The story of George Sodini is sad but fascinating. I agree that memoirs and personal diaries of the supposedly deranged should not be removed from the web (as was done by Mr. Sodini’s web host) simply because he ended up randomly killing a bunch of people. He lived his life in silent torture, cursing the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘passive aggression’
Why conservatives are doomed
American conservative thinking has overwhelmed most of the world’s conservative parties. Their idea is to base intense patriotism on the idea that we’re “free,” and can do whatever we want as individuals, and use that to justify caring about social order. Ultimately what conservatives are trying to argue toward is that the society as a [...]
The climate change elephant in the room
Humans are funny. Because we are personalities that control the mind and body, we view the world through the same filter, and tend to defer to authority even if it’s incompetent — so long as it leaves us alone. No obligation to others means we’re just fine pretending we’re solitary hunter-gatherers, even if we depend [...]
Self-pity and Darwin
Our society is very fond of the idea that we are enlightened. We are scientific, progressive, compassionate humanity. Underneath this veneer of nice, the usual manipulations go on for personal profit — which is the underlying theme of humanity in every age: sacrifice the self for the whole, or sacrifice the whole for the self. [...]
The psychological consequences of equality
Our nitwit species has never overcome its own cleverness. If we find an idea or symbol or image that appears to compel people, we’ll use it — and worry about the consequences later. Equality is a powerful symbol to use. It conveys inclusiveness, and an automatic sense of group bonding. “We all agree we all [...]
Why the world hates the west
Americans, and others who have followed the path of individual desire to democracy, consumerism and the nanny state, have no idea why they are loathed. They assume it’s from bad results of our interference in other nations. I’d suggest it’s from the reasons we interfere. Because our society is based in the revolutions of 1789 [...]
Reality imitates satire
When you criticize society as a writer, you immediately find yourself oriented toward the commonly observable things that are universally socially denied. We can list them here, briefly: Biology: we are not the final stage in evolution. Politics: we are not all equal in ability or reward. Social: we get ahead by manipulating others Business: [...]
Moral judgment blinds us
Among the many ways to look at the world, one of the most popular is moral judgment. Moral judgments are the shoulds, oughts and shouldn’t’ves of the world. When a situation happens, we decide according to some ideal what “should” have happened, and penalize people for what did. But that’s neurotic, since they did do [...]
Thresholds
Whenever the words “it’s the natural way” appear in debate or in print, I groan inwardly. They once seemed such an easy thing to say; granola, monogamous marriage, friendship and eating vegetables were “natural,” and soft drinks, aggressive selfishness, and living in tiny air-conditioned boxes were “un-natural.” But then someone pointed out the first paradox: [...]
Greenism needs to be absorbed by the right
We’ve covered here before how humanity cannot act on global warming because humanity is too internally confused to act on anything but immediate threats. Today, it’s time to point out how the green movement itself doesn’t need to exist — it should either be absorbed by another political concern, or migrate to a whole vision [...]
