In 2008, Google launched a contest called “Project 10×100″ asking for ideas on how to improve the world. They received over 150,000 suggestions and then condensed those ideas down into 16. Then they donated $10 million to finance them. Below is the entry I submitted. The Google 10×100 contest awarded $3 million to the Khan Academy after multiple people submitted similar ideas to mine.
Ignorance is the root of all that kills, and true knowledge is the root of all virtue. The Internet has done an amazing job of educating the masses in ways that were never before possible, and we can already see real-world improvements as a result. So let’s take the Internet to its obvious conclusion and streamline that power by giving everyone access to free education.
Make a website where anyone can upload education material. In addition, have public schools record their classes and/or produce Internet-ready educational videos and give them to the world. This site would be like a hybrid between YouTube, Wikipedia, any free E-book site and Itunes University. It will be open source, and anyone can add to its content.
The content would be arranged like a college course listing, except it will include every subject from every grade level. The structure would be further subdivided into sections/chapters like in a school textbook. This way people will be able to find the content they want to study.
The site would include videos and downloadable course material for every single class you could ever take in school, from kindergarten to a doctoral degree. I’m talking about unlimited, free education for everyone, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. Children in inner-city school who don’t have good teachers or can’t concentrate in class because of all the chaos going on around them can watch classes online at night and pick up what they missed or didn’t understand. People who can’t afford to go to college can watch videos of upper-level sociology and anthropology classes. People with depression can watch psychology classes and come to understand themselves on their own. People in third world countries can watch videos on farming at their local Internet cafe. Young professionals could watch law school or philosophy classes on their lunch break. Poor kids won’t ever need to pay for another tutor again.
It won’t lead to a degree (at least, not at first). The site is based on the philosophy that education is more important than degrees because degrees don’t make people better: education does, and only when our entire society is fully educated will we ever hope to live in an ideal society.
I have this theory about where heroes come from. Look throughout American history, and you can find some incredible heroes who fought in the name of social justice. There are no great leaders today. America is so starved for real heroes that it’s resorted to looking up to sports players and TV characters as substitutes. Why don’t we have any heroes, and why were there so many in the past? What was different?
As cliché as it is to pull the “Fight Club” card, I think Chuck Palahniuk touched on it when he wrote that we have no great war to fight. If you look back through history at any hero anywhere you’ll notice that they all had great wars to fight. Think about Winston Churchill. He was a great orator, a capable leader, and a massive alcoholic. Ask yourself this, if it weren’t for Hitler, would many American know Winston Churchill’s name?
There are rarely heroes without a war to respond to because human nature is to sit around docilely as long as nothing is bothering you. The more something bothers you the more you respond to it. However, depending on how house-broken you are, you’ll put up with degrading levels of abuse before you stand up for yourself. Some people are so housebroken they’d let themselves get poked to death with a stick. Some people are so housebroken they’d kill to keep getting poked by that familiar stick.
Some people get fed up with getting poked by the stick and stand up and take the stick away. From an evolutionary standpoint, it sort of makes sense. If there’s no need for heroes then nobody would be motivated to become a hero. Unfortunately, heroes don’t seem to stand up until the poking has turned into bloody beatings.
So you have to ask yourself, how much are you getting poked? Have you ever seen anyone getting hurt or killed from the poking around you? And at what level would you actually stand up and be a hero? Or would you take your beatings to the grave?
I just wanted to vent some frustration I’ve been feeling lately that everyone without a trust fund can relate to. By saying this I’m not looking for advice. I know the solutions to the problem. It’s just that those solutions are long and hard. So this is really just a commentary on how the system in the supposedly greatest nation in the world sucks.
Man, it just seems like the cards are stacked against us from birth, and succeeding in the land of opportunity is fucking hard. I mean, really hard. Yeah, I know you’re supposed to buck up, not be a pussy, rise to the challenge, and overcome the obstacles in life, but it seems like there are a lot of superfluous obstacles standing between the common person and the success we’ve been promised as our birthright.
For example, we have free public education. Awesome. This hasn’t always been the case, and the quality of life for the common person increased exponentially after this change occurred. However, it’s a well documented fact that the poorer you are the poorer an area you’re going to live in. The poorer the area you live in the worse your education will be. Thus, the less of a chance you’ll have to succeed. The richer you are the better school district you’ll be in. Thus, on top of all the other benefits you were born with, you’ll also get this free source of empowerment.
College is too damned expensive. I sold my soul to the military to pay for college even though I graduated 11th in my class and had a few scholarships. It still wasn’t enough. You can get loans to go to college, but why should you have to do that? College should be free. As long as it’s not it’ll serve as an obstacle to success for the poor and a vehicle to success for the rich. As it stands though, poor people either don’t go to college or finance it through loans that they’ll be paying back for a very long time. Thus, even when they enter the work force they’re starting their lives in debt.
When you enter the work force without a college degree you can only climb the corporate ladder so far based on your merit. You’ll quickly reach a point though where you can’t go any higher without a degree. The really fucked up thing is, and you’ll see this if you work any length of time, that people with degrees don’t have to prove their merit nearly as much as people without degrees. So you end up getting unqualified morons in high paying management positions who can’t be fired because their unqualified moronic boss believes that since they have a degree they must have earned it and the position they hold. All the while the non degree holders are busting their asses twice as hard for half as much with little hope for advancement unless they go in debt while taking night classes after coming home from an exhausting, thankless job.
Something you probably won’t be taught in school unless you take economy classes in a college you can’t afford is that you have to buy a house. Paying rent your entire life is a huge waste of money that will terminally cripple your financial security. And unfortunately, you probably can’t afford a house. You certainly can’t pay cash. So you have to get a loan. You can’t get a loan for that much money unless you make enough money, which you probably don’t, and/or your credit is very good. Your credit won’t be very good though unless you have a long history of paying off debt on time. Well, if you’ve been in debt all these years, then you don’t have any money. But supposing you can get a mortgage you have to pay 20% down, which you probably can’t do. So you have to pay mortgage insurance, which is through the roof and people who were born rich don’t have to pay. You also have to buy insurance, pay an inspector to inspect your house, agree to an interest rate that is based on no other calculation than how much the banks can gouge you for, and on top of all that, if you only pay the minimum balance of your mortgage each month the final cost of your house including interest will be twice as much as the actual cost of the house. The poor get twice as poor out of this arrangement and the rich bankers get twice as rich.
Suppose you want to get around this problem by building your own house. Not so fast, there are so many bureaucratic (even the word is spelled all fucked up) red tape around that you won’t be able to do it without paying someone a lot of money who knows the ropes. Plus you’ll have to pay surveyors, draftsmen, building permits, construction crews who will each mark up the price, etc. And you’ll have to buy a house in the middle of nowhere because you can’t afford good land close to the jobs. And the reason office buildings won’t be built near your house is because of zoning restrictions that prevent office building from being built in residential neighborhoods. So you have to spend a lot of gas (and money) driving to work. And the only reason gas prices are so high is because the ability to lobby and finance politicians through campaign contributions has created a streamlined method for big business to bribe and control our politicians…in a country that claims to have the greatest government in the world to the point that we’ve been overthrowing governments for decades to implement our form of government there.
Supposing you can overcome all this, you still have to save for retirement. Your best vehicle for this is to use a tax sheltered retirement account like a Roth IRA or certain 401K plans. For rich people they can shove their spare cash in these vehicles and laugh all the way to the bank. Poor people have to sacrifice luxuries and sometimes necessities to put money in these plans. But they’re also putting their money towards fees that they get nothing in return for. Sure, it costs money to run these things, but the fees translate into ludicrous profits for the institutions and a disheartening setback for the individual. Plus, if you want to withdraw any of that money out early you’ll be fined a ludicrous amount unless you use it for very specific emergencies. Well, it’s you’re fucking money! Why are you getting penalized for taking it out? To discourage you from withdrawing it for your own good? How much good does getting raped in the wallet do you?
Your entire life you’ll still have to deal with other setbacks like registering/insuring your car. It’s you’re fucking car. Why do you have to remind the government once a year? Why do you have to renew your driver’s license? It’s not to make sure you can still drive, because you don’t take a driving test each time. You need a phone too. And the telecommunications companies will tell you they love you and will help you more than the next company, but then they pull this shit. I moved to an area with no Sprint service. Sprint refused to cancel my contract without charging me $200. Yeah, I signed a contract, but only because you have to have a phone these days. And the phone companies know this. So they’re going to use it as leverage on you. My wife even went to Sprint to get her free upgraded phone after using the company for several years. There was an $18 administrative fee to get the new phone. That doesn’t sound like a free phone to me. It sounds like an $18 phone. And we’re so used to this Orwellian double speak shit from every business we deal with that we don’t bat an eye at it anymore. That’s just life. Life is one long process of getting ripped off by the people who say they care about you, and we just take it in the ass because we have no other option save building an illegal house in the mountains and living off stream water and beaver meat. Moreover, when we bitch about it we tell each other we’re pussies and to suck it up. That doesn’t sound like being manly to me. That sounds like being a fucking idiot. But again, there ain’t shit we can do about…except boycott…which may or may not accomplish anything. Some of us could strike, but the greatest government in the world has made it illegal for a lot of people to strike. Nah, if you’re not rich you’re just fucked. All you have to look forward to is a life of hard work only to be rewarded by an underfunded retirement…
Unless you start your own business, but there’s so much bureaucratic red tape you have to navigate in order start a business that you’ll have to hire a CPA to set up your business for you. You could run it illegally under the table, but then you’ll go to jail and go more into debt. But coincidentally, you probably don’t have the money to pay the startup costs of a business anyway.
In 2009 I took my first long distance motorcycle ride from Texas to South Dakota. This is what I learned from that trip:
1. Do your research.
Wherever you are, the weather different 2,000 miles away. It may be 40 degrees cooler where you’re going than where you started from. Add a wind chill factor of 70 mph, and you’re talking cold as Santa’s balls.
If GPS says it takes 20 hours to get where you’re going and you look at a map and find an easier route that looks about the same, it’s not. If it were then your GPS would have told you to take route. The “easier” route actually takes 5 hours longer. So you’ll ride 10 hours the first day and then 15 the second day. And on the second day, you’ll be racing against the sun trying to arrive before the temperature plummets under the heartless night sky, and you’ll lose the race. Luckily by this point, your body will be so numb from the cold that you won’t feel any more pain from the cannonball run you’ve unwittingly signed yourself into.
2. Check your bike.
If you don’t know anything about bikes, at least check the easy stuff at least…like the foot pegs you bolted on yourself after drinking a 6 pack. If you don’t, the right footpeg might fall off without you knowing, leaving the only (relatively) comfortable position to hold your legs in for 50 hours is an awkward Street Fighter 2 jump kick pose.
Check to make sure your license plate is bolted on securely. Otherwise, it might fall off somewhere in Kansas leaving you to drive across 8 state lines paranoid of the cops. But take comfort in knowing that cops don’t pay much attention to motorcycles that are going the speed limit.
3. Spend the money on the right accessories… at the right time.
Take a short road trip and see how comfortable you’re going to be sitting on your bike for hours. If you find that your seat isn’t made for long distance, make sure you buy a new seat and have it on your bike before you set a date to leave. You might order a seat online and find out something went wrong and your seat isn’t going to be delivered until after your departure date.
If you don’t have the right seat for the ride, you might end up having to find something to put under your ass to pad it. Don’t get a gel-cushioned bicycle seat. It’ll only create ledges for your ass to grind against and an uncomfortable bulge under your fragile taint. You’d be a little better off using the leopard print throw cushion you put in your duffle bag to cushion it against your back.
If you don’t have a back on your seat to lean against, and you don’t have a big windshield, you’re going to spend 50+ hours using your arms to hold your body forward against 70+ mph winds. So you might want to invest in one of those.
4. If you put your gloves in your jacket while gassing up and drive off forgetting to put them back, stop immediately and put them back on.
Otherwise, the right-hand glove might fall out and be lost forever. Then you’ll have to buy a $4 pair of scissors at a gas station and cut holes in a black sock to wear as a glove so that the unexpected cold doesn’t make your hand feel like a starved chipmunk is chewing on it.
More importantly though, if you thought taking your gloves off for 3 hours while driving through northern Texas would be comfortable and cool you might find that the tops of your hands have been burnt like Beavis’s on that episode of Beavis and Butthead where Beavis stuck his hand in the fryer at whatever burger join they worked at. Then you’ll do goddamned anything to cover your hands to keep them from getting more burnt…especially after you put your stiff motorcycle jacket back on at a rest stop and the cuff sloughed the boiled skin off of the back of your hand like on that scene on “We Were Soldiers” where the cameraman pulls the wounded soldier’s legs off as he’s being loaded on the medivac chopper.
5. Everything will cost twice as much as you expect.
…and the price of gas will jump 15 cents between the time you leave and the time you return.
6. Call your bank and tell them you’re planning on taking a cross-country road trip.
Otherwise, they’ll assume somebody else did…and they’ll lock your check card out…that you’re using to pay for gas.
However, they’ll only lock your card for “suspicious activity” after you enter your secret pin in an ATM to check your balance…after charging up the card for 8 days all across the country. But if you keep $40 in your pocket you should be able to just make it back to Austin.
7. When you gas up your motorcycle pick the pump closest to the gas station window. If you park your bike behind a big SUV and walk into a gas station with hair that looks like the bride of Frankenstein got electrocuted, while wearing combat boots, MC Hammer pants, a wool/leather vintage Air Force bomber jacket (in seemingly good weather) covered in dead bugs, wearing a cut up black sock on your right hand while your left hand looks like burnt bubble wrap…and there’s a circular sunburn around your eyes and nose but not the rest of your face…if the cute gas station clerk doesn’t know you’re on the motorcycle ride from Hell, she’ll probably assume you’re a homicidal smack addict, .and she won’t smile at you.
7. That’s the ride.
If you hiked halfway across a continent and back, you would deserve to feel proud of that accomplishment no matter how many novice mistakes you made along the way. Regardless of how bad you screwed up, you still did something very few people ever will. More importantly, you did something you set out to do. You lived your life even though you were unprepared. That’s the definition of foolishness and courageousness. Even if you were totally foolish and completely at blame, you still learned how not to be a total dumb ass by being a total dumb ass. That’s how the ride works. Your first mistake is your first step towards mastery.
Riding a motorcycle gives you the same thrill as surfing -harnessing the massive power of something outside of you and bending it to your will to launch you down the highway at 70 miles an hour. As a child, you probably stuck your hand out of a car window to feel the raw energy of the world surging past you. That was just a taste of what you experience on a motorcycle.
2: Riding places you an inch away from death.
Have you ever been rafting, skydiving, skiing or bungee jumping? Have you ever watched a horror movie, gone to a haunted house, looked in the mirror and said “Bloody Mary” three times, or done anything remotely scary or dangerous just to bring a thrill to your dull suburban life? Yes. Yes, you have, because nothing makes you feel more alive than being near death. Riding a motorcycle injects that experience straight into your veins.
3: Riding brings you closer to life than a car does.
Riding in a car is the same experience as sitting in your office or living room. It’s a temperature controlled, sterile, familiar environment, and it keeps you from experiencing anything different as you transition between one controlled, sterile, familiar environment to the other. Riding breaks that up a bit. When you ride you don’t pass through your environment unaware. You become a part of it and experience it.
4: Riding cuts you off from the bullshit.
Riding a motorcycle is like traveling through space. No one can call you. No one can get in your face. No one can reach you. It’s like you don’t exist. You’re outside the system, and you can go anywhere you want. As long as you’re on your bike, you’re free from everything.
I had a conversation with a guy a long time ago. I don’t remember who his name or what we were talking about, but I remember I said something that made the guy chuckle, and he said, “You’re cool.” But he didn’t say it like it was a compliment. He said it like he was making a decision… like he was bestowing a title on me. Like I wasn’t cool until he said so. I was a little offended by that because I knew I was cool regardless of whether or not he or anyone else thought so.
Understanding you’re valuable regardless of what anyone else thinks is a vital life lesson for everyone to learn. That’s why it pisses me off that our society has a tool that teaches people their value is validated and measured by external sources like ribbons, certificates, and trophies.
Isn’t that pretty much what an award does? It says, “I deem you worthy.” I deem you the best, the second-best, third-best, or I deem you’re not worth mentioning. Sure, I’m being a little hyperbolic; awards have their place, but honestly, human beings do have a tendency to take them way too seriously. People have walls in their houses dedicated to their trophies because they believe on some level that their inherent value is reflected on that wall. That’s why people cry when they lose a contest. That’s why parents push their children to the breaking point to win competitions. Emilio Estevez’s character in “The Breakfast Club” was based on real people.
If your kid wins an award and you make a huge deal about congratulating him but you don’t make it a point to teach him that he’s valuable without the award then you’re effectively teaching him that he needs external approval to validate his internal worth, and that’s crippling.
I lose respect for adults if I see that they still have a wall full of trophies they won during childhood. Nobody needs that. If they’re so proud of themselves for having those trophies, I have to wonder if they’d still be proud without them. When I get an award, I throw it away the first moment nobody is looking, and I believe that’s healthy.
Having said all that, I hereby award you the world champion ass-kicking award. Your certificate reads as follows: “I (insert name here) don’t need your fucking award to tell me I kick ass. It goes without saying.”
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
“A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc.) designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”
I’m going to go through the characteristics of a cult and break down how they apply to military. You’ll see by the end of this list that the similarities are too blatant to be explained by accidental coincidence. The more you understand the design of a cult, the more obvious it becomes that the military system was painstakingly designed around the cult model.
5 CHARACTERISTICS OF A DESTRUCTIVE CULT:
1. “Authoritarian pyramid structure with authority at the top.”
There is no system of authority in the world that fits this description more than the military’s. All the enlisted grunts with no power are at the bottom, and a few generals sit at the top raining orders down a clearly defined chain of command nobody can question. This is an authoritarian pyramid structure.
In military basic training, you’re forced to sit in classes which teach you the ranks of the pyramid authoritarian structure that you’ll have to spend the rest of your enlistment obeying. If you don’t follow every single order handed down the authoritarian pyramid structure then you’ll go to jail and get a dishonorable discharge.
Military leaders are not leaders. They’re dictators. They’re dystopian rulers. Military officers are morally equivalent to slave owners. When one human being gets to tell another human being that they have to do whatever they say or else they’ll go to jail or be shot then that make the subjugated human being a slave. This is inhumane and violates the basic human rights supposedly guaranteed to all human beings.
The authoritarian pyramid structure of the military is the largest human rights atrocity ever. It’s evil. It’s unconscionable that anyone would allow this human rights atrocity to exist. Yet it’s celebrated by humanity. We should all be ashamed and terrified over how eagerly we celebrate human right atrocities.
2. “Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (Messianic meaning they either say they are God OR that they alone can interpret the scriptures the way God intended.”
I used to know an enlisted soldier who had a coffee mug that said, “God couldn’t be everyone at once. So he created officers.” That coffee mug existed because officers have been compared to gods for years. There was even a movie titled “Gods and Generals.” I’ve often wondered if officers are taught to view themselves as gods in officer training school or if the comparison keeps coming up because they have god-sized egos and god-like power over their subordinates.
Just to remove all doubt of the officer corps claim to surrogate god-hood, all military chaplains are officers. The military has actually co-opted religion and injected it into its ranks, and even though the military makes broad attempts to accommodate service members from every faith, if there’s ever an irreconcilable conflict of interest between the military’s goals and religious doctrine, military law supersedes religious law. Muslims can’t pray towards Mecca in the middle of an exercise, and Christians have to kill when ordered to.
Underneath all of this is the ever-pervasive belief that America is God’s favored country, and to serve America is to serve God’s will. From the Declaration of Independence to every State of the Union address, American politicians align their goals with God’s, which means every soldier serves God’s will by serving their leaders’ will.
3. “Deception in recruitment and/or fund raising.”
I really, really hate the common phrase in the military, “You knew what you were getting into when you signed up.” In reality, this isn’t the case at all (unless you were a military brat). That’s why so many people try to commit suicide in basic training. They think the rest of their career is going to be like basic training and they’d rather die. They wouldn’t try to commit suicide if they actually knew what they were getting into.
Also, half of basic training is spent in a classroom where you’re taught military rules, ranks, and history…because most people don’t know anything about it before they’re recruited. Part of passing basic training is taking a test to prove you know what you’re taught about the military, and very few people make a perfect score on that test. So most people don’t even know that much about the military after basic training.
Chances are you don’t even know how much you’re going to be getting paid before you join. And anyone who has enlisted will tell you their recruiter lied to them about a slew of things. If you don’t believe me, go talk to a recruiter. They’ll paint you a glorious picture of how the military is a wonderful summer camp that turns you into a man. They’ll never mention the indignity you’ll suffer and the systematic brainwashing that will strip you of your free will and turn you into a willing slave.
4. “Isolation from society — not necessarily physical isolation like on some compound in Waco, but this can be psychological isolation — the rest of the world is not saved, not Christian, not transformed (whatever) — the only valid source of feedback and information is the group.”
This is true on both levels. You’re isolated physically in a compound. In basic training, during your indoctrination, you’re totally isolated from the outside world. You’re literally locked on base behind barbed wire fences. Later you’re shipped all over the world where you don’t know anyone and might not even speak the local language.
Ideologically you’re separated from the rest of the world by your branch’s cult culture. You’re told you’re better than civilians. You’re told you’re elite. Your unit has slogans like, “If you ain’t Ammo you ain’t shit.” Or “The best supporting the rest.”
You’re even told your branch is better than the other branches. You’re told you’re serving the best government in the world (and thus the rest are inferior). You’re told your rank is better than others. You may even have separate dining facilities from the inferior people in your own branch.
Mental and physical isolation are standard practices in the United States military because the military knows how to run an effective cult.
8 MIND CONTROL METHODS USED BY CULTS:
Military customs and courtesies are designed around the framework of mind control. They fit all 8 criteria listed by Dr. Robery Jay in his book, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism:”
1. “Milieu Control: Control of the environment and communication within the environment.”
Military bases are completely controlled. They even have laws on them that don’t apply to civilian land. Even your clothes are controlled. See what happens if you walk outside without your hat on or leave a button on your shirt unbuttoned. Communication is controlled through the chain of command. And you can’t make public statements about the military unless you’re a public affairs representative, and even then you have severe restrictions on what you can say.
2. “Mystical Manipulation: Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative the “principles” (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)”
I’ll sum this up in one word, “patriotism.” What word is more mystical than that? Within the context of patriotism, the best example I can give of “mystical manipulation” is saluting the flag. Twice a day on every military base (that has a loudspeaker, which is most of them) the national anthem is played while the American flag is raised or lowered. When this happens, if you’re outside, you have to stop whatever you’re doing and salute the flag (or salute in the direction the music is coming from if you can’t see the flag).
You’re told you’re doing it out of patriotic respect for the flag. In reality, you’re doing it because you were told you had to and because you’ll be punished if you don’t. Would you have ever come up with the idea yourself to stop in the middle of the street on cue to face an inanimate object and put your hand on your head until the music stopped? No. But if you’re in the military and you see someone not saluting the flag will you chase down the “perpetrator” and angrily yell at them for their lack of respect and patriotism? Probably. And you’ll think it was your idea.
Have you ever asked why soldiers have to keep their boots shined or their uniforms pressed? There’s no practical need for it. You might assume that it’s because soldiers are well disciplined, but all the soldiers in the military didn’t independently come to the same conclusion that it would be responsible to shine their boots and press their uniforms. They were ordered to do that upon fear of severe punishment. The reason soldiers are forced to shine their shoes and press their uniforms is to keep them in the habit of doing whatever their leaders order them to without ever asking why.
3. “Demand for Purity: The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group) one must continually change or conform to the group “norm”; tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group’s controlling and manipulative influences.”
Commander in Chief, George Bush said specifically that the United States military is fighting evil, which makes his side the good or holy side. Capitalism and Communism were divided the same way. We’ve used the term “axis of evil” more than once. Civilians are even stereotyped by the military as being weak, ignorant and ungrateful.
Within the military organization, the norms of good and evil are constantly being updated, and one must constantly relearn what is right and wrong today. There was a time when blacks, women, and homosexuals weren’t allowed in the military. Now they’re okay. Smoking inside, smoking while walking, and smoking outside designated areas used to be okay. Now they’re wrong. Walking while talking on a cell phone used to be okay. Now it’s wrong. Every year the uniform changes. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people break rules like smoking outside of a designated area and someone bitched them out and asked, “Where’s your integrity?” Integrity has nothing to do with it, but you will be shamed into conforming to the group norms, and if that doesn’t work you’ll be punished.
4. “Confession: Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself sessions in which one confesses to one’s sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change”
In the military this really only happens in basic training. You’re told to admit that before you came into the military you were a useless, undisciplined slob. Now that you’re in the military you can wash away your sins by completing basic training and be transformed into a real man. Think of all the Marine commercials you’ve seen on TV where the guy picks up the sword and is surrounded by light and his clothes change into a crisp, military uniform.
5. “Sacred Science: The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited a reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology.”
This goes back again to military recruits being told they’re fighting for the best nation in the world and that they’re in the best branch of their nation’s military. Our constitution is even encased in Washington DC in a bullet proof display case, and you’re not allowed to take pictures of it. That’s not to say the constitution is bad, but it does carry an air of sacredness. Even our money says, “In God we trust.” on it. Thus, meaning the preservers of that dollar are protecting something holy. Even the doctrine that takes away the military’s human rights is treated as sacred. Recruits are told that the Uniform Code of Military Justice holds them to a “higher” standard than regular people and that they should be proud of it.
6. “Loading the Language: Words are given new meanings — the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way — it becomes a “group” word or phrase.”
There are pamphlets and even classes for new spouses of military members that teach them the new language of the military so they’ll know what it means when their spouse says, “Before I go to the BX to pick up my BDUS. I’m taking the POV to the MPF to pick up my PCS orders to my next OCONUS assignment, which should be somewhere in USAFE.”
7. “Doctrine Over Person: If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question — it is always “turned around” on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly the underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one’s experience to that “truth” the experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt one is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one’s own evil when doubt arises, conflicts become intense.”
I have personal experience with this. One of my supervisors asked me point blank why I wanted to get out of the military (after I already received my approval for separation). So I told him my reasons. A week later I was forced to re-swear my oath of allegiance to the military and the constitution.
You won’t last in the military if you just view it as a day job. You’re expected to buy into all the ideology. You’re expected to associate your identity with the military and be proud of it. Anything less and you’ll be ostracized by the group and bullied at work.
8. “Dispensing of Existence: Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist; impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed one outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group; fear manipulation — if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their salvation/transformation, or something bad will happen to them; the group is the “elite”, outsiders are “of the world”, “evil”, “unenlightened”, etc.”
I’ve already covered this enough that I don’t feel the need to retype it. If you need more validation then go ask anyone in Special Forces how they feel about civilians.
1. Before you call make sure your computer is plugged in and turned on.
I’ve actually gotten about 6 calls from people whose monitors were black because their computers were turned off. I’ve had about 3 calls from people with unplugged computers. One person actually asked me, “Will it work if it’s not plugged in?” Don’t be that guy. It’s embarrassing for you and a waste of the help desk technician’s time.
2. If your screen freezes, then reboot your system.
What do you expect a help desk guy to do for you? There’s no unfreeze switch in the back. There’s no secret button combination that unfreezes computers. All a help desk guy is going to do is reboot your system. Save him the trouble. Save yourself the wait, and do it your self.
3. If you want to know how to add bullets to your PowerPoint or insert a picture in Word, then use the fucking Help menu.
Don’t call the help desk to find out something you could have figured out on your own in less than 15 seconds. If you ever call your help desk and ask how to use any of the Office programs, chances are they’re going to open Office on their computer, pull up the help menu, type in your question, and read what it says to you verbatim. So basically, their boss is paying them to read to you. Your laziness has reduced your I.T. technicians into overpaid nannies for illiterate adults.
If you type almost any problem into an internet search engine and find the answer to even the most obscure problems in minutes.
4. If your internet connection is down, or your mouse or keyboard stopped working, make sure your wires are plugged in.
80% of problems with network connections and peripherals can be solved by jiggling the cables. If you call the help desk they’re going to ask you to jiggle cables. Now that you know it, do it yourself before you call.
5. If your account is locked out don’t tell the help desk that you have no idea how it got locked.
I’ll tell you how it got locked. You put in your password wrong too many times. The more you try to deny that you’re responsible the dumber you’ll look in the eyes of the nerds in the help desk. Do you want to be looked down upon by nerds? No. If you want to minimize the shame of getting locked out of your account then minimize the time the help desk guy has to spend unlocking it. You can minimize the time by wasting everyone’s time with transparent excuses.
6. Don’t yell at the help desk because your computer is broken.
It’s not their fault. In fact, the help desk technician is the last person you want to yell at, because he’s the only one who can help you. And think about this. Every call the help desk guy gets all day is from some frustrated idiot at his wit’s end. You’re the 10th today and the millionth in his life. The help desk technician is not in the mood to deal with your shit.
I’ve put many angry customers on hold for no reason and bullshitted with my coworkers while the guy on the line fumed. If I had to go out to the person’s workstation to help them I’d wait anywhere from 30 minutes to a day before helping them. On a few occasions, I even told them that a fixable problem was unfixable. For really nice customers I’ve taken their systems home and worked their problem on my off time or hooked them up with extra software or hardware. The helpdesk technician is not your punching bag. He’s a human being, and you need him.
7. Don’t explain how important it is that your problem gets fixed.
The technician doesn’t care, and your babbling is only keeping him from fixing your important problem. If you absolutely must explain how important your work is, then only do it once.
On a related note, know that if the technician says your hard drive has exploded and there’s no hope of salvaging your data…you can not get the technician to change his mind by repeating over and over how important it is that you get your data back. If a doctor told you that your spouse was dead you wouldn’t stand there repeating to the doctor how important it is for you to get your spouse back. Face the facts. Move on. Back up your data next time.
8. If you know anything about computers, then don’t try to impress the technician with how much you know.
And don’t try to start a dick waving competition about who knows more about computers or who has the better home computer. You will only make yourself look like a dick, annoy your technician, waste the time he could be using to fix your problem, and cause him to give you worse service now and in the future.
9. Try to describe the actual problem you’re having.
This means taking ten seconds to analyze your screen and at least read labels correctly. I don’t know how many times someone has called me because they say they can’t log in to their computer, but when I get to their office they’re logged in. They just can’t get to a website. I had one guy call up and say he deleted the Internet. The whole damned thing.
Just because your internet connection doesn’t work, doesn’t mean that the entire building’s internet connection is down. Before you tell the technician the building’s internet is down, ask the person next to you if they have a connection. I understand that everyone can’t be tech savvy, but explaining what is right in front of you falls more under common sense than tech sense. Use common sense. Take the time to analyze the problem you’re having if only enough to describe it accurately. It will help the technician help you.
10. Rewards your helpdesk technician
Unless you’re the old lady who gives the help desk candy all the time, or you’re the hot young girl who wears low cut shirts, your help desk technicians hate you and don’t want to serve you because you’re an idiot who makes their lives hell.
They only help you for the money, and they don’t get paid enough to make dealing with you worth it. They would quit and get a better job, but they’ve got bills to pay just like everyone else. So they man up and take shit from idiots day in and day out like good, hard-working adults are supposed to.
Try to look at life from their point of view. They deal with real, catastrophic tech problems day in and day out. The more time they can spend on real problems and the less time they have to spend on wiping stupid, lazy people’s asses the better they’ll be able to improve everyone’s computing experience. So try to fix your problem yourself before calling. If you do have to interact with technicians then get to the point, shut up and let them do their job. And give them candy.
When modern American conservatives use the term “traditional family values” they’re not referring to “the way everyone here has always done things.” They mean “the way we do things right now.” And when they say “we” they mean “white, upper middle-class American Christians.”.
I don’t think it’s fair to everyone else for them to use the word “traditional,” because it only refers to the traditions of one group of people living in one country. It’s ignorant to demand all the people in the most diverse country in the world to follow “traditional” values… especially when you want them to follow your traditions instead of their own. Secondly, this one sliver of one country’s population has 3,000 years of traditions spanning several continents. And the traditions of that one culture has been changing for 3,000 years. So which stage of that cultural development should we stick with? Let’s analyze the history to figure out which time period they’re getting their traditions from.
In early middle eastern culture, when you got a wife you would have to pay the father a “bride price.” In some parts of Turkey, this is still required. I’m sure there are other places too. In modern times the concept of the bride price has been defended by saying it’s a gift to the parents or it proves you can provide for the wife. But you’re giving money to a person and getting a wife in return. That’s called buying. The people who wrote the Torah got their wives through paying a bride price. So the husband owned the wife, and he owned slaves too. He was allowed to beat both of them, and he was obligated to kill his wife if she was unfaithful. And he could kill his child if he/she was disobedient. Here’s an excerpt from Exodus 21:7-11:
“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.”
When Republicans refer to a “traditional” family, this is the earliest stage of that traditions. So technically speaking, values that stray from this model are liberal and heretical.
Fast forward a thousand years past Jesus’s death and observe Europe. Bride prices were largely replaced with dowries, which was a gift to the husband’s family. The dowry served two purposes. One, since women didn’t work they were a financial burden. The dowry offset the cost of keeping a woman. It also bribed men into marrying women since it was shameful to be unmarried. Still, love was rarely a reason to get married. It mainly about money and networking. Husbands were still the head of the household and could beat their wives and children. Wives were housewives. Even if they wanted to get a job they had very limited rights to work since the Bible established them as second-class citizens. The wedding ring came from Egypt a few hundred years after Jesus died, but they were made out of hemp at first, later became iron, later became gold. Rubies were the gem of choice for a while. Oddly, in 1 Timothy chapter 2, it says Christian women shouldn’t wear gold or pears but wedding rings are now gold. The Quakers don’t wear gold rings though because they follow the Bible better than most people. England outlawed slavery within its borders in 1102 A.D. but didn’t make slave trade illegal until 1802. So slaves were still a part of the family well after Jesus died, which isn’t surprising because Jesus gave slavery his blessing by saying to treat your slaves well.
If you’re of Italian descent your pre-Christan era ancestors had another interesting Tradition. In a Roman household when a child was born the husband picked up the child to signify that he would accept it and allow it to live. If he didn’t pick it up the baby was killed or left to die. Romans also had slaves in the house. If your ancestors are from a Nordic country then in your ancestor’s traditional family they stole their wives from villages they pillaged.
Fast forward to the early years of the United States. Nothing much has changed. You could still own slaves, but you could only beat your wife with a rod as thick as your thumb. You could still beat your children, but you wouldn’t want to hurt them too bad, because they were put to work before the age of ten, and that was expected. Your elders lived with you until they died. Women were still second-class citizens and couldn’t vote, which was really the least of their problems as they were expected to be subservient to their husbands, which everyone believed was justified because not only did the book of Genesis say women were flawed but early Americans believed that science proved that since women had smaller brains they were biologically inferior to men. Women were expected to be barefoot in the kitchen and pregnant. Children were not allowed to question their parents no matter how idiotic their parents were.
And here we are today. If you’re a conservative American Christian, your great, great, great grandparents and every generation of your family before them, would view your beliefs about family as insanely liberal and a disgrace to God. Your great, great, great grandchildren and every generation after them, will look back at your generation and view your values as archaic and ridiculous as you view your great, great, great grandparents’ values.
Regardless of how funny and ironic that is, it’s beside the point. The point is that the conservative American concept of a traditional family is a figment of the imagination. It only reflects the traditions of one sliver of the American population, and it doesn’t even accurately reflect the traditions of that culture, at least, not if you go back more than half a lifetime.
Note: Whenever I quote the bible I’m quoting the New International Version.
1. “You shall have no other Gods before me.”
If a modern day Christian child were to ask their parents the question, “Why did God say you shall have no other God before me if He’s the only god?” A modern day Christian parent might reply that it’s a figure of speech.
No, it’s not, and two sentences later the author of Exodus makes that clear. Here’s Yahweh’s reasoning for why He only wants you to worship him: “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Why should you only worship Yahweh? Because he’s jealous of the other gods. Not because he’s the only god.
More importantly, if you don’t worship him he’ll torment you and all your descendants. Don’t overlook the significance of the Jewish tribal leaders who wrote the Ten Commandments threatening their tax-payers’ family. In near prehistoric times (and especially for nomads) family life was all you had. Your family was absolutely everything. To threaten an ancient Jew’s family was a billion times harsher of a threat than to threaten a modern American’s family. Think about how serious that is. That’s how seriously the Jewish religious leaders wanted control.
2. “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
This is pretty ingenious. First, it directly ends the problem the Jewish religious leaders had been having of people worshiping any shiny statue that impressed them. Secondly, if you don’t have a shiny statue to worship then how are you going to commune with god? Through the religious leaders of course.
3. “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”
Let’s simplify things, every time you see the word LORD, replace it with GOVERNMENT, because LORD is GOVERNMENT in the time and place were talking about. So this commandment is really saying, “You will not question the government or you will be punished.”
4. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”
The military has an ingenious way of indoctrinating its members. When soldiers walk outside they have to put their hat on. When they walk inside they have to take their hat off. The reasoning for that rule isn’t to keep the sun out of soldiers’ eyes or to keep them from looking tacky inside. This rule exists because it prevents soldiers from forgetting that they belong to the military, and it forces them to police each other. The Sabbath works the same way. It’s a weekly reminder never to forget that your theocracy rules your life. Other than that, it serves absolutely no productive purpose.
5. “Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
This commandment is written in Exodus 20:12. Exodus 21:17 says, “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.”
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says, “If a man has a stubborn a rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of the city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”
This commandment establishes the elder’s power over the young. It also justifies and indoctrinates the cultural values the Jews were already practicing.
6. “You shall not murder.”
This is the first commandment that lays down a functional civil law, and what civil law is more important than not killing each other? If any group of people were to sit down and come up with laws for society, this is the first law they would all come up with first. In fact, other governments around the world have come to the same conclusion without Yahweh’s divine inspiration. It’s certain this law existed in Jewish culture before the person who wrote the Ten Commandments was born..
7. “You shall not commit adultery.”
Biblical marriage law is based on the premise that men buy their wives from their father in-laws, and women are property to be owned and controlled completely by their husband. That means adultery is equivalent to stealing property. That’s why forbiding adultery was so important to the authors of the Ten Commandments that he had to put it in the top 10 list.
8. “You shall not steal.”
This is another rule that makes good civic sense. It doesn’t take God to come up with this rule, and it was almost certainly around long before the Ten Commandments. Why else would the Hebrew language have the word “steal?” Or do you believe that word wasn’t invented until Yahweh revealed to the Jewish leaders that stealing was wrong?
9. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
This rule doesn’t say, “Don’t lie.” It doesn’t say, “You shall not give false testimony to your neighbor.” It expressly says, “…against your neighbor.” It’s saying you will not lie about your neighbor.
In Jewish culture at the time, your personal reputation and your family’s reputation basically determined your status in society. That’s why preserving peoples’ reputations was one of the top ten priorities of the authors of The Ten Commandments This law reveals yet again that the Ten Commandments are culturally, as opposed to divinely, inspired.
10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
This is the most morally bankrupt commandment in the list. It relegates women to pieces of property less valuable than a house but more valuable than a common slave or a donkey. Either that’s how much the creator of the universe considers women are worth or that’s how much one ancient Middle Eastern tribe once considered women were worth.
But that’s beside the real point of the commandment. Why was this commandment necessary? Commandment #8 already said not to steal. So if you’re not going to steal then what’s wrong with just wanting stuff? Because people who don’t want a better life are easiest to control.
The Wise Sloth 