I am Man

[Rizzo in a box]

In the interest of flooding the site with content....well a post in the retarded thread made me source my old blogger blog from like 2005-2006 (oh man those feels), and I saw a post of mine that I put into my ebook I published ~6 years ago. By publish I mean I put it on the internet. That is what publishing in this day, right?

Anyway, I really liked the flow of this piece and thought it just as relevant as the day I wrote it, at the tender age of 15ish. (wow its ten years later lol....fuck.)

I am Man

If one were to sit down on a day of no particular interest and count the number of human faces that populated the television screen, it would take little longer than the time it takes to count your fingers and your toes. This is especially true of the so-called “News Stations”; these talking heads are not only spineless and self-serving, but also heartless and unnerving. To call them brainless would be a lie, for they know better than most the tools required to swindle you out of your money, your opinions, your free-will, your dignity, your values, and your life.

At first glance, one would assume that the end of the world is at hand and that everyone is insane or out to murder you. This may be true, but it is nothing newsworthy as this has been the state of affairs for thousands of years. One could look back to Sumerian stone tablets and read the cuneiform script; only to become engrossed in tales of ancient leaders engaging in taboo sex acts, or of large towers scraping the sky and eventually falling to the ground under the oppressive weight of their own corruption. It seems as if all news stories lead back to the gates of Hell.

After getting sucked into the shiny graphics and mindlessly repeating logos, the eyes begin to glaze over and the brain becomes ripe for the molding. The overall frequency of the mind turns to such state that is very open to suggestions, especially those of a subtle or subliminal persuasion. Feelings of nationalism and brand loyalty are fostered into petty tribalism, turning one man against another and profiting off of it. That’s been the game all along; die for your country, for your team, for your politics, your religion, for the shirt you wear. Gang symbols and the symbolism of exploitation litter our screens, roadways, and anything they can get their grimy little hands on. Those disgusting hands, dirty with the blood and sludge of a billion dead and more on their way. A legacy popularized by the era of the Egyptians; human life means little next to phallus-domination and sun worship.

Is this the message we are sending to the next generation? That we are not human? It is time to stand up and have yourself counted, are you a man or are you a beast? Is this the face of humanity, or the face of carnal, animalistic filth and destruction? The time has come for each and everyone to look inside of ourselves and realize that qualities that set us apart from animals, the pieces of us that set us apart from the machines, as well.

Cold and callous, unthinking and voracious, it is time to smash the machine and chain the beast.

I am man.

[LiquidIce]

Can't believe I was so easily incited by those words all those years ago. But then, you have improved immensely. Even if I agree with what you describe(d), I don't think using fancy words will change anything.

Actions? What actions will fix the problem you wrote/write about?

[Max Headroom]

It's good to get writings like these more popular. The news and politics will still be actors reading a script wearing a prosthetic face covered in makeup, the majority of people will still be under the mass hypnosis of the media, but atleast more people will realize that they have been manipulated and corrupted for years but they have freewill and can break the chain permanently.

[Rizzo in a box]

Can't believe I was so easily incited by those words all those years ago. But then, you have improved immensely. Even if I agree with what you describe(d), I don't think using fancy words will change anything.

Actions? What actions will fix the problem you wrote/write about?

Well no, fancy words won't solve anything. Fancy words might set you apart in a readers mind, and those words might take root and change their world view, which will change how they act & react to the world. Not that I think this particular piece is capable of even that.

What actions can we take to fix things? Well, first of all, turning off your TV is a good start. Learning critical thinking and research skills is another, and using those skills to do some citizen journalism could be good. Holding up the media to higher standards and constantly calling them out can possibly wake more people up.

Honestly we just need to make a marketplace for the truth. When people desire the truth more than convenient lies the market will follow...I hope.

I dunno, what do you think?

[Lanny]

Honestly we just need to make a marketplace for the truth. When people desire the truth more than convenient lies the market will follow...I hope.

I dunno, what do you think?

I think "marketplace for the truth" is the wrong analogy. Indeed I think the present situation of opinion acquisition in the west can be most accurately described as a marketplace. We're presented with a deluge of possible positions without the tools or time to assess them, it becomes trivial to shop for a viewpoint and "evidence" to support it that complements or existing set of ideas. The liberal ideal of critical thought as the liberation from this state is nice but it never seems to have worked for very long in very large societies before. We simply can not hope to endow every member of our population with the training and sentiment to make informed decision about everything they might need to.

I submit what we need instead is a command economy of truth. Instead of letting people cherry pick (or more likely consume the cherry pickings of their prefered source) ideas we should have (real) experts figure things out and let that be that. Todd Akins doesn't belong within a mile of an abortion debate for the simple fact that he doesn't have any expertise on the subject. Doctors and ethicists do. We'll never have a voting population capable of reading medical papers and familiar with even basic ethical theories, it's just not possible. But we can have small specialist groups with the ability to make much better decisions than large bodies of non-experts. Assuming we like making good decisions then it seems like we need to give up some freedom in personally deciding policy and forming beliefs to those who are actually able to do it well.

[John Smith]

And how would you prevent those organizations of experts from being corrupted? Don't you think it's naive to give people so much political authority and expect good outcomes?

[Lanny]

And how would you prevent those organizations of experts from being corrupted? Don't you think it's naive to give people so much political authority and expect good outcomes?

That's a good question but it's fundamentally an empirical one to be solved. John Rawls proposed a "veil of ignorance" wherein organizers of a society would be intentionally blinded to where they would be placed within that society so that working in their own best interest meant securing a maximally just system. I think we can employ at least the spirit of that thought experiment in keeping experts honest.

I think there's also the fact that even some level of corruption might be tolerable as well. Like it might be hard to imagine an economist finding that the predictions of economists are no better than coin flipping surrendering his job and profession on that finding, but honestly it doesn't seem terribly likely to happen in the first place. To revisit the abortion case, like maybe some doctor's first child was an unplanned pregnancy or something so that doctor has this kind of experiential/ideological bias going on, or maybe another was born in a household to too many children and suffered for it. Those individuals hold biases, but its rare to see expert communities hold the same in aggregate. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, certainly the sciences have been informed by cultural politics over the years, but it's still obviously better than taking consensus of non-experts which, almost by definition, will vote to reflect cultural biases.

[LiquidIce]

Can't believe I was so easily incited by those words all those years ago. But then, you have improved immensely. Even if I agree with what you describe(d), I don't think using fancy words will change anything.

Actions? What actions will fix the problem you wrote/write about?

Well no, fancy words won't solve anything. Fancy words might set you apart in a readers mind, and those words might take root and change their world view, which will change how they act & react to the world. Not that I think this particular piece is capable of even that.

What actions can we take to fix things? Well, first of all, turning off your TV is a good start. Learning critical thinking and research skills is another, and using those skills to do some citizen journalism could be good. Holding up the media to higher standards and constantly calling them out can possibly wake more people up.

Honestly we just need to make a marketplace for the truth. When people desire the truth more than convenient lies the market will follow...I hope.

I dunno, what do you think?

It feels like you can't exactly pin down the right actions and I don't blame you, it's pretty fucking hard. I do agree with the line of holding the media as well as institutions to a higher standard, but I also root this belief in adhering to a higher standard myself. The whole "be the change you want to see in the world" thing. I do, however, realize that those actions are fairly limited in their reach and this is where I also believe where doing the little things comes in - if you must have a job, have one that aligns with your ideals (ie. don't work for a corporation), connect with like-minded people, work on projects together, create tools for change. I know these are extremely broad statements and I don't know how applicable they are for someone who isn't me - I've been able to help out a bit on opensource projects that champion causes which appeal to me and lately I've been working at a company that works with people whose aims, yet again, align with my aims. Might have been mighty lucky, 's all.

Having typed that - it feels real small. I mean I don't see a way I can change anything that way. Maybe turn a few people away from the shit-spewing tv machine? Then maybe it really is the small things that matter, like helping someone out on your way to work?