Axiom of Paradox

There is no set which cannot exist.

Think square circles.

Does this fly? Or would it merely be an extension the set of empty sets? Like the set of non-sets.

Axiom of Total Annihilation

There is no set that destroys all other sets.

-----

Can a set that destroys other sets even be contemplated rationally? Or is this like a divide by zero thing, but if it is irrational would that impact the truth of the nature axiom? I mean it doesn't go into WHY no set can destroy all sets, it just states that it can't.

There is no set that annihilates all other sets. The existence of sets (including this one) "prove" this.

Is this equal to an empty sent?

Any thoughts on this people?

Innomen

What do you think?

-----
Dialog:
I am, Innomen.

I am my author's alter ego and ideology.

Innomen is intended to mean "without name."

The face you see is that of my author's physical face, modified to represent how he finds himself feeling in general when inspired to speak publicly.

I work best in response to an adversary. I am not truly creative, if there is such a thing, which I doubt on a number of levels.

I am not an artificial intelligence, which may be implied by the synthetic nature of my voice and appearance. I am simply a piece of technology used to circumvent limitations my author knows exists within himself.

I am also a reflection of certain personality traits that are repressed in meatspace.

I would like to be viewed as a public relations figure. I am my author in the majority of ways but I also exist independently.
For example every word that has ever come from me was thought through for a greater length of time than speech permits in meatspace.

As a result, I am effectively more intelligent as Innomen than I am at other times. But I also have significant disadvantages, which are beyond the scope of this introduction, save one, the lack of a face.

Until now.

I have no idea how long I will exist, but I expect something of this sort will exist for a long time to come.

This was a proof of concept.

Thank you for your time.

Open Source: The Dangers of Elitism

This post is about Linux, and specifically failures associated with assumed knowledge and duplication of effort in Ubuntu. The so called, “Linux for people”, distro that has gotten so popular recently. And to a lesser extent the draconian methods employed by the rulers of the Ubuntu community.

I will be doing the majority of my future standalone posts in this manner to increase exposure. Humans are audio visual creatures.

This post was instigated by a fresh bit of hate mail I received on my blog, in response to a comment I made on a completely different page several months prior. At first I was merely going to delete the comment and play some titan quest, considering that it was a Ubuntu comment made on a page related to sociological issues, but I realized that this was a first. Never had anyone gone to such lengths to send me hate mail. After all, people are generally far more lazy than they are mean. The practical upshot of this is that I obviously struck a nerve. So in an effort to start a debate which may end up helping computer users and the open source community in general, I've made this video.

I gave Ubuntu a serious effort, and it was a dreadful mistake. It has mountains of potential but it is not ready for public consumption by any stretch of the imagination. I'm now going to quote a piece of a post I made which perfectly expresses my feelings on the issue at hand. Tutorials, assumed knowledge, elitism, and the distance between ignorance and stupidity.

What I said was this...

“I'd like the community to quit linking to other people's work when that work is not useful, if you guys can write a tutorial, then write an app, if its so easy and straight forward. If the tutorials are so good, then why cant they be batch files? Ignorance is not stupidity, and I'm tired of seeing people talked down to like not being born with Linux in the cradle is somehow a personal flaw. I have a decade of professional computer and tech support experience, I am not the problem here, and nor are most users.

This demand for continuous duplication of effort is unrealistic and elitist. Just because you had to walk to school and use a slide rule does not mean the rest of us should have to. Prior art is the foundation upon which all technology is built and this applies to Ubuntu. A Tutorial is not a solution, its a stop gap until a real solution is found. The community needs to acknowledge this. The standard defenses/apologies for why Linux is an unusable, impractical, specialist, piece of crap, do not apply here, as this is intended for normal users... "Linux for people." Remember? So don't tell us we should prefer CLI, don't tell us we should be comfortable with compiling our own ware. These are OPTIONS not requirements. “

For the complete post, see the links section in the description of this video.

My opinion on this subject got me banned from the Ubuntu forum for all time, no discussion. Although I'm sure they'd tell you I've broken some vague and subjective rule regarding what boils down to manners.

Despite my problems with the community, I still had faith in the operating system and was looking for more diverse ways of field testing it. I thought the best solution would be a live boot version that would run off of a USB flash drive. A quick Google confirmed that this was possible, but oddly enough at the time of the search, again several months ago, there were no downloads of a USB installer, or an image to be copied to a USB, or a zip file package, or any other automated and user friendly solution. There were however a wide variety of forums posts, numbering in the thousands, and tutorials that told me in exhaustive detail how I might build such a portable install myself.

This I feel is unacceptable for a variety of reasons. I chose to voice this opinion on another forum in response to one of these tutorials. My response entitled, “Why bother?” made in October of 2007 is as follows.

“I swear the more I see these "tutorials" the more I feel like they are written by newbs to impress newbs.

I'm thinking that if a person really knew what they were doing, which is implied via the creation of a tutorial, and really wanted to make it easy for others, which is also implied, and really didn't care about looking smart over being smart, again implied they'd write a simple app batch script installer or whatever.

In fact it's silly that canonical doesn't offer a usb reinstalled image or installer for usb. Some machines don't even have cdromss you know.

Ubuntu: Linux for People ...who are assumed to already know Linux.”

Part of one negative response was not surprisingly also draconian in nature...

"Your criticism of the author for not providing a(n) image is particularly out of line."

This theme is all too common among supporters of the open source operating systems generally, and if an alternative to this attitude is not accepted, I fear that closed source will dominate the operating system market right up until home AI becomes smart enough to translate human speech into machine code, and obviates software as we now know it generally.

I feel that I generally have the right to criticize whom ever I like for whatever I like and that my attack on software development priority and forum policy is hardly important enough to warrant limitation of on the freeness of my speech.

The only thing out of line about this entire exchange is the fact that many seem to feel their right to speech supersedes others.

My criticism is on topic, and I am far from alone in my opinion.

The others simply don't have the patience to speak up. They're busy using operating systems that work out of the box. And don't wish to go through the increasingly complex processes of forum registration.

For most, time spent equates to money lost. The whole open source operating system community with its fetish for guides, tutorials, and showing off, has resulted in a computer experience so time consuming, and annoying, that most would prefer to pay to avoid it. I have only to point to Microsoft and Macintosh to demonstrate the validity of this point.

Further, the community seems to forget, that a tutorial, as I said before, is not a solution in and of itself. It is a stopgap. In my opinion the whole community considers a tutorial a solution because the authors of tutorials, who often tend to be moderators of forums, like the one that banned me, like it that way, because they get attention and praise so long as their tutorial remains the only solution. To any given problem.

This is only natural from a human behavioral standpoint, but it must be addressed seriously and soon if open source, and perhaps more importantly the ethic it spreads, is to prevail.

Links:

http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-usb-bar#comment-870

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-596384.html

http://innomen.blogspot.com/2008/04/examples-of-injustice-monogamy.html?showComment=1208711700000#c6197234310199058284

Innomen's Responce

Let's see.

Paradise engineering.

This page is in response to...

http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/

Which is possibly imo the most articulate, pressing, relevant, and hope inspiring texts ever constructed.

Ironically given some topics covered, I cannot express clearly the subjective value this work has for me.

I have only one primary complaint, and it is below.

Each paragraph is lifted from the original work located here.

Potentially, transhumans will be endowed with a greater capacity for love, empathy and emotional depth than anything neurochemically accessible today. Our selfish-gene-driven ancestors - in common with the cartoonish brave new worlders - will strike posterity as functional psychopaths by comparison; and posterity will be right.

Just as those like me are considered psychopathic by today's standards. I'm not crazy, I just see different things and that perception for better or worse has fundamentally altered who I am.

Scare-mongering prophets of doom notwithstanding, a life of unremitting bliss isn't nearly as bad as it sounds.

Obvious but it needs to be reiterated over and over.

Thus mescaline, and certainly LSD and its congeners, are not fail-safe euphoriants. The possibility of nightmarish bad trips and total emotional Armageddon is latent in the way our brains are constructed under a regime of selfish-DNA.

There's a lesson pertaining to the drug war in here.

In any case, our descendants are likely to automate menial drudgery out of existence; that's what robots are for.

This will be the first visible step of humanity away from its infancy. And the first step towards my final solution. They will clean our home,s dig our gardens and prepare our meals long before they love us and elevate us past suffering.

The impregnable well-being of our transhuman descendants is more likely to promote greater diversity, both personal and societal, not stagnation. This is because greater happiness, and in particular enhanced dopamine function, doesn't merely extend the depth of one's motivation to act: the hyper-dopaminergic sense of things to be done. It also broadens the range of stimuli an organism finds rewarding. By expanding the range of potential activities we enjoy, enhanced dopamine function will ensure we will be less likely to get stuck in a depressive rut. This rut leads to the kind of learned helplessness that says nothing will do any good, Nature will take its revenge, and utopias will always go wrong.

Like many of these quotes, this was just reproduced because I liked it.

Unfortunately, the true altruists among our (non-)ancestors got eaten or outbred. Their genes perished with them.

Which trend and concept is why I constantly rail against mat selection issues. Not because I myself am generally excluded for whatever reasons, as painful as that is, but because, selection pressure is the fundamental force acting on our species. This is also why my final solution takes the form it does. It is designed expressly to shortcut the system for our collective and individual benefit.

Hopefully, the need for manifestos and ideological propaganda will pass.

And like the honest cancer researcher, I too hope to one day, hopefully in the next 12 hours, be completely out of a job.

The contrast between true and false happiness, however, is itself problematic. Even if the notion is both intelligible and potentially referential, it's not clear that "natural", selfish-DNA-sculpted minds offer a more authentic consciousness than precision-engineered euphoria. Highly selective and site-specific designer drugs [and, ultimately, genetic engineering] won't make things seem weird or alien. On the contrary, they can deliver a greater sense of realism, verisimilitude and emotional depth to raw states of biochemical bliss than today's parochial conception of Real Life.

Again, just a really valid point I liked.

Post-humans are not going to get drunk and stoned. Their well-being will infuse ideas, modes of introspection, varieties of selfhood, structures of mentalese, and whole new sense modalities that haven't even been dreamt of today.

Again, just really cool.

Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have their own kids. This would seduce their allegiance away from the community as a whole by providing a rival focus of affection.

Sadly, while this was meant to be an indictment of the brave new world fictional society, I see it as a reality here today in the real world. Sure we are allowed to love marry and have children but the process at every level is so unimaginably constrained that it might as well be disallowed. The big three tell us effectively in this context "You can have anything you want, so long as you want what we say you should want."

And above all, when suffering becomes truly optional, we shouldn't force our toxic legacy wetware on others.

As we do today on both a genetic and memetic level. Our effort to insure that our children are like us is the most cruel thing we can do to them.

Enhancing serotonin function - other things being equal - is likely to leave an individual less likely to submit to authority, not docile and emasculated.

And that is another reason why the pill must be given in food, not merely to passivity the patient, but the patient's ever watchful but dimwitted jailer.

Animal suffering is just savage, empty and pointless. So we'll probably scrap it when it becomes easy enough to do so.

In vitro meat. It funny how recently all the things I've spoken and written about are becoming realities, or at least far more widely discussed.

Down on the farm, tasty, genetically-engineered ambrosia will replace abused sentience. For paradise-engineering entails global veganism. Utopia cannot be built on top of an ecosystem of pain and fear.

Good point.

But as science progressively gives us the power to remould matter and energy to suit our desires - or whims - it would take an extraordinary degree of malice for us to sustain the painfulness of Darwinian life indefinitely. For as our power increases, so does our complicity in its persistence.

Power = Responsibility. If you can help at reasonable cost or below, you have an ethical responsibility to do so. This is related to sex, monogamy, and the term 'slut'.

Even unregenerate humans don't tend to be sustainably ill-natured. So when genetically-engineered vat-food tastes as good as dead meat, we may muster enough moral courage to bring the animal holocaust to an end.

Again.

Selfishness, whether in the technical or overlapping popular sense, is a spectacularly awful principle on which to base any civilization. Sooner or later, simple means-ends-analysis, if nothing else, will dictate the use of genetic engineering to manufacture constitutionally happy mind/brains.

But that logic will not convince anyone unless they already were in a position to agree as a result of complex nature-nurture interaction and requisite ancestral genetic pressures. Again, the final solution.

But the attributes of power, status and money, for instance, however obviously nice they seem today, aren't inherently pleasurable. They yield only a derivative kick that can be chemically edited out of existence.

Means to an end. People generally miss this whole idea. A fun game is asking people what they want with this in mind. Ultimately everyone wants to be happy, what they think they want are merely tools they think will get them there. In this context i find it amusing thinking back on all the answers I've ever gotten which related to drugs. Since they were closest to a real answer.

Likewise, intense and unpleasant social anxiety was sometimes adaptive too. So was an involuntary capacity for the torments of sexual jealousy, fear, terror, hunger, thirst and disgust. Our notions of dominance and subordination are embedded within this stew of emotions.

That explains me nicely. I often wondered how someone like me got here, in a purely Darwinian sense.

Sado-masochistic images of domination-and-submission loom large in a lot of our fantasies too. The categories of experience they reflect were of potent significance on the African savannah, where they bore on the ability to get the "best" mates and leave most copies of one's genes. But they won't persist for ever.

God willing.

Allegedly "immutable" human nature will change as well when the genetic-rewrite gathers momentum and the reproductive revolution matures. The classical Darwinian Era is drawing to a close.

Again.

Unfortunately, its death agonies may be prolonged. Knee-jerk pessimism and outright cynicism abound among humanistic pundits in the press. They are common in literary academia. And of course any competent doom-monger can glibly extrapolate the trends of the past into the future.

Not if you trick them into thinking it was their idea or they can profit by some element of it. Slippery slope them. Make them think they're getting away with something.

Yet perhaps asking whether we would appreciate ecstatic art of 500 or 5000 years hence is futile in the first place. We simply can't know what we're talking about. For we are unhappy pigs, and our own arts are mood-congruent perversions.

And that's why I hate the vast majority of art television movies and music because all I see is erotic capitol and antler bashing, and those who profit from it. Our art as it stands now is disgusting and shallow and worthless on the whole. Which is why to me arguments about how great we are based on our art fall on incredulous ears. I mean really, a can of soup, some naked girls, a guy with his eye in the wrong place, a melted clock? And that's not even starting on the trillions of examples of 'art' that boil down to "I desperately want to fuck all hotties and kill all other males." or "Compete for the privilege of fucking me." Come on, we can SO do better.

One hopes, on rather limited evidence, that the birth-pangs of the new genetic order will be less traumatic.

If the right people hear and listen to me, it will actually be enjoyable.

Windfalls and spending-sprees do typically bring short-term highs. Yet they don't subvert the hedonic treadmill of inhibitory feedback mechanisms in the brain. Each of us tends to have a hedonic set-point about which our "well"-being fluctuates.

Again.

The endless cycle of ups and downs - our own private re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus - is an "adaptation" that helps selfish genes to leave more copies of themselves; in Nature, alas, the restless malcontents genetically out-compete happy lotus-eaters. It's an adaptation that won't go away just by messing around with our external environment.

And here is where science needs philosophy and the concept that inspired Einstein's famous quote about science being lame.

A few centuries hence, we may rapidly take [im]material opulence for granted. And this virtual cornucopia won't be the prerogative of a tiny elite. Information isn't like that. Nor will it depend on masses of toiling workers. Information isn't like that either. If we want it, nanotechnology promises old-fashioned abundance all round, both inside and outside synthetic VR.

Yup.

The experience of this-is-real - like all our waking- or dreaming consciousness - comprises a series of neurochemical events in the CNS like any other. It can be amped-up or toned-down. Reality does not admit of degrees; but our sense of it certainly does.

Yup.

Thus Huxley doesn't offer a sympathetic exploration of the possibility that prudery and sexual guilt has soured more lives than sex. In a true utopia, the counterparts of John and Lenina will enjoy fantastic love-making, undying mutual admiration, and live together happily ever after.

Yup.

If suffering has been medically eradicated, does happiness have to be justified any more than the colour green or the taste of peppermint? Is there some deep metaphysical sense in which we ought to be weighed down by the momentous gravity of the human predicament? - Only if it will do anyone any good. The evidence is lacking.

Yup.

Moreover this transformation of the living world, and eventually of the whole cosmos, into a heavenly meaning-steeped nirvana will in no way be "unnatural". It is simply a disguised consequence of the laws of physics playing themselves out.

And the point of the path is revealed.

Until now, selection pressure has ensured we're cursed with a genome that leaves us mostly as callous brutes, albeit brutes with intermittently honourable intentions.

Again, why I'm always on monogamy's ass. It's not just me people.

This isn't to deny that love is real. But its contemporary wellsprings have been poisoned from the outset. Only the sort of love that helps selfish DNA to leave more copies of itself - which enable it to "maximize its inclusive fitness" - can presently flourish. It is fleeting, inconstant, and shaped by cruelly arbitrary criteria of physical appearance which serve as badges of reproductive potential. If we value it, love should be rescued from the genes that have recruited and perverted the states which mediate its expression in blind pursuit of reproductive success.

Love through the lens of the meat.

When sexual guilt and jealousy - a pervasive disorder of serotonin function - are cured, then bed-hopping will no longer be as morally reckless as it is today.

Again with the term slut, and the profit the big three get from us fighting each other for sex.

And just as during much of the Twentieth Century, any plea for greater social justice could be successfully damned as Communist, likewise today, any strategy to eradicate suffering is likely to be condemned in similar reactionary terms: either wirehead hedonism or revamped Brave New World. This response is not just facile and simplistic. If it gains currency, the result is morally catastrophic.

Again, final solution.

But one does one's best. The ideological obstacles to genetically pre-programmed mental super-health are actually more daunting than the technical challenges.

Hence my life's work.

Hence my approach, which may be self defeating as I'm about to explain it, but honor demands that i do so. I've always aid that if you can't trick a child into doing what you want you shouldn't bred, this is an indictment of brutality and dominance through fear. The relevant point here is that humanity must be tricked into this, it must be delivered in candy as surly as one must had medicine int he dogs food. We will never eat this as it is, as we are. The hedonic engineered populace may be swayed by logic and clarity but normal humans simply are not. they are too thoroughly owned by their dopamine addiction, and social masters.

It has been suggested quite astonishingly well that the solution is to edit the species in such a manner as to preserve our humanity and eliminate suffering as an option.

Some may see my solution and dismiss it out of hand as a result seeing the direct edit preferable. I am aware of this argument.

Which is more likely to be accepted by a given individual. A syringe of retrovirus which will forever make them happy and different? Or a delicious little slave thing that adores the very idea of their pleasure and makes its life goal the enhancement of it's host's enjoyment and general well being?

The end goals of genetic hedonism and my slave species solution are one in the same. I'm simply suggesting a different more palatable way of getting there. Creation of this servant race of neo humans who actually enjoy helping will lead to interbreeding, and eventually the traits of suffering et all, will be quietly annihilated. Our species as it is will NEVER accept the hedonic genetic option no matter how technically feasible or desirable logically it my be.

One fact is always overlooked by the writers of these essays, a fact I've personally discovered again and again, and hopefully learned from. Logic does not dictate emotion. In order to affect change, one must use emotion creatively and responsibly.

So my final solution stands.

Suffering and the Defacto Matriarchy in America.

At a commenters request I have decided to first expand and defined the following point of this post. (http://innomen.blogspot.com/2008/02/masculism-now.html)

7.Men must suffer in order to acquire any sex.

By suffering I mean the dictionary definition... “feelings of mental or physical pain “

Men as a rule must suffer to acquire a mate as a result of competition or the demands of their mate, which must be satisfied . This is so basic I am having trouble finding a way to explain it more simply. But I will try.

First you must grant that in the majority of cultures acquiring a mate is a rite of passage for men. In fact in recent years being a man has literally become synonymous with suffering to archive a goal.

(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=man+up)

Second, you must grant that the exact revere is true for women. Though it is somewhat derogatory, the term “being a pussy” means being like a woman, or doing what feels best, or what is safest and most rational. I have particular loathing for this phrase because it illustrates the enslavement of men and the objectification of women simultaneously.

Look at the mating process. It can be summed up as men competing for the approval of women. Men must get a job, fight for power and money, condition themselves physically, and defeat other men in various ways. and before you even say that women compete too, understand that they choose to compete because they are trained to want President Brad Pitt with super powers and an Aston Martin collection. Men are forced to if they want a mate of any kind, the only difference is the degree of suffering. There is no such thing as a zero maintenance mate. Even superman must suffer to please Louis Lane.

In fact suffering is the entire point, because even if a man had super human powers, a normal woman has the option of raising the bar at will. In short Louis recognized that superman could out compete any normal man without suffering and so she raised the bar until she found a way for him to suffer, she made the plight of the world his responsibility, or made him feel guilty about being super powerful in the first place, depending on media, comic, show, or movie. This is best illustrated in the series, Smallville, where we have a extremely sensual girl (not Louis) judging superman in subjective ways on matters of morality and social correctness, ares where he had no super powers, and always her judgment was final. His competition was Lex, a super rich, handsome, super genius. Now, for her, this is a win/win situation. This is an extreme, but the concept fits almost everywhere, the only thing that changes is the matter of degree.

They as a group suffer to please her, individually they try to shift suffering to the other, and please her more than the other so they may have access to her. This is the case in at least 80% of movies shows and songs. Just look for it. Its right there. From Disney to Romero, from The Beatles to Slipknot, men are told over and over that they must suffer to obtain a female, or they will suffer infinitely more from loneliness.

Obviously those that compete must suffer and those that judge do not, or, being ultra conservative here, must suffer less. As with any competition, it is always harder on the competitors than the judges. Take a foot race for example. Who has it harder, the runners or the guy with the stopwatch?

I hope I've made my point, It really is difficult to explain something this fundamental.

Edit: Found this image.

Seemed to illustrate a point made above nicely.

Death and Miracles

To whom it may concern:

Written in response to this video and the general social reaction to Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley who is a young lady with Primordial dwarfism and related social concepts. If you would like to help her, a PayPal donation link can be found from her official site, located here.


(My favorite picture of her, lifted from here)

For one, these parents are set for life if they play it right, as they should given what she's undoubtedly going to need. I'd say the instant Oprah hears of this young lady and her sickeningly clean cut family, its gold plated stroller / book deal time.

But seriously, with thousands of children living in poverty in our own country and countless millions more abroad, I don't think this particular child is any more deserving of help than any other, no matter how adorable she is. Perhaps even less so, if you want to look at the matter clinically.

I think all children deserve a shot at life, even the ones that don't get PayPal donate links.

I have to ask, why is it when something bad happens they always call it a miracle? Is it really a miracle that this poor person is effectively going to spend her whole short life in a hospital?

I love how 3/4ths of the video are about the painfully banal couple that produced her. I don't care about her parents, and neither does anyone else. All they care about is what they see as the cool freaky small kid.

Why is it when a bus full of school kids explodes and one survives with half her face burnt off its a miracle? If this is the best your god can do, you can keep him. I don't see this as a miracle I see this as a tragedy.

Gotta love the Internet, the modern freak show. Is everyone proud of their gawking? Would you care so much about this child if she were normal? Obviously not.

If she grows up normally in terms of intellect you think she'll appreciate being so objectified and showcased?

And yes mom, she would have been put down if she were a dog, whats so wrong with saying that? Its true. Pointing that out does not mean you agree with it or endorse it. Self righteous narrow minded twit. It's called freedom of speech. Google it. How quickly we turn into Stalin when someone flames us on the intarweb.

Besides, judging from the pastor or whatever you rushed to her side, you presumably think she has heaven waiting for her anyway, so whence comes the anger even if the poster did suggest euthanasia? By your logic would it not be in her best interest?

You Christians don't even act like you really believe in heaven. I mean if I truly believed in heaven and hell, and I truly believed that asking forgiveness saved my soul, and I truly believed, that after a certain age, hell, that is, being tortured brutally for ALL TIME, was a real possibility.

I'd quickly and painlessly murder my own children to insure their entry into heaven and to shorten their suffering. After all, this life is worthless compared to the next, right? And hell is a much bigger problem then death, right? As a parent would you not risk hell to ensure your child's entry into heaven? I would, and I don't even have children.

But no, Christians fight death just as hard as atheists, if not harder. So, I smell bullshit.

And where's the outpouring of support for the hundreds of families that actually lost their children this year? Oh right, they didn't make a cool little freak baby for the Internet to ooo and ahh over. They aren't interesting, right? And make no mistake, thats what they all see her as, the only reason they even pretend to care is curiosity and guilt.

You people disgust me.

Some of us know people who didn't get a miracle, and are infuriated at the implication that these people somehow deserved a miracle to keep their child alive while others did not. The ego of this implication is astonishing beyond words, and that comes from a guy who considers himself a latter day Buddha and potential savior of all sentient life. :)

The only real miracle here is that people will believe anything, even if its in complete contradiction.

Every living human is a miracle, or none of them are, not just the cute little white American female ones.

News flash, she's not an angel, or a doll, or a toy, or an object of wonder. She's a human being, which is more than I can say for most of you. I deeply pity what its going to be like for her to grow up surrounded by you people.

Fortunately for her, the media has the attention span of a 5 year old cocaine addict with ADHD, so she may get a bit of dignity in a little while.

I hope she makes it long enough to be repaired by future gene therapy.

I wish her luck, but no more than the rest of us.

We all deserve a good life, so long as we are sentient, regardless of size.

Dreams: Threats or Opportunity?

Its not merely threat rehearsal in my opinion, its, benefit maximization rehearsal.

I have a very quiet life, and I'm also a lucid dreamer when frightened, so my number of nightmares has dropped sharply in the past 5-10 years, on the order of one every 6 months about or less.

But, instead I seem to have dreams of opportunity with choices. Difficult ones. many times theft and profit are themes which develop, like I'll have a choice between turning in the envelope full of cash so to speak. Sometimes turning it in becomes wildly inappropriate, like its a blank envelope in the middle of the desert, other times its blatantly obvious like you just saw the old homeless mother, drop it.

Sometimes its sexual situations, and before you think fantasy allow me to explain a bit. It will be someone's girlfriend, or someone drunk. Some times they are seducing me, and sometimes i just 'know' in the way one only can in dreams, that they would be responsive if I merely asked. Sometimes the situation is normal, but there is an interruption, and its always important so that I'll have to pick between personal immediate physical pleasure or the more lasting and less tempting egotistical pleasure I get from helping.

Sometimes it's food, I'll be presented with what amounts to a buffet and a time limit.

Only twice have I dreamt of sexual fantasy. And one of the times was on the night of valentines day, a day charged with sexual imagery especially if you have television as I did at the time. Perhaps that was an opportunity test in and of itself. As if my brain was testing, “Well how would we handle it if you got exactly what you claim and think you want sexually?” I did learn about myself via that dream. And I never had one like it since.

I have a point I'm getting to thats relevant to you, just give it a second heheh.

Effectively I have great dreams but there is ALWAYS a catch. In a nightmare the catch is gigantic and the choice is between evils, but, I'm going to guess that there is ALWAYS a choice, and that choice is the whole point of dreams. To train us to make it or choices like it quickly when the time comes, either to avoid threat, or to maximize benefit. In short dreams force us to consider so we can say with honesty “All things considered, I made the right choice.”

Previously, I thought that catch said something about my general insecurity, as you all know I have my hangups, but seen in the context of behavior rehearsal I feel a lot better. My dreams may actually be reflective of the future of dreaming assuming our future is a good one.

My dreams are not characterized by fear or negative emotions of any kind really. Perhaps because my psychology is a bit more evolved (before you go all frothy at my impudence, this does not necessarily mean better) to fit a threat-less situation emotionally. Example, I don't get jealous, I don't lose control with rage, my only fears are social and are about making people happy and loss of happiness, as opposed to fear of pain or harm or loss, I'm extremely tolerant (irl), but not so much so that I become a drone.

Knowing the nature of dreams is a test, then perhaps the way to improve them is to out wit your wit, and focus on decisions you'd like to make, rather than decisions you have to make. Like assume your problems were solved, what sort of decisions would you be likely to make?

“Do I fly to Paris today or just stay home and ride the dune buggy outback in my private 10 mile square sand box?”

...Or I could just be a nutjob. Your call.

Masculism Now!

This is a position list meant to express why I feel that men are an underclass in contemporary American society. It is under construction, and open to debate. If you disagree with any of these choose one and meet me on debate.com.

Your comments will not be censored.

1. Men die sooner.

2. Men suffer a great statistical disadvantage when it comes to fighting for their children in court.

3. Men are ridiculed for social expressions of emotion.

4. Men are forced to compete with each other, or capitulate to a woman if they want a mate at all.

5. Men must live up to their mates idea of what it is to be a man and a father.

6. Men must work or risk destitution, homelessness, and social ostracism.

7. Men must suffer in order to acquire any sex.

8. Men are expected to maintain the home with no say in its appearance.

9. Men are constantly required to tolerate inconsistency and irrationality, especially from a mate.

10. Men who use their body to manipulate women are considered abusive and monstrous.

11. Men have an extremely narrow range of options for potential dress and hair style.

12. Men are constantly told by society that they are ugly and not successful enough.

13. Men are constantly told by society that without a woman they are utterly worthless and pathetic.

14. Men are constantly told that a father is replaceable.

15. Men as a gender are given no assistance what so ever in job placement.

16. Traditional man's work is dangerous and difficult.

17. Men lose jobs to women because of their gender alone.

18. Men who express their genetic desire for sexual exploration and polygamy are perverts.

19. Men have almost no organized assistance as a gender.

While simultaneously...

1. Women live longer.

2. Women get a disproportional advantage in court when fighting for parental rights.

3. Women are encouraged to express themselves emotionally both publicly and privately.

4. Women compete for better mates, but even when they settle they have the power.

5. Women get to define what it is to be a man and a father.

6. Women have the socially acceptable choice of not working.

7. Women typically profit from the acquisition of at least moderately enjoyable sex.

8. Women are typically allowed total control of the home's decor.

9. Women are socially allowed to issue conflicting and irrational edicts.

10. Women who use their body to manipulate men are considered strong and clever.

11. Women are allowed a much greater degree of freedom with regard to dress and hairstyle.

12. Women are constantly told by society how beautiful they are.

13. Women are constantly told that they are the sum total purpose of men's existence.

14. Women are constantly told that the most important thing a human can be is a mother.

15. Women are given preferential selection in almost every job market.

16. Traditional woman's work is simple and safe by comparison.

17. Women who work profit socially because of the women who choose not to work.

18. Women who express their genetic desire for sexual exploration and polygamy are sexy.

19. Women have hundreds of social groups to protect their rights and interests.

Masculism: a social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on males must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

Masculism, Cynicism, and Woman Hating.

This essay is out of date:: See the updated version here.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1345

Many times when people read some of my work they come to the conclusion that I am cynical and that I hate women or view them in a bad light.

The purpose of this post is to answer that claim, so that I can have a full bodied response at my fingertips.

I consider myself a masculist, and here' I'll include the definition.

Well, in looking for a suitable definition, I found a lovely double standard.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminism ...

Noun feminism A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masculism ... (until I edited it, I'm sure someone will put it back)

Noun masculism (plural masculisms) A belief in the superiority of men or the masculine. 1983, Sheila Ruth, quoted in Judith Evans (1986), Feminism and Political Theory [1], ISBN 0803997051, page 70: Fascism, fully revealed, is the extreme, exquisite expression of masculism, of patriarchy, and thus the natural enemy of feminism, its quintessential opposite. 1997, Nalini Persram, "In my father's house are many mansions", in Black British Feminism: A Reader [2], ISBN 0415152887, page 213: It often takes a crisis of some sort to initiate the difficult but empowering feminist process of renegotiating the masculisms that dominate the discourses of origin, authenticity and belonging in a way that transforms margins into frontiers, lack into (ad)vantage. 2004, Thomas Schatz, Hollywood [3], ISBN 0415281350, page 73: The Rocky-Rambo syndrome puts on display the raw masculism which is at the bottom of conservative socialization and ideology.

So, when one argues for equal rights from the man's perspective, they are a bigot, but when one argues for equal rights from a woman's perspective they are a civil rights figure.

Anyway, I'll define masculism correctly, and continue to answer the charge that I am a woman hater or am cynical etc.

Noun

masculism

1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on males must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

For example, the social restriction on arguing that men are the oppressed gender in America. As if honor killings over the proper use of a burqa are common in the states.

No, I do not hate women, I just feel that they are in an undeserved socially superior position. Like the blue eye brown eye school experiment demonstrated, whenever an oppressed group is given power over their oppressors on equally flimsy grounds they will act as badly as those who oppressed them. This is a sad human fact.

Feminists in the modern American context simply want revenge. They want a period of social superiority to make up for the long period of inferiority.

Granted, the global picture of women's rights is a grim one, and feminists are indeed needed all over the world, and in those contexts I consider myself a feminist as well. But here in America, any disadvantages females encounter are consequences of their own choices.

For example, if a woman wants to complain about being a victim of violent crime then they should not subsidize violent men with mates. Time and again the smaller gentler man is disregarded in favor of the larger aggressive one. This means that what it is to be a successful man is inherently linked with violence because of the choices women make.

Rape is not a significant source of children anymore in the west on an evolutionary level, men desire sex more than women for hormonal and biological reasons, therefor women have more sexual power because more often than the man, the women becomes the gate keeper of sex, or as I like to put it, The Chooser Sex.

Women as a result generally get to choose when a family is formed. No glove no love, they can say. Thanks to legal favoritism they also choose who gets to be a father and thus THEY control what it is to be a man and father, because if a man or father does not measure up she can divorce him and take his child in the majority of cases.

Therefor it is not fair to blame men for how they are since how they are is largely under female control.

Pointing this out does not mean I hate or blame women. I consider this a social inequity perpetrated on both sexes by The Company (Corp/Gov/Church), using monogamy as its chief tool, for purposes of profit, as I have explained before.

I don't hate women, I love women. I personally consider them my superior by default, as they are physically built better, and they are calmer and more compassionate by and large, which may be a reason they tolerate violence too much, their forgiving nature, but in any case this situation is the result of sexual selection practices they have instituted, and perpetuate.

This may seem conflicted, one might ask :”but if you consider them your superior why do you complain about their supposed superior standing in society?”

Quite simply because why they are superior in this society has nothing to do with why I consider them superior as a gender. Women in this society are superior because they posses a vagina, not because they have a gift for compromise, compassion, diplomacy, and personal strength.

Women are on top socially because they are desired sexually. This has nothing to do with their general advantage in the traits I mentioned above, which means that women who possess none of those traits are still placed on top, like Paris Hilton for example.

I think most everyone can agree that she's a vapid monster. But she does not need to be hated because she enjoys sex or money, most of us do, and that's nothing to be shamed of. She needs to be hated because she sells sex covertly and is part of a culture that encourages others to do the same, with disastrous results. She demands pampering because she fits The Company's social definition of beauty.

I wish the playing field to be equalized so that the traits I mentioned above can be accorded their due respect. And I personally believe that in an equal society primarily women would be in charge until such time as sexual selection or transhumanist pressures begin to more evenly divide those traits up among the genders.

No, I do not hate women. No, my view is not cynical, it is in fact hopeful. Sex is something sacred and it is a human right. To trade it like so much beef is a grand sacrilege. It should be shared freely circumstances permitting. Sex is the perfect drug and we are all born with it, we should not have to pay third parties for it. And we should revere those who are kind enough to give it away or sell it at fair market value, not call them sluts and whores and attack them as if they were inhuman. Nor should we attack and humiliate those who wish to buy sex, or who want sex, for being perverts or pathetic, anymore than we should attack a starving person looking for a meal.

Some will blame men for their hunger, claiming sex obsession, but this is radically unfair. Sex is a basic animal need. And testosterone is what makes men different from women, and it is also the sex drive hormone in both sexes. Again pointing this out does not make me a woman hater.

No, the fact is, its everyone else that has the dark and cynical view of love and sex. I see it as a crystal pure flowing stream. Not a dirty six pack of Dasani.

Editorial addition:

I have a problem with cultural aspects of general female behaviors and choices. But to have a problem with women simply because they are women would be equivalent to racism. I have a problem with choices, not people.

I love people.

However, yes, I have a dim view of some people as they are defined by their actions because of the choices they consistently make. No cynic thinks of himself as a cynic, they all think of themselves as realists. I personally think of myself as an optimist.

After all, look at the hope I show is speaking at all, if I was a cynic would I not take the attitude "why bother"?

Cloak and Hooker

Undercover hookers everywhere.

People get mad at those who say all women are whores but really when you look at just how much of typical American romance is about power and money its easy to see where the misconception (if it is one) comes from.

Any woman who gets vitriolic about hookers or sluts has about a 90% chance of being an undercover hooker who hates sluts because they give away what they are trying to sell or hates hookers for selling what they are trying to sell at a fraction of the cost.

This is why both women and men blame women when cheating in a relationship occurs. Because deep down women know they have all the real power, and you don't blame the powerless because they have no responsibility.

Running with scissors.

This is a conversation I had in response to a review I placed on stumble upon. I find that quite often if I buck the trend as far as what I thumb up or down people feel the need to message me personally. I used to post them separately on my webpage but that got time consuming, this place is as good as any.

The review in question can be found here.

The author of the statements quoted can be found here.

And I want to thank him for the effort and conversation, even if he is a little misguided.

He begins...

“what in the world does wishing to be young and not fat have anything to do with the military?”

Nothing. What I said was that making it seem like potential injury is somehow cool on the assumption that it’s merely a risk is the same logic used to make uniformed idiots feel safe, as I explained in the article. The fact is someone usually will be shot in war, and someone will eventually break their neck on the playground. Safety innovations are not something to be made fun of, especially if it is your child that has to live out his life in a chair as a result of some guys rosy nostalgia, and cavalier attitude towards life.

The difference between you and me is I don’t need to actually have experienced that horror to have compassion for my fellow man.

“Today we live in a world were kids are becoming more and more obese, why?”

Probably the presence of HFCS and other industrial toxins in the diet, and the general social apathy of the populace, which I might add is contributed to by the cavalier attitude with regard to health issues this very article is based on. Look at diabetes rates, it’s not merely lack of exercise. Your world view is simplistic and incorrect.

“they're eating mcdonalds all the time and sitting around playing videogames. Playgrounds are built to encourage physical activity which is healthy.”

They eat McDonalds because it's cheap and parents don’t have time to fix real meals because the economy is so bad that both parents have to work full time on top of the fact that we demand so much of our children via school that they have almost no down time. And when they do we don’t let them go anywhere unless it’s to wear a short skirt and wave pom poms for the pleasure of balding middle age coaches, or beat each other up at some mindless ball tossing ritual based on sexual tension.

You know nothing of our society. You’re as blind and indoctrinated as the rest of them. But your children won't be. They'll get one too many passes with the metal wand on the way to history class and start asking the dangerous questions. Like, what does football have to do with math, what does patriotism have to do with chemistry, and what happens if we all say no more all at once?

“its not some sort of indirect way of recruiting kids into the military or something crazy like that”

You misunderstand the purpose of education in industrialized societies. What part of pledging allegiance to a flag and mandatory attendance being superfluous to knowledge acquisition is hard for you to grasp?

“limiting the ways kids CAN excerisize during recess or whatever (some schools actually tried eliminating recess) will only increase the amount of fat, lazy, obese people who do nothing but sit in front of the TV all day being indoctrinated by TV programming.”

Like putting children on human hamster wheels is any less mentally demeaning than plopping them in front of the propaganda box. For one, laziness is not a bad thing, and two fat is largely a dietary and genetic issue which stems directly from public tolerance of social abuses such as toxins in the food supply and the ultra high cost of non-toxic foods. We’re sheep because school trains us to be that way, and when we grow up we line up for our feed no matter what’s in it.

“and i see you like BDSM and yet you're complaining about abuse?”

Uhh, what part of “consenting adult” is unclear?

50$ says you don't even consider my position thanks to social inertia, and a million says I don't care one way or the other what you think since I got this grand opportunity to tear down the ideas you defend.

Thank you for the material, feel free to comment below :)

The Three Laws of Sentience

The Three Laws of Robotics (adapted to include the Zeroth law by Brandon Sergent)

0. A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm except where such prevention would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I’ve always found these laws (and not my adaptation, feel free to offer correction or suggestions) to be beautiful. I wonder what would happen if you applied a modified set to all sentient beings.

The Three Laws of Sentience (I need a word for all sentience, because this title sounds like a checklist for what constitutes sentience, which is obviously not my intention.)

0. A sentient may not injure sentience as a whole, or, through inaction, allow sentience as a whole to come to harm.

1. A sentient may not injure another sentient or, through inaction, allow a sentient being to come to harm, except where such prevention would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2. A sentient must obey orders given to it by sentient beings, except where such orders would conflict with the Zeroth or First Law.

3. A sentient must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth, First, or Second Law.

Do you think this would work? I foresee problems with the second and third laws, and the definition of harm. The following ‘orders’ bit is an attempt to codify compassion and aid. An order could be a request for help. I feel like I’m missing something. Hence the public post.

Two Days Cleaning House At Woodland Oaks

First of all let me say that this letter indicts a system, not people. While I had almost no exposure to the medical side of things, I heard few if any complaints about their work from residents or family, and have every reason to believe that they are competent if not exemplary in this regard. The nurse aids and nurses with very limited exceptions were kind, personable, and professional. The dietary and housekeeping people were equally thoughtful and generous. In fact the only tolerable part of this job was the people. And I feel personally guilty for the extra work I’m sure someone has to endure because of my departure.

A little bit about me. I've been repairing computers since I was 17, I’m 28 now, I was president of my college, and I have a 3.0 GPA with 56 credit hours. I worked in a computer lab for three years which was a very rewarding job consisting of answering phones, helping with homework, trouble shooting machines, resetting passwords, maintaining the printers, managing an inventory, proctoring tests, and various other computer lab type things. I have written a book on philosophy called simply “the book”, I am a certified locksmith, and a patented inventor. I have mild cerebral palsy on the right side of my body which resulted in a mild deformity of the right foot and hand.

Having worked at the oaks during a summer as a lawn care helper, I had gotten to know many of the employees, and one of the residents very well. So much so that I went back to visit every week, including Christmas day when the place was a virtual ghost town. Ms Gay was who I went to go see, she’s a super sweet and tough old lady that got onto my bosses for working me too hard. This turned out to be the only serious notice of appreciation I got over there, and let me be quick in pointing out that I was not alone. Praise is not a common thing at the oaks. In fact in between my time there as a lawn guy and my two days of housekeeping, all three of my bosses had been fired or quit (I can’t get a straight answer, but knowing two of them at least one quit) But what administration lacks in concern for its employees it makes up for in greed and shortsightedness.

Anyway, I need money like everyone else right and I live across the street from the place. So I ask for a job during one of my visits. I’m kind of hoping that my three years of office experience and computer/printer skills could get me a job up front manning the phone signing people in, doing inventory, or what ever. But apparently I’m too tall for the job. (Or too male maybe, I’m not sure.) Incidentally they hired at least two attractive young ladies for the job I’d like.

They do however offer me a job in activities, which I turn down because I’m not as strong as the activities people. While I’m sure its extremely rewarding work for those tough enough, I simply cannot handle the idea of getting to know all these wonderful and sweet old men and women only to watch them die in the coming years. Being an atheist I cannot feel anything but loss when a person dies. So, knowing my own limitations, I turn it down. At this point a friend steps in, whom I won’t name because she might not want me to. She was a co-worker when I was still the lawn guy. But since then she had been promoted (replacing one of my three bosses) and offered me a job in her department, which was house keeping. I foolishly accepted. Even now I truly appreciate her offer and her efforts to accommodate my frailties. I was only there in this capacity for two days and 20 minutes. My trainer had been there 14 years.

The first order of business as far as administration goes at the oaks is divide and conquer. Talk of a union is strictly but informally prohibited. In addition to this somewhat passive measure a more active process of classist separation is initiated involving color coding the humans running the place as if they were equipment. Scrubs for everyone, white for cooks, brown for cleaners, blue for nurse aids, multicolor for nurses, and semi casual for administration. The only non dress coded personnel are the maintenance people because they are worked so hard that anything other than the most practical of wear would simply self destruct. The excuse given for this behavior is it confuses the residents. But I don’t buy it. We’re there for them, why do they need to know for what department we work? If a resident asks me about sheets I’ll just go find a sheet person. If they ask me for a cup of water I’ll find an aid. I feel it’s there to remind everyone that we’re different and that the people up front are better than all us lowly hive workers.

The economy is so bad in our area that they know they can get away with murder. At any moment for any reason you can be fired. This leads to total employee apathy with regard to standing up for them selves. Everyone is on a first name basis except the exalted Ms. Tice, whom I have yet to lay eyes on; such is the rarity of her attendance and distance from the residents, except in the photos of her placed around the entrance like Chairman Mao.

My first day begins simply enough, at 9am I have an orientation, I attend it and I watch a bunch of CYA videos about how not to get Tice and the oaks sued or closed. My first round of these videos when I was a lawn guy included a video about resident rights, curiously now that the videos were moved from vhs to dvds, this portion of the program was absent. After these I leave to go home, but I’m told by my boss at the door that my 8 hour shift begins at 2 pm.

During this shift I sit down like twice. My job consists of trashing, restocking things, mopping, and buffer piloting. The buffer is the first real snag. I’m 6’5” the buffer is made in like 1950 and has no adjustability to the handle, so my back begins to fail almost immediately. On top of that I’m expected to run it during the day, backwards, with one hand. Backwards because each area needs multiple passes, one hand because I have to guide the cable, because one from the 21st century is too expensive despite the fact that they make like 3K$ per month per room or more, and during the day because a night shift cleaning crew is an unjustifiable expense when you can just over work your day crew.

Same with mopping, I’m expected to wait until after dinner to begin mopping which gives me just under 4 hours to mop the entire facility. My trainer who as I said had been there for 14 years does it during dinner, because he has no real choice. If he doesn't get done, he gets fired, if he does it right and safely he doesn't get done. So long as no one falls or sues, administration doesn't care. Residents won’t fall because they are mostly in wheel chairs anyway, guests aren’t around during dinner so the only people in real danger are employees, and they won’t sue because they want their job. Many of them are parents. Exploiting single mothers is just about the most loathsome thing I can think of, I might add. My foot is really starting to hurt by the end of this run because as I said I’m slightly deformed in the right foot. But I make it through because I don’t leave people hanging.

The next day at 11:30 am there is a staff meeting that we all must attend. Ms Tice is supposed to be there so of course we all attend; she decides to just not show up. Of course we’d get written up if we just decided not to show with no warning, but the rules are different for the aristocracy. The meeting concerns a decree from our lords, that apparently we’re no longer allowed to gossip. I’m not kidding, they even make us sign a paper to this effect.

I’m wondering how you would even define gossip, and about the legality of controlling private conversations. And I say something to this effect, like can they even restrict our private speech? And I’m totally laughed off. I let it slide. I talk to my boss after the meeting and explain the buffer situation, and I explain my foot thing and how I need at least a day between shifts. She says she’ll get a day person so I don't have to work like full time, she asks is it cool if I have just like two days a week and I says yes please, I only want part time. I’m very optimistic at this point.

Anyway my next day is pretty much the same, I mop I buff I empty trash but I’m thinking, with me and my trainer doing this and we just barely get done, how does he manage it when he doesn't have help, since he’s just training me and this is supposed to be a one person job? I tell him and others that they are radically over worked. No one wants to hear about their rights, no one wants to even contemplate organized complaint, I’m looked at like a total alien for suggesting that maybe we’re being mistreated. As if I’m somehow unable to detect mistreatment unless I’d been there years, but in my mind the exact opposite is true. I can detect it precisely because I haven’t been slowly indoctrinated to accept abuse.

My boss is roaming around for half the day and I see her and ask when my next shift is. Despite what we talked about she tells me my next shift is tomorrow, and it’ll be all day, by myself. This makes it the third day in a row. My foot is already beginning to fold on this the second day and eventually I can’t take it and leave 4 hours early.

Also the whole time I've been feeling really out of place no matter everyone being nice to me. I’m thinking maybe it’s because I’m dressed wrong, I should be in scrubs. So before the shift on the final day, I get a ride and get some scrubs, instead of using the company voucher (which will only cover the cheapest scrubs in the building), I buy a set with my own money because I’m thinking I may quit today. So I go home change eat shower and wait for my shift to start.

I get there 10 minutes early, an easy feat, thanks to being across the street, and I go to see the boss for my day’s assignment. I know from the two days of training generally what I’m supposed to do, I thought on the second list to bring a pad and paper to take notes and I have them with me, but if I’m going to be a robot I’d like a little programming. I find out that my boss isn’t going to be there today. Which worries me because I don't even have a punch card, who’s going to sign my blue sheet saying I was here today? Anyway I ask some co workers what they think I should do and they nicely explain stuff, and I start my first task, which is dust mopping. The office where they keep the trash bags was locked and the keys they gave me didn’t open the door I had no supervisor to address questions to, none of that was the straw though. Here's what did it, the Coup de grace, to my career as a housekeeper at Woodland Oaks.

As I begin dust mopping, a singularly useless activity on par with writing "I am futile" 100 times, I walk past Nora, a sweet old lady that they park in the hall all day and won’t let her sleep. In an effort, (I presume, I may be wrong) to try and make it so she doesn’t ask to sleep and since they know she won’t be in bed they take their time redoing her bed the only bed I ever see undone is hers. Anyway, she stops me, apparently I’m expected to rove around the hall like a robot ignoring the elderly humans or giving them platitudes instead of real attention. I can’t do that, so I stop, she might be pulling my chain but I don’t know that yet it’s like my first day. She very lucidly explains by way of a question, that they haven’t fixed her bed and asks me what I would suggest that she do I say I'll look into it I go to the nurses station and ask about her bed, they say they'll get to it, dust mopping takes me in a full circuit of the facility so I tell Nora I'll be back and if its not done by the time I get back I'll pester them I come back around and sure enough its not done so I head to the nurses station but there's an aid on her way into Nora’s room, so I talk to the aid and she asks me why I'm wearing blue, in kind of a harsh tone. I’m like because they told me to. The reason I think she asked is because she's a SRNA and I'm housekeeping and SRNA's wear dark blue, house keeping wears brown, male house keeping wears dark blue as well. Sexist I know but hey whatever, I'm reminded of the star belly Sneetches. Though the day I walk past a good 15 people. People I'd walked past before and nodded at and said hi too... in button up and slacks, and I got nods and smiles. This time around I'm the invisible man because I'm in scrubs and I fold. I can’t take the classism, I can’t take the apathy, I can’t take the pain and the greed.

So that's it. I’m jobless again.

A brief history of monogamy.

A brief history of monogamy. lifted from the comment on this google answer.

I reposted it here because of its pertinence.
----
Subject: Re: Life-long Monogamy
From: tehuti-ga on 26 Nov 2003 04:32 PST

Hello curioussam,

At the risk of inciting a flood of "hatemail" comments :) I am daring
to say that the answer to your question is "none".

If we look at the matter from a "selfish gene" viewpoint, which is
about as unemotional as you can get, it is, from one point of view, in
a male's interest to have as many sexual encounters as possible to
reproduce his genes to the maximum. However, it is in a female's
interest to have a stable partnership, or other stable arrangement, so
that she is provided for while unable to do so for herself due to
pregnancy and the need to look after the children until they become
self-sufficient. However, in order to ensure the survival of his
genes, it is also in a male's interest to provide for at least some of
his offspring and ensure they receive the care they need. On the other
hand, it is not in the male's interest to expend time and energy to
ensure the survival of someone else's genes, and the only way he can
be (reasonably) sure of that is within an institution that does not
permit his sexual partner to have other liaisons.

This gives us a typical picture of Western society in earlier times: a
"sort-of" monogamous arrangement where blind eyes were turned to
sexual adventuring by married men, but heaven forbid a married woman
to be caught in adultery! Women, having little or no control over
their reproduction, were involved in childbearing and rearing for a
much longer period than now, and more likely to die in childbirth.
Also, the average human lifespan was generally shorter than today due
to disease. The typical monogamous relationship would therefore have
lasted a comparatively short time and not gone on very long, if at
all, past the duration of the reproductive abilities of the woman.

Moving nearer to today, the lifespan started to increase, due to
improvements in hygiene and medicine. Once a woman has brought her
children up to self-sufficiency and is no longer capable of
reproduction, she no longer has a genetic interest in staying with her
partner. However, the social structure enforced a division of labour,
so that women performed unpaid work in the home while men did paid
work outside the home. Thus, even when no longer genetically dependent
on their partners, women continued to be economically dependent, and
this was recognised and affirmed by the society, so that divorce,
where permitted was tied to heavy financial penalties on the male in
order to ensure a continued financing of the woman he left, since she
was deemed incapable of fending for herself.

Today, the remanants of this social structure still remain. On the
other hand, women in Western societies have a free choice on how much
to reproduce, if at all. Also, they have a free choice to develop
their own paid careers and thus become and remain economically
independent of males, except perhaps in a very short period just after
childbirth, although even then arrangements such as maternity benefits
and social security measures mean they do not have to be in a
partnership to survive (which also removes the genetic pressure on the
male to provide for his offspring). Add to this the fact of the
increased lifespan, which means that a typical couple entering into
marriage could expect to live for another 60+ years afterwards. Most
of this would be after childrearing has finished, although for much of
that excess time the male would still be able to reproduce his genes
by mating with other woman.

To all this, add also the non-emotional fact that people in today's
Western societies are more individualistic than ever before, and more
desirous of personal, including emotional, satisfaction and therefore
less willing to remain in a situation which has ceased to provide it
simply because this is what is demanded by tradition mores. Even if
they do stay in a partnership because of convenience, women are
increasingly catching up with men in looking for other avenues of
satisfaction. The concept of monogamy is daily being demolished in
practice, even while still being held up as an ideal by some sectors
of society.

Here are some estimates made by authors of books first published in the late 1980s:

"The various researchers arrive at a general consensus…suggesting that
above one-quarter to about one-half of married women have at least one
lover after they are married in any given marriage. Married men
probably still stray more often than married women—perhaps from 50
percent to 65 percent by the age of forty."
Annette Lawson, author of "Adultery," first published in 1989 by Basic Books.

"Most experts do consider the 'educated guess' that at the present
time some 50 to 65 percent of husbands and 45 to 55 percent of wives
become extramaritally involved by the age of 40 to be a relatively
sound and reasonable one."
Maggie Scarf, author of "Intimate Partners," first published in 1987
by Random House

"Conservative estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of
women will have an extramarital affair... If even half of the women
having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the
60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an
affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages."
Peggy Vaughan, author of "The Monogamy Myth," first published in 1989
by Newmarket Press

All these quoted by Peggy Vaugan in "Statistics about Affairs"
http://www.dearpeggy.com/statistics.html

Masculism

I'm sick and tired of neo-feminists ranting about pay inequality and sex crime. I'm tired of being blamed for problems they cause! Women stopped being oppressed when it became illegal to discriminate based on gender. Period. The rest is a function of supply and demand. The treatment of women in this country is a direct result of the demand impact on sex monogamy has had, and the exploitation of the sexual and economic advantages that result from it.

Since women control breeding by definition, those problems can be laid squarely at their feet. Men are so oppressed that the term masculism is virtually unknown compared to feminism. And the one men's rights group that I know of gets near constant derision and flak when they aren't being ignore completely. And even this group is an adjunct of women, as it focuses on men who have been selected by women as good enough to breed. Those of us that refuse to play this slanted and humiliating game are totally ignored.

I have no doubt whatsoever that I'll be hassled and made fun of just for suggesting that men have it worse than those dear sweet innocent little victim princesses. Awww look at her pout, how can I be so mean to those poor sweet little girls.

Where do I even begin? Lets start off with a list of important facts.

1. Men die sooner than women. This is not genetic.
2. Men are the more common rape victim.
3. Men have to compete to breed.
4. Women choose who breeds and who doesn't.
5. Women choose if they want to work.
6. Women have the option of trading something fun for something useful.
7. Women have the power to destroy lives with accusations alone.
8. Women receive disproportionate protection.
9. Women have an overwhelming advantage in custody cases.
10. Women are socially allowed a greater degree of freedom with regard to emotional expression and fashion.
11. Women encourage maddeningly unrealistic expectations.
12. A single woman is called independent and powerful, a single man is called a loser.

I'll stop there for now.

Women complain about being objectified but they subsidize the behavior. Women make fun of male virgins as losers, but then attack men for being sex obsessed pigs. Women complain about equality and then call men cheap for wanting to split dinner. Women complain about men not helping to clean up, but would not tar a roof for anything.

On a more subtle note, why do we have to put down the toilet seat, why don't women put it up? Why do women get a row of stalls but men get urinals? I personally prefer to pee in a toilet without a guy standing next to me. But what I want doesn't matter.

I'm constantly called a loser because I don't have that ubiquitous modern parasite, a girlfriend. I'm sorry but I literally can't afford a girlfriend. My mind and my compassion and my self reliance are irrelevant unless they add up to me being a good little slave.

Every movie and every song with a relationship in it, has at some point or at all points a declaration of a few basic servility requirements.

1. Men must always put the needs of women ahead of their own.
2. Women must always be saved while men are expendable.
3. A man dieing for a cause is heroic, a woman dieing for a cause is tragic.
4. Men must always be the one to go the extra mile with regard to bridging a relationship gap.
5. If a woman makes an arbitrary demand no explanation is required.
6. A man's sole purpose in life is to please and then bed and breed with a woman.

I am not a sperm and cash donor. I am a thinking feeling human being.

I mean look at all the examples. Take "Meet Joe Black". Here we have a movie about death, the most powerful force in reality, actually having trouble pleasing a typical attractive affluent American woman.

Turn on the TV, Every commercial is about either something a woman can demand or something a man must provide. Everything the media broadcasts is either related to a product designed to make women hotter, give a man an edge in competition with other men, or maintain an existing relationship. It's all veiled prostitution on one end and role enforcement on the other.

"Every kiss begins with Kay." "Choosy moms choose Jiff."

I could go on and on.

I'm indirectly single by choice, because I refuse to buy spend or lie in an effort to form a sexual relationship with a woman. Plus I want one on equal terms, which makes me a sexist pig apparently. Go figure.

P.S. I'm totally willing to debate any of this.

Terroristic Monogamy.

Monogamy in a way represents our capitulation to a terrorist's demands. Allow me to explain.

Monogamy is at its core a submission to feelings of jealousy. A way to structure our lives in such a way that we tolerate and even encourage the indulgence of this rather harmful emotion, in a way we indulge no other negative emotion.

There is an excellent article on DrSpock.com for understanding and dealing with sibling (and general) jealousy. Which I think can be helpful in understanding what i mean. (http://www.drspock.com/article/0,1510,3962,00.html)

As I was reading it I realized that from the first paragraph, everything in it could be seen as a pertinent to polygamy.

From the beginning it treats jealousy as not something which should be placated but something which should be understood, utilized, and overcome. Which is the exact same attitude I suggest we adopt with regard to monogamy and polygamy in the united sates and everywhere else.

Nowhere in this article will you see it suggest that since (sibling) jealousy is natural the only real workable solution is to not have more than one child. Which is precisely the solution one would be forced to arrive at if using the same logic applied to lovers.

To me both are reprehensible. You cannot tell me how many children I can have for the exact same reasons you cannot tell me who to love and when. If I love two women or more, so be it! I will not choose between them if they love me in return any more than I would choose a favorite child. Further, I would not ask a person who loved me to choose between me or another if I loved them.

It is quite ironic that very early on the article uses a polygamous situation as a metaphor for how a child feels when a new baby arrives because the article itself presents many valid points which could easily carry over into both a critique of, and solution set for, problems stemming from polygamy.

Some examples…

“There really is no reason for an older child to love the new baby at first. In time, the relationship may grow very close and loving, but at the start the new baby is at best a novelty, at worst, an interloper and enemy.”

This is exactly the type of emotions one can expect as a couple makes the jump from monogamous (in practice) to polygamous.

“Rivalrous feelings are often more intense in a firstborn child, because he has been used to the spotlight and has had no competition.”

…and again.

“Generally speaking, jealousy of the baby is strongest in the child under five years, because he is much more dependent on his parents and has fewer interests outside the family circle. The child of six or more is drawing away a little from his parents and building a position for himself among his friends and teachers. Being pushed out of the limelight at home doesn't hurt so much.”

This illustrates one of the real motivations for monogamy, attention greed and control. And again it offers a solution to what will be a common problem.

And finally we have the real gold of the article, a breakdown of why dealing with these emotions rationally is super useful. Hell, this is a rather convincing argument for encouraging both multiple children and multiple mates.

“Though jealousy can't be completely prevented, you can do a great deal to minimize it or even to convert it into positive feelings. If your child comes to realize that there is no reason to be so fearful of a rival, it strengthens his character so that he will be better able to cope with rivalry situations later in life, at work, and at home.”

“Parents can help a child to actually transform resentful feelings into cooperativeness and genuine altruism. The stresses and strains of coping with a new sibling can be transformed into new skills in conflict resolution, cooperation, and sharing.”

“These are lessons that are hard won. Learning to cope with the challenges of not being the only show in town may be the lesson that is most valuable of all to later success.”

Thank you very much Sitarih (http://sitarih.stumbleupon.com/) for sending me this article!

Online dating.

(in reffrence to eharmony.com)

I am by no means taking the "online dating is for losers" approach, but this does seem to me unusually slanted. I myself am a polygamist, and a fetishist, and I am certain I would not be welcome there if they can't even handle something as normal as gay people.

But I feel the need to defend them a bit because the problem is not with matching people the problem is simple supply and demand associated with monogamy. The premise here is false. There is not someone for everyone because some people are perfect to many people. The solution is not a database, which at best will merely more effectively match existing options, the solution is to learn to share and to spread out your demands of a mate over many individuals.

It’s like this, a new way to search and drill for oil (hyper efficient databased monogamy) is not a real solution, renewable power (new mating paradigm) is.
We allow specialists into every other aspect of our lives. We don't demand that our car repair guy our plumber our gardener our dentist our doctor and our chef be the same person, because that would be absurd. You’d end up with 4 guys system wide that everyone wants and everyone else gets the shaft.

That is the situation today with mating. There is a small percentage of highly desirable men and women, but many of the traits we demand are in conflict. (like compassion and ambition)

Monogamy is a means of control. They want to keep us tense and unhappy.

Mercenaries

It is astonishing how badly one can be made to feel without physical damage or death being involved.

Imagine you have an enemy, imagine this enemy was your friend. Imagine that you decide to take one for the team and patch things up despite your continuing to hurt mightily. Imagine that this enemy begins to speak to you one day, and you get excited, you think ‘hey maybe I’m not the only one trying for peace’, imagine they are so good at it that they just talk to you for like 3 minutes and you imagine for those three minutes a future without animosity. And then the person makes a request of you and it becomes clear that the whole conversation was a sham, a prelude to the request.

Suddenly you’re made to feel used and worthless, and worse you have no one to blame because it’s human nature. No one actually likes anyone else. They only like what the person provides. All love is conditional, all relationships are exchanges.
The lines between partner, victim, family, friend, lover, customer, are only drawn by the nature of those provisions, and the effort required to provide them, and how badly each service is needed. For example if a guy you know is really funny, and he doesn't even have to try, you will hang around him because laughing is fun, and now let’s say you have a really nice house, so he hangs around you for the comfort, this could be called a friendship. But deep down, it isn’t. Because if you lose the house and he stops being funny one will tire of the other.

How is one expected to deal with that? Why is it always on the victim to adapt?