Nervous Energy

(Pencil on canvas 16"X20")

"...To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet..." - T.S. Eliot 

Write A Brief Summary

The modern system of American education was established for the purposes of homogeny and standardization. It is a system conceived in the sin of aristocratic lore - the underlying idea that the masses must be managed, controlled, subordinated. Despite the sincerest efforts of meaningful professionals and educators, they are confined within a system that scorns innovation and rewards conformity.


With the advent of standardized testing, this condition has worsened to the point of critical mass. Creativity of thought has been replaced by the mental management of sanitized bits of information. Abstraction of thought has been replaced by linear and contained processes which limit the ability to make insightful connections across disciplines. 


Random dots. Zero pattern recognition.


Because the teenage years are characterized by the overt dominance of the pleasure-principle, the easy homogenization of modern education is perfectly suited for a generation of people who have had everything pre-imagined for them. 


From 3D-Imax-seat-rumbling-hi-tech-special-effects-driven-cinema (which can even make redundant, unimaginative plot lines bearable), to total-immersion-graphics-enhanced-high-powered-intuitive-interactive gaming systems, to the inherently narcissistic Facebook/Twitter/social networking cites which gobble-up the limited attention of a drama-prone teen, to High Def television and high-speed smart phones which have replaced actual interaction with virtual interaction - we can see Aldous Huxley's distraction-based society come into being. We are living in the Brave New World of centralized social management and control. Soma is our everywhere.


The institutional inclination of modern public schools is to take the inherent hallmarks of youth (curiosity, creativity, authenticity, imagination) and remove them from the equation. A nation of critical and independent thinkers is antithetical to the pre-ordained paradigm envisioned by the global elite and the hidden oligarchy financing this unsettling reality.


The only solution is a complete systemic change.


****


Today I learned to respond to bells, sit in rows, be still, memorize bits of data, and not question the methodology of the state agent charged with my mental development nor the design of the standardized curriculum. 


Because my brain has been rewired by highly interactive video games and other facets of modern technology, I am easily bored by lecture and classical modes of instruction. This boredom manifests in a variety of ways and can often be medicated into submission. Regardless, I would much rather update my Facebook profile while texting my girlfriend and playing Temple Run on my iPhone than listen to one of my classmates struggle to read aloud.  


Sadly, my culture has made me the ultimate materialist and the empty pursuit of shiny objects and meaningless celebrity is my greatest ambition. In reality, my level of intellectual development (which has been vigorously restrained) has prepared me for the life of cubicles and taxes and repetition and drudgery. But I'll never notice. 


And I will still update my Facebook daily.   


****

Above is the first part in a rather extensive interview with John Taylor Gatto. The actual interview begins around the 17 minute mark (there is an overly lengthy intro by the interviewer). The entire series covers a variety of topics. You can read his amazingly thorough and eye-opening book, Underground History of American Education, here. Highly recommended. 

Until we do something about the way in which the young of our nation are being educated, the future is truly lost.  

Making A Rabbit Hole

After the death of the Dalai Lama, the process of seeking his new incarnation begins. A young “candidate” is presented with several objects. Some are favorites of the previous incarnation, while others are randomly selected. If the candidate is attracted to the items cherished by the previous incarnation, he is Dalai Lama.

Currently, we are living with the fourteenth incarnation.

Regardless of one’s religious alignment, the implicit idea in this approach is that the human soul has natural compulsions – specific tendencies inherent to the design. We are drawn to certain realities like the tides are drawn by the pull of the moon.

An artist picks up a pencil for the first time and sketches a bird. From that moment on, the trajectory of his or her life bends to the weight of that compulsion. Various compulsions have various densities and thus various gravities.

For me, the ultimate-density compulsion is the esoteric realm. From UFOs to Martian ruins to ancient astronauts to occult societies to advanced technology… a thousand steps leading through the grassy knoll of paranoia or revelation or both.

Many consider these topics the natural habitat of the insane. Yet in all actuality, any abstract examination of human activity is the very stuff of insanity.

What’s Happening Now?

Right now, I am typing into a complex software application specifically designed to be compatible with the intricate design of my iMac while interfacing with a worldwide network of signals. Insane, right?

I am also streaming a live radio broadcast that is represented by a small “window” in the top right-hand corner of my monitor. With ninety-something pixels per square inch, this window occupies about nine hundred or so.

My LCD monitor is made by pressing two specially treated, polarized planes of glass together. Sandwiched between them is a liquid crystal material that responds to an electrical current and allows different wavelengths of light through to varying degrees across the plane. Absolutely insane.

As the man on the radio rants about the globalist banking cartel, I recognize that this is all being transmitted across fiber optic cables – voices transformed into signals at one end are received and converted back into voices at the other end.

This is to say nothing about the very molecules and atoms holding all this together. Atoms – which pop in and out of existence – which exist as both particle and wave – which exist in a superposition of potential manifestation – are currently holding me up while I type onto a very solid keyboard and stare into a seemingly solid monitor.

Reality is insane.

How insane is it then to investigate the reality of topics considered taboo by the so-called “mainstream” media?

Given the absolutely insane nature of the media monstrosity - given the rigid insanity of scientific dogma - given the insane nature of politics and political involvement in the scientific endeavor - given the verifiable insanity of clandestine groups like the CIA and NSA (groups that function as the organ of paranoia for the state) - given the insane secrecy of the "military industrial complex" and its use of classified technologies for the purpose of spreading death - given the endless stream of lies and disinformation that continuously flows from national security institutions – how likely is it that topics ridiculed by each of these authoritarian entities may actually be the only things worth examining?

A paranoid conspiracy theorist I am.

For The Sake Of Clarity

Any investigation into the realm of the esoteric reveals a chaotic swirl of ideas, hypotheses, speculation, and conjecture. I am reminded of a quote that I keep coming back to from Alan Moore (writer, "magician", anarchist, cult icon). In discussing his own investigation into the subculture of conspiracy while developing the graphic novel, From Hell, a tale told around the Jack the Ripper murders, he states:

“The truth is that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the gold-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is far more frightening. NOBODY is in control. The world is rudderless.”

Though he discounts conspiracy as the domain of “paranoid fantasists”, I can’t help but appreciate the point that he is making. At least with the so-called “mainstream” there is order. Overt propaganda, yes. Product placement and suggestive advertisement, yes. But to the conscious mind, all of this is rather obvious and plain.

The world of the paranoid fantasist, however... the world of conspiracy and occult secrecy, the world of the greys and reptilians... this is a world in complete disarray.

And while Alan Moore may be right – the underlying chaos of existence may be the ultimate truth of existence – it does not preclude the many layers of truth along the way.

It may be that conspiracy trips over conspiracy in a race for the illusion of control, but the race does indeed exist. It may be a futile effort by bags of carbon and water seeking dominion over a small pixel of a planet on the tattered fringes of a spiraling arm of a ubiquitous galaxy in a universe of billions of galaxies, stars, planets.

But the effort does indeed exist. Futile as it may be.

We plummet into the ultimate black hole of oblivion.

"Alea jacta est." The die is cast.

Public Education and the Descent of Man

John Taylor Gatto explains the sinister nature of compulsory education:



MAYDAY

Generations

Familiar stranger. A paradoxical term I once heard to describe those people who exist in our lives indirectly. A tangible presence as well as an abstraction.

In the Catholic tradition, infants are given an extra set of parents - an antiquated hedging of bets - called "godmother" and "godfather".

My godmother is a familiar stranger.

She has always been a presence in my life though I would be hard-pressed to recall if I have even heard her voice. For some reason, I imagine she sounds like my mother - another Kentucky girl. Growing up in Louisville (pronounced the way a drowning man might sound as he swallows the surface water on the way to the bottom, LEWavll... blub lub...), I like to think the clean air and clean water soften the vocal chords to create that rustic antebellum yodel.

If, in reality, she sounds like she swallowed a box of nails, I wouldn't know.

When my mother tells tales of her past, they invariably find their way back to my godmother, a gal called Bev - so many Kentucky summers ago. I sometimes try to imagine these years. The halcyon days of the late 50's and early 60's - braving the edge of curfew - talking to silver-tongued boys - exhilarating - forever.

A generation removed from my own, the nuances of those times are lost in translation. But the hallmarks of youth, the universal character of it all... these I know. Our childhood years are readily embellished by the vigorous decor of Romance. I know this spell. It is a familiar incantation. Any time I get together with my closest friends, we evoke the spirits of the past as readily and familiar as laughter. My "godmother", a gal named Bev, is the embodiment of this spirit. What a great thing to be.

*****

Carl Jung would say that the very tradition of the godmother is a cultural expression of the dual-mother archetype. This also explains why my sister used to think that she was adopted and had a secret set of parents out there somewhere. Parallel to this, the idea of dual lineage (as seen in examples from Hercules to Christ) is a common social archetype manifesting across cultures and generations.

Ironically, I feel like it is in this collective current of unconscious concepts and ideas and symbols - Carl Jung's ethereal realm of the "collective unconscious" where the spiritual connection of man exists as a part of the universal flow of mysterious entanglement - that my familiar stranger and I are more familiar than strange.

We both have a love of art. Though she is a professional and I am a novice, we both paint.

Art is all about the undercurrents. Symbols. Mood. Perspective. There are very few human endeavors where the subconscious processes harmonize with a conscious act to such a degree. "Art people" can always recognize their own kind -- kindred spirits -- familiar strangers.

So in this way, my godmother, a gal named Bev, has always been a tangible part of my life. In the spirit of brotherhood, sisterhood, and companionship as well as in the spirit of the visionary, the artist, the creative force -- our connections are alive despite the fact that I have never held her hand.

As I Follow Blindly

Popping Bubbles in the Multiverse

Last night was autumn-cool.

The relentless heat of the Texas summer (which is about 9 months out of the year) makes Fall a welcome guest - even if temporary. It was a particularly starry night; the waning crescent moon was barely a scratch of light and the outdoor fluorescent that usually illuminates the place where I stood was mercifully silent. Staring up at the visible stars (the constellation of Orion looms large above my patch of earth this time of year), I settled into a ready pensiveness.

In this familiar posture, I am prepared to mediate great questions - or at least as great as I can conceive. A philosopher in the sandbox. Wrecking castles.

Thousands of years separating each point of light, species born and extinguished - from Brachiosaurus to Barack, from scrolls to smart phones, Stonehenge to the Golden Gate bridge. Amoeba to me.

This night, I could only fathom the surface. Distance and dimension eluded me the way that complex math always does. The calculus phantoms of my limitations.

I experienced a feeling much like the kind that you get when you wake from a dream. I felt the unreality of reality. In a flash it was gone and I was back to staring at the stars of the primal hunter -- signifier of seasons -- pyramids at Giza. As above, so below.

Reality snapped back into place. As did I. Or because.

*****

The seemingly bizarre notion that reality exists as unified quantum field of probability has been advanced by theoretical Physics and the sorcerers of their profession since the unification of electricity and magnetism in the 19th century.

Given the mysteries of quantum entanglement and the so-called "observer effect", it seems hard to deny the role of individual consciousness (or even the Jungian collective unconscious) in actually creating the tangible world -- along with equally tangible Physicists to explain how it happens.

But the nature of scientific pursuit, as dogmatic as it may be (witness the global warming fraud), implies that today's reality becomes tomorrow's flat earth witchcraft.

This perpetual state of development and understanding -- if we are to gleam any principle from its trajectory -- is that there is no end. No final point. No touch down. Everything unfolds and unfolds.

Truth is ever-expanding. Because we are.

Without us, the universe is merely a field of superpositions and probabilities. Reality is always moving with us... Because we make it.

When I was little kid, I can remember thinking for a time that whenever we would drive, the moon would follow -- keeping pace with my dad's old V.W. Even when I realized this was not the case, I used to pretend it nonetheless.

Philosophers, scientists, thinkers throughout the ages have speculated as to the nature of reality. What is this thing called life? What is the material world? What is the metaphysical world? What is man?

But these questions imply an answer. And an answer implies an end.

There is no end. That is the answer.

Bowl of Dust

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." ~George Orwell

Based on our current trajectory, the future is as bleak as any dystopian nightmare envisioned by Orwell. We have become a society where each is beholden to the next through the metrics of debt, imperialism, and what we are told is the "common good".

We have decided to silently accept the sacrifice of personal liberty for homeland security.

We have quietly funded a robust military empire and encouraged the profit schemes of the war machine.

We have capitulated to the ever-pervasive and invasive surveillance society as well as increasingly authoritarian modes of control.

We have time and again sanctioned the authority of the state to exercise force on our behalf -- whether it be the confiscation of wealth through taxation or the violation of private property through regulation.

We have accepted the principle that a proactive government, as long as it is called a "democracy" and cloaks itself in the guise of "freedom", is at liberty to invade every aspect of our personal lives as quickly as it will invade a foreign country.

We have accepted that terrorists are out to get us. We believe the lie of 9-11 as well as other events fabricated or manipulated for the purpose of control. We accept the cultural Psi-Op being run out of the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon as reality.

The fairy-tales are real.

Because they are less painful.

We blindly believe that there is still an America to believe in. Sorry. It is gone. It was long ago co-opted by the militant forces of control and subjugation.

Eventually, blogs like this - criticizing the folding fist of tyranny -- will be deemed "hate speech" or some other form of "terrorist" rhetoric.

Over and over in my head I repeat the wisdom of the famous German thinker, Goethe...

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

The sinister beauty is all around us. An elegant sociopathic design.

Wake up.

Vigorous Control Through Vigorous Fear

An insightful essay delivered by the amazing Mr. Corbett.

Watch Me Implode

"I had a dream of the open water;

I was swimming away out to sea.

So deep I could never touch bottom...

What a fool I used to be." ~ Neal Peart

When I watch the news, I see the propaganda machine at work. The paradigm of reality is established. Norms. Modalities. Moralities. Constructs. Limited vision based on fabricated schisms: Glenn Beck versus Chris Matthews; CNN versus FOX; Sarah Palin versus Hilary Clinton; conservative versus liberal.

But when it's time to beat the drums of war -- all media harmonize. When it's time to propagandize the phony war on drugs -- all media share a common chord. None will investigate the Federal Reserve banking scheme. None remember the constitution or serve to protect individual liberty. None will question the nightmare police state taking hold in America. They capitulate to their corporate and governmental lords and promote the agenda of the elite. Maintaining the false dichotomy through fear and the exploitation of ignorance.

Swine Flu today. Financial collapse tomorrow. Weapons of mass destruction today. Terrorist plot tomorrow. On and on - the machine it turns.

When I watch network television programming, I realize that programming is not said without an understanding of irony. I see the revelation of the method. It is as sinister as it is transparent.

Once the illusion is shattered, it is shattered for good.

*****

Life is as ethereal as it is tangible. It is as majestic as it is stark. And we are damn lucky to be here. To be alive and aware at this moment -- the near mathematical impossibility of it all... and yet here you are. Here we all are.

Now clock in. Spend your life in a cubicle or office. Never take vacations. Exhaust the most productive years of your majestic life obeying rules and abiding institutions.

Or not.

We give up so much of our humanity in pursuit of media-driven cultural illusions. We accept as fact so much of the fabricated reality created by the mass media establishment. We are well-contained and in our place.

****

Enter the world wide web.

The Internet is the last bastion of free expression and discourse left in the "civilized" world. Would it be a conspiracy to assert that the elitists who have been able to control the flow of information since time immemorial have an active interest in transforming the free Internet into a glorified version of cable TV? Would it be a conspiracy to argue that the globalist masters who run this fabricated reality scheme have a vested interest in maintaining control over humanity -- obscuring the limitless potential of human development (free energy and other liberating technologies) by declaring it classified as a matter of national security? Are we being lied to about everything?

Yes. It's a conspiracy, alright. And a nasty one at that. It goes to the very core of human freedom and potential. Mankind is never liberated by its governments or institutions. It is only enslaved by them. They know no other purpose. Those in control of the levers and gears of manufactured consent fear nothing more than the light of truth. Illumination.

The false reality matrix of controlled culture and the media propaganda machine are threatened by the Internet and all that it represents.

Is it too late? Is the genie too far out of the bottle? For the sake of free humanity, let us hope.

With Osiris On Our Side

When I was a young boy I took my first communion. Being from a Catholic family, I was brought up to believe in the Christian God and His son who is also God and the ethereal presence known as the Holy Ghost who also happens to be God.

The idea of the Trinity was a perplexing one. My young mind had difficulty hammering out the logistics of it all.

Moreso - the idea of the brutal and bloody sacrifice of a deity was a wretched one -the idea of immaculate conception was an intriguing one -the idea of Noah and his arc was a ridiculous one -the idea of Moses destroying the cow-worshiping Jews who followed him to Mount Sinai was a frightening one -and the idea of going to church in order to sit/stand/kneel while surrounded by a citadel of stained glass depicting the Crucifixion and Resurrection was a tedious one.

I was taught to believe in priests and popes and churches and sin. I was taught that the benevolent creator of the universe was watching. And when I committed sin, I injured God.

As a child, being properly taught to fear an entity who had nearly destroyed all of humanity through flood (along with many rogue factions of Adam's descendants through organized warfare and genocide -- sucks to be a Canaanite), I decided that when it was time to engage in my first act of confession -- I would come clean.

The sins of an entire decade on earth went something as follows:

Sometimes I don't listen to my mom and dad. Sometimes I say bad words - like shit and goddamn (I remember actually saying them). Sometimes I get mad and fight with my sisters. One time I stole something from the store. And one time I told God that I hated him.

I was told to say a certain number of Hail Mary's (I think it was thirty -but I wouldn't bet) and to listen to my parents and to stop fighting with my sisters and to stop taking things that don't belong to me.

Here's your receipt. Come again.

As I got older, our mandatory Sunday service became less and less frequent. I'd like to think that my mother and father found it as dull and uninspiring as I did. More likely, they were too busy and too tired raising three kids while working full-time and keeping afloat during the bum years of the early 80's.

Either way, I'm glad that we finally limited our church visits to the obligatory Thanksgiving mass when my very Catholic grandmother would visit from Virginia. Maybe we'd go on Christmas eve. During high school - almost never.

Now - only when a niece gets baptized or goes through the same Communion process as the rest of the fold.

I never eat the bread. Even though I could. Technically.

Yet I still believe in a spiritual force, or sublime system, or transcendent ocean of consciousness called "god". I still hold to a strong moral code. And when I meditate at night just before drifting off into the ether, I know such lovely pictures!

Men who credit God for their greatness, from my point of view, have it all wrong. They are great only because they are themselves the subjective expression of that which we call God.

That force, that unified field of consciousness, is filtered through the human body and manifests as individual perception. But separateness is an illusion of the bio-mechanical body suit which we wear. Our three-dimensional experiences and observations of reality are limited to the mechanical possibilities and limitations of the human mind. There is much more to perceive than we are capable of perceiving.

If I am wrong -- then I hope the answer is reincarnation. I want to come back as an Egyptian Pharaoh. Or Henry David Thoreau.

"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

and to die is different from what any one supposed. And luckier."

~Walt Whitman

Page 9,001 Subsection B4

Are the nuances and subtleties somehow apart from the principle of things? Freedom and servitude. Liberation and subjugation.

I have often been accused of lacking nuance in my geopolitical view - a sin against the complex machinery of the globalist leviathan. After all, who needs principles when there are so many layers of carefully contrived nuance to consider?

I have likewise been accused of wanting to do away with revered and "vital" institutions - such as the vampire Federal Reserve system - instead of reforming from within. Working to refine layer upon layer of nuance for the sake of sustaining the unsustainable.

Perhaps my disdain is mostly true. And reasonable.

It's all bullshit slight-of -hand, I say. Tricks! -- The nuanced position is always hidden up the sleeve.

Rather than "doing away" with these institutions, I would like to see our species render them irrelevant. Outgrow them. Transcend them. Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, corporate vultures and financiers -- we are responsible for their power because we perpetuate the institutions they use to subdue us. .

We are responsible for the Orwellian society they have conspired to create. Our weakness. Our Fear. Our gullibility and distraction. We make the prison ourselves. We live in it without protest or concern. Without question. Obedient to the last.

"...BE the change you want to see in the world," said Gandhi.

In the end, all that you can control are your own actions. Your thoughts. Your feelings and intention. To whom or what you choose to submit. Again, to whom or what you choose to submit. Be the change.

Nothing outside of you exists.

Freedom - as with slavery - is a state of mind.

Bring Back Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. ~Thoreau

*****

Because all unique expressions of truth by the individual are necessarily subversive, the machinery of society and culture as well as our malignant and onerous institutions actually abhor the individual.

The holy monuments of society require conformity and submission. Sacrifice. Your life blood. Soul. Spirit. Essence.

Watch Television. Play video games. Work. Eat. Sleep. But whatever you do, don't think. Don't stare too long. Stop short. Don't take the inner-journey. Only concern yourself with the material world. Acquiesce to the ruling class. Focus on celebrity. Dream of riches. Take vaccines. Die.

******

Bring back Henry David Thoreau.

Would You Like Fries With That Dimethylpolysiloxane??

When I first began exploring the GMO/ Fluoride/ Aspartame/ Monsanto rabbit hole, I was actually somewhat skeptical. Despite significant research into the New World Order agenda and the Illuminati network of secret societies as well as the occultism involved in their ritual and traditions - I was not quite ready to believe in the "soft kill" hypothesis i.e. the slow poisoning of the masses through the machinery of science. Of course, that was then. This is now.

It is time for a new environmentalism. An environmentalism that is more concerned with the chemicals being put into the food and water supply. An environmentalism more concerned with the disturbing cocktails used in our vaccines and medications. An environmentalism that looks to the lingering chemtrails criss-crossing the skies and demands answers. An environmentalism that is based on human health and harmony. A real environmentalism. Not the current environmental stasi bent on controlling everything from the temperature of your home to the contents of your refrigerator. How and when you flush the commode. Where you can fish.

The new environmentalism should not be concerned with asserting influence in Washington solely for the purpose of using the hammer of governmental force against property rights and individual sovereignty. It should concern itself with truth. Education. Enlightenment.

The largest polluters are governments and corporations. Not Joe Blow running his AC at 72 degrees during the summer. Yet the brunt of the assault of today's environmental movement focuses on the destructive power of the lowly masses - not war machines or GMO foods. This must change.

It's time for a real environmentalism to emerge.

******

Deep Breath, Exhale

This week I turned 38. A who-cares? figure to be sure. It's not like one of the biggies - 21, 30, 40, etc - where the prospect of staring down another decade or finally being able to buy a beer at the pub infuses the day with an inherent sub-text. But 38? Whatever. All I am doing is staring at 40.

The average life expectancy of a male living in the US is right at 76 years-old; being 38 means I am at the statistical mid-point of my life. Half gone, and if I am lucky, another 38 to go. If I were unfortunate enough to have been born a citizen of Mozambique, I would only have about 3 years left to live - life there being a brutal struggle unimaginable to my Western experience - so I consider myself statistically and geographically fortunate to say the least.

I have been told, and I think that the evaluation is mostly fair, that I still act a bit like a twentysomething - my fondness for crass, potty humor and a relaxed disposition that my father calls "above the fray" or "out there" as my sisters may say - speaks to both my assets and to my flaws.

According to the Jungian-based Myers-Briggs Typology test, I am a Healer Idealist. INFP. Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving. Those who know me would consider it especially ironic that Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are listed as having the same personality type.

The Keirsey evaluation of this personality type states that "Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials."

Sounds good. I'll take it. Better than some of the others. Though they never tell you things like - you're lazy or difficult to talk to or overly conceited or any of the other common character flaws... fortune-cookie compliments are never without merit and much more enjoyable to hear.

Sadly, INFPs only make up about 1% of the population according to the Keirsey scale. It seems that the agents of natural selection have been plotting against the proud Idealist. Weeding us out. Favoring personality traits better fit for the post-apocalyptic shit-hole our rulers have been creating.

The governing forces of Nature seem to understand that modern times are not the times for idealism. Realism is what will save the species. Idealism is a luxury for later.

"Tough times demand tough talk..."

These same forces could always conspire to produce far fewer personality types geared towards power and domination - these people are mostly dicks anyway. We would do much better without them. Of this, I am certain.

--Perhaps after our society implodes we will learn to rid ourselves of these central planners and the vampire machinery they create. Or maybe I can just keep hoping that Darwin will do it for us.

Oh well, happy birthday, 38. Wake me when I'm 40 and it's July of 2012 and the dollar is worth dogshit and the History channel keeps running non-stop documentaries about the Mayan calendar and the coming apocalypse. Now that's a birthday to remember!

Nibiru.

*******

In honor of my father who contributed significantly to my existence, I close with the following quotes:

Individualism regards man -- every man -- as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights -- and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. ~Ayn Rand

The philosophy of collectivism upholds the existence of a mystic (and unperceivable) social organism, while denying the reality of perceived individuals—a view which implies that man’s senses are not a valid instrument for perceiving reality. Collectivism maintains that an elite endowed with special mystic insight should rule men—which implies the existence of an elite source of knowledge, a fund of revelations inaccessible to logic and transcending the mind. Collectivism denies that men should deal with one another by voluntary means, settling their disputes by a process of rational persuasion; it declares that men should live under the reign of physical force (as wielded by the dictator of the omnipotent state)—a position which jettisons reason as the guide and arbiter of human relationships. ~Leonard Peikoff