I am already camping out at the theatre for the release of this.
And my wife is already rolling her eyes.
_
And my wife is already rolling her eyes.
_
Donnerstag, 4. Dezember 2008
Jesus Walked on Water, But Chuck Norris Swam Through Land
Posted on 19:13 by david
I alluded in my earlier post that manliness is not a desirable trait anymore. It's true...so true, in fact, that this book actually mocks manliness, and was written by a man! How many copies of this book were bought by wives and girlfriends, subconsciously hoping that a man would recognize his own activities in the pages of the book and subsist from those activities out of shame or embarassment?
It is a folly to dream that genders should be equal. Clearly, I have facial hair, and my wife does not. No amount of "women's lib" will ever change that. Also, my wife is capable of rational thought during a football game, I am not. My daughter reaches for her mother when injured, she ignores me. Men and women are different, and they ALWAYS WILL BE. Women's Suffrage aside, the desire of men and women for gender to be a non-issue are wasted effort.
As we learn more about the human brain, we realize that the actual neural activities of the brain are different based on the hormones supplied to that brain. Simply put: women and men have different brains structures. Simpler put: women and men think differently.
Ever hear someone say "a woman is too weak to be President."? This is (by and large) not an allusion to women having (by and large) a smaller bone structure and lower average weight than men. This is an allusion to the fact that by complex hormone interactions and poorly-understood brain activities, the female mind is capable (by and large) of more compassion and less likely to engage in physical violence than a male mind.
Further, though women are smart enough and physically capable of playing football, the reason it is not a popular female sport is because the female body is simply (by and large) not the equal to the male, and when the intensity of sport is proportional to the athleticism of the participants, men will win every time. This, however, doesn't make "powderpuff football" a socially acceptable term, and enforces bad gender stereotypes.
Anyway, the point is, men should grow their beards, wrestle their kids, and be manly. It's what we were meant to do! Women who dress us in skinny jeans and scarves and expect us to appreciate post-modern art are not accepting us for what we really are. Similarly, women who express disappointment in the male for "not having feeeeeeeeeeelings, or "not being coooooomforting" need to accept that those are things you pick up the phone and call your mother or girlfriends for. We are perfectly capable of listening to you, and perfectly capable of hugging and loving you with every fiber of our male being, but is it really so hard to accept that males are simply mentally different than you and emotionally incapable of really caring how so-and-so's offhand remarks made you feel?
Could it be that long ago, when males were roaming the grasslands and slaying land-sloths, that the compassionate males who felt bad about killing game starved and the compassion was slowly but surely bred out of males? Meanwhile, the females never saw the game animals dying, they simply saw the male bring home slabs of meat which they could feed to their children, which strengthened their mother-child bond. Females never needed to lose compassion, in fact, staying home from the hunt, to gather nuts and berries and staple crops in groups that communicated with complexity would actually strengthen their compassion and desire to discuss their feelings. Males spent their days in silence or near-silence, stalking game or chasing it, females spent their days in groups working together and communicating.
So why do we laugh at women on their cell phones all the time? Their just obeying their instincts.
I know I am going back to paleobiology for a lot of my arguments, but when we accept that we are genetically identical to the humans that walked the plains over 15,000 years ago, it can be a very humbling experience. The great thinkers, Aristotle, Da Vinci, Thomas Paine, all of them, they are in effect absolutely no smarter than humans who stabbed woolly mammoths with spears.
The only difference is that spears are way more manly than pens.
_
It is a folly to dream that genders should be equal. Clearly, I have facial hair, and my wife does not. No amount of "women's lib" will ever change that. Also, my wife is capable of rational thought during a football game, I am not. My daughter reaches for her mother when injured, she ignores me. Men and women are different, and they ALWAYS WILL BE. Women's Suffrage aside, the desire of men and women for gender to be a non-issue are wasted effort.
As we learn more about the human brain, we realize that the actual neural activities of the brain are different based on the hormones supplied to that brain. Simply put: women and men have different brains structures. Simpler put: women and men think differently.
Ever hear someone say "a woman is too weak to be President."? This is (by and large) not an allusion to women having (by and large) a smaller bone structure and lower average weight than men. This is an allusion to the fact that by complex hormone interactions and poorly-understood brain activities, the female mind is capable (by and large) of more compassion and less likely to engage in physical violence than a male mind.
Further, though women are smart enough and physically capable of playing football, the reason it is not a popular female sport is because the female body is simply (by and large) not the equal to the male, and when the intensity of sport is proportional to the athleticism of the participants, men will win every time. This, however, doesn't make "powderpuff football" a socially acceptable term, and enforces bad gender stereotypes.
Anyway, the point is, men should grow their beards, wrestle their kids, and be manly. It's what we were meant to do! Women who dress us in skinny jeans and scarves and expect us to appreciate post-modern art are not accepting us for what we really are. Similarly, women who express disappointment in the male for "not having feeeeeeeeeeelings, or "not being coooooomforting" need to accept that those are things you pick up the phone and call your mother or girlfriends for. We are perfectly capable of listening to you, and perfectly capable of hugging and loving you with every fiber of our male being, but is it really so hard to accept that males are simply mentally different than you and emotionally incapable of really caring how so-and-so's offhand remarks made you feel?
Could it be that long ago, when males were roaming the grasslands and slaying land-sloths, that the compassionate males who felt bad about killing game starved and the compassion was slowly but surely bred out of males? Meanwhile, the females never saw the game animals dying, they simply saw the male bring home slabs of meat which they could feed to their children, which strengthened their mother-child bond. Females never needed to lose compassion, in fact, staying home from the hunt, to gather nuts and berries and staple crops in groups that communicated with complexity would actually strengthen their compassion and desire to discuss their feelings. Males spent their days in silence or near-silence, stalking game or chasing it, females spent their days in groups working together and communicating.
So why do we laugh at women on their cell phones all the time? Their just obeying their instincts.
I know I am going back to paleobiology for a lot of my arguments, but when we accept that we are genetically identical to the humans that walked the plains over 15,000 years ago, it can be a very humbling experience. The great thinkers, Aristotle, Da Vinci, Thomas Paine, all of them, they are in effect absolutely no smarter than humans who stabbed woolly mammoths with spears.
The only difference is that spears are way more manly than pens.
_
World's First Post-GM-Bankruptcy Post
Posted on 18:57 by david
I want to be the first person in the world to write the "What went wrong" article about GM because they are going to go bankrupt.
So what went wrong?
Well for one, GM's timing to come looking for ahandout bailout was horrible. Right when the populace is tired of hearing about who is getting taxpayer dollars, and the government is locked in we're-Republicans-we-hate-democrats-shutup-i-can't-hear-you-NO-LALALALALA mode and nobody really wants to work together, GM showed up with hands outstretched.
Then there was the private jet debacle. The fact that they did it isn't a big deal. Several banks are still getting their bailout money even though their leadership is playing golf in the Hamptons. The problem is GM has no PR guy who can spin this into a victory. In fact, the robust ineptitude of GM's advertising and public relations wing is an underline to the following: We don't get it.
GM put out crappy cars for years, and years. It got to the point where my generation has zero brand loyalty. Say what you want about their cars making gains in the last 5 years, it does not matter. GM picked up a "big honking piece of junk" stigma and could not shake it.
Boy, SUV's seemed like a cash cow, but when the market turned, it was like GM was a deer caught in the HID headlights, completely unresponsive to market trends.
I could (and someone will) write a novel about how the union killed GM. This is partially true. But it's been shown recently that union workers at GM didn't really have it that much better than workers at Toyota. The major difference is the honey the retirees from GM were eating while Toyota has almost zero retired workers. However this fact didn't receive a whole lot of press, which just goes back to the collossal failure of GM's PR department.
So what went wrong? I think the bottom line is that GM looked like a wounded giant for the last ten years. Just as we all watch the government helplessly founder over Social Security, we watched GM stumble around like a drunk trying to find the privy. I never felt that "GM is back" or that "GM makes a bold move". I never saw a corporate strategy that said "We're putting all our chips in on this" or "we acknowledge the times they are a'changin' ". These activities could very well have happened, but GM consistently produced ugly vehicles, sang its swan song, argued with its unions, and complained to (and exorbitantly bribed and lobbied) Congress that it was helpless against the forces of economic nature.
Surely, surely there were competent people at GM who understood the changes that needed to be made. They just didn't work in the PR department.
_
So what went wrong?
Well for one, GM's timing to come looking for a
Then there was the private jet debacle. The fact that they did it isn't a big deal. Several banks are still getting their bailout money even though their leadership is playing golf in the Hamptons. The problem is GM has no PR guy who can spin this into a victory. In fact, the robust ineptitude of GM's advertising and public relations wing is an underline to the following: We don't get it.
GM put out crappy cars for years, and years. It got to the point where my generation has zero brand loyalty. Say what you want about their cars making gains in the last 5 years, it does not matter. GM picked up a "big honking piece of junk" stigma and could not shake it.
Boy, SUV's seemed like a cash cow, but when the market turned, it was like GM was a deer caught in the HID headlights, completely unresponsive to market trends.
I could (and someone will) write a novel about how the union killed GM. This is partially true. But it's been shown recently that union workers at GM didn't really have it that much better than workers at Toyota. The major difference is the honey the retirees from GM were eating while Toyota has almost zero retired workers. However this fact didn't receive a whole lot of press, which just goes back to the collossal failure of GM's PR department.
So what went wrong? I think the bottom line is that GM looked like a wounded giant for the last ten years. Just as we all watch the government helplessly founder over Social Security, we watched GM stumble around like a drunk trying to find the privy. I never felt that "GM is back" or that "GM makes a bold move". I never saw a corporate strategy that said "We're putting all our chips in on this" or "we acknowledge the times they are a'changin' ". These activities could very well have happened, but GM consistently produced ugly vehicles, sang its swan song, argued with its unions, and complained to (and exorbitantly bribed and lobbied) Congress that it was helpless against the forces of economic nature.
Surely, surely there were competent people at GM who understood the changes that needed to be made. They just didn't work in the PR department.
_
One man's trash
Posted on 18:46 by david
When I heard this week that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, my immediate thought was: how was Exxon reporting record profits during this entire period?
The answer is that the crude oil industry, from top to bottom, is created by pure evil. Evil people pump it out of the ground and conspire with their cohorts to finance terrorist groups while trying to inflate the price of oil as much as possible.
Refinery companies piddle and twiddle over opening new refineries, while closing others to increase demand and decrease supply. It is cheaper for them to run fewer refineries, and cheaper still to close them. Meanwhile, less refined oil means less gas which drives up the price.
The government continues to provide huge (can we say hundreds of billions) tax credits to oil companies. While demanding out one side of their mouth that oil companies need to expand production and dig new wells, they say out the other side of their mouths that oil is evil, and that new refineries, new well, new anything is bad and they lock up viable land that has huge oil reserves beneath it.
Anyway, this all points to one easy solution: no more oil. Someone needs to stand up, be a man, and stop all oil use in the transportation industry. If we all drove electric cars, all of the above would be moot points.
Why aren't we driving electric cars? Because the oil producers over-supplied to keep the price artificially low and expand their market. Because the refiners used to produce so much oil that we thought it would last forever. Because the government was easily bought by the people who whispered in their ear and put money in their pocket. Because the car companies didn't have any foresight. Which leads me to my next rant.
_
The answer is that the crude oil industry, from top to bottom, is created by pure evil. Evil people pump it out of the ground and conspire with their cohorts to finance terrorist groups while trying to inflate the price of oil as much as possible.
Refinery companies piddle and twiddle over opening new refineries, while closing others to increase demand and decrease supply. It is cheaper for them to run fewer refineries, and cheaper still to close them. Meanwhile, less refined oil means less gas which drives up the price.
The government continues to provide huge (can we say hundreds of billions) tax credits to oil companies. While demanding out one side of their mouth that oil companies need to expand production and dig new wells, they say out the other side of their mouths that oil is evil, and that new refineries, new well, new anything is bad and they lock up viable land that has huge oil reserves beneath it.
Anyway, this all points to one easy solution: no more oil. Someone needs to stand up, be a man, and stop all oil use in the transportation industry. If we all drove electric cars, all of the above would be moot points.
Why aren't we driving electric cars? Because the oil producers over-supplied to keep the price artificially low and expand their market. Because the refiners used to produce so much oil that we thought it would last forever. Because the government was easily bought by the people who whispered in their ear and put money in their pocket. Because the car companies didn't have any foresight. Which leads me to my next rant.
_
Never bring a paleobiologist to an ethics fight.
Posted on 17:51 by david
Many people erroneously believe that humans started as polygamists and then developed monogamy via civilization. This is actually opposite of the truth. Pleistocene humans, as they first climbed out of the trees and stood upright quickly learned the advantages of pairing. As the gender roles were realized (woman takes care of babies, gathers nuts and berries with toddlers, men travel distances and hunt game, battle neighboring groups for water and food rights, etc.) the early hominids realized the value of mated pairs. One father and mother would stick together. The necessity of a single father per child is evident in the increasing complexity of hunting techniques used by early humans. Polygamy only emerged as a popular concept around 6000-5000 B.C as complex agricultural societies sprang up. Once a social hierarchy was developed, only then did it become possible for elite male humans to support multiple wives, and by extension, multiple families.
So when it is argued (against me) that our war-like nature is in fact defeatable because we defeated our innate desire for polygamy, I have to wonder how much the author of such arguments actually knows about anthropology.
Suffice it to say, I am not ethics expert, nor am I a military man. I write these posts entirely based on my own experiences and feelings, so when I state that humans are inherently hunters and killers, I am stating that because I read it in a book, or saw it on the Discovery Channel, or heard about it during an anthropology lecture. Things like interpretation of religion are very hairy issues for me. My sister and brother-in-law are both UofChicago educated theologians, and probably could tie my brain in knots when it comes to theology. At work, the electrical engineers talk about wave-boards, rectifiers, and God only knows what and I can only shake my head and think how much I love gears and motors. There are things I do not know (see below).
But I do know that humans sprang down out of trees, stood up, surveyed the expansive grasslands, saw Neanderthals, and discussed with one another the most effective way to kill every last one of them and take over the place. The reason monogamy worked back then, and is the root relationship base for humans, is because humans lived such simple, half-starved lives in communal, loose tribes, that it would be impossible for a male to effectively supply foodstuffs for two sets of children, and teach two sets of children his hunting skills.
"But lions are effective group hunters in the Savannah, aren't they?" the reader might argue.
Well, true. But lions are still effective group hunters in the Savannah to this day. They have yet to put a lion on the moon, or on top of Mount Everest. No lion has ever invented anything.
Anyway, maybe I'm going off about this, but I feel pretty vehemently that humans are a violent species. That's just the way we are. Sometimes groups of humans are so motivated by their own personal desires to kill that there can be no changing them. They are simply justifying through modern devices a reason to tap the innate concept in them to kill other humans. The only way to stop those violently inclined individuals is to satiate our own inner violent urges until one group wins.
I'm sure there are many, many cases when violence was an end-game strategy only. After negotiations, tariffs, protests, and every other measure of diplomatic pressure had been applied, only then was violence used as a choice. But I think we are kidding ourselves if we really believe that we just short-shifted into fifth gear and that a magical fourth gear - some other unused diplomatic strategy - was not used. There are times when a group absolutely must take up whatever arms they have and apply them against violent individuals. Or even against non-violent individuals that would inevitably become violent.
It was also argued that I (and my audience) should read Hobbes, presumably Leviathan. In part one of that book, Hobbes gives his first law of nature: every man ought to endeavor for peace, and when he cannot obtain it, that he seek and use all the advantages of war. That is precisely what I am arguing for. Further, in that book, Hobbes argues against freedom of speech and argues for censoring the press. The book is in general an argument for an absolute dictatorship, going so far as to argue that members of a social contract should take a pledge to absolve themselves of their personal rights and of their right to dissent on any matter whatsoever. Hobbes saw chaos, all right, and argued for Stalinism. (TAE absolutely is not an expert on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, only an expert on Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson)
Now I am not trying to pick a fight here, but when my arguments (and the arguments of anyone who believes there is a time to saddle up the horse and ride with the posse after the bandits) are cast aside as underdeveloped I feel I must mount a defense! I am not, I repeat, I am not arguing that we shoot everyone that gets out of line, I am trying to argue that part of human nature is a well-developed sense of how to hunt and kill, and when a religion or government uses incentives to motivate their followers to access that sense of violence, it is very likely that the least harmful thing for all parties involved is to just kill the crap out of the terrorists.
Truman understood me. The Japanese culture had turned death by martyrdom into a glorious death, and the Japanese infantry fought like men eager to see the afterlife. A long island-to-island conflict against an army with no self-protection mechanism and nothing to lose would have meant many, many Americans and Japanese would die. Although Truman didn't have to drop the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a dotard would argue that the cost of human life would have been less great had he refused.
The Pakistani terrorists are just the same. They won't negotiate. They want to kill, and don't mind dying in the least. They are in easily-defendable positions that would cost many lives to root out. The easiest solution, the solution that will, in the end, amount to the least blood shed would be to turn northwest Pakistan into a parking lot.
And that's all I have to say about that!
_
So when it is argued (against me) that our war-like nature is in fact defeatable because we defeated our innate desire for polygamy, I have to wonder how much the author of such arguments actually knows about anthropology.
Suffice it to say, I am not ethics expert, nor am I a military man. I write these posts entirely based on my own experiences and feelings, so when I state that humans are inherently hunters and killers, I am stating that because I read it in a book, or saw it on the Discovery Channel, or heard about it during an anthropology lecture. Things like interpretation of religion are very hairy issues for me. My sister and brother-in-law are both UofChicago educated theologians, and probably could tie my brain in knots when it comes to theology. At work, the electrical engineers talk about wave-boards, rectifiers, and God only knows what and I can only shake my head and think how much I love gears and motors. There are things I do not know (see below).
But I do know that humans sprang down out of trees, stood up, surveyed the expansive grasslands, saw Neanderthals, and discussed with one another the most effective way to kill every last one of them and take over the place. The reason monogamy worked back then, and is the root relationship base for humans, is because humans lived such simple, half-starved lives in communal, loose tribes, that it would be impossible for a male to effectively supply foodstuffs for two sets of children, and teach two sets of children his hunting skills.
"But lions are effective group hunters in the Savannah, aren't they?" the reader might argue.
Well, true. But lions are still effective group hunters in the Savannah to this day. They have yet to put a lion on the moon, or on top of Mount Everest. No lion has ever invented anything.
Anyway, maybe I'm going off about this, but I feel pretty vehemently that humans are a violent species. That's just the way we are. Sometimes groups of humans are so motivated by their own personal desires to kill that there can be no changing them. They are simply justifying through modern devices a reason to tap the innate concept in them to kill other humans. The only way to stop those violently inclined individuals is to satiate our own inner violent urges until one group wins.
I'm sure there are many, many cases when violence was an end-game strategy only. After negotiations, tariffs, protests, and every other measure of diplomatic pressure had been applied, only then was violence used as a choice. But I think we are kidding ourselves if we really believe that we just short-shifted into fifth gear and that a magical fourth gear - some other unused diplomatic strategy - was not used. There are times when a group absolutely must take up whatever arms they have and apply them against violent individuals. Or even against non-violent individuals that would inevitably become violent.
It was also argued that I (and my audience) should read Hobbes, presumably Leviathan. In part one of that book, Hobbes gives his first law of nature: every man ought to endeavor for peace, and when he cannot obtain it, that he seek and use all the advantages of war. That is precisely what I am arguing for. Further, in that book, Hobbes argues against freedom of speech and argues for censoring the press. The book is in general an argument for an absolute dictatorship, going so far as to argue that members of a social contract should take a pledge to absolve themselves of their personal rights and of their right to dissent on any matter whatsoever. Hobbes saw chaos, all right, and argued for Stalinism. (TAE absolutely is not an expert on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, only an expert on Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson)
Now I am not trying to pick a fight here, but when my arguments (and the arguments of anyone who believes there is a time to saddle up the horse and ride with the posse after the bandits) are cast aside as underdeveloped I feel I must mount a defense! I am not, I repeat, I am not arguing that we shoot everyone that gets out of line, I am trying to argue that part of human nature is a well-developed sense of how to hunt and kill, and when a religion or government uses incentives to motivate their followers to access that sense of violence, it is very likely that the least harmful thing for all parties involved is to just kill the crap out of the terrorists.
Truman understood me. The Japanese culture had turned death by martyrdom into a glorious death, and the Japanese infantry fought like men eager to see the afterlife. A long island-to-island conflict against an army with no self-protection mechanism and nothing to lose would have meant many, many Americans and Japanese would die. Although Truman didn't have to drop the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a dotard would argue that the cost of human life would have been less great had he refused.
The Pakistani terrorists are just the same. They won't negotiate. They want to kill, and don't mind dying in the least. They are in easily-defendable positions that would cost many lives to root out. The easiest solution, the solution that will, in the end, amount to the least blood shed would be to turn northwest Pakistan into a parking lot.
And that's all I have to say about that!
_
Dienstag, 2. Dezember 2008
A Time For Violence
Posted on 06:52 by david
I feel like our nation is averse to warfare. Our society has set us up to feel guilty for the use of violence, and has pushed down masculinity, rage, vengeance, and war as evils that society should work diligently to erase. Violence should only be a last resort after all peaceful avenues have been exhausted.
I don't think that's fair. I acknowledge that war has a very real, and very terrible cost, but it also has a place in history as one of the prime movers of progress. Don't get me wrong, many wars and battles were fought for the wrong reasons. But America declared war on Japan to prevent the loss of human life. America and Europe declared war on Germany (twice) to stop a dictator and his regime from harming masses of innocent people. America's very existence is owed to successfully winning a war.
I haven't really felt strongly about the attacks in Mumbai until last night when I was listening to Michael Savage's barely sane rant about the "sub-human, sub-moron" Islamists who perpetrated the attacks there. While going off about whatever it is that seems to stream into his angry, hateful mind, he did make one good point: it is demoralizing to watch the Defense budget of this country be spent on weapons we never use. Our military bases are chock full of fighter planes, stealth bombers, and missile defense platforms that are rusting from inaction. Our ground infantry has become a police force. Meanwhile, Taliban and tribal groups train in the backwoods of Pakistan so they can effectively torture and kill Jews and Christians in India. Why aren't we turning Pakistan's tribal region into a parking lot?
It is because Judeo-Christians consider diplomacy somehow superior to violent, quick action. We have indoctrinated in ourselves the believe we are better if we have peaceful talks with our violent enemies, and develop long term strategies to unite in brotherhood, like we are doing them a favor or something. We don't lower ourselves to their level of thinking, because obviously non-violence is somehow more logical and therefore superior to violent retribution for violence.
What we don't acknowledge (or refuse to admit) is that our belief that talking is better than acting is not shared by all humans and probably never will. Like I mention often, humans have an evolutionary propensity for violence towards other species and towards our own species. Perhaps Western culture has moved to a point where diplomacy andmonetary greed free trade overwhelm the primal instinct to fight, but there is no specific evidence that our species has physically evolved away from violence, nor is the Western culture shared by many people outside of North America and western Europe.
I hinted at this yesterday during my post about killing Neandertals, but I should expound it now: we humans are natural born killers. A dream of a peaceful planet is very nice, and I share that dream with anyone who has it. But until our entire planet is a homogenous society with shared goals and shared beliefs, there will always be conflicts and with conflicts there will always be the threat of violence. Maybe Western culture has taught us that violence should only be defensively used to stop offensive violence, but once again, Western culture does not encompass all peoples.
One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is that if you suffer here on earth, the kingdom of Heaven is going to be awesome for you. "Sell your belongings," Jesus says, "and follow me."
Why is it so hard to imagine that radical Islam is teaching the same thing? If you are a poor, radical Muslim in the back country of Pakistan, all things being equal, the argument that martyrdom will give you wealth in the afterlife should be just as compelling as Christianity's parallel promise to the oppressed. Non-Violent Christianity, it seems to me, is a rather new idea.
So you've got these Muslims who don't give a rat's ass about human life, because they genuinely want to die. They want to kill as many Christians and Jews as they can and then get themselves killed. Honestly, how can you expect to bargain with that? How can you possibly offer them something better? And are you being a good Christian by doing so? Would you offer a Christian monetary gifts or promises of a better life, if that Christian promised to turn their back on their faith?
The appeal of radical Islam is that it makes all the promises of Christianity without compromising a man's sense of pride. If you were told "you can go to Heaven with your head held high, your knuckles bloody, your gun in your hand and be received there as a hero, or you can go to Heaven humbled to the core and realizing you are nothing when it compares to Jesus and you can sit at his feet like a sheep in his flock" most men would absolutely choose the Islamic martyrdom over the Christian redemption.
I guess the logic of Islamic martyrdom is so obvious to me that I can't imagine a way to convince them that their death is a bad plan. I can't imagine a single thing I could say to them or teach them (other than that Islam = fail) that would get them to change their behavior. Because of this, I have to advocate a violent solution to this problem. Deep down, their military actions and tactics are incredibly inept in comparison to the American military machine. We could probably wage war on them using unmanned aeriel vehicles and air strikes and they'd never see an American face during the entire engagement. We could give them the glorious death they wanted and move on, with few American casualties.
But my manly, violent, easy way out isn't the Christian way. Or is it?
_
I don't think that's fair. I acknowledge that war has a very real, and very terrible cost, but it also has a place in history as one of the prime movers of progress. Don't get me wrong, many wars and battles were fought for the wrong reasons. But America declared war on Japan to prevent the loss of human life. America and Europe declared war on Germany (twice) to stop a dictator and his regime from harming masses of innocent people. America's very existence is owed to successfully winning a war.
I haven't really felt strongly about the attacks in Mumbai until last night when I was listening to Michael Savage's barely sane rant about the "sub-human, sub-moron" Islamists who perpetrated the attacks there. While going off about whatever it is that seems to stream into his angry, hateful mind, he did make one good point: it is demoralizing to watch the Defense budget of this country be spent on weapons we never use. Our military bases are chock full of fighter planes, stealth bombers, and missile defense platforms that are rusting from inaction. Our ground infantry has become a police force. Meanwhile, Taliban and tribal groups train in the backwoods of Pakistan so they can effectively torture and kill Jews and Christians in India. Why aren't we turning Pakistan's tribal region into a parking lot?
It is because Judeo-Christians consider diplomacy somehow superior to violent, quick action. We have indoctrinated in ourselves the believe we are better if we have peaceful talks with our violent enemies, and develop long term strategies to unite in brotherhood, like we are doing them a favor or something. We don't lower ourselves to their level of thinking, because obviously non-violence is somehow more logical and therefore superior to violent retribution for violence.
What we don't acknowledge (or refuse to admit) is that our belief that talking is better than acting is not shared by all humans and probably never will. Like I mention often, humans have an evolutionary propensity for violence towards other species and towards our own species. Perhaps Western culture has moved to a point where diplomacy and
I hinted at this yesterday during my post about killing Neandertals, but I should expound it now: we humans are natural born killers. A dream of a peaceful planet is very nice, and I share that dream with anyone who has it. But until our entire planet is a homogenous society with shared goals and shared beliefs, there will always be conflicts and with conflicts there will always be the threat of violence. Maybe Western culture has taught us that violence should only be defensively used to stop offensive violence, but once again, Western culture does not encompass all peoples.
One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is that if you suffer here on earth, the kingdom of Heaven is going to be awesome for you. "Sell your belongings," Jesus says, "and follow me."
Why is it so hard to imagine that radical Islam is teaching the same thing? If you are a poor, radical Muslim in the back country of Pakistan, all things being equal, the argument that martyrdom will give you wealth in the afterlife should be just as compelling as Christianity's parallel promise to the oppressed. Non-Violent Christianity, it seems to me, is a rather new idea.
So you've got these Muslims who don't give a rat's ass about human life, because they genuinely want to die. They want to kill as many Christians and Jews as they can and then get themselves killed. Honestly, how can you expect to bargain with that? How can you possibly offer them something better? And are you being a good Christian by doing so? Would you offer a Christian monetary gifts or promises of a better life, if that Christian promised to turn their back on their faith?
The appeal of radical Islam is that it makes all the promises of Christianity without compromising a man's sense of pride. If you were told "you can go to Heaven with your head held high, your knuckles bloody, your gun in your hand and be received there as a hero, or you can go to Heaven humbled to the core and realizing you are nothing when it compares to Jesus and you can sit at his feet like a sheep in his flock" most men would absolutely choose the Islamic martyrdom over the Christian redemption.
I guess the logic of Islamic martyrdom is so obvious to me that I can't imagine a way to convince them that their death is a bad plan. I can't imagine a single thing I could say to them or teach them (other than that Islam = fail) that would get them to change their behavior. Because of this, I have to advocate a violent solution to this problem. Deep down, their military actions and tactics are incredibly inept in comparison to the American military machine. We could probably wage war on them using unmanned aeriel vehicles and air strikes and they'd never see an American face during the entire engagement. We could give them the glorious death they wanted and move on, with few American casualties.
But my manly, violent, easy way out isn't the Christian way. Or is it?
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Montag, 1. Dezember 2008
Neanderslayer - On Intentionally Killing Innocent Animals
Posted on 05:34 by david
Theoretically, you can kill any animal. There are varying levels of legality about it. Dec.3 is the start of firearm season for whitetail deer in Kansas, which TAE is very excited about. Other animals also can be hunted for sport or food: ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, coyotes, feral hogs, bear, elk, moose, groundhog, some fish, etc. A laundry list can be found here.
There are also a large volume of animals that can be killed without punishment, like purple starlings, insects, many fish, many amphibians, and others. These animals make up the bulk of the animal kingdom: unusable as a food source, too plentiful to be remarkable or protected.
There are also a large variety of animals that you can kill but will face fine or imprisonment for doing so. Kill a Peregrine Falcon, for example, and you face up to $1200 in fines. Kill a California Condor and you may go to prison.
Anyway, the point is, whatever animal you killed, by and large it is called hunting, or poaching, or furharvesting or fishing. It is only called murder if it involves killing another human being.
So when I saw a few weeks ago that scientists speculated they could bring a Neandertal to life, I had to wonder: if I shot a Neandertal, am I a poacher or a murderer? At what point are we separate from animals? Or even from our ancestors? The problem here is that it is virtually impossible to name a single trait that humans have that they don't share with some species of animal. Is hunting other animals not murder because of our superior weapons? Is hunting not murder because we aren't killing our own species? If we grey the line between human and animal, how will we separate ourselves ethically?
If we resurrect a Neandertal and it turns out to be a highly intelligent, compassionate, witty character with a well-developed sense of humor and an ability to grasp advanced concepts (Neandertals had the same size brains as modern humans) will we say "oh my god, cloning this creature was an ethical 9/11" and throw ourselves to the wolves, or will we refuse to acknowledge the "humanity" in the Neandertal, or in any animal, and consider ourselves still superior by some mystical, unnamed force? Will we suddenly realize we can't ever really come up with the definition of "humanity" and lose our Selves? Would we still laugh at Geico commercials depicting a Neandertal frustrated by the humiliation of his race if a real Neandertal acknowledged and felt those humiliations?
And what of our Selves? Could we go on considering ourselves a holier-than-thou species, meant to hold dominion over the animal kingdom, if a Neandertal could win arguments against us? What would Creationists say, if instead of ignoring fossil evidence, they had to ignore a walking, talking, college-educated living fossil that could argue on its own behalf in a court of law, and demanded reparations for 65,000 years of genocide and discrimination against its species?
This all goes back to hunting, amazingly. I have noted before that fossil evidence suggests that modern humans partially arose because of our tenacious ability to wage cruel war on ourselves and our Neandertal neighbors. Could it be that the ethics of Neandertal rights was settled in lower Africa thousands of years ago? Could it be that a highly trained hunting party of humans stumbled upon the last vestiges of the Neandertal race and cunningly pushed them into exctintion?
Or has modern society made fundamental leaps of morality and now we could understand the basic tenants of every creatures' right to life and freedom on this planet? I suggest, sadly, that humans are not meant to share this earth with an equal. By our nature we subjugate, destroy, conquer, and enslave, kill, and eat. Although we do have a moral compass, and although we do have amazing bouts of altruism that inspire, we also have a sense of self-protection. Although we have the ability to put our own needs aside, we are just as likely to put others down to satisfy our wants. I don't particularly believe that were we faced with a sudden population of Neandertals today, we would reach out and shake hands and greet them as equals. For we do not do that with ourselves.
_
There are also a large volume of animals that can be killed without punishment, like purple starlings, insects, many fish, many amphibians, and others. These animals make up the bulk of the animal kingdom: unusable as a food source, too plentiful to be remarkable or protected.
There are also a large variety of animals that you can kill but will face fine or imprisonment for doing so. Kill a Peregrine Falcon, for example, and you face up to $1200 in fines. Kill a California Condor and you may go to prison.
Anyway, the point is, whatever animal you killed, by and large it is called hunting, or poaching, or furharvesting or fishing. It is only called murder if it involves killing another human being.
So when I saw a few weeks ago that scientists speculated they could bring a Neandertal to life, I had to wonder: if I shot a Neandertal, am I a poacher or a murderer? At what point are we separate from animals? Or even from our ancestors? The problem here is that it is virtually impossible to name a single trait that humans have that they don't share with some species of animal. Is hunting other animals not murder because of our superior weapons? Is hunting not murder because we aren't killing our own species? If we grey the line between human and animal, how will we separate ourselves ethically?
If we resurrect a Neandertal and it turns out to be a highly intelligent, compassionate, witty character with a well-developed sense of humor and an ability to grasp advanced concepts (Neandertals had the same size brains as modern humans) will we say "oh my god, cloning this creature was an ethical 9/11" and throw ourselves to the wolves, or will we refuse to acknowledge the "humanity" in the Neandertal, or in any animal, and consider ourselves still superior by some mystical, unnamed force? Will we suddenly realize we can't ever really come up with the definition of "humanity" and lose our Selves? Would we still laugh at Geico commercials depicting a Neandertal frustrated by the humiliation of his race if a real Neandertal acknowledged and felt those humiliations?
And what of our Selves? Could we go on considering ourselves a holier-than-thou species, meant to hold dominion over the animal kingdom, if a Neandertal could win arguments against us? What would Creationists say, if instead of ignoring fossil evidence, they had to ignore a walking, talking, college-educated living fossil that could argue on its own behalf in a court of law, and demanded reparations for 65,000 years of genocide and discrimination against its species?
This all goes back to hunting, amazingly. I have noted before that fossil evidence suggests that modern humans partially arose because of our tenacious ability to wage cruel war on ourselves and our Neandertal neighbors. Could it be that the ethics of Neandertal rights was settled in lower Africa thousands of years ago? Could it be that a highly trained hunting party of humans stumbled upon the last vestiges of the Neandertal race and cunningly pushed them into exctintion?
Or has modern society made fundamental leaps of morality and now we could understand the basic tenants of every creatures' right to life and freedom on this planet? I suggest, sadly, that humans are not meant to share this earth with an equal. By our nature we subjugate, destroy, conquer, and enslave, kill, and eat. Although we do have a moral compass, and although we do have amazing bouts of altruism that inspire, we also have a sense of self-protection. Although we have the ability to put our own needs aside, we are just as likely to put others down to satisfy our wants. I don't particularly believe that were we faced with a sudden population of Neandertals today, we would reach out and shake hands and greet them as equals. For we do not do that with ourselves.
_
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