books

Should the Earth get a break from humans?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Do you ever get the feeling that we should just give up and let the bombs start flying? I think it’s time that the Earth gets a break from humans. Can you think of anything better than A nuclear or holocaust to do this?”

While cleaning up my Quora content, including A2As like this one. I sometimes make what I’m unsure of is a mistake or not to check out a profile. My first inclination is to pass on the question, but I’m sometimes more curious than I should be about the profile behind the question. When checking out this profile, I thought this would be another troll to mute and block. Then I started scanning the rest of the content, expecting more unhinged lunacy.

I spotted content from someone who appeared somewhat sane, non-trollish, and aware enough to grant the benefit of the doubt about this question by interpreting it as an extreme expression of frustration. We all have moments when we realize afterwards that we could have gone a different route in our expressions.

This may be one of them, so I decided to answer it instead of passing on it and blocking the querent.

I’ve never felt that destroying all life on the planet was a solution to anything. I view it as a kind of MAGAt “burn it all down” attitude that I immediately dismiss as unhinged emotionality.

Although I have encountered this sentiment occasionally, I generally scroll past or get triggered into lambasting it.

This time, however, I will respond with a simple question:

Why should all the rest of the animal and plant life be extinguished to quell the frustrations of a few humans who have lost tolerance for bullshit?

It seems rather like the kind of narcissistic attitude that’s gotten us into this mess in the first place.

Why not just pull a Frank Herbert and create a virus to eliminate humans, allowing the rest of life on Earth to continue? (Okay… Frank’s virus in “The White Plague” didn’t extinguish all life, but you get the picture.)

That seems much more representative of justice to me and perhaps even a better step in owning up to our shit as humans. By allowing all other species to learn from our stupidity (at some point in an imaginary evolutionary future) instead of turning the traces of our existence into glass that can never serve any potential life that may or may not follow, we can at least make up in part for our destructive behaviours.

There’s no upside to this kind of genocidal cleansing of life. Getting rid of humans is one thing, but taking away the opportunity to live away from all other forms of life beyond bacteria and cockroaches seems like adding insult to injury.

This reasoning reminds me of someone considering infanticide. Just because one’s life sucks, it doesn’t mean their families need to be extinguished as well. Eat a bullet or play hopscotch on a freeway to get your misery over with. If the lives you want to extinguish along with yours are innocent of causing harm, and of harming you in particular, how do you factor in punishing them? That makes absolutely no sense to me.

One should at least pick targets directly responsible for their misery, and let everyone else live, so they can learn something of value going forward.

Luigi Mangione chose this route, and he’s now viewed as a hero by many. I’ve even read claims (however trustworthy they may have been) from people about how insurance companies briefly relaxed their policies after Brian Thompson’s exit from this plane. People who would otherwise have been denied coverage and died were accepted for treatment and cured. They are still among the living when they would have died otherwise. One cannot but consider some nobility within an ignoble act.

The entire point of violence as a last resort is that it’s supposed to address the causes of unendurable misery, not eliminate all life. The Bush Doctrine’s advocacy of preemptive action seems to have proven that leading with violence is always the worst strategy to take. It’s supposed to instill hope in the lives of those left behind to continue struggling through difficult situations. That’s what Luigi accomplished.

Turning the planet into a giant glass ball accomplishes nothing more than turning the Earth into a giant glass ball. Nothing is left to praise the heroes who sacrificed their treasure for the sake of protecting the treasures of others.

Sure… I can understand wiping out mosquitoes, but what has any rabbit ever done to you to deserve wiping them all out?

Were you somehow hurt by a carrot or traumatized by tomatoes? Perhaps apples give you gas?

I’ve never met a squirrel that hasn’t made my heart flip.

I don’t see how anyone who isn’t indulging in extremely narcissistic thinking could imagine a nuclear holocaust as a solution to anything.

Please do try to think about how it is precisely that kind of self-serving thinking driving the Orange Nazi freak who likely contributes to your extreme attitude.

It’s a strategy that gives the bastards their coveted win.

What makes you think Trump isn’t trying to get revenge on all of life in precisely that way, because he’s reaching the end of his? Right now, he seems like the guy who got into office to party like there’s no tomorrow because he knows there isn’t much longer for him. In a 1992 interview, he spent an hour talking to Charlie Rose, bragging about how much he loves revenge on people he feels have betrayed him.

1992 Charlie Rose Interview with Donald Trump

Why do you think Republicans are making such a fuss about Biden’s decline and faking outrage about it “being hidden” in the dastardly, devious way Democrats always do? My guess is that’s just another projection on their behalf.

I will predict that we’ll discover insiders within the Republican party are acting precisely in ways that run interference on TACOman to hide his decline. He may not even make it to the end of his term.

It would not surprise me to discover Jake Tapper’s got another book in progress to mirror the one he’s hawking right now.

In short… No, I can’t think of anything worse, not better than a nuclear holocaust. Feeling as if cats, dogs, or even leopards can evolve enough to rule the world comforts me.

Mondays may suck, but they don’t suck that badly.

Kamandi — Last Boy on Earth – DC Comics — by Jack Kirby
Kamandi — Last Boy on Earth — DC Comics

New Memes Category

This is my first test of the categories feature on WordPress as I organize my thoughts under a common umbrella free from submission to often inconsistently applied rules through the various social media and other platforms I’ve been spreading my content around on like it were runny peanut butter flowing like sludge from too much oil.

At any rate, my intention in this category is to create a repository of memes, from which I’ve already created *many* over the last year and beyond. As of this posting, I’ve been revitalizing my WordPress account with a daily editorial that I’ve culled from my daily contributions to Quora while answering questions as a form of therapy for a long story I’m still trying to determine how best to share it with the world.

If I find the categories feature here on WordPress helpful and flexible enough to address my concerns with sharing that story, then I plan to add a few more categories soon. I may include my story and links to online print-on-demand sites I’ve been testing out as I adapt my content creation efforts to this site.

Here are a few of my most recent meme creations, which I hope you find humorous enough to steal and share.

Cheerios

Today’s memes are in the theme of political mockery (as most of my meme creations generally target Canadian and American politics, but can vary).

PS. These are all of a high enough resolution to print at a decent enough quality on letter-sized paper.

Americana Believe their Shite (This first one includes a censored version, which, you guessed it, became my inspiration to explore options while rethinking how to share my memes):

Canuckian Politics:

While posting these, I noticed a slideshow feature I may explore while posting older memes that are outdated for addressing current issues, such as memes I created during the election season.

I hope you enjoy them and can find some value in resharing them.

Thanks for reading and for your support. I hope to grow this into a viable venture that can sustain both body and mind, and I sincerely appreciate your visits, upvotes, and comments.

Thank you.

Does the USA need to exist anymore?

Patrick Henry — Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Does-the-USA-need-to-exist-anymore/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

The U.S. cannot continue to exist as it does, mainly because it currently exists in a form that betrays its founding principles and values.

Patrick Henry Speech: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/patrick.asp

No matter how much power the few corrupt billionaires have or can amass against the people, they cannot kill the dream.

350 million people will stop them and make them pay for their betrayal.

The U.S. cannot continue to betray everything it claims to be without losing everything it has gained as benefits from representing those values.

350 million people love their country so much that they cannot sing “Home of the brave and land of the free” without feeling shame over how cowardly and submissive they have become by the machinations of monsters.

People like Curtis Yarvin will be vilified for decades, if not centuries, while the tech bros with overgrown egos will become cautionary tales for the next century to learn from. The Walton family should be experiencing concern, if not outright fear, for their future. The 50 billionaires who supported Trump’s presidency should be planning to escape to their bunkers. The Heritage Foundation president who threatened bloodshed should now be chowing down on some crow if he’s not too stupid to realize that he is about to reap the whirlwind for his arrogance.

The U.S. will either restructure itself to become more aligned with its professed values or it will destroy itself and destroy global stability in the process. The Find Out stage of the Fuck Around game the billionaires have played with the American people has only just begun.

If they don’t start issuing their mea culpas now, flaming Teslas will appear like quaint bonfires before Trump’s term is done.

The nation’s future lies in the hands of its people, while the rest of the world still holds out faith that the American spirit is not yet completely dead.

We are all hoping the scourge of this century will be overcome by far less bloodshed and destruction than the scourge of the last century.

Why am I so quick to blame everything on myself?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-so-quick-to-blame-everything-on-myself/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Most likely because you’ve been conditioned to believe that everything is your fault, whether it has or hasn’t been. You may have been raised in a household where blameshifting and victim-shaming were standard responses to complaints, which is far more common than most people want to admit, given how prevalent that behaviour is in society.

We are generally all taught to internalize our pains and cope silently with the mistreatments we receive from others, and that’s primarily a consequence of other people’s incapacity to do anything that could help alleviate another’s suffering. Most people are just too busy trying to keep their heads above water in a dystopic world where they can’t afford to care for others because doing so comes at the expense of their survival.

This condition of “everyone for themselves” is by design and has been cultivated in society over the last several decades by a ruling class that has pitted individuals and groups within the working class against one another.

They’ve realized it’s cheaper to cultivate animosity within the lower classes than to support income equity and economic justice.

The consequence is for people to internalize their unresolved issues and begin a process of suicidal ideation. Blaming yourself for everything is a slippery slope, not limited to your personal experience but also a cultivated attitude in society. We can see an upward trend correlating suicidal ideation with the increased economic injustice we are all forced to endure by the ownership class.

Suicide Data and Statistics

In essence, the long-term consequences of the class war waged against the working class is a strategy of deflection away from their persistent threats while simply directing a flow of negative sentiment back onto the working class while denying the majority a valid outlet for their struggles, and that creates a solution for them that permits them to ignore the suffering they cause.

They have become so successful in cultivating a self-destructive form of lower-class pruning that whenever someone steps outside the paradigm and shockingly challenges their destruction, many among the lower classes will fight to protect the system of abuse by attacking those who do not capitulate and die quietly so as not to disturb their quiet reverie.

People like Luigi Mangione respond in diametric opposition to their expectations of people internalizing their abuses, and that represents a shock to a system they cannot tolerate, so take measures to ensure vigilantism like his is presented to the public in such a way that he becomes a message to the little people of what will happen to them if they resist and fight back.

In short, believing everything is your fault is precisely the attitude cultivated in society because that’s how the ruling class can rule with a minimal amount of their blood being shed.

Is Neil deGrasse Tyson wrong?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Is Neil deGrasse Tyson wrong to suggest that talented athletes credit God when they win on social media?”

I think there is something severely wrong on so many levels that it’s impossible to address them without an entire book and a lot of research to identify the dynamics of a business decision justifying the dissemination of lies in society to stimulate engagement and generate revenue.

This is horrifying on so many levels that it insults every aspect of humanity, human society, and the social contract. This contributes to the widespread decay and ultimate destruction of civilized society on the most malignant levels. This crap is worse than the stage of “subliminal seduction” we went through in the 1970s when laws were crafted to prohibit embedded “invisible messaging” within entertainment media.

Psychorama — Wikipedia

Neil deGrasse Tyson has never suggested any such thing, and although it’s easy to attribute this claim to a believer on a mission of Lying for Jesus, it’s not. This is even worse than a believer trolling for reactions by lying.

For non-Quorans: This screengrab indicates the question author, and in this case, the question was written and posed by a bot designed to stimulate engagement on this social media site. This is a common revenue-generation strategy employed by media outlets across the board. Fox Entertainment, for example, has built its empire entirely upon this toxic revenue generation model.

Targeting information appealing to the limbic system is like serving up crack to a heroin addict, and that shapes the society we are cultivating by allowing this practice to dominate media. The effects are profound. 

Not only does this represent an abysmally immoral strategy for generating revenue, but it’s also a strategy that furthers a divide between people in a society already at the edge of fracturing into chaos. This strategy for engagement is ultimately a violent assault on our social contract and is responsible for the dramatic divisiveness characterizing our social dynamics today.

This precisely reinforces the post on my Thotbag space, citing Yuval Noah Harari’s statements during a round table discussion about the threat democracy itself is facing. Here is the meme I posted that includes his full text:

Along with Mr. Harari’s warning, Ian Bremmer pointed at the problem this divisive, conflict-escalating disinformation creates for society:

This fraudulent question is worse than Quora violating its own, now primarily defunct BNBR policy; it’s an assault on human decency on the most corrupt of levels for the most corrupt reasons.

This should not be disturbing only to atheists who fight back against a daily assault from believer trolls seeking to provoke emotional reactions. This should be disturbing to everyone who cares in the least about things like integrity and the social contract that has never been strained to such a degree as what we are living with today.

If society collapses into chaos — If people’s lives are unnecessarily lost because we can’t or won’t back away from the cliff we march toward — Then this kind of manipulative nonsense perpetrated upon us all for the sake of profit will be responsible for the nightmares ahead that we are about to encounter.

This is central to my argument on why social media should not be operated on a for-profit model. Social media is a community development endeavour, and we must consider how we approach its role in society more thoroughly than consigning personal information to a feeding ground for mining material profit.

That we are being strategically and systematically provoked by algorithms to hate each other should horrify all of us.

What does the left mean by freedom?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What does the left mean by freedom? When ever I see lefties passing around rankings of the “freeist” countries, inevitably the countries at the top are the type with heavy regulation, heavy taxation, low economic freedom.”

One of the hallmarks of a lack of freedom is ideological thinking that colours one’s perceptions in ways that interfere with one’s apprehension of reality to impede one’s critical thinking skills.

For example, the flawed presumption in this question presumes higher taxation equals less economic freedom when the obvious comparison between the U.S.’s health exploitation system is far more destructive to one’s financial freedom than the taxed version of universal health care offered by every other nation that has succeeded in providing higher quality care at a lower price.

There is no economic freedom when medical bankruptcies destroy lives.

There is no economic freedom for people who pay over one thousand dollars per month for insulin when the rest of the world pays only tens of dollars.

There is no freedom when one is murdered for profit.

There is no cognitive freedom for anyone who divides the world into ideological camps, just as there is no freedom from the mind-destroying forms of bigotry polluting this world.

Within the context of this question, the definition of freedom that addresses it is clarity of thinking, in which the querent proves their mind is so trapped within a toxic paradigm they can’t understand freedom when it’s presented to them in the most unambiguous of terms.

I fully expect this answer to whoosh past the querent’s mind and trigger them into an ideological quandary where they will dismiss these words as an ideological irrelevancy in much the same way that the people who think Donald Trump is an intelligent man are utter idiots.

Why are no geniuses like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates in Europe?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-no-geniuses-like-Elon-Musk-Steve-Jobs-or-Bill-Gates-in-Europe/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Well, that’s easy… none of them are (or were) “geniuses.”

All have been sharks in a tank filled with small fish they overpowered and incorporated their value into their own.

In Europe, people are — or were still somewhat considered “people” whose lives held something approximating value — at least enough to not worship greed above their welfare.

The U.S. is unique in that it places profit above human life.

The U.S. is this century’s Rome, while the capitalist system is the equivalent of a gladiatorial pen where the biggest and strongest gladiators suited up with armour mow down victims by the thousands and the crowds cheer all the destruction.

Hell, the crowds get pissed when one of the little people manages to strike back and give the mighty gladiators a humiliating bloody nose. That riles them up and incentivizes them to hate the little people even more while they add more armour and weaponry to the gladiator’s outfits so that they can do more damage.

All three, with some slight exception of Gates, were just smart enough to spot people smart enough to make them rich, and they added them to their gladiator arena to dominate the competition. At the same time, they did everything they could through legal manipulations to weaken their competition.

Ask yourself how it is that an alleged “genius” would forego cancer treatment in favour of new age woo to address a medical condition and die from it. That’s not very “genius-like.”

Meanwhile, Musk proves every day how much of an egotistical buffoon he is while spending $44 billion on the world’s most enormous megaphone to devalue it to such a degree that it’s now worth less than a quarter of its purchase price. Meanwhile, the competition is heating up over which alternative will replace his Xitter.

Of the three, at least Gates puts some effort into helping the most disenfranchised in the world, even if he’s mainly motivated by the potential of new technologies that can become ubiquitous. (His toilet redesign initiative, for example, can potentially transform the world if he succeeds. That’s a level of billions in profit to rival what he got through Microsoft, and it’s also an initiative he’s relying on the genius of others to make manifest. He’s just financing their efforts.)

Even Jobs understood how his “genius” was not “being a genius” but was not getting in the way of real geniuses he hired to profit from.

Musk, on the other hand, is an absolute idiot by contrast because his ego has blinded him to his shortcomings, and he believes, because of his wealth, that he truly is a genius. At the same time, gullible people lap that nonsense up like ice cream.

If you are a Leftist, do you think it is wrong to build Utopias?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/If-you-are-a-Leftist-do-you-think-it-is-wrong-to-build-Utopias/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

As humans, it is vital that we all work together to make a better world for all of us today and for those who come after us.

After all, we are currently enjoying many freedoms and luxuries we would otherwise not have had it not been for the contributions of those who came before us.

Failing to do our part to make this a better world makes us a parasitic element that erodes the social fabric.

Working against the betterment of humanity is a betrayal of the social contract. Today’s dynamic resembles a tribe that survived a primitive existence by everyone working together. Having one person in that tribe work against the tribe’s survival was viewed as a threat to that tribe.

They had much more efficient ways of dealing with such betrayals then.

A utopia is otherwise just a setting on a compass that keeps us on track. Utopia is a concept and a direction, not a destination.

Hiding one’s misanthropy behind a political ideology is the polluting act of an intellectual coward and a morally depraved psychopath.

As you can see from how people are united in support of Luigi Mangioni, it’s not about left versus right. It never has been. It’s always been the top attacking the bottom, while people like you who play into that divisiveness are just useful idiots keeping us all distracted from saving ourselves from disaster.

Framing this question within the context of a political ideology only adds to the chasm between political polarities, imbues it with passive-aggressive disparaging implications, and is irresponsibly divisive nonsense.

Shame on you.

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.

Why has the term “weird” gotten into Republican heads?

Norman from “I, Mudd”, Star Trek TOS

The term “weird” has been a success due to having correctly pegged their audience.

One of the worst insults for a child in grade school struggling to fit in is being called weird, and being called weird means being ostracized by the group while one’s socialization skills have barely begun developing.

To be called weird at that age means being forced into becoming an outsider, and that induces a deep sense of loneliness and despair within a child.

Drumpf is an extreme and highly malignant narcissist who craves validation through attention. He’s been able to buy and bully his way into always being the centre of attention throughout his life.

Becoming president is a way for him to convince himself that he is relevant to society, and that soothed the young boy inside who had never grown up.

Weird strikes at the heart of his dysfunction and throws him off balance because it confronts his addiction to attention at its core.

It is particularly effective because it’s a relatively benign word for most mature adults with little impact on healthy psychology.

It’s also a word that can be used in many cases. Practically anything can be described as weird, but it’s a word that “has a frequency effect,” like a dog whistle no one else can hear but him and those who (ironically) empathize with him. It gives him a headache while everyone else wonders what’s happening because they can’t hear anything.

This word choice is three-dimensional chess like the word “woke” is. They’re both fun words to use because they’re simple and punchy without being offensive.

They are words that “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,”… and that pisses all the Reichtoids off to no end.

It’s like the logic problem Captain Kirk gave Norman to cause it to overload in the episode, “I, Mudd.”