I despise cruelty in all its forms, even if it is directed towards one “deserving” of it.  Like Nietzsche asks, how is it that we have come to believe that inflicting pain on those who have wronged us compensates us in someway.  Why must we be cruel to those who have been so to us?  If someone does not show us compassion, then does it mean we should abandon showing compassion to them?  If we expect those who want to wrong us to be enlightened, must we not ourselves be enlightened as to how we deal with them.  This conception of punishment that we have must be altered…if for nothing else, then simply for a matter of personal hygiene.  Cruelty is not enlightenment.  Perhaps?

 

To take sides—why? If life is eventually deception, why take sides? By deception I mean that it is plausible that whatever tradition of enquiry we subscribe to is founded on assumptions that may be false or errors or that they simply reflect our fears and psychological needs (if there are such needs).

 

On the other hand, the above can be a stupid stance: how can one not take a stance.  For example, if I make a statement such as I do not respect anyone—how can I side with that, when daily people I don’t even know provide me with my sense of security.  Everytime a soldier falls in battle, his sacrifice is inevitably going to benefit the security of our country and by extension my own security.  If I do not show that person respect, than I am scum.  Also, even to say to take sides is foolish is to take a side.  However, I do contend that all systems of beliefs are exclusionary and as such may be based on errors or untruths.  Every system has an agenda, and everything that is significantly contrary to the continuation of that agend will be relatively easily dismissed proportionately to how much a group needs that system for its own survival.  When it comes to ensuring our survival, we are prudent, and that may not necessarily always make us conform to truth, all truths, at least.  Truth has to be beneficial for the group as a whole (ex: a country) if not its leaders.  A country will sacrifice its individuals for the sake of truth, but it will never do so itself as a whole, at least most of the time.  It cannot do so, and perhaps it is not untruthful for civilians, as a country to say that they have an unconditional right as a whole to go on existing as a country, but it is this very impulse that will deny the same impulse in people who oppose them.  No one gives power and status away.  And it cannot be demanded by the party that does not have power as it would be demanding the same status.

 

In the long run, nothing hurts the human race; our blunders, our successes all enrich us, or at least show what potentials lie within us.  If nothing else, they increase our knowledge and allow us to form new institutions and alliances.  In the long run, every evil and badness proves indispensable.  Perhaps? Example: AIDS – benefits: increased knowledge, reduced population – these are not morally tenable, but we nonetheless benefit.  Perhaps by studying AIDS, we will discover something that will prove crucial to the survival of the human race someday.  As such even the epidemic AIDS may prove indispensable to our survival as a specie in the long run, albeit at an expensive price.

 

Consider that ethicists would be out of a job, if there were no unethical people.  It is the unethical that thus contribute to the fame and successes of ethicists.

 

It is adversity that makes us shine.  Peace, dull.  In the long run that is.  Perhaps?

 

We are the age of archaeologists: we comb through stars, ruins, molecules—all in search of a few delicious tidbits of knowledge about ourselves and whatever is around us extending outwards and inwards to infinity.

We are the age of the mind: it is the only place left where we are allowed to create, destroy, and create a new.  Hamlet must be in the mind only.

 

What has led to the differing attitudes toward premarital sex and sex in general in America and Iran?

 

Why is sex a taboo?  Why all the hoopla?

 

A man or a woman scrubbing a floor of someone else’s house or bathroom is not considered disrespectful (at least by many), but sex before marriage is…why?

 

Assuming that in the future all sexual diseases are eradicated or no longer affect individuals, how would then adults encourage or force youngsters to abstain from sex until marriage.  What reasons will they give, and what needs do such reasons mask?

 

We are the age of understanding, though we lie on occasion.

 

It is not only about utility but also about taste, especially reverence and devotion.  Family as sacred; wife as a holy shrine; children as holy springs and blessings.  The more sacred a society considers itself, the severe the punishments will be for those who shame sacredness.

 

Shame and Restraint are essential components of Culture.  The more relaxed they are the more one inhabits a Civilization but not Culture.  Popular culture is an oxymoron.  Culture is about selective taste; civilization is about fun, or at least easy fun.  Is the antithesis of Culture and Civilization viable?

 

Hypocrisy—Perhaps is an inevitable consequence of adopting any worldview whatever.

 

Is it possible not to be a hypocrite and still live and have opinions?

 

On Seduction

 

On Consent

 

Is religion simply a childish expression?  Someday it will be.  We will someday read stories to our children that begin: once upon time there was a God, Allah, Yahweh.

 

Religion was an inevitable social phenomenon.  Since man was once ignorant of his surroundings but still a thinking man, he posited the first scientific hypothesis: that behind every lightning, every tremor was the hand of a god or gods, basically forces unknown to him.  We have much to be grateful for in religion.  Our culture, music, codes of conduct, etc.  Many fine things (things we superficially enjoy as we are moderns) we owe to religion.  It was to be.  Man needed to know why he was and why he was suffering and why he would one day die.  It is our confrontation with mortality that made us look beyond—metaphysics.

 

It is not difficult to fool many of the people, at least some of the time.  Like Nietzsche said, people judge a person they first meet by a couple of traits.  Dress conservatively, hold a book, and talk about psychology and many will think you are bright.

 

Treat yourself as an individual with special needs.  That to stay alive and maintain a mode of life, one needs to lie, at least on occasion.  If you wrong someone, move on and try not to wrong others.  And if others should wrong you, forgive them or defend yourself.  And should you get caught and punished or brutally attacked by those you have wronged and inconvenienced, see but yourself in them.  That they too are individuals and have a right to their special needs.  Live individually—though you will probably have many enemies.  But just because one is callous or psychotic does not necessarily preclude the possibility that you cannot form stable and healthy relationships with others, others whom you have no inclination to wrong, because you like them, even if you don’t love them.  Missing another human being is sufficient a trait for you to belong to at least one other person.  Though they will never trust you.

 

You are motivated not by bravery but by the thought that you want to see yourself as brave.  Brave people don’t have to think…they just are…brave.  May be?  You want not to see yourself as a coward.  But in this very thought lies cowardice.  That you did not do the necessary because it conflicted with you other needs; that you chose to be selfish, and even in that you proceeded cowardly: you were afraid of others reproaching you.

 

Everyone is your enemy—everyone.  Everyone has the potential of killing you.  Your father, your mother, your siblings, your wife, your friends.  As such they cannot love you unconditionally.  Unconditional love is a painful myth that you will have to painfully forget and unlearn.  No one can unconditionally love you.  No one.  Whatever you is.  Everyone will value you according to your usefulness for them.

 

Science—a route to cleanliness…maybe?

 

We are never completely honest to everyone, including ourselves, assuming the latter to be possible at all, that is a wholly state of denial.  Consider the ambivalent attitudes we may have about a person due to conflicting needs within us: if such a person has bestowed his or her generosity upon us, we feel obliged and grateful to them.  We may, however, feel troubled by the nature of the gratefulness that is expected from us, and whether such an expectation is eternal—that in effect those who are charitable to us become our Gods; we may be unable to swallow such a thought.  Such a thought, in itself, is sufficient to poison some souls through and through.  Assuming, we are resentful, as a result, and we begin despising a person for so intruding upon our personal space and that too by our own choice or shamelessness at accepting or continuing to accept help from them, those we do not particularly like, we may not be able to divulge such feelings, if we feel we have to maintain such relationships, especially when in a closely knit family setting or close friends. We may have to keep up appearances.  In these cases, the lie (hiding what we feel) is essential to a working relationship, though it may not be a healthy one and may eventually come to poison and consume the resentful individual or poison the relationships between other individuals near him or her.  Unfortunately even feeling such thoughts are indecent and logically and socially we have not acceptable means of forgetting them.  In such a case, the individual should simply practice forgetfulness.  Whatever demons he has, he should ignore them, if he has the capacity of doing so.

 

Though gratitude and revenge (may be in older times) are routes to cleanliness, not all people are noble enough to handle them well.  It is hard for some individuals to show gratitude if they come to see that as insufficient pay back and they come to see their benefactor as more god like; such a condition is further exacerbated if one comes to learn that in old days, benefactors were construed to be godlike and that if a debtor failed to pay back, the creditor could take and do anything to him and his wife and children.  Such thoughts begin to poison one, and one finds that social logic bounds him to show gratitude while social situation bounds him to accept help and perhaps it is his own pride will that refuses to bow to this eternal form of gratitude.  Such an individual, it is sad to say, will end up destroying himself.  And unfortunately, the benefactors have no sense of empathy to see that the very pride that courses through them also courses through the recipient.  As such, gratitude should be of short duration, at least for our present era that has forgotten what it means to obey.  In this world some are destined to be King Lears and others Kents.  Not everyone can be a King Lear.  Like Nietzsche says, we need to learn to pay homage.  And if an individual is poor enough not to bestow gratitude that is not a form of a pay back but as an act of taste and nobility and cute revenge, then such a person should try to outpay his benefactors; though such a course is rude, it may be the only one.  Else the person should refuse further help or kill himself.   But some are further poisoned when they think that they deserve to be killed because of their incapacity to show gratitude.  What can I say?  Man is a cruel animal.  He is most cruel to himself.  Nietzsche was right…some man just become animals that keep on gnawing on themselves once they think they have to obey someone…by showing gratitude or fulfilling promises.  Must they torture themselves this way?  Must they?  Perhaps the benefactors should just leave them alone…for pity’s sake.  Though this is rude too.  Unfortunately, I am just such a gnawing animal.  Signed: the Ressintment Man—par excellence.

 

Words – are cages that turn man into a cruel animal.

Logic – another such cage.  The same goes for Reason, Justice, Love, Honor, and Devotion.  What frightening words they seem to me.  And I feel indecent because I still depend on them.  At least, Nietzsche would say so.

 

Truth is Vodka

And I am no Russian.

 

But I must still drink.

Must I?

 

Ressentiment—it is a disease, but only in the weak and underprivileged.  Who knows may be it is pride; that is at the root of this too.  To will rather than not will, like Nietzsche says.

 

Assuming we constantly harbor conflicting needs, how is it possible not to lie to oneself in order for one to retain one’s sanity?  Consider a simple example of pornography: many people watch it, but many will get outraged if they find out their daughters partook in the making of the films.  People are hypocrites all the time, whether they are selfish or selfless.  Contradiction may be an inherent outcome of being alive.

 

Consider a person, who through his own recklessness gets AIDS.  Is it reasonable to assume that such a person will abstain from further having sex?  Is it reasonable to expect this from him?  No suppose such a person finds himself among women who are understandingly unwilling to have sexual relations with such a person, even with proper protection, would then this person not end up lying?  Should he be prosecuted for subjecting the woman to whatever risk that remains after taking proper protection?  How does society decide what levels of risk are acceptable?  And even if he told the woman and the woman agreed to take on the risk not covered by condoms, why should society allow it given that the long-term outcome is inherently dangerous to the woman and will have emotional harms on her family.  In such cases, deception may be the only viable alternative, at least for the individual.   Given that over sixty million people in America had some form of STDS, is it reasonable to assume that many of them did not lie, and that some got the STDS even after taking protective measures?  Society has to confront this issue of when to allow an individual to take risk without him or her or those who know of their activities to be threatened with negligence torts.  Where does society draw a line between what is private and what is a public and therefore state matter?

 

When we are persuaded by someone though we may not like to acknowledge it, we may as a last resort, restate what he or she is saying as a question.  In this manner, what he or she is telling us looks less formidable and open to criticisms.  Questions are friendly, at least those that corner one into indicting oneself as relentless Hal did in Henry the V with some of his companions.

 

Truth is Nietzsche’s and the Philosophers thumbscrews…on me.  Ouch.

 

Truth is a tough cookie.  Can easily break my tooth over it.

 

Give me lies.

 

On the nature of justice

 

Is justice enlightened self-interest?  One conception of Justice involves agreements between parties of equal power?  Another conception of Justice involves agreements over time: if we as a group of people behave in a certain manner towards another group of people with no regard to a set of standards which operate within our own group but simply power, then a situation might arise in the future, when power statuses are reversed and we may have to have a taste of our own medicine; why should others show us compassion, if we never showed them compassion.  How is this conception of Justice to be maintained in situations when two groups of people both want to survive but to do so one group must be sacrificed.  Will not the only factor that prevail then be who has most power?  Obviously, the answer will be yes; unless if one group wants to willingly sacrifice itself for another group.  But this will always be an act of charity…may be?

 

Case in point: may be the Iraqi Sanctions and the Atomic bombs of 1945.

 

If we wish others to treat us fairly, we must treat them fairly.  Violation of such an agreement simply reveals the beast in man.  Consider, how drug dealers treat each other when one of their members violate an agreement.  They kill (or murder?) each other violently. 

 

What is happening now in Iraq affords us a glance as to why America was hesitant to go to war with Saddam when he was fighting the Ayatollah.   Destroying Saddam then would have created a power vacuum, which might have been filled by the Ayatollah after a civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites.  And since the Ayatollah was already saying America is the Great Satan, it would be foolhardy of the Americans to allow the Ayatollah to gain more resources (is this true?).  As such they sided with Saddam to restore the equilibrium between Iraq and Iran.  Since Turkey and Qurds were involved, an all-out-war between Iran and Iraq would have had the potential of destabilizing the middle east(is this true?).  But at the same time, America did not want Saddam to eventually acquire WMDs given Saddam’s penchant to invade neighboring countries.  As such, the only alternative at the time was to use the sanctions which destroy the lives of the some of the Iraqi’s.  So what would have been the Just course of action, given that all routes seem to end up in a messy place.  Do not help saddam and you aid the Ayatollah to expand his power and subject the Iraqi’s under a forced theocracy and give your enemy power over you, or help Saddam and keep a brutal dictator in place and eventually place sanctions that will kill some Iraqis.  So what is the Just way?   It is possible that I am leading the issue; I am forcing the reader to take sides. 

 

Where there are no conceptions of shame, there can be no culture, only civilization.  The conception of shame is highly developed only in Aristocratic cultures, as conceptions of shame are strongly tied to the taste and distaste of the individual prince or king.  When the King has a harem of women, the harem is offlimits to other people.  It becomes an area of shame, as such of reverence.  No one is to look upon his women, or women under his care. He likes the women in a way that no other man could; that is he raises the women in his own eyes.  He finds them attractive, but this attractiveness in his eyes is more profound and meaningful than the glance of a passerby who simply looks upon his women as sexual objects only –with an evil or bad eye.  This seclusion of women makes them even more appealing to him, and most likey the masses. All the finery that the Kings comes across is predicated upon the idea only he can feel what he is feeling and the others are simply dirty and unworthy commoners.

 

 

When I was younger, perhaps a boy of twelve, I believed that I was not good enough; I presume, that such an attitude is not mine alone, that it is shared by a lot of people at various point during their lifetime.  Tolstoy, in his Anna Karenina said, that there are two kinds of people: some who upon seeing their flaws, looks for perfection in others that he or she can emulate, while others who upon seeing their flaws, only want to see what is bad in others.  I unfortunately was the latter.  As a young boy, my brother was a devout believer in God; he would prescribe to himself all the manners that would be deemed decent and gentlemanly without harboring any illwill at doing so.  I on the other hand was envious of his devotion; I felt lacked that capacity of worshipping my God, and instead of attempting to rectify myself, I did everything I could to spurn my brother.  Instead of learning to love God, I hated him.  Why, I would ask him, do you love my brother more than I; I have never heard God speak to me, but for some reason, I always felt that had he spoken, he would choose my brother’s devotion.  I wanted to compete with my brother for God’s attention, while he simply gave himself up to God.  Something, I could never do.  And thus I hated God, and I am afraid I still do.  Neither I nor my brother believe in God, and yet, the hate is still there.  Because I finally realized that what I hated was not God, but that lacked and thus hated the capacity for gratitude.  This is sufficiently adequate to bar me from any community, atheistic or Godly,