

THE WISE SLOTH

Travis Haan

The Wise Sloth

Written by Travis Haan

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Travis Haan
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: INSPIRATION, INSTRUCTION AND MOTIVATION

 Steps to becoming a genius

Demotivational inspiration

You may already be a winner

Fuck it

Aggregate happiness

Immediate karma

How to become an expert at anything

How to get super powers

The Alphabits analogy

No action is an island

Glass masks

Signs you're old...but not necessarily mature

Signs you're mature...but not necessarily old

You might be depressed because the system sucks

 reasons you're surrounded by idiots

 ways people get dumber as they get older

CHAPTER 2: RELATIONSHIPS

How to pick up chicks

Stages of a relationship

Are you in love or just codependent?

How to go down on a girl

Why women like jerks

CHAPTER 3: BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

The fundamental problem with the economy

Cost/benefit analysis of economic oppression

Business makes the world go 'round

The legacy of a billionaire

Put a 100% tax on all personal income over $1 billion

The housing market is a crime against humanity

Professionalism is a straightjacket

Stop treating people like shit and they'll start giving a fuck

The letter I'll never send to my C.E.O.

Slavery by any other name

 ways workers' rights need to improve

One dollar equals one vote in the economy

CHAPTER 4: POLITICS AND WORLD ISSUES

Cost/benefit analysis of terrorism

Americans, you're not represented in the 2012 elections

The psychology of the game theory behind revolution

Problems we all just accept as part of life but don't have to

Borders are inhumane

Taxation without representation

Don't ask what your country can do for you

Why you should not have faith in your government

Why stop with just making drugs illegal?

The 28th amendment

An intervention with the police

We need to talk about cops beating up and arresting protesters

Is it moral for police not to enforce laws they believe are unjust?

Why the world sucks and how to save it

CHAPTER 5: PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

Sanity, reality, science, truth and religion

 ways mainstream academic philosophy has come to resemble organized religion

Reading for truth

How to argue scientifically

My secular theory on ethics

My theory on sexual morality

You already have ethics without religion

The danger in telling people life has no meaning

Life is war

The rise of the vagrant intellectual movement

An agnostic take on Pascal's Wager

An agnostic take on intelligent design

The agnostic's god

Should reason be recognized as a legal religion

Why I don't like strip clubs

CHAPTER 6: MYTHOLOGY

 signs Christianity is mythology

Prophets and cognitive dissonance

 reasons I'm extremely hesitant to debate Christians

Christians, you believe in science

 signs you should stop pretending to be Christian

 ways the Bible will literally drive you insane

 ways the Bible will make you an immoral person

A more realistic take on the 10 Commandments

It's time to stop celebrating Easter

It's time to stop celebrating Christmas
CHAPTER 7: MILITARY

The war debt

A Veteran's 2011 state of the troops address on the 10th anniversary of September 11th

You can support the troops or the UCMJ but not both

American soldiers aren't heroes, they're victims

The military is a cult

An overdue critique of the military caste system

 reasons public school teachers are better leaders than military officers

Quantifying in the heroism of troops

Why I won't salute the flag

CHAPTER 8: POP CULTURE AND OTHER THINGS

You should boycott pop culture

 reasons not to let your children read/watch "Twlilight"

The moral message I took away from "The Hunger Games."

 sings you're a sheeple

Cost/benefit analysis of internet trolling

Why do rappers get away with it?

 things gangstas and cowboys have in common

A history of recent American culture as measured by pop culture milestones

Upgrade your culture

 simple formula plot templates
INTRODUCTION

This book is a collection of selected essays written by Travis Haan and published on the website, www.wisesloth.wordpress.com. To understand what the Wise Sloth book and website are about it helps to understand why I chose the title, "The Wise Sloth."

My use of the word, "wise" isn't a declaration that I'm wise or that I'm trying to insinuate that readers should assume anything I say is wise. It represents my aspiration to seek out wisdom. All of my writings are motivated by a deeply, painfully self-conscious acknowledgement of the fact that I'm so lost I don't even know how lost I am. This is the basis of my philosophy on life, and it motivates me to analyze the world and articulate my observations and conclusions, not out of pretentiousness but out of desperation.

The conclusions I come to may appear biased, but I can assure you that almost everything I've written I've disagreed with in the past. The conclusions I've come to today are the product of tearing apart my preconceived beliefs at great cost to myself in the form of grief and anxiety. Tomorrow I may disagree with the things I've said today. If/when that happens then future editions of my book and blog will look significantly different than they are now.

The inclusion of the word "sloth" in the title is a declaration of my laziness that I refuse to apologize for. I simply don't see the virtue in working ourselves to death running in a circular rat race our entire lives. I don't measure maturity by how willingly one enslaves themselves to an economy that views its workers as disposable commodities. I measure maturity by how fully one experiences the majesty of life, and that requires stopping and smelling the roses and walking the path between the cradle and grave at an enjoyable pace. Though, the fact that I've written nine books and counting provides some evidence that I've completely failed at my aspiration to celebrate the virtue of slothfulness.

The title "The Wise Sloth" comes off as a little arrogant, lazy and unprofessional. Any public relations firm would probably advise me to change my title to something more marketable. I know this, and I could have fixed it at any time, but I've chosen not to. If I were going to whitewash over my beliefs and my identity to make myself more marketable to people who are more comfortable with whitewashed professionalism then I would have never started questioning society in the first place. I would have just taken the first dead-end cubicle job that offered me an insulting paycheck and punched my timecard in corporate hell until my soul died of cabin fever.

I can't make a categorical imperative out of that kind of behavior. So I've kept my unprofessional title and my unprofessional style (warts and all) because it reflects who I am. Ironically, I reflect the environment I was raised in. American culture tries to whitewash over its horrendous flaws with a sanitized, censored, godly, professional, soulless smile, but behind that fake smile American culture is dark, cynical and cruel. If that's how my words comes across it's not because I'm trying to use shock value to sound edgy and hip. I'm just calling it how it is. If that comes across as crude it's just because that's how American culture looks when you wipe away all the makeup.

If you're not pissed off about the state of the world by the time you're finished reading this book then you must not have paid attention to anything I've said or anything that's going on in the world around you. At the same time, if you don't see the message of hope in all this then I've doubly failed to communicate my message.

This book is written for, and dedicated to, anyone who is trying to understand the crazy world they live in and feels that despite all the propaganda telling them they live in the best place in the world at the best time in history that something just isn't quite right.
CHAPTER 1

INSPIRATION, INSTRUCTION AND MOTIVATION

7 STEPS TO BECOMING A GENIUS

Step 1: Accept that you need to become a genius. Look at the graph below. Where on the graph would you mark yourself if the far left represented the ignorance of a new born baby and the far right represented the genius of Leonardo Da Vince?

(Ignorance) 1-2-3-4- (Normal) -6-7-8-9-10 (Genius)

Okay, that was a trick. Without changing your position on the graph, replace the word "Ignorance" with "Insanity" and replace the word "Genius" with "Sane."

The definition of the world "sane" is: "having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense."

Think about a baby. Does a baby think or act with sound reason, judgment and sense? No. If an adult acted like a 1 year old he'd be locked away in a mental institute. I'm sorry, but babies are insane. We're all born insane, and, our progress towards sanity doesn't happen on its own. Sure, as we grow up our brains develop and automatically make us more capable of sanity, but we have to use that capability. In order to become truly sane you're going to have to consciously put forth a significant amount of effort to using reason, sound judgment and common sense.

What you know and how you think define how you experience reality. Your mind is your life. If you don't consciously take responsibility for improving your ability to reason then everything about your entire life will be duller, weaker and uglier. The clearer you understand that the more motivation you'll have for striving to fulfill your mental potential. The less you understand that the more likely you are to spend your life sitting on your couch watching mindless television to distract you from the emptiness of your reality.

Step 2: Accept that you're capable of becoming a genius. There's a popular misconception that you're either born a genius or you're not. Nobody has any proof of this. We just believe it because we've heard it so many times and assumed that if so many people believe it then it must have some basis in reality. Plus, it excuses us for not being geniuses and lets us get back to watching television without feeling guilty about how stupid we are.

If you're smart enough to graduate high school then you're smart enough to become a genius. Think about this. How many song lyrics, movie characters, book titles, sports statistics, telephone numbers and street names will you memorize in your life? How many books/magazines/news articles/websites/blogs have you/will you read? When you add it all up the number is astronomical even if you score low on a traditional I.Q. test.

You'll never reach the limits of your mind. Therefore, the limits of your mental potential are defined more by what you believe they are than what they actually are. You have the potential to become a genius if you would only allow yourself permission to become what you're capable of becoming and dedicate yourself to pushing yourself as far as you can go.

Step 3: Accept that you're ignorant. At first glance it seems I'm contradicting myself by saying that you're capable of becoming a genius but you're also ignorant. However, as you'll soon see, this paradox makes perfect sense.

Everyone is born insane, and in order to become a genius you have to grow into it, and the more room you give yourself to grow the more you can grow. In step 1 we talked about people who give up on the game before they start, but there are many, many people who get a tiny bit of knowledge and believe they've reached the peak of human potential. Then they spend the rest of their lives patting themselves on the back and sticking their noses up at everyone else. Ironically, since these elitists don't believe they need to push themselves any further they don't. So they spend the rest of their lives stagnating on the pillar they've set themselves on.

A word of warning. When I talk about elitists I'm not just talking about the dean of philosophy at your local community college who thinks the meaning of life is to memorize quotes and belittle freshmen. I've met plenty of poor, dirty, high school dropout rednecks who fall under the same category. They figure out that Jesus loves Republicans, Liberals are naive, the French are cowards, minorities are thieves, and real men learn how to fix their own trucks. With that they spend the rest of their life drinking coffee at the local Dairy Queen swapping condescending remarks to their church buddies about every colorfully dressed punk kid that comes in to buy a dip cone. Think of the movie, "Gran Torino." Clint Eastwood's character was an ignorant elitist even though he wasn't a Harvard educated yuppie elitist.

Here's a motto you can live by: Only an idiot thinks he knows everything.

Step 4: Accept that everyone else is ignorant. Humanity doesn't have life figured out. Our entire history has been a slow process of clueless adults raising clueless children. The younger generation always takes it for granted their parents' generation has it all figured out. So children devote their lives to mimicking their elders only to waste their lives re-enacting primitive, obsolete customs invented by pompous monkeys.

Each generation a few rebels break out of the autopilot setting their culture tries to force on them, and as a result they learn something new about the world. Then they're likely ridiculed and possibly killed for going against the status quo, but if their new knowledge stands the test of time then in a few generations everyone will take that new knowledge for granted and mock their own ancestors for being so dim-witted while they themselves are still living their own lives on autopilot and mocking and killing the forward thinkers of their own generation.

This is the environment you were raised in as well. You'll meet people on every street corner who will tell you they have life completely figured out. If they know anything that you don't then they have something worth learning, but the moment you fall hook line and sinker for somebody else's answers is the moment you stop growing and start living a subpar life.

Take everything you learn with a grain of salt. Even if someone teaches you something that's true it's probably still incomplete. Questioning people and their belief systems can only help you arrive at a clearer perception of the truth. Blind faith can only result in blindness.

Step 5: Develop a systematic plan to understand life. Imagine it's Sunday afternoon, and you don't have to go to work, but you've got a ton of errands and chores you need to get done. If you just wander around the house and do a chore here and there when you just happen to find yourself in a room that needs something done it's going to take forever to get all your chores done. Imagine driving around town aimlessly and hoping you run across the store or business you need to get something done at. You'll never accomplish all your goals.

Becoming a genius (aka growing up, aka becoming sane) is the same way. You're not going to be able to wander through life aimlessly, casually doing the things you feel inspired or hungry to do and hope to make the most out of your mind or subsequently your life. You need a written, step by step plan (preferably framed and hanging on your mantle). Chances are you don't have one of these, and chances are you're not going to make the most out of your mind and subsequently your life.

Creating a systematic plan to understand life sounds like a monumental task that can only be accomplished by the greatest philosopher or prophet, but that isn't the case. All you have to do is figure out what's most important in life (in descending order). You can make all the excuses you want for why you can't do that, but at the end of the day all those excuses are going to accomplish is to keep you from making the most out of your mind and subsequently your life. Who told you that you couldn't or shouldn't take control of your life? That's bullshit. At any rate, what did you think life was all about? This is it. This is what life is about. This is what you're supposed to do. Figuring out and learning what's important is the biggest part of growing up.

And it's really not that hard either. Think back to how much you know about movies, music, and possibly sports. You're probably a movie trivia genius. And how did you learn so much about movies? By watching a little bit every week (probably every day) for most of your life. You can become a genius at life the same way. Just learn a little about what's actually important in life every day.

Step 6: Learn, practice and use logic. How are you going to understand life if you can't take someone else's word for it? By using logic. Logic is simply the art of asking questions. The amount and quality of the answers you receive about anything is directly proportional to the amount and quality of questions you ask. So go to the library and check out some books on logic and critical thinking if you haven't already.

Step 7: Question your answers. Let's suppose you questioned your personal beliefs and the foundations of your culture and found them lacking. So you went back and rewrote the rules and applauded yourself for fixing them. Then you lived the rest of your life by those new rules and taught them to other people. The only problem is you're Anton Lavey, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Timothy Leary or Charles Manson.

Question your answers.
DEMOTIVATIONAL INSPIRATION

Everybody has a dream, that big thing you want to accomplish in your short life. Unfortunately, the bigger your dream is the more work it'll take to achieve it. Thus, the farther away it'll be and the harder it'll be to achieve.

To make matters even worse, since the size of your dream is relative to your ambition, the bigger your dream is the stronger you'll burn with desire to accomplish it. Thus the more miserable you'll be in the present because you'll be weighed down by all the work you have ahead of you, and you'll be weighed down by the shame of not having fulfilled your potential yet.

If your unfulfilled ambitions weigh heavy on your soul, take solace in the fact that it doesn't matter if you accomplish your dreams anyway.

Think about it. Let's suppose you write the next great American novel, get promoted to CEO, become a rock star, buy that house by the ocean with the rickety dock leading out over crystal blue waters, have sex with a super model...whatever.

You know what happens after that? You die. Your fans die. Your lovers die. Your house collapses and gets paved over to make way for someone else's dream house that's going to collapse after they die.

In the long run, on the cosmic scale of things, it doesn't really matter if you accomplish any of your dreams because they're all just castles made of the sands of time that are going to get blown away, kicked over by the next snot nosed kid who comes along or dissolved by the indifferent cosmic sea when the celestial tide comes in again.

So what does that mean? That dreams are futile and we shouldn't have them? No. You need to have dreams because your tomorrow will only be as vibrant as your dreams tonight. If you don't have a dream then where's your life going to go? Nowhere. And that would be a waste of a life. But you do need to keep those dreams in perspective.

When you start to stress out over your dream, ask yourself this question. So what if you achieve your dreams? So what if you get a gold rimmed hot tub and a trophy spouse; is that really going to fundamentally change the experience of existing for you? No.

You're still going to be you. Your reality is still going to be defined by how you perceive what you experience in the immediate present. All you're going to do after you fulfill your dreams is continue being you and experiencing the moment.

Life is made up of "todays," not "tomorrows." Stressing out about a tomorrow that hasn't happened ruins your "todays" that are actually happening. So even if you finally do achieve your dreams and tomorrow is everything you ever hoped for, your "yesterdays" will be miserable if you're always stressing out today.

You don't need to own a Bentley to enjoy yourself and savor the moment. You can do that right now sitting on the mini lawn chair in your empty one bedroom apartment while typing on a laptop that's sitting on the upturned luggage you're using as a table because you don't own a real one...or whatever the case may be.
YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER

I had a conversation with a guy a long time ago. I don't remember who his name or what we were talking about, but I remember I said something that made the guy chuckle, and he said, "You're cool." But he didn't say it like it was a compliment. He said it like he was making a decision... like he was bestowing a title on me. Like I wasn't cool until he said so. I was a little offended by that, because I knew I was cool regardless of whether or not he or anyone else thought so.

Understanding that you're valuable regardless of what anyone else thinks is a vital life lesson for everyone to learn. That's why it pisses me off that our society has a tool that teaches people that their value is validated and measured by external sources. I'm talking about awards.

Isn't that pretty much what an award does? It says, "I deem you worthy." I deem you the best, the second best, the third best, or I deem that you're not worth mentioning. Granted, that's not the sole purpose and inherent nature of all awards, but honestly, human beings do have a tendency to take awards very, very seriously. People have walls in their houses dedicated to their trophies because they believe on some level that their inherent value is reflected on that wall. That's why people cry when they lose a contest. That's why parents push their children to the breaking point to win competitions. Emilio Estevez's character on "The Breakfast Club" was based on real people.

If your kid wins an award and you make a huge deal about congratulating him but you don't make it a point to teach him that he's valuable without the award then you're effectively teaching him that he needs external approval to validate his internal worth, and that's crippling.

I lose respect for adults if I see that they still have a wall full of trophies they won during childhood. Nobody needs that. If they're so proud of themself for having those trophies I have to wonder if they'd still be proud of themself without the trophies. When I get an award I throw it away the first moment nobody is looking, and I think that's healthy.

Having said that, I hereby award you the world champion ass-kicking award. Your certificate reads as follows: "I (insert name here) don't need your fucking award to tell me I kick ass. It goes without saying."
FUCK IT

As a child my favorite characters on television were the old guys (usually Asian karate masters) who were always perfectly calm and had everything figured out. They'd sit there and smirk as the young fledgling hero fumbled through their quests like a clueless 11 year old lost in a big city.

One day it dawned on me that I'd been fumbling through life crippled by my own ignorance just like the fledgling heroes on my favorite Saturday morning cartoons, and just like the young heroes on television, I was the only obstacle keeping me from becoming a calm, centered Zen master too. All I had to do was figure out the supreme truth they understood. Unfortunately, I couldn't ask my parents or any other old people in my real life to teach that secret to me, because they didn't know it either.

If nobody would tell me the secret to supreme calmness then I'd just have to figure it out for myself, and I reasoned I could do it without having to go through a lifetime of meditation and martial arts training if I just worked backwards and reverse engineered the process from the conclusion.

The conclusion was that all life's problems aren't worth stressing over. I just needed to know why.

The difference between the old, wise, tranquil guy and the guy who jumps out of a sky scraper when the stock market dips is perception of priorities. When you know what's important then you don't worry about the unimportant things. When you have a skewed perception of what's important then you overreact to unimportant events. So you have to ask yourself, what's important and why?

Imagine all the worst possible things happening to you at once. Your loved ones die. You go bankrupt. You go to prison. You lose your legs. You lose your rank in your high school's social hierarchy. Once you've lost in every way that you can possibly lose in life, what have you really lost? All you've lost is external luxury. But you still have your self, the only thing you ever truly owned. Nobody can take that away from you, and as long as you have yourself then you can still till a life for yourself.

The only time you're taken from you is when you die. Even then, it's not logical to fear the inevitable. And the big kicker about death is that when you die you lose everything in life anyway. So when you lose anything in life before death...shit...you were going to lose it anyway. So you can't ever lose anything that you weren't going to lose anyway.

This makes a lot of suicides ironic. The point of suicide is to escape your intolerable life. If people could choose between suicide and a better life they'd just choose the better life. So if you're at the point that you're willing to kill yourself then you're free to do anything. If you're willing to let go of all the ties that bind you to the earth then you're free to fly to the ends of the earth.

Look, shit happens. So don't be surprised when it does, and don't freak out because you think it's the end. It's never the end until you're dead, and in the meantime shit happening doesn't change the fact that you're still you and you can still experience life.

So the old, wise guy realizes that nothing really matters. but the reason the young jack ass hero can't achieve the same Fight Club-esque sense of freedom from worry is because he's trying too hard. Don't try to hold the philosophy that loss is unimportant tightly in your mind. Just let go. Say, "Fuck it." All you have to lose is your anxiety.
AGGREGATE HAPPINESS

There are millions of moments throughout your lifetime where you're faced with a decision that can cause you a tiny bit of happiness or a tiny bit of distress. The amount of happiness and stress is so small that it basically doesn't matter: like waiting to use the restroom until later, satisfying a slight hunger, resting for five minutes, rubbing one out before work, etc. These choices might seem inconsequential, but when you think of the millions upon millions of these tiny choices we make in our lifetimes, if we always choose to take that extra piss, snack, nap, or whatever then those millions of choices will add up to a huge chunk of happiness, but if we always choose to tough it out we will have amassed a huge pile of misery over the course of our lives.
IMMEDIATE KARMA

We only have so much time in this life. Therefore we only have so much time to be happy. Whenever you're angry, confrontational, jealous, convincing, condescending, etc. you feel angry, confrontational, jealous, etc. If you're always acting that way then you're always feeling that way. So at the end of your life all you'll have to look back on, all you'll have experienced will have been negativity.

The second you're mean to someone you've already created an experience for yourself that is not worth remembering and is wasted time that could have been spent experiencing happiness. So when someone is being a dick to, understand that they may or may not ruin your day, but they sure as hell are ruining their own. Even if they look like they're enjoying harassing you, they're not experiencing pure, honest joy, and they'll never be able to get that moment back. That moment will have been wasted on sub-par joy for the rest of eternity.

On the other hand, no selfless act is ever unrewarded. Anytime you do something virtuous you get the reward of feeling happy. Even if you don't get a tangible reward, ask yourself why you would have wanted a tangible reward anyway. You would have wanted a tangible reward because it would have made you happy. Well, if you take joy in doing good without getting a tangible reward then you just skip straight to the end goal: immediate happiness.
HOW TO BECOME AN EXPERT AT ANYTHING

1. State your goal. The more specifically you identify your goal the more specifically you can focus on it. Saying your goal out loud or writing it down will help you refine your goal and stay focused.

2. Learn from other people's research and mistakes. Whatever you're trying to do has probably already been mastered by someone else. Learn from their research and mistakes. Go read a book about it. Read every book you can find on the subject. Take a class on it. The more external help you can to get the less you have to reinvent the wheel.

3. Practice. No matter how much you read up on a subject or listen to lectures, that's only going to help you understand the theory. Take for example the simple skill of rolling a cigarette. I can fully explain everything there is to know about rolling a cigarette in one or two pages, but even if you memorize those instructions word for word you're not going to be able to roll quality cigarettes quickly and consistently until you've rolled at least 200 cigarettes yourself.

Every time you do something the neural pathways your brain responsible for processing that action will grow stronger. The stronger those pathways become the more second-nature the thing you're doing will become.

Not only that, but throughout your life you've developed a unique and extensive list of good habits, bad habits and different predispositions to ways of thinking and acting. All of these factors influence everything you do. Nobody else knows what all of those factors are. So nobody else's instructions will be tailor made for you. The only way for you to understand how your predispositions affect what you're trying to do is by doing the thing you want to do.

As you practice you'll come to understand not only your strengths and weaknesses but also the subtle nuances of the task you're trying to accomplish, and by giving yourself hands on experience with the task you'll fully understand why these nuances exist, how to fix/exploit them and eventually how to change them. But those subtleties can only be teased out through hands-on experience.

The point of practicing is to understand the logic of the system better. The more logically and systematically you understand the logic of the system the better you'll be able to master the system. As you practice, break down the system into its component parts and write a how-to manual for how to do the thing. It doesn't matter if anyone else will ever read it. It will force you to fully articulate how to do what you're doing and allow you to take a step back and look at what you know and find the holes in it. Read "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank Gilbreth. For God's sake, don't watch the Steve Martin movies. The book will help you understand how to break down systems into their component parts.

Also, practice all the time. You can't get good at rolling a cigarette, much less snowboarding if you only do it once a month. In between practice sessions you'll forget everything you learned last time and the neural pathways you've strengthened in your brain through practice will atrophy. It's a common misconception that some people are born experts. Mozart and Beethoven are often cited as examples, but in reality they only appeared to be child prodigies because they devoted their entire childhood to practicing constantly. If you want to master something then practice it every day, preferably several times a day. If you can, devote your whole day to it every day.

4. Constantly ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" If you have to force yourself to practice then you're not doing something you're passionate about. Oh, you may be passionate about achieving the end goal of becoming rich and famous, but you're not passionate about the task. So performing the task makes you miserable, and your brain constantly tells you to stop. You can push yourself through that wall for a while, but you're not going to be able to keep pushing yourself against your will for the decades it's going to take to master a skill. If you hate practicing them do yourself the biggest favor of your life and quit whatever it is you're doing, and find something you enjoy doing.

You should want to practice several times a day every day. You should want desperately to cut other time consuming activities out of your life to give you more time to do what you really want to do: practice. If you're not like a crack addict going through withdrawals when you can't practice then you've set the wrong goal. Find the thing you can't live without and practice that, because if you do something you're not passionate about enough to master it you're likely going to grow to hate it and become miserable.

If nothing else, life is short. You're running out of time to follow your real dream...the dream you would do just for the sake of doing it regardless of whether or not you'll ever master it.

5. Make crap. What do you think Leonardo Da Vinci's first picture looked like? What do you think Jimmie Hendrix first song sounded like? I guarantee you it was crap. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then the road to perfection is paved with crap. Rolling crappy cigarettes is discouraging. Every crappy cigarette you roll is proof that you'll never be able to roll a perfect cigarette. Even if that's true, you should keep rolling crappy cigarettes not because your goal is to become a master cigarette roller but because you want to roll cigarettes, and you enjoy the crappy cigarettes you've rolled until one day they start coming out perfect, and that day will come quicker than you expected because you weren't constantly stressing about becoming a master. You were just doing what you want to do and enjoying yourself and learning along the way without measuring success by the end product.

6. Constantly ask yourself, "Should I be doing this?" You should NOT be rolling cigarettes. All cigarettes do is get you addicted to poison and then kill you slowly and painfully. Life is short (especially if you smoke). Are you making the most of your time? Are the things you're getting better at really important? Are they worth the time and stress? Are they contributing to your demise or the demise of society at large? Are they a waste of time? If you're not asking yourself these questions then you might be wasting your life mastering a counter-productive skill.

7. Cheat. Here's a motto you can live by, "By definition, the quickest and most efficient way to do anything is to cheat." By "cheat" I mean break the rules. What are the rules anyway? They're just the standard way of doing things that the people before you established. They're not written in the fabric of space time. They're not like the laws of physics. They're not even moral imperatives. Rules are just shit people said or did. In order to do something better you have to do it different. That means you have to change the rules, and in order to change the rules you have to break them.

And remember, there are always at least 3 ways to get around the rules or standard operating procedures. Those three ways are different for every task. Take rolling a cigarette for example. Here's 3 ways to cheat: buy pre-rolled cigarettes, use a rolling machine, or smoke a pipe. Find your own shortcuts in whatever you're doing. It's not unethical. It's usually how we should be doing things anyway, but people have been (and are) just too stuck in their ways or uncreative enough to think outside the box and figure out a more efficient way of doing things. Doing things the long, hard way doesn't prove you're tough or responsible. It proves you're a Neanderthal.
HOW TO GET SUPER POWERS

Everyone has wished they had a super power like the ability to fly or run super-fast, but super powers don't exist. There's no hope of finding radioactive ooze or a magical totem that will imbue you with the ability to do anything out of the ordinary other than maybe get cancer. We're going to die in the same bodies we were born in, and that's it.

However, there's more than one way to skin a cat. You don't need magic or fantasy to get super powers. I hate to sound this hokey, but you've got the best super power of all. You've got the super power that unlocks all the other super powers. You're like Peter Petrelli from the television show, "Heroes."

You're a human, right? And you wish you could fly? Well, humans have already made flight possible. Do you want X-ray vision? Humans have already created X-ray machines that can do that. Do you want to breath under water? We figured that one out too, and scuba divers have been doing it for years. We can see all the way to the moon. We can shoot bullets out of our hands. We've got friggin lasers.

If you want a super power, don't go looking for mythical beings to give it to you. Go ask a really smart person who thinks a lot. Then they'll study the actual universe we live in and reverse engineer a way to give you that super power using what we've got. Think about it. All the technological super powers we have came from the same source: people studying the way things work and thinking about it.

That's where you got the super power to not have to live in a cave and shit in the bushes. You take that for granted now, but that's quite the super power you've got. Your ancestors would be in awe of you anyway. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty for taking modern comforts for granted. Your ancestors are cheering for you. If you want to honor them, then show them their sacrifices weren't in vain by living the dream.

This raises the question, what about you and your childhood dream to have a super power? When you got older you probably laid that dream to rest with other childish things... and for good reason. It'd be great if you could fly, but if you could fly it'd probably be fun at first, but after a few years, one way or the other, it'd either turn into your job or you'd be turned into an experiment. So you don't spend your days wishing you could fly any more.

But there is something you wish you could do, and it's probably not as exotic as being able to fly. You might wish you could give fantastic back massages. Or perhaps you wished you were like MacGyver and could make anything out of anything or like Sherlock Holmes who could solve any puzzle. Maybe you just wish you had the ability to keep your car running. If I were a betting man I'd bet you wish you were more seductive... or at least less socially awkward. The point is, there's something you wish you could do.

Well, whatever that is. You can do it...or at least the next best thing. There's just one secret to unlocking every power-up in the universe: Study what's going on around you, and think about it. If humans have been creating new super powers for themselves since prehistory then that sets a precedent for you personally. If you want to be able to do something new...you can do it if you put your mind to it...especially since now we have the super power to share information around the world instantly. So now, more than in any other time in history, if you want a super power you can get it. If you want to learn karate and dress up in a turtle costume, you can arrange all of that in a couple of Goggle searches. You can even get a sidekick off of Craigslist.

Obviously, the internet isn't a perfect super power, but the overall point is valid. I'm just trying to point out the magic mushroom in the room. I'm saying if there's something you want to do but can't then power up with knowledge or quit winching about it. Even if what you want is literally impossible, the point still remains, the only way you'll ever be able to do anything different from what you're getting bored doing right now is by studying things around you and thinking. And you're very capable of doing that. If you're not doing that then I have no idea why because the door to superpowerville is wide open.

A final word of warning, the less you learn and think, the weaker you'll be. If you don't believe me, go talk to an idiot and see how hard their life is. Then go talk to Bill Gates and ask him how many super powers his house has.
THE ALPHABITS ANALOGY

Note: If you don't know, Alphabits are an American breakfast cereal made of processed grain that's been shaped to look like letters of the English alphabet.

Your brain is like a cereal bowl. Gaining knowledge is like pouring a little Alphabits cereal into the bowl. The more knowledge you gain the more Alphabits you pour in. Once you've got those Alphabits in your bowl they just sit there, but if you pick through the letters and look for patterns you can spell words by stringing letters together. The fewer letters you have the fewer words you can spell. The less of any certain kind of letter you have the fewer words you can spell. So it's not so important that you have any Alphabits of the letter "X," but if you're missing a lot of vowels you won't be able to make very many words.

The more letters you have the more complete sentences you can make. If you have enough Alphabits you could write a novel, or a how-to-guide or something profoundly wise and useful. If you've only got enough letters to write one page, then you'll only be able to write relatively simple things.

In this analogy the Alphabits represent pieces of knowledge, and the quantity of Alphabits in your bowl represents how much you know. The words you spell by stringing your Alphabits together represent the complex ideas you've learned/figured out in your life.

The less Alphabits you have in your bowl the fewer ideas you can understand. This is profoundly important, because the sum total of the ideas in your head are what make up your identity and your perspective of reality. What's in your head is your reality. The less you know the less you are... and the less you can become because you can only string X-number of Alphabits together in so many combinations.

The number of Alphabits in your bowl (or the lack thereof) limits the number of ways you can express yourself as well. If you don't have many Alphabits then your interaction with life, the universe and the world will be through simple grunts and truncated messages because that's the extent of your total life-repertoire. The more you fill your bowl and the more you study the pieces the more beautiful and useful words you can string together and write deeper, more meaningful paragraphs. Why grunt when you can sing a ballad?

It's not a chore to fill your bowl with Alphabits or take the time to sift through them and sort them. Stringing those Alphabits together is how you lay the road to happiness. Every idea you understand and organize into your greater world view brings you one step closer to having a relatively complete understanding of who, what, where, when and why you are enabling you to understand how to get to where you want to be.

If you don't pour any Alphabits in your bowl or take the time to string the letters together into any words other than what you heard on TV, then your life is basically forfeited. You had the chance to make whatever you wanted, and you just let your Alphabits sit there while you bitched about the taste all the way through breakfast time.

That's not cool. That's not honorable or mature. That's a pathetic tragedy. Stupidity is a pathetic tragedy. And yes, that makes stupid people a pathetic tragedy.

But that's not a call to action to sneer at stupid people. Stupidity is the consequence of stupidity. If you were born and raised with X-number of Alphabits in your bowl and the people who served you breakfast never gave you more and discouraged you from asking for more but taught you it was wrong to "play with your food" then how could you be anything different than a product of your environment?

If your parents didn't spell it out for you as a child, someone's spelling it out for you now. Your Alphabits are your responsibility. Fill your bowl, and study what's in it. Because when you die what's left on the table will be the product of your existence.

I don't know if we'll be judged after death based on what we left on the table. I don't know if there will be any consequences for anything we succeed or fail at in life, but I do know that while we're here, what we do is what we experience. It's what we have to look back on for the rest of our lives and what determines what we're capable of doing/experiencing for the rest of the time we have left to live. So it matters here and now what you've done with your Alphabits. If your life sucks, and you want it to be better, I guarantee you that if there's a solution to your problems then the way to find it much less use it is to either get more Alphabits in your bowl or study the ones you've got closer and figure out what combination you missed.

And I guarantee you this. Whatever problems are in your life, being complacent with your Alphabits will only make them worse.
NO ACTION IS AN ISLAND

However you act in a given situation is how you can be expected to act in any other similar situation. Everything you do or think is a piece of a pattern of thoughts and behavior that has existed in your past and will exist in your future.

Have you even known anyone who dated an asshole and was miserable because of it? Did it ever annoy you how they'd constantly make excuses for why their significant other was an asshole and why they were going to put up with it? The whole time they were making excuses you were probably thinking, "That person was an asshole yesterday. That person is an asshole today. That person is going to be an asshole tomorrow. Why don't you understand that?" Well, your friend was oblivious yesterday. They're oblivious today, and they're going to be oblivious tomorrow. Why don't you understand that?

No action is an isolated incident. Everything is part of a pattern. This is why psychologists and fake psychics understand you so well even if they only know a little bit about you. They understand that every little detail they know about you is indicative of a larger whole.

This is why bad drivers and people who stand in the middle of the isle at the grocery store blocking 15 shoppers while they stare mindlessly at a jar of pickles should piss you off. If they're dumb enough to do that one seemingly idiotic thing then how far does that pattern stretch throughout the rest of their lives? Those are probably the mother fuckers who would gas Jews just because Mein Furer told them to.

So you have to ask yourself, what are your tendencies? Are there any tendencies you have that you try to minimalize or make excuses for? Regardless of how you answer those questions today you should watch yourself tomorrow. The next time you do some small irrational thing, stop and try to find how that irrational action fits into a pattern in your life, because I guarantee it does.

Next time someone is mean to you and comes up with a seemingly valid excuse for why their meanness was an accident, don't believe them. The only accident was that they let you see the real pattern beneath the mask they're wearing.
GLASS MASKS

A wiser man than myself once said, "You wouldn't worry so much about what other people thought about you if you realized how seldom they did." Think about that. Most people walk around agonizing about what other people think of them. They don't go around agonizing about what they think about you. Nobody is scrutinizing you. Nobody gives a fuck about you. They're too busy thinking about themselves. So don't worry about what anyone else thinks about you. You're under the radar.

Well, you're not really under the radar. Everyone can see you more clearly than you could imagine. They just don't generally give a shit about you or your image enough to tell you everything they understand about you.

People don't need to scrutinize you to see you for who you are. We put so much time and energy into constructing these elaborate masks to present a polished Hollywood image of ourselves to the rest of the world and hide the vulnerable, shattered people we truly are, but the irony in this is that we're only fooling ourselves.

You can fool a person on a first date. You can fool a person at a job interview. You can fool anyone for a week at most, but the real you will shine through eventually, and people will pick up on the real you much, much, much, much sooner than you'd expect.

We all like to think we're smooth. We like to think we're unique snowflakes. We like to think we're different. But we're not. People are people. We're all 99% the same. The differences are barely consequential. This is why advertising works. This is why brainwashing works. This is why self-help books work. This is why our whole goddamned society works.

But it doesn't take a professional psychologist to read you. You're transparent. Period. I'm transparent. Period. I don't bother pretending to be anyone but who I am anymore even though I know that who I am...is pretty fucking shitty in a lot of ways. But I am who I want to be (as we all are). And apparently I want to be a shitty person (by some standards). Whatever. Fuck it. As long as I like who I am I'm not going to bother hiding the shit stains. It wouldn't do any good if I tried. You'd see it eventually anyway no matter how hard I tried to hide it. So why expend the extra effort?

So do yourself a favor. Stop hiding, because you're not really hiding from anyone but yourself. And when someone points out your shit stains don't waste their time with this, "You don't know me! You don't know anything about me!" bullshit. You're not complicated. You're not special. You're cut from a generic cookie cutter. What little else there is to know about you everyone already knows...because you told us/them all about yourself with the words you said and didn't say. You told us/them all about yourself with your actions.

We know you. And we can see the shit stains you've wiped all over your face behind your glass mask.
SIGNS YOU'RE OLD...BUT NOT NECESSARILY MATURE

1. You've held a job for a long time! That's not going above and beyond expectations. That's the bare minimum you have to do to survive. Even if you have a good job, that just means you can afford to buy yourself more crap you don't need. I'm happy for you, but you're still only wearing 15 pieces of flare. If you've had a job for a long time then you must be old, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're grown up.

2. You got promoted at your job! The world operates under this assumption: Society makes up the economy's work force, and through social Darwinism the alpha members of society are destined to rise to the top of the corporate ladder; one way or another, the best, smartest people work their ways into the highest positions in every organization. So if you ever meet anyone who has a better job than you then you can just assume that they're better, smarter and just all around more alpha than you.

The problem with that philosophy is that human beings aren't tactical wolves, they're butt sniffing monkeys. There's a billion ways to get ahead in the world. Acting/thinking like a mature adult is just one of them, and not many people take that route because it will get you in trouble with the butt sniffing monkeys you work for as often as it will help you.

Everybody knows the world is full of shitty bosses. I would say there are more shitty bosses in the world than there are good bosses, and that's sad. It's sad to watch almost 1/3 of the world's population walk around with their heads up their asses their entire lives. It's sad to watch them make fools of themselves, and its' sad to have to work for a twat who mismanages everything everyone else spent their lives building. And it's really sad to see that twat get to take all the credit and spend all the money everyone else earned their employer.

It's naïve to believe that rank always equates to maturity.

3. You got an award! In the bureaucratic world we live in, someday you're going to get a piece of a paper from someone saying how great you are. They'll give one to you every couple of years you stay in school. When you get a permanent job you'll get at least one a year. If you do any volunteering you'll pick a few up, especially if you make sure everyone knows how selfless you are. You can even get a world famous award for putting a ball in a hoop over and over and over like a lab rat. Awards are a dime a dozen. The only thing they guarantee is that somebody likes you, and you feel the need to let other people know that you feel the need to impress other people.

That's not impressive. That's not mature...on multiple levels. That's great if you got an award, and I'm sure you put a lot of effort into earing whichever one you got, but that's not a milestone of maturity in and of itself. And mature people don't gloat over their achievements privately or publically.

4. You got married! As a child I imagined getting married was like leveling up in a video game. Or your wedding clothes were like a cocoon that you spent the day in, and the next morning after a night of cosmic sex you emerged a new, upgraded human being. After all, if that's not what happens then what's all the fuss about?

The fuss is about convincing ourselves we're cosmic creatures taking part in a cosmic ritual when in reality we're just butt sniffing monkeys reinforcing the behavioral standards set by our butt sniffing monkey ancestors.

Great. So you decided to commit to spending the rest of your constantly changing life with another constantly changing person you just happen to want to rub your genitals against right now. You believe you're fulfilling some God-given mandate by signing a piece of paper printed out by a bureaucrat who charged you $300 for that piece of paper. You think tomorrow you're going to glow in the mirror because that piece of paper will change you who and what you are inside over night?

And you're going to love the other person forever. That's beautiful, but it's a conflict of interest to take credit for selflessly sacrificing yourself to the person you're going to get to rub your genitals against every couple of days for as long as you give them everything they want and don't piss them off. I'm glad you could come to a legal agreement with another human being that allows you to swap resources for sex for as long as it's convenient for both parties. That would be clever except it's what everyone expects you to do.

Getting into an archaic legal contract with another person after being pressured to your entire life doesn't make you king of the world. It makes you unoriginal, and if you bought a diamond ring it also makes you a sucker for paying thousands of dollars for a worthless rock, and it makes you complicit in the human rights abuses being committed by the diamond cartels. That diamond ring is not an indicator of maturity either.

5. You had a child! Parents act like they had to carry a ring to Mordor to have a child. Granted, pregnancy is hard, but getting pregnant is neither difficult nor novel. Everybody has sex. Having sex without a condom doesn't make you better than anyone else.

And if you had a child before you were financially secure then you fucked up. You shouldn't get to take credit for being an adult for making an irresponsible decision that is going to cost you your life's dreams and force you to raise a human being in a less stable home than you could have if you hadn't fucked up. If you had a child before you were prepared then the existence of your child is a badge of your shame, not your maturity.

Even if you had a child on time, that's not a sign that you're mature. That's just a sign you better get your shit together.

6. You kept a child alive for 18 years! If you had a child then you better keep it alive for at least 18 years. Bragging about that is like bragging about not burning down your house for 18 years. That's the least you can do. You only get to take credit for doing your best. If you had your child before you were prepared then you didn't do you best. If you didn't read every single child psychology book they sell on Amazon.com then you didn't do your best. If your child is a fuck up then you didn't do your best. If your child grew up to be a dick headed boss then you really fucked up as a parent.

The fact that you played some role in keeping someone alive for 18 years isn't worth nothing, but there are billions of shitty parents out there, and statistically speaking, if you're a parent you're probably one of the shitty ones who refuses to even consider the possibility they're a shitty parent. And when your child does screw up you're going to say, "I don't know what went wrong with that child. I did my best to raise him/her." When in reality what happened to that child was you were a shitty parent who is in denial because you've always been immature, and in fact, that's probably why you had a child in the first place. But since you've spent so long asserting your superiority based on your title as parent you've blinded your ego from recognizing your obvious flaws.

You can impress stupid people by telling them you're a parent who did their best. A mature person will just raise their eyebrow at you like Spock.

7. You have the power to command and punish others! As long as you put an average amount of effort into not being a dumbass then at some point in your life you'll be handed authority over a group of people younger than you. It's just going to happen. And if you want to go out of your way to make it happen, you can pick a career field that leans more towards command than others. As a matter of fact, you only need a G.E.D. to get a job as an authority figure.

When some old people get to tell people who made the mistake of being born after them what to do they start believing they deserve to tell other human beings what to do. When old people get really carried away with their illusions they start believing they have the right to punish other human beings for not following their orders.

But it ain't that hard to get in a position of authority, and it ain't that hard to yell at people whose only two options in life are homelessness and taking your shit. If you truly do have a keen understanding of organizational psychology, and you're an accomplished, confident communicator, and all your subordinates don't talk shit about you behind your back then I'm not talking about you. I'm questioning the maturity of authority figures who get a hard on from bossing other people around or who constantly congratulate themselves for how great it makes them for being in charge of people who were too stupid to be born earlier than them to richer parents.

If your license plate has your rank on it I'm talking about you. Grow up, you fucking child.

8. You hurt other people. We've all got monkey brains with monkey brain cortexes. Sometimes it feels good to hurt other monkeys, but civilized modern, mature monkeys control themselves and find intellectual ways to work around hurting others. They certainly don't take joy in hurting others or go out of their way to do it.

Everyone who hurts others thinks it makes them the alpha pack member. It doesn't make you the alpha pack member. It makes you a waste of animated star dust.

9. You're an ascetic. Religions tend to promise that if you follow a strict moral code you'll get to go to a paradise after you die. That moral code tends to boil down to never having any fun or experiencing any pleasure. Implied in that ascetic moral code is that the more free and happy you are the worse of a person you are. Thus, the more cold and rigid of a person you are the better you are, and you should be sad and remorseful all the time anyway for all the bad things you did in the past and know you're going to do in the future.

Being silent and miserable makes you look serious and mature, but what's the point in growing old if it's just to bemoan and regret the time we spent here? Devoting your life to asceticism is as immature as devoting your life to rain dancing. There's no point. It just wastes all the time you've been given to make the most of your life.

10. You've proven yourself obedient and faithful. Obedience and faith are the two best traits you can ask for in a slave. As much human history and culture revolved around the use of slaves it's not surprising that obedience and faith are held in such high regard. It's been written in a billion books and pounded into every poor person's head that it's mature to be obedient and never question the people who were born before you to richer parents.

Modern psychology politely disagrees. It's not mature to turn your brain off because it's not healthy or productive to turn your brain off. It just makes you a slave.

11. You dress professionally at work and wear designer clothes in the evening. Smart people in professional circles will tell you that "the clothes make the man." And you can prove this by doing an easy, fun experiment. Dress up in a sharp, casual suit and go run errands around town. Then shave your head and put on some sweat pants and a stained Looney Tunes T-shirt and go run some more errands around town.

When you dress sharp fortune seeks you out. When you dress like shit you repel fortune. There are a thousand psychological reasons for this that marketers understand better than the rest of us, but it all boils down to us being gullible monkeys. We're so gullible we'll even trick ourselves into believing we're more alpha simply by dressing more alpha. And if we keep up the lie long enough sometimes the lie ceases to be a lie.

For some people though, wearing designer clothes is just covering a turd with gold paint. If your conscience is fine with spending thousands of dollars on an outfit while people are dying in the streets from starvation then you're probably a gold crusted turd.

12. You're older than someone else. When I was a child I was told to respect my elders. Nobody ever told me why because it went without saying that the older you were the more respect you deserved.

That's simply not true. There's no rational justification for that rule. Nobody owes you anything for staying alive. You were supposed to be doing that anyway, and everyone else who is alive has been doing just as well at staying alive as you. You don't get extra points for being born before someone else. Everyone has equal worth in the universe.

You can be an old dumb ass. You don't deserve respect just for being old. And if you did truly deserve respect you wouldn't have to ask for it, much less try to demand it.
SIGNS YOU'RE MATURE...BUT NOT NECESSARILY OLD

1. Accepting responsibility for your fate. If you're lucky enough to be born into the right family at the right time and place you can achieve professional success while still being a whiney, co-dependent, indignant, incorrigible little bitch. You can get pulled through life kicking and screaming and have a place of success set up for you despite yourself. If you're born into the wrong family at the wrong time you can have every advantage in the world stolen from you. Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be born into poverty and oppression than prosperity and freedom.

That's unfortunate, but that's life. The universe doesn't owe you an ass wiping, and even if it did, you can't count on the universe to give it to you. Part of growing up is realizing that ultimately you're the only person who is responsible for ensuring that you survive and make the most of your life. No other human truly owes you anything, and even if they did, you owe the world more than that. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and you owe a debt to everyone who played any role in creating a world where you don't have to dress in loin cloths and hunt rats in caves for dinner.

The goal of life isn't to come up with the most valid excuses for why you failed. If you want to make the most out of your life and there's a valid reason why that's not possible then it's your responsibility to beat the odds. Death doesn't give a shit about your excuses. You're a walking, talking cosmic supercomputer. You're designed to solve problems, and if you're good at reverse engineering excuses then you've already proven how clever and resourceful you are.

You've got one life, and it's your responsibility to prove the excuses wrong and make the most of your life and the world you're going to pass down to the next generation. You don't have to be old to understand that. If/when that lesson sinks in then you'll be firmly on the path of maturity. Regardless of your age or position in society, if you're a sniveling, selfish, spoiled coward then you're immature.

2. Figuring out you don't know shit about shit. Humans are brilliant for the first few years of our lives. As children we're painfully aware of the fact that we don't know shit about shit. We don't know why the sky is blue. We don't know why dogs can't talk. We don't know what happens after you die, and we're honest with ourselves about the fact that we don't know any of this shit.

But before we're even out of high school we convince ourselves we're smarter than everyone who doesn't think exactly like us. Then we get a few years older and realize how stupid we were in high school. Then we laugh at high school kids for thinking they're smart while we congratulate ourselves for being smarter than them. Then when we're elderly we laugh at mid-life adults for how arrogant they are and congratulate ourselves for being wise old men. If we lived to be 150 we'd undoubtedly look back at 80 and realize we didn't know shit about shit then either.

No matter how much we learn we'll only ever know an infinitesimal percentage of what there is to know. No matter what we accomplish, we're still just a microscopic speck of dust on a slightly bigger microscopic piece of dust on a slightly bigger microscopic piece of dust. We live in an absurd universe, and nobody knows shit about shit except the bullshit they've convinced themselves makes them sound smart.

You grow up a little when you figure out that life isn't a pissing contest. It's a maze with no beginning, no end, no warning and no instructions. So humility isn't so much of a virtue one needs to exert effort to maintain as it is the common sense response to acknowledging how hopelessly naïve you and everyone else, truly is.

You knew this when you were a child. Hopefully it doesn't take you too long to figure it out again, because it really puts your life into perspective and helps you make the most of it.

3. Realizing all the adults in the world are lost little kids living in their own private self-centric fantasy world just like you. You were born lost. You were raised on bullshit customs invented by monkeys. All of humanity's greatest heroes evolved from butt sniffing monkeys, and we're still very close to that branch of the family tree.

Granted, humans sent a robot to Mars. We're some pretty clever monkeys, but at the end of the day, all the congressional blue banners and tailored designer suits in the world don't change the fact that the world is run by monkeys (of all colors) who have access to apocalyptic weapons.

But we're not told that as kids. We're told adults are a higher form of life than children, and our leaders are approved by God. And kids grow up believing that...to varying degrees.

Think of the world like an amusement park roller coaster ride. Some kids will ride any roller coaster with absolute faith in their safety because they know that roller coasters are marvels of human engineering, and they're tested regularly by professional safety inspectors. Other kids will ride the ride but be scared shitless the whole time that the roller coaster will fall apart and kill everyone on board because they noticed the wooden beams look rotted and the amusement park doesn't hide the fact that it's maintained by disenfranchised alcoholic carnies.

In the real world, sometimes amusement rides break and kill real people. The world isn't run by the cast from "Full House." The world is run by arrogant monkeys with more money than they know what to do with and access to the best drugs in history.

The sooner you realize that the sooner you can start choosing which rides you go on a little more carefully and stop putting so much faith in the carnies.

4. Reading a book on a very important topic. Want to be mature? Then read a book on a very important topic. If you don't know how to read then the most mature thing you can do is learn how to read. The fact that older people already know how to read doesn't make them better than you. Fate just gave them an earlier start. And if they haven't read a book on a very important topic lately then no matter how many books they've read previously...you're being more mature than them right now if you're reading and growing while they're stagnating mentally.

It doesn't matter who you are or what you do. There's only one correct answer to the question, "Have you learned more about something very important lately?" If you answer "yes" then you get a maturity badge for today. If you answered "no" then you get a badge of shame. That's how growing up and getting smarter works.

5. You think multiple steps ahead. In order to behave like a mature adult who is making the most of your life your first have to think like a mature adult. Mature thinking involves observing the world attentively, analyzing it objectively, breaking it down logically and drawing conclusions from supporting evidence. This requires looking outside your little bubble and thinking multiple steps ahead.

Think of life as a big chess game. We're all competing for resources, chasing after our own personal goals, bumping into each other as we get in each other's ways. Sometimes it may feel like we're just drifting through life, but we're drifting through a global waltz. Some people are so aware of the global dance they've identified and are tracking patterns in our movements and profiting from predicting where we'll drift to next. At the very least, they can see trouble coming a mile away because they've read the writing in the wall, and they won't be there when disaster strikes.

The point is not that we should all be market analysts. The point is that if you're not thinking about where you're headed in life and planning multiple steps ahead then you're a hapless pawn. Mature people don't drift through life. They plot the shortest distance to the Promised Land. If you're 12 then this means you should be figuring out the most efficient way to master your classes and utilize your free time. If you're 42 this means you should be advancing the limits of human knowledge and achievement.

6. Devising a life plan. Thinking multiple steps ahead is a useful tool for solving day to day problems, but it's also necessary to accomplish the specific responsibility of creating your 100 year plan.

Yes, spontaneity can be a virtue, but so can foresight. Someone once told me "Proper preparation prevents poor performance." That can be true at the same time as spontaneity is a virtue.

Look. You've got one life to live. You have a better chance of accomplishing more if you plan ahead. If you already have a plan, great! You get a maturity achievement badge. If you don't have anything mapped out then you get a badge that says, "I'm lost, and I don't care."

7. Choosing your passion and dedicating yourself to it. If you don't figure out anything else about your life then the least you could do for yourself is find your passion and dedicate yourself to it. If you never identify your passion then what the hell are you doing with your life? You're just going through the motions of life until you die and get replaced by the next automaton.

It's irresponsible to spend your life doing things you're not passionate about. You've got one life. You've got one chance to choose how you're going to spend it. The goal of life isn't to survive it. There ain't no surviving life. The goal is to be here now making the most of it by doing the things we're most passionate about...not just because that's the most enjoyable way to spend one's life but also because it's the closest thing to immortality we may get. The way we spend our lives is how we go down in history. Maybe after the past gets flushed down the drain of time it comes out somewhere on the underside of the universe where it's stored on faded, dusty cosmic microfilm that just sits there untouched for the rest of eternity.

Do you want to go down in history for eternity as the guy who sat there with his thumb up his ass while he played devil's advocate his entire life and never grabbed life by the balls and threw an existential touchdown pass for the record books?

The universe didn't go through 13.75 billion years of trouble bringing you into existence for you to sit here with your thumb up your ass or to settle for demeaning work at a shit job. I'm not saying to quit your job tomorrow and sink your life savings into a backyard oil wrestling league. I'm just saying, if you're not doing what you want to them what the hell are you doing here? What's all the sacrifice for if you're just going to die unhappy and unfulfilled?

8. Refining your style. You're probably not going to get your face carved into a mountain, and even if you did, that mountain is just a speck of dust on a bigger speck of dust. That carving is going to get erased by time in a twinkle of an eye. Nothing you ever do will last for eternity. But you do have this moment right now. Life is like a piece of falling dust caught in a sunbeam for a moment. It's brief and meaningless, but it's your moment in the limelight. It might even be an audition. Strike a pose.

Despite all reason or likelihood you exist, and for some reason you didn't get to choose what you are, but you can choose who you are. You're born with a microphone in your mouth announcing to all of history eternal who you are, and nobody warns you that as long as the clock is ticking the microphone is on. Is eternity going to hear you mumbling lame excuses or singing your ballad?

Why would you be here if not to be you? Think about it.

Being bland and cold and boring makes you look scary and authoritarian and adult. But that's just because dead, lifeless robots look like that. It's not really mature. It's just dead and lifeless and scary looking.

9. Creating and correcting your philosophy on life. Before you can plot out your life plan or personalize your identity you're going to need to figure out what you believe about life and death. Growing up we're told that only prophets and geniuses get to decide that, but it turns out that we all have to live our lives and suffer the consequences of our actions and inactions on our own. So since you're ultimately responsible for living your life and making the most out of it you need to figure out what you believe and why. And you should really write it down just to be sure you really believe in something more concrete and useful than a few overgeneralized fortune cookie quotes.

Once you figure out what you're doing here and express what that is and why then you can spend the rest of your life doing that meaningful thing you decided would make the most out of your life.

You're going to patch together your own philosophy on life anyway. The only question is whether or not you're going to be conscious of it. If you're not conscious of it then you'll likely end up basing your life on a hand full of random beliefs pushed onto you by other people who want to control and exploit you. If you don't put an exemplary effort into figuring out and correcting your life philosophy you'll end up like a FOX NEWS junky; even if you're successful enough to buy a yellow Hummer you'll still be a tool.

10. Defining your personal ethics. You've got to learn more than 10 rules to navigate your way through life. There are rules for everything. There are rules at school, at work, on the road, in our banks, on our televisions, on our IPods. God never said, "Though Shalt not run at the pool." But more people believe that than believe you should be able to get a refund if you purchase a wife who doesn't please you.

We barely get any ethics from religion, and nobody believes every rule written in any religious book. For the most part we make up our own ethics. We patch together commandments other people told us. We filter that through our prejudices and experiences and subconsciously weave together the real list of rules we use to guide us through life.

If you just drift through life on autopilot you're going to end up with a flotsam pile of ethics that you're probably not going to follow yourself. You'll just spend your life feeling guilty for doing things you don't understand why you keep doing.

The difference between right and wrong is not the forbidden question. It's actually the first question on the test. If you want to spend your life right then you need to figure out the difference between right and wrong, a task complicated by the fact that everyone in the world has a different answer. But that just means it's all the more important for you to ask the hard, forbidden questions yourself.

11. Expanding the limits of human knowledge and achievement. I'm not impressed by the Jeopardy champion or the guy who beat a super computer at chess. I'm not impressed if you can sell 42 used cars in a month. I'm not impressed how many clients you have. But I'll be impressed if you expand the limits of human knowledge by say, solving an unsolved mathematical problem or finding the cure for cancer.

Glen Beck is a very successful family man by Utah standards, but from a cosmic perspective his life will have meant far, far less than Carl Sagan's life. That's because Carl Sagan spent his life expanding the limits of human knowledge and achievement while Glen Beck spent his life sensationalizing disinformation to exploit gullible people's fears for his own personal gain.

12. Helping other people. Have you helped anyone lately? If so, that's real mature of you. If not, that's real immature of you. If you're helping someone then you can take credit for behaving maturely regardless of how old or accomplished in the ways of the world you are.

Sometimes life isn't complicated. This is one of those times. It's mature to help people.

13. Coming to terms with your past. Finding absolution for your sins and regrets. Old people act sanctimonious and demand respect, but they all fucked up somewhere, and you're going to fuck up too eventually. Everybody makes mistakes. We even feel guilty for things that weren't anyone's fault or that just don't matter. Guilt, remorse and regret are human emotions that appear across cultures and religions.

If you look at the mythologies humans have invented you can see patterns in how humans view guilt, remorse and regret. We've come up with some pretty elaborate rituals to process those emotions, but at the end of the day we're just dancing monkeys wishing away an existential dilemma we're not smart or brave enough to confront directly.

How do you deal with your regrets? Part of growing up is figuring that out. If you don't have any regrets yet then congratulations. In the meantime it would be mature of you to get a head start on figuring out how human beings find absolution when the need arises.
YOU MIGHT BE DEPRESSED BECAUSE THE SYSTEM SUCKS,   
NOT BECAUSE YOU SUCK

The current mental health profession generally accepts that suffering from high anxiety or depression is a sign of bad mental health and can/should be treated with drugs and extensive optimism training. Drugs and blind optimism have their place, but the root of much of the anxiety and depression in the world is caused by the fact that much of "the system" is insane, and if you're a logical, reasonable person, then the contradictions and abuses inherent in the system will drive you to anxiety and depression. Consider the following points:

  * Work places have totalitarian control over your life while you're at work, and America has one of the largest prison populations in the world, but we're told we live in the land of the free.

  * All day long the television and radio churn out commercials encouraging us to buy wasteful junk, and then we're told that if we buy that junk we're irresponsible and destroying the environment.

  * It's fashionable to get drunk. It's unconscionable to get high.

  * If you feed your family poison over the course of several years until they die you can get the death penalty. If you run a tobacco company that poisons millions of people over several years until they die you get a golden parachute.

  * The stock market is designed to fund companies at the expense of the investors, but when investors lose their money in the system that was designed to take their money the investors are told they were foolish with their money.

  * Houses cost twice what they're worth and are so confusing to buy you have to hire someone to help you navigate the paperwork, and we blame the people who got tricked into buying houses that cost twice as much as advertised for the mortgage crisis.

  * A higher education is necessary to earn a living wage, but if you can't afford a college education you're told the reason you're not earning a living wage because is because you're lazy and worthless.

  * People are killing each other over which mythology is the most loving.

  * We're taught that slavery is unconscionable, but almost all of our clothes and household goods are made by slaves in sweatshops.

  * Poor people work the longest hours at the hardest jobs, but we're told they're poor because they're lazy.

  * America spends half its federal budget on the industrial war complex to protect freedom, but America is the largest exporter of war and has the highest prison population.

  * Janitors have to take drug tests, but political leaders don't. In fact, they have diplomatic immunity.

  * Police cars are designed to look intimidating, but they have the words, "To protect and serve" printed on the sides.

  * Shows like Southpark and The Sopranos come with warning labels that say, "For mature audiences only."

  * A man can take of his shirt in public, but women are told their chests are immoral.

  * Bribery is called lobbying, and propaganda is called advertisement.

  * When goods in a store are only sold at a 1000 percent mark-up instead of a 1200 percent mark-up we're told they're on "sale."

  * Banks call their investors "valued customers" but they charge you with fees for everything possible, even for not having enough money.

  * We're told there's no cruel and unusual punishment for breaking laws in the West, but going to jail is almost a guaranteed sentence to get beaten and raped.

  * The tax laws are so complicated you have to pay someone else to do them for you, and if you can't pay your taxes then you can go to jail, but we're told if you can't pay your taxes or you fill them out wrong you're considered a criminal.

  * Work places use performance quotas to push workers to the limits of human endurance, and if that stresses you out you're told it's because you don't have a positive enough attitude.

  * Self-help books and religious books offer ineffective, fantasy-based solutions to real world problems, and when they don't work you're told it's because you didn't believe in them enough or try hard enough.

  * Fox News is considered "news."

  * We're charged the highest possible cost for goods and services while being paid the lowest possible wages for our work, and we're told that wealth trickles down and that supply and demand justifies our exploitation as necessary.

  * The celebrities we're encouraged to emulate churn out mindless, idiotic, formulaic art. People who actually take stances on important issues are told they take life too seriously and should lighten up. And we wonder why the world isn't improving.

  * We're raised from childhood to believe that romance and wealth are the most important goals in life, and when we spend our whole lives chasing them only to find out they don't work in life like they do in the movies we're told we were childish for believing what we were taught on television.

I could go on, but you get the point. Western society is a labyrinth of smoke, mirrors, contradictions, misdirection and dead ends. The lies and falsehoods are so ingrained in our society that you can't escape them. If you even begin to wake up to the reality of how un-user-friendly society is it will cause you deep anxiety and depression, and when that happens you'll be told by the television, your boss, your co-workers, your political leaders, your mental health professions, your religious (mis)leaders and maybe even your friends and family that there's something wrong with you. And just like the military you'll be pressured to conform to their twisted mind-set or be rejected and even punished by the brainwashed individuals who have given up the quest for sanity and have given in to the status quo.

Anxiety and depression can be signs of mental health when the rest of the world around you is insane. If you don't experience anxiety and depression then you should be very, very worried, because that means you probably aren't paying attention or asking the right questions, and that's not mentally healthy.
10 REASONS YOU'RE SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS

1. Cultural Isolation. Great leaps in human progress have often come from the meeting of minds. The Crusades brought Europe out of the dark ages. Christianity would have never evolved out of Judaism were it not for the cultural diffusion the Romans brought to the Middle East. The founding fathers of America based many of their political ideas on what they learned from thinkers all over Europe as well as the Native Americans. The printing press made the ideas cheaper and easier to transport, and the internet has sped up the growth of human knowledge exponentially.

But throughout history our minds have been cut off from each other's by physical, linguistic and political barriers, and they still are. If we had free energy, one language and no political barriers our knowledge would explode like an algae bloom in the ocean...but the people with the power to remove these stumbling blocks from our path fear change. So despite the globalization that is shrinking the world and bringing humanity together, all of our minds are still limited by the relative cultural isolation that remains. So there are still racist, trailer trash rednecks who live in the country that invented the internet, and there are still isolated tribes of bushmen who still believe the earth is flat.

2. Stress. The greater the disparity between the rich and poor becomes the less wealth there is for the poor to fulfill their base needs/desires much achieve self-actualization. The harder and longer the poor are forced to work the less time, energy, opportunity and motivation they have to turn their minds towards self-actualization and learning for the sake of learning.

Throughout history the gap between the rich and poor has stretched and contracted in cycles, but the contractions have been few and far between. If human nature wasn't to be so greedy and the distribution of wealth had been more equitable all along then the human race would have progressed at an exponentially faster rate, but since the vast majority of humanity has been poor and stressed throughout history we're suffering the compounded consequences of generations of ignorance. Even today most people are still too stressed over their base needs/desires to turn their attention to becoming more complete people.

3. Peer Pressure. Humans don't like it when people act differently than them. So we ridicule, pick on, ostracize and punish each other for deviant behavior. Unfortunately, progress is deviant. So we tend to indiscriminately oppose progress and maintain our current level of ignorance, and unfortunately it works. One of the big reasons we're all so dumb is because we've beat the courage and inspiration out of each other.

I guarantee at some point in your life you've stuck your nose up at or made fun of someone who was better than you. Ironically, the smarter you think you are the more often you look down on people who are smarter than you.

4. Media caters to the lowest common denominator. If you don't know about Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs you need to turn off your television and throw away your magazines until you fully understand the concept. It says that people will be instinctively drawn to fulfill their most immediate needs. We almost never eat because we intellectualize that it's a good idea. We eat because we're hungry. We eat because our instincts draw us to do it, and if we don't have the money to eat we'll rob, cheat and steal to get food. Once that need is secure though, we're drawn to other higher needs, not because we intellectualize it but because our survival instincts tell us to.

Once our need for food, clothing and shelter are secured we're drawn to sex. We're drawn to love (because love leads to sex and protecting our group and thus survival of our gene pool). We're drawn to prestige and wealth because they fill base biological needs. Even when all of those needs are met we're naturally drawn to fulfill our self-actualization, in other words, to become the best person we can be.

That's why emo kids are so sad. They have everything they need, but they're miserable as shit. To the have-nots, emo kids look like whiney bitches. In reality, they're legitimately miserable because they're starved for self-actualization in their sterile, boring suburban environment. They're like tigers in a cage.

The media could help enlighten those who live enough of a life of leisure to be able to philosophize, but instead it's picked up on the fact that people will always be drawn to their most base desires: fortune, glory, sex and shiny objects. So they sell us that. Hell, they push it on us, and we eat it up because our brains are wired to respond to that stimulus. Unfortunately, when the only thing our brains ever get fed is puerile brain candy our brains don't grow. In fact, they regress.

5. Government doesn't make education a priority. The world wouldn't be so dumb if our governments devoted more resources to education than war. If we'd spent our entire war budget on education we could end the need for most of the world's wars and prisons. We're not doing that though, because the rich can't get rich by exploiting enlightened humans capable of solving all the world's problems.

6. Academic philosophy has failed humanity. Ideally, school is supposed to teach students to be curious, to seek knowledge on their own, to ask questions and seek answers. Unfortunately, academia has suffered the same fate as any large, hierarchical bureaucracy that controls vast amounts of wealth and power. It has come to defend the status quo and ridicule, ostracize and punish deviant thinkers.

Universities rarely teach people to think for themselves. More often than not they teach students to think what their professors think. And the professors at the tip of the spear of the search for truth (professional philosophers) have become more intellectually corrupted than any other teachers save theologians.

The quickest way to get in a fight with a modern mainstream academic philosopher is to say that philosophy should be useful. Philosophers will sneer at you with a mixture of disgust and pity and tell you that philosophy is above such limitations. In fact, mainstream academic philosophers will call you short-sighted and close minded if you ever claim to answer any question because it's become fashionable to insist that nothing is real, there is no truth and everything is relative. If you want notoriety in philosophical circles your best bet is to not think at all but to just memorize everything the celebrities of philosophy ever said and then out-quote everyone around you.

I'm not saying there's no value in pure theory or in studying the history of philosophy, but in a time when the world is drowning in blood and misery, if you have the intelligence to solve the very real problems tearing lives apart and you choose not to then you're not a genius; you're irresponsible. Mainstream academic philosophy has steered what should be our brightest intellectual leaders away from solving important real world problems that would improve everyone's lives, and as a result, the masses don't have the time or resources to devote to improving their minds because they're too busy coping with the problems philosophers refuse to solve. From that point of view modern mainstream academic philosophers are doing more to promote ignorance than enlightenment.

7. Religion has failed humanity. Religion tells people it has all the answers. So there's no reason to seek truth elsewhere, and even if you wanted to seek truth elsewhere, religion forbids this. For those two reasons religion stops people in their intellectual tracks. This holds people back from fulfilling their potential and actively propagates real world problems.

Religion has been doing this for all of human history. If religion had been replaced with useful philosophy from the beginning of human history we wouldn't have had to let deviants sporadically piecemeal humanity's progress step by step. Instead we could have harnessed the collective power of every religious follower in history to build a more intelligent, progress-oriented civilization, and then every generation could have built on the progress of the previous generation, which would have increased our progress exponentially. But as it stands, religion has kept us in the dark and will continue to do so until all children are systematically taught to value curiosity and objectivity before they're systematically taught to value blind ignorance.

8. Social leaders don't know what they're doing, and they lie about it. Society is so lost we don't even know we're lost. This is true for the lowest street sweeper all the way up to the highest political leader in the world. We have no idea what we're doing, and we're just guessing while putting on enough airs to make it look like we have it together. In this kind of world it's natural to look to leaders for guidance, which wouldn't be such a bad thing except that our leaders are just as blind as the rest of us. The only difference between us and them is that they're better at lying. This causes 2 problems. First, when we attempt to emulate our leaders we end up emulating shit. The second problem is that our leaders are leading us in circles as our world becomes overpopulated and better armed.

9. Parents don't know what they're doing, and they lie about it. That's all I have to say about that.

10. Evolution has designed us to be stupid. All of these problems aren't accidents or anomalies. They're all inevitabilities considering how evolution has designed us. As surely as evolution gave us hands, feet, eyes, ears and noses to help us survive it also gave us pain, pleasure, hunger, fear, love, greed and all the other emotions and base desires that steer us away from logical accountability. It also put shortcuts into our brains like cognitive dissonance, cognitive bias, schemas, trust for authority, fear of change, the fundamental attribution error and a slew of other mental processes that reduce our need to think about what we're doing and encourages us to sleepwalk through life on autopilot.

The truth is ugly, but we have to face this demon in order to fulfill our potential. We were born to be stupid, and make no mistake, we are stupid. I don't say this because I'm better than you. I'm no better than you. I'm stupid too. The big difference between me and the gangstas, rednecks, preps and religious fanatics that infuriate me day in and day out is that I'm afraid and ashamed of my stupidity whereas they celebrate theirs.

How terrified are you of your stupidity? Because the greater your terror is the more motivated you'll be to truly do everything in your power to get unstupid. The more confident or even resigned with who you are the less critical of your own stupidity you'll be and the more you'll wallow in your own stupidity, infuriate the intelligent people around you (who you will have ignorantly mistaken for being stupid) and waste your life in vain while making a mockery of the infinitely priceless gift of life. 
10 WAYS PEOPLE GET DUMBER AS THEY GET OLDER

**1. We stop going to school.** While in school you have knowledge crammed into your head for 4-8 hours per day. After graduation most people just stop reading altogether because they have no motivation to teach themselves new information. Most people resented and resisted the knowledge were taught when they were in school. So after graduation they're more than happy to plop down in front of the TV for the next 60 years and let their mind turn to mush and forget everything they did learn in school.

**2. Even if every adult wanted to learn, a lot of them are too busy to.** Between working 8-12 hours a day, cultivating (or enduring) a marriage, raising children and doing household chores most people don't have the spare time or energy to learn new things. There's not much you can do about this, but even though there's a good excuse for it the fact remains...most people don't learn much after graduation.

**3. We assume the education we** ****_did_ ******receive proves we know everything (or at least as much as we need to know).**

In theory this shouldn't be true. You'd think that people who went to 4-8 years of college would have a lifelong passion for learning, but the more people with higher education degrees you meet the more you'll find out this generally isn't the case. Instead, the higher of a degree they've earned the more conceited they are about how much they know. The more conceited they are the less motivation they have to learn more. So they spend the rest of their lives congratulating themselves for their past educational accomplishments and cease achieving new educational accomplishments while forgetting most of what they had learned that they're so proud of.

**4. We give up.** When we're young we tend to be enthusiastic, hungry idealists. The world is a big, open sky to us. Every adult felt like that when they were younger, but then they got out into the real world and found out nobody gives a crap about you. You're not a snowflake. You're a number, and you're expendable. Nobody really wants you to think outside the box. They want you to shut up and follow their orders.

Some day you may come to the realization that idealism is cute in cartoons, but in the real world the responsible thing to do, the adult thing to do, is to get a job you don't necessarily take any joy from and work hard day-in and day-out for 60 years without a single complaint.

When the light goes out in your eyes and your life downshifts into autopilot you don't think of brilliant things. You lose the motivation to explore. You just fade out. You call it "responsibility," but your willful celebration of slavery defeats the purpose of existing in the first place, and it makes the world a duller place.

**5. We come to believe that the rank makes the man.** The purest example of this is military officers. Aside from politicians no group of people in the world are more delusional about their self-worth than military officers. Why do they think they're so great? Because they have an arbitrary, man-made rank that tells them they're God. And once you're God you believe you can do no wrong. So you don't listen to anything you don't want to hear, and you have no motivation to improve yourself since there's nowhere to go once you've reached the top. This is as true in the civilian sector as it is in the military. Give people an important title and tell them they're important and they'll become delusional idiots.

**6. We assume the mere fact that we're older makes us wiser.** Adults think kids are dumb shits. Adults don't try to talk sense to kids because they know every kid is so naive they're practically, certifiably insane. Being an adult surrounded by children is like being a one-eyed man in the land of the blind. You have more clarity and hindsight than them. True as that may be, it tends to go to adults' heads. Even if adults are smarter than children that doesn't make them a higher form of life. And the only reason adults are smarter than children is because they were born first. Whoopdy doo. You don't get an award for that. If you think being born before someone else makes you better than them then you truly are a dumb ass./

**7. Similar to #6 is that we tend to assume that getting married, having kids and working at a job makes us wiser.** Again, yes, you do learn a lot about life by experiencing these trials. But those lessons are on par for what you should learn in life. Great. You can do what you're supposed to. That's not going above and beyond the limits.

Assuming that doing the bare minimum in life makes you an expert on life is foolish and shows how little you know about life. More importantly though, it causes you to stop pushing yourself to learn more than the bare minimum.

**8. We've had more time to convince ourselves of our beliefs.** Childhood is defined by our quest to understand ourselves, the world around us, why we're here and what we're supposed to do now that we're here. By the end of childhood we've amassed a head full of answers and explanations, and a lot of those answers are wrong. Even if they _were_ all right, our understanding of life would still be incomplete. But people get the answers they're comfortable with and repeat those answers to themselves over and over again until they can't see anything else outside their tiny misshapen reality. Then they spend the rest of their life defending their answers and becoming more close minded. After we've spent 50 years telling ourselves the same thing over and over again, we would have to erase part of our identity to admit that we're wrong about our cherished beliefs. There's a reason we have the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

**9. Similar to #8 is that we've had more time to surround ourselves with sources that confirm our biases.** We make friends who believe the same things we do. We watch television shows that are slanted to our point of view. We read news sources that cater to the spin we want to hear. The few nonfiction books that the average person reads are written by authors who just tell their audience what they want to hear. After a lifetime of confirmation bias we inevitably convince ourselves with concrete certainty we're the good guys and anyone who disagrees with us are the bad guys.

**10. We've invested our pride and our very identity in our tiny reality.** Growth requires change, but in order for adults to change they have to admit that their tiny world view is either wrong or incomplete. Pride alone won't let them do this, and even if they were willing to lay their pride aside- their identity is their reality, and their reality is their identity. Changing would be tantamount to suicide, and even though it would benefit them more in the long run most people are too afraid to walk through the darkness to reach the light. They would rather live with a comfortable lie.
CHAPTER 2

RELATIONSHIPS

HOW TO PICK UP CHICKS

There are a hundred books on how to pick up chicks, and they all say basically the same thing. Be confident. Be an asshole. Be good looking. Be rich. Be kind. Be yourself. Bla bla bla. All of these ideas will work some of the time, but they're all based on a flawed premise: the idea that you need to pick up chicks.

This sets you up for failure for several reasons. First, if you want something from someone then they have power over you. The more desperate you are for female companionship the more you put yourself beneath them. Nobody wants to date someone beneath them, and when a woman picks up on the fact that you've placed yourself beneath her she'll lose interest in you.

If you do end up hooking a girl who you've given leverage over yourself to then you may have won the war of getting laid, but you've lost the war of life because now you've locked yourself into a relationship where you will inevitably have to sacrifice your wants for hers. Oh sure, relationships are supposed to be all about compromise, but in reality the person with the most leverage usually wears the pants in the relationship.

It becomes even more likely that you'll get into a bad relationship if you're desperate for female companionship because you'll end up taking the first thing you can get. Whereas if you didn't have to have a woman you could wait until you found a kinder, saner, more compatible mate.

On the other hand, not wanting a woman could cause you to not look for one and thus never find one. However, if you spend your life focusing on defining/attaining your own wants then you're going to put yourself in the right place to find a person who shares your interests. If you're doing the things you love then you're going to end up interacting with other people while you're doing it. So if you're living life correctly you really shouldn't even need to pick up chicks because they'll already be in your life, and you'll already be talking to them about whatever it is you're doing.

So my best advice on how to pick up chicks is to devote your life to self-actualization. If you don't end up getting a chick you still win because you're doing what's important in life. But the more you do what you love the more confident and successful you'll become. The more confident and successful you become the more women are going to come to you. It's a win/win situation all around.

If you simply must have a woman right now then I'll give you the one piece of advice I give anybody no matter what they ask me. Cheat. I don't mean "cheat" as in "be unfaithful" I mean cheat as in "use a shortcut." How do you cheat on the dating scene? Use an online dating service. The women there are looking for you. So they don't have leverage over you. You can screen out the incompatible people without having to date each one for 6 months only to find you have nothing in common. And if all you want to do is fuck then go to casual sex site. With those girls you don't have to worry about pretending to be perfect or meeting their parents. Oh, but they all have diseases you say? So do the girls in the clubs. So do the girls in your office. Wear a condom or don't have sex.

If you're really desperate, then just rent a prostitute. You're not crossing any moral lines that you weren't going to cross having a one night stand with a girl you met at a night club. The only difference is that when you get a prostitute you're both honest about your intentions, and you're paying for sex instead of bartering with drinks and flirts. And since you have all the leverage, the prostitute will spend all night lying to you about how great you are instead of you having to lie to her about how great she is.
STAGES OF A RELATIONSHIP

This doesn't sum up every relationship in the world, but if you live in a modern, Western-style suburbia then you probably known someone whose relationships have followed this progression:

1. Anonymity. You don't know your future partner exists.

2. Strangers. You meet your future partner, but you don't know what their name is or who they are.

3. Acquaintance. You break the barrier of anonymity. They're no longer a stranger, and they now have a connection to your life, even if it's a part as small as "friend of a friend."

4. Interest. Eventually you take an interest in one another. In this stage you act like cats sniffing a treat and deciding whether or not it smells good enough to eat.

5. The Hunt. After passing the smell test you make a conscious decision to pursue the other person. This is the chase. It's exhilarating, expensive, sometimes unsuccessful, sometimes discouraging, and you have to exert a lot of energy pretending to be cooler and more collected than you really are so that you can compete against other people who have more experience pretending to be unbelievably cooler and more collected than you.

6. The Salad Days. Following the catch at the end of the hunt you gorge yourself on each other for as long as your stamina holds out. During the salad days children hold hands on the playground, teens make out in public and adults try to have sex in every room of their house.

7. The Trial Commitment. People tend to assume that once they've reached the salad days they've found true love. Contrary to what Disney or the pop music industry would have you believe, this is not the time to propose for marriage. Though at some point in the salad days you're going to have to consider where your relationship is going. If the salad days don't end as just a successful fling then the next step is a trial commitment.

You may have already considered yourself a couple, but this move ups the ante. You may transition from "going out" to "going steady" or from "dating" to "being engaged." You'll spend this phase looking at your partner more seriously, and you'll probably pretend to act like what you think a serious adult who is in a committed relationship acts like.

8. The Breeze Days. If things go well and your lifestyle and personality are compatible with your partner's then you will find yourself working together like a finely tuned machine. You'll act like twins who are so in tune with each other that you can complete complex tasks together with minimal verbal communication. Like twins you'll also develop a secret language of your own based on shared references and inside jokes. Life will operate so smoothly that time can fly by without you noticing it.

9. Deep Appreciation and Familiarity. One day you'll roll over and see your partner lying next to you in bed and you'll realize they know you better than anyone else, and you know them as well as yourself. You'll have come to depend on this person like your right hand, and losing them would leave you more lost and helpless than losing your job. If there is a thing called love then this stage is it, but it can't last forever. And the fact that you may have had it once with someone doesn't mean you always have to have it with them or that either of you owe the other anything for having had it.

10. The "Washing Machine You Take For Granted" Days. It's a wonderful thing if you can work with another person like a well-oiled machine, but when a machine works perfectly for long enough we tend to take it for granted. Even though you work well with the other person your heart's somehow not in it anymore. You're walking through your relationship and life on autopilot.

11. Full-on Boredom. One day you roll over and see your partner lying next to you in bed and you realize you're tired of looking at them just like you're tired of having to step around that damned washing machine you're always bumping into on the way out the door. You'll be surprised to find yourself actually bored of sex. You'll fake enthusiasm during sex. You might even fake orgasms. You'll yearn for the hunt and wonder where the magic in your relationship went. You'll blame the other person when in reality the problem is that that's what happens when two people share a pair of golden handcuffs for long enough.

12. The Pretend Days. You're fully aware that you're bored of the other person. You always think about someone else when you masturbate, but out of respect and obligation to your partner you don't let them know how far your heart has drifted away from them. So even if you don't lie to yourself about your feelings you lie to the other person to keep the boat from rocking.

13. The Onset of Resentment. You can only pretend to be happy for so long before it gets old and the cracks in the walls start showing. You'll start dropping your mask more often and compromising less.

14. Outright Resentment. If you don't talk openly to your partner, reassess your relationship, get some space, pursue separate interests or break up (if need be) then your resentment for one another will cross the line into open hostility. You may not act on this hostility yet, but you'll feel it and be fully conscious of it. You'll carry it with you all day and won't be able to stand looking at your partner. Everything they say will sound like fingernails on a chalk board, and everything they do will be wrong. This phase has ended in murder and/or suicide for millions of people.

15. Bursting out of the Bottle. The hate-charade can't last forever. Eventually the crack in the damn will burst and everything will come out. If this process is managed productively it can be a euphoric release that takes the weight of the world off your shoulders. If this process is managed unproductively it can lead to broken hearts, burned bridged and closed doors.

16. (A) Reconciliation or (B) Break Up. At this point your old relationship is over. You can never go back to the way things were. Your only choice is to start a new relationship with your partner or end the relationship. Below is a list of the steps of the stages your life will go in if you reconcile. After that is another list that starts back over at #17 and traces the stages your life will take if you break up.

If you take the path of Reconciliation:

17A. The Kicked Puppy Days. You may have reconciled your differences with your partner, but you've both just come out of a traumatic experience. One sweaty night and a few heart felt words aren't going to fill those wounds. There will be a short time where you'll both still feel hurt and ashamed of your past behavior.

18A. The Trial Recommitment. Once the dust has settled and emotions have calmed you'll find yourself looking at your partner soberly. Both of your punishments may be over, but you're both still on notice.

19A. The Recovery Days. If you're both truly sorry for hurting each other and earnestly want to be together you'll try to make it up to the other person. This phase of your relationship will find you going out of your way again to do nice things for each other and say nice things to each other. These will be days full of pampering and feel like stages 6 (The Salad Days) and 9 (Deep Appreciation and Familiarity) combined.

20A. Return to the Breezy Days. You can't keep up that intensity forever. Life goes on. The best place you can go from here is back to the Breezy Days. Where you go from there is up to you.

If you break up:

17B. The Free Fall. If you break up with your partner at any stage of your relationship you'll end up in a free fall. The intensity of the free fall experience for you will be relative to how long you've been with your partner, how strong of an emotional attachment you had with them and how strong your dependency on them was.

You will feel lost in space. You'll feel disconnected from your environment. You'll feel like you just stepped into a new universe, and you may or may not want to be there.

18B. The Landing. One day all the emotions left up in the air after your break up will come back down to earth. It's like coming to terms with the fact that your dead relative really isn't just sleeping in a box. They're never coming back. Your life will go on, and you will be alone. Again, this can be a good thing or a bad thing.

19B. The New Underwear/Phantom Limb. So you move on with your life, but you'll be so used to sharing a life with your partner that you'll have some trouble readjusting to life without them. Sometimes it can feel like you're missing a limb. Sometimes it'll feel like you're getting to stretch your limbs after years of being tied down in a contorted position.

20B. The Great Wide Open. When you finally get used to living on your own again and doing things your way then the world is your oyster. Life is there for the taking. Your plans may include hunting another partner or it may not, but either way you have a new chance to get what you want.

21B. Normalcy. The things you're doing with your freedom will lose their novelty, and if you don't keep your life interesting then the repetitiveness of your daily life will lull you into a dream state where you just go about your business on autopilot and not really notice time passing.

22B. Boredom. If you do the same thing over and over long enough eventually you'll get bored with it. Technically you'll have everything you need to survive. You may even have a giant television and a well-worn stack of awesome video games collecting dust in the corner of your living room, but you'll feel an inexplicable sense of boredom and lack of satisfaction in life.

23. Desperation. After you feel bored long enough the boredom will turn to despair. You'll put pictures of island beaches on your desktop background and/or screen savers and fantasize regularly about escaping the grinding, suffocating darkness of your normal yet "privileged" life. You'll masturbate more, and you'll have dirty thoughts about almost anything with two legs that walks past you.

24. Forever Alone. The longer you're alone the older you get. The older you get the farther you're removed from the dating pool. Eventually there comes a point where you just have to face the fact that you'll be forever alone.
ARE YOU IN LOVE OR JUST CODEPENDENT?

The dictionary defines love as, "A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair." According to this definition love is harmless and simple, but this isn't the definition most people use. Most people would agree that love is something more. Most of the people I've spoken to about love say that love is something so powerful and magical that you can't sum it up in words.

But if you can't define love then how do you know if you have it? A romantic will tell you that you just know. That sounds convincing enough, but in reality it's vague to the point of being useless. Plus it creates lifelong confusion and anxiety within us as we chase an undefined goal.

Eventually we all decide for ourselves what level of affection we believe constitutes love. Unfortunately that level is different for each person, and that causes strife between "lovers" who set their bar at different levels, but the problem doesn't end there. If you listen to enough pop music you'll get the impression that in order to be in love you have to be hysterically affectionate towards your significant other. If you don't feel hysterically affectionate towards your significant other you might assume you're doing something wrong by being yourself and feeling what's natural to you.

If your significant other has watched too many Disney movies and listened to too much pop music he/she may demand that you treat them with the hysterical level of affection they've come to believe they're due. So we contrive affection we don't really feel (and isn't warranted) to meet the standard of affection we think we're supposed to have, but you can only maintain pretenses for so long until you run out of energy and are left feeling exhausted and guilty for not truly loving our significant other.

The ambiguity of love and the problems that arise from our misconceptions would just be an adolescent problem that we all get over when we grow up and develop realistic expectations/perceptions of our significant other except for the fact that every facet of our society is inundated with the message that we have to find cosmic mind-blowing love immediately and keep it forever because life is meaningless without love. You ain't got nothing if you ain't got love. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Yada yada yada.

Does this definition of love sounds familiar? "Being psychologically dependent on someone." Yeah, that's the definition of "co-dependency."

In modern, American society we're taught to believe that if we aren't in love then we're a failure in life. Not only is this illogical, but it fosters co-dependency. This unhealthy misconception destroys healthy relationships, because a co-dependent person is a parasite that is a burden on their significant other. And being co-dependent, if/when your significant other leaves you because you're sucking the life out of them then you won't be able to function properly on your own, and you'll feel worthless and hate yourself as long as you're alone.

For you to successfully maintain any human relationship (or to just be a mature, capable human being) you need to be able to stand on your own. Only when two independent people form a symbiotic relationship with realistic expectations and feelings for each other can they thrive together...for as long as it's practical for them to be together.

There's no logical explanation for why love has to be invincible and eternal. People change, and they change each other. The more time you spend with a person the more you learn about them and about yourself. It's illogical not to adjust your perception of another person to reflect these changes, and it is illogical not to adjust your feelings to reflect that change in perception. If you don't adjust them then you truly are in love with an illusion and out of touch with the reality and thus will be unable to function productively in your relationship. Then you'll become a soul-crushing weight around the neck of the person you claim to value more than anything else in the world.

Not only is the traditional, co-dependent concept of love impractical, it's hypocritical. Love is supposed to be selfless, blind, and unbreakable. In other words, unconditional. Consider the person you love (or the image of the type of person you want to fall in love with). Now think about the person (or type of person) you hate. Now really think about the conditions on which you determine who you love or hate. This defines what your conditions for love are. If the person you love hadn't happened to develop the characteristics of the type of person you are attracted to then you wouldn't have ever fallen in love with that person. If they hadn't been exactly what you wanted you might have hated them.

From this point of view, if you don't love everybody in the world equally and unconditionally then you don't really love anybody, because what you call unconditional love is really nothing more than a provisional, self-centered transaction of affection and attention between you and your significant other. There's nothing majestic about that. There's also nothing sinister about that. It's healthy and productive to a thorough cost/benefit analysis when deciding whether or not to spend a year, much less a lifetime with another person. All I'm saying is we need to let ourselves be honest about it and not be hypocrites.

I'm not saying that human affection is stupid or that you should give up on love and resign yourself to being a cold, calculating gold digger. I'm just saying...don't confuse crippling co-dependency for something beautiful.
HOW TO GO DOWN ON A GIRL

Step 1: Get her in the mood. If you've been dating or married for a long time you're obviously not going to go spend hours setting the mood every time you're intimate, but to say it's not necessary to get a girl in the mood before going down on her is like saying it's not necessary to put sugar in a cake. You can bake an edible cake without sugar. You're just going to get a reputation as a bland cook.

The correct way to give a girl the best orgasm possible is to get her in the mood first. The longer you spend getting her aroused the harder she'll cum. The key to understanding how to get a woman aroused is to assume that her mind and body are one. If her mind feels good, then her body will feel good. Use these techniques to get her in the mood:

  * Tell her flattering and/or sexual things all day leading up to going down on her at night

  * Tell her that you love her and want to take care of her forever.

  * Buy her the thing she wants most in the world.

  * Find a way to make her friends jealous of her.

  * Get her friends to tell her how lucky she is to be with you.

  * Take her out for a nice dinner.

  * Give her a full body erotic massage.

  * Light candles in the bedroom and play sexy music.

  * Find out what kind of environment she associates romance with and recreate/provide that.

This may sound like a lot of work, but there's a painfully logical reason to go through all this hassle. The entire consumer advertising profession tries to pressure women to feel insecure about their bodies and their self-worth. Religion tells women to loath their sexuality and fear penises. Experience teaches women that men are selfish and just want a hole to stick their dick in, and if they didn't have to ask the girl's name they wouldn't bother. All of these subconscious factors freeze women's minds and bodies with anxiety when they take their underwear off.

They can still have an orgasm if you rub her clitoris the right way for long enough, but if you can wash away all her anxieties and fears first and make her feel like time stands still in a safe, genuine, caring bubble when you're with her then she'll relax and let herself experience the fullness of your sexual activity. In fact, if women had to choose between a night of feeling special or a night of hot sex, they'd usually choose a night of feeling special. The hot sex and orgasms are beside the point. But if you can make her feel special then the hot sex will be majestic instead of regrettable.

There are also a few purely technical reasons to get a girl in the mood before going down on here: it dilates her vagina and gets her wet. To put it in man-terms, this is like warming up the engine of your sports car before red-lining it on the Autobahn.

Step 2: The Labia. After you've got her turned on, and she's been naked for long enough to acclimate to her nudity, and you've massaged away all the tense muscles in her entire body, the next step is to get your face between her legs. Once you're at eye-level with her vagina you're going want to start from the outside and work your way in starting with the labia.

Lick your thumbs and her labia until they're completely wet or lubricate them with Astroglide. Here's why you're worried about lubricant. Next time you're in the bathroom rub your thumb on the mirror. Notice how rough that is. Now lick your thumb and rub it on the mirror. Notice how much smoother that is. Now lick your thumb and the mirror, and rub your thumb on the mirror where you licked it. Notice how that feels even smoother? That's what the girl is feeling between her legs.

Once you've got the (vagina) lips and the surrounding area wet massage the lips and surrounding area lightly with your thumbs. Do small, fluid circles or slide your thumbs up and down the length of the lips. Start on the outside of the lips, and eventually work your way to rubbing the inside of the lips without penetrating the vagina.

There are several reasons why you're massaging on and around the labia. First of all, the girl probably isn't wet enough inside for penetration to be comfortable for her. Even if your fingers are covered in enough lube to make up for her being dry you should still let her get wet on her own, because getting wet is her body's way of saying she's ready for penetration. The other reason it's important to massage her vagina is because when her vagina gets attention inside and out she'll have a stronger orgasm. Think of a blow job. A blow job is great, but if the girl massages you're balls in the process so much the better. Massaging her labia is sort of equivalent to massaging your balls. You don't want to focus all your attention there, but you're missing out if it's ignored completely.

Trying to fit both your hands and your face between a girl's legs comfortably is pretty hard, but your comfort isn't what's important here. Making her cum is what's important. So you'll just have to deal with it. But if you just absolutely don't have enough room to maneuver and are so uncomfortable that you're getting frustrated you can have her rest her ass on a pillow, which will give you more room. You can also move your head a little closer to her belly button. You might be surprised how far up her abdomen you can put your head and still be able to lick her clit.

Step 3: The clit. Once you get the outside of the vagina lubricated you're actually going to be licking the clit at the same time as you're massaging the lips with your thumbs.

If you don't know where the clit is stick one finger inside the girl's vagina. Now trace that finger straight up pulling your finger out of the vagina. Keep moving your finger straight upwards in the direction of the belly button. About a quarter of an inch above the opening of the vagina your finger should snag on a little hood shaped piece of skin. When that happens the tip of your finger should be pointing directly at the clit under the hood. The clit should feel like a small bump. If you can't find it on your own it's better to ask for directions than to never get there, because if you can't get there then she won't get to cum.

From this point onward don't get creative. I think one of the main reasons guys fail to give girls orgasms through oral sex is they try too hard to be creative. There's no creative way to hit a baseball or to swing a golf club. There's just the right way. Going down on a girl is like that.

Notice that all you've done with your tongue so far is lubricated the vagina and then gone straight for the clit. This is what I mean when I say don't be creative. The clit is the whole point of going down on a girl, and until you get there you're missing the point. And never, ever stick your tongue inside the vagina like you're fucking it with your tongue. Nothing says, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing." like fucking the vagina with your tongue. It doesn't do anything for her.

Okay, so you've found the clit, and you're ready to lick while you massage the lips with your thumbs. At the beginning of oral sex the clit can be very sensitive. So start off licking the clit lightly. How sensitive the clit is varies for every girl. Having said that, it's better to lick it too hard than to not lick hard enough, because the girl will definitely tell you to lick lighter if you're doing it too hard (she'll have to), but she probably won't tell you to lick harder.

In addition to licking relatively lightly you'll also want to start out licking slowly, but not too slowly. A good starting pace is one lick (up down) per second. If you start off too fast then you'll have to slow down eventually, and that means back tracking. She'll lose momentum, and you'll have to start back over half way to the orgasm. She'll be disappointed, and you'll have to lick twice as long. When you first start going down on girls this will inevitably happen, but once you've mastered the art you should be able to transition from slow to fast with perfect timing to make her cum without ever slowing down.

This is important enough to say twice, switch things up as rarely as possible. Girls don't want to find out how many different things you can do with your tongue and fingers; girls want to cum, and every time you change gears she loses momentum and has to get used to the new thing you're doing. Think about a blow job. What you need to get off is consistent rhythm. How many times have you been right on the verge of cuming, and the girl starts doing something new and you're lying there screaming in your head, "Damnit, you were almost there! Why did you stop doing that?!" The same thing happens to girls. You don't have to worry about her getting bored with what you're doing, especially if you're following this guide.

I've read in several men's magazines that a great way to make a girl cum is to spell out the alphabet with your tongue on the clit. I'm convinced that they tell you this to make sure that you remain sexually inept so you have to keep buying men's magazines for advice. The alphabet thing doesn't work, because it's not rhythmic. And don't go side to side either. It's easier for you to move your tongue up and down for a long time. Plus, your tongue can make more physical contact going up and down than side to side. So all you should be doing is going up and down with your tongue like the Karate Kid painting a fence or like turning a light switch on and off with your tongue. Here's your only room for creativity on this matter: You can either do long, full strokes or short, quick strokes. If you cut the tendon on the bottom of your tongue on your bottom row of teeth then you're going way too crazy with your tongue.

Step 4: Taking it up a notch. So you've been licking the clit and massaging the labia for a few minutes. In this time you've increased the speed of your licking a little. If you're lucky the girl will give you a sign that it's time to step it up a notch. And by sign I mean any sign: moaning, heaving, wetness, hardened nipples or the clit hardening and growing minutely taller. Then again, she might not give you a sign even though she's ready for more. In that case you'll just have to guess. But don't ask. That would mean taking your mouth off the clit for too long and suggesting that you don't know what you're doing. You shouldn't have to do this for longer than 3 or 4 minutes.

The next thing you want to do is take the hand that you write with and lick the fingers you're going to stick into the vagina. You want to use the hand your write with, because you have more control of that hand, and it'll take longer to get tired. Don't lube your fingers up with Astroglide, because that would keep you away from the clit too long, and that will give the girl time to cool down, which neither of you want. Get your fingers as wet as possible as quickly as possible and then insert one or two fingers into the vagina, and do this with your palm facing up. You want this to be comfortable for the girl. So don't try to cram as many fingers in as possible. You might even want to start with one and work your way up to two or three after her vagina loosens up. If you're unsure, then just use one finger.

With your finger in the vagina rub the roof of the vagina. Don't worry about finding the G spot, because there isn't a G spot. There's a G area, and that area is the roof of the vagina just above the opening. Don't bother rubbing the bottom or the sides. Don't bother making circles to touch all 360 degrees of the tunnel (unless the girl is really tight and you need to loosen the vagina up for sex afterward). Just focus on the roof just beyond the opening.

The first time you penetrate her slide your finger in up to your knuckle and slide it out rubbing the roof all the way. Keep doing this, and keep going deeper and deeper. Don't worry about reaching the very back of the vagina. There's not a pot of gold back there. Just worry about being sensual. Don't finger-bang the vagina. Give it a rhythmic, sensual massage like you're massaging a flower. If you're doing anything that would tear a flower apart then you're doing it wrong.

Keep sliding your fingers in and out, pressing against the roof. While doing that you can change things up a little by sliding your fingers to the left and right like a snake slithering. You can also just massage the roof in circles like you massage your temples when you have a head ache. The wildest you should possibly get is twisting your wrist back and forth so that your fingers make a cork screw motion.

You can do combinations of these techniques, but don't keep switching it up. If you do one method, do it for a while. If you change, stick with that for a while. Give her time to get into what you're doing. And make sure that whatever you're doing you do it fluidly. Herky-jerky motions won't get you anywhere. If she's responding well to what you're doing then don't change.

While you're doing this take your non writing hand and wrap it around her leg so that her thigh is slightly resting on your shoulder. Then place that hand palm down on her abdomen just above where your face is. What you want to do is actually pull her skin towards her belly button to expose her clit more from under the hood. This might sound cruel or whatever, but the skin down there has some slack that you can pull, and you're only pulling it a fraction of an inch anyway. You can do that with your skin anywhere on your body. Also, since both of your hands are around her abdomen this gives you leverage and control to manhandle her a little.

Once you've got all this going on just keep doing it. You'll want to slowly increase the speed of your licking. You'll also want to increase the speed of your fingers, but not by much. You don't want to speed up to finger-banging speeds. Think about getting a hand job. There's a point where the girl can stroke you so fast that you don't feel anything or the friction numbs your cock. The same thing can happen to a girl.

At beginning of this step it was okay to give the clit long, full strokes with your tongue, but as you get closer to orgasm you need to speed up your licks. This means that you have to use fast flicks with the tip of your tongue.

Step 5: The orgasm. There are several ways you can tell a girl is about to orgasm. Her clit may become very hard. The inside of her vagina might expand. She might grab your head and start screaming "Oh fuck! Oh God. Oh (insert your name here)!" Or her body might tense up.

When you can tell she's definitely about to cum start licking at full speed using the tip of your tongue. With the fingers you have inside her press a little harder against the roof and speed up a little, but don't finger-bang.

When she finally does orgasm (and there will be no doubt about when that happens) she'll probably start to try to push your head away. Don't let her. She doesn't actually want you stop for another few more seconds. Keep licking at full speed, and start finger banging her. That's very important. Keep doing this until she flat out forces your head away from her.

Once she's forced your head away put your head right back where it was and just press on her clit with the top of your tongue, but don't move your tongue or head. Just press it flat against her vagina. If she moves her hips then let her, but don't do anything yourself. After 5-30 seconds she'll relax and move your head way.

Now your job with the clit is over, but the job's not over yet. Wipe your face off on the sheets or something, and pull your body up next to hers and embrace her in your arms. This post orgasmic afterglow heightens the experience for most women. It lets her know that this wasn't a purely physical experience for you, and therefore it allows the orgasm to be physical and emotional. If the experience was purely physical for you then that's all the more reason to snuggle up to her, because you haven't finished pleasuring her yet. Stick one of your legs in between hers so that your thigh presses up against her clit. Don't rub your thigh up and down her clit, because her clit is so sensitive at this point that it would probably hurt her. Don't worry about how strategically your thigh is placed in her crotch. Just press it up there. By applying pressure with your thigh you keep her sexual excitement from fading away. At best this will give her another orgasm. At worst, it lets her hold onto her current orgasm a little longer. Wouldn't you pay money to hold onto your orgasm a little longer? She'll love the fact that you're helping her hold onto her orgasm. Plus, it'll show her that you really do know what you're doing.

If you're going to have sex after this you should let her cool down for a minute or three, because her vagina and clit should be too sensitive for more action.

Other pointers. If a girl ever stops you while you're going down on her and says something like, "You got me so hot. I can't wait any longer. Put it in me now." she's really saying, "You suck. Let's hurry up and fuck and get this disappointing charade over with."

If that ever happens to you then you know that at some point after you finish fucking you need to get advice on how to do it better. You don't want to get advice right then, because that would absolutely destroy any mood and make you look insecure. Sometime later, preferably when she's drunk and being honest, ask what you can do to improve. Even if you do make her cum every time there's probably still room for improvement. So communicate with your girl.

When you do ask your girl for advice she might not give it to you right away. She might not want to hurt your feelings (even if she claims that's not the case) or she might not know. There's a good chance you'll have to extract your tips one at a time over the course of many conversations over the course of many months. Ask specific as well as general questions. Ask her what she doesn't like. Ask her if she liked/disliked one specific thing you were doing. Ask if there's something you're not doing that she wants. If you do something new ask if she liked it better than the old things you were doing. Don't necessarily trust her moans and thrusts to tell you what you're doing right. Don't ask her if anyone else did it better, and don't apologize for your failure. Both of those things just make you look insecure. Just get better. And if your jaw hurts when you're done it just means you're not going down on her enough.

While you're going down on a girl you could potentially reach your arms up and play with her nipples a little, but as a general rule you want to keep your hands on her vagina. Don't grip her legs and caress her body during oral sex. Think about when you're getting a blow job. Sure, it's cool if the girl shows you that she's getting into it by grabbing your ass and caressing your stomach a little, but those hands could be better used by fondling your balls or stroking the shaft of your cock. So if you're going to caress her or grab her body away from her sexual organs then do it just long enough to get the point across that you're excited by what you're doing (which will make her feel more comfortable if nothing else) and then get back to stimulating her where it counts most.

If your girl is sexually liberated enough you can substitute a vibrator for putting your fingers inside her. If you do that make sure you get a small vibrator, because a big one will get in the way of your chin. Also, work it inside her as gently and as rhythmically as you would with your fingers. Making it vibrate too hard or thrusting it inside her too fast or forcefully will draw her attention away from what you're doing to her clit, and that's bad.

If you've watched a lot of porn you've probably seen what I like to call "the porn pat." That's when you slap the clit. Don't do that. That's bad. And don't be like Jay from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and rub the bridge of your nose on the clit. That doesn't do anything.
WHY WOMEN LIKE JERKS

Why do women like jerks? Well, that question may be a bit misleading. For starters, you have to ask yourself, are the guys who are getting all the girls really jerks? Or do you just perceive them as jerks because they got the girl and you didn't? Could it be that you're just too narrow minded to acknowledge your own blatant flaws and thus feel the need to project flaws onto successful people who are successful because they actually have something over you? Think about that.

It's also important to note that not all women are the same, and they're not all looking for the exact same traits in the guys they partner with. So you can't just say that all women like jerks. It may just be that the girls you're chasing are looking for a different kind of man than you, and it may not be that they're looking for jerks. They're just looking for guys who happen to be really different than you. So the problem may be that you're just frustrated because you're socially inept and are chasing after girls you have nothing in common with who like guys who are nothing like you.

To be fair though, if you send a standard jock and a standard nerd into just about any house party or bar, you can bet the jock will come out at the end of the night with more girls' phone numbers. There are several reasons for this. The first one is simple evolutionary psychology. Our brains are hardwired to be sexually attracted to the healthiest mate. So someone who is in great shape automatically has an advantage over a pasty, fragile nerd. This doesn't mean that women are shallow. Men do the same thing, and neither of us can help it. In fact, far from being shallow, it's smart from an evolutionary point of view. It's best for the group that the strongest survive and pass on their genes. That's life. Deal with it or suffer the consequences, but don't be surprised. When frail, nerdy guys complain that women like muscular men they sound like fat women who complain that men like fit women. The problem isn't that the opposite sex is shallow. The problem is that you're unhealthy, and if you can't take care of your body then why should the opposite sex expect you to be able to do anything else right?

Evolutionary psychology goes farther than pheromones and muscles. It extends to how you present yourself. All women aren't shallow, but all women have needs. Their brain is constantly subconsciously weighing up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Everyone needs security, and thus everyone craves security. In addition to being secure, everyone is subconsciously compelled to achieve self-actualization. They may not think of it in that clinical of terms. They probably just know that they want to be themselves, and they want to accomplish their dreams in life. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, if they don't want to be themselves and accomplish their dreams then there's something wrong with them. So when girls see two guys in a room: one wearing clothing indicative of financial and social success, and one wearing a comic convention T-shirt, they instantly know how far both of those guys could potentially help them fulfill their dreams, and unless their dream is to go to a comic convention, they're probably going to pick the guy wearing the designer clothes. You can accuse women of being shallow for this, but can you really fault them for being practical?

Another simple reason why women end up hooking up with jocks over nerds is because you can't win if you don't play. 99 times out of 100 a woman is only going to give her number to the guy who asks for it. If you spend the whole night in the corner by the snack table eyeing up the girls and scowling at the guys then you don't have any room to complain that no girl will talk to you. After all, you didn't talk to them. You've reaped exactly what you've sown: nothing.

If you want to understand the girl's perspective then look at the situation from her perspective. She's not dumb. She knows every guy is horny. She knows when she goes into a bar, all the guys: young, old, jock, nerd, whatever has an interest in her, and she knows it's awkward to just walk up to someone you don't know, start a conversation and face possible rejection. She sympathizes with you, at least, she would if you weren't lurking at the snack table staring at her like a serial killer. The point is that when someone does have the balls to take the risk to approach her she's got to respect that. It shows courage and initiative, and if you show courage and initiative in that simple action then she has to assume you can show courage and initiative in other aspects of life, but if you don't have the courage or initiative to talk to a girl you're interested in then there's a good chance you won't show courage and initiative in other aspects of life.

Now, that guy you just saw hitting on your dream girl might get shot down, but she's not the only girl he's ever going to hit on. He knows you have to strike out a few times between every home run, but unlike the nerd at the snack table, this doesn't discourage him because he knows he's playing a numbers game. He might not get that girl, but he'll get a girl simply because he's persistent. The nerd won't get any girl simply because he didn't play the dating game -he went home with his tail between his legs and played video games with his insecure guy friends.

And before you get on your high horse about how love shouldn't be a game and you have too much self-respect to be a whore, you should know that life is a game. Nerdy gamers should know that more than anyone. Chances are you've watched "A Beautiful Mind" a few times. Everything you do has an element of game theory in it. Whether or not you win at life depends on whether or not you play the game and how well you play it. Giving up, bitching and blaming the world for your failures is not how you win the game. Understanding your environment, taking calculated risks and learning from your mistakes is. If you're so smart, how did the jocks figure that out and you didn't?

Another reason not to get high and mighty about calling players whores is because even if you're just looking for "the one," you have no way to know which girl is the one unless you talk to them. Those jocks might turn down as many girls as they get turned down by because they're looking for "the one" too, and they know they're never going to find her unless they put themselves out there and get their "feet" wet. So maybe it's not that they're whores, maybe it's that you're frigid.

I've been pretty hard on the nerds and pretty forgiving with everyone else so far. Here's where that stops. I've known a lot of players, and I've picked their brains about their methods. A lot of them aren't successful because they have such a deep repertoire of virtues. A lot of them are narcissistic sociopaths who have no moral inhibitions or concern for other people's feelings. All they're concerned about is getting laid, and being narcissistic sociopaths, they've spent their lives studying people and learning what behaviors people react positively to. They know what women like, and they've learned to pretend to be that guy. The secret to their success is lying, and that does make them jerks.

Players tell girls what they (the girls) want to hear. Yes, this is immoral, but you'd be a hypocrite to condemn them for it. Everyone paints over their faults, wears masks and puts their best foot forward. Some people are just better at it than others. Any girl who would fall for a player's bullshit lies isn't worth dating. If a jock takes the prettiest girl home by feeding her bullshit all night, he just did you a favor by taking the dumbest girl in the room out of the dating pool leaving the genuine people behind for you to scoop up.

Unfortunately, some girls are worse at seeing through the illusion than others, and tragically, some girls don't even care. We were all raised on big promises. We all grew up expecting life to be like a fairy tale, but the farther into the real world we get the more we realize fantasy is fiction, and reality is tough. Honestly, life is disappointing sometimes, and some people would rather live a comfortable lie than a hard truth. Just look at how popular religion is. Those jocks are like charismatic, big-tent revival preachers. They know they're selling a lie, but it's a lie that some people desperately want. In that respect, they're doing those bobble-headed bimbos a favor. Those girls are getting exactly what they want and exactly what they deserve. So again I say, if the girl of your dreams falls head over heels with a douche bag it's because she's a douche bag too. Quit building her up into the person you wish she was. She's not worth worrying about.

Let's get a little more philosophical now. I'll try to keep this short. Nobody knows the meaning of life. Nobody knows what the hell we're doing here. Nobody knows shit about shit. We all grow up mimicking what everyone else around us is doing and convincing ourselves that's "the way." Wise men know that they know nothing. Fools believe they've got everything figured out and everything under control. This gives fools misplaced confidence, but it does give them confidence. So one big reason that jock was able to strut into the room, break through all the social barriers and grab the prize was because he was emboldened by his own ignorance. You can fault him for his ignorance, but at the end of the night, he did get the girl, and you went home with a hard on.

And maybe that girl wasn't completely naive. Maybe she saw through his bravado. Maybe she wasn't looking for a comfortable lie or a meal ticket. Maybe she wanted a nice guy to listen to her and introduce her to Anime. Maybe she's disappointed in you for not talking to her. There are a lot of maybes in this equation, but one thing is sure, at the end of the night, she's got to weigh all the variables and pick the best answer. The guy she went home with might not be as smart as you. His ignorance might extend to other aspects of his life that cause him to do stupid, unkind things on a regular basis. He might not be as caring (or co-dependent) as you. But he did a lot of things right that you didn't. He showed initiative. He showed self-confidence. He showed interest. He bought her drinks and proved in some small way that he can take care of her. He made her feel special, and he proved that he wanted to make her feel special. And he proved that he can navigate the social system.

Lurking by the snack table all night you proved yourself to be a pussy. She did what she had to, to look out for herself and get as much as she can out of this short, hard life. Sure, she had to settle for a semi-Neanderthal, and she'll probably have regrets, but in the end she'll probably be better off than if she'd settled for a pussy. She'll definitely have experienced more to life than cowering by the snack table with you.

At any rate, she knows that when it's finally time to settle down and raise a family with a boring, well-paid nerd, you'll still be single and waiting for her. So why not have some fun right now with a muscular, horse-cocked stud who will buy her drinks all night and not get psychotically clingy tomorrow?
CHAPTER 3

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM WITH THE ECONOMY

The problem with the economy is simple. Workers are paid as little as possible to work as long and as hard as possible while goods and services cost as much as much as possible and are generally made as cheaply as possible and need to be repurchased as often as possible. As a result, the standard business model funnels all of society's money up to the business owners' bank accounts. That's how and why the rich become as rich as possible while the poor become as poor as possible.

This makes life suck as much as possible for as many people as possible, and even though it looks like the economy is doing great when businesses are making money, what you're really seeing is the economy eating itself alive, like a snake getting fat by eating its own tail. The more money the rich exploit from the poor the less money the majority of the population has to spend. The less people spend the more the economy slows down. The more it slows down the less jobs are needed and the higher the unemployment rate rises. The higher the unemployment rate rises the greater demand for jobs there are. The higher demand for jobs there are the less pay, less benefits and longer hours people are willing to accept just to get a pay check.

The inevitable conclusion of this tried-and-failed economic model is a civilization where the workers starve en mass while the rich wallow in luxury until resources have been so mismanaged that the system collapses. Collapse rarely ends with everyone dying though. Often the mismanaged civilization will plunder a weaker civilization for its resources, but that only delays the collapse. Sometimes the system is corrected by a peasant revolution. Sometimes a civilization with a better managed economy will take over the mismanaged managed one. Sometimes the excess poor will die or leave so that the meager resources allotted to the masses by the rich don't have to stretch so far. Usually though, life simply drags on miserably for generation after generation of the desperate poor who have been raised on the lie that this is how the world works and if you don't like it then you're not grateful for what you've been given and you just need to shut up, man up, work harder and eat cheaper food.

The rarest and most fleeting scenario is the one where politicians peacefully and willfully pass laws that give workers fair claim to a share of the profits they produce and guarantee consumers a fair price on the goods and services they pay for so that as much money as possible is kept in circulation and as many people as possible live as securely and comfortably as possible. The reason this happens so rarely is because the rich always control their nation's government either directly or by proxy. So they influence their governments to resist any legislation that threatens their smash-and-grab economic philosophy.

Even if a sane egalitarian politician could secure a term in a high level position of government they would be unlikely to successfully make any significant change since the system is already designed to be unfair and resist change. The only thing getting closer to the fire is likely to accomplish is getting burnt.

Violent revolutions have been tried before but have failed to produce long term change because they don't fix the root problem. Here's a maxim you can live by: If you have to resort to violence to fix a problem it's because you don't have a real solution.

Here's a more realistic solution. Start businesses that have an equitable profit sharing pay scale and charges fair prices. The best workers will flock to those companies. Consumers will buy from them because their products are cheaper, and people will want to support them. As these companies grow they'll put the slave-based companies out of business. Once the corrupt companies go bankrupt the corrupt people running them will go bankrupt and won't have the resources to buy influence in government. Then intelligent, sane humanitarian politicians will have a better chance of making significant positive change in government as well.
COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC OPPRESSION

The benefits of economic oppression are obvious, and they can be summed up in three words: comfort, freedom and legacy. Comfort is obvious. The wealthiest people in the world can enjoy whatever comforts they can imagine. At the snap of a finger they can have things many people would have to work their entire lives for and most people will only ever dream about.

The wealthiest people in the world are the only people who are truly free. They're free to spend their time however they want. They don't have to give their time to anyone, and nobody has the control to tell them what to do for 9 hours a day. They're free to work however, whenever and wherever they want. They're free to travel wherever they want whenever and however they want. Barring going on a shooting spree in a shopping mall they're free to break most laws. Even if they do have charges brought against them they can hire a team of lawyers to bend the law for them so they'll be let go or they might get charged a fee that represents such a miniscule percentage of their wealth that the legal consequences are utterly inconsequential to them.

The wealthiest people in the world have more money than they could spend in their lives, and most of that money is sitting in investment vehicles that will continue to make money after they're dead. So unless their descendants are completely irresponsible they could live comfortable, free lives indefinitely.

The benefits of being wealthy are undeniably desirable. People have been killed for less. If all you have to do to live that kind of life is sign a piece of paper approving the exploitation of workers you'll never meet who need jobs anyway and are willing to work for slave wages, I doubt many people would pass up the opportunity.

But then there's the cost to consider. Now, I'm not even going to bother exploring the moral arguments against economic exploitation. If you've succeeded in becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world you're either a sociopath who has no conscience and wouldn't be moved by moral arguments or you've already built a wall of excuses to justify your actions. So arguing morality with you would be as futile as arguing with a Christian over the divinity of the Bible.

So let's talk about the empirical, real world costs of economic exploitation starting with comfort. Consider the kings who ruled in the Middle Ages. They squandered their wealth and lived more comfortably than the serfs could ever imagine, and yet the serfs of today live more comfortably than the kings of antiquity could have imagined. The reason we live so much more comfortably is because of technological progress. Technological progress is the result of billions of people all over the world applying their time and education to scientific inquiry. The more people who collaborate on research, the faster it generates results. In fact, the speed of progress increases exponentially as the number of people working on it increases.

If, instead of forcing everyone to devote the bulk of their lives to menial work for just enough money to survive, we devoted our resources to giving as many people as much education and free time as possible we could speed up humanity's technological development exponentially. If we didn't have our priorities so backwards we could easily be living on Mars before Generation X dies of old age.

If we'd never oppressed anyone in the history of mankind we would have probably started building on Mars hundreds of years ago. By now we would have built artificial intelligence and servant robots. If you're a millionaire CEO, there's probably someone who works for your company for barely enough money to survive who would have contributed something that would have significantly improved or saved your life, but you chose to squeeze a few dollars out of their misery instead.

Also, even though wealthy people may be freer than the oppressed, much of their freedom comes at unnecessary cost. For example, a wealthy person could walk through an inner city ghetto safely, but they'd need to hire paramilitary escorts. Wealthy people are free to sleep soundly without fear of burglars, but that's only because they have million dollar security systems and security guards. Wealthy people can bypass the cumbersome and demeaning security measures at airports by flying in their own planes, but why do we need security measures in airports at all? Why do we need locks on our doors? Why do we need bodyguards?

We need security because there are billions of stupid and/or desperate people in the world. The reason there are billions of stupid and/or desperate people in the world instead of billions of intelligent, content, philosophers is because the leaders of the world have designed the system to oppress the majority of the world's population. If we dedicated our resources to helping people instead of oppressing them we wouldn't need to lock our doors or carry guns or have metal detectors at airports and schools. We probably wouldn't even need armies because everybody would have enough and wouldn't need to fight each other. Until that day comes, freedom will always be so expensive that only the wealthy will be able to afford it, and it will always be an unnecessary expense for the rich...an expense that was created by the rich.

It would be so easy for rich people to leave their children a utopian world. All they need to do is treat everyone as equal human beings. Granted, this will come at a cost. The rich wouldn't be able to horde more money than they could ever possibly spend. They'd still have enough money to live like a king though. So they won't necessarily lose any quality of life. But maybe I'm completely wrong here. Maybe there is some long-term moral and practical benefit I can't see that makes it worth causing billions of people to suffer so a few people can horde money they'll never use.
BUSINESS MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

Who's to say if the world is in a good shape or a bad shape right now? We all are. Even though we all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences that have taught us different lessons about the state of the world, all of our perceptions are valid, even if they contradict each other. We grew up in separate, unique environments. Some of us were born into better lives, but most of us were born into worse lives. If you think that's a pessimistic thing to say then look up the global poverty and crime rates. It's a statistical fact that most of the human beings alive today are living very hard, unjust lives.

The only people who live really good lives right now are the rich. Everyone else from the upper middle class to the lowest of the lower class has it bad; it's just a matter of degrees. Anytime anyone complains about their living conditions they're shot down by optimists telling them, "You should be thankful for what you have. You could be starving and getting gang rapped just before you're thrown into a bonfire in Darfur." And to be fair, that's true. Most of us could have it a lot worse, and we do have a lot to be thankful for. However, if every level of disparity is accepted under the auspice that "it could be worse," then we end up enabling every level of disparity.

When things happen to people that are too horrible to write off as whining, we find other reasons to write them off, and if we can't excuse away a human right atrocity we just pretend it doesn't exist or doesn't matter.

The entire world is like one of the small German villages outside the Jewish concentration camps. We all know that just past the city limits people are being systematically deprived, tortured and murdered. The difference between us and them is that the atrocities are happening across your country's border, not your city's.

Excusing all the world's problems away by saying, "It's not that bad." misses the point. The point is that it could be better...for everyone. It should be better for everyone. We have the technology and resources to live in a very awesome world. In fact, we've had the technology and the resources for quite a while. If we had done as much as possible to help as many people as possible achieve their potential since 1980, we would all have flying cars and cute semi-intelligent robot servants by now. And we would most likely be in the initial stages of colonizing either Mars or the moon. If you don't believe me, ask Stephen Hawking. He'll back me up.

But instead of doing that we've driven history to the point where there's a continent sized patch of garbage in the Pacific ocean, the American Gulf coast is ruined, people are dying of radiation and food poisoning, natural disasters are leaving bodies in the streets, the mines that provide us our resources are collapsing (killing the workers and cutting off everyone else's supply of raw material), more and more of our budgets are going to putting peaceful people in jail for the crime of being different or for not filling out the right forms or paying the right fees. Our news stations lie to us and we know it but accept it. We worship moronic celebrities and try to emulate their stupidity. We view intelligence as a bad thing. Our schools are crumbling. Our teachers are taking the blame for the rest of society's failures. We're actually talking about teaching mythology as science in public schools. We're doping ourselves up with government-approved mind-numbing pacification pills, building our houses with poison and bullying each other at work. We treat "lower" ranking workers like second class citizens. We're stealing from the poor, killing the planet and ourselves. And the whole time we're playing video games, watching television, fussing with our cell phones, surfing the internet and laughing at dick and fart jokes, LOL cats, canned cliff hangers and unrealistic love stories.

To be fair, I might not have to worry about being executed in a ditch tomorrow, but I bust my ass at work, and I barely have any money left to myself after I've paid the bills (that I know are inflated). My life is hard, but there are illegal immigrants all over the world working three times as hard as I do for three times as little while getting belittled by conservative shock jocks. Those men, women and children's lives are hard, but their lives aren't as hard as the refugees living in tent cities hoping someone will send a truck full of rice so their dying family can survive another day, but their lives aren't as hard as the people who died in the next tent over. But all of our problems are valid. They're all real, and they all matter.

So instead of bickering about who has it worse and how thankful we should all be for what we have, how about we all focus on what we all could have if we worked together to give ourselves the opportunities and resources the world never gave us (or the person next to us, or the person 1, or 5, or 10, or 100, or 1,000, or 5,000 miles away).?

It's simple game theory. We all have the most to gain by working together. I know that sounds a little Communist, but isn't it also exactly what the founders of the United States of America advocated? And regardless of who said it or why, isn't it an obvious truth? We all have the most to gain by working together.

Yet we're not doing that. Instead we're fighting each other tooth and nail in a dog-eat-dog rat race. We're treating everyone like our enemies. We're cutting everyone's throats, stabbing everyone in the back or turning a blind eye to each other's' problems (sometimes in the name of optimism). And look where it's got us. People are building bunkers preparing for the apocalypse. Nobody questions whether there will be another war, just how soon it'll happen.

So the world's going to hell in a hand basket because everyone is acting stupid and mistreating each other even though the people we're discriminating against are the only people in the universe who can help us build the most advanced world possible. We all have our excuses, but in the end, no matter how justified those excuses are, the end result is still that if we don't work together we can't build the most advanced world possible.

So the question is this, "What are you going to do?" Of course, we've all been asked that before. In fact, a lot of us have been asking ourselves that question a lot. The only problem is that we don't know what we can do. Sure, we can vote, but how much potential progress has that turned into reality in the past 60 years? Where's it gotten us? It's gotten us to where we are today. We've given billions to charity, but half of that gets siphoned off to "administrative expenses," stolen or mismanaged. There's a question as to whether the money that does make it to the intended recipients helps them more than it enables a brutal cycle of dependency.

The question of "what we can do" is a complicated one because the truth of the matter is that we don't have as much power as we like to tell ourselves. Truth is most of us barely have the power to take care of our own lives. Truth is a lot of us don't even have that much power. So how can we be expected to save the poor when we're relatively poor ourselves and can't even save ourselves?

Well, ask yourself, how did the people with all the power today get all their power? They bought it. Money represents anything money can buy, including power. In fact, the only way to get power is to buy it. Sure, you can take power with force, but force costs money. You can win power through popularity, but popularity costs money. No matter how you cut the cake, money is power.

If you want to change the world then you need power. If you want power then you need money to buy it. If you want money you need to make it. And you don't need to do anything illegal, violent or terroristic to make money. In fact, the best way to make money is to start a legal business. That's how all the most powerful people in the world today came to power; they started a legal business and made their money right on the store shelves in plain view of the entire public, and that wouldn't have hurt or killed anyone if they hadn't gotten greedy. Somewhere along the line they lost sight of the fact that we all have the most to gain by helping the most amount of people as much as possible over the long haul. Then they decided to help themselves to as much as possible as quickly as possible, and they sold the rest of us out and exploited us to make that happen.

The most lucrative (and thus most potentially powerful) way to change our lives is to follow the example of the people who took our lives from us. We need to start our own legal businesses because that's where we stand to make the most money. The more money we make the more we can build a sustainable lifestyle that reduces our dependency on the archaic and inhumane systems that we have to reluctantly serve today. The less dependent we become on the systems that prey on the poor the weaker those systems will become.

Even if you didn't own a share of the system, wouldn't you want a system in place that didn't own (or have any interest in ever owning) you? If any part of this idea appeals to you, I can promise you that the system with the most power will always be the system with the most money. The system with the most money will always be the system that sells the most goods and/or services. If you want to have any power over the environment you live in, you have to own a share or be an employee of (or be in the good graces of) the system that sells the most goods and/or services.

You only have as much control over your life as you have over your environment. In the world we live in, the amount of control you have over your environment is relative to the percentage of the wealth you own within that environment. When you look at the entire globe as a finite environment it looks to me like people's lives suck because they don't have enough control over their environment, and the main reason they don't have control over the environments they live in is because the people with all the money (and thus power) are exploiting their positions of power to force the poor to work under worse conditions for less pay so the rich and powerful can have more money and more power.

Even if there's not any bizarre Illuminati conspiracy theory (which I honestly don't believe there is), there's still no denying that the rich are screwing over the poor. In fact, you can look it up in any intro level economics text book. The backbone for our economy is based on the idea that businesses need to pay as little as possible to produce goods and services that they sell for as much as possible. The idea is that you have the most to gain by screwing the most amount of people for as much as possible. If you don't believe me, go fill out a loan application at your nearest bank.

I'm not saying it's the only way or the end-all best way for the poor (and/or the relatively poor) to take control of our environments (and thus our own lives), but as best as I can tell from where I'm standing, the best bet we have to make our dreams come true is to start our own perfectly legal businesses and earn more money than the bastards who are making our lives suck more than they have to.

If we want to control our environments (and thus our lives) we need to own our own businesses and reduce our personal expenses. We can kill two birds with one stone by living in our offices. That way we won't have to buy our own homes. We won't have to commute. We won't have to pay for repairs to our property out of our own pocket. And any fun and luxurious amenities we wanted in our house we could bill to the company and call an "office improvement." And we wouldn't have to hide it because we would own the company and get to decide what the company's profits are spent on. It wouldn't be illegal or immoral in any way.

Think about it. You could spend your life working and financing someone else who is going to use that money to pamper themselves and hold your head down farther or you could start your own business and spend your life working and financing your own security without having to hold anyone else's head down. The only thing you would have to do is exactly what you already do. Just instead of doing it for a greedy wanker, do it for yourself and share the wealth with your fellow workers equitably.
THE LEGACY OF A BILLIONAIRE

Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple, died recently, and the internet has been flooded with eulogies and praises to/about him. If he'd been a member of the Catholic church I swear they'd give him posthumous sainthood, and I'm not surprised by this at all. When Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Warren Buffet die they'll get the same treatment. Even Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers will get some kind of glowing recommendation letter to Heaven from someone.

I'm not saying that all this praise is completely undeserved. Steve Jobs (and every other billionaire out there) put a lot of mental and physical effort into building companies that provides useful products to humanity. I respect that, but that's only half the truth. It's misleading and unethical to only acknowledge the high points of any billionaire's career, and the fact that we do praise billionaires so eagerly and consistently is a sign of deeper flaw in society that desperately needs to be addressed and rectified.

You can become a millionaire by working hard, but there isn't enough time, energy or opportunity in one person's life to become a billionaire through hard work. The only way you become a billionaire is by underpaying your workers and over charging your customers (or owning stock in companies that underpay their workers and over charge their customers). So the only way to become a billionaire is to steal. The way you do that may be legal, but it's still stealing. Steve Jobs may have been a technological visionary, but the cold, hard fact of the matter is he was a thief. I can respect the work that he did do, but I can't respect him for the unreasonable, unnecessary mountains of cash he skimmed off the sweat shop slaves who built and sold Apple products.

Why did Steve Jobs deserve 8 billion dollars, no limit on his lunch breaks and 1000 heart felt eulogies but the people who build IPods apparently don't even deserve to be treated like human beings? You could ask the same question about any billionaire, but almost nobody ever does. So we keep rewarding robber barons and keep punishing hard working poor people.

We can all agree that Steve Jobs deserves some recognition for his company's product, but almost nobody ever talks about how much money Steve Jobs deserved for each IPod he sold. He wouldn't have died with 8 billion dollars if the cost of an IPod reflected its production value. I'm not saying Steve Jobs should have sold his products at-cost. I'm raising the question of how high you can mark up the cost of goods and services before it becomes unethical. If you mark it up high enough to accumulate 8 billion dollars without being guilty of price gouging then how much money do you have to horde before your ethics become questionable? How about 68 billion dollars?

As it stands, the generally accepted answer to that question is that there is no limit. The more money you horde the bigger of a hero you are. Furthermore, the blame doesn't lay on the CEO for overcharging for products. The blame lies on the customer for willingly paying whatever the advertised price is. There is some truth to that, but again, that's only half the truth.

Steve Jobs knew there was no logical reason for his customers (many of whom were poor) to pay the price he wanted to charge for IPods. So he created one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever that framed the IPod as a status symbol first and an electronic gadget second. In other words, Steve Jobs has already gone down in history as a visionary business leader for orchestrating a propaganda campaign that exploited his customers' mental weakness to swindle them out of more money. That's not admirable. That's dishonest and cruel, but he gets praise for it from so many people because the entire economy operates under the assumption that if you can be swindled then you deserve to be swindled. It's probably more correct to say that if you can be swindled you should be swindled.

This isn't how a utopia operates. This is how a dystopia operates. This philosophy creates poverty, which in turn creates misery and crime. That is part of Steve Job's legacy, and whatever good things he did don't change that fact.

It's worth noting that Steve Jobs did give some money to charity, though every old granny in the world who puts a dollar in a collection plate at church gives a higher percentage of their income to charity than Steve Jobs did. I don't want to sound ungrateful or discourage billionaires from giving to charity, but at the same time I can't give them too much street credit when they're giving away money they were never going to spend anyway. They didn't lose anything by giving to charity, but they got a lot out of it in the form of a generous reputation and generous tax breaks. At any rate, if you have billions of dollars to give away, why not just cut out the middle man and leave that money with either your workers, customers or both? Does it justify burning your workers and customers if you're nice to other people?

I haven't heard any news about Steve Jobs giving leaving all of his money to charity after his death, but other billionaires have contrived a reputation as saints for making that claim. I don't believe billionaires deserve praise for that either because it's tantamount to cruising down the street in a stretch Hummer limousine drinking a glass of $10,000 wine and shouting at homeless people through the sun roof, "You'll get my money when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!" I fail to see the honor in that sacrifice....not that Steve Jobs was even that generous.
PUT A 100% TAX ON ALL PERSONAL INCOME OVER $1 BILLION

My entire life I've been hearing politicians, political commentators and angry old men sitting on their front porches arguing about how much the rich should be taxed. After all these years it seems like there hasn't been any progress made towards a common consensus. For what it's worth, here's my take on the issue.

The big argument against raising taxes on the rich is that the less taxes the rich pay (and thus, the more money they take home) the more incentive they'll have to work hard and create jobs whereas if we tax the rich heavily then they will have no motivation to grow their businesses as those heavy taxes would effectively punish them for being successful. Thousands of articles, speeches, papers and books have been written picking this idea apart and going round and round in circles about it, but every one I've read has missed a fundamental concept.

You become a millionaire by working hard. However, there isn't enough time, energy or opportunity in one person's life to become a billionaire through hard work. The only way you become a billionaire is by underpaying your workers and over charging for your products (or owning stock in companies that underpay their workers and over charge their customers). So the only way to become a billionaire is to steal. The way you do that may be legal, but it's still stealing.

You want to fix the economy? Put a 100% tax on individual's income over $1billion. No human being needs more than $1billion, and if you made it impossible to make more than $1billion then you will eliminate the incentive for anyone to try. This won't stop people from working harder. It will just stop people from exploiting their workers and their customers or cutting jobs to maximize profit.

Plus, you could use those billions of tax dollars you've liberated from the greedy to stimulate the economy by creating new businesses. Think about it. If you want to create jobs and stimulate the economy...then create jobs. The government should sell "one of every product." If the government used the money it requisitioned from the rich to start businesses it could regulate those businesses and make sure its employees got paid a fair percentage of the profit their work generates. The government could guarantee its workers are treated with more dignity than McDonalds treats it workers. The government could guarantee the quality and safety of its products, and this would stimulate competition with the rest of the private companies.

Best of all, if government sold one of every product then the extra profit those businesses generate could go directly to paying for public programs instead of paying for a CEO's new yacht that he bought in a foreign country. If the government made enough money off the goods and products it sold we could eliminate the need for many of the taxes and fees we pay. If nothing else, we could subsidize health care or give our teachers raises or invest in free education.

Do you believe America is a welfare state? Then instead of giving money away to the poor, clear out every other floor of the projects and replace those apartments with offices and pay for it with the stolen money the government has taken back from the ultra-wealthy. Give everyone in the projects jobs right there in the projects. That will eliminate the excuse of not being able to find a job, and it will eliminate the need for the poor to buy cars and gas to travel across town to demeaning jobs that pay demeaning wages.

Americans are raised on the idea that working like a slave without complaining and hording money are hallmarks of virtue, but the reality is that some people don't want to work like slaves nor do they want a lot of money. If the government opened businesses that didn't set Asian sweatshop work quotas and paid their workers okay wages with lifetime job security, a lot of individuals who would have otherwise turned to a life of crime to support their unambitious lifestyle would gravitate to these jobs...where they would be happy and not bother anyone. But billionaires bent on squeezing every last minute and thus every last dollar out of their employees would never set up this business model, nor do they care if the abusive work ethic they mandate drives people to a life of crime. That's not their problem. The government could do it though, but they'd need capital to set these low-profit businesses up, and right now the billionaires are stealing the nation's wealth and bankrupting the country, crippling the government's ability to create a reasonable safety net for the poorest of the poor.
THE HOUSING MARKET IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

The legal process of buying a house has been made so complicated that you have to hire a licensed professional who has taken a course on real estate laws to help you buy your home. During the process of buying a house your real estate agent will introduce you to a long line of fees that you won't understand, don't agree with, and in many cases, are completely unnecessary. You'll be forced to lock in an interest rate that changes daily for no other reason than it can. By the time you close the deal on your house you'll have signed so many papers your hand will hurt.

The justification for all of this is to protect you, but after all the charges have been tallied up, your 30 year mortgage will cost you twice the price your house was advertised at, but you won't know that until after your charismatic real estate agent has made your head spin with 300 pages of legal jargon and schmoozed you into signing your future away so they can get their cut of the closing costs.

The justification for charging you twice what your house is worth is because the bank takes a risk. That excuse is overdramatized to the point of being a lie. In fact, the more your bank overcharges you and the less upfront it is about those charges the more likely you are to default on your loan. Your lending institution will also deflect the blame by saying a lot of the cost is taxes, which only proves the government is complicit in overcharging you for your house. The government doesn't have to tax you to death on your home. It doesn't have to make it hard for your family to own your own house. They just do it because that's the way it's always been done, and the reason it's always been done like that it because there's money to be made in it.

The immediate consequences of this system are obvious: home buyers get screwed out of their money and are set up to default on their loans, but the problem is worse than that. Since there's so much money to be made selling overpriced houses to suckers, the rich (who can build houses cheaply or buy existing ones with cash so they don't get screwed on a 30 year mortgage) have a lot of incentive to buy up as much land as they can and build houses as cheaply as possible. This results in cities full of dilapidated houses that require constant repairs being sold at astronomical prices.

If it weren't so easy to screw over the little guy, property values wouldn't be so inflated. If property values weren't so inflated people could afford to pay off their houses and wouldn't default on their loans. Then lending institutions would not go bankrupt, and governments wouldn't have to "bail out" lending institutions.

But the system is designed to screw over the little guy, and that causes housing bubbles, which result in millions of people losing their homes and even more never being able to buy one in the first place. And even after the American tax payers bailed out the lending institutions that screwed them in the first place...the process of buying a house is still exactly the same as it was before. The little guy is still getting systematically ripped off in the exact same ways, and the consequences will continue to remain the same until the fundamentals of the housing market are changed.

If the government was the sole lending institution through which all property purchases were financed it could set low, stable interest rates and eliminate all the predatory fees banks throw into the process just because they can. If the government collected the interest on housing loans it wouldn't need to impose such oppressive property taxes on home owners. Those taxes could be slashed or eliminated, increasing the working class's ability to pay off their mortgages. Real estate agents could still assist home buyers, but they should have a fixed wage set, say $1000 per house. Period. This is a generous sum of money for what's often less than a week's worth of work, and it doesn't incentivize overpricing houses to pump up the realtor's commission. Building codes should have higher standards. This won't lower the cost to buy a house, but it will lower the cost to maintain a house, which will increase the likelihood that a home buyer will be able to pay off their mortgage in the long run.

Finally, how much land does one person need? Why does one person need to own 10,000 acres? The more land one person owns the less land there is for everyone else. You can argue that everyone has a right to own as much land as they want, but when there's no land left for the poor, the effect is the same as denying the poor the right to own land. If a law were put in place limiting the amount of land someone can own or the frequency with which they could flip their property it would prevent housing bubbles. This would kill the big business surrounding the housing market, but that business needs to be killed. It doesn't benefit society in any way. It's a drain on society, and when you consider that every dollar a home buyer spends on their mortgage is equal to time spent at work, you ultimately pay for your house with your life. As it stands, the exploitative nature of the housing market steals people's short, irreplaceable lives. I won't hesitate to say that it's a crime against humanity. If all of this money weren't tied up in the fake fees business it could be released into the economy to stimulate actual businesses that have a real world benefit to humanity.

But your dearly beloved politicians aren't talking about that, and they're not going to, and you should be asking why.
PROFESSIONALISM IS A STRAITJACKT

The dictionary doesn't have a good definition of professionalism. So I submitted my own to Urban Dictionary:

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=professionalism>

Professionalism: any business practice in which happiness is sacrificed for success.

Think about any behavior that constitutes professionalism: wearing business suits, ties, leather shoes, addressing people with formal speech, prostrating yourself before abusive customers, sitting upright in your chair, etc. None of these behaviors are necessarily things you'd choose to do on your free time. In your free time you wear comfortable clothing, speak naturally and honestly, stand up for yourself, lounge around comfortably, etc.

Professionalism is an unnatural set of behaviors forced upon you by someone else to improve their company's image at the expense of your freedom and comfort. Professionalism ties your hands behind your back and prevents you from living how you want to...just like a straitjacket. Not only is this inhumane, but it's philosophically self-defeating.

Why does your job exist? What does your business provide society and why? Why does our economy exist in the first place? Obviously, it's all about making money, but what is the ultimate goal of making money? Two things: survival and happiness. The whole point of working or even having this gigantic, intricate, thriving economy is to streamline the hunting/gathering/tool making process so that we don't have to spend our lives in the fields fighting for survival.

In other words, our economy has grown out of the desire to be happier. Any yet we defeat the whole purpose by imposing unnatural standards of professionalism that eliminate people's freedom and creative expression. So if your company enforces strict standards of professionalism and makes a lot of money, and even if it makes its customers happy, it defeats the purpose of its existence by making its workers less happy than they could be if they were allowed their basic human rights.

If you ever see a company that has very strict standards of professionalism you automatically know that that company's C.E.Os don't care about their workers' rights, dignity or comfort. For a dollar they'd gladly put their workers in a straitjacket and tell them to like it.
STOP TREATING PEOPLE LIKE SHIT AND THEY'LL START GIVING A FUCK

If the baby boomers are correct in labeling Generation X and Y as lazy, aimless, apathetic, disrespectful and not giving a shit it's because the baby boomers have treated Generation X and Y like shit their entire lives.

From the moment a child is born in the West he's automatically considered a second class citizen relative to adults by law. Children don't have the same rights and freedoms as adults do. Putting aside the argument of whether this is philosophically justifiable, consider the psychological impact that has on children. During their formative years of development, when children are forming the perception of reality they'll use through the rest of their lives, they take it for granted that they're second class citizens. Children are even legally allowed to be beaten during that time frame in their life. Children who are hit enough tend to develop battered person syndrome, and somewhere in the world right now there's a group of kids somewhere having a bragging competition over whose parents or siblings beat them the worst.

When children go to school they're forced to address adults with higher titles than them as if they were in a military cult, and nonconformity is punished swiftly and harshly. And each school has its own rule book that imposes a whole new level of rules on children and is effectively law to the students; school rule books are effectively comparable to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and like the UCMJ, school rule books tend to have a lot of absurd, random, pointless rules that serve no productive use other than to get the people who live under them used to following rules and fearing punishment for nonconformity.

For the first eighteen years of their lives children endure a brutal, haphazard gauntlet of tests and assignments at school that judge their worth as a human being, and when they don't perform well they get smacked on the nose hard, and the worse they do the harder they get smacked. Children who do endure the beatings and pass the tests are told that when they graduate they'll get go to an even harder school with harsher punishments and more tempting distractions, but they'll have to go into half a lifetime of debt in order to do it, and once they graduate they'll get to go sit in an office cubicle that is effectively a sensory deprivation chamber where they'll endure another lifetime of belittling, absurd rules, minimal pay, absolutely zero company loyalty, constant tests to determine their worth as a human being and indefinite punishment for nonconformity. And in order to get one of these jobs they'll have to sign a contract that waives a significant amount of their legal rights away effectively putting them under a private version of the UCMJ.

The baby boomers understand all this. They've seen Office Space. They know there's at least a little truth to Fight Club. They've read Dilbert. They know what kind of a life their children have in store for them. They know the best most of them have to look forward to is being a faceless servants in a droll, stressful, ungrateful, disrespectful, lying, cheating corporate world. Generation X won't get a pension, because the Baby Boomers destroyed all the unions, and Generation X won't get social security, because the Baby Boomers will have bankrupted that long before Generation X retires. The Baby Boomers have systematically destroyed any hope of their children achieving the American Dream, and yet Baby Boomers act surprised when the younger generation doesn't give a shit.

The Baby Boomers went out of their way to raise their children in a series of Skinner Boxes that rigorously conditioned them to not give a shit and then set them up to spend the rest of their lives in an environment that doesn't give a shit about them. That's why young people don't give a shit.

Stop treating them like shit and they'll start giving a fuck. And stop accusing young people for having an underserved sense of entitlement when they complain about being treated like an inferior species.
THE LETTER I'LL NEVER SEND TO MY C.E.O.

Dear Daniel Robertson,

You must be very proud of your company. You started it on your own and took it from a garage-sized operation to an award-winning and internationally known brand. Few people in the world ever achieve that much success. Equally impressive is the fact that success doesn't seem to have gone to your head. The few times anyone has asked me what you're like I told them you're a down-to-earth kind of guy, a little shy even. I told them you're always smiling and friendly and that I can't even imagine what you'd be like when you're angry because that would just be so out of character for you. It's unusual that someone as gentle as you makes it so far in the dog-eat-dog, cut-throat world of business. You should be proud.

I sometimes wonder if you ever imagined your company would grow this large when you first started out. If so, I wonder how you envisioned your company would look. I wonder if you imagined it being a progressive, Utopian(ish) workplace like Google where your employees would almost rather be at work than at home. You certainly seem to be trying to take it in that direction, what with the idealistic company values printed on the giant poster in the front office, the lack of dress code, the free milk and coffee and fruit and the occasional company-sponsored fun-night. Some workers even get a dollar an hour bonus for meeting their "key performance indicators." I know some of the executives get bonuses for reaching their targets, and their bonuses are so big that nobody ever talks about them. You've also set a sales goal, that if we meet, the company will divide up one million dollars between all the employees. We both know you've been far more generous with perks than most companies.

I wonder if this is how you envisioned the future of your company when you first started out. I also wonder if sometimes you look down from your corner office and think, "You guys are all suckers. I can't believe you're doing this. Thank God I'm not as naive as you." Let's be honest for a minute and spell out the math, so to speak. I know this must have crossed your mind before.

You pay your workers as little as possible within the context of the law and supply and demand. Some of us get fifty cents or a dollar fifty over minimum wage, but let's be honest. If minimum wage were six dollars you'd be bragging about how you pay some of your workers seven dollars an hour. If minimum wage were four dollars you'd be bragging about how you pay some of your workers five dollars.

In addition to paying your workers as little as possible to maximize the profits you get to take home you work us as long as the law will allow. You also exploit the loophole that as long as overtime isn't mandatory you don't have to pay over time, and despite the fact that we do intense mental and physical work for you, we're expected to keep up the highest pace humanly possible the entire time, every day. And you guarantee that we'll exhaust ourselves to that limit by designing the computers we use to monitor, record and report everything we do. So even if our boss doesn't see us resting the system will show it. If there's any doubt that we're pushing ourselves to the limit (which there's not) you can always play back the video footage from the dozen cameras that keep a constant watchful eye on us.

Even though nobody counts the way you spend every minute of your day and you can take as long of a lunch break as you want and take time off whenever you want I know you're a busy man. So I'll get straight to the point. I wonder how fully conscious you are of the fact that your business model is based on exploiting wage slaves, which is just a fancy way of saying, "slavery." I wonder how fully conscious you are of the fact that every dollar you put in your pocket was earned by us, and every dollar you spend on luxury is a dollar we can't spend on necessity. I wonder how fully conscious you are of the fact that every day we come to work we're fighting against your "key performance indicators" for survival. I wonder how fully conscious you are of the fact that the key performance indicators are based on the best worker working at their best speed and doesn't take into consideration all the little tasks we have to do every day like tidying up, looking for a pen, changing stations, finding a computer that works, waiting for the constant little lags in the system caused by the tragically designed infrastructure, restocking supplies, tying our shoes, going to the bathroom and so on. So in order to reach the ninety five percent productivity rate that's expected of us we actually have to work all day at a one hundred to one hundred and ten percent productivity rate.

Granted, all the stress would be worth it to us if we meet that sales target and get that one million dollars...except everyone in the company knows it would take fifty miracles to make that happen. That bar was set low enough to (theoretically) motivate us but high enough that there was never any risk of you having to pay up. So all that "incentive" has accomplished is sending a clear message to everyone who works for you that we've made you enough money that you can afford to give away a million dollars but you're not willing to share that wealth with us. In fact, you're willing to insult our intelligence and lie to us to try to squeeze as much sweat and irreplaceable time out of our fleeting lives as you can so you can convert it into cash in your pocket to squander on more luxuries for you and your family.

This is why your best workers leave. This is why you have so many immigrants and pot heads working for you, because they're the only ones desperate enough to endure the working conditions you've created.

I often wonder if this is how you imagined you'd build your fortune when you started your company. I wonder if you dreamed of wasting the best years of people's lives slaving away for you for barely enough money to survive. I wonder if you even realize you're doing it and if you've excused it all away by telling yourself things like, "That's business." or "If you don't like it you can get another job." or "I have to do this to stay competitive."

I wonder how much thought you've put into the value of human life, and by that I don't just mean how much one person's life is worth but how much each minute in a person's life is worth. Is a minute in one person's life worth more or less than a minute in another person's life? If you had to spend five years working in the conditions you've created for the pay you allow, would you consider those five years fully lived? If your children had to work in the conditions you've created for the pay you allow would you feel like they fully lived their lives? If the answer to either of those questions is "no" then why would you demean and rob other people's lives that way? Is there really any excuse big enough to justify wasting an equal human being's potential for money?

Why is it that if you cut a person's life short it's called murder but when you cut the best years of their life out in the middle it's a justified business expense? You might think these questions are over dramatic, but if you play back the video of your workers and you see the dead-eyed, stressed out expressions they wear on their faces all day when your back is turned you'll realize I'm not exaggerating when I say that the reality is, you're killing us little by little every day.

I'm positive this isn't what you envisioned when you started your business, and I'm positive that you're either completely ignorant of what you've become or you've made enough short-sighted excuses to justify your actions to yourself, and I'm positive you'll never realize the true cost your success has come at to the people who run your company. I regret that I'll never be able to send this letter to you because you'll fire me, and I need this job because slavery is better than starvation. So I'll work for you as long as I have to until I've saved enough of the crumbs you've let fall from your plate and I can start my own business that treats the people I work with as equal human beings fully deserving of equal respect and profits. And I, and everyone who has ever worked for you, will always remember you with sadness and regret.
SLAVERY BY ANY OTHER NAME

The definition of "totalitarian" is: "exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others."

It's not difficult to see why nobody speaks of totalitarian governments positively despite how much a totalitarian government can accomplish. The pharaohs of Egypt were totalitarian rulers, and they were able to build massive pyramids beyond what you would think would be possible at the time. Imagine if they'd used that power to do something of that magnitude that was actually useful. Imagine if your government had complete totalitarian power. Imagine what it could accomplish if it used that power for good. We could have space travel, flying cars and computers exponentially faster and smaller than what exists now.

But you don't wish that would happen, because it wouldn't be worth it. Case in point, I once heard that a group of psychologists did an experiment where they took two floors of a nursing home, and on one floor they told the residents that they weren't allowed to decide how the furniture in their room would be arranged. They also gave the residents a plant and told them that a staff member would take care of watering it. On another floor they told the residents they could arrange their rooms however they wanted (obviously somebody else would do the heavy moving for them). The residents were also given a plant and told that it was their responsibility to water it and care for it. The psychologists found that the people who were given that tiny amount of freedom and control over their environment lived an average of ten years longer. The people who didn't have control over their environment or life had less reason to live....so they didn't.

Totalitarian regimes take away your freedom to act or think and thus negate the purpose of life. So even if the regime can build giant monuments, the slaves who build those monuments will live empty, pointless, unrewarding, painful lives that end prematurely. So it's a good thing we don't live under a totalitarian government. We're free to act and think as we want. Our life has meaning...or at least that's what we're told to believe.

In reality that isn't true for most people. First of all, the American government is partially totalitarian. There's a lot of things we're not free to do or say, and there's a lot of things it discourages us from thinking. We delude ourselves into believing that just because we're not 100% controlled then we must be 100% free. That's an illogical and incorrect conclusion. But that's not the worst of our problems.

Most people spend half their waking hours at a job serving someone else. Most work places are totalitarian systems. Almost every aspect of your work day is controlled. You must come in at a certain time and most likely work overtime with little to no compensation. You have to follow strict rules on how to dress yourself (like you're 5 years old). You have to follow strict rules on what you can/can't say. There are strict rules for how you can decorate your office (if you're lucky enough to have an office of your own). Your mind will be subjected to unnatural propaganda. Motivational posters and pep talks from department heads will tell you to be excited about the degrading treatment you're forced to submit to at work. You'll be taught that a person's worth is related to the level of college degree they've purchased. You'll be taught that a person's worth and wisdom is relative to how long they've worked at their job. You'll be taught not to question your superiors (as if anyone is superior to anyone else). You'll be taught to shut up when your ideas differ from the status quo, and if you refuse to conform you'll be fired and thrown out into the street.

In order to afford food, clothing, shelter, medicine and transportation for yourself and your family you have to work. If you don't work then you'll die. So when you get fired your boss might as well just put a bullet in your brain. They're taking everything away from you and leaving you for dead. That's the threat your smiling, condescending, pompous boss hangs over you all day every day as he/she forces you to do work you hate in a place where you have no control over your environment or fate. Okay, so maybe you have 10% control, but that's to say you're 10% alive. That's not something to be proud of. You should be 90% pissed off that your life has been 90% taken away from you and rendered degrading and meaningless.

I suspect there are penniless fishermen in third world countries all over the world who, by the virtue of the fact that they own their own little boat and are in control of their lives are more happy than all the SUV driving, diamond wearing cubicle workers in America combined.

So much for soldiers dying for our freedom. Our government just outsourced control over us to private companies. They might not own a deed to our bodies, but our contracts just mean we're rented, disposable slaves.
7 WAYS WORKER'S RIGHTS STILL NEED TO IMPROVE

I know it's considered responsible to accept things as they are. I know it's considered mature and strong to take the problems the world throws at you without complaint and just push through them. I know that docilely submitting to authority is considered a virtue and anyone who "has a problem with authority" is considered childish.

I understand these things, but I still can't help but wonder how the world could be better. The immature, weak, ungrateful little brat in me has identified 7 ways I believe workers' rights are still drastically below the standards of basic humanity dignity and equality.

1. Workers should get paid what they're worth. Most of the workers at the place I work get paid minimum wage, but the work we do generates millions of dollars of profit for our company every year. The people who generated that money only see a fraction of it. They eat like shit because they can't afford real food. They drink to forget their shitty lives, and they've accepted that they're going to live shitty, hard working lives forever. The top 2 or 3 people in company live in mansions, do very little work and smile all day, every day.

This describes most companies. The standard business model is based on a modern version of slavery that allows the masters to exploit their workers with plausible deniability. The end result is unmistakable though. The masters make all the money for controlling the means of production while the people running the economy get paid nothing and waste their lives in humiliating servitude.

I know all the excuses for why we should live under corporate slavery, and I don't buy them. If we ever hope to live in utopia or even just be decent human beings we need to figure out a way to share profits equitably within companies using a better system than supply and demand (which really just amounts to, "screw whoever you can however you can whenever you can").

2. Workers should not have to take shit from customers. Worker's aren't allowed to verbally abuse their bosses. Parent's aren't allowed to verbally abuse their children. Teachers aren't allowed to verbally abuse their students. You can't verbally abuse a random person on the street without fear of repercussions. Everyone is protected from verbal abuse except customer service workers. Customers can bitch out customer service workers as hurtfully as they want and the customer service representative has to submit to it. If they demand to be treated with the basic level of human dignity everyone else is afforded under the law they'll be labeled insubordinate and get fired.

I have no idea how/why my parent's generation allowed this to happen, but if its' wrong to verbally abuse people directly then it's blatantly a violation of basic human dignity for a company to force it's workers to submit to verbal abuse from customers. Customer service representatives need the law to protect them from verbal abuse and give them the right to tell assholes to go fuck themselves.

3. Freedom of expression. I don't know how/why my parent's generation let professionalism get to the maniacal level it's gotten to, but this problem should have been acknowledge and ended a long time ago. People should be allowed to dress themselves however they want. Nobody should have the power over another person to tell them what to wear. Basic human rights don't get any more basic than that. Being forced to wear uniforms or even conform to certain standards of appearance is humiliating, degrading and oppressive. If we want to live in a free society we can be proud of the very least we can do for our children is let them dress themselves how they want and quit forcing them to conform their identities to the soulless, exploitive standards of professionalism.

4. Stop drug testing. Nobody with any intelligence thinks drug testing really accomplishes anything productive. People who use drugs aren't bad. Most people who use drugs don't use them at work. The purpose of drug tests are defeated by allowing people to drink alcohol. If there's a legal way to get high, does it really matter which way you get high? No.

And most high paying jobs don't drug test. Politicians don't get drug tested. CEOs don't get drug tested. Important people don't get drug tested because important people use drugs, and it doesn't matter. The only thing drug testing accomplishes is making life harder for people whose lives already suck so bad that the only realistic chance they have at any form of happiness is through ingesting chemicals. Help their lives suck less by ending the practice of drug testing or drug test everybody.

5. Employers shouldn't get a carte blanche on contracts. Workers are exploited, stolen from, abused, humiliated, forced to live in fear and fired with complete disregard for their dignity because people need jobs to eat. This means employers can put anything they want in their contracts and people have to agree to it to get a job. Then when the company wants to abuse their workers they can say, "But you agreed to this. See you signed your contract."

Of course we signed the contract. We need to eat. So we had to concede to your extortionate demands. Workers should be protected from this kind of unethical treatment by the law.

6. Shorter work weeks. What are we doing here people? The year 2000 has come and gone. We're living in the age of technology. There's no reason to work 9+ hour days 5+ days a week. All we're doing is lining our masters' pockets with thicker pads of money. We're wasting our lives at work, and it's making us miserable, stressed and volatile. This is so pointless a child can see it. We should be working 7 hour days 4 days a week. You know what will happen if we do? Everyone will be happier. That's it. So why aren't we doing it already?

7. Create 1 national job board. People can't find jobs because networking is more important than skills. The "good old boy" system is out dated and detrimental to the national economy. We should get rid of the millions of avenues business have to advertise jobs and force them all to post on one federally funded job board. That way everyone will have access to every job opportunity.
ONE DOLLAR EQUALS ONE VOTE IN THE ECONOMY

The term, "Free Market" is defined as, "an economic system in which prices and wages are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without government regulation or fear of monopolies."

The American economy is not strictly a free market. There's a lot of regulation that goes on, but by and large the general population determines what's sold and how much it's sold for via supply and demand. If we don't want something that's offered we won't buy it, and then business offering it will cease to exist. If we want something we'll buy it, and the more we want it the more we'll pay for it.

The more money we spend on a certain product or service the more money that business will make. Thus, the more money that business will have to reinvest into making that product or service better. As investors see us spending our money in certain places they'll start more business to fill that need. That drives up competition and forces each business in that field to make even better products for potentially lower, more competitive prices.

There's no ballot box where we deposit our voting slips and determine what we want businesses to sell us, but there are cash registers and dollars. A free market is a democracy where we vote with our dollars, and we suck at voting. If we took all the money we spent on sports over the past 30 years and invested all of that money into energy we'd all be riding around in flying cars right now. If we took all the money we spent on designer clothes in the past 30 years and invested it in public transportation there'd be no traffic. If we took all the money we spent on movies and invested it in housing there'd be no homelessness. We've done a good job of voting on computers at least. For every other dumbass decision, there's Master Card.

As we watch banks collapse and the economy go to shit we hear a lot of talk about the role regulation and deregulation of business practices has played, and it's all very confusing. We're all looking for someone to point the finger at. We need a scapegoat, and I have no doubt that one will be found for us. It won't solve our problems, but it'll make us feel better, because we won't have to point the fingers at ourselves. We won't have to admit that gas prices are so high because we voted for it by buying Hummers. We won't have to admit that the reason so many mortgages have defaulted is because we voted on mass-produced houses we couldn't afford in unsustainable suburbs. The reason we're worrying about whether or not we'll have the basic necessities of life when we retire is because we didn't vote on them. We voted on Pepsi, Prada, Persian rugs, IPods, Hollywood, Harley Davidson, Marlboro, Ikea, and Viagra.

There are a lot of corporate douche bags and incompetent politicians out there who have done a lot of unethical things to bankrupt the economy, but we shouldn't forget that we voted in all of these mistakes with our dollars, and we should take responsibility for it and feel ashamed. However, that won't do us any good unless we use that shame to vote wiser in the future. Don't waste your money. Spend responsibly on the things that matter, and the things that matter will improve. Not wasting your money on things you don't need will also allow you to save money to give you a cushion when things go bad. Then, the shit will never hit the fan.
CHAPTER 4

POLITICS AND WORLD ISSUES

COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF TERRORISM

Every potential terrorist needs to serious ask themselves, "Is killing a bunch of people an effective way to motivate a government and/or culture to conform to a new ideology?" You can find the answer to this question by studying the history of terrorist attacks. Terrorist attacks have had some success in motivating encroaching imperial forces from leaving an area they're not welcome in such as in Ireland and Beirut, but you'll notice the British are still in Ireland, and the Americans are still in the Middle East.

Other than those small "victories" for terrorism, a quick scan of the history books show that terrorism is an overwhelming failure. It has never succeeded at producing total long term political or social reform. And why would it? Look at the cost/benefit analysis of giving into terrorist demands from the point of view of a government. If they gave into terrorists then that would set a precedent that terrorism works. Then every disgruntled punk would be blowing up schools. The only logical course of action for a government to take is to reject the influence of terrorists regardless of the short term cost in civilian life.

Even if one terrorist won a total victory and overthrew an entire government through terrorism, their victory would set a precedent that terrorism works. So everyone who disagreed with the successful terrorist's ideology would fight the successful terrorist with more terrorist attacks. Then the original terrorist's regime would be overthrown with a new regime that will be overthrown by someone else's terrorist attacks and so on until there's no one left to attack. In order for terrorism to work, the first successful terrorist would have to oppress and silence any future dissenters, but that would just sow the seeds of frustration and resentment that will make future terrorist attacks inevitable on a long enough time scale.

That's just a best case scenario which assumes a government even cares enough about civilian deaths to cave to terrorists' demands. Before you go killing innocent people, do a case study on the government you're hoping to influence. The United States, Russia and China (to name a few) lock up their own civilians in prisons for nonviolent, victimless crimes where they're raped and beaten only to be thrown out in the streets with felony convictions that ruin the rest of their lives. These countries sell tobacco, alcohol and toxic food to their civilians and create laws that prevent the poor from being able to afford the medicine that will save their lives after they get sick from those poisons. These countries set the legal minimum wage below the poverty level. They've even been accused of state sponsored terrorism themselves. Even without that last accusation, it would take an army to kill as many civilians as those countries let die every year. It would be illogical to expect terrorism to hold any leverage over countries that make a full time job out of terrorizing and slaughtering their own population.

You could try using terrorist attacks on more humanitarian countries like Norway, Sweden or Switzerland, but giving into terrorist demands would be a huge step backwards for them. So the cost/benefit analysis of giving into terrorist demands wouldn't add up. They would lose more than they would gain, and it would require them to act against their values. So terrorism is unlikely to hold any leverage over countries like that either.

As a matter of fact, giving into terrorism directly contradicts humanity's very instincts. When someone attacks you, you don't embrace them or sit down and listen to them. You either put up your defenses or attack back. Look at history. Terrorist attacks might get you an airplane or a little money, but it also gets the attention of insanely well-funded military and paramilitary organizations that are able to operate outside the law.

Attacking a world super power is tantamount to personal and ideological suicide. When you attack a super power it will attack back. Period. There is no question about that. If a terrorist kills him/herself in their attack, the super power will still need to attack somebody in retaliation. So they're going to attack the terrorist's family, colleagues and like-minded individuals. And since the largest, most powerful militaries in the world are riddled with bureaucracy, inefficiency and un-accountability they're probably going to end up imprisoning and bombing more of your innocent neighbors than your actual associates. If/when/before that happens, you really have to take a step back and ask yourself what terrorism really accomplishes. It just sets in motion a domino effect of murder and mayhem until there's nobody is left to be angry at. The only people who really win are the bullet and bomb merchants.

If you truly have an ideology worth spreading, the worst thing you could possibly do is kill a bunch of innocent civilians. All that's going to accomplish is getting you and a significant number of like-minded individuals killed, and your ideas are going to die with you.

You're not going to die as a glorious martyr either. You're going to be demonized, and your ideology is going to be demonized right along with you. Even if your ideology isn't demonic, you'll have made it demonic in the public eye.

Terrorist kill themselves and other people because they believe they've been pushed up against the wall. Terrorists say they were forced to use violence as a last resort against overwhelming odds. That's the line we hear anyway, but when have the police ever raided a terrorist's bomb-shack and found a door-length list hanging on the wall of every other method the terrorists had tried before finally resorting to violence? Never. Terrorism isn't the last resort of courageous men. It's the first idea of uncreative fools. Here's a few ideas that have worked for other people that you and your organization should consider trying before resorting to violence to propagate your ideology:

1. Bribery. Maybe you have a righteous ideology that you want your government to adopt. Killing innocent people will obligate politicians to reject your ideology. However, history shows that nothing motivates politicians better than money. Instead of funding terrorist training camps, just fund a politician's political campaign. Even if your ideology doesn't make any sense and is blatantly in the disinterest of the common citizen, you can still get a politician to sign legislation that will force your ideology onto others. In Colorado, rich people got the government to give them ownership of the rain. If you can buy the rain, you can buy anything.

2. Outreach. The Catholic church tried to spread Christianity by the sword. Now the Crusades are remembered by believers and non-believers alike as a prime historical example of FAIL. However, Christianity still spread all the way around the globe because the Christians changed their tactics. They sent missionaries to foreign lands to set up schools, hospitals, orphanages and poor houses. The locals didn't (usually) fight off the missionaries. The locals came to them. Then, once the locals were inside the church the Christians pulled a bait-and-switch and pushed their manifesto on the locals in exchange for the services they provided. Bam. Hundreds of years later Hawaiians, Maoris, Alaskans, Native Americans and countless other ethnic groups are still worshiping the God that stole their land and erased their culture.

3. Propaganda. You don't have to kill your enemy to defeat them. Ultimately, what's your enemy? Your enemy is the ideas in people's minds. Defeat the ideas and you convert your enemies into your allies. Then you win twice.

If your ideology isn't sound enough to convince people to adopt without violence then you need to seriously consider whether your ideology is worth spreading at all. If your ideology can convert people without violence then why use violence?

If you have an ideology worth killing/dying for then you must have a giant manifesto detailing your cause, right? If you don't then you have to ask yourself what you're killing/dying for. How do you spread an idea? You use honey, not vinegar. You don't even have to be subtle about the fact that you're spreading propaganda with a bait-and-switch agenda. Just make it cute and funny. If you want to get into people's minds then DO get into their television; DON'T kill them.

4. Regroup/Rebuild. Joseph Smith had an ideology he wanted to spread. He was killed for his beliefs, and his followers were brutally persecuted by Christians. Afterwards, his followers didn't start burning churches and attacking government buildings. They moved out into the country and built a new nation based on their ideals. Unfortunately for them the United States forced them to accept annexation as a state instead of being able to start their own country, but even after that happened they still didn't start burning churches and blowing up government buildings. They set up schools in places Christians had already done the groundwork of wiping out the local culture. They sent missionaries door to door all over the world to spread their manifesto and convert people's minds by talking to them, and they've had far more success that way than violence could have ever achieved. They haven't taken over the world yet, but that's no reason to start killing people. Point in fact, at the time of writing this a Mormon is running for president of the country that wouldn't let Utah be its own country. Regardless of whether Utah is a state or a country, it's still a stronghold of the Latter-day Saints, and it became that way through hard work, not violence.
AMERICANS, YOU'RE NOT REPRESENTED

IN THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Note: I fear that if you change the names at dates, everything I say here will apply to every presidential election in the foreseeable future.

Every election season you hear people say, "If you don't vote you can't complain." Any time you complain about laws you don't like people will tell you, "You live in a democracy. If you want to change things then vote or run for office."

This brings us to the 2012 presidential elections. Mitt Romney is the Republican candidate, and Barak Obama is the Democratic candidate. Those are the only two candidates you get to choose from. A Libertarian might be on the ballot, but you don't really get to choose him, because he's not going to win. So choosing him is tantamount to choosing not to vote.

The Republican party doesn't want Mitt Romney to represent them. He might have a few die-hard fans, but he's a big city fat cat pandering to poor country voters. He doesn't carry himself with confident poise like Barak Obama. He almost seems terrified to be running for president because he knows he's not very good at making up bullshit on the spot and saying it confidently...like say, Newt Gingrich. And he's a Mormon, which godless liberals might not judge him for, but the kind of Christians who wouldn't vote for Obama because they believe he's a Muslim believe Joseph Smith was just as much of a false prophet as Muhammad. For a lot of reasons, Republicans just don't want Mitt Romney to be their president, and they really, really don't want Barak Obama to be president. So they're unrepresented in this presidential election.

At the same time, Barak Obama is running as the Democratic candidate for president, and while he has some die-hard fans, a lot of liberals don't want another four years of Barack Obama doing everything they hated George Bush for doing.

Obama-mania is over. He had his chance to change things, and he didn't. He maintained the status quo to the point of standing by silently, consenting to police beating and arresting people for protesting for freedom, justice and representation in the various "Occupy" protests.

A lot of people who vote for Barak Obama in 2012 will be choosing him as the lesser of two evils even though they know neither candidate truly represents them, and a lot of conservative voters will be voting for Mitt Romney only because they perceive him as the lesser of two evils even though they know neither candidate truly represents them.

So in the 2012 election the conservative voter base doesn't have a candidate that actually represents them...and neither does the liberal voter base. What Americans get to choose from are an old white guy who made a fortune in the financial sector squeezing the little guys and an old black guy who's campaign is funded by old white guys who made their fortunes in the financial sector squeezing the little guys. And both candidates are going to staff every government position in their power with old, rich people from the financial sector who made their fortunes squeezing the little guy. If that's enough to scare you into voting Libertarian you'll just elect an old white guy who wants to remove every safe guard that protects the poor from getting squeezed by the rich. So the 2012 presidential election is merely a charade where the American people get to choose who they want to represent the rich and open the gates for them to squeeze the little guy more.

At the time I'm writing this, the 2012 election isn't for another 6 months, but I can already tell you who's going to win representation in the White House. The rich are going to win representation, and the poor are going to be told that if they don't like it they can change who represents the rich in the White House in 4 more years.

I can see how some people might not have seen this coming in the 2008 presidential election with everyone so excited that George Bush was gone and Obama-mania was sweeping the nation, but I don't know how it could be any more obvious in 2012 that nobody who is running for office represents the American people. And the American people will never be represented in any presidential election as long as they only get to choose between who the Republican party and the Democratic party nominate on behalf of the nation.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GAME THEORY BEHIND REVOLUTION

This isn't directed at any government in particular. It's a general analysis of human behavior in a hypothetical, generic revolutionary environment.

Revolution is a game played between three groups of people: politicians, law enforcement and citizens. By understanding the psychology of each group you can understand how/why they play the revolution game. The most important thing you need to understand about each group is that they tend to act in their own self-interest.

These three groups tend to act in their own self-interest because humans tend to act in their own self-interest. It's an evolutionary trait that has served the human species well (with some exceptions). This isn't to say that people are inherently selfish to the point of being evil. We all make conscious decisions to do good, selfless things on a regular basis, but even people like Evangelical Puritans who sincerely try to do good all the time have lapses of reason where they fall back on their subconscious instincts. Actually, I suspect we do it more often than we'd like to believe, and when everyone acts on their subconscious instincts, the group as a whole acts like a giant zombie on mental autopilot.

Consider how dangerous it is that the politicians who run the world don't think using pure reason 100% of their lives either. Even sociopaths can't think at that level all the time. So politicians zone out too sometimes. They make snap decisions, especially when they're stressed. They have cognitive biases. They're guilty of making the fundamental attribution error from time to time. When all their lapses are combined they add up to a sleep walking political system that tends to serve its own interests.

It's the least profound thing in the world to say that people want as much money, power and prestige as the world is willing to give them. Everybody fantasizes about having more of whatever they want out of life. But getting everything we've ever wanted doesn't tend to satisfy us; it just tends to wet our appetites. So it should be the least surprising sight in the world to see people getting money, power and prestige and then wanting more and doing everything they can to hold onto what they've got. That's what humans do, and since politicians are humans that's what politicians tend to do.

The working class isn't any different. They want as much as they can get, but since they're born into an exploitive system that subjugates them, they have no power or leverage to improve their lot in life. So they go to work day in and day out and try their best to impress their boss and get a promotion.

When people have a legitimate path to success paved in front of them where they're fairly rewarded for the amount of effort they put in, human nature compels them to take that path. Even if they're not fairly rewarded they'll still work themselves to death for the hope of a better life.

Governments and business owners understand this, and since politicians and business owners tend to want to horde as much money and power as possible, history shows a tendency for governments and businesses to collude to pay their workers as little as possible while pushing them to work themselves to the limits of human endurance while making it as expensive as possible to survive. This makes the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. The greater a disparity in wealth there is, the greater a disparity in leverage there is; the rich have more resources to oppress the poor with, and the poor have less resources to stand up for themselves with.

This is not without consequences. The economy can only exploit its workers so far before the cost/benefit analysis of illegal activity outweighs the cost/benefit analysis of working as a slave for your entire life only to get kicked out into the streets in your old age. That illegal activity may be selling drugs on the black market or rioting on the steps of the capitol. Either way, people don't tend to end up in such low places unless they're forced there because the alternative they were offered was worse.

People are even more likely to turn away from the light at the end of the corporate ladder when the cost of education is raised so high it prevents the poorest of the poor from buying-up the socio-economic ladder. The glass ceiling of prohibitively expensive higher education guarantees a percentage of society will turn to a life of crime...not because they're evil but because it makes sense from their perspective (especially if they've been denied the education necessary to reason like a self-actualized adult).

Having said that, the average human tends to accept their lot in life even if it's a backbreaking and thankless one as long as they can survive and have at least the perceived hope of prosperity someday. The average person perceives the cost of scraping by as less than the cost of striking or revolution, and they perceive the benefit of getting a guaranteed small pay check each week as better than a theoretically better pay check in the future after a costly revolution.

Striking and/or revolting would make sense to overworked/underpaid/unrepresented people, but they're not completely stupid. Look at the disrespectful way people treat each other in office politics. Based on that evidence you would be naive to believe lower class workers could organize into a revolutionary force capable of operating with the resolve and efficiency of a military unit. Even if they could, governments and businesses have learned to demonize and/or outright criminalize unionizing or forming grass roots political organizations to prevent the lower class from even wanting to unionize.

For all of these reasons and more the cost/benefit analysis of wagering one's position in life on strangers is too tenuous to risk....unless you have nothing left to lose. When the population has nothing left to lose they will take that risk because it finally makes sense to do so.

How violently the population revolts depends on local conditions. Protesters in the Arab Spring rioted in the streets, but for the most part they weren't violent because they weren't gunned down in the streets en mass, and most of the protesters were family members with homes to lose.

Palestinians, on the other hand, have been actively fighting their oppressors with guns and rockets because their homes have been bulldozed and their families have been cut down in the streets remorselessly for decades. Unlike the Egyptians, the Palestinians are facing ethnic cleansing and have responded proportionately. I won't argue that their taking up arms was justifiable (or that it wasn't), but I will argue that it was inevitable given the corner they've been backed into.

This brings us to the third group involved in paving the road to revolution: the law enforcement and military (aka the praetorian class). We'd all like to believe that police and soldiers are morally impeccable heroes, but politicians understand that they're humans who tend to do what's in their best immediate interest just like anyone else.

Politicians understand the psychology of service better than anyone. Every law enforcement and military organization in the world uses text-book brainwashing techniques to indoctrinate their members. It's standard procedure, but people might not notice it because it's so innocuous and commonplace. Any technique that gets the members of an organization to base their identity on their job and embrace a job-centric culture is using brainwashing techniques on their members whether those members realize it or not. In fact, if you brainwash someone correctly they shouldn't know they've been brainwashed; they should deny that (accurate) accusation to the death.

Once these psychological walls are put up in the minds of law enforcement personnel, disobeying a direct order from their work boss ceases to be a work decision because they've been put in a position where disobeying their organization would be going against their identity, their culture, their (surrogate) family, their beliefs and their oath.

Corrupt governments craftily force their law enforcement personnel to swear an oath to serve their country at all costs. While that sounds noble on the surface, what is a country? I would argue that a country is the people who live within its borders, but law enforcement personnel don't salute or recite incantations of loyalty to the people on the streets. No, they salute and recite incantations of loyalty to a flag or other organizational symbol, which symbolizes the authority structure of the government first and foremost.

You can disagree with this statement in theory, but look at how the oath of loyalty plays out in practice. Anyone the government labels a traitor, dissident or criminal immediately loses the protection of law enforcement personnel. However, the people can't label their politicians corrupt and expect law enforcement to act on their behalf because law enforcement personnel are bound to obey only the people in their chain of command, which ultimately extends up to the corrupt politicians. So when the common citizen is pushed to the breaking point by their government where striking and revolting is in their best (and even dire) interest, the government only needs to label those protesters a threat to national security and law enforcement personnel will be obligated by duty, honor, oath, patriotism and the threat of losing their own livelihood to point their guns at their fellow countryman. After that's happened you can't say that the law enforcement and military personnel ever saluted the people when they saluted their flag. They saluted the leaders in their chain of command. That's all the flag ever represented in practice...in a generic revolutionary environment.

Understanding that, as long as law enforcement and military personnel associate their identity and their culture with their job and swear unquestioning oaths of loyalty to inanimate objects that represent their chain of command, you can expect law enforcement personnel and soldiers to beat and shoot civilians if/when their leaders order them to, and politicians who trampled the rights of their people to rise to power can be expected to use the police and military to trample the rights of the people (who pay their pay checks) to hold onto power.

This puts oppressed civilians in an impossible situation. Fighting law enforcement personnel is typically futile not only because law enforcement personnel are better armed and better trained, but also because they're a political straw man. They're not the problem. The politicians are. Fighting law enforcement wastes lives, resources and momentum that could be directed at the real source of the problem.

More importantly though, protesters need support from people who are organized, effective and have access to massive resource networks. No one in the world is better trained and prepared to fight injustice than law enforcement and military personnel. If law enforcement personnel can be convinced to leverage their strength against the real source of the problem on behalf of the oppressed, then the protesters have taken the main source of the politician's power and turned it against them. So one of the first goals of a unified social movement is to educate law enforcement personnel of their plight and remind them who they should be fighting for/against and why. This will yield an even better chance of success if revolutionaries give the law enforcement personnel an incentive and a new source of identity.

A revolution will have an even better chance of succeeding if it's clear that its goal isn't to "overthrow the government." The government isn't the one selling out the people. The government is just a stack of books sitting on a shelf somewhere. Fighting "the government" is fighting a ghost...a ghost that law enforcement personnel are bound to protect. The real source of the problem is the specific individuals instigating the oppression. A successful revolution should have the clear aim of identifying and removing corrupt individuals from power. Coincidentally, law enforcement personnel know how to remove criminals from society non-lethally, and they're bound to do so to protect the greater interests of their country and their government.

The worse the consequences of revolution are for the politicians the harder they'll fight to remain in power and the more force they'll authorize against the uprising civilians. The less the politicians have to lose, the more likely they'll be to acquiesce to the people's demands. While justice demands those people be removed from office, prudence recognizes that the most important change that needs to be enacted as a result of a revolution is to get a set of laws on the books that remove the incentives for politicians to exploit the working class and then holds politicians accountable for their actions in the future. Without these changes, the system would eventually revert back to a state of corruption and require another potentially bloody revolution anyway. So a revolution may be wise not to overthrow their leaders, but merely to force them to bind themselves with more regulations. If the politicians refuse they weaken their case that they deserve to be protected by the law.

The only question that remains is what the working class can do to make it in the politician's best interest to perform their jobs in the best interest of the people. The first thing that needs to happen is the people need to draft a clearly articulated set of demands and circulate it as widely as possible. The American revolution against the British got this step right, and the rest of the world could learn a lesson from their success. The next thing the people need to do is confront their corrupt politicians directly where it matters most to them. Chanting slogans in the boondocks behind police cordons doesn't give a political movement any leverage. All that does is let protesters blow off their steam and feel productive without affecting anything. If you want to influence politicians you need to make it in their immediate interest to listen to you. Corrupt politicians use their political offices to wage class warfare against the working class to build up wealth in their own homes. Their offices and their homes are the most fundamental sources of their motives. Occupy those and they lose their power and their incentive. Both their offices and their homes are physical places that can be occupied non-violently. Surround them and put the politicians out in the streets and you can take back your freedom, your dignity, your equality and your fair share of your nation's resources.

Of course, there are other ways to wage a revolution. This one simply uses human psychology to target mental pressure points in an attempt to maximize efficiency.
PROBLEMS WE ALL JUST ACCEPT AS PART OF LIFE...BUT DON'T HAVE TO

I want to believe humanity won't destroy itself in a 21st century apocalypse. I had hoped society would wake up one day and we'd all change our ways. As it turns out, society has woken up; we just don't care.

In the few short years the internet has existed society has woken up. The answers to all the world's problems are everywhere. Yes, there's a lot of disinformation and white noise on the internet, but there are also a lot of useful, reliable resources, and we're not all retards. The average person today is more aware of society's problems than any time in history...ever.

The world is awake. We know what's going on. We're just not collectively doing anything about it. It's a surreal time to live in. Here's a list of things we all know are ruining the world that we're more or less just letting happen.

1. "Corporate financing of political campaigns leads to corporate control of the country." You know it. I know it. Nobody knows it better than politicians. For all the hope politicians promise you they never promise to end corporate sponsoring of politicians. Until that happens nothing will change, and we all know it, but people still act like it matters which politicians we elect when the only people they represent are their campaign donors.

2. The Catholic Church harbors and enables child rapists. Everybody knows it. If anyone else aided and abetted a gang of child rapists the police would turn a blind eye while a lynch mob burned their property. There's no reason why the Catholic Church should be immune from justice. And yet, they're still prancing around the world in their gold rimmed wizard hats telling poor people to give away all their money and not use condoms. The Vatican needs to be converted into a mental institute. We're not afraid of the Inquisition anymore. We can say that out loud now.

3. It's past time churches started paying taxes. Taxes help people. Tax havens attract dishonest people. Taxing churches is a win/win situation for everyone. And why should believing in mythology be rewarded anyway? The tax free status of religious organizations is archaic and obsolete. Even religious people understand that...even if they won't admit it.

4. The War in Iraq. George W. Bush told the world Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and gave Iraq an ultimatum: give up the WMDs or get invaded. Sadam didn't give up the WMDs, and America invaded. Then it became public knowledge that the Bush administration knew Saddam never had WMDs. Then George Bush said the real reason the U.S. invaded Iraq was to free the Iraqi people. Then the U.S. spent 10+ years fighting off people in the Middle East who just wanted the American military to leave their country and quit killing civilians. Meanwhile there are countless other people begging to be rescued and freed from ruthless dictators who are too poor to attract America's attention. There should be an entire prison built to hold all the people who should go to jail over the Iraq war. We know this, and we accept that no one will ever hold the Bush administration accountable.

5. American soldiers are not fighting for the freedom of the American people in Iraq. Nobody can agree on exactly why America invaded Iraq, but everybody knows it wasn't for the freedom of the American people. There's just no way to connect the two. So nobody knows what the American troops are dying for, but everyone just says "freedom" and lets them go on dying.

6. Global warming is real, but let's suppose it isn't. Just because we can screw up the planet a little more doesn't mean we should. In a lot of ways taking care of the environment is the most important thing we can do. It's even more important than corporate profits. Suppose environmental regulations cost companies money, which lowers their profits, which forces them to cut jobs, which hurts the economy. The worst case scenario still can't be worse than poisoning the planet until it's unable to support life. We know we should be taking care of the planet. We shouldn't be arguing about this.

7. We live in a wasteful consumer economy. We slash and burn resources and produce mountains of trash. There's a layer of garbage the size of a continent floating in the Pacific Ocean. We shouldn't be using disposable kitchenware, and we shouldn't be using disposable plastic bags. But we're using more disposable good than ever and speeding up our production of garbage.

8. University degrees are bullshit. The hardest part of getting a university degree is paying for it. It's a glass ceiling for those who can't afford it, and it's an unfair advantage to those who can. It's classist, and pampered idiots all over the world are riding their paper credentials to the top of their professional organizations where they're destroying and squandering companies built by intelligent, hardworking people who couldn't afford as many degrees as their bosses. The higher education system is broken and overpriced. A lot of smart professors have said all this a billion times, but the glass ceiling factories keep churning.

9. The war on drugs needs to end. Legalizing drugs worked in Holland and Portugal. The results are in. The debate is over. Academics have made their case, and every year another South American politician tells America to end the war on drugs because it's a futile war that does more damage than it prevents. Even American policemen are calling for an end to the war on drugs. The American people used the whitehouse.gov site to send a petition to the president to legalize marijuana. The president laughed at the people, the professionals and all their evidence. And then everyone just said, "Darn."

10. Nudity isn't evil. Women shouldn't be forced or even pressured to cover their heads or their breasts. That's basic human equality. If a 5 year kid in a nudist colony sees an 80 year old penis the kid will be grossed out. If a 5 year old kid sees an 80 year old penis in suburbia the old man will go to jail and the kid will be told by a therapist they're supposed to feel traumatized. You know what would happen if we got rid of all nudity and censorship laws? Not much...because nudity is not an issue. The people who told us to hate our bodies also told us it was okay to own slaves. We stopped believing them about slavery, and most of us have stopped believing them about sexual taboos as well, but more often than not we act like prudes so nobody will suspect we're as amoral and horny as we really are. But deep inside we all know nudity and censorship laws are overblown and unnecessary. Even if a lot of people want censorship laws in place, if their right to not be offended supersedes another human being's right to free will then we've set a dystopian precedent. Come on. With as much blatant sex is on television, cartoons and the Internet it's obvious that the world is okay with nudity and sexuality. We just haven't come out of the closet to ourselves about it.

11. Fox News is the most unethical, hypocritical, malicious disgrace in the history of journalism. Fox won a court case that said they had no obligation to tell the truth. The entire world laughs and cringes at Fox News. This isn't even a slanderous thing to say. It's just a simple fact. The organization wears its business model on its sleeve for everyone to see. Fox News is not fair and balanced. It pushes the limits of free speech by lying and sensationalizing for the purpose of instigating social disharmony. That's some dystopian shit right there. And it's real, and it's still respected. That's terrifying.

12. Palestinians have shot rockets into Israel killing civilians. But Israel invaded Palestine and forced the Palestinians into ghettos where they've been systematically stripped of their humanity and are being ethnically cleansed. Israel shot aid workers trying to bring medicine to the Palestinians. Israel tortures Palestinians. These are human rights abuses. There's no ambiguity here. Just like there's no secret or ambiguity that North Korea is committing human rights atrocities. The world superpowers know all about these problems. But they let it go on because...even if they didn't actively create the problem they've been complicit long enough to share the blame...just like the general public.

13. Police shouldn't beat up protesters. When the police beat up protesters then you officially live in a police state. When it's a crime for people to gather to demand freedom, justice and representation in government then you live in a police state. When the police shoot a veteran in the head with a tear gas canister and crack his skull and then throw a flash bang grenade in to the group of people trying to rescue him, and nobody gets fired over that incident then you live in a police state. If warrantless wiretaps, x-ray body scanners and full body searches don't constitute a police state then what line do you have to cross before you concede you're approaching a police state? Maybe America isn't a police state, but it's not the land of the free. But people keep saying it like if they say it enough times it'll make it okay to get groped at the airport and have your E-mails read.

14. There should not be for-profit prisons. There should not be prisons traded on the stock market. The richer a man can get by filling prisons the faster prisons will fill. We shouldn't incentivize incarcerating as many people as possible by allowing prisons to exempt their inmates from their basic human rights so they can work in sweatshop conditions. We've seen enough movies about prison to know that the guards let the inmates tear each other apart like you'd expect animals in a cage to. They even made that "Scared Straight" program to make sure children understand how unethically human beings are treated in prison. We all know how inhumane prisons are, but we're not using that knowledge as a call to action to do the right thing.

15. Suburbs are a terrible way to design a city. Major suburban cities are congested, unsustainable, stressful, dangerous shit holes. Every single building looks the same, and the same businesses are on every corner. Everything is too far to walk to, and the suburbs are so bland and lifeless you wouldn't want to look at them if you did have to walk through them. They force us to spend our lives in traffic wasting time and resources traveling. But cities don't have to suck. We have the technology to build ultra-efficient floating cities for less money than it costs to maintain the broken, unplanned cities we've scarred the earth with. If nothing else, we could just stop expanding suburbia and start designing new suburbs more effectively. But we're not even doing that. 24 hours per day somewhere there is a crane and a tractor clearing the earth to make way for another isolated, unsustainable, boring cookie cutter suburb. And they'll keep going until there's no land left. And we're all watching the train wreck shouting for it to stop while paying our mortgages and rent in the suburbs.

16. Everyone who has ever bought a house knows that the housing market is a giant scam. Mortgages are full of meaningless add on fees and charges. Interest rates could be set at anything. They're set high to squeeze more money out of the customer. That's it. Banks don't make money unless they're fucking their customers in the ass. And we let them get away with it because we assume there's some higher economic reason why it has to be nearly impossible to buy a home. But really it just comes down to "fuck you." That's why houses are so expensive, and that's why homelessness is so common. Again, this isn't a secret. But it is something you're children are going to have to learn for themselves because apparently nobody is going to change the way banks fuck their customers in the ass...I mean...do business.

17. Politicians should have competency and sanity tests. Anyone familiar with politics at all can name a few examples of politicians who were unarguably unqualified to hold office. There's nothing un-American about competency exams. Everyone's careers are built on competency and character tests. The people with the most responsibility should be held to the highest level of accountability. Anything less is a recipe for disaster. Everyone wants a better president, and it's crossed everyone's mind that maybe if we screen the candidates a little better then we'll get a better pool to choose from. If nothing else the voters would be fine with giving politicians drug tests...just like politicians have mandated that soldiers and school janitors have to take drug tests. But politicians decide what the political debate of the day is on television, and they're too busy blaming all the world's problems on how school teachers aren't monitored and reprimanded enough.

18. Everyone knows teachers are being used as a scapegoat for society's failures. Schools don't suck because teachers are stupid. School suck because they're underfunded and the parents have made it illegal for schools to enforce discipline. Every political and religious organization big enough to fill a P.T.A. board or donate to a politician's election campaign can have their warped ideology forced onto the Department of Education. The one person with the least amount of say or control over the classroom is the teacher. And they're too busy filling out paperwork for the performance-monitoring companies that are bankrupting the school to build meaningful relationships with their students. Kids in school know this. They know the system is rigged against the teachers. Everybody does, and we know it's crippling children forever. But the only way it's going to change is for parents to accept some responsibility for their children's performance and cede some authority to the school system. Experience has taught me not to expect that level of humility from first world parents.

19. People want to be able to listen to any song whenever they want and watch any television show, movie or clip ever created any time they want. And we have the technology to allow that. We're just not allowed to use it. If Hollywood won't give their customers what they want then their customers will go somewhere else to get it. If Hollywood made one website where anyone could access any song, show or movie anytime and it would work without any hassle then everyone would pay a premium for that luxury. As it stands, you can either go pay a ton of money to a bunch of different services to get random access to media or you can go get it all for free on a pirate site as long as you're willing to deal with pop ups and virus threats. Customers don't pirate because they're evil. They pirate because it's a more user friendly way to access the content they want. Hollywood needs to stop blaming their customers for expecting a better consumer experience. The world is waiting for Hollywood to get its shit together and offer everything it's got in one place for a flat fee. You can make excuses for why that's not legally possible, but as long as that excuse continues to prevent customers from getting what they want legally, they're going to keep paying pirates to host and organize pirated media. We're all waiting for Hollywood to save itself, but we're not holding our breath. All we really expect Hollywood to do is bribe more Orwellian-worded spying legislation Hollywood through congress.

20. Everyone knows Hollywood creates anti-intellectual crap that is lowering humanity's potential. "Jersey Shore," "Full House" and "Saved by the Bell" should never have been on television. Television was supposed to help mankind fulfill its potential, not record it celebrating its suicide. Celebrities are irrelevant. If you buy celebrity gossip magazines at the checkout line you're retarded. That's not mean of me to say because if you buy those magazines you know you're retarded, and you don't care. But when you look at those magazines in the future look at them as a test. The more of those that get sold the more people there are who are living in the dumbest reality you can create in a Los Angeles basement. The most dangerous force in the world is a large, frightened group of dumb people. The more gossip magazines you see the higher the apocalypse threat level

21. Everyone knows their phones and shoes were made in sweat shops. But if you boycotted every product that was made in a sweat shop you'd die from starvation and exposure. Slavery isn't the exception in our economy, it's the premise. So what do you do? Apparently you just give up thinking about the problem and carry on with your life. We've been ignoring the problem for over 10,000 years. Why would we do anything different now?

It's common knowledge that these problems and their solutions exist. People have been talking about them for years. Maybe if we just talked about them a little more we can actually fix them. If you don't see any of these problems getting fixed in the coming years though, then that may be a good sign that you should invest in a bunker because we can't stay this ignorant and apathetic forever without blundering into some kind of avoidable extinction level event.
BORDERS ARE INHUMANE

The world is a confusing place, and there's so much disinformation and misinformation pushed in our faces everyday it's hard to tell reality from fiction. Here's a little trick that will help you see through a lot of the illusions. Social issues always involve multiple people, usually from multiple groups. These different people from different groups get differentiated with labels like gay, straight, American, Korean, president, citizen, soldier, officer, enlisted, supervisor, immigrant, owner, renter, customer, capitalist, communist, etc. These labels have their uses, but sometimes they confuse the real issue more than they clarify it. If you ever run into an issue you don't understand, try replacing all the labels with the term "human being." For instance, if you're having a hard time understanding why straight people have the right to marry and gays don't, replace the labels and ask "Why do human beings have the right to marry and human beings don't." When you do that you see that the justifications we use to deny one group of human beings the same rights as others are beside the point. The real point is that we're all human beings. Bringing labels into the equation just confuses the issue and creates an environment where one group of human beings can oppress another group.

Let's apply this concept to political borders. Suppose your child asks you this question: "Why aren't Mexicans allowed to move freely into the United States, and why are the Mexicans who sneak North across the border paid slave wages and not given any employee benefits while people born in the United States are guaranteed a higher minimum wage and certain benefits and protections from their employers?"

Tell your child to replace the labels with the phrase "human being" so the question becomes: "Why aren't human beings allowed to move freely into the United States, and why are the human beings who sneak North across the border paid slave wages and not given any human being benefits while human beings born in the United States are guaranteed a higher minimum wage and certain benefits and protections from their human beings?"

When you do that the question sounds absurd...because the real issue is in fact, absurd. But that's hard to see when you fog reality with arbitrary labels. The truth is, our passports are lies that perpetuate a false and inhumane reality. They're not designed to help us get around the world. They're designed to limit our freedom to travel, which limits our freedom to choose where to live, which limits our freedom to choose which laws we live under, which rights we have and probably most importantly, who we work for and who we pay taxes to. Borders don't keep bad people out, they keep tax payers in.

Any country that truly believes in freedom would open its borders unconditionally, but no country in the world has done that, because it would free the human beings from the stranglehold that rich human beings have on poor human beings. Eliminating borders would give human beings the ultimate power to veto their corrupt leaders by simply leaving.

If that were possible then rich and powerful human beings wouldn't be able to create trade restrictions and sanctions that exploit human beings from poorer "nations." The corrupt leaders from those poorer nations wouldn't be able to exploit their own people or rule them with brutal force. People wouldn't sit around saying to themselves, "Oh, the world sucks but what can we do about it?" They would simply leave and go live under the laws of a more just nation, and no leader wants that.

If we are all truly human beings, what right does one human being have to tell you where you can live? In truth, they have no right. All they have is the authority you give them over you. Unfortunately, so many people believe the lie of political borders and help enforce it that they make the lie real and in doing so, we eliminate our own freedom to travel, to choose which laws we would live under and which dictator's regime we fund with our taxes. And that's the reality we've created for our children to grow up in.
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

If you're ever having a hard time trying to figure out why political events happen the way they do, a good rule of thumb is to stop listening to the reasons given by the talking heads and just follow the money trail.

Money represents every resource that it can be exchanged for. Money buys land. Money buys energy. Money buys political offices. Money buys everything a human being could ever want, including rights, freedom, laws, protections, opportunities, businesses and countries. Money is power. If you see something bad happening in the world and the reasons given don't seem to make sense, see who is funding the bad thing and who is profiting from it. Chances are, if you connect those two points you'll find an explanation that makes perfect sense.

If you're poor, the world probably looks pretty unfair to you. If you're a poor person raised in America you should be confused. You were raised your entire life to believe that you live in a free country where everyone has equal rights and equal opportunity to succeed and that if you work hard enough you can become a billionaire too. But no matter how many burgers you flip or how many widgets you roll off the assembly line, you're still poor. You still have to call someone "sir" or "ma'am." You still owe somebody a lot of money and you just can't seem to get your head above water. You can't see a good doctor, and you don't even think about taking vacation. Sometimes it just seems like life isn't fair, and it doesn't make sense that your life should be so hard in the land of opportunity in this enlightened age.

If you want real answers that makes sense, turn off the television and go pick up your pay check. You should notice something funny about your pay check. Your pay check tells you how much money you got paid, but it also tells you how much you paid the government. In fact, the first time you ever got a pay check you may have been surprised how much money you paid the government, especially considering that every time you pay for your groceries, your receipt tells you how much extra you paid the government again. Once a year you have to file another round of taxes that doesn't make any sense at all. It makes so little sense that you'll likely have to pay someone else hundreds of dollars to figure out your taxes for you, and there's a good chance you'll end up owing the government even more money for reasons that don't make any sense and you might not even agree with.

Where does all this money go? Hell if you know, and it would be almost impossible to figure out without a law degree. You can figure out where some of it goes just by looking around you. You know it pays for the roads you drive on, the police who protect you from murderers, the soldiers who protect you from terrorists, the space shuttles that will one day allow your decedents to live on Mars and beyond, the technological research that brought you the Internet, the courts that convict child molesters and the prisons that separate arsonists from the rest of society.

But if you look past the rose bushes you'll see something else. Your tax dollars fund the police tasks force that busts down feeble old men's doors and arrests them for smoking weed peacefully in the privacy of their own home and throws them into prisons where they'll be beaten and raped by other men. Your tax dollars fund a legal system that decides one person has the right to marry and another doesn't. Your tax dollars fund political campaigns of politicians who stand for ideals you hate. Your tax dollars fund secret paramilitary organizations such as the CIA and FBI that tap your phones and spy on your E-mails against your will. Your tax dollars fund wars that your politicians won't give satisfactory explanations for and you may not agree with. Your tax dollars fund a Top Secret information network that plots and plans assassinations you'll never know about and have no say in. Your tax dollars fund opulent living conditions for military officers who have the same power over enlisted troops that Confederate slave owners had over their slaves. Your tax dollars go to enforcing trade restrictions on poor countries that make your designer clothes in sweat shops. Your tax dollars subsidize businesses that destroy the environment. Your tax dollars are donated to other countries that use the money to buy weapons to suppress the freedoms and quality of life of their own people. These are some of the things the money coming out of your pay check goes to.

And if you don't like it, the only option you're given to change it is to choose which corporate funded politician you want to sit in office passing pro-corporate laws for the next few years. And if you don't like that you're told that you should have done more to change the system...when you weren't taking orders at work or sitting in your hour-long commute.

Now, it may be true that you could have quit your job and moved to Washington DC to tell your elected politicians what you hope they'll do. It may be true that you could have spent your exhausted evenings at a town hall telling your local politicians what you hope they'll do. You could run for office yourself without the benefit of corporate backing or professional campaign training. On some level that may be true, but on another level that misses the point.

Your government runs on money, your money. The taxes that come out of your meager pay check are the source of your government's power. You are "Point A" at the beginning of the political power spectrum. You don't have any direct control over how much money your government takes from your pay check, and you don't have any direct control over how that money is spent even if it's spent in a way that you disagree with or that is directly in your disinterest. You're told to vote for random rich guys you don't know, who have no accountability to their promises and you just have to hope they do something you like, and that's supposed to be good enough.

At what point do you get to say that's not good enough? If you refuse to pay your taxes then your tax funded police force will arrest you and throw you in a tax funded prison. So the situation is that you are forced to pay the government, and if you don't then the government will take away your life. That's not freedom. That's extortion. That's taxation without representation, and that's not good enough.

What's it all for? Where's it all getting us? America claims to have the best system in the world. What return on investment is this getting the poor? World-class streets with a whole lot of authority figures with guns patrolling them looking for reasons to throw you in jail and a handful of CEOs with diplomatic immunity flying freely around the world in jets. What don't you get? A say in your government. And unless you're rich and/or highly educated (which costs a lot of money) you don't have the freedom to leave your country permanently.

For all the talk of freedom and change coming for American politicians, I wonder when anyone is going to mention giving the American people a direct say in how their taxes are spent, which agencies they allow to be funded, which laws determine how they can live their lives or the terms on which they will be allowed to leave their country of birth? For all the pride Americans have in their system, I wonder how long they will accept pseudo-freedom as being good enough for their children.
DON'T ASK WHAT YOUR GOVERNMENT CAN DO FOR YOU.

ASK HOW YOU CAN SAVE YOURSELF FROM YOUR GOVERNMENT.

Governments exist to serve the people living under their care. Anytime any government acts in any way that's legitimately in the disinterest of the people then it voids its whole purpose for existing.

If you hire a person to build a system that helps you, but instead they build a system that hurts you then you're just being dumb if you pledge unquestioning loyalty to that person or the system they build. Conservatives understand this, and they show it in every hate mongering diatribe they spew against liberal politicians and the systems liberal politicians have created or that liberal voters want.

But put aside fanatical conservatives' brazenly hypocritical attitude towards patriotism for a moment and consider how hypocritical it is that liberals tend to despise fanatical conservative politicians and the policies conservative voters want. If you believe electing politicians to represent the will of the people is a just and fair way to staff a government then you shouldn't complain when you don't like the representatives your peers elect. Just because you don't feel the electoral system worked in your favor doesn't mean it didn't work. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

This raises the question, should public opinion play a role in shaping government policy? Governments exist to perform a functional role in society. They exist to minimize human suffering, and the causes of human suffering are rarely subjective. For example, poverty is a mechanical consequence to unsustainability. If there are enough resources to feed and clothe the entire planet ten times over but 80% of the population gets poorer every year while 20% gets richer then there's an objective problem with the system that's causing all that human suffering. There's no reason it should be up for discussion whether or not income inequality is a problem. Human suffering is a problem, and governments exist to fix that problem. It doesn't matter how any two voters feel income inequality should be fixed and human suffering should be alleviated. We might as well ask voters how they feel sewer systems should be designed or how they feel military leaders should plan their wartime strategies.

But we don't typically ask voters how they feel about technical problems. We let experts with specialized education and experiences study the problem scientifically and deduce logical solutions, which they then apply to the problem without generally asking or telling the public about it. The public doesn't get up in arms about this, because as long as their toilets work and their suburb aren't invaded by barbarians then they can get on with living. If the public had to vote on every single thing the government did then nothing would ever get done. So a good government is like a fire-and-forget missile. We embrace this concept every time we don't call up our local politicians to complain about every single street light and crack in the sidewalk we don't like.

This is very practical of us and is to be commended, but where do we draw the line? And remember, this isn't a question of "Do we draw a line?" It's a question of, "Where do we draw the line?" If you live in the country with the highest quality of living in the world then these philosophical questions aren't that immediately important to you. At least, you could just ignore them and let your government keep doing whatever it's doing and you'll probably be able to continue enjoying a high quality of living. However, the question of how much influence voters/tax payers should have in the day-to-day business of running the country becomes very important to your quality of life in the immediate present when you live in a country full of maniacal idiots who have as much power in your government as they can afford to buy.

Idiots act in their disinterest. That's what makes idiotic behavior idiotic: it doesn't work out well for you in the end. If there's one thing conservatives and liberals can agree on it's that there are too many idiots with too much power in government and thus too much power over all of our lives. Everybody hates that, but nobody wants to change it because everyone perceives it would be in our disinterest to forfeit our ability to elect leaders in open elections. After all, if you don't have the freedom to influence government then you don't really have freedom. At least, you only enjoy your freedoms at the whim of your leaders, and that's a pretty watered down flavor of freedom.

So conservatives and liberals alike cling to representative "democracy" even though they forfeit their freedom to influence government every time their peers elect a politician who represents an ideology they disagree with. Conservatives and liberals alike forfeit their freedom again if they allow politicians to do whatever they want without ever being held accountable for their campaign promises or any human suffering that is objectively created by their actions. If/when we don't hold our leaders accountable then we're just electing dictators. The freedom to choose between two dictators who only represent their own interests isn't just a watered down flavor of freedom. That's just...not...freedom.

This raises the question, how do we reconcile all our contradictory expectations of government? Well, holding politicians accountable to their campaign promises and making corruption punishable as treason would be huge steps towards reigning in politicians, but it still wouldn't prevent idiots from entering political office in the first place.

There are a lot of simple changes any government can make to keep idiots out of power. Competency exams and background checks for politicians are obvious examples. If you can get smart people in office to begin with then you might not have to create a robust system to regulate them. NASA doesn't have as robust of a system in place to micromanage and punish astrophysicists as say a high school would have to micromanage and punish students. NASA doesn't need one because astrophysicists already think scientifically, and their scientific approach to understanding the universe generally keeps them sane.

Governments can improve the odds that the children who will someday grow up to be politicians will be sane, intelligent people capable of acting in society's best interest voluntarily if everyone in the country had unlimited access to free education.

If you want to go a step further and actually build a robust system of checks and balances that ensure politicians act in the best interest of their voters/tax payers (even when the voter/taxpayers demand unyieldingly that politicians act in their disinterest) then you're going to have to rewrite your politicians' job contracts, and since their job description is to uphold the social contract then you better have a brilliantly logical and robust social contract to base politicians' job descriptions on.

As it stands, every country in the world needs to rewrite their social contracts whether they're stated in a constitution or some other legal premise for their government's sovereignty. The best way to do that is not to have violent revolutions that replace our existing governments with...whoever is leading the revolutions. Governments can fix themselves with constitutional conventions (by any other name).

But politicians who currently have the freedom to act like dictators have very little incentive to let the public arrange a constitutional convention much less arrange it themselves. It would just be naïve to expect politicians to ask a constitutional convention to take away their freedoms for the greater good. At the same time, it would also be naïve to expect all the idiot voters/tax payers to support a constitutional convention that limits their ability to force their cherished misconceptions down the rest of society's throats.

The world is the way it is because that's the way people want it, and until people change their wants it's futile to try to force them to change, much less compromise. So if you want to save the world, the first thing you should do is support unlimited free education.

Until we raise a generation of intelligent adults capable of thinking logically and running a productive constitutional convention all you can really do to ensure your quality of life is hunker down and try to ride out the storm and minimize how much power idiots have over you. The key to that is sustainability. If you live in a village that can completely sustain its population without the intervention of a higher echelon, national government then you won't need a national government to minimize human suffering in your village.

If you live in say, the United States of America or the Congo there are a million reasons why it would be naïve of you to expect your government to save you. Your livelihood is at risk in the first place because your government is run by idiots who have access to enough guns and brainwashed, patriotic supporters to squash any attempt to change the status quo. So don't ask what your country can do for you. I'll tell you right now, it won't do anything except what it's been doing, which is making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

But if you live in a self-sustainable village then you don't need the government to take care of you. You'll be fine. If everybody lived in self-sustainable villages or cities then we wouldn't have to fight over issues like welfare or social security because those problems will have already been solved by intelligent urban planning.

Once the majority of voters/tax payers' lives are stabilized then they can turn their collective attention towards education, philosophy and maybe even setting up constitutional conventions. That would be great, and we owe it to our children to leave them a world where the biggest thing they have to worry about is what subject they're going to study next, but we don't live in that world yet. We live in a world designed to boom and bust to pump up investor returns and pave the way for monopolies. The best thing you can do to save the world right now is to build yourself a sustainable refuge and ride out the storm that's already here. If you're not suffering yet, don't assume that means you won't suffer tomorrow, because poverty, crime and war are your government's modus operandi. That's why you shouldn't ask what your country can do for you. That's why you should be asking what you can do to save yourself from the problems your government is creating.

You can take control of your future by making a little slice of this world sustainable. You can largely neuter any government that helps make the rich richer at the expense of the poor by helping your poor neighbors achieve sustainability. The less reliant you are on your government the less leverage they have over you and the less you'll have to risk by standing up for yourself.
WHY YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE FAITH IN YOUR GOVERNMENT

Look at some cold, hard facts objectively. You never signed a social contract agreeing to any terms or conditions regarding what authority your government has over you or what you get in return for ceding authority to your government. You were just born into a country at random and told what laws you were expected to follow and how bad the consequences would be if you didn't follow them.

This might not bother you. You might even be able to come up with an excuse that sounds good on paper to explain why it's a good thing you didn't get a choice in whether or not you wanted to be a citizen who is subject to the laws of the country you were raised in. Even _if_ this arrangement is justified, it's still important that we be absolutely clear about what this means. Your life, liberty and happiness are bound to the conditions of a contract you didn't sign. You may have some freedoms, but you only enjoy those freedoms at the whim and leisure of those human beings with the power to dictate and enforce the law. It's a logical fallacy to say that since you have some freedoms then you're free. You're not free. You're just lucky...for now....on a few levels. Though you may be free to choose which religion you express belief in, at no point are you free to drive as fast as you want, to do whatever drugs you want, to build whatever want or take your clothes off. You're not _that_ free.

Even if you would have chosen to follow all the rules you're subject to there's a very important principle implied by the fact that you didn't choose them. The laws you're subject to...subjugate you. Forcing you to do something you never agreed to is an indignity to you even if you would have done it anyway. The indignity of the situation is doubled if you willingly follow rules you never agreed to, and the more you celebrate your own subjugation the more indignity you heap on yourself. Anyone who would tell you to celebrate your own degradation is not your friend. Your government doesn't treat you with respect and dignity; by forcing you to follow rules you never consented to, your government treats you with the disrespect and indignity of a slave, not a free and equal human being.

This inherent state of indignity is compounded by a list of other factors such as the fact that you never agreed to pay taxes. You never agreed to what kind of taxes you have to pay, how much those taxes are, what they're spent on or what the punishment is for not paying them. You were simply told that you have to pay an arbitrary amount decided by someone you'll never meet, and the punishment for not paying them was set arbitrarily by an arbitrary person...yet _you're_ held to those expectations strictly. If you're a citizen of the United States of America you're still expected to file taxes in the United States for the rest of your life even if you expatriate and renounce your American citizenship.

True, you do get something in return for your taxes, but that doesn't justify taking _any_ amount of money from you for any reason, especially when you're punished severely for not paying. Even if your taxes were completely fair and were spent entirely on public works that benefit you, if you'll go to jail for not paying taxes you never agreed to then you're being extorted. If there's any basic human right that everyone deserves, it's the right to choose how much money you give to your government in return for services of your choosing, but you don't have that right. You owe your government a lifetime of money the moment you're born, and since the only way to get money is to work for it that means you owe your government a time debt. That time is infinitely valuable, because life is short and irreplaceable; the fact that you have no say in how much of your life is taken from you is infinitely degrading.

Not only are you denied the right to _choose_ what taxes you pay, how much you pay or what that money is spent on, you don't have the right to even _know_ what your taxes are spent on. There are thousands of rooms in this world with "Top Secret" signs on the doors that nobody outside is allowed to enter or know the contents of without authorization and a need to know. You don't have authorization or a need to know...what your taxes are spent on. You never chose to be kept in the dark about what your taxes are spent on, and you have no recourse to rectify the situation. If you don't continue to fund these mystery projects you'll go to jail. This is not a situation you put someone you respect into.

The people who authorized your taxes to be spent on classified projects will tell you that you've been kept in the dark for your own protection and benefit, but what are you being protected from? You're being protected from someone overthrowing your existing government and replacing it with one that forces you to follow rules you never agreed to and pay taxes you never agreed to for projects you never asked for and aren't allowed to know about and will get thrown in jail for not funding.

The people in charge of your government would obviously take offence to these charges and insist that they're really and truly white knights who are looking out for your best interest. And yet...every government acts in the disinterest of their citizens at some point. Your taxes fund institutions that trample your rights and treat you with indignity. Your government might do some good things for you, but that in no way minimizes or excuses the negative things it does to you.

If you assemble in a group of protesters large enough to have enough leverage to influence your political leaders then your political leaders will order the law enforcement agencies (that you fund to protect you) to terrorize you and your fellow citizen/protesters until you disperse. If you need any proof how free or represented you are, just watch footage of the last protest your government shut down. If you need any proof how much dignity your government believes you're worthy of, watch footage of the last instance of police brutality that went unpunished.

If you come to the conclusion that your government only cares about you to the extent that it can exploit you for taxes and farm you out to businesses as wage slaves and no amount of protesting will influence your leaders to treat you with the dignity becoming of a human being then you might decide to just leave your birth country. Surely, if you complain about your government on the internet long enough someone will eventually tell you to "vote with your feet."

That sounds reasonable in theory, but all the governments of the world (by intent or incident) have effectively colluded to make that option impractical to the majority of the human population. In order to emigrate to pretty much anywhere you need a degree from an accredited university and at least $10,000 in cash. Plus you have to be perfectly healthy. University degrees tend to cost more than $30,000. So unless you have at least $40,000, an able body and a brain smart enough to pass all your university classes then you can't leave your home country. You're effectively a prisoner. I know all the arguments and reasons for why immigration laws exist, but if they sound reasonable and justified then that just means it's reasonable and justified to imprison human beings in their birth country. Furthermore, it means the poor and stupid don't have the right to choose where they live or which laws they're subject to. So by justifying the current immigration laws, you're justifying denying equal rights to all human beings. You can make that argument, but in doing so you cede the right to claim you believe in freedom, equality or the right to life, liberty and happiness.

This is how the world works. These are the indignities you're subjected to. Yet you've been told your entire life that if you don't like it then you can change it by voting. And yet, year in and year out new politicians get elected and appointed to power without changing the system that imprisons, exploits and degrades the poor. How many more impotent politicians do we have to elect before we have the right to point out that electing different politicians isn't changing anything?

And why would you expect electing politicians to change anything when your politicians are in no way held accountable for their actions? They've given themselves and their friends diplomatic immunities you don't have. They may as well have painted in big red letters on every government building, "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others." That's not just a line from a dystopian children's story. That's reality even in democratic capitalist countries. Politicians don't get in any trouble for reneging on their campaign promises either. The can even break the law with impunity, because when politicians break the law, it's legal. If they get really backed into a corner they can just get another politician to absolve their criminal charges. That's true freedom. Now why would you expect your politicians to restrain themselves when they have free reign to abuse their powers? Because they represent you? They don't represent you. Most people have never even met a politician. We only find out who we get to vote for a few months (at most) before it's time to vote.

You're not represented in government. You have no say in government. Your vote is meaningless at best and a lie that enables your victimization at worst. You don't know what your government does or why it does it. If you don't like it you have no recourse, and if you take matters into your own hands you'll be punished with severe prejudice. The only thing you can do is run for a government office yourself and dedicate your life to your political career until you have the power to make the changes you want, but everyone can't do that, and nobody should have to.

So what _can_ we do about this? You can't do anything alone. The only leverage the civilian population has is their numbers. No army can stop a hundred million people acting in unison. A hundred million people literally don't even have to do anything to effect change. If they all went on strike at the same time or stood in the streets and refused to move then their inaction would have enough leverage to twist the arm of their politicians, but a hundred million people are never going to act in unison until they think in unison. Nothing will change as long as people have faith in their government and believe the benefit of keeping calm and carrying on outweighs the cost of sticking their neck out.

If you want to make meaningful change in your government the first thing you need to do is explain everything I've just said to your fellow citizens (particularly those in law enforcement and the military who will be called on to terrorize anyone who makes any progress in effecting meaningful change). When the majority of the population loses faith in their government then the stage will be set for the people who are capable of organizing nonviolent political change to do so. If you choose not to help erode public confidence in your government then you should build a bunker to protect your and your family from the problems you're enabling. You might survive that way, but you're choosing to live without dignity, and you're condemning your fellow man and future generations to live without dignity. If that's your choice then you have no right to pat yourself on the back for anything you ever accomplish for the rest of your life because all of your accomplishments will be tainted with the indignities you've accepted for yourself and everyone else.

Why should you have dogmatic faith in your government anyway? Your government exists to serve you. Why would you be expected to have unquestioning loyalty to your servant? Your servant should have unquestioning loyalty to you. When you subjugate yourself to your servant you make your servant your master and place your dignity under your master's feet. You're better than that, and you deserve more than that not just because you're a human being but because your government is a product that you paid for with your blood, sweat and tears. You deserve to get the highest quality product for your tax dollar. If you're not going to demand to get what you deserve, I guess you didn't deserve it in the first place after all.
WHY STOP WITH JUST MAKING DRUGS ILLEGAL?

Drugs are illegal because they damage your health, inhibit your ability to function in society and lower your potential in the long run while increasing the likelihood that you'll commit crime. That pretty much sums it up, right? Well, if those are solid reasons to make drugs illegal then why stop with just criminalizing drugs?

Let's make it illegal to drop out of school. Uneducated people lack higher level social skills, are less useful to society and are more likely to commit crime. A lack of education is every bit as dangerous as drug use. In fact, if we're truly concerned with the individual's welfare (as well as society's) we would make it mandatory to stay in school through the completion of a bachelor's degree or at least a trade certificate. If you should go to jail for using drugs then you should go to jail for not having a bachelor's degree.

While we're at it we should make it illegal to eat fast food and junk food. McDonald's food will literally kill you faster than marijuana, and it'll give you health problems that will rack up extremely expensive medical bills. It'll also make you so fat that you won't be able to use certain public facilities. In a worst case scenario you won't even be able to leave your house because you're too fat to squeeze through the front door. That's every bit as tragic as a worst case scenario heroin junky. Obviously, you should go to jail for eating fast food.

Next, we obviously need to make alcohol and cigarettes illegal. They're drugs. Cigarette packs even say right on the front, "This is poison." Legal poison hurts you in every way that illegal poisons do. It's cut and dry hypocrisy to make one poison legal to consume and another illegal. By the precedent we've already set, you should go to jail for smoking (cigarettes) and drinking.

We also need to make slave wages illegal. Poor people have poor health, low potential and are more likely to commit crimes. If, instead of letting CEOs become obscenely rich off the blood and sweat of slaves, we force CEOs to pay their workers a fair share of their company's profits then people won't be so poor. Then they'll be able to afford better food. They'll be able to save and invest more, and they won't have to resort to criminal activity for money. So it should be illegal to pay workers minimum wage.

While we're at it we should make religion illegal. Religion hinders logical thought, which puts a rock solid cap on people's potential. It also forces barbarically archaic moral standards onto people that conflict with their natural instincts. As a result it causes undue stress on individuals, which has proven to push people to dangerous ends. Also, since religion divides the world into the wicked and the righteous it inevitably leads to the righteous oppressing the wicked, which is bad enough to begin with but made worse by the fact that religion uses barbarically archaic standards to distinguish who is righteous and who is wicked. Religion flies planes into buildings and gets homosexuals lynched. Bibles are worse for your health than marijuana and should be correspondingly illegal.

Obviously, hand guns and automatic weapons are the next big item. They kill people....and that's pretty much it. I don't even need to elaborate on that. Granted, not everyone who has a gun is going to kill somebody, but since there will be a few worst case scenarios we should hunt down everyone who has a gun and send them to prison for years where they'll almost certainly be beaten and raped. While we're at it we should black list them when they get out so they'll never get a good paying job again. That will certainly solve the gun problem without causing any other problems.

Let's add television to the list as well. Television is by and large a waste of time. You get fat and stupid by watching too much TV. This is bad for your health and lowers your potential. Using the same precedent set by drug laws television should be illegal.

What else? Sports. Sex. Aging. Pets. Unkempt houses. Working too much. Asshole bosses. Driving. Hell, we may as well just lock everyone up. We're all doing something that could hurt us if we take it too far. And since prison doesn't have any adverse effects on health happiness or potential then once everyone is locked up in prison then everyone will be healthy, happy and able to fulfill their highest potential both for themselves as well as society.

...or maybe some other judicial reform is needed.
THE 28TH AMENDMENT

The American government needs a new amendment for its constitution. The legal jargon used in this amendment will need to be more professional than mine, but if you'll look past my layman's language and focus on the main idea you may find a wealth of truth and value in the overall concept I'm about to explain.

The amendment needs to state that no state or federal government shall pass or enforce any law that prohibits people from harming themselves or behaving in ways considered indecent unless the actions of the individual directly or indirectly hinder another person's right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. (You might also make an exception that people can harm others if the person being harmed has given full consent because there are some exceptions like euthanasia and smoking tobacco where people want to be hurt.)

Here are 6 reasons why we need this amendment:

1. Without this rule we have no way to systematically limit what kind of culturally relative laws will be passed that will oppress people. Look throughout history. People were locked in stocks for gossiping. Women have been killed for doing pretty much anything, including eating bananas. Today countless laws are enforced that don't actually protect anyone. All they do is reinforce cultural norms to the detriment of the individual's right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership and happiness. Women still can't take off as many clothes in public as men. Blasphemy (against mythological deities) is still a crime in many countries. Alcohol prohibition was a disaster, and marijuana prohibition is currently destroying countless lives. Censorship laws reinforce an oversimplified explanation of reality that debilitates people's minds. People who just happened to be naked at the wrong place at the wrong time are being jailed as sex offenders. Curfew laws are blatant oppression. If you look long enough you'll find countless minor local laws that are just ridiculous and only serve to fill the police coffers.

None of these rules should be brushed off as exceptions and mistakes. They were inevitabilities in a system that has no fail safe to limit the control of moral fanatics, and as long as no fail safe exists you leave open an avenue for laws to be passed in your country that legalize oppression.

2. The cost benefit analysis of these kinds of laws doesn't add up. It would be one thing if these laws actually protected society from itself, but as it stands they do more to tear society down and hold it back. What happens after a woman gets thrown in jail for smoking a joint on her front porch while not wearing her shirt? How is society protected? Since these are victimless crimes nobody has been protected. The only way society has been affected at all is this woman has been made to live in fear, been black listed with a criminal record and had her money stolen from her by the police to pay unjust fines. Now what happens when this isn't just one woman? What about when it's 2 million people? That's systematic oppression. That's living in a terror state. There's no cost benefit analysis here because there's no benefit. There's just cost in the form of destroyed human lives.

3. Victimless crime laws waste resources. Every time someone is jailed for a victimless crime the manpower that they could provide to improving society is temporarily eliminated, and the manpower used to apprehend and incarcerate these people is wasted when it could have been used to apprehend and incarcerate actual criminals.

Everyone who knows anything about criminology knows that locking up criminals is an ineffective way of reducing repeat offenders. Rehabilitation would be more productive, but at this point rehabilitation isn't even an option because our resources are stretched too thin by apprehending, prosecuting and locking up people for victimless crimes. If we ever hope to reduce real crime it's vital that we stop wasting our resources enforcing subjective, victimless morality.

4. Victimless crimes contradict the Constitution of the United States and the Universal Bill of Human Rights. These documents don't place conditions and exceptions on the manner or extent to which people can choose to pursue life, liberty, ownership or happiness except to say that our actions may not infringe another person's own pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. Victimless crime laws do.

5. One of the big arguments against the idea of legalizing victimless crimes is that society will break down. Society won't break down. People do what's in their best interest, and it's not in anyone's best interest to sleep with every whore in every brothel and shoot up heroin at work. The people who would do such things are in such dire positions in their lives that these actions appear to be in their best interest. If this is truly unhealthy behavior then the causes need to be addressed. They need to be given what they're missing in their lives and rehabilitated, not punished and have more of their life taken away from them. This will only push them further past the limit of desperation and increase the chances that they'll actually harm other people.

Furthermore, most of the people who want to sleep with hookers and do heroin are already doing it. The only difference is that we're wasting our resources and theirs by trying to stop them when we could just let them do what they're going to do anyway and get on with solving real problems.

6. It's not our place to play God. If we allow people to live at odds with the various mythologies humans have created to explain God then we would be denying the sovereignty those mythological deities have over mankind. While some people would applaud this step, others fear it. However, even if one of these mythological deities were the real one then by passing judgment for Him we're playing God. Therefore, it would be more blasphemous to enforce God's will than to leave judgment to God.
AN INTERVENTION WITH THE POLICE

Every American school kid was raised on well-meaning propaganda that painted the country's police force as super good guys, and that propaganda has worked; many young Americans look up to police as heroes...but not just because of the propaganda; kids who grew up in the information age aren't dumb. They understand how important it is to have a highly funded police force. Americans are happy to wear "NYPD" hats and not just because they got duped by a marketing campaign to buy novelty apparel but because they really do value their police on meaningful intellectual and emotional levels.

The thing is, the police are making it real hard to keep liking them. Americans who were raised on Saturday morning cartoons want to believe that every police officer is like Andy Griffith meets Robocop. That's how WASPS were raised to perceive cops. So that's how they try to perceive cops, but it's hard to keep giving the police the benefit of the doubt when the public looks around, and they don't see Robo Andy Griffith. All they see are protesters getting pepper sprayed and shot in the head with tear gas canisters, and the public can't do anything about it because anytime they bring up the issue of excessive use of force they're told they're ungrateful and spoiled and are sternly reminded that all police deserve the full honors and privileges of Robo Andy Griffith.

 The "you're a spoiled, naïve liberal" excuse isn't cutting it anymore. There was a time when young Americans smiled when they saw cops. Now seeing a cop is more likely to wipe the smile off their faces, and the reason they're scared of police is because the police go out of their way to scare them.

Police cars are designed to appear menacing, not welcoming. I'm sorry, but you don't get to act surprised when you pull up in a car that looks like a prop from a Hollywood movie about a futuristic dystopian police state and people say they feel menaced by you. And it sends a mixed message that undermines your authority when the side of your car says, "To protect and serve." but it's an accepted fact of life that you do not ever speak to the police without a lawyer present. Ever. The police are even required to remind you that "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Why would anyone want to be anywhere near someone who can and will use anything they say to put them in a prison system that is globally famous for its unchecked human rights violations?

The thing is, young American aren't even asking anymore. They're telling the police they feel absolutely miserable, terrorized and afraid of the people they pay to protect them. Some people have even given up on the system so completely they've left America to go live in less wealthy places where at least they don't have to be afraid of the police or the corrupt government the police are protecting.

The correct way for the police to respond to that charge isn't to say, "Oh, well then fuck those people if they don't like it here." The correct way for the police to respond is to say, "I accept that I have a problem and am ready to listen."

And the good news for the police is, young Americans are smart enough to understand that police aren't just inherently bad people who deserve to be hated because of the color of their clothes. The American people understand that people who are police officers aren't the problem. Unethical police behavior is a symptom of flawed police system. To blame it all on the cops on the street would be like holding teachers (who work at the bottom of an obsolete and compromised education system and have their hands tied behind their backs by cumbersome bureaucracy) solely accountable for children's test scores, and that would be ridiculous.

There are some serious flaws in the way the police force is designed on paper, and the police should be more eager than anyone to address those flaws because they're setting up good cops to lose sight of the purpose of the law, and if the law has no purpose then you don't have a police force; you have a mafia. I actually wouldn't believe any senior cop who says they've never been pissed off at how ineffective and backwards and in need of upgrading the police system is.

The police want the police system fixed. The people want the police system fixed. Everyone just wants the streets to be safe. The police and the people just never talked about it together because they've always been compartmentalized with a great divide between them. Now they're both part of the 99%, and there are people with tables all over the world listening to ideas, writing them down and sharing them with other people.

If the politicians can't figure out an effective way of balancing crime, authority, freedom and equality then the police and the citizens are the only parties left for the responsibility to fall to. The people took the first step setting up the tables at the Occupy protests. All the police have to do to have their voices heard is sit down at the table. The least the police can do if they want to live in a better society is not kick the table over and beat the hell out of everyone sitting around it.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COPS BEATING UP AND ARRESTING PROTESTERS

I understand why cops beat up and arrest protesters. I recognize that protesters look great on TV; from home protesters look like harmless, courageous, peace loving, innocent civilians doing their civic duty, and while that may be true on some level, police don't have the luxury at assessing the situation from their living room.

I imagine police are a lot like soldiers who have seen combat action, and now, even when they're on civilian time in civilian clothes, they're still on edge in large crowds of people because they understand that people are dangerous, and a lot of people are really dangerous.

I understand that police took an oath to perform a role in society in the name of order and part of that oath was to follow orders. I know that the police force has its own internal culture full of customs and courtesies built around rank and protocol. As a result the police feel a deeper sense of pride and satisfaction in performing their job and following orders than say the average civilian working in the bowels of a giant, faceless corporation.

So I have sympathy for police who approach a once peaceful and orderly street to control a stampede of potential lunatics, many of whom are dressed like lunatics. I understand that when police get the order to clear uncooperative protesters out of an area by any nonlethal means necessary, that's pretty close to getting a commandment from God; that order came down from the mayor to the head of the law enforcement organization all the way down the chain of command to the police on the scene. The cost/benefit analysis of following that order is stacked heavily in favor of doing so especially because officers who don't will get in trouble, which in a best case scenario would prevent them from getting promoted later. In worse case scenarios they could lose rank or even their job.

From a practical, stoic point of view, it's logical to beat up and arrest nonviolent protesters in the heat of the moment, but that's a narrow point of view that ignores the bigger picture. Let's take a step back and look at the situation from a broader view.

Protesting and rioting isn't normal. Sitting at home watching TV, shopping, visiting friends and having sex are normal. That's what people want to do with their free time. And people are really lazy. They're too lazy to open a can of pre-cut tomatoes without an electric can opener. So when people turn off the television and take to the streets it's because there's something really, really wrong in their lives that they want...nay, need fixed, and the more people there are protesting, the more likely their grievances have merit.

Their grievances are especially poignant when they concern inhumane government policies, because the chain of command the police follow leads straight up to the civil government. So when police beat up, arrest and disperse nonviolent protesters for protesting against inhumane government policies then the police become the tools of oppression. They're directly enabling those inhumane policies to continue destroying people's lives, and preventing people from speaking out against those inhumane policies is the very definition of suppression of free speech.

This is self-evident in theory, but on the streets it becomes clouded. You can arrest a protester for a million seemingly logical reasons. Maybe they don't have a permit to gather. Maybe they're outside the approved protesting cordon. Maybe they're wearing a mask. Maybe they shouted a threat or it sounded like they did. Maybe they raised their arms above their head in a threatening gesture. Maybe they looked suspicious. Maybe they didn't follow orders. On the surface these seem like practical reasons to arrest people, but if a protest can be dispersed by using all these little justifications then the end result is that the police silenced the people's voice in government by terrorizing them. By enforcing rules like these the police are telling people that if they attempt to make their voice heard then the government will send thugs to silence them under false pretenses in a way that absolves the government of the crime of suppressing free speech and makes offenders out of protesters. That's how protesters have to see the police on the street.

That's not what the police signed up for. They took an oath to serve and protect people. It's more than a slap in the face to the police force to order them to violently suppress free speech in the name of peace and freedom, but that's exactly what's happening in America today.

I thought we were passed this phase of history. All my textbooks in school said the days of cops beating up citizens trying to hold their politicians accountable to the basic principles of human rights was over. I wonder how many more skulls the police have to crack before they just let the people have their voice. I wonder if the police will ever collectively come to the conclusion that maybe if they just let the people get what they want from the government then they'll all go back home to their TVs, friends and lovers and be happy and not go outside and cause trouble any more.

What the police force should be doing is helping the protesters organize. The police are inadvertently doing it anyway by locking all the organizers in jail cells together with nothing else to do. Come on. We all just want the streets to be safe. We're on the same side fighting for the same goal. Why can't we work together?
IS IT MORAL FOR POLICE TO NOT ENFORCE LAWS THEY BELIEVE ARE UNJUST?

In Nazi Germany it was the police's (by any other name) job to arrest Jews and send them to their deaths. Even though the police made a vow to uphold the law, no reasonable person would argue that the Nazi police were morally bound to uphold that law because it was blatantly unjust.

In modern day America the police take a vow to uphold the law as well, and the law says that smoking or selling marijuana is illegal. I would argue that calling the police on your neighbor for smoking or selling marijuana is one moral step down from calling the Gestapo on your neighbor for being Jewish. Likewise, any police officer who enforces unjust laws is one moral step down from the Gestapo especially considering the inhumane conditions American prisons force the humans inside them to endure. Convicts may not get gassed, but they'll be stripped of their humanity and get beat, raped or even killed. If they're released with a felony conviction on their record they'll be lucky to ever get a job again. For some ex-cons it would have been a mercy if they were just gassed the day they got caught with marijuana.

This is what American police are ordered to do to the civilian population, and they wash their hands of the blood of the civilians they sacrifice to the industrial prison system by saying, "It's not our place to question the law, only to enforce it."

Well that's not good enough. Where do all those laws the police vow to uphold come from and what gives them validity? The laws were written by politicians and hold validity for the same reason money holds value: By active or passive consent, the majority of the population has made a social contract with each other to agree to give politicians the authority to pass laws and assign value to money.

The Gestapo had their orders that came down the chain of command from the highest level politicians in their government too, but no reasonable person would argue that every rule Hitler told his police to follow was automatically and unquestionably valid simply because the leader of the government said so. People are just people no matter what man-made rank they wear. Things people say or write are just things people say or write. The American Declaration of Independence said the rights of man are self-evident and exist regardless of any laws written by men, even if those men are kings. The only way we can know these unwritten rules is by reason, not faith. Thus it's up to the individual to think for themselves to determine whether or not the laws of their land are just.

This is all good and well for the average citizen who isn't in any position to push their morals on other people, but the point becomes poignant for police who are charged with the responsibility of enforcing a canned version of morality on all the citizens within their jurisdiction. This issue becomes even more poignant the more power the police have to fine, detain, imprison, black list, beat and kill citizens without facing any repercussions.

The American people have already told their government they want Marijuana legalized, and the president literally laughed at them. If elected politicians won't honor the social contract then who else is there to stand up for the citizens who have to suffer the indignity and danger of unjust laws and an inhumane prison system? The only people standing between the citizens and the unjust laws are the police who enforce those laws. The police are the first line of defense against tyranny, and by rights the police should serve the interests of the public over the interests of politicians. Police officers' pay checks come from taxes, and their authority comes from the social contract they have with the people they're charged to protect. Politicians are simply servants who try to manage the affairs of the nation. They're not masters or gods.

You still may not be convinced though. You still may be saying, "But you simply can't make it a categorical imperative that every cop should enforce whatever laws they personally feel are just, because that would just result in anarchy." As true as that may be, what's the alternative? If we make it a categorical imperative that cops should never be able to exercise their own judgment then that literally makes them slaves, and that gives their leaders unlimited power to oppress the civilian herd. That doesn't immediately make civilians slaves, but if the executive and judicial branches of government can use thugs to force civilians to follow rules they don't believe in then you can't say those civilians are free.

We don't have to choose between a praetorian slave state or anarchy, but if civil servants aren't allowed to question the morality of their actions then we're well on our way to a police state.
WHY THE WORLD SUCKS AND HOW TO SAVE IT

This is very simple. The world sucks because people suck, and people suck because they're stupid.

You want to save the world? The solution is free education. Once all human knowledge is completely free and accessible anywhere, anytime then everything else will follow.

Who should pay for it? You. Everyone. If you live in the United States of America then most of your federal income tax goes to bombing brown people. That money should be spent on giving you and everyone else free education. Any politician who doesn't make that their number one priority is the barrier between us and utopia, but politicians choose to continue to use your money to fund an unnecessary and destructive weapons industry. If you want to know why, read Noam Chomsky.

Since your elected leaders won't spend your tax dollars to give you free education then Hollywood should. Second only to religion, Hollywood has been the largest producer of stupidity in all of human history. The majority of all media content produced in Hollywood is stupid. It's designed to appeal to the lowest common intellectual denominator. It's brain candy, and most people in first world countries binge on brain candy most of the time they're not at work or school, and it makes them stupid.

Hollywood owes the world free education to atone for the stupidity it has created. Who is your favorite celebrity? That person is a millionaire and has played a role in making you, your friends, your enemies and countless strangers dumber. Your favorite celebrity should pay to build a free online school that offers video classes on every subject broken down by topic.

If Hollywood won't do it then the richest person in the world should pay for it. You know how you become the richest person in the world? You sell stuff, and you pay your workers as little as possible to produce something everyone needs and that is as cheap as possible to reproduce, and you sell it for as high a price as you can. Then you avoid paying as many taxes as possible by exploiting tax havens and loop holes.

The richest person in the world is the world's biggest legal thief. The richest person in the world has ripped off more people than anyone else in the world. The richest person in the world owes the world a free school that offers instruction in every subject. The richest person in the world can afford to create that school and never have to sacrifice any luxury or necessity in their personal life ever.

If the richest person in the world won't give the world free education then the smartest people should. MIT has already created a small, free online school. That's great, but it doesn't include elementary school lessons on the alphabet or downloadable video clips on how to build and launch a space ship (yet). If MIT doesn't have the money to give the world that scope of free education then MENSA should pay for it. If MENSA is so smart then the need to fund a free school should be obvious to them.

If high IQ societies won't fund a free school then the KKK and other hate groups should. If you feel that another group of people are a burden on society then give them a free online school. Once everyone in the world has equal access to education then we can all be fully trained workers with self-actualized minds, and we'll all be productive members of society. Plus smart people statistically have fewer children. What more could a hater want? Education is the final solution.

If haters won't save the world then religious groups should. Religions claim to want to help people and to not be greedy. Great. Sell all your temples and ridiculous outfits to pay for school. Or be a hypocrite and stand by and watch the world burn knowing that you have the power to save it but chose not to. Yes, the issue really is that black and white.

If religion won't give the world free school then the people should give it to themselves. People on social networks should collaborate and fund it.

Until then stupid people will continue to destroy the world until there's nothing left.
CHAPTER 5

PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

SANITY, REALITY, TRUTH, SCIENCE AND RELIGION

##  "Sanity" is defined: "having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense."

But this definition leaves out a critical component: the measuring stick. How do you know when someone has or shows reason, sound judgment or good sense? The key is truth. The definition of both "truth" and "reality" can be said to be, "that which is." Once you understand what is true and real you can make accurate assessments of the world and base your decisions and perceptions accordingly.

So in order to be sane you have to know the truth about what is real. If you hold perceptions or beliefs that aren't real then you're insane. This means that psychology alone can't bring you to full mental health. Psychology can help you understand the motives, developmental factors and other critical aspects of the human psyche, but it doesn't provide a tool to distinguish reality from fantasy. Therefore, any good psychological treatment will also include training and exercises in critical thinking and science.

Think about it. How do you determine the difference between reality and fantasy, that which truly is and that which truly isn't? For example, how do you know you exist? How do you know your parents are really your parents? How do you know the universe didn't begin the day you were born? How can you trust the version of history you've been told is real? What makes a fact, a fact?

The determining factor is supporting evidence. Our entire society is based on this principle. You can't be tried for a crime without supporting evidence because it's the supporting evidence that establishes fact. You can't write an article in an academic journal unless your propositions are based on supporting evidence. You can't make a claim about the nature of the physical universe without supporting evidence. You won't be considered mentally healthy unless your perceptions and beliefs are based on supporting evidence.

When you start making exceptions and saying, "Oh, I don't need supporting evidence for this one little thing." or start cooking your answers to fit your preconceived beliefs or flat out falsifying information you set off down the path of insanity because your perceptions and beliefs are no longer supported by independently and consistently verifiable evidence.

This is the crux of the disconnect between science and religion. Science demands evidence and rejects taboos. It would be an understatement to say that science (as well as proper philosophy) accepts doubt. Science demands doubt, because doubt is the wedge that divides truth from fantasy.

There's a classic story about a scientist who built his career on a scientific theory he'd come up with. Late in life his theory was disproven by a young scientist just out of college. When the elder scientist learned he had been proven wrong he thanked the younger scientist for showing him the truth.

To a scientist there's no joy in the world greater than being proven wrong because there's no joy or reward in the world greater than truth, and that's worth giving up your pride for. You can accuse scientists of a lot of things, but you'd be wrong to deny that the underlying principle behind science is the humble search for truth.

However, physical science doesn't answer every question there is to ask. It doesn't answer, "Why are we here?" "Who am I?" "What is love?" or "Why shouldn't we hurt each other?"

This is where philosophy and the social sciences come in. They acknowledge that there are theoretical questions outside the realm of physical matter, and even though these questions don't have physical supporting evidence you can still use systematic logic to deduce, infer and extrapolate reasonable answers to these questions. Just like hard science, social science uses doubt to separate truth from fantasy.

Religion is the opposite. Religion starts from a position that isn't backed up by physical evidence or logical deductions. Often times religion actively contradicts the evidence such as in the case of creation stories and the effectiveness of prayer. Its theoretical answers are based on the subjective cultures that produced each religion, and it reverse engineers warped, illogical explanations to support its conclusions. Often times it will even flat out falsify information. The study of apologetics is systematic cognitive dissonance.

Religion claims it has a monopoly on truth, but all the real evidence contradicts this claim. Religion employs every tool of deception and delusion. It teaches techniques such as faith, fear and dogma to undermine truth for its own purposes.

Religion claims to be humble but refuses to admit or even consider if/when it's wrong. Science, on the other hand, sets the bar for humility. Thus its sets the bar for truth, and in the end it sets the bar for sanity.
11 WAYS MAINSTREAM ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY

HAS COME TO RESEMBLE ORGANIZED RELIGION

Note: This list only applies to the niche genre of mainstream academic philosophy, not philosophy in general.

1. It has a set canon of books that are studied redundantly.

2. The canon has a few good ideas, but much of it is archaic, garbled, over generalized, subjective, culturally biased and sometimes even flat out wrong.

3. Followers' understanding of life begins and for the most part remains within the framework taught by teachers as opposed to each individual systematically figuring out life for themselves starting with what's most important and working down from there.

4. Insanity and incomprehensibility are often mistaken for genius.

5. People who criticize the ideas taught in the canon are ridiculed and ostracized by other students who base their self-worth on mastery of the cannon.

6. Any criticism of the canon's shortcomings can be dismissed by saying, "You just don't understand our ideology. If you were smarter and studied it more you'd get it."

7. To devout followers of mainstream academic philosophy, winning an argument is more important than arriving at truth.

8. What cannot be disproven is given equal standing with what is provable...when it's convenient.

9. The ability to quote great thinkers is mistaken for being a great thinker.

10. The people within the group are considered the elite, chosen or ubber. People outside the group are considered unworthy, subhuman and not worth living.

11. Violently and dogmatically defending pre-packaged beliefs is only viewed as being close-minded when someone outside the group does it. When someone inside the group does it they're viewed as strong.
READING FOR TRUTH

The quality of your person is equal to the quality of the information in your brain. This means that if you hope to grow up and make the most of your life you need to consciously and systematically undertake a lifelong quest to gain and refine the quality of knowledge in your brain. There's bit more to growing up than just that, but what I've just said is true enough to warrant focusing on for a few pages.

In a Utopian society the path of knowledge would be well paved and streamlined. Every level of education would be free for anyone of any age, and every curriculum would be painstakingly edited for objectivity and clarity. Unfortunately, humanity has opted to devote more of its resources to killing each other than raising each other.

The good news is that you live in the information age. Technology allows the average person access to more information than kings in ancient times had. Unfortunately, freedom of information has come with a cost. When production and distribution of information was largely controlled by wealthy publishing houses, information was more expensive while also being more limited. On the upside, the big publishing houses did a pretty good job of filtering information for quality. Now, anyone can publish any crap they pull out of their ass and put it on the virtual shelves of online bookstores right next to the most professionally crafted literature humanity has ever produced. As soon as the internet was invented journalists started warning us that equal access to information distribution would (and has) resulted in a fog of white noise that makes it exceedingly difficult to find the quality information that's necessary to achieve enlightenment, and I'm sad to say that the situation is even worse than that.

The problem isn't just that there's too much information written by amateurs who can't write coherently and don't do a professional job of fact checking their data. There are news outlets with biased agendas bending the truth and misleading their consumers for their own benefit. Even the consumers themselves are guilty of mangling the truth by littering social news sites with their inane editorial comments.

This situation isn't fair, but life isn't fair. So let's not waste our time talking about what's fair. Even if you could determine what's fair, the point would be moot anyway because you're not in a position to enforce your perception of fairness. You're just a little fish stuck in a murky fish bowl.

All you need to worry about is that your education, and thus your growth, and thus your quality of life is your responsibility. So it's your responsibility to sift through the white noise and the misinformation to arrive at truth on your own. You can point fingers all day long at the unprofessional purveyors of information for not doing a good job of paving the way to truth for you, the reality of the situation is that you are the biggest obstacle standing between you and the truth.

As a child your brain soaked up all the knowledge available to you in your environment like a sponge, but your ability to use formal reasoning didn't develop until after you'd already established your perception of reality. In other words, during childhood you just assumed that what you learned was true, but a lot of it wasn't, and all of it was filtered through your subjective culture. This means you were doomed to grow up with a warped perception of reality. We all were, and to make matters worse, there may not be one true perception of reality. So not only were we born so lost we didn't even know we're lost, we're probably doomed to be lost by degrees our entire lives no matter how many of our misconceptions we slay.

This is made all the more dire by the fact that we don't know what we don't know. So the tendency is to assume that what we know is all we need to know (or close enough). You'll find conceited people who are totally convinced of their intellectual mastery from every walk of life from the most inbred redneck to the most ordinary office secretary to the most tenured professor...and they're all wrong. Here's a joke you should remember for the rest of your life: Question: How do you know if you're dumb? Answer: You think you're smart.

Every individual in the world will be guilty of being conceited about being smart at some time/s in their lives, which is bad enough, but when everyone in a society does the same thing, that behavior becomes a part of their culture. This is why every culture in the world tends to assume it's the best culture in the world. Xenophobia, ethnocentrism and patriotism aren't mistakes that only the worst humans make. They're an inevitable product of the human brain. So no matter where you were born, I can guarantee you that your culture tends to celebrate its obsolete past and demonize beliefs and behaviors outside of your ancestors' experience. Since culture tends to blindly label anything outside of its past experiences as bad, that means popular culture tends to demonize progress because progressive thought is inherently deviant thought.

Ironically, the fact that humans are born with their minds set to auto-reject isn't a flaw in the design of the brain. Our brains are super computers that receive, process, store and recall an astronomical amount of information every moment of our lives. Our brains have to manage all this information while also operating a body that grows, generates its own energy, processes waste, heals itself and reproduces. This necessitates that the brain process information as efficiently as possible, which it does partly by saddling the subconscious mind with the burden of making as many decisions as possible. It does this by assuming that whatever it has done in the past to survive will ensure its survival in the future. This means we're all born on autopilot. We learn schemas and repeat the same patterns of thoughts and behaviors the rest of our lives while tending to automatically rejecting any new and unfamiliar information and then reverse engineering reasons why afterward.

You can see the human autopilot function at work on any social news sites or internet forum. Go to a site like www.reddit.com or www.digg.com and click on the "Comments" button under any news article. The more comment threads you read the more you'll see the auto-pilot/auto-reject phenomenon. The more forward-looking or creative the article is, the more of a backlash you'll see.

Undoubtedly you've seen this behavior in real life. Have you ever met a person who contradicts everything anyone says? They're probably smug and eloquent, but they don't really stand for anything other than standing against anything anyone says to them. That's because their mind isn't tuned into searching for truth. Their mind is tuned into auto-rejecting everything and confirming their biases. Sadly, they'll win every argument they ever have, but that won't bring them any close to truth. It'll just reinforce their belief that they can never be wrong. For all the effort they put into proving they're right, they're really building a wall around them that keeps truth out.

When you're looking for it, it's easy to browse through comment threads and see people genuinely celebrating their superior genius by finding the most pointless flaws in the text in question and tearing apart anyone who challenges their irrelevant position. It's easy to see grammar Nazis do this. It's harder to catch ourselves doing it, especially when we don't type out our arguments in a comment thread to look back over and get feedback from others on. More often we just read or hear something and quietly bury whatever nuggets of truth we could have learned under smug, short-sighted, self-serving complaints.

I'm not saying this to sound smug by putting down stupid people. I'm saying this to warn you that everyone, myself included, has an instinctive drive to do this, and no matter how vigilantly we watch ourselves for this destructive behavior, we all slip, and the consequences are twofold. First, by tearing down other people indiscriminately just so we can win an argument we actually reinforce our opponents' incorrect perceptions since the only thing we'll have taught our opponent is that people who think differently than them are assholes.

Not only do we stop other people from perceiving truth, we stop ourselves as well. Here's a perfect example. I published blog about how borders are inhumane. A self-proclaimed Christian responded in a comment saying that opening borders is like taking the hinges off the door to your house; you're just inviting the scum of the earth to come in. I told this pseudo-Christian that Jesus would have taken the door off the hinges to his house and let anyone into his house. My opponent replied that Jesus didn't have a house. That's when I deleted the whole conversation because it was obvious he wasn't interested in arriving at truth. He just wanted to win an argument.

Technically, you could say he did win because he was right. Jesus, in fact, did not have a house of his own after he started his ministry, but in winning that pointless, irrelevant, distracting argument my opponent missed any truth he could have gained from the argument. And sure, that was my fault for not articulating my point better, but that just goes back to what I said in the beginning of this essay. Life isn't fair. The world isn't going to gift wrap truth for you and give it to you with a spoon full of sugar. The water is murky, but your education is your responsibility. It's up to you to read for truth.

On a societal level it's important for every author or speaker to present factual information in a clear and understandable manner for the benefit of the masses. On an individual level though, anything you read you're probably only ever going to read once. That means you only have one chance to learn something from the things you read. If you waste those opportunity nit-picking grammatical errors and technical flaws then you miss the opportunity to learn the more important lessons in the text. Sometimes you could read 100 pages of bullshit with only 10 lines of useful, enriching information. You win the reading game by finding those 10 lines that will make you a better person, not by finding 1000 reasons you're smarter than the author.

Even if you read 90 pages of bullshit, you can still learn something by figuring out what the author didn't say or should have said. One of the most productive intellectual exercises you may ever perform is to read "The Satanic Bible" and "Mein Kampf" for the express purpose of finding one useful piece of information in each of them. Afterwards, look at everything else you read with the same stoic, purposeful objectivity as you did when you read those two books. When you read anything, always ask yourself what useful truth you can tweeze from the text for the purpose of enriching yourself, and anytime you feel compelled to argue with an author of a blog, book or even another person's comment on a chat forum, ask yourself what you really have to gain by tearing them down, and ask yourself if you're really doing it in the honest pursuit of mutually beneficial truth or if you're just auto-rejecting for the purpose to subconsciously proving your intellectual superiority to yourself.
HOW TO ARGUE SCIENTIFICALLY

Step 1: Okay, someone is telling you something you disagree with. Recognize the fact that you've been wrong before. Regardless of how absurd their idea is, remember that everything you've been wrong about in your life before, you initially thought the truth was absurd. The same thing could be happening again.

Step 2: Assume that if this person believes what they're saying then they must have a compelling reason to. You might find in the end that it's not logical, but since it's strong enough to influence him there must be something to it. Find out his reasons for believing what he's saying before you disagree with him. In fact, press him to keep talking. Find out everything there is to know about the topic before criticizing it.

Step 3: Don't respond yet. Tell the person, "Give me a few minutes to think about this." or better yet, "Let me sleep on it. We'll continue this conversation tomorrow."

Step 4: Assume/pretend the other person is right. Block out your beliefs for a time and look at the world through his eyes. Imagine living a life where you walk around believing what you were just told.

Step 5: Consider his arguments objectively. Imagine that you're a scientist in a laboratory where ideas can be stored in petri dishes. In one dish is his argument. In another is yours. Take your argument and put it on a shelf. Take his argument and put it under a microscope. Use logic to dissect it and study it independent of how it relates to your ideas.

Furthermore, disregard the source of the idea you're studying. Just because the idea came out of "The Communist Manifesto," "Mein Kampf," or "The Bible" doesn't mean it can't be true. Of course, it doesn't mean is must be true either. It doesn't matter if the person you're arguing with is an immature, conceited, hypocritical wanker. The source has nothing to do with the idea. So separate the two for the time being.

Step 6: Take the results of your scientific dissection and file them away. Then take your own ideas and put them under the microscope. Even if you've studied them before, the fact that they're being challenged means there's a chance you might have missed something. Consider where your ideas came from. Did you really adopt them because you'd done all the math and deduced that this was the correct answer yourself or did somebody else tell you they were true? Dissect your arguments with the scalpel of logic again. Be brutal about it. Get angry at your ideas. Hate them. Tear them apart with the fury of a lover who just found out his soul mate was cheating on him.

Step 7: Compare the results from both of your studies understanding that the goal of the study isn't to determine who is right and who is wrong. Arguments are almost never black and white. You could both be right about some things and wrong about some things. The goal of the study is to take the good and bad of both arguments and mix them together to create the real truth. If at the end of the study you accept or reject the opposing idea completely you probably did your math wrong. If you do find fault on either side of the argument don't simply throw that petri dish away. If an idea has flaws then fix them yourself.

Step 8: If you want to you can present your findings to the person you argued with, but this isn't necessary. This whole process was never a battle between people. It was really an internal battle in your personal search for truth. Whether or not you can convince the other person of your findings is irrelevant, and if they were dogmatic about their position in the first place it would probably be impossible to convince them of the truth even if you presented an air-tight case.

Step 9: If you do decide to continue the argument with the other person don't worry about winning. Simply explain your findings to him, and if he doesn't like it then end the conversation. Winning an argument won't do anything for you except stroke your ego, which is pointless.

Step 10: If you do proceed with a debate, watch for personal attacks. Once either side throws a personal attack the conversation is over. Dialogue has broken down, and neither side is listening objectively anymore. So you may as well quit.
MY SECULAR THEORY ON ETHICS

The purpose of what follows isn't to try to convince you that I have all the answers or to try to tell you how you have to live. The point of sharing this is mainly to help you understand that the traditional morals you were taught as a child aren't the final say on morals. You're allowed to dismiss them, analyze other ones, and even develop your own. You're not committing heresy if you do that. You're exercising the power of your mind as well as your free will. To that end, I also hope that this essay will help you understand what a systematic moral code is and why it's important for your morals to be systematic.

KOHLBERG'S THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

A scientific way to begin explaining the logic of morals is to look at it through a framework developed by psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg.

Kohlberg argued that part of growing up involves developing morals. No doubt we can all agree with that, but what he specifically focused on in his research was how our morals develop. In order to find that out he performed a study where he asked people of all ages what they thought the right thing to do would be in the following theoretical situation:

"A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, 'No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.' So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?"

(Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-064760-4.)

Kohlberg didn't care whether you answered yes or no. He just wanted to know why you gave your answer. Go ahead and answer this question for yourself and see what Kohlberg had to say about your level of moral development.

He found that humans (have the potential to) progress through six stages of moral reasoning. Pay special attention to the last two words of the previous sentence, "moral reasoning." Morals aren't just answers to be remembered. Morals are a thought process, a formula to be calculated.

The first level of moral reasoning is most common in young children. They do what they're told by authority figures because if they don't they'll be punished. That's as far as their reasoning goes.

The second stage is basically defined by selfishness. Children at this stage believe that they should do what's best for them even at the expense of others. The only time they'll help someone else is if there's something in it for them.

The third stage develops in adolescence. Here the individual is primarily concerned with social approval. If everyone else is doing it then it's okay. In addition to basing morals on social standards people at this level of moral reasoning also tend to think that good intentions justify destructive behavior.

In the fourth stage the individual believes the world has rules, and it's responsible to follow those rules because those are the rules, and the rules are good because...those are the rules. This level of thinking is typical of older high school students.

The fifth stage is a little more abstract, and is easily spotted among college students. People at this level believe that laws are social contracts we make to keep us safe, but rights are more important than laws, and laws can be changed if we change them in a democratic way. People at this level of moral reasoning also say laws should do the greatest good for the greatest number.

Kohlberg said that almost nobody (if anybody) reaches level six, which involves abstract thinking and a commitment to following rules only because they're true and not because the outcome will have any empirical consequence to the individual. This level of reasoning also follows that rules are made for people; people are not made for rules, and if a rule ceases to help people then the rule is no longer valid and can be morally broken.

So what's the secret to reaching the highest level of moral reasoning? Sure, you have to think logically and abstractly, but that statement is basically vague to the point of being useless. We can be more precise than that.

In order to think at level six you need a logical, systematic, empirically valid measuring stick. The ultimate measuring stick is the meaning of life since the value of everything you do can be measured relative to how it helps/hurts you/others fulfill the meaning of life.

Once you decide what the purpose of life is then you can judge any action relative to whether it helps or hinders accomplishing that goal. Even if you can't figure out the meaning of life, the fact still remains that an objective system of ethics must be built relative to a goal. If you can't decide what the objective meaning of life is then you can still decide for yourself what you think the value of life is and what you believe is the most important goal to accomplish in life. Once you have that you can reverse engineer a system of ethics around it. Without that, you'll never be able to build a coherent, logical system of ethics.

I can't prove that my theory on the meaning of life is the end-all truth, and my goal isn't convince you that it is. My goal is to show you how you can reverse engineer a system of ethics relative to a proposed meaning of life so that you can do it for yourself.

My theory is built on the assumption that the meaning of life (or at least the closest conclusion to it we can deduce logically) is to fulfill your potential. Let's see what kind of ethical measuring stick we can reverse engineer out of that.

MY MEASURING STICK

My system of ethics is based on four principles:

1. A living creature's worth comes from the fact that it's alive. All living things are equally valuable.

2. The meaning of life for every living thing is to fulfill its potential.

3. Every living thing needs to eat other living things to survive. Every living thing must vie for the same resources to survive.

4. The most basic need in life is survival. The second is safety. The third is self-actualization. The fourth is free will.

Let's take each of these four principles and look at them a little more in depth.

THE DOOR PRIZE OF LIFE. A living creature's worth comes from the fact that it's alive. All living things are equally valuable.

Every living thing is infinitely valuable, period. This also means that every person is equally valuable regardless of what they've done, what level of education they have, or what rank anyone has bestowed upon them.

One implication of this is that murder is inherently immoral as is the death penalty as long as the option exists to keep a murderer in prison. This rule also validates the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If everyone is equal then whatever you do to one person is morally equivalent to doing it to anyone else, including yourself. If you hurt someone else it's the same as hurting yourself. If you kill someone else it's the same as committing suicide.

FULFILLING THE MEANING OF LIFE. The meaning of life for every living thing is to fulfill its potential.

If the meaning of life for every living thing is to fulfill its potential, and everyone is equal then preventing or helping someone else fulfill the meaning of life is the same as preventing or helping yourself fulfill the meaning of life.

This means you're morally obligated to fulfill the meaning of life for yourself, and to the extent that you're obligated to do that you're equally obligated to help everyone else fulfill the meaning of life.

An action is only responsible if it helps you accomplish the goal of surviving and fulfilling the meaning of life in the long run. An action is only moral if it helps other people accomplish the goal of surviving and fulfilling the meaning of life in the long run.

Every society has rules that it considers moral which in reality have no relationship to morality. For example, cuss words have no effect on fulfilling your potential as a living being. This means there's no logical justification for considering cuss words immoral or punishing people who say cuss words on television or radio. The only basis for the supposed immorality of cuss words is cultural ignorance. The same thing goes for the taboos against masturbation, nudity, homosexuality, polygyny, etc.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. Every living thing needs to eat other living things to survive. Every living thing must vie for the same resources to survive.

It sounds very idealistic to say that all living things are infinitely valuable, and we should help everyone and everything achieve its potential, but those ideals hit a snag when applied to the real world because every living thing needs to eat other living things in order to survive. Every living also needs to compete for the same resources to survive. This means we're acting immorally every time we take a bite of food or collect a pay check. How can we ever in good conscience go on living knowing someone or something else has to die so we can live?

In order to get past this we need to take emotions out of the equation for a moment. The fact is this is the world we live in, and the survival of the fittest is one of the rules of the game. If every living thing is equal then it we all have equal right to consume each other in the fight to survive and grow. In cases where one living thing must die for another to live the one that should live is the one who is able.

Remember, this philosophy applies only to cases of life and death. Saying that the strong should survive is different than saying the strong should exploit the weak. Remember, we're all equally valuable. This means we're equally obligated to help those we can (when there's no immediate conflict for survival). Regardless of how strong you are it's still immoral to needlessly hurt or exploit those less powerful than you.

Look at how this applies to war and self-defense. If it's wrong to kill then what do you do if a mugger or an army attacks you? Given that both your lives are equally valuable you would be justified in either defending yourself or allowing them to kill you. However, if you knew that your attacker was going to kill someone else after you then you would be obligated to try to disarm them by the least violent method possible. If it's impossible to disarm them without killing them then they've forced your hand and made it moral for you to kill them in self-defense.

What about abortion? According to this concept abortion would be wrong if your only reason for getting one was avoiding the responsibility of being a parent. However, if having a baby threatened the mother's life or if food was so scarce in the local environment that someone else would have to starve in order to feed the baby then you would be justified in aborting it.

Let's apply this to stealing. Why is stealing inherently wrong? There has to be a more concrete reason than "because God said so" or "because it's against the law." Why would God or the lawmakers say it's wrong? It all comes down to resources. You traded your infinitely valuable time to work for the money you have and the things you've bought. Stealing money or possession is the same as stealing life. However, this means there's no inherent immorality in stealing what has been stolen. Furthermore, you would be morally justified to steal if it were the only way for you to survive. However, that doesn't mean the law should let you steal either. The law has to protect people's rights. Of course, if we all managed and shared our resources wisely in the first place nobody would need to steal.

A LOGICAL HIERARCHY OF PRIORITIES. The most basic need in life is survival. The second is safety. The third is self-actualization. The fourth is free will.

When a conflict of interest exists between two living things the one who should be allowed to proceed with their interest is the one whose interest addresses the most basic need. When the conflict of interest is equal then the creature who should be allowed to proceed with their interest is the one that can. If there's ever a conflict of interest where it's possible for both beings to be reasonably accommodated without one trumping the other then they should take the path of accommodation.

Let's apply Kohlberg's moral dilemma to this list. Is Heinz right to steal the medicine from the crooked doctor to save his spouse's life? That depends.

1. The most basic need in life is survival. If the doctor was overcharging so he could buy medicine to save his own life from another terminal illness then the doctor was right to overcharge, but Heinz would also be right to try to steal the medicine.

2. The second is safety. Suppose the doctor was overcharging solely to secure his retirement. Even though this still equates to a battle for survival the wife's immediate survival would trump the doctor's future safety. Thus, Heinz would be justified in stealing the medicine. However, stealing the medicine would only be justified as long as his wife's illness was terminal. Even then, if he had to take money out of his own retirement fund to heal his non-terminally ill wife then he would be justified in stealing for the sake of his and his wife's future safety. However, if Heinz ever came across an abundance of money in the future he would be morally obligated to pay back the doctor so he could secure his precarious retirement as well.

3. The third is self-actualization. The doctor is as morally obligated to achieve self-actualization as he's also morally obligated to help everyone else achieve self-actualization. Regardless of whether or not Heinz's wife was terminally ill, by the doctor overcharging patients for his medicine he's limiting the resources they can use to help themselves achieve self-actualization. If the doctor is merely overcharging to horde profits he's guilty of theft with no excuse and should held accountable. If nothing else he should be forced to charge a fair amount for his medicine.

As for Heinz, he should steal the life-saving medicine and leave enough money in the doctor's office to pay for the true cost of the medicine with maybe a little bit extra if he can afford it.

4. The fourth is free will. The case of the Heinz V.S. the greedy doctor doesn't extend this far into morality since it's only about life and death. But once someone has secured their survival and achieved self-actualization their only obligation in life is to exercise their self-actualization by doing whatever it is they want to do (as long as that doesn't break any of the previous three tenants of morality). Though if anyone else around you is suffering or in need, their plight takes precedent over your fancies.
MY THEORY ON SEXUAL MORALITY

A long time ago I used to be a hard core Christian and "witnessed" (aka pushed my beliefs on others) every chance I got, and I didn't just witness that Jesus died for our sins. I preached the moral values taught in the Bible (except for the ones that modern society has deemed ridiculous and we tell ourselves the Bible wasn't really serious about).

One of the big moral topics I preached about was sexuality. Funny thing about the Bible...God killed a man (Onan) for pulling out of his penis out his wife's vagina just before he orgasmed. Yahweh also said in the Old Testament that if you have a wet dream you have to be exiled from the camp for a week or two until you're "clean" again. Moses's daughters got him drunk and incestuously raped him, and that was okay. Lot let an angry mob gang-rape his daughters, and God was pleased by this. Most of the biggest heroes in the Old Testament had multiple wives (which they bought from their fiancés' fathers). Women were considered unclean when they were on their periods and it was immoral to touch any part of their body or anything else they'd touched during that time or you would become "unclean" too...whatever that means. Jesus said that it's better to get married than to burn with passion, but did he say that because God told him it was virtuous or because Jesus was giving practical advice to people who lived under a theocracy that would stone you to death for having premarital sex? If Americans could be killed for having premarital sex I'd tell my friends it's better to get married than to burn with passion. If I accidentally got my girlfriend pregnant I'd lie and say she was still a virgin and the baby was conceived by God.

If you critically analyze all the sexual taboos in the Bible it becomes obvious that those rules weren't invented by the creator of the universe. They were invented by goat herders and then collected like Aesop's Fables after the fact and put into the local religious book.

Unfortunately, I didn't recognize that back when I was a Christian. At the time I just blindly preached that masturbation, homosexuality and premarital sex were bad. At first I told people to believe these things because the Bible says they're true. (Though I can't off the top of my head think of a passage that ever mentions masturbating specifically). Of course, the atheists I was preaching to didn't believe those rules were justified simply because the Bible said they were true. They demanded real reasons, and I naively assumed that since the Bible was true there must be logical reasons to back up all of its claims. So I put a lot of time and effort into objectively and logically analyzing its rules about morality.

As a Christian I screwed up by trying to be objective about morality instead of just trying to cook up answers that justified my pre-existing beliefs, because the only logical explanation for the Biblical moral code is that it was created by primitive, ignorant, superstitious, chauvinistic, self-loathing goat herders whose moral philosophy could best be summed up, "Anything that makes you feel good is bad. Anything that makes you feel bad is good."

Over time I gradually developed a new philosophy on sexual morality based on observable facts, objectivity and logic. On a side note, if you've ever wondered how non-believers can live a moral life, that's how. And it's a much more efficient and accurate system than believing the drivel of primitive, ignorant, superstitious, chauvinistic, self-loathing goat herders whose moral philosophy can best be summed up, "Anything that makes you feel good is bad. Anything that makes you feel bad is good."

When you don't base your morals on logic you end up with all sorts of bizarre, unfounded, illogical and contradictory moral standards for sexual behavior. The consequence of such a poorly designed code of ethics is a world awash with human suffering. People are stoned to death and have their heads cut off for adultery and promiscuity. People are jailed and put on sex offender lists for life and denied the possibility of enjoying a life of liberty and happiness. Priests rape children because they can't have sex with anyone else.

There are personal consequences that are far more common yet subtle enough to ignore if you don't want to see them. Children grow up sexually frustrated, and their inability to explore their sexuality results in a loss of self-respect. So they grow up loathing and punishing themselves for the natural feelings their bodies create. If they do give into those natural feelings they have to find creative and dangerous ways to excuse themselves for having sex. The list goes on and on.

I'm not saying that my philosophy on sexuality is necessarily right, but it is objective, logical and based on observable facts.

The premise of this philosophy is drawn from my overall philosophy on ethics: Every living (or at the very least, sentient) being is equally valuable and is entitled to the same inalienable rights. Everyone is entitled to the freedom to live, grow, and exercise their free will as long as it doesn't interfere with another person's rights. Any action that doesn't hurt another person or interfere with their growth/will is permissible. Any rule that has no real logical justification but tells you an action is immoral even if it doesn't hurt anyone or impede anyone's growth will only serve to hurt people and impede their growth.

Humans are born with a powerful sex drive. We're all addicted to sex. Even if (or rather, especially if) we're not having sex we still crave it as strongly, and sometimes more so, than food or water.

This addiction is mostly indiscriminate. We all have our fetishes and preferences, but for the most part our body just tells us, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." It's actually not even that discriminating. It'd probably be more accurate to say it tells us, "Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate."

Mother Nature (by any other name) designed us to fuck and ejaculate our brains out, and if we choose not to then our bodies were designed with an override switch that frustrates us and makes us more and more horny until it breaks our will and more or less forces us to fuck or at least ejaculate. It's logical that this was done to ensure the survival of the species, but it has some adverse side-effects...like rape and masturbating in awkward places.

We need to ejaculate. We need to ejaculate like we need to eat, and if God is real then God wrote that commandment into our DNA. And we should obey God, but God aside, we should do it for our own mental health and for the safety of others so that our override switch doesn't get flipped and cause us to harm another person. In other words, we owe it to our fellow man to ejaculate on a regular basis. However you bring yourself to orgasm (as long as it doesn't hurt another person or impede their growth/will) is morally permissible.

A lot of people claim that they were born heterosexual or homosexual. As a general rule I believe society takes the labels "heterosexual" and "homosexual" too seriously. I believe there are a lot of people out there who the thought once occurred to them that they might like fucking someone of the same sex, which is perfectly natural for anyone to feel. However, society told them that since they had this thought they must be "gay." So some of these people ended up limiting themselves and defining their identity around a non-issue because society didn't give them any other choice.

Let me be clear about what I'm trying to say: it would be an understatement to say that we were all born bisexual. We were all born omnisexual.

If you want to live a safe, mentally healthy life you need to accept yourself for what you are, a sexual being. Masturbate with confidence. Use sex toys with confidence. Have premarital sex with confidence. Have gay sex with confidence. Just practice your sexuality responsibly, which is to say, in a way that respects your obligation to live, grow, exercise your free will and not harm anyone else or impede their right to grow/will.
YOU ALREADY HAVE ETHICS WITHOUT RELIGION

When people ask, "How can you have ethics without religion?" what they're really asking is, "How can you have ethics without mythology?" Because religion is mythology.

So, how can you have ethics without mythology? Very easily. We've been doing it the entire history of our species, and everyone still does it today. Before Christianity was invented people didn't spend their days wallowing in the mud having rampant cannibalistic orgies with their families. We were building cities, navigating the globe, curing diseases and developing the sophisticated languages we would later write religious tomes with.

Humanity has been writing its own rules since day one. Look around you today. Your entire life is controlled by rules that nobody claims God was responsible for. There are rules for how to behave in a department store. There are rules in school, rules at work, Robert's Rules of Order, rules for sports games, rules for war, rules for taxes, international law. Moses was an amateur. The IRS makes wrote 1000000000000000000000 commandments and counting, and those commandments have real, life and death consequences in this world.

Where do these rules come from? They came from the practical need to establish best practices to accomplish practical goals. 10,000 years ago we just needed to get firewood and food. So the practical needs of our lives were pretty simple. As society progressed life got more complicated, and we needed more practical rules to address the new practical problems standing between us and our personal goals (for those of us who had them).

There's one rule in particular that highlights how ethics can exist without religion. At some point in history we collectively agreed that slavery is wrong no matter who says it's okay. Yahweh actually wrote down a lot of rules about the right way and the wrong way to buy, sell and handle slaves. Yahweh was an avid supporter of the slave trade, and even Jesus said that "servants" or "maidservants" (as slaves are called in the modern, Disney-censored versions of the Bible) should obey their masters.

The Bible is clearly pro-slavery, but modern Christians don't believe in slavery, because everyone knows slavery is evil. But how do we know that if God didn't tell us slavery is wrong? Where did we get that moral from? Obviously, we figured that out for ourselves...just like every other moral rule we follow...because Yahweh never told us anything. The Jewish leaders just wrote down all the laws they wanted people to follow, most of which people were already following by custom; the religious leaders just said God had finally made them official.

If that's true, then it raises the question, where did Yahweh's ghost writers come up with their ideas for rules? They came up with their laws the same way modern politicians create policy. They looked out their window and saw problems going on in the streets. Then they wrote rules that solved those problems.

We understand society's rules and why they exist, and we still follow them even though we know we'd have to play Six-Degrees-to-God to give any deity credit for saying your car has to come to a full stop at a red light. We even have our own personal philosophies on which rules we have to acknowledge as valid and which ones are bullshit and we don't have to follow. Every member of every religion uses their personal philosophical system to dismiss parts of the religion they profess to base their life on. Every Christian has their own personal ethics that guide which passages in the Bible they cherry pick and how they interpret scripture to conform to their existing biases.

The following experiment would prove my point: Take 100 people who claim to be religious. Have them carry a notebook with them everywhere they go for a week and have them write down every place they go and every person they talk to. Have them record a short explanation for why they decided to go and do each of the things they did that week. At the end of the week you might have 2 or 3 actions among thousands that were directly motivated by Biblical doctrine. Yet you'll notice that they got through the week relatively okay and probably accomplished a lot of good things by following rules that were publicly and unapologetically invented by humans. You'll find these people even made up rules on their own, broke their own rules, broke other people's rules and broke Christian rules without their week devolving into a cannibalistic orgy with their family because the reasoning they used to come to the conclusion that it was acceptable to break those rules was based on the logic that they could be more productive (according to their personal value system) by breaking those rules than by following them.

If that sounds confusing then pat yourself on the back because you do it every moment of every day. You put more thought into calculating your personal system of ethics than a super computer puts into calculating the world's most complicated chess game. Unfortunately, the games humans play have gotten so complicated, and we have so many competing rule systems (that are often obsolete), that the world is in arguably worse chaos than it was back before we wrote down tomes and tomes of. The world is in such a state that even when people logically figure out the best way for them to live they're not allowed to because there are so many institutionalized bad rules.

Bad laws stay on the books because ordinary people don't believe they have the right to decide right from wrong for themselves even though we're all already doing it. When we take what we're already doing to its inevitable conclusion and all become unapologetic thinkers and problem solvers then we'll be able to agree on an upgraded social contract that effectively addresses society's problems. But we can't do that as long as we're living in the past.
THE DANGER IN TELLING PEOPLE LIFE HAS NO MEANING

If there's no true, pre-set inherent meaning to life then the question, "What did you do with your life?" serves the same practicality as, "What was the purpose of your life?" If there's no true reason why we're here then that's as close as you're going to get to experiencing and fulfilling any real meaning in your life, and on one level it is real.

Suppose you dedicated your entire life to playing football. Then on your death bed someone asks you, "Why were you here?" Well, apparently you were here to play football. It doesn't matter if that's what you were supposed to do. That's what you did. So that's retroactively why you existed.

Understanding that, if someone asks you what the meaning of life is and you just smugly tell them, "Life has no meaning..." and leave it at that then the only influence you're likely to have on your audience to convince them there's no point to thinking about the question altogether.

If that happens they're still going to end up doing something with their lives. Their life is still going to be guided subconsciously by a primary prerogative...only now they're not going to be conscious or in control of it. This means they're just going to let their evolutionary instincts guide them. Their priorities will be to reproduce, conquer and consume, and they'll fall into the pack or herd mentality and allow the ebb and flow of aggregate (aka mainstream) culture to define their identity, wants and fears for them. They'll meander through life as confident as they are blind. Most likely they'll adopt the predominate mythology (aka religion) that exists in the region they live in though they'll cede control of their will to their evolutionary instincts when they contradict the teachings of that arbitrary mythology since their lack of focus in life will prevent them from taking even their religion seriously.

When someone asks you what the meaning of life is you may as well just tell them it's to mimic your favorite television characters and be a workaholic consumer whore. That's the danger of telling people life has no meaning and leaving it at that.

P.S. Telling people that the meaning of life is 42 accomplishes the same thing as telling them life has no meaning.
LIFE IS WAR

The definition of life is, "the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally."

The definition of war is, "open armed conflict between two or more parties, nations, or states related."

The definition of conflict is, "a fight, battle, or struggle, esp. a prolonged struggle; strife."

Every living organism on earth is vying for access to and control of limited resources in a limited space. The stakes are life and death, not just for ourselves but for our offspring and our species. Guns and bullets are a tiny fraction of the arms we use in this war. There are teeth, barbs, poisons, money, contracts, votes, disciplinary paperwork, laws, locked doors, embargoes, sanctions, access to education, taxes, lawsuits, blackmail, guilt trips, promises, threats and almost everything else anyone ever does.

Every time you go to work you're literally fighting for your life, and your employer is winning that battle. You and your significant other have a conflict of interest in how your pay checks are spent. If you're lucky you can form a treaty to end that war. And really, all social contracts are just treaties that put the war between individuals on hold so they can work together to fight against a larger enemy such as the environment, the bill collector or other groups of people who have formed their own treaties and are waging their own wars against you and your allies for access to and control of your resources in order to ensure their survival.

The value of looking at life as a war over resources and ultimately survival is that it forces you to value the resources you have. It forces you to think strategically and spend your resources strategically. It also forces you to be more aware of the treaties you've made. Once you're aware of them you'll be able to improve them. If you're unaware of any of this you'll be more likely to bumble through life while other parties who are aware of it employ ambitious strategies against you.
THE RISE OF THE VAGRANT INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT

Throughout most of human history the only people who could read were the upper class. Until the invention of the printing press the upper class were also the only people who could afford books, which all had to be hand-written. Even if a peasant could read, lived in a city with a library, and were allowed in the library he still wouldn't be able to learn enough to be considered educated, because he wouldn't have time to learn, because he would have had to work the fields or the factories from morning to night.

The printing press helped make education more affordable and accessible to the poor. Unions gave us the weekend and the 40 hour work week, which gave the poor time to learn. The invention of free public education allowed the poor to learn to read and get a taste for intelligence. Very recently children of blue collar workers have been able to access higher education through grants, scholarships, and loans. Now that the internet exists anyone can research any topic they want through free web sites. Anyone can purchase almost any book that exists on Amazon.com, even upper level college text books that used to be only sold at university book stores.

Towards the beginning of human history the only people who could ever hope to be intelligent were the wealthiest people on the earth. As a result of social progress and technological advancements access to knowledge has slowly trickled down to the middle class, and now the lower class finally has the same privilege (at least in first world countries).

With the lowest class of society finally having practically unrestricted access to knowledge I see a new class of philosophers and thinkers forming. I call them the vagrant intellectuals, and I have high hopes for them.

Think about this. What is an upper class socialite going to be inspired to write? A pampered socialite from old money doesn't have to face the harsh realities of life and isn't going to be able to relate to the real human condition, and that's going to be reflected in what they publish: over-worded pseudo-intellectual crap.

But the poor, the dejected, the abused, the chemically dependent dregs of the earth have been bitch slapped by reality, and now they have the educational resources to understand and articulate that experience. Plus they have the technical resources to disseminate their hard earned knowledge upwards to the rest of society. Plus, they can help the rest of the dregs make sense of their lot in life and articulate their experiences.

The rich are losing their monopoly on literature and intellectual culture. More and more you can expect the poor to shape national dialogue. The more the poor air their experiences and grievances the more well-rounded our understanding of our society will become and the more the world will be forced to acknowledge and rectify the unfair conditions the poor live in.
AN AGNOSTIC TAKE ON PASCAL'S WAGER

Pascal's Wager argues that although you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God (specifically Yahweh), there's always the chance you could go to hell for not believing in Him. So you might as well believe in Yahweh just in case.

Pascal's Wager only makes sense from an extremely narrow point of view. The gigantic, glaring hole in Pascal's logic is that he's taken one mythological deity out of the thousands of mythological deities humans have invented and assumed that's the one true God. Pascal was raised around Catholics in France, but if he were raised around Muslims in Saudi Arabia he would have said the same thing about Allah. If he were raised around Hindus in India he would have said the same thing about Shiva. In fact, if he had been raised by Jews in Israel he would have said the same thing about Yahweh except without the added modifier of Jesus Christ.

However, he does raise an interesting point. It's true that we don't know what happens after we die, and there is prudence in assuming a worst case scenario, but how do we hedge our bet if we're not going to just pick a mythological deity at random and base our lives on the commandments ghost-written in that God's name?

Pascal's call to action was to believe in an invisible man, attend weekly religious ceremonies and tithe 10% of your income to the Ministry of Funny Hats. That's actually not very hard to do, and if you break any of the arbitrary moral rules laid out by the sexually repressed chauvinists who wrote the Bible, you can always ask for forgiveness. You never need to think for yourself. In fact, you're commanded not to. You just wind down your existential clock going through the motions of life as absent mindedly as Catholics reciting their Sunday invocations. This is an easy way out. It's so easy as to be a coward's way out. Religious fanatics would argue that it's not easy to be religious. To that I would reply, compared to what?

If you wager that you have but one brief life to live and no supernatural agent to carry the burden of eternity for you then it's solely up to you to live a life worth living. To make matters even more severe, you don't get a religious cheat sheet. In fact, if God doesn't speak through men and everyone is truly equally lost then you can't rely on the authority of any man living or dead. So not only do you have to live your life for yourself, but you also have to figure out life for yourself. That's terrifying. That's the greatest responsibility any living creature could possibly bear.

Religious fanatics tend to minimize the courage it takes to accept the challenge of living alone by pointing out that without the belief in a sadistic, mythological deity there's nothing stopping you from just living a completely selfish, hedonistic lifestyle with no concern for the future or anyone else. And while that's technically true, very few people actually analyze the grandeur of life, the universe and existence and then weigh all their options and decide to take that path. You don't need God to tell you there's more to life than getting drunk before noon and raping your neighbor. If you can't see that then it's no wonder you would settle for a life of meaningless rituals and self-deprecating rules to fill the void between birth and death.

But what else is there? Well, I'll give you my two cents, but remember that I'm no more an authority on the subject than anyone else. As long as you agree to take this with a grain of salt I'll hazard to point out the obvious, which is to tell you that by asking that question you've already answered it. Consider this. Do the technicians who design sports cars (or computers or video games or fine art pieces) see themselves as failures until they've built a complete sports car? Their passion, their success doesn't lie in looking at a completed car. Their passion, their success lies in the pursuit of designing the perfect car. In fact, once they finish designing a car they get right back to designing another one. You want to know what to do with your life? Your brain was designed to solve problems. You were designed to solve problems. Your life begins the day you start thinking about it. I would wager my life on it. In fact, I am.

If there is an answer to the question of the meaning of life, the only way you're going to figure it out is by thinking about life, the universe and your existence. If there isn't an answer or its true nature is as elusive as God, then the only way to figure what the next best thing to do with your short, irreplaceable life is to think about it. If there is a God watching us to see how we make the most of our lives in an absurd, existential universe, what could possibly please that being more than doing the very thing He/She/It must have done to design this bitchin sports car of a universe we're joyriding our bodies around?

You're a sentient being. Think about everything, and have fun doing it.
AN AGNOSTIC TAKE ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN

There's a scientific organization known as S.E.T.I whose purpose is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. The founders of this organization asked themselves how you would scientifically deduce the existence of intelligent life in the universe if you couldn't directly shake hands with an intelligent alien. They concluded that if you can find patterns in radio waves coming from deep space that are too orderly to happen randomly in nature then it would be logical to conclude that those patterns were coded by an intelligent being.

For example, if an alien space ship flying past Earth picked up a radio transmission of an Elvis song they would know there is (slightly) intelligent life on Earth because that song is too orderly to happen randomly in nature. But what if it wasn't an Elvis song they heard? What if it was a code describing in detail how to build an android? If aliens heard that coming from earth they would know there was extremely intelligent life in this galaxy. But what if that code wasn't sent via radio waves? What if they found a box floating through space containing a single solid state computer chip that held the code? That would still be too orderly to exist randomly in nature.

If the scientists at S.E.T.I. found such a computer chip floating around Earth they would conclude it was intelligently designed. But what if the code wasn't in a chip? Would it matter where we found the code, as long as we found a logically patterned code somewhere in something?

Well, look at our DNA. It's a code. The code is a program. The program is for the design of an intelligent being that is capable of self-direction and self-awareness. Its body can process resources to generate its own energy, repair itself and even create new robots.

Now let's take a step back and look at the rest of the living creatures on planet earth. Each living thing contains similar codes. These codes even overlap between species. Humans, reptiles, fish, and birds (to name a few) all have eyes. Dissimilar species have lungs, feet, skin, reproductive organs, hearts, skeletons, etc. One or two examples would be a coincidence. The extensive number of similarities constitutes a clear pattern. The pattern indicates order. Order indicates these similarities aren't an accident; the code is designed that way.

Consider also how these patterns came to exists. All of these species didn't pop into existence 6,000 years ago. They evolved over millions of years. Since evolution has produced patterns we can conclude that there is an element of order in the process of evolution. Evolution is isn't completely random. Taxonomy is not random. Hereditary traits can be predicted because they're not random. Mutations may be random, but every child born with ten fingers, ten toes and two eyes are the product of order.

When we use the same criteria for identifying intelligent life that S.E.T.I. uses then evolution is probably the best evidence we have for the existence of an intelligent (albeit stoic, absentee) designer.
THE AGNOSTIC'S GOD

Life is a mystery that each of us is confronted with at birth. The quality and meaningfulness of your existence will be directly proportional to the extent to which you unravel the mystery of life. Choosing not to even attempt to unravel the mystery cedes all control of your fate. Choosing to put a half-hearted effort into unraveling the mystery will result in a life half lived. Choosing to devote your life to understanding life will result in a life well understood...or at least, a life as well understood as possible, and that will result in a life lived as well as possible.

If you want to understand anything, the best place to start is usually the beginning. Applying that simple rule to understanding life will take you all the way back to the beginning of time where you'll find a pivotal question: What created the universe?

Everything we've observed about the cosmos so far tells us that the universe began with the Big Bang (though you can call it whatever you'd like), but what catalyst set the Big Bang in motion? Was it simply the nature of the universe or was it caused by the action of a sentient entity? This question makes all the difference, because the implications build up exponentially to the point that the question is as important as life and death.

So let's take an objective look at the issue. On one hand, the universe exists, and its structure and function are both marvels of perfect mathematical elegance. It's been argued that if you find a watch in the desert you can assume that there must have been a watchmaker who designed it. A valid point except for the fact that we've explored all the deserts on earth and peered across the boundaries of our galaxy, but we haven't found any watches that weren't made by humans. At this point it's reasonable to assume that there might not be a non-human watchmaker anywhere to be found.

However, you could take the watchmaker analogy a step further and say that we've found intelligent beings (ourselves) and that the existence of an intelligent being necessitates that an intelligent creator predated the intelligent creation. That's possible, but it raises the question, if we needed an intelligent creator to create us then wouldn't the original creator require an intelligent creator itself?

Eventually both sides of the argument cancel each other out. The only way a creator could exist is if it existed forever or it created itself, but if you can believe that then it would take an equal amount of faith to believe that the universe either existed forever or created itself.

You could continue making logical arguments for and against the existence of God all day long, but the fact remains that we don't know what happened before the Big Bang. So ultimately we don't know how or why the universe was created. So we can't say for certain that God does or doesn't exist. To declare either side true or false would be an act of speculative faith.

So where does that leave us? Well, the fact of the matter is that we're still alive, and the quality and meaningfulness of our lives still depend on understanding life as well as possible. Just throwing our hands up in the air and quitting will still only result in ceding control of our fate. So the only real option is to proceed cautiously and objectively with what little information we have. In other words, the best thing we can do at this point is to make both assumptions: that there is a God and that there isn't.

The intelligent nature of evolution suggests that the universe may have been created by a sentient being, but if it was, that being has chosen not to show itself to us or communicate with us. So we have no idea what that being's nature or intentions are.

To assume the existence of a being we know nothing about would be pointless. So if we're going to assume the existence of a creator we need to take the next step and make some kind of assumption about its nature and intentions.

There are 3 ways we can proceed with making these assumptions:

1. Trust other people's statements about God.

2. Trust our own intuition.

3. Draw conclusions from physical evidence.

There are a few points to take into consideration before trusting other people's statements about God. First and foremost, we need to ask ourselves what makes anyone an authority to speak about God? Before you answer that question though, it's of the utmost importance that you don't ask it with only one religion in mind. This question applies to all religions and prophets.

This is a vital and fundamental issue that believers of any one religion tend to dismiss with a shamefully irresponsible lack of due diligence. If you don't apply the question, "How do we determine which prophet (and thus, which religion) truly speaks for God?" objectively to every religion then you end up turning a blind eye to certain religions and give them a benefit of the doubt they don't deserve. Ultimately that means you give certain religions power over you that they don't deserve. You owe it to yourself to think about this question seriously.

Anyone can claim to be an authority on God, but what gives their claim authenticity? A personal claim is satisfactory if you're taking advice on which vacuum cleaner to buy, but when it comes to speaking for the creator of the universe and decreeing how we should live our only life we need more evidence than that, especially since every prophet's claim has to compete against every other prophet's claim.

Exercising Godlike power would be pretty convincing, but nobody can do that. There are stories about this happening in the past, but none of those stories come from sources that pass even the minimum reputability test of a mere professional scientific journal. At any rate, there are stories from competing religions in which competing prophets claim to have used the power of God. How do we reconcile these competing claims? We could assume that they're all true. We could assume that they're all false, or we could assume that none of them are reliable enough to take into consideration.

The fact that no miracles have been recorded since the invention of modern recording devices points directly to the conclusion that no miracles have ever happened.

If we can't determine which prophet speaks the truth by their supposed actions we can at least measure which ones speak falsely by their words. It's reasonable to assume that any prophet who speaks with the authority of the creator of the universe wouldn't make any faulty statements about the nature of the universe. Unfortunately, every religion makes shamefully amateur inaccurate statements about the scientific nature of the universe.

Another fact that should raise suspicion about the authenticity of a prophet is if his/her moral codes can be directly tied to the moral standards of the society that produced the prophet. Again, this is something every prophet in history is guilty of.

Another major warning sign that prophets aren't reliable spokesmen for the creator of the universe is if a prophet's teachings result in him/her fulfilling base, human desires for things such as money, power and/or prestige. Again, every prophet in history has reaped these convenient rewards from their ministry. Sure, some of them died penniless, but to a megalomaniac that's a small price to pay to be worshiped for centuries.

Here's what it boils down to. In the universe we live in, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. The simplest, most elegant, most reliable explanation of every religion men have written books about is that...they were written by men...just men...relating their limited understanding of the universe and their personal and cultural biases while hiding their ignorance and their selfish motives behind terroristic threats and unaccountable promises.

Having said that, if trusting other people's statements about God is unreliable we can still rely on our intuition. However, there are several problems with feeling "led" to the one true religion.

The most obvious problem with this approach is that people have felt led to believe in every opposing religion. So how can you be sure that everyone else was led by a deceiving force and you were led by a reliable force? You can't.

The simplest, most elegant, most reliable explanation for why God abandoned everyone but you is that your emotions were the force that led you to your beliefs, not God. If you look at yourself introspectively and honestly enough you'll find familiarity, anger, fear, anxiety, hope and a selfish desire for security led you to your decision to pick one religion over the others. Familiarity, anger, fear, anxiety, and hope aren't good reasons to pick a vacuum cleaner much less a scientific explanation of the physical universe and a moral code that will control your entire life.

Still though, you might stand firm in the belief that you felt something so real and powerful that it couldn't be anything other than the power of God at work in your life. To that I would reply that Friedrich Nietzsche put it best when he said, "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." You can also compare feeling led to your religion to the single-minded irrationality of the first time you were in love. The first time you had a junior high crush didn't you believe with all your heart that you felt something so strong it had to be the most real thing in the world? Our minds are designed to latch onto ideas that make us feel good in the moment despite the reality of the situation. For all these reasons, intuition doesn't qualify as valid evidence for anything other than our ability to delude ourselves.

The only logical way to make any assumptions about the nature or intentions of God is to draw conclusions from the physical evidence, which is to say, the physical universe.

Here are a few things we know about the universe (aka the watch): There's no physical evidence of divine intervention in the form of rewards, punishment, protection or favors. There's no physical evidence of magic or other nonphysical powers. There's no physical evidence of angels or demons (by any other name). There's no physical evidence of God speaking through prophets, and if there is a God, it doesn't reveal itself in any way that's recognizable, which we assume it could do if it chose to.

Here are a few more things we know: The universe operates according to cause and effect. The universe is designed mathematically. Human beings possess the capacity for logic. The circle of life is that all living things are born, grow and die.

All of these facts point to the conclusion that God has left us to stand or fall on our own. From one point of view this makes God seem callous and uncaring, but from another point of view it makes sense.

Before I explain why that is, I need to start with this observation: An all-powerful being doesn't need humans for anything. We can't do anything for it that it couldn't itself...except be ungrateful. So it's unlikely that God created us for its own benefit. So who would benefit from our existence? To answer this question, ask yourself what would change in the universe if all life disappeared all of a sudden? Nothing. The universe would go on spinning without noticing a difference. Our disappearance would have no effect on the final fate of the universe. So if we don't serve any purpose outside of ourselves in the physical universe then why do we exist? If the only thing our existence benefits is us then we must have been created for our own sake.

God (might have) created us for our sake. Great. If God cared about us to go through all the trouble of creating us then why didn't God create us in a universe with no pain or sadness? You could also word that sentence this way: "Why is God such a dick?"

God gets a lot of criticism from people who want their asses wiped for them, but what happens when human adults coddle their children? Their children grow up weak and can't survive on their own much less grow up to fulfill their full potential. The freedom to make your own choices gives meaning to your success, but it also carries the burden of suffering the consequences of your choices.

Let me make this absolutely clear: Bad things happen to good people because shit happens and nobody is going to wipe your ass for you. This doesn't necessarily mean God is spiteful or indifferent. If God exists and is sentient it probably loves us. After all, it went through the trouble of creating and sustaining us. God just loves us enough to let us grow up on our own. If we view life from this perspective there's no need for God to reward or punish us for our choices. Our success in life is its own reward, and our failure is its own punishment.

This raises the question, what are we supposed to do now that we're here? What constitutes success and failure in life? Well, let's look back at the watch and see if we can use it to reverse engineer an answer to the question, "What use is this piece of junk?"

What does any life form do? All life is born, grows and dies. We don't have any control over when we're born. There are limits on how much control we have over when we die. Between those two points, the question of life is, "To grow or not to grow." The only difference between plants and humans is that humans have the added burden/blessing of growing their minds as well as their bodies.

Think about it, don't human parents love their children and want them to grow up and live a successful life? Yes. Would a good parent kill their child for doing poorly at life? No. Would a good parent torture their child or allow their child to be tortured for doing poorly at life if the parent could prevent it? No. Life is about growing up. It's not about being judged and punished.

Now, you're never going to be able to grow to your potential as an individual unless you accurately understand reality. That means figuring out truth...for yourself. Look at the universe. It was designed by a stoic mathematician who gave you a mind capable of critical thinking. If you want to walk the path of God then do what you were designed to do and think for yourself.

Here's something else to think about. If God is truth then wouldn't anyone who speaks objective truth arrived at through logical thought be speaking with the authority of God? If so then that would also mean that anyone who opposes critical thinking and thus opposes truth opposes God. It could be so, but don't get carried away with this and assume I'm saying that anyone who took Intro to Logic should walk around congratulating themselves as a saint and a prophet. From a scientific point of view, we can't know when we're speaking truth. Einstein put it best when he said, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right. A single experiment can prove me wrong." We can never be sure we know the truth about anything, but we can be sure we're wrong when sufficient evidence is presented. So even if we speak the truth we would be fools to claim to speak with the authority of God.

But that doesn't mean we should just give up and shit in our hands. You can do something. You can learn something. You can figure something out. That means you should try, because trying to arrive at truth translates into trying to live. The more truth you understand the more you'll grow. The more you grow the more truth you can understand.

So if there is a God then you should seek to understand the universe. You should seek to understand yourself. You should seek to understand what you can become and then seek to become that. Do those things and not only will you live a quality and meaningful life but you'll fulfill the purpose for which the universe (might have) gave birth to you. Aside from that, help others to do the same, and don't hinder anyone from fulfilling their potential. Aside from that, exercise your free will to choose how you want to enjoy life without worrying about the haphazard moral standards of any archaic, brutal, tribal, warring theocracies that heaped untold wealth, power and prestige on their scientifically ignorant leaders.
SHOULD REASON BE RECOGNIZED AS A LEGAL RELIGION?

Religion is defined as:

"1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing amoral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions."

Reason is defined as:

"1. a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.: the reason for declaring war.

2. a statement presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action.

a basis or cause, as for some belief, action, fact, event, etc.: the reason for declaring war.

3. the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences."

People who claim to hold Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist beliefs enjoy special privileges under the law. They can demand special treatment at work to accommodate their beliefs. They can refuse to partake in activities that conflict with their beliefs. They can demand that other people alter and censor their behavior in their presence so as not to offend their religion. The military hires chaplains to provide ethical and emotional guidance to believers and provides deceased soldiers with free tombstones in the shape of religious symbols. Religious organizations can still operate tax free and pay their board of directors as much as they want.

Getting a religion legally recognized is a serious thing. The freedoms and advantages it gives to organizations and individuals effectively puts them in a higher class of citizenship than those who can't claim a legal religion on a human resource form. This leaves atheists and agnostics at a disadvantage in society. To a small but significant degree, atheists and agnostics are literally second class citizens to Christians, Muslims, Jews, Mormons and Hindus since they don't have a religion. Yet if you look at the definition of "religion" you'll see that most atheists and agnostics do practice a set of beliefs and customs that are very compatible with that definition; those shared beliefs and customs are very compatible with the definition of the word "reason."

Scientists have used the scientific method to construct a far more elaborate and reliable explanation of the universe than any religious prophet. The scientific creation story has been printed in countless books that are sold in the nonfiction section of book stores. Granted, we don't know exactly how it all started, but we know more about the big bang than we know about Jesus. The point is that anyone who adheres to a scientific understanding of the universe holds beliefs on par with religion. Why should atheists and agnostics be punished for believing in an explanation of the universe that has independently verifiable evidence to back it up?

Every religious organization has rituals, rites and customs that define them as a unique and identifiable culture. So do scientists. Scientists follow the scientific method so methodically that scientists can work with other scientists from other cultures and different linguistic backgrounds and still manage to collaborate on solving extremely complex problems thanks to their shared understanding of scientific customs and courtesies. Science students and entry level professional scientists get crash courses on using the scientific method to ensure conformity of behavior. As a bonus, they conform in a logical, objective, self-critical, self-aware way that encourages reasonable dissent. Either way, they have uniquely identifiable behavior patterns that fit the legal definition of religious organization.

Reasonable people have strict ethical codes written in snippets and in collections of books that aren't based on religion yet are followed religiously. Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie if you haven't. That's a book of ethics based on reasoning. Dale Carnegie lived by those ethics, and millions of others have followed his example. Every major scientific organization in the world has a handbook that includes a section on ethical guidelines. They even share the common language of mathematics, which some have even referred to as "the language of nature" and "the language of God."

The members of scientific organizations go to great lengths to incorporate consistent ethical values into their lives. Those organizations themselves will fire members who don't live up to their organizational bylaws. So people live, prosper, suffer and die by reason-based ethical codes written in books that are endorsed by major economic and political organizations.

According to the legal definitions of the terms "religion" and "reason" it stands that reason and/or science should be recognized as an official religion for the purpose of honoring the rights, privileges and freedoms due to practitioners of those beliefs and behaviors as set by the precedent of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. If you think this is nit-picking and anal and not that big of a deal then you should have no problem letting this insignificant little issue get passed into law. Or maybe we should just stop pampering people because they believe in fairy tales and let everybody be equal under the eyes of the law.
WHY I DON'T LIKE STRIP CLUBS

It's not that I have a moral objection to strip clubs. I firmly believe that most of our morals against all things sexual are archaic and illogical. I certainly don't believe that women's chests are inherently evil and thus strip clubs are immoral because you can see women's evil chests there.

I don't believe strip clubs degrade women and treat them like meat either...at least, not any more than any other servile customer service job does. It's ironic that religion tells us it's immoral to prostrate our bodies but it's necessary to prostrate our minds. From that point of view, church is more demeaning than the sleaziest whore house.

When you look at strippers objectively, they're professionals working in a customer service role where consenting adults exercise their right to free will in a safe environment to fill a demand and make lots and lots of money. So that's not why I hate going to strip clubs.

Here's why. Here's what happens when you go to a strip club. You pay an unreasonable amount of money to get in the door even though you could see naked woman for free on the internet. You could also spend less money buying a girl at a bar drinks and taking her home. Granted, at a strip club you get to watch a bunch of girls dance around naked without having to spend half the night pretending to be more confident, successful, or interested in the girl you're talking to than you really are, but at a strip club you can't touch the girls.

It reminds me of one time when I was 5 or 6 years old and my dad promised me and my brothers that if we cleaned our rooms he would take us to Toys R Us, a gigantic American toy store. So we cleaned our rooms like never before, and the next day our dad took us to Toys R Us like he promised. We all picked out one toy we wanted, and when we brought them to our dad he looked at us like we were stupid and said, "I told you I'd take you to Toys R Us. I didn't say I'd buy you anything." That hurt. That's the feeling I get from strip clubs.

Even what little you can touch the girls you're still not going to achieve...satisfaction. You're just going to get all pent up and frustrated. It's like going to a car show and getting all excited about the amazing cars there even though you're not going to get to drive any. Why torture yourself like that?

To add insult to injury, the girls there don't even like you. In all likelihood they despise you. Even if you're not a fat, greasy, disgusting bastard they assume you're there because you're too lame to get a real girlfriend, but they pretend to like you, which makes them liars. If I called you up and said, "Hey, wanna go hang out with a bunch of liars tonight?" You'd tell me to fuck off.

Even if you don't want to throw your money away sticking it in resentful lying girls' panties you can always just sit there and watch. What better scenery to watch while drinking overpriced beers and chatting with your bros than a bunch of augmented titties?

Wait a minute. You can't just sit there and watch. Whether you want to touch these girls or not they're going to ask you if you want to buy a lap dance. Then, when you tell them you don't want to give them all your money they're going to scowl at you and make you feel bad about it like you're a scrooge with some fucked up sexual issues. Why would you pay someone to let you into a room full of people who are going to make you feel guilty for not doing something you don't want to do?

So basically, when you ask me if I want to go to a strip club you're really asking me to pay a shit load of money to get sexually frustrated by a bunch of resentful liars who look down on me and won't hesitate to make me feel guilty if I don't give them what they want.

Why don't I just go in the bathroom and flush my money down the toilet while punching myself in the balls and shouting self-deprecating remarks at myself in the mirror. At least then I won't have to leave the house. That's why I don't like going to strip clubs.
CHAPTER 6

MYTHOLOGY

3 SIGNS CHRISTIANITY IS MYTHOLOGY

Mythology is defined: "a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature."

1. The Bible is objectively inaccurate. There are hundreds of scientifically inaccurate statements and events in the Bible. The story of creation in Genesis contradicts science. The universe is not 6000 years old, and there was never a magic garden guarded by a flaming sword. Samson's magical hair didn't give him the strength to kill hundreds of people with the jawbone of a donkey. Jonah didn't survive in the belly of a whale for 3 days. There have never been pillars of fire, parting oceans, water turning to blood, donkeys that talk, snakes that talk, magic apples, burning bushes, zombies or evil spirits. And prayer doesn't work.

Some of these obviously mythological events can be written off as misinterpretations, metaphors or Yahweh working in mysterious ways, but the fact that fictitious events happen all the way through the Bible lends credence to the idea that the Bible on a whole is mythology. If you don't believe this then ask yourself how absurd the Bible would have to be before you would agree that it's a myth? If Yahweh literally had sex with Mary, would that smack of mythology to you? If the Bible said Yahweh invented rainbows the day after Jesus died, would that smack of mythology to you? If the Bible said a man lived in the belly of a talking donkey for forty days would that smack of mythology to you? If the Bible said Jesus had a stand-off with another religion to see who could call down fire on the other on their opponent to prove who worshiped the one true god, would that smack of mythology to you?

Christians point to human sacrifices, talking animals, magic and scientifically inaccurate statements in other "religions" to prove they're mythologies. Yet when Christianity does the exact same thing they turn a blind eye. That's called denial. By Christians' own standards, Christianity is mythology.

2. Yahweh is the personification of the ancient Jew's primitive values. Notice that Yahweh is a "He" just like the ruling class of the Jewish theocracy. Does Yahweh really have a penis or did the people who created Yahweh in their image have penises? Did Yahweh really have swords in the Garden of Eden before the Bronze Age or did the people who invented Yahweh have swords before they invented Yahweh?

Aside from what Yahweh was, study what Yahweh commanded. Does Yahweh really want us to kill disobedient children, own slaves, buy and sell wives or stone people for having sex outside of the traditional Jewish mating rituals? Does the creator and sustainer of the universe really see premature ejaculation or wet dreams as punishable offenses or does that sound like something people from a primitive culture would say?

Think about it. Who wrote the Old Testament? It was written by people who believed that women were inherently unclean when they were on their period and couldn't be touched. It was written by people who wanted an excuse to take the best land in the region from the natives who already lived there. It was written by people who believed in magic, demons, curses and even other gods. It wasn't a typo that the Ten Commandments says, "Though shalt have no other Gods before me." and "I am a jealous God." Yahweh didn't say to worship him because he's the only God. He said to worship him because he's jealous. Why does the creator of the universe want his followers to cut off the foreskins he gave them or grow their sideburns? It doesn't make any sense. It's almost seems like Yahweh is some kind of ancient tribal leader. It almost seems like that because he was made up by ancient tribal leaders just like all the rest of the Gods our ancestors worshiped.

The Bible proves itself to be a projection of the writer's pre-existing values again in the New Testament. Yahweh didn't change his nature or his mind between the time of Abraham and Jesus. The Jewish culture evolved naturally over thousands of years until its nomadic, barbaric origins were incompatible with its new urban, culturally diverse values. Unsurprisingly, a new hero appeared at that time and said Yahweh's nature had changed to reflect the Jewish people's new hopes and dreams for salvation from the Romans. And that hero was unsurprisingly born of a virgin on a day of astrological significance who went on to die and rise from the dead after three days...a common pattern in textbook mythology. And even though Jesus changed a lot of rules, he still approved of slavery. That's not because the creator of the universe approves of slavery. That's because the human beings who wrote the Bible approved of slavery.

3. Follow the blood trail to the truth. The story of Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross to save the world is an emotionally moving story, and, from a limited perspective, it makes emotional sense even if it doesn't make any scientific sense. The message it tells us is that it's okay if we don't understand perfectly why we're here or what happens if we fail to live up to our potential. All of our fears and failures are moot because Yahweh loves us and has paved a way for all of us to survive death and spend eternity in paradise. Honestly, that's beautiful, and if there really isn't an afterlife (which all the physical evidence suggests) what does it matter if we go through our lives believing in a beautiful story that gives us hope and a sense of certainty?

Let's back up a few thousand years and look at the rest of the story. The creation story in Genesis ends with one man and one woman (with zero bellybuttons) walking and talking with Yahweh in a magic garden where they're tricked by a talking snake into eating a magic apple that Yahweh put in front of them and told them not to eat. Then, when the man and woman fell for Yahweh and Satan's two-man-con, Yahweh threw them out of the garden and left a magical flying, flaming sword to keep them from coming back into the garden. Plus, as an added insult to women, (and in classic misogynist mythology style) caused women to feel pain in childbirth as punishment for being duped by Satan.

Now here's where things get strange. As the years passed, Yahweh gave the "unclean," incestual descendants of Adam and Eve more and more absurd rules to follow, like not working on Saturday, and if anyone broke those rules, they had to go to a massive temple that the Jews literally believed Yahweh lived in and kill an animal (which they could conveniently buy from the priest class for an extortionary fee). Maybe they burnt the animals. Maybe they soaked the altar in the animal's blood. Either way, the only thing in the world that made Yahweh happy was slaughtering the animals he created. The more rules the Jews broke or the more favor they wanted with Yahweh, the more animals' blood they had to spill.

Now, I challenge every Christian to stand in front of a room full of non-Christians and explain why Yahweh, the creator of the universe, needed blood sacrifices to make him happy. Oh you can do it; there are reasons you can give, but when you say them out loud they sound absolutely retarded. If you believe God needs blood sacrifices then you sound even more retarded if you try to explain how Christianity is more credible than all the other mythologies throughout history that claimed their laughably barbaric "Gods" required blood sacrifices to appease them.

And unfortunately, you can't just say, "Oh, that was in the Old Testament. That doesn't count anymore." That does count. That was the whole point of the New Testament. Yahweh impregnated a woman so she could give birth to a demi-god who would grow up, turn water to booze, approve of slavery and then sacrifice himself to himself to appease himself so people wouldn't have to travel to the stone temple where the creator of the universe lives and make animal sacrifices to atone for the evil God placed in our hearts when Adam's rib-clone ate the magical apple she got from the talking snake.

Honestly...L. Ron Hubbard wasn't creative enough to come up with a mythology that absurd. How much more insane would this story have to be before you said, "Oh, well that's obviously mythology."?
PROPHETS AND COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Consider everyone throughout history and around the world who have claimed to be prophets but weren't/aren't accepted by traditional Christians: Joseph Smith of the Latter-Day Saints, Muhammad of Islam, the Dali Lama of Buddhism, L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, etc., etc., etc.

Why do Christians discredit these false prophets? Is it just because they weren't mentioned in the Bible? Yes and no. "Yes" because if they had been mentioned in the Bible then Christians would believe in them. "No" because they all fail the test of reason. Christians understand that common sense tells you their stories were fabricated.

Their stories are so transparent that it only takes a semi-conscious half moment of thought to size them up and dismiss them for the fantasies they are. But let's take a look at them again anyway. Consider what all the false prophets have in common. They each made outrageous claims about being specifically chosen by God to deliver a special message from God to humans (which conveniently always resulted in the prophet receiving copious amounts of adoration, and/or power, wealth, and sex). Furthermore, most of them claim to have been literally visited by magical beings, witnessed magical events and were usually given some sort of magical power.

In short, all the prophets' stories are scientifically impossible based on what we know about how the universe operates. It's obvious God didn't give Joseph Smith magical golden plates. It's obvious an angel riding a flying horse didn't reveal Himself to Muhammad. It's obvious the Dali Lama wasn't reincarnated. It's obvious L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer desperate for a pay check who wrote the most profitable fantasy story he could think of. Why is it obvious? Because God told us? No. Atheist and Christians alike all over the world have figured out that those stories are bullshit because we put them to the test of reason and evidence, and when we did that it took us about two seconds to find those stories lacking.

We know these things to be true, and yet when Christians look at their own religion they don't practice what they preach. Take the apostle, Paul for example. Paul saw God on a journey from one place to another just like Muhammad. Afterwards magical scales formed on his eyes until he made it to the end of his journey where they were miraculously removed. Afterwards he was imbued with the authority of God, and angels helped him along his way. God even caused an earthquake to get him out of prison.

The double standard is obvious. Paul's story is full of magical events that are impossible. Not only that, but his message is full of the same kind of culturally relative social standards that betray the humanity of other false prophets. God may be unknowable, but common sense tells us that the creator of the universe would never command us to kill the infidels any more than he would tell us that women aren't allowed to speak in church or wear jewelry.

The case becomes even worse when we apply Christian standards of prophet-judgment to Jesus. Think about it. We can't prove that anything Jesus did actually happened. We can't even prove Jesus actually existed. Based on what we know about how the universe operates we know that all the magical events that supposedly happened to and around Jesus couldn't have happened, and even though there was some wisdom in the words attributed to Jesus he also promoted a lot of culturally relative social standards as well. What if Muhammad approved of slavery? Wouldn't that betray the fact that he doesn't speak for God? Well, Jesus approved of slavery. What if Muhammad started out his career as a prophet advocating racism and then halfway through his career said, "Wait a minute. Maybe racism is stupid." Would anyone believe that God's only prophet would be so daft? Well, that's what Jesus did with the gentiles.

Even if you have faith in Paul and Jesus, you have to admit that believing in their stories doesn't just require having passive faith that improvable events happened but requires you to actively believe in events that contradict reason and evidence. Not only that, but in order to believe those implausible stories and nobody else's you have to exercise and even celebrate cognitive dissonance. To put it bluntly, you have to be an ignorant, close minded hypocrite. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Again, I don't say this because I want to bash Christians. I want to point out that the Bible obviously isn't the word of God so you can stop worrying about it. Do something enjoyable and productive with your life instead of prostrating yourself before the contradictory and oppressive dogma of a couple of manipulative megalomaniacs from a foreign culture who have been dead and gone for thousands of years.
16 REASONS I'M EXTREMELY HESITANT TO DEBATE CHRISTIANS

1. Christians are close minded. This sounds insulting at first, but hear me out. Christianity demands its believers have faith. To have faith is to believe in your preconceived conclusion no matter what. If you're inclined to defend your preconceived conclusion despite logic or empirical evidence, that's being a closed minded bigot. Faith is closed minded. This means a good Christian isn't supposed to consider my divergent (aka heretical or blasphemous) points of view.

So when a Christian tries to debate me I have to be suspicious as to whether or not they're really trying to have an open minded debate with me or simply trying to blindly argue against my position. In my experience, the Christians I have "debated" never had any intention of considering my point of view. They just wanted to tear me down so they could feel secure in their dogma and hopefully get me to buy into their sect. I'm not saying I won't debate Christians. I'm just saying they owe me an apology upfront if they're going to try to pass off their close minded, dogmatic preaching as a two-way debate.

2. Christians don't play by the rules of logic.  The sane way to think is to analyze the facts in front of you and try to find meaningful and consistent connections in the data to draw consistently reproducible conclusion from. Then, once you've come to a conclusion you should be eager to test your conclusion against new evidence to see if it still holds up. If it doesn't, you should update your conclusion until new evidence disproves that conclusion in part or in whole. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. If both members of a debate do that then two people can start with opposing conclusions, analyze the data and agree on a reasonably objective conclusion.

Christians start from the assumption that the Bible is fact and look for evidence to support that conclusion. There's no point having a debate with someone who doesn't question their own data or objectively analyze their "opponent's" data. It's even more pointless to argue with someone who reverse engineers fantasy data to negate actual, empirical data.

Creationism is full of examples of reverse engineered fantasy data. You can't win a debate with a creationist because your hands are tied with reason and evidence while creationists have free reign to make up unverifiable data on the fly. They can even use data that is objectively, empirically invalid, and they all they have to say to back it up is, "No. You're wrong." whereas a scientific thinker will have to use the scientific method to prove they're right. But I don't have the time or resources to explain the age of the earth in a 10 minute conversation and be able to back up all my statements. A Christian can back up everything they say by pointing to the Bible. So it's going to look like I lost the argument, even though in reality...the earth isn't 6000 years old.

Cooking evidence to support your preconceived conclusion gives you a powerful advantage in an argument. Since you're not bound by the rules of logic you can say anything you want, twist anything how you want it and makes excuses to dismiss actual logic or evidence. After having a number of Christians use this style of "debate" against me I've become extremely hesitant to debate Christians because it's unfair, unproductive, immoral and insulting.

3. The Bible is true because it says so. How do Christians know the Bible is true? Because the Bible says so (or at least it implies it). You can't argue with that. It's logic proof. It's sanity proof. There's no point arguing with someone who can always prove that they're right by pointing at a piece of paper that says they're right. So why argue at all when I've lost the argument before I've even started?

4. Every Christian is an expert. Every non-Christian needs to study more. It doesn't matter how long I was a Christian, how many times I read the Bible, how many books I've read about the Bible and ancient Middle Eastern culture or how logical my observations on the Bible are. Nor does it matter how little any given Christian understands the Bible. In my experience with debating Christians it doesn't matter what I say or how much supporting evidence I give because they tend to dismiss it all by saying, "You don't understand the Bible. You need to study it more." They don't even need to actually go on to give supporting evidence disproving my observation or prove that their interpretation of the Bible has any academic merit. The fact that they said I don't understand the Bible is enough to discount everything I've said. And I can't say, "Maybe you don't understand the Bible." because they can, have (and I assume, will) just keep saying, "No. You don't understand it. Study it more and pray about it and you'll get it." But to them I'll never understand it until I come to their preconceived conclusion. So why debate a Christian in the first place if everything I say will be arrogantly dismissed as ignorant by someone who probably knows less about the Bible than I do?

5. Non-Christians take every passage out of context. No matter what passage you pick out of the Bible to criticize, Christians tend to dismiss you by saying, "You're taking that passage out of context." It doesn't matter how qualified the Christian is to interpret that passage. It doesn't matter how many passages before and after the verse in question you include in the argument. It doesn't matter how cut and dry the message in the passage is. It doesn't matter if the Bible itself contradicts that/those passages. Experience has taught me that if I debate passages in the Bible with a Christian there's a good chance (almost a certainty) that they're going to tell me I took it out of context, and there's no argument I can use to prove to them that my stance has any validity because they dogmatically assume they understand the Bible better than I ever will.

6. The Bible contradicts itself. Whenever I try to point out to Christians how absurd the Bible is they'll "prove" that I don't understand the passages in question and am taking them out of context by quoting other passages that contradict the passages in question. Then they'll say, "See. You're wrong. The Bible doesn't glorify killing people. It really says to love everyone. The Bible really says that sex isn't evil. The Bible really says women don't have to be subservient. The Bible really says you don't have to give money to the church. The Bible really says slavery is bad." The fact that the Bible contradicts itself doesn't make it right. That makes it worse and a waste of time to try to debate.

7. The Old Testament is obsolete...except when it's the word of God. If you quote an illogical or absurd passage from the Old Testament there's a good chance the Christian you're talking to will wipe away thousands of years of their own religious history and thousands of pages of their religious book by saying that the Old Testament doesn't count. The most common reason I've seen Christians give for discounting the Old Testament is that Jesus made it obsolete. Therefore, non-Christians can't introduce any passage from the Old Testament into an argument.

And don't try quoting this passage to argue that Jesus didn't make the Old Testament obsolete: ""Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." If you tell a Christian that this passage means that Jesus didn't intend to abolish the Law or Prophets, then there's a good chance the Christian will tell you that you don't understand the Bible and you need to study it and pray about it more because you're taking that passage out of context. However, if a Christian ever needs to quote a passage from the Old Testament to prove a point then any passage they choose will automatically become the unerring and eternal word of God and would be blasphemous to question. I'm not saying every Christian does this. I'm just saying that if you argue with enough Christians you'll come across this argument sooner rather than later. When it does come up you can just stop talking because there's no point playing a rigged game.

8. The Bible is the word of God...except when it's not. Christians tend to use another, similar technique on the Old and New Testament alike. If they like a passage in the Bible they'll simply say it's the unerring and eternal word of God and that it's blasphemous to question it. However, any passages they don't like they'll dismiss by saying that humans acted as God's pen to write the Bible, but they were only human. So you have to take that into consideration and use prayer, reason and common sense to determine which parts you have to listen to. I've had several Christians tell me that the Bible never even hinted that it was unerring or that you have to have complete faith in it. It's extremely frustrating to argue with someone who can constantly pick and choose which of the statements made in their premise are open to argument. It's enough to make me extremely hesitant to debate Christians.

9. Everything is a metaphor...when it's convenient. Try telling a Christian that you can't live in the belly of a whale for 3 days. Long hair doesn't give you magical powers. There was never a talking snake in a magic garden passing out magic apples to mammals with no belly buttons. Nobody saw God and Satan taking juvenile bets on Job's faith. Donkeys don't talk. The world wasn't flooded, and 2 of every animal didn't fit on one boat for 40 days." Christians tend to sidestep these absurdities by saying, "That wasn't meant to be taken literally. That was a metaphor." But if they want to take any of those (or any other passage from the Bible) literally then they get to do that, and you can't prove that they're wrong. You can't argue with someone who can dismiss any of their own premises as a metaphor.

And another thing, if everything in the damned Bible is a metaphor, then maybe the story of Jesus was just a metaphor too.

10. Christianity is a moving target. Every point I've made about how Christians argue is wrong, and every criticism I have about Christianity is wrong...to someone. That's because the Bible never explicitly states what Christianity is, and no two Christians will agree 100% on every aspect of Christianity. I can't say, "This belief of Christianity is illogical and absurd." because some Christian out there will say, "That's not what true Christians believe." If I say, "A lot of Christians believe it." They can say, "Well, they're not true Christians."

Well, every Christian says that some Christian isn't a true Christian because there are no true Christians. There's just a bunch of people projecting their own cultural values into a foreign, obsolete book they'll never understand. When you go into a debate with a Christian you have no idea how they define Christianity. So you have no idea what they'll claim or dismiss. It doesn't matter how accepted the beliefs you're arguing against are, if you say Christianity is anything other than exactly what they believe it is then they will shoot you down for not understanding what Christianity really is. So fighting Christianity is like fighting a shape shifting ghost with multiple personality disorders that is in denial.

11. If all else fails, you're going to hell. If you're a non-Christian it doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are about textual or historical context in the Bible. Your point of view is invalidated by one simple fact: you're going to hell. The fact that you're trying to convince Christians that the Bible isn't the word or path to God means you're a servant of the darkness. If you're stupid and corrupt enough to be blinded by the devil then why should a Christian listen to you? By Biblical standards, they shouldn't. They should have faith and put Satan behind them.

If you always have a logic stopping argument up your sleeve just in case all else fails then why should I bother arguing your absurd beliefs into a corner just to wait for you to pull that card...which I knew you were going to do all along.

12. Faith and reason are apples and oranges. Back a Christian into a corner with enough facts and logic and they'll eventually resort to side stepping reality by saying that faith/religion fills a void that logic/science can't. The idea is that logic and science can only take you so far in understanding this giant, bizarre universe we've all found ourselves stranded in; and when those tools fail, faith/religion pick up the trail and fill in the gaps.

On its own, this argument sounds nice. It ties up the universe in a pretty package with a nice bow on top. In reality this argument is meaningless. Remember that religion is merely an expression of a primitive society's cultural values. So faith in religion is not a transcendental experience. It's just refusing to think about what you've been told. That's just dumb. Choosing faith over logic is ultimately just choosing ignorance over awareness. So yes, faith and logic are separate languages, but faith is the language of insanity, and logic is the language of sanity. Since I don't have the psychiatric training to communicate effectively with people who demonize sanity, I find it very hard to debate Christians about the difference between their caveman delusions and scientific reality.

13. What would we argue about anyway?  Christianity is mythology, and every single page of the Bible contains evidence to support this conclusion. Debating individual passages in the Bible is like debating individual passages in Mein Kampf. Even Hitler was right about a few things. That doesn't mean I'm joining the Third Reich. (Fun fact, do you know what the First Reich was? The Holy Roman Empire.) The only debate I could possibly have with a Christian would be me trying to convince them that they've accidentally based their life on an embarrassing mythology while my Christian opponent would try to convince me to ignore all the glaring evidence in the Bible that reveals it as a primitive culture's mythology. Well, I'm not going to abandon reason, and Christians aren't going to abandon their faith over the course of a debate. So we really don't have much to discuss anyway.

14. Why would I argue about something you don't believe in anyway? As pointed out in reason #10, every self-proclaimed Christian believes Christianity is something different. But if we can't agree on anything else about Christianity I have to assume that being a Christian means being Christ-like. Being a Christian means asking yourself, "What would Jesus do?" and then actually doing what Jesus would do. This raises the question, what did Jesus do? Jesus gave away everything he owned and devoted his life to helping people in need and publicly advocating forgiveness, acceptance and love. By that definition I've never met a single Christian in my entire life. Not even close.

All the Christians I've met make up for their lack of "walking the walk" by talking louder and meaner. If you're not going to walk the walk then I don't want to hear you talk the talk. Don't you dare tell me I need to devote my life to a cause you won't even devote yours too. Even without living like Christ, Christians don't even believe in the Bible. As pointed out in reason #10, before I can have a discussion with a Christian I have to establish all the passages you've dismissed as being metaphors or obsolete until the only teachings in the Bible left for you to follow are the ones that coincide with your modern cultural values, and we already share most of those. Don't tell me to take a step backwards when you're already an apostate yourself.

15. When all else fails they just shout. If you read enough arguments between Christians and non-believers on the internet you'll see Christians who, unable to make a logical argument, will just type something like, "JESUS IS LORD!" as if it were fact. Shouting that your conclusion is right and walking away doesn't prove you're right. It's not even good witnessing. What it does do is make you look like a lunatic and underscore the fact that you have no real argument to make. If that's all you have to offer then there's no point in me talking to you or letting you leave your embarrassingly nonsensical comments on my blog.

16.... or they'll accuse you of being judgmental. Christian doctrine states that if you don't believe in mythology then that makes you so evil that you deserve to be tortured for eternity. But don't worry. You won't be tortured by an all-loving creator for eternity for not believing in mythology...because mythology isn't real.

In fact, if you do believe in Christian mythology it will drive you insane, make you an immoral person and ruin society. Those are strong words, but they're true. Christian mythology is crippling humanity. I don't say this to be mean. I say it because I value humanity, and I want every single human to fulfill their potential, but humanity can't fulfill its potential as long as it's being crippled by Christian mythology.

I didn't write this post to be a smug, condescending, judgmental jerk who enjoys tearing down other people just to see them hurt. I'm not that guy. I hate the insanity that Christian mythology plagues humanity with, but I don't hate the Christian who has been brainwashed and driven insane by it. Criticizing the obvious flaws in Christian mythology is like pointing out the broccoli in a friend's teeth. It's constructive criticism. To say it's doing Christians a favor is an understatement. I'm trying to save Christians from wasting their lives and bringing the rest of humanity down with them.

But since Christian mythology exploits brainwashing techniques that shut down your ability to reason, when I try to tell my fellow human beings the truth and set them free (and I don't let them get away with using any of the illogical defense mechanisms listed in this post) then as a last-last-last-last resort, sometimes Christians will try to change the subject away from the fact that Christianity is blatantly mythology that does more harm than it does good by saying that I'm being judgmental and I think I'm better than everyone else and I should just let people have the right to believe what they want to believe. They'll say this completely ignoring the fact that the premise of their entire belief system says that I'm such a terrible person that I deserve to burn for eternity just for not believing in zombies, and every Christian is obligated to cram that belief down my throat for the rest of my life.

Really? I should stop pointing out the obvious because it's judgmental? No. You should stop believing in mythology. You should stop trying to cram mythology down other human beings throats, and you should certainly stop forcing your illogical, primitive morals into civil law.

I want to be patient and respectful towards Christians. I want to have reasonable conversations with them, but they make it very difficult for all the reasons stated here. For these reasons (and counting), I'm extremely hesitant to debate Christians.
CHRISTIANS, YOU BELIEVE IN SCIENCE

New rule. Christians aren't allowed to dismiss scientific evidence as here-say using the excuse "Science is just theories." The reason you can't use that excuse anymore is because you believe in science. You put your faith in science every moment of every day, and you sleep more securely at night because of the faith you have in science than because of your belief in the Bible.

You have faith that water will freeze when its temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. You have faith that when you send an electric charge through a tube of halogen gas it'll release light. You put your faith in science in action every time you take a drink of pasteurized milk. You don't ask God what the five day weather forecast is going to be. You ask a meteorologist.

The words you're reading were typed on the Internet. The human race used everything it knew about the fundamental properties of electricity, light, atoms, gravity, physics and problem solving to create a machine that is literally wrapped around the entire globe directing rivers of beaming information packets that exist and yet don't exist. Somewhere out there right now a video of a monkey eating its own poop flying across the Atlantic ocean, and yet you can't see it unless you're looking through a computer monitor that's connected to a primitive electronic brain that can interpret and display the coded info ghosts flying through the room. And you have faith that if you go to YouTube and do a search for "monkey eating poop" you're going to get what you prayed for.

Human beings have used science to send human beings to the moon and remote controlled robots to Mars. Physics may be theories, but they're reliable enough to send a rocket from one rotating, orbiting planet to another rotating, orbiting planet and send back pictures. Every astronaut that has gone to space has bet their life on their faith in our understanding of physics, and if you've ever flown in a plane, rode a car or a roller coaster then you've bet your life on your faith in science too.

There is nothing sinister about that. It's a relief. You can sleep well knowing your carbon monoxide/smoke detector will protect your family. You can have faith that chemists and biologists understand the theories behind the periodic table of elements and the human body well enough to design good vitamins and medicines for your body. Every suburban parent has faith that if a child drinks Drano it will die. Most suburban parents probably couldn't even explain the science behind why drinking Drano will kill a person, but they don't need to know all the boring details because they have faith.

It's not fair to put your faith in science 99.9% of the time, but the minute you need a vague, cop-out excuse to cover your ass in an argument you're losing then you make a big deal about how science is all of a sudden evil and unreliable. That's not a valid argument; that's a defense mechanism.

There's no reason to even go there. Science isn't the bad guy. It's not out to get anyone. Science's only agenda is reporting what it's observed. It's just looking at what's happened in the past and saying, "I bet if we did that again the same thing would happen." In some ways science is just stating the obvious. Well, if people standing around pointing out the obvious are constantly disagreeing with you then at some point you should take a step back and consider the possibility that the source of confusion isn't that scientists have a sinister agenda; the source of the confusion might just be that you're wrong.
10 SIGNS YOU SHOULD STOP PRETENDING TO BE CHRISTIAN

1. You're a dick. I don't know how many people I've met and seen who treat other people like dirt and then turn around and claim to be Christians. I've known many self-proclaimed Christians who are consistently hurtful to other people and who seem to take genuine satisfaction from tearing other people down. And I'm not just talking about the extreme Westboro Baptist Church-goers wearing "God Hates Fags" t-shirts. I'm talking about the normal guy in the office next to you. I'm talking about the guy you always knew was a dick head, and then one day you saw him praying before a meal in the break room and you thought, "What the fuck?"

I cannot fathom how one brain can cultivate and contain enough cognitive dissonance to be a complete dick head to everyone around him and still claim to be a Christian. So if you're that guy, and you're reading this, you almost certainly fail to recognize that I'm talking about you. Just know that if Jesus really died for our sins, you will be the first to get thrown in Hell not just for the inexcusable way you treated God's children but also for how irreparably you soiled Jesus's name with your crappy, juvenile behavior.

2. You own expensive luxury items. I've seen Jesus fish car magnets on Hummers, BMWs, Cadillacs, Mercedes and every other luxury automobile I'm too poor to afford. I've heard self-proclaimed Christians brag about how many Gucci purses they own. I've seen pastors wearing suits that cost more than my entire wardrobe. I've watched TV on self-proclaimed Christians' 50 inch plasma screens inside their million dollar upper class houses. I've seen people wearing 24 karat gold "WWJD" jewelry without expressing a hint of irony.

I must have read a different Bible than these people, because in the one I read Jesus was penniless and consistently urged his followers to give up everything they owned so they could devote their lives to helping the poor. Owning expensive luxury items is so opposite of everything Jesus stood for that I can't even really articulate how hypocritical that is other than to just repeat what I just said slower and louder.

Obviously you've found some way to reconcile your hypocrisy in your own head and would be more than happy to use it to shoot down my accusations, but honestly, if you had that argument with Saint Peter at the pearly gates do you think he would be impressed by your mental gymnastics? Dude, you're not getting into Heaven. If you're going to choose the way of the world then just run with it and live it up while you can. Quit wasting your time with pretenses.

3. You spend more time sitting in church than you do working in charity. How many times did Jesus enter a church in the Bible, and what did he do when he was there? Off the top of my head I can only think of 2 times he ever entered a church. The first time he was a child, and he was telling the religious leaders they were fools for putting too much importance on the law and not enough importance on people. He returned to church as an adult and went on a rampage over how profit-centric the church had become.

2000 years later Jesus is still rolling in his grave. Self-proclaimed Christians would say that religion does a lot to help people, and that's great....but what about you? Do you just punch your time card with God every Sunday and then get back to taking care of your own family? Have you ever eaten with a homeless person ever? Did Jesus set up a $50 recurring direct deposit to the Roman equivalent of the Salvation Army and call himself a martyr? No....because that's not good enough. That's borderline pointless, and if that's what you do then it's pointless to call yourself a Christian.

P.S. If you do in fact go out of your way to consistently help people at noticeably expense to your own quality of life, then I'm not talking to you. But let's be honest, you don't go out of your way to consistently help people at noticeable expense to your own quality of life.

4. You habitually indulge in self-gratification. I've actually had multiple religious arguments with self-proclaimed Christians while they were holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And yes, that was in Texas. Their justification: Jesus never said you couldn't smoke. True. Jesus also never said you couldn't buy season tickets to your favorite sports team. Jesus never said you shouldn't watch professional wrestling. Jesus never said you shouldn't eat so much processed food it gives you diabetes. Jesus never said a lot of things, but he did live a distinctly ascetic lifestyle (and not just for 40 days). Do you live a distinctly ascetic lifestyle or do you live more sumptuously than 2/3 of the world's population? If you have to make excuses for your relative decadence, I don't want to hear them because really, the only point in trying to justify yourself to me is to justify your actions to yourself. Tell your bullshit to God. He's the one you're going to have to answer to anyway. But until you see the Lord face to face, you may want to stop telling people that you base your life on the example Jesus set....because you don't, and it's blatantly obvious to everyone but you.

5. You're prejudiced. Not all self-proclaimed Christians are prejudiced, but enough of them are that prejudice and Christianity have become synonymous. Hitler used Christianity to justify the internment of the Jews. The KKK used Christianity to justify enslaving African Americans. The Westboro Baptist Church isn't an isolated anomaly but merely the far extreme of a broad spectrum of intolerance in the name of Jesus.

Having said that, nobody would argue that Jesus was an intolerant, xenophobic racist at the end of his life. You could even argue that blind acceptance of our fellow man was the crux of his message. So if you're in favor of closed borders, segregation and the persecution of sinners and dissidents, find a different group to identify with than Christians because that's just not fair to people who do actually emulate the egalitarian beliefs and behaviors of Jesus.

6. You don't live in an egalitarian commune. To be a Christian is to be Christ-like. This makes being a Christian hard, because from the time Jesus started his ministry he basically lived as a traveling beggar and public speaker until his death. This isn't a lifestyle choice we can make a categorical imperative out of. If everyone in the world sold everything they owned and travelled the world preaching to each other the human race would die off in a generation from lack of productivity. So this is one instance where you really have to disregard Jesus's example a little. This raises the question though, how much should a good Christian tone down Jesus's fanaticism to arrive at a level that's sustainable while still honoring the spirit of Jesus's teachings?

Given that Jesus was penniless and an adamant advocated of asceticism and austerity, I would say that living in a $250,000+ house with a huge entertainment system in the living room, a luxury automobile in the parking lot and a golden safety net in the bank would be the extreme example of how not to be Christ-like. I would argue that Paul was closer to the mark (Acts 4:32-35) in how he lived communally with his Christian brethren, owning nothing and sharing everything equally. I certainly can't find any reason why Jesus would object to egalitarian communal lifestyle. But don't take my word for it. There are millions of monks all over the world who have come to the same conclusion.

7. You're a pedophile. Seriously. If you can't keep your dick in your pants then don't stay in the ministry. You're not doing anyone any good. And don't defend pedophiles in the ministry. Disown them the way they disowned Christ. Nobody will fault you for that. They will fault you for covering up sex crimes and operating sex rings, and that will hurt your entire religion's reputation.

8. You support the military. We all know that Jesus said if your enemy strikes you then you should turn the other cheek. I've also heard it argued that Jesus actually intended to mobilize an armed insurrection against the Romans, which would make sense why they killed him in a way that made an example out of him, but even if Jesus did support military action against the white, western imperialist nation that was building permanent military bases in the Middle East and setting up puppet leaders in the local government, that would still set a precedent that Christians should stand opposed to military aggression, particularly in the Middle East.

Having said that, let's suppose Jesus really meant it when he said to turn the other cheek. Logic tells us that it's impractical, even reckless, to make a categorical imperative out of this rule. A lot of American Christians own guns and believe in their right to defend their house, and it's fine to believe that....as long as you don't call yourself a Christian. You certainly shouldn't call yourself a Christian if you serve in a military that actively invades other countries. If you're actually in the military you probably justify it to yourself by saying that you're fighting for freedom, and that's fine. You can call yourself a hero for that. Just don't call yourself a Christian. Jesus didn't kill for freedom. He allowed himself to be killed. Even if you aren't in the military but still actively support the military and the troops who do the killing, then by all means, call yourself a patriot, but don't call yourself a Christian because you're advocating the opposite of what Jesus advocated.

9. You don't speak Aramaic, Hebrew or at least Latin or Greek or have an intimate knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern history. I'm not saying that just because Jesus spoke Aramaic that you have to speak Aramaic too in order to be Christ-like. What I am saying is that in order to think and act like Jesus you need to understand where Jesus was coming from. The better you speak the language he spoke in, and the more you understand the culture he was raised in, the better you will understand his message. The less you understand these things the less you'll understand his message and thus the less chance you'll have of being able to follow his example. The less you understand the original context of the Bible the more you'll subconsciously project your own context into it. When you do that you end up reading what you want into the Bible, and all your Bible study does is serve as a mirror with which you justify to yourself the modern values of the culture you were raised in.

In other words, don't claim to be a die-hard, card-carrying member of the Shakespeare fan club if the only thing you know about Shakespeare was what you gathered from watching the Leonardo DiCaprio version of "Romeo and Juliet."

10. It's been thousands of years since Jesus died. It's been 2000 years since Jesus supposedly lived. You live a life of luxury and privilege. You barely know anything about Jesus's life and environment. You spend more time making excuses for why you don't live like him than you actually do living like him. And you're an intolerant jerk...or at least effectively apathetic to the suffering of the poor. The only real Christians are Biblical scholars living in monasteries, and they're no use to themselves, God or anyone else. They're living in the past while you're pretending to. Fuck it. Give up the charade. Admit you're not a Christian and take a more reasonable, logical, scientific approach to self-improvement. You can start by reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie and "How to Argue and Win Every Time" by Gerry Spence.
10 WAYS THE BIBLE WILL LITERALLY DRIVE YOU INSANE

The definition of "sanity" is: "having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense."

10. The Bible teaches you that you're a bad person. The Bible teaches you that we're all sinners who deserve to burn in hell, and even our righteousness is like filthy rags to God. Why are we bad people? Because Adam's rib-clone ate a magic apple given to her by a talking snake in the Garden of Evil. Even though Yahweh came to earth as a demigod and sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself so people wouldn't have to slaughter animals on Yahweh's doorstep to anymore, humans are still bad people for sinning.

What is sin, you ask? The Bible doesn't explain sin well at all. So it's hard to figure out exactly what sin is or why it makes us bad people. If you get a degree in theology you might be able to reverse engineer an explanation of sin that doesn't revolve around the Bible being a culturally relative work of mythology, but laymen and children tend to just get the message that they're bad people and should feel a lifetime of crippling guilt and self-loathing that's not based on reality. Chances are that's what's going to happen to you if believe the Bible.

9. It teaches you that you're a good person. The Bible teaches that if you take part in Christianity's indoctrination rituals they will transform you into a higher form of life who deserves eternal peace and joy. The message of eternal salvation contradicts the Bible's teachings on original sin, because even after you're saved you're still a sinner until you die. This contradicting message will tear your minds in two directions creating cognitive dissonance and possibly a bipolar disorder and/or split personality. If nothing else it's a recipe for deep rooted anxiety.

8. It teaches that everyone else is bad. The teachings in the Bible continue to rob you of an accurate perception of reality because it teaches that everyone who isn't a Christian is a bad person...so bad in fact that they deserve to be tortured for all of eternity. Moreover, all the evil non-Christians asked for it; they chose to be separated from the light and embrace darkness and evil. This isn't an accurate assessment of reality. This belief is far, far, far from sound judgment or good sense. It's sick, and sets the stage for humans to pass judgment on living "sinners" here on earth. The belief that non-Christians are automatically evil has caused countless murders and hate crimes.

7. It teaches you that your self-worth is based on believing in a story. The determining factor between what makes someone deserve to burn for eternity and what makes someone deserve paradise for eternity is believing in a story. Believing in a story doesn't have anything to do with anything. That's not a valid factor to determine anyone's self-worth by.

If you choose to judge people's worth based on whether or not they ever heard an unbelievable story (that's full of holes) then you won't seek to find reasonable, sound, realistic ways to measure your own self-worth or other people's. Hence, you'll never identify the qualities and goals you should strive to achieve and avoid in order to grow up into a healthy, functional adult.

6. It teaches you not to accept responsibility for your actions. The Bible teaches that if you believe it then you'll get to go to Heaven. In theological circles there's some debate about whether or not good works are needed in addition to faith, but children don't understand the Bible well enough or have the critical thinking skills to raise or explore that deep of a theological question. So as far as they (and most adults) are likely to be concerned, once you believe the story in the Bible you get to go Heaven. Anything you do bad after that is already forgiven, and if you want to be safe you can always confess and give God's funny-hat-wearing spokesmen some more money.

This assumes a Christian can even recognize that their bad behavior is bad, but the Bible has already taught them that they're a pillar of righteousness for believing in the right story...and righteous people don't do bad things. So Christians tend to reason that their bad behavior must be good. Just look at the Westboro Baptist Church for proof of this.

5. It teaches you to feel guilty about the wrong things. Humans are sexual creatures. In a sense, having sex is the most important thing you'll ever do because it ensures the survival and evolution of the species. That's why sex feels so good. Our bodies are designed that way, and if God designed us then God designed us that way. Sex is a biological commandment. Yet the Bible basically tells us that sex is evil and we should feel ashamed for wanting to have sex...much less having it with anyone except the one person we marry according to an ancient Middle Eastern cultural ritual. Although, for some reason modern Christians no longer honor the tradition of the bride's father giving the groom a sales receipt and a money back guarantee. But I digress.

Any addiction counselor will tell you that denial is the worst way to deal with addiction, but that's how the Bible teaches us to deal with the sexual urges we were created with, and that's why you see so many cases of rape in the Catholic Church. Priests are being driven to insanity by unreasonable teachings in the Bible.

Sex aside, the rest of the 7 deadly sins are all relatively irrelevant issues that the Bible blows out of proportion and turns into unhealthy, destructive obsessions.

4. It discourages critical thought. The corner stone of sanity is critical thought. The Bible commands you to turn that part of your mind off. I've heard a lot of Christians argue that the Bible commands you to think logically, but that's bullshit.

From beginning to end the Bible constantly stresses the importance of faith. The definition of faith is "belief without proof." Jesus even criticizes the disciple Thomas for asking to see his wounds after he returned from the dead. Today, anytime a Christian has a lapse in faith they're called a "doubting Thomas."

Doubt isn't immoral. Doubt is the door to truth. Faith is close-minded, willful ignorance. Anytime anyone tells you it's immoral to question their authority, you can be sure you're being manipulated.

Since the Bible claims to be the word of God and constantly stresses the importance of faith, a lot of Christians have extrapolated those two facts to come to the conclusion that the Bible has all the answers you'll ever need in life and is the only book you'll ever need to read. This would be unhealthy even if we said "Everything you need to know about life you'll learn in school." It's even more crippling is it to believe that about one archaic book.

3. It teaches false science and false history. If you don't understand how the physical universe works or what happened in our history then you won't be able to understand the world we presently live in. If you don't understand the world we live in then you won't be able to accurately predict, respond, navigate, or influence the world you live in because you'll be using a faulty instruction manual that teaches a false and misleading version of reality.

The Bible teaches false science and false history beginning on page one. Believing things that aren't true is the definition of insanity. If you believe the Bible you will believe things that aren't true, and that will make you automatically, by-definition, insane.

2. Prayer only accomplishes one thing. The Bible teaches that if you believe in Yahweh with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind then you'll have the power to move mountains and be immune to poison. Basically you'll have magical powers.

That's not how reality works. Wishing and begging an imaginary friend doesn't accomplish anything. Your prayers aren't going to be answered, and when they're not you're going to have to come up with an excuse to explain the disconnect between your expectations and reality. As a result you're going to spend a lifetime nurturing a massive case of cognitive dissonance.

1. You will believe in imaginary beings. And I don't just mean one all powerful, all loving father figure in the sky who never does anything or helps anyone. You'll believe in an evil tyrant who lives in a lake of fire and plots against you all day for no reason. You'll believe in invisible magical minions who serve both of these imaginary characters. You'll believe in super powers and magic. You'll believe in an invisible universe just around the corner from our own just as fantastical as Narnia or Middle Earth and you will be so convinced of your delusions that you'll think anyone who doesn't accept this magical fantasy is insane. That's the definition of insanity.
7 WAYS THE BIBLE WILL MAKE YOU AN IMMORAL PERSON

7. The Bible has immoral instructions. The Bible says that women are property and should be silent in church and obey their husbands. The Bible says it's okay to beat your slaves as long as you don't kill them. The Bible says to kill your children if they talk back to you. The Bible orders you to kill witches.

If you follow every word of the Bible you'll become a murderous villain. Period. The only way to be a "good" Christian (by modern, Western cultural standards) is to ignore these parts of the Bible or reverse engineer excuses for why you don't have to follow them.

6. The Bible tells you that sinners are evil. Granted, there's the old Christian saying, "Love the sinner. Hate the sin." But let me point out one flaw in that logic. If God loves the sinner but hates the sin then why is God going to punish the sinner with everlasting torture? That's not unconditional love. That's a sadistic ultimatum.

If God is going to treat sinners with such remorseless, self-righteous hatred then how likely would it be for a fallible, human Christian to rationalize hating, mistreating and killing sinners? History shows that hurtful and murderous Christians aren't a rare anomaly. They're an inevitability produced by a wicked moral guide.

5. The Bible tells you to love everybody. In and of itself this sounds great. In practice it's terrible for two reasons. First, this moral lesson is vague to the point of being useless. What is love? Should you love an invading army? Should you love a serial killer? Should you love Hitler? Should you love criminals? In what way? To what extent? It doesn't say. It doesn't offer any clear guidance.

If you follow an unclear moral code your decision making process will be unclear. So you'll have to rely on some other form of guidance, like instincts, reason, culture or other people's advice. This raises the question, if we're going to end up relying on other methods of guidance anyway then why not cut out the distraction and rely on the final source of guidance to begin with? Unfortunately, if you believe in a book that teaches you not to think critically you're not going to question that book's instructions even when they don't offer clear guidance. You're just going to waffle through life haphazardly.

The second reason this commandment is bad is because the Bible has already set us up to hate, hurt and kill sinners and infidels. These contradicting moral messages will paralyze your ethical decisions. It becomes exceptionally difficult to know which path to take, especially if you're a simple minded person, which most people are, especially children.

4. The Bible says the highest virtue is faith. If you know your Bible verses you should be arguing that 1 Corinthians 13 says, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." But John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life." So the way to get to Heaven and survive death is to have faith. That's what life and death is judged by. That's the test. That's the meaning of life.

If the most important thing is to have faith then everything else is ultimately irrelevant. You can beat and rape your children, lie, steal, and anything else. When it comes time to make those hard moral decisions you know that if you backslide a little (or even a lot) you can always ask for forgiveness later, and as long as you have faith your sins will be forgiven and you can get away with a lifetime of hurting yourself and other people.

Furthermore, when the emphasis of ethics is taken off of actions and focused on beliefs it cripples your ability to weigh the value of your actions. A real system of ethics, like the one the court of law uses focuses where it should be, on actions that matter, actions that hurt/help people.

Another problem with faith is that it's the opposite of reason. If you have unyielding faith in the "alpha and the omega" God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and you have faith in God's word then what else is there? God is everything, and God's word is everything. Logic would tell you that you don't need anything else. But in reality you do need something else. You need a lot more. You need knowledge. You need introspection. You need growth. You need reason. You need money. You need to be selfish sometimes. You need comfort. You need to fulfill your wants. You need self-actualization.

Faith doesn't fulfill everything. Faith eliminates everything. Faith yields an empty, ignorant shell of a human. Go to any prison and interview the worst of the worst criminals, and I guarantee the three most common traits you'll find among every immoral person are ignorance, an inability to reason and self-hatred. Those are the exact character traits the Bible crams down its followers' throats.

3. The Bible says "good" people are scum. This is slightly different than the first point that says sinners are scum. While sinners are the worst scum, everybody is still scum. "All our righteousness is like filthy rags." Isa 64:4.

The foundation of any reason-based moral code is the value of life. The United States Declaration of Independence doesn't begin by saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all humans are like filthy rags, that women should be silent in church and slaves should be obedient to their masters." The Declaration of Independence said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

When the foundation of your moral guide says that every human is scum who deserves to burn for eternity then you're going to end up hurting yourself and others. It practically obligates you to hurt yourself and others. It certainly allows God's spokesmen the right and obligation to hurt sinful, heretical infidels.

Even if you pick and choose the parts of the Bible you follow and devote yourself to "loving" other people, you're probably going to end up hating yourself and punishing yourself for being human. A perfect example is Mother Theresa. Yes, she helped a lot of people, but intertwined with her devotion to helping others was an irrational devotion to personal suffering. Her own life was a celebration of agony. The Bible took a kind hearted woman who was willing to sacrifice everything to help others and made her hate joy and comfort.

Actually, that's a generous remembrance of Mother Theresa. She was once quoted as saying, "Today the passion of Christ is being relived in the lives of those who suffer. Suffering is not a punishment. God does not punish." and " "I was talking to our lepers and telling them that leprosy is a gift from God, that God can trust them so much that he gives them this terrible suffering."

These aren't the words of a sane person. These are the words of a person whose mind has been tragically disfigured. The reality of human psychology is that we tend to treat others the same way we treat ourselves. So if someone or some book teaches you to hate yourself and hurt yourself you'll tend to hate and hurt other people. That's the stage that the Bible sets for us.

2. The Bible tells you to give money to God. Let's pretend that there aren't hundreds of passages in the Bible directly commanding and encouraging you to give money to God. Even without that, God still created you. Therefore, you owe everything to God. Plus, the only way to survive death is to please God. So it stands to reason that the more you give to God the better off you are.

The problem with this is that there's a correlation between financial stability and crime. Being poor doesn't cause you to be a criminal, but poverty makes crime more rewarding and eliminates many support structures that would prevent you from resorting to crime.

If you don't have money then you can't afford an education. You can't afford to start a business. You can't afford to survive. This sets you up to be an ignorant, suffering, desperate person. This sets you up to take desperate and illogical measures to survive. This sets you up to be a criminal.

The more money the family you're born into has, the more money they'll be able to devote to your education and setting you up in life. The better you're set up in life the less likely you'll be to have to resort to crime to survive. Yet when a family has been devout Christians for generations upon generations the amount of money they'll have given to the church that could have been spent building personal wealth will be compounded. Thus, their loss is compounded, and the chances of raising a miserable, ignorant desperate child who is likely to become a criminal is compounded.

To this you might argue, but the church does help people. Sure, but it keeps more than it gives. Look at the cathedrals and opulent churches all over the world that have been built instead of building schools and half-way homes. Plus, the church spends a great deal of its time and money spreading the word of God: the word that makes people hate themselves and give up their financial security for a dream that's never going to pay out.

If all the money the church swindled out of people over the past 2000 years had been spent solely on schools or technological research the world would be much closer to utopia. As it stands, we're on the brink of an apocalypse, not despite what religion has done for humanity but because of it.

1. The Bible doesn't offer any clear moral guidance. This has been the theme of this list. So this point pretty much goes without saying. However, it's important enough that it needs to be stated clearly.

At no point in the Bible is there a coherent, systematic break down of morality. The 10 Commandments is the closest it gets, and even those (on a whole) do more damage than good, and the rest of the commandments following those 10 are maniacal and contradict other commandments elsewhere in the Bible.

Using the Bible as a moral code will leave you confused, self-loathing, illogical and fanatical. There's a reason the Bible isn't used as the state code of law anymore. That was tried, and it led to hundreds of years of oppression and misery culminating in the Inquisition. That wasn't an accident, an anomaly or the fault of a less-evolved, less-knowledgeable culture. That's the path the Bible leads to. If you follow the Bible you will become an immoral person. Period.

To this you might argue, "I know lots of Christians who are the nicest people you've ever met."

That's because they're not following the Bible. They're following an idealized version of their culture's values and projecting that into the Bible, not the other way around.
A MORE REALISTIC TAKE ON THE 10 COMMANDMENTS

Note: Whenever I quote the bible I'm quoting the New International Version.

1. "You shall have no other Gods before me." If a modern day Christian child were to ask their parents the question, "Why did God say you shall have no other God before me if He's the only god?" A modern day Christian parent might reply that it's a figure of speech.

No, it's not, and two sentences later the author of Exodus makes that clear. Here's Yahweh's reasoning for why he only wants you to worship him: "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." Why should you only worship Yahweh? Because he's jealous of the other gods. Not because he's the only god.

More importantly, if you don't worship him he'll torment you and all your descendants. Don't overlook the significance of the Jewish tribal leaders who wrote the Ten Commandments threatening their tax-payers' family. In near prehistoric times (and especially for nomads) family life was all you had. Your family was absolutely everything. To threaten an ancient Jew's family was a billion times harsher of a threat than to threaten a modern American's family. Think about how serious that is. That's how seriously the Jewish religious leaders wanted control.

2. "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." This is pretty ingenious. First, it directly ends the problem the Jewish religious leaders had been having of people worshiping any shiny statue that impressed them. Secondly, if you don't have a shiny statue to worship then how are you going to commune with god? Through the religious leaders of course.

3. "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." Let's simplify things, every time you see the word LORD, replace it with GOVERNMENT, because LORD is GOVERNMENT in the time and place were talking about. So this commandment is really saying, "You will not question the government or you will be punished."

4. "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy." The military has an ingenious way of indoctrinating its members. When soldiers walk outside they have to put their hat on. When they walk inside they have to take their hat off. The reasoning for that rule isn't to keep the sun out of soldiers' eyes or to keep them from looking tacky inside. This rule exists because it prevents soldiers from forgetting that they belong to the military, and it forces them to police each other. The Sabbath works the same way. It's a weekly reminder never to forget that your theocracy rules your life. Other than that, it serves absolutely no productive purpose.

5. "Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." This commandment is written in Exodus 20:12. Exodus 21:17 says, "Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death."

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says, "If a man has a stubborn a rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of the city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones."

This commandment establishes the elder's power over the young. It also justifies and indoctrinates the cultural values the Jews were already practicing.

6. "You shall not murder." This is the first commandment that lays down a functional civil law, and what civil law is more important than not killing each other? It's a great law. I'm not questioning that. But if a bunch of government officials were going to sit down and make rules for the governing of society this would be the first law every time. In fact, other governments around the world came to the same conclusion without Yahweh's divine inspiration. It's certain this law existed in Jewish culture before the Ten Commandments.

7. "You shall not commit adultery." Here's another commandment that betrays the illusion of divine inspiration by pandering to Jewish culture. Marriage is a human invention, and different cultures around the world developed different marriage customs according to the environmental needs of the people.

In the nomadic Jewish version of marriage a man bought his wife and kept her for life. This worked well in a nomadic society...especially for the men who ruled the nomadic society. A nomadic family is like a mountain climbing team. You have to work together to survive, and there's not much room for variety or instability. In places where survival was easy, like in Hawaii, family hierarchy wasn't so important. People slept around, and kids lived with whoever they wanted. In places where there weren't enough of one of the sexes polygamy became a necessity.

None of the Hawaiian Gods ever said, "Though shalt not commit adultery." Because Hawaiians didn't buy and sell wives, and their survival wasn't dependent on a strong nuclear family.

8. "You shall not steal." This is another rule that makes good civic sense. Nothing profound here, and it was almost certainly around long before the Ten Commandments were written. Why else would the Hebrew language have the word "steal?" Or do you believe that word wasn't invented until Yahweh revealed to the Jewish leaders that stealing was wrong?

9. "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." This implies that you shouldn't lie, but it doesn't say, "You shall not give false testimony to your neighbor." It expressly says, "...against your neighbor." It's saying you will not lie about your neighbor.

In modern, Western society if someone gossiped about you it would piss you off, and in a worst case scenario you'd get in a fight, but in ancient times your reputation was your life. In Rome people would carry around stone busts of their honorable ancestors to show how good their name was. Everyone's heard of the Japanese killing themselves to preserve their family's honor. It was just as important to the Jews -so important that they made a law against falsely shaming others. This law reveals yet again that the Ten Commandments are culturally (as opposed to divinely) inspired. It also reveals how badly modern, Western suburbanites misinterpret the Bible and project their own cultural values into it.

10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." This has to be the most fucked up commandment of them all. First of all, your wife is a piece of property that's less valuable than a house but more valuable than a common slave or a donkey. That's how important women were in ancient Jewish society: Yahweh, the creator of the universe considers women pieces of property slightly more important than a donkey.

But that's beside the real point of the commandment. Why was this commandment necessary? Commandment #8 already said not to steal. So if you're not going to steal then what's wrong with just wanting stuff? Because people who don't want a better life are easiest to control.

The creator of the universe didn't write the Ten Commandments, and whoever did was an ingenious, manipulative, power hungry, (male) ass hole.
IT'S TIME TO STOP CELEBRATING EASTER

Easter is a holiday that honors a zombie rising from the dead after being brutally mutilated. The way we celebrate this macabre event is by having children search for painted eggs that were hidden by a basket-toting rabbit. None of that makes any sense.

Sanity is defined, "having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense." There's nothing sane about Easter, and when children see adults putting so much effort into doing insane things it teaches children that insanity is the norm.

You can test your child's sanity every Easter by asking them, "Why are you celebrating the resurrection of a zombie by having kids pick up fertility gifts shat out by an imaginary rodent on behalf of a God that the first commandment of the zombie's religion says is an abomination?" If they say, "I don't know." Then there's hope for your child despite your best attempt to drive them insane. If they try to reverse engineer an excuse for their actions then you've succeeded at driving your child insane.

That's no way to go through life, but that's how we raise children. We condition them to believe in and defend bullshit by raising them on bullshit. How can we expect kids to have a grounded sense of reality when we tell them a fat magic man climbs through heating ducts and distributes free presents made in a sweat shop in the North Pole? Is it really healthy to tell children there's a magical fairy who breaks into semi-naked children's rooms and swaps broken body parts for cold, hard cash? Parents may defend telling their children outright lies by saying it's all in good fun and kids know the difference between fantasy and reality anyway. But why set up your children to have to spend a single minute of their childhood trying to figure out when their guardians are full of shit and when they're telling the truth? Especially considering that kids are really bad at thinking before their brain is fully developed. Teaching your children to celebrate mythological holidays is a recipe for disaster that you went out of our way to create that you didn't have to. If nothing else, it undermines your child's trust in you.

Please world, please stop celebrating Easter. I know it's cozy and cute (aside from the human mutilation part), and there's nothing wrong with getting together with your family and friends to eat BBQ while the kids eat candy. That's great. That's so great in fact that we should do it anyway without having to re-enact mythological events we don't believe in.

Let's rebrand Easter as BBQ Day. Would you rather get the day after Easter off work or the day after BBQ Day? The best part about BBQ day is you'll be able to buy beer. Fun Fact: You can't buy beer on Easter in a lot of places. Yeah, that's another thing that's retarded about Easter. Easter celebrates the life of the creator of the universe, "our heavenly father," who came to Earth with all the powers of the cosmos to shape the course of human history, but he didn't cure cancer. He didn't give us the design for a perpetual motion machine. He only had time to perform a handful of miracles during his brief time on Earth, and in his infinite wisdom he used one of those divine favors to turn a couple gallons of tap water into top shelf booze so a house party full of yuppies could get slammered.

Ever since the lord of Lambrusco died his followers have been ceremoniously drinking more booze and pretending it's his blood. Why is it okay for Jesus to have a high blood alcohol content but I can't? Why can't I buy a bottle of alcohol on Drunky Mc Drunken Jesus's special day? Jesus himself set a precedent, a categorical imperative if you will. Think about it. What would Jesus do? Well, if he's still doing the same things now that he was doing back then, that means Jesus would probably be drinking. So don't tell me you won't sell me alcohol out of respect for Jesus. Prohibitionists are the ones insulting Jesus' memory.

Why are we carving the year up into days where it's immoral to do one thing one day and moral to do it the next anyway? Morality doesn't change based on the calendar date. So...there's no reason to do that. All that can accomplish is confusing children and training them to accept that everything about life right down to how we measure the year is completely random and there's no point asking questions or trying to figure any of it out. You just drink some zombie blood, light a candle, keep calm and carry on.

That's no way to go through life.

Life is short and hard enough without feeling socially pressured to go through pseudo religious holiday charades every year. If we all stop tuning into ridiculous holidays then someday we'll shed them off our calendars, and we can just celebrate life for its own sake...on BBQ Day, a sensible holiday.
IT'S TIME TO STOP CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS

Christmas is celebrated on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year, after which the Sun rises to conquer the deathly coldness of winter and the darkness of night. At this time of year you can see the constellation, The Three Kings (also known as Orion's belt) pointing west to Aldebaran, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Yes, it's a wonderful Pagan holiday steeped in astrology....which was stolen by the Catholics and reworked to apply to this Jesus guy so he'd appeal to Pagan astrologists or at least negate the Pagan's original holiday. So Christmas is about rewriting history and stealing other people's culture in an attempt to crush their way of life and assert your own dominance so you're the only spiritual tax collector in town.

But Christmas is about more than the Catholic church's lack of conscience in their campaign to establish a foothold of power in Europe. It's also about Jesus's dismay with the Jewish religious leaders using their theocratic status for personal gain. Jesus figured out a way to undermine the Jewish theocracy's whole claim to power. He figured since God's forgiveness was dependent upon sacrificing the blood of animals at a temple, Jesus would just sacrifice himself and nobody would need to use the temple to connect with God anymore.

A few years after Jesus made the church obsolete the Catholic Church created a strict religious hierarchy that still undermines Jesus's goal to free the believer from the control of the church/temple to this day. So the Catholic holiday of Christmas is also about greedy bastards undermining everything Christ stood for.

On one hand, Catholics should feel ashamed for how heretical Christmas is, but on the other hand, Jesus's blood sacrifice was only valid if God ever truly required the blood of animals to atone for sin. Every rational human being who reads the Bible skips over the animal sacrifice parts and dismisses them as archaic, allegorical or just silly. I mean, nobody really thinks God was pleased by the smell of burning animal flesh. That's just stone age mythology. But Jesus believed it. So much that he (as the story goes) bet his life on it. So if you don't believe God wanted us to slaughter animals for forgiveness at a stone temple where He (and his penis?) actually lived then you have no ground to believe that Jesus's blood forgave our sins.

Did you see the move, "Apocalypto?" Didn't you think it was stupid when the Aztecs were sacrificing humans on a bloody altar to please their God? Well?... Hint. Hint. You're right. It is primitive to believe God is pleased by human sacrifices. Also, do you know any Jewish people? If so, do they sacrifice animals? No. Because even Jews knows that's fucking stupid. So the point is that as stupid and stone age as slicing up goats and Aztecs is...that's how stupid and stone age the idea that Jesus died for our sins is. So Christmas is about holding onto stone age superstitions and refusing to believe what common sense or logic have to tell us about reality.

If you do believe in Jesus, you should follow what Jesus said, and Jesus said to give away everything you own. He also said you don't get any points in Heaven for giving gifts to people you love. You get points for helping strangers and enemies. So why would you celebrate Jesus's birthday by buying more presents than you can afford for your loved ones? That's literally the opposite of what Jesus explicitly said he wanted. You may as well just tea-bag a crucifix on Christmas morning and wipe your ass with the Bible.

No matter how you look at it, there's no logical reason to celebrate Christmas. If you refuse to stop celebrating Christmas then at least stop calling it Christmas and start calling it by a more truthful name like, "Consumer Whore Day" or "Holding onto the Past Day."
CHAPTER 7

MILITARY

Note: Everything I say about the military is either true or false regardless of my experiences or the quality of my character. Though if you must know, if it makes any difference, I received an honorable discharge after 7 years active duty service in the United States Air Force.

THE WAR DEBT

Hopefully you've never been to war. Hopefully the closest you've come to war is watching movies about ones that happened before you were born, but you probably aren't that isolated. You probably know a few service members, and if you don't then you know someone who does.

If you've spent half your life sitting on the couch watching television and the other half surfing the internet then you've seen some really realistic war movies. You've watched fifty documentaries on the Holocaust, and you've seen a billion news segments on the wars in the Middle East. So even if you've never been to war you still understand the concept. You deserve a good amount of credit for understanding what war is, why it happens and what it costs.

You've probably seen "Saving Private Ryan," "The Pacific," "Band of Brothers," "Hurt Locker," and maybe even "Generation Kill." You've seen the sacrifice. You were moved by the orchestra music, and you're not stupid. You understand that you owe a debt to all the soldiers throughout history who have died in vain or successfully so that you would have a better life. The thought has got to have crossed your mind at some point in your life, and if it hasn't, I'm telling you now. You owe a debt to every soldier, living and dead.

Here's the thing about that. Those soldiers didn't die just so you could be comfortable. Each generation has to give something to the next generation in order for humanity to survive much less fulfill its greatest potential. Fallen soldiers took a bullet for the team. This begs the question, what have you done for the team? Without being accusatory, it's a legitimate question that every human being needs to ask themself.

Only you can answer that question, and if you haven't thought about it then you've let your fallen brethren down. They thought about it, and they put their money where their mouth was. If you haven't even thought about it, and you aren't going to do anything about it as long as you're not actively being guilt tripped then those soldiers died for nothing. If you're going to let the world devolve into "Jersey Shore" then it might have been better if the Nazis had won. I'm being sarcastic, the Nazis should not have won...nor should the civilian sector be spending their hard-won years of freedom resigned to their couches learning how to act stupid. The civilian sector was supposed to pick up where the soldiers left off and go on to build paradise.

That's how it works. You don't just sit there and be thankful. You repay the debt. You owe it to your ancestors and your decedents. You're not the tip of the spear. You're a link in a chain. You owe it to everybody to devote your life to helping humanity achieve its potential. If you don't know how to do that then you need to ask as many people as it takes until someone explains it to you or you figure out for yourself, because you can't weasel out of the debt by claiming ignorance. You're not ignorant, and it wouldn't make the debt go away even if you were.

Soldiers don't get to make excuses. They don't get to say no. If they can't do something they figure out a work around. If they don't know how to do something they teach themselves. They don't sit around cursing their uselessness and using it to justify future uselessness. They accomplish the mission and/or die trying.

That's the bar soldiers set for humanity. The civilian sector is capable of the exact same level of accountability, and it's not like this is a terrible, burden that's going to cost civilians everything they hold dear. Civilians don't even need to bother setting out POW tables or sticking "Fallen but not forgotten" bumper stickers on their trucks. All they need to do is try to figure out how they can make the world a better place for themselves and everyone else to live in...and then do that. Coincidentally, we were all supposed to be doing that for a bunch of reasons anyway.

And yet we live in Idiocracy. Someone's not paying their war debt, and if you're wearing hair gel it's probably you.
A VETERAN'S 2011 STATE OF THE TROOPS ADDRESS

ON THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001

Part 1: An address to the American public. If you finish reading everything I have to say about the military and you think I'm not on the troop's side, you missed the entire point. I'll summarize my point of view by saying that the U.S. military treats the troops inhumanely. It would be considered a human rights disaster if anyone else in the world treated anyone else in the world the way governments (in particular, The United States of America) treats its military personnel. The way the U.S. military treats its troops is in violation of the universal declaration of human rights and many other laws both foreign and domestic.

The American government and the American public are complicit in these human rights abuses. The America public has quietly accepted that in order to get one person to kill another person you need to break all the rules free, civil society is based on. The American people understand that troops are systematically brainwashed, treated like 2nd class citizens and have 99% of their civil liberties, freedoms and rights voided. They know it, and they're paying all the bills to make sure it keeps happening every day.

So no America, you do not support the troops no matter how many yellow ribbon car magnets you buy. Saying you do is just insult to injury. The only reason everyone calls troops heroes is because the government has very consciously orchestrated a spectacular, highly funded charade. Without all the propaganda, all the commercials, all the pop culture references and all the memorabilia we wouldn't go along with pretending our troops are gladiators fighting for honor, glory and righteous causes in the Coliseum. We would see that our troops literally are the political equivalent of Roman gladiators who are owned, trained, lied to, systematically instilled with battered person syndrome and sent to die for the benefit of their owners under false pretenses...and when they can't be duped into marching to their death proudly they're simply forced to go against their will with a gun to their head.

On some level we all know this, and if you don't, you do now. So now that it's been said, you have to ask yourself, what's the best way you can support the troops if there's a fraction of a chance that a fraction of this is true? I'll give you a hint. None of the following excuses help anyone:

"The troops knew what they were getting into when they signed up."

"The troops volunteered. So they can't complain."

"They took an oath. End of discussion."

"It's not for them to question why but to do and die."

If those excuses are valid then all it takes to create a second class citizen is a signature. The United States Military perpetuates the precedent that as long as you can get someone to sign a piece of paper then it's perfectly acceptable for the government to erase all the civil rights humans have fought and died for throughout human history. Think about that next time you sign a civilian job contract that waives away all your rights to any kind of legal protection from your employer no matter what they do to you or how badly you get hurt on the job as a result of their negligence. You don't have any right to complain about that because you set the precedent that paper is worth more than human life when you turned your back on the troops.

The great irony of the United States Military is that it claims to fight to protect people from being forced to live under the same conditions it forces its troops to live under. That's the irony behind your "support the troops" car magnet. You should replace it with a magnet that says, "Through hypocritical, Orwellian doublespeak, willful ignorance, flimsy excuses and apathy against the rights of my fellow human beings, I support government-sponsored brainwashing, slavery, the erosion of civilian rights and unaccountable government authority."

Part 2: An address to the American troops. The way you're being treated is tragic, and the military has put conscious effort into lying to you so that you won't see it or believe it even when it's pointed out to you. You practiced marching drills in basic training even though you never march in formation on the battlefield because marching teaches you to lose your identity in the group; it's a well-documented and time tested brainwashing technique. So are your ranks, medals and "customs and courtesies." You take your hat off when you walk outside and put in on when you go inside as a constant reminder that every moment of your life belongs to your leaders. You're forced to call your "superiors" "sir" and "ma'am" as a constant reminder that your will is worth less than theirs. A true leader, someone worth following, would never say, "Salute me out of respect or I'll send you to jail and end your career." A leader worth following would never tell you, "It's not for you to question why but to do and die." Only an abusive manipulator would say that to another human being. We were all born equal. Every breath we take, we take as equals, and we'll die as equals. Anyone who tells you differently is not your friend and not worthy of respect.

I understand that many troops volunteered for pure, selfless, heroic reasons. Even the troops whose primary motive in signing up was a steady pay check, I understand that you sleep well at night believing that, incidentally, you support truth, justice, freedom and peace. I understand that if it came down to it, most of you would literally, willingly step in front of a bullet for the sake of the civilian population. I can't thank you enough for the sentiment.

The thing about that is, what you're doing right now is accomplishing the opposite of what your leaders promised you it would. They know that. That's why they won't allow you to question them. It's not because there's no time to explain. It's not because global politics are too hard for you to understand. It's not because there's anything truly heroic about not thinking for yourself. It's certainly not because your leaders are so righteous that questioning their integrity or intelligence would be an exercise in futility. You're told not to exercise or trust your own ability to reason because the more you do that, the more likely you'll come to the logical realization that your leadership has systematically constructed an elaborate bubble around you and is lying to you to get you to do someone else's dirty work that violates your strict code of ethics and honor. While you're busying hating me for saying this, your leadership is laughing at you all the way to the bank.

I know I'm attacking all the beliefs you hold dear, but you have to see that I'm doing it because my heart bleeds for the troops. Having said that, I have one more hard thing to say. You don't have any excuse for supporting an unjust war. Not at this point.

I was an Airman First Class stationed in Aviano, Italy on September 11th, 2001. That day we went into Threatcon Delta and scrambled our fighter jets not knowing which direction to look for the next incoming attack. We were scared and confused, but we did our jobs and we didn't ask questions because there wasn't time for second guessing. Not long after that our flight line was full of C-130s sending troops to Northern Iraq. We didn't fully understand why we were sending troops to Iraq, but our president promised us that we were the good guys, the terrorists hated our freedoms, Saddam had WMDs and he posed an imminent threat to the American public. I was skeptical until General Colin Powell explained the whole situation in detail with pictures. Then, even though I couldn't turn a corner in Italy without seeing 50 "Pace" (Peace) flags insinuating I was monster, I had faith in our leaders. So I did my job and slept soundly.

It's been 10 years now, and the verdict is in. The WMDs were a lie. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Saddam Hussein was never even a remote threat to the American people. The chemical weapons he used on his people, he bought from America. Since Saddam was removed from power more Iraqis have died as a result of America's actions than Saddam Hussein's did or could have. The Iraqi people want America out of their country. The American occupation in the Middle East isn't protecting anyone's freedoms, and it's not making the world safe from terrorism. The American occupation in the Middle East has created living conditions in those countries worth fighting against. It's scary there, and it's making people hate America who otherwise wouldn't have. The actions of the American military are creating terrorists and bankrupting America.

And that's just what the American military is actively doing. The other, less publicized side of the coin is what the American military is passively preventing from happening. Palestinians are living in Holocaust-conditions. They're being ethnically cleansed. Boats full of aid workers trying to reach the victims are being shot at and blockaded by Israel. Yet the world stands by and watches in horror because every nation in the world knows that if they step in to help then America will turn its gargantuan, unquestioning military on them.

The world economy is strangled in economic policies and embargoes held in place by the threat of American military "intervention." All the while murderous dictators are given free rein to step on the rights and lives of their people as long as they play ball with America. Threat of American military intervention keeps millions (if not billions) of people trapped in poverty, misery, fear, despair, indignity and danger every day.

These aren't conspiracy theories. These claims consistently make front page news, not just in the "lame stream, left-wing, American media" but in every media outlet around the entire globe. Everyone is talking about it everywhere. Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written about it, and world leaders weigh it in their decisions every day. The world practically revolves around it. This means that the American troops no longer have the luxury of feigning ignorance by saying, "I was just following orders." "I trust my leaders." "I was just doing my duty." "It's not my place to question." "There's no time to ask questions." "The verdict is still out." No. The verdict is in. I'm sorry, but you're not acting like good guys even if the intention is there.

Your duty to your current employer doesn't supersede your duty to humanity no matter what oaths they handed you to recite. It's your responsibility to question your actions. When someone tells you to kill someone else, the only correct response is, "I'm going to research this issue to the core of the onion and second guess myself right up to the last moment." That's called holding yourself accountable, and that's a cornerstone of maturity. Suicidal servitude is not.

It's not like you're going to have to do some deep, dark soul searching to even face the possibility that the official Disney version of recent history as told by the United States Military Public Affairs Office is bullshit. In fact, I wouldn't believe any troop who says the idea never occurred to them. I expect most troops understand this truth better than most civilians. I know that 70% of the conversations that take place in military smoke pits every day are about how much the military sucks and how it cuts its own throat with its broken, outdated, backwards bureaucracy. The troops know better than anyone that military bureaucracy is a wasteful menace kept afloat because it's such a lucrative cash cow. On some level all the troops know this is true. The question is, when will you fully admit that the giant, bloody elephant in the room that everyone (even you) is talking about is real?

As long as that bloody elephant stays in the room you don't have the right to sleep well at night. Don't get mad at me for pointing out the obvious. Get mad at your leadership for misleading you and putting you in that position. And don't tell me, "I don't agree with you, but thanks to my sacrifices you have the luxury to say those ignorant, disgusting things." No. your sacrifices have not secured my freedoms in any way. In fact, the citizens you claim to be protecting have lost significant freedoms, liberties and dignities on your watch. And you know who took those freedoms from the people you were supposed to be protecting. Your leaders did. I'm afraid to even bring it up in public, because I'm afraid of those leaders and the unquestioning military force they control. I accept that I'm probably on a no-fly list despite (or because of) the fact that I'm a very vocal advocate of freedom, equality and nonviolence. I haven't tested that theory because I have too much pride to fly and allow myself to be violated by the TSA. So no. You don't get to dismiss any criticism of the military, its leaders or its personnel by claiming to fight for anyone's freedoms. I wish you could, but your leaders took that card away from you and wiped their asses with it.

When I was enlisted I didn't have the courage to consciously object and go to jail for standing up for truth, justice and freedom. I wish I had so I could ask the same of you today. I understand your fear of your employer. So I urge you, don't reenlist. Get out as soon as possible. Talk others out of joining. Starve the military industrial war complex of its slaves and make the world a safer place for everyone.
YOU CAN SUPPORT THE TROOPS OR THE UCMJ BUT NOT BOTH

Many American civilians don't fully understand that military service members fall under a completely separate legal jurisdiction than civilians. This legal code is known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The existence of the UCMJ isn't necessarily a sinister thing. In a lot of ways, pointing out that civilians and troops fall under different legal codes is like saying people who work for McDonalds and people who work for Burger King have different employee handbooks. The military is a bureaucratic institution that exists to accomplish a specific purpose just like the United States Post Office. Neither could operate without some kind of guidelines that outline the operating procedures for how they accomplish their purpose.

However, the UCMJ redefines the basic human rights of the people who fall under its jurisdiction in ways that are considered unethical and unconstitutional. It's literally illegal to treat civilians the same way troops are treated under the UCMJ.

You can say you "support the troops" by sending them care packages or putting a yellow ribbon magnet on your car, but that's like a citizen of the Confederate States of America sending care packages to the slaves in the cotton fields and painting "Support the Slaves" on a horse.

Here's 5 ways the UCMJ treats the troops unethically:

1. Bad Conduct and Dishonorable Discharges. There's effectively no difference between a bad conduct/dishonorable discharge and a felony conviction. No other place of employment has the ability to punish dissenting employees with prison time and felony convictions for not obeying their boss at work. However, the military reserves this right because the UCMJ gives it that right, which is like saying the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true.

Just like how the Bible causes its followers to carry around the burden of the threat of Hell in their minds every time they commit the most innocent, victimless sin, the troops carry around the burden of the threat of a dishonorable discharge with them all the time, everywhere they go. This is tolerable if you don't think about it, but once you realize that the rest of your life will be unceremoniously destroyed if you decide not to do a jumping jack when you're ordered to or you decide not to button up your shirt when you're ordered to and persist in refusing to do so after repeated orders you'll come to realize that your life isn't your own, and your personhood isn't important to the military. You're a slave whose worth is measured by your willingness to conform, and you'll be unceremoniously thrown out onto the street and made an example out of the moment it's convenient for the military.

You can find ways to justify this, but it's a legal fact that McDonalds couldn't do this to its employees because that would be grossly unethical. So let's be clear that in justifying the existence of bad conduct/dishonorable discharges we are in effect justifying second class citizenship for the troops; they have less protection under the law and can be treated worse than other people and we're fine with this.

2. Institutionalized Victimhood/Subjugation. Imagine if you had to salute teachers, police officers, doctors or politicians any time you pass them in the street. Imagine if you had to address everyone who gets paid more than you as "Sir or Ma'am." Imagine if you had to deliver these gestures of submission to people you don't work with and don't know. Or imagine if you had to offer these gestures of submission to individuals who you knew for a fact were dumber than you and had less moral character than you.

Now imagine if I told you that you had to salute all these people and address them with a superior title because you respected them....well, that and the fact that if you don't then you'll be demoted, fired, go to jail and/or receive a felony conviction on your permanent employment record that you can't hide from future prospective employers....but the fear of permanent destitution isn't why you salute them. You salute them because you respect them...even if you don't know them or you know for a fact that one of those individuals is a scum bag.

What if I told you that you had to respect these people because they were white, or older than you, or joined the company before you or went to school a little longer than you? In a world where "all men are created equal" does it matter what reason someone tells you to subjugate yourself to another person, especially when the order to subjugate yourself comes with the threat of destitution?

Mandatory gestures of subjugation are reprehensible and illegal in every walk of life except the military, and in that case insult is added to injury by training the troops to glorify participation in their own subjugation. Military training teaches you that the way to be the perfect human is to be the perfect victim or abuser, depending on which side of the caste system your rank places you in relation to the human being standing in front of you.

Again, I understand that there are reasons for the military caste system and for saluting, but those reasons merely justify the exact same level of institutionalized victimhood and subjugation that was imposed on Negro slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation.

Just like with Negro slavery, many honest, well-intentioned people used similar reasons to justify the institutionalized victimhood and subjugation of those slaves, and the worst part is that from one narrow point of view they were right. If you ignore the inherent value of human beings and only look at the well-being of a nation from the standpoint of its economic and political strength, then a caste system looks justifiable. So feel free to argue that the troops need to or deserve to be held to a lower standard of ethical treatment than the civilian population. Just understand that when you do that, saying "Support the Troops" is as meaningful as saying "Support the Niggers."

3. Inhumane Training Methods. Have you ever wondered why police officers, firemen, lawyers, CEOs or politicians don't go through military basic training? After all, the commercials say that military training will turn you into a super human. If military basic training is such a powerful tool for raising human beings to their full potential then why doesn't everyone or at least the most powerful people in the world go through basic training?

The answer is because military training doesn't raise you to your full potential. It uses time-tested brainwashing techniques to break you down mentally and replace your values and beliefs with those that will ensure you shut down your capacity to reason and question. It indoctrinates you to willfully subjugate yourself to external control and kill without question.

Public and private organizations alike regularly produce literature condemning the training techniques used in military basic training. However, these techniques are only condemned when cults use them, not when the military does. Point in fact, the Stanford Prison experiment was shut down after a few days for doing the exact same thing student leaders in military tech schools are forced to do every single day.

I strongly urge you to put this claim to the test. Go look in any brainwashing text book, and compare those methods to military basic training. Military basic training is copied word-for-word from brainwashing textbooks. This isn't a subjective opinion you can disagree with for your own subjective reasons. This is a cut-and-dry, verifiable fact.

Another way you can put this theory to the test is to set up your own basic training camp. Hire ex-basic training instructors to train a group of psychology students using the exact same training manuals and techniques used in military basic training. Then invite the American Psychological Association to monitor your training program for any ethical violations. Your experiment would be shut down before it finished if not before it started.

This raises the question, why the double standards? Why have we taken one group of people and exempted them from the same protections we guarantee everyone else? And does it even matter if there's a reason? What's our freedom worth if it's bought with the blood of slaves and can be taken away from us by our own government with the flick of a pen? Are we even worth protecting if we agree to strip our fellow man of their humanity?

4. Pushing the Limits of Contractual Obligation. We justify exempting troops from the same rights and protections every other human being is entitled to because the troops signed a contract and took an oath. Actually, this statement is only half true. In the case of a draft the troops don't have a choice. They have to take the oath or go to jail. In that case, the government gets to throw all the rights and protections guaranteed by the constitution out the window at its own discretion. In other words, the government can suspend the constitution at will like it did in the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese call it, The American War) when there was zero threat to the American public and the troops were sent in (many against their will) to protect American business's access to the South East Asian economy against the will of the majority of the Vietnamese (and all of the Cambodian) people...but I digress.

The draft sets a precedent that the government can throw out the constitution at will and it doesn't need airtight justification to do so. It can also throw out the constitution if it can get a person to sign a piece of paper waiving their rights. Before you start screaming, "The troops knew what they were getting into before they signed up!" go visit a military recruiter and tell them you want to sign up for the military. They'll put a piece of paper and a pen in front of you and pressure you to sign it as fast as possible.

If you ask them the hard questions about the U.C.M.J. they'll make excuses and dodge the subjects. They'll reassure you everything is on the level and promise you anything they can to get you to sign that paper so they can meet their recruitment quota. They'll even flat out lie to you. Any honest basic training instructor will tell you that military recruiters are synonymous with dishonesty.

To a military apologetisist this is all just nit-picking; the bottom line is the troops signed a contract that's more legally binding than the constitution or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I suppose, from a purely technical standpoint that's legally valid. But if that's the case then what the hell are we doing here? If I can just give you a $3,000 kicker bonus and promise to pay for your pregnant wife's upcoming hospital bills (that you can't afford because you work for McDonalds) in exchange for all your civil liberties then why have civil liberties in the first place? The issue here isn't whether or not it's illegal to strip human beings of their civil liberties. The question is whether or not it should be legal. The answer is no. It shouldn't, because as the military says, "A threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere."

5. Welcome to the Twilight Zone. Many of the laws in the UCMJ are inoffensive and inarguable. For example, Article 128 of the UCMJ deals with assault. Of course, we don't want people assaulting each other. Article 120 deals with rape. That's a law that I would make a categorical imperative out of. I don't believe that anyone anywhere should be raped for any reason. So I agree with that, but the fact that there are some reasonable lines in the UCMJ doesn't prove that they're all reasonable, practical or just. Look at Articles  and ), which say, "Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct." and "Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court."

If those statements sound borderline meaningless, that's because they are. They were designed as catchall laws to allow the military to incriminate and punish the troops for any reason it subjectively decides. Michelle Manhart was discharged for posing nude in Playboy magazine because it brought discredit on the military. Others have been reprimanded and discharged for moonlighting as strippers even though they kept their daytime job in the military a secret. You'll go to jail and/or get a dishonorable discharge for publicly speaking your mind about morally questionable things your employer (who won't let you quit) is doing. You can be demoted at work for cussing at a minor at a grocery store.

You might not have a problem with this, but let's just be clear about the precedent we're setting here. The military enforces subjective cultural taboos, and retains broad discretion in its ability to destroy the lives of its service members for not conforming to the military's narrow perception of morality. Imagine if you were a member of a church, and your pastor found out you cheated on your wife. Then he told your boss and you got demoted at work. Imagine if you got fired at work for marching in a gay pride parade over the weekend. Imagine if you were sentenced to life in prison for whistle-blowing human rights abuses committed by your employer. Would that be fair? Would that be just? No, but that's everyday life for the troops. The human beings are so un-free that they're subject to laws that basically say anything you do can be illegal if your boss wants it to. That's literally the opposite of freedom. That's totalitarian control over the life of a human being, and there's no dignity in that.

Conclusion. All of the extraordinary rules/regulations in the UCMJ are supposedly justified because they ensure good order and discipline, but never forget that this good order and discipline comes at the cost of respect for human dignity and equality. Furthermore, these measures aren't necessary to maintain good order and discipline in the civilian population because civilian employers don't have the same mission as the military. The military's mission is to kill people and blow things up without asking why. This is an unnatural mission that human instincts, common sense and reason-based morality cannot accept. As a result, the military must use invasive techniques to break its members' minds and bind them in an unnatural psychological state against their will if/when necessary. If the military can't break the mind of a troop it will tattoo "failure to conform" on their forehead and throw them in the gutter and make an example of them to scare the remaining troops into submission. To the military, the perfect hero is the perfect slave, and all their benefits and perks are just golden handcuffs. Putting bigger golden handcuffs on the slaves is a hollow way to support them. Refusing to allow open, honest discussion about what the troops are dying/killing for is a hollow way to support them. If you really, truly care about the troops, the best way you can support them is to end the UCMJ and give the troops their rights, their dignity and their freedom back.
4 REASONS AMERICAN SOLDIERS AREN'T HEROES; THEY'RE VICTIMS

 1. Many soldiers are victims of economic oppression. Many soldiers didn't join the military out of patriotism or the selfless desire to defend other people's freedoms. Many soldiers joined the military for a job; they choose to lock themselves into a nearly unbreakable contract doing an extremely stressful and potentially fatal job is because they were poor. They did a cost/benefit analysis of their options in life and came to the conclusion that the risk of dying outweighed the cost of trying to scrape through life in an economic system that shamelessly exploits the poor and limits upward mobility to those who can afford prohibitively expensive college degrees. Any honest military recruiter can corroborate this...though any drill instructor will tell you that there are no honest recruiters.

A military recruiter will likely try to spin this sad fact of life by saying it just proves how great the military is because it saves poor people from a life of destitution, but every time a soldier receives a higher pay check than a dish washer it proves my point that soldiers have been (incidentally or intentionally) swindled into signing away their freedoms for money.

2. Soldiers aren't brave. They're brainwashed. Once these civilian recruits joined the military they were put through 6+ weeks of systematic brainwashing. Most of "basic training" was spent stripping them of their identity so they could be reprogrammed to identify themselves as a member of the new group they were being indoctrinated into. In the process they were taught not to think for themselves and not to question the new authority structure of the group who was brainwashing them. Completing basic training might give you the body of a man, but it turns you out with the mind of a child. That's not heroic. That's tragic.

Military personnel have heard that basic training is brainwashing, but they tend to dismiss this accusation as subjective liberal propaganda. It's neither subjective nor propaganda. It's a verifiable fact.

Professor Margaret Singer summed up the definition of brainwashing this way, ""Coercive psychological systems are behavioral change programs which use psychological force in a coercive way to cause the learning and adoption of an ideology or designated set of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors. The essential strategy used by the operators of these programs is to systematically select, sequence and coordinate many different types of coercive influence, anxiety and stress-producing tactics over continuous periods of time."

The techniques fall into seven main categories:

"Techniques such as: Extended audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills, excessive exact repetition of routine activities, sleep restriction and/or nutritional restriction."

"Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends are abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered."

"Prohibit disconfirming information and non-supporting opinions in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually constructed."

"Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defense mechanisms. The subject is guided to reinterpret his or her life's history and adopt a new version of causality."

"Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment."

"Create strong aversive emotional arousals in the subject by use of nonphysical punishments such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety and manipulation."

"Intimidate the person with the force of group-sanctioned secular psychological threats."

"These tactics of psychological force are applied to such a severe degree that the individual's capacity to make informed or free choices becomes inhibited. The victims become unable to make the normal, wise or balanced decisions which they most likely or normally would have made, had they not been unknowingly manipulated by these coordinated technical processes."

Source: <http://www.factnet.org/coercivemindcontrol.html?FACTNet>

Every single statement about brainwashing made here is systematically incorporated into military basic training. Military basic training is the perfection of brain washing, and anyone who is brainwashed is a victim.

3. Soldiers are slaves. When civilians sign up for the military they sign away most of the civil liberties guaranteed to everyone in the universal declaration of human rights. Many of those soon-to-be-soldiers weren't aware of all the rights they were giving up until after they locked themselves into a legally binding contract. No military recruiter will tell you that you have to read the Uniform Code of Military Justice before enlisting.

Once you do sign your rights away you literally became the property of and wholly subject to the domination and influence of the U.S. government. That's literally definition of slavery. That's not speaking metaphorically or bending words in any way. Soldiers are slaves. Period. Slavery is still legal in the "land of the free" because soldiers are slaves, and if living in bondage wasn't unethical enough, the systematic brainwashing soldiers are subjected to manipulates them into loving and celebrating their slave-hood. So soldiers are mental slaves as well as legal slaves.

The fact that the military pays its slaves relatively well and are only subject to slavery for a few years doesn't change the fact that they're still slaves. Even if you disagree with the use of the term "slave," the point remains that they still lose an inhumane, unjust and undignified amount of freedom when they join the military. Granted, some people actually enjoy this way of life since it absolves them of the responsibility of determining their destiny and gives them a sense of identity and purpose, but even if they love and embrace it, that still doesn't change the fact that they're slaves and have lost civil rights that were supposed to be guaranteed to all human beings.

4. Soldiers don't fight for the poor and oppressed. They fight for the rich and powerful. Many soldiers sleep well at night believing they're liberating the oppressed and protecting civilian's freedoms even if they were once civilians who have now had their freedoms taken away from them and are now being oppressed.

To add to their peace of mind, the U.S. military has been involved in a number of humanitarian missions and will undoubtedly be involved in future humanitarian missions. So from a certain perspective, soldiers are at least inadvertent heroes...or they would be except for the fact that the U.S. military's primary mission isn't to liberate the oppressed, protect civilian's freedoms or provide humanitarian aid.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the U.S. military is officially "number one in serving mankind in airlift operations to flood victims, food supply, and rebuilding communities around the world." True as that may be, the U.S. military is currently number one in exporting war, destabilizing regions and killing civilians. A few token presents don't make up for that fact.

It's also arguable how much soldiers serve the American people. Almost half the federal budget goes to the military. Every dollar spent on the military is a tax dollar not spent on education or social services. What do the American people get in return for spending all their taxes on fighting phantom enemies around the globe? They get crumbling schools and pot holes in their roads.

This would be justified if it kept Americans safe and secure at home, but look at Osama Bin Laden. He said himself that the September 11th terrorist attacks were in response to America meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. America's response was to jump into the Middle East with both feet and grow roots. I'm not going to argue whether or not that was the right thing to do, but I will argue that the more bases the American military opens on foreign soil and the more people they kill the more it will piss off the rest of the world and make terrorist attacks more likely.

And since the military is bleeding the American tax payers out of vital civil services the military is creating ripe conditions for poverty back home, and with poverty comes crime and bloodshed. So even if the U.S. military kills every terrorist in the world it will come home to find a collapsed system where more and more houses have bars on the windows and the police are stretched thin dealing with violent crimes. Every soldier needs to seriously ask themselves if they're really giving or taking more from the American tax payers.

Conclusion. Look past all the military propaganda about military patriotism, freedom and liberation. Analyze the events leading up to every major military action taken by the United States of America. Analyze the outcome of every major U.S. military action and you'll find very little evidence to back up the claim that the U.S. military's primary mission is to protect freedom or anything else universally idealistic. What you will find is a consistent theme of war profiteering. Every time America goes to war the rich get richer and the poor get poorer...assuming the poor survive the collateral damage; there are millions who haven't, and there are millions more who won't if business continues as usual. If you're skeptical about this claim (and you should be) then do your research. If you study the facts and not the propaganda you'll find that everything said here is true.

So the question all of this leads up to is: If someone orders you to kill someone else and tells you it's for a very, very, very good reason and you do it with the best of intentions but it turns out that you were lied to and actually killed an innocent person then does that make you a hero, a murderer or a victim? I know it doesn't make you a hero. I don't know if it makes you a murderer, but I do know that it makes you a victim.

If you support the troops then don't treat them like heroes. Treat them like the slaves and victims they are. Help free them from the mental and legal oppression they suffer under every day. If we save the troops we might save the world.
THE MILITARY IS A CULT

"A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc.) designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community."

I'm going to go through the characteristics of a cult and break down how they apply to military. You'll see by the end of this list that the similarities are too blatant to be explained by accidental coincidence. The more you understand the design of a cult the more obvious it becomes that the military system was painstakingly designed around the cult model.

"Characteristics of a Destructive Cult

1. Authoritarian pyramid structure with authority at the top." There is no system of authority in the world that fits this description more than the military's. All the enlisted grunts with no power are at the bottom, and a few generals who don't get their hands dirty sit at the top raining orders down a clearly defined chain of command that nobody can question. This is an authoritarian pyramid structure.

In military basic training you're forced to sit in classes which teach you the ranks of the pyramid authoritarian structure that you'll have to spend the rest of your enlistment obeying. If you don't follow every single order handed down the authoritarian pyramid structure then you'll go to jail and get a dishonorable discharge.

Military leaders are not leaders. They're dictators. They're dystopian rulers. This is inhumane and violates the basic human rights guaranteed to human being. Period. Military officers are morally equivalent to slave owners. When one human being gets to tell another human being that they have to do whatever they say or else they'll go to jail or be shot then that make the subjugated human being a slave. Period.

The authoritarian pyramid structure of the military is the largest human rights atrocity ever. It's evil. Period. It's unconscionable that anyone would allow this human rights atrocity to exist. Yet this human rights atrocity is celebrated by humanity. We should all be ashamed and terrified over how eagerly we celebrate human right atrocities.

2. "Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (Messianic meaning they either say they are God OR that they alone can interpret the scriptures the way God intended." I used to know an enlisted soldier who had a coffee mug that said, "God couldn't be everyone at once. So he created officers." That coffee mug existed because officers have been compared to gods for years. There was even a movie titled "Gods and Generals." I've often wondered if officers are taught to view themselves as gods in officer training school or if the comparison keeps coming up because they have god-sized egos and god-like power over their subordinates.

Just to remove all doubt of the officer corps claim to surrogate god-hood, all military chaplains are officers. The military has actually coopted religion and injected it into its ranks, and even though the military makes broad attempts to accommodate service members from every faith, if there's ever an irreconcilable conflict of interest between the military's goals and religious doctrine, military law supersedes religious law. Muslims can't pray towards Mecca in the middle of an exercise, and Christians have to kill when ordered to.

Underneath all of this is the ever-pervasive belief that America is God's favored country, and to serve America is to serve God's will. From the Declaration of Independence to every State of the Union address, American politicians align their goals with God's, which means every soldier serves God's will by serving their leaders' will.

3. "Deception in recruitment and/or fund raising." I really, really hate the common phrase in the military, "You knew what you were getting into when you signed up." In reality, this isn't the case at all (unless you were a military brat). That's why so many people try to commit suicide in basic training. They think the rest of their career is going to be like basic training and they'd rather die. They wouldn't try to commit suicide if they actually knew what they were getting into.

Also, half of basic training is spent in a classroom where you're taught military rules, ranks, and history...because most people don't know anything about it before they're recruited. Part of passing basic training is taking a test to prove you know what you're taught about the military, and very few people make a perfect score on that test. So most people don't even know that much about the military after basic training.

Chances are you don't even know how much you're going to be getting paid before you join. And anyone who has enlisted will tell you their recruiter lied to them about a slew of things. If you don't believe me, go talk to a recruiter. They'll paint you a glorious picture about how the military is a wonderful summer camp that turns you into a man. They'll never mention the indignity you'll suffer and the systematic brainwashing that will strip you of your free will and turn you into a willing slave.

4. "Isolation from society \-- not necessarily physical isolation like on some compound in Waco, but this can be psychological isolation -- the rest of the world is not saved, not Christian, not transformed (whatever) -- the only valid source of feedback and information is the group." This is true on both levels. You're isolated physically in a compound. In basic training during your indoctrination you're totally isolated from the outside world. You're literally locked on base behind barbed wire fences. Later you're shipped all over the world where you don't know anyone and might not even speak the local language.

Ideologically you're separated from the rest of the world by your branch's cult culture. You're told you're better than civilians. You're told you're elite. Your unit has slogans like, "If you ain't Ammo you ain't shit." Or "The best supporting the rest."

You're even told your branch is better than the other branches. You're told you're serving the best government in the world (and thus the rest are inferior). You're told your rank is better than others. You may even have separate dining facilities from the inferior people in your own branch.

Mental and physical isolation are standard practices in the United States military because the military knows how to run an effective cult.

5. "Use of mind control techniques (we use Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's criteria from chapter 22 of his book Thought Reform & the Psychology of Totalism to compare whether the eight psychological and social methods he lists are present in the group at question)." Military customs and courtesies are designed around the framework of mind control. Let's go through these 8 methods of mind control and see how they all have been systematically incorporated into the military.

1. "Milieu Control: Control of the environment and communication within the environment." Military bases are completely controlled. They even have laws on them that don't apply to civilian land. Even your clothes are controlled. See what happens if you walk outside without your hat on or leave a button on your shirt unbuttoned. Communication is controlled through the chain of command. And you can't make public statements about the military unless you're a public affairs representative, and even then you have severe restrictions on what you can say.

2. "Mystical Manipulation: Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative the "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)" I'll sum this up in one word, "patriotism." What word is more mystical than that? Within the context of patriotism the best example I can give of "mystical manipulation" is saluting the flag. Twice a day on every military base (that has a loud speaker, which is most of them) the national anthem is played while the American flag is raised or lowered. When this happens, if you're outside, you have to stop whatever you're doing and salute the flag (or salute in the direction the music is coming from if you can't see the flag).

You're told you're doing it out of patriotic respect for the flag. In reality you're doing it because you were told you had to and because you'll be punished if you don't. Would you have ever come up with the idea yourself to stop in the middle of the street on cue to face an inanimate object and put your hand on your head until the music stopped? No. But if you're in the military and you see someone not saluting the flag will you chase down the "perpetrator" and angrily yell at them for their lack of respect and patriotism? Probably. And you'll think it was your idea.

Have you ever asked why soldiers have to keep their boots shined or their uniforms pressed? There's no practical need for it. You might assume that it's because soldiers are well disciplined, but all the soldiers in the military didn't independently come to the same conclusion that it would be responsible to shine their boots and press their uniforms. They were ordered to do that upon fear of severe punishment. The reason soldiers are forced to shine their shoes and press their uniforms is to keep them in the habit of doing whatever their leaders order them to without ever asking why.

3. "Demand for Purity: The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group) one must continually change or conform to the group "norm"; tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences." Commander in Chief, George Bush said specifically that the United States military is fighting evil (which makes his side the good or holy side). Capitalism and Communism was divided the same way. We've used the term "axis of evil" more than once. Civilians are even stereotyped by the military as being weak, ignorant and ungrateful.

Within the military organization the norms of good and evil are constantly being updated, and one must constantly relearn what is right and wrong today. There was a time when blacks, women and homosexuals weren't allowed in the military. Now they're okay. Smoking inside, smoking while walking, and smoking outside designated areas used to be okay. Now they're wrong. Walking while talking on a cell phone used to be okay. Now it's wrong. Every year the uniform changes. I don't know how many times I've seen people break rules like smoking outside a designated area and someone bitched them out and asked, "Where's your integrity?" Integrity has nothing to do with it, but you will be shamed into conforming to the group norms, and if that doesn't work you'll be punished.

4. "Confession: Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change" In the military this really only happens in basic training. You're told to admit that before you came into the military you were a useless, undisciplined slob. Now that you're in the military you can wash away your sins by completing basic training and be transformed into a real man. Think of all the Marine commercials you've seen on TV where the guy picks up the sword and is surrounded by light and his clothes change into a crisp, military uniform.

5. "Sacred Science: The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited a reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology." This goes back again to military recruits being told they're fighting for the best nation in the world and that they're in the best branch of their nation's military. Our constitution is even encased in Washington DC in a bullet proof display case, and you're not allowed to take pictures of it. That's not to say the constitution is bad, but it does carry an air of sacredness. Even our money says, "In God we trust." on it. Thus, meaning the preservers of that dollar are protecting something holy. Even the doctrine that takes away the military's human rights is treated as sacred. Recruits are told that the Uniform Code of Military Justice holds them to a "higher" standard than regular people and that they should be proud of it.

6. "Loading the Language: Words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase." There are pamphlets and even classes for new spouses of military members that teach them the new language of the military so they'll know what it means when their spouse says, "Before I go to the BX to pick up my BDUS. I'm taking the POV to the MPF to pick up my PCS orders to my next OCONUS assignment, which should be somewhere in USAFE."

7. "Doctrine Over Person: If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly the underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth" the experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt one is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil when doubt arises, conflicts become intense." I have personal experience with this. One of my supervisors asked me point blank why I wanted to get out of the military (after I already received my approval for separation). So I told him my reasons. A week later I was forced to re-swear my oath of allegiance to the military and the constitution.

You won't last in the military if you just view it as a day job. You're expected to buy into all the ideology. You're expected to associate your identity with the military and be proud of it. Anything less and you'll be ostracized by the group and bullied at work.

8. "Dispensing of Existence: Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist; impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed one outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group; fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their salvation/transformation, or something bad will happen to them; the group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc." I've already covered this enough that I don't feel the need to retype it. If you need more validation then go ask a Marine how they feel about the military.

SOURCE: http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studycult/study_whatisdescult.htm
THE PARALLELS BETWEEN THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

AND THE UNITED STATES MILITARY'S TECH SCHOOLS

"The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th to 20th, 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. It was funded by a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps in order to determine the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.

Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned randomly. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the "Officers" to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as "Prison Superintendent," lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts made publicly available."

The Stanford Prison Experiment was shut down because it violated the ethical standards of professional psychology resulting in psychological and physical harm to the subjects in the experiment. However, the exact same scenario has been repeated every day since before the 1970s on every military tech school in America with full immunity from the law and a deliberate disregard for the ethical treatment of humans.

Here's how tech school works. Once a soldier (aka airman, marine or seaman) graduates basic training they're sent to a "tech school" to learn the job skill they'll perform for the rest of their career in the military. While life in tech school isn't as rigorous as basic training, it is the last chance for the military to conform its troops' thoughts and behavior to its standards before releasing them into "the real military" to succeed or fail at supporting real world missions. So the environment is designed to indoctrinate the students to embrace willful obedience and let go of their pre-military identity. Troops live in barracks and are granted small freedoms (such as the right to wear civilian clothing and leave the base) in stages to decompress them from the totalitarian internment they experienced in basic training. In tech school the troops march to and from school in uniform, and are assigned some additional duties after school. Many aspects of life for the students are highly regulated in ways that serve no functional purpose other than to get them used to following rules without question. You can't walk on the grass. You have to carry a flashlight at night. Your uniform must be immaculate. Your room must be cleaner than Martha Stewart's dream home, etc.

So far the standard operating procedure of military tech school exactly mirrors (because it's based on) the standard operating procedures of a cult, which is unethical in itself and would be shut down by the government if any other organization other than the government attempted to use similar methods.

The parallels between the Stanford Prison Experiment are found in the use of student leaders or "ropes." The student leaders are responsible for policing their fellow students. On paper these duties can be made to sound innocuous and clinical to the point of boredom. In reality what happens is the student leaders have a tendency to mimic the intensity and righteous fury of the training instructors and drill sergeant they've been getting yelled at by for the past 6-9 weeks. The student leaders tend to feel and express genuine disappointment and anger over the smallest infraction regardless of how arbitrary the rule being violated is. They'll scream at their subordinates for walking on the grass and accuse them in all seriousness (with no sense of irony) for having no integrity.

This behavior isn't an anomaly, and it doesn't happen behind the backs of the senior military leader's running the school. It's actively encouraged and built into the tech school's official operating procedures. In order for a student leader to advance to the highest level of student leadership they must "host" "remedial military training." When a student has violated enough arbitrary rules they're assigned a day of remedial military training over the weekend. During that time they'll be forced to exercise beyond the point of exhaustion and submit themselves to a full day of verbal degradation. Remedial military training is overseen by senior ranking sergeants, but the details are run by the student leaders.

The military justifies this behavior by saying it's necessary to instill discipline, but that's just an Orwellian way to say, "brainwashing." To be fair, it's not like they're taping troops' eyes open, feeding them gunpowder and forcing them to watch snuff films. Having said that, the end result of the brain washing techniques used in tech school is that the followers of the military cult will someday kill another human being without question.

At any rate, the point is that the "training" methods used by the military are literally in direct violation of professional standards of the ethical treatment of human beings. This exact same behavior has already been shut down by the government in the Stanford Prison Experiment. This isn't an opinion. This isn't said out of spite or ridicule. This is a cut and dried fact. If a professional civilian psychologist recreated the exact same environment that exists on military tech schools, much less basic training, their simulation would be shut down by the government for ethics violations. Period.

This raises a very serious point that deserves to be considered seriously and objectively. Soldiers, airmen, seaman and marines are human beings. However, the government, which is run by human beings, has written the Uniform Code of Military Justice to provide a loophole around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exempt military personnel from the same ethical protection guaranteed to everyone else. The only justification for this I have ever heard is that it is necessary to protect our rights and freedoms. That argument is self-defeating. It says we have to strip the rights of one portion of society, legalize their systematic emotional, psychological and physical abuse and literally enslave them in order to prevent the rest of society from suffering the exact same fate. Then, to add insult to injury, we're then told to "support the troops."

I don't support the unethical treatment of the human beings we've labeled "troops." I don't support the fact that they've lost their freedom. I don't support the military caste system. I don't support slaves being led to get slaughtered in wars their leaders can't give proper justifications for. I don't support the UCMJ that allows all of this to happen.

I do support ending the UCMJ. I support freeing the human beings we call troops. I support equal rights for all people, even those who have been coerced and misled into signing away their rights "voluntarily." And I don't believe the only way we can achieve peace and harmony on earth is to enslave one portion of society, strip them of their identity and reprogram them into unthinking killers. I believe the standard operating procedures of the United States military are in direct conflict with creating a peaceful and harmonious world. I believe that if you truly "support the troops" then you cannot support the UCMJ that allows the unethical treatment of your fellow human beings, especially those you claim to support and call heroes.
AN OVERDUE CRITIQUE OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY CASTE SYSTEM

The American military caste system, particularly its officer corps is an obsolete institution that is incompatible with modern, enlightened values.

In order to understand why this is you have to look at where it came from. In the past the upper class was extremely well educated, and the poor were mostly illiterate. The job of designing and implementing military strategy naturally fell to the educated upper class, and the job of dying in the mud naturally fell to the illiterate lower class. This division of labor also served as a way to further institutionalize the caste system that separated the upper class from the lower class. By putting a pin on one human being's shoulder and a stripe on another human being's shoulder it gave one human being a visible "right" to order the other like a dog, beat them like a dog and kill them like a dog if they disobeyed their master's orders. As long as these symbols existed everyone understood their place in the social hierarchy and accepted it as natural and just.

The industrial revolution and the information age eventually created a middle class to bridge the income gap between the rich and the poor. The higher education system still keeps a glass ceiling over the heads of the poorest of the poor who can't afford a college degree to open the door to professional work. However, free K-12 public schools, equal access to libraries and all the information on the internet has almost completely bridged the intellectual gap between the rich and the poor.

The constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights (to name just a few relevant legal documents) have whittled the institutionalized caste system down to a thread. These new social contracts have even affected the United States military. Senior ranking soldiers can no longer legally beat lower ranking soldiers. All soldiers are guaranteed protection from discrimination based on race, sex or religion under equal opportunity laws. Technically, a soldier can still be executed for disobeying a direct order, but that involves a lengthy legal process, and in order to avoid the bad press, disobedient soldiers are almost guaranteed to just do some jail time followed by a dishonorable discharge.

But the military has side-stepped social progress by inventing the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). This document exists to provide the military with a legal loop hole around the basic human rights guaranteed to all of humanity. One of the greatest insults to humanity perpetrated by the UCMJ is the existence of the officer corps, which is an archaic, institutionalized caste-system that's incompatible with modern, enlightened values.

The injustice of the officer corps is most clearly exemplified in the act of saluting. When an enlisted troop sees an officer (or a general's staff car) they must put their hand on their head until the officer returns the salute, which gives the enlisted troop permission to take their hand down. On the surface this is innocuous. Officers will even tell you that the reason enlisted troops salute them is out of respect. However, the true purpose of saluting is betrayed by what will happen if an enlisted troop refuses to salute an officer.

If an enlisted troop refuses to salute an officer they'll get a letter of counseling. If they still refuse to salute an officer they'll get a letter of counseling. Then an Article 15. Then a court martial. Then they'll lose rank, pay, privilege and ultimately their freedom when they're sent to jail. When they're released from military prison they'll be given a dishonorable discharge that will prevent them from getting a good job for the rest of their life.

Enlisted troops are taught to salute officers out of respect, but failing that, they're forced to salute officers out of fear. While the rest of the population is guaranteed that their punishment must fit their crime, enlisted troops and lower ranking officers are denied this right and are forced to symbolically subjugate themselves to any stranger wearing a pin on their shoulder.

Make no mistake, the salute isn't designed to exchange gestures of respect. It's designed to systematically indoctrinate lower ranking troops to accept their place in the lower social caste that robs them of the dignity supposedly guaranteed to all men.

And the issue goes deeper than dignity. The mandatory salute is also designed to prime/force the lower caste to accept their "superiors'" orders without question. An officer can order enlisted troops to do anything within the limits of the Geneva Convention, and if the enlisted troop refuses they'll go to jail. For example, if the higher caste orders the lower caste to do jumping jacks and the lower cast refuses they'll go to jail. On the surface this might seem innocuous again, but look at what's really going on here. What do you call someone who has to do whatever another person says upon fear of jail time and destitution? That's a slave. It's not like a slave. It is a slave.

If you're going to justify the manipulation, exploitation, degradation and subjugation of another human being, much less an entire group of human beings, you have the responsibility to provide extensive, articulate, air-tight justifications. You can't wipe away thousands of years of social evolution and human rights with a vague sentence or two such as, "Well, they took an oath." "Good soldiers follow orders." "You're an idiot." "This is hogwash." or "You have to follow orders to accomplish the mission."

This is especially true when we're talking about soldiers who will be ordered to kill other human beings and be killed themselves in the process. This isn't a game. This isn't a joke. This is a human's life we're putting on trial, and in the case of a military with nuclear weapons, this is the fate of the entire human race we're talking about. When we're talking about tangible, perishable human lives, we can't afford to be lackadaisical in our arguments. If you truly believe that the lower military castes are selflessly sacrificing their lives for the greater good then they, of all people, deserve serious consideration and not just flippant, condescending, reactionary excuses.

Honestly ask yourself if the officer corps and the human rights abuses that come along with it are truly necessary. In the past the officer corps' power and their pay was justified by the degree to which their education level and thus their contribution to the mission exceeded that of the enlisted troop. This arrangement held some merit when the average officer held the equivalent of a doctorate degree and the average enlisted troop held the equivalent of a 3rd grade education, but that justification is obsolete.

Many enlisted troops have a higher level of education than many officers even if they don't have the certified credentials to prove it, though some do. Even in the cases where officers do have a higher level of education, that fact doesn't supersede the fact that all humans were created equal. An officer may have gone to 1-4 more years of school and a few months of officer training school, but to presume that that gives one human being the inherent right to treat another human being as a slave and force them to degrade themselves is absurd.

Civilian doctors can't treat uneducated patients like that. Public school teachers can't treat students like that. Politicians can't treat voters like that. Prison guards can't even treat rapists like that. Nobody in the world is allowed to treat anyone else with the level of disrespect that officers are allowed and expected to treat enlisted troops with.

After all, why should they be able to? Does a few years of partying in college really fundamentally change the worth of a human being? If so, shouldn't all of society adopt this practice? If this system is indeed justifiable then shouldn't we force it on the rest of society? No! It would be inconceivable to force 100% of society to live under an institutionalized caste system that degrades the lower class. It would inconceivable to force even 50% or 30% of the population to live that way. So why is it okay for 1% of the population to live under a dystopian social contract?

What would happen if troops were as free as civilians? What if they could give a two week notice and quit their job legally? What if they could challenge and disobey their "superiors?" The existing power structure would have you believe the entire military would dissolve into anarchy. Is that really logical though? The United States has an all-volunteer military. Why would people who willingly volunteered to join the military and support its mission turn around at their first base and abandon their jobs? They wouldn't, and all the civilians who work for the military are proof. The few civilians and troops who do disobey orders should be removed from the military, but under the UCMJ they're almost impossible to get rid of. You can put this to the test. Create a test group of soldiers and give them their freedom back. The only ones who will abandon the mission will be those who are already holding the mission back.

The only other exception is if the mission were unjust. If there were a valid reason to conscientiously object to the mission then any troop with foresight and a sense of justice would leave their military service. This raises the question, what are the chances the government would ever engage in an unjust war or send its troops on unjust missions? If you're 100% positive the government would never, ever do that, then why lock the troops into slavery? If you believe the government has ever engaged in unjust wars, ordered its troops to do unjust things or will ever do so then why lock the troops into slavery? That would only guarantee corrupt and/or misguided politicians the ability to call on the world's most lethal fighting force to serve their corrupted purposes. When you justify the enslavement of the military, you need to understand lucidly that you're giving a monkey a gun on blind faith. If you're willing to go down that path you need to seriously ask yourself if that's absolutely necessary.

And understand the irony of saying, "Yes." What you're saying is that we absolutely must mislead, mentally and physically enslave and degrade our fellow human beings into submission...for the sake of protecting our fellow human beings from slavery, abuse and exploitation. The United States Military failed its mission of protecting people's freedoms the moment it threw out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights out the window in favor of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Honestly, what are we doing here? What kind of a world are we creating where we've justified and institutionalized slavery at the tax payers' expense to act as unquestioning mercenaries for the rich and powerful? How can we honestly say to ourselves that we "support the troops" when we've allowed our brothers and sisters to be swindled out of their basic human rights?

Are we even worth defending when we would so throw our fellow man under the bus like that? What kind of a world are we creating? You can see for your own eyes what kind of a world we're creating. Go to any American military base in the world and tour the officer's barracks and clubs. Then tour the enlisted barracks and clubs. You should be horrified by the Soviet-era disparity between the quality of life between the two castes. The officers gorge themselves on luxury in gold-encrusted rooms (paid for by impoverished tax payers) while the enlisted people shiver in condemned buildings. You will see a world that has existed right under your nose for your entire life that makes "1984" look like a children's story.

Don't accept the American military's actions on blind faith alone. If the military's actions have truly been just then go to the all the countries America has exported war to this century. Talk to the people and look at the physical results of the war. Oh, you'll find people who celebrate the American military, but for every one of those you find you'll find 1000 corpses, 1000 broken families, 1000 babies with birth defects from discarded military ordinance, 1000 destroyed buildings, 10 sweat shops where American goods are produced and more often than not, a few active American military bases.

Suppose everything I've said here is wrong. Suppose the military caste system is excusable despite its indignity. We (or at least the taxpayers who maintain it) still need to question its efficiency. We've already asked ourselves if we should have absolute faith in the politicians who wield unquestionable control over the military and acknowledged the inherent danger in that. Now consider this. Think of all the civilians you know with a bachelor's degree. What if they had absolute, unquestionable authority over the subordinates in their cubicles. How responsibly would they wield their power to silence all opposition to their will by saying, "Shut up and color or I'll send you to jail."? Would totalitarian authority improve innovation and efficiency in public or private organizations? Is there any precedent whatsoever to suggest that totalitarian authority has a tendency to inculcate close-minded thinking, abuse of power and impunity from accountability? Yes. Civilian progress would grind to a halt if they adopted the same caste system the United States military uses. The military is made up of human beings, just like the civilian sector, and the caste system has had predictably detrimental effects in the military. The military sets the standard for fraud, waste and abuse because it's run by the officer corps, which is fraud, waste and abuse incarnate.

There's one final cost to the officer corps itself that we have to acknowledge and accept if we're to continue to permit the officer corps' existence much less its celebrity status. Look at the psychological damage it does to officers when they're allowed to exercise totalitarian authority over other human beings they call their subordinates. Consider the psychological impact it has on a human being when they're treated like a god day in and day out for years. This lifestyle will take its toll. The constant reinforcement will indoctrinate the officer himself to truly believe there is something superior about his person, and when this belief is indoctrinated deeply enough he'll eventually reach a point where this illusion becomes permanent reality in their own mind. Then they'll go through the rest of their life wearing rose-colored glasses. They'll live in an inescapable false reality in which they play a divine figure walking amongst unclean, incomplete sub-humans, and while this will be enjoyable to the officer, it's simply not true. That's literally insanity. The officer corps is institutionalized insanity. I don't say that to shame officers, I say that to shame the tax payers who fund the indoctrination of officers and strip them of their sanity.
10 REASONS PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS ARE BETTER LEADERS

THAN MILITARY OFFICERS

1. If an officer can't earn the respect of enlisted troops they can still command obedience by threatening to send the enlisted troop to jail and end their career with the snap of a finger. A teacher can get sued for hurting a student's feelings.

2. Enlisted troops are required to address officers as "sir" or "ma'am." Teachers are required to take verbal abuse from their students.

3. If an officer is unworthy of respect he can tell an enlisted troop, "Salute the rank, not the man." Teachers get flipped off by students and aren't allowed to discipline them.

4. Officers have access to millions of dollars of resources, cutting edge technology and an organized, global support network. Teachers have to buy their own classroom supplies and pay to print out worksheets for their students to use.

5. Officers live and work in an environment where strict rules are in place at all times and everyone is accustomed to conducting themselves professionally at all times. Teachers juggle a constant rotation of hormonal teens who are bored, high, horny and accustomed to being allowed to do whatever they want.

6. As long as an enlisted troop is within shouting distance an officer literally has a slave at their beckon call who is legally obligated to kill and die for the officer. Teachers will get fired and go to jail if they raise their hands to defend themselves when a student attacks them.

7. Officers have a direct line to the highest levels of political power in the world allowing them opportunities to operate outside the law and potentially get laws changed to suit their purposes. Teachers operate at the bottom rung of an isolated, fractured bureaucracy that doesn't listen to them.

8. Officers are glorified in the media so that a contrived, godlike reputation precedes them. Teachers are demonized by highly funded political groups and mocked by government leaders.

9. Officers look forward to regular pay increases. Teachers look forward to regular pay cuts.

10. A bachelor's degree and 30 years of service will yield an officer a monthly retirement check of up to $9,000 per month. Teacher retirement pay for the same level of education and length of service is barely above the poverty line.

Despite all the handicaps placed on teachers, most of them still manage to earn the respect of their students and control their classroom by exercising genuine leadership skills. Imagine how much more our teachers could accomplish if we didn't treat them like shit.
QUANTIFYING THE HEROISM OF TROOPS

"Hero" is a strong word. The label of "hero" comes with a prestigious amount of respect and privilege. It's only fair that anyone who claims hero-status should have to give full account of why they deserve to hold the title of hero not just to the civilians they expect to be praised by but to the true heroes who can give full account of their hero status lest any false heroes minimize their sacrifices and accomplishments.

The current culture in America has indiscriminately lumped every member of its military into the hero category with no consideration for achievement or distinction for degrees. This is unfair to the civilian population and all true military heroes for several reasons.

Firstly, it doesn't take into account the different reasons individuals join the military. Yes, there are many individuals who enlisted because they genuinely wanted to serve their country, be all they can be and selflessly sacrifice themselves for their fellow man. These individuals' noble intentions put them in the running for hero status, and it's not fair to give mercenaries equal standing as them.

There are troops who joined the military because they were enticed by an early retirement, free education, travel opportunities, partying, a lucrative and secure pay check, socialized health care for them and their family and all the other practical benefits that come along with being in the military. Some troops even joined as an alternative to prison. Anyone who joined the military for what they could get out of it is a mercenary by degrees.

Granted, they knew there was a chance of death in the line of duty, but every trucker accepts that same risk in their job to deliver goods to consumers across the nation. The big difference between a regular trucker and a mercenary is the mercenary accepts the certainty that they'll be responsible for killing other human beings (directly or indirectly). If you'd join Murder Incorporated for what you can get out of it, you've got a big task ahead of you to explain how that doesn't make you the opposite of a hero.

Regardless of why you joined the military, let's suppose you spend 20 years processing administrative paperwork in a cubicle at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Let's suppose the closest you come to a combat zone is Ali Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait, where you gained 10 pounds from eating stake, lobster and ice cream bars and returned home with an extra $5000 in separation and hazardous duty pay even though the closest you came to combat was playing paint-ball in downtown Kuwait City. Would you really tell a Marine (who has done 5 tours in Iraq and lost half his friends in combat) that you're a hero on the same level as them? No. Hell, no.

Well, if you wouldn't tell a combat infantry Marine you're just as much of a hero as them, then don't tell civilians you're a combat infantry Marine-level hero, because by my calculations processing paperwork in San Antonio for 20 years doesn't make you any more of a hero than the tax payers who paid that Marine's pay check.

Regardless of how close you came to the battlefield, what would happen if you refused to support the mission? Technically, the UCMJ gives the military the right to execute its own troops for going AWOL during a time of war. Granted, in this day and age the negative press that would generate almost guarantees that won't happen. What will happen though is you'll go to jail for a few months and then get kicked out of the military with no benefits... but you will get a dishonorable discharge that's designed to almost guarantee you'll never be able to earn a living wage again for the rest of your life. This means every soldier is constantly faced with two choices: Support the mission and possibly die on the battlefield or don't support the mission and face certain destitution by your own leaders.

This means it would require as much of a sacrifice, if not more, to conscientiously object to the mission as it would to support the mission. This means it's theoretically possible to continue to support a mission you disagree with out of cowardice. This doesn't mean all troops are cowards. It just illustrates how important it is to make the distinction that not all troops are automatically heroes so as not to lump the hypocritical cowards in with the troops who do genuinely continue to serve out of courage and selflessness.

It also raises an uncomfortable point. The mere existence of the dishonorable discharge will always cast a shadow of doubt on the heroism of any soldier. I don't say that to be spiteful, at least, not to the troops. I say that to encourage discussion about whether or not the dishonorable discharge should exist at all. Is it just that the military expects civilians to embrace every troop as selfless heroes, but the military itself holds a gun to every troop's head and orders them to dance or die? Is it mentally healthy to be comfortable with this?

Some troops do willingly fight on the battlefield selflessly and die in the line of combat. Some even willingly and consciously sacrifice their lives in order to save the lives of their fellow soldiers. As taboo as it is to question the heroism of these martyrs, it's imperative to do so in order to fully validate their heroism.

Consider this. Soldiers died selflessly fighting for Hitler, Ho Chi Mihn, Stalin and Pol Pot. If we made it a rule that any soldier who dies in the line of duty is automatically a hero then we owe every fallen Nazi and kamikaze pilot full hero honors on par with every American soldier who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the Iraq War.

If that doesn't sound reasonable then we have to ask ourselves if reason ever played a role in our decision to call our soldiers heroes or are we really just saying that any time one of our troops dies they become a hero and any time anyone else's troops dies they're just the bad guy getting what they deserve? If that's what we're doing then the only determining factor in who becomes a hero is who wins the war, and that cheapens every hero's death everywhere.

Even if a man dies in battle, he still needs to pass 2 more tests before he's granted full hero status. The first question we have to ask is how their unit behaved. Did they maim or kill any civilians? Did they harass and bully civilians? Did they engage their enemy with unnecessary cruelty? Did they torture? Did they kill for sport? Did they use their victims' skulls as ash trays? Did they commit any war crimes? Did they break the Geneva Convention?

Point in fact, there is an American War Crimes museum in Vietnam. It contains pictures of American soldiers committing war crimes. Some of those Americans in those pictures died in the line of combat and received medals. Why should they get a free pass to the hall of heroes? They wouldn't if they had Nazi flags on their shoulders instead of American flags. But the Nazis killed 6 million Jews and invaded other countries though. Well, America is responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis and has sent troops to as many, if not more countries than Germany. I'm not saying America is the same as Nazi Germany. I'm saying we need to have a measured conversation about America's military actions without white washing over every uncomfortable fact with euphoric propaganda.

This brings me to the second question we have to ask about our fallen soldiers before we write them into the history books as divine heroes, and that is the righteousness of the wars they fight. No matter how valiantly and selflessly any Nazi soldier fought and died, they won't be remembered as heroes by most of the world because the war they supported was unjust. The American government tells its civilians and soldiers that every war it fights is just, but every single government that has ever gone to war has always told everyone that their actions were just. Therefore, you can never take any government's reasons for going to war at face value. When a government gives you the reasons why they're going to war, that's your cue to question those reasons relentlessly....and that takes courage.

Look at the war in Iraq. Many Americans have lost their lives there. The surviving soldiers spit venom at any civilian who questions the Iraq war, but is it really the civilians who deserve to have their integrity questioned? Any American soldier who expects to be regarded as a hero or at least expects to be exempt from criticism needs to objectively analyze for themselves why America invaded Iraq.

If you look past the propaganda and look at the hard facts you'll find...nothing. George Bush claimed America had to invade Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction even though America knew Saddam didn't have nuclear capability, and the only chemical weapons Saddam had were the ones America sold him. America knew Saddam had used those weapons on civilians years before America used those war crimes as justification to hang him. When it came to light that Saddam didn't have the weapons of mass destruction General Colin Powell claimed, then George Bush changed his story and said America went into Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. Years later, the Iraqi people still have their roads blockaded by American troops. So which reason did America go to war? Journalists, Nobel Prize winners, politicians, soldiers and citizens have been arguing for years about why America went to war in Iraq because there's no clear answer.

100,000 people dead requires a clear cut answer, which the American government has yet to produce. I can't yield unquestioning trust to a government that can't give a solid account for why it's killed so many people and spent so much of its tax payers' hard earned money. Nor can I endorse hero status on soldiers who are killing for a cause with no clear justification. Nor can I exempt soldiers from criticism if I can't determine with certainty that the cause they serve is just. Nor should you, nor should the troops themselves.

I can't support the troops if the troops cannot give me a full account of what they're fighting for. This isn't disrespectful, arrogant, impudent or ungrateful. This is completely reasonable and justified. In response to everything said here I know that many troops (as well as family members, friends and supporters of the troops) will respond by saying, "The troops protect your freedoms...." as if that fact justifies everything they've done and exempts them from all criticism.

To this I would say, what about the Iraqi's freedom to travel? What about their freedom from search and seizure? What about their freedom from torture? America backs the Palestinian holocaust, which the rest of the world would step in and end were it not for America's military. Even back in America, civilians don't have the freedom to marry whomever they want. Americans don't have the freedom of privacy. Our phones are wiretapped. Our genitals are groped at airports. You can't buy certain books without your name appearing on a CIA or FBI black list. Peace activists are put on the TSA terrorist list and lose the freedom to fly. The American government has given itself the right to take anyone in the world to secret prisons to be tortured and denied the right to a fair, public trial. Americans don't have the freedom to buy alcohol expect in limited places at limited time. Americans don't have the right to grow medical marijuana.

The troops claim they protect Americans' freedoms yet America has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Americans don't have the freedom to choose how their taxes or spent. Americans don't have the freedom to dispose of a president with a 30% approval rating or a Congress with a 12% approval rating. Americans aren't protected from predatory financial practices. American women don't even have the same freedom to take off their shirt that American men have. How can you the American military supports and guarantees Americans' freedom when it's illegal for half the population to take their shirt off?

To this you might say, life is better in America than in a lot of third world countries. So Americans should be grateful and not complain. You know why life is cheap and bountiful in America? Because America actively and consistently represses the freedoms, rights and opportunities of other people so they can be used as cheap slave labor for American companies that have moved their sweatshops overseas. That's the freedom our precious military martyrs are dying for, and if you're angry at me for saying that you're directing your indignation in the wrong direction.

You can even bring the issue closer to home. The enlisted troops of the military themselves are literally slaves who are exploited and subjugated by the military caste system. The troops are made up of American civilians. Therefore the American government is enslaving civilians and justifying it by using the UCMJ as a loophole around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If the American government can enslave 1% of its population and systematically and brazenly brainwash those slaves to belligerently defend their own subjugation then why should I feel safe in America? The American government reserves the right to draft able bodied men into slavery at any time as long as it claims there's a need for it, and we've seen how reliable its reasons for going to war are.

I'm not impressed by a soldier's ability to follow orders without questioning them. I'm not impressed by a soldiers' willingness to die for a cause they don't understand. I'm not impressed by the freedoms soldiers willingly surrender to men with a track record of authorizing human rights abuses and lying about it. I'm not impressed by how belligerently you tell me I'm ungrateful. I'm impressed by people who question their answers. I'm impressed by people who stand up to injustice in their own house. I'm impressed by troops who refuse to serve politicians who torture whistle blowers.
WHY I WON'T SALUTE THE FLAG

The American flag represents everything the American government stands for. So if you respected it in 1838 you honored the Trail of Tears. If you respected it before 1862 you respected slavery. If you respected it before 1870 you respected keeping African Americans from voting. If you respected it before 1920 you respected keeping (white) women from voting. If you respected it before 1938 you respected child labor. If you respect it today you respect keeping homosexuals from having the right to marry, just to name a tiny fractions of the human rights violations America has committed within its own boundaries. Outside it has committed countless more.

So what does The Flag represent today? Does it represent truth or justice? Is that the American way? Are any of our politicians known for upholding truth? Where is justice when the supreme court is stacked to favor a political agenda? Where is the justice when America has more people in prison than any other nation? Where is the justice when you can sue anybody for anything? Where's the justice when it's illegal to protest against corruption? Where's the justice when selling tobacco is legal but possession of marijuana is punishable by ass-raping? Where's the justice when white collar crime is rewarded with executive bonuses paid for by tax payers?

What is the "American Way?" If you've been outside your house any time soon it should be obvious that, on a cultural level, the American way is to go as deep into debt as possible by buying as much useless shit as possible. On a political level, the American Way is to enforce whatever morality campaign contributors want enforced. The "American Way" is to allow any business with enough money to bribe our politicians with campaign contributions to do whatever they want even if that's to exploit and kill consumers and/or workers to make money. That's what's happening in America. If the flag represents the current state of the nation then that's what the flag represents.

If you're not unimaginably rich then The Flag doesn't represent you or anything you stand for. It only represents control over you. So when you salute the flag you're not saluting truth, justice or freedom. You're saluting the memory and the illusion of truth, justice and freedom. And as pure as your intentions may be, paying lip service to dead ideals while those ideals are actively being trampled only serves the functional purpose of enabling the trampling of those ideals.

In these backwards times, to salute the flag that represents corruption is to spit on the ideals it falsely claims to represent. Out of respect for truth, justice and freedom, I won't salute the flag.
CHAPTER 8

POP CULTURE AND OTHER THINGS

YOU SHOULD BOYCOTT POP CULTURE

Since the invention of television, mass marketing, and focus groups the major media companies in America have made it standard operating procedure to produce content that appeals to the largest number of people (or as the media industry calls us, "consumers"). On one level this is just good business sense. Entertainment is a product that's created for the sole purpose of selling for a profit, and every business wants to sell as much of their product as they can in order to make as much profit as possible. So the logical thing to do is to make your product marketable to the widest audience possible.

In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with this. However, there's fault to be found in the mainstream media's execution of this concept. Decades ago psychologists started scientifically documenting that, while everyone has their own unique beliefs, everyone also has the same basic desires and psychological tendencies. Psychologists also realized and studied the fact that since everyone has differing beliefs, anytime your product advocates any particular belief it'll disenfranchise some segment of your audience. Therefore, the best way to avoid alienating your audience is to never advocate any beliefs other than the most basic, vague, non-offensive, non-committal ideas possible.

On one hand, this gives us all something we can agree upon in a world torn apart by our differences. On the other hand, it doesn't leave us with anything of substance either. Pop culture is brain candy, time filler, a screen-saver for real life. Even that, in and of itself, wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Our jobs are hard. Our responsibilities are demanding. Our minds are scrambled by the frequency and intensity of information being bombarded at us all day. Sometimes it's healthy to take a break. The problem is that the vast majority of the content on the television, radio and in print is vacuous entertainment, and you can't ever get away from it. Pop culture is mainstream culture.

When the majority of the information you process day in and day out is white noise you end up mentally deafened by the silence. Spend enough time in the silence and you forget that life was ever (or could ever) be any different. So you accept the silence as the norm, and when you are faced with real, hard information you're likely to view it (from your mentally weakened perspective) as cumbersome, tedious, pretentious and irrelevant.

The danger in Pop Culture isn't that it's inherently evil and will turn you into a maniacal, baby-eating monster after watching one prime time sitcom. Even heroin won't turn you into a maniacal, baby-eating monster after one hit. But once you've felt the soft, warm, intoxicating, addicting embrace you'll want to go back to that place anytime life gets hard, and the more time you spend in that honey trap the less time you spend facing the real world.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Mozart wasn't born a genius. Talent is cumulative. Genius is cumulative. Sanity is cumulative. Becoming the person you're capable of being, having the mind you're capable of having, and building the world you're capable of building takes decades of daily practice and refinement. When you spend 2-7 hours every night zoning out in front of the same clinically unintelligent stimuli you irrevocably wipe away your potential, and by the time you reach old age (when your mind should finally be reaching the level of genius) all you'll be is exactly what you put into your mind: nothing.

To make matters worse, all those years you were lulled into that cozy dream state by the flashing lights in your living room and the pulsating music in your car, the real world problems that made you want to seek shelter in a movie theatre never went away. In fact, since the majority of the population has been ignoring those problems by pretending they're Jedi Knights living in a galaxy far, far away, the problems her on earth have compounded. Now look where's it's gotten society: on the verge of collapse. Seriously, if television and radio had been used to their full potential as educational tools ever since they were invented and we had all devoted ourselves to improving our minds instead of glazing them over we would literally be colonizing Mars right now. We certainly wouldn't be worrying about the eco-system collapsing from the careless destruction wrought on it by mass consumerism.

Is there hope for the world? Well, what is the world? The world is society, and society is made up of individuals. If we're to save the world then every individual needs to stop numbing their minds with pop culture and dedicate themselves to using the majority of their free time to improving themselves. And being individuals, we can't make anyone else's decisions for them or expect anyone else to take responsibility for our decisions. The world isn't yours to change, but you are yours to change. The choice is yours. Boycott pop culture and play your role in actively improving your mind (and thus the world) or embrace pop culture and continue playing your passive role in the decline of your mind and thus the world.
6 REASONS NOT TO LET YOUR CHILDREN READ/WATCH TWILIGHT

The target audience of Twilight is young girls between the ages of 9 and 20. This demographic is extremely impressionable, and as with anybody they're most likely to be influenced by those they respect and admire. If your child owns a closet full of Twilight merchandise with Edward and Bella's faces on everything, they obviously look up to those characters even if they're fictional. So of course children are going to be influenced by the role models of Edward and Bella.

As a parent it would be irresponsible to allow your children to read and watch Twilight because it's chalked full of themes that provide horrible influences on young, impressionable girls. None of the things I'm going to say here haven't been said somewhere else 1000 times, which is all the more reason why you should be ashamed of yourself for failing your children if you've encouraged their exposure to Twilight.

1. Twilight implies that Pedophilia is acceptable. Edward is 109. Bella is 17. This is the definition of pedophilia, but in the story it's okay for them to have this relationship because Edward looks 17. In real life girls idolize Edward. They want to fall in love with Edward. Since they can't have Edward they need a substitute: someone real who is much older, wiser and stronger than them. The only stipulation is that the older person has to look young. Twilight drives home the theme that pedophilia is okay by the fact that Edward is a monster who society won't accept, yet his affair with Bella (which he has behind Bella's parents' back) is portrayed as a beautiful thing. This might seem like anal nit-picking to an adult, but what does it look like to an impressionable, hormonal teen following the lead of her idol?

2. Twilight says girls are incomplete without a man...or at least, it's of the utmost importance to be in a relationship. Obviously, this message sets women's liberation back 20 years, but that's so obvious I'm not even going to talk about it. I want to talk about the more subtle message that it's of the utmost importance to be in a relationship at all. There's a lot to be said for relationships and marriage, but those are adult themes for the adult phase of your life. Tween and teen girls need to be focusing on finding themselves and establishing their independence so that when it comes time to date they don't become co-dependently attached to the first guy who tells her he loves her to get into her pants. Barraging young girls with the message that their life isn't worth living unless they're in a relationship cripples them for life.

3. Twilight says that rushing into a committed relationship is virtuous. This is similar to #2, but a little different. Twilight shows that it's not just enough to lock yourself into a relationship with someone you barely know, but you should do it as quickly as possible. If you can't understand why that's bad then you don't deserve to be a parent. Then again, maybe that's why you're a parent.

4. Men have to be superhuman. Edward is portrayed as not only super strong but also super refined, super selfless and super courteous. Twilight is setting young girls' expectations at this standard. That's not to say that men shouldn't be strong, refined, altruistic and courteous, but nobody is perfect...especially not teenage boys. This unrealistic standard is setting up young girls for heartbreak because they'll never find a boy who lives up to their fictional expectations. I guarantee you that before this whole Twilight fad is over it will have caused someone to commit suicide. Even without that, it's going to stress out already overstressed teen boys, and it's going to send girls into adulthood resenting men for not being perfect.

5. Twilight overlooks the fact that love leads to sex. In the fictional story, Bella and Edward stay celibate until they're married, but in reality there's no such thing as vampires or celibate lovers (with the exception of religious extremists). Every male "player" knows that the quickest way to sleep with a girl is to tell her he loves her. The reason this works is because girls want sex to mean something. So if a man tells her he loves her then she views it as meaningful and thus it's okay. Twilight tells girls they have to fall in love...immediately. It also says you need to prove your love. Every other show on television says sex and love go together. What do you think is going to happen in real life once your daughter falls in love with a stranger and she wants to prove her love to him?

6. There are better books/movies your children should be reading/watching than Twilight anyway. The simple fact that your children are occupying their time reading/watching Twilight means they're wasting irreplaceable time during their formative years that they could be using to read good books and watch good movies. That's reason enough to keep them away from Twilight.

But then again...children are going to be exposed to the same destructive, co-dependent, anti-intellectual themes that are in Twilight in other places. So as a parent you need to talk to them about these issues sooner or later. Maybe you should watch Twilight with your children for the express purpose to using as an instruction manual for how not to live.
THE MORAL MESSAGE I TOOK AWAY FROM "THE HUNGER GAMES"

If you haven't seen "The Hunger Games" I'm about to give away the plot. A bunch of oblivious first world jack asses who dress like retards sit around and watch a television show where real human beings are recorded hurting and eliminating each other in a contest until there's only one contestant left for the audience to cheer for.

This movie isn't a prediction of what America could become in 200 years if society keeps devolving at its current rate. It's a direct reflection of what's been happening since the invention of reality TV. The only exaggeration is people dying whereas in actual reality TV the contestants just hurt each other emotionally and physically.

I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion about whether or not it's moral to take joy in watching other people hurt other people. We can all agree that's bad, and we're probably all going to do it a little every now and then anyway.

The more interesting point the Hunger Games brings up is that all the spoiled, gossipy, retardedly dressed first world citizens understand on an intellectual level that their luxury is built on the backs of the poor and downtrodden citizens in the lower districts...who are far from lazy. The people in the lower districts are working themselves to death just to survive, and no matter how hard they work they'll never get to move to a rich, gated community because they're never going to get paid enough to improve their lives because all the economy's profits are going straight up the corporate ladder to pad the baby cribs of first world children. Even though the spoiled first world characters in "The Hunger Games" know this they push it out of their minds and get drunk and distract themselves with fashion, entertainment and popularity contests.

That's exactly what's going on in the real world. We look out our window and see people dying in the streets. So we retreat to our living rooms and turn on the TV so we can watch beautiful people hurt each other for petty reasons. Then we laugh at them and congratulate ourselves for being better than them. The first world characters in "The Hunger Games" are pathetic, and they're a direct reflection of you and me.

You're not supposed to watch movies like "Fight Club" or "The Hunger Games" and walk out thinking, "Man, those sheeple out there sure are stupid. I'm glad I'm so different." You're supposed to walk out and shout, "I've been fucking up! I'm the dick head in the movie I just watched!" You certainly shouldn't go buy overpriced merchandise in an attempt to look hip owning something that bears the logo of the movie that was trying to tell you what a gullible consumer whore you are.

How much blood do we have to see in reality TV, and how stupid do our clothes have to get before we look at ourselves and say, "How did I get so petty and useless? What the hell am I doing with my life? What should I be doing with my life"

Seriously, if you can't find anything better to do with your life than watch reality TV and freak out over fashion emergencies then what the hell are you doing here? Everyone has more potential than that, and the poor and downtrodden need help that only first world citizens have the power to give. If you're not sure how you can help your fellow human beings (who made all the ridiculous clothes you own and are starving and suffering in abject poverty day in and day out while you worry about the flavor of your dental floss) then you owe it to them to ask enough people until someone tells you how or you figure it out for yourself.

I'm going to write a screenplay for a movie where the main character is a spoiled first world drama queen who sees the atrocities happening outside her upper middle class bubble and throws up her hands and says, "Oh, but what can we do?" and never thinks about it again. Then anytime anyone suggests ways she can help she brushes them off with excuses for why it's not enough. All the while she's freaking out over first world emergencies and trying to get the richest, best looking guy in her social circle to sign a legal contract saying he'll love her and provide for her selflessly for the rest of his life. By the end of the movie the protagonist will have justified all of her actions and inactions to herself, and all the world's problems will keep on existing and making life shorter and more unbearable for countless other human beings.

Then I'm going to write an alternate ending where the protagonist refuses to listen to the naysayers and gets off her ass and figures out for herself what she can do to be a better human being and make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Feel free to steal that idea.
10 SIGNS YOU'RE A SHEEPLE

I want to mention, on the record, that I hate the word, "sheeple" just like I hate it when people refer to performing an Internet search as "Googling." But those are the terms society has chosen to use, and if you want to communicate effectively with people in your society you have to speak their language. So, ironically, in true sheeple fashion, I'm using the term "sheeple" to describe those despicable mainstream zombie bastards who go with the crowd and refuse to think for themselves.

The determining factor of whether or not you're a sheeple is whether you think proactively and objectively or you think subjectively and reactively. The best example of a non-sheeple in recent history is Carl Sagan. That was a man who spent his life staring at the world around him, proactively analyzing it with a sober mind, tweezing the details apart looking for logical patterns in the noise.

Sheeple don't think like that. They just wake up at birth and start running in the direction everyone around them is shouting at them to run in. Of course they rebel, but they rebel in the social prescribed ways: cussing, wearing dark clothing, thinking they're edgier and cooler than preps and squares. They bounce through life on autopilot following the advice of television commercials and charismatic personalities. At no point in their life do they stop and commit themselves to a life-long , systematic quest to seek truth through objective analysis and sustained reflection.

A lifetime of thinking like a sheeple will yield consistent results. Below are 10 signs that you've been thinking and living like a mindless sheeple on autopilot who has been subjectively reacting to your environment and ceding control of your life to your subconscious instincts and the society you were raised in.

10. You own an expensive vehicle. Think about it. Do you need a $40,000 vehicle to get from point A to point B. No. So why do you have one? Because you want one. Why do you want one? Because you were told to want one...and you obeyed. Go ahead, make all the excuses you want for why it's okay to spend an entire year's wages on a shiny contraption that's going to break down in 10 years. All I hear is baa'aaing.

On a related note, if you own a $40,000 car and claim to be a Christian then just go ahead and replace your overpriced James Avery crucifix necklace with a huge gangsta-style dollar sign emblem and stop pretending to be a Christian.

9. You watch the top 10 highest rated television shows. This wouldn't be the case if the top 10 television shows were beacons of genius. As it stands, the top 10 television shows are beacons of petty ignorance because stupid sells better than genius. The reason stupidity sells so well is because sheeple are stupid and flock towards stupidity because it's familiar and safe. It reinforces their egos without ever challenging them. If you're confused as to whether or not you're a sheeple you can check to see if any of your favorite television shows are on the top of the Neilsen ratings. If you don't know what the Neilsen ratings are, just Google it.

8. You believe that the music you listen to and the clothes you wear make you unique and/or rebellious. Think about it. Music and fashion are mass produced consumer goods no matter what label they fall under. I don't care if you're hip/hop, grunge, indie, metal, emo, punk, hard core, country, death metal or classical. There's somebody else out there listening to the same music as you, wearing the same clothes (that were made in the same sweat shops), congratulating themselves for being unique just like you. But you're not unique. You're defining your identity by associating it with mass produced consumer products that you're going to stop listening to/wearing when it goes out of style. I'm not saying you can't listen to music or wear clothes. Just don't assume any of it makes you a rebel.

7. You don't read or you only read popular fiction. Think about it. Idiots don't read. Do you read? If not, you're an idiot. How could you not be? You're not learning anything outside the cultural influence of the people you surround yourself with. Go get a library card.

Oh you do read? A lot of John Grisham, Stephen King and slutty vampire romance novels? Congratulations, you're an idiot who is squandering the divine ability to read by only using it to consume mass produced entertainment that in no meaningful way improves your mind. And you're consuming ideas that are designed to pander to your base desires while the unused portions of your brain that control higher level reasoning atrophy.

6. You get along with pretty much everybody. Think about it. On the surface it sounds noble and virtuous to get along with everybody, but most people are stupid. Stupid people are afraid of ideas. Smart people have ideas. If you're smart, stupid people won't like you. If you get along with everybody you either don't have any ideas to offend their stupidity with or you're not standing up for your intelligent ideas, and if you're not going to stand up for what's right then you're stupid.

5. Similar to #6: You automatically disagree with people all the time. If you do this you probably don't notice, but it's pretty easy to spot when other people do it. So think about this. Stupid people don't think. They don't weigh pros and cons logically. They just defend what they already believe and automatically reject everything else even if it's mundane and trivial. If it doesn't already have a place in their mind already it's not coming in. So they constantly disagree with other people. They think this makes them smart because they're so "good" at coming up with arguments and playing the devil's advocate. The more they shoot down other people's ideas and shut them up the more smug and maniacally genius it makes them feel, but all they're really doing is building a higher and higher wall around their mind.

If you ever meet someone who, after you propose a novel idea to them, they work on it with you and try to improve it you'll know you're talking to a thinker. Someone who just tells you that you're stupid...is stupid. If you're constantly tearing other people down and congratulating yourself for how awesome you are, you're a sad, sad idiot.

4. Your best friends are stupid. Think about it. We hang out with people we're comfortable with. Now be honest. Are your best friends stupid? If they are, then the reason you're friends with them is because you're stupid. Stop kidding yourself.

Is your significant other a complete ditz? Then you're a complete ditz. Both of you need to go back to school. Is your girlfriend 10 years younger than you, but you say she's mature for her age? No, she's not mature for her age. You're immature for your age, and you're dating someone who is at the same intellectual level as you. Oh, you both have college degrees but you never read books anymore, just gossip magazines? Great. You're both educated fools. Go back to school and figure out what you missed.

3. You have no philosophy or your philosophy is vague to the point of being useless. Here's a simple sheeple test in one question: What's your philosophy on life? Don't have an answer ready to go? Your mind is empty. You're following the herd.

But don't take my word for it. Go do a survey. Go ask everyone you know what their philosophy on life is. Most people won't have an answer. That means they don't know how to live. So all they can do is just follow the herd and convince themselves that whatever they're already doing is novel and ideal. But what they're doing is neither novel nor ideal. Chances are they're working a shitty job that's sucking the life out of them while paying too much rent.

If you do this survey and anyone begins their answer with: "Ooooooooh, well I just think that..." Stop them right there. They don't think shit. They're coming up with something on the spot that's probably going to be a hybrid of overgeneralized, pop-culture norms, and it's probably also going to be vague to the point of being useless.

A thinker would be able to immediately give you a summary of their philosophy and tell you a long, arduous story about how they came to that conclusion, and they would go out of their way to make the disclaimer that their answers aren't conclusive, their journey isn't over and they'll have more to say on the matter every year.

2. You believe in religion. Think about it. You follow someone else's explanation of life. You're a follower. Christianity even refers to the congregation as a flock of sheep. Don't get mad at me for calling people who worship mythology sheeple, get mad at Jesus for comparing himself to a shepherd.

I'm not saying that not believing in religion automatically makes you smart and independent, but if you do believe in religion you're definitely a sheeple, and according to most religions you're supposed to be proud of having blind, unquestioning faith in your pre-packaged, out-of-date beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence proving you wrong. If that's not being a sheeple then I don't know what is.

1. You don't think you're a sheeple. Think about it. Every one of us is a product of the environment we were raised in. Our most basic assumptions about life, existence and our own identity are interwoven with the fabric of society so tightly it's usually impossible to tell where society's ideas end and ours begin. The world simply can't be divided into sheeple and nonconformists. We're all sheeple.

If you don't think you're a sheeple you'll never have any motivation to analyze your beliefs and behaviors objectively to decide if you're doing anything stupid or herd-minded. However, once you admit you've been guilty of following the herd your entire life then you'll be motivated to tear yourself apart looking for the disgusting stains of society within yourself. And when you do that you'll also find the good parts of your personality that society helped build within you. Then you won't be such a naively bitter teenage wanker who thinks everything popular is automatically evil and shuts himself off from half the resources that would help him improve his life.
COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF INTERNET TROLLING

I define "Internet trolling" as posting comments on blogs, chat groups, forums, or any other venue on the internet that makes disparaging remarks about other people, their statements, theories, questions, beliefs, or anything else they post on the internet. It's irrelevant whether the troll's comments are intentionally constructed to cause other people anger and pain or the troll's communication skills are just so uncivilized that that they incidentally infuriate and hurt other people. As long as the end result is anger and pain the perpetrator is trolling. You could say that unintentional abuse isn't trolling but flaming, but unless the offender spells out their intentions then the victim doesn't know the difference. It all looks like trolling to them.

Every troll is unique, and each has their own motives for their actions, but after watching trolls in action since the birth of the internet and even questioning them directly I've gathered that most trolls are trying to accomplish one (or more) of five goals by attacking strangers on the internet.

  * Correct other people's mistakes.

  * Force other people to better refine and articulate their ideas.

  * Punish stupid people for being stupid.

  * Reinforce their own sense of self-worth by proving to themselves that they're better than other people.

  * Derive pleasure from other people's pain and discomfort.

Let's take a look at each of these goals and see how well trolling accomplishes them.

1. Correcting other people's mistakes. Regardless of whether your intentions are pure or even if you're right, insulting people makes them angry. When people get angry they don't think rationally; they think emotionally. This makes it nearly impossible for them to think about your point of view objectively. Thus, if your goal is to change people's minds you've just shot yourself in the foot.

Another reason insulting people reduces the chance of you successfully arguing your point to them is because it changes the subject of the argument away from the topic altogether and turns it into a personal argument about the quality of the individuals arguing. Abortion, gun control, politics, immigration, health care reform, drug laws, religion, and other sensitive subjects have many compelling arguments on both sides, none of which are addressed by the statement, "You're fucking stupid."

When you make people angry and steer the conversation away from the actual topic you're destroying any chance of changing your opponent's mind. In fact, you're accomplishing the opposite; you're shutting down their brain and reaffirming their belief that people who belong to your school of thought are arrogant dick heads. Even if you "win" the argument the other person is going to walk away more convinced of their position, which may in fact be wrong about, but they'll never know it because of you. Trolls aren't the agents of truth they believe they are. They're the guardians of ignorance.

2. Forcing people to better refine and articulate their ideas. Again, starting a flame war shuts down people's minds and changes the subject to an irrelevant straw man argument. I've seen many trolls defend themselves against this criticism by saying things like, "I don't have time to sugar coat reality for your dumb ass." Or "If you can't take a joke then fuck you." Or simply "You're a pussy. Fuck you."

Regardless of whether or not there's any truth to those defenses, the reality of the situation is that the only people who are going to listen objectively to someone who insults them personally are the most brilliantly stoic and objective thinkers society has to offer. Thinkers of that caliber are probably going to objectively challenge their own ideas themselves without waiting for a belligerent stranger on the internet to offer them that service. So your criticism isn't likely to help anybody who isn't already helping themselves.

What your criticism is likely to do is cement ignorant people's beliefs, discourage budding minds from reaching out to society for help in their quest for understanding, and hurt innocent people who are making the same honest mistakes you've made in the past.

3. Punishing stupid people for being stupid. Imagine an abusive parent who beats his children when they misbehave. When this particular parent beats his children he doesn't explain to his children why the thing they did was wrong, how they can correct their behavior or what the benefit of correcting their behavior will be. The parent just beats his children while screaming at them that they're bad people who can never do anything right.

After years of this kind of abuse the children will learn one thing from their parent, that they're inherently bad people who can never do anything right. That "truth" will define their reality, and they'll go through the rest of their lives hating themselves and destroying themselves and everyone who comes into their sphere of influence (including their own children). They'll never be motivated to fulfill their human potential because they'll be convinced that their individual potential is crap.

That's what punishing people for being stupid accomplishes. It reinforces and breeds stupidity.

4. Reinforcing your own sense of self-worth by proving to yourself that you're better than other people. Self-esteem is something that everyone struggles with. Defining your self-worth is an essential and inevitable part of growing up. It's also one of the most difficult parts of growing up, especially if your parents are bullies.

We should all be honest with ourselves that there's an intoxicating lure to establishing your self-worth by putting others down. However, it's just a quick fix. It creates an external illusion of self-worth. Your true value is internal and has nothing to do with the value of the person next to you.

Measuring your self-worth relative to the accomplishments of someone else is an honest mistake that everyone makes a couple of times in their life. We all deserve a pass for a few lapses of self-control, but if you consistently tear down other people to prove your superiority, that's a sign that you don't believe your value as a person is good/solid enough to stand on its own. That or you're just ignorant of what determines a person's worth. Either way, trolling provides written documentation in a public forum definitively proving to everyone who crosses your path that you're worse than everyone else, and everyone can see it except you.

5. Deriving pleasure from other people's pain and discomfort. If you derive joy from causing other people pain then you don't have room to criticize anybody else's personal or intellectual flaws because you possess the greatest personal and intellectual flaw humanly possible.

Furthermore, while the pleasure of hurting others may seem intoxicating at the moment, when you look back on your life years from now your memories won't be defined by honest, solid happiness. They'll be defined by torture. While the happiness you experience by hurting other people may be real it's also a lesser form of happiness than can be attained by helping other people and celebrating life.

Gaining happiness in life is like a business gaining money in the economy. You're like a business that's making a profit. You might be content with the amount of money you're making, but if you changed your business model just a little you could make a lot more profit. Again, you might be happy without how much money you're making, but consider that the money you're not making is money you're losing.

In order to understand how important that is you need to understand how important money is. Money is a medium of exchange that represents all the hopes, dreams, fears and values of mankind. Money can do anything. Money really does make the world go 'round.

What I'm talking about is more important than money. I'm talking about your life.

Whether your goal is to correct other people's mistakes, help other people to better refine and articulate their ideas, vanquish stupidity, define your self worth, or achieve happiness, trolling won't help you accomplish any of those goals; it will accomplish the exact opposite. What will help you accomplish all of those goals is reaching out to your fellow human in kindness, objectivity and patience to help everyone arrive at truth in a productive manner. In doing so you'll make other people smarter individuals, which will help them fulfill their potential, which will cause society (which is nothing more than a large group of individuals) to improve and fulfill its potential. By being an agent of truth and productivity you'll fulfill your own potential and prove your worth to the rest of the world and have written documentation in a public forum definitively proving to everyone who crosses your path that you were/are a great human being. Finally, when you look back on your life years from now you'll have a long history of creating happiness in this world, not just for yourself but everyone you've met and everyone they've met, and everyone they've met and so on across the world and across generations yet to be born. The happiness you experience from those memories will be compounded a billion times, and when you die you will be one of the few humans to ever live who knew true greatness and true happiness.

Or you can just keep being a dick and devote your life to creating a world defined by ignorance and hostility, chipping away at everything good in this world while making yourself angrier and angrier as you sit in your mom's basement cursing the world you're creating.
WHY DO RAPPERS GET AWAY WITH IT?

I just think it's weird that rappers are idolized for being objectively bad role models in ways that nobody else can get away with.

Take rappers' egos for example. Half of all rap lyrics are basically just bragging. Imagine if Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Barak Obama or Noam Chomsky wrote a book about how awesome they are and constantly over-exaggerated their past accomplishments? If an intellectual did that it would cost them their career. Whereas rappers not only get a pass, they get paid for it. And then they brag about how much money they have. If Bill Gates and Warren Buffet wrote album after album about how much richer than you they are and how they waste their money on excessive luxuries while the people who purchase their overpriced products starve in the street it would insight a revolution against the bourgeois. But when rappers do it, kids look up to them.

You wouldn't be happy about your kid hanging out with an arrogant peacock who only talks about selling drugs, partying, hording jewelry, having casual sex, going to prison and shooting people. You want your kid to hang out with someone who talks about starting a small business and investing. Rappers don't talk about responsible topics. They glorify doing things that will fuck up your life. If everyone in the world adopted the thug lifestyle the entire world would devolve into a crime infested, miserable ghetto. People who set counterproductive precedents should not be given awards.

We certainly shouldn't cheer for anyone who glorifies hurting and killing other people. If NWA had written a manifesto based on their philosophy of conflict resolution it would have been condemned by every human rights organization in the world and be given place in history next to "The Turner Diaries" and the Unabomber's manifesto. But NWA never wrote a book. They just sang about their philosophy. So instead of being condemned they sold millions of records to impressionable, disenfranchised ghetto children looking for an identity.

Which brings me to the last thing rappers get away with that nobody else could: the subjugation of African Americans. How many black people have you heard about getting killed by white supremacists since 1985? 5 maybe? How many black people have you heard about getting killed by gangstas? Tens of thousands, if not more. Gangstas have made the KKK obsolete. If the KKK wanted to oppress and kill black people, the most effective thing they could do would be to promote gangsta rap music. So why aren't gangsta rappers ostracized and criticized as much as the KKK? Why do rappers get away with it?
10 THINGS GANGSTAS AND COWBOYS HAVE IN COMMON

Obviously, when speaking about any 2 people (even twins) much less large groups of people it's impossible to make generalizations that are 100% true, 100% of the time. However, subcultures exist because the members within them share common traits. So it is possible to make generalizations about subcultures with a fair degree of accuracy even if there are exceptions to the rule. Also, this list only applies to American gangstas and cowboys. People from other countries who have copied these foreign (to them) subcultures are a whole other topic.

10. Xenophobia. Ask any gangsta or cowboy if they're proud to be a gangsta or cowboy, and they're both likely to give the exact same response, "Hell yeah." Ask most Germans if they're proud to be German and they'll give you a lecture about how group pride will inevitably lead to xenophobia.

Xenophobia is defined as "An unreasonable fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign or different.

Even though there are exceptions you don't have to throw a stick far in gangsta or cowboy circles to hit xenophobia. The more proud gangstas and cowboys are of their subculture the more they wall themselves off from the rest of society and fear new ideas and behaviors.

9. Guns. Aside from the military and the police force no other subcultures own as many guns or identify with them as readily as gangstas and cowboys.

8. Glorify mind altering substances. Even if you barely listen to any rap or country music chances are you can name a few songs from each genre that glorify getting fucked up. The methods may differ, but the end result is the same.

8. Glorify sports. Gangstas love basketball. Cowboys love (American) football. There is no denying this fact.

7. Conform to pre-set fashion standards. You can pick a gangsta or a cowboy out a crowd just by how they dress. I don't even need to offer examples.

6. Glorify sex. Gangstas celebrate their preoccupation with fucking bitches and hos. It's becoming more popular in country circles to speak openly about sex, but they still have a habit of hiding their true intentions by talking about love. But the smoke screen is usually pretty thing. They're really talking about fucking, and they talk about it a lot.

5. Materialism. Gangstas and cowboys are typically poor, and yet they glorify material goods, specifically fashion and vehicles. Whether it's a pair of Jordans or boots, doorags or cowboy hats, Escalades or F-150's, pent houses or ranches, gangstas and cowboys place high value in owning material goods.

4. Based on a misinterpretation of obsolete cultures. Gangstas emerged as a response from racial oppression in the ghettos of America. Cowboys emerged as a response from working on ranches in the country. Most people who identify as gangstas live in the suburbs. Some even live in mansions. If you do live in the ghetto I guarantee you're not worried that an elderly white man is going to steal your car or do a drive by on your house. That threat comes solely from another gangsta. The cure has become the disease.

Very few cowboys own cows or horses. The environmental conditions that gangstas and cowboys emerged from are obsolete, and the subcultures have taken a life of their own and evolved into a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy that fail to accurately address the realities of the current environment that the conformists of those subcultures live in.

3. Media driven. Since the trends of gangsta and cowboy culture don't stem from their environment this raises the question, where do they stem from? The answer is blatant. They stem from the media. That's where all the suburbanites learned about these subculture from to begin with, and it's still their only link. Of course they got all their ideas from the media.

2. Don't value intelligence. Sure, you could find a few exceptions among the celebrities of gangstas and cowboys, but for every exception I could find 3 who glorify ignorance. And if you just started pulling random gangsta and cowboys off the street you'll probably end up with a ratio of 9 ignoramuses to every 1 intellectual. If you think this is close-minded and bigoted of me to say, then put it to the test. Grab 50 gangstas and 50 cowboys off the streets at random and ask them if they've read Noam Chomsky, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, or even Herman Hesse, Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov. Ask them how many essays they've written, how many languages they speak, how many countries they've visited, how many peer reviewed journals they've been published in. Just ask them how many news sources they read each week. If 40 of them have seen "Stephen Hawking's Universe" I'll suck a tranny's dick. Any of them who have read "A Brief History of Time" or "Siddhartha" gets 2 points.

1. Their subculture is not based on humanitarianism and logic. Gangstas and cowboys base their culture on obsolete cultures and receive their present cultural direction from an entertainment-driven media that panders to base human desires for sex, prestige, violence, pride and material consumer goods. They're xenophobic and don't place a premium on intellectual growth.

If they based their culture on humanitarianism and logic they'd become citizens of the world, merging cultural innovation from every corner of the globe without holding onto any one too tightly. They'd adapt to their environment instead of fighting it, and they'd rise to the top of the social structure to hold positions of power and influence. They'd shun the media and its mind-numbing influence and speak against it in favor of intellectualism and self-actualization. But if they did all that they wouldn't be gangstas or cowboys.
A HISTORY OF RECENT AMERICAN CULTURE

AS MEASURED BY POP CULTURE MILESTONES

This list is generally placed in chronological order. If anything is out of date it should at least be pretty close. If you point out an error I'll fix it.

"Birth of a Nation" \- The first major motion picture made in America is a love song to the KKK.

The original 3 Star Wars movies – The modern cinema era is born

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" \- Someone acted different and got away with it

which led to \- Rent

which led to - Brokeback Mountain

"Easy Rider"\- Someone finally told America that it's not cool to be a red neck.

"Cosmos by Carl Sagan" and "Revenge of the Nerds"\- It's becoming socially acceptable to be a nerd

which led to- Weird Al Yankovich

which led to- They Might Be Giants

and -Mr. Wizard

which led to - Beakman's World

and - Bill Nye the Science Guy

"All in the Family"- It's still socially acceptable for white people to be racist.

"We're Not Gonna Take It." by Twizted Sisterz and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cindy Lauper- Told a generation for the first time that being a WASP is no way to go through life.

which led to - "Fight For Your Right to Party" by the Beastie Boys

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" – the publishing industry learned how well philosophical snake oil sells. In other words, they learned that if you published pseudo-intellectual crap and market it as genuine, quality analysis/information on life people will buy it because they prefer the cozy Hallmark feeling it gives them to the difficult challenge of digesting meaningful content that pushes them past their current limit.

which led to - the "Celestine Prophecy"

as well as – "Waking Life"

which led to – "What the Bleep do we Know"

which led to – "The Secret"

The deaths of Jim Henson, Dr. Suess and Mr. Rogers\- The world's top inspirers of children died and left the throne vacant, never to be filled again.

which was proven by – NeverEnding Story Part 2, 3, 4

and again by – SpongeBob Squarepants

MTV and Nickelodeon- Kids start taking over the world

"Rockula"- The future is certainly not turning out the way our grandparents envisioned it.

"The Simpsons" – legitimized cartoons as adult entertainment for the first time since pretty much the Flintstones

"NWA" (Niggas With Attitude)\- Gangsta rap goes mainstream, dooming generations of street kids of every color and nationality to idolize willfully ignorant, insatiably greedy urban barbarians with predictable results

which led to- Dr. Dre

which led to- 2 Pac

which led to- Bone, Thugs in Harmony

which led to- Kanye West

"Vanilla Ice" and "MC Hammer" – broke down racial barriers making it more socially acceptable for white Americans to act black and for black Americans to act white.

which led to – Christina Aguilera

which led to – Marshal Mathers

The Black Entertainment Television (B.E.T.) \- "Separate but equal" returns

"Falling Down" – America admits there are cracks in the foundation

which led to – "Office Space"

which led to- "Workaholics"

"Jurassic Park," and Terminator 2" – The future is here. Unfortunately, you can only see it; you can't touch it yet.

followed by – The Matrix and both Final Fantasy movies

"MTV's The Real World" – Reality TV's hostile takeover of the airwaves begins

followed by - "Survivor"

followed by – Ozzy Ozbourne's show

followed by - "American Idol"

followed by - "Jersey Shore"

"The No Spin Zone" – Orwellian doublespeak has gone mainstream

which led to – Glen Beck

"Mortal Combat" – Ultra Violence enters the living room

which led to – "Grand Theft Auto"

which led to - "Hostel"

which led to – all the "Saw" movies

"Jerry Springer" and "Natural Born Killers" – Society has officially lost the innocence of youth

which led to - "Ichi The Killer"

which led to- "Old Boy"

Metallica sues Napster\- A business that has been selling 10 cent widgets to customers for $20s each for years uses Ronald McMetal as a puppet to declare war on poor children and the elderly in an attempt to block cultural and technological evolution so they can continue to exploit their customers. Metal is dead; long live corporate consumerism.

"Barney" – An answer to the question of whether or not children's television would be used to provide edifying content or indoctrinate consumerism.

which led to- SpongeBob Square Pants

and - Dora the Explorer

Matt Parker, Trey Stone and Quentin Tarantino\- The kids who are growing up today have proven that they can and will stay kids and have fun while still being successful. The old standards of professionalism pushed down the younger generation's throats are no longer simply "the way." They're starting to become merely one personal choice among many equals.

"Friends" – intellect is to nutrition as "Friends" is to generic TV dinners

which led to- Two and a Half Men

which led to- The Big Bang Theory

"What Dreams May Come" – Christianity loses its throne in American culture and gets kicked to the curb

which led to- Stigmata

which led to – Constantine

and – Viva La Vida by Coldplay

and - House M.D.

Jurassic Park" "Forrest Gump," "Independence Day," "Titanic" "and "Saving Private Ryan"\- Hollywood firmly grasps the Spielberg principle, which says that the most successful movies are always about the most epic topics. Plus, all epics are formulaic.

which led to - The Lord of the Rings trilogy being adapted to film

which led to – Avatar

"Night at the Roxbury," the Spartan cheerleader SNL skits and "Dumb and Dumber" \- the American people surprise even the sleaziest Hollywood executives with how shockingly low they want the intellectual bar to be set, and the entertainment industry obliges them.

which led to - Kung Pow

which led to - Epic Movie

which will eventually lead to an hour and a half of video of a guy's ass hole

Britney Spears \- The new queen of pop blossoms on to the main stage and promptly wilts

which led to \- Christina Aguilera, who was a better singer but wasn't as pretty and acted black and therefore didn't sell as well

which led to - Jessica Simpson, who sets standards in both beauty and willful ignorance and did sell well even though few people know what she sang

which led to - Miley Cyrus, pop culture's next child rape victim

which led to - Lady GaGa who blurs the line between stupidity and insanity

which led to - Justin Beiber, who is the latest Anakin Skywalker to the pop culture emperor.

NSync and/or The Backstreet Boys win a music award\- removes all doubt that music awards are rigged by the mainstream music industry and aren't worth paying attention to

"The Blair Witch Project" – Hollywood buys out the Indie movie scene

which led to - Warner Independent

"Fight Club" – the day the lost generation started waking up

"Scary Movie," "American Pie," "Not Another Teen Movie," \- The coming of age of every 80's coming of age movie, which closed a chapter in every 80's American child's life.

which led to – "Euro Trip."

"Lain," "Akira," "Pat Labor," "The Matrix," "Ghost in the Shell"– The future is here, and it's not just something pretty to look at now. It's a part of our thought processes and how we see the world. And by the way, don't expect the future to be the 1950's American Dream or an old school Orwellian dystopia. Technology has made things much stranger than that.

Anything associated with the Star Wars franchise since Jar Jar Binks was shat into existence\- Hollywood stops even trying to make quality blockbuster movies.

which led to - "The Incredible Hulk"

which led to – "X-men 3"

which led to – "Spiderman 3"

which led to – "Pirates of the Caribbean 3"

which led to – "Transformers 2"

"Stars on the Water" by George Straight- The uncrowned king of country sings a song through an auto-tuner. Pop music has officially killed country.

which led to- Taylor Swift

and- Lady Antebellum

"Harry Potter" –The millennia's "Star Wars"

which led to -Lemony Snicket

which led to -a reboot of the Lion, the With and the Wardrobe series

"Under Cover Brother" \- It's okay for African Americans to be racist.

"Bad Ass Strippa" by Jentina\- This is what happens when impressionable children are raised on bad rap music. We have created millions of people like this.

"Idiocracy" – This movie wasn't a prediction of the future. It was a reflection of the present.

"Sopranos" – Confirmation America has no moral compass. That's not to say the religious wackos were right and America is a Godless den of Satanic hedonism. It's just to say that America has no moral compass.

which led to- Spartacus: Blood and Sand

which led to - A Game of Thrones

"Blood Diamond" and "Hotel Rwanda"– we have openly admitted that the global political and economic system is based on slavery, lies, shared delusions, diffusion of responsibility and outright conscious denial

which led to – Thank You For Smoking

which led to- The Hunting Party

which led to – Men Who Stare at Goats

"Shrek" – In the same way that the Simpsons made semi-quality TV cartoons appropriate for adults, Shrek made completely mindless movie cartoons appropriate for adults

which led to - G-Force

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris- Atheists have the moral high ground over Christianity in popular culture

"Twilight" – The consumer has spoken, and the consumer has said, "I celebrate the fact that I'm retarded."

which led to- more vacuous supernatural romance stories to count

Tokio Hotel\- Emo has gone too far.

"Rocky," "JCVD" and "Rambo" – a proper eulogy to 80s style action movies and an admission that we've raised the bar in some ways

which led to- The Expendables

"Brokeback Mountain" – It's okay to be gay now

which led to- Glee

"The Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta"\- a candle of hope that Hollywood can make quality, intellectually stimulating action movies

"Jersey Shore" – We're beyond the ignorance apocalypse at this point. Now we're at the stage where fallout mutants maraud across a barren intellectual wasteland riding road warrior vehicles fuelled by stupidity and armed with mounted stupid guns.

which led to - Edible Play-Doh

"Iron Man"- starring Robert Downey Jr. and "The Dark Knight" starring Christian Bale.- Hollywood surprises the world with quality movies about action heroes hinting that viewers are also becoming more refined.

which led to - "The Avengers" (In which Hollywood served up a muddled plot and superficial character development revolving around a cardboard villain...and the consumers loved it. )

"Love Story" by Taylor Swift- The music industry realizes their customers are so stupid there's no longer any need to even bother fact-checking lyrics.

"California Gurls" by Katie Perry (featuring Snoop Dog)- Rap has completely sold out to Pop; NWA's dream is dead.

"Scott Pilgrim VS The World" – Gamers are taking over the world

"The Walking Dead"- Zombies go mainstream as kids raised on zombie movies grow up into adults who love zombies. Also, atheism is mainstream cool.

"The Hunger Games" \- Hollywood makes a movie criticizing how shallow their audience is, and their audience buys all the tie-in merchandise they can afford in an attempt to show off how much they love a movie about how shallow they are.

"Domino" by Jessie J.\-  The sexual innuendos used in dance music have gotten so transparent they should just be replaced with out-and-out smut.
UPGRADE YOUR CULTURE

Culture is defined as, "the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another."

The reason so many different civilizations have developed different cultures is largely due to environmental factors. Surviving in the desert requires different behaviors than surviving in the tundra. Likewise, living in a place where fish and fruit are abundant will lead to a different culinary culture than living in a place where tubers and livestock are abundant. A place where war has reduced the male population will create a different culture than a place where abundant food and resources mean there are plenty of mates to go around.

But what happens if the environment changes? What happens if a warm land turns cold, when once abundant resources become scarce, or when technology eliminates the sacrifices and hardships your ancestors once faced? In order to survive and thrive your culture has to adapt to the changing environment.

That's easy to say, but humans are cognitive misers. By default we go through life on autopilot relying on biases, stereotypes, assumptions and faith to allow us to survive without having to delay our actions with thoughts. In fact, that's a large part of why culture exists: because we do the things we've always done without thinking about it. This is a natural survival mechanism that has served our ancestors well, but the benefit of this natural instinct becomes a liability when the environment changes because we're naturally disinclined to change our behavior even though it would benefit us.

Well guess what? The world is changing. Technology allows us to ship abundant resources from a country on one side of the world to another country on the other side of the world where that resource is scarce or non-existent, and we can move those resources in less than a week. You can even move people out of their environment into a totally new one in less than a day. The world is becoming more uniform. Other than learning the language and the laws you don't have to do hardly anything different to survive in the mountains of Bavaria as you do in the plains of America. This has only been true in recent history.

In addition, information travels almost at the speed of thought. You can access the same information over the internet in Bolivia as you can in Siberia. In a world where you can take all your customs and information with you wherever you go and still survive and thrive, culture is becoming more and more obsolete.

A lot of people are afraid of this and see it as a bad thing. They feel like they're losing their anchor to reality, that their rich heritage is being lost, that the world is becoming white washed. So they're pushing back against the rising tide; little do they know this is as futile as fighting the ocean.

The fact is, the world is changing. In fact, the world is changing faster than any time in history. The old ways are becoming obsolete within a year instead of a lifetime. And no matter how you rationalize holding onto your heritage, the basic premise of culture is still the same today as it was in the Bronze Age. Culture is the sum total behavior of a group of people developed in response to the environment in order to create the best chances of survival.

Holding onto the past is the best way to survive and thrive when the environment is the same as it was in the past. When the environment changes, culture has to change with it in order to provide society with the best practices to ensure survival and prosperity.

At this point in history, the past is obsolete. The old ways won't help you. In fact, they're more likely to hurt you. If you want to survive and thrive you need to upgrade your culture.

But you might ask, "Isn't that disrespectful of the past? Shouldn't we honor the past?" To that I ask, "Why?" What do you owe the past? Your heritage, your ancestor's culture, what you call "the past" is just a way of doing things that worked for a different group of people in a different time and a different place. You don't owe the past anything. In fact, your ancestors worked hard to survive in a harsh world so that you could live today. They made difficult adjustments, and they broke away from the old ways themselves in order ensure a better future for their decedents. You owe it to your ancestors to do everything you can to survive and improve your decedents' chances of survival because life is more important than rules or habits or ideologies. And the best thing you can do to survive is to adapt to the changing environment: to abandon your ancestors (even your parents') obsolete culture.

The best way to honor the past is to embrace the future. Upgrade your culture.
8 SIMPLE FORMULA PLOT TEMPLATES

What follows are 8 very common plot formulas you'll see used in popular movies and books. These templates are the stripped down versions that leave out everything that isn't absolutely necessary. You can add to them and bend them in whatever way best supports your story. While you can certainly use these formulas as they are, their main purpose is to help you understand the common stages of plot progression so you can manipulate the process to suit your needs.

ACTION STORY TEMPLATE

ACT 1

SEGMENT 1. The story begins by introducing the protagonist in a way that reveals his defining characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, life circumstances, motives, and goals. SEGMENT 1 also establishes the setting and tone.

SEGMENT 2. Something happens to the protagonist that is out of the ordinary (for the protagonist, not for you). The event should be as apocalyptic as possible. This even throws the protagonist out of his comfort zone. The more disastrous it is for the protagonist the higher the stakes are. The higher the stakes are the more interesting the story will be.

SEGMENT 3. The protagonist weighs his options. He decides he cannot ignore the event that has thrown his life off track. There is either too much at stake or the event has irrevocably closed the door on his previous life until he confronts the issue.

ACT 2

SEGMENT 4. The protagonist makes a plan of action to address the source of the conflict. The event that threw him off course has given him 1 clue as to where to start finding answers or he knows the first obstacle standing between him and the resolution of his conflict.

The protagonist executes his plan and succeeds, closing the door on the antagonist's original plan. Not only does the antagonist not achieve his goal he was hoping for, but the exact opposite of what he intended happened and the door he was trying to go through is now closed. The protagonist learns more about the antagonist, himself and the antagonist's motives/goals. Based on this new information the protagonist makes a new plan to get closer to the antagonist.

SEGMENT 5. The protagonist, enabled by his previous success, sets in motion the second part of his plan to accomplish his goal.

SEGMENT 6. The antagonist has to adapt to the new circumstances created by the protagonist's success and devises a new plan.

SEGMENT 7. The protagonist executes his new plan and fails. Not only does he not achieve the goal he was hoping for, but the exact opposite of what he intended happened. The door he was trying to go through is now closed.

SEGMENT 8. Despite the protagonist's failure he has learned something new about the antagonist. He uses that information to create a new plan to approach the conflict from a different angle.

SEGMENT 9. The protagonist executes his new plan and succeeds.

Note: You can repeat SEGMENTS 4-9 as many times as logically needed to fully develop the characters and the conflict.

SEGMENT 10. The protagonist's success places him in a position to confront the antagonist directly, which he does. This is the Battle of the Bulge. The protagonist has made it to/into the gates of the antagonist's lair and must directly battle all of the antagonist's signature strengths with his own signature strengths.

SEGMENT 11. The antagonist has the protagonist cornered. The protagonist is at his weakest point and all hope is lost. The antagonist is one step away from accomplishing all of his goals and defeating the protagonist.

SEGMENT 12. The protagonist uses his signature strength and attacks the antagonist's signature weakness to defeat him.

ACT 3

SEGMENT 13. Having defeated the antagonist the protagonist finally takes possession of the object of his quest.

SEGMENT 14. After the protagonist takes possession of the object of his quest he must do what he planned to do with it.

SEGMENT 15. The protagonist, having accomplished all of his goals must choose what to do next or with the rest of his life.

SEGMENT 16. The denouement tells what lies in store for the protagonist, any supporting characters or the world in general.

A VERY COMMON SITCOM TEMPLATE: THE TRAGIC OPPORTUNITY

SEGMENT 1. A sitcom episode does not need to begin by introducing the protagonist at length since his character has already been established in previous episodes. However, the first segment of an episode should begin by revealing the protagonist's primary motive/goal for that particular episode. In a sitcom Segments 1 and 2 can be combined often within a single sentence of dialogue.

SEGMENT 2. The protagonist finds (or is presented with) an unusual (for him, not for the audience) opportunity to attain whatever it is he values (usually money, fame, sex, love, freedom, leisure, etc.).

SEGMENT 3. The protagonist pursues the opportunity and becomes involved with it.

SEGMENT 4. The opportunity turns south. Not only does it not help the protagonist achieve his goal, but it actually prevents him from achieving it and results in him attaining the thing he was trying to avoid.

SEGMENT 5. The protagonist tries to free himself of the situation he's gotten himself into but fails.

SEGMENT 6. The opportunity, being faulty, ends up destroying itself and spitting the protagonist either right back where he started, farther behind, or miraculously ahead in some unexpected way.

SEGMENT 7. The protagonist learns a valuable lesson.

SEGMENT 8. In the final scene it is explained how the resolution of the conflict will affect the character's life in the future.

THE SEINFELD TEMPLATE

First, understand that a Seinfeld-esque story line is character driven. So create the main characters in vivid detail first. You can use any number. For now we'll use 4.

SEGMENT 1. Introduce all 4 characters in one location. "Seinfeld" uses a diner. "Friends" uses a cafe. "The IT Crowd" uses a work office. "The Big Bang Theory" uses communal living space. "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" uses an Irish pub. You get the idea.

In the introduction segment each character expresses some goal they want to achieve. Reverse engineer what goal each character would most likely want to accomplish based on their distinctive personality. Prime time television leans towards using petty, idiosyncratic, common, day-to-day goals like trying to get a bowl of soup from a mean chef. Or you can go the "Snatch" route and have them trying to get something extraordinary...like a gigantic diamond.

SEGMENT 2. The characters go their separate ways, and each of them either encounters a problem that prevents them from achieving their goal or an opportunity opens up that allows them the chance to attain their goal given that they complete a task relevant to the goal.

SEGMENT 3. Each character does something that commits them to accepting the challenge before them. They could simply declare that they're going to achieve their goal like making a vow to get laid on prom night or they can do something they can't back out of like making a deal with a mobster.

SEGMENT 4. Each character steps up to the plate and takes their first swing at their problem. They go on the date. They go to the job interview. They steal the beer. They steal the diamond. Remember that they engage their challenge in a way that reflects their distinctive personalities and values.

SEGMENT 5. Up until this point it doesn't matter if each character's story line intersects or affects any other characters' story line. Whether or not that happens up to this point just depends on what moves your particular story along. Having reached this point though, the story lines have to start weaving together. Here's one way to do that:

Character #1 will succeed or fail at his goal as is typical for his character. His success or failure will directly influence the situation Character #2 is in when he takes his final stab at achieving his goal. Character #2's success or failure will then affect character #3, and character #3's success or failure will affect character #4. This is a simple domino progression that looks simple in outline form, but when your story is fully fleshed out it'll look genius.

The big question is how each character's story line affects the next character's. You can psych yourself out by trying to preplan this, but you don't need to. Simply get each character to the second to last step of their journey and then reverse engineer a way to connect the dots from there. Your characters may end up miles apart with no obvious way to connect them, but this just means you're going to have to do something absurd and nonsensical to connect them. This may seem like a cheap deus ex machina trick when you look at your outline, but when your story is fully fleshed out your reader will be amazed at how creatively you managed to connect 4 seemingly unrelated events.

SEGMENT 6. After each character succeeds or fails they end up back where they first met in SEGMENT 1 and lick their wounds and/or celebrate their victory.

NOTE: If you want to get real crazy you can use the domino effect in segment 4, 5 and 6. In SEGMENT 4 each character's approach will affect the next character's approach to their problem. Then, character #4's approach will affect character #1's final attack, which will continue the domino effect through each character's attack. Then, character #4's final success or failure will have an after-affect that flips Character #1's success or failure, which continues the domino affect which will flip every other character's success or failure.

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY TEMPLATE

SEGMENT 1. Introduce the detective. Arthur Conan Doyle usually just showed Sherlock Holmes in his home office and said, "This is Sherlock Holmes. He's a genius detective." Just to prove the point he would sometimes have Sherlock Holmes make genius deductions about his sidekick based on his appearance.

SEGMENT 2. Introduce the harbinger. Someone walks through the door and tells the detective they have a case they need solved. Then the detective agrees to hear the case. If you want to rub in what a genius the detective is then you can have him make deductions about the harbinger based on their appearance.

SEGMENT 3. The harbinger explains the case as they understand it. They leave out the critical details necessary to solve the plot. However, they give the detective all the clues he needs to solve the case. These clues are laid out in plain sight, but they're presented alongside heaps of superfluous details so that it's impossible for the reader to guess which details are the true clues.

Note:

If the crime was murder then the harbinger must be someone who has a close connection with the murder victim, and the harbinger will tell the victim's story. If the crime was theft, blackmail or manipulation then the harbinger can be the victim, and then they will tell the story of their own victimization.

The harbinger will relate their story to the detective in this general order:

  * Give a general description of all the characters involved in the crime. The harbinger explains who the characters are, where they came from, what they do, what their greatest hopes and fears are (to establish their motives). For example: "My father was a gold hunter in Australia, and he retired in England with his partner who was a bastard."

  * The harbinger relates the significant events that happened to the victim leading up to the day of their victimization that set the stage for the crime committed against them. For example: My father started receiving strange letters that freaked him out."

  * Next the harbinger relates the specific details of the crime as they happened on the day of the crime. This part reads like a police report. (Studying how to actually write a real police report will help you write detective fiction.) For example: "My father was last seen by the lake arguing with his business partner's son."

SEGMENT 4. The detective identifies the vital clues in the harbinger's story and asks the harbinger to elaborate on them.

SEGMENT 5. The detective leaves his office and finds the proof necessary to validate his theory.

SEGMENT 6. The detective catches the antagonist and explains how he solved the mystery.

NOTE. The key to plotting a mystery is to understand that a mystery story is really three stories: The story of how/why the antagonist committed his crime, the story of how/why the crime affected the harbinger and the story of how/why the detective solved the case. The easiest way to weave these together is to write them in this order and then splice them together in the format explained above.

So the first thing you need to do is to write a dark crime story starring the antagonist, which you do like this:

SEGMENT 1. Introduce the antagonist.

SEGMENT 2. The antagonist has an opportunity to attain or defend what he wants most in life (usually a lot of money or a lover)...at the expense of someone else.

SEGMENT 3. The antagonist finds a way to attain/defend what he wants in a way that nobody else can trace the crime back to him.

SEGMENT 4. The antagonist commits the crime but unknowingly leaves one or more vital clues that can trace the crime back to him.

SEGMENT 5. The antagonist goes on about his life hiding his secret.

Once you've written this relatively simple, straight-forward crime story then creating a mystery out of it is just a matter or plugging the details into the detective formula.

FABLE TEMPLATE

SEGMENT 1. The story begins by introducing the protagonist in a way that reveals his defining characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, life circumstances, motives, and goals. SEGMENT 1 also reveals the setting and tone.

SEGMENT 2. The antagonist appears and poses a moral quandary to the protagonist.

SEGMENT 3. The protagonist chooses a course of action he believes is most desirable based on his values.

SEGMENT 4. Protagonist executes his decision, and the antagonist reacts accordingly.

SEGMENT 5. If the protagonist chose wisely it has positive consequences for him and negative consequences for the antagonist. If the protagonist chose unwisely it has negative consequences for him and positive consequences for the antagonist.

SEGMENT 6. The lesson to be learned from the protagonist's decision is explained.

GROUP JOURNEY TEMPLATE (FOR CHILDREN'S STORIES)

SEGMENT 1. Introduce the protagonist, describe the protagonist, explain the protagonist's back story.

SEGMENT 2. Something terrible happens to the protagonist, and he has to embark on a journey to get something that will fix the problem.

SEGMENT 3. The protagonist sets out on his journey and runs into his travel companions who each have personalities, values and/or skills relevant to the quest. Explain each supporting characters' back story and their incentive to join the protagonist.

SEGMENT 4. Explain the first obstacle the characters must surmount to resolve their conflict. The characters must draw on their combined resources (mental and physical) to overcome the obstacle.

SEGMENT 5. Explain the second obstacle the characters must surmount to resolve their conflict. This one must be more difficult than the first, and the characters must overcome it or work around it.

Note: You can have as many obstacles as are logical, but they must keep getting progressively more difficult.

SEGMENT 6. After surmounting all the obstacles between the characters and their goal they (or just the protagonist) face the antagonist head on. Describe the antagonist, Explain the antagonist's back story. Explain the antagonist's motivation to oppose the protagonist. The protagonist (possibly aided by his/her friends) defeat the physically superior antagonist by outwitting him/her.

SEGMENT 7. Denouement

THE "HERO YOU WANT TO BE" TEMPLATE

Answer the following questions and you'll have written a complete story. Your outline will "tell" what happens. Based on that outline write a story that "shows" what happens.

Chapter 1. Name your 3 favorite characters from your favorite books or movies. Note: They don't have to be from your favorite stories. They just have to be your favorite characters. Now combine yourself and those characters into one person. That's who your protagonist is.

Next, name your three favorite stories. Now combine the setting/environment in those 3 movies into one place. That's where the protagonist lives. Write a short narrative about what that protagonist's daily routine is like. Have him engage a conflict that is typical of his life, and have his succeed or fail as would be typical for that character.

Chapter 2. What is the one thing you want most in the universe? Who/what is the most likely agent in the story setting you just created to have the power and the motive to take that away from you? What is the most logical obstacle that would prevent you from stopping this agent of loss from taking away the most valuable thing in the universe from you? That agent takes your thing away and you fail to stop it from happening.
Chapter 3. What's the first thing that would go through your mind after the traumatic loss? How do you react to the loss?

Chapter 4. What would it take to get your very important thing back? What would be first logical thing you would do to get back your very important thing given the strengths/weaknesses of your protagonist and the specific nature of the agent that took it?

Chapter 5. What's the most logical reason why that wouldn't work? Because it didn't work, and that's why. So where does that leave you now?

Chapter 6. What would be the most logical way for you to get your very important thing back from the agent of loss now? You do that, and it almost doesn't work, but you do it a little more and it finally works perfectly. (Or fails miserably if you want your story to be a tragedy.)
Chapter 7. What's the first thing you would do after getting your very important thing back?

Chapter 8. And what would that accomplish? What's the biggest effect that would have on your life and/or the world?

Chapter 9. Once that happens what does the future hold for your character and/or the characters left behind in the story environment you created?

THE "IT'S LIKE THE AUTHOR UNDERSTANDS ME" TEMPLATE
Chapter 1. Who are you? What is your day to day life like?

Chapter 2. What was the biggest personal problem or tragedy you had to overcome in your life?

Chapter 3. How did you figure out the solution you ultimately used to solve (or at least cope with) the problem?

Chapter 4. What steps did you take to solve/cope with the problem.

Chapter 5. How did the final events that brought closure to the issue play out?

Chapter 6. How did the initial recovery period after that go? What was it like adjusting to life after having gone through what you went through?

Chapter 7. Where are you now? What are doing with yourself these days? How is life going for you? Have the old wounds healed?

Chapter 8. What are your plans for the future, or are you just living for the moment right now?

