when people call the united states 'a free country', they are typically referring to the bill of rights (freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, to petition, etc.) as well as our right to vote in a democracy - in other words, they are re... read »

how can we call this a democracy?

american politics has mistaken itself for rational discourse - what we are actually witnessing is a delusional obsessive experiment in human psychology. the commercial sector has for decades been perfecting ... read »

the framers of the constitution agreed with aristotle that social equality is a necessary ingredient in a functioning democracy: hence 'all men are created equal'. they recognized that if and when this ceases to be the case, many other principles and mecha... read »

'left' and 'right' are neither political ideologies nor identities: if you tried to rigorously formulate either ideology, you would be left with a definition that either applied to only a scant handful of americans, or was so vague and overgeneralized as t... read »

let me run this scenario by you - we have two pharmaceutical companies competing fiercely in a similar market. company A adopts the policy that whenever they find a cure for a disease, they make it available, profit reasonably, and the disease disappears. ... read »

hero - n: the superhuman individual whose abilities lie far beyond the scope of man-on-the-street, depicted on television and in newspapers as the only agent capable of bringing about any real effect. the existence of the hero precludes the real individua... read »

why run for government office when you can become so powerful as to make government *irrelevant*?

corporations are now essential to the law-enforcement, educational, military, transportational, and medical operations of our society - as more... read »

i'll tell you why: what if you value democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom from religious organizations, the freedom to pursue happiness in whatever way you see fit - e.g. you love america - but some organization vehemently opposed ... read »

this week michael jackson has done a great service to his country by distracting the public eye from the deaths of 25 american soldiers and thereby dispelling a subversive and unpatriotic suspicion of our president and his rationale for war:

... read »

legislating thought carries with it the risk of popular revolt. with modernized propaganda sciences, a population can be reengineered to think just about anything while *thinking they came to those beliefs on their own*. while this is a more indirect rout... read »

there's a lot of 'left'/'right' struggle these days over control of the juggernaut of federal law - who should be allowed to marry *anywhere* in the united states? can genetic research be done *anywhere* in the united states? should *all pharmacists* in th... read »

hero - n:

1. the central character in a government-, church-, or other institution-originated fiction whose reason for being is the glorification of some act against oneself.

2. a charismatic bystander elevated to epic ... read »

fourteen themes historically common to fascism:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on th... read »

"Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions o... read »

is free-market capitalism an attempt to justify our denial of responsibility for our neighbors? or does it just happen to serve handily toward that end?

is it an attempt to sidestep the question of what civilizations are for? or is it in fac... read »

tocqueville: "a despot easily forgives his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love each other."

rationale being: if a nation is divided within itself by false perceptions of "us vs. them", and its people have come to falsely v... read »

it's often said that revolutions (traditionally) replace one tyranny with another. while the idea of being the guy with the whip instead of the guy with the oar holds obvious appeal, what reason to we have to believe that that coersive power is not ult... read »

"A survey, released yesterday by the nonpartisan Council for Excellence in Government, found that about half of respondents were concerned that terrorists would strike near their home or work. Seventy-three percent identified themselves as anxious or conce... read »

if the free market is the 'best yet' path to social progress and fair distribution of resources, why are we not competing with our families, our children? why are we not selling sex to our lovers at the price their libidinal demand dictates?
read »

if i may take the soap box for a minute, this greytuesday site is making an understandable but profound mistake here:

"[EMI's] actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that peo... read »

if i had an interest in setting the groundwork for fascism in my country, i would take aldous huxley's advice, and generate enough fear among my countrymen as to warrant the surrender of individual rights to a hero government, an all-powerful savior.read »

"what is insanity?" - in the pejorative: an instrument of those who wish to control truth, value, and function; a coercive device.

"what is insanity?" - in truth: stubborn incompetence.... read »

there is a threat of disorder now, like thunderclouds on the horizon, which i knew about even back then but which is now of immediate relevance. a person's emotional life is like an organism: it is highly ordered, operating fully at odds with the universal... read »

» the only problem is that by not buying any cd's anymore, you hurt the artists too.

maybe, maybe not.

the issue is that the recording industry hurts both parties: artists and their fans. artists, by giving them pennies ... read »

human exchange has been universalized through an intermediary consensual abstraction - currency

this has largely replaced cooperation (and the need for cooperation) in the human sense with mere operation within the same economic system, that ... read »

if we can embrace our laziness, fear, and self-interest, if we reorganize our lives to make use of these human traits rather than trying to overcome them, then we will have empowered ourselves.

this is and has always been the argument for coop... read »

empirical evidence abounds supporting the notion that infants who do not experience significant positive physical human contact in their early years are thus rendered mentally and emotionally stunted, sickly, and physically weak. i do not doubt that th... read »

i had a dream once when i was about seven: i was playing a hand-held video game, one of those 80's-era monochrome LCD devices, and suddenly i wanted to know how the thing was powered. i turned it over and removed the battery panel, and inside i fo... read »

a message from gwb:

i'm supplementing my budget by selling deprecated armaments to third-world militias. when the day comes that they decide to use those weapons against americans, i'll use that opportunity to undermine civil liberties and advanc... read »

i tell you the secret...

civilization - the engineering project : a self-proud, ignorant religious man's fable.

civilization - the purposeless, blind, sprawling 10 billion-ton evolutionary juggernaut : the humbling and frigh... read »

economic growth. hooray. as long as there is hierarchy - people wielding whips and people sweating over oars - there will always be men who come home to their wives smelling of feces. no amount of economic growth will change that. this economy - it t... read »

i ask you this... i mean -listen-: what if you were not solely responsible for your material well-being, paying for your house, your transportation, food, etc.? what if you were not competing economically as an individual but as part of a group? and ... read »

[the dissolution of interpersonal relationships] is ground-zero in america, by which i mean the path of least resistance. the big secret: without these relationships life can have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, except that which can be produced thro... read »

consider the strength of this analogy: there is the raider's fan getting drunk in a piss-smelling oakland bar... he's got his jersey and his raider's hat on, one silver and one black sock. he says, "Yo yo yo! raee-dahz, represent east bay YESSSSSSs... read »

1. we are not going to overthrow the government - we would not, because we have come to over-value security (as opposed to tolerability... see tocqueville); and we should not, because the effect would be to replace one hierarchy with another, and no hie... read »

though cities have been erected, doctors educated, farms mechanized... the struggle for survival is not yet over. it has only changed kind - become more absurd and more frightening.... read »

have you ever had the experience of being very present, very aware, self-aware, a moment of far-reaching sight, of synthesis and understanding and deep feeling... and thoughts and insights and ultimately plans are generated in this moment... and you f... read »

while man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his own well-being ... in the end he may lose the use of his sublimest faculties, and while he is busied in improving all around him, he may at length degrade himself. ... read »

this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life ... read »

1. morality is necessitated by economics.
2. with empathy, there is no need for morality.
3. economics is the logical antipode of and therefore the enemy of empathy.
4. economics will tend to win over empathy (and, eventually, morality) in o... read »

it must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. ...subjection in minor affairs does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of the... read »

the aspect of society in the united states is at once excited and monotonous. [political and commercial equality] absorb men wholly in quest of those pleasures which are allowed. by these means a kind of virtuous materialism may ultimately be establish... read »

what chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them. they strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this c... read »

there are, to be sure, several things to be said against their means of alleviating life: they soothe and heal only provisionally, only for a moment; they even hinder men from working for a real improvement in their conditions by suspending and discharging... read »

1. The error of philosophers is to look for human nature in the current state of humanity... to disregard the period during which man has evolved to its current state. ... read »

people are kept docile by the image of other people's happiness, by the lie that happiness exists and is attainable. The happy old American dream, reconditioned for the world: If I (choose one: work harder, drink more, buy newer toothpaste, prostrate... read »

...the prisoners, on the other hand, can be assumed to have a practically constant desire to escape, and here the jailer has arranged that the opportunity to escape is made to exist only [such that] it cannot be recognized and thence acted on.... read »

"i think you are a good person, but you're misunderstood. i understand you and am drawn to you."

i tell her that i didn't hear what she said, could she say it again? she does, in measured, slow speak. she wants me to hear her every word. she says... read »

love is a revolutionary force; a force in whose essential realization lies the downfall of the commodity-spectacle economy

true self-love affords individuals within the spectacle a little too much autonomy; i.e. it's bad for the economy. Where wo... read »

'perhaps that is the mark of a truly strong disease - being unrecognizable as a disease, as foreign to life. a disease which convincingly masquerades as part of its host cannot be excised.'

see also: HIV.

the american dream is the disease wh... read »