Monday, March 19, 2012

Awkward silence or boring stories

After several minutes of sitting quietly with someone at work yesterday, he commented that he didn't say much because he was shy and would rather listen that talk. He said "My father told me I wouldn't learn anything new if I talked more than I listened."

It wasn't until this afternoon that I realized that I really wasn't shy, I just have no tolerance for useless information. But the trick is deciding what information is useless. I often find myself listening to long detailed stories about how someone almost hit a deer on the highway, or how a storm tossed around the plastic furniture on their back patio. I cannot imagine what expression those people saw crawling over my face. I'm sure if they knew how I felt, they would probably never speak to me again.

I must remind myself why they are telling me their stories. It has nothing to do with the subject at hand and everything to do with sharing the emotional experience. An exchange is taking place in the expression and feedback that culminates in an pseudo-shared experience that creates a feeling of affiliation and validation.

These are some of the key tools of bonding that take place in groups. If main-stream religion mastered this we would all be worshiping something, but it's no different than regularly repeating ritual Initiations in fraternities, sororities, gangs, clubs, religions, or other group types. The compulsion toward worship is rewarded by feeling a little less lonely for a while. The brilliance of religion is that they mask this emotional outcome under the guise of "feeling the spirit of the Lord."

Very lonely people tend to tell very boring stories. I'm very lonely here in the Midwest where there are very few atheists, and there are very few people here who want to talk about real, serious issues. They are content to create drama among their tiny social circles, all the while being robbed and enslaved by those at the top.



Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Natural selection, medicine and predators

The Death of Socrates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Socrates 
Some humans claim to believe in an afterlife yet they pursue extreme measures to prevent access to what they claim is an eternally blissful existence after death. Some humans believe that government should be smaller and shouldn't interfere in the private decisions of individuals or their families. There are humans who are against big government, but at the same time want government to interfere with the private health related decisions of individuals and families.

There are some humans who believe that preventing pregnancy through contraception is unnatural, but at the same time pursue the artificial preservation of the appearance of life in a human who is unable to independently move, speak or contribute to one's own survival.(1)

Nature has nothing what-so-ever to do with medicine. Medicine is inherently unnatural because nature relies on continuous trial and error through genetic mutation, to determine the most effective and efficient form of life to reach the top of the food chain.

Life without death is unnatural. Death is alleged by some humans to be a transformational passage to another existence, but the only evidence of contribution after death left behind by a corpse is the return to the earth of accumulated nutrients, and the collected messages communicated to the remaining living who can still act upon the recorded wishes of the deceased.

The energy expended by the pursuit of medical cures for diseases and methods of correcting deformities is considered a grand pursuit within a herd of animals that slows down for its weakest members, leaving the entire herd, including the strongest members, vulnerable to attack by other predators, in this case other humans.

The "grand pursuit" is the creation and preservation of life at all costs. In the short term of a single generation, this appears to be the respectable thing to do, after all, people don't usually bother to consider their environment beyond their living children and grandchildren. Your great grandchildren will have no fuel to sustain their lives because there will be far too many of them, and not enough resources.

The human predators know this, so they are using economic models to enrich themselves. They don't follow the rules they make for you, they only need for you to believe they do. They can hide from you in their gated communities.

The human predators are those who promote overpopulation of humans by denying access to birth control. Human predators claim to be against big government, but when elected, create laws that allow the government to interfere in private health care decisions. Human predators deregulate food safety inspections so more people become sick and are left with medical bills that cannot be paid off in one lifetime. Human predators demand that people on life-support be kept sustained, perhaps in agony, however partially, by machines until the most money possible can be drained away.

No one wants to die, but no one wants to wither away in agonizing pain, immobilized in a pool of their own waste, developing painful bed sores, slowly drowning as their lungs fill with fluid, watching as their life-long hard-earned savings disappears overnight, and their children lose everything and go into debt taking care of them.

So why do the human predators deny birth control and physician assisted suicide? (2) Because there's too much damn money to be made! Praise the Lord!"