The name of this post would be more accurate if it was “Man Has Finally Figured Out How to Copy Nature, A Little.” An organic being is still a mechanical one, just as much as a robot on a plant assembly line is a mechanical being. It operates according to physical forces and obeys physical and chemical laws. The machinery of nature was developed over millions of years of gradual improvement and sophistication through the course of evolution. Humankind, with all its intelligence and technology, can only make weak attempts at imitation, and even those imitations are only at the level of unicellular organisms. The bigger machinery our species has created, like cars and robots and whatever else, are mostly clumsy, inefficient, and obnoxious.That’s why I never bought into artificial intelligence being a threat to humanity- we’re simply better-adapted to life on planet Earth than any machine we create ever could be.

The whole distinction of this accomplishment rests on a false dichotomy between “living” and “non-living” matter. Anyone who’s taken a healthy dose of psilocybin realizes that there is life in all matter because existence is unified (“all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration”). There is life in all things, each aspect of existence reflects upon the whole, organic life is just one means of expressing the beauty of all things, of the only thing. Humanity is heavy with scientific knowledge but remains, generally, quite shallow.

When people talk about rights, what they’re really talking about is power. Rights are an expression of freedom, freedom from the restricting influence of others.  This is why the constitution contained a guarantee that the government wouldn’t make a law abridging the right to bear arms- it was a guarantee that people would still have recourse to forceful means of self-assertion after a hard-fought war for independence from a tyrannous regime.

So if you really believe in rights for certain individuals or groups or for you, I would suggest developing the means for guaranteeing those rights yourself. Money and political influence are helpful. Carry yourself in a way that will make people want to support you. Forceful resistance to attempts to violate your rights should at least be considered, although it’s obviously not always practical or appropriate. Remember: if somebody is powerful enough to violate your rights with impunity, and will gain from doing so, then violate your rights they will. It’s a fact which has repeated itself over and over through history: appeals to abstract justice are ignored in favor of tangible benefits. So… be practical!

How far, how far removed from real life? Dusty apartment, mediated experience of the world. I read articles about things that happen all over the planet, which I can prove no more than I can prove the existence of black holes. All taken on trust. A gigantic base of knowledge built on the flimsiest veil of real experience. Absurd! And yet I could fly all around the world and experience these things for myself, but what would I choose? In this life we only ever scratch the surface, so much must be taken on faith. (Comforted by memories of magic; thank you psilocybin for this island of sanity)

This apparatus of which The I has been given control- built to adapt, as capable of loving and caring and peace as it is of brutal and unrepentant slaughter. And why? Biological imperatives, nothing better to do, one has a self and he can either express it or die alone (cf. story from Dostoevsky’s devil in Brothers, the soul doomed to walk for millions of miles before he was allowed into heaven; he rebelled, decided he would just lay down forever. But he got up (after millenia), walked, and rejoiced upon his entry into paradise).

And so this social meat machine, the human, can take a keyboard and write a blog and share ideas. Is there any one human who could carry the information of the whole hive? More and more in common with insects, a fact which has either gone unnoticed or has been accepted by the greater majority. But this strange hairless ape is not an ant, it has a nature, and that nature yearns to break through the modern veneer like tufts of grass cracking  suburban pavement.

Existed outside for a while, in the world of ideas, which against all logic seem more real than anything else (intuition so much more dependable than logic). No back to the indoors of the soul; there’s work to do and external demands to satisfy.

I think the bailout is everything in this speech and why meaningful change won’t happen.  (scare tactics: “I know you guys hate that we gave billions of dollars to people who are already rich and who caused the problems, but that had nothing to do with the millions they spend on taking us out to nice dinners; we HAD to do it or there would be a super-depression”).

He has a vague plan to send people to school and to help pay for college. However, government subsidy for bad public schools (through conditions put on federal education aid money) and for college tuition (through government-secured and insured interest-free loans) are major causes for the problem in the first place. Pressure needs to be put on schools to lower costs, but that won’t happen through presidential fiat; it will happen when people aren’t willing to pay exorbitant tuitions anymore. So Obama’s plan will exacerbate the problem by continuing to subsidize the payment of overpriced tuitions.

As fas as innovation of our workforce, it would be happening on its own if everyone who made money trading paper for the last two decades was homeless right now. Spearheading great economic change during a post-bubble collapse is EXACTLY what a market economy does best. So I have slim hope that throwing borrowed money at the areas that we GUESS will be the jobs of the future will create any real jobs.

This was going to be a disastrous recovery without government intervention because of the extent of the bubble that burst. But I don’t think this government, whether during Bush’s or Obama’s administration, has done anything but put the disaster off until later. It’s still lying just beneath the surface, and it needs to happen. Propping up a failed economic model for the sake of politics isn’t the answer. “Seven slim years,” in the words of Jeremy Grantham. Better seven than seventeen or more, which is what might happen if the government exhausts all its resources on preventing a depression.

However, in order for democracy were to work in practice, it requires effort. This is why it inevitably fails: people are lazy. In order for democracy to work, everyone would have to devote, minimally,  5-10 hours a week to understanding the most important things effecting our country, because determining the cause and therefor helpful attempts at solutions to those things is a very complicated process. In order to elect and hold accountable competent leaders capable of dealing with real world problems, especially in a world where change is happening so much faster than the bureaucracy can keep up with it, the public needs to be constantly educating itself in order not to fall prey to the manipulative wiles of self-serving ideologues who distort facts in order to serve their own shortsighted agenda.

Instead, people watch television for an average of 28 hours per week, using up plenty of time that could be spent being a responsible member of the electorate, while at the same time filling their heads with propaganda in order to be more easily cowed into a state-approved point of view. Time not spent watching TV is usually occupied with consumption, whether of alcohol or some other drug in a setting totally devoid of responsibility for anything or anyone.

None of this would bother me in other circumstances; how one spends her time is not really my business if it does no harm to me. But it does harm me, and everyone, because it is the endorsement from these people in the form of their votes that allows the criminals in our government to assist the bankers and institutionalized investors to bleed all of the fucking money out of the world with no sense of accountability for all of the damage they do. The bankers and insurers and pharmaceutical companies harnessed an ignorant, fat, and irresponsible middle class in order to create a new tyranny out of what is still nominally a democracy. And you let it happen.

So fuck anyone who thinks that merely voting is enough to be a responsible citizen. You’re only harming yourselves with your ballots because you’ve made no effort to understand the actions of your government and their consequences, or if you have it was likely only a superficial survey that kept you well within the bounds of conventional thinking (i.e. slavery).

America has the leadership it deserves, and when this country finally finishes its thrashing, shrieking, pitiful death throes, hopefully ignorant, lazy people will know enough to stay the hell out of its government, for their own sake.

AB

To be honest, we didn’t even fight this one like we wanted to win it.

Toil and struggle is the norm, not the exception. Pain and suffering are normal. Failure and destruction is normal. What matters is not whether your struggle ultimately results in something good (a house in the suburbs and a surgically enhanced wife, right?).  What matters is whether you keep fighting or you give up.

Giving up is by no means something unwelcome to the sufferer. On the contrary, to allow circumstances to overcome you, to quit swimming and surrender yourself to the currents, is perhaps the most delicious poison on the planet. The urge to surrender creeps into the back of your mind, and once you acknowledge it as a viable option it’s already won. Surrender is compelling– it’s easy and responsibility is difficult.

But continuing the struggle in spite of terrible circumstances, even the nightmarish horror of an earthquake’s aftermath, is the ultimate expression of life’s resiliency, and marks anyone who expresses such as a true hero.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.