So while I was writing the script for Government: Earth I think the left side of my brain started to hurt from overuse and I ended up recording this, and kinda worked on them both at the same time.
will posting this get me fired from my job? (probably not?)
aaron moritz, July 16th 2010I just got home from a barbecue with some people I work with at and I walked into the middle of a conversation about a new policy I hadn’t heard about. Apparently, employees can expect to be fired for posting that they had ‘a bad day at work’ on their facebook page (or, you know, anything negative — workwise).
My immediate reaction was ‘isn’t that illegal?”, but my boss (well, one of them, who was there) told me that there was plenty of historical precedent for these types of policies, and that the company does need to protect itself. After all, I couldn’t just take out an advertisement in the paper that says their hotel sucks, now could I? I guess not, because that’s libel? But, me posting my opinion of my day on my Facebook page?
I’ve never once mentioned my job on this site or on facebook because I don’t mind my job. Anyone who follows this site at all knows my position on wage slavery, etc, but for being a wage slave, my ‘masters’ here aren’t too bad at all. It’s a pretty decent place to work. So why am I posting this?
Because, on this planet, when the interests of a company (their ‘image’) can trump the free speech interests of an individual… there is just absolutely nothing more disgusting I can think of (maybe one or two things). If I wanted to say that I had a bad day at work, I should be allowed to.
And I don’t even want to. I like my job and my bosses, but the fact that they signed off on this gross restriction of human freedoms is something I can’t abide. It’s disgusting, it’s atrocious, and I plead with the management to reverse this policy. Not for the sake of the company, but for the people who work there. When you start acting in the interests of a company, a fictional entity rather than in the interest of real human beings, I think it is time to take a look at your priorities in life, and if I believed in a soul, I’d say this was quite a soulless act.. How much freedom are you willing to take away from real people for a corporate entity? But what can I expect? There are no friends in business, as they say.
To my bosses: why does your job matter to you more than the people you work with? How are you ok living in, and supporting, a world where people are not free to express their opinions openly? Even if this is only a fractional microcosm of a much larger problem (as I believe it is), I implore anyone involved in making this decision to find their humanity, to realize that freedom isn’t something to be taken for granted and to re-examine your stance and role in today’s society. Do you believe the past impossible to repeat itself? Do you believe that these tiny, incremental, steps towards FASCISM are insignificant, or are you just ignoring them.
I’ve worked there for almost three years now. I’ve never had a problem with a co-worker, I’ve never even asked for a raise, I just do my shit and go home for the day. I’m gonna hit publish, right now, because I feel I have to. Maybe this will never be read by anyone at my work, maybe I’ll get called into the office on Monday… all I can do is what I know to be right.
Because what they are doing is wrong. Companies do not deserve the same protection as humans. Common sense people. We are all unique biological individuals who deserve respect, and the money and the companies we work for are abstractions. Buildings and logo’s and bullshit.
When a companies ability to control your actions extends outside of the time period you are ‘working’ for them, that sets a dangerous precedent. So Jane, Dave, (whoever the head office people I don’t know are)… I’m willing to lose my job, but please don’t fire me. It is my fundamental right as a human being to express my opinion on this disgusting infringement on human rights and my contempt for a system and a society that allows these things to pass without massive outbursts of dissent.
Science, Wonder, and the Beauty of What’s Real
aaron moritz, June 18th 2010The struggle to find meaning in life seems almost to be a basic human impulse. Those who choose to engage in that struggle will find it both difficult and rewarding.
Finding true meaning, for me, doesn’t come from made up stories, or from superstitious, mystical explanations of consciousness and the universe. It comes, simply, from the inherently staggering beauty of nature, and from the puzzles and contradictions that arise the deeper we examine it. It is the thrill of finding truth, an answer to a question.
When I attempt to comprehend the totality of our unusual, subtle, and elegant universe I feel ecstatic to be a part of it. I almost feel like walking around, proselytizing to anyone I meet of the great joy I feel to be on this earth, full of hundreds of beautiful species, each the current pinnacle of their own evolution.
Contemplating nature, I sometimes feel like I’ve tapped into a power greater than myself and I can feel it’s love flow through me, fill my soul and spill out into the world around me. I can glimpse the fullness of perfection and realize that wherever we find it’s absence in our world, we should strive to implement and exemplify it. I am utterly connected, and surrendered, to the absolute. The infinity of existence.
I could go on and on, but at the end there I kind of lost my steam. The words stopped naturally flowing from this caffeine buzz I’m riding and I started using random abstract concepts that sound nice, but don’t really mean much. But the language is powerful. Humans have this amazing ability to channel the essence of our emotions into words. The thing is, words can get confused.
So, basically, I am Jesus. Wait. Not literally. What I mean is, I could sit and make up a million different ways to say, basically, ‘I’m feeling good, I want to sustain that feeling and share it with others. And I want to encourage others and myself to do only good things.’ You know, the stuff Jesus talked about, spreading the love. Except for Scientology, which, of course, we all know started as a money making scheme by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard in the 1950’s, most religions probably start with a normal person, an endorphin rush, and some unique circumstances. Anyone could be Jesus. We all experience this love and we all have the ability to share it.
One thing I really do wonder about, though, is why none of these religious founders ever taught that we humans ourselves are the source of this great, infinite love. Just us. Except for maybe Buddhism (I’m not too clear on how that whole thing works), typical religious training is that some being greater than ourselves must be responsible for our love.
I don’t believe in a ‘power’ greater than myself. I am the greatest thing this universe has ever created and so are you. I exalt in the realization that my consciousness is just a transcendent property of my neurons firing, unique to me and my physical brain. Giving credit to a non-physical soul would cheapen the stunningly complex, yet simplistic nature of what we are. Atoms dancing with each other.
Because we are just atoms, and through how they interact, we are able to know ourselves, and learn about our universe. Sadly, this amazing gift is rarely nurtured. People are kept ignorant. The joy of discovering the truths of our world is robbed from children, their education reduced to a mind-numbing game of question/answer regurgitation. Children should be led down a self-directed path of
discovery, allowing them to freely explore their curiosities with a wealth of information at their feet. Not graded and compared, or made to compete and experience humiliation for failing to learn fast enough.
The most successful tool we have for discovering what is true is the scientific method. And yeah, the scientific method is strict, very strict, because if we want the truth, it has to be. It demands proofs and repetitions, continued experiment and revision. Truth is beauty and truth is power and science works because it is self-aware, self-correcting, and utterly devoted to the truth.
But being strict does not mean that science has to be cold and uninspired. The spiritual and philosophical power of what has already been discovered should not be dismissed. Us, plants, animals, water, the air, all of nature, all of almost everything, is made up of atoms forged inside of stars. This is a fact. Also, every being on the planet gets it’s energy, in one way or another, from the sun. As Carl Sagan put it, “We are star stuff harvesting star light”.
It is humbling to realize that beings as complex and experiential as we, could, and did, evolve slowly over time through nothing more than subtle interactions between atoms, exchanges of force particles and photons, gluons, quarks, and neutrino’s. The universe dancing with itself. When we get down even smaller, many physicists think that all these particles are made up of strings. All the strings are the same ‘stuff’, they just vibrate, and resonate with each other in unique harmonious ways (through ten spacial dimensions no less!), and from those harmonies the natural world unfolds. The orchestra has been building for 15 billion years, and it looks to me like we might be at a crescendo.
We currently face a choice. Will we continue this battle we rage against our own species? Become extinct, a sour note, allowing the symphony to continue on without us? Because it will. The fall of
humanity would be but a minor stumble, a single trumpet player faltering for just a moment, when we consider the vastness of this universal production. Or do we learn to resonate with one another, as our atoms and our strings do, and create music so beautiful that some seem to think it impossible, or unimaginable?
I find that sad, because I don’t just imagine this beauty, I can see it, read about it. Science has shown that humanities long-felt, deep connection to nature is a real and tangible thing. We are all dependent on each other: plants turn sunlight into our food and we spread their seeds, they breathe in our CO2 and we breathe in their Oxygen. Bees that pollinate flowers, bacteria that help us to digest our food, animals that eat each other… everywhere we look we seem natural examples of living things being ‘plugged in’ to one another.
These realities raise our consciousness above vague, spiritual statements on connectedness. They empower us with the realization that we are physically, demonstrably, and irrevocably intertwined. We are extensions of one another, aspects of one planetary organism. We have come to see nature as neither a force to be reckoned with, nor an enemy to be vanquished. Nature is a set of highly interdependent variables that when broken down into smaller components can be known, recorded, understood, and ultimately influenced and maneuvered. This is what science shows us. This is the power we have been discovered to be holding.
Facing the future and all of it’s uncertainty, the search for truth through science, and it’s humanistic application to the way we live our lives, could be the key in the engine of the next revolution. A global, but personal and truthful revolution that implements institutions not of power, but of facts, and truth.
telescoping evolution
aaron moritz, April 15th 2010Keeping in the same vein as my last couple posts about accelerating technology, here’s a clip from an excellent movie called ‘waking life’, where accelerating change is talked about not only as a technological phenomenon, but an all-pervasive one.
It took billions of years for life to turn from single-celled to multi-celled organisms, some millions of years for mammals to evolve, some hundreds of thousands of years for humans, 10 000 years for agriculture (the end of nomadic hunter-gatherers and the establishment of cities), a few hundred years for science to get started, a hundred years for the industrial revolution, four or five decades for the computer revolution.
The next revolutions will be biotechnology (us messing with out own genetics, cloning, etc), and nanotechnology, which has so many incredible possible applications that I can’t even pick a couple to list.
And these revolutions will take maybe a decade or two. They are happening now.
In the video he talks about ‘neo-humans’. This is what I was talking about in my last post when I said we’d merge with machines, become information in the cloud, choosing our bodies at will using swarms of nano-bots. That’s not what HE says, but he definitely talks about man merging with machine, and something else that I love:
SELF-DIRECTED EVOLUTION. Evolution traditionally happens through natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Once we have the ability to control and transcend our biology, we can evolve in whatever ways we want. PERSONALLY, not together as a species, but as we, as individuals see fit. Self-directed evolution. That’s a term I’m definitely gonna yank and use as much as possible.
I want this all to happen. I think it’s exciting. I know lots of people don’t want it to happen. They think it’s scary. But if we want it or not is irrelevant regarding whether it will actually happen. It may, it may not, but people, lot’s of very very smart people are working on it. Right now. And they’re constantly getting closer. It’s in the news every fucking day if you’re up on the right blogs and websites. http://www.kurzweilai.net/ is a good one to start.
If it does happen, we’re all going to have to find a way to deal with it. Or you could kill yourself, I guess, but I don’t recommend anyone kill themselves. I actually value ALL human life, not just my friends and family and people who are from my country or my church. I don’t value the ‘life’ of a non-thinking embryo over the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers we waste fighting wars, you fucking religious whackjobs (Ok, sorry, cheap shot, I say this all in fun and only in love, feel free to call me whatever kind of whackjob you want… just look at the crazy neo-technocratic bullshit I post on here) (oh and for a big long speal about my views on abortion, which go a little further than just ‘pro-choice’, click here).
So anyway, if we’re creating a universal compu-biological consciousness, it’s pretty safe to say that God doesn’t exist. Yet. But we’re on our way to inventing one.
but if i wait for a holiday, could it stop my fear?
aaron moritz, March 26th 2010I was wrestling with ‘everybody’s working for the weekend’ as the title of the post, but in the end I decided Vampire Weekend was hipper than Loverboy. Yes, I’ve basically turned to quotes and song lyrics as the titles for my articles .
So. If I wait for a holiday, could it stop my fear? Because that’s what they tell us. Sure you work 5-7 days a week until you’re too tired to do much else but watch tv, or, if you’re really ambitious, get drunk and party. As long as you aren’t thinking critically and openly challenging the system, well, your life is just as it should be. Maybe not perfect, but hey, you get two weeks paid vacation, right? Can’t be all bad. We’re only asking for 96% of the weeks of the year, 71-85% of the days of the week, and 65% of your waking hours each day. And that’s not even counting all those paid holiday’s days you get. Almost one every month! What the FUCK are you complaining about, people?
We give you two weeks to travel, unwind, relax. Forget the stresses of the work day, the ones that eat at your soul and crumble your desire to do anything truly productive. It’s not our fault that by the time your vacation rolls around you’re too tired to be creative or inventive or even think. Maybe you aren’t drinking enough caffeine or eating enough addictive, high-calorie meals from McDonalds and Burger King.
Maybe the problem is you. Maybe you’re just lazy. It’s not the system that makes you that way, you were born lazy and you should be grateful we allow you to work for money, or you wouldn’t be motivated to do anything and society would collapse. We don’t dampen the intrinsic creative and inventive drive of the human spirit, human beings are lazy. The fact that 50% of people in the United States volunteer their time for free to various charities doesn’t mean anything. If we weren’t here to hold out the carrot you people would never walk.
Control over the people is responsible for all progress.
So take your break, your vacation, your weekend and enjoy it. If it doesn’t quite seem to be enough, well, that’s obviously a problem with you. Maybe you should go see a shrink, because you might be maladjusted to the human labour market.
did you know that europe is now a country? neither did i!
aaron moritz, February 6th 2010This is because technically, using the words they are using, it isn’t a country, it’s the EUROPEAN UNION. But what (if not a country) do you call it when a group of… lets call them nation-states, but the nation is silent, so, a group of states, each with their own government, get together under the leadership of a larger government? The EUROPEAN UNION. Hahaha these jerks pulled a fast one on us. Hahahah they’re consolidating power! HAHAHA.
Meet the new President of Europe! (link)
Herman Van Rompuy. You’re making history Herman.
Herman Van Rompuy accused of acting like a ‘king’
Herman Van Rompuy: Europe’s first president to push for ‘Euro tax’
and now because I am not and could never even possibly be biased, some positive press:
Van Rompuy focuses on European future
Ahh but this isn’t a federal government, this isn’t a federation of [nation] states in the same way the United States is. There are fundamental differences. In fact, this is only a treaty! Just look at this fancy chart that can be found on wikipedia that shows how they took all those confusing treaties and pacts and just merged them into the EUROPEAN UNION.
The only difference is that this treaty has a council, a president, an executive branch, a parliament, cabinets, their own court system, and the ability to draft legislation. From wikipedia (caps added): LAW MADE BY THE EUROPEAN UNION INSTITUTIONS IS PASSED IN A VARIETY OF FORMS, PRIMARILY THAT WHICH COMES INTO DIRECT FORCE AND THAT WHICH MUST BE PASSED IN A REFINED FORM BY NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS.
So whatever laws the EUROPEAN UNION makes, every European country MUST PASS IN A REFINED FORM.
I wouldn’t be so suspicious but it feels like they’re keeping it such a secret.
***Edit: In all the fun of writing this out last night I forgot to mention that HERMAN was NOT elected. He was appointed in secret meetings. Not that it would’ve made a difference if there had been an election, but it’s the principal. They aren’t even trying to fool people anymore.
…complains that more guys don’t experiment (ie. want to have sex with me)
aaron moritz, January 9th 2010I think it’s really interesting how right now it’s much more prominent for girls to experiment with girls than guys with guys. No wait, not interesting, I meant shitty. For me. But fine, whatever, the thing that really gets me is the attitude people have that this is some sort of natural thing, it seems obvious for some reason that girls will experiment more than guys. I’ve been scoffed at for suggesting that guys could ever.
Ok first I have to get into what I think causes homosexuality. There is no gay gene, at least not that anyone’s found yet. Just like there’s no criminal gene and there’s no nice gene, behaviour does not seem to stem, in general, from the genetic level. The best they’ve found are some dna markers that seem to correlate with homosexuality, sometimes. All that means is that more gay people have this marker or gene or whatever than straight people. But not all of us have it, and not everyone who has it is gay. I don’t understand why some gay people keep hoping for this genetic basis like it will somehow validate our existence. I guess maybe they think it’ll shut up those maniacs who want to cure homosexuality. The proper argument to use there is not that it can’t be changed because it’s genetic, it’s that there’s no reason it should be changed.
So back to the original point. Since it’s not like females are genetically somehow more open to experimentation. It’s completely societal. And it’s not even like it’s been a constant in every society throughout history. In fact most of these examples support the idea that same sex behaviour is mostly environmental. The most commonly known example is that in Ancient Greece, most men of any type of stature had a male lover. It was just something every guy did, usually in addition to his wife. ‘Male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex [[thigh fucking...hahahah]]’. For native americans, “Two-Spirit” individuals were shamans, in fact they were usually considered to have powers greater than regular shamans, and had regular sex with “normal” male tribe members. Homosexuality was an ‘integral’ part of buddhist monastic life and the samurai tradition in Japan. Every Roman Emperor (except for one) had male lovers. A few cultures in Papua New Guinea even went as far as to consider heterosexuality at all a sin. Though I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around how that worked.
*All this info raped from wikipedia.
So my point is that more guys would experiment (hopefully with me) if we didn’t live in such a repressed fucking bullshit Christian society. Because apparently when everyone else is doing it almost every single guy in a society is ready to get down with a dude or two.
While I’m sounding bitter I just want to add that I wish gay guys would stop internalizing these offensive fucking stereotypes that they show on Will & Grace and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Well, more like I wish the stereotypes weren’t there to internalize. I could go on about this but I’m at risk of offending some of my own people (I think it’s dumb we are even grouped together based on having one behavioural trait in common) and I don’t want to do that because us gay people have it rough enough.
11.30.2009
aaron moritz, November 30th 2009food. now i’m probably the last person who should be proselytizing about food but my own example is kind of my point. i’m utterly and hopelessly addicted to shitty food. well, not hopelessly. never hopelessly. since high school i’ve opened up my diet a little bit, but really, just to include more shitty food. and i never knew until recently what shitty food is. but i’ve been learning.
MEAT IS BAD FOR YOU. our bodies do not digest meat properly. i’m not bothering to look it up right now, but the way our intestinal tract has evolved suggests that humans didn’t start eating meat as a staple in their diet until recently (like say, 10,000 years ago when we invented farms). all other carnivores, like dogs, wolves, etc, have certain systems in their body for processing meat that we don’t have. meat has almost no nutrients, and even fewer that our body can process. the common wisdom is that meat provides you with protein, and that’s true, but we can get protein from certain vegetables and nuts that our body can more easily process.
corn. corn is in everything and it’s empty calories and it is BAD FOR YOU. chips, pop, cereals, noodles, pastries, cooking oil, cookies, ketchup, caramel, and soup all have corn in them. corn is cheap, government subsidized and easy to grow. it has no nutritional value and it’s main purpose is to fill you up and give you calories. also, corn is what we feed almost all of the animals we eat, making them unhealthy and sick and passing that shit along to us.
bread. it’s fattening and has almost no nutrients. it’s loaded with carbohydrates and gluten. whole wheat bread is a little better, just like light cigarettes are a little better (I’m not comparing bread to cigarettes, i’m just saying the difference between white and whole wheat is negligible). gluten (anything with wheat in it) especially has been linked to a shit load of mental and physical disorders, especially as we get older.
dairy. i’m not even gonna get scientific on this one. we’re drinking the milk of another animal and also processing it into cheese butter and fucking ice cream. figure out how that’s good for you. really the only thing good in milk is vitamin d, which we add in ourselves anyway, and we can get from the sun, or supplements.
so what is good for you? really the only thing that i’m 100% sure of is raw food. meaning fruits, vegetables, and seeds and nuts. raw seeds and nuts. if you roast them, you lose nutrients. if you cook vegetables, you lose nutrients. this is all you need to eat to be healthy.
but don’t listen to a word i say, because i ate at kfc today and then came home and made ichiban noodles and later had some shreddies and an apple. so according to my own health guide the only healthy thing i ate was an apple. and as much as i want to change, i am insanely addicted to shitty food. i’m just saying what i think i know about this stuff. you can look it up for yourself.
quick story to end it off. i was talking to this girl i met a few times today. she’s a raw food vegan (just to be clear, she isn’t where i got any of this information), she’s lived alone in the mountains for a couple years of her life, she has tattoos all over her neck and body and she’s a lesbian. really nice girl. really beautiful too, never seen her wear make-up. anyways, someone else brought up vegetarianism, and she says “have you ever been dumpster diving?” now since i was apparently the only person at the table who hadn’t heard of this (except in the case of homeless people) i sat back and took the conversation in. apparently it’s common practice to go to the dumpsters behind grocery stores and take the vegetables and fruit and tofu and things they throw away. a lot of it is still good, i have no doubt of that and it’s very expensive to eat raw food, so i understand the necessity for people with a lower income.
its fucked up though. i didn’t say anything because i’m sure she’s heard it all before, but it’s unsanitary (…). and i know that if she had the option of completely fresh fruits and vegetable every day at a reasonable price she would take it. and that infuriates me. governments could just as easily subsidize the growing of fruits and vegetable as they do for corn and meat, but they don’t. it makes the entire world sick and addicted to shitty food. i don’t know, hearing this dumpster diving thing from this girl just floored me. and the crazy part is that she is without a doubt eating much, much, much healthier food then i am. from a dumpster. because i eat at mcdonalds. ok, i’m done. i don’t know what i said but i’m done.
09.04.2009
aaron moritz, September 4th 2009I was watching “Are you afraid of the dark?” a few days ago, and as great as my memories of that show were, it wasn’t very good. When my friends and I sit around talking about funny or dumb shit we did in junior high or high school (or two months ago), it’s nice, but most of these things took place during the shittiest times of my life. And yet I still get nostalgic. I’m not that happy, but I’m happier now then I ever have been before, and for some reason I still look back on the past with this strange sadness, as if I’ve lost something. I wonder if nostalgia related to fearing death… we idealize our past because we want to return to it, to have more time left (some completely unfounded psychology for everyone).
It’s always bothered me when people talk about “the good old days”, like “back when America was great”, or “the great ancient civilizations”. The old days were not good. America was never great. It started with some good ideas, like the removal of religion from government and concentration on the advancement of science (now we have George W. “God wanted me to be president” Bush), rule by the people (now we have “pick one of two corporate sponsored candidates”), and the most important cause of the revolution, according to Ben Franklin, breaking the stranglehold that the independent central banks had over the economy (America also completely fucked this up by implementing the Federal Reserve [privately owned central] bank in 1913). John Adams, the second president, passed a set of laws called “the Alien and Sedition acts”, basically giving him the right to deport immigrants who “aroused his suspicion” (curiously he was mostly aroused by French and Irish Immigrants, who were commonly known not to vote for his party). Most of the early presidents had slaves. America was never great.
No civilization has ever been great. Yes, the Mayans had an amazing calendar system (much more accurate and logical then ours), and they were amazing astronomers, but they also sacrificed people to their gods whenever the crops were bad. I’d rather have a bad calendar and still be aloud to live when there’s uncooperative weather. Egyptians created some of the most amazing palaces in the world, along with the fucking pyramids, but they did it using slaves. And people somehow still believe that these ancient, crazy, fucking murdering racists and slave owners had some “greater knowledge” then we do today. Then there’s the argument that the past was better because it was simpler.
I can’t fathom when people say shit like “I want to go live in a cabin somewhere and live off the land”. Really? Do you really want to do that? Because when people actually did that, they only lived for like 30 years. It wasn’t a simpler life. Every single day you have to worry about whether or not you’ll be able to find and kill an animal. And if you don’t, you don’t eat. How the fuck is that simpler, or in any other way better then what we have now? You think farming without machinery was a simple life? I don’t get it. I mean, maybe, but having no other options isn’t the good kind of simplicity.
Even with all the tainted food (anti-biotics, pesticides, anything that comes in plastic, or contains a preservative is pretty much bad for you. So unless your getting all your food at the farmers market, carrying it home in paper bags and then washing the shit out of it, you’re eating some poisons), all the children needlessly starving to death, drug companies handing out speed like candy to children (ritalin anyone?) people needlessly dying in car accidents (put radars in the cars so they can’t hit each other!), people being murdered for their race, religion, gayness, being on the either side of any war… even with all this shit, we still have the highest global life expectancy that we’ve ever had. Is it a bad thing that we don’t have to worry every day about finding food, so we can turn our attention to healing other aspects of our society? Getting past all the piss and shit that tears people apart.
Why do people want to go back to the past, when the past is littered with shit like the inquisition (“hey, you’re not a Christian? Die!”), the crusades (same deal), slavery, bigotry, the list goes on. The past sucked. The present sucks, but substantially less. I can afford an iphone, macbook, nice speakers, a trip to London, a trip to BC, a trip to Toronto, rent, food, internet, alcohol (and other..), presents for my family at Christmas, new clothes whenever I need them, and $500 tattoos, and I’m barely above the poverty line.
Also, the world has never been as fucking cool and advancing so quickly as it is right now. There are amazing advances in technology all the time. And there would be a lot more, if we could stop with this silly profit motive (check out my last “update” entry about motivation). We’ve created nano dissasemblers (they literally take atoms apart and rearrange them to create other compounds.. instead of Co2 we could just have some nice oxygen and carbon), wireless energy transfer (no more plugging things in to charge them), we have thousands of years worth of power stored just beneath the earths crust, and tons more shining down on us every day. We’re alive at the birth of artificial intelligence. If you haven’t seen this, check it out (I’ve heard the video is a fake, but the technology does exist, even if it’s slightly less impressive). People world wide have more freedoms then ever before (and others are constantly fighting to keep that on the rise [[not always successfully, but we keep trying]]).
I have a lot of problems with what’s going on in the world today, but people aren’t being burned at the stake for being witches. A charge for which both admitting guilt and refusing to admit guilt were seen as evidence of guilt. Oh and don’t forget that people who gave the courts inside info on women who were witches (ie. made shit up) got a nice little finders fee and all of the witches possessions. Nobody’s going to throw me into a volcano because it hasn’t rained in a while. Fifteen years ago the internet barely existed, and computers were far less powerful then my iphone. The past sucked. Dick. Anyone who wants to go back there should take a minute to think about everything they’d be giving up.
A trip to the future, on the other hand, would be pretty rad.
08.17.2009
aaron moritz, August 17th 2009“In 1979 Michel Gauquelin put an advertisement in “Ici-Paris”, offering a free horoscope to those who supplied him with their time and date of birth. Recipients were asked to reply saying how accurate they and their friends found the horoscope. Of the first 150 replies, 94% percent said it was accurate as did 90% of their friends and family. Unfortunately, they all got the same horoscope, that of Dr. Petiot, a notorious mass murderer.”
I read that today, and it was in no way surprising. I’m gonna grab a random horoscope and see how well it applies to me.
“You have the gambling spirit and you may call upon that spirit in making a decision this month. The Lunar Eclipse on August 5 shines its bright light on the taking a chance axis of your chart. You’ve been dealing with restrictive Saturn in your work life for the past two years and it may not have been easy. On August 19, Jupiter, the cosmic Santa Claus, will form what is thought of as an aspect of fate to the planet Saturn. If that isn’t enough incentive to think about making a change, the New Moon in Leo on August 20 falls into the house of chance or risk taking. It could be a friend or an organization you belong to aids and abets your desire for change.”
Strikingly accurate, actually. The first sentences basically say that I might make a decision this month that is a gamble. And I might. Next, I am feeling very restricted in my work life. And I have worked this job for about two years. That’s pretty fucking spot on. And (how could they have guessed this??) I’m feeling very restriced by my job. Saturn obviously behind these things. Then there’s this vague statement about “Cosmic Santa Claus” and the “New Moon in Leo” being an incentive for this change? Maybe that’s an insight beyond my understanding, I have no proof otherwise… And finally, if I am going to make a change, I would almost assuredly receive some kind of help from either a friend or organization. I’d say this horoscope is spot on. Too bad I’m not an Aries, and that the stupid fucking horoscope is so ambiguous that it could apply to anyone and has no meaning beyond what you yourself give it.
I know it’s taking easy shots at easy targets (horoscopes.com? I could’ve at least found an astrology sight that takes itself seriously) but sometimes it just needs to be done. For example, davidgran1967, on youtube, posted a reply to a video on athiesm saying:
“If man has been on earth for thousands of years and homosexuality has been with man and animal from the beginning. Wouldnt homosexuals evolve a vegans in? were there ass is. Just one more prove that evolution is a lie. No disrespect to gay people some of you are cool”
Since that’s just funny and a tad fucking stupid, I’ll respond to a slightly less dumb argument: “Evolution, like creationism, is a only a theory.” Yes, retard, it’s called ‘the theory of evolution’. Scientific ‘theories’ have to be backed by a lot of fucking evidence to be considered a ‘theory’. In fact, creationism isn’t a theory, not in the scientific sense because it actually goes directlyagainst the evidence. Our current understanding of gravity is based on Einstein’s “Theory of relativity”. These ‘theories’ aren’t just wild ideas people put forward, they’re emerging realities that need more research and experimentation in order to get more facts.
And perhaps the easiest target of them all. Hitler. It’s not a jew quote, but it seems to give some insight into the type of thinking that leads people down these fucked up roads:
“A new era of magical explanation of the world is rising, an explanation based on will rather than knowledge. There is no truth, in either the moral or the scientific sense.”
Too easy. He puts the ambiguous morality (**cough** killing jews **cough**) right beside the denouncement of science. A magical explanation of the world. Now let’s see, what other group of people have a magical explanation of the world… too easy… just a quick wikipedia quote to sum it all up:
“In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage, German Christian culture, and professed a belief in an Aryan Jesus Christ, a Jesus who fought against the Jews.”
Disclaimer: I’m just having fun. (Most) Christians aren’t nazi jew-haters. People who don’t believe evolution is the most likely possibility or who do believe in magic (you know, God, Astrology… whatever) aren’t stupid people or bad people… They’re just misinformed. It’s not their fault. It’s not like we live in a time when basically any piece of information is available to anyone with an internet connection (so I’m letting all you third world countries off the hook). Didn’t I write something a couple months ago about being less condescending and sarcastic? Oh well. Maybe next time.
