On the Greater Good

On our extinction

Do you look forward to the extinction of humankind? I sure do, I feel like the most beautiful thing that humans could achieve would be to finally die off and let the good earth try to heal itself. When I say this to close family members they never agree and sometimes are angry at me, calling me morbid. There isn’t anything more morbid than our species smothering and poisoning every other one on the planet. I’m not worried about being judged, just worried about those who are reproducing and those who want to cure major human diseases.

The good earth? You fucking idiot. The earth is an ethically inert mud ball hurtling around an amoral little star in an infinitely vast universe that is neither good nor evil. On a geological timescale, the measurable effect of our species on the planet is an insignificant burp.

It takes the human condition to color the world with value judgments, and yours are self-hating and silly. Besides, we’re not going to make it anyway. Not at our current stage of evolution, and certainly not if we stick around this corner of the solar system. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of all species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct, and one day we will be too. We aren’t that fucking special.

Does that mean we should wish for our annihilation? Fuck no. Only arrogant malcontents think like that. All you’re doing is projecting your own self-loathing onto a species-centric worldview, one that’s no different from the ignorant fucks who think we were put on the planet to rule over the animals.

Humanity is a fleeting and beautiful experience, the sum total of which probably won’t count for shit in the long run. So what? Don’t resent your species. It’s a wasted emotion based on a primitive way of thinking.

If you really look forward to the extinction of humankind, then do your part and kill yourself. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and enjoy the ride.

On that dollar in your pocket

Why’s some motherfucker ask me for a dollar to specifically refill his 42oz big gulp at 7/11 like I just have fucking money to give to him (he said all this yes)? I have to work hard for this money; why does it piss me off so much that someone thinks I’m just there to give it away to them?

It pisses you off because you’re a selfish person who thinks the world revolves around you. It doesn’t, so stop taking every little thing personally. I’m not suggesting you give a dollar to the guy – you aren’t there yet, but at the very least, summon up the few drops of empathy it takes to shake your head no without letting some poor bastard’s very existence anger you. If you really want to improve yourself, watch out for that ego-based Republican instinct to announce to the world that you’re a hardworking taxpayer who earns things. Resist the urge to make comments like, ‘I have to work hard for this money.’ Yes, you are paid a wage in exchange for your labor. Congratulations on grasping the basics of capitalist micro-economics, but saying shit like that to help prove a point is a big red flag that you are an enormous gaping asshole.

The problem with your way of thinking is that you fundamentally believe there’s a difference between you and that bum trying to refill his Big Gulp. You lack compassion and any sense of economic scale, and it prevents you from recognizing that you two motherfuckers are on the same team – Team 7/11, Team 99% – whatever you wanna call it, man. We’re all American peasantry.

I know that makes you uncomfortable. You don’t wanna wear the same jersey as the Big Gulp bums, but you really need to start taking a broader view of the socio-economic system that has you conditioned to direct your anger at the underprivileged. Fuck that shit. The guys asking for a dollar outside the 7/11 aren’t your enemy. Aim your animosity upward. The guys earning net profit off your labor are the ones taking money out of your pocket. That’s your true enemy. That’s who should be pissing you off.

On black market economics

I was having a chat with a dear old friend today about the legalisation of drugs. While I am pro-legalisation, he doesn’t believe ANY drugs (even cannabis) should be legalised. His reasons are as follows: During the 1920s or whatever when alcohol was made illegal, it was so completely illogical that people (read: dodgy gangsters and shit) immediately set up complex systems to smuggle and create it. When alcohol was again legalised, the framework for organised crime was in place; just not any actual crime- and it was through this that both drug and arm smuggling became a much bigger issue. His point is that, when you then legalise cocaine/ heroin/ meth/ pot, the people that make these drugs or smuggle them into the country aren’t going to suddenly turn straight and start being legal drug dealers- they’re going to start shit like arms smuggling and people smuggling, which fucks shit up a whole lot worse than a little bit of mind fuckery.

I was just wondering whether you think this is a legitimate issue with the legalisation of drugs, or just some shielded conservative bullshit to hide his own issues?

Thx bby.

xxx

Wow. You actually write with an Australian accent. I can almost hear this guy mansplaining his dumbfuck anti-legalization argument to you over schooners at the pub. I fucking love that.

Unfortunately, the only thing your dear old friend understands less than criminality is basic fucking economics.

First of all, he’s wrong about his underlying premise. As black markets shift from gray to white, the organizations involved really do turn straight and go legal. It proved true after America’s prohibition experiment, and it’s proving true again as we slowly decriminalize marijuana across the Western world. Dodgy gangsters are more than happy to become legitimate businessmen. (As if there’s really much of a difference to begin with.)

Secondly, your friend is confusing the criminal underworld’s various command hierarchies with its supply-chain logistics. Black markets aren’t a zero-sum game, and the ‘framework’ for organized crime isn’t a rigid thing. It’s not as though with fewer drugs to smuggle, suddenly there’s more room in the cargo hold for guns and Eastern European women. That’s just not how it works.

Your friend is also forgetting the other side of the criminal equation: an obscene amount of law enforcement resources are wasted on the drug war. If those same resources were suddenly freed up to deal with illicit arms dealers and human traffickers, the world would be a much better place.

I’m sorry, but your friend is completely full of shit. Please tell him I said so. His only valid point is that prohibition is illogical. Whether it’s alcohol or any other kind of drug, prohibition in a supposedly free society is nothing more than a grotesque means of social control, and it’s ultimately doomed to fail.

On politics and punishment

Despite my numerous far-left political tendencies (I am a registered Democratic Socialist), I still think public hanging should be reinstated as a method of the death penalty. Does this make me nothing more than a chicken-shit centrist, or am I just overthinking?

A desire to reinstate public hanging doesn’t push you towards the political center. It pushes you back around towards the fringes where wingnut ideologies start to blend into a hazy purple of both far-left and far-right lunacy. In other words, you don’t sound like a chicken-shit centrist. You sound like a fucking fascist.

Democratic Socialism is all well and good, but not when coupled with a state powerful enough to perform barbaric death rituals as punishment for crimes. Government should exist to regulate, not punish.

As the systemic extension of the will of the people, government’s role should be broad, but its power should only extend as far as its benevolence. The death penalty is the institutionalized representation of the most abhorrent and inferior aspects of our human nature.

We are never lower as a people than when we allow the state to take murderous revenge on our behalf.

On people against feminism

What do you think about all the people who don’t understand feminism? Especially the women who supposedly “are against feminism because they don’t hate men”? Should we argue or is it a lost cause?

No, we shouldn’t argue. We should teach. We should enlighten. We should in the friendliest of spirits and without the slightest trace of condescension drop so much fucking knowledge on those people that it crushes their flawed and simplistic understanding of gender politics.

We should be patient in the face of ignorance until we know for sure that it is willful. We should give them every opportunity to change their minds, because ultimately, very few people are built around a core of malignant, incurable misogyny. Very few people have a worldview so grotesque that they actually believe women should be subjugated. Very few people will openly admit that equality isn’t a noble pursuit – especially women for whom so often their only fault is being misguided about the fundamental concepts.

No one is a lost cause until we find out for sure that their identity is tied to an aggressively misogynistic belief system, and when we come across those broken souls, we don’t argue. That’s wasted breath. We simply mark them with red flags and keep them at arm’s length, because those are the ones who aren’t safe to be around.

On feminism and porn

Am I a hypocrite if I believe in feminism and want to be a respected woman, but I like watching porn?

What kind of porn are we talking about?

Better yet, what kind of feminism are we talking about?

If you’re an old-school iron cunt – one of those angry, man-hating second-wave feminists left over from the early seventies – and you secretly get off to bukkake gangbangs, then sure, that’s pretty damned hypocritical.

On the other hand, if you’re just a garden-variety sex-positive post-feminist with a college degree, a tattoo and a lesbian experience, then there’s no hypocrisy whatsoever in watching some hardcore anal action, especially if it’s well lit.

When you think about it, the debate between pornography and feminism has a lot in common with the debate between science and religion.

Folks are constantly trying to intersect two institutions that have no business together in the first place, and it’s only when you superimpose a closed-minded ideology on the situation that you run into problems of hypocrisy.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll always be on the side of porn and science. If a narrow-minded belief system is making you feel like a hypocrite, maybe you should leave it at the door.

On giving feminism a bad name

YOU CALLED FEMINISM A ‘NARROW-MINDED BELIEF SYSTEM’? Haha.

It’s funny that you think you’re being ‘open-minded’ by watching porn. Wow, what a free spirit! Succumbing to the objectification of women, the assigning of gender roles and misogyny!

WELL FUCKING DONE.

You idiot.

Capital letters and sarcasm? Wow. I almost didn’t notice that you completely misquoted me. I didn’t call feminism a narrow-minded belief system, although for your angry brand of the stuff, I might be willing to make an exception.

Do me a favor and don’t talk to me about words you don’t understand. I know sex workers with more feminism in their clit rings than you’ve got in your entire gender studies department. Free spirits, indeed.

Here’s a thought exercise: if a camera crew filmed me pulling the stick out of your ass, would that be considered porn?

The correct answer: only if you enjoyed it.

(Oh, and you know how you got all offended just now instead of laughing? Yeah. That’s why nobody likes you.)

are politics + economics just our egos fighting each other over who is right?

Nope. Politics and economics are just our species fighting over who gets the limited resources.

Do people have an obligation towards the country they were born in?

Fuck no.

Why do so many working class white people in rural areas vote against their best interests?

Because they’ve been institutionally conditioned to use their vote as a means of justifying their belief system rather than protecting their interests.

Liberation feminism or equality feminism?

In a patriarchal society, there is no difference.

Why can’t I help but feel that billionaires are better than me?

Because you think they earned it.

There is a war coming towards us and I am frightened.

That’s what they want you to think, and that’s what they want you to feel.

On nationalistic pride

Are you proud to be an American?

No. I have a deep appreciation for the privileges my citizenship affords me, but I am highly suspect of the tribal nature of the human condition and I consider nationalistic pride to be a particularly ugly and regressive emotion reserved for simpletons and the charlatans who hope to take advantage of them.

On fucking the police

You keep bringing up the mantra “fuck the police.” I agree that the police can and do abuse their power and that reform should be an ongoing and continuous process. I also agree that the police are forced to enforce unjust laws that have led to an overcrowded and unsustainable prison system. But don’t you agree that the police do serve the public interest in much of what they do such as bringing burglars, white collar criminals, rapists, and murderers to justice?

You’re confusing the police with the criminal justice system, and you’re confusing public interest with the establishment.

For the record, the police do not bring people to justice. All they do is enforce the law. If you don’t understand the difference between justice and the law, then you’re fired from America, and you should drive down to Home Depot and give your citizenship to someone who deserves it.

Admittedly, the public interest is well served by criminal investigators and emergency first responders, but so fucking what? Those duties aren’t inherent to police. Any number of governmental departments and agencies can (and do) serve those functions.

What makes the police special, what makes them internationally fuck-worthy, is that they’re granted authority by the state to preserve order through the use of force. That, my friends, is the opposite of liberty.

Whether it’s sharia law in Tehran, drug laws in Los Angeles, or public nuisance laws at your local Occupy protest, the police are the ones who can (and do) legally compel obedience through violence. I’m not cool with that.

At best, police power is a necessary evil. At worst, it’s a boot on your motherfucking neck. It will never be okay with me. I will never consent to that codicil of the social contract.

I do not recognize the state’s right to use force to compel my obedience, and that’s what I mean when I say, ‘fuck the police’.

On church and state

Why does the government think it is okay to force the church to go against their core belief (right wrong or indifferent)? Their core value of preserving life hasn’t changed and anyone who wants it can get FREE birth control at their local health department. The government wants the separation of church and and state and you can’t have it both ways. Catholic hospitals are self insured and provide more charity care than all other hospitals combined. We didn’t allow the church to stop us from legalizing abortion. How can the government force them to go against their core values? Do you really think this is ok?

1. The Catholic Church’s core value isn’t preserving life. It’s preserving power.

2. Your statement that free birth control is available to anyone who wants it from the local health department isn’t even close to being true. That’s like saying free housing is available to anyone who wants to live in the projects, or free food is available to anyone who wants to sign up for food stamps. Only the poorest of the poor actually qualify for government safety net programs.

3. You clearly don’t understand the concept of separation of church and state. Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion. The church doesn’t get a free pass to do whatever it wants to its employees in the name of its own belief system. Religious organizations still have to obey the law.

4. I don’t know where you’re getting your statistic on Catholic hospital charity care, but even if what you’re saying is true, so what? You’re just making an irrelevant appeal to authority.

5. On American soil, the authority of the Catholic Church to enforce its core values does not supersede the authority of the US government to enforce its laws. If you can’t handle that, by all means, brush up on your Italian and move to Vatican City.

6. Yes, I really think it’s okay for healthcare mandates to require church-affiliated hospitals, charities and schools to offer birth control to its employees.

7. All you bible-thumpers might want to shut the fuck up about stuff like this before the rest of us all decide it’s finally time to revoke your church’s tax-exempt status.

8. None of this is an attack on your religious freedom. Feel free to continue being an ignorant twat who believes in angels, demons and a jealous god.

On basic fucking economics

It’s easier to make a lot of money than to make “just enough” money. EVERYONE’s trying to make just enough money. There are so few actively trying to make a lot of money that they tend to help one another more. If you make a lot of money and don’t want it, you can always give it to worthy causes or people. But why let your state of mind be determined by a boss who decided they want to make a lot of money from your work? Go make it yourself.

Okay, fuckface. Lemme break down your stupidity line by line:

It’s easier to make a lot of money than to make “just enough” money.

No it’s not. It’s damn hard to make ‘just enough’ money, and it’s downright impossible to make a lot of money without access to privilege, influence and a fuck-ton of capital.

EVERYONE’s trying to make just enough money.

No shit, Sherlock. Life’s a fucking grind. Don’t act all superior, like you know some special trick that all the poor working stiffs haven’t figured out yet. Social mobility is a fucking myth, and you sound like an airhead talking about money like this.

There are so few actively trying to make a lot of money that they tend to help one another more.

Oh, you mean members of the elite class serve their own self-interest through nepotism, cronyism and favoritism? Yeah, I like how you tried to make unfair advantage sound like a good thing.

If you make a lot of money and don’t want it, you can always give it to worthy causes or people.

You sound like a fucking child. Do you even understanding how corporate capitalism works? Obscene wealth hoards itself at centers of power, relentlessly flowing back into its own gaping maw as value is leeched from helpless pools of human and natural resources. There are no worthy causes or people, just public relations and consumers.

But why let your state of mind be determined by a boss who decided they want to make a lot of money from your work?

Ugh. Social stratification is more than just a state of mind, you privileged little shit. The real world is a harsh and unforgiving place. I sincerely hope you discover that when you’re shat out the other end of whatever cut-rate business school is stealing your parents’ money.

Go make it yourself.

Go fuck yourself.

I first learned about you three years ago and back then I was a hardcore Republican. Now I’m basically a socialist hippie. What have you done to me?

I’ve sharpened your critical thinking skills while helping you become less selfish.

How do I accept the inevitable?

By realizing that it doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

I’m empty. What do I fill myself with?

First, hope. Then some strength. After that, motivation. Then finally, purpose.

Isn’t having a “purpose” delusional? Life has no purpose other than what it is.

You’re confusing purpose with meaning.

People often wonder what the meaning of life is, the point of existence. There is none. So what’s wrong with committing suicide? It’s just skipping to the inevitable end anyway.

A meaningless existence is almost always preferable to a meaningless annihilation, and inevitability is the absolute worst reason to skip to the end.

Please tell me it gets better.

Sometimes it does. Mostly it just changes.

How do you ethically defend eating meat? I do too, but I’m conflicted about it all the time.

I don’t defend eating meat with an ethical argument. The argument against eating meat has the ethical high ground. I defend eating meat simply by saying it’s delicious, which it is, and I accept the fact that I am not ethically pure in that regard.

Here’s a crazy thought experiment: 1% of the world’s population has to be eliminated. How would you do it?

Every year for a millennium, I would send the world’s wealthiest .001 percent to the guillotine.

On eating the rich

Can you explain in simple terms why you would choose to send the wealthiest .001% to the guillotine? What if they’re giving more than they’re getting?

I know it seems a bit Hunger Games-ish, but it’s actually a fairly well thought-out edict.

The premise of this outrageously hypothetical thought experiment is that 1 percent of the world’s population has to be eliminated, and it’s up to me to do it. Okay, fine. I can work with that, but at the same time, I want to make the best of a bad situation.

Now, the premise didn’t stipulate a time frame, so I’ll take a gracious millennium to do it. (There are several reasons for this.) First off, eliminating 1 out of 100 people all at once would be quite messy and traumatize the collective consciousness. However, eliminating 1 out of 100,000 people every year for a 1,000 years would barely be noticed.

More importantly, though, spreading it out over a millennium ensures that the desired effect is permanent. Now, what is the desired effect? To eliminate grotesque wealth inequality, of course.

The first year would be rather shocking. A lot of well-known billionaires would end up with their heads in a basket. Obviously, a handful of them would be deeply missed, but by and large, the world would instantly become a much better place without the world’s wealthiest .001 percent.

Now, as the second culling approaches, do you think the remaining super-rich are gonna hold on to their wealth? Fuck no. They’re gonna redistribute whatever’s necessary to keep from losing their heads. Everyone will.

Entirely new global financial industries would spring up to automatically and inherently correct the world’s wealth inequality problem, and after a period of painful adjustment, we’d have 1,000 years of relative equality where the richest person on earth would only have about 10,000 times more wealth than the poorest person on earth, or risk being sacrificed each year. (A 10,000 to 1 ratio may still seem like a lot of inequality, but on a global scale, it really isn’t.)

Obviously, there would be plenty among the rich and powerful who’d try to game the system through complicated trusts and schemes, but as empress of this little scenario, I would reserve the right to call shenanigans and send those folks to the guillotine.

Actually, the most interesting thing about this edict would be all the bizarre rituals, institutions and unforeseen consequences that would spring up as a side effect of such a new world order.

It’d make for a fascinating utopian/dystopian novel.

On our ecosystem

I know you believe that buying fair trade is self-righteous and doesn’t really make a difference because we’re all still buying from the same system and I agree with you. So what is your overall opinion of the damage humans are doing to the earth’s ecosystems? What changes, if any, would you make if you had the power?

I never said buying fair trade is self-righteous. It’s a consumer preference just like any other. Whether it’s a fair trade logo, a recycle symbol or a ‘Made in the USA’ sticker, you’re only self-righteous if you think your consumer identity somehow makes you a better person.

As for your larger question about the planet, people tend to ignore the rather obvious fact that the earth as an ecosystem is self-regulating and self-sustaining. It doesn’t give a fuck whether we’re here or not, and on a geological timescale, human influence on the earth’s ecology is a fucking burp. It’s nothing.

When people talk about damage to the earth’s ecosystem, what they really mean is damage to the extent that humans aren’t able to continue living in it, either comfortably or in such numbers. Sure, we also care about a short list of our favorite species, but ultimately it’s all quite self-serving. Of course, that’s perfectly fine by me. I’d prefer that we all thrive, because we’ve got some serious evolving yet to do.

The best way to ensure that our ecosystem stays habitable is to make a dramatic shift in our primary energy source in the coming decades. The world economy is petroleum based. That simply has got to end. It’s dangerous, dirty, and quite frankly, it’s not like we really have a choice. At our current rate, we’re probably gonna run out of oil in our lifetime anyway.

As a species of 7 billion strong and growing, it’s inevitable that we’ll reach a tipping point where the necessity for clean, renewable energy will outweigh the moneyed entrenchment of petroleum-based energy. I just hope that tipping point doesn’t come in the form of World War III or global economic collapse.

If it were up to me, I would have gotten ahead of the curve already. Instead of dumping 3 trillion dollars into the Iraq war, I would have made a concerted, multinational push for the major scientific breakthroughs that are needed in solar power and inertial confinement fusion technologies to revolutionize our global supply chain with clean, renewable energy.

That shit would have made the race to the moon look like fireworks, and honestly, that’s what it’s gonna take if we want to keep upwards of 10 billion people alive after the oil is gone.

So, on behalf of the earth’s ecosystem, what changes would I make if I had the power? Short answer, I’d move humanity into a post-petroleum world as soon as possible and on our own terms by throwing a bazillion-dollar party for solar and fusion technology.

On ethical consumption

You’ve been known to take a drug or two on occasion, and I feel like you’re someone whose behaviours are not lightly criticised by sensible persons. So perhaps you can clear this question up for me.

I wouldn’t buy ivory, eat a whale or wear conflict diamonds, so why am I ok with buying cocaine? Ought one apply the same logic of ethical consumption to drugs? Does one have to take the hard road of total abstinence to get the proverbial blood off one’s hands?

There is no washing the blood off your hands, you pretentious hippie fuck.

The simple act of paying taxes in any first-world country makes you complicit in an unholy global raping of such magnitude that no amount of dolphin-safe tuna or fair trade coffee could ever restore the cosmic balance.

You’re guilty of original sin just for living on the grid, so quit pretending you’re ethically superior because you get your politics off a Starbucks cup.

Besides, ivory is tacky, whale blubber tastes like shit, and diamonds are a sucker’s bet. Do you have any idea how smug you sound by acting like there’s some noble sacrifice in avoiding products that you wouldn’t have consumed in the first place?

Go ahead, boycott cocaine on ethical grounds. That’ll teach the Sinaloa Cartel a lesson. You idiot.

Ethical consumption is a marketing ploy. It should be ironically transparent, but weak-minded consumers are so desperate to assuage their hippie-flavored white guilt that they’re willing to believe a holier-than-thou consumer identity actually has a positive net effect on the world’s political and environmental atrocities.

Seriously, don’t let them fool you. When they tell you that ‘every dollar you spend is a vote for how you want the world to be’, it’s just because they want your fucking dollar.

You’re being programmed to think that your consumer choices are the equivalent of moral acts, but they’re not. You’re just buying shit like the rest of us.

On balancing the scales

Regarding your “ethical consumption” post—I agree with you, nothing will ever balance the scales. People are terrified of having to feel guilty about anything, and they’ll use whatever they can to keep on walking around blind to their negative impact on the world and on others. But are you saying that we shouldn’t try to make conscientous decisions about what we buy when we can? If I can buy the laundry detergent bottle made from recycled plastic instead of new, shouldn’t I? Not to the point where it makes me struggle finanically, or cripples me in some other way. I know it’s just a drop in the oil-tainted ocean, that all corporations see is dollar signs, and that balancing the scales is impossible, but isn’t tipping them a little bit back still worth it?

I just want to keep some hope and some sea turtles alive. Even if it’s foolish and makes you want to call me a hippie.

Balancing the scales is not impossible. All you need to do is go develop the major scientific breakthrough in the field of photo-voltaics or inertial confinement fusion that finally revolutionizes our supply chain of clean, renewable energy.

Somebody’s gonna do it. Might as well be you.

If all you want to do is tip the scales back just a little bit, then I suppose you could move to Malawi and start an orphanage or something. You know, devote your entire life to easing the suffering of the third world in some personal way. As you put it, it’s just a drop in the oil-tainted ocean, but hey, it’s a start.

Short of that, please stop kidding yourself. You’re not making a difference.

Feel free to buy whatever laundry detergent you like, but do not for one second let yourself believe that your decision was somehow more conscientious because the bottle was made of recycled plastic. Do you have any idea how mind-bogglingly self-centered that sounds?

I wish common sense included a sense of scale. You and your consumer identity have absolutely no moral mass whatsoever. Nothing you can buy at Walmart will ever count as an ethical unit of measure that has weight on a global scale.

Green products are a marketing strategy. All you’re doing is paying a premium for that fleeting moment of self-satisfaction you feel when you buy something labeled as environmentally conscious.

That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with having a consumer preference, but please know that it doesn’t earn you a single inch of ethical high ground.

I know, you can make arguments for aggregated effects, but those are still just passive market forces tied to a capitalist system built on corporate self-interest. Buying a Prius doesn’t mean you’re ‘doing your part’ to conserve oil. It merely means you get better gas mileage.

I’m not a cynic. I really do believe that you can make that drop in the ocean, but doing your part actually requires that you fucking do something. You can boycott shrimp all your life, and it’s not gonna help a single sea turtle. If you want to keep those little bastards alive, become a marine biologist and go save some fucking turtles.