i call bullshit on willpower. it presupposes that your inherent nature as a human being is selfish and destructive, and requires you to fight against your desires, not try to understand and temper them. we live in a corrupt culture, our hopes and fears and dreams and desires have been twisted and used to turn us into selfish consumers, more concerned with what we own and how people look at us than we are in being free and being true to ourselves. i think if you disentangle yourself from that web of fear and selfishness and figure out what you believe and what makes you happy then willpower becomes not the defining trait of a good man, but a useful peripheral tool.

not that i have any real proof, been an interesting line of thinking though. its hard for me to really believe that life is supposed to be a battle against yourself, if one of the basic tenets of our morality is fighting ourselves, who we have everything in common with, what then does this mean about our relationships to others? history speaks for itself i think.  theres got to be another way to relate to ourselves and our world.

more and more i think it goes back to descartes and the concept of a discrete separate self outside of the rest of the world.  it separates animal desire from logical objectivity and puts the latter on a higher plane as what defines and enlightens us.  so if our essence is not physical but divine, or at least separate, we feel no qualms about dominating and taking ownership of the physical. it makes our bodies tools to secure our own safety and continued existence. it also makes willpower a necessity, so that we can fight off the animal urges that get so twisted and used against us by others better at the game. its all been so entrenched in our culture and basic to our thinking for so long i dont know that anything other than a catastrophic downfall of society could change it.

science is the new religion, and it may bring armageddon yet.

a rambletastic current manifesto

the older (and more educated) i get, the less i think that the evil in this world is a conspiracy. centralized power has historically shown itself to be inept at best, by its nature it isnt forward thinking or interested in the good of the whole.  its interests are inherently different from that of yours or mine, because they lie in sustaining and growing its own influence and power at the expense of yours.

the way that power is centralized is it is taken from the hands of many by the hands of a few.  so your money, your freedom, your dignity, and your knowledge are taken from you. what you are told is that it is because these few in power know what is best for you, they are benevolent father figures only looking out for your best interests.  this is pretty obviously untrue i think, as again, by its nature its own safety and growth are its only interests.

so what do you get out of this deal? a lot of fearmongering, distraction, and the occasional outright lie to keep you believing that you are better off suckling the teat of the welfare state than trying to make your own way in the world.   we are worse than slaves, because we would rather be assured gruel than have to figure out how to feed ourselves. the downside is that a man who is not free is not ever able to be a complete man.

before industrialization, forced schooling, corporatization, globalization, and the neutering of a constitution meant to keep those things from  happening this is what america was like:

-we had a literacy rate of over 90% of kids. as in they were reading shakespeare and a whole lot of other things half our college students cant understand now. this is because people want to learn. being trapped at a desk in what amounts to a cell with thirty other kids your age and forced to memorize useless information in a way scientifically proven to make learning difficult kills that desire. forced schooling, as is detailed in a lot of reports and speeches at the time it came about, had nothing to do with education (hint: look up the definition and root words for schooling, it and education are two entirely different things). it had everything to do with preparing people to be fed to the industrial machine. so sit still, be quiet, and do as your told, because we need you in the steel mill, not on the farm.

-people were kept accountable by their communities, not some paper pusher at the center of the world generalizing overall behavior and doling out punishment and reward based on that. this had to be done for a long time, but the fruit of that labor is that people are now being born into a pretty efficient system that makes them buy into and eventually become the stereotype. i dont blame the guy that likes football and doesnt know a thing about politics, i feel sorry for him. he has been told that football is important, he feels helpless to change the real problems with the world and it is a great distraction. thing is if all these armchair quarterbacks would put half the energy into really trying to understand themselves and the world arount them...well for one thing big business and the government would be fucked, and thats all that matters at this point really.  small communities live and die by personal relationships, and i for one would rather be kept accountable by someone that i know and that knows me. making the authority remote and untouchable makes it a lot less likely that you'll retaliate or challenge their decrees.  the implications for personal freedom are pretty obvious here, given the nature of the beast.

-people did real, meaningful work, work that had a more or less immediate impact on their well being. you could see the fruits of your label and feel satisfied with having accomplished something.  thats not the case anymore, and i think the void that leaves in people is among our biggest sources of discontentment. the disconnect between work and a result makes work something you do because you have to instead of something you do because it enriches your life (which incidentally is also because of an artificial scarcity that is necessary to industrial society, thats a whole different post).

now that i've read that whole thing it seems pretty much like disjointed rambling. maybe it is. im still trying to figure it out, every question turns up 10 more questions. gotta start somewhere though.

here is where i would suggest that you start.

http://johntaylorgatto.com

http://ascentofhumanity.com

and read anything noam chomsky wrote. even if you dont agree with everything he says he does a lot to help people with learning to think critically.

future posts to hopefully be a little more to the point and limited to one subject or another.

peace.

josh.