Excerpts from "Things I Have Learned"

Since 2003 I have been keeping a log of ideas, points, refutations and theses called Things I Have Learned. Some of it has been spun out into real essays, some of it is being saved for my 800-page Crackpot Manifesto. Here are some small pieces from it.

If you knew someone was going to die, you’d be nice to them, wouldn’t you? Remember that everyone IS going to die, and act accordingly. Pity is not a weakness, but the fear of weakness is.
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The ruling class pass laws against certain behaviors and activities called "vice." Vice means "everybody does it but no one is supposed to admit it." These are a convenient set of laws for the ruling class: as they control the justice system they need not worry about their own vices while at the same time they can use the vice laws to imprison people when necessary. On an individual scale dissenting voices can be discredited or silenced; on the scale of entire populations this provides for a large and booming prison labor business.

The ruling class is comprised of two factions: the "conservatives" and the "liberals." The conservatives believe that the people can not be trusted and so must be kept firmly under control. The liberals believe the same thing -- the only difference between factions are the proposed forms of control. That the people must be kept controlled is never in question. The alternative to this false dilemma -- the evolution of consciousness, both in the individual and in groups, so that the people can learn to take care of themselves without control -- is marginalized and dismissed. And why not? If people did not need to be controlled there would be no need for a ruling class to control them.
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The problem with the Global Village is that the number of village idiots the village has increases exponentially the larger the village gets. By the time the village is global the crowds of idiots chanting nonsense all but drive out anything intelligent or even intelligible. Indeed, this is exactly what we have seen happen with the Internet. It is perhaps this sense that the barbarians of nonsense are perpetually at the gates of one’s conscious world that leads to the obsession with things being “real” or “natural.” (Note the popularity of “reality TV”, hip-hop’s cultural obsession with being “real”, and even the marked demographic increase in the natural foods market as a few examples of this trend as it appears in different forms.)
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Conspiracy theories fall apart because they assume conscious human decision where unconscious human behavior is a simpler and more probable explanation.

The true conspiracy is the conspiracy of self-deception, which we’re all in on. Every character is a part of the Order.
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Honey isn’t natural— bees make it!
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What if the alphabet was not comprised of letters, as it is today, but rather was made up of tiny aspirin tablets?
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The Pax Romana was a sham. the whole duration saw many wars of conquest or to quell rebellion (as well as numerous reigns of terror on the home front). The idea that wars don’t really count if they don’t take place on native soil became the foundation of the American Empire.
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Comparing the parallel aspects of Oneness and Nothingness to binary numbering: In binary the principal importance of a one is that it is not a zero and vice versa, whereas the importance of the One and the Void is that they are the same. The gift is the curse. The punishment is the reward. Life is a double-edged sword, but still, it's just one sword. The chicken IS the egg.