civilisationReview

The strategy of Corporations and governments in the long run is to get people to stop seeing the cup as half empty,  1. by downsizing the size of the cup to half so it can be perceived as completely full 2. by downsizing the thirst of the people so they view the glass as full enough 3. by getting the people to compensate for the glass being half empty by looking elsewhere for nourishment And this works by downsizing people's intelligence, aspirations, self-identity, ideas on what is ideal, etc, etc, in proportion to the downsizing of the glass, through the reduction of expectations via the provision of means to get around a half empty glass.  The hunger for profit by the few can never be reconciled with the maximal development of all the people.  Yup.  The best means supplied by capitalist and fascist governments globally to get around a problem is by getting you to not see it as one.   And how that is done is by 1.  providing you ways to get around it...

The truth is the truth, wherever it comes from. Remind yourself. Failing to recognise that will give the Devil a monopoly over truth, because all he has to do is to speak the truth, or publicise it greatly when he does, and know that you will discount it because it comes from the Devil. Thereafter, when saints speak a similar truth, you will confuse these saints for Devils for saying the same as them, or think it is all lies because the Devil said the same thing earlier. In such a case, the Devil wins, truth loses. For me, i care not about who vocalises the truth. It may be the Devil, it may be a Saint, but if it is the Truth, its ORIGINS are one and the (Heavenly) same. ed X

Makavelli  (on facebook) : We are all humans until... Race disconnected us, Religion separated us, Politics divided us, And wealth classified us. ed : Race didn't disconnect us, it gave us the opportunity to have different experiences and share it. Religion didn't separate us, it gave us different ideas that, when joined, forms a beautiful whole. Politics didn't divide us, it just distinguished between the ignorant or self-abosorbed and those who weren't. Wealth didn't classify us, its disproportionate distribution did. It is not in avoiding the above that we become human, but in realising and resolving it.  Navigate wisely and with empathy through such division, and it will deliver your multiplication. e X

Guardian: Lance Armstrong doping scandal: Q&A  Look at it this way.  If every athlete was to self-dope with an equal amount of ‘performance enhancers’, and one amongst them wins gold, wouldn’t that still be a reflection of the athlete’s ability since they all start on an equal ‘performance enhanced’ footing? Putting it in this context, if all cyclists in the races Lance Armstrong took part in was to self-dope, and Lance still won gold, wouldn’t that still mean that he has an added innate ability to win it over others whom also self-doped? Everything is a ‘performance-enhancer’.  Whether it be training, or to having the right supplements, or to having the right regime to deliver gold medals in their barrowfull.  To say that one supplement is alright, and another isn’t, is just another way of saying that we have to level the playing field where everyone takes a common type of supplement.  Where one takes an uncommon or ‘banned’ type of supplement, the supposed...

I suppose the belief that the end is nigh is due to people wishing for a world without Mondays....and feeling impotent enough to not do something about it themselves ~ ed bbc: Mayan prophecies: Life after the (non) end of the world On the other hand.....those who openly state that only idiots believe that the world will end today base their self-confidence in the fact that they can never be proven wrong. ~ ed bbc: 'Mayan day of apocalypse' arrives (the comments beneath the bbc article is worth a read...for it's priceless wit that is ;) ed

A linear tabulation of age only counts when wear-and-tear, biological age, amongst related others, are taken into account.  The Perspective For instance, Chinese culture has been tabulated to be thousands of years old, going back to the Shang, or Hsia.  Egyptian culture has been dated to be even more than that.  Western contemporary culture has been dated back to Greece.  But that isn’t true, logically speaking, albeit it be true chronologically. When it comes to culture, its age can only be determined by the continuity of a culture of antiquity to the present in terms of perspective.  When there is a major shift in culture, and the people began to go along a path that people of a previous era would not have if they had continued along their path, then we can say that their cultural age starts from zero at the point of the major transition, or shift away from an earlier and dominant mode of thought. This perspective for instance, and ed, is not borne of ‘Singapo...

When people ask me what sort of music I listen to, I might say, amongst others, “60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.” “Oh! Retro.”, they might respond knowingly. “No. ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.”, I correct them. And if they were to push it with an, “It’s the same thing isn’t it!” Then they’ve asked for it. Dictionary meanings and social meanings can be two different things. On the surface, ‘retro’ would refer to ‘the past’. There is no other value attributed to it. It is just ‘music that was produced in the past’. But when humanity fell for the religious belief that ‘we are living in modern’ times - excluding ed - this meant that quite a few words begin to mean something else as well. For instance, ‘elders’ became ‘old’. ‘Retro’ became ‘kitsch’, ‘passe’, ‘old’, and all of these words became interchangeable terms as well. That’s what happens when people are led to believe that we are living in ‘modern’ times; that we have reached the shores of enlightened times unlike the ‘medieval past’. So ...

The short answer. Yes. I’ll keep it simple. What are the factors contributing to having more information = knowing less ? 1. The human tendency to pay attention to that which interests us instead of that which doesn’t fall within our sphere of interest. 2. The influx of youngsters into the informational world to get and provide information. 3. The tendency of younger minds to be appealed to that which is immediately gratifying, trivial, sensational, publicised, etc. The discomfort of contradiction can be shunned with a single click of a mouse, and one can bathe in the self-validating mires of similitude. You don’t get wiser this way, just equally dumb. The combination of 1 to 3 mean that people tend to form self-validating enclaves of similarly interested people. Basically, the more i can interact with people of similar interests, the less i’m going to bother about people of dissimilar interests. With the world wide web, people can immediately access similarly minded people. Th...

One of the richest couples in the world, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, have pledged to give away 95 per cent of their fortune to aid projects. Do you welcome the support of philanthropists or should governments do more? - bbc You could say that philanthropy is not unlike saying an 'our father' and '10 hail marys' as penance and then going out and doing what it takes to be given the same penance for absolution another day.  It is a small fee one pays to go out and screw the people for far more.  At the end of the day, viewing philanthropy as 'philanthropy' misdirects people from questioning after the justification for the existence of the filthy rich by way of getting us to thank them for giving back part of the loot.  Philanthropy serves to maintain a system that requires philanthropy as a means by which society is periodically relieved of the consequences of said system. In that, philanthropy is an investment by the rich to...

“US anti-gay rights senator Roy Ashburn admits he’s gay A conservative US state senator who has voted against gay rights measures during his 14 years in office has confessed he is gay.....Mr Ashburn said his votes reflected the way his constituents wanted him to vote, not his own "internal conflict". ” source: BBC If that is true, then it is laudable enough. Putting aside his own proclivities to be representative is indeed praiseworthy - or perhaps he liked the benefits that comes with being a senator enough to confine his sexuality to the disrobing room. But then again, I often wonder why it ought to matter if an anti-gay rights or anyone for that matter lives a life other than that which s/he vociferously promotes. People might say, you have to practice what you preach. To that, I would say, ‘you are in a better position to preach if you’ve had good practice in that which you stand up against, especially if one is able to learn from her/is personal practices enough to l...