Cornellius

I'm just going to quote my own comment: This video is utter nonsense. This asshole obviously is calling for political action, like Bloomberg banning large sodas in New York. The only real cost of a big mac is: its retail price and the fact that it's not vegetarian, for those who are against meat... but again, it's by no fault of big macs, it's your choice whether you buy it! Oh, big macs have calories because they have meat, and they have bread? They're salty? Well don't binge on them if you don't like that! What an effing pretentious twat! I know, I know. I don't have to change people. I am my own proof. It's a challenge I have on my hands.

Strawman, and in the subsequent replies, arguments from adjective and statements of personal opinion masquerating as arguments. Nothing more pretentious and pathetic. I think you should get the f--k out of here. You're pissing everyone off and I'm sick of your foul attitude. I think you're a rotting brain in a dwarf's body, looking for people who will bow down to your faux-intellectual ramblings so you can feel tall without looking into yourself. I've taken screen captures. If you reply with more of your crap, I will contact the head of this board. But I honestly think I should do that now, because you deserve to leave and never come back.

I've read that confusing paragraph twice, mind you. It really made my stomach turn. You're a fogging faux intellectual, in my opinion. I just had to mention it. It's not important right now. What matters is what you said. I'm not going to bother replying thoroughly. I was simply talking about sentience, the possibility of taking account emotions in evaluating the killing of animals. My example had to do with the VERY SIMPLE question: What is its sentience? Yes, he used arbitrary, and yes, it was in the context of inventing some category. That doesn't have anything to do with anything. Maybe I'm wrong, but I saw that he had slipped in an adjective to disqualify the process of evaluating sentience. And plain and simple, squeezing in "this isn't some game" at the end was an attempt to disqualify my entire efforts in pursuing the truth in the debate of meat consumption! What point are you trying to make here? Did you want to seem smart for using the term "quote mining"? Dear sweet lord! I apologize, I was having a painful evening in the first place.

You could write a song called Be a Vulture. It would go "Be a vulture! Be a vulture! Be a vul be a vul be a vuvulvuvuvuvuvuvututure Be a vulture! Be a vulture!Be a vulture! Be a vulture!Be a vulture! Be a vulture!Be a vulture! Be a vulture!"

The song is "about" Salbutamol, an anti-asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease medication. It is marketed as Ventolin among other brand names. This information is from Wikipedia.org. Asthma meds have little to do with psych meds in terms of effects, except for its standout side effect of Tinnitus, "a high pitched ringing in the ears" that's not uncommon in subjects, which are a nice metaphor for the subtle, sustained brain grilling that antidepressants and antipsychotics and such stuff can bring about. Zoloft doesn't just put you to sleep when you're at work. It's screeching and working hard in there. I hold as a crime their attempts to put me on meds instead of being honest about the possibility of self-knowledge. With every one of those evil public sector therapists, it's the same thing. They bring me to their office, they babble on about how great they are, trying their best to play with your unconscious and keep you there. Soon the psychiatrist, without even trying to make any sort of diagnosis, comes up with "hey, if I had a magic wand, I'd use it to make you better, but what do you know, I don't have one, so we're going with brain numbing pills. See you in a month sucker." So what, self-knowledge is a superstition?!?! Even the psychologist doesn't give a frick. With the internet, eventually you do start to get into self-knowledge, and then you're stupid, so you bring it up with the so-called mental health professionals, and all they do is pretend they get it. They got you by the balls. Now they're free to take all the complexities you've been working on and with their authority, destroy where it's coming from, passing off your catarsis as their magical work.

This talk of net life is truly fascinating, Ikiru fan. I really haven't heard that kind of perspective before. Very eye-opening. I'm just wary of the possibility that we're already exploiting this exact utilitarian-ish (I don't know) justification for murder. For some research, I'm thrilled to mention the Werner Herzog documentary Happy People: A year in the Taiga, where a trapper compares hunting with animal raising. He speaks of dishonesty. He speaks of hypocrisy. It can't be ignored that animal raising is an assured betrayal; moreover, the barriers of the coercion may well come to the cow's consciousness and lead to neurotic cover-up behavior, a sort of maddening internalization. It might be a crime to carry animals' emotional experience from the natural realm of fear and pain into the realm of depression. Just paths to explore. Thank you man.

Sentience is easy to measure. What are the mental functions of the species you're studying? What is part of the experience of said organism if you put it through a "coercive" agricultural process? Does the situation communicate pain, panic, misery and sheer terror in the mind of the organism? OF COURSE, it all comes down to emotion! It's an empathy thing! Heck, screw the details! 99% of the time, ask yourself this question: Does it scream to death or shriek when someone shoots a nail in its head? Arbitrary is an adjective and "This isn't some game" isn't an argument, and both sounds like the perfect oppressive statements for you to respond to the cows' calls for help in a slaughterhouse when they're walking around in feces with bruises from steel bars and bull horns. I'm not trying to make an argument here. I just want to say that you are starting to creep me out.The state of the animal world has no bearing on the validity of secular ethics, same thing for veganism. In fact, philosophy itself is an escape from primitivism. Back to meat. You see that penguin in your profile pic? If one day the chance exists that you have a sadistic penguin fixation and want to eat penguin flesh, well then, you support its slaughter in the here and now! These nutritional concerns are rock solid and rather concerning. But in my case, I'm all for the discomfort of busting my ass looking for compromises. Come on man, you're two steps away from becoming a true peace advocate! Ahem. In terms of convenience, Soylent and its homologues has got to be the greatest invention ever in the fight against famine. Have that plus filter straws and you're all set!

Briefly speaking I think the real challenge in debating Veganism is to sort through all the emotional defenses sprayed out by carnivores. Not convoluted. Just hard to get over. I think carnivorism endures on because of specifically, a blindness. The taste of a medium rare steak with worcestershire sauce overpowering the prospect of ... well, legumes and tofu. It's not even a matter of giving slaughterhouses glass walls. It is to deconstruct the practises necessary for scrambled eggs and big macs and milkshakes and shepherd's pie to be possible. Because for that sensory clutter to be possible for our lives, we need every day to take millions of animals just as sentient as our loving meowing cats, and put them through Nazi extermination camps. And just as an off-topic remark... Chef Ramsay treats his cooks like cattle.

Me likey.

It's the mortar shooting people down from within a walled fortress on a mountain top.

"The Social Network (2010) is The Shining (1980) for the youth of today." The post was written during a rather manic all-nighter. In the end, it was a very maladjusted liberation of my intellect. I went to sleep, and upon waking up four hours later, drowsy, I was pulling my hair out, thinking what the hell kind of mess is that I just wrote. I saw that manic episode as an unconscious, unstoppable self-intoxication. I felt insane. I rushed to delete the post and put into a total quarantine the imput of my emotions into my conscience, because of how they ruled over me during the evening where I wrote the Social Network post. "It's like reality split open. Anything can happen." -Through a Glass Darkly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ULTblYOxa4 I suffered from an unfathomable pessimism and distaste of my actual self. I told myself I was slipping into a seizure-like mental breakdown. In sleep was my hope for a reset button. It was the dizzy heights of a hole under the rug I had just pulled in the red pill moment of writing the post. And I think that's what made the manic episode so painful at the time. I just thought I was going to fall back down. I just thought that the supercomputer of my unconscious mind would go Skynet on me and nuke itself out of existence. But was it just my sister? My mother? My father? The grip of the family? Well, that may well have been the most powerful instance of my family living inside my head, inhibiting my individuation. Like Truman crashing his boat into the edge of the Sea Haven dome after a life in limbo. Where's the damn door?! Any views on what the source of the problem might be would be appreciated. Am I going insane, or individuating at long last?

Speaking from recent experience, I think narcissism has its roots in acute isolation.

I guess he wasn't used to dealing with a celebrity that makes a virtue out of transparency!

I recently had a dream that tells the same story as what I'm talking about here.

I should warn you about the nature of this post. It connects with the call I had with Stefan two days ago, especially the theme of living to stand up to evildoers. It kind of runs deep. And it feels obsessive, for one. Growth anxiety rears its ugly head; taking the red pill makes me deathly afraid that some of the engine noises outdoors might be the chopper to chop my head off, that FDR was Goldstein's book, and that the real world... was Julia. But I'm sure some can see the beauty in the whole thing. The Social Network is The Shining for the youth of today. And Mark Zuckerberg is Danny Torrance without the sheltering help of his imaginary friend Tony and Mr. Hallorann. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the dusty skeletons inside the hallway of the Overlook hotel, sitting in a sea of (get ready for it) spider webs, in one of many frightening moments of a movie that gets scarier and scarier, and as self-knowledge deepens in the audience, deepens in resonance. Being the genesis of this post, I am genuinely inspired by the characters Eduardo Saverin and Erica Albright in the 2010 film The Social Network. Although they're imperfect, riddled by some defenses, which is fully to the advantage of the movie, there is an aura of peace to them. A priceless ability to stop and be observant. Receptive. Open, vulnerable. It's that vulnerability that turns out to be displaced, as Mark Zuckerberg brutally exploits the opening itself. And leads to more isolation for everybody. Inflicts his isolation on everybody. That exploration is in the framework of dealing with loneliness difficulties I've been busting my ass off to sort out. A feeling of insanity, a feeling that I'm slipping through life without a single human soul to hang on to through meaningful contact, right through to the event horizon of the Sulaco airlock. I mean the edge. Forget that one. If no one's available, I think that the living inspiration of people who are just about my age, of young angelic beings, is exactly the change I needed from many of my previous inspirations, namely the Greek composer Vangelis. My fanhood comes down repetedly to old artists past their prime. Vangelis. Robert Smith from The Cure. Thom Yorke from Radiohead. The deceased Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman. Ridley Scott. Aphex Twin. Roger Waters. Jon Anderson. What an eerie discovery. And a beefy stronghold for the floodwaters of my conscience. I'm 19 and sometimes, yeah, I feel old. Old as can be. Actually older than that. The overall direction of those artistic discoveries can only be of a neurotic origin. A highly stylised extension of my family life. A deadly F117 Nighthawk in the Baghdad sky. A Mark Zuckerberg enterprise of social isolation and mortar shelling. It doesn't feel like a distraction from prior abuse. It doesn't even feel like a vindication of the world. It feels like an orgy of catartic wonder. Which makes it all the more dangerous. The universe of the old folks infects me with the gangrene that my personal prime may be past, in my case my childhood, and that nothing is worth trying anymore. That apparently, I'm ashes of a burnt fire. A log that ended up axed up by Jack Torrance and his creepy face of impending catastrophe. Who acted out on his defenseless family. Conversely, the two young folks in The Social Network are the Redrum alarm yell. They don't exclaim MURDER, just as Wendy in her sleep, is simply subjected to the continuous utterances of her dissociated son's and her own unconscious: Redrum, redrum, redrum. They're the characters in a movie, slipping unnoticed past my defenses, exploding the LETHAL quicksand stronghold of defenses, right from within. And they could have been Mark’s saving grace. But he was quick to turn on them. At the moment, I'm not Wendy, the mother in The Shining. I haven't run out of time, I know I haven't. No. I'm not the old neurotic who dresses like Goofy. I'm Danny Torrance, winning against my dad in the maze. And I can't wait to be in that Snowcat heading away from the Overlook hotel. Leave this other maze of bitter coloured carpet and papier peint patterns, jet set furniture, tamed Apache ornaments, and peaceful hallways, with its nuanced and acquired taste that no child has even a hint of warming up to. Not to mention, a gold room shrieking of history, and an ocean of blood covered up in vain behind an elevator door. I wish not to discredit any of the old artists I mentionned above. After all, Mr. Kubrick made The Shining, and I believe that the man is the Stefan Molyneux of filmmaking. The one man in his business who took the red pill in every one of the real worlds he woke up in, and ended up with the ability to focus his sight with certainty, and probably died an anarchist. But from where I stand, if I had one instance of thanks to give out, they would be for Mr. David Fincher. The modern aura of The Social Network. The cinematography. The truthful, the honest, the clear-as-can-be depiction of the teenage partying/planmaking clique-intensive frenzy of the Occident. The sharp and contemporary music that transcends the right moments. The themes of digital escapism. The suave acting. The choice to include a time-lapse shot of San Francisco downtown at night, to give the audience breathing space with brilliant efficiency. Fincher's hairstyle. That all of this. Built a bridge between the important themes and my conscience by telling the tale of the 21st century world that STILL in fact lies before me, clearing the path clean for the Redrum awakening that might well save my life today. Stanley Kubrick was really into dream sequences. These entire movies are both dream-like messages of absolute anarchistic liberty. And liberty has all the side effects needed to fix the world. p.s.: Stefan Molyneux is Mr. Hallorann with several obvious nuances (for one skin color) and one (fortunate) difference. And rationality is... well, you know. p.s. 2: If there's anything at all pompous or narcissistic about my post, please point it out. But re-uploading it, I just adopted a "the hell with appearances" attitude. I mean, the truth is this: last night, I wrote all that. I suppose I'd feel better if I said that the post was a Bohemian Rhapsody of my written carreer so far. Shine on you crazy diamonds. Fin

That'd be great Stef Your call!

Too right. It's alarming to see, that people actually fall for the story that Somali pirates are a threat. I mean for god sakes. They have documentaries on tv about those next-gen navy destroyers with the fancy little precision turret on the front deck that are deadly to specifically small boats, and then we're supposed to believe that you can't even get the Captain of a freighter a pistol! XD Fire hoses? What?! Isn't that just absurd?! Oh my god! And we DO fall for that! Come to think of it, Captain Phillips is also pro-gun control propaganda. You have the Dubai traffic control lady from the us military or whatever telling Captain Phillips to have his fire hoses ready before help arrives in the form of a tremendous military operation. "It"s mommy here. Yeah dear son, prepawe your little fire hoses while daddy arrives to beat the crap out of the bad bad kid with the plastic boat." Whoa. Don't tell me this is also feminist propaganda.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. Captain Phillips is a statist propaganda flick.

Decades - Joy Division - Closer The most powerful song about war and possibly child abuse Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders, [/font](All that's left is the scars blamed onto age) Here are the young men, well where have they been? (What became of them?) We knocked on the doors of Hell's darker chamber, Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in, (We became adepts of evil, but we were pushed to where there was nowhere else to push forth) Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying, We saw ourselves now as we never had seen. (The scenes of war replaying inside our heads, watched from the wings in the theater of history, watched ourselves in the midst of those scenes) Portrayal of the trauma and degeneration, (To us evildoers, these scenes are the lowest point of our plight) The sorrows we suffered and never were free. (The mental scarring we never could heal) Where have they been? Where have they been? Where have they been? Where have they been? (Where has all that abuse led them?) Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever, Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase, (Death chasing every living soul now takes all the space there is in our lives) Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings, (The practice of war points at parental rejection, and when we were expelled into the world, weary hearted) Open then shut, then slammed in our face. (The terror of wandering, abandonned, unable to get back in) Where have they been? Where have they been? Where have they been? Where have they been?

Perfect lyrics. Ambitious. Says so much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtHRFusfqmM It doesn't matter what I say You never listen anyway Just don't know what you're looking for (What are the unknown feelings binding you to me?) Imagination's all I have But even then you say it's bad Just can't see why we disagree (Don't want me to come up with this song? Can't see why you'd rather remain in this hole with me) Casual conversations how they bore me They go on and on endlessly But no matter what I say You ignore me anyway I might as well talk in my sleep (I could weep) (Might as well talk to the ceiling) You try to make me feel so small Until there's nothing left at all Why go on? just hoping that we'll get along (We're holding ourselves back) There's no communication left between us But is it me or you who's to blame? There's nothing I can do, yes you're fading out of view Don't know if I feel joy or pain in searching (Now I find I'm not attached to you; is that why we drifted apart?) And now it's all been said If you must leave then go ahead Should feel sad But I really believe that I'm glad I really believe that I'm glad I really believe that I'm glad (The song worked, and I'm walking away from a wreckage) _____________________ School (Crime of the Century) http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=435568 Songwriters: HODGSON, ROGER / DAVIES, RICHARD I can see you in the morning when you go to school Don't forget your books, you know you've got to learn the golden rule, Teacher tells you stop your play and get on with your work And be like Johnnie - too-good, well don't you know he never shirks - he's coming along! After School is over you're playing in the park Don't be out too late, don't let it get too dark They tell you not to hang around and learn what life's about And grow up just like them - won't you let it work it out - and you're full of doubt Don't do this and don't do that What are they trying to do?- Make a good boy of you Do they know where it's at? Don't criticize, they're old and wise Do as they tell you to Don't want the devil to Come out and put your eyes Maybe I'm mistaken expecting you to fight Or maybe I'm just crazy, I don't know wrong from right But while I am still living, I've just got this to say It's always up to you if you want to be that Want to see that Want to see that way - you're coming along!

I think "wild" in this case... is synonymous for free.

How do you personally deal with the frustration of being in an insane culture that insults the individual at each turn? I'm bringing up this topic as a framework for an ad I thought about listening to Stef's latest video which is on Male Disposability. The most putrid ad I've ever been subjected to. So, it's about an online gambling site with a lot of great casino-style games to play. The name escapes me. In Québec fashion of glorifying the police, the Sureté du Québec, in every one of the countless state-funded movies and ads, two stoic policemen knock on the door of a noisy house to see what's up; a large woman and a larger man standing behind her. A particularly sophisticated and diva-like woman opens the door (and seems completely undisturbed from the surprise of seeing two bulky state thugs.) First, the female policeman says why they're here, to which the woman replies there's really nothing bad in here, but the male policeman insists earnestly that it'll only be a moment. The three of them get to the living room where there are several men playing obsessively with live casino machines all over the place. The male policeman's earnest airs dissipate as he stares with the same air of obsession at the games room, like he's comically absorbed by some gambling addiction. And I don't remember what kind of condescendence the female policeman comes up with but she mockingly fists his chest armor and heads out while he just stands there. And while we're at it, there's a different example of male disposability in advertisements, which I believe is ABSOLUTELY RAMPANT and impossible to get away from once you turn the tv on. There's an insurance ad or something where a bunch of coworkers in an office dining room in costumes are obsessing about some technical issues. First it's four guys arguing about the best thing to do and they can't even find the solution! And they all look so clumsy. They have like brutish medieval costumes and one of them is a bull that can only groan. Then the camera centers on the diva-like female coworker at the other edge of the room slouched suavely with her mermaid tail on her table, coming up with the simple solution that is offered by the advertised company. One last. In a different ad, a man and a woman are taking their break around the watercooler of the office, cups in hand. The man is the generic bulky male, the woman is the AUDACIOUS, CALM AND CONFIDENT female diva that basically does the same stuff as you all day, but better. So, she asks him for an estimate of her age, and he fails, giving her 5-10 years over, so she shoves her cup full of water in his face and storms off with a sadistic smile, after which once again the male just stands there staring, this time as if he was consternated that he might be a monster because a woman shoved water in his face. And he does nothing. And we're supposed to laugh. I see one recurring theme in all those ads. TAMING MEN. And apparently that sells stuff. At the end of the day, I don't blame the admakers, I blame the culture that their ads singlehandedly define for me. Because I know that the crushing insults they display are accepted by society. Culturally accepted. It helps me condense the frustrating offence into the simple pain of making conscious what it really boils down to. Manipulative destructiveness.

Oh my god, thank you so much teabagger.

Amazing replies Kevin and meeri!

1. I never said piracy had anything to do with anarchy in the peaceful sense and I would never. 2. My point is that for the filmmakers chose to make a movie about a story with Somali pirates, and Somalia of all places is anarchic (not to mention that the godlike saviors of the world in the movie is embodied as teh US military), the movie speaks against anarchy! I'm talking about a representation of anarchy, that's all. Period. 3. You have no reason to think I condone hijacking. This is silly, but here what I was saying. Art is an argument for essentiality. If the hero of the movie goes nuts because a representation, albeit flawed, of anarchy is hijacking a ship, then you're dealing with anti-anarchy propaganda.