Remember the scene in “The Dark Knight Rises” where Bruce Wayne is trying to escape from a hole in the ground prison? He can’t make the jump as long as the safety harness is tied around him. He’s only capable of his full physical prowess when death is a real alternative. Like it or not, that’s the way it works.
Tag: death
Band-Aid Solutions Are Lame and Nature is the Answer
The violations that plague us don’t come out of thin air one day. It is the result of the culmination of traumas inflicted onto us from day one (and actually before, while we are still in the womb) of entering into a world that profits and runs off of others people’s trauma. We literally live and operate in a place that is rooted in trauma and carries out traumatizing rituals on its most vulnerable people. So long as we passively accept these cultural narratives and practices, we cannot and should not expect better from our society.
Unreliable Narrators
On a podcast today, I heard the most descriptive term I have encountered in a long time, “unreliable narrators.” That is a universally useful concept, as the problem seems epidemic among humans.
Gina Haspel: Torturers Should be Punished, not Promoted
Gina Haspel doesn’t belong at the head of the CIA. She doesn’t belong in the CIA at all. Nor does she belong in any other position of government authority. Gina Haspel belongs in prison.
“Avengers: Infinity War” Is A Cosmic Battle of Individualism vs. Collectivism
Thanos’ collectivism expresses itself in a backwards view of the world which many viewers may not immediately catch on to. Despite the film’s scenes on the devastated and once-populated Titan (which attempt to make Thanos’ mission seem sympathetic and reasonable) there are literally zero cases where eliminating half of a population by genocide improves productivity and wellbeing for the other half.
Trump: For Whom the Nobel Tolls?
The Nobel Peace Prize is, so far as I can tell, an annual tribute to political hypocrites who make war while talking peace. South Korea’s president is quoted by his office as saying “It’s really President Trump who should receive [the prize]; we can just take peace.” If the peace comes about, any credit accruing to Trump should buy him something more worthwhile than such a bloodstained trophy.
On Coming to Grips with the Nature of the State
That so many intellectuals talk about the state as if it were a sort of garden-party amusement, rather than the cold, merciless killing and plundering machine that it really is, now puzzles me. I don’t think the disconnect between the ivory-tower conceptions and the reality of the state springs so much from the philosophers and political scientists having prostituted themselves to the state as it springs from these thinkers’ not getting out more—or, barring actual first-hand involvement in the relevant realms, from their failure to learn more realistic history.
Government: The God of Statism
AronRa, a popular outspoken atelatheist, whose work (in general) I love, defines a religion as “a faith-based belief system, including the notion that some element of self, be it memories or consciousness …a soul, perhaps… continues beyond the death of the physical body; transcends and survives that…”. I see no mention of belief in a god being a requirement for something to be a religion. But, do they really not believe in a god?
Creating the Time to Do What You Love Every Day
Our days are often filled with things we have to do, and things we do to comfort ourselves from the stress and tiredness from doing what we have to do … so we end up putting off what we really want to do.
When to Be Decisively Indecisive
I’m a big fan of agnosticism. I don’t mean the orientation to theological questions, but something much broader. For me, the greater the number of things about which I am agnostic, the happier I am and the more powerful and productive on the very few things about which I have passionate belief.