Posts from Marquis
Uprooted & Dehumanized
Submitted by Marquis on February 4, 2010 - 7:30am.I seem to constantly run into studies and figures which suggest that Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is now the most commonly diagnosed of all diseases in the typical Western-Industrialised Nations; such as the Eurozone, Scandianavia, the UK and North America. It is tempting to draw a direct correlation between the kind of 'civilization' that we have developed - since these phenomenons are also manifesting in other highly industrialised and organised societies in South-East Asia and Japan - but this is at best a nebulous field of study and it is hard to establish any clear and irrefutable evidence.
Contrary to what many seem to believe, MDD is not about 'feeling blue' or being moody and uninspired, nor is it a question of ordinary lazyness, stubborn mindedness or antisocial unwillingness to participate in social activities; it is a consistent 'state of mind' which by the singular individual is often even perceived as 'normal': This is it. This is what life is about. Nothing has any meaning and death is where it all ends.
According to an American governmental website [1], these are the typical symptoms:
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
Submitted by Marquis on February 4, 2010 - 7:36am.From what I hear, MDD has become the most commonly diagnosed disease in the West.
I wrote more detailed about this in a blog post but would like to hear some POV's.
Bookmark Exhcange
Submitted by Marquis on February 5, 2010 - 7:46am.Since I spend most of my work day at a computer, I spend much of the "pockets of time" inbetween doing things on surfing the internet.
I am now wondering if y'all would lik to submit 3 - three - websites or webpages you think are worthy of mentioning (apart from this one), insofar that you have them bookmarked. I myself shall submit the following three: (they all open in new windows!)
1. classics.mit.edu/index.html The Internet Classics archive contains much of the classic literature of antiquity.
2. deoxy.org/ The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension is a site for all kinds of speculative humaniora.
3. www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/ Memetics is the study of how ideas move within human populations over time.
Global Climate Change: What to do?
Submitted by Marquis on February 6, 2010 - 5:59am.It is seriously hard for me to understand what exactly it is that is motivating all the crackpots on the internet who seem to think that the positively massive amounts of peer reviewed scientific data that exists on something which is as commonly interesting and closely scrutinized as the weather is somehow part of a conspiracy which for obscure reasons aims to spread a myth about man-made global warming.
Latest, the so called Climategate; where hackers stole a couple of thousand private emails wherein they supposedly found evidence for the sinister tampering of data in order to promote said conspiracy. This created quite a stir in the branch of our free press which targets the more intellectually challenged parts of our world's population.
OK, so you don't believe the scientists. How about believing your own eyes?
"Global warming" is a misnomer which leads the mind towards a fallacious idea of warmer summers and milder winters. Myself, being Norwegian, sure would vote for that, on an average, hands down. Bring it on! But this is not the issue. The "warming" we are speaking of is really only quite miniscule... but it has some dramatic consequences, most notably that of increasing the level of moisture held by the atmosphere.
Consequently we can expect more precipitation. More rain, more snow, more flooding, more (and fiercer) stormy weather.
Seen any of that, anyone?
Is America ready for another Revolution?
Submitted by Marquis on February 7, 2010 - 7:48am.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8498688.stm (opens in a new window)
In a speech before the 'Tea Party' convention, Sarah Palin stated that "America is ready for another revolution".
There seems to be quite a lot of these people, and Mrs. Palin appears to be their prime candidate for a leader figure. It would be appropriate if they formed their own political party, so that they could worship "the true values of conservatism" (Palin) in a separate reality, free from the burdensome demands of political realism. In fact, it is a wee bit weird that the US of A only has two political parties. There should have been something like 20...
However, the inevitable crash and burn of the American dollar is likely to happen either just before or during the next presidental election campaign. It is not a question of if, only of when. (My personal prediction is within two years from now.) The point of no return is long since passed. This may in fact bring Mrs. Palins ominous callout for 'another revolution' to fruition in ways that these 'Tea Party' retards (including Mrs. Palin) - and I say retard in the meaning 'mentally disabled by own choice' - didn't really have in mind.
Riding The Hobby-Horse
Submitted by Marquis on February 7, 2010 - 2:53pm.Most people have one or more favourite issues. Something like a pet peeve. An itch that keeps coming back. A fixation. It can be just about anything; the point is that it has developed into a habitual response, a hobby-horse. I believe that the most common - and the most infantile - of the many varieties of these is the idea that all other people but yourself (and your confidentes) are stupid. But not only people, structures and objects can be stupid as well. And say nothing about the many rules and regulations we have to relate to in society every day! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Dies Irae - The Day of Wrath
Submitted by Marquis on February 9, 2010 - 10:02am.I prefer to avoid TB's. That is to say, True Believers. People of faith. They make me edgy. I prefer the doubters; that is to say, the kind of people who ask questions. Not the ones that look for answers. Those are two very different things. I don't believe in answers. Give me an intelligent question and we might have something to talk about. Bring me your answers and I'll fall asleep. Let's be clear on that.
They say that great minds think alike. I don't know about that. It seems to me that stupid minds think pretty darned alike as well. But it is good to have a creative conversation with someone who knows how to ask questions. Stimulating. Asking questions will lead you to discuss possibilities. Looking for answers will make you form opinions. Those are two very different things. We might even say different outlooks on life.
Product is the Excrement of Activity
Submitted by Marquis on February 9, 2010 - 10:22am.It is common in our world, in these times, to identify with our products. We are told that being productive is a virtue. Making, distributing and owning these strange fetishes of megalomania is what life is all about. The biggest shitter is admired - and so are those who claim possession over the largest amounts of these excrements of activity. The human monkey is trying to be an insect, building a glorious colony of lines, angles and surfaces we proudly refer to as 'civilization', wherein we spend our lives in frantic activity just to stay alive from one day to the next.
But something has died. Our sense of wonder and ability to simply BE. We do not consider ourselves a part of nature, and we think of ourselves as 'non-animals' that for some reason - the jury is still out on that one - evolved beyond the 'lesser' creatures, whom we look at with overbearing kindness if they are cute, and a mixture of terror and fascination if they are fierce. Mostly, we reckon that we are GOOD, and that we should probably take our wisdom and our goodness with us and try to colonize the rest of space as well. That is to say, after we have researched forth a cure for that pesky ailment we call DEATH. (We wouldn't want to miss out on all the excitement that our glorious future holds, now would we?)
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Jews & Arabs
Submitted by Marquis on February 9, 2010 - 12:09pm.In our age, not so many remember the real reason for the big fight and eventually the split between the sons of Abraham; Ishmail and Isaak. As we know, the former went on to become the founding father of the Arabs, whereas the latter fathered the Jews. But their real beef was about how to make coffee (or kava as it was called back then). Ismael wanted to boil it in the traditional way in a brass recepticle over the campfire, whereas Isak insisted on his own invention, the back then revolutionary "drip through" technique, better known as the coffee filter. In fact Isak was so stubborn about this that after this incident, he started wearing his coffee filter on his head, as a powerful symbol of innovation and independence. This later evolved into that typical Jewish hat, the yarmulka.
To us northerners who always have to keep busy with important things like preparing for the winter, it seems silly to have a war between brethren nations for thousands of years over how to make a goddamned cup of coffee, but that's human nature for you. Most of them don't even have to get shitfaced in order to become aggressive. Now, a fight over beer we can understand... but coffee? People of the Middle East are well weird.
Connecting the Dots
Submitted by Marquis on February 10, 2010 - 6:54am.Imagine the night sky. What we can all observe is a multitude of little shining points, the stars. Now... imagine the blackness inbetween the stars as your available belief-space and the stars as what you can actually and factually know about life in this world. As there are a lot of stars, so is there a lot of possible lines of connection inbetween them.
Believing things is like drawing lines between stars. Sure enough, everyone can see the same night sky and agree on that, but we start disagreeing as soon an anyone is suggesting how they are "connected". An intelligent person will immediately realise that there are multiple options for connecting those dots, not just the ones that are being hailed as "the truth" by the few or the many. We can say that there is a multitude of perceptible subjective variables in the same objective observation.
Illumination, then, is an act of erasing the lines and seeing reality for what it is. Little shining points of truth against the vast blackness of the belief-space. Illumination isn't about learning how to correctly draw those lines through the empty belief-space and make the correct conclusions about how it all hangs together; rather it's a question of detaching from all assumptions that can be derived from subjective observation alone.
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Tied in Bronze Chains
Submitted by Marquis on February 11, 2010 - 8:42am.Sinful woman walk with me cause I'm the wolf on your shoulder
but complain not to me, cause I'm the accuser
If you dare to withhold the immense power and the greed
you shall walk among us in the subterranean fields
Why don't you come with me
and dance the snakepit dance
rhythmic moves to the eerie bell, the boiling blood
evil's breath on your neck, the morbid rite
I'm tied in bronze chains
so where do all these flowers come from?
I am tired, should I care anymore?
The rusty claws who reach for me are too far away
sense no anger for that, be at one
The sleaze on the wall is all gone
it's just flowers, flowers
Come, come let's join the orgy
decay and wine, sodomy all the way
no rest for the holy
forbidden fruit is always best
dirt'n'filth tastes so good
Your Capacity for Love?
Submitted by Marquis on February 11, 2010 - 9:08am.Many theists say 'love everybody'!
To me, this amounts to prett much the same as loving nobody.
Who can love "everybody"? How? And why?
There is an old saying: Don't bite off more than you can chew.
Whatever love I have in me is for my woman alone. Nobody else can have it. The rest of y'all jokers I can like or dislike if you're an interesting character, and "tolerate" (i.e. ignore) if you're just another mediocre zombie of boredom who's accidentally passing through life. But love you I won't. I can love only one. I refuse to spread myself any thinner than that, lest my love becomes a worthless commodity which supply far exceeds all and any demand for it.
The Hitler & Stalin argument
Submitted by Marquis on February 12, 2010 - 9:17am.The argument that Hitler and Stalin were 'atheists' seems to be raised quite a lot.
However, the fact of the matter is that both these two sought a clerical carreer in early youth; which, at the very least, suggests the presence of some sort of childhood faith. Furthermore, both these two quit - or, rather, were expelled from - their theological studies (in both cases due to unruly, aggressive and conflict-seeking characters) to pursue artistic carreers; Hitler as a painter and Stalin as a poet. None of them were successful beyond the mere mediocre ability to craft some pieces of work that would be of little to no interest were it not for their infamous next (similar) choices of carreers: Politics.
It seems a little off target to suggest that either of these gentlemen were 'atheists'. In fact, it makes a lot more sense to suggest that they had issues with religion(s) on a personal level, because they were not recognised as the leadership figures they both perceived themselves to be by their respective faculties. The reasonable conclusion must consequently be that they were both damaged by religious ideas during their upbringing - which, interestingly, is also the case with a great many mass murderers and other very prominent evil-doers in history.
Sex Talk: An Offer You Can't Refuse
Submitted by Marquis on February 12, 2010 - 12:45pm.WARNING! This only applies to you if you are 18 years of age or older.
I am the co-owner of a website called KinkSpace. (It's linked in my signature line.)
This is a service which is created for adults who has an interest in matters of a sexual nature; included, but not limted to, the political opinion that people's sexuality is a private issue and its free expression is a human right which is essential to any individual's general health and well-being - and, by proxy, their ability and interest of adapting to and being a productive member of society as a whole.
It is not a "porn site". Nor is it a "dating site" (at least not any more than Facebook is).
KinkSpace is, simply put, a social networking site which is 100% open about sexual issues, no matter how "strange and unusal" they may seem to the sexually naive. This means that you are free to discuss any matter of a technical or emotional nature, but you are also free to not do so. The only thing which is not allowed is to advocate one (usually your own) sexual preference as more "right" than that of other people. (We are of course assuming that you are adult enough to understand the prerogatives of law and custom, as well the ethical standards of informed consent, without explicitly mentioning this.)
Because I have taken a fancy to the "spirit" of RRS, I have decided to make its members an offer (that you can't refuse).
Mother North
Submitted by Marquis on February 12, 2010 - 4:29pm.Mother north - how can they sleep while their beds are burning ?
Mother north - your fields are bleeding
Memories...The invisible wounds
pictures that enshrine your throne (gone?)
A Future benighted still they are blind
Pigeonhearted beings of flesh and blood
keeps closing their eyes for the dangers that threat...ourselves and our nature
And that is why
they all enrage me
Sometimes in the dead of the night i mesmerize my soul
Sights and visions prophecies and horror
they all come in one
Mother north - united we stand (together we walk)
Phantom north - I'll be there when you hunt them down
(Satyricon)
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American Style Fascism?
Submitted by Marquis on February 14, 2010 - 5:11am.American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges raises some timely questions.
Who are 'The New Atheists'?
Submitted by Marquis on February 14, 2010 - 5:57am.I seem to come upon this concept every now and then. 'The New Atheists'.
I don't understand what it means. I think it must be an American expression.
How can there be any 'old' or 'new' to the simple question of whether or not you are religious?
It's not like the question is opening up for a whole lot of angles....
Can someone please enlighten me? Who are 'The New Atheists'?
The War on Science
Submitted by Marquis on February 15, 2010 - 1:26pm.The link will open, in a new window, the first episode of a 2006 documentary on "intelligent design" made by the BBC.
There is a more ominous reason than it simply being false why this monstrous idea needs to be obliterated without mercy by anybody with two brain cells, and that is what kind of sociological consequences the act of teaching irrational concepts to school children is having. One of the things that separate open and informed societies from various alternative reality projects past and present is that it makes no claim to know, much less teach, any variety of "truth" that cannot be proven by the standard scientific method. It is bad enough to have that crap hammered in at home but it becomes a force of tyranny when propagated by the govermental authorities.
