Sheep on the right, sheep on the left

It's just gotten on my nerves a lot lately how people will hardly ever thumbs down a video of someone they're subscribed to. It's like they say "this person made a good point once so all their points must be good". It's like blind patriotism only instead of mindless allegiance to a country it's to a person. I can't stand when people are obsessed with celebrities and it's just as bad if not worse to be obsessed with an internet celebrity as it is to be obsessed with some actor or actress in Hollywood. It's also pretty annoying how people are soooo far to the left online and soooo far to the right politically in real life in my situation. On the one hand I have people saying "censor everyone who disagrees with liberal ideas!" and on the other hand I have "everyone who doesn't agree with the bible is going to Hell!" In reality neither should have an effect on politics but sadly both do for maximum restriction and lack of freedom. I consider myself moderately on the left so it's no surprise that I think that people on the right are loony for the most part how they protect the rich and deny people's rights based on their religious preference but I find the FAR left to be pretty annoying at times.

A friend of mine recently posted a picture on facebook about the "double think" of liberals. Frankly I think it needs to be said. Everyone knows that conservatives are insane but the "liberals" aren't exactly a shining beacon of perfection either.

To make it a bit simpler I highlighted the things I agree with most in green but I'll go over each one.
1. I don't believe that race is a social construct. When I refer to race I'm talking about the physical features of people who are native to specific regions of the world. Obviously there are some people with different bone structures and skin tones than others. I don't however believe that it's right to say that one race is more good or evil than another. Good and evil are clearly subjective and not solid facts. Can someone have the opinion that one race is "better" than another? Sure, but it would only be ignorant stereotyping.

2. I do firmly believe in evolution and it's clear that some people have greater skills in certain areas than others. This does not mean however that people should be treated poorly for their lack of skill.

3. I don't believe that police should be the only ones with guns. I believe that common people should be trained in safety courses for arms use. Most police officers I have known of are sadistic control freaks.

4. I don't believe that school standards should be lowered. Minorities are likely just as smart but lack the proper environment to thrive more because of economic factors than for racial ones.

5. Stereotyping may have hints of truth at times but that's more coincidence than anything if you ask me. It leads to false assumptions a lot of the time and that hurts the person doing the stereotyping as well. I've never found the "gingers have no souls" thing to be funny.

6. I think people should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies. If they want to do crack, let them do crack. If they want to be fat, let them be fat.

7. I don't know if dictatorship is bad or not. It'd really depend on the person and I don't know that much about Che.

8. While civil discourse is good most of the time sometimes violence is the only way. I don't know that much about teapartiers other than the mud flinging I've heard from their opponents so I'm not sure what the real story is.

9. I'm sure SOME conservatives use ad hominems but so do SOME liberals. Not sure if they're nazi fascists or not but "nazi" seems to be thrown around a lot as a blanket term for someone unpleasant.

10. I don't think that capitalism is the best by a long shot, I'm more inclined to say that socialism is better. I'm not up with the latest technology nor interested in impressing people with my purchases.

11. Pretty sure Obama didn't get congressional support for the war in Libya.

12. Clearly they're both biased but in different directions.

13. Oppression of anyone is wrong. I don't believe the Islamist are "freedom fighters".

14. I think at this point people have plenty of reason to hate Obama without it being based in race. Any republican, black or white, I'm likely going to consider stupid.

15. Stick it to the man? I'm not even sure what that means. Government has too much power as it is.

16. I don't believe in respecting all cultures. Some are just plain stupid, like Christianity. That doesn't mean I'll disrespect the Christians themselves as people, but I won't play along with their game of magic man in the sky.

17. All racial slurs should be avoided imo as they're offensive and encourage an "us" vs "them" mentality.

18. I see nothing wrong with a flat tax, it seems fair I guess.

19. I'm more in favor of reforming and rehabilitating criminals than just flat out killing them. I'm not really fond of abortion but I suppose I could find it tolerable before a certain time limit. Third trimester abortions are absurd if there's no medical reason. 

20. Solar power is the way to go. Carbon taxes are a scam from what I can tell.

21. Eh this one is kind of iffy. Thinking that gays should be stoned to death etc is pretty terroristic and their religion has tons of equally ridiculous and harsh punishments. I don't know that I'd call it "terrorism" but I'd definitely call it violence and intolerance.

22. Hate speech laws are idiotic. The idea of freedom of speech is to protect unpopular opinions.

23. It's not equal to hire someone based on their race alone.

Lies about STDs

I recently watched an episode of Sexplanations on youtube. I generally like that channel but it seems that the host is spreading a lie about herpes. Not a huge one about the facts of the disease but more so about the "stigma" of STD's. She claims that herpes is stigmatized by the fact that it is sexually transmitted. I whole heartedly disagree! I wouldn't care if herpes could be caught by playing tennis, I'd still want to avoid it as much as possible. I wouldn't care if herpes affected the feet rather than the mouth and genitals. I'd STILL want to avoid it as much as possible. I feel like she's saying that not wanting herpes makes a person "sex negative" even if she doesn't outright say it.

Child Suicides

I just watched a youtube video by JaclynGlenn about a girl who hung herself at age 12 in order to "be with her father in heaven". This is an absolutely horrible story and even sadder it reminds me of my ex's daughter. The kid wanted to die when she was 5 or 6 years old because she wanted to go to Heaven. That is so fucked up. Then I think about how her mother is being a religious fanatic now. She's genuinely putting this child's life at risk for some stupid belief system from thousands of years ago. It just pisses me off that she would go along with something so dumb and who's to blame but her super paranoid husband. They've been watching too many youtube videos about conspiracy theory shit. Not only do they believe in the bible now but they also believe there are aliens in the US government. I literally can not think of anything more insane than Christianity but to add aliens into the mix is just so crazy I can't even express it. At this point I wouldn't even be surprised if they threw Elvis and Bigfoot into the mix. I don't want to be a back stabber but I feel like their daughter shouldn't be with them. The sad thing is that if she were adopted by another family there's a high likelihood of it being into another bunch of religious loons. She already had one set of foster parents that told her that Satan's angels would carry her away if she didn't listen to adults. This whole thing is such bullshit and it's child abuse. Unfortunately the society we live in says that it's reasonable to lie to children about such absurd things.

Rape Apologists Suck

It sadly doesn't surprise me that popular youtube uploaders get mostly thumbs up regardless of what they say. A recent example of this would be thunderf00t's video in which he says that women can control certain factors of being raped. This is more absurd that he would have you think. Wearing a short skirt for example doesn't make a difference in whether you get raped or not. Suggesting that women cover themselves to avoid being raped IS the mentality of the middle eastern extremists and take all the responsibility away from he rapist if a woman does dress revealingly.  What really makes the difference is being in a vulnerable state or not and of course no one wants to deliberately be in a vulnerable state. Sure people enjoy getting drunk but being vulnerable isn't the point of that and by no means does a woman take on responsibility for being raped if she is drunk. Being raped isn't a choice a person can make. It's something that another person has to do to the victim without their consent. There are basically no ways possible that a victim can "control" whether they're raped or not. There are ways to make it less likely to happen but that's no promise of safety. For example, if you're going out to the bar it's a good idea to have friends with you but if you go alone you shouldn't be blamed if someone rapes you once you black out.  Thunderf00t also assigns a "control factor" to women for giving off the "prey" body language. How absurd. I don't even know how to rebuttal something so blatantly wrong. Just because a person looks cautious they are giving off signals that they can be raped? Crazy. He goes on to say that women who want to avoid being raped should never have "alone time" with their date because that would make them more vulnerable and that the alternative is to be so paranoid that you never have a relationship. Gee, nice choices here thunderf00t. Either we can get raped or never have any kind of consensual relationship. Then he goes on to say that people who don't like those choices are being unreasonably emotional. Urgh.

Mission Impossible

Do you ever feel like it's impossible to get a point across to someone because they are just SO dumb or have such a flawed view of reality that you cannot possibly even communicate with them? I experienced this yesterday with an exgirlfriend of my current partner. I have no ill will toward her for dating my partner or in general but she just seems entirely delusional about reality. I was trying to explain the fact that gender is a social construct and therefore not real by using Santa Clause as an analogy for something that people believe in but isn't real. Boy was that a mistake. She claimed that Santa was only not real because people believed he wasn't real but would actually be real if people never learned that he isn't. That makes no distinction between reality and fantasy. She went on to say that there is a kid who she works with who sees ghosts as schizophrenic hallucinations. She doesn't want to tell the kid that the ghosts aren't real because it would be "disrespecting their reality". So she sees this kid's schizophrenic hallucinations as equally as real as her own perception of reality by her own words. That's INSANE! And when I said "don't you think you're being a little dishonest in validating something that you know to be untrue?" she said "well it might not be true to me but it's true to them" and when pressed further she said she wasn't being dishonest but rather "empathetic". When will the madness end?!

Utilitarian Consequentialism

Although I'm hesitant I think I would assess utilitarianism as the best moral philosophy.

The reason I'm hesitant though is because you could easily say something like this:

"There are 10 violently criminal people and 1 saint. The 10 criminals are on one train and the saint is on the other. You can only save 1 train from exploding" Then it would seem that saving the 10 criminals would be the "utilitarian" choice.

However I say that choosing the metaphorical saint could be the "true" utilitarian choice because you have to look at the bigger picture. If you save the 10 criminals it would result in more "bad" for more people if they go unchecked because their bad influence would ripple out and cause harm to a greater amount of people.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of "what if"s like "what if the criminals all changed their ways?" but we have to look at what's most likely. Whether you like it or not, a person's past says a lot about their future behavior. We're creatures of habit to say the least. If someone is a staunch vegetarian their whole life it's not likely that one day without provocation they will suddenly start eating meat.

Also, we must consider how OUR choices affect outcomes. If people are saved based on their numbers alone it says nothing about moral repercussions. It would mean that going with the crowd is always right no matter what the crowd is doing. If we reward people who are good all along even if it defies the crowd it encourages the behavior throughout society.


I don't know if it's possible to measure happiness without something like a survey for each individual to fill out and people could easily lie. Perhaps instead of measuring the happiness felt we can measure the good deeds done. Of course that's also very subjective and somewhat fuzzy but it's far more tangible and perceivable by others.

I think it's legit to analyze what good/bad and right/wrong mean.

Imo "good" is utilitarian by its definition. "Good" is happiness. We say that things are "good" because they make us happy. Sure, you can say that sometimes people are shortsighted and I think that just goes to prove that "good" is truly utilitarian. It's not what just makes us happy temporarily, it's what gives us the maximum amount of happiness. Often choices that make us happy in the short term will make us unhappy in the long run, thus making them actually "bad" choices.

Like the veggies vs cookies argument. Cookies may make us happy in the short term but if that's all we ever eat we will likely regret it because we'll have health problems.

Right and wrong may more or less be a matter of efficiency. If you're trying to mow your yard it's "right" to do it with a lawnmower and "wrong" to do it with a spoon. Applied morally, things that are "right" give you more efficient outcomes of "good" or happiness.

Let's Play The Victim Game!

While I know what it's like to be abused I think that a lot of people out there like to make themselves out to be victims when they're not. Their lives could be perfectly happy but they can take something like racism or sexism and make it a personal problem regardless of never having directly experienced it. These people seem eager to label themselves as victims and have a personal sense of retribution due. Why would they do that? Most probably because they were brought up in a prejudiced environment. One girl in particular comes to mind. She claims that she's half black and so she seems to be a bit conflicted. On the one hand she hates white people but on the other she has inherited white guilt. Neither of these are acceptable. Hating people based on their race is awful no matter what race or races you happen to be. It's prejudice pure and simple and it's wrong. Hating people based on their sex is wrong too. I don't care what the statistics are for rape and violence, it's wrong to say that all men are equally guilty of "oppressing" women. I believe another reason that people like to play the victim game is so that they can have a sense of self-righteousness about their hatred and bigotry. A "holier than thou" thing.

What pisses me off even more is the idea of privilege. While I know that white men for example may have higher chances for "success" in life simply because of the mindset of the masses I don't agree with it. I don't think that racial or sexual privileges should exist. Yet you see people pushing for privilege who are minorities too. They think that just because they're minorities they should get special rules made just for them such as "equal opportunity" for school enrollment and jobs despite the fact that they may not be the most qualified candidate. Ideally companies and schools should be monitored as to how qualified the applicants are and the most qualified applicants get the placement.

Going further it annoys me that many people who claim victimhood will get utterly pissed when you point out what advantages they have because it crumbles their facade. Women for example can manipulate men easily with the mere hint of sex, but this statement is forbidden. Women are only to be seen as helpless, brainless victims. To say that they have any sense of autonomy would be blasphemous. To suggest that women are intelligent and even crafty enough to make the system work to their own desires is heresy. Do I know that women have had the short end of the stick in some cases? Sure, but they're not all brainwashed into subservience. Many like being submissive sexually and socially because they know that if they do they can control the man in their life however they want. It's a sly contract that's unspoken. Sure, there are men who don't give a fuck about what the woman in their life thinks but for the most part those types of men are sociopaths. Normal men want love and acceptance like any other human being and so they're willing to do what it takes to keep the woman in their life happy. If every man were a total abusive asshole and women were simply being victimized I'm sure there would be far more cases of women killing men.  The legend of the Amazonian women might even have come to pass, but it never did because for the most part women liked the status quo of being puppet masters to the men.

This isn't to say that feminism has no upsides. I'm sure it has made the lives of many women much better for those who had more dominant personalities, but simple observation reveals that most women, indeed most people in general don't want to be dominant. Most people are sheep by nature. I'm all for the elimination of sex based social roles but let's be frank here, many people enjoy them.