Rumination

I've been writing best behavior since december

i'm on page 44 in open office, which would be like 52 in microsoft word, and probably 65 in book pages.

The whole thing is me ruminating on people

just talking about them

kind of endless shit talking about people

but not in a mean way

i like talking about people, having feelings concerning people

people email me and say they like when i do that

so i'm sticking with that

perhaps it will be a book of shit talking

i don't think i will write a book with a nicely drawn plot, where there is more revealing than telling

there will be a plot

but not a nice one

there will be stories

but not a big one

many little ones that make a big one

but no big story that ends in something tragic or beautiful

I'm working on writing lines that are normal, or somewhat normal, not like stephen king normal, but normal

like i can't write, "Have you thought about my penis lately?"

or, "Her vagina reminded me of Thomas Hobbes."

or, "This onion has downs."

or, "I told her she couldn't fuck any other hamsters."

or, "I just wanna go home and eat."

No I can't write lines like that anymore.

Everything is serious

I must maintain a face of seriousness

"Have you thought about me lately."

"Her vagina was old and had given birth to children. But still it was usable and satisfying."

"This onion is misshapen."

"I told her she couldn't make love to any other writers."

"I was going home from the bar because I had ran out of money to buy drinks. I felt that if I could eat some oatmeal my drunkenness would not be so bad."

Stimulus Package

I've been reading through the stimulus package:

You can type something into that bar and what you want to see will pop up.

I tried to read through it, but it is really long and dry. We are giving a lot of money to Indian Block Grants. I don't know what an indian block grant is, I know when they get block grants around here that's federal money to work on infrastructure. Indians need work too.

We are giving 650 million to television conductors. This will make old people who have old televisions i think. I don't know.

A lot of the money is going into infrastructure though: which is good.

I don't know where they got this money.

I don't know if it is a good idea to keep handing out 700 to 800 billion dollars every three months.

I seriously don't know.

I'm only 28 and I don't recall that happening before.

None of the Republicans voted for it because they only have four issues guns, homos, stem cells, and abortion and none of those were mentioned in the stimulus.

I think the Republicans going nuts like they have, has disrupted the balance of the republican and democratic party.

Like, even if you didn't like Reagan and Newt Gingrich they brought balance to the universe of American politics, so that neither party could completely take over.

But the Republicans have reduced themselves to four issues that don't matter. They don't even care about their old economic policies anymore. Well, they can't. Because it has been proven they won't work in a global world. That their lack of regulation has created empires within empires. That's what the phrase "too big to fail" means. It means that a corporation has gotten so huge they are like they are mini state and government, and if they fail, it would be like a good sized in the Caribbean island's government collapsing.

Cantor said, "Keynesian economics doesn't hold a candle to the entrepreneurship that made this economy so prosperous up until the last six months,"

Keynesian economics means that if the government can increase demand, then that will cause more supply, leading to more workers getting hired.

That's pretty fucking logical to me.

How can people be entrepreneurs in this climate of corporate crap.

Seriously?

I mean

fuck

Start a goddamn t-shirt shop within 20 miles of a wal-mart and a corporate mall complex and see what happens?

Rich people can't even get loans to open new factories.

Like Americans would even buy a shoe made in Ohio anyway.

The Republicans are creating a lack of balance in the universe.

I have a fear of one party having the licence to do what they want without interference.

One a person doesn't have negotiate, they start thinking they are more awesome than they are.

When people start thinking they are more awesome than they are, they start thinking everything they think is correct.

That is bad.

Here is an article about the stimulus package that I liked:

The Republicans are doing a bad job.

Some of their states went over to Obama and some had very close margins.

See the thing is:

Politics isn't about the correct or logical thing.

Politics is about giving the impression, that you are doing something.

This stimulus package to most Americans implies, "Fuck yeah, give us some money."

So when the Republicans vote no, it says to the normal person, "They hate us, they won't give us money."

That is as far as most people consider political behavior.

Between 78 million baby boomers retiring, energy depletion, globabl warming, and the republican party taking a shit, seriously who the fuck knows.

The Spirit of America

America is very fucked up place

but there are good things about it

it is like we have become masters of good self-delusion

positive thinking even if it insane

but that insane positive thinking can be good

last night on some news channel, I wasn't really paying attention, I was at someone else's house and the show was on:

A white lady came on and said, 'Don't think about your job loss as something horrible, don't think of your foreclosure as something horrible. Think about it as an opperturnity. That you get to change your life, go on craiglist, look up jobs in places where you've always wanted to move. Look up jobs you've always wanted to do. Maybe your job pays more somewhere else and you didn't even know it. Your life isn't over, a new one has just begun."

This is shit only Americans can say with a staight face.

I don't know, maybe other countries do this.

But I can't see that happening in Brazil or China or Russia.

In other countries it is like, "We need to start political factions to combat this situation."

In America, "Hey, we lost our jobs. Lets move to somewhere and start all over again because where live now sucks."

The Death of Socrates, Romulus, and Christ

They made me read the Apology

Socrates trial

Where he tells everyone that they are jackasses for accusing him of corrupting the youth.

It made me think about Romulus and Christ.

I think that Socrates, Romulus and Christ symbolize the three main aspects of mankind. Not just American or European, but Asian and African also.

Socrates symbolizing that questioning spirit of man.

Romulus symbolizing that part of man's spirit wanting victory.

And Christ, that part sometimes has compassion.

Well, they killed all three of them.

They were all murdered.

Revolutionary Road

Today I woke up and ate oatmeal.

Then I learned this song on guitar.

*

At school I learned that the second, third, seventh amendment were never incorporated.

What this is that states can outlaw guns, put state troops in your house, and give you a trial without a jury.

I did not know this:

Also we get our rights from God.

*

Then I walked through the snow.

I felt and thought that going to school is a good idea.

I've read a lot and learned about things.

But it is all cluttered and scattered fuck in my brain.

I think if I learn things in a clean well-lit setting by professionals then it will organize my brain into a machine that will be able to produce coherent thoughts on things.

*

Bernice and I went to barnes and nobles because i got a gift certificate

i was standing in the philosophy section looking for a book that cost five dollars

someone stands by me, grabs a book on logic, flings his hand out to me holding the book and says, "Try this one."

I got really confused

he didn't have an introduction section like, "hey, what are you looking for, try this one."

he just flung the book at me and expected me to buy it because he suggested it.

I got really confused and held the book in my hand and said, "I have a gift certificate."

Then he said something about having a background in logic.

Then I thought, "Everything I do is illogical and driven towards self-destruction."

*

Then we watched Revolutionary Road

I liked it a lot

I'm really happy it turned out well

Everybody was lying to each other

Michael Shannon did a great job

I'm satisfied.

lie down on the melting snow and die

I went to school this morning

it was music class

he talked about stringed instruments

he kept bitching about people spelling the words cello and oboe wrong

he has not worn a different outfit to class since the first day

and he has a comb over

i walked to another class

we watched pleasantville and the teacher has still not come to class

then i went to the coffee shop and ate a chicken wrap

then i started feeling like laying down on the melting snow and die

i don't know if it was the sun coming through the window or what

most mornings it is just me and the old asian math teacher that never speaks and no one speaks to him

i don't speak to the old asian math teacher and the old asian math teacher doesn't speak to me

because we don't want to talk

i assume

he looked like he wanted to die in the snow also

then i went and sat on a stoop or something, it was cold and moist and my butt was cold

i sat there smoking with my head down

feeling totally apathetic about the universe

then i went to philosophy class full of people that aren't attractive and mostly annoying

we didn't start class for twenty minutes because the computer being used for powerpoint wasn't working and the teacher refuses to use his hand to write on the dry erase board

he finally started class

it was about Hobbes

i asked like twenty million questions

Hobbes is a realist concerned with scarcity

i don't think i mind Hobbes philosophy

reading hobbes is annoying though

he sounds like an old upper class british man wearing very nice clothes eating a very nice diner bitching about humans to his wife

Locke and Burke sound like that too

Locke was a bit more positive though

British people who bitch are different than french people who bitch

French people seem like they get drunk and have dirty sex because they are so depressed about what they are observing and thinking

British people comb their hair in anger

Obama as Pragmatist

my professor told us to read this article on Obama's speech.

Dionne does not understand what has taken place.

Charles Hugh Smith in a post on his site said that the young generation wasn't democrat or republican but pragmatist.

We are a generation raised by television and public school, and not by our parents.

Those venues of education are very apolitical.

Television and schools have no political preference.

But they do have problem solving, common sense, and pragmatism.

Barack Obama represents that:

I think he represents a new stage of political development and this article reveals that.

There are two main philosophers that came after the enlightenment

Burke and Marx

Burke represents the upper class:

He had an elitist view of humans, that people born upper class were somehow more awesome genetically than poor people.

That has be proven obviously false, just look at all the poor people after World War 2 who took the G.I. Bill and became well educated members of the middle and upper classes.

So if you give people a chance, meaning a peaceful situation and the possibility of education they will rise to the occasion.

But Burke had two good ideas:

That government should take its time: that huge disruptions in law and government create chaos, murder, stupid shit.

The other being that democracy is good because it takes time. It may take years, but through endless complaining, arguing, compromises will eventually be made that will have results that solve problems.

We learned from the soviets and fascists that life without democracy sucks. That if people do not own property, even if it be only an cell phone. It is better than everyone owning everything, which means if you break a plate you've broke everyone's plate. And they kill you or send you to the gulag.

Because if you own your own shit, when you brake a plate, you broke your shit and nobody cares.

But the point of Marx now that we don't care about fighting revolutions and creating utopias is, "THE MAN will fuck you in the ass, so never stop regulating and being up his."

I think Barack Obama represents the good parts of both of their theories, he discards Burke's elitism and Marx's want for instant change.

Dionne sites the line by Obama, "Their evidence included Obama's stout defense of old-fashioned values -- "honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."

"These things are old," Obama declared. "These things are true."

Dionne here talks about virtues:

Montesquieu said that democracies main psychological binding component is virtue. Despotism being fear and Aristocracy being honor.

Americans because they are democratic are supposed to have virtues.

What Obama is saying that we need to return to old virtues.

Because our virtues have gotten all fucked up:

Honesty: I think Obama was talking about the dishonesty of Bush. That there needs to be a new transparency in government.

Hard work:We have become obsessed with being entitled

People think they deserve shit

As Kunstler constantly bitches about, our obsession with gambling.

Gambling is an activity where a human believes they can get things for nothing.

Which is disgusting.

Courage: Bush kept telling everyone to be scared. He was obsessed with fear and irrational emotions. 9-11 happens, instead of Bush telling people not to be afraid, he is like go shopping and wins the next election by getting the media to make man on man kissing something that might cause rural children to stop riding four wheelers and put on dresses.

Fair play: This is totally Marxist and has never occurred in America. I'm not even sure if this possible with humans.

The reason Obama won was because he wasn't a democrat.

He beat out Hillary because he represented a human that wants to solve problems.

That the best democrat.

That doesn't make total sense because Hillary's health care plan was more intensive that his.

But everyone associated Hillary with the old school because of Bill.

The hard facts are irrelevant when it comes to getting elected.

Obama represents a shift in politics.

McCain and Bush didn't represent any new virtues, they represented their self-serving insanity.

Which many Americans enjoy in their personal lives, but hope for better in their politicians.

There is cynicism that Americans have been too self-obsessed and feeling entitled for too long, to just change.

I don't think this is true.

When the situation changes, humans change over time, slowly, so slowly they don't even notice it.

Their habits will change just a little bit everyday until they are sitting with their friends at a bar, and say, "remember when we did this."

My dad told me once, he's sixty five now, he told me that when he was young blacks and whites never spoke, never did anything together, especially didn't fuck and have kids. And he said that the television kept sending out images of blacks and whites together, giving names and personalities to black people. That he worked with more black people over the years. At first it seemed weird, but as time passed it didn't matter anymore.

And that was only within 25 years.

And now we have a black president.

This is probably a pretty boring view of human nature.

It doesn't involve a sweet view that god made humans awesome, that some humans are born better than other ones, that humans have a destiny to end up in a utopia.

Just that, overtime things change slowly and humans change with it slowly.

It is almost like it doens't matter if things change.

People will bitch about their lives getting worse.

About having to change how they use energy.

Of course it sucks.

But eventually you get used to it.

And sometimes it doesn't suck.

And you get used to that too.

I kind of feel like rereading Steppenwolf

what has happened to me

I'm having on of those years where the course will be changed

I think I'm changing my life.

It hasn't changed for awhile

the last time it changed was 2001 in a december, I wrote the human war, left a woman after seven years of being together, left a family and changed housing.

Wrote the human war, the condemned, burning babies, treatise, blue collar boy, the dead child, and the insurgent

that's six books

there was a lot of writing

the insurgent hasn't been released yet

but i dont' even like to think about it

i'm sitting here trying to think of a synopsis for it

and i don't even want to think about it

the lead character has no confidence

and so alone

everyone in it is so alone

but that course has ended

i feel more confident

more directed

i'm in school

i've had the same job for over two years straight

i've maintained my bills by myself

without any parental support

i have maintained my life

but i am very poor

and been very poor for awhile now

if anyone reading this has ever spent 6 years without ever having a 1000 dollars in a bank account probably knows that it grinds on the soul

i noticed too that when i engage in conversation with other humans it is never in person, it is always on the phone or through gmail chat to people in nyc.

there are a few that live in other places

but the majority live in nyc

so i've started new habits

getting up early

going to school

writing in a more popular fashion

in past tense

with medium sized sentences

i got an agent

and will try to respect their wishes

it takes a lot of courage to do things like this

but we have to do it every once and awhile

or we end up like those people that sit hating their lives enjoying reality television

courage isn't easy

it isn't like waking up early for 40 years and going to work

or watching a movie eating popcorn

it is like

you punch the wall

say, "FUCK!"

and you go in there with a hateful serious expression and do it, hoping it turns out okay

A professional synopsis

I have to give a synopsis to the agent.

Does anybody have a professional looking synopsis I can look at.

I could probably just emails some people

but i want to look at several different ones.

And pick and choose how it should look.

email me noah.cicero@gmail.com

the presidential oath

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

He doesn't swear to protect The People.

He swears to protect the constitution

that's like saying

"People of America, you are not as important as the constitution. It was here before you, it will be here after, there is not one of you that can't be sacrificed for the constitution."

That's funny

Hobbes

I'm reading Hobbes for some class

he says man is always in a state of war

and without an awe inspiring force holding guns

we would kill each other

I've gotten the urge to beat people down

but i didn't because The Law awes me into not doing it

i'm not going to argue

Serious Choices

I don't know if I can live if I am unable to tell which one of these songs is better

It is important to know which is better and worse

I've been listening to these two songs all morning

pounding my head, worried, sweating, to figure out which song

is

better

Plato The Republic Chapter 1 Justice

I'm going to post my personal notes on Plato:

The first chapter is all about justice.

What is justice?

I think, is it justice that i came from the vagina of a factory workers and another comes from a vagina of a rich woman and gets different possibles than me.

Is that justice

well the only people I could blame for that is God or my mother

I don't believe in God, so I'll blame my mother

but that doesn't make sense

because existence precedes essence

and I am Noah Cicero because I am came from that certain vagina and had certain experiences that generated my personality and led me to certain habits and choices and locations that makes my biography

So Justice must come from authority

Justice can be administered is by someone that is in authority to someone that is below them at the moment

So justice is a behavior of one person in authority to a person below them at that moment in history

So justice is behavior that has its origin in a choice by the person in authority

justice has a situation also

because behaviors all take place in situations

So lets give an examples of what justice or injustice

A black kid from the ghetto enters the court room who stole a car to get it chopped so he could get some money, the judge gives him a year in prison and keeps at felony status.

a white kid from the suburbs steals a car to take a joyride, secretly hoping to get arrested to get attention so his parents will notice him and love him.

He gets probation and it gets reduced to a misdemeanor.

Obviously something is wrong.

Same crime, different motivations, different sentences.

So we could say the judge, "Did not act justly."

I would say, the decision, "did not make sense."

Another one:

A country that needs a resource to preserve its nation, to maintain civil order, because they have a population surplus that is growing everyday, decides to take over another country to get their resources:

The country could go over and just fucking kill people, enforce their rule, make racist laws, and steal their resources.

Or they could could go over, try to kill at least people as possible, after they had taken over try to make peace, try to be diplomatic, and even give them money and let them share in their benefits of the resource they are taking.

Now, we would say that the latter makes more sense.

Some would say, 'Well, both are unjust.'

But we are working the frameworks of politics and where the grey is the predominant area.

I agree with Plato though, that it is better for authority to be just. Because if authority is unjust, they make decisions that do not make sense. Then the workers and slaves of humanity will decide to be just to each other, and make factions and revolt.

Allowing unions, the better business bureau, OSHA, minimum wage, raises, giving health benefits, etc are signs of justice.

Some would say that capitalist is always stealing money.

But the capitalist always replies but if you have good credit, get a business degree, you can take out a business loan yourself and work for yourself.

Which makes more grey

but inside the grey it makes sense

Last semester I had moment with the word "justice"

I had an intro to history class.

The professor is like 65 and has tenure

the class started out with 25 kids and only 8 completed it

We had to do essays and she marked off for contractions and all kinds of writing problems.

She said after the essay was completed that didn't grade for content but only for english

she said whoever had the best english got the best grade

but she never told us that, she didn't tell us she wanted us to write in some 1965 version of english

on the tests everyone said they wrote answers and studied the same way that got them an A in other classes

but in her class it got a B or C

And I heard someone who dropped the class say, "It didn't seem just. I applied the same habits to her class that has gotten me a 3.5 and I somehow failed her class in the first month, so I withdrew."

Now here is the thing

No one could figure out what she wanted.

She never let anyone know what she wanted, or how to get there.

Most of her points off on grammar were subjective and now something a writing teacher would even mark off.

It was obvious that she was grading from some weird subjective place that no one knew how to get to.

It didn't make sense

But maybe that is where injustice comes from

the judge that judges from some subjective place in their mind

Subjectivity is okay for poems, novels, family, lovers.

But courts, class rooms, politics, the work place, requires objectivity, that the precedence be followed, that the slaves know what the rules are, and that if they follow them they get expected results.

What does my penis have to do with a vagina

Now it occurred to me

sex is for babies

men put their penis into a vagina to make babies

but men who don't want to make babies still put their penis in a vagina

they also put it in buttholes

women also ask for men to put their penis into their holes

but what does my penis have to do with a vagina if I don't want to make a baby?

Why is important to pump a vagina with penis?

Now this is what I'm trying to get to

if you don't want to make a baby

are there better holes to stick it in?

Like mouths or buttholes

or rubber vaginas?

Or your hand?

I look at a woman's face and think, "I want to fuck her, she's pretty."

But her vagina doesn't look anything like her face.

Depression in Ohio

Ohio runs out of unemployment check money and has to borrow from federal government

Things are really shitty here.

People keep getting hired where I work that used to be factory workers making over ten dollars an hour.

No is coming to eat at the steak house.

After 7:30 it is like, nothing.

Maybe a two top will come and order burgers.

Usually people would stop coming in around 8:45.

In my little world something is totally wrong.

The only person I don't know that isn't laid off is a guy who works at a plant making military parts.

And he says they aren't getting overtime anymore.

Everyone is still carrying on though like there will be sunshine next year.

All the kids in my Poli Sci classes still want to be lawyers.

Everyone thinks the factories are going to call soon.

People don't understand what a depression does though

when there is less money

less money is being spent

and that less money

keeps becoming less money

and stocks go down

and life sucks more than it did the day before

unless there is a bubble that creates a large amount of cash

and stocks go up

and local areas get more money

than nothing happens

Obama says he will create like 2 million jobs fixing the infrastructure

I hope that works

I don't know if it will

The DOW is dropping again

it has dropped 900 points since Jan 6.

my biggest concern right is that the jetta won't work in below 20 degree weather. The battery starts fucking up in these low temperatures.

And I ran out of loan money and still need to buy 120 dollars more in books.

Back to school

I have 45 hours completed

I'm attempting 15 to make it 60

I've gone to four my classes

Law and society, a constitution expert teaches it. I have like take three tests and write a six page essay and memorize a bunch of shit.

Political Sociology: Get to learn about marx and paine, and write a 2 page paper every three weeks

Political Social Philosophy: this didn't turn out like i thought it would: it is about like school uniforms or something.

Political Thought: a whole semester about Plato's Republic. I answered a bunch of questions today like a smart ass.

I added Music Appreciation and will begin it tomorrow morning.

There is a lot more walking this semester than the last one and my tuesday and thursday classes are no where near my favorite coffee shop. So I have to buy coffee from the university, it wasn't bad, it was called Mexican Organic. Usually I drink Sumatra.

What my analysis really is:

When I observe things it isn't because i want to know things

It is because I'm so weak and pathetic

and the world reminds me constantly of this

and through them reminding me

i see what they are doing

When i write i make it sound like I have the power over them because I can see them

and all the lies they tell

maybe i'm not strong enough to lie so well

i don't have the courage to lie with sincerity.

I'm listening to Landlocked Blues right now

but Conor Oberst isn't weak like me

he gets up and travels doing world doing tours

doing interviews, making videos

he does more than check his email

Conor Oberst gets up early in the morning and tunes his guitar with a serious intention of writing a song

I type a page and a half and lay down

It is probably natural to compare ourselves to others

it must be biological

because so many people do it and conform with such ease

amd i know everything that is wrong with me because my brain keeps processing everything that is wrong me because others keep reminding me

not with words

but just by being there doing what they do

this is all really abstract

i'm in college and should provide evidence with endnotes in MLA style

but i don't have any evidence tonight

it is a real conjecture night

I reread this post

and noticed i used the word 'remind'

i think that is it

it is like, "Hey, Noah, just to remind you, you're weak and fucked up."

weakness report

I told my roomate bernice i'm weak

that i've never worked a forty hour work week

she said, "Neither have I."

I said, "Oh yeah. Are we just gonna not have kids and work 30 hours a week."

"yeah sounds good," she said.

On Being Weak

I tried to work forty a week twice in my life and I quit both of them in two weeks.

I tried to live out west twice when younger and failed within two months both times.

I got jobs both times and one time i had only 150 for rent and the other 250.

When I've gotten several forty hour weeks in a row at work I started crying.

I actually started crying, I'm not being dramatic.

I cried after work.

I only cried at work once.

When a man cries and has a panic attack people are strangely nice.

I have zero confidence level.

I felt hopeful for a little bit in my life.

But then I realize how weak I am.

I think this weakness has led me to writing.

There have been and will always be weak writers.

The whole thing about writers being recluses, getting drunk and killing themselves.

Those are things weak people do.

I'm pretty sure my kismet is to kill myself.

If someone left me alone with a loaded gun for a night

I would bet money that I would kill myself with that gun

I need to make a will though so my parents don't get my copyrights.

baby boomers and their kids

I had a comment on the Charles Hugh Smith website about baby boomers:

Here is a comment from a baby boomer about my opinion on baby boomers: The original comments can be found on his

"Noah C's resentful attitude is also revealed in his statement "And we are going to have to support on our backs 78 million retired baby boomers. 43 million disabled people, 70 million children. And we have 20 million illegal immigrants." I don't understand why he feels that all these people will be "on his back." Disabled people have jobs. Parents support children. Illegal immigrants work hard. But the larger issue is his resentment. Has he never heard of the social contract? We are not islands unto ourselves. We all live and work together."

If you are a baby boomer, read blogs, have an interest in what is going on, care so much about the world that you what 28 year olds have to say about things:

Then you are different than most of your generation:

Most baby boomers let the television and public schools raise their children.

Most baby boomers got divorced and let their children grow in single parent families.

Most baby boomers didn't do anything but feed their children and buy them objects on Christmas.

I know some baby boomers that taught their kids responsibility.

But few that were sincerely loving to their children.

If this economic depression and energy crisis leads to the younger generations having their worldviews jackfucked into some green worldview of frugality and simpleness.

They aren't going to care about baby boomers.

Because as we discussed earlier this week, capitalism doesn't not create loving families.

Is Art a Vice

I put art into a the vice category the other day and someone took it the wrong because I didn't explain enough.

I don't think art is a vice like drugs, beer, or most television.

I put it in that category because I was talking about Muslims.

The Islamic culture doesn't allow any real music besides ones with drugs and voice.

And it isn't allowed to express anything but their religion.

Those countries don't put out existential novels, weird paintings, they don't even put out porn.

When we compare American art to Saudi art, our art in their eyes is a vice.

Literature, music, painting, whatever isn't a vice.

They tell the stories that teach the mores of cultures and help us understand our own emotions.

Marxism Party

I'm going to respond one more time and then move on to other things.

But I think this is good.

This is helping me think about things and clear things up in my head, so I'll keep talking:

*

I think what said is depressing.

I think the fact that high population density equals capitalism is depressing.

I'm not Milten Friedman talking about the joys of capitalism.

I'm Dostoevsky going, "Well, this what we have to work with."

Two completely different emotions going on.

*

"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

This is a good amendment.

It keeps the government from stealing the goods of the people.

But it does not state that the government may produce its own goods.

It grants the right to the government to grow food, make shoes, and have its own oil companies.

What it also states is that if the government needs to take over a sector of the economy or business, it has to pay for it.

And what is the opposite of paying for it?

It is shooting people for it.

Which is horrible, ugly and mean.

I prefer that the government pays for things and not shoot people for them.

*

“slowly becoming a socialist state.”

This is a good question:

What I mean is this:

We are pragmatically becoming a socialist state.

When a company that is 'too big to fail' fails. Society steps in and considers it part of their infrastructure.

Our main problem in the last decades is that economic sectors have become part of the infrastructure and we didn't notice.

Now we noticing that there are private businesses in society that have become integral in society.

Nobody thought cars, banks, finance, were going to become part of the infrastructure.

I would bet in a few years we are going to find out that trucking and railroads will be part of it also.

The difference lies in the philosophy behind it:

America and Europe made a pragmatic decision to solve the banking crisis with bailouts.

A Marxist decision would have been to take all the bankers, shoot them or imprison them and take their banks.

Even if I think some of those bankers deserve to die for being such greedy assholes. Most of them were probably just people doing their job, which is normal human behavior, and we shouldn't be killing people for that.

*

I did not state "marx's utopia", I stated utopia, which is having security and the finer things of life.

Americans can get a lot, and have a lot. And what they did with it shows me that even if there was no exploitation they would just do drugs and watch television.

It is depressing, I know, but I didn't make humans the way they are, they were here, acting fucked up, before I ever got here.

*

To conclude capitalism is not awesome.

It is alienating, it makes people feel alone, it subjects them to the market, it subjects them to being the enemies of their co-workers, it subjects them to having their money stolen from them. It subjects people to never owning their own means of production.

The capitalists have taken the land, the streets, and the plazas.

But I believe in rights, in being a citizen, in democracy, and I never wanted to believe and it makes me depressed to deal with on a daily basis, but my fellow humans on average want their to be a hierarchy, they want to talk about the rich, and like the idea that someone somewhere is sending out messages telling them what to do.

Most people like to be told what to do.

I do think that the world will become more socialist.

Engels and Marx were correct that large corporations would one day come into trouble, collapse and society will take charge of them.

Large economic sectors like health care, railroads, semi-trucks, cars, banking, oil, coal, natural gas, water, electricity, and a lot of farming I believe will be taken over by society in the next decade or so.

But it will be a pragmatic decision and not a marxist one.

There won't be a revolution.

I agree with Montesquieu functioning democratic states don't have revolutions. They may have a civil war every once and awhile, but for the most part a compromise will be made.

But for things like socks, shoes, pants, publishing houses, alarm clocks, it will remain in the public sector. Because they are products that involve an individual touch, which people like.

Providing water is not individual, everyone needs the same water.

The problem I see is that some economic sectors or instruments of production have taken on a larger role in our society than we ever imagined, and they remained in the private sector because they were able to handle themselves.

But as they collapse we will see that they were much more important and vital than we ever thought they were and will have to be bought by the govenment, maintained by the government, because the only way to keep them going is by everone pitching in the money to do it.

Capitalism and Democracy

Someone made a comment about me becoming stupid or something because I'm going to college.

I realize now that I should have explained my new theory of capitalist-democracies before referencing in a post about getting an agent and wanting to make money and live a normal life.

*

Capitalism has existed everywhere where there has been a high population density.

A high population density comes from a surplus of food

which creates a surplus of people.

Small forms of capitalism first appeared in City-States all the world.

A City-State is like ancient Athens or Sparta or Rome.

Small tribes speaking the same language in a relative distance from each other, had large food surpluses.

Then eventually there was not farmers needed to create as much food.

Those surplus children of farmers had to find other means of living, other places to live, etc.

They gathered in a city.

And created a City-State.

The farmers would bring their surplus to the City-State and the people (Capitalists) would sell it according to the laws of supply and demand.

Capitalism existed from ancient times all the way through Medieval times in small cities.

After the Black Plague 50 percent of the European population was killed.

Which created huge surpluses of food, land and goods.

Soon after The Age of Enlightenment and science began

which created new thought patterns and an obsession with making life better on earth, as opposed to waiting for heaven.

Then a housing boom started in the 1700s with the fireplace.

Everyone started building new houses based around the fireplace as opposed to thatched houses based around the hearth.

This created a housing boom, an economic boom, and consumerism because people wanted to fill their houses with new things like forks, spoons, knives, seats, and other things.

Populations grew because of the food surpluses.

Populations grew because of coal being used for machines and run things.

European cities realized that if they keep the cities clean, reduce the rodent population and funnel the feces out of the city the cities will be healthier.

Which created more population boom.

Then we started using oil and building cars, but the most important oil using machine was the farm tractor which led to huge food surpluses.

Then in the 1940s penicillin was released into the population and boom

the mixture of clean cities, farm tractors, and penicillin led to our way of life now.

The huge population the world has right now, has turned the world into a giant City-State.

If the world is a giant City-State with a very low percentage of farmers, then the world operates using capitalism.

Because the economic model the City-State is capitalism.

Capitalism is like writing or farming, it arises amongst humans when certain circumstances come together.

Capitalism and Democracy are linked in the fact that general will of the population gets served.

The general population chooses what they want to purchase.

The general population chooses who they want to be their leaders.

The general will makes the society.

America's general population has had 200 years of voting and purchasing power to make this country into a communist state but they didn't.

They could have, communists have ran many times for political positions.

But I think we have learned with Europe and America's experiment with democracy is that humans like to have their gods, they like the idea of one day becoming rich or that the possibility is there, even if it is only a dream. That humans have and will always accept hierarchies in their societies.

*

I would say that the Marxist utopia has already been accomplished.

It can be accomplished with as little as 20,000 a year in America.

Americans in general before the last six months had heating, an air-conditioning unit, indoor plumbing, clean cities, easy to attain food, school systems, police, a huge military, etc.

Now, there is no doubt there is always room to make things better.

But those things, if compared to what humans had 100 years ago is a utopia.

But what did we do with utopia

we bitched and complained and talked about how we don't know what to do with our lives.

We still played the lottery.

Ate too much.

Bought shit we didn't need.

Went to the bar and got drunk.

Sang along to Journey in our cars.

Had pointless sex.

Neglected our children.

Sniffed coke and smoked weed.

A bunch of shit.

Now what I'm trying to say:

Is that I'm not giving a 'political' view of things.

Looking at food surpluses, population increases, is pre-political. It is saying that when these certain circumstances arise amongst humans, there are predictable outcomes.

Out of high population density comes capitalism.

My other view is existential which is also pre-political

which states that human nature accepts hierarchy, humans want power, if they don't have, they still like to dream about it.

Humans will always be creatures of desire.

If you give them a wonderful house with air-conditioning, heating and indoor plumbing they will still want more.

There is also:

Capitalism operates within the laws of supply and demand, which is the law of nature. Butterflies and birds operate within the law of supply and demand.

*

To respond to your comments:

"The non-rich could easily appropriate all of society’s wealth if they merely got organized."

They have had 200 years in America to get organized and vote for communists and they didn't.

They have had 200 years in America to purchase goods that weren't made by capitalists and they didn't.

Our constitution does not have economic laws, they could have slowly created a socialist state through voting. And from what we are seeing now, with these bailouts and buying into corporations, that we are slowly becoming a socialist state. People complained about it, but no one revolted so they must accept it.

"Also, isn’t it odd that your bourgeois (i.e. middle class) teachers teach you that the most important thing a society can have is a middle class?"

I got that from Aristotle.

The basic theory is that a middle class does the majority of production, gets a good pay for it. Not the highest pay. But a good pay. The middle class walks around buying goods.

The capitalist takes some off the top.

But the middle-class does things like go to restaurants, the mall, has their garbage taken out, hires people to mow their lawns, to paint their houses, to build or remodel their houses, which creates jobs for low income people.

Marx believed that society should be a giant middle-class.

"Under feudalism, they would have taught you the most important thing was an aristocracy.
And in the Soviet Union, they would have said the most important thing was the proletariat."

feudalism taught that the most important thing was honor, that everyone should honor the place they were born into.

The Soviet Union taught that everyone should do what the communists said: in the soviet union like China the communists ruled and rule. People do not know, but the whole population was not communist. To be a communist in Russia you had to join the party and go through all kinds of shit to get into it.

The communists were the upper class, they got the best places to live, best pay, and best lives.

Communism was two things:

1. The apex of the Enlightenment, the idea that humans could create heaven on earth.

2. It's basic form is that of an Islamic Empire:

There is a an absolute dictator:

Because they have one absolute dictator

Everyone is equal

because all status, wealth, and power are achieved by kissing that dictator's ass.

Communism by Lenin was like some throwback to the Ottoman empire.

Getting an agent

I think I will have an agent soon

I believe this will be the first step to becoming a high performance writer with advanced abilities and 25 percent more power.

I do not think I'm totally anti-corporate anymore

because in the last year of studying history and politics

I've concluded that corporations are not manifestations of evil created by secret men to destroy mankind

but things that occur because of food surpluses and excess population.

Some philosophers have concluded that rich people get some enjoyment out of the suffering of their workers.

But from I have seen

rich people either become sympathetic and take a job helping people

or they continue with the family business

but neither seem really conscious of what it means not to be middle-class or poor.

I've concluded that blue collar and poor do not know what it means to be rich.

Also concluded that a Youngstown rich person doesn't know what it means to be NYC rich and a NYC rich person probably doesn't know what it means to be Saudi rich or Indian rich.

That everyone gets born into some situation and depending on how their psychological make-up turned out, they find a way live in that situation.

I do think that governments, all governments should regulate their corporations and keep a close eye on them.

Because the most valuable thing a country can have is a middle-class.

The rich and poor feed off the middle-class purchasing goods, from cars to coffee to steaks.

But the truth is:

the rich have the money

and to get money in a capitalist democracy

that's where you have to go

you have to go to them

and say, "Hey, I can do this, I can make this product, I can produce something for you. Please give me money."

Like now, I work at a steak house. I go to the steak house people and say, "I can cook for food, I'll show up everyday on time and not fuck up too much. Please give me money." And that's my life currently.

Middle-East Islamic Nations are Incompatible with Democratic Capitalism

This debate has been going on for awhile

and I think it is too complex

This is where the problem lies

Democratic Capitalism

has two integral features that Islam does not have:

1. Unionism or class consciousness

2. Vice

Democratic Capitalist countries demand some form of Class Consciousness, it demands for workers and the poor to recognize even a little bit that THE MAN is fucking them in the ass

Now they don't hate THE MAN's things.

They don't hate THE MAN's cars, or houses, or kitchenettes.

They want those things too.

But they do hate some of their behaviors.

But they don't kill them in Capitalist Democratic Countries because they have the right to life also

So they bitch and complain

They complain through union activity, through calling the Better Business Bureau and OSHA.

Businesses now have Open Door Policies, where you can call the corporate office and complain if you feel your rights are being fucked with.

Where I work, at a dumb ass steak house, they have that.

There is no real Class Consciousness in the Islamic countries, they have been trained for a thousand years that the upper class is in some way divine and cannot be fucked with.

Or that they all Muslims, and therefore not guilty.

I honestly can't grasp the logic with my western mind, but the their logic does not lead to class consciousness.

The second major part of a democratic capitalist nation and it sustaining itself is Vice.

Capitalism is alienating.

It makes people feel alone.

It ripped humanity from their clans, tribes, farms and places them in a position to spend their lives hunting for work or working for an owner they never meet and who lives a much better life than them, off their labor.

It pits every human against every other human in the struggle for money.

But to go with a Jared Diamond view of history, if you want to live in a country with millions of people, you have to divide labor tasks, and the only real way to do that is through capitalism.

Since the human of capitalism feels alone, and alienated, they need vice to calm this feeling.

Vice as in drinking, drugs, sex, television, art, and religion as a club, not as a way of life.

What I mean religion as club, is that our churches are clubs where people go to smoke the opium of hope. That god will protect their job, and their dead son is in heaven. And churches also provide activities such as bingo, basketball courts, and NA, AA, and they help battered women.

Religion as a way of life contradicts the theory of democracy and capitalism, where people through voting and purchasing can make the world the way they want it.

Vice also creates jobs, it spreads money through the community, cigarettes, gambling, booze, strippers, all those things spread money around.

Vice is part of a modern capitalist democracy because democracies provide Rights to their citizens. A Right is that people as citizens have a choice on how they live, how they make their world. Now they must follow the laws, drive certain speeds, don't kill anybody, and don't steal. But inside the law people can drink themselves stupid on Friday night, fuck a random co-worker and live their life without fear of being killed.

The first step to a capitalist democracy is believing in the right of human life.

Think about when the Kent State Shootings went down, people wrote songs about it, people still talk about it today.

Because we believe so much in the right of life.

Think about how America constantly pays money for new military inventions to fight war with less American casualties.

We hate our own people to die.

We aren't suicide bombers, because we so firmly believe in the right to live.

We don't want to die for oil, but we want oil.

So people figure out how to get oil with at least amount of people being killed.

Think about republicans and democrats, the republicans want unborn fetuses to exist even though they've never seen life.

And liberals want murdering lunatics not to be executed.

If the Muslims of the middle-east do adopt our capitalist democracies they will see the same thing happen to them as us.

The old way of life will be destroyed.

And religion becomes a club and when something makes you really mad, you go home and get drunk and play Wii really angrily.

People are killing each other again in the middle east

Today I watched a group of Muslims march down a street waving Palestinian flags.

They were very excited

everyone has an opinion on the conflict

and it seems when looking at comments that everyone judges people harshly no matter what side they pick

this is my opinion

we go into Gaza

get like a million of them

and find other countries for them to live in

we could send them to Wymoming and have them ranch cattle and grow soybeans, Wyoming has like eight people, nobody will notice. Everyone there is religious, they might get along.

i'm sure a lot want to leave anyway

that would bring down unemployment

instead of building like three jet fighters and five missiles

we could buy two televisions for everyone in Gaza

and we could give them cable

then we could send them computers with the internet for free

then find like a 100,000 rich educated people to be their upper class.

We could send them the newly unemployed stock brokers and hedge funders, we don't need them anymore.

Then everyone works for them.

I don't even think Gaza has an upper class

Capitalists countries need an upper class

After they have an upper class

then there will be jobs doing things for those people

I don't know what there is to do in Gaza though

They could send Iraqi oil there

the main thing is that they have cable television

Also they need bars

I don't think they drink

They need to a lot of booze

bring in bars and television

Weed too

they need weed

Weed, bars, and television

also have classes on how to engage in promiscuous sex

see the thing about america

the thing that everybody loves, from the lawyer to the factory worker to the history professor to the Denny's server

is that we have

bars, television, pain killers, weed, and promiscuous sex

that men and women can participate in these activities

these activities sustain us as a people

the humans of the earth are miserable

and the Gaza people are really miserable

they need these things

provide these services

and there will be hope

Initial Feeling and Recreated Feelings

Most of my days are trying to recreate that initial feeling

it is like losing your virginity

that feeling you have when something really new comes

so you keep trying to have weird sex, thinking if you derange the sex enough, that feeling will return

or like when you're in a relationship and for your anniversary you go back to the place you met

or you walk to the piece of woods or neighborhood where you have happy memories as a child

artists always talk about that

that perfect moment

that creates a feeling or casts a shadow over your whole life

the same thing works for bad experiences

rape victims don't enjoy going back to the rooms they were raped in

I've never met a Vietnam veteran that took vacations back to Vietnam to relive the good times

the catch is that we don't know when those initial moments will come

look at this

you go to a bar and meet somebody and six years later you're still together and getting along

well back then

when you were single and walking around bars

you were probably talking to people, trying to hook up all the time

you never expected that would be the person you would end up for a long period of time

you were probably just trying to get laid

and end up getting bitched about how you do dishes and drive too fast

and we spend our boring days, which greatly outnumber the exciting ones saying to each other, "Lets listen to that song we listened to when we met." "Lets go back to that place." You drive by an apartment building and say, "Remember when we lived and fucked all night."

And then the worst thing happens:

Say you have a memory at a certain business or building, and it closes or gets demolished

what if the person leaves

or dies

what is there then

the stimulate is gone

which is we probably like music so much

because it remains there

always

songs never die

we can always put our memories to songs

There's this scene in The Outlaw Josey Wales, it is the end of the movie and everyone is happy because they killed bad guys. A couple of musicians are playing and they ask Josey what song he would like to sing. Josey was obviously not a man of music. The only one he could think of was the one his young friend who died in the earlier part of the movie sang. He told them to play that song, and as it played he thought of his friend and how happy he would be if he had lived to see what he was seeing, to feel what he was feeling.

From Rousseau's Origin of Inequality

If this were the place to go into details, I could readily explain how, even without the intervention of government, inequality of credit and authority became unavoidable among private persons, as soon as their union in a single society made them compare themselves one with another, and take into account the differences which they found out from the continual intercourse every man had to have with his neighbours.8 These differences are of several kinds; but riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit being the principal distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in society, I could prove that the harmony or conflict of these different forces is the surest indication of the good or bad constitution of a State. I could show that among these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities being the origin of all the others, wealth is the one to which they are all reduced in the end; for, as riches tend most immediately to the prosperity of individuals, and are easiest to communicate, they are used to purchase every other distinction. By this observation we are enabled to judge pretty exactly how far a people has departed from its primitive constitution, and of its progress towards the extreme term of corruption. I could explain how much this universal desire for reputation, honours and advancement, which inflames us all, exercises and holds up to comparison our faculties and powers; how it excites and multiplies our passions, and, by creating universal competition and rivalry, or rather enmity, among men, occasions numberless failures, successes and disturbances of all kinds by making so many aspirants run the same course. I could show that it is to this desire of being talked about, and this unremitting rage of distinguishing ourselves, that we owe the best and the worst things we possess, both our virtues and our vices, our science and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers; that is to say, a great many bad things, and a very few good ones. In a word, I could prove that, if we have a few rich and powerful men on the pinnacle of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it is because the former prize what they enjoy only in so far as others are destitute of it; and because, without changing their condition, they would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched.

These details alone, however, would furnish matter for a considerable work, in which the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of government might be weighed, as they are related to man in the state of nature, and at the same time all the different aspects, under which inequality has up to the present appeared, or may appear in ages yet to come, according to the nature of the several governments, and the alterations which time must unavoidably occasion in them, might be demonstrated. We should then see the multitude oppressed from within, in consequence of the very precautions it had taken to guard against foreign tyranny. We should see oppression continually gain ground without it being possible for the oppressed to know where it would stop, or what legitimate means was left them of checking its progress. We should see the rights of citizens, and the freedom of nations slowly extinguished, and the complaints, protests and appeals of the weak treated as seditious murmurings. We should see the honour of defending the common cause confined by statecraft to a mercenary part of the people. We should see taxes made necessary by such means, and the disheartened husbandman deserting his fields even in the midst of peace, and leaving the plough to gird on the sword. We should see fatal and capricious codes of honour established; and the champions of their country sooner or later becoming its enemies, and for ever holding their daggers to the breasts of their fellow-citizens. The time would come when they would be heard saying to the oppressor of their country —

Pectore si fratris gladium juguloque parentis
Condere me jubeas, gravidœque in viscera partu
Conjugis, invita peragam tamen omnia dextrâ.
Lucan, i. 376

From great inequality of fortunes and conditions, from the vast variety of passions and of talents, of useless and pernicious arts, of vain sciences, would arise a multitude of prejudices equally contrary to reason, happiness and virtue. We should see the magistrates fomenting everything that might weaken men united in society, by promoting dissension among them; everything that might sow in it the seeds of actual division, while it gave society the air of harmony; everything that might inspire the different ranks of people with mutual hatred and distrust, by setting the rights and interests of one against those of another, and so strengthen the power which comprehended them all.

It is from the midst of this disorder and these revolutions, that despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head and devouring everything that remained sound and untainted in any part of the State, would at length trample on both the laws and the people, and establish itself on the ruins of the republic. The times which immediately preceded this last change would be times of trouble and calamity; but at length the monster would swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either chiefs or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practise.

This is the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle, and meets that from which we set out. Here all private persons return to their first equality, because they are nothing; and, subjects having no law but the will of their master, and their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of equity again vanish. There is here a complete return to the law of the strongest, and so to a new state of nature, differing from that we set out from; for the one was a state of nature in its first purity, while this is the consequence of excessive corruption. There is so little difference between the two states in other respects, and the contract of government is so completely dissolved by despotism, that the despot is master only so long as he remains the strongest; as soon as he can be expelled, he has no right to complain of violence. The popular insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him. Thus everything takes place according to the natural order; and, whatever may be the result of such frequent and precipitate revolutions, no one man has reason to complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own ill-fortune or indiscretion.

If the reader thus discovers and retraces the lost and forgotten road, by which man must have passed from the state of nature to the state of society; if he carefully restores, along with the intermediate situations which I have just described, those which want of time has compelled me to suppress, or my imagination has failed to suggest, he cannot fail to be struck by the vast distance which separates the two states. It is in tracing this slow succession that he will find the solution of a number of problems of politics and morals, which philosophers cannot settle. He will feel that, men being different in different ages, the reason why Diogenes could not find a man was that he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period. He will see that Cato died with Rome and liberty, because he did not fit the age in which he lived; the greatest of men served only to astonish a world which he would certainly have ruled, had he lived five hundred years sooner. In a word, he will explain how the soul and the passions of men insensibly change their very nature; why our wants and pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man having vanished by degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of artificial men and factitious passions, which are the work of all these new relations, and without any real foundation in nature. We are taught nothing on this subject, by reflection, that is not entirely confirmed by observation. The savage and the civilised man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair. The former breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from labour; even the ataraxia of the Stoic falls far short of his profound indifference to every other object. Civilised man, on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find still more laborious occupations: he goes on in drudgery to his last moment, and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or renounces life to acquire immortality. He pays his court to men in power, whom he hates, and to the wealthy, whom he despises; he stops at nothing to have the honour of serving them; he is not ashamed to value himself on his own meanness and their protection; and, proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of those, who have not the honour of sharing it. What a sight would the perplexing and envied labours of a European minister of State present to the eyes of a Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to the horrors of such a life, which is seldom even sweetened by the pleasure of doing good! But, for him to see into the motives of all this solicitude, the words power and reputation, would have to bear some meaning in his mind; he would have to know that there are men who set a value on the opinion of the rest of the world; who can be made happy and satisfied with themselves rather on the testimony of other people than on their own. In reality, the source of all these differences is, that the savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him. It is not to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how, always asking others what we are, and never daring to ask ourselves, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity and civilisation, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is sufficient that I have proved that this is not by any means the original state of man, but that it is merely the spirit of society, and the inequality which society produces, that thus transform and alter all our natural inclinations.

I have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of inequality, and the institution and abuse of political societies, as far as these are capable of being deduced from the nature of man merely by the light of reason, and independently of those sacred dogmas which give the sanction of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows from this survey that, as there is hardly any inequality in the state of nature, all the inequality which now prevails owes its strength and growth to the development of our faculties and the advance of the human mind, and becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the establishment of property and laws. Secondly, it follows that moral inequality, authorised by positive right alone, clashes with natural right, whenever it is not proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction which sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that species of inequality which prevails in all civilised, countries; since it is plainly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that children should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life.

More Guns, Germs and Steel and Hegel

The thing about Guns, Germs and Steel is how godless and positivist it is:

Guns, Germs and Steel shows the fate our of modern minds:

As Hegel and Saint Augustine showed the fate their era's minds

Saint Augustine showed the religious mind coming into being

that personal behavior and large scale generalized behavior represented a religious devolution that would eventually lead to the returning of Christ

Hegel showed that early capitalist democratic countries had a sense of the spiritual left, a sense of duty in the name of God, but Hegel thought like Marx that heaven could be found on earth

The major difference between Hegel/Marx and Saint Augustine was that Augustine did not think heaven could be on earth, that life was suffering and only happiness could come after death

But Hegel and Marx were products of the Enlightenment when God died, Hegel still believed, but not like Augustine. The Enlightenment even though they claimed to believe in God was that man must take responsibility over his life and not worry about heaven.

Hegel and Marx rationalized this to be that if the perfect political economic system could be created then heaven would appear

But at some point, I think in the late seventies the modern world gave up on heaven and become totally uncaring about making a 'perfect' world.

Diamond shows this:

It goes even farther

In Augustine, Hegel and even Marx man is at the center of the universe.

Diamond doesn't put man at the center of the universe, he is like the universe, coming and going, overcoming and being overcome

there is no spirit that directs mankind

no predictable outcome

there are no real great men or oppresses in Diamond's world

his dialect if there is any at all is:

well there were these people and they had 100 years of peace on this small island so they didn't bother to do fighting training and they stopped making war spears 25 years earlier

then this other island of people ran out of a certain kind of food they were depending on because they killed all of that certain animals or cut down that certain tree

those people were violent and had been fighting amongst each other for several hundred years and developed very good tools of death

so they built boats and floated over to that other island

and when the violent hungry people encountered the non-violent well fed people, the violent people killed them.

Or

a ruling class doesn't become a ruling class to oppress the lower classes, or that the strong rise amongst the week

but politicians, a ruling class, large administrations arose out surplus food which creates surplus population which creates a demand for organization on a larger scale

another

italy, America, England, and China have had great empires because they have a certain statistical amount of good soil, good ports, rivers that flow inland, they have a certain type of climate, and they were open to new ideas from other cultures.

Paraguay and Serbia are never going to be a super power because it is landlocked and does not the prerequisites for a empire.

Which is a very modern view of things

I think the book shows something about who we've become

A godless people obsessed with facts

but I think the world is divided into two groups when looking at it

there are people that accept Guns, Germs and Steel. Which are people who accept that life is hard, we are in an indifferent universe, and there are certain factors that make life better in country and worse in another

But there are still people who believe in God, who believe in conspiracy theories concerning the Illuminati, believe in aliens, and all kinds of shit like that

who want life to contain some sort of magic

people don't want to think that this is it

that when they look around their room, that the objects in the room are it

this is your life

you and the objects that surround you

the other day i was talking to bernice about a hostess where i work

she writes poems while she works

and i said, "She writes poems about being a hostess"

Bernice said, "No she doesn't."

I was like, "Yeah, you're right. She writes about magical wonderful things. Nobody writes about their lives as they are."

Which is weird, there are and were only a handful of writers and movie makers that make art that has to do with their life.

People don't really consider their lives

I think that is what diamond does, but Augustine, Hegel, and Marx don't do, there is no real 'know thyself' in them. Diamond kind of says, read this book and 'know thyself.'

moving to new york

i keep thinking about moving to new york city

i will graduate next December which is a long way off

but i think i should have a goal

my goal for the last year and a half was to get back to school

i had to make the goal

and fix my defaulted loans

which took nine months before i could even enter a school in America again

so now,

i must start planning again

I'm thinking either going to americorps and doing something productive and good for humanity

or going to NYC, doing nothing good for humanity, and doing a lot of readings, networking, meeting people, shaking hands, getting drunk, having sex with women who drink too much and find writers attractive.

Which would be sin but very new york

I'm very scared of living in NYC, because it takes a lot of money. I would have to get a job that at least makes 18,000 with an AA degree in social studies and too much cooking experience

Does anybody know if it is possible to get a job with that experience and make 18,000 to 20,000 a year in NYC?

Also I would have to find a place to live and live with other people and pay like 500 dollars a month to live in a small closet

this is all discouraging?

I've very scared of all this

The meaning of life, guns, germs and steel, and Hegel

People always say that philosophy is supposed to answer the meaning to life

or

of life

i'm sure which

of course philosophy answers

The word "life" doesn't actually mean anything, so the sentence doesn't make sense and can't be asked.

Nietzsche responded that life, all life, even plants and stars, and rocks, was to overcome that which surrounds them, The Will to Power.

In the past year I read

Hegel's The Philosophy of History
Vico's The New Science
McNiell's Plagues and Peoples
Saint Augustine's The City of God
Engel's The Origin of the Family and State
and I just finished Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel

This books are about history, how humans came about, how philosophies came about, who we are as a people

I've made these conclusions

that human life

is about

hard work and responsibility

it doesn't matter if you live in a tribe in the jungle or work at a restaurant

you're only going to live and get what you want if you work hard and take responsibility

there are people who don't work hard in our modern area

strangely they are the poorest and the richest

the poor live off the middle class
and so do the richest

which is why a strong middle class is important to any civilization

I will write more about Guns, Germs and Steel

The Most Popular Bar

last night I ended at the most popular bar

have you ended up at the most popular bar

i stood there

thinking

these are the most depressed i've ever met

more depressed than the bar where they play bright eyes and nina simone and the boys weigh tight pants and all the girls have old cut scars on their arms from puberty

more depressed than the bar where the crack heads drink 75 cent draft and talk about prison time and young black men try to sell you black market DVDs downloaded off the internet

the people at the most popular bar are much more depressed