theorybinladen

The more power you have, the more powerless you feel. It explains a lot when you think about it.

Suppose you rule a kingdom surrounded by five other kingdoms. Naturally, these other kingdoms are full of backward, barbaric ways, so you have no choice but to conquer them out of compassion. But now your territory is bordered by fifteen other kingdoms more barbaric than the ones you just conquered. You could try to conquer those ones too, but sooner or later you have to accept that the world is full of darkness, suffering and weird people and you can't do anything about it.

Today, most Americans possess more wealth than would be typical for a medieval king. Plus, we have a ridiculously high population density compared with our ancestors of twenty thousand years ago. You can go to the grocery store and see people from every corner of the world. We all see problems every day that we can't fix, and they're weighing us down with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. We hardly notice it because we've always had it. It's part of living in modern society.



In this scene from the journals of Knud Rasmussen, an Inuit shaman asks why there is sickness and bad weather in the world. Apparently it's because of broken taboos and evil spirits. If there's a bad snowstorm, no problem, you just have someone journey in a trance to the ocean goddess to cleanse her of broken rules. Of course, magic has no effect on weather, but still, just imagine how it feels to successfully dispel a storm. If it doesn't work, you can always say evil wizards are messing up your mojo or something. People love illusions, that's why we tell stories. (In my opinion, there's pretty good evidence that shamanic healing is medically efficacious, but I will save that discussion for another day.) There is no problem that the Inuit can't handle. If they don't have enough power, they just use magic to get more. At least that's how it was until the missionaries showed up and introduced Christianity, technology, poverty, and many other wondrous things. The Inuit accepted all of these at roughly the same time.

We're a lot like the Inuit in our reaction to suffering, only our illusions are more intense. The only thing that will fit the bill is a paradise where everything is perfect. examples:

1. God is identical with both everything that exists and perfect good. If there's suffering, whether in this world or in another, then that must be good somehow. There is another world waiting for us, full of snow-white angels singing church songs, where the sorrow and toil of this earth will be over.

Starting around the 18th century, a second solution emerged and religion began to break down:

2. Inevitable progress through technology. In the not-too-distant future the machines will do all the work, democracy will triumph everywhere, and for any problem you can name technology will have a solution.

That's the one I used to believe. It isn't as popular since around the time of World War I, but I have a feeling it will make a comeback. Coincidentally, its decline coincided with the rise of the third possibility:

3. A world will arise free of unpleasant labor thanks to the regular Joes like you and me working together. Like number 1, except the working class is omnipotent and omniscient instead of God. And often the "working class" means the state.

4. If there's suffering in this world it's all the meddling government's fault. As with number 1, there will still be suffering in the next world, but only for those who deserve it. The chosen few will enjoy paradise because they'll be filthy fucking rich.

In summary, the four major paths to utopia are religion, science, communism/fascism, and free-market libertarianism. Notice how the followers of each one tend to hate the other three. Variations and combinations are possible, however. I have a feeling there are more brilliant ideas out there that claim to solve all problems, and we'll hear more from them in the future.

Powerlessness is the emotion that causes the rise and fall of nations. There are at least two ways in which people react to it. One is telling themselves "everything is alright" and other lies to help them accept their place. The other is surrounding themselves with symbols of power. Such symbols include crowns, scepters, limos, guns, gold, jewels, beating your kids, humiliating those lower than you, and sex. (I know sex is power play. But don't you think our culture goes a little overboard with the whole "fucking someone = dominating them" thing?) Politicians used to promise us "a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot." Well, now most of us have these, even though we would probably be better off without them.

If I'm right that all of this stuff is the result of feelings of powerlessness, then the best solution is to stop desiring power. It turns out this is a very practical solution. Learn to live in the moment and accept life exactly as it is, and you'll be happier. Learning anything require practice; that's why I meditate regularly and you should too.

Check it out:
http://www.box.net/shared/8ne339bkhn

What I've done here is take audio files of people singing or talking and modified them so that they're singing at approximately the same pitch, minus an octave or two, as the first two formants of their voice. Here are the original files:
http://www.box.net/shared/sepp8u4ut8

Included here are a bunch of folk ballads, a Mayan shaman chanting, a poem by Maxine Kumin, "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" by George Orwell as spoken by espeak, and a comedy routine by Mitch Hedberg.

You can do this yourself by downloading Praat, opening up the file you want to modify, and running the following script:
select 1
To Manipulation... 0.01 75 900
select 1
To Formant (burg)... 00 5 5000 0.025 50
select 3
Formula (frequencies)... 110*round(self/110)
To Matrix... 1
To Pitch
Down to PitchTier
Formula... self/2
select 3
Formula (frequencies)... 440*round(self/440)
To Matrix... 2
To Pitch
Down to PitchTier
Formula... self/4
select 6
plus 2
Replace pitch tier
select 2
Get resynthesis (overlap-add)
select 9
plus 2
Replace pitch tier
select 2
Get resynthesis (overlap-add)
select 10
plus 11
Combine to stereo
Convert to mono
Play

The process may take a few minutes if you have a slow computer. Also, it still works if the audio includes instruments or sounds other than a single voice, but not as well.

If you simply change the pitch to match the formants, it sounds kind of atonal, but it's interesting because many of the inflections you hear are the same ones that occur in everyday speech. To make it sound more consonant, I've made it so that all the pitches of the first formant are multiples of 110 Hz, and all the pitches of the second formant are multiples of 440 Hz. If you do this to the formants (that is, make the speakers articulate vowels using only overtones that are in the key of A) it doesn't sound noticeably different, so we're not losing too much information. What I think is most interesting is that the musical style in the modified version often resembles that of the original, for instance, in Roscoe Holcomb's rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow".

I have a theory that if you listen to enough of these you will develop an unerring sense of phonoaesthetics.

I drank a bowl of chicken broth today. It was hard, since vegetarianism has been part of how I've defined my identity for the past twelve years. It's funny, you wouldn't think "Who am I?" would be such an emotionally charged question, but it is. People are always doing ridiculous things to prove that they're a man, woman, American, Christian, nerd, homosexual, etc. I understand people like this a little better now.

I don't think I expressed my reasons for this decision well enough, so I'll try again. Basically, I don't want anyone to see my diet as an endorsement of animal rights. It's true that vegetarianism is good for the environment, but there are a lot of things I could do that are good for the environment. It takes more energy to produce a box of cereal than a gallon of milk (probably because of all the vitamins and shit they put in there). Although, the milk wastes more freshwater than the cereal. Then again, it takes more water to make a glass of beer than a glass of milk. So it's not quite as simple as "animal products bad, everything else good." So instead of abstaining from meat, I guess I'll just go out and do good deeds for the earth. (Yeah right, I'll probably just sit around and play video games.)

I'm still not a hundred percent about the whole animal rights thing. Maybe the folks who break into research facilities and steal bunnies are right. Maybe I was right seven years ago when I said it would be better to kill a person than to kill two animals. But I was born and raised a human and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let chickens and squirrels stop us from doing what we do.

On the one hand, It's healthy not to eat meat, and good for the environment. Plus vegetarian food tastes just as good as meat does. On the other hand, radical environmentalism is spreading and I feel like I should take a stand against it.

I'm gonna shift topics for a bit here, but bear with me. Consider how the anti-abortion movement has affected America. Millions of people believe that a fetus with five cells is exactly as important as a human. They say murder is wrong, it's as simple as that, and they don't need to consider for one second the details of implementing laws against abortion. So if it means women die in back-alley abortions, or people are prosecuted for acting on their perfectly understandable philosophical beliefs, that's not even relevant to the debate. The result of all this that people vote Republican when they would otherwise want to vote Democratic. So the rich and powerful get to screw us over while fanatics crusade for the rights of "people" who don't give a damn one way or the other. And that's what I think would happen if the animal-rights movement were as popular as the anti-abortion movement: the ruling classes would find a way to use it to their advantage. Not to mention all the terrorism and passionate yet fruitless discussions we'd endure.

I don't care about animals, and haven't for some time now, except insofar as I feel empathy towards them. So I'll gladly rub a cat's tummy, or leave food out for the birds so I can watch them eat. Other than that, animals can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. I'm still more or less a utilitarian, I just rely more on compassion for humans to guide me through life.

Our primary concern should be the survival of humanity as a species. Our presence is undoubtedly causing more suffering than the world is used to. But things will get better in the future. We're not the first species to cause mass extinctions. Imagine if the first vertebrates had been environmentally conscious and started crusading for the rights of invertebrates. If we only stick around long enough, nature will find a balance just as it always does. But if we die out, some other species will develop a big brain and a form of communication that is productive, displaced and arbitrary. Then it'll be the same nightmare all over again.

As for meat, it's unhealthy and contributes to global warming, but that's true of a lot of things. Cars are unhealthy (since they can kill you) and contribute to global warming, but I still drive cars. Anyway, I plan to limit my meat consumption to no more than once a week for these reasons. The extra variation in my diet might even be good for me.

I don't know if I've made a very persuasive case for meat, but I hope I've at least given you some arguments you can use against environmentalists who might hassle you.

This entry is about how to change the world.

Repetition is more powerful than truth. And just about everyone who has power knows it. Hitler, Stalin, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, advertisers, the list goes on. The all understand that when repetition goes up against truth, repetition wins. But imagine what would happen if truth worked with repetition instead of against it for a change.

Christianity and Islam are both built upon foundations of repetition, Islam more so than Christianity. Christians only attend church once a week (often even less than that), but Muslims are required to pray out loud five times a day. They are expert propagandists without even knowing it. This is a big part of why Islam is so popular.

Liberals do not use repetition much compared with conservatives. This is probably because we have too much faith in reason and logic. What we tend to fail to understand is that our brains bring order to a chaotic universe not by rational argument but by imposing structure on reality. I do not care for the standard ways of structuring reality, so I take my structures and bash them against other structures. In the wake devastation that follows, the survivors must rebuild anew. Truth is an art, not a science.

Basically all I'm saying is know what your beliefs are and repeat them every chance you get. Various asshats throughout history have done so and reaped the rewards. For example, conservative pundits are always going, "America is the greatest country in the world, America is the greatest country in the world," and that's exactly the right way to do it.

The catch is that it's not the literal meaning of the statement that matters but the thoughts it evokes. So if you told someone "Don't steal!" a hundred times a day it would make them more likely to steal. Similarly, if you go around saying "There is no God, there is no God," all you would do is make people think of an all-powerful sky father smiling down on them. (Clearly atheism needs a more positive message, though I have no idea what that message should be.)

tl;dr: Repetition works, repetition works, repetition works. And in return for reading this, here is an amusing youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3dKv9a7DtM&feature=related

That is all.

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

Weapon can be real or fictional, you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. Gun
2. "Back in the USA" by Chuck Berry
3. John Lennon

If you go to Our Dumb World and click over to Tibet, the second pin from the left says, "Point Of Interest: Satellite Campus of Oberlin College."

It's weird how often you see Oberlin mentioned in popular culture. And people have completely the wrong idea of it. It's like they either picture it as a psychedelic dream or they think that all Obies are militant radicals, or both. But there are more hipsters at Oberlin than hippies. All Oberlin is is a small college with a couple of thousand students of whom the majority are liberals with rich parents. The high school I went to has about the same number of students as Oberlin and you never hear TV characters mention that they went to Snider.

The reason pink is associated with girls instead of boys is because pink is the color of vaginas. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. So when a girl wears a pink shirt, she's saying, "Hey, check out this big pink vagina." Similarly, when a gay guy wears pink, it's to remind everyone what color the inside of his butthole is. And now you're going to know that for the rest of your life.

It's logical enough, if you accept his premises. Our civilization is founded on the equation of law and morality. Because this is tantamount to overt amorality (sort of like setting one equal to zero) it would seem to be at odds with Christianity (which suffers from the same problem). So a lot of people claim that every law is a corollary of one of the Ten Commandments. That's completely retarded, but it allows people to claim that the United States government rules by divine right.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem like it should be necessary to violate the principle of non-contradiction just to keep society in order.

The candidates in the primary election are saying, "I'm not the sort of politician who only says things to get votes" to get votes. Reminds me of how my ninth grade history teacher said that in order to get a good grade we had to care about more than just getting a good grade.

Discordianism would have you believe that it's like a ninja who sneaks into the President's house, slits his throat, and vanishes in a puff of absurdity as soon as the security guards get there. In fact, it has at its core a very simple fallacy. Two fallacies, actually: the first is that people are more profound when they're stoned. The second is something which is never stated explicitly but strongly implied all throughout the Principia Discordia. It's true enough that "We look through the world through windows on which have been drawn grids." But Discordians and many other intellectuals seem to think that all the possible grids are equally good. Can you think of any logical reason why every culture must be exactly as good as every other culture?

And speaking of religion and shit, have you tried Buddhist meditation? You should. It's like steroids for the soul.

http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/

At some point, every serious video-gamer needs to learn not to let the pleasures of interactive fantasy interfere with challenging yourself to the utmost. Of course, mainstream video games never encourage you to concentrate on this, it's always, "Shoot these aliens!" or, "Smash these zombies!" So when I opened up XMoto, I was like, "Sweet, a game where I get to ride a motorcycle! I'll probably get to go real fast, and maybe jump over things!" Nope. This is the hardest game I've ever played.

Humans have an innate tendency towards reciprocity—so much so that when we get something good and it wasn't given by anyone we still want to thank someone, so we pretend there are gods, and give them things in return that we think they might like. For example, we might light a cow on fire, or play some music and dance to it. I can't see anything inherently wrong with this aside from a few wasted cows. Surely it's better than being mean to people who don't exist.

So why is religion so fucked up? I mean, the majority of the world unquestioningly believes every word of a book they haven't even read yet. The explanation for this is quite simple. Making sense of the world is difficult, and anyone who tries to do so on their own doesn't get very far; therefore it has to be a collaborative effort. For everything you believe, you believe it partly on its own merits and partly because of the opinions of others. From this it logically follows that the stupidest things believed by people are bound to be believed by the largest number of people, though the converse isn't true. So it's not that the world has gone mad, it's just that people trust one another and are apparently insufficiently vigilant against bullshit. And we trust authority figures in particular, so religions most often spread as a result of a change in the philosophy of a region's ruling class, which may happen through conversion or military subjugation.

You know what, I am pretty fucking smart. But the credit belongs not to me but to the entire human species. Seriously folks, you've been a great species, give yourselves a hand.

90% of the people in the US have a bad attitude. 10% of the people in the US have the most money.

Fatigue will make cowards of us all!

If you don't listen to yourself, you will lose all your gold and your ass!

There's only one thing money can't buy, and that's poverty.

Everybody says money is the root of all evil; actually the lack of money is the root of all evil. Since when do you hear of a rich guy going out and robbing a bank? It's always some guy who doesn't have enough money because he was too lazy to work.

"How do we feel?"
"FANTASTIC!"
"What are we gonna make?"
"MONEY!"
"What time is it?"
"SHOW TIME!"
"Huh!"