Recent comments

The Death Cult likes to first dehumanize and degrade that which it wants to abuse and destroy. All part of the war on "primitive" life itself, Mother Earth and her Children. Well, not children. Meatbags. "The only good meatbag is a dead meatbag." Nips, Huns, Injuns, SandNiggers and no-good-Shit MeatBags.

That video was awesome - the best use of vocoder I have ever seen (WAY better than the Cher song that made it acceptable). I am a big lover of Sagan - the man knew how important altered states of consciousness are to developing a proper sense of self (and to make one's philosophical life more productive: the myth of the 'stoner' is simply dumb, since weed is mostly a force-multiplier). The man made it clear: he smoked weed EVERY DAY. That said, I have never smoked anything in my life - edibles suffice, along with 'primitive' ingestibles - from peyote to mescaline to mushrooms to morning glory tea... and one day I will do a proper ayahuasca experience. Imagine how awesome humanity would become if we forced ALL candidates for political office to undertake a (non-pharma) hallucinogenic experience: the Cheney types would trip balls and horrify themselves when they looked into their inner abyss and it snarled back at them... they would find that deep down they are so monstrous that they don't really even care about themSELVES. You're right about the OT critique though - the foundational myths of any 'nation' are almost always intensely statist. The cock-snipping and willingness to kill one's own kids in exchange for power is the sort of thing we're encouraged to associate with 'primitive' cultures, in order to misdirect us from the fact that the really horrifying behaviour is decided upon by nicely dressed people speaking in gentle voices in palaces. Michio Kaku's observation is something I have banged on about for a decade - We could be in the middle Of an inter-galactic conversation And we wouldn't even know Any civilisation that is a generation more advanced than we are, will not require little grey dorky bodies, will not need to speak through a meatbag, will be 1/50th the size of a virus, and their radio traffic will be encrypted and thus utterly indistinguishable from background noise. AND they'll be able to interact with us mind to mind if they so choose... but they would feel no need to. They would not be hostile - they would be utterly indifferent to us.

You didn't read the article; people are living in tiny wire rabbit cages, sometimes more than one per hutch. The libertarian fetish for Heritage Kong and the other Asian police state is astounding.

Hello Jesse -- a wonderful piece. Part of the mystery of "Who will build the roads?," we can now see that the imperialists will. And certainly the state will. The scales began to fall from my eyes when I read 2 revealing works on major transportation sagas, Stephen Ambrose's book on the transcontinental railroad and David McCullough's work on the Panama Canal. These works are not even muckraker's pieces, but the imperialism, political corruption, plutocracy, militarism, and statism are rampant.

The problem is primitivism. It is pure evil....It is not solving the problem. Someone who is so fixated on their problem of state and cities apparently cannot think outside their Dunbar, Malthus, Empiricism out of touch with reality map.. A Primitivist is not here to teach nor understand. Don't care what the reason is Mommy--Dunbar, Malthus, Empiricism--said so...(Replacing the State with Mommy-ism is not the answer). sTROLLING in the wilderness does not require primitivism. Primitivism is what we came from. Primitivism is old age and dead at 25. I can go modern with a 4 wheel into the wilderness. He can go build his stone ax--that's primitive. Go primitive? Who cares if a primitive wants to go. *Taking us with him is the problem*.

I used that set of adjectives because the vast vast VAST majority of the observable universe is cold (near-absolute-zero) and dark (night-sky dark, not 'nuclear bunker with no generators' dark). Those words have a nice embedded double entendre, too: physical vs anthropomorphic emotional-projection. * Hard like a rock, or hard like the 1000-yard stare of a US soldier at a checkpoint in a land that isn't his? * Cold like ice, or cold like the soul of an IDF soldier helping steal land from people who've lived on it for a hundred generations? * Dark like a movie theatre, or dark like the mind of anyone who believes in the primitive racial-supremacist lunacy of the Old Testament? I also think those words accurately reflect the disposition of the universe towards some bunch of self-important naked monkeys on a slightly-interesting ball of rock orbiting a not-special little star in a backwater of a galaxy that is indistinguishable from a hundred billion others. The more we inculcate the 'we are nothing special' view, the better: the human conceit of 'specialness' has caused enough agony and depravity when directed just at our own little mildly-interesting ball of rock and its inhabitants - if we don't get rid of that trope before we blunder out into the stars, we deserve to be extinct. Lastly... when considering the staggeringly tiny bit of the universe that we occupy, you should also consider just how much of it is relatively inhospitable to our poorly-evolved meatbags. Most deserts, a good chunk of any decent-sized mountains, the liquid environment at any depth greater than about 40 feet, the polar regions - all of those places will kill a naked ape in a relatively short period of time. Mother Nature (to personify the natural world for a sec) is indifferent as to whether humanity extincts itself or is extincted by a mutated germ or virus, or a comet, meteor, supernova, or any of the planetary-scale ass-whipping-phenomena; we're about as important in the broad sweep of cosmic history as chlamydia. The thing is, deep down I am perfectly happy with being an insignificant hairless ape whose entire life is less than a blip in the timeline of this tiny little planet, which itself is hurtling through a vast void. We each of us have that nanoscopic sliver of time, sandwiched between eternities of non-existence. Anybody who can't make peace with their insignificance will be shitting bricks, crossing their fingers and hoping for God as their last heartbeat approaches - and that's the ultimate in lacking self-awareness. That said, I am also a utopian extropian who plans on being alive when we get past the knee of our tech development curve... so I will zip up my mind, upload it to a nanobot a few million atoms across, download everything ever written (and know it instantly)... and spend eternity playing Reversi.

Why "hard, cold, dark universe" when the part in which we've adapted is warm, soft, and light, and alive? Is warm, soft, light, and alive too hippie-ish? I think such a rigid, frigid description acts more as a mirror than a lens.

A pretty good article, but I dislike the use of the shorthand that conflates a system with the way a system is MODELED in pedagogic and research tools. (I've spent a decade post-academe in financial markets, which are full of people who think the 2-asset model is the real world, and that the Solow-Swan model is what the actual macroeconomy looks like). The probabilistic approach (modelling particles as probability densities) dominates quantum theory at present, but in all likelihood it simply reflects incompleteness in the theory rather than something that is genuinely inherent in the physical universe. Likewise, quantum 'entanglement' and action-at-a-distance relies heavily on the idea that physical proximity in R4 (space-time) is a useful proxy for proximity in other dimensions: the idea that other dimensions exist is no longer even at issue (when I first became interested, in the late 1970s, it was HOTLY contested; now it's a question as to how MANY there are). As an example; in R4, 'distance' is meaningful; in the macro world a large change in any co-ordinate renders information-exchange more difficult. So if I am at [X1,Y1,Z1,T1] and you are at [X2,Y2,Z2,T2], then unless ALL FOUR dimensions are 'close' (to within a few metres and seconds) we cannot communicate directly without technology. However consider if R5 is 'red-haired-ness' (call it 'G'); my red-haired-ness is quite low (but non-zero... ginger-beard unless I shave). You might be a full-on bloodnut [G=100], or a Chinaman [G=0] - you could be ANYWHERE on the Ginger spectrum, and the 'gap' between our relative levels of Ginger does not impede almost-instantaneous communication (unless G=100 and the ginger in question has been drinking) if we are proximate in R4. Now consider if R6 is 'literacy' and R7 is 'internet connectivity' (I know these are not akin to 'physical dimensions', but bear with me). If both of us have high R7 and reasonable R6, we can exchange information almost at will across R3 and T (T only in one direction at present) - even if one of us is a drunk Ginger (although as G approaches 100 and D [drunkenness] rises above 60, R6 [literacy] drops sharply). OK... this is already book-length, but bear with me for a few more sentences. If ANY of the 'higher dimensions' enables spacetime-invariant transmission of information (i.e., transmission of information regardless of the interactee's position in R4), THEN quantum entanglement is not even interesting as a concept. It's like asking "How did that fat guy in Australia tell the guy in the US what he thought over such a great distance?", ignoring the cable coming out of the back of my computer. It will become clear as humanity continues to research dark matter (and the even MORE bizarre 'dark energy'), that the constraints we thought we faced in R4 are almost entirely non-binding. The first thing that we will come to understand is that information - having no mass - is not bound by R4 constraints and can change co-ordinates (including bidirectionally in T) without hindrance. One last thing - don't anybody for a minute think I'm getting all 'New Age' in my old age: not a bit of it. But the universe - the hard,. cold, dark universe - has non-hippie wonders that we will uncover that will make late-21st century man look back on early-21st century man, the way we currently look back on societies that had not developed writing.

Dunbar, Malthus and the Empiricist posits are false alternatives. There is NO empirical evidence to support Dunbar. The Covenant of Unanimous Consent, which is for interpersonal relationships (without the need to control others; without the need for space travel (which would require an industrial civilization, which is being destroyed by Govt)) and without the need for a grand kill off. But only self-control. Those that do not take care of themselves--you--will suffer the consequences. There is plenty of wilderness. There are others out there now! If you are unable to go that is your own fault. Laissez faire. Go to it! The 99% won't go quietly into the night. Apparently you are hoping to be part of the 1% taking a BIG Gamble on the hope that they will not defend themselves and that they won't come looking for you....

Ahhh to be able to smoke when we wish :)

Ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ol-l-l-l-l-l-l another one... "But that's after exposure to more than 10 "joint-years," which the scientists calculated as a joint a day for a decade. That's a fair amount of weed." ROFLMAO Those 'scientists' do not have a clue!! Does anyone who is currently smoking, or who has ever smoked mary jane, know anyone who smokes/smoked only one joint a day for a decade? A day, one fricken joint a day? ROFLMAO again!! "That's a fair amount of weed." ROFLMAO all over again!! Not that I would have first-hand knowledge, now mind you, but that is DEFINITELY NOT a "fair amount of weed". Somebody's been bogarting. (Years ago I dated a girl who babysat some of Joe's children.)

I got this from your own posts. If you don't recognize your own drivel you need to go back and read your own posts.

~According to our resident Altruist: What "We" need is to be freed of the inhabitants of the World in accordance with the premises of Dunbar, Malthus and the Science of Empiricism. Ask yourself dear reader, is that really what you need? ~What is self-evident (at least to me on immediate inspection)--Gak--is that the primitivist's data driven ideas are the megalomania ravings of a Sociopath righteously demanding indulgence, acceptance and the sanction of death on a Global Scale for the good of his "We" who--then and only then--will be free to gambol in the forest undisturbed... ~The non-sacrificial ideas of Rand, Mises AND Thoreau--are hardly abandoned in "Atlas Shrugged". They are hardly abandoned here (nor LewRockwell.com or Mises.org). Indeed as their students Linda and Morris Tannehill point out in "The Market For Liberty": "If revolution comes by violence, and in advance of the light, the old struggle will have to be begun again".

In many ways, agricultural civilization is like being an alcoholic. First, alcohol for ritual and social control is likely the very reason for domesticating grain. Lots of fun promised ahead! Where's the car keys? Euphoria! Second, the results are similar. Much of the world is now wrecked. The vast cedar forests of Mesopotamia? Yeah, that's the Iraqi desert now. Oak forests in the Sinai and Saudi peninsulas and the Negev desert? Burned down to smelt copper.* Yay, that was fun while it lasted. Civilization is like a 10,000 year bender with all the abuse and destruction and denialists and enablers. Derrick Jensen writes eloquently about the abusive nature of city-Statist Culture. Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable. http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm Drive safely, man. ________________ * Even the Sinai which is located to the Southeast and the Negev, East of the present state of Israel, bear evidence of past, perhaps abundant forests. The 1960 investigations of Sir William Flinders Petrie into mining operations in the Wadi Nash area of the western Sinai desert, believed to date from the third millennium, BC, yielded unmistakable clues: "(Petrie) found a bed of wood ashes 100 feet long, 50 feet wide and 18 inches deep, and also a slag dump from copper smelting, 6-8 feet deep, 500 feet long and 300 feet wide. It seems that the adjacent area, now desert, must have borne combustibles during the period when the mines were operating. Similarly, in the Negev, copper smelting kilns of a highly developed kind dating from 1000 BC have been found in the now quite desert-like Wadhi Araba." Man and the Mediterranean Forest: A history of resource depletion. J. V. Thirgood. Academic Press. 1961. p. 57. quoted from chapter 4 of: THE FINAL EMPIRE: THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION AND THE SEED OF THE FUTURE by William H. Kötke http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/

I agree; I was just dinging him on his White Man's Ghost Dance, today including Latin, that somehow insulated him from city-Statist society and protects him from cop bullets. He's a part of the present agricultural city-Statism (civilization) society whether he wants to be or not. Civilization isn't much of a voluntary society; never has been, never will be. I sympathize with his plight, and I know it drives many people crazy, but crazy delusional thinking does get you killed. You and me, we're in this thing together now... We're In This Together - NIN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9BfvPjsXXw We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine. And the machine is bleeding to death. The Dead Flag Blues - Godspeed You! Black Emperor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS2BrxcWWZA

I believe that Suverans2's statement is an indication NOT of his reverence for the oppression of ancient Rome, which was the evil empire of its day and the destroyer of and parasite upon Mediterranean civilization and trade. It is, instead, a reiteration that marriages are things undertaken in nature by consenting beings BEFORE the existence of the state -- or so I hope. That the evil and barbarous Romans recognized this in the statement above (despite fencing it in everywhere else as our own evil government does) does not, I hope, indicate any reverence for the evil Roman state.

How can liberty be work? Paleolithic people in the Original Affluent Society (Sahlins, 1974) were "autonomous and sovereign" individuals "who bow to no external political leaders" (Service, 1975) and they were quite lazy. "The redskinned Indians are naturally lazy..." ~Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, 16th century In Praise of Laziness by Jason Godesky | 5 June 2007 http://rewild.info/anthropik/2007/06/in-praise-of-laziness/ The Abolition of Work Bob Black http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm The Idle Theory of evolution, human life, technology, trade, money, ethics, law, and religion, proposes that life does the least work it can. http://idletheory.info/

If you want to study triangles, you should stay with in the realm of triangle axioms. When you start positing claims that can be checked in the real world, only an intellectual fraud would claim something provably false was somehow "a priori" knowledge. When Mises states: "The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity....Primitive man was always haunted by the specter of death from starvation," he's parroting the falsehoods of Hobbes. By observation, anthropologists, archeologists, evolutionary biologists, medical historians, etc. have all debunked such Hobbesian lies created to apologize for the oppressive hierarchy of city-Statism (civilization.) Then you further your intellectual fraud by trying to abandon those you were defending just, what, yesterday? Do you think I'm as stupid as you? Not hardly, pilgrim. You're the only one who keeps talking about culling -- because you're hiding the fact that you want to cull the "parasite" sub-humans who aren't followers of your Totalitarian Capitalist ideology that you falsely posit as "free." And then you'll commit the intellectual fraud of calling genocide "self-defense." You'll cook up some fraudulent excuse how they "deserved it." In fact, you buddy here already said that in his Totalitarian Capitalism, those without enough money deservedly "starve to death." Yep, that's what he said. "Starve to death," with nary a shred of human empathy. Oh right, to you, evolutionary biologists are as evil as they are to Fundamentalist Biblical Literalists. Humans are created in your a priori image! There can be no observable data, across many species, about behavior that demonstrates morals and empathy and altruism, because you don't want it to be! And those intellectual smarty-pants who are smart enough to observe such, well, they're just parasites to you, right? Send them to hell to burn forever and ever, amen! Maybe that's too silly these days, let's try a different rationalized tack: "“Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms, who live on the profits of the mind of others and proclaim that man needs no morality, no values, no code of behavior!" ~Ayn Rand There's your Fundamentalist Preacher who , and you sound just like it: an intellectual fraud. A fraud who wants people to ignore their senses, their powers of observation, in favor of believing your ideology about the real world is as axiomatic your simple-minded triangles.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39185824/The-Not-So-Wild-Wild-West

This guy needs a drink. Sounds as if he's trying to sober up. Can't have that. Sam

Those that think we can solve the economic woes in this country and elsewhere by printing money (so-called economic "stimuli") might think we can solve a shortage of doctors by simply handing out more medical diplomas. In other words the stupidity to which Hein elequently refers is not restricted to the topic of money. Parents tell their kids all time, "You need to bring up your grade in X." Rarely do they say (and one wonders if any many mean it), "you need to learn more" and the student's grade will then reflect that (assuming the grade is actually a measure of learning and not just attendance or "busy work"). We live in a society where the symbol standing for something is confused with the something for which it stands, be that "something" money, learning, or even love.

well said, and will do thank you!

"The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared to the rich." ~ Thomas Paine

You're still bent out of shape because simple observation in the real world debunks your make-believe premises. Which makes Paul Krugman pretty much like you: another agricultural city-Statism (civilization) swindler. So, you continue to lie to cover up your evasion of empirical data. (Hardly surprising from your hustlin' type.) I've said several times that I do not advocate "going back to primitivism" because it is impossible to do. But the critique of civilization against 2 million years of our primitive ancestors' Original Affluent Society (Sahlins, 1974) still stands true as ever. If you dare to not evade reality. And your dear leader, Ayn "Pol Pot" Rand was the one who dreamed of eliminating most people on earth. Oh wait, she dehumanized them like all genocidal tyrants do into mere "parasites." They're not people at all; just parasites, Objectivistly rationalized. "Sweep aside those parasites..." Yeah, Pol Pot sounded pretty much the same, and his goal was "restarting civilization" at "year Zero." Maybe Pol Pot read Ayn Rand? She had the same murderous fantasy: blow the whole thing up and start over. That's what Atlas Shrugged is all about, a Mathusian novel to get the earth's population back to its Objectivist carrying capacity. So let's compare these two batshit crazy kooks: Pol Pot wanted to: 
(a) "restart civilization"
 (b) by cleansing civilization of liberal influences
 (c)and punishing and starving out people he regarded as subhumans 
(d) at Year Zero. Ayn Rand wanted also to:
 (a) restart civilization 
(b) by cleansing civilization of liberal influences 
(c) and punishing and starving out people she regarded as subhumans 
(d) with a wave of the dollar brand cigarette. Not much difference. But what else would you expect from a philosophical movement inspired by a serial child killer?