The Lesson We Didn't Learn From Hitler

The lesson we didn't learn from Hitler is this: that Hitler was harmless on his own. The millions of people that listened to him, that put him in power, followed him and carried out his orders -- they're just as much to blame, if not more. Without them, Hitler would have been just another harmless crank ranting about the Jews. We all know one, some crank ranting about Jews -- a drunken uncle, the creepy old guy down the block, whatever. Harmless cranks on their own are, well, harmless. It takes the entire mechanism of society, government and military to turn a harmless crank into a Holocaust. If they had all just laughed at him and his ridiculous notions of racial purity -- for when you subtract the atrocities and the genocide, what's left really is quite laughable -- he would have been powerless. Maybe he could have become a serial killer or something and still personally taken out a few dozen Jews / gypsies / homosexuals / non-Aryans but a few dozen against a few million is a staggering difference and, dare I say, acceptable loss. Instead, the people gave into their worst instincts, allowed themselves to be led by fear and swayed by nationalist fervor, and a black mark on human history followed.

Because we do not want to admit that the people were responsible for allowing Hitler to be Hitler and not just another crank, we demonize the man. Hitler is the closest thing to the personification of evil in my society, and yet again I stress that he was virtually harmless on his own. There will always be people like Hitler. Rather like how single celled organisms come together cooperatively to form more complex lifeforms such as ourselves, and yet we cannot stop rogue cells from going cancerous and destroying that which they are a part of -- so too will we always have people like Hitler. Rogue elements even in paradise. What we won't always have is the sheep-like drive to be led by these rogues, these predators, to do their bidding and elevate them above us. The reason we won't always have this characteristic is because either we will eventually grow up and stop doing it, or because we will follow the wrong cancerous leader straight to complete annihilation.

Just something to consider during a quiet moment of reflection.

On Morality (An excerpt from "Things I Have Learned")

If you flip a coin, and it comes up heads, that is right. If you flip it and it comes up tails, that too is right. It is the nature of a coin that if it is flipped it will be heads or tails. If you flip a coin and it comes up “rainbow trout,” that would be wrong. But that cannot happen, because it is simply not in the nature of coins to do such. Anything that actually happens CANNOT be “wrong” in any sense that is meaningful to the universe at large. There is no “right,” there is only “right for me.” No, not even that, just “seems right to me.”

Religion is NOT the basis of morality. Morality evolved from the necessity to distinguish between White Hats and Black Hats; once certain impulses have negative connotations and others have positive ones (say, the difference between the feeling of hunger and the feeling of orgasm) the world gets divided into Right and Wrong by the individual. This tendency was co-opted by societies as bodies in themselves to preserve their own structure through the creation of laws and rules. There's a reason every society on the planet has had a taboo against killing another one of Us - a society that allows its members to go around killing one another won't last. Killing one of Them, on the other hand, has always been, if not openly encouraged, at least not particularly discouraged. The problem is where Us ends and Them begins, something every society and individual has to judge for themselves.

Some people will try and argue that there is some sort of Universal-Morality-By-Consensus: “Every society in human history has considered murder WRONG. Therefore, murder is intrinsically wrong, aka EVIL.” But already there is a magic trick going on in the words: literally, murder is "wrongful killing." Note how an intrinsic "wrongness" has at this point crept into the definition of the word, so you can now offer the proposition "Murder is intrinsically wrong" and technically it's true, when in fact there is still nothing intrinsically wrong with KILLING per se. And in fact, this is where the difficulty in making it a universal law comes in: what’s the difference between killing (which is okay) and murder (which is bad)?

The Problem of Definition has again reared its ugly head. Everybody has different views of the same abstract concepts (Plato’s “perfect forms”). For people thousands of years ago, human life was sacred, but the folks in the tribe over yonder hill weren’t really human, so it was okay to wantonly murder them. In the middle ages, human life was sacred, but non-Christians, or people not of one’s particular sect of Christianity, I should say, weren’t really human, so it was okay to torture and enslave and murder them. In the pre-Civil War South, human life was sacred, but slaves weren’t really human. To your average sociopath, the only real human is the sociopath himself, or herself. Proponents of the death penalty think convicted murderers aren’t really human. The Nazis didn’t think non-Aryans were really human, and they considered their mass genocide to be nothing more than a large-scale pest extermination. But on the flipside, Vegans and their ilk have expanded their concept of “humanity” to include all members of the Animal Kingdom. For that matter, most people consider their pets to be honorary humans.

So you see, human life is sacred to everybody, but no one agrees on what a human really is. When we say “human,” we really mean our tribe, our species, our nation, our family, our race, our gang, our pets, whatever. The abstraction “human life” is the same, and everyone considers it sacred, but the definitions are always different. In the end, it all comes down to Us vs. Them, with wildly differing subjective views of what constitutes Us and Them. The Problem of Definition prevents human word-magic from ever becoming completely real (think of Orqwith bleeding over into the world and be glad) but it also leads to some major misunderstandings. Here we see that almost EVERYONE considers the killing of a member of Us to be intrinsically WRONG, but who is in the Us is entirely a matter of perspective. We create these abstract notions to explain the world, and then turn them into concrete cages with sharp borders. The universe knows no absolutes but we always try and turn an infinite scale of gray into black and white. It is how our minds work, both a great strength and a great weakness. The Double-Edged Sword strikes again!

Five Franchises That Need To Have A Free-Roamer Made

Free-roamers, or "GTA clones" to the jaded masses, are open-ended video games that progress in a non-linear fashion while giving you wide expansive areas to play in or just explore. In some of them you are a grim and gritty urban gangster type that goes around jacking cars (ie Grand Theft Auto, True Crime, Saints Row) in some of them you are super-powered (ie Infamous, Prototype or the half-dozen Spider-Man games). Or else you can be an alien (Destroy All Humans), a mercenary (Mercenaries) or just a kid trying to survive prep school (Bully). Many popular franchises (such as The Godfather, The Simpsons or the aforementioned Spider-Man) have been developed into free-roamer video games. Even Jaws got one. Here's a quick list of some that haven't and should:

1. The Prisoner. Nuff said. This would be more like Bully where you mostly traverse a smaller area on foot, since the only vehicles worth jacking in The Village would be those little golf cart things. And of course that bicycle. Probably story mode would entail some new Prisoner (Number 114?) who has been kidnapped to The Village, taking various missions (some from those who want to escape, some assigned by Number Two) while trying to escape. The good ending? You escape. The evil ending? You become the new Number Two.

2. Snake Plissken. Another no-brainer. Set it in a new futuristic post-apocalyptic wasted city (like Detroit or something) and set Snake loose in it. Some macguffin of a plot where the government sends Snake in to the city to retrieve something. Lots of side missions. Most of the amoral character-types that protagonize these games are third generation carbon copies of Snake Plissken's badassness anyway.

3. Ghostbusters. This one is so obvious that I can't believe a Ghostbusters game just came out and it's not a free-roamer. You're the new Ghostbuster recruit, drive around town in your Ecto vehicle and bust random ghost events. Story mode would be something suitably apocalyptic.

4. Batman. Spider-Man got a bunch of free-roamers. Superman got a (terrible) free-roamer. The Hulk's even had a couple. Batman's the only major superhero left. And what cooler city to free-roam in than Gotham? What cooler car to drive than the Batmobile? Zip into the sky on bat-lines, glide around with your cape, this practically writes itself.

5. Philip Marlowe. Set in 1940s Los Angeles. Written in the same over-boiled neo-noir style of Max Payne. The main story mode would involve the big convoluted case that Marlowe is in over his head in. Side missions would be smaller detective jobs to pay the bills and interesting mini-games. Travel around the city in taxis and try to avoid being doublecrossed by beautiful femme fatales.

It isn't a franchise or a property but I also have a great idea for a free-roamer called Law Abiding Citizen. I'll save that for another time though.

There's A Razor-Thin Line Between Genius And Lame

SELF-IMAGE (as expressed in Castlevania song titles)

wicked child / walking on the edge
heart of fire / poison mind / out of time / nothing to lose
dead beat / demon seed
a man who knows too much
clockwork / dance of illusions
battle with chaos
underground / message of darkness
pressure / nightmare / anxiety
revenge
cursed memories / wandering ghosts
the tragic prince
new messiah

The Gender Politics of "LOL"

"Lol" is more girly than Hello Kitty pajamas and having a womb combined. If you're a guy and you use the phrase "lol," you are no longer a guy. Sorry. You could be the most manliest, strapping lumberjack type -- wrestling crocodiles with your teeth, with seed so fertile that every woman you even glance at bears pentuplets -- and if you use the phrase "lol" you are no longer a guy. It's done. A dude that gets his dode chopped off and parades around in three-inch heels and mascara is more of a man than you are at that point.

A Brief Refutation Of Law

You ever know someone who didn't break any laws? Any laws at all? I don't mean the obvious ones like murder and rape and arson and so forth, I mean any laws period. Someone that never drove faster than the speed limit, never drank while underage, never used any illegal substance, never bought a bootleg DVD or downloaded pirated software. Never engaged in oblique sexual practices in areas where said practices were illegal. Never turned without using a blinker. Never, ever, ever broke the law. While you are out looking for this hypothetical person I am going to move ahead with my argument by assuming that this Ideal Law-Abiding Citizen simply does not exist.

Next. Imagine murder was made legal tomorrow. Are you going to go out and kill someone just because you can? If arson was legalized would you start torching shit? If rape was legal, would you be out raping people? Okay, but don't joke about it because my mother might be offended. Zing! My point is, if you were inclined to kill, burn and/or rape, chances are you would be inclined to do so even with it being illegal. How do I know this? Because these kinds of things happen every day everywhere. On the other hand, I wouldn't do any of them even if they were legal. Why? Because they are wrong... to me, at least.

Personally, I have an internalized ethics / moral code that guides me. I don't need a Mystery God to damn me, I don't need The State to imprison me. Punishments are for children. I have my own code and I live by it, and when I break it the knowledge that I fucked up stays with me forever and I would say it is punishment enough. There is no need for law.

Eh. When I was drifting off to sleep last night this was more eloquent.

The Earth's shape and a divorce from belief

(January, 2006)

I had this novel I wanted to write sometime in the late 1990s where the protagonist discovers that the Great Conspiracy’s deep dark secret is that the world is really flat. A secret society (I think I was going to call them the Brotherhood of Eratosthenes or something lame like that) has been keeping people deceived for centuries. Columbus? In on it. Magellan was killed when he discovered the truth on his own voyage. Lindbergh? In on it — and his child kidnapped and murdered when he threatened to spill the beans. Amelia Earheart? Another casualty of the code of silence. The moon landing? Faked. The real map of the Earth is the one used in the symbol of the UN with “Antarctica” actually the icy border of the flat Earth (presumably to prevent the oceans from running off.)

I never wrote it, and probably never will — mostly because I couldn’t think of a good Why — why lie about the shape of the Earth? Cui bono? But that being said, I like to use the flat earth as a good example of the way we let beliefs dominate our way of looking at the world. For all I know, the world really is flat… if they lied to me about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy I can’t rule out the possibility that they are lying to me about other things as well. I’ve never traveled around the world, I’ve never personally seen the world from space, and what other empirical evidence do I have for believing the world is round?

But before anyone jumps down my throat because I said the world is flat, understand that I don’t believe that. I accept as the most likely hypothesis the round world rather like although I have never fooled around in a particle physics lab I accept the existence of subatomic particles. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe anything about the shape of the Earth at all — based on my own information I cannot form an opinion, I can only accept the consensus reality. I think that most likely the world is round and will continue to hold that as my model of the world until I am proven otherwise — but if they flew me out to the edge of the Earth and I peered over it, I would switch my model with relative ease. After Santa Claus I am never making that mistake again.

The truth is, we know next to nothing about reality as it IS (and, if you accept quantum mechanics it appears that at the base level reality IS nothing that correlates with our own experiences) but are constantly guessing, theorizing, making it up as we go along. Thousands of years ago the best guess we had was a flat earth at the center of the universe with the sun and stars and planets fixed above us in some sort of inverted dome. But, confusing the map with the territory, we are very reluctant to let go of our pet theories and world models — consider what happened to Galileo when he found better evidence for the heliocentric model of the cosmso. Remember that they burned Bruno for suggesting that other planets might have life on them. This was in the era when religious thinking, inflexible and trapped in dogma, dominated the world — but even in scientific thinking paradigm shifts do not occur until most of the old guard dies off. We are stubborn and do not want to change the way we think. In a world that is in constant change this inflexibility is our chief downfall.

[Fwd: Fwd: fwd: The Chain Letter Of Mystery And Vexation!]

This is not your run-of-the-mill, harmless, chain letter. Oh no. This is the Chain Letter Of Mystery And Vexation ! This is an electronic transcript of a chain letter someone found in their late grandfather's belongings. Apparently, the grandfather and nine of his friends received the chain letter while still in college back in the 1930s. They all scoffed at it, and all of them threw it away -- except for the grandfather, who was trying to build up the world's largest collection of chain letters so he could get into the Guiness Book Of World Records. None of them continued the chain, not believing in the powers of the Chain Letter Of Mystery And Vexation -- and within 70 years, they were ALL DEAD!!

A woman in Denver, Colorado didn't break the chain, and received a huge raise at her job -- FOUR MONTHS EARLIER!!

Two parents in Tampa, Florida broke the chain -- their son was born with a congenital heart defect. When the son received the chain letter 15 years later, he sent it to ten of his friends, and the next day he died of heart complications. But -- HE WENT TO HEAVEN!!!

A man dreamt that if he broke the chain letter, his plane would crash. So, HE TOOK THE TRAIN INSTEAD!!!!. Actually, I'm not sure what the point of that one was.

Anyway, this is the Chain Letter Of Mystery And Vexation!!!!! Send it to ten (10) of your friends as soon as you can, to receive good luck. If you don't have any friends, try e-mailing random people, or your congressman. If you decide to be a skeptic and break the chain, be warned -- the Chain Letter Of Mystery And Vexation will cause you to regret your ways!!!!!!

So hit the forward button already!

Disconnect

I go through my days in a daze. Ignore the unintended wordplay and vibe with me. There is no clear connection between one moment and the next. Instead of following a linear narrative I am adrift amidst coincidences, synchronicity and Pavlovian repetition. There is no clear connection between one moment and the next, and consequently I wind up repeating the same things over.

Unable to hold my timeline in my head, I am constantly extrapolating the present moment out to fill the whole. I remember a poem I wrote a long time ago, where the gist of it was that when it's winter, in my mind it has always been winter. I remember the poem but I don't remember writing it. There is no clear connection.

As a result of this fog, I can only practically remember the last two, maybe three years of my life. Anything before that enters into the realm of myth -- half-remembered snapshots as faded and yellowed as actual photographs, and my own written record. I pore over my old writings, trying desperately to remember being the person that wrote them, but there is no clear connection.

At the present I am not paying attention to my surroundings and circumstances. I am lost in my own head, confused and constructing narratives to explain how my karma led me here. As this present slides into the past, I am already there in the future, reading these words with detachment, trying to recall where and when I wrote them. What I was doing, thinking, feeling. Trying to connect one moment to the next.