Re: OT: Dogbert's New Ruling Class Newsletter, April, 2005

Kryten wrote:

"Scott Stephens" <scottxs@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

Kryten wrote:

You wouldn't want to insult me or insinuate I'm a neurotic, tormented, Nazi, fascist, paranoid, militant loon, now would you? ;-) 


Nope, because you could well be on the news as yet another serial killer.
Man leaves trail of dead cartoonists and comedians!

If there is a market for their foolishness, more would just take their place. Its the left, BTW, the ilk of Ted Kazinski, and the several leftist comedians have "joked" Republican politicians should be killed. Conservatives don't do that.

Not *lots* of people, Kryten. Just *certain* people, Kryten. ;-)

And they're all going down on a little mental list of people you hate with murderous intensity.

I should keep a list to prove they exist. A "vast left-wing conspiracy" to match Hillary's "vast right-wing conspiracy".

Now you say I hate with murderous intensity. No, just loathing and disgust, and fear, for leftists advocate theft, and occasionally assassination.

it pretty much nails him as left-leaning, because the left is behind the efforts to purge "values" and morality from the culture.


So other people are not up to your own high standards.

No, Libertarians and I do not advocate the imposition of moral standards by law, I leave that to Nature. Besides, I'm more liberal than conservative in tolerating the stupidity and vice of self-destructive fools.

I'm not. If you asked me how many gods are false, I would say all of them.

The universe exists, it has a quantity of space-time real estate, and it operates on Principle, which we, to the best of our knowledge, describe by physical law. This is very close to eastern religious traditional notions of "God".

Science and philosophy evolved from religion, the lexicon (god, soul, spirit, et) has been politically corrupted. But I don't want to discuss religion further.

But now you've grown up, you can believe there is a huge commie conspiracy manifesting itself through comedians and cartoons?

what do you consider "good"?

Avoiding murder, incest, rape etc at the extreme end and not ranting abuse at strangers on the internet somewhat down the scale.

Would you kill someone trying to kill you? Would that be good? Are you a pacifist that would never fight a war? Do you advocate government theft (taxation) from one group to another, for whatever whim a politician offers the favored interest as a bribe?

You know where I'm headed. You've made arguments based in social-proof, that popularity, "normal", is a moral standard. The horrors of any communist; Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, et. rationalize their atrocities with the "good intentions" of the public interest.

So do the religious, BTW. Each religion, inculcated as children or by dynamics of a conversion experience, develop a cognitive and emotional dynamic which makes a sense of their God real, and popular, normal too.

You, in your resort to popular sentiment, are as religious as those that believe morality is based on the traditional beliefs in divine (Biblical/Koran/Torah) revelation.

What everybody believes is "normal"?

By and large most normal people might concur with the shortlist above. 

Ah, I see again, social-proof. "Most *normal* people". "Popularity".

You don't know what you believe or why. Aren't your a shallow poseur, living the life you think the average of those you see around you live?

Been there, done that as a teenager. Then I tried to be a good Christian, because they claimed the Bible was the universal, objective way, truth and light. Not the depraved fashions, the whims of the mob that defines what is "normal" and what is "deviant".

Then, after seeing conflict and mere men practicing mere tradition a bit more politely, but still with selfish delusion, I dared to start using Reason and logic.

Perhaps you aught to grow up and start thinking too. Its hard, and scary, and takes courage and the shallow poseurs you abandon will hate you for dishonoring and abandoning them to their ignorance and depravity, but its never to late to reclaim your soul from the city gutter and live as an intelligent, rather than an emulating being.

Start here: http://www.businessballs.com/ifpoemrudyardkipling.htm

The poem epitomizes what it means to be independent and principled.

Oh, that I could "bear to hear the truth [I've] spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"

I feel convicted! I have far to go.

I picked a bad for instance. But there are militant, genocidal, nihilistic aliens. I know there are! Saberhagens Berserkers, Dr. Who's Daleks. I'm sure there is more. The universe is no doubt full of them!

Of course, they are there as mere plot devices for the sake of an interesting movie that people would go to see. Stories are often portrayals of good versus evil. The good life forms need some evil ones to win over.

"For the sake of an interesting movie that people would go to see"? You've got it backwards.

Artists make movies with that theme because those themes first are part of the human experience of life, and as artists, its in their hearts and they have a passion to express it. And people will see them because they are part of the life experience, and are meaningful. If I program a fractal generator to make pretty, intensely complicated and profound patterns, or perhaps a film of a cloud chamber from a particle accelerator, the novelty would wear off non-scientists and mathematicians in several seconds, though those interested could spend years or even a life-time contemplating them.

A pornographer makes pornography because he is full of lust and serves those who are full of lust. "Modern" artists make ink splats for poseurs, conditioned to believe the excuses celebrity critics and professors give them for its "popularity".

So there it is, nasty aliens are not there as part of a conspiracy to disrupt interplanetary genocide, but to fill movie seats.
....
The hero of the movie is one the few to notice the vast numbers of commies being elected all over America.
....
I don't think you'd be able to sell the script. Hollywood can sell aliens in spaceships, but not commie conspiracies.

On the contrary, there is a commie-conspiracy movie in production! I'm anticipating the film release of *ATLAS SHRUGGED* =)

I was disappointed to find "We the Living" was only available in Italian. "The Fountainhead" was ok.

Though not directly about the shallowness of popularity and poseurs, "Blade Runner" has some interesting similarities with Fountainhead; Individuality, reverence for life, heroic struggle, government that doesn't value "unpopular" lives, rather than objectively, defined as human.

Heroic, anti-communist, individualist themes do sell. "Lord of the Rings" sold damn well!

In these films, anyone, not celebrities, if they choose independence and courage, having a sense of the value of their own soul has the opportunity for heroism or infamy if they fail.

Its too bad there are so many celebrity films, which feature one super-human celebrity with mystic powers, held out to be worshiped by his inferiors. Your typical Arnold Schwarzenegger film. Interesting, even profound, but celebrity films don't make the possibility of heroic courage any closer to us than fantasy.

Ah, so you have something in common with Nietzsche.

Yes; reverence for my soul, a creepy intensity, an innocent cynicism, a desire to be a first-cause, a creator, like many engineers. A desire for excellence, a disgust for the common and mediocre, a desire for a better world (by different means). The will to continue in spite of crippling suffering, even the will to power (for different values; not social dominance). Yes, I'm proud to say I have much in common with Nietzsche, I've learned from him.

But it took Rand to really bring those themes into focus; Rand is explicit where Nietzsche is poetic.

And where do you find inspiration? The atheists that tell you you are a meaningless, dirty bag of saltwater? The fashion page of the newspaper?

I would get scared if physical threats were made.


Well, most people get nervous around socially inappropriate behaviour.
If you're having a good natured chat about electronics, someone cracks a joke over the barbeque, and a complete stranger hurls abuse about how you're an evil ***, 

I didn't call you an evil ***, there you go agin twisting my words.

I said the ilk of Whoopy Goldberg, George Carlin, Al Frankin, et. were commie bastards. And I've said a couple times already, I'm going to practice being more civil and dignified, and call them scoffing left-leaning nihilists.

I would tune out.

Well can't you just tune out humour/comedy/propaganda?

I don't ask you to tune out your opinions. Some people I don't bother reading the posts of. You could do the same.

You obviously enjoy argument as much as I. And I doubt any of us here advocate or practice initiating violence against other. I hope anyways.

Some people just don't take a joke well, because they've been victimized. I've been (still probably am) persecuted for being different.

If your being persecuted for the intense and creepy behaviour you don't want to change, then maybe they feel you deserve it.

Ah, you mean my aesthetic and political opinions and my expression of them? Persecution based on "unpopular" personality and opinion is deserved?

I doubt your a bully. Perhaps your one of those wimpy appeasers that sucked-up to the bullys and cheered and spit with the mob as they were beating up those that didn't conform to social fashions.

I think my scowling is cathartic


As much as you think it makes you feel better, it isn't making anyone else feel that way. Getting it out of your system puts it into ours. 

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot y'all owned the Internet! How rude of me!

For example, would you read Charlie Brown as a boy exploring the childhood trials and joys of everyman, or as the persistent abusive social humiliation of a kid for the entertainment of a cruel public?

Charlie Brown is a depressed loser, who occasionally sees a ray of sunshine. One comic strip (roughly paraphrasing) has Linus pointing to the sky at the clouds, saying, 'Look! there's the Sistine Chapel, and Moses parting the Red Sea, and...'. Charlie Brown looks at the clouds and says, 'I just see a doggy, and a kitty, and a pony'.

That epitomizes Schultz' sense-of-life expressed in Peanuts. Disappointing, small, frustrating, pathetic.

I prefer Linus to Charlie Brown. Notice, Charlie Brown was Schultz main character, not Linus.

If you want the right to find certain cartoons violently offensive, okay.
Equally, everyone else has the right to find them quietly enjoyable without a torrent of intimidating aggressive abuse.

Its not like I'm spamming thousands of e-mails to the uncaring, or begging OT threads. I'm expressing an opinion, which you label intimidating aggressive abuse.

That's more left-leaning sophistry; label dissenting opinions as hate-speech to censor dissent.

You employ the same methods as left-leaning scoffers. You label those that dissent as crazy, violent extremists spewing hate-speech and intimidate them with threats of mob-intimidation.

"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
....
you'll be a Man, my son!" - Kipling, If

Perhaps you're right, it appears this place is desolate of kindred spirits. I should leave, and you can inherit it. Mr. Kryten.

Scott

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POLITICS, n.
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. - Ambrose Bierce

There is no giant behind the devastation of the world—only a shriveled creature with the wizened
face of a child who is out to blow up the kitchen because he cannot steal his cookies and eat them, too. - Ayn Rand
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