Amerika

In an age of lies, the truth is seen as a lie.

You don’t get to an age of lies without massive decay. An age of lies is also an age of a dying civilization. That means that every weak-willed person clusters around some familiar lies, and chants them like a catechism, bleating out their terror as their voices get stronger.

They have the power to shout you down because they have greater numbers. What they don’t have is any relation to reality, so they’re schizoid: drunk on the power they have for social reasons, and terrified in denial of their imminent downfall through the confrontation between their lies and reality.

We live in an age of great taboos that we cannot speak “officially” or we become ostracized by All the Good People, who think our ideas are horrible and barbaric, and because they all agree with each other in a circular echo chamber, they can afford to deny us — for now:

• Inequality is a fact of life. There are mathematical distributions in physics that determine the spread of traits among a group. Not everyone will be born a genius; few will. Similarly, few will be born great musicians, great athletes, or great orators. The rest of us need to do what we can to keep a social order going that rewards these people, so we have the best at the top. However, that’s unpopular with the angry masses who are upset that anyone has something they do not. They demand equality. Giving in to that demand creates a Soviet-style covert totalitarian state which seeks to smash those who rise above the mediocre.
• Diversity doesn’t work. Even if your immigrants are from the master race, it destroys who you are. This shatters social order. That means that people have no expectation of being rewarded for good acts, and the assurance that they’ll be harassed for any act that inconvenience others, even if it’s good. As a result, they stop acting outside their homes and crime, corruption, perversity and blatant dishonesty and ignorance reign. With a social standard and consensus, your society has no center and it becomes a giant shopping mall where people earn money, take what they want, and ignore the consequences on the whole. As a result parasites, predators, perverts, thieves with fountain pens and demagogues take over.
• Our problem is not oppression. All truly burnt out people in life will point to some large entity that is keeping them down, and keeping them from rising. They are making excuses. The large entity may have damaged them, but what’s keeping them down is their own incompetence, laziness, disorganization, and inability to prioritize long-term construction over short term pleasures. Corporations, Israel, Nazis, Ghaddaffi, Jesus, Satan, etc. are not what “oppresses” us. What oppresses us is the weakness of our fellow citizens, and their dishonesty, especially when you gather them in lynch mobs or other democratic groups.
• We’re committing ecocide and the problem is too many people. Whoah, dude, major party foul. You mean I can’t have my giant house, two SUVs, lots of plastic junk from Wal-mart and a cheeseburger every meal? That’s like, not fair, because some people get that, and I’m a person too. And you know, I think I want it too. So why can’t I have what others have? — this is how people think, and it’s why they expand like a slime mould. You need social roles and social castes to regulate what people can have, and to regulate population so you get more smart ones (who need less reminding to not litter) and fewer dumb ones (who litter because they’re oblivious to anything but themselves). For all the “green” and “environmentalist” blather in the news, you’ll find plenty that is thinly-disguised socialist wealth transfer, and very little that is practical efforts to protect our environment, its creatures and plants.
• Our society is dying from within. Ugly streets, ugly architecture; commercial advertising covers every open surface, and every design is utilitarian or glorifying the prole. Do you smell the fetid stink of a state religion? People sit in traffic, tolerate idiots, are polite and compromise, try not to lash out and impale the morons on poles for wasting time and being pointless. We’ve made a society of tolerance, alright, but the result is that you must be either (a) oblivious to everything around you or (b) constantly irritated by your fellow citizens. And what is the goal of this? Good, compliant consumers and good, compliant neighbors who never interrupt us when you embark on selfish pursuits. The selfishness of the individual, magnified through a crowd, starts with the desire of the individual to be beyond criticism. The result is social death because soon, any action except “I’ll just go to work, go shopping and go home” is some kind of political-socioeconomic conflict zone because it’s inconvenient to someone else.
• Your leaders are liars because the voters are liars. People vote dishonestly. Instead of delegating power to someone who can make tough decisions, they’re voting out anyone who will bring up any really difficult issue. They care only about the economy and an occasional quick victory in a war where our greater power leads to the crushing of some lesser enemy. People vote the same way the cheer on a favorite sports team, or pick stocks, or go shopping. They are oblivious to any consequences beyond how cool it makes them look to be supporting the “right” candidate.

All this leads up to a simple reality: problems ahead, people refuse to see them, and so we’ve created taboos around any discussion of these problems.

You think you live in a free society? It’s “free” in that you can do anything, until society decides your thoughts or actions were inconvenient and throws your behind into a court situation:

Geert Wilders, the far-Right Dutch MP will face trial on charges of incited hatred and discriminations against Muslims, after a judge rejected a request to dismiss the case.

Mr Wilders was charged with insulting Muslims by comparing Islam to Nazism. The case has attracted considerable attention, not just because of Mr Wilders’ controversial comments, but also because of the increasing influence of his Freedom Party, which provides support for the Dutch minority government on key issues.

Following a brief adjournment, judges, prosecutors and the defence agreed for the trial to resume on April 13 with key witness testimony. If found guilty, he could face up to a year in jail of a 7,600 euro (£6,700) fine. – The Telegraph

Let me ask you there, fellow Comrade Citizen, why is this man in jail?

Well, he said some bad things.

So we are thinking of jailing him for his opinion or ideas?

Well, no, we’re trying to put him in jail because his words will cause people to be upset, and that could cause disruption in our social order.

I see. I’m sure similar dramas played out in ancient Greece and Rome, in the failing Maya and Aztec empires, even in the collapsing kingdoms of ancient India, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, China and even failing Amerind societies like the Hopi.

Make sure you kill that messenger. If you get rid of him, maybe the trouble will go away because no one will be saying anything offensive, and we’ll all get along.

Except that never works. It just causes resentment to smolder. Eventually, it explodes.

And while we’re fiddling away here in the palace, what’s happening to Rome — errr, our planet?

A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years — tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations — and add more strain to global food supplies.

People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said. – Discovery

Because our leadership is based in what is popular, not what is realistic/truthful, we’re unable to deal with our real problems.

Fake, symbolic, emotional attention-getters? Sure, let’s keep talking about Libya, racism, abortion, inequality, al-Qaeda, legal marijuana and socialized medicine. These actually have really minor consequences in the big picture.

Most of all, don’t do anything to inconvenience each other. Don’t rock the boat — your neighbor wants a bigger house, two SUVs, more plastic junk from Wal-mart. You just want to get through college into that profitable career and to do the same. You two agree: don’t rock the boat. Ignore these problems, at least until we make our pile and retire, and then it’s someone else’s problem.

Large corporations? Satan? Fascists? No, those aren’t our problem… it’s this simple mechanism. People deciding not to do the inconvenient, unpopular and thus unprofitable.

We have inverted all values. Truths — ideas which correspond to what we can expect from reality, given a certain path — are proclaimed to be Lies; truth-tellers are called criminals and thrown in jail. And the crazy train rattles on, out of control, with no one at the wheel.

Tags: crowdism, ecocide