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Rape all you want

Rape all you want

 This post isn't about religion, but about the bullshit illogic used alike by church and state to impose authority and, thereby, rule.

Jillette -- raping and murdering all he wants

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard 'But... chaos!' from supremists over the years.

Zero tolerance for supremism and its henchmen -- authorities -- will not result in chaos, because it already doesn't. But you'd never know from their never-ending spout of claims stinking with terror over the prospect.

I call them "claims" for a reason: I've yet to hear a compelling, cogent argument from any of them. Not even once. And I've been at this in earnest a decade now.

The real argument supremists make has nothing to do with what would happen if we got rid of rulers and the supremism they rode in on, because we have no data about what would happen then. We've never, ever tried intelligently to create a non-supremist society. Not even once. Not that we know of… yet.

Supremism is inherent and crucial to everything we ever called a "civilization". Just the notion of civilizing implies supremism.

Supremists do not argue against the eradication of supremism. Given our dearth of knowledge on that point, there is no legitimate argument to make. They’re arguing against something quite different.

They and those who dismiss abandoning supremism, authority, and thereby the evils that unavoidably result from them, are actually arguing against moving away from state-sanctioned dominance narratives about how societies must be structured.

Notice that "must" means preemptive of and regardless of what would actually happen otherwise.

“Must” is what we say when we know damned well there’s a very good chance that what we don’t want to happen will happen.

So supremists with their incessant thought-terminating memes are not arguing, they're precluding real argument.

Show me just one person, anywhere at any time, who compared what actually happens under supremism (lots of data available for that) to what actually happens when supremism has been eradicated (… Data?? Where? Naw... Crickets…)

So who are the ones who tell us, “Chaos will ensue!!” ??

People who have knowledge of what actually happens when we abandon authority, reject supremism, and deal with each other as friends?

No. That line comes from people afraid to try and find out what actually happens, so instead of arguing intelligently they spout mountains of bullshit, pretending knowledge that could only truly come from trying.

That's the opposite of intelligent. That’s what was long known as folly until supremists made it the definition of sagacity.

A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.--Book of Proverbs, Chapter 18, Verse 2, New American Standard Bible, 1977

When people reject the proposition of honestly, seriously considering a hypothesis, let alone trying it, you know you’re faced with cultists.

Fools.

Question: What if all the stops were removed -- no more authority, government, rulers, laws, cops, prisons, etc? What would happen then?

Hypothesis 1: Chaos would ensue.

Hypothesis 2: Everyone would have a lot of fun, but chaos would not ensue.

Both of those are testable hypotheses. Both of them are deathly terrifying to supremists, who simply will not go there and will literally kill anyone who tries to make them. Whenever a sizable group of people went off on their own and created a so-called “anarchist” society anyway, bothering no one -- say, the Cathars -- supremists have made sure to concoct some story that justified genocide and wiped out them along with their history. If there were any reason for wiping the people out, then why destroy information about them? Wouldn’t it have bolstered the case for eradication?

There’s really just one reason why supremists treat those hypotheses like the plague. If we tried the experiment, we’d get to see what each of us really wants. We’d see who really wants Good and who really wants to violate but had been held back by deterrents which now are gone.

How many people do you think would go chaos on your ass, realistically? Name them. Anyone? Would you go chaos on others?

Given what we now know about psychopathy in the conventional sense of the term -- i.e., those who score higher than 25 (UK and Canada) or 30 (USA) on the Hare PCL-R scale -- not even most psychopaths would suddenly turn into outright fiends were all the stops removed.

Why?

Because chaos, crime, violation, etc., simply make not a chicken lick of sense. Unless you’re supremely stupid or in the clutches of some addiction that has debauched your perception and walloped your judgment, you can see that there would be no real advantage in in creating chaos, not for you and not for anyone else.

And that’s just one side of the story.

Most people aren’t even aware that there’s another side: the chaos, crime, and violation that now occur because of supremists, authorities, rulers, laws, cops, and soldiers.

Just listen to a “But… chaos!” whiner and you’ll see that they have already exceptionalized supremist chaos out of the picture with the likes of, ‘That’s just good business!’ or, ‘That’s just how it works!’ or, 'They made the tough decision!' or, ‘It’s for the greater good!’ or some other absolutely ludicrous line of trash.

In other words, the chaos, crime, and violation motivated by oppression and obscene inequity that were instituted and are perpetuated and enforced by supremists, authorities, rulers, laws, cops, and soldiers doesn’t even register for these hapless fools. Even if chaos would increase in some small degree by abandoning authoritarian ‘deterrents’, we’d have to weigh that against the chaos that already occurs because we’ve embraced them, chaos which would disappear with them.

I have yet to meet a ‘but chaos would ensue’ alarmist who even considered that side, far from factored it into their thinking. Intelligently compare the chaos of supremism to the chaos of zero tolerance for supremism and see which one is more chaotic? All you’ll get from them on that one is eye-rolling (if they’re nice guys) or knives out.

The fact that people swear with the utmost certainty that peerness spells C-H-A-O-S only proves that either they are unable to see what’s really going on and do the math themselves, or they’re just fucking liars. Supremists are liars. Cultists are liars. Authoritarians are liars. Rulers are liars. They are all liars just like every addict is a liar, and they lie for the same reasons.

Chaos occurs in the absence of authority so rarely that you could sit in a park for hours and hours, day after day, or stand on the corner of a busy intersection or in a crowd of thousands protesting injustice and never see any chaos.

Not until the cops or soldiers or authorities arrive, that is.

You could rape all you want.

The question, then, becomes: What do you really want?

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Blustery day at Stonehenge, England

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You Might Be Safer Than You Think

Opinions about the benevolence (or lack thereof) of the universe range across the board. Some see an all-powerful, benevolent God behind it all, making it a safe place for the faithful. Others see a harsh, often cruel and ultimately indifferent space…

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Two Stupid Faiths

It's time to stop putting up with stupidity--our stupidity. Bad enough that we think as ineffectively as we do; we don't need to protect our right to continue the habit. Forrest would tell us, "Stupid is as stupid does." Please note that today we exploit, abuse, and exterminate each other more than we ever have, with the ultimate victims being our children.

Oh, well, that kind of stupidity. We have a couple of defenses for that. Out pop our internal Books of Common Knowledge.

Verse 2, the Creed of Evil People: "Evil, crazy people do evil, crazy things." It's their fault. If we knew how to get rid of them, the world would be a better place.

But we don't know how, do we? We don't even know if getting rid of them is a good idea. We instinctively fear that it's not a good idea, that we aren't much different from them; not different enough to feel sure that getting rid of "them" will stop with them and not include us. And we've seen how the certainty that "they" are essentially different from "us" transforms us into monsters.

Those aren't our only complicities.

"Thus it shall always be" is a prophecy, and we recite it with all the conviction of blind faith. If hope exists somewhere that things need not be this way, we shut it out by reciting our creed like a mantra. But "what shall be" is in our hands. Maybe the weight of that responsibility drives us to panic and deny that we're capable, even to deny that it's our responsibility. Admitting hope in a better future puts us on the hook to realize that future. To keep ourselves off the hook, we deny hope and cling to futility. We rob our own hope, then declare it gone forever.

Someone must be to blame, so they are to blame: crazy, evil people. We blame them, but it hasn't been so long since the jungle. Their raw displays of awful power still attract us. We stand in awe of their capacity for monstrous acts.  Marveling, even in disgust, we watch. When things blow up, we run to see. Threats to blow us up make us run with fear, but then we stop and turn to see. How can they be so crazy, so evil? We don't know why. We can't understand. Their minds are lurid, inscrutable. Their actions are horrific, incomprehensible, mesmerizing. We stand dumb, in awe, stupid. In our ignorance, denying our kinship, in the blindest of faiths and against all evidence, we consign them to the unknowable, unthinkable, and unimaginable.

Each soul we consign to outer darkness emboldens our creeds of  futility and evil people. Avoiding hooks of understanding and responsibility, we get firmly snagged by the disempowered thinking of victims. Our creeds of futility and the power of evil people keep us at the mercy of what we dumbly fear and hold in awe. These are faiths. We can replace them. These are people. We can understand them. But first, we need to do the most difficult things: divorce stupidity and understand ourselves.

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Coming Out of the Muck

A while back I met an intelligent man who claimed that we are a transitional species. Not far from our bestial past, we aspire to humanity, but we sorely lack evidence that we have arrived at our goal, yet.

This makes sense to me when I think about how we recognize power. We could simplistically divide power into three types: 

Power of fear of force

Power of charisma

Power of intelligence

Much of the world remains subjugated under the power of fear of force. We in the United States flatter ourselves to think that we are largely free from that fear. We aren't; our fear is just buried beneath faith that "our system works" and that we can meaningfully improve things via system-prescribed methods. That might be true were the system not designed to prevent meaningful change. 

The people cannot be all, & always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

        -- Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, November 13, 1787

What precludes the "terrorism" advocated by a Founding Father? The world's most powerful standing military and police forces, along with military technology and systems of surveillance that any tyrant would drool over. Power of fear of force can seem invisible or absent when it goes unchallenged. When nothing provokes it to the fore, it feels like it's not there. Every American knows that it's there; we just disagree over why it's there.

We celebrate power of charisma and reward it with office, license, and wealth. Our celebrities get it; our executives get it; our political leaders get it. Why we give it to them remains unclear, other than the fact that we like charismatic people. No one has yet demonstrated that a person's ability to garner the support of other people to get things said and done is proportional to the wisdom of saying or doing those things. Charisma and wisdom are often wildly disconnected. Charisma guarantees that people will perceive and hope that wisdom is present; otherwise it guarantees nothing, even worse than nothing. Charisma often proves to be an attractive cloak hiding despicable secrets, yet we love to cling to it. We still need kings and queens, pomp, glory, and reasons to believe.

Despite a mountain of wisdom and historical evidence to the contrary, our love for charisma incites us to pretend that power is symmetrical, that it can used benevolently or atrociously. The evidence? The most charismatic and powerful people were those who achieved the unbelievable. We call them tyrants and monsters. The rest have given us the world as we know it, not exactly a stellar product. At least in the United States, we don't have a Hitler or a Stalin or a Chairman Mao to fear. Our charismatics are better than that. We prefer them on stage and at the helm. They inspire our confidence. Why? We're not sure about that. As long as they promise us a better world and we despair of a much better one, stasis is maintained. So, we keep giving them power.

The connection between intelligence and the wisdom of a course of action has long been recognized. We have mountains of evidence to support that connection. Are there exceptions? Of course, but the serious question is: do we have anything better? Hopefully we will find something better, but it probably won't involve a reversion to force and charisma. Our sciences, economic systems, and educational systems depend on the connection between intelligence and wisdom, and so in turn do our societies. In other areas, though, we deprecate the connection.

We admire superior intelligence in its place and within its prescribed limitations. Otherwise, we fear it. It challenges us. Its superiority places it beyond our control. We lack the means to assess its intentions and motivation. We don't know where it's coming from. Trust our freedom to intelligent people? Better trust that to a strong military. Trust our governance to intelligent people? Better trust that to those who can wheel and deal, make impressive speeches, navigate Byzantine politics, and have camera presence. Better to trust ourselves to those who can make us feel confident and secure, rather than to those who understand the facts, tend not to spin the facts, acknowledge our limitations, and don't have $100,000 smiles.

We make our decisions and grant power to our leaders much like our ancestors did, much like our evolutionary forbears did: on the basis of striking visuals and impressive noises or, in lieu of those, threats of bodily harm. Powers of force and charisma still rule the day. If we have advanced to the point that we are capable of accelerating our own development, let's put our might into learning better ways and teaching them to our children. The forceful get away with keeping us under thumb, and the charismatic get away with keeping us fooled. The intelligent need to get smart enough to stop their inferiors from getting away with it. 

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To Be Or To Become

We do something strange to each other. We do it a lot, and it's patently hypocritical. We tell each other to be different.

I'm not talking about hoping, encouraging, or even expecting each other to change. Change is good. Everything that lives and grows, changes. Every living and growing thing changes what's around it. When we stop changing, we've stopped learning. If we stop learning, we have in a very real and fundamental way stopped growing. Once we've stopped growing, it's no longer my idea of living.

Telling each other to be different is not the same as telling each other to become different. Semantics? No, not when we do it to each other and not when we experience someone doing it to us. What's more, we don't resort to telling each other to be different unless we're at a loss. When we have a clue about how someone could become different, we share that information with them. When we have no clue, we are more likely to flatly require that they ought to be different.

It's easiest to see ourselves while looking at someone else. Let's say we have two friends who are having trouble. Both sides have points and both sides have faults. We don't like to see our friends in trouble. It's pretty obvious that if Sally would do this instead of that, it wouldn't push Johnny's buttons. It's equally as clear that if Johnny would do that instead of this, it wouldn't push Sally's buttons. So we, being good and fair friends to both, inform Sally and Johnny what they should do differently. Both Sally and Johnny value our perspective and are appreciative, because they don't want to have trouble either.

Here is us telling them to become different: we suggest, encourage, criticize, give our best advice, and explain how it will help them get where they want to go. We offer what we can to help. We offer it because we think it will help. And then we let them know that we'll stand by them and do what we can to get them from where they are now to where they ought to be.

Here is us telling them to be different: we suggest, encourage, criticize, give our best advice, and tell them how they ought to be. We define the optimal for them, and then we put it on them to get there. The upshot is clear: if they don't get there, it's their fault.

Funny, we don't like it when people put us in that position. That is, unless they've done it for so long that we came to believe it's justified.

On this point, Jesus stands out uniquely. His message and mission revolved around the same thing that all great prophets and teachers were intent on: the welfare of the people they tried to reach. His uniqueness was in his approach and the commitment that approach entailed.

Jesus might have been the Son of God or he might have been a lunatic; but if he was a lunatic, he was a special sort. He claimed to have come from God to share the troubles of our life with us, and he promised to stay with us as we learn how to get ourselves out of trouble. He didn't tell us, from a high and mighty heavenly position, that we ought to be different. He didn't lay down rule upon rule, requirement upon requirement, which once fulfilled would miraculously yield salvation. Even if he didn't rise from the dead and ascend to heaven, the spirit of what he did do remains with us and is still significant. And powerful.

Jesus' only requirements were that we give him the same personal devotion that he had already given us, and then listen to him. He got down into a cesspool with us, one that was mostly of our own making, to show us how to climb out. He told us that we need to become different, and he informed us how to do that using the most devoted of approaches: he modeled it for us, knowing that it would mean his death. And then he said that if we do the same to the least of his brothers, we do it to him.

Friends don't tell friends to be different, stand aside, and blame them if they fail. Friends tell friends that they can become different, help them figure it out, and stand by them as they try. 

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Which Came First: Chicken or egg? Problem Solved

It only takes one chicken to lay many eggs. To hatch many chickens takes many eggs.

To get a chicken that lays eggs, you only need one egg. To get an egg that will hatch a chicken, you need two chickens.

Chickens rule.

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Faith in Science

Yesterday in response to something I said, someone asked me, "How does honest, serious science complement honest, serious faith? I do not see how that can possibly be true."

Well, I suppose that depends on what is meant by "faith" and "science" doesn't it?

If "science" means "the absence of faith" then I would agree. The problem is that science is in no way free of faith. In fact, science depends on faith every step of the way.

At that statement, you might think that I'm full of crap. Or, being a bit more inquisitive and polite, you might think that I mean something weird by "faith." No, not really, not on either count. I'm actually quite thoughtful and serious, and I mean something very usual and commonplace by "faith." Scientists have faith in all kinds of things all the livelong day.

First, scientists have faith in the scientific method, which is no more certain than any other verification method devised by the minds of humankind. It is hardly foolproof, as attested by those three little letters: PhD. Next, scientists have faith in their respective abilities to perform science, otherwise they probably wouldn't be scientists; not good ones worth listening to, anyway. Next, and this is the one that most of us don't get, they have faith in the scientific process.

"Of course they have faith in the scientific process! What's not to get?" says you. Well, while you might be kind enough to let me put words in your mouth, you might not realize that the scientific process is NOT the same as the scientific method. The scientific method is what makes science different than philosophy or history, for example. Actually, just part of the scientific method makes science different.

Here's a lay version of the scientific method (thanks to the Science Lab Wiki at https://science-lab.wikispaces.com/Scientific+Method ):

"Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment" is uniquely scientific. The other steps are shared by other disciplines, with the notable exception of philosophy. Philosophy doesn't particularly care for data, testing, or what the rest of us think of as analysis. When asked to disclose the data from which he drew his conclusions, one philosopher answered, "Data is illusionary." Another retorted, "Define data." A third said, "That's ambiguous. Data is a variable referent." You see the problem.

To form the scientific process in its entirety, the scientific method is more or less sandwiched between a couple of very unscientific sub-processes.

At the front end, before you can get past the "ask a question" step, something needs to happen that behaves very unscientifically: funding. Science that isn't funded simply doesn't get done, scientific method or no scientific method. Deciding what and who (it often comes down to who) gets funded is not a very scientific matter. Sometimes it isn't even a reasonably understandable matter. Funding science is no more scientific than funding politics or art. We tend to think that those white lab coats imbue their wearers with above average ethics, apolitical aspirations, and plain old honesty. Alas, the history of science does not agree. Scientists are just as human as anybody, susceptible to greed, ambition, party loyalty, plain old lying, and every foible known to man. That's exactly why the scientific method is valuable: scientists are no different than the rest of us, except for those three little letters and some hefty student loans. Virtue not present can't be transmitted to funding sources. Even if it were present, it's doubtful that the most virtuous scientist could ameliorate the abstruse machinations which result in funds that enable his work. If that sounds obscure and remote, that's just how funding decisions seem to many a scientist, too.

At the back end of the process, after you have published your results, (which is no different than the publishing process for any other type of material, except that it involves a different set of acceptance criteria and--maybe--a higher level of scrutiny,) what happens next is far from an orderly, rational process. It's a veritable crap shoot. If your published articles get any attention, and if they get the right attention, and if they get enough of the right attention, your work will be considered by other scientists. What they do in response defies prediction, except that you know they will do the whole thing over again, this time on their terms. Oh, yeah--that is, if they get funded, and if they get published, and if they get enough of the right attention. (They will certainly have yours!) Then come the conferences and the discussions and the debates, and yet more funding, scientific work, publications, discussion, debate and, if you're lucky and/or connected, a book deal, or maybe even a spot on your favorite host show. 'Round and 'round it goes, and where and when it stops, God only knows. Just consider the global warming issue and ask yourself how orderly and rational a process that discussion has been. Eventually, out of the churning mass, like from some primordial ooze, comes a bona-fide, scientific miracle: consensus. That lasts for a while, until the next generation of scientists comes along with completely different thinking and approaches and everything changes. Again.

If that's not enough to drive the most cynical to faith, let's consider the more mundane aspects of a scientist's world. Scientists have faith in lots of familiar things: their lab equipment, their lab technicians, their suppliers, the labels on bottles, their colleagues, journal publishers, funding sources, management commitments, etc. There are lots of things that can go wrong with a scientific experiment, let alone all the research, experimentation, publishing, discussion, and consensus-building required to elevate a notion from wild idea to accepted scientific doctrine. Scientists don't perform regular micro-experiments to ensure that anything which could go wrong won't go wrong. They are more like us. They are anal about many things, (pardon me if that's not you!) With other things, they "trust and verify." Most things they just take on faith, like the rest of us. Routinely. Every day.

At each step along the error-prone and highly manipulated road to accepted science, scientists continue in the faith that they are moving closer to something valuable rather than farther away from it. They aren't always--or even usually--correct in that belief. For every idea that made it through the gauntlet of the scientific process, there have fallen scores, hundreds, even thousands of wild and not-so-wild ideas. Behind each fallen scientific idea were scientists who believed that their ideas would not fall. And the funny thing is that you can't be sure that an idea is wild until after it has fallen. Some of the wildest ideas simply refuse; try as they might, the opposition just can't cut them down. Even when one does fall, you can't be totally sure. Time and time again wild ideas of yesteryear fell, even fell badly to opposition replete with scorn and mockery, and yet were later resurrected and are accepted as good science today. Despite what we were given to believe by those most indisputable of all educational authorities, our textbooks, science has not been a long, uninterrupted train of forward progress, not by any stretch.

Which brings us to the mother of all faiths, held by every single scientist who pursues science as a scientist should, i.e., to further human knowledge, as opposed to just, say, load his or her bank account or get laid. (Hey, rock stars aren't the only ones with groupies.) We all believe, scientists included, the faith of all faiths: it's worth it. Billions each year in public and private funds devoted to science prove that we believe science is worth it. However, the evidence for this faith is not unequivocal, as issues like nuclear holocaust and environmental impacts attest. Even the shining hope of science, improved health, doesn't shout and cry the virtues of its outcomes. When taken as a whole and measured by human longevity, science seems to be a winner hands down. By other measures, though--say, mental health--it's far from clear that our sciences yield us net benefit. The most scientifically advanced nations are not necessarily the healthiest, nor are they necessarily leaders in any other quality of life measure. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. Yet, we love to believe.

I doubt I've changed your mind about too much, but hopefully I've made you think. And hopefully, I've sensitized you to the idea that science is no less dependent on faith than any other human pursuit, whether in matters large or small. You might not agree, but I'm sure you'll pay closer attention. Maybe you'll eventually find yourself compelled to change your mind. If you do, please don't blame me, and certainly don't blame science. The fault doesn't lie with either of us. The fault lies in human cognition, which cannot operate at all apart from leaps of faith. The fact that we are intimately acquainted with those leaps and make them so often that we take them for granted doesn't mean that they are not leaps, huge ones. Things only have to get a little Twilight Zone on us before we realize how huge.

When events or the people we rely on begin behaving in very unexpected (and unsettling) ways, we start to doubt their intentions. If it goes further, we start to doubt their sanity. If it goes too far, though, we start doubting our own sanity. (Funny, we rarely doubt our own intentions.) Theirs or ours, our senses of sanity depend on a very delicate balance. It doesn't take too much to upset it. We even have a term for it: crazy making. You don't have to be crazy to make crazy or to feel crazy. You just have to lose a little of the faith to which you have become so well accustomed. You know when that happens because faith is like breathing: you only miss it when something takes it away. Then, either way, the panic feels pretty much the same.

Next time, I'll look at faith. I'd like to suggest a kind of faith that complements serious science and doesn't leave you incredulous at the coupling.

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Newbie Post

Yet another avenue to spout off on... I love it!