Saturday, April 25, 2020                                          5:24 PM

Seen & Accepted   (2020Apr25)

You’ll remember from past presidents—during a crisis, they addressed the nation, reassured them that an adult was on the case, and then disappeared. They worked behind-the-scenes to remove the crisis from the headlines.

This was only common sense, from a citizen’s POV and from a political POV. Those past presidents had credibility (be it ever so tattered). When Nixon resigned, he was recognizing that no serious adult was taking his side. Trump has known this (or should) since his Impeachment.

Look at the many ‘reasonable adults’ in Trump’s own circle—and yes, term used loosely, & so on—who have, at least, recognized a politically untenable position when they were in one, and resigned. Only that cowboy-clown child-molester down south has equaled Trump in ‘Deafness to The Room”.

We must recognize: the people “empowered” by Trump are disreputable, sloppy-thinking ticks, who have (to quote Asimov) “the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

They have been made to feel inferior their whole lives. Their lack of alacrity in wit and philosophy—is merely the consequence of their disinterest (or disability) in Reason. I’m just realizing that my own love of Reason is what stands out.

Every time I meet new people, there’s always someone who asks me if I’m a teacher or a scientist. It’s flattering, but it also puts distance between me and everyone else. My speech, my vocabulary, my attitude, even my body language—everyone else sees it immediately, but I never really got it until now.

I’m a scholastic. That is an obsolete term, from before modern times—as is my spirit, to some degree. I’ve always been interested in learning new stuff—and sharing it with others. What never really clicked, for me, was that this is not normal—I am not normal.

I’m just remarking on the reflexive principle at play here. There is an emotional component to being smarter than average—and there is an emotional component to being less-smart than average. Both extremes, on either side of the bell-curve, spend most of our lives trying to be seen, to be accepted.

And it may be hard to accept the Trump-base people—but we sure can see them now, can’t we?

Wednesday, April 01, 2020                                              4:41 AM

Not for God   (2020Apr01)

People are animals. I don’t mean to be mean, I’m just stating a fact. There’s nothing inherently wrong with animals. Animals with the power of thought are a problem. We didn’t ask to be born. We didn’t ask to be ‘thinkers’. We didn’t ask to be stressed, insofar as we expect ourselves to be better-behaved than animals.

We are animals. Cruelty to animals is an expression of self-loathing and hatred of one’s own life. Misogyny is an example of how our thoughts are skewed by our feelings—knowing that women are basically ‘man, plus’, givers of life and love.

In fact, in many ways, men have no idea what love is—I certainly didn’t. I had lust, surely, and peer-pressure, and ego. But I hadn’t the faintest notion of love with the big L. We only get that from our mothers (if lucky) and are taught to be embarrassed by it, as soon as we socialize with other males.

And the masculine bent of organized religion is a monument to this dysfunction. That is why I am an atheist—religion is far-too-obviously a male scam, peaking during the era of witch-burning—when any women who acted with agency was quickly tortured to death.

But religion contains another primitive meme—the authoritarian skew that weaponizes the whole thing. God must be obeyed, thus the priest, the father, the male, must be obeyed—it’s a great racket. But the most dangerous thing about organized religion is that it buries the lede.

Men are not important. Authority is not important. Both are products of our dark side. The only truth in religion is the love of good. I’ve spent my life, trying to be good. Not for god—fuck’m. I do it because it is the only worthwhile aspect of our species—the urge towards goodness.

If we wish to be proud of the human race, of being a part of it, we have to stop with the mythology and start becoming our best evolutionary outcome.