Messages

Premise: The way to power is by fucking people over and depriving them of theirs. However, it must be done correctly. Awkwardly killing a few people won't get you anywhere.
Conclusion: If I want power I need to fuck some people over in the right way (whatever that is).
Question: How hard, how many, and in what way do I need to fuck people over to make it into that top one percent I keep hearing about?
Moral: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Quit your bitchin.
Personal ad: SWM, seeking to fuck people over for power.

I was thinking about the first and second laws of thermodynamics and energy a while back, and I got to thinking about perpetual motion machines, and how a machine actually needs friction. We could only have perpetual motion if the particles of one object and the particles of an other object could just slide right past each other without any interaction. But if this happens, nothing gets done. Everything would be like dark matter for everything else, flying around invisibly, not causally linked in any way -for perpetual motion to work. A rough approximation is the octopus on roller skates on wet ice -it can flail around a lot, but can't move along a chosen path. In order to get anywhere, you have to have something to push against. Something has to offer you some resistance. You have to have some limit to your motion, otherwise, you are just floating in space, weightless, with no way to change your course. So (I'm going to mention free will here) your will isn't really free unless it is somehow limited, constrained, determined. 

We often talk about entropy and the impossibility of perpetual motion machines as if they were obstacles to be overcome, but I don't think we really want to overcome these obstacles, when we think about what the consequences would be. Our limits define us, like the edges of an object define its shape and volume, it's ability to interact with other objects. Unbounded, boundless, we would be unable to move, for there would be nowhere to go.

Seven billion people on the planet now.  Seven thousand-million, as the Brits like to say. We are all a renewable resource. What makes you so special? We can make another one just like you. We have too many of  you already. We have to stop new people from coming in. We have all the good stuff here. We have manicured front lawns, power-blown free of desiccated leaves by Mexican immigrants. We have strawberries in Publix for two-fifty a pint, picked by illegal immigrant women with babies deformed from pesticide exposure. We are in a state of emergency. We can't afford to leave no man behind. If you can't pull your own weight, then fuck you. Progress is a lie we tell ourselves to shield us from the horrors of the future. People have been living and dying on the streets for as long as there have been streets. We have all, from the oldest to the youngest among us, grown up and lived in times where people have left others to die to save their own asses, or to save their own pensions, or slice of the pie. Seven billion people. And growing. So what if we lose one or two? So what if that guy is sad and drunk and sleeps huddled on a park bench specifically designed to deter laying down with a strategic placement of perpendicular boards? There are seven million, no sorry, Seven Billion more to take his place in the human struggle for...what? Humanity? Decency? Love? Fuck that guy. Let him rot in the name of Justice For All!

So you're stressed and want to just rant about it until you get your shit together, or you want advice on some very unclear problem or ummmm  I have no clue.

Don't want advice. Just thought I'd share some thoughts. I am unclear on what is unclear.

I want Phlogiston to come back and explain. Responding to questions/criticism is an important part of the curve IMO.

Personal point: I need to chill out.

Universal hypothesis based on taking my own subjective experience and assuming I am not a special, special snowflake: this type of confusion between wants and needs results in people acting like assholes, and may be responsible for much of the rampant assholism we see vis a vis teabaggers. The thing is, they aren't trying to be assholes; they are just trying to survive because belief in Christian God can make sure you are always in a survival mindset because everything you do in life is a condition for survival. Every thought you think is scrutinized and compared against an irrational standard set by God Himself. Not only are you fighting for your very survival at all times, you are fighting for your eternal survival. You will either survive in guaranteed satisfaction of all your biological and emotional needs, or you will suffer a fate of lasting insecurity devoid of any caring or empathy. This turns you into an asshole.

What I'm not talking about: actually being in a survival situation. This is stressful, and sucks, and would be less common if people that weren't in survival situations were aware of the difference (now I am talking about it) and helped out those who needed it.

I'm not sure how to clarify more without knowing where the muddiness is. I just wanted to let out what I've been thinking about. This is just a train of thought I've been having. I might not really have a point. Thoughts come, thoughts go.   

I have only just now put this all together: I am not in a constant fight for survival. I realize that I've been in survival mode all my life, to one extent or another.

I am looking for a job. I have graduated with a PhD, but have no permanent job lined up. I am currently making 14,000 a year teaching as an adjunct. I have sent out several applications to teaching positions, and heard back from very few of them, all in the negative.

This can be viewed as a survival situation. If I don't get a better job, my survival will be compromised. Everyone around me has better jobs, all the full-time faculty at the college have guaranteed jobs, and they prance around smugly ignoring my dire situation. I become accustomed to behaving like an obedient sheep in survival situations because of this. I also become passive-aggressive because I resent that I must do silly things like fill out paperwork so the dean's office has a copy of my office hours. They are making me jump through some stupid hoop so that I can survive! I quietly disobey and fester, cultivating bile.

This can be viewed as a fun situation. All of my survival needs are met. I have plenty of money and support from my family. I know I will not starve, or be forced to live on the street; even if I am evicted and make no money, my family will support me. Therefore, every dime I earn is for fun. I go to work so that I can have a neat, shiny car and house and do fun things. I go to a job that is fun –teaching biology. Other people have more money, but they also have less-fun jobs, and that just means they get to have nicer cars and big houses with fancy stuff. I bet I can have just as much fun without all the money. I'm willing to do dumb shit like let the dean know my office hours because I am doing this job for fun. This is all a game. If I am ever put in an actual survival situation, I will act quickly and decisively because I can clearly mark the distinction between what I want (to have fun) and what I need (to survive). I am not resentful, nor constantly living in grouchy submission.

It seems like hyperbole, like some problem of the well fed: a middle class white male privilege dilemma. But the script in my brain doesn't know that. The script says I am in mortal danger. It says this all the time. Well fed people die every day, not of gluttony (even when they are fat), or too much privilege. They die of stress. The perceived, mental stress invoked by this constantly running script turns what should be a life of luxury and fun into a dire, bleak, gray hell, then cuts it short, ensuring your worst fears come true. Heart disease is the number one cause of death. A disease exacerbated, if not entirely cause by, fear.

On a funny note, I think what we need are PSA's addressing the plight of the white, middle class male with everything he could want except the ability to see it. For the price of a cup of coffee a day, you could provide this man with the peace of mind necessary to enjoy his morning commute in the 325i he is leasing for $350 per month. You can help him file his TPS reports with a smile because he will know he is doing it all for the fun of having a neat car to drive, because it is more fun to live in the nice part of town in a big new house.

The reason that filing TPS reports is so soul sucking is that we live in the illusion that we work for our survival. This is false. We have plenty of resources and technology to meet all of our survival needs. Being a salesperson for Dunder Mifflin paper company does not help humanity survive. The only thing it can do is provide you with an entertaining way to pass the time and make some money so that you can have some fun. Greyface came along and told you it was for your survival, that work is very serious, and that you must have a job to survive. That view isn't even productive. I sure doesn't make you happy. It doesn't even make you a more effective worker. It makes you less effective, because you aren't able to have fun with it, to think creatively and interact cheerfully and genuinely with your coworkers, because you are in such a funk about working in a slave camp. Wage slavery is only wage slavery when 1. you really need the wages to survive, 2. you think you need the wages to survive. If 1., then revolt, pull a Patrick Henry and mean it. If 2., snap out of it. True survival situations demand clear, decisive action aimed at getting you out of the survival situation as quickly as possible. All other situations require playfulness, lightheartedness, and slack. 

My balls. These balls are mine. I'm gonna recombine my genes, randomly assort the ones I got from my folks, and shoot 'em out my pee hole. So FUCK YOU.

All parts of the pig are fucking amazing. I would kill a pig just to eat it.

Really nice work.

However...
I go back and forth between being upset, unhappy with the state of affairs, and just simply being OK with it all. I can't imagine what life would be like if there wasn't something for me to be angry with, something for me to really sink my teeth into. I love Big Brother.

I mean, we kind of revel in it don't we? How would we come to the realization that we make our own black iron prison or golden sphere of opportunity or umwelt if there wasn't some aspect of the world we found unsatisfying on a very human level?

I'm with Thoreau on this one:

"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute"

You're right, kai, the GMO thing is off topic. How else would we get glow in the dark kittens?

This is the awesomest thing I've read all day. So, we knew that chemicals in our food affected our physiology. However, we did not know that some of these chemicals could do this at the level of regulating our gene expression. This makes genetically modified food a bit scarier. This also points out how shitty our knowledge of nutrition is. However, we don't need to know everything about nutrition to know that it is always a good idea to eat raw fruits and vegetables. Chances are good these things are doing you more good than harm, just like the trillions of bacteria that live in and on your body. Also, this indicates that you need to eat not simply to supply calories for cellular respiration, but also to supply regulatory molecules for proper genetic expression. I'm going to to way out on a speculative limb and say maybe americans are obese because of a lack of fruits and vegetables to properly regulate expression of genes. Perhaps hunger signals are tied to these microRNA's, and if you don't get them you tend to eat way too much. Perhaps not getting enough microRNA's makes you stupid and fat.

Suppose I am a librarian in charge of conserving books. I don't need to read the books to know how to conserve them, I just need to keep them at the right temperature and humidity and keep assholes with kerosene and matches away from my library. Go ahead and read the books, that's what they are there for. That is why we are saving them but it isn't how we are saving them.

Advances in conservation are going to come from theoretical approaches to managing the complexity and volume of data inherent in the myriad interactions of a living ecosystem, not from more comprehensive catalogs of species. However, conservation is always going to depend upon setting aside some land and employing simple management actions like controlled burns and reducing pollution to watersheds in order to keep the land like it was before we sectioned it off and developed around it. 

Sorry but, how long is that going to take? Even with decent funding? What I know of biology is that everything takes really really long and is really really hard work.

That's the point, you're doing everything you can, amazing job, and we know a littlebit more about a single species namely caddisflies. And it took, what, five years?

Then you tell me we've not nearly even described 1% of all species out there even in the most basic form.

And describing that 1% has taken biological science how long? 100 years? How many man-years?

So is building this inventory a realistic scenario? Cause it sounds to me like it would require at least 10,000 years to complete?

That's why I proposed to save the planet first, and get to work on the biodiversity problem later.

This. If we knew the exact habitat requirements of 100 million species of tartigrades, slime molds, weevils, and other un-charismatic microfauna, the answer to conservation would be what it is today: set aside land for protection from development, and strictly regulate pollution of water and air. We don't need to know all that biological detail.

You might not personally need to know all that biological detail  ,but what about the children? Should they be given a choice?

I don't mean personally. I mean that as conservationists, we as humans don't need to know that much detail in order to make present day decisions. Building decent scientific models depends upon asking "how much do we need to know in order to know what we need to know?" If we need to know how to conserve biodiversity, and want to create a model predicting the consequences of our management actions on biodiversity, population dynamics, and extinction risk, do we need to fill that model with countless data on thousands of species? Does that improve our model? My answer is almost always no. If you want to conserve trichopterans, you pick some more charismatic umbrella species like river otters and set aside and manage land and water necessary for viable river otter populations, which captures the public imagination, and conserves countless other species at the same time. Do original research on whatever you want to, but the main obstacle to conservation is public support and the idea that economic development should take precedence over conservation, not lack of taxonomic detail.

Sorry but, how long is that going to take? Even with decent funding? What I know of biology is that everything takes really really long and is really really hard work.

That's the point, you're doing everything you can, amazing job, and we know a littlebit more about a single species namely caddisflies. And it took, what, five years?

Then you tell me we've not nearly even described 1% of all species out there even in the most basic form.

And describing that 1% has taken biological science how long? 100 years? How many man-years?

So is building this inventory a realistic scenario? Cause it sounds to me like it would require at least 10,000 years to complete?

That's why I proposed to save the planet first, and get to work on the biodiversity problem later.

This. If we knew the exact habitat requirements of 100 million species of tartigrades, slime molds, weevils, and other un-charismatic microfauna, the answer to conservation would be what it is today: set aside land for protection from development, and strictly regulate pollution of water and air. We don't need to know all that biological detail.