As an atheist, this kind of position really irks me, as I tend to lean more Nietzschian in how I feel about humanity’s place in the universe. It irks me even more because I would assume Dawkins would feel the same way, considering his position as an evolutionary biologist.

My position is that humans are animals. We are stupid, irrational, short-sighted, and destructive, no matter if we have religion or lack of religion.

It seems to me that this oil leak in the Gulf should be proof of this.

The oil leak in the gulf was not caused by religion. It was not caused by dogma. It was not caused by belief. It was not caused by prayer.

The leak was caused purely and entirely by corporate negligence that supported short term profit over ecological safety. BP, Transocean, et al, were all very aware of the catastrophic effects such a disaster would bring. Even in their leaked briefings on how to deal with such a crisis, one of the main points BP noted in their public relations structure was to never make any sort of promise or allusion to the idea that the ecosystem would ever be the same and/or return to its natural state.

British Petroleum is an oil company, and in dealing with searching for, finding, and extracting this product, they have invested millions (if not billions) of dollars in scientific and engineering funding. They have massive teams of geologists and engineers who (in my humble opinion) are probably not dogmatically tied to religion and think “nature will just sort itself out” or “god will take care of it.” No, it seems readily apparent that they were and are fully aware of the ecological impact of their cost-cutting, profit-booming measures. They were a group singularly dedicated to the science of the issue, as well as the business of the issue.

Of course, companies like these can be blamed for pushing an anti-scientific agenda such as the groups claiming that global warming is a myth, or that pollution in general isn’t as bad as environmental groups make it out to be, usually using the guise of religion and belief to draw larger groups of people into these groups, allowing them to continue to make ecologically risky decisions.

In that case, which is worse? Religion that allows one to believe that global warming can’t be real because the earth is only 6,000 years old or a corporation that knows full well the scientific truth of the matter but obfuscates it purely for the motive of profit.

You know, I can imagine a world without religion, and sadly, it still involves the BP/Transocean oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that began in April 2010. Humans, no matter their creed, are fucking insipid, bullheaded, and parasitic creatures. Science did more to create the worst ecological disaster in human history than religion did. Science in collusion with big business.

So the next time one of you fucking Dawkinite yahoos wants to tell me that I should be scolding anyone I know for being religious, you can go jump in the gulf, take a swim, dunk your head under, take a deep breath, and then tell me it is all religions fault.

In contrast to this, we have the American public’s response to this disaster, which seems to focus almost entirely on one company, and in many cases, one man, the lost, lonely, and nearly utterly destroyed Tony Hayward, the wayward CEO of British Petroleum.

Of course, the massive angry response is not unreasonable. We want answers for this disaster, and we want someone to hold accountable for destroying the future viability of a safe ecosystem in the American Gulf. In our eyes, someone must answer to this situation, and who better than a CEO of the company who was drilling in the Gulf to begin with? Especially if he is obviously unable to handle this situation with grace and professional veneer, it makes him an even easier target. Every misstep he makes, even things that may not truly be missteps, the public is biting at his heels, perfectly content to psychologically hang him from the gallows.

Recently, he made the error of making the statement “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back,” to which there was a public uproar. How could someone who is barely affected by this disaster be demanding his life back when he is responsible for destroying the livelihood of thousands?

It is curious to me that we would lash out so violently and angrily over such a statement, mainly because it is truly a very human statement. We are all inherently selfish and self-serving, so who wouldn’t want their life to return to normalcy when suddenly saddled with such a disaster under their control?

Of course, “control” is actually core issue at hand here. How much “control” does a man like Hayward really have?

In this instance, I would turn to Milton Friedman’s stipulations on the four ways money is spent in a capitalist society.

The first and most common way in the private sector is people spending their own money on themselves. In this case, the buyer is interested in both quality (the best product or service that he can afford) and value (getting it at the best price) because he is both the producer of the wealth being spent and the consumer of the good or service being procured.

The second way is when people spend their own money on others (such as gifts). Here they are still concerned about value (it’s their money), but less concerned about service quality as they are not the consumer.

The third way is spending other people’s money on yourself. Think of the rich man’s girlfriend who buys herself the nicest dresses in the store on his credit card without even looking at the tag. She wants quality, but value is irrelevant since she sacrifices nothing.

The fourth way is when people spend other people’s money on other people. In this case, the buyer has no rational interest in either value or quality. Government always and necessarily spends money in this fourth way. This guarantees inefficient public spending because the spenders have no vested interest in efficiently allocating those funds.

I believe this fourth way of spending money is directly relative to the way capital is spent within large corporations. In most cases in a large corporation, you are spending other peoples money on a project that doesn’t directly affect you. Many of the people employed by British Petroleum live nowhere near the area directly affected by this disaster. In fact, the likelihood that many of the people that work for BP are actually sub-contracted out by different companies is very high. Considering the oil rig in question was actually owned by Transocean, and the company that was cementing and sealing the wellhead right before the explosion was Halliburton, it raises the question of how much corporate bureaucracy produces inefficient capitalist spending because of a lack of vested interest in the individuals making the decisions.

Let us consider, ignoring companies outside of BP, the fact that BP alone employs 115,000 people. That is no small change. These people are daily working together all across the world, making arbitrary decisions with the sole intent of making the most profit for the company. It is unrealistic to assume Tony Hayward has direct and authoritative control over every single decision that is made by the company at large. In fact, it stands to reason that many of the decisions are largely ill-considered responses to how other departments of the business conduct their business, and how it affects other departments, thus creating a sort of endless-feedback-loop of bad decisions based on previous bad decisions, with no progress being made because no one department is fully willing to cow-tow to another department and change the way they run their personal business. This kind of situation alone is a prime environment to create accidents, mis-communications, and in general negative corporate behavior. Combine that with a deeply ingrained corporate bureaucracy in all of the companies involved in this disaster, and how they all do business in their own way, and their employees are likely to come in conflict with one another on many occasions when trying to work around these differences, and you have to be surprised that this kind of disaster isn’t more common.

Now, none of this is to say that blame shouldn’t be laid, and that we don’t need complete accountability for this disaster, but we have to consider the words of Castro. What we are presented with is the question of, is there even any way to viably censure the corporations involved? I have noticed many people have jumped on a bandwagon of the idea of the American Federal Government taking over BP operations (much like they did with some banks recently during the American fiscal crisis of late 2008). This, of course, is a ridiculous idea in reality when you consider the simple fact that BP is a British company, and is completely run out of the UK (of course, you would think the name “British Petroleum” might clue some Americans into this whole concept, but nobody said the public was exactly brilliant.).

How does one censure international capitalism? Isn’t the core issue here that Castro is indeed correct, that this is not simply a problem with an individual company named British Petroleum, but it is quite indicative how modern global capitalism functions, and that these corporations that do indeed dictate the public’s future are simply unaccountable due to their size, reach, and our near complete dependency on them.

Some would suggest a boycott, but how does that work in global capitalism? Massive industry isn’t just supported by the consumer, it is also supported by the global capitalist network of massive industries relying on each other. Even if every American consumer stopped buying BP products, corporate America likely would continue to buy their products, and as they have much more capital than the consumer/citizen, they have much more sway in keeping BP afloat than any smattering of people who think they can simply boycott their way out of a situation anymore.

Beyond this, but considering the serious employment crisis all over the world, there are people who will be more than desperate enough to continue working for companies like BP. If you need a job to feed your family and stay afloat and not become homeless and desperate, you will make a choice to work in a morally dubious position to accomplish what you need to do to take care of family. It is no different than stealing to survive, a morally bankrupt choice in a position of complete desperation.

So, where do we stand? Is there any way to react to and censure corporations like BP, who are not just destroying the environment and countless livelihoods that depend on it right now, but also the livelihoods of future generations who will not be able to rely on our planets natural ecosystem for survival as it will be nearly completely destroyed?

The solution certainly isn’t to blame it all on Tony Hayward. The solution certainly isn’t to assume that it is only a problem with one corporation, and that things will get better if BP disappears. The beginning of a solution is to accept that the problem is with global capitalism itself, and that unless there is a massive sea change, we can expect our future to be drenched in oil and marred with chemical burn.

But if I were to ever switch this around, to adopt a Morrowind mentality in real life, I would end up looking at everything in every room.

‘Affect’ is generally defined as ‘emotion’, and philosophically defined as ‘the ability to affect and be affected’. One has ‘affection’ for someone or something. Two of the most powerful modes of affect are love and rage, polarized, yet intertwined. One can ‘kill in a heat of passion’, a phrase that implies both love and rage as the motivator of action.

Technology is considered to be an extension of our bodies, by both philosophers of technology and neuroscientists. When we use a simple tool, our brains begin to treat it as a new part of our body. Technology can be said to be ‘prosthetic’. However, one should avoid a rationalist bias and not see technology as merely an extension of our rationality. Technology is just as much an extension of our animal passions – affect – love and rage.

Understanding the relationship between our animal selves and technology becomes more difficult when we begin to discuss more complex tools such as communication technology. Marshall McLuhan referred to such technologies as extensions of our nervous system. A global network as an extension of a collective nervous system is a complex animal indeed.

There are many examples one could choose to explore such concepts: long-distance relationships, warfare, economic transactions, etc. I have chosen American football.

A game of professional football has evolved into an incredibly complex technological situation. Communication technologies and human passions form a system in which affect is constantly being modulated, not just for the players on the field, but the fans.

When watching the New Orleans’ Saints games this season, one can observe that the team and fans seem to be coming from a place of love, forming an affective feedback loop of positive feelings. However, football requires the modulation of rage, and games are not without their outbursts in which rage can no longer be contained by the technological system. Nevertheless, the prevailing affect appears to be one of solidarity. 

Crowd noise has played a crucial role in the Saints’ wins inside of the Superdome. During the defense portions of the game, the crowd took advantage of the reflective walls of an indoor stadium by making enough noise to interfere with the visiting team’s communication technology. To no avail, Brett Favre used earplugs to improve his team’s communication technology. A technological response to a disadvantage is not uncommon, but in this particular case, noise won out. The crowd and the team form a feedback loop of larger than life communication, much like the Zerg race in Starcraft who benefit from their numbers and ability to swarm.

The philosopher Michel Serres plays off of the meanings of the French word for ‘parasite’ in his book The Parasite. The word simultaneously means parasite, host, and noise. For him, “the parasite invents cybernetics”. Noise is always a message in a communication system. Noise, like communication technologies, may play off of the rage our primitive brains, but it can also be an expression of love and solidarity.

The power of crowds was evidenced at the end of the last game, when cell phone networks were jammed by their immediate use by masses of people just after the climactic end of the game. But, that is all I can say about it for now. I think I’ve got something in my eye.

Now, don’t mistake me. The show in question is utter fucking trash. V, as the title simply stands, is a science fiction drama about an alien race that comes to Earth purportedly in peace but in reality has dire intentions for mankind.

It has been talked about nigh-everywhere online at this point about the absolutely obvious parallels between the “evil aliens” and the presidency of Barack Obama. The aliens call spreading their message “spreading hope and change” calling upon the most recognized words of Obama’s campaign. By the end of the episode, the aliens have revealed they have advanced medical technology, and they plan to install “healing centers” in every city in the world, for free. Essentially, they want to offer Universal Healthcare. A group of conspiracy theorists who are “in the know” about the aliens, reveal that they plan to use this plan for healing everyone to take over the world.

I am dead serious. If this show doesn’t come off as some neo-con’s wet dream, I don’t know what does.

Now, leaving politics aside in relation to this show (which is difficult, considering television media’s response to Bush’s policies was to create 24, a show about how tearing the Constitution and Geneva Conventions to shreds was the best possible thing in the world.), I want to focus on the subject of conspiracy theorists and their role in non-linear history.

One of the biggest points we have to make about history’s essential non-linearity is that the future is completely unpredictable. This seems like a very basic idea, but it also often seems lost on many who would essentially agree.

“The future is unpredictable.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“However, you are absolutely sure that within 10 months the Bilderberg group is going to use financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sach’s to overthrow our government and institute a New World Order.”
“Well yeah! Don’t you see the writing on the wall etc etc etc…”

Why, especially in Western society, do we often perceive history as this ultimate endpoint that is being worked towards. That some event or cataclysm will be the solution and things will be okay and we won’t have to worry about the future anymore.

Where does this, shall we say, perseverance for the future come from? In political campaigns like Obama’s we see it. Selling the idea of working together for a “brighter future.” To what end? How does staying ahead technologically secure the future? Does the future of the planet change because we are the most powerful nation?

The answer is, of course: No.

So, where does conspiracy theory fit into all of this?

Well, I find conspiracy theorists very interesting because they are almost like self-negating prophecies. The fact that a conspiracy theory exists is a testament to individual thought. Billions of people all with individual thought will not be easily subjugated by an extremely small group of people. So, through conspiracy theory, we have a group of people who are convinced there are plots by shadowy forces to take over the world. However, by simply expressing such a theory, they are showing that such plots will have little luck in the real world because people already suspect such a thing from the outset and will have nothing to do with it. If such tactics were attempted to be used, such massive amounts of rioting would occur as to destabilize most of the civilized world. Prophecy negated.

This isn’t to say I don’t think there are people who are playing with power. As we know from Nietzsche and Foucault, power relations are some of the most basic tenets of human social interaction. On some level, we all seek to exert power over one another, in whatever capacity we have the ability to.

So, there are definitely groups who want to abuse their status and power.

The funny thing is, you can’t really call most of them conspiracies.

Consider Dick Cheney. Straight up evil motherfucker. He was heavily involved with PNAC (Project for the New American Century), which had no problem stating that they believed the best course of action in the modern world was for America to start World War 3 and take over the rest of the civilized world in one fell swoop.

Consider a recent memo from Citi that leaked online. In it, Citi theorists discussed how soon there is going to be much more plutocracy in the world. The world is quickly moving towards more plutocracy than ever, they described, and went on to describe how to survive financially in a heavily plutocratic world. They clearly defined practices to profit from plutocracy.

Consider something much older: from the bowels of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s, during investigations of the likes of the Ford Institute and the Carnegie Foundation, we learn that as early as 1910, such private educational institutions planned to move the country towards more socialism sympathetic policies by influencing the education system.

This isn’t conspiracy theory because we are being told exactly what they plan to do. How is that conspiracy? That is just plain being honest. The people involved also think its in the best interests of the people they hold interest in, so they think its not inherently evil.

Not only that, but in reference to the socialist ideals of groups like the Carnegie Foundation, when a new head of the foundation is chosen, most of the original ideology of such a foundation can (and definitely was) lost. Much of what was found in reference to their socialist agenda was minutes of meetings from 40 years before the investigative trial. Most of the staff of the foundations at that time were young, eager, and had no knowledge of such plans. As such, they let congressional investigators search the minutes of early foundation meetings without worry, because they had no idea whether or not such things existed in the minutes themselves.

Ah, 1910, a great year for socialism in America.

2009, and evil aliens are offering socialized medicine.

Somehow, I don’t think the “conspiracy” really panned out.

So not only do we have “conspiracies” with the inability to come to fruition over time (and an example of one that has proven that the exact opposite of what was planned has occurred), we also have the fact that these activities are far from conspiratorial because they are simply not hidden.

The super villains behind such machinations are much like a James Bond villain, divulging every juicy detail of their master plan to take over the world to our hero, Mr. Bond, right at the pinnacle of the film. Bond uses his savvy and know-how to destroy the plan.

However, in reality, the absolute menacing size of the population of the world makes it nearly impossible to pull off any such power grab, no heroes needed.

—

Quickly, back to Obama. I can almost see our villain now…

“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No Mr. Beck, I expect you to have socialized medicine pay for your Appendicitis treatment!”

“Beck. Glenn Beck. Martini, no salt. I salt it with my tears.”

During the G20 protests, we saw the first use against civilians of the LRAD sound weapons.

Apparently this is “change we can believe in.”

Now, politics aside, I am slightly frustrated at the outrage over this issue, not because I think using weaponized sound is a good thing, but more because I see multiple ways in which to disrupt/defuse such tactics.

Compared to getting shot with rubber bullets, responding to sonic cannons seems like child’s play.

To begin with, a simple way to deal with the use of sonic cannons without making a physical response would be to buy earplugs and cover your ears with tight fitting, sound dampening headphones, further drowning out the sound to an at least bearable volume. Also, learn to communicate using sign language, which allows you and fellow protesters to be essentially “deaf” throughout the process but still able to communicate freely.

However, if you really want to get things cooking, show up in a truck with your own sound system. Get someone who is equipped with earplugs and headphones wired with a wireless mic and get them close enough to the sonic cannon to be able to get a good sample of the sound emanating from it. Have the wireless mic wired into a laptop, and have your laptop invert the soundwave, and play it back at the loudest volume possible, directly back at the sonic cannon. As the sonic cannon seems to be a repeating sound, like a car alarm, you don’t even need a very long sample, nor a long time to invert the sample. As long as you can sync the inverted sound with the origin sound, the inverted sound wave will cancel out the origin soundwave, defusing the sonic cannon entirely.

The question in that situation is, though, are they able to cite you for breaking noise ordinances? Perhaps they could, but it is likely you would be able to fight such a charge in court since they, in turn, were breaking noise ordinances themselves.

Remember kids, a hack-a-day keeps the fascist technology at bay.

1.) Does there have to be a reason?/Can there be a reason?
2.) If so, is there a reason?
3.) If there is a reason, what is it?

We have to start with the first question, and depending on that answer we may or may not move on to the second… similarly for the third question.

 These are not easy questions.

 If there can be no reason, then I suppose the people who say there is no reason are correct and we can stop there, each of us content with simply trying to make comfortable in our minds the very reason that there can be no reason (which seems to me like something that might actually be understandable, and the end of the regression of Why’s). If those people are incorrect however, then are the remaining questions themselves by their nature impossible to answer or are they simply too difficult to have been answered by any human in history? Or have they been answered, and if so where is this mofo who has the answers? And if they are impossible, is it because of our perspective as part of the universe itself, or because of some other reason? If some other reason, what would that be? If on the other hand they are not impossible questions, but too difficult for anyone to have answered thus far, will someone or something eventually answer them? If so, who or what will that person or thing be, and when will it happen? Also, if it is possible to understand the answer, and someone or something does provide the answer, will the Illops personally have enough intelligence to understand it?

A while back I watched the old animated version of Horton Hears a Who with Laurel. I remember being particularly moved by the story and Laurel even cried a little. The Whos’ struggle to be heard and Horton’s efforts to save them from a doom brought on by their obscurity really highlighted a myriad of social injustices. Homosexual civil rights, class warfare, healthcare tragedies, etc. are often ignored by the good while the evil people of the world tramp all over them. We should all strive to “hear a Who.”
Not long after watching it, though, I began to think that it could have been intended as an anti-abortion story especially with the oft-repeated line “A person is a person, no matter how small.” I began to wonder if one of the beloved Dr. Seuss classics was actually just a pro-life whining session. The book was written in 1954 but the “abortion debate” is a lot older than some of us realize.
No worries though, a little internet research cleared that shit right up. It seems that Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was inspired by the mistreatment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII and the post WWII US occupation of Japan. He even dedicated the book to a Japanese friend of his. Given the original sentiments of the story I’m sure he intended to highlight the abuse and exploitation of all the world’s downtrodden minorities.
Of course, I wasn’t the only one to notice the apparent apt-ness of this story in relation to the abortion debate and pro-lifers everywhere have taken up the mantra “A person is a person, no matter how small.” to support their case. Even though I had settled the question of the original intention I still wondered how Seuss would react to this usage of his work. Alas, the internet has come to rescue once again. Philip Nel is a Seuss biographer and according to him Seuss threatened pro-life groups with a lawsuit for using his words on their stationery. Audrey Geisel, Seuss’ widow, even said that the good doctor did not approve of these groups using his words to support their point of view.

Well there, it’s ok with Dr. Seuss if you kill your fetus.

Personal anecdote/testimony: I, a resident of Louisiana, get frustrated and short-tempered during the summer. I hate being hot. I hate walking around sweating and having to deal with shit while I’m hot, especially when there are mosquitos present. In the winter I just want to stay inside and comfortably read and play video games.

Seriously, is there something to this? Does this have anything to do with aggression? Do Eskimos have wars? And if Africa got cold, would anyone act differently? I’m not trying to claim anything here. I just wonder if there’s something to it.