Why is there so much civil unrest and more expected in the UK?

It’s not just the UK. There has been a trend toward increasing civil unrest around the world.

Global Protests and Riots Almost Double from 2011 to 2018

Institute for Economics & Peace | Experts in Peace, Conflict and Risk

The Institute for Economics and Peace provides an in-depth analysis of civil unrest in the UK specifically through the .pdf available from the link below:

Click to access UKPI-2024-briefing-web-1.pdf

Note from this quote a clue as to the causes of civil unrest:

“The UK has become less peaceful in the last decade. Peacefulness in the UK deteriorated by almost 11 percent in 2022, the most recent year of measurement. This is the eighth deterioration in peacefulness in the last decade and the first since 2020. Fifty-eight Police Force Areas (PFA) deteriorated, while eight improved. This is the largest number of PFAs to deteriorate since 2018.

Of the five UKPI indicators, homicide was the only one to improve, while the remaining four — violent crime, weapons crime, police officers, public disorder — deteriorated”

This suggests the aggravating factors for civil unrest do not lie within social dynamics among the population but an overall level of dissatisfaction with systems failing to meet the needs of the people.

Sadly, the propensity for ignoring causes and treating symptoms has exacerbated the problems as police have increasingly adopted militaristic policies for “serving and protecting” the public.

The militarization of the police has made this phenomenon worse, not better and they’ve been allowed to evolve in a counter-productive strategy that fails on every front from inciting civil unrest to increasing incidents of their wrongdoing as police are responsible for up to 40% of all domestic violence incidents.

Police Stress Results in 40% Involved in Personal Domestic Violence Incidents

Police Stress Results in Alcohol Dependency Issues

Click to access ED338997.pdf

The strategy of militarization of the police has turned them into a terrorist organization for many citizens. This is a consequence of conservative politics because imposition is the only language they understand.

Here is a summary provided by Chat GPT on social events in which Police catalyzed riots as a consequence of their inept approach to conflict de-escalation (from a U.S. perspective):

Numerous social events throughout history have seen police actions catalyzing riots. Here are some notable instances:

1. 1965 Watts Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The arrest of Marquette Frye, a black motorist, by a white California Highway Patrol officer.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and extensive property damage.

2. 1967 Newark Riots (Newark, New Jersey):

– Trigger: The arrest and beating of John Smith, a black cab driver, by white police officers.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and widespread destruction.

3. 1967 Detroit Riots (Detroit, Michigan):

– Trigger: A police raid on an unlicensed bar, or “blind pig,” in a predominantly black neighbourhood.

– Outcome: Five days of rioting, 43 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and significant property damage.

4. 1968 Chicago Riots (Chicago, Illinois):

– Trigger: The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., followed by police actions during protests.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 11 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

5. 1980 Miami Riots (Miami, Florida):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four white police officers in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie, a black motorcyclist.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 18 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

6. 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four LAPD officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 63 deaths, over 2,000 injuries, and widespread destruction.

7. 2001 Cincinnati Riots (Cincinnati, Ohio):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black teenager.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, resulted in injuries and significant property damage.

8. 2014 Ferguson Unrest (Ferguson, Missouri):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.

– Outcome: Weeks of protests and riots, resulting in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

9. 2015 Baltimore Protests (Baltimore, Maryland):

– Trigger: The death of Freddie Gray in police custody.

– Outcome: Several days of protests and rioting, resulted in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

10. 2020 George Floyd Protests (Nationwide, USA):

– Trigger: The police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

– Outcome: Protests and riots across numerous cities in the U.S., resulting in deaths, injuries, and significant property damage.

These events highlight the recurring issue of police actions triggering significant social unrest, often reflecting deeper systemic issues within society.

Imposition is conflict escalation NOT conflict resolution.

Although the militarization of the police is entirely the wrong way to go in addressing social unrest, they are a symptom of resolvable political problems beginning with the short-sighted views of conservative politicians who interpret every problem as a nail because they have learned only how to wield a hammer.

Nuance escapes them.

The patience required to facilitate peaceful resolutions runs contrary to a profit-oriented mindset that equates time spent with lost dollars.

The core problem is also exacerbated by their sycophantic support of the conditions that led to last century’s Great Depression and were responsible for triggering the Second World War. We are watching those conditions and their consequences replaying themselves right now in real-time with the horrifying implications inherent within the corrupt American system.

No nation is immune to the impact of economic distortions feeding despair among the public.

The core problem catalyzing the increase in civil unrest is economic by nature.

The core problem feeding the despair driving otherwise peaceful citizens into extreme action is the economic distortion corroding the basic patience, tolerance, and decency of otherwise peaceful people who want only to live modestly dignified lives but cannot because we have all been robbed of trillions in a class warfare that seeks to resurrect a facsimile of governance resembling a medieval caste system of two classes of people; rulers and serfs.

This trajectory is unsustainable and will continue to feed unrest.

This sociopathic profit motive cannot but lead to chaos.

Making matters worse is that the lifestyles of the wealthy class have put humanity on a trajectory toward its extinction.

No one should be surprised by an increase in public unrest.

Things are going to get MUCH uglier before they get better.

The questions we need to address are:

“How many casualties can we tolerate before we come to our senses?”
How much pain and suffering can we stomach before we lose our shit?
How many millions must die due to preventable causes and the behaviours of sociopaths hellbent on destroying this planet will it take before civilization is a chaotic mess of violent insurrections all around the world?
What will it take for the wealthiest among us to show some leadership and help set this ship of humanity onto a path toward a sustainable future?

JFK — Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

(This post was an answer to a Question posed on Quora — where all my posts on Medium have originated; hence the personal response indicated within this article. — https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/ )

Are we more committed to protecting free speech or cancelling voices that challenge our beliefs?

This post is a response to a question posed on Quora

Upon encountering this question, I thought, “Who is ‘we’?”

My second thought is that this is a typical question by someone who doesn’t understand what “free speech” means.

People often misconstrue “free speech” as a right to say whatever they want wherever they go without suffering the consequences of the content of their speech.

That’s not even remotely close to what “free speech” means.

“Free speech” means only that you will not be hauled off in the middle of the night by your government for saying something that a government authority doesn’t like.

That’s it.

That’s the extent of “free speech” in society.

“Free speech” has never been, nor will it ever be, anything more than a protection against a dictatorial government determining acceptability for the concepts people publicly discuss.

Here’s an example of a violation of the principle of “Free Speech” in society:

This is a politician who has already announced to the world that they are willing to strip fundamental rights from a people based on being personally offended over the presentation of their own words repeated verbatim.

Here is an example of how a self-declared “Free Speech Absolutist” regards “Free Speech.”

This is NOT a “Free Speech” violation because Xitter is a privately owned space, not a government entity. Elon is well within his rights to ban anyone he pleases in the same way you are entitled to kick anyone you don’t like out of your house for no reason you would need to use to justify kicking them out of your house. Your home is yours. You have every right to enforce any rule you like, whether irrational or contradictory.

All Quora answers are the property of all the authors of those answers, and that’s a HUGE draw for people because it means we can delete abusive comments or turn off comments altogether. After all, “freedom of speech,” in practical terms, also means “freedom from speech” — just like “freedom of religion” also means “freedom from religion.”

“Freedom of speech” is NOT an entitlement to be heard. It is a protection from a malicious entity with the power of a government to enforce the homogenization of a public under an autocratic system.

When people reject stupidity barfed up by people they don’t want to hear from, they’re not “cancelling” anything. They’re simply exercising their right to refuse to subject themselves to personally offensive speech.

When it comes down to the notion of being cancelled as a criticism of what happens in society, if one were to create a ven diagram of the people who complain about “cancel society” and the people who endorse banning books, it would be a circle.

Otherwise, the reality of “cancelling a voice” while violating the concept and principle of “free speech” literally means hauling someone off in the dead of night because they offended some government official like Drumpf by repeating their own words to the public in the way that journalism is supposed to in society.

I think the people who complain the most about this issue should spend more time educating themselves on what “Free speech” means. The most impactful lesson one could undergo and never forget is to take a trip to North Korea. Set up a soap box on a street corner. They can then begin criticizing the North Korean government to see exactly what it means to “cancel a voice.”

Otherwise, the tiresome whining about “cancelling voices” on social media is interpreted much like enduring nails on a blackboard.

Why do citizens consider themselves to be R or D?

It’s by design. We have been deliberately manipulated into warring camps by the modern equivalent of bread and circuses to keep all the little people engaged in being cheerleaders to distract from addressing real issues to make our lives better.

Making our lives better by solving real-world problems instead of manufactured non-problems would result in smaller hoards of wealth for those who already have too much wealth.

Sadly, they have also cultivated the belief that there is no such thing as “too much wealth”. Most people extrapolate from their impoverished conditions to believe there can never be enough wealth — which, to some degree is true, just not for individuals.

Fighting a Culture War to Stop You From Fighting a Class War

People are essentially forced into one of two camps by shutting out parties beyond the two parties dominating the U.S. political landscape.

Limiting the political environment into two warring camps just makes it easier for the oligarchs to control the chaos in ways that ensure we remain distracted from their machinations as they focus on strategies for invisibly extracting microscopic amounts of blood from our bodies so that we won’t know when we’ve been weakened too much to save ourselves.

We are treated like frogs in a pot of water with a carefully monitored temperature to ensure we sweat our value out in their service while rendered too weak and distracted to fight back and save ourselves.

To survive our hardships, we turn to those who share our struggles and our values and since our options have been limited to two oppositional camps while the media owned by the oligarchs feed us conflict porn to escalate our tribal affinities and condition us to treat our neighbours like enemy combatants who must be eradicated or die at their hands.

The more we entrench ourselves into a caricature of team sports cheerleaders, the happier the plutocrats are because that frees them up to concoct creative strategies for extracting more value from all of us like the parasites they are.

Do atheists believe in fate, good and evil, or alien life?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “Do atheists believe in fate, good and evil, or some other supernatural beliefs? Like do some atheist believe in alien life?”

This question embodies the problem with the notion of belief among believers.

Believers often need help understanding the difference between knowledge and belief. Blurring the distinction between two different but similar concepts makes it challenging for them to adopt a third option between their binary perspective on life.

To a believer, one either believes or does not believe.

Knowledge isn’t even a factor in their perceptions because knowing, to them, is just another form of belief. Belief supersedes knowing because one cannot know if their prayers are being heard by a “Father Cosmos,” so they must have faith that he is listening. This places an undue burden on the concept of belief that breaks its meaning in their minds.

They have no choice but to relegate knowledge to a subordinate relationship with belief because belief is everything to a believer.

Ironically, they have no problem with aspects of belief that require little to no consideration, such as “suspension of disbelief” because that occurs autonomically while engrossed in an entertaining fiction, as does “disbelief” when it applies to every belief system that isn’t theirs.

The notion of belief being subordinate to knowledge is like heresy, which induces a fear of straying, resulting in an eternal punishment for failing to adhere to their faith. This is why they often suffer crises of faith due to excessive cognitive dissonance.

The seemingly fearless attitude of atheists placing knowledge above belief attracts believers’ attention to notions of non-belief, like a moth to a flame. Since they fear eternal retribution for disbelief, they view atheists roaming around free to live their lives in terms not too dissimilar from how many people view a convicted felon roaming about freely to campaign for one of the most influential roles on the planet. It’s like witnessing a horrible accident. One would prefer to avert their gaze but cannot as they stand transfixed over the intense drama playing out for their unwilling minds to process.

The cognitive dissonance this generates explains the obsessions believers demonstrate over atheism every day on social media.

We see in this question how they fabricate presumptions about atheists that fit within their cognitive boxes of belief determination.

They cannot think beyond their belief paradigm to interpret reality beyond a binary state. One must either believe something or reject believing something. The meaning behind the concept of disbelief itself is lost on them. It’s like interpreting absence as a form of invisible presence.

To address the presumptions of belief in this question and many like it, one either presents a dismissive response like they would with a persistent child that fails to comprehend nuance but requires something of an answer to quell their curiosity or one burns through several boxes of crayons to bring them up to speed on basic concepts that will fly past their perceptions to leave them even more confused than before answering their questions.

This is the rub with knowledge.

Every question answered that contributes to our overall understanding of ourselves, others, and the universe we inhabit generates dozens of additional questions we never realized were questions before getting that answer we thought we wanted but sometimes regret getting.

To address the basic but flawed presumptions within the questions above, one must judiciously parse the information in ways that ignore large parts of what is implied within the question and attempt to focus on constructing a simplified answer they will understand, just like one does with a child.

For example, “Atheists don’t “believe in” alien life. Atheists know the universe is vast beyond belief, and the existence of life on this planet within a Brobdingnagian (I love this word) ocean of countless planets means the odds are beyond simply excellent that life has emerged elsewhere. We have been getting new evidence supporting that conclusion, such as the discovery of RNA embedded in spacefaring meteorites we’ve examined.”

All RNA and DNA Base Types Are Found in Meteorites, Study Claims

This answer won’t be interpreted as stated, though. It will be construed as “Atheists believe in alien life.”

The same applies to concepts like “good” and “evil”. We can explain and re-explain repeatedly until the proverbial cows come home that “good” and “evil” are subjective concepts requiring context for meaning. However, their interpretations of these concepts are apprehended as objectively as one would a physical cow within their field of vision.

“Supernatural beliefs” are also subjective constructs that we can explain “exist outside of nature” because that’s what “supernatural” literally means — “beyond nature.” To accept subjectively defined notions as true, one requires belief, and that’s why one interprets these concepts in terms equivalent to knowledge.

To “believe in fate” is to subordinate one’s knowledge derived from empirical experience through an objective lens to a subjective interpretation functioning like a soothing narrative rather than a concrete mystery to resolve. This dilution of one’s senses is essentially the core of the threat to human thinking that religion poses to humanity and that limits our potential as a species.

Should wealth be more evenly distributed?

No, but yes but no… but yes.

To “distribute wealth more evenly” implies a dictatorial imposition of a narrowly and politically defined sum of what constitutes “evenly.”

There are numerous problems with that strategy that go well beyond not fixing the underlying issues contributing to the corruption of what should be an agnostic system but isn’t due to how it has been corrupted.

This approach not only accomplishes nothing in the way of fixing the underlying issues, which, on that level alone, would create a “rubberband effect” of “snapping economics back to their originally corrupt state,” it would also justify an exacerbation of a centuries-long class warfare that has allowed the corruption of an economic system to take root. IOW. The degree of corruption existing today that has led to historic levels of income injustice would escalate from a cold war into a blazing furnace of vengeance against the little people by the wealthy. Their loss of wealth would be temporary, and they would be motivated by more than greed to rebuild their hoards; they would also be motivated by a desire for retribution.

We should focus instead on adjusting the parameters of a wealth redistribution system like capitalism to ensure wealth flows freely throughout the system rather than collect like plaque in arteries to clog up the entire system with private hoards held by a few whose obscene accruals threaten a system-wide collapse.

We need to establish rules to ensure equitability from a system-wide perspective to make fairness an inherent characteristic of the capitalist system. We need the system to rein in corruption at the top while empowering the middle and enabling the bottom.

If our economic systems were to operate on a holistic and agnostic basis, then success would not be a measure of how much wealth the wealthiest are collecting but how stable the economy is and the degree of economic mobility the system facilitates. We should measure economic success based on how people move out of poverty and into wealth. We should measure economic success on the stability and growth of the middle class. The middle class has always been the engine of the economy, and we must prioritize its health and efficiency to ensure that the entire system is stable.

Grocery store experience of bottom 30% serves as a better gauge of our economy than the stock market performance of the top 1%.

This can be “easily” accomplished (once the political will is established) through a few simple measures. We can begin with the adjustment of tax rates to levels historically proven to spur the greatest economic growth and the greatest growth of a thriving middle class.

Historic Highest Marginal Income Tax Rates

Restoring tax rates to Eisenhower levels incentivizes investments back into companies to hire more staff to minimize a tax burden. It means capital investments into the operation instead of stock buy-backs to boost share value and billionaire hoards.

Restoring tax rates to Eisenhower levels gives the economy a boost of liquidity flowing through the entire system to boost everyone’s well-being while restraining the excesses of greed, which contributes to creating a ruling class through a dynastic acquisition of wealth and political power.

Restoring taxes to sane levels permits the implementation of a universal basic income that mitigates the leverage of wealth in labour negotiations. People will no longer be forced to choose between a depressed wage and basic survival. Since unions are an easy target to attack and disempower, as occurred following Reagan’s example, which led to a strategic initiative by employers to eradicate unions, UBI eliminates that weakness.

Employers in the U.S. spend $340 million per year on “union avoidance” consultants.

Union-busting: what to expect and how to respond

A Universal Basic Income provides economic stability for a nation because when a corporation contracts, thousands of jobs are lost, not just a few or dozens. The entire economy is impacted by an exaggerated shrinkage that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

The boom and bust outcome of a trickle-down economy is intentional because it is during a bust that the wealthiest make their greatest gains by leveraging desperation against people to buy out smaller businesses at fire sale prices.

Restoring tax rates to Eisenhower levels eliminates the boom and bust advantage while UBI insulates the vulnerable from the predatory practices of the wealthy.

The above represents two primary initiatives that would restore equity throughout the economy. These alone are temporary measures subject to reversals, putting us back on this same destructive track we are on.

We must cement fairness into our systems on levels greater than the simple vectors of corporate taxes and employee protections.

We must make fundamental changes to a vulnerable political system which allows the worst of our impulses to dominate political discourse while being manipulated through corrupt media enterprises owned by powerful stakeholders.

Electoral reform initiatives to eliminate the toxically competitive first-past-the-post elections and replace them with proportional representation and a ranked-choice voting process will eliminate the hegemony of party politics and allow a public to engage on an issue-resolution basis rather than be reduced to a gaggle of high school cheerleaders caught up in tribalist fervour.

This initiative also mitigates the impact of wealth on the election process because it’s much harder to “create a team of tax and revenue manipulators” when “multiple teams” exist in a multiparty system that more accurately reflects the different views and positions of a diverse voting public.

Eliminating private funding from the election process would also protect the political system from corruption. Both initiatives above would transform the entire political process into an agnostic system of representatives who fully represent the diversity of the people’s will.

First-Past-the-Post-Elections shut out most voices from representation to favour the horse race winner.

First Past the Post Elections do not represent the public.

Democracy is a government that is supposed to represent the will of ALL the people, not just the horse race-winning team.

Proportional Representation versus First-past-the-post

U.K. Election First-Past-the-Post versus Proportional Representation

Swedish Parliament with Proportional Representation

Finally, the most difficult challenge to implement and arguably the most important initiative to protect our world’s democracies from the greatest villains we have ever fought throughout history is to rein in excesses at the top around the globe.

We should not keep breeding generation after generation of entitled people who assume their wealth equates to superior humanity and the right to shape the world in their image. The wealthy class is not comprised of superior beings but flawed humans. They possess too much power at such a degree of disproportion that they can individually tip the scales of humanity’s future toward extinction or utopia.

Guess where they are collectively leading us all today:

Oxfam — Percentage of Global CO2 Emissions by Lifestyle

Is it okay to tell your religious family that you have atheist views?

Chances are excellent that if you have to ask strangers online, you’re already concerned about their reactions.

That should be a huge red flag, especially after reading some of the horror stories in the answers already given.

Your parents have spent a lifetime being who they are and believing what they do.

Their vision for having children was miniature versions of themselves who they could accept may take a different path than they took for themselves but would at least hold the same values they do.

As you may have noticed, religious beliefs are not like most other beliefs people have about different things in life.

Religious beliefs are personal identities, group associations, and a support structure where opportunities in life are found.

They will view their religious beliefs as a prescription for success in life and a symbol of unity within their family. All their children sharing in their beliefs means they will have become successful parents who have given their children their best chances at leading a happy and rewarding life like they feel religion has done for them.

Rejecting their religious beliefs will be interpreted as a rejection of their parenting.

It may not make sense to think of religious beliefs you don’t share on this level in that way. The reactions you will get from them if you insist on having them see you on a different path to self-development, self-discovery, and self-discipline than they took will show you what a wedge in your relationship will feel like.

They may initially show some acceptance because they love you more than their adherence to their beliefs, but that acceptance will grow into a distance between you.

You will eventually discover their open embrace of you, and your accomplishments will be responded to with increasing disinterest.

During periods of conflict, they may claim they no longer understand you and will blame your straying from their beliefs as the cause. They will look for scapegoats to blame and begin criticizing your choice of friends, the school you attend, or the video games you play.

Anything they can use to justify how you are not choosing to betray them willingly, they will weaponize during open conflicts you might have. If you have never experienced open conflicts with them before, you likely will afterwards.

To answer your question directly, it’s okay to be who you are, and it’s even recommended in a world where you will spend your entire life fighting to preserve who you believe yourself to be, but you will have to learn to pick your battles in life, and some are just not worth fighting.

Eroding one of the most important relationships you will ever have is not a battle anyone should take lightly, particularly in a world where a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families are dysfunctional. Suppose you have a happy family life as it currently stands. In that case, you might want to accept how that’s already a treasure beyond what most experience. It may not be worth giving that up to have them accept what you believe in yourself because your assertion could very well end up in your rejection.

You can certainly continue to question your views on religious beliefs, and you should continue to do that for the rest of your life because that’s how you will grow as a person. Understand, though, that it is always a personal journey one takes. As much as one would like to share every intimate detail of that journey with others, it’s impossible with almost every other person one will encounter.

Your personal development journey will always be your journey. The rest of everything you encounter will be about how to get along with the people in your life so that your life isn’t made any more complicated than it already is or will be.

Good luck with your journey through this nuthouse.

Why Conservatives Conserve Old American Values

The world is changing ever faster by the year. The natural reaction many people have toward circumstances changing in ways they haven’t been able to process is to resist that change. A large part of the problem contributing toward resistance to change is the perception that things were okay before the proposed changes had been introduced and “pushed onto them”. (People in general, regardless of their political ideology, don’t appreciate feeling like they’ve had their lives dictated to them.)

In the case of gay marriage, for example, many people seemed quite comfortable with their many generations of heterosexual marriage. They didn’t want to see their status quo change because that represents a change to something everyone believes is fundamental to society — family. The notion that a family is not a genetically controlled environment just doesn’t factor into sensibilities which still believe in the “Ozzie and Harriet illusion of family” (even though that symbol hasn’t existed for decades — if ever it did beyond a small segment of society). Changing that image is difficult for some people on a fundamental level because it means changing much about how they perceive the world around them.

Conservatives have the greatest difficulties with such changes because they are naturally predisposed toward conservation — (hence their designation as conservatives). There is certainly some value in preserving aspects of tradition and ideology to facilitate the cultivation of a consistent set of values to strengthen a community. We are at a point in our history where diverse communities across the globe that have been evolving for centuries are now transforming into a singular and global community. Many traditional values are forced into being discarded quickly without permitting conservatives their luxuries of taking the natural amount of time they would otherwise take toward adjusting to change.

Some conservatives can still support notions of slavery and misogyny. It seems clear that some of these views have been entrenched so deeply within the human psyche that we have many centuries of effort ahead of us to cure our society of such destructive attitudes… and because the changes which are occurring across this globe involve cultures which are still currently living in what the developed world regards as barbaric conditions; we have an enormous amount of work to do to resolve the conflicts arising out of the differences in perspectives as expressed by groups whose affiliations range the gamut of the spectrum of ideological concerns.

I don’t believe conservative values are fundamentally any different than liberal values; only the comprehension each group has on how to achieve those values differs between them. For example, both dislike the fact that unwanted children are forced into this world, and both would like to see the elimination of abortions as a means of preventing those children from being born into deplorable conditions. The conservative mind rationalizes that the best way to eliminate abortions is by imposing conditions and laws which govern behaviour. The liberal mind rationalizes education and support as the best solution toward reducing abortions to their minimal requirement. In the case of this issue, it seems clear to me in my biased mind that the liberal mindset is more capable of acknowledging the reality that people will respond far better toward receiving support than they would in being dictated to. This introduces an aspect of conservative thinking, highlighting a degree of hypocrisy in their efforts. No one likes to be dictated to, and it seems conservatives are the most vocal complainants of appearances of being dictated to. They seem incapable, however, of recognizing how their solutions are often impositions of their will upon others. They want their cake and to eat it, too. (This is speaking in generalities, of course, but that’s the nature of this topic.)

I think conservatives do sincerely believe they are helping our society to preserve values, but that often, they don’t seem altogether self-aware enough to recognize how many of their “proposed solutions” are not only not solutions but are often approaches which exacerbate the problems they claim to want to solve; but even worse is that they are approaches which contradict their values.

(A case in point would be the sheer number of laws they have introduced for controlling a woman’s reproductive rights while completely dismissing how those laws contradict their desire for a small government and greater freedoms as individuals… and under the auspices that they are protecting an unborn life while demonstrating no capacity for supporting initiatives to help already born and suffering children. They claim to possess superior morality arising from their religious beliefs, yet also complain about supporting those with the greatest need in society while lavishing riches upon those already wealthy.)

A conservative ideology and mindset may contribute some value toward establishing some framework for consistency within the development of a stable social structure, but it seems clear that the conservative mindset has lost all touch with what it means to be conservative in the first place and that it now is merely a caricature of an obstinate child who simply wants the world to capitulate to its own selfishly myopic views without having to give anything back in return for the luxuries they enjoy because of the sacrifices of those who came before us.

Do you ever wonder where consciousness originated from?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “Atheists, do you ever wonder where consciousness originated from? Do you sit back and think ‘maybe science doesn’t have the answer to everything?’”

Based on the fleeting interest in the topic demonstrated by the wording in this question, I have wondered that likely more than most. I’m obsessive that way. It’s a curse I must have been born with because I remember thoughts as a toddler that may not have been quite as sophisticated as now but definitely within the ballpark.

20–20 hindsight leads me to believe my life would have been far easier if I had realized I could create a vocation and a “normal life” around the formal pursuit of knowledge in that realm. I had to get this far on my own before I could think about options I didn’t realize could have been available to me then.

Even as a kid, I valued my mind more than my body, and I found myself attracted to any reading material, fact or fiction, that expanded my views on the mental realm. This led me to explore myths at an early enough age to understand how religion is also just mythology, except that people believe it’s more than that.

I should have been more focused on exploring the sciences, but I was more interested in exploring self-knowledge, which led me straight to the arts. Economically, it was the worst decision I could have made. Insofar as personal development is concerned and surviving the nightmares I’ve endured, it has been my only means of making it this far.

By the time I went to art school, I had already consumed many subjects from various realms. I have enjoyed material from scientific objectivity and metaphysical subjectivity. The arts have enabled me to process abstractions such that when Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts, or Edgar Cayce wowed me, I never interpreted their material from a literalist perspective. I still love and am affected by the imagery they evoked within me. People like Joseph Campbell were an incredible inspiration to me from the standpoint of cognitive discipline and the “hard sciences modality of thought,” but discovering Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” was like being hit with a hammer to crack open a hard shell surrounding my awareness of consciousness.

I highly recommend “The Mind’s I” as an “easier-to-consume” piece of his writing.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2081.The_Mind_s_I

At any rate, my pitiful comprehension of the sciences allowed me to understand, on at least a basic level, that science itself isn’t an answer to anything. Unlike religion, however, “science doesn’t lie” about being an answer to everything.

Science itself isn’t even a source of knowledge — people are.

Science is just a process of determining facts, leading some incredible minds to discover amazing facts about our universe.

One recent proposition arrived at through the scientific discipline of inquiry is that we may be on the verge of identifying a connection to or a source of consciousness within the quantum realm. That’s exciting news to me.

Not too long ago, I chanced upon this image:

This set my imagination on fire as an analogy for 3-dimensional existence created by consciousness itself. I had already been aware of issues like the “Thermostat Problem,” “Integrated Information Theory,” memory structures stored in 11-dimensional space, and microtubules in our brains that directly interact with quantum space. This image was like another crack in a shell obscuring my view of consciousness.

The analogy I draw from this image is that “consciousness shines through” our physicality to take shape in a three-dimensional structure we understand as reality. The shadow in this image represents physical reality, while our biology shapes the nature of consciousness within the context of a three-dimensional space.

Recently, much more intelligent people with dedicated minds have been exploring realms outside my comprehension in ways that filter down to hope within me that we will eventually solve the mystery of consciousness — even though it still feels far too distant to believe we’ll manage to create artificial facsimiles of actual consciousness. We can’t map quantum space, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s possible or how we could do that.

How the hell do we establish a coordinate system for virtual particles? At this point, all I can think of is that we can’t and likely never will; if we can, it won’t be in any near future.

At any rate, anyone with any basic understanding of science knows science is not a magical source of all knowledge like religion pretends to. It’s at least testable and verifiable knowledge rather than the ludicrous fictions concocted by religious nonsense that leave reality far behind in its rearview mirror as it gallops into fantasyland.

Here’s some additional reading on the subject of consciousness by people far more advanced in their explorations than I am.

Quantum mechanics and the puzzle of human consciousness

https://alleninstitute.org/news/quantum-mechanics-and-the-puzzle-of-human-consciousness/

Study Shows Consciousness May Be Product of Quantum Effect

https://www.gaia.com/article/study-shows-consciousness-may-be-product-of-quantum-effect?gad_source=1

Quantum Physics Could Finally Explain Consciousness, Scientists Say

Oh… let’s not forget a valuable source of primers on almost every subject imaginable — good ol’ Wikipedia — please donate if you can to this marvellous resource that thumbs its nose at the parasitism of capitalism and generates knowledge for its true value to humanity.

Quantum Mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

Temet Nosce

Are people poor because they were born to be poor?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “What can we say for those people that worked hard but are still poor? Is it because they were born to be poor?”

The first place to begin one’s assessment of another’s fortune is with an honest apprehension of the environment affecting all fortunes by all people who inhabit a (somewhat) closed ecosystem.

To suggest some external source of magical influence like fate to factor in any of this merely distracts from an objective apprehension of the dynamics leading to disparity.

It is precisely this kind of magical thinking that every “Confidence Artist” (“conman,” “swindler,” “scammer,” fraud) throughout human history has relied upon to enrich themselves at the expense of their victims.

Making matters worse for the victims is the belief that they’re responsible for the actions of others who impoverish them.

This thinking epitomizes victim-shaming.

It’s no different than blaming one’s attire for “causing” a rape.

It’s precisely the thinking a homicidal monster utilizes when they claim someone else’s actions forced them to commit murder. They twist the notion of self-defence into a justifiable weapon to dismiss responsibility for their actions.

This perverse thinking permits people like Derek Chauvin to suffocate George Floyd until they stop breathing. It empowers all the evil monsters in our midst to invoke sociopathic rationalizations unrelated to the incident in question to justify the commission of murder.

Inmate who stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times is charged with attempted murder, prosecutors say

It ignores the causal nature of reality. Even the Bible’s Genesis chapter and “list of begats” acknowledge causality.

Bible, King James Version

People are not poor because of some cosmic assignment handed down to them by an authority, as if it were a justifiable assessment of their character at birth. People are poor because humanity has not learned the lessons of our primitive existence — namely, that we managed to survive our cave-dwelling origins only because we worked together as we hunted in groups. Each contributed to the welfare of the whole in ways that allowed everyone to benefit equally from the collective labours of synergy.

Margaret Mead has most succinctly identified the dawn of human civilization in her example of a knit bone discovered during her anthropological studies.

The worst aspect of all of this is that the evidence is abundant. There is no mystery as to why so many people struggle with poverty today.

In our early history, widespread poverty primarily resulted from natural scarcity due to environmental conditions such as an early frost wiping out an entire harvest or poor land management practices such as those that led to “The Dust Bowl” and the “Dirty Thirties.” Ironically, the magical thinking of “Manifest Destiny” driving an initial bump in prosperity contributed to the impoverished conditions that contributed to “The Great Depression,” which contributed to the stressors driving global aggressions leading to a Second World War only decades after the first global aggression.

Dust Bowl: Causes, Definition & Years | HISTORY

The fuel behind all of the poverty and aggression is the same fuel contributing to an increasing number and degree of violent protests occurring worldwide today — income disparity. We have surpassed the stage of income disparity that triggered our first global aggressions due to the stresses of exacerbated conditions of poverty.

This cycle of class disparity has triggered aggressions throughout human history, and many of our popular stories are based on them.

We should know better by now, but we seem incapable of learning this crucial lesson from history.

What makes matters worse is that in today’s “post-scarcity world,” we produce more than we can consume. We have no excuse for poverty today beyond human failings, as expressed through our politics.

Can we feed the world and ensure no one goes hungry?

None of this is a mystery — or should be a mystery to anyone today. Yet, here we are looking for excuses to victim-shame the vulnerable in society who struggle to feed themselves every day.

The information providing clarity exists in abundance. Few people are ignorant of the fact that eight people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the whole of humanity. No one is oblivious to the magical sound of the designation we venerate of a “centibillionaire.” It’s like a status of godhood on Earth that people seriously believe is a consequence of effort and ingenuity and not a dysfunctional system that impoverishes the vulnerable.

Few people perceive that obscenity in terms of the threat to global stability that it is. Few people perceive that amount of power within the hands of an egotist as a direct threat to their livelihoods — unless, of course, they’re one of the thousands who have been displaced on a whim by a megalomaniac who spent $44 billion to own the world’s most enormous megaphone so that they can capture global attention every day.

Few people look at graphs like these two and become horrified by their implications.

Yet… here we are, sending ourselves on a path in which the logical conclusion of the trajectory summed up by these two graphs is the end of human civilization as we know it. Instead of focusing on how to correct our course, we’re looking for reasons to victim-shame the most vulnerable among us.

It’s entirely disgusting that so many people are so willing to demonize the victims in society that it is mind-boggling how such utterly primitive thinking can exist in modern society.

Centuries from now, if we survive this insanity, this mindset will be viewed as the horrific equivalent of witch trials from our history.

Is it worth responding to the laughing emoji reactions to a tragic post on Facebook?

This post is a response to a question that was asked in its complete format: “What do people think of others who react with a laughing emoji to a serious or tragic post on Facebook? Is it worth going through the list and giving them all a nasty pm, or would this be a rather pointless and sad exercise?”

That list you imagine going through to castigate people individually is often over one hundred people and can sometimes be several hundred to over one thousand.

Going through one list of even just one hundred people would easily chew up your entire day.

You would also have to deal with pushback and people reporting you for intrusive messages on their DM.

You would likely find yourself consigned to Facebook jail for your efforts.

Even the process of blocking on Facebook is onerous enough where if that’s all you did was block one hundred people, that would easily chew up a few hours of your day…

On just one post.

Odds are excellent, and you could find at least half a dozen such posts that motivate you to block hundreds to thousands daily.

It could be a full-time job just blocking people, and you would still find a never-ending supply of names to block within a user base of two billion.

Blocking one thousand people daily would take three years to block one million people.

If you were to go by statistics that bear out at one in five people having severe mental health issues, you would need to block 400 million people.

That would be a lifelong job working every day from morning until you fell asleep without any break from that task.

If that’s how you wish to spend your life, it’s your choice, but you may find other approaches to making your point more beneficial to your sanity.

You can post a public comment on a post where you can chastize all inappropriate laugh reactions at once. I’ve done that, and it can feel rewarding when you get a lot of feedback from people who appreciate someone publicly criticizing lousy behaviour. You will also find that you’ll get laugh reactions on your complaint that you can address.

If you think you will have a discernible impact on behaviours, then you’re not being realistic because succeeding on that level will require years of effort.

You may want to consider lobbying Facebook for improvements to their blocking process because it sucks. It’s onerous and constantly redirects you to pages you probably don’t want to see repeatedly.

Change.org has a petition that has already gathered 296 signatures, and as of this writing, it requests that the Laughing Emoji be removed from Facebook altogether.

Sign the Petition
I recently wrote feedback to Facebook about something that’s been bothering me about their emoji feature. Here is what…www.change.org

If it gains enough traction, we might see at least some changes to their emojis if the laughing emoji isn’t removed altogether.

Here is another article calling for its removal:

No laughing matter: Why it’s time to cancel Facebook’s haha reaction
That squinting, grinning idiot is poisoning Facebook.thespinoff.co.nz

Whatever you decide to do at this point, it’s probably wisest to consider it more personal venting than instigating social change. Otherwise, you will tire yourself into a frustrated frenzy while spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

A helpful quote you should keep in mind for whatever you choose to do is from Winston Churchill.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

Imposition is conflict escalation NOT conflict resolution.

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