A Personal Account of Past Insanity

For me, my own past has always had a weird relationship with my present-day self. Whether it be confusion over dreams of nostalgia or the recurring nightmares of my own past sheer insanity, it's sometimes hard to grasp the history of my own brain.

I guess, if one were to sum up my childhood they could say it was a collection of the most blissfully tragic memories of terrorizing school days and complete loneliness mixed with an over abundance of joy and passion. I would jump from one end to the other, sometimes within minutes.

Eventually I began to socialize with others more normally at around the time of 7th grade. That's when I sort of began my friendship building (and destroying) and learning how to really hang out with other people.

Without getting into too much detail about the more terrorizing stages of my mental state through childhood, I want to instead address the lows of my past and how they may still be relevant to today... or tomorrow for that matter. I don't want to live in these extremes. The euphoria doesn't compensate for the anxiety and I rather live on the middle ground to where I currently feel most comfortable at, because indulging in moderation is truly the way to go.

This leads me to my next worrisome thought. How will I leave this world? Will I fall back into my early mayhem stages? Where will it all take me? Thinking back makes me realize how important people are to me. And honestly... sometimes I don't feel that way. Sometimes I think I have my head on backwards and I'm just emotionally cut off from the world. If this were ever the case though, I don't know if I'd be ready to handle it if it was even possible. I don't think I'm willing to experiment with this.

Stomp Someone Down the Nice Way

To just flat out kick somebody to the ground looks pretty bad, to say the least. It's a very bold way of keeping your minions in line. But if you would rather maintain a clean social image, a better way to lay down the law is to offer people two options with which both will lead to failure!

A certain failure can add legitimacy to your commands! And it works this way quite often. For example, take the witch hysteria from the older days. Back then, to test a woman to see if she was a witch or not, she would sometimes undergo a "swimming test." Basically what they would do is test to see if the woman in question was a witch or not, by seeing if she could breathe under water. If she could breathe under water she was guilty and if she drowned then she was innocent. She had two options, you see? She could... a) die or b) die. When you set up someone's fate like this, it isn't to offer justice or fairness. This was to create a system of hatred towards females. Witch hunting was the sport of misogyny!

Much like the older sport of misogyny, today a new sport is played and it's all dressed up for the 21st century. There is a new couple of options given to women these days. The first option is to be a "slut" which is a term given as much of a negative connotation as it is feminine. (Sure, one can be a "male slut" or a "man whore" but unlike a "fireman" or a "mailman," the "man" part of "man whore" diverges from the default definition of a "whore" usually being a woman.) The second option is to be a friend zoning, cold, frigid "bitch." So as a female... you can either put out and be shamed for your lack of self respect or you can turn a man down and be the girl who "friend zoned" her buddy. Either way, you lose! Misogyny!

And it's not just patriarchy that oppresses through lose/lose options. Government elections offer no solutions, our economy guarantees poverty, drug laws generate criminals... etc. etc. When the hand of oppression knocks us down, it's only doing its job.

Equality Within Communism

What does "communist equality" sound like to a capitalist? Well, it probably sounds like a place where everyone wears the exact same uniform and marches to the exact same drum beat in an impoverished nation under the guise of a merciless regime. You've got to love that Cold War propaganda!

To be fair however, capitalism to me sounds like a country full of micro-dictatorships where all the workers serve their masters while wearing identical uniforms and listening to the same corporate radio stations. Actually, that's based more so on my real-life experience though and not just propaganda and rhetoric.

You see, to imagine that one could desire equality while also embracing an elite ruling party is such a contradicting concept that if I were to try and make sense of it my brain would probably go through a melt down. And capitalists pride themselves in opportunistic equality because anyone could some day make it to the top and have their own glorious enterprise dominion. It's such a beautiful thing when the exploited take their unprivileged opportunity of social mobility and become the exploiters. (Was the sarcasm apparent enough??)

All jokes cast aside, equality in reward for labor in no way implies equality OF the types of labor. When labor becomes enjoyable and non-oppressive, it becomes an honest obligation rather than a burden to the individual. And of course equality of reward doesn't imply no specialization. No one ever said that everyone is expected to know everything. A logical division of labor does not imply an irrational inequality in living standards.

Religion Is Merely A Tool Of Convenience

Today as I was reading some online essay on Reducing the Ego (http://www.taoism.net/theway/ego.htm), which was correlating Taoism to the idea of minimizing your own "false self-image" (ego), I had wondered, "Who would be inclined to actually read into Taoism?" Would an egomaniac be inclined to read about destroying their own ego? Would a humble person be inclined to read about boosting the ego? In all honesty, it seems that people with certain tendencies would be naturally swayed towards a familiar philosophy.

Like many religions however, Taoism has also been cherry picked by people with all sorts of tendencies. Some claim it is critical of competitiveness while others have written articles on Taoism supporting a laissez-faire system (free market capitalism). Also, consider how religion has been used in cases of civil rights. The same religion that influenced Martin Luther King Jr. to struggle against defacto, racial segregation in the south also influenced others to support slavery prior to that (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_slav1.htm).

For these and other examples of contradicting beliefs stemming from single religions, I want to correct my previous claim that Christianity itself "influenced" MLK. Christianity really didn't influence anything for the most part. It was just used (and still is to this day) as a tool of convenience. It's just a toy box of moral scriptures that people dig into to find what ever matches their already preconceived notions of morality. These preconceived notions of morality stem from culture and education.

This leads me to another worrisome observation. It seems that within the atheist trends today, some anti-theists flirt with the idea of ethnocentrism. The thought goes, "Christianity has done plenty to harm LGBT civil rights in western society, but we're still better off than the Muslim nations who embrace Sharia Law to the east." Ethnocentrism isn't exclusive to atheists, but it does unfortunately get thrown in with the criticism of all religions. This is why it is important to recognize that culture creates religion and morality and not the other way around. Both western and eastern cultures have been shaped by domination culture and various political conflicts and colonization (and the limitations that have been put into place by these factors) have been the leading influences on morality.

To conclude all of these observations, I would just like to state that religion is really an illusion in more ways than one... especially in politics. Religion is just a tool people use to rally in supporters. "I believe this and SO DOES GOD!" It's all tied in to the idea that our ideologies and tendencies should dominate and control populations of people. If one is to reject religion, one should also reject its significance.

Internet's Anarchy vs. Domination Culture

Once upon a time there lived a global phenomenon known as the Internet. Although it was littered with intellectual property, business spam and other various symptoms of domination culture, the Internet was largely a place where the average citizen could go to and escape many of the laws of her/ his government.

Because life outside of the Internet was in many ways bleak, riddled with alienation and lacked any real sense of community, many people became addicted to the Internet and spent countless hours floating through a seemingly lawless cyber space.

Now back in the real world, folks for the most part were still unaware of their own class consciousness and they went on their ways while going through the motions of a typical day of corporate slavery and doing as they were told. But as foreshadowing would have it, the Governments and their corporations grew wary as to what their little minions were up to in their little private online communities. "Too much talking and file sharing going on," Mr. Corporation said to Mr. Government. "Maybe we need to lay down a little law within their cyber utopias."

Being as how the Internet was the only real sense of community and freedom that the average citizens were allowed to experience, once they realized their online worlds were in jeopardy they began to buzz like an angry bee-hive. Suddenly the realization of corporate and government tyranny would clash with true freedom and community.

Now the only question left is... will the Internet share the same fate as the worker in chains? One can only speculate as the people will probably run to their corporate masters and seek what little solidarity and voice they do have against government mandates and imprisonment of their Internet.

Common Misconceptions Among Anti-Feminist MRA's

Mens' rights advocates often have a general idea of the problems associated with gender roles, but as TJ (aka The Amazing Atheist) points out... the overall concept flies over their heads.

The specific issues that are brought up by MRA's that supposedly disempower males are usually actually further evidence that patriarchy is still alive and well within our country.

To put gender issues into context, you must first realize what patriarchy is. It's instilled attitudes towards both genders which ultimately favor male domination. With the set notion that females are weaker, it's actually no surprise that when domestic abuse is caused by the woman, it's not taken as seriously. The main role of the woman in society is to be the damsel in distress and when the helpless damsel ends up being the abuser then the male victim is more likely to be seen as weak and/ or the issue isn't taken with proper consideration. This idea of the dominating/ strong male is also another reason why patriarchy plays as a disadvantage to homosexuals. Sexism = Homophobia.

So yes... when a man takes on the role of being submissive, weak, indecisive (all traits to which a patriarchal society lends to the female gender) then he is indeed disadvantaged because patriarchy seeks to keep male domination intact. When the courts side more often with women in child custody battles it's because the general attitude is that women belong more so at home raising the child (while the male should be out making the money to support his family).

As for the issue which TJ brings up with circumcision, I would argue that that's more of a childs' rights issue. Societies have plenty of overlapping domination structures and one of them is the nonconsensual violence used against children (corporal punishment, circumcisions... etc).

While it is a nice thought that MRA's do recognize gender inequality and specific roles, the main basis for all these roles (patriarchy) is overlooked and therefor misunderstood.

Abuse of Authority? I Am Not Amused

There are so many stories in the news, all day and every day, about people in power abusing their authority in some way. And every time it's, "Oh my God! How could this incident have happened!?" as if this is just some isolated occurence.

No, this is not an isolated incident. These are merely reccuring episodes of corruption generated from a system that was started, maintained and continuously produces violence in one of its various forms. And no, I'm not going to be surprised if the Occupy movement ends up having their own Kent State Massacre. It's actually rather vain of any country to raise hell over the loss of unarmed citizens while their armies commit Kent State Massacres all over the globe in other countries.