On Purpose

I started this thing almost 19 months ago with no idea what it was for or really why I was doing it. In essence, my reasoning was basically that I wanted to be able to work things out and the easiest way to do that was by taking my time and working it out on paper. I also wanted to be able to find it again later but I'd probably lose the paper.
So this page was started.

A page with no particular purpose beyond it's existence.

And so I ask myself, of what use is something with no purpose. On one level, this question has a simple answer. If there is no purpose, then it is not useful and therefore it is useless.
Now, to my knowledge I've never been accused of sentimentality. I have very little use for anything that's only purpose is to remind me of something that I used to be - what I used to be I generally try to forget. If something has served it's purpose, it is now not useful and is therefore useless.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post, and indeed this page. This page was created with out a cogent purpose, but in the last week or so, I discovered what it was. In conjunction with a couple of other things, this page forced me to think about things in a way that I had never done before. I don't ever think I've mentioned this before here, but it's been my observation that if a mask is worn long enough, it becomes your real face. People say they 'find themselves', I think that's a lie. No one 'finds themselves', they decide who they are.

Over the past two years, I decided who I was.

I moved to Sydney about 20 months ago. In the process, I decided that the things that people thought about me back where I was previous would not be thought about me here. In particular, I had many rough edges that needed to be smoothed off. I failed somewhat at that mission. My edges are a bit smoother, but people still have many of the same thoughts. But what it did do was force me to be someone I hadn't been before. I wore that mask for about 18 months with only very occasional slips and with such regularity, that my previous faces had to shuffle around to make room. What happened without me noticing was I became a person, whole and complete.

As a result of this, the entire premise of this page has become a moot point. I wanted to work things out on paper, and in the process worked myself out.
This has become a thing without purpose. It has ceased being useful and therefore must come to an end.

This next part is somewhat difficult. When I leave a situation, it is my practise to cut ties as much as possible. I don't really want to cut this particular tie since it is something that I actually need to remember. This page will no longer be updated except under exceptional circumstances. You can still contact me through this page but I won't be doing anything more here.

Farewell, and I hope that those of you who decided to take this plunge into the morass with me enjoyed it or learned something from it.
This is Alphonse, signing off.

Cynicism

Well it's been a while and I haven't written anything. So here goes. I probably should have found something better to write about after the break that I had, but my life is fairly boring (so no inspiration there) and I've had no flashes of brilliance or realisation from any real philosophical or intelligent directions and so I discuss this.

I was recently told that I was incredibly distrustful and cynical. The actual words used as far as my memory goes were "Maybe one day we'll be able to get you over your distrust of everything". This followed the same person not being surprised by my ridicule of various administrative processes, bureaucracy and governmental processes in general. In my flawed memory, I replied, somewhat incorrectly that "I'm not distrustful of everything, just cynical of everyone's motives" which makes me sound overly paranoid. While I do have tendencies, I'm not that bad. Rather, this was yet another case of me opening my mouth too quickly and going with exaggeration instead of a carefully considered statement that was both poignant and insightful.

What I should have said instead was "I just don't trust the motives of anyone who holds some level of power". This, while still paranoid, at least leaves wriggle room and puts a limit on the statement. From there I would have to explain. So here goes my explanation.

Humans are by nature creatures that desire power above all else. The problem from there is inherent in the nature of power. Power puts you above at least one other. As a supervisor in your place of employment, you have some level of power and by default, you have been placed above some others. As your amount of power increases, so does the number of people who are by default under you. When you get a position of power in the government, you have essentially been placed over every person who is not you.
This, to me, is in itself a problem. I'm at heart an anarchist. I believe in the human ideal of self autonomy, at least on Earth. Before you say anything, I also believe in social responsibility. Put those two together and you get self autonomy that respects and aids others over most else. So I have a problem with anyone who can say that they have power over another if it isn't qualified with the strictest terms.

We see abuses of power every few minutes. Government employees who take bribes or kickbacks, employers who abuse their employees however they do that, teachers who punish students for imagined or false reasons. I could go on but the point is that power, as has been said many times, corrupts. The converse is also true; while power corrupts, power also attracts the corruptible. And so the story goes.


Now my next problem is that the ultimate goal of power is to either increase or retain the level of power that the holder has. If we have the corrupt and corruptible with this subconscious goal, then nothing that is done by these people can be trusted on any level as it will all (probably) come back to the retention of power.
A good example is tax cuts. No one will ever complain about tax cuts in a time of surplus, that doesn't make sense from anyone's point of view. But let's look at the intention. A Budget Surplus is a good thing to have, it means that everyone's doing well and if something bad happens, everything should be fine. So why give a tax cut if this is desirable? Because the people ask for it. So what does the government gain? The only thing is that the public view of the government in this case will increase. And what will that achieve? Come the next election, they'll get voted back in. That's why you only ever see tax cuts if the government is looking bad in the opinion polls, or in an election year.
Yes, that sounds like the words of a hardened cynic but I can see my point.

So yeah, I'm a cynic and getting me over that will probably take some work.

Actions

Let me preface this with a disclaimer. As with most things, I'm still trying to figure this one out. And as with most things, I'm probably wrong.

There is no object that contains the metaphysical properties of bad, or evil, or wrong. And I think that that principle can be taken further.
There is no action that contains the metaphysical properties of bad, or evil, or wrong IN AND OF THEMSELVES.
The action that you may undertake may be evil, but I don't think that the action itself is evil.

But coming out and simply saying it will never explain it, or make it so. Before I explain it however, I'll explain my motives behind writing this down.

A few weeks ago, I came across a forum discussion from a group purporting to be something along the lines of 'Fundamental, Baptist, King James Bible believing [original not NKJV] Christians'. After reading through this and a couple of other of the discussions I came to the conclusion that these were Ultraconservative 'christians' who were stuck more in their tradition than the actual bible that they said that they read. However, read it they did; they could probably quote whole books of it at you and explain what they thought it meant.
The particular discussion in question was about whether modern musical stylings could ever be considered wholesome, and more specifically, whether they could be used for the purposes of worship. Where I was hoping that the discussion might be an intelligent, civil one, it ended up being little more than a slagging match on all non-hymn music that contained logical fallacies so large that Christopher Hitchens would be able to drive an incredibly oversized vehicle through them with not just room to spare, but also without being able to see the edges, so congratulations for that.
The discussion ranged from things like the associations of rock music being unsuitable for Christian worship (actually not a bad point) to things like the standard 4/4 drum beat employed in rock music was created by the devil to tempt us, and it's obvious since people dance to it (where they got that idea from I still can't figure out).
It contained arguments like, "Parents of children who listen to this music don't listen to this music. Therefore, it is not honouring to the parents to listen to this music and so it breaks the 7th commandment" - to which I thought, it was my parents who introduced me to this music. It also featured this particular doozy: "You wouldn't use the music from AC/DC's Highway to Hell to sing Amazing Grace to" (and yes that was actually the example given), so you therefore can't use any thing bearing any similarity to that style for worship. My thought here was, not only that the music doesn't have the same rhythm as amazing grace and therefore can't be used, but also that Highway to Hell isn't really particularly good musically anyway so why would you want to.

Any backwards and onwards to the original proposition - No object or action is evil. Before the piles of hate mail come in for me saying this, I will clarify.
The physical entity or movements themselves are not evil, they are merely things. What is evil, is the motives.

Let me explain further. Let's take objects first as it's less of an abstract concept and therefore easier to explain. A knife is not evil; it has a function and it carries out that function. The function of a knife is to cut things. It can cut all sorts of things; paper, bread, fabric, light plastic, meat. It is merely a thing with a function.
However, let's consider briefly the function of the knife. It is designed to cut things. Ergo it can cut humans if the user deems that that is what the knife's function should be on any particular occasion. This could be deemed an evil function, but the object has stayed the same. It has not in any way changed or altered its physical or chemical make up, so how can it now be evil?
When you consider closer, even with this theoretically evil function, there are cases when it could be deemed good even with the exact same function. You can cut a human in order to kill, maim or wound. You can cut a human in order to perform life saving surgery.
The Object, no matter the function or the motive for it's existence, says the same and can not be said to be either evil or good, it merely is.

Let's take actions now. Let's take a few different actions and see how they can vary.
We've already considered the action of cutting open a human. It can be done both to injure and to heal. Let's take the example further. Let's now kill the human with the afore mentioned knife. Let's say firstly that it was done simply for the pleasure of killing, to end a life. Most people would have no problems at all deciding that this is an evil motive. But let's now consider another scenario. What about defence for yourself or others? Could that be considered a good motive for killing a human. Certainly in the eyes of the law of most lands it is. Which means that this action is just a thing, neutral at best. So let's try another action.
Let's take an action that many people would not stop to think about. Let's take sex as an example. Sex can be good. It builds intimacy and strong relationships. It builds families which in turn have the potential to be forces for some metaphysical property of good. It is even (or so I've been told) pleasurable. It certainly seems to be off to a good start. What about rape. It is the same action, but suddenly it has a different motive. The motive in this case could be to hurt or injure either physically, emotionally or psychologically. It could be for the purposes of gaining power over an individual. It could simply be for the purposes of gaining pleasure at another's expense. These motives all shift the potentially good action to being what 99.999999% of people consider bad. But the action itself is still just a neutral thing.
Let's now take an action that could never be considered bad or evil. Let's help an old lady across the street. She's struggling with the load of shopping and she's been walking all day in the heat. Good action. Now think about why you're doing it. Did you want to help Mrs Winthrop completely out of the goodness of your heart? or instead did you want Mrs Winthrop to think you were a good person and maybe even tip you for helping out. Unless you can say that the second never crossed your mind, then the action itself was not completely good. If you helped Mrs Winthrop because you wanted to get her away from the crowds before you ran off with her shopping and handbag, then your motives were definitely bad.

I'm not trying to advocate a lesser evil mentality here. Instead what I'm trying to do is write down my still young thoughts on this topic. But it seems to me that the only thing that is evil in all of this is the motives, whether for the action or for the existence of the object, the rest is just a thing.

Small

I had a moment of clarity this morning. I realised how absolutely small my own mind was. Now, I'm not a moron and at times I've even been considered intelligent. So what was it that made me realise how small my mind is? For the past 18 months I've been living in Sydney, a city of four and half million people. I can't conceive of that many of anything. That number is simply beyond my comprehension, I can't understand the implication of 4.5 million. To me it's a pointless number since it just goes into the realms of big.

Now in the scheme of things, 4.5 million is small, tiny even. And I can't imagine that number in anything except as a number.


As a secondary part of this realisation, it started to become apparent to me how big God's mind is. While I don't understand 4.5 million, there are 6888 million people on the planet (6.9 billion) at the time of writing. And from what we are told, this number is also meaningless. Not because it is beyond comprehension due to it's massive nature. Instead of that, it's because it's such a small number that it doesn't even really register. Just think about that for a moment.
The population of the earth is such a small number that it doesn't really matter. It barely rates as a statistic.

OK, stop thinking about that now. Blow your mind on this little chestnut now. God knows every person on the earth individually. Every single one. With room to spare. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, everything.
To write out the genetic sequence of a single human being would apparently take the entirety of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. To put that into context, if you stack the full set, it comes in at roughly 2 metres thick, almost 6 foot and 7 inches. Multiply that by 6.9 billion.
I won't go into number of cells in the human body because that really is meaningless numbers with ten trillion.
The human brain itself is still considered the greatest computer built due to it's incredible processing power and the level of it's contextual separation. If there has been one goal of software advancement, it has been to achieve this. God not only can do it (look at the human brain for example) but knows each different one individually and completely.
and I can't comprehend the number 4.5 million.

Optimism

Frank Fenner died on November the 22nd. His first expected time of death was during the mid 50's when he knowingly injected himself with a virus in order to prove it's safety. In 1980, he announced to the world that smallpox no longer existed outside of laboratories. Earlier this year, he announced to the world that we would be extinct within 100 years. To come to this conclusion marks a drastic change in the way he thought thirty years ago.

And there in lies one of the problems. Optimism is only short lived. Almost by definition (at least in my experience as a pessimistic realist).
Humanity can't cope with positivity. We see it in the news. Only one day in three gives us a positive news story and these are usually shunted to the end of the paper or the report as a 'human interest' story.

For Frank Fenner to inject himself with Myxomatosis, a virus which he had studied strictly for it's fatal capabilities took optimism. He did it for the express purpose of proving its safety for humans. And his gamble paid off. Myxomatosis was used for 40 years to keep the rabbit population controlled in Australia.

For Frank Fenner to announce that smallpox no longer existed took optimism. Everyone knows about carriers. His announcement marked the point at which vaccines were made. If there was even one carrier who managed to pass on the disease, there could have been monumental casualties before the vaccine was distributed again. Now smallpox only exists in two places, a vault in Atlanta, and a vault in Koltsovo. Here it is used to study virology and to develop vaccines for other diseases.

For Frank Fenner to announce that the Human race was doomed, all he had to do was look around. He gives a few reasons. Overpopulation (he is quoted as saying "If you want to protect children from the vast number of infectious diseases, vaccination is by far the best way to do it. If on the other hand, you wish to act against overpopulation, don't vaccinate anyone, including your own children.") key among them. Other reasons include Global Warming or Climate Change and a lack of food (causing wars as a result of the distribution).

I don't particularly want to answer any of these as I think I've discussed most of his concerns in some way or another during my time here. However, what I want to do is consider briefly the difference between his optimism and his pessimism.

For his optimism he risked death at his own hands.
For his optimism, he worked day and night for something that would statistically never affect him.
For his optimism he was rewarded with a literally changed world.
For his optimism, he achieved something that had never previously and has never since been done (the eradication of a infectious disease in humans).

For his pessimism, he gave up.

three fathom analysis

So here is why I got irritated at the pub the other day. [click here to see what I'm talking about].

Apart from what I mentioned before (ie, you're a douche), the answer comes essentially down to something that might surprise people who only know me through this page. I am basically an egalitarian; that is, I am mostly of the opinion that people in general are equal. However like the pigs in Animal Farm, I am also of the opinion that some are more equal than others.

Before you say something along the lines of "Alphonse, Animal Farm was intended as a critique of communist Russia. The political struggle of the working class over the bourgeois and upper class has nothing to do with your encounter with this previously mentioned douche. Also, that statement was considered the fault of the pigs and so should not be taken as a personal motto of any kind," this is true and so I'll clarify. I am not strictly of the opinion that some are more equal, my views are closer to some can become less equal over time. This can be through a series of poor personal choices in most areas, but it can, such as in this case, be as a result of one very poor showing of your own personality. None of the players in this piece besides the daughter made a very good showing of themselves and thus they fall several equalnesses in my eyes.

Firstly the mother. What are you doing taking your daughter to the pub every afternoon; she's 9. Also, once you make this preliminary bad decision, why do you question how well things are going? I would have thought this was fairly obvious.

Nextly, the douche-man. The argument that you decided to make the afternoons discussion into shouldn't have been an argument. Your associate didn't want to argue, she made that clear early on in the piece. Instead, she wanted confirmation that she wasn't doing a bad job. She didn't want to have you telling her how wrong she obviously was and listing off reasons to that effect.
Also, you're a douche. I saw him a few days later at work again. As the band was playing, he was quite effusive in his strangely positive heckling. Happily singing along out of tune making it hard for the actual talent to not hate him. In the end, despite not actually doing anything wrong and simply because he was being annoying as a result of his imbibing of alcohol, he was asked to leave and escorted from the premises. Conclusion: You're a douche.

Finally, and semi relatedly, the girl. Despite the situation, the girl was happy. She was the bright candle that illuminated the flaws of the surrounds. My worry is that alcohol, being a liquid, will put the flame out. It may not be now, it may not be soon, but one day I worry that her light will be put out and she will end up taking her 9 year old daughter to the pub every afternoon in imitation of what she knows.

So that's the three fathom analysis of the behaviour that I saw and why it irritated me.
To explain why it's three fathoms (3.48m), that depth initially looks deep and the above may well (probably not however). However, fathoms measure depth of water for sailing and you can't sail a ship in that depth.

So on the whole, today was a day of mixed things.
On one hand (the more positive one), I finished uni for this term, meaning I only have 7 months left. I was also paid for the first time in roughly 18 months.
On the other hand, there were a couple of things that really got my pissed off, which I should add, I don't do all that often. My comment at one of them was "It's this sort of thing that makes me wish knifing someone was legal." Shortly after that while this was still happening, I had my knife out and ready in case I really needed to do something rash. Don't worry, it's a small (3 inch) knife that's attached to my multitool and therefore is completely legal. The other was less bad for my blood pressure and thus I will not talk about it.

While preparing for work in the pub, sitting behind me enjoying their drinks were two middle aged people (one male and one female) and a mid twenties guy. Occasionally with them was the woman's daughter. It was only occasional because sometimes she was dancing on the carpeted area slightly downstairs. She was probably about 9 or 10. That's the start of what got me riled. There is no real reason that you should have a child of that age at a pub unless she's there for a meal or something (as pub meals are awesome and should be enjoyed by all). These people were not there to enjoy a meal, they were there to have their afternoon drinks at around 4:00. I have no problem with having a drink at 4:00; I myself have enjoyed drinks at that time after work. What I do have a problem with is subjecting your nine year old child to that.

These people come there most afternoons and follow the same sort of schedule. Arrive at around 3, drink for a while and head home at 5. During this time, points for discussion will generally be of an unsavoury nature. The woman will talk about her boyfriends (one for every new night from the sounds of it), the older guy will talk about how good he is, and the younger guy will smile and nod. Again, this isn't the right environment for any nine year old child.
Today the talking headed in a slightly different direction to what I'd heard previously. The mother was concerned that her daughter wasn't going all that well in school and that she therefore wouldn't be able to exceed her own life (in which case, don't bring her to the pub every other day). The older guy in an apparently arrogant way was saying "She'll be good at maths, she'll be good at science and you know why?..." and so on. When the mother kept saying that she wasn't sure, he piped up again and told her to, in internet terms, STFU, from which he progressed forward. At this point, mum told daughter not to listen and I started playing with my multitool. Mum went on at this point to say that daughter should "never let a man talk to her like that", at which point I thought "and don't get into a situation where your daughter can be talked to like that"
From here things spiralled downwards. Yep, from that high point, the conversation got worse. Mum tried to ban the older guy from talking to her daughter, and "for the record, I didn't touch her or say a single word to her" etc, and then they all left.

Next time I'm on, I'll respond to this with a three fathom analysis of why this got me particularly annoyed. For now, I'm going to leave it at that.

Christian Music

There was a long time during which I refused to listen to any music by anyone who called themselves a Christian musician that wasn't hymns and such - I still find it hard. As far as I could tell, there were only three kinds of Christian song - the incredibly distorted guitar song where you couldn't understand the vocals (which were usually the best by way of lyrics), the generic soft rock song (with lyrics that could be sung by anyone about how awesome 'he' was but never saying who he actually was) and the unfortunate, but all to common, dross that appears in all music (which was by and large the kind that you heard the most). My refusal got to the point where there were a few cases of me getting rid of music that I had liked as soon as I found out that the musicians called themselves Christians. Bands like Kutless, Anberlin and Skillet never stood a chance once I learnt their origins.

Since then, my situation has changed. I am still incredibly wary of so-called Christian Music. However, as I am living with aficionados of certain Christian bands, I have been forced to rethink and explain my policy. Many Christian bands are indeed good musically and as they can now gain credibility and a wider audience while still actually singing Christian lyrics, they in many cases do. Many still disguise their words under a layer of symbols or hidden meanings but it is getting better.

The default setting for many Christians is to automatically assume that since the band calls themselves Christian, their music will therefore be quality and their lyrics worth hearing. It may be that we decide that it is important that we support the industry, but this doesn't seem to be the main reasoning. So it is interesting that even without the demand for improvement or any real skill a growing number of Christian bands have a high quality of both musical proficiency and performance ability, making them worth listening to for the music and worth going to see as well.

So the question arises, What is it that is making Christian music good? There are two things I think that are doing this. The first is industry and audience related, and the second is deeper.

Firstly, with a large number of mediocre bands that achieve the qualifier of good by some means unknown to me, it is harder for bands that are actually good to gain any notice. For this to happen, they either need to be or do something incredibly controversial (which won't really work in the semi-conservative Christian market) or be really properly good. This has driven bands who want to achieve things with their music to greater heights seeing as they have to be quite good in order to be noticed by either the publishing companies (who would rather keep on squeezing proven bands until they are dry) or the audience (who already have favourites and aren't overly willing to change)

The second comes down to the nature of music. Music in its purist form is about emotion and passion. The greatest albums ever came out of a deep emotional connection to the music and the band or the artist; look at Face Value by Phil Collins of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, both of them came out of massive emotions held by the bands in question. As the return to Grace-based Christianity continues, people are returning to the passion that is, or should be inherent in Christianity. Since this passion is becoming more and more real, bands are funnelling it into their music and performances. This is what is driving the music to be better and the lyrics to be truer.

Post Modern Amusement

One of the most common responses that I have ever had to cold evangelism (eg door knocking) is "I'm not interested," followed by the quick closing of the door and a phone call to everyone else in the street warning them to not answer the door. The second most common response essentially boils down to "Sure that might be right to you, but it isn't right for me." In some cases, everything you say might be agreed with, and the response will still be one of apathy. This is almost directly due to the post-modernist movement which says that "what's right for me is right for me and what's right for you is right for you"

This line of thinking is a real problem when it comes to something like evangelism of any sort because it denies logic of any sort. Now some of you might be saying that when it comes to religious evangelism you don't want logic to be the major factor in what you are saying. However without some level of logical background in what is being said, all sorts of stupidities can come out in arguments or discussions. For example everyone accepts the logical assumption that you get older as time goes on. If you find someone who denies this assumption at your birthday, you will have a hard time explaining to them the reason that you haven't already enjoyed your 50th birthday and why you won't be turning 15 again. When you deny basic logic, all sorts of things fly out the window. Which is why this line of thinking is a real problem for evangelism.

You say, "If you don't accept Jesus, you will go to hell; but if you do, then you will go with him to heaven" (which is a basic explanation of the gospel - there are better ones but this covers the bare essentials). The response comes back, "That might be right for you, but I don't believe it", close door and never hear from them again. Your line does not depend on whether it is believed or not, similar to "If you don't get out of the way of the bus, it will hit you and you will die; but if you do get out of the way, it will not hit you and you will not die". One person's denial of the existence of the bus doesn't mean that they can't be hit by it and die, on the contrary, it makes them more likely to get hit by the bus because they won't get out of it's way.
If you take the logic that an effect follows a cause, then you know that to avoid the effect, you need to avoid the cause.

Which is why this argument is so annoying. The fact that they won't accept it doesn't make it any less true, but it means that they won't accept anything that you say in regards to it and so you can't take any line of reason to get to the point where the simple assumption is accepted.
It is an obvious fallacy that people can't accept is a fallacy.

But the good news is that there is a fairly simple counter to it. It takes the form of a second line. The conversation so far has followed the basic form from above but as the door is about to be closed, you have to tell them that they don't actually believe that. Here is where it can be tricky as you've just told them that they are flat out Wrong and people are always Right. From here you need to point out the logical fallacy in their thinking gently since aggression in this form of evangelism almost never goes down well. However if they don't mind doing a bit of thinking about their thinking, you at least have them listening.

The Sun Is Burning: Part 2

So here is part two of the other day's post, correctly titled this time since you know what the song is now.

Read the first three verses again.

The sun is burning in the sky
Strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
In the park the lazy bees
Are joining in the flowers, among the trees
And the sun burns in the sky

Now the sun is in the West
Little kids go home to take their rest
And the couples in the park
Are holdin' hands and waitin' for the dark
And the sun is in the West

Now the sun is sinking low
Children playin' know it's time to go
High above a spot appears
A little blossom blooms and then draws near
And the sun is sinking low


Now, without knowing what happens in the next part of the song it appears to be a nice, sappy song about everyone having a nice time. They're all going to get up in the morning and go back to school or work and then enjoy the afternoon sun again. So what does happen next? Warning this part isn't the nicest thing you will hear in a song.

Now the sun has come to Earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
And the sun has come to Earth

Now the sun has disappeared
All is darkness, anger, pain and fear
Twisted, sightless wrecks of men
Go groping on their knees and cry in pain
And the sun has disappeared


So to answer yesterday's question, the people were Japanese. And no, they didn't get up in the morning.

So what's my point with this section?
I suppose all I really want to say is that the framing or context of something that is said is possibly the most important part of what is said. When we take it out of context we read our own meaning into what ever it is. This is something that all people have to be careful of. I've complained about it many times when other people take my words out of context and misinterpret them.

Now in this case, you are forgiven. It was intended to be like that.

The other thing that I wanted to say was not that humanities ability to inflict cruelty on itself is one of our defining characteristics.

What I wanted to say was that it is amazing how we can change things so quickly. A simple line like "the sun is sinking low" is just that, a simple line that only gives a time frame. In the next verse however "now the sun has come to earth" does that and then almost pours on the irony - yes, life is going on.
It went from happy sappy music to everyone is dying in pain in the space of three words. The last verses wouldn't be out of place in a Death Metal song. This comes back to the last part where I said that fear comes from the unknown. In this case we reverse engineer again. We don't know the outcome and so we make it something that we don't fear. While it is a logical assumption that the song won't go in this direction, it is an assumption nonetheless.

?: Part 1

The title is because I don't want to play all my cards at once. You will get the actual title later.

This being part one, it needs to introduce what part two will talk about and then discuss it's own stuff.

These are the first three verses of a song by Simon and Garfunkel. Picture it in your head as you read. Pay special attention to everything that you see as there will be a test afterwards.

"The sun is burning in the sky
Strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
In the park the lazy bees
Are joining in the flowers, among the trees
And the sun burns in the sky

Now the sun is in the West
Little kids go home to take their rest
And the couples in the park
Are holdin' hands and waitin' for the dark
And the sun is in the West

Now the sun is sinking low
Children playin' know it's time to go
High above a spot appears
A little blossom blooms and then draws near
And the sun is sinking low"

So what was all that about? (That was a Rhetorical Question - don't answer it).
I have one question. It's only for people who don't already know the song and therefore the answer.
What racial background did the people come from? Simple question. For me, they were almost all caucasian, a couple of others in there as well.

So what was the point of that. This question tells you how deeply ingrained racism is.
In 95% of cases, the people that you saw were of the same ethnic background as you. In 4% of the remaining cases, they were of the dominant ethnic background of the place you grew up or reside in. The remaining 1% of people are lying.

Fear comes from the unknown. From that we can reverse engineer and find that the known is what we prefer to associate with. This is why we imagine people (unless told otherwise) to be the same as us. In a Science Fiction book I once read, the front page said "In most cases of Science Fiction, all humans are white unless told otherwise. In this book, all humans are black unless told otherwise." Think about it - in the original StarWars trilogy, there is only one black person in the entire universe. In the more recent they included more - most notably all of the un-named clones (who were all wearing white...).

The real problem with racial barriers is that they can't not exist. Even saying "I'm not racist, some of my best friends are [insert descriptor here]" means that you've defined those people by that descriptor. It is inherent in Human nature.

For any one who was wondering, the Song is called "The Sun is Burning".
The next post will be about the next verses.

The Monster von Frankenstein

I apologise in advance as this will be somewhat a train of thought post and therefore I am likely to get even myself lost during moments here.

Frankenstein is a book by Mary Shelley where a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, manages to piece together a human body from a collection of parts. This body is initially bereft of life but through a series of experiments manages to imbue the body with the vital spark and both its heart and brain, and subsequently the rest of it, start working. Being of essentially human origins, besides being initially a collection of dead bodies, it becomes self aware and its education begins. However, its (for the sake of clarity the monster will hereinafter be referred to as David - He was never called Frankenstein, that was simply the name of David's creator and that name has begun to encompass both David and his creator) education is somewhat different to the way that you or I are educated.
David's education starts with Victor being utterly repulsed by his appearance that he runs away. David is released and is left without guidance. He decides that he needs to meet with other humans to learn from. With this in mind he watches a family for a year. When he approaches them, they get scared and drive him away. He realises that his appearance is not what people are accepting decides to approach a child, reasoning that a child won't care as much about appearance. By chance this child is the young brother of Victor and insults David. David, attempting to keep him quiet by covering his mouth. This kills him and is David's first act of revenge for Victor making him and then abandoning him. However, it is accidental.
David and Victor meet by accident and David explains to Victor the situation. He says that because he is a living thing, he has a right to happiness and that Victor, as his creator, should provide him with a companion that will accept him. Victor can see the logic and so they leave for Scotland together to make a female companion for David.
While in the process of this, Victor starts thinking that two are probably worse than one, especially a breeding pair. He decides to destroy Davina (the female companion to be) before she is finished. David witness this and vows to destroy Victor's chance of happiness on his upcoming wedding night and kills Victor's somewhat more human partner.
On the wedding night, Victor prepares himself for a fight to the death. Telling his wife to wait upstairs for him he waits for David's arrival. Unfortunately for Victor (and his wife) David's revenge was not Victor's death, but the death of those closest to him so that he can feel the same isolation as David does. He sneaks in to the bedroom and kills Victor's wife.
Victor then vows vengeance upon David and they end up chasing each other for a few months until they find themselves in the Arctic Circle.
Victor dies of exposure. David finds him dead. Grief-stricken and filled with remorse he decides that so that no one else will be hurt, he will go up to the North Pole and burn himself to death rather than let anyone else know of his existence.
Thus ends the sad tale of Baron Victor von Frankenstein and his creation, David the Monster.

Ok, so that was a fairly quick recap on the story in case anyone has either not read it or has forgotten the salient points. In saying that, I have not read it either and so I might be wrong on a few points.

So there are a few things that come out of it. Firstly and quite quickly, something comes back to this post in which I discuss the difference between humans and animals. Mary Shelley seems to agree with my points here. David argues for his human-like rights; something I proposed should be the deciding point of whether an animal should be afforded the same rights. Secondly he defeats his instincts (survival) for something that he deems is more important than himself - in this case, the fact than his vengeance has cost the lives of four people and one like him for the gain of nothing and also the fact that his difference is obviously the cause of this. He decides that this is reason enough that he should not be allowed to continue his existence. Self sacrifice was one of my differences between humanity and animals. David put a value on his own life and determined that it was not higher than his revenge.

Secondly, it seems that a crucial point of his self awareness was the fact that he desired companionship. He grew to full self awareness as his desire for friendship grew. As this grew, he also gained more 'human' characteristics. It is the result of many studies that children of any age crave association with others. This is a critical part of their growth - the association with others teaches them social skills and aids in their development in a way that can not be taught in any other way.
It is also a result of similar studies that at the formative stages, a child's mind is more plastic, but that what is taught is remembered for longer (Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it). In the formative time for David, he was firstly abandoned. As a consequence of his abandonment linked with his desire for companionship, he sought out others. As he watched this, his mind formed the deeper desire to gain friends and a bona fide family. When this was taken from him by the second rejection, he learnt that no one liked him and no human would ever like him. Whether this was true or not, it was what his experiences taught him.
Looking at this, it is no surprise the direction that he decided to go. It has been seen many times before - usually in the lives of psycho killers. Repeated (shall we say it?) inhumanities teach inhumanity. David was taught that he was not worthy of what others had simply because he didn't look like them. Logic dictated to him that this was a lie and that he was worthy of the same as everyone else. And so he decided that if he wasn't worthy of it, no one else was - simple logic especially in the mind of a child.

Thirdly, he showed remorse. This is interesting of itself - he was never taught this because no one ever showed it to him in their dealings with him, and so either he learnt it as an aside somewhere or it is inherent in the human mind (which by now I have decided that he has). But even in the case of the latter, the path that he has taken, which we have seen in the lives of serial killers worldwide, this is a rarity. In fact it is generally considered more than just a symptom in these cases and is often more of a partial cause - if you don't care about the results for others then it doesn't matter what you do as long as you come out it positively. Which means that he was not in the same category as such luminaries as Richard Kuklinski, the infamous 'Ice Man' who despite initially feeling remorse, started to feel that killing gave him a sense of power.
Which means that he was simply a normal human who had been taken in a direction that he could not escape from and in which killing was the only way to continue. His thinking was that if he could kill the one that had made him unacceptable then he would feel some closure and would be able to live alone for the term of his natural life. When this was proved to be not apparent, by his remorse and grief, he decided that not only would he be not able to ever live with others, but that he could not live alone with himself, which is one of the most common excuses for suicide - the inability to be a part of yourself.

The next part is a question. Why is it that people assume from the outset that the worst possible thing that could happen is that they die? That was the conclusion that Victor made - if David was going to have revenge and it was going to be really really bad, than of course it would be his death. Interesting that an 18 year old, upper middle class girl who had not had any experience at all similar to this would decide that this wasn't the worst revenge that could be had - that it was in fact the death of someone close to you. Interesting also that this is one of the two reasons that vengeance is decided, the other being the slow destruction of the life of the other nemesis.

Something else; all of the people born human (rather than David who was made a human) indulge in the classic human pastime of prejudice. As soon as Victor sees David alive, he flees; when he tries to talk to the kid, he gets insulted; as soon as he reveals himself to the family that he watched for a year, they attack him - I will admit that is creepy, if someone came up to me and said "I've been watching you for about a year. Can we be friends?" I would probably attack them to. Basically the only person in this tale that doesn't, is David himself.
It occurs to me that the only people who don't indulge in prejudice are those who are considered outcasts. Although that isn't completely true - they still indulge, just with people who are close or similarly outcast to them. Since David never got the chance to meet anyone that was similar to him, he never got to show proper prejudice.

The last thing that I want to say here.
I'll come at it sideways.
The reason that recruiting child soldiers is such a brutally efficient way of getting loyal people fast is that once they've killed, they know that there is no coming back - murder is the only taboo that we are born with. When you show them that they are still accepted then they come into the life that accepts them willingly. If this is a life where cruelty and killing outsiders is the norm, then that is the life that they will live, no matter the consequences, until they are accepted into another life where their previous sins are not accepted but not a cardinal sin.
David experiences the first part of this. He kills someone by accident, but he already knows that no one will accept him and therefore there is no life that he can take. His only recourse is to continue in the path that he is already on because he doesn't see an alternative, although he continues to try and get out of it. His desire for a companion is now a desire for a counterpart who will accept him even after his sins more than it is a desire for association with others - he only wants one because in his mind only one will possibly accept him, classic romantic thinking.
When this falls through, he defaults to the original path and kills again, these times as a willing participant. He sees through the jaded eyes of the betrayed that without a literally custom built companion, no one will ever accept him. Whether he is right or not, I can't comment on; but his logic is flawless.

Here is the major difference between David and Victor (despite the obvious physical difference) - David rules himself through a logic that, while impeccable, doesn't have the advantage of secondary, wiser eyes and also hasn't been taught right or wrong besides what is inherent in him already. Victor jumps to conclusions and his logic is ruled by preconceived notions of what is right, being a non human (David) putting himself on the same level as a human (for example Victor).

The power of Belief 2

So the Westboro Baptist C(ult)urch.
What can we say?

Not much, so I'll just go straight into the negativity of their beliefs.
While a lot (roughly 103%) of what they do is negative, there is only one facet that I want to cover here.

A large portion of their reasoning goes somewhat like this.
"We are followers of Christ. Followers of Christ are called to be of one heart and mind. Therefore anyone who disagrees with us can not be called a follower of Christ."

The next part of their reasoning goes something like this.
"Christ said that his followers (us) would be hated for following him. We are hated for doing his work. Therefore we must be followers of Christ. Since everyone hates us, no one else can be legitimately called followers of Christ"

The next part of their reasoning goes something like this.
"Since God hates sinners, being everyone that doesn't follow Christ, which is everyone that isn't us, God hates everyone that isn't us. Since God isn't subtle about his methods (Look at the Old Testament where he would kill nations for the sin of one man) and he calls us to tell all about him, we must tell everyone that they are going to go to hell."

The final part of their reasoning goes a little something like this.
"People don't like us because we're telling them the truth that they are going to hell. Therefore they are going to hell"

In an interview with one of the members of this small group, it came out that she didn't actually want people to listen to their message in case people repented because if they did that, they wouldn't be punished for their sins. While this may not be the view shared by all of the members, it shows the type of hatred that is a definite part of the teachings.

Any hoo, back to the point. The reasoning is circular and lead the thoughts essentially in this way.
"People who dislike or hate us are going to hell and we should tell them that. People don't like us for telling them that they are going to hell, therefore they are going to hell and we should let them know."

So what is the negative power of belief in this case?
Here they refuse to take accepted belief over dogma. This is one that is especially good in small doses - it leads to questioning the accepted order, which may yet be wrong.

But why is this bad when it leads to questioning? Because in its extreme case (which we see with the WBC) it doesn't allow questioning. Everything becomes black or white, and there is no way that any shade of grey can be anything other than the darkest of blacks. It once again prohibits growth, but it also disallows anything else to be even considered. In this case, they refuse to believe that there are more than 15 or 20 actual followers of Christ in the world because, in their words "They'd be doing the same as we do and we'd have heard about it"


The real problem in this case is that they've warped their views so much that every time they do anything that someone dislikes they re-validate everything that they do once again.

The power of Belief 1

There are two things that I want to talk about in terms of the negative power of belief and therefore there will be two separate discussions. It is important that I say that both of these aspects can also be positive in the right dosage (very mild).

They both take different forms and affect different people. Thus, I will focus on possibly the most notable incidences in each case. In this discussion, I will look at the Nazi party nearing the end of WWII. In the next discussion I will look at one facet of the Westboro Baptist C(ult)hurch. (as an aside, written that way you can almost trick yourself into thinking it says Cthulhu)

So firstly, the Nazi party. What did they most notably believe in? The Motherland and the divine strength of the same. Everything else was secondary, which isn't to underplay it, but everything else came from this one core belief. The hatred of the Jewish race, the gypsies and homosexuality came from the belief that this was what was making Germany weak. The love of the aryan 'race' came partly from Neitzche's theory of the Übermensch and partly from the view that this was the purist and therefore strongest race; and so the propagation of this bloodline meant that Germany would strengthen itself through its people.

And how did this play out?
Towards the end of the second world war possibly the most common reaction among the Nazi high command was disbelief - there was no way that they could lose the war and so therefore there was no justification to the claims that they were. Documentation of Hitler's last weeks show that he couldn't accept that there wasn't a way that his men weren't simply lulling the Russians into a false sense of security before crushing them close to Berlin. When they entered Berlin and it became clear that Germany had lost the war, Hitler committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun. Following this the rest of the high command gave up hope - after all, how could they win when their leader had abandoned them and Germany.

So what was the negative power of belief in this case?
Refusing to accept fact over belief. What they 'knew' to be true had lost out to what was actually true but there was no acceptance of this because their belief overrode the facts.

We've seen this in many other cases as well. Possibly the other most well known one was Galileo's fight with the Catholic church over the shape of the earth leading to his conviction for heresy and subsequent house arrest.

So then the question is how negative is this power of belief.
It blinds you to the reality of what is actually happening. This in itself is bad enough, it disallows growth from your accepted beliefs, and as I've stated previously, if you're not growing, you're regressing.
It forces you to lie to yourself by discounting, belittling or misinterpreting data that is true.

Negative indeed.

The big difference

Yes there is a difference between animals and humans. Even the fact that we split ourselves into these two groups shows that. There is one difference that I keep coming back to almost no matter the end. It has something to do with the scientific name for our species, Homo Sapiens - Humans, the Wise. That's right we decided from the beginning that we were the only intelligent species on the face of the planet. But past that there is another thing that this brings up. What is wisdom? If we alone have it, how does that make us different to every other species on this earth?

It has been defined as the ability to know what to do with knowledge and while this is true, I would like to propose an addendum to this. It's also the ability to synthesise information, which leads me to the point that I wanted to make. The difference between humans and animals is that instinct doesn't rule us.

This is a fairly easy thing to see. If an animal is hungry it will find something to eat, no matter what it was doing immediately before that. If a human is hungry and was doing something, that will finish first. We set priorities that can override our own survival requirements temporarily. No animal will go on a hunger strike. But it also has some deeper consequences.
A human can protect others over themselves.
A human can fight and kill other humans for little or no reason (ie with out the need for protection or to satisfy a need for survival).
But also a human can literally put a value on a life - it isn't just something to fill in time with or a collection of health-some proteins.

And so this is what I come back to, this is my reason for doing a lot of things. Instinct would tell me to do all sorts of stuff that would get me into trouble - instinct is bad for me. Doesn't mean that I shouldn't eat when I'm hungry, but when instinct tells me to be angry or what ever, then I should ignore it and try to find something new. This is why I dislike painkillers - the instinct is to try and prevent or relieve pain. Pain is a teaching method that the body uses to try and keep us safe, relief of this stops the lesson. It also limits the things that we can do as part of anything (and you know how much I hate limitations). They work by slowing the nerve receptors in the brain and therefore slowing the brain. If the brain is what separates us from animals, why would we want that?

The other thing that this difference means is that animals sharing human rights, at least to me, makes no sense. I would argue that if they are to get human or human like rights, they have to first be able to argue for them on their own.