Month: July 2015

I just started contemplating all the equivalencies which are possible for people not bound by the actual law, tradition, common sense, or a concern for the future.

Men might be found equal to women, and unisex bathrooms abolished nationally by the Supreme Court.

All ethnic clubs might be found to be inherently exclusionary (and racist, of course, which is now merely a synonym for “offensive to the professionally offended”), so that the Hibernians, and German-American, and Lebanese-American clubs are forced to close their doors.

Might some species of animals be found “equal” to humans, and some form of vegetarianism compelled by Supreme Court fiat?

Might the rich be found equal to the poor, and all wealth equalized by bench legislation?

Might the police be found equal to the citizenry, and all citizens legally empowered to self-deputize themselves, and conduct pitchfork marches, bonfires, and lynchings anywhere and any time they choose, provided that they are hunting “haters”?

Might children be found equal to adults, and all previously exclusive parental prerogatives removed and replaced by the State?

I feel like I am giving these lunatics ideas, so I am going to stop, but I also feel that they have already thought of most or all of these ideas.

This is not satire.  It should be, and if the Supremes had a shred of actual legal integrity and sense of fidelity to the actual law, it would be.  But they don’t, and it isn’t. If it makes them feel good–the majority–then they do it, and then rationalize it, as those skilled in casuistry are quite able to do.

But a first principle of law in this country and those governed by common law is the precedent, and the first consideration there is what can of worms any given ruling might open up down the road.  With this ruling, I see no end to the worms and the wormy.

What is the difference between the State telling religious people they cannot practice some specific of their faith, and the entirety of their faith, except in extent?  Is the principle of State primacy not already there?

If I can say that homosexuality IS perfectly acceptable, that I can grant this principle absolute and unquestionable moral supremacy and ontology, then I would argue it is the fact of the granting of the supremacy that is most salient, and not the immediate content.

Can we not imagine a day when today’s processes have continued to the point where “science” and “common sense” make it impossible to square any form of religious belief with public piety, and that anyone who retains such beliefs is to be considered, ipso facto, as insane, and in need of conciliatory psychiatry so as to reconcile them with the actual truths of human experience, as condensed, codified, and turned into a code of universal conformity by “science”, which is to say an oligarchy of anti-patriotic, anti-moral, emotionally superficial, arrogant de facto sociopaths?

When I go into things, I try to go deep.  I look at the surface, see what it is showing, then dive in to research the depths.  And I believe I can go quite deep.

There is a direct, linear correlation between criminalizing Christians for beliefs that were universal 50 years ago, and scarcely controversial ten years ago, and my ideas on the necessity both for cruelty and conformity I developed in my Cultural Sadeism piece.  This is exactly what I predicted.

People who fail to conform are not considered as just having differing views, but as innately evil.  They cannot be conversed with.  The possibility of an honest and reconcilable difference of opinion is not and cannot be considered, once one walks far down this path.

Superficially, Cultural Sadeists can of course seem quite congenial, even fun.  But in their hearts, they cannot brook true, qualitative difference of the sort embodied in continuing religious beliefs.

I am told that the arguments against gay marriage are similar to those used against inter-racial marriage.  That was before my time, but let us assume that is true.  How has the Civil Rights Movement worked out?  How has the use of coercive Federal power to force integration worked out?  Brown v. Board of Education. Busing.  Everyone gets a shot at a good school.

Culturally, what I am feeling is that the nascent black consciousness was never given a chance to stand on its own.  They were not forced to negotiate difference, face to face with people who judged them.  Granted, this work was hard.  But it was ennobling.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man.

If I might compare it with individual acculturation, it was like “momma” did everything for them, protected them from everyone who might hurt them, never let them stand on their own, never let them test their legs, never let them fail on their own and learn from that failure.  They were never trusted to work things out on their own, to use their freedom to mature as people and as a discrete culture with the American nation.

The Civil Rights Movement is an abject failure.  Success would have looked like full integration, and a demographic equality between whites and blacks.  Success would mean color no longer mattered.

But in point of fact, color is all some people want to talk about even today.

And who is doing most of the talking?  Momma, which is to say white liberals who do not understand the black experience, have no intention of living it as it is being endured today, and who are absolutely unwilling to take ANY responsibility for continuing to push policies which were obvious failures 30 years ago.

Similarly, gayness is not integrating into the mainstream.  It is concentrated in certain urban centers, largely, and this court decision, I’m sure, has left a lot of people furious with them, and in no mood for conciliation.

Christians do preach and in a great many cases in fact practice love.  Everything may come up sunshine and roses for the Gay Rights Movement.  But it will not be because contempt, hatred, and social violence was not heaped on people guilty of nothing more or less than attempting in the face of opposition to carry on cultural beliefs which are many thousands of years old.

My sense is that many years from now, this period will be seen as the beginning of our final decadence, our final separation from the principles and laws that once protected American success economically and political freedom.

And again this has nothing to do with my particular beliefs on this issue.  I don’t care if gays get married or not.  It is the tone of this non-debate that concerns me.

Within our lifetimes we may see attempts–I think we will see attempts, and over some time horizon successful ones–to get religious language banned from the public sphere outright.  The mention of Jesus will be as anathema as were positive references to Trotsky under Lenin.

To those who say this is ridiculous, I ask why?  Was gay marriage even on your radar five years ago?  The whole thing, soup to nuts, played out in less than that.  The attack on the Confederate Flag lasted less than a week.  The propaganda, and the those addicted to it and fully compliant with and dependent on it, is largely perfected.  Anyone can be successfully assaulted any time, with no fear of public reasoning, any sense of proportion or history or context, or of a backlash.

We should all be concerned with this, as I am describing nothing less than the final triumph of totalitarianism in the purported “Land of the Free.”

I want freedom for all, mutual respect for all, common decency, and common sense,  There will come a time, probably soon, where these are “code words” for whatever that Agit Prop practitioner needs them to be.  Anything to stir up the hate and fear, and anything to make sure there is never any time for people to take a breath, talk to one another as individuals to work out their differences, and use the brains and reasoning and empathetic skills that alone make us superior to animals.

I feel sometimes like an Old Testament prophet.  It is a feeling of frustration.  I can see danger, but people in all too many cases don’t want to hear it.  Yes, I more than most get that life’s wounds can make it much harder, that the pressures of everyday living leave little room for negativity, or even for introspection.  And practically, I never judge people face to face, or even on the internet.  I am judging ideas, by and large, except when it comes to the Sadeists.  They deserve a special  place in Hell, and I sense they will get it.

Never believe me when I say I am going to stop making political posts.  I am growing as a person–I am getting flashes of personhood that are lasting longer and longer–but this still continues to be a comfort.

Again, for the same reason that a compulsive carpenter can still be a good carpenter, a compulsive thinker can still be a good thinker.

The stipulation that Christians must modify their faith to accept homosexuality, and homosexual marriage, is an example of the State stepping in and altering Church doctrine, and compelling compliance.  They are saying more or less, “you can do what you want, but you can’t do this.”  In other words, they CAN’T do what they want.

They either now or soon will not be able to refuse to conduct gay marriages, lest they be sued; and whether they consent or not, the movement to revoke tax exempt status has already been started–this despite the fact that the concept of non-profit exists equally in a great number of groups that are completely non-religious.  The focus on the Christian churches specifically is in my view unmistakable.

Logically, why must it necessarily stop even there?  Once accepted in principle, why couldn’t the State force Christian churches to stop teaching that Christ is the only path to heaven?  Or that one must be “born again” to be saved?  Why couldn’t the State implement an “equality” doctrine requiring churches to give equal time to Muslim preachers?

Why couldn’t the pork producers lobby Congress and compel Jews and Muslims to eat bacon?

Why couldn’t pornography producers sue–and prevail against–Churches which condemn their products?

At some point, why couldn’t the State tell ALL churches that there is no God and that teaching about such a being constitutes unacceptable child abuse (violating the Equal Protection Clause, since parents are equal in their rights to their children)?

The motion is clearly to stifle religious belief in this country.  Obama’s enemies were people who “cling” to guns and religion.  Despite his best efforts, he got nowhere with gun control, so religion is the next logical target.

It remains to be seen how pissed off, and how well organized the churches in this country are, and how they will react in the next election.  Most of them were already Republican because of the last time we went through a convulsion like this, in 1973.

As I have said often, though: we must fear the loss of liberty of any and all, because all large encroachments begin small, beg necessity–or in this case moral virtue–of some sort as their cause, and grow slowly and imperceptibly (to most), until in a great realization people realize it is too late.  Some are saying that now.  I can’t say with confidence they are wrong.

But the American people–while naive, and generally unwilling to submit to the discipline required to do honest and comprehensive thinking–are in general good spirited, generous, and kind.  This remains one of our great strengths.  It has been perverted, not dissolved.

 Is it possible that children living in mud huts and defecating in ditches are happier than kids who grow up in suburbs with everything a modern American life can offer? Yes, absolutely.  Because they feel loved, that they belong, that their lives have a context and purpose, and because they have FUN often.  They sing, they dance, they create art.


One of the salient projects of modern philosophy has been demolishing moral ontologies.  This project, here, is neither relativistic, nor so vague as to be useless.  At the same time, I would want some sense of motion in it, some waves, ebbing back and forth.  It feels too much like another attempt to bring the music of the spheres into a perennial philosophy [note: I mean no nod to Huxley there; my work choice was poor], something that doesn’t change, and which can be counted on, like math, not to change.


And I have been thinking a lot about transformation as well.  Living is not like collecting experiences in a sort of bank account.  It is about periodic waves which change who you are.  We cannot say misery must stay misery, or that it lacks a purpose.  Neither should we be hard hearted and fail to help others.  But there must be a flux.


That’s my incomplete effort at coherence.  I am tired and going to bed.  This is a better morality than I have seen in a while though.

Now, if they beat people, strangle people, abuse them, kidnap them, kill them with their car, or otherwise create a public nuisance, well those were crimes ALREADY, and I have no issue with adding time for the drug part of it.

But what got me thinking was researching marijuana for PTSD.  Right now, I often dose myself, perfectly legally, with alcohol, to avoid some really awful PTSD related shit that happens when I fall asleep.  But this is bad for my liver and overall health.  It is impossible to get skinny when you drink like I tend to.

And I was watching a veteran in a video talk about his PTSD, and then I started researching.  Turns out that the whatever it is in THC that makes you forget stuff can, with pharmacological modification, help you forget trauma too. I won’t post the article, but the main research was being done in Israel.

People who are abusers–of drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, video games–ALREADY have emotional problems, and not infrequently outright trauma to deal with.  They are self medicating. They are doing what they can to make the pain go away.

How does it become morally virtuous telling them they can’t make the pain go away in ways we disapprove of?  Heroin is likely less damaging in some respects than a sex or gambling addiction.  You are not wrecking other peoples marriages or bankrupting yourself and your family.

And then I read about what happened when Portugal said fuck it: http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/what-happened-and-what-didnt-when-portugal-decriminalized-drugs

Portugal was in the middle of an “addiction epidemic,” with 1 in 100 Portuguese addicted to heroin.
But since the shift in policy, rates of STDs and drug overdoses have fallen dramatically. Since decriminalization, the Economist reports, drug-induced deaths have fallen by 80 percent, from 80 deaths in 2001 to just 16 in 2012. Meanwhile, the number of heroin addicts fell by half, in absolute terms, over the same period.
Because drug abuse is treated like a public health question instead of a criminal offense, the state focuses on treatment and harm-reduction.

People who shoot up heroin, or who smoke a doobie or two every day, are ALREADY in pain.  They are already miserable and dealing with it in a way which is dysfunctional, but the best they can come up with.

Would it not be wiser, cheaper, and more humane, to work to develop methods of dealing with trauma, with emotional pain, with social alienation, and sense of metaphysical pessimism, than simply increasing the misery of people who were already miserable, and congratulating ourselves for our virtuous rejection of others vices?

When I really grokked–as I think I have done–the sheer awfulness of sending the wounded into a new field of battle, it made me a bit sick to my stomach.

Yes, many people are childish and irresponsible.  Yes, people are stupid.  But it is my belief that given an actual alternative, most people will choose adult freedoms, and wisdom.  I just don’t think most people are ever presented with a choice.  Certainly not by our media or criminal justice system, in all too many cases at least. They are on the contrary praised for their self indulgence, and the people trying to point out a better way are condemned as judgmental.

But the person who tells you you are fucking up and then how to fix it and be happy is doing you a favor.  And the person who feeds your worst impulses is codependent, and passively increasing your pain, even if you can’t see it, and they won’t admit it.

With respect to my last post, I thought I might post a link to a really well done video put together by professional, credentialed, architects and largely structural engineers regarding the idiocy of accepting the received view of the events on that day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg&list=PLCFCB1EBC1BD3F5D9&index=2

I will note that Lynn Margulies, in addition to being a National Science Prize winner, was also Carl Sagan’s wife.  Interestingly, she inverted my own college career by getting her B.S at the University of Chicago, and her graduate degree at UC-Berkeley.  She called 9/11 “the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization”.  I have made a similar point.  Some large section of humanity itself was tuned in live when Towers 1 and 2 collapsed. 




Most, of course, have forgotten Tower 7, which was really only shown on 


9/11 itself, and then scrubbed from media coverage.  It is worth wondering why.  Many 


explanations present themselves, some innocent, some much less so.  I can’t render a strong 


opinion one way or the other.



[formatting errors I won’t take the time to fix]

I have to say I think I am one of the bravest people I know.  Every night I don’t drink my body does really unpleasant things to me, things that have nothing to do with detox, and everything to do with things I can’t remember.  I think sometimes I have imagined things, but bodies don’t lie.

I see very unpleasant images in my dreams sometimes, but I have reached a point where no demon frightens me, no monster can make me run, and finally the weapons I use against them are working.

There was something close to a psychosis waiting for me in that bag of tricks I pulled out of the dark.  I have managed it with persistence, courage, and not inconsiderable emotional intelligence and skill.  I still have miles to go, but I think it has finally been forced to reveal itself fully, and it did not kill me.

I’m likely a bit crazy for posting this, but it seems to comfort me somehow, and small comforts are always a blessing.

I am winning.  That is the bottom line.  I am winning because I did not quit, and I did not let the horse buck me.

I will add that I don’t see me ever changing my political views. They were won at too hard a cost.  I reasoned everything through from first principles and based on a pretty comprehensive view of history.  I have evolved on the Iraq War, for the very simple reason that we have, now, precisely what we fought to prevent; and even if our brave troops go in there and clean house, we can never trust that people like Obama and Clinton will not go right back out and lose yet another war for reasons which are unclear, but certainly ignoble, unprincipled, and unworthy of the sacrifices made.

Let us defend our borders, and let us do what we can to figure out who the traitors were on 9/11.

Just watched it.  Enjoyed it.  I have long listed Mary Poppins as one of my favorite movies.  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, but I have the dialogue memorized.

I have several things I could say, but what I will say is that I get Travers/Goffs grumpiness quite well.  I do the same things.  I am getting better–I’ve improved immensely in the last year–but deep unhappiness will make you irritable.  Everything hurts and it makes you impatient and grumpy.

And I do look for the negatives.  I always have.  It is a necessary protective instinct when living in dangerous places.  It is simply maladaptive in places which are or could be safe.

As I say, I am making rapid progress, now.

I have no idea who if anyone cares, but it has long been enough for me to send my bottles out into the ocean without worrying about their final destination.

Not really: it’s not in my DNA.  But wise people choose their battles, and I realized about 15 minutes ago an important reality: my obsession with the state of the world–which far, far, far exceeds that of 99% of our population I suspect–is a defense mechanism.  Specifically, it exists to prevent a full ego individuation from a state of fusion that is a primal artifact of early trauma and parental narcissism.

Letting it all go is my last important task prior to calling Phase One–climbing out of the hole–done.  If we are going to hell in a hand basket, I am going to look for positives in the hand basket.

I have more or less been willing the world to be rational, which is more or less the equivalent of an emotional isometric against the entirety of the planet: it neither moves nor notices, but I get quite tired.

That, I quit.  No more.

And I think I mean it.

Morality is nothing more or less than the capacity to judge OUR OWN behavior by some consistent standard.  It may consist in general principles or absolute rules, but the judging of ourselves is the most important part.

Our sense of our selves, our characters, are formed through decisions made either in conformity to or contrary to our sense of right and wrong.  If we hew to our standards we earn self respect, and if we fail in this, we justly view ourselves with distaste or even contempt.

The solution to self loathing is not to abandon morality, but to GROW.  That is what a standard makes possible: a way of measuring beneficial changes in our personalities and selves.

There is of course pathological and chronic self judging, but I would argue that is actually a species of vanity, and not honest self rejection.  It is that, or it is the result of a deep emotional wound which needs healing.  But even in that healing process, one must in my view have an ideal, something that is aimed for.

I think my development of my own code has been absolutely necessary for my own healing.  It is both simple and useful.  It consists in the three logical steps of defining an ideal, defining principles most likely to tend toward that ideal, and creating a decision making process.  I have covered these things before, but it may not hurt to cover it again.

The ideal is to continually develop and refine my capacity both to live happily on my own, and to savor and share the joy of others.

The principles are 1) Reject Self Pity; 2) Persevere; and 3) Be curious.

The decisions which are judgments of self or others must be 1) Local; 2) Necessary; and 3) Understood as necessarily imperfect.

This is a code which in my view walks the line well between moral absolutism and moral relativism.  It is adaptable, but eminently practical.  I just summarized it in three sentences, but the possible permutations are endless.  As I mentioned in my essay on this, I consciously incorporated the ideas of  Complexity Theory, and defined the ideal as an Emergent Property of the operations of my principles.  Within this world, at issue is not who you ARE, but who you are tending to become.  And there is no room for ontological judgment, because I reject moral ontology, even if I recognize in practice that something like it can persistently tend to exist in some people.

I would oppose this code to that which stipulates that the only sin is judgement itself.  The only sinners are the “intolerant”, which is defined as anyone who continues to grant moral superiority to any behavior or person.

This is an innately destructive creed, both of social harmony, and of individual felicity and happiness.  The “virtue” of supporting gay marriage is nothing like traditional virtues of hard work, honesty, kindness shared with all, familial fidelity, charity and the like.

When I put myself in the head of typical contemporary college student, they have no way to esteem and look for the positive, at least consistently.  It may be that Asians dominate, relative to their numbers in this country, institutions of allegedly higher learning.  This is because they work harder than most of us.  But you can’t say that.  You can’t hold them out as examples we should all emulate.

Rather, college students seem to wander around looking for something or someone to object to, someone to heap their own intolerance on, someone to execrate and destroy socially.

This is the problem I have with the Supreme Court decision.  I am happy for gay people who feel a genuine sense of liberation.  At the same time, I mourn with traditional Christians who feel that the religion which provides their sense of meaning, sense of purpose, and feeling of comfort is being taken from them, and that there is nothing they can do about it.

I have defined Liberalism as follows:

Liberalism is the idea that since none of us can be
presumed to possess absolute truth, that all of us be free to believe and
say what we want, provided we injure no one else in so doing, and that the
role of government is to protect those rights. Constitutionally, the right to
regulate areas of moral ambiguity were intended to rest with the States.
This would include abortion, drug regulation, euthanasia, prostitution, and
the provision of social services.

Within this framework, I would argue that the use of the word “marriage” to describe the legal institution of civil union between gay men and women should have properly been left to the sundry States.

It is not an open and shut case that gay unions are intrinsically equal to those of heterosexuals, particularly where children are concerned.  This is simply stipulated, and anyone attempting to discover whether or not any differences may exist is socially ostracized, unless they reach the correct conclusion.

This is not morality, in my view.  This is not seeking the maximum felicity for ALL concerned, at least not in a concerted, honest, exploratory way.

What it is evidence of, in my view, is a loss of actual moral moorings.  The principle of the intolerance solely of alleged intolerance is not and can never be a positive morality.  It cannot lead to happiness, and indeed precisely to the extent that it tends naturally and quickly to devolve to looking for the flaws in everything and everyone, it becomes an agent of fear, shrinking, and social isolation.  The people practicing it can never rest, and the people subjected to it must constantly self censor themselves.  Self evidently, this world is devoid of humor, and the social growth it enables.

Such is our shared future, if we do not change paths. I am not permitted to say that the successful got that way because they had a plan and worked hard, but I am permitted to judge them for their success.  That is just ugly.  Such ideas, deployed far enough, will easily ruin our nation.