once famously said in reference to global direction. The key word there seems to be ‘rule.’ On the other side of the ethical coin we have the localized religious/nationalist tendencies which Kissinger and Co. would paint as the ugly villain of our modern times. That is, the good and bad of sovereign nations and their people self-governing.

So are they right?

The idea of a worldwide revolution is a varied one, ranging from the depths of conspiracy to the heart of the public sphere. Tinfoil hats to Obama and Oprah -- there is a mutual recognition that things seem to be coming to a head. Some would say it is only inevitable. We are surrounded by technological potential caged and delayed by the politics of greed; this is a world where people starve to death, and modern countries somehow slide into recessions. Things should be getting better, but they’re getting more fearful, and less free.

What is going on here?

Is this a natural progression, or is it all part of the plan? Is shady fiat banking causing these problems, or does our jungle need more authority than we already see? The coincidence theorists are scolded by skeptics as delusional for their claims of clandestine planning and occult method, while the paranoid scold the skeptics for not looking far enough. Whatever the objective truth, in the 11th hour it truly doesn't matter and time stops for no species.

Right and wrong, good and bad, it all depends on how you define autonomy, for it can be defined in a great number of ways; the many derivations in which certain ignorance can mix with certain intelligence. As Henry points out, the engine of globalization will of course require the redistribution of geopolitical power and that will be a tough time economically for the West. Some will go broke, surprised and angry. Beyond that, should Kissinger and Co. get their way, will be a world devoid of many things, some of which would admittedly be some of the problems we now face. Absolute power is absolute peace. For some this is a peace of mind; for others, this is a piece of mind.

Some stand in opposition to people like Kissinger who play higher reasoning on those who cannot understand it for control, others welcome the Darwinian logic entirely. On one side is the accumulating worry that one version of freedom is about to be lost; on the other there is the growing attitude that maybe those questioning power should just shut up and let it do its thing.

Depending on where you place your values, you may be welcoming that which I fear most. Whatever the outcome, the clock is forever ticking. It is up to us to discern the hands from the face.

We. Are. Robots. -- A Rant.

2009-01-21T11:01:00.001-08:00

Teachers indulge in this annoyance that I find particularly short-sighted. Here, caught in a school system clinging to the inverse proportion between social intelligence and a greed-driven technological potential for control, we have a generation of kids who have seen more cultural novelty than perhaps every previous generation combined, a culture inundated from birth deliberately with chemicals, violence, sex, and beyond hours of brain-numbing television, every possible conceptual option one could ask for via the internet --anywhere, at any time-- sitting in a classroom with some old professor giving them the disapproving stare because they are not engaging the material like they used to: with some vague notion of the wonder years pizzaz. We didn’t decide to flush the untamed human spirit from the emotional lexicon. How is this our fault? With public education systems which --worldwide-- relegate anything but technologically based avenues of learning to some one-room broom closet orchestra with a mural behind it class, I’m personally amazed students arrive in post-secondary education with the ability for any sort of intuitive lateral ability at all, and you’re giving us the generation eyebrow because we’re not as lively as you used to be? I don’t know about my friends, but my brain works in a holistic fashion. You cannot subject an entire generation of people to what functionally equates to city after city of electromagnetic sludge, and the trance-like depths of right-brain overload, and expect too much. I dunno about you but I grew on up on TV. How about this: if you were content enough to hand us a world run by clandestine corporational exploitation you didn’t bother to address because fiat bankers were too busy throwing free credit at you, then why don’t you quit the complaining and just shove the information down our throats like the robots we are?

The World from a Bread Factory.

2008-12-30T02:49:00.001-08:00

I used to work at a bread factory, and then when I was home for xmas I worked some shifts there again.

The union warehouse workers are all the nicest guys. They have more fun than I ever could, and I am envious of their smiles. We talk about work things, for that is the common language -- and there are always complaints. The way these guys get jerked around is indicative of everything, really. It's all there. The fiat banking dictated hierarchy and the unseen hand. And the the ever-churning mixer of luck: the management can't really say anything to me cause I'll just walk out. I need that job like I need an erection problem, but it could have easily been different -- who knows where I will end up when I am old. The mixer churns: the Canada Bread guys need their job, and they take a lot of crap. I wish they would win the lottery or something. I've wished for that a couple times now. I know money won't solve my problem, cause the problem is money: why should some get it and others not?

The majority of the guys there are Asian of some type. One guy is Japanese, another is Korean, and most are Chinese. In this language sense, it's an immersion into a world I'm not as familiar with; it's another world, away from mine: everything else. They've all been there for like 30+ years and for the most part, they're kind of too old to be doing the types of things we are. One guy is pushing seventy, I think. I, being young (and I guess a bit taller) could lap some of them if I wanted to. Simple luck that it should be this way. My point? We should be able to care for the elderly, and not slave away with them like peons pulling the Pharoh's bricks. It's a soul-foul, plain and simple. We'll see it on the replay in the afterlife.

The global community has already been long established. Technology has already been long established. So why are things not getting better? Why, instead of a Utopia, does it look like we're heading into a hellish green prison? Why is it these conditions in the west are actually among the best? Where else but Satan's backyard can the young and old slave together and have that be the apex of societal advancement? And did he not mention? -- it's not even a Bread Factory anymore, it's a Distribution Warehouse. Once proud bakers from a different age now wear back braces so they can stack the (surprisingly heavy) trays of bread sixteen high. Freedom is not being able to move in chains. It's just not. It is a quiet warehouse now; the flower of the heart wilts under those stale lights.

But then, these guys go home to their loving wives. They are loved, and that is what allows us to exist, stubbornly holding our candles into the blowing darkness. Without it we are lost and the darkness consumes.

Obama, McCain, and the Hegalian Dialectic.

2008-11-06T09:56:00.001-08:00

I am trying to point out is that Democracy itself is essentially the Hegalian dialectic in action, every time around. Yes a black President is nice and progressive, and yes Mccain is ugly, but what of the synthesis? This is a very old technique. The history of government is the most interesting history there is.

Obama is an (admittedly truly charismatic) 'rock star,' as the media so calculatingly puts it, but it's eclipsed by the fact that this man is a usher of the globalist machine. That is, those in power who have published, with no shame, and into redundancy, the plan. The conspiracy is that there really isn't one. PNAC, even Obama's main adviser Brezinkski... they've stated it plainly, it's just that it lies above the umbrella of alphabet media.

The march there is the dialectic. Dumb President, Smart one. Economic growth, recession. Until people understand the power of the polarity there can be little hope to realize in mass this stopped being about individual countries long ago. As I said: this is an old trick. It was always East, West; North, south.

At the end of this square dancing around semantic drivel we call the US election process, we find ourselves with two candidates who, when questioned, have stuck -unequivocally- to the imperialistic expansion plan that is the CFR. So why the hype around Obama? Tell me, but think carefully first.

Fleeing Reality

2008-10-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

So I thought I'd do a blog on World of Warcraft. Everyone seems to do it. Why? Well, I think it's because they find it so easy to make fun of. Indeed, you don't see too much on the internet pertaining to, in particular, why it is WoW or other similar games, are so appealing. I guess most of this fun takes place in the game, in a sort of self-apparent way; outside of the game you find those who are threatened by it. You can count the blog posts into the higher order of 'easy punching bag' as a quantification of originality. Yes it would seem that, for some reason or another, the internet is just like any typical Western High School -- one where the cool kids make fun of the nerds, while the nerds simply shrug, to go on playing their games.

So what is going on here? Which side is playing games, if any?

Well, all I can do is tell you my story. I am a nerd at heart, but I was blessed with other social conventions which allowed/drove me over different social borders, to the 'real world' insomuch as such a thing exists for me. That is, I feel I got the unique advantage of being able to fit into a several different contexts where escape into fantasy, and arbitrary rules undercut with an almost religious sense of knowledge and efficiency, were not exactly 'cool' or whatever term you want to use. To put it simply, the type of immersion one gets from say, dressing up as a Night Elf for role playing, in some contexts, might as well be an immersion into this actual world we all inhabit.

The nerd side of the argument is an intellectual one, and therein lies it's strength. So while I was university athlete, and blessed with a rather symmetrical, healthy body, I still view the world as one where your physical looks, and other such blessings such as social intelligence, largely determine the extent to which you are aided above and beyond reasoning as a functional capacity. So for example, there is the classic 'Verbal Bully' vs 'Smart Kid' argument. What most people don't realize is that many bullies (all the ones I've ever met at least) may not be that smart in one sense, but when it comes to psychological profiling, and audience manipulation, and just sheer quickness of thought, these guys are the masters. I've seen them make teachers laugh, consistently, when the teacher knows consciously that it's wrong given the context, and his or her role as an authority figure. Humor is a powerful, overriding force -- and that's just the relatively harmless part of the ego.

So the nerd would say look: I was born into a body lottery, and quite frankly, kind of got a shitty deal. I'm smart enough that my social archetype literally created, from 1's and fucking 0's, the entire basis for which modern information and communication itself now rests, and I have to listen to this drunk guy in front of me struggle to remember his Dane Cook joke? I have to watch that attractive, intelligent woman in the same bar let their biological urges get the better of themselves? I have to teach the offspring of these two (who later get divorced) because all the good IT jobs have gone to secret ridiculousness instead of the public good?

And once he's said all of this, he says 'No... fuck no. I'll just create my own, better world' -- and so he did. I mean, do you know why elves, and dragons, and the infinite fascination with magic exists? Because somewhere along the lines, someone thought it would be cooler if they did. Or, likewise, that it would be interesting to try out a world where everyone is hot, and draped in endlessly artistic clothing, and get all the same chances for some conception of success and achievement as everyone else. I applaud that person. The point here is that when someone tells you 'You're fleeing reality' they are ushering something dangerously self-defeating, something quite morbid indeed. These people, the ones involved in a WoW self-help group who have never played the game; who lecture people, probably without ever having picked up a philosophy book, on the virtues of 'real life' and 'human interaction;' the people for whom someone else's fantasy, no matter how fanatical, troubles them to the core of their own insecure being; the people who drape our world in dogmatic, short-sighted, vacuous praise without ever mentioning nature; the people who genuinely like our world for, ironically enough, petty, made in China reasons that more than encompass the computer. For these are the people, so run by their own egos to think of suspending it momentarily as absurd, who are the truly deluded.

Orwell, Facebook... and that useless info.

2007-11-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

As a person with a face, and seemingly some sort of book, I have noticed that there are certain things that sort of piss me off about this outward reaching data-mining program. It's no one's fault, really, it's just that every time I read things like "Katherine is no longer part of the group " I get the feeling I am witnessing the abyss of irrelevance -- sort of like sitting in a virtual lunchroom and listening to all the conversations going on around you. Each One. I don't even know Katherine that much, (she sits at another table) and her possible reversal on a subjective judgment is of no real fascination to me.

Or does it? I know you can turn those alerts, off, but it leads me to the point here: I don't want to eat lunch in silence, and my guess is that if you actually use Facebook, you probably don't want to either. So what is going on here?

When you look at what drives the internet, it's the eagerness on everyone's part to explore themselves by skipping small stones of our lives into the vast electronic ponds of communication. Unlike in High School, there is no wrong decision, or established methodology for cool. The insight of the lonely will not fall on empty school yards or wait in cars just around the corner from parties. With the internet comes the ability, at any second of the day, to stand up (probably sit down in this case) and say 'I was here, I lived at this moment and I loved it enough to change my status!'.

Every single piece of information you send on just about every single web site on the net is recorded and cataloged. The NSA and respective governmental agencies worldwide filter this at the very level of the data-stream from various ISP's. It's all very Orwellian sounding, and believe me I sort of agree. There are, however, some positives. The more we are surrounded by Big Brother's prying eyes the more we attain immortality. The useless comments are divine in this regard. Whether or not the information itself is accessible to anyone, there is more detailed information on your actual life online some of the more notable people in history. You have an entire virtual life and it will live on -- your own screenshot in history. Sure we know of Parmenides and Socrates, but we do not have the tagged photos of the uncles of philosophy bombed at the strip club.

Smiles are Free

2007-06-10T04:13:00.001-07:00

I snuck into McDonalds the other day for another fast food meal I shouldn’t have been having, and, taking off my fake moustache and sunglasses I pondered what I read on the menu.

“Smiles are free”

It’s an interesting concept; that of ordering something which, as the sign states, is perfectly free. Do we all order smiles? In our increasingly fast paced world, is it simply easier to reduce the smile to nothing more than a means to an end? After all, if you smile to a woman on the street it obviously means you want to sleep with them, why else would you do it? Answers like, “I’m just happy” or “They looked a little down” simply make things confusing, right? After all, we are in a hurry.

To test my hypothesis I turned to the woman in line behind me, giving her a smile of my own I asked, “Hey, what do you think? Should I switch it up and try something different today?”

She rolled her eyes at my smile slightly, shrugging her shoulders. “Umm, I’m not sure…whatever you feel like I guess.” The curt statement was followed by a quick check of her cell phone.

I nodded, turning back to the cashier. I seemed to be right, at least on that occasion. It makes sense, and I suppose it’s easier this way. Why talk to a stranger any place other than downtown amidst the flowing social lubricants? You know, where you can have conversations like these. We’re building a better, more efficient world; sure you walk out onto the street and all you hear is car horns and traffic, but if you listen even more closely – utter silence.

“Same old number five I suppose… and a smile!” I said proudly.