When Sheep Eat Men

The Problem With (Religious) Tolerance

2008-06-19T11:03:00.002-04:00

Despite having grown up as a outspoken atheist/agnostic (I still haven't decided whether or not the difference between the two is trivial) who has spent a great deal of time around religious zealotry, I have always considered myself pretty tolerant when it comes to religion. Yes, I think pretty much every major religion is a big waste of time, bad for humanity, and almost comically retarded, but I don't advocate the compulsory destruction of them either.

That might seem like a pretty generous definition of tolerance, but I think it's the best people are capable of, and probably also the best most people deserve. I have long-since abandoned my moral relativism, although not because of lack of incompetence on the part of its detractors. Crazed bigots like Bill O'Reilly and smug philosophers who think they fucking invented the wheel with their stupid little refutation "U CANT BELEEV IN MORAL RELATIVISM CUZ HOW DO U NOE UR RIGHT IF EVREETHING IS RELATIVE LOLZ!!!!!" actually make moral relativism some progressive and intellectually rigorous. But of course it is neither. Tolerance isn't uncritically accepting all ways of life, beliefs, and cultures as equally valid. That's stupid.

The first important thing to do while crafting yourself into an upstanding, progressive lefty is to develop a sound worldview. If you're going to run around judging everyone else all willy-nilly, at least have some consistent, objective criteria with which to judge. I won't get into just what those criteria should be (and believe me, I know), because that would entail me pretty much outlining my entire moral and political worldview, which might take a while. I will however, talk about stage two.

DON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! That's right, who cares about your fellow neighbors are acting in an unholy way that is completely incompatible with your lifestyle; it doesn't affect you. That's the problem: I may not personally agree with country music, or people who derive excessive pride from their heritage, but I'm not going to go on a personal crusade trying to prevent people from watching CMT or going on and on about their cultural pride or nationality. Of course, there are a few exceptions.

I'll will present you will two scenarios, and then you can go through the steps of tolerance, and then think about how you would respond.

Scenario #1: It is the mid 1930's, and a political movement known as fascism is sweeping Europe. Already, Italy and Spain have fallen to this menace. Its unique brand of totalitarian capitalism, coupled with fierce nationalism has influenced another, similar movement in Germany. Most of Europe seems nonplussed.

Scenario #2: It is the mid 2000's, and a political movement to afford to same rights, privileges and cultural acknowledgement to gay couples is sweeping the nation. Already, California and Massachussets have fallen to this menace. Its unique brand of equality, coupled with basic human decency is has influenced other, humane ways to look at fellow human beings. Most of Europe seems nonplussed.

(Aside: Ironically, I'm sure many of the people who are so up in arms about scenario #2 probably wouldn't have been all that concerned about scenario #1)

You see, there are a few, subtle differences between the two hypotheticals. One major thing to consider about most beliefs or customs that might make you uncomfortable is a) they don't effect anyone other than the people participating, and, more importantly, b) they're not harming anyone. Of course, those two examples are obviously pretty much as black and white as you can get. Most of the time, it's hard to tell if some cultural entity is crossing the line. This actually brings me back to what this post was originally supposed to be about, before I got distracted by tolerance and fascism (as is too often the case for me).

I was just reading an article about a kid with stupid parents. He got sick, and they decided to pray the disease away. Needless to say, it didn't work. He died ("coincidentally", he was the cousin of this girl). Now that in and of itself angers and depresses me. I found it on StumbleUpon and I decided to check the comments page. Here is a verbatim review I found:

Although I definitely believe in the power of prayer, I also believe that the medical "discoveries" that help to treat our various illnesses are provided to us by the good Lord too. I find myself in a quandary in a situation like this; where does one realistically draw the line in religion and the treatment of your children? These people have the same rights to their beliefs as any other religion, and the right to teach their children their own beliefs. By prosecuting the parents, nobody gains. But it does open up a can of worms as to the governments ever increasing interference of EVERY religions beliefs and practices.

That's almost exactly when I decided that if religious people can't start telling the difference between reality and fiction, I'm going to stop being tolerant of them. I have no problem with people praying. Hell, I have no problem with people praying for sick people. It doesn't do much, but fuck, why should that stop them? The problem is when the fun little stories they read about on Sunday start legitimately interfering with their actions in the real world. When prayer stops them from getting medical attention. When the story of Sodom and Gomorrah leads you to beat up gay people. That's stupid. People get pissed at the WWF when some stupid kid kills his friend cuz see saw somebody do it in the fictional sport of professional wrestling. Why don't people get pissed of at the Church when some stupid parents kill their kid because their pastor, represenative of the fictional being known as God tells them to.

I know that these people are part of a very fringe organization, and definitely don't represent mainstream Christianity. But you see much more mainstream christians letting the fictional world of the Bible color their real-life actions. The most prominent example of this right now is the so-called Intelligent Design, which is basically creationism (no idea why they felt the need to change the name, creationism sounded stupid enough as it was). Science and religion are diametrically opposed. Science emperically posits a falsifiable hypothesis, then studies the real world, using logical and consistent means, and then formulates a theory about the real world based on the previous observations. Even before the scientific method came around and helped revolutionize the world for the better, that was basically how human beings interacted with the world. Someone figured out the purple berries were poisonous because a bunch of people ate them, and they all died, not because a magical little invisible imp told her.

There's nothing wrong with believing the things that may or may not exist outside of the observable Universe. Feel free to believe in Heaven, Hell, or any other conceivable afterlife. Want God to be a trinity of three seperate entities that somehow combine to make one? Fine with me. But please, acknowledge that those inanities have no place in the real world. It's dangerous. There's a reason people are mildly afraid of Schizofrenics. They're acting like the crazy things that are going on in their head are real. When you start doing that, you become a danger to yourself and others. Until people can tell the differene between their religion and their reality, I'm going to treat them like that.

What the Hell is Wrong With Vegetarians?

2008-05-23T12:35:00.004-04:00

There is a conception among many members of the meat-eating community that many if not most vegetarians are pretty much the equivalent of the equally invalid stereotype of the "feminazi".* Groups like PETA are seen as crazed maniacs who would slit their grandmother's throat to save an orangutan. Of course, this is an essay about vegetarianism, so the orangutan issue isn't really all that relevant, since most people are likely to be offered a side of broiled orangutan, at least in polite company. As such, I won't talk much about PETA except to say that I don't really know that much about them. My assumption is that their hearts are in the right place, but they are probably a bit misguided about some things (like every advocacy group) and these cases are highly reported on. I also find it humorous that they organized direct action against Nike for its relationship with Michael Vick, but not for its relationship with sweatshop labor. Of course, that's completely reasonable as they're an animal rights organization, not a human rights one. However, in my eyes, it's just kind of another example of why we should shy away from single-issue causes, or at the very least view our specific causes in the light of greater societal issues.

Okay, I really didn't mean to turn that into a political diatribe. But let's face it: I could turn a rumination on silverware into a rambling condemnation of antiquate notions of social norms and the stupidity of superficial demarcations of class. Anyways, back to the vegetarianazis.

There are probably a couple reasons why this stereotype of vegetarians is so abundant. First of all, it's kind of true. I myself have jokingly made comments about the life of sin my family is living in for consuming the flesh of the innocent. It's kind of funny, and it makes everyone just a little uncomfortable. Furthermore, I'm completely sure that many people have made slightly more serious comments about their friends' and family's eating-habits. Of course, most wouldn't go so far as to make comments like that extremely gratuitously or to total strangers, which brings me to my second point.

They do it to us.

I can really only speak for myself, but I assume the situation is similar for other vegetarians and vegans. I honestly don't think most meat-eaters are trying to be mean. They see a custom they're not used to seeing, and it makes them a bit curious. Or maybe even a little suspicious. I guess it could be akin to meeting a cross dresser, if that's not something you do all that often. So maybe you ask questions. But for most people, implicit in all these questions is that this is a weird thing to do. Even for the most innocent of questions, this can be a grating experience after a while for vegetarians and vegans (especially vegans). And of course some people are a little more aggressive when they approach an herbivore. Its partially a response to the stereotype mentioned above, and partially for reasons unknown to civilized man. That tends to make us pretty defensive, and sometimes that defensiveness stays with us, even when we're not with the meat-bigot. In fact, many of the jabs I make at my family only presented themselves more recently, after years of subtle warfare from "the other side". In this way, it's kind of a circularly reinforcing cycle. Non-vegetarians are a bit rude to vegetarians, then vegetarians are mean to non-vegetarians because non-vegetarians are mean to vegetarians, then non-vegetarians are mean to vegetarians because... (and on and on) Of course all of this belies the fact that it's kind of an unimportant conflict.

Or is it?

Now this is the part where I pretty much confirm in many people's eyes that the myth of the militant maniac of a vegetarian is not a myth at all, and that I am living, breathing proof. I will try as best as I can to prevent that from happening, but I'm only one man, and frankly my writing skills are sub par. The major complaint leveled against vegetarians is that we're dicks who think we're better than everyone because we don't eat meat. In many cases, this accusation kind of spreads to corollaries like "We're dicks who throw blood on fur coats" and "We blow up medical testing facilities" because we're dicks. While I won't get into testing on animals or fur coats, there's actually kind of an obvious possibility to point out for vegetarianism. Maybe the holier-than-thou attitude is justified. During slavery, it would not have been completely insane of abolitionist to look down on people who owned slaves. Now, I should really not have to say this, but there are stupid people abound:

I DO NOT THINK THAT SLAVES ARE MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO LIVESTOCK. I AM NOT COMPARING THE FOOD INDUSTRY TO SLAVERY. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED THAT I FEEL THE NEED TO SAY THIS.

People who had slaves and approved of slavery thought that certain people could be treated horribly because they were less than people. That is a truly disgusting way to think, and abolitionists were right to accuse it of being such. Today certain people think that animals are less than people and therefore can be treated horribly. It's not really within the scope of this article to discuss what criteria should be used to determine how animals should be treated. But for me it was relatively simple to make a decision about this without developing a complex moral theory. I weighed the harm to me of no longer eating meat, and compared it with the benefits to any given animal traditionally used for eatin'. Now I know that's a bit simplistic. I'm equally aware of the many, many responses to it (most of them revolve around quite a few instances of doublethink and some questionable ethics), but I don't really wanna go into a point-by-point refutation of them. If anyone actually reads this and has a point that they think is particularly prescient, feel free to respond.

Here's where I try to make myself seem like less of a moral absolutist who sits on a golden throne above of you dirty eaters of the flesh. There are many things that other people do a lot better than me. Like energy conservation. But if people constantly ran around telling me I drive too much, and that they're better than me since they bike everywhere, I'd start to get kind of pissed off. I might even be bitter. Worst of all, their annoying chatter isn't going to get me to drive less. That's a decision I'm going to make on my own, not based on peer-pressure (especially annoying, self-righteous peer-pressure). Secondly, if they say they're better for biking everywhere, I might point to their Chucks and say I'm better because I don't buy clothing produced by children in free trade zones. We could probably go back and forth for a while, and leave feeling pretty annoyed at each other. I have lots of flaws, and some characteristics that I'm kind of proud of. I can't just ignore the former and pretend I'm better than everyone else because of the latter. That said, I really don't think there's anything wrong with being vocal about your beliefs. Of course it's near impossible to do that without seeming like kind of a douche.

*As a side note, it really pisses me off when people talk about "feminazis". While its meaning is kind of hazy, I'm pretty sure it's just a slur to imply excessively extremist or radical views. It's also associated with the idea of man-hating, bra-burning lesbians roaming the streets. Of course there are feminists who happen to be assholes, but hey, guess what, there were actually nazis who were really nice! You can't conflate the personalities of individuals within a group with the values of the group itself. Feminists come in all genders, sexual orientations, races, and levels of assholeishness, and it's really stupid/offensive to assume otherwise. As for the term "feminazi" referring to to radical feminists, that's just ignorant. Anyone with half a brain and access to a public library or computer can figure out that radical feminism is almost invariably associated with far-left politics which is anything but nazi. Of course the term nazi, much like "fascism", has been so badly abused, I doubt anyone even knows what it actually means anymore.

Jusifying Capitalism or: Why You're Probably Wrong About Human Nature

2007-11-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

In an argument with my dad last night, I noticed two themes that seem to be present in most discussions I have with liberals: A) he believed that cooperation was a good in theory, but in a global society it was at best unfeasible and B) the common man is not very competent. Of course the result of these two views is that many people tend to believe that economic competition (ie people pursuing entirely self-centered goals with little positive collaboration with others) is the best possible option, and that people should not have the right to govern themselves. I find it interesting that most people do not consider the fact that the reason they harbor such undemocratic and anti-egalitarian views is because they live in such an undemocratic and anti-egalitarian society. If you live in a blue world, blue just makes sense to you, and other alternatives (ie green, purple, red, and even *GASP orange) seem really silly in comparison. There's probably some kind of cognitive bias which explains this particular brand of stupidity, but - out of sheer laziness - I'll leave it up to the reader to found out what it is. However it would be inappropriate to attempt to discredit someone's opinion based on their reasons for believing. I believe that's some sort of ad hominem argument. And nobody likes those.

To be honest, I don't really have a handy refutation of my dad's argument against cooperation. While I abhor the Thatcherian dictum that "there is no alternative" I will admit that I don't really have a well thought out alternative in hand. In this issue, most radicals are at a serious disadvantage, because we have to propose something that has never been though of before. Of course the leftists with a penchant for ideological thoughtlessness can quote a few Marxian economists and be done with it, but that hasn't really done much for the movement, so I try to avoid it. My most poignant critique is that, like the argument that the common man is a moron, it is very elitist (if less obviously so). Competition "works", yes, but for whom? I would be very interested to see if the workers in Argentina were impressed with the effects of competition during the economic crisis of 2001. Which interestingly leads to a minor alternative that the people in Argentina had no problem working out. During and since the economic crisis in Argentina, over 15,000 workers have reclaimed the factories they work in. What this means is that they have taken control of management of a particular factory, and then cooperatively and democratically resume production. Most of these factories have continued operating in the face of relatively strong opposition by both business interests and government intervention. Of course the actions of a workplace are completely separate from the greater economic structure governing said workplace, but it's a good start.

On a more theoretical note, one could easily envision a society which operates based on values of cooperation. With even minimal levels of transparency, accountability, communication, recognition, democracy, and self-management, cooperation becomes feasible and definitely desirable. Compare that to the insane concept that "the most wickedest of men [doing] the most wickedest of things" will bring about good for everyone. While this characterization is obviously from someone relatively critical of capitalism (not quite so critical, actually; it's John Maynard Keynes) it's really not that far off from the ever-popular concept of the invisible hand of the market, which is effectively the billions upon billions of exclusively self-interested actions taken by the subjects of capitalism. Furthermore, it would be a profound stretch of the imagination to assume that the "captains of industry", as it were, do not command a great deal more economic power than the average (or common) man. This combined with the fact that these people are generally seen as, at best, moderately unscrupulous, and are admittedly only looking out for themselves, brings us dangerously close to the above quote from our friend Keynes. Coincidentally, Keynes was in large part responsible for a few minor alterations to the robber baron capitalism that he was no doubt attempting to describe (although in my opinion he evidently misspoke and ended up describing all forms of capitalism, from the disturbing laissez faire capitalism of Hong Kong to the euphemistically labeled socialism of Norway). I bring this up because these changes are generally extremely popular among the same liberals who despise democracy and equity. While Keynesianism does seem to stabilize the economy a little and hammer out some of the "kinks" of capitalism, the base problems are still there.

One major problem with attempting to address the above endorsement of cutthroat competition is that it is very rarely fully fleshed out. Most people make some vague reference to human nature and then make a case for capitalism. Of course the case doesn't involve any actual details or supporting evidence. Sometimes people make an offhand comment about the failure of Soviet Russia. Apparently people just support capitalism because they're used to it. I'm not going to address the supposed failure of the USSR other than to say that it wasn't just the absence of capitalism. There were many other factors involved, including what many people saw as the betrayal of the revolution by the Bolsheviks, extreme authoritarianism, and foreign intervention, all of which contributed to many of the problems generally associated with Communism in Russia. Part of the reason that people don't provide many details when they provide their two cents on cooperation versus competition is that it's a highly complex issue. One can provide a myriad of manufactured situations in which one or the other appears to be more beneficial. Even if you were to ignore the inappropriateness of analyzing a completely hypothetical situation and its application to the real world, there is still a problem. One isolated event of cooperation or competition means nothing when you discuss the fact that the economy is made up of perhaps trillions of these "isolated" situations over the course of years and years. Furthermore, capitalism isn't just the sum of all of these interactions. It also consists of the structure governing the economic interactions between individuals within a specific society. This allows for people to act in conjunction with each other, or act against each other's interests (although the latter is encouraged pretty heavily). Ultimately, the only way to test the theory that competition is more compatible with human nature or healthier for society is intense experimental testing, including study of human psychology and organic discovery of alternative economic structures. One proposed system that I have begun to embrace is participatory economics. I won't get into the particulars here, but here's a link to some information about it.

Disgust with the common man is a lot easier to discuss. Of course most people disguise this sentiment by claiming that human nature is evil (as opposed to awesome) and use that to justify a relatively hostile attitude towards democracy. Very few people go on to mention the accompanying thought: "except for me". Still fewer voice the other obvious corollary: "and those of my class". In this regard I'm pleased that my dad was so honest in his assessment. Although it's a very elitist and self-important thing to say, it makes the conversation a lot more open.

As somewhat of a warm-up, I'm going to address my most serious problems with the assertion that human nature is somehow evil, or at the very least incompatible with social justice. First of all, that is a ridiculously presumptuous statement to make. To see all these people making such absolute claims about human nature, you'd think about half the population of this country not only had simultaneous PhDs in Biology (with a focus on evolution), Anthropology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Economics, Game Theory, and Philosophy but also access to a country-sized laboratory with a multi-trillion dollar grant and permission to use any and all human subjects as virtual lab rats in billions upon billions of unique and highly controlled experiments. I mean Jesus, learn some humility and realize the extremely complex nature of the concept you're attempting to sum up in one simple sentence. Of course, it's a bit hypocritical of me to chide people for not being humble enough, especially in intellectual matters, but the point is that these people are making extremely authoritative statements about something that they know very little about. I actually think it's sufficient to refute any theory about human nature with an argument along these lines, but even if one actually were to accept such a ridiculous claim, it's very easy to break apart the conclusions they come to based on this assumption. Of course one could always make a ridiculously specific claim about human nature such as: "human nature operates in such a way that the current political and economic paradigm in the United States, coordinated with similar such states in countries throughout the world, for and by the powers that be, such as corporate and political leaders in the West, in pseudo-collaboration with leaders in the global South is the best possible state of global affairs", but even people that presume to know intimately about human nature would agree that at a certain point one must acknowledge that some degree of vagueness is necessary in describing human nature.

If we disregard the crazed ramblings of self-important whack jobs (myself excluded), then we can focus on a general idea about human nature, such as human beings are general self-interested, desire instant gratification, tend to be irrational (especially during important and stressful times), and are stupid and lazy. My first statement when confronted with such a bleak view of other people (because we have to admit that no one actually thinks such base characterizations actually apply to themselves) is "Good God, and you want to give a random one of the depraved individuals that you just described excessive power over you?" Which I think is actually a better argument than most people would admit. If I actually believed this about people, assuming I was somehow prevented from living in a shack in Antarctica and amassing as powerful an arsenal as humanly possible to defend me against the inevitable invading hoards of Zombies that are the human race, I would have a serious problem with consenting to giving a small percentage of the population control of a badge and a gun, an even smaller percentage of population control of the bulk of the economy, a few thousand absolute control over the legal system, and a couple dozen people power over the nukes. Instead, I'd be spending a lot of my time attempting to develop an alternative which prevents anyone from being able to get too much power over me. Nobody explains why the result of their dim view of human nature results in a politics that effectively rounds up the worst, most self-interested of the lot, and makes them jump through random hoops so they can get elected and then formulate the laws that are enforced by more of the worst of the lot at the point of a gun, or an economy that actually encourages the worst of human nature. More importantly, people who make this argument are nonplussed by such refutations, because they're not actually making this argument. They're actually making the argument that my dad was making, but since that argument makes most people look like arrogant assholes, they're afraid to admit it, especially to an angry and rather large anarchist with a propensity towards particularly animated debates.

As far as I can tell, the argument - especially when used to justify a relatively authoritarian political system and a hierarchical economy - is that the speaker, and the people s/he general associates with are generally intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful people, who are capable of making informed decisions about personal and political affairs. In general, they deserve political freedom and are completely suited to self-management, as well as economic autonomy. The common man, however, can't even be counted on to tie his shoes right. Nobody every quite states exactly who the common man is, but there's a very strong implication that the bulk of these people come from the "lower classes". Unfortunately, the bulk of my interactions are with people a half step away from the ruling class, so I don't know all that much about how people in the middle and lower class justify this position. Either way, it's pretty stupid to assume that you and the people you associate with are somehow better than everyone else. Furthermore, if you belong to the upper class, I would bet dollars to donuts that it's not because you pulled yourself up from your bootstraps. Nonetheless, many people in this position develop some bizarre sense of entitlement, which can feed into the above belief that you're better than everyone else. Since you most likely did nothing to get yourself into this prestigious tax bracket, there's no reason for this sense of superiority. Hell, even if you did go from rags to riches, that just means you're a combination of lucky and good at making money. That hardly makes you a superior breed of human, especially with regard to socio-political decisions. In fact, being part of the upper class is going to guarantee at least some degree of separation from the bulk of the population, which makes your opinions generally less important than those of the middle and lower class.

If you have made some argument along the lines of the idea that human nature is incompatible with social justice, then try to be honest with yourself. If you meant that "other people’s" nature is incompatible with social justice, while you and your friends and family are squeaky clean, trying to think about how deranged, elitist, and "convenient" that idea is. Most likely there's no real evidence to this assertion. If you think all people are evil, then you're probably just a very screwed up person, and God help you.

By the way, I'm aware that this article is relatively unpolished, but I just came back to it after weeks of inactivity, and I didn't really feel motivated to make the necessary changes to it or completely rewrite it (which is probably what I should have done). Also, due to Zeeshan's aggressive posturing, I've decided to launch a preemptive strike, and so I kind of hastily finished this essay. Either way, it's probably a good idea to start writing again. After two months of not writing a thing, I'm probably gonna have to ease back in pretty slowly.

Something's Been Bothering Me

2007-10-26T09:11:00.000-04:00

Whenever I hear or participate in a debate about American Foreign Policy, one thing always astounds me. People apply different standards to themselves and the country they identify with than they do to other countries. It's a pretty simple concept, and it's somewhat understandable, but it's also completely morally indefensible. When people were discussing the lead-up to the War in Iraq, it would've been ludicrous to point out the hypocrisy of the only country in the history of civilization to use atomic weapons on actual humans talking about Iraq's WMD's. Hell, at that time, mentioning the fact that if Iraq were to still be in possession of any Biological or Chemical Weapons, we most likely brought them there. Of course, the accusation of hypocrisy is only appropriate when attacking the bad deeds, not the lofty goals. So the fact that we sold weapons to Saddam Hussein or killed a couple hundred thousand Japanese citizens on a whim couldn't really be used to protest the impending war (of course basic moral decency and those pesky little "facts" did a pretty good job), but the point is that these points never come up. OK well that's not true. A couple instances of wrongdoing on the part of the higher-ups come up after they're no longer relevant, but for some reason people never seem to put it together.

Slavery, The Indian Removal Act, The Dred Scott Decision, Jim Crow, the Sedition Act, Japanese Internment Camps, the War in Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Operation Ajax, the Iran-Contra Affair, NAFTA, the War in Iraq. That's a relatively random sampling of shitty things perpetrated by this government since it's creation. Of course I have very limited historical knowledge, and that was just a list of some of the few things I could think of off the top of my head in about 5 minutes. The point is that these aren't really isolated instances of individual corruption or government oversight, and you can't chalk it up to people being products of their time. The way I see it, the main difference stuff like the Trail of Tears and Operation Ajax is that the government was open about what it did back then. Nobody knew about the latter when it was going on in '53 (actually I highly doubt that many people know about it even now). So I guess that means that the people are changing their values, which is forcing the government to become less democratic. Of course, if you were to review the historical record with a fine-toothed comb, you'd come up with probably (conservatively) thousands of equally appalling acts. It would be psychotically paranoid to claim that that US is unique in this quality, but at the moment it is probably the most prolific. It's also important to note that many of these actions which are seen in retrospect as "setbacks for democracy" involve US intervention in foreign countries.

The point is that so many people take the word of their government for law (which I guess is actually technically what it's supposed to be), and refuse to critically examine it the same way they would the policy of other countries, especially non-western countries, and - almost exclusively in recent times - muslims, arabs or desis (for reasons most likely related to above unthinking acceptance of government proclamations). It would be really nice for people to actually examine US foreign policy in the future from a stance of neutrality, which wouldn't yield a perfect discussion (much of what the government does is not revealed to the general public - democracy anyone?), but with the knowledge that does trickle down to the common man, we can actually engage in reasonable discussion. Of course, since the people in this country are pretty much removed from direct political or economic influence in this country, it doesn't really matter.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2007-03-07T19:06:00.000-05:00

My Confrontational Style and Absolutist Bent Will Make me Few Friends in Life

2007-02-20T17:30:00.000-05:00

I just had a conversation with my old friend Zeeshan Aleem in which he admitted to being a mama's boy and a habitual bet-wetter, among other things. Fortunately I kept a transcript of our conversation and decided to write an essay based on the subjects we discussed, with a focus on some of the more outrageous claims my incontinent friend uttered. Unfortunately, the whole project spiraled out of control during econ class today, and I ended up writing something that will potentially be upwards of 15 pages once completely finished. So, for your convenience, I decided to break it down into two or three smaller sections, one of which will go up immediately. If I continue on this streak of efficiency, the other two will be up by Saturday.

On Human Nature and Anarchy (or Why Zeeshan is Always Wrong, Part I)

2007-02-18T23:28:00.000-05:00

One of the many complaints leveled against anarchists and (more commonly) communists is that it looks very good on paper, but it could never work in real life. This is almost always attributed to some shadowy concept known as human nature. Although I do not presume to know anything the natural state of human inclinations, I am relatively certain that faith in the workability of a libertarian socialist community (the idealized end-state envisioned by both anarchists and communists) does not explicitly rely on any specific view of human nature. Furthermore, I would argue that the very concept of a unifying nature for all of humanity is useless both politically and intellectually. Unfortunately, the myth that is imposed upon most radical leftists by those who are not is that we are required to believe that human nature is essentially good. After being told what we must believe, we are then told that this belief is hopelessly naive. This argument can be dismantled three-times over (yippee!).

First of all, if we are to take this particular view of human nature as naive, then it can be easily demonstrated that any other assertion about human nature is also naive. Here are the two useful definitions of naive that I found on dictionary.com:

1. having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous.
2. having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous

Fascinating stuff. Anyways, it seems pretty obvious that people are using the latter connotation of the term when they call anarchists naive. Most people live in a very specific cultural paradigm, which provides a very limited view of a lot of things, including human nature. If one were to make an overarching assumption about the way humans act in a natural state from such a closeted perspective, it would easily qualify as lacking in experience, judgment, and experience. Just because you've been mugged before doesn't mean you know anything more about the human condition than someone who's never been the victim of any crime in their life, and bad things happening to you doesn't automatically make you experienced. The only way to even get a glimpse of human nature would be through a massive cross-section of many different cultures, environments and situations, and even that would be wholly inadequate. Even people in the field which is devoted to the study of people in all different kinds of situations, anthropologists, would be remiss in positing a definite conception of human nature.

The second flaw in the argument stems from the simplicity and vagueness of the assertion. The possibilities of human nature cannot be judged on some linear progression from good to evil. People aren't that simple, and to imply so is ignorant and dangerous. You could at least make the argument that human beings on average tend to act in ways that benefit themselves, but even that is a hollow classification. I believe that this error comes from an incorrect view of human nature itself. Although human beings a by no means born with a tabula rasa, there is definitely an environmental aspect to human behavior, not only in shaping our future actions, but in creating the context for our current actions. To use a particularly absurd example, if it is our nature to collect widgets, can can't really fulfill that nature if widgets don't exist. Environment achieves the dual goal of shaping our mentality and limiting (or perhaps enhancing) our ability to exercise certain instincts. Even this very minor inspection of concepts relating to human nature, it becomes painfully obvious that such a dismissive and simple assessment of human nature falls far short of any practical value.

Finally, and most important of all, this particular view of human nature is not a basic tenet of either anarchism or communism. Let me repeat that. The belief human beings are basically good is not a basic tenet of either anarchism or communism (from here on, I will be discussing only anarchist beliefs). The only belief about human nature that you must subscribe to in order to legitimately describe yourself as an anarchist is to believe that human beings are capable of organizing a non-hierarchical society which is at least as desirable as the current socio-economic paradigm (namely liberal democracy on a national scale and neoliberalism on an international scale). Of course, most anarchists have slightly more ambitious goals than the ones stated above, but those are the bare minimum standards for the most moderate of anarchists.

A corollary of the belief that anarchists have a naive and possibly dangerous view of human nature is that some sort of governing body is required to impose a specific value system on the people (or, in the case of Libertarians and anarcho-Capitalists, some sort of rigid material-incentive program). I will leave out the refutation of the pro-market libertarians' claims for now because it requires a relatively complex argument, and most people are probably already on my side in this matter. However, a pretty handy refutation of this particular argument for government (I must stress that this does not by any means refute all pro-government arguments) is relatively simple.

For people who believe that human nature is not essentially good and that people will generally act in their own self-interest when they can get away with it one thing should become quite apparent: that people should have as little power to exercise their will over others as possible. To the stupid eye, this might seem like a de facto endorsement of a massively repressive police state, but a simple thought experiment shows this is not the case. A serial killer with, saw a chain saw and a couple shotguns can, if motivated, kill hundreds of people in his or her lifetime. Now, I obviously don't want this psycho running around chopping off people's heads and whatnot, but his or her danger is minuscule compared to the potential threat of a man or woman will thousands of missiles and an army of trained killing machines at his or her disposal. That, ironically, tends to be the general type of power given to the leaders in countries with a low opinion of human nature. Apparently the person who lied, cheated, bribed, and philandered to get this position is not subject to the laws of nature that govern normal men.

There are three ways to overcome this apparent contradiction. The first involves a pretty skillful utilization of doublethink. The second is by standing by your initial statement about human nature and its implication about the feasibility of an anarchist society, and simply arguing that the aggregate harm done by an entire society of people acting on their nature is greater than the current harm done by the small minority who are currently in charge (plus the damage currently done by the people in society with comparatively fewer freedoms than the elites). I don't really see any logical problem with this argument. I just disagree with the assertion and can probably point to a couple dozen or so examples which seem to contradict it. The final method is to slightly modify one's position on human nature and instead argue that humans are for the most part bad, but that there are a few exceptions who are capable of transcending their nature and acting in purely benevolent ways. Aside from being ridiculously elitist and having a bit too much of a Savior-complex thing going on, there is not really much wrong with this argument, which is essentially an appeal for the installment of some sort of Philosopher King in the vain of Plato's "Republic". I personally believe that some people are more capable than others at certain things, and this must obviously apply to governance. The biggest problem with this proposition is the method used to determine who is fit to have this position of power. I won't go into the details of all the various problems with the different methods of choosing a leader, as I've listed them in previous essays, but I'm sure they are all relatively evident to most people. Another problem with the idea of a Philosophy King is the question of whether the power they are given will corrupt them. Even if you find a supremely benevolent person, it's almost impossible to tell whether or not giving them complete control over a country will cause a negative change in their demeanor and intentions. Of course, presumably the selection process would have some sort of way to figure out if a potential candidate would be corrupted by their newfound power, but this raises even more serious questions about the viability of such a nuanced method of choosing a leader.

Fuck the Debate on Illegal Immigration

2007-02-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

There is no widely accepted correct answer in the question of illegal immigrants. The two most commonly heard arguments are "those dark skinned savages are stealing our jobs, money, and turning our urban areas into third-world countries" and "they are taking the jobs that nobody in the US wanted in the first place, including poor and unemployed people (in fact, before people started immigrating en mass into the US, nobody had those jobs, the companies were just sitting there waiting for the Latinos to come)". Yes, I know nobody actually says it like that, but I can say with almost complete certainty that the subtext that I've included is there. Even in their more harmless form, they're both stupid arguments, although only one also has the distinction of also being subtly racist (yay for culturally acceptable racism!). It's interesting that I've never actually heard of arguments in favor of amnesty programs coupled with serious corporate accountability for breaking laws in order to get illegally cheap labor (although one of the reasons that I may not have heard it could have to do with the fact that I gave up on following the issue a few months ago). In fact, one of the more "reasonable" arguments in support of illegal immigration, is celebrating just the opposite: that it's good for US citizens because the immigrants are exploited by the people who employ them.

It really amuses me how paranoid "border security" enthusiasts are about the future if this "dire menace" isn't stopped (on a related note, I could probably write an entire post on the creepiness of language use in this debate). Usually these kind of doomsday scenarios are only reserved for the loony-bat left, and their whole crazy theory that global trade liberalization engineered by less than a handful of powerful countries and a few multinational corporations could potentially be bad for humanity as a whole (and other such nonsense). But I digress. And I thought crazy rich white people's paranoia about affirmative action was creepily hilarious. This stuff blows it out of the water. I'm not even going to address the ridiculousness of the more "liberal" arguments, because, for all it's depravity, the border security argument at least has some sort of grounding (blatant xenophobia and racism, scapegoating, and in some cases, pure laziness). The same cannot be said for most arguments I've heard from people who support illegal immigration (except for maybe the people who seem to be more pro-business than pro-immigration).

Now this would normally be the part where I would propose some sort of theory that would make the previous two paragraphs seem less like whining and more like focused criticism preceding a coherent solution. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed from the previous two paragraphs, my writing ability has seriously degraded in the past few months. Furthermore, I don't really know enough about this debate or the facts to have even warranted any article, much less a serious serious critique and proposition. In fact, the only reason I'm even publishing this is because I'm trying to motivate myself to start this up again, and maybe seeing a new post (and possibly some input, though I don't see how anyone could really bring themselves to respond to this rambling diatribe) could provide the right boost to write something more serious and cohesive.

Absurd Ideas

2006-07-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

This is the first part of a randomly posted series of absurd ideas that I have come across. I will do absolutely no work, just alert anyone who may come across this obscure blog to its existence.
(just click on the title)

2006-07-24T16:41:00.000-04:00

anarchist party

I want to be at this party.

Straight From Zeeshan's Dumb Blog

2006-06-06T13:53:00.001-04:00

Since my earlier posts on Zeeshan's blog Twilight of the Idle (I would link here, but it's not even worth looking at) are not being put to any good use (and since I haven't been able to come up with any new ideas in months) I've decided to move my posts to this blog, in the hopes that more than zero people will be exposed to them. I'm also going to try to retool them a little bit, because they seem to be lacking in some major ways. Anyways, here's the first one:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

- excerpt from The Common Good, by Noam Chomsky

I was talking to Zeeshan the other day about my experience watching The O'Reilly Factor while on hallucinagenic drugs, and I remarked at how ridiculous the whole show seemed to me. I was dumbfounded that people actually took it seriously. But then I started to realize that the ideas being espoused were really not all that different from those of the liberal sector of the country. The difference between liberal propaganda and conservative propaganda is almost enitrely rhetorical. Obviously there are some relatively important actual differences between the Democrats and Republicans, but ultimately they both support the same social structures, ideologies, and institutions. They just do a very good job of covering up the obvious similiarities by advocating slightly different approaches to politics and by constantly expressing distain for the other party. After watching The O'Reilly Factor again while completely sober, I realized just how important that particular strategy is. It wasn't that I was so much more put off by Bill O'Reilly's viewpoints than, say, those of my parents, it was that I was completely put off by his semantics and unflinching hatred for "the other side". And this phenomenon is not exclusive to Bill O'Reilly or even conservatives. Almost all of mainstream political thought is governed by these two main principles. And my good friend Noam has artfully illustrated this point in the above quote.

In this country, we have freedom of speech. But just because we're allowed to think and say anything doesn't mean we can.

Notes: This is a horrible post in many ways. First of all, I started off telling my readership that this tripped was inspired by psychadelic subtances, which probably doesn't do much for my credability. Secondly, I used only one show as my "evidence", and on top of that it was a show considered by most liberals to be laughably conservative. Finally, I didn't use any concrete examples of the superficial versus the actual differences between mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives. I'd rather just put this post out right now and give myself a feeling of momentum than spend the next week editing this article so it can be acceptable, so I'll put up a new post later as either a replacement for this one or as some sort of addendum.

I am an Idealist

2006-04-25T16:12:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's right, I'm and idealist. I don't really see why that has to be a dirty word. In the most bare-bones way, I would define an idealist (aside from the philosophical considerations) as someone who has some sort of conception of a perfect world, and would like to see it be that way. Most rational human beings would consider that to be a prerequisite for someone to be a moral human being (I know that's a kind of absolutist generalization, but I assume most would agree with the general sentiment). The one exception to the previous conclusion is the people whose ideals completely (or mostly) match the practices of the current world order.

I personally believe that the pejorative classification of idealist more accurately describes these people. Many people simply consider idealist to be a rough synonym for naive, and absolute faith in market economics and authoritarian politics in the face of overwhelming global poverty, racism, and lack of economic stability seems pretty naive. Furthermore, the believe that we are very close to achieving the ideal society is a patently naive (as well as disturbingly apocalyptic) idea. This idea is strongly associated with revolutionaries of all stripes, but we can't forget that almost all non-revolutionaries have committed the even more egregious error of assuming that we have already achieved ideal society. They may both be wrong, but it can be argued that the acts of the (perhaps misguided) revolutionaries is in some small way contributing to social progress, while the others are creating stagnation.

At this point I'd like to specify what I mean by revolutionary. The terms I've been using are kind of misnomers, but it's a lot simpler. Anyways, in this context I consider revolutionaries to be people who are actively fighting for a revolution (violent or non-violent) which they believe to be imminent. I personally would not consider myself a revolutionary in this sense. However I do not identify with the vast majority of non-revolutionaries who have pretty much accepted the status quo (the ones who have committed the egregious error). I belong to the minority of non-reformist and non-revolutionary radicals who believe that the ideal society will not be achieved in "One Big Revolution" and may even doubt that a better society may not even be possible (obviously a perfect society is almost by definition impossible, but most believe that there are some minimum standards that are achievable).

The final definition of idealist which I will address comes from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and provides a happy middle-ground between my initial definition and the excessively negative one. They say that and idealist is "one guided by ideals; especially : one that places ideals before practical considerations". I accept this definition wholeheartedly, provided I can elaborate on what being "practical" is. "Practical" cannot exist in a vacuum. In order for a means to be considered practical, you must have some sort of end in mind. Now, in achieving the current goals of modern society- namely political expediancy, market efficiency, corporate power, massive incarceration, and generally supporting the system- my views are very impractical. For example (although I do not actually support this) people who vote for third parties are generally seen as wasting their vote, more or less because it's impractical. Therefore, in a coutry where the two mainstream parties are virtually indistinguishable, the only possibility for change "ironically" becomes impractical. Change is impractical. However, if you decide on some slightly more humanitarian goals - low poverty and starvation rates, high literacy rates, economic equity, intellectual freedom, etc. - my beliefs become decidedly practical.

So in that sense, the majority of society is idealistic, holding the ideals of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, etc. above the practical considerations of human life.

Take THAT, Aditya!

2006-04-06T16:41:00.000-04:00

Well, I think freedom of expression is much more psychologically satisfying than intellectual freedom, because you are much more aware of the former. However, that doesn't always mean that is more important. For example, in the Asch Line Studies that you discussed, the people being studied weren't aware at all that their opinions were being manipulated (albeit very subtly). In that sense, they were completely satisfied. However, the manipulation caused them to come up with incorrect conclusions. If their compromised opinion was actually important in some way, the effects could be disastrous. To use an example that has been done to death, if the manipulated information had been the reasons for going to war in Iraq, the people in the study would be in serious trouble.

On the other hand, I think you can argue that intellectual freedom is not very important if you assume that people's opinions don't really matter. Sadly, this is true in many ways. The bulk of public policy is really not determined by the majority of people, but rather an elite few in the upper echelons of society. Yes, the population does contribute to the debate (except for some interesting free trade agreements which are truly terrifying), but the ultimate decisions are made by a handful of people. However, even if most people's opinions are completely inconsequential, the people "in charge" would still require intellectual freedom in order to make informed decisions, assuming they use their knowledge in a way that benefits more than just themselves, which is admittedly a very naive assumption. Furthermore, although most people don't have much say in national and international policies of their government, we still require a certain amount of diversity of opinion to make more "mundane" decisions, such as what car to buy. Also, in "the perfect society" (or at least my vision of it) people would have a lot more say in larger decisions, which would require quite a bit of (untainted) knowledge about a few things.

Also, I'm pretty sure intellectual diversity is essential to any sort of progress. People need to have different opinions in order to devise new solutions to problems, and any measures to stifle diversity can inhibit positive change. It's also possible that lack of intellectual diversity can also inhibit negative change, although that's kind of a complicated issue. My assumption is that in the right situation, a sort of social evolution would prevent that negative "memes" from causing too much damage, although my idea of the right situation is kind of specific. I have a theory about the evolution of states which is somewhat related to this idea that I've probably talked to you about, but have yet to elaborate on. I'll probably do that sometime later. I do realize I use natural selection as a base for a lot of theories altogether too much, but it just makes so much sense.

I would also like to take a moment to point out that encouraging intellectual freedom might not necessarily lead to intellectual diversity. It's very possible that if you provide all the right conditions for freedom of thought (namely strong critical reasoning "training" and free access to a wide variety information) that people will develop a relatively narrow range of opinions about the world. I personally find this highly unlikely, for reasons that I would be happy to elaborate on if anyone actually cares.

A more complicated question is how much a society can actually foster intellectual diversity. If it turns out to be a positive thing to foster intellectual freedom, then it would be an extremely important question to address. However, my assumption is that you can't seriously improve intellectual diversity through structural changes in a society (or maybe through any changes at all), and that all you can do is change the apparatus through which it is shaped. It's ridiculous to get rid of all the distributors of information in the country, which would theoretically prevent any sort of censorship of information, because it would also seriously impede the ability to access information.

On the other hand, leaving the supplying of knowledge to a certain group with its own personal interests is probably not a very wise decision either. For example, the government might suppress information that is critical of the government, a corporation might suppress information that is critical of the corporation or that might not be commercially viable, and I might suppress information that is critical of me or my ideas. There are probably very many pros and cons to each of us being used as arbiters of knowledge, and they would most likely result in populations with a unique outlook on life (presumably one that better suits the main distributer of information's interests). The best solution would probably be to spread the regulation of knowledge to as many entities as possible, and to try to eliminate the motivation to purposely suppress certain works.

David's New Rule

2006-03-15T21:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've developed a new policy to deal with certain people who disagree with my view of the world. Now, I completely understand that people wouldn't accept a political philosophy that is radically different from the current one, but some of their criticisms are just ridiculous. So I have a new plan of action whenever somebody says something along the lines of "Okay, pal. Put down your rocks and tell me - how would you run the world instead?" And here it is: I'm going to try to explain concisely what I believe are viable and reasonable alternatives (including ones that are not ostensibly anarchist) to the current economic and political order. Then - and here's the kicker - I'm going to ask them the same question. Yes, I will ask them to explain an entire world government on the spot. Since they probably more-or-less support the current world order, it should be much easier than what they nonchalantly suggested I do. However, if they are not able to articulate their preferred political organization, I'm going to shoot them in the face. So be prepared.

Company Dreamin'

2006-03-13T22:04:00.000-05:00

Clicky on the picky...

More on Anarchism

2006-03-07T00:23:00.000-05:00

First of all, I don't really think that "self-determination coupled with a desire for solidarity and cooperation" would be the basis of an anarchist society. I was just providing a somewhat analogous summary to the somewhat misleading "hard work and deserving what you get" credo. Neither is the really the reason those societies work the way they do. While every society is strongly influenced by the personalities and ethics of the individual members of them, no one would claim that the two above mission statements can explain or summarize any cohesive society.

I don't know much about pre-historical societies, but it makes sense to me that many, if not all of these societies would be strongly hierarchical. That doesn't necessarily mean that I think that humans have a strong tendency towards authoritarianism (or in this case, it seems more accurate to equate it with totalitarianism). I think it is entirely appropriate to dismiss those societies as unenlightened, because there are quite a few technological, cultural, and scientific advancements we've made since them, and the many more that we can make in the future. Much of the "social laws" you mentioned seem to have stemmed more from a lack of understanding about the world, and the particular methods people used to try to bridge the gap. I'm not just referring to stuff like rain and earthquakes, but also social behavior and agriculture. They all seem like rookie mistakes to me. However, this analysis doesn't explain why the hierarchical character of societies pretty much continues to this day.

I also think it is a silly mistake to use current and past societies as benchmarks for the capabilities of humanity. Many people naturally fall into the "end of history" mentality, where they assume that we are at the most advanced society possible. People seem to forget that this has been pretty much the mentality ever since human beings started recording history. It’s understandable that most people would naturally have difficulty imagining alternative societies (particularly ones that either haven’t happened or are conveniently left out of history books). However, that’s no excuse, because it’s really easy to escape from the idea that our paradigm is the one true way, particularly for people who make a point of examining the political philosophy and (to a lesser extent) economics.

I completely agree that physical violence is not the only form of coercion. In fact, I think the most pervasive forms of violence in the world do not result from the direct physical harm of people at all. I also think that most of the violence done by the government isn't physical as well. So abolishment of the government is not simply abolishment of the physical violence it does. However, it would be naVve to say that abolishment of the government and it's co-conspirators (the military, capitalists, the police, etc…) would be an elimination of all violence. I think a lot of radicals mistakenly attribute all the harm in the world to a certain group of people, and then posit that getting rid of them would also get rid of the problems. Then again on the other hand, the rest of the world generally does the same thing with a different group of people.

I do think that your reference to the two experiments is kind of misleading. In the Milgram's, people were placed in a specific situation and expected them to behave a certain way. If you place people within the context of a hierarchical relationship (not to mention people who live their entire lives in a hierarchical society) then it makes sense that they assume their roles diligently. In that way, it is kind of like the Stanford Prison Experiment, which I’m sure you’re aware of. Disposition and environment are both very important in influencing one's actions. It is very possible that I am selectively stressing the importance of certain data and causes, but it's pretty hard to avoid that without a more rigorous examination.

The other experiment seems to me to be a much graver threat to human progress. I’m not really sure what causes conformity in the first place, and I can’t really see any evolutionary benefits for it. If there are potential good things that come out of conformity, it is very clear that there are many more problems with the propensity of human beings to conform than there are benefits. First of all, it stifles individuality, which can lead to the adaptation that is so essential to progress. Second of all, it can be bad when people have a tradition that is damaging to someone, whether because of malicious designs or of (for lack of a better word) stupidity. In the case of the Asch line studies it is clearly malicious intent that causes this conformity blunder. I’d like to talk more about the causes and dangers of conformity, but I actually don’t know that much about it, so I’ll leave it at that right now.

Although you claim to acknowledge the difference between communism and anarchism, you are treating anarchism as if it is fundamentally similar to communism. You seem to have fallen into the trap that many people I talk to have (particularly pro-capitalists). A couple of months ago, I told a friend of mine that I was taking a class entitled "Individual Freedom vs. Authority", and he replied (without a hint of sarcasm or humor), "You mean communism versus democracy?" Although he was a child of the Cold War era who cited one of his favorite books of all time as Atlas Shrugged, he still represents a pretty good majority of the American populace. The point is that people condense the entire spectrum of political possibilities into a simple linear continuum (and the "acceptable" political possibilities into an even smaller range, one which usually spans between the democrat and republican parties). The tradeoff you're referring to seems almost entirely fictional. I'd be really interesting in reading Durkheim's book to see his (your?) perspective on this. I don't see exactly what you believe is the reason for this incompatibility between intellectual and social freedom and equity (on a side note, I think there's a difference between equity and equality, and I'm not sure whether you're trying to use them as synonyms).

The basic assumption you're making it attributing certain detriments to human beings as products of capital, and certain detriments as products of government (I know I'm over-generalizing, but I think I have the gist of it), but it's pretty easy to see that the state can take over some of the nastier aspects of capital, and vice versa. The last two centuries is peppered with examples of this occuring, including the few examples I listed above. The USSR is an example of the other side of the coin, which had a socioeconomic system that many have referred to as "state capitalism". Furthermore, examples from pre-capitalist societies show examples of very limited freedom of though as well as serious inequity. To posit the give and take scenario you seem to be suggesting is not only easy to dismantle intellectually, but also historically innaccurate.

Also, it's pretty obvious to see that capitalism (even in it's most libertarian form) has the potential for as many limitations of social and intellectual freedom as even the most authoritarian regime. For example, intellectual property rights, biased news reporting (yes, companies do have a vested interest in making sure a specific viewpoint is expressed in the media), an almost totalitarian respect for satisfying mainstream sensibilities (aka corporate censorship), the need for an intellectual lower class to provide cheap labor, the social penalties for poverty, etc… I could go on an on. Not to mention the very real and anti-democratic policies in the name of liberalization of trade in the form of MAI, NAFTA, GATT, WTO and others. Much of what I'm referring to is not just potentially a problem, but an actual danger that has serious ramifications for the integrity of our "freedom".

I probably agree with your assessment of the relative importance of intellectual/social freedom versus economic freedom, depending on what the minimum acceptable economic conditions are. However in this case, I think you can have your cake and eat it too, so it's not that big of an issue.

For some reason, I've never studied that much on highly authoritarian societies, so I don't know much about their history. However, I do know that the most famous fascist society of all time was Nazi Germany, which had a pretty strong antipathy to equality. Furthermore, as far as I know, it actually sprung from a liberal democracy much like our own. It is my understanding that the rhetoric of equality is more of a symptom of a larger cause of fascism, rather than the cause itself. It seems more like social decay and extreme poverty are more substantive causes of fascism and coincidentally calls for egalitarianism. Also, most anarchists more or less agree with the phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" not "equal work, equal pay". Equality for equality's sake is just a bad idea, and it's not only most likely impossible to enforce, the mere attempt to do so would cause serious repression on a grand scale, much like that of the USSR. I personally think the world should strive for freedom from oppression, exploitation, and coercive hierarchy rather than absolute equality ( more reasonable halfway point would be some kind of equity).

A more determined version of myself could write an entire book on the absurdity of the current tendency to posit almost magical powers to the free market. The mechanism by which "fluid market forces... allocate people to necessary socioeconomic roles" is shrouded in a creepy kind of mystery, in a manner that is completely unreasonable. I've read of dozens of examples of capitalist apologists achieving variations of what you've described, but no actual in depth analyses of how they occur, and not even a cursory description of how it does it. It's mostly in the vein of "the market [magically] accomplishes this". On the other hand, I've seen even more examples of the market (magically) allocating resources to the huge multinational corporations, and very detailed analyses of why this is inevitable.

2006-02-27T18:11:00.000-05:00

This comic is from PartiallyClips.com, which hosts Partially Clips, which is much funnier than Cliptoons (which is kind of like a one-panelled version of the former), but they're longer and wouldn't fit in the blog. Anyways, you should definitely read some of the Partially Clips comics (here are two of my favorites)

Internet Firms to Defend Policies

2006-02-19T16:59:00.000-05:00

I saw this article in the Washington Post (click on the title for the link) the other day and it interested me. Here's the first paragraph:

"Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. will go on Capitol Hill today to defend corporate policies for dealing with China that they say balance business interests with human-rights concerns."

With an opening paragraph like this, you know something evil is brewing (in complete disregard for Google's famed slogan of "Don't be Evil", which, btw, seems to indicate that they set the bar pretty low). It should be pretty obvious that business interests are far more important to these companies than those pesky human-rights concerns. So far it seems like these companies aren't going so far as to murder union leaders, but helping authoritarian and repressive governents repress people is really not a road most morally sound human beings want to travel down.

Apparently, the arguement is that since they're operating there, they have to cooperate with the country's laws, they're actually benefitting the people of China by being there, and they didn't even know what China was going to do with the information. So they're saying that not only do they have to do it, but they are also doing a great service to the citizens of China by disregarding human rights, although they weren't aware that they were doing it. I think it may have more to do with China's wopping 1.3 billion person population and drastically growing market. You can call me cynical, but I was under the impression that money was important to corporations.

Questions on Anarchism

2006-02-16T17:11:00.000-05:00

This is a response to aditya's comment on my most recent article.

First of all, I'd like to say that it's great to be able to talk with intelligent reasonable people about anarchism, because it's pretty much impossible to develop an understanding of something without debate. I'm also starting to realize that, although anarchism has been around as a coherent philosophy for over a century, there are still lots of holes that need to be filled in. So in some ways I feel like I'm actually treading new ground in some of my discussions, and in that context, dissenting opinions are almost essential.

With regard to your questions, I've tried to address them as thoroughly as possible. However, like I said, some of these ideas are actually not very developed within the school of anarchist thought (at least as far as I know), so I'll mostly be drawing from my own interpretations. Not to be said that there are no ideas, just that the majority of anarchists (including myself) aren't actually that familiar with the ideas of 19th century anarchists, and even if they were, they would probably be relatively outdated. Secondly, anarchists differ drastically in their beliefs about the nature of humans and the particular applications in human society. So I really can't represent the actually opinions of all or even most anarchists.

There are quite a few schools of thought that deal with the economics of potential anarchist societies. In fact, the anarcho-capitalists have no problem with capitalism (as long as it's completely unregulated), as the name implies. However, I won't be discussing their beliefs, since the right wing anarchists are pretty much just insane (I mean, nobody in their right mind actually thinks privatizing the police is a good idea). In terms of productivity, it's kind of subjective. For example, a certain economy can produce quite a bit, but if the products aren't supplied to the people who need them, the productivity is really useless. I know that's a simplistic interpretation of economics, but a more complex analysis would require a much longer essay, and I would probably need to know quite a bit more about economics. In fact, although I've only taken one class on econ, I imagine that there probably aren't that many classes that deal with "productivity" in ways that actually take into account helping out people. I could be wrong.

However, like you said, if society was structured in the way that you suggested was the natural result of anarchy, then it would be completely impossible to be as productive as our current economic system. The problem is that in order to create the right kinds and amounts of products, you need massive coordination. Small, isolated groups can't create in bulk, and even if they were able to, they couldn't very well figure out what would be best for everything without constant and aggressive communication with the rest of the world. In fact, the highly coordinated Soviet Union was much better off economically before it underwent massive liberalization in the 80s. As much as I disagree with the centralized character of that particular atrocity, the fact is, some of the economics were sound, for precisely the reasons I've been discussing. But I've gotten ahead of myself; I'll get more into the proposed material structures of anarchy later on. Either way, I'd be interested in reading the book you suggested to get a better view of the whole matter (wikipedia didn't really give me much information).

If you want to know more about specific economic policies that different types of anarchists propose, wikipedia has a pretty good introduction here. There are georgist anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, individualist anarchists, and more. Although I can't reasonably talk about the efficiency of each of these economic models, the links might explain a little about their aims (also, this link about participatory economics might be of interest; although it is not explicitly anarchism, it's definitely very compatible with it).

I tend to attribute the function of any given society to the economic, political and social structure more than to the motivations of the individuals within it. However, technically motivations are a subset of the social structure of a society, and I'll leave it to you to assume how large of a subset it is. Anyways, if the main motivations of capitalists is "a moralistic obsession with hard work and 'deserving what you get'" then the corresponding motivation for anarchists would be "a strong sense of self-determination coupled with a desire for solidarity and cooperation". That's a little vague and probably sounds a little too lofty for the average human being to follow, but I don't really see how the same argument can't be made for the capitalist motivations (at least if you asked a disinterested third-party observer).

There are almost as many different ideas about the political and social organization of anarchism societies as there are about economics. The two most notable that come to mind are primitivism, federalism, and regionalism. There's a pretty good description of the latter two here (and if you really want to get an in-depth knowledge, a lot of the books cited, especially Proudhon's, should be illuminating). Now, these approaches for the most part confirm your suspicion in some ways. Primitivism, which I actually have spent a good deal of time researching before I thoroughly rejected it (for reasons which I don't really need to go over), is pretty much exactly what you're describing, and regionalism is not too different. My interpretation is that the breaking down of society into affinity groups does not literally mean the destruction of urban areas and the establishment of hundreds of millions of tiny 12-person communes around the world. I see it as more of an administrative and economic partitioning. The biggest structural changes I foresee are the workers taking control of the workplaces, and more specifically the factories (although I know the US is post-industrial and more of a service economy, but we're talking globally here), which hopefully will avoid the capitalist oppression of most of the west and the government-controlled mess of the USSR and other "communist" countries. It will also hopefully avoid the need for the tiny sectarian communes you're so worried about (again, sorry for the simplistic analysis). As for the politic changes I can't even attempt to do a basic explanation. However, this guy can:

"Solicit men's view in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political 'language' of mass democracy, which represents 'the people' as unitary and undivided and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end."

It's a nice little quote. Now I can't really go into more detail because I literally haven't managed to find anything more detailed than the sweeping generalizations our the anarchist "founding fathers". Now I personal think the reason for this absence is not do to internal inconsistencies within anarchism, but rather due to a complete rejection for what you call "ideological authoritarianism". Although this a very sound policy in my eyes, it ironically causes one of the two most serious problems facing modern anarchist movements, both of which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

The irony of this ideological libertarianism is that in this case it leads to striking similarities with what might be the most egregious form of absolutism that exists: Christianity. By rejecting the idea that we can accurately describe what a state of anarchy would be like, we are inadvertently attributing a certain magical quality to it. The language of anarchists is one that appeals to pretty much all human beings (in fact, some of the language we use was cleverly exploited by the founding fathers of the USA, and is still used today as gross caricatures of freedom and justice), but due to our natural hesitancy to arrogantly dictate the conditions for anarchy, we are left simply with the rhetoric. In this form, anarchy is indistinguishable from the Christian idea of heaven (although perhaps slightly more concrete).

The second problem with anarchism as it currently exists, happens to bring the similarity with Christianity even closer. This lies in the complete reject of the current society, and one-minded focus on the One Big Revolution. This idea draws from the very worse streams of Marxist vanguardism that should make any self-respecting anarchist sick. The idea of one momentous shift in world politics leading to the "heaven" that is anarchy seems like was plucked straight out of the book of revelations. The analogy is so obvious, that I almost don't need to spell it out. In some ways, the anarchists are waiting for the rapture. Of course, I would argue that we are not nearly as far gone as the Christians, but it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.

I've very worried about the similarities between some aspects of anarchism and Christianity not simply because I hate Christianity and everything that has to do with it, but because of serious implications on the present and future of the movement. The vagueness of the predictions for a future society and the idle preparation for its coming can cause serious atrophy in the theoretical and practical foundations of the movement, respectively. However, I am confident that, although these problems are very serious, they are not so fundamentally ingrained in the movement that it is impossible to overcome. Anyways, this stuff is really only interesting to anarchists probably, so I'll get back to the issue at hand.

And the issue at hand is...

Human Nature.

Anarchists have had an interesting relationship with human nature, as is expected for any radical philosophy, or really any philosophy (but I believe that any real philosophy should be radical). I'm not exactly sure if there's a consensus among anarchists about human nature (there rarely is) but I personally agree with your conception of it. It is impossible to say exactly what it is, because in order to do so, you would need to examine man in a completely natural state; a state that does not in fact exist. The only way you can reasonably talk "human nature" is be describing/predicting the way human beings respond to a certain situation. I think most people would agree that the same person will react drastically differently depending on the situation they finds themself in. I think one of the aims of political philosophy is to determine what organization of society is such that it creates the best situation for the most amount of people to act right. If I were to phrase it more broadly (which I won't) the resulting generalization would probably be the only aim of political philosophy.

I'm not confident to definitively say what situation is most conducive to causing good behavior, but I don't think it's a capitalistic one and I don't think it's an authoritarian one. That's more or less why I'm an anarchist. I believe that direct action, not appeal to a higher power, is the most effective way to accomplish your goals. Of course, just because you're not submitting to authority, that doesn't mean that you're not cooperating. On the contrary, horizontal associations induce cooperation, rather than inhibit them. If you are on the same level as someone else, and you have similar interests (as people in similar situations are wont to do) then you're likely to work with your equals to accomplish similar goals. Anyways, it appears that I'm saying this with certainty simply because the text flows more easily: I do not mean to imply that I am 100 percent sure about any of this. Furthermore, I apologize for the trillionth time for being overly simplistic. For a more detailed account of the practice of modern anarchist societies, find about any book on the Spanish Revolution that has an overtly anarchist viewpoint.

Finally, on the current turmoil in Africa, I don't think I know enough to address that issue directly. I also would like to note that the mainstream accepted meaning for anarchy doesn't not have anything to do with the tenets of anarchism or the society that anarchists predict. The phrase you're probably looking for is "violent anomie" which is really actually a pretty good descriptor of places other than those in Africa, such as the U.S.A (each of the letters in USA has a link to a different symptom of our particular case of anomie).

On the subject of transition to anarchic societies, I would also like to direct you to the Spanish Revolution. It was by no means a complete transition, but there are reasons to believe had the fascists not been around, and the communists didn't meddle, it would have gone through and it would have been a relatively peaceful revolution. But that's just speculation. The current goal of anarchists with regards to an ultimate revolution is creating the foundations of the "new society" in isolated pockets with the current one. If enough people in this country internalized anarchist ideas (or at the very least semi-anarchist practices such as direct action, voter abstention, cooperation, self-determination, worker-controlled companies etc...) then a violent revolution would not be necessary. The history of the world has had a few non-violent revolutions, so there's some sort of precedent for this type of thing. Ultimately, if enough people support an overthrow of the government, the powers-that-be have no choice but to concede. In that situation, the only thing that could lead to violence is the government having too strong of a desire, and the only country that could possible succeed in squashing a popular uprising is the USA (what with the billions of dollars being spent in the military yearly). Either way, I think truly anarchist society can not possibly come out of violence. If you would like a more detailed analysis of why, I can give it to you, but right now I'm really tired of typing.

My Great Endeavor

2006-02-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

I've seen a lot of anarchist texts that address anarchism from an insider's perspective; they have a great appeal to anarchists (and non-anarchist radicals) who are looking to expand their knowledge of the obscure political philosophy of anarchism, however an important demographic is left out in most of these texts: namely the majority of mankind. Very few of the essays, articles, and books on anarchism that I have read provide a simple, illuminating look at anarchism that can be readily understood by non-radicals. The few that I have managed to come across have been hopelessly outdated. The time has come for a tract that appeals to the unfocused disillusionment of the masses and helps people direct their frustration towards useful and sustainable action. Not to be said that it should only appeal to people who are in some ways critical of the system. On the contrary, the bulk of this essay will be focused for the most part on people who are steadfastly devoted to life-long service of the status quo (particularly the more liberal democrats).

I’m going to try to write a longer piece that will hopefully accomplish the aforementioned task, but I’m not a very disciplined writer, so chances are I won’t succeed. However, I will most likely be able to write enough for at least a few cohesive posts. I was going to ask Zeeshan to help me write some of this, but at this point I pretty much consider him to be a lost cause. So it appears that I will be entering this ultimately doomed endeavor alone.

The first “chapter” will deal with the question of why people cling to mainstream politics, and what exactly they think they’re doing by participating in the spectacle of government. I’ve just started writing it, so it will be a while before I post it, but it should be pretty sweet. I imagine that it will provide the most appeal to most people, especially those who don’t give a rat’s ass about Anarchism, and have no interest in learning about it.

On a final note, I’d like to remark on the inspiration for this whole enterprise. For the first time in the history of the philosophical talks I have with my dad over dinner, he actually brought up the topic of anarchism of his own volition. We talked about it for the next hour or so, and for the first time in my life I was able to argue with someone who was actually capable of stringing two coherent thoughts together on the topic of anarchism (not including the anarchists I have argued with). The trick was that, although he didn’t know that much about anarchism, he was a great arguer and also knew a great deal about political philosophy (it may also be because he‘s not a moron, unlike the bulk of people who I talk with about politics). Although the main points he was making were ones that I have heard time and time before, he was actually capable of forming them in articulate and logical ways, and I was really able to elucidate my views on the matter. It really helped me not only understand exactly what I thought about the matter and expand my knowledge of a practical anarchist society, but gave me the tools to argue more comprehensibly on the topic with people who don’t really know what they’re talking about (as well as the people who seem to have some sort of clue).

The New Anti-Semitism

2006-02-12T16:36:00.000-05:00

So I've been reading the wikipedia article on "the new anti-Semitism" which is apparently strongly associated with left-wing groups and anti-Zionism. Some people have actually gone so far as to say that any form of anti-Zonism is synonomous with anti-Semitism (one report by the State Department even bizarrely characterized critics of US foreign policy and globalization as anti-semitic). However, the less insane Zionists contend that anti-Zionism can lead to anti-Semitism (though they don't really seem to indicate how this happens) or is a kind of a front for anti-Semitic sentiment. Clearly some of the people involved in leftist politics - and in particular opposition to the state of apartheid in Israel - hold anti-semitic beliefs, but it's really hard to tell how serious of a problem this is. Since the issue of Israel is very politically charged, and anti-Semitism has been (and still is) a very serious problem throughout the world, it is difficult to sift through all the rhetoric to get to the heart of the matter. However, one thing is very clear: someone's views about the state of Israel should not be delegitimized simply because they are in fact anti-Semitic. Anti-imperialism and anti-Jewish sentiment are two distinct issues, and it's almost never appropriate to attack someone's character in the context of a political debate. Secondly, the legitimacy of the accusations seem somewhat suspect. Thomas Friedman (who I've recently learned is pretty much pure evil) says that "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest." While the far Left does have trouble examining all the injustices in the world, it is psychotic to assume that focus on Israel is due to anti-Semitism. Using that logic, my criticism of the US stems not from a reasoned analysis of global and domestic politics and a passion for justice, but a virulent hatred for all American citizens (sadly, I'm sure a lot of people might agree with that assesment). And furthermore, when people condemn the terrorist activities of some Palestinians but not the terrorist activities of other groups (including *gasp* The USA), are they being islamophobic? Israel's relationship with the US, along with it's strategic presence in the Middle East and its "interesting" attitude towards the Palestinian problem are some of the many reasons that the Left (maybe innapropriately) focuses on it as a target. Again, there are legitimate critiques to be made about the Left's choices of entities to denounce, but racism is not one of them. That doesn't mean that discussion of possible anti-Semitism within the movement (or any other movement) shouldn't occur, just that as they stand now, they are unreasonable and most likely an attack on criticism of Israel instead of a pure objection to bigotry.

NCOR 2006

2006-02-05T19:39:00.000-05:00

So I just returned from the National Coalition of Organized Resistance (click on the header to see the webpage) and it was fucking sweet. There were hundreds of anarchists roaming around the campus of American University this weekend. Along with a ridiculous amount of tid bits about activism and anarchism, I also learned that apparently Sidwell is a radical training ground. Including me and Zeeshan, there were five kids from Sidwell at the conference, including one from our grade. We saw Cat Dawson, Ben Hartman and Tom Frampton (apparently he's part of a radical folk collective; the music's pretty fucking good and you can download it all on the webpage). Zeeshan and I hung up with Ben extensively during the weekend, and we briefly talking to Cat, but did manage to talk to Tom. Anyways, I don't have anything substantive to say, but it was just so refreshing to be with such a large group of people with virtually identical political beliefs to myself. Not that I don't like intellectual diversity, it's just that it's rare for me to be around even two or three people who could even stand to listen to me talking politics. The highlights of the weekend were the Pacifism and Anarchism lecture by Coleman McCarthy, the Against Apocalyptic Anarchism workshop (Zeeshan missed it; the bitch) and the Weatherman workshop in which two former members of the Weather Underground spoke (Bernadine Dohrn and Laura Whitehorn). I felt like a complete political novice (both intellectually and with regard to activism) so it was kind of despressing, but it the potential for achievement and the copious good examples were also inspiring. Alright well I have nothing more to say so I'm gonna cut this off before I start rambling too much.

Some Notable Quotes

2006-02-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

I spent way too much time compiling and editting all these quotes. Luckily I was drunk most of the time!

Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
- Edward Abbey

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
- Victor Hugo
Ninetythree

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
- Ursula K. LeGuin

But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum

What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.
- Kerry Thornley
The Principia Discordia, 5th edition

All humans are hypocrites; the biggest hypocrite of all is the one who claims to detest hypocrisy.
- Peter Wastholm

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.
- Alfred Hitchcock

If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.
- Adolf Hitler

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- Voltaire
War

Peter: Ok, here's another riddle. A woman has two children. A homicidal murderer tells her she can only keep one. Which one does she let him kill?
Brian: That's... that's not a riddle. That's ... that's just terrible.
Peter: Wrong, the ugly one!

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole book.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Good Omens

To make and apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.
- Carl Sagan

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
- Albert Einstein

It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.
- Gloria Steinem

Then I saw a sign which said 'Drink Canada Dry' - so we started.
- Brendan Behan

Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
- E. M. Cioran

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
- Cyril Connoly

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
- Anonymous

Imagine, if you will, a worldwide conspiracy to deny the existence of the color yellow and whenever you saw yellow they told you no, that isn't yellow, what the fuck's yellow? Eventually, whenever you saw yellow, you would say: that isn't yellow, course, it isnt blue or green or purple, or... you'd say it, yes it is, it's yellow, and become increasingly hysterical, and then go quite berserk.
- David Edgar
Mary Barnes

Someone from Greenpeace walked up to me the other day and started yelling 'MURDERER! MURDERER! What do you see when you see a cow grazing one of Mother Nature's beautiful green fields, what do you see!?' Now I'm a vegetarian but I just didn't like his attitude so I said 'Mate, when I see a cow I see a steak wrapped in a leather jacket.'
- Will Anderson

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.
- Henry Miller

It was Christianity which first painted the devil on the worlds walls; It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to it's deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exists.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear and, behold, do ye now complain that ye lack FREEDOM!
- Robert Anton Wilson
The Principia Discordia

Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone.
- Robert Anton Wilson
The Principia Discordia

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
- Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
- Charles Bukowski

Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.
- Bruno Jasienski
Yasensky

Hell is when there is no reason to live and no courage to die.
- William Markiewicz
Extracts of Existence

The party is not concerned with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, providing that the hierarchical structure always remains the same.
- George Orwell

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
- George Orwell

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
- George Orwell

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
- George Orwell

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
- George Orwell

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
- George Orwell

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
- George Orwell

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
- George Orwell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
- George Orwell

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
- George Orwell

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
- George Orwell

The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.
- Bertrand Russell

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
- Aldous Huxley

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
- Bertrand Russell

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty - I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat.
- Martin H. Fischer

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
- George Bernard Shaw

Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
- John J. Miller
And Hope to Die, in Jokertown Shuffle Wild Cards IX

Religion is the opium of the masses.
- Karl Marx

They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come - it will, if his prayer is heard. A terrible day of vengeance when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.
- Solomon Northup

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.
- Fran Lebowitz

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
- John Maynard Keynes

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse it true.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Either god should have written a book to fit my brain, or he should have made my brain to fit his book.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
- E. M. Forster

Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being suffer eternally for any offence whatever.
- Antony Flew
The Presumption of Atheism, God, Freedom, and Immortality

Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.
- Dan Barker

Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
- Ayn Rand

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
- Albert Einstein

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.
- Freidrich Nietzsche

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
- Toulouse-Lautrec

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
- Clarence Darrow

Where it is duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
- John Morley

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
- Jean Rostand

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
- Karl Marx

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
- Karl Marx

Religion is the opium of the masses.
- Karl Marx

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.
- Mikhail Bakunin

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
- Mikhail Bakunin

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.
- Mikhail Bakunin

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
- Karl Marx

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
- Karl Marx

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
- Karl Marx

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
- Mikhail Bakunin

The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.
- Mikhail Bakunin

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
- Mikhail Bakunin

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it.
- Peter Kropotkin

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.
- Emma Goldman

Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.
-Henry David Thereau

If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force.
- Auberon Herbert

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
- Emma Goldman

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
- Emma Goldman

Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.
- Herbert Read

We see that not only is the emperor naked--he is a murder, tyrant, brigand, liar, and bungler.
- James Harris

Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?

Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.
- August Spies

'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.
- Emma Goldman

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.
- Leo Tolstoy

Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrawise, must check tradition by reason.
- Leo Tolstoy

The great are great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise!
- Max Stirner

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited--or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society.
- Errico Malatesta

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
- Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife

Workers and their families may starve to death in the New World Order of economic rationality, but diamond necklaces are cheaper in elegant New York shops, thanks to the miracle of the market.
- Noam Chomsky

In the hands of a people whose education has been willfully neglected, the ballot is a cunning swindle benefitting only the united barons of industry, trade and property.
- Daniel Guérin

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
- Edward Abbey

Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey

Liberal-Democracy seldom voices any arguments against anarchism as such-other than relying on prejudice-because its objections are purely authoritarian, and unmask the innate Statism and authoritarianism of liberalism.
- Albert Meltzer

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Talk of revolution is one of avoiding reality.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Manifesto of the Patriotic American

2006-01-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

I'm proud to have been randomly born within an arbitrary geographical area encompassing a wide range of people with varying degress of similarity and common interests with myself. I didn't choose to be born in this country, but that doesn't stop me, along with most of the rest of the world (some who even happened to have been born outside this country), from simplistically believing that my country is the 'best in the world'. Also like the rest of the world, I can easily state all the great things that my country has done, and I salute and delusionally aggrandize the important men and women (okay, just the men) in the history of this country. When it comes to the bad deeds and villains of this country (which, ironically, happen to be the aggrandized men and women of my country more often than not) I am a know-nothing (here lies 'discrete' reference to the racist and xenophobic Know-Nothing movement of the 1850s which I have more in common with than I'd like to admit).

Along with loving my country simply because I was born in it, I also have some 'real' reasons for loving this large and completely inhuman mass of land and the people in it (ha ha no, just kidding, only the land). I love it because of the freedom and prosperity that it affords me. Freedom and prosperity that only a genocide of an entire people, mass kidnapping and enslavement of millions of Africans, the disenfranchisement and oppression of the lower classes, brutal conquest in the name of manifest destiny, global imperialism, barbarous economic policies enforcing protectionism and economic hegemony over the rest of the world in a manner which would make Adam Smith kill himself were he not already dead, and a healthy love of freedom can provide.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that God loves America too?

Terror Alert

2006-01-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

So it just occured to me that we still have a terror alert. Anyways, I decided that in the interests of national security and keep my friends from harm, I will put the Terror Alert on my blog. Now you can know at all times how likely it is that our freedom-hating enemies from the backwards sand-countries of Arabia are planning to personally murder you and your family. The alert is at the bottom part of the sidebar (just below the I Power Blogger icon.

Unemployment and the Class Struggle

2006-01-03T16:04:00.000-05:00

I wrote this in response to Aditya's criticism of my original snippets post:

Aditya, I thought you were going to respond to the other post, you lying bastard. Also, this is not the greatest post to respond to. That said, you make some good points (and there are some things you've said that I don't really know much about, but I'll try to address, and learn more about later). Firstly, I object to the use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" in most cases. It has gone from a relatively neutral term meaning that three or more people have planned something in secret that is either illict or immoral in nature to pretty much being synonymous with the belief of people who think they've been anal probed and "the government" is covering it up. Although my assertion pretty much is a conspiracy theory (although I don't entirely agree that it is a conpiracy), so I guess I can't really complain about your characterization.

Regarding the "conspiracy theory" of the ruling class. It seems pretty obvious that the people with the most political and economic power a) want to keep their power and b) know how to. I call that class consciousness, which may sound unpalatable to most. However, few would disagree that points a and b are incorrect. The ruling class is simply the alliance of the people with political power in order to secure their interests. I don't even need address any denial that there is in fact an alliance, so I won't.

With regards to the unemployment rate specifically, there is a specific constant unemployment that is about 4-7 percent in the United States, which is called structural unemployment. That's just inherent in capitalism. There's also cyclical and frictional unemployment, which the government and the owners of the means of production actually have a good deal of control over. The capitalists can hire and fire people, the Randian in the Fed can change interest rates, minimum wage can be alterred, etc... It would be foolish to say that they didn't do these things with their own interests in mind. While it may not be a conscious conspiracy, they're definitely working together to support their class interests.

While I don't know much about the economics of the "socialist" countries you are referring to, except for the fact that they are not in fact socialist. These countries that are practicing benevolent capitalism probably in some ways are more egalatarian than places like the United States, but they still have the same shortcomings. That's all I can definitively say on the topic at this point.

As for the unemployment rate being overstated, I agree with you entirely. Most people are not employed for an extended period of time. The vast majority of the permanently unemployment do have extenuating circumstances which have very little to do with either laziness or a "ruling class conspiracy". However, the unemployed who are capable of working provide a nice little motivation for the workers who aren't unemployed. It keeps worker productivity up and wages down. Dissent is also pretty easily managed. For example, at Leo's bike messenger company, they were attempting to organize. Within a few weeks of the beginning of the negotiations, quite a few people left the company. I think about four or five were fired and an equal amount quit (and quitting may not seem relavent, but I if it's in response to the draconian methods imposed in response to the organization of the workers, it seems important). While that may not seem like a lot in a company of dozens of people, it provides an impressive psychological deterrent.

For me, the vote is still out as to whether or not most of the problems in this country are being specifically engineered by the ruling class, or are more or less a natural result of the social order. I used to lean more towards the latter, and I still do, but the conscious actions of the elite seem to be an entirely plausible support for the order. All in all, it can easily be both.

At the risk of sounding elitist, I think it's very possible for "the unwashed masses" (to borrow a phrase from the actual elitists who thought that the poor needed a system that will decide the politics for them, our founding fathers and their economic, political, and intellectual descendents) can vote against their own self-interests. Again, the idea of brainwashing has been placed in the same category as conspiracy theory, but I think it's still an appropriate term. Religion is a powerful tool in getting people to lose track of what actually benefits them. So is education (and lack thereof). I know I'm not touching on exactly how these institutions do this, but I feel like thise response would get tediously long. I'll try to write about their specific method of "educating" the public in other posts. If people are given false illusions and outright lies which cloud their judgement, they are already in a system that decides the politics for them, regardless of whether they are in a direct democracy or a parliamentary republican or totalitarian state. And for future reference, trying to refute somebody's point by claiming that their argument leads to an unwanted conlusion is not a very effective debate tool. It's like calling someone sexist if they claim that men on average have more upper-body strength than women. (I feel like this entire paragraph is touching on some nice ideas, and I'm not doing them much justice in this article, so I'll try to publish and expanded version later)

It's also possible to claim that many poor people act against their own interests simply because they're stupid conformist or something of the like, which I believe is more of a justification for not allowing them to rule themselves than the brainwashed argument (but I guess that's neither here nor there). However, any cursory look at the history of progressive movements in the last two or three centuries will show that most of them have been pioneered by the working class, who seem to have had a very clear knowledge of their own interests. Even before then, the peasants in Europe viciously fought against the first steps towards capitalism, which they all knew would not benefit them in any way. There's no way to know exactly how many of the poorest people in society were directly involved in or even supportive of these movements, but my guess is that it was a minority. Now I don't know exactly why most people act against their own interests in the political sphere, but it could have to do with structures inherent in any given hierarchical system, or conscious meddling on the part of the propertied class, it could be both, it could be due to new advances in propaganda techniques in the last century or so, or it could be that the entire world has embraced the "consumer paradise" that is capitalism, and while certain aspects of capitalism don't benefit them, they realize that they must exist in order to support the system itself (which ultimately benefits them). I don't think it is because the people are just naturally too stupid to realize what's good for them.

David's Snippets, Part Two

2006-01-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

Terrorism: The calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear.

Terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

These are two definitions of terrorism (I got from them dictionary.com) that I believe most people would agree are pretty accurate. I tend to agree with the first definition more because it specifically mentions civilians and leaves out damage against property (but I guess it's possible that some people stay awake at night utterly horrorified that someone might key their car).

Anyways, the reason that I point this out is that is because it definitively shows that the United States is a terrorist organization. There is no debate that the United States of America has committed acts of terrorism. In fact, the USA is responsible for the two largest terrorist attacks in the history of civiliziation (the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) which killed a combined total of about a quarter of a million Japanese civilians.

In the United States' defense, most of its time is not spent committing international acts of terror against its enemies, and it is by no means the only group that uses terrorism as a means of attaining political goals. In fact, almost every government that has ever existed has used terrorist methods to control either its domestic of foreign enemies (and even friends). The United States is simply the most powerful nation on earth, and therefore is quite possibly the most effective at utilizing terrorism to attain its political goals. Also, since the US theoretically has other, more humane ways to "convince" people, it seems less reasonable for it to use terrorism than, say, a poor Palestinian who has no political or economic power and really nothing to lose (or gain).

David's Snippets, Part One

2005-12-31T15:26:00.000-05:00

The unemployment rate is kept artificially high by the ruling class in order to encourage job insecurity. They then turn around and call poor an unemployed people lazy, and lament that they should get a job.

Reality is truly stranger than fiction.

Aditya is Wrong

2005-11-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

And here is part two of the ongoing series: Articles From When David Was Actually a Competent Writer.

This posting isn't actually in my Xanga, but a response to somebody’s response to an article I had in it. I know, it's very complicated, but I'm sure you'll be able to handle it. I'm not reproducing the article I wrote, but here's the response that my esteemed colleague, Aditya Dasgupta (Cambridge University) wrote on my Xanga:

Those technical jobs are really just a part of basic production of goods like anything else, except that its kind of a capitalistic streamlined process of being more efficient. So as opposed to everybody performing basic services and producing goods that society depends on, the task is performed by some, and streamlined to be much more efficient by others. Its kind of like an economic production line. That’s why global GDP for example is infinitely higher than say it was back in ancient times when everybody was farming, because of the introduction of technology and specialization.

I'm not saying its the best system, and its somewhat unjust, but all jobs do serve some purpose I think somewhere in a larger scheme of economic production--otherwise they wouldn't exist. Even stock brokers are just making trade between people, between farmers and households just for example, more efficient on the large scale. Yet they don't seem to serve any tangible purpose.

Of course there’s the problem of the unfair reward system for various peoples' jobs, so its not equal. But I do think the system can be fixed without a total system change.

And no I am not being a capitalist tool.....

First of all, I would like to say that Aditya is in fact being a capitalist tool. That being said, he does seem to make some good points. First of all, assuming you could compare the post-industrial global economy to the production of isolated agrarian economies, the global GDP would probably be much (though not infinitely, as Aditya seems to believe) higher now than when it was back in "ancient times". Hell, I might even go so far as to say that the per capita GDP is much higher now than it was "back then". The problem with this clearly capitalist view is that a Ferrari contributes about as much to the GDP as, say, 40,000 loaves of bread. Now, far be it from me to denigrate the contribution of the luxury car industry in making the world a better place, but I think don't think those two commodities should be treated equally.

Aditya also is correct in establishing that in any modern economy (not just capitalist ones) all production is social. Everyone plays a certain part in contributing to the economy. And even if someone may not contribute anything useful or even a tangible object at all, they are still an integral part of the economy. Whether or not this particular method of division of labor, the "capitalistic streamlined process", actually makes production of goods more efficient is debatable. What is clear is that, despite the mainstream capitalist view that "efficiency is the ultimate goal", efficiency doesn't necessarily translate into tangible benefits for society at large. Even assuming this particular system manages to autonomously produce the right stuff, "efficiency" doesn't guarantee that these products will be distributed evenly (or even at all).

The biggest problem in Aditya's little treatise, however, is actually quite a common myth accepted by capitalist apologists. It's contained in the first sentence of his second paragraph, "all jobs do serve some purpose I think somewhere in a larger scheme of economic production--otherwise they wouldn't exist." Aditya seems to accept the bizarre semi-tautology that the existence of a position justifies... its existence. The theory in its more extreme form is that the market left to its own devices will maximize happiness, freedom and equality. However, no rational person with any knowledge of the world would accept that bullshit, so Aditya has adopted the more moderate theory that the organization of the economy is justified by the completely unregulated and unaccountable market, and that the only things that are produced are--if not completely necessary--at least beneficial to the populous at large.

Although I can't successfully refute any of Aditya's points, I feel that explaining the rationale behind his statements is enough to expose the serious flaws in his argument. Interestingly, many of his points don't need to be seriously examined to be shown to be completely false.

This Modern World

2005-11-24T18:12:00.000-05:00

The Radical Manual

2005-11-24T18:03:00.000-05:00

So I was looking through my xanga the other day and I noticed some good posts that I had, and since I have not managed to write anything even remotely acceptable for this new blog, I've decided to recycle the old posts here (with a few edits here and there).

Here's the first one:

Do you think you're a real liberal? Well, now we have a little manual to help you realize your dream of being the perfect ultra hardcore radical liberal. And here is it:

Every self-respecting liberal must pick 7 issues to support. Because we all know that nothing screams liberal like a bunch of unrelated and ineffectual causes half-heartedly championed by a group of "radicals".

The first 4 issues must be picked from the 12 MAJOR liberal causes:

[ ] black people
[ ] gays
[ ] war
[ ] abortion
[ ] latino people
[ ] political correctness (censorship)
[ ] gun control
[ ] Bush (yes, that's right, hating Bush has somehow become a liberal cause of its own)
[ ] genocide in [who the fuck cares]
[ ] Palestine
[ ] environmentalism
[ ] death penalty

Now, this may seem like a bit too much for the average "radical" liberal to handle, but I can give you some help. Here are a couple of reminders to help lighten the load:

For black people, you really don't have to do anything (notice how it just says black people, not black rights or other such nonsense), all you need to do is talk about their oppression and how awful it is. If you really want, you can bring up affirmative action or even (*gasp*) reparations.

Gays are even easier! Two words: gay marriage. Also, don't ever forget the breathtaking struggle of Matthew Sheppard (RIP 1976-1998).

War is kind of tricky. On the one hand, you have to hope that there are enough wars for you to frequently be able to scream such nice catchphrases as "No blood for oil!" and "BOOKS NOT BOMBS!" but on the other hand you don't want too many wars. If there are, you'll prolly have to put in too much effort, and we all know that blows.

Abortion is probably the easiest. I mean, it's already legal! Nuff sed.

Now, Latino people are probably the hardest to deal with. I'd steer away from them completely.

Political Correctness is easy and fun. Just yell at anyone who says anything that you disagree with in any way. Calling them racist, ignorant, or just plain old stupid always works. Key words to look out for: nigger, fag, dyke, spic, chink, fat, primitive, ugly, black, short, indian, native american, american indian, pretty much whenever anyone refers to a native american, and chair.

If guns didn't exist, people would have absolutely no way to kill each other.

Bush is by far the most important liberal issue in the past 200 years. If you don't hate him, you are evil. Or at least an ignorant redneck. A couple things to remember: he's really stupid (I mean, he did get bad grades and he's not a very good public speaker) and if Kerry was elected instead of him, we would now be in a 700 year reign of peace and happiness, the streets would be made of gold, and we would all jizz champaign.

Genocide is wrong unless the country the US is invading is doing it. I mean, you really wouldn't want to be against something the United States government is also against. Ugh!

You might as well just forget Palestine altogether. I mean, what with the constant accusations of being anti-semetic, the extreme distance of Palestine, and the fact that the struggle is clearly never going to end, Palestine is clearly a lost cause. Of course if you happen to be arab or are frequently accused of being arab, then you're pretty much stuck with this issue.

Evironmentalism is simple. If you're a hippie, then choose this issue. If you're not a hippie, then don't.

Abolish the racist death penalty!

Just remember: If all else fails, put a bumper sticker on your car. If you wanna be really crazy, put two or even more. Common choices are Keryy '04, a rainbow or equal sign sticker, a peace sticker, or a picture of a tree with a circle of (multicultural) kids holding hands around it.

Now you have to pick 3 obscure or unpopular causes to prove you're a true liberal, not just some mainstream conformist. These are perhaps the most important issues, because they prove that you live by your own standards, and you don't rely on other people to determine how you live you or what you do. Here are you choices:

[ ] save some endangered species (not the bald eagle)
[ ] DC Statehood (a must if you live in DC)
[ ] prisons
[ ] WTO/IMF/World Bank (Package Deal!)
[ ] legalize weed (but rememember, only weed)
[ ] third party (cuz that's all we need for the USA to be perfect)
[ ] animal rights (that's different from endangered species)
[ ] communism (Yes, i know communism is a complex political and economic system that takes into account many different ideas and theories, and cannot simply be treated as an inconsequential issue, but that really shouldn't matter to you. Just tell people you're communist)
[ ] fast food restuarants

For these, all you really have to do is join some organization that focuses on these issues, and let it do the thinking for you. You can really just pick your choices out of a hat for this section.

What's that, you say? Nothing about taxes, welfare, the minimum wage, and other economic regulation? That's the beauty of being an extreme liberal "radical". You don't have to care about that shit!!! With this helpful manual that you have just read, you can have no actual effects on standards of living (or really on anything at all) and still be hailed as a progressive thinker!

Well, now that you're done perfecting your degree of liberalness, you may go off into the world and not change it. I'll see you at the next rally.

Poverty!

2005-09-25T15:03:00.000-04:00

This is not really a full post, I just found some statistics on income in the United States, and I thought I'd put them up (no analysis).

The median household income in the US is 42,409 dollars. The state with the lowest median annual income is Mississippi with a median annual income of 31,434. The state with the highest is New Jersey, at 54,932 dollars. The percentage of people in poverty is 12.2 percent, although it is as high as 18.9 percent in Mississippi, and as low as 6.3 percent in New Hampshire. Now, here come the really scary statistics. The percentage of kids below the age of 18 in poverty is 16.7 percent. In New Hampshire it's 6.6 percent. In the Distric of Columbia, 31.3 percent of the children are below the poverty line. One out of every three people under the age of eighteen living in DC are below are in poverty. It's pretty ridiculous.

Wow.

2005-09-20T23:31:00.000-04:00

Wow. That's really all I have to say. There was a special on The Daily Show about this and I had to check it out. And now I want to kill myself. You should go there too. Now click on the link (which is also the header).

By the way, I realized that if you check out the gallery, all the cardboard signs have some sort of reference to God or Christianity. I guess you should only give money to god-fearing christians.

Equity vs. Equality

2005-09-17T22:14:00.000-04:00

I was visiting Zeeshan at GW a couple weeks ago, and we ended up visiting some of his friends at another dorm. Me and Zeeshan were a little tipsy at the time, and we did what any sensible anarchists would do in that situation: we started a heated political debate with a room full of centrists and conservatives. One of Zeeshan's friends - in response to my assertion that equality is an extremely important principle that is grossly neglected in our society - pointed out that there is a difference between equality and equity and questioned whether equality without equity was an ideal to be striven for. As I was nicely intoxicated at the time, I wasn't together enough to reply competently to such a sharp departure from the conventional mindless anti-socialism rhetoric. Now that I've sobered up, however, I feel like I can address Carn's comments.

It is true that equality itself is not necessarily the best state for society. I mean, it hardly seems desirable for everyone on earth to be in abject poverty, even if everyone was equally poor. Similarly, pure equality (equal work, equal pay) may seem like a good idea at first to some, but if you examine it closely, it starts to fall apart. Obviously different people have different needs, desires, strengths and weaknesses, so it doesn't make sense to treat everyone exactly the same. However, these are relatively minor problems, and they could easily be fixed with a little tweaking. Either way, I'm not here to argue the pros and cons of equality, I'm here to refute Carn's argument.

Carn asserted that equity is more important that equality, meaning that you should only get basic necessities if you "deserve" them. Now, it's hard to determine what he though someone needed to do to deserve food, clothes, and shelter (he never said it outright) but he's a Libertarian in the tradition of Ayn Rand, so I have some suspicions. He probably believes that the right to private property is more inalienable than the right to life (this is not bitter sarcasm or political slander, most Libertarians either implicitly or explicitly believe this) and that people who have a lot of property deserve more than people with little or no property. It also stands to reason that he believes that people with more merit deserve more than the less skilled people. The problem with this approach, however, is that merit is not a simple, one-dimensional quality. You can have many different skills in varying degrees, and there's no objective way to determine how much "merit" you have. If I'm much better at soccer than somebody else, does that mean I deserve to be better off than somebody who can't play? Or does merit only count with skills that are beneficial to other people. Well, let's test. Which is more beneficial to other people, banking or farming? I think most people would agree that producing food is more important in the scheme of things that moving around money. However, bankers make much more money than most farmers. Why?

In capitalist society, merit is less important than possession. If you own a factory that makes a certain product, you are considered more important than the people who work in that factory; you are actually allowed to make more money from the sale of the products than the people that actually make them. You don't even have to know how to make the product, much less be good at doing it. Merit is nonexistent. That is the main reason extreme inequality exist in this society and the rest of the world. Now this little theory of mine might not hold as much water as the other theory (namely that we live in a near-perfect meritocracy and there are only a select few people who are competent enough to contribute to society in a meaningful way and there is even a depressingly large section of society which appears to be so incompetent that it can't even contribute enough to get the basic necessities of life; I mean, it just holds together so well) but I'm sticking with it. But seriously, it is much more reasonable to assumed that in a system actually based on merit (i.e. where people are allowed to work as hard as they want on whatever they're good at, and are able to receive the fruits of the labor) there would be much less inequality. Assuming you live in a hospitable enough environment, almost everyone on earth is completely capable of supporting themselves indefinitely. A society in which people are prevented from attaining the things that they could have easily gotten completely on their own hardly seems equitable.

So it seems that the question is not whether equality is more or less important than equity, it’s whether there’s a difference between the two. And there doesn’t seem to be.

Race Neutral

2005-09-12T23:38:00.000-04:00

As this is my first post on "When Sheep Eat Men," I'd just like to thank David for generously extending to me an invitation. He is, without a doubt, the best friend I have ever had. And he's also intelligent enough not to have a blog with a lame philosophical pun in the title. I am only sorry that I did not post this earlier.

I have done, and continue to do, a lot of work around issues surrounding diversity at my school. One of the most common responses that comes up in discussions around race and ethnicity is, "Why are you [Kyle] talking about black and white and asian and hispanic? Why can't we just see people as people? You are exacerbating the problem by discussing these artificial barriers. We should strive to be colorblind." My first instinct in these situations is to hurl MLK at the person (in a purely figurative, beyond-the-grave sense) by citing his thoughts on this statement, which are frequently mischaracterized. And these statements almost always come from white people (more on that later).

But more importantly, this idea is in itself absurd. It is essentially a rephrasing of what people are generally taught (or think they are taught) about race in pre-school: Skin color should never come into consideration in the way you treat someone, ergo any acknowledgement of race is bad. However, the logic underlying this statement is tenuous, at best: Since racial barriers are man-made, we can simply overcome them by expelling any notion of them from our thinking. If it were possible to expel all notions of race from every living person's mind at once, it would still not address the current inequities caused by racism in the past.

Of course, it is not possible to expunge the notion of race from each person's mind. As the white people who say this so often don't realize, minority groups are forced to think about their race/ethnicity almost every day. It is a fact of life for them, not just something that comes up in U.S. History class when the 1960s are being covered. Unfortunately, for a white person to hear this for the first time, and for them to come to understand it, takes an extreme mental leap. How can you possibly communicate to someone what it is like to always be thinking about something that they have never thought about? And then, how do you convince them that some people must necessarily think about this thing when they have been able to go through their entire lives without thinking about it? An apt metaphor for the situation escapes me.

This, to me, is the prime obstacle in creating dialogue about diversity, and it is a wide chasm to bridge, and not just when discussing race, but gender, sexuality, class, and even religious expression. The other problem, of course, is there is no substitute for first hand experience, and, except for a few extreme examples, such experience is impossible for any member of the majority group. I myself still only have an intellectual understanding of this concept that is slightly informed by the experiences of my peers. Unlike them, I have the ability to spend time not thinking about these things. Not thinking, however, would be remaining ignorant, and there is little to be gained from that.

A note on efficiency

2005-08-29T17:24:00.000-04:00

As the leader of this blog, I would like to place special recognition on Kyle "Jew" Sinick for the almost fascist speed with which he accepted the invitation to join my blog. Although he has not yet posted anything, his quick action to join such a promising and powerful body of online information-sharing bodes well for this blog. In contrast to zeeshan's hippie, drug-smoking and quite possibly communist blog team, my "Luftblogge" is an extremely effiecient, highy trained group of cold-blooded killers. The world will bow before the immense might of Fuehrer David Nash and Deputy Fuehrer Kyle "No Longer Jew" Sinick.

Fat beasts and lean poor people follow.

2005-08-29T16:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I've spent quite a bit of time simply trying to come up with a name for this blog and I finally settled on "When Sheep Eat Men" (as you can see). As I don't have any other posts ready, the reasons that I chose this particular gem seem adequate enough for now.

The phrase "sheep eat men" was in reference to the enclosure of the commons by the landed upper classes and, to a lesser extent, the yeomen during the period leading up the the English Civil War for the sake of profitting of the sale of wool (which by then had grown into a booming industry),

The main victims of progress were as usual the ordinary peasants. This happened not because the English peasants were peculiarly stubborn and conservative or clung to precapitalist and preindivualist habits out of sheer ignorance and stupidity, much as this seemed to be the case to contemporaries. Persistence of old habits no doubt played a part; but in this instance . . . it is necessary to ask why the old habits persisted. The reason is fairly easy to perceive. The medieval system of agriculture in England, as in many other parts of the world, was one where each peasant's holdings took the form of a series of narrow strips scattered helter-skelter amid those of his fellows in unfenced or open fields. Since cattle grazed on these fields after harvesting, the harvest had to come in about the same time for all concerned, and the operations of the agricultural cycle had to be more or less coordinated. Within these arrangements, there was some leeway for individual variation, but mainly there was strong need for cooperative organization that could easily harden into custom as the easiest way to settle matters. To rearrange the use of the strips each season, though this did happen, would obviously be quite an undertaking. The peasants' interests in the common as a source of extra pasture and fuel is obvious. More generally, since the English peasants had won for themselves a relatively envious position under the protection of the custom of the manor, it is no wonder that they looked to the protection of custom and tradition as the dike that might defend them against the invading capitalist flood from which the were scarcely in a position to profit.

Despite some help, now and then, from the monarchy, the dike began to crumble. In the language of the day, sheep ate men. The peasants were driven off the land; ploughed strips and commons alike were turned into pastures. A single shepard could manage flocks grazing over land that had once fed many humans.

- Excerpt from Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington More, Jr

This was, in effect, the most basic seeds of capitalism being planted. It was a very ghastly affair, and has onlt grown more ghastly as the seeds have begun to mature. Another more modern connotation of the title is that a wave of conformity is permeating throughout our culture, and the conformists are (figuratively or literally?) consuming everyone else.