October 30, 2009

The power of prayer: Spit in one hand and pray in the other, and see which one fills up faster

By wise sloth

Flow chart: 1. Pray. 2. Did it work? If yes, praise the Lord. If no, God works in mysterious ways.

Here’s how the universe works. There’s cause and effect. One thing happens, and that effects another thing. That’s it. Now you hold the key to understanding and solving all the world’s problems. If there’s a problem going on in the world then there’s a real world solution that needs to be applied to the problem in order to fix it. In the real world staying at home and wishing for the problem to solve its self has only one effect: It allows the problem to persist because it takes people who are capable of solving problems out of the problem solving game.

Take me up on this challenge. Take your whole church up on this challenge. Every time you feel the urge to pray, go out and help someone. Give up praying for a month and go work in a homeless shelter instead. At the end of the month ask yourself which method really made the world a better place. Now imagine if everyone in the world stopped praying and went out and worked…and not just for a month but for the rest of their lives. There wouldn’t be a problem left in the world.

Even the Pope isn’t foolish enough to bet his life on his faith in prayer. When he asked himself the question, “How can I stop an assassin?” He didn’t turn to God. He turned to scientists and workers who did real world work and built a bullet proof Pope Mobile. Why didn’t the Pope just pray for God to protect him? Because prayer doesn’t work, but actual work does.

Picture of the Pope-Mobile with a price tag of $350,000.

 

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4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in christian culture

October 30, 2009

Don’t Give Conspiracy Theorists Your Money

By wise sloth

 

The thing that makes conspiracy theories difficult to understand is because they’re laced with truth, and it can be hard (even impossible) to discern the truth from the fantasy. For example:

  • We know the US Air Force keeps its latest planes secret. So we know there are unidentified/identifiable flying aircraft in the world. But there’s no way to know if they’re really just American airplanes.
  • It’s pretty well accepted that the WTO (World Trade Organization) gives loans to 3rd world countries but tie the loans with exploitative trade regulations and unmanageably high interest rates which keep 3rd work countries subservient to 1st world ones.
  • It’s pretty well documented that the FDA allows poison to be put in our food. Hell, the FDA approved cigarettes for human consumption.
  • It’s pretty well documented that Monsanto is copyrighting seeds, genetically engineering seeds, and putting small farms out of business through shady legal bullying.
  • It’s pretty well documented that we don’t vote for the president. The electoral college does, but it tells us that it picked the one we wanted anyway, which is bullshit. They led the decision like a magician making you think you picked the card he wanted you to pick.
  • It’s pretty well documented that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was created to allow big American companies to move their headquarters to Latin America to escape paying American taxes, following environmental protection laws, and paying realistic wages to its workers.
  • It’s pretty well documented that No Child Left Behind has systematically destroyed the American education system and the lives of almost every child (particularly the poor ones) who grew up under this system.
  • It’s pretty well documented that the industrial war complex is such an integral part of the American economy that in order for America to continue to prosper and enjoy its quality of living it must constantly be at war.
  • It’s pretty well documented that the Federal Reserve exists solely to exploit the American taxpayers.
  • It’s pretty well documented that the media is lying to you and instilling within you a false perception of reality. And the more you let your children watch television the more you let them become brainwashed with a false perception of reality that reduces them to a mindless consumer whore idiot.
  • It’s pretty well documented that if you have a lot of money you can lobby politicians or support them (or threaten to support their opponent) with campaign contributions to get them to do whatever you want them to do. Thus, politicians all the world over really represent the will of their financial backers and not the irrelevant poor people. Thus, big business indirectly controls the world governments.

There are very real, very bad problems in the world people need to know about and that we need to do something about, but conspiracy theorists would have you believe our problems are caused by aliens or royal magicians out to destroy the world and create a demonic police state for their own dark, sadistic fetish-driven purposes, and they’ve been laying out this plan for generations upon generations, and everything that has ever happened has been a part of this one unifying, evil plan.

In reality, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. All the bad things happening in the world are the result of the fact that humans are instinct driven animals whose lives are devoted to fucking and fighting for resources. And when these animals become stronger, they fuck over more people. When several of these animals get real strong, they fuck each other over. In other words, Earth is a giant sanatorium in full riot condition. Most people don’t realize this and run around their whole lives like chickens with their heads cut off. Some people do realize it and that they can capitalize on it. So they fuck over whoever they can, however they can, for whatever they can. You don’t need a conspiracy theory for all this. It’s simple human nature.

But when people make up a conspiracy theory to tie it all together, they distract us from the real causes and the real solutions of these problems, ensuring they’re allowed to continue and grow. To make matters worse, the audience become slaves to the fear-mongering conspiracy theorist who is taking advantage of the fear he knows he can instill in them to keep them buying his videos and listening to his radio program. Thus, the conspiracy theorist is a member of the greedy class who is trying to exploit you.

Conspiracy theorists tell you to have faith in them without questioning because they’re tantamount to cult leaders who prey on the lost, scared, and gullible. They’re not trying to raise awareness. They don’t want to fix anything. They want the world’s problems to get worse and for us to do nothing about it other than keep buying their videos.

If you’re upset about the state of the world join a political activist group and not a pseudo-political science fiction cult.

 

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Leave a comment | posted in Conspiracy Theoris and Theorists

October 30, 2009

11 Things I Learned From Blogging On Myspace

By wise sloth

Myspace logo

 

1. Be as clear and articulate as possible with what you say.

Don’t make any statements half cocked. Don’t overgeneralize. Don’t assume people know the difference between what you mean and what you say. People will rip you a new asshole with extreme prejudice if there are any holes in your argument or any basis uncovered.

 

2. Having said that, no matter how clear you make your statement there will be people who don’t “get it.”

Maybe they just skimmed over your blog and didn’t take the time to understand it. Maybe they believe something different and are only interested in expressing their point of view and refuse to hear what you have to say. Maybe they’re just a dick looking for someone to belittle to justify their shallow sense of self-worth. Maybe they’re just stupid. All of these people are out there, and they’re going to read your blog and attack you. Don’t let it get to you. Accept that there are people who disagree with you. Don’t delete their comments unless they attack you personally.

 

3. If they do make it personal then delete their comments and block their profile.

If you want to hurt a conceited attention whore then the worst thing you can do to them is ignore them and delete their comments so nobody else will know they exist. Arguing with them isn’t going to accomplish anything except to give them exactly what they want.

 

4. On the same token, don’t attack commenters personally, yourself.

If you think a group of people are doing something stupid and/or immoral then blog about it without holding back. Otherwise you’re not standing up for what you believe in. However, when an individual disagrees with you in the form of a comment (as long as they don’t attack you personally) then leave their comment. If you choose to argue with them then stick to analyzing the topic of conversation professionally. Once you attack your commenters personally then the search for truth ends and a childish/pointless war begins that only results in proving that you, yourself are a dick.

5. Who you are is more important than what you have to say.

The top blog spots are always taken up by hot chicks or douche bag celebrities talking about lame shit like getting a cup of coffee. I’ve actually considered changing my profile pick to a hot chick because I know it’ll sky rocket my popularity into the stratosphere. But on second thought…fuck that. My integrity is more important than popularity.

 

6. Appealing to the lowest common denominator will get you farther than appealing to the highest common denominator.

Hey, I love a sexy body as much as the next person. I even enjoy dick and fart jokes. But I love philosophy too. But if you want to achieve popularity then posting sexy photos and dick and fart jokes will get you farther in the social standings than talking about things that matter.

 

7. If you want to be popular, then you need to know that “tip for tap” is the name of the game.

If you post comments on all the most popular blogs and keep posting comments then the other popularity whores will comment on yours. All the top non-celebrity and non-hot chick bloggers know this. That’s just the name of the game. P.S. That’s a tip, not a criticism. But if I don’t comment on your blogs tip for tap then understand that I’m not interested in popularity. So if you’re commenting on my blogs expecting tip for tap then stop. If I want to comment on your blog because I feel I have something relevant to add then I will.

 

8. Don’t argue about creationism. Ever. …unless you’re only interested in blog-view numbers.

There’s no topic of conversation that’ll bring more views and more anger to your blog than arguing about creationism. But know that you’re not going to actually bring any type of closure to the argument.

 

9. Blogging on MySpace won’t make you a wealthy celebrity…

unless you’re a hot chick or you cater to the lowest common denominator.

 

10. MySpace is a great place to get feedback about whatever ideas you have to express.

Ironically, the most productive feedback you’re going to get will be from the assholes you hate you and want to point out any minute flaw in your ideas they can, which they’ll do with extreme prejudice. Sometimes you’ll need to block these assholes because they’re just too belligerent and unhealthy to keep in your “life.” However, their tirades usually have some worth in showing you how you can improve your thought process.

 

11. Keep blogging.

Despite the dangers, it’s still worth it. If nothing else it helps you articulate yourself. Sometimes it gives you a self-esteem boost. Sometimes it helps sharpen your edge. Sometimes it lets you know when you’re being a douche. It certainly teaches you a lot about human nature. And fuck it. Between the ups and downs, it’s fun… and cheaper than World of Warcraft.

 

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Leave a comment | posted in Blogging

October 30, 2009

Every grain of knowledge is valuable. Every grain of ignorance is destructive.

By wise sloth

On the surface, it would seem there’s nothing wrong with being a little stupid or a little ditsy, but this belief is unequivocally false. It’s not okay to be a little stupid. At the same time, actively being stupid is just as bad as passively neglecting to dedicate your life to mental and personal growth.

Every action has its consequences. The consequences of the little stupid thoughts you allow yourself to think, and the consequences of the little smart things you fail to, are like tiny grains of sand. In and of themselves, they may not seem like much, but over the course of your life they add up into a giant dune. Imagine how heavy that dune would be if it were all resting on one end of a scale. Now imagine the other end of the scale where the smart grains go. If you haven’t dedicated your life to vigilantly combating your own ignorance and striving to improve your mind, then how many intelligent grains of sand do you think you’ll have to weigh against the ignorant ones?

Unfortunately, this is more than just a cute hypothetical question. Imagine taking all the little, seemingly innocuous stupid things you’ve done and smart things you’ve failed to do through the course of your entire life, and ask yourself honestly, “What are the cumulative, real-world consequences?

Ultimately, the consequence is you failed to fulfill your potential. You took your one shot at life, the most precious and sacred thing in the universe, and wasted it. And on what? You had the chance to live a life more brilliant and divine than the night sky and you squandered it watching reality TV and cat videos, listening to rap music that glorifies hurting other people, and gossiping about celebrities whose importance you know is a lie. Drug addicts live life more spectacularly than that. At least they know you’re supposed to feel something. But you, your life was completely in vain because you thought that floating just around the status quo was good enough and you didn’t have any responsibility to put any real effort into fulfilling your potential.

Now let’s take this a step further. Imagine if everybody in your society took their person ignorance/intelligence scales and dumped their sands onto one huge scale. Would your society’s scale be heavier on the ignorant side or heavier on the intelligent side? I know for sure my society’s scale would lean to the ignorant side. And what do you think the consequences of that much stupidity would be? Mind you, the consequences of one person snuffing out their own spark of divinity is as bad as an entire universe disappearing. How much worse would it be for the majority of an entire society to do that? And what would happen to that society?

Extinction. That’s what would happen to that society. Or at least, the consequences of their ignorance would set in motion the cause and effect chain of events leading in the direction of extinction. And at some point, the momentum of those consequences would pass the tipping point, the point of no return.

Look at who you are. Look at what you think and what you do. Look at the society you live in and ask yourself honestly, where is all this going?

If you ask me, I don’t think anyone could shovel enough sand off society’s scale to tip it back to the side of intelligence. I think the world is beyond saving. I think it’s just time to buy a bunker, a rainwater collector, some back issues of Playboy and a ton of MREs.

 

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Education, Knowledge and Learning

October 30, 2009

10 Steps To Becoming A Genius

By wise sloth

1: Accept you need to fulfill your mind’s potential.

Look at the graph below. Where on the graph would you mark yourself if the far left represented the ignorance of a newborn baby and the far right represented the genius of Leonardo Da Vince?

(Ignorance) 1—2—3—4— (Normal) —6—7—8—9—10 (Genius)

Okay, that was a trick. Without changing your position on the graph, replace the word “Ignorance” with “Insanity,” and replace the word “Genius” with “Sane.”

The definition of the word “sane” is: “having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense.”

Think about a baby. Does a baby think or act with sound reason, judgment, and sense? No. If an adult acted like a one-year-old, he’d be locked away in a mental institute. We’re all born insane, and our progress towards sanity doesn’t happen on its own. As we grow up, our brains develop and automatically make us more capable of sanity, but in to grow to your full potential you have to proactively use reason, sound judgment, and common sense.

Genius isn’t a condition you’re born with. It’s the process of pushing your mind to its unique potential. Once you’ve pushed your mind to what it’s capable of, you’ll be the person you’re capable of becoming.

 

 

 2: Accept you’re capable of becoming a genius.

If you’re smart enough to graduate high school, then you’re smart enough to become a genius. How many song lyrics, movie characters, book titles, sports statistics, telephone numbers and street names will you memorize in your life?  How many books/magazines/news articles/websites/blogs have you/will you read? When you add it all up, the number is astronomical even if you score low on a traditional I.Q. test.

You’ll never reach the limits of your mind. Therefore, the limits of your mental potential are defined more by what you believe they are than what they actually are. You have the potential to become an expert at just about anything if you would only allow yourself permission to become what you’re capable of becoming and push yourself as far as you can go.

 

 

3: Accept you’re ignorant.

Everyone is born insane, and we become saner by learning. But no matter how much you learn, you’ll always be an ant on a speck of dirt in an endless universe. Nobody knows shit about shit, and we’re all so lost we don’t even know how lost we are. So conceit is a delusion, and humility is sanity. The smarter you think you are, the less room and motivation you give yourself to grow. The more humbly you accept your ignorance, the more room and motivation you give yourself to grow.

 

 

4: Accept everyone is ignorant in different ways to different degrees.

Humanity doesn’t have life figured out. Our entire history has been a slow process of clueless adults raising clueless children. The younger generation always takes it for granted their parents’ generation has it all figured out. So children devote their lives to mimicking their elders only to waste their lives re-enacting primitive, obsolete customs invented by pompous monkeys.

Take everything you learn with a grain of salt. Even if someone teaches you something true, it’s probably still incomplete. Questioning people and their belief systems can only help you arrive at a clearer perception of the truth. Blind faith can only result in blindness.

 

 

5: Decide what you want to learn.

Nobody can know everything. The end goal of genius isn’t to master every field of learning but to master the one/s that are most important to you. The only way you’ll have the motivation to master anything, is to love doing it. Find something you love, and excel at that. If you try to master something you aren’t terminally passionate about, you’re either going to quit or be miserable, which would defeat the purpose.

 

6: Develop a systematic plan to understand life.

Imagine it’s Sunday afternoon, and you don’t have to go to work, but you’ve got a ton of errands and chores you need to get done. If you just wander around the house and do a chore here and there when you just happen to find yourself in a room that needs something done it’s going to take forever to get all your chores done. Imagine driving around town aimlessly and hoping you run across the store or business you need to get something done at. You’ll never accomplish all your goals.

Becoming a genius (aka growing up, aka becoming sane) is the same way. You’re not going to be able to wander through life aimlessly, casually doing the things you feel inspired or hungry to do and hope to make the most out of your mind. You need to plan out what you want to learn and how you’re going to teach it to yourself.

 

 

7: Learn as much as you can.

If you want to be smarter, then learn more. If you want to be exceptionally smart, then learn an exceptional amount of information. You’re going to run out of time before you run out of storage space in your brain.

 

 

8: Learn and practice rational, logical thinking.

To understand the information you learn and make the best use of it, you have to be able to process the information effectively. You can memorize the encyclopedia, but if you don’t know how to think, all your good for is reciting information. The better you are at thinking, the more valuable conclusions you can draw from your knowledge.

 

 

9: Ask the right questions.

You might be able to cram enough knowledge into your brain to win every quiz game in the world, but that doesn’t make you a genius. What separates the savants from the geniuses is meaning. Is the knowledge you possess and are the questions you ask meaningful? Do your intellectual pursuits make a difference in the world? Do they help people? Do they advance humanity? If not, then it doesn’t matter how many credentials you have or how many people pat you on the back. Your efforts are meaningless.

You don’t have to be smart enough to figure out why E=MC2 to be a genius. The world doesn’t need 7 billion astrophysicists anyway. We need geniuses from every walk of life. We need people who can solve meaningful problems in the fields that they’re suited for. Solve a meaningful question and that will be an exercise in genius, but that doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels for the rest of your life. Just because you did something genius yesterday doesn’t mean you’re a genius today. And just because you performed one stroke of genius doesn’t mean that you’re a genius in every other facet of your life. In fact, nobody is a full spectrum genius. Every genius is a complete idiot in other ways.

 

 

10: Question your answers.

Let’s suppose you questioned your personal beliefs and the foundations of your culture and found them lacking. So you went back and rewrote the rules and applauded yourself for fixing them. Then you lived the rest of your life by those new rules and taught them to other people. The only problem is you’re Anton Lavey, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Timothy Leary or Charles Manson. If you don’t question everything, especially your own answers, you’ll end up acting on irrational conclusions that will cause harm to you or others.

Question your answers.

 

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52 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in How to Think Like a Genius

October 30, 2009

My Short Theory On Sexual Morality

By wise sloth

Outline of a man and a woman standing back to back with a broken scale holding the masculine and feminine sex symbols

 

The premise of this philosophy is drawn from my overall philosophy on ethics: Every living being is equally valuable and entitled to the same inalienable rights. Everyone is entitled to the freedom to live, grow, and exercise their free will as long as it doesn’t interfere with another person’s rights. Any action that doesn’t hurt another person or interfere with their growth/will is permissible. Any rule that has no real logical justification but tells you an action is immoral even if it doesn’t hurt anyone or impede anyone’s growth will only serve to hurt people and impede their growth.

Humans are born with a powerful sex drive. We’re all addicted to sex. Even if (or rather, especially if) we’re not having sex we still crave it as strongly, and sometimes more so, than food or water. This addiction is mostly indiscriminate. We all have our fetishes and preferences, but for the most part, our body just tells us, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” It’s actually not even that discriminating. It’d probably be more accurate to say it tells us, “Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate. Ejaculate.”

Mother Nature (by any other name) designed us to fuck and ejaculate our brains out, and if we choose not to then our bodies were designed with an override switch that frustrates us and makes us more and hornier until it breaks our will and more or less forces us to fuck or at least ejaculate. So we should ejaculate for our own mental health and for the safety of others so that our override switch doesn’t get flipped. However, you bring yourself to orgasm, as long as it doesn’t hurt another person or impede their growth/will, is morally permissible.

Our DNA predisposes us to be generally attracted to one sex or the other, but that general attraction neither permanent nor a moral imperative. Everyone will have cultural deviant fantasies in their life, and this isn’t a moral flaw. It’s by design. Our bodies are designed to be omnisexual. Labels for sexual orientation and fetishes are products of culture. At the end of the day, underneath our skin, we’re all just horny animals, and that’s okay.

If you want to live a safe, mentally healthy life you need to accept yourself for what you are, a sexual being. Masturbate with confidence. Use sex toys with confidence. Have premarital sex with confidence. Have gay sex with confidence. Just practice your sexuality responsibly, which is to say, in a way that respects your obligation to live, grow, exercise your free will and not harm anyone else or impede their right to grow/will.

 

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1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Sex, Relationships, and Dating

October 30, 2009

How to argue scientifically

By wise sloth

A drawing of two comical high class gentlemen having an animated argument

Step 1: Okay, someone is telling you something you disagree with. Recognize the fact that you’ve been wrong before. Regardless of how absurd his idea is remember that all the things you were wrong about before you initially though were absurd. The same thing could very well be happening again.

Step 2: Assume that if this person believes what they’re saying then they must have a compelling reason to. You might find in the end that it’s not logical, but since it’s strong enough to influence him there must be something to it. Find out his reasons for believing what he’s saying before you disagree with him. In fact, press him to keep talking. Find out everything there is to know about the topic before criticizing it.

Step 3: Don’t respond yet. Tell the person, “Give me a few minutes to think about this.” or better yet, “Let me sleep on it. We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow.”

Step 4: Assume/pretend the other person is right. Block out your beliefs for a time and look at the world through his eyes. Imagine living a life where you walk around believing what you were just told.

Step 5: Consider his arguments objectively. Imagine that you’re a scientist in a laboratory where ideas can be stored in petri dishes. In one dish is his argument. In another his his. Take your argument and put it on a shelf. Take his argument and put it under a microscope. Use logic to dissect it and study it independent of how it relates to your ideas. Put your initial hypothesis about the outcome out of your mind. This is a clinical study where scientific truth is more important than winning. In fact, the only way to truly win is to arrive at the truth. (Side Note: the book “How to Argue and Win Every Time” is an amazingly enlightening analysis of this concept.)

Furthermore, disregard the source of the idea you’re studying. Just because the idea came out of “The Communist Manifesto,” “Mein Kampf,” or “The Bible” doesn’t mean it can’t be true. Of course, it doesn’t mean is must be true either. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re arguing with is your father who you respect deeply and who himself insists he’s the head of the house and you must obey him. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re arguing with is an immature, conceited, hypocritical wanker. The source has nothing to do with the idea. So separate the two for the time being.

Step 6: Take the results of your scientific dissection and file them away. Then take your own ideas and put them under the microscope. Even if you’ve studied them before the fact that they’re being challenged means there’s a chance you might have missed something. Consider where your ideas came from. Did you really adopt them because you’d done all the math and arrived that this was the correct answer yourself or did somebody else tell you they were true? Dissect your arguments with the scalpel of logic again. Be brutal about it. Get angry at your ideas. Hate them. Tear them apart with the fury of a lover who just found out his soul mate was cheating on him.

Step 7: Compare the results from both of your studies understanding that the goal of the study isn’t to determine who is right and who is wrong. Arguments almost never black and white. You could both be right about some things and wrong about some things. The goal of the study is to take the good and bad of both arguments and mix them together to create the real truth. If at the end of the study you accept or reject the opposing idea completely you probably did your math wrong. If you do find fault on either side of the argument don’t simply throw that petri dish away. If an idea has flaws then fix them.

Step 8: If you want to you can present your findings to the person you argued with, but this isn’t necessary. This whole process was never a battle between people. It was really an internal battle in your personal search for truth. Whether or not you can convince the other person of your findings is irrelevant.

Step 9: If you do decide to continue the argument with the other person don’t worry about winning. Simply explain your findings to him, and if he doesn’t like it then end the conversation. Winning an argument won’t do anything for you except stroke your ego, which is pointless. However, if the other person is willing to engage in an objective debate then by all means proceed. Two heads are better than one.

Step 10: Watch for personal attacks. Once either side throws a personal attack the conversation is over. Dialogue has broken down, and neither side is listening objectively anymore. So you may as well quit. And remember that the person who throws the first body shot is probably wrong. If you had logical reasons for your argument you’d be using them instead of calling the other person names. And the more you make fun of the other person the more of a case you build that you never really had anything to say at all and are a close-minded bigot who just likes to fight.

That’s my method. Do I always use it? No. Do I defend my ideas without spending all night analyzing them? Sometimes. Do I call people names sometimes? Yes. Does that mean my method isn’t valid? No. Does it make me a bad person? Yes. But then again, we’re all bad people.

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2 Comments | posted in How to Think Like a Genius

October 30, 2009

You Can’t Hide Your True Face. So Don’t Even Try.

By wise sloth

"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do." Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought about you if you realized how seldom they did.” Think about that. Most people walk around agonizing about what other people think of them. They don’t go around agonizing about what they think about you. Nobody is scrutinizing you. Nobody gives a fuck about you. They’re too busy thinking about themselves. So don’t worry about what anyone else thinks about you. You’re under the radar.

Well, you’re not really under the radar. Everyone can see you more clearly than you could imagine. They just don’t generally care about you or your image enough to tell you everything they understand about you.

People don’t need to scrutinize you to see you for who you are. We put so much time and energy into constructing these elaborate masks to present a polished Hollywood image of ourselves to the rest of the world and hide the vulnerable, shattered people we truly are, but the irony in this is that we’re only fooling ourselves.

You can fool a person on a first date. You can fool a person at a job interview. You can fool anyone for a week at most, but the real you will shine through eventually, and people will pick up on the real you much, much, much, much sooner than you’d expect.

We all like to think we’re smooth. We like to think we’re unique snowflakes. We like to think we’re different. But we’re not. People are people. We’re all 99% the same. The differences are barely consequential. This is why advertising works. This is why brainwashing works. This is why self-help books work. This is why our whole society works.

But it doesn’t take a professional psychologist to read you. You’re transparent. Period. I’m transparent. Period. I don’t bother pretending to be anyone but who I am anymore even though I know I’m not perfect because I am who I want to be, as we all are. Apparently, we don’t really want to be perfect, or we would be. Whatever. Fuck it. As long as I like who I am, I’m not going to bother hiding the stains. It wouldn’t do any good if I tried because you’d see through my glass mask eventually. So why expend the extra effort?

So do yourself a favor. Stop hiding, because you’re not really hiding from anyone but yourself. And when someone points out your stains, don’t waste their time with this, “You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me!” bullshit. You’re not complicated. You’re not special. You’re cut from a generic cookie cutter. What little else there is to know about you, everyone already knows… because you told them all about yourself with your actions.

We know you. And we can see all the stains you’ve wiped all over your face behind your glass mask.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

Growing up and Becoming You
Happiness and Peace
Self-Esteem
Health
Drugs and Addiction
Achieving a Healthy Work/Life Balance
Leadership and Authority
My Tweets About Self-Help

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Self-Esteem

October 30, 2009

The Importance Of Intellectual Standards

By wise sloth

Universal Intellectual Standers: Clarity, Accuracy, Precision, Relevance, Depth, Breadth, Logic, Significance, Fairness

The fact that the world’s intellectual standards have dropped so low means that this is a concept people are somehow either unaware of or not taking seriously enough.

You are your life, and your life is who you are. What you experience is who you are. What you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, say, believe, think, remember, etc. is who you are. The quality of who you are equates into the quality of your life…and visa versa.

This is why it’s important to have intellectual standards. We all make excuses for the stupid things we do, say, watch, listen to, think, believe, etc. Whatever excuses we use they all point towards the same conclusions: that it’s harmless or even good to lower our standards, even if just for a little while. But it’s not okay. There are real world consequences for exposing yourself to and partaking in mindless, low brow anti-intellectualism.

Even without getting into macro-sociological ripples the consequences are personal and immediate. When you watch a stupid television show like the Super Bowl, you’re lowering your quality of life immediately and irrevocably. I know it may seem fun, but so does crack-cocaine. Would you be right to justify crack-cocaine use because it’s fun? No. So why would you justify watching American Idol because it’s fun? They have the same consequences.

You can’t even use the excuse that they’re different because crack-cocaine will kill you. When you binge on stupidity and mindlessness it builds up in your system. Then, before you know it you’re riding a four wheeler around a construction site drunk shouting to your friends, “Hey man, watch this shit!” Next thing you know you’re winning a Darwin Award.

But even without getting that dramatic, think about this. You have one life to live, and it’s a short one. Life is infinitely valuable. We need to make the most of it to honor our creator (if you believe in a creator) or otherwise just for our own personal sake. If you spend your whole life watching dumb ass television and reading gossip magazines what have you really done with your life? You’ve wasted it and mocked it just as surely as killing yourself as a teenager.

Wallowing in the joys of low intellectual standards may seem fun at the time, but life is better than that. Life has more to offer, and if you take it up on that offer you’ll become a better person, and immediately you’ll live a more enjoyable and more meaningful life.

So don’t waste your time justifying low intellectual standards to your self, and certainly don’t push them on others. Because what you’re really doing is justifying a life less lived.

If you liked this post, you may like these:

Leave a comment | posted in Knowledge and Learning

October 30, 2009

Why I Don’t Like Strip Clubs

By wise sloth

Photo of the exterior of a strip club with a neon sign that says, "GIRLS GIRLS."

 

It’s not that I have a moral objection to strip clubs. I firmly believe that most of our morals against all things sexual are archaic and illogical. I certainly don’t believe that women’s chests are inherently evil and thus strip clubs are immoral because you can see women’s evil chests there.

I don’t believe strip clubs degrade women and treat them like meat either…at least, not any more than any other servile customer service job does. I wouldn’t want any woman I know to work at one, but it’s a woman’s choice. It’s not the best choice, but at the end of the day, strippers are professionals working in a customer service role where consenting adults exercise their right to free will in a safe environment to fill a demand and make more money than my job pays. So that’s not why I hate going to strip clubs. Here’s why I do:

This is what happens when you go to a strip club. You pay an unreasonable amount of money to get in the door even though you could see naked woman for free on the internet. You could also spend less money buying a girl drinks at a bar and taking her home. Granted, at a strip club you get to watch a bunch of girls dance around naked without having to spend half the night pretending to be more confident, successful, or interested in the girl you’re talking to than you really are, but at American strip clubs you can’t touch the girls.

It reminds me of one time when I was 5 or 6 years old and my dad promised me and my brothers that if we cleaned our rooms he would take us to Toys R Us, a gigantic toy store. So we cleaned our rooms like never before, and the next day our dad took us to Toys R Us like he promised. We all picked out one toy we wanted, and when we brought them to our dad he looked at us like we were stupid and said, “I told you I’d take you to Toys R Us. I didn’t say I’d buy you anything.” That hurt. That’s the feeling I get from strip clubs.

Even what little you can touch the girls you’re still not going to achieve… satisfaction. You’re just going to get all pent up and frustrated. It’s like going to a car show and getting all excited about the amazing cars there even though you’re not going to get to drive any. Why torture yourself like that?

To add insult to injury, the girls there don’t even like you. In all likelihood they despise you. Even if you’re not a fat, greasy, disgusting scum bag, they assume you’re there because you’re too lame to get a real girlfriend, but they pretend to like you, which makes them liars. If I called you up and said, “Hey, wanna go hang out with a bunch of liars tonight?” You’d tell me you have better things to do.

Even if you don’t want to throw your money away sticking it in resentful lying girls’ panties, you can always just sit there and watch. What better scenery to watch while drinking overpriced beers and chatting with your bros than a bunch of beautiful women?

Wait a minute. You can’t just sit there and watch. Whether you want to touch these girls or not, they’re going to ask you if you want to buy a lap dance. Then, when you tell them you don’t want to give them all your money, they’re going to scowl at you and make you feel bad about it like you’re a Scrooge. Why would you pay to enter a room full of people who are going to make you feel guilty for not doing something you don’t want to do?

So basically, when you ask me if I want to go to a strip club, you’re really asking me to pay a ton of money to get sexually frustrated by a bunch of resentful liars who look down on me and won’t hesitate to make me feel guilty if I don’t give them what they want.

Why don’t I just go in the bathroom and flush my money down the toilet while punching myself in the balls and shouting self-deprecating remarks at myself in the mirror? At least then I won’t have to leave the house. That’s why I don’t like going to strip clubs.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Sex positions and techniques
General Sex Advice
Dating Advice
Relationship Advice
Philosophy of Sexuality
Friendship
My Tweets About Romance

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Philosophy of Sexuality