Friday, August 3, 2012

Misanthropic Rant Compilation


Since most of my posts are half philosophy/politics and half angry rants at idiots, I'm hoping posting a bunch of relatively short rants will get a bit out of my system so I can actually focus on some real quality philosophic posts (or re-visit and expand on the cognitive dissonance as stupidity idea) or maybe, even if I get the motivation, to work on a novel.

Idiots and morality: It's wrong? Under which system, Kantian? Utilitarian? Virtue Ethics? I'd wager a good 90% (and probably more) of the population make moral choices the same as a dog, if they have an emotional or instinctual reaction that is negative towards it, it's wrong. Your moral system is on par with a dog. Once (or in most cases, if) you grow a bit, you realize that two rational moral theories can disagree on something being wrong/right, both be fairly reasonable. If two people hold different weights and thus, hold these two moral theories, then you can respect each other, still think each other is wrong, but understand why they believe what they do and be rational about it. This is not the case with dog-morality.  Your emotions are not morality, in fact that is the most disgustingly arrogant thing I could even imagine. In addition, the fact that you believe some natural-selected blob of biological waste happened to evolve to survive and reproduce somehow came with a working, magical, instinctual perfect moral detector, (or rather, only you and people who agree with you have it, everyone else is wrong) is just plain fucking insane.

My music is awesome, Justin Beiber is the best artist ever: I'm focusing on emotionally confused little girls who have just started with frontal lobe development in the title, so let me clarify that this covers the vast majority of stuff you'll hear on the radio. If you believe your song is good, but can't read musical notation, odds are you shouldn't speak. Since the most popular of music today is the repetition of three notes from a machine, odds it's obvious you can't listen. However, I'll give you a second chance, since you can't comment on the instrumentals, we can look at the lyrics. Lets break it down into two sections, message (or story-telling) and prose/vocabulary.  Let us break it down a run of the mill B.R. song: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/badreligion/strangedenial.html  Look, they actually use words that a ten year old wouldn't know and the most important thing, it suits the prose while making perfect sense -- with an important political and moral message. Look at this laughably travesty, I picked it due to being #1 on Billboard charts. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/carlyraejepsen/callmemaybe.html  Pick the most complex word, and decide at which age a child would need to be for them to not know the meaning of the word. Now, look at the overall message of the song, which is a cross between laughable and deplorable. Some desperate skank of a woman randomly see a  hot guy and thus instantly falls for him. I can only say that I can only hope she'll get the relationship she deserves. The even more laughable part: The song doesn't even make sense in most places, even as a god damn metaphor. Just look at the first few verses, verse is as vapid, as stupid, and/or as nonsensical as a Sarah Palin speech. The sad part is I don't blame people who may enjoy the song. But if you believe the song is actually good, well, then I do. This is literally a song that, based on music complexity and vocabulary, should be marketed towards ten year olds. Based on message, should be marketed towards 14 year old girls that 16 year old boys want them to listen to so they can sexually exploit them. Number one song in America.

Free Speech:  Oh God, this is such a wonderful, ripe, field, but I'll try to keep it short. Unbelievably ignorant halfwits love this one. A right-wing asshole says something terrible hateful, offensive and evil on all moral theories. Well, this is called every day, but sometimes they get caught up in the media and explode in a backlash and proclaim that their free speech is being violated because people are mad at them for being vile little cesspools. Fucking... I can't even... fuck. Free speech means you get to voice your political opinions without a government agent putting a bag over your head and a bullet in your brain. It means that, yes, you get to say your sad little opinions without being blatantly censored. It does not mean that people fucking like it for you. It doesn't mean you get to speak at a KKK rally and then turn around and be the fucking diplomat to Uganda, you stupid little fuck. It means that the government can't stop you from broadcasting to the world you're the most pathetic type of person on Earth, not that you're immune to consequences of being a disgusting, evil, bigot, when everyone around you realizes you don't deserve their support, money, advertising, company, or anything else that could be given or taken from you. I don't know if these people don't know what free speech is (given their average IQ, it's very possible) or simply like to use the word because the people who would actually like them are too stupid to know what free speech happens to be. Either way, pathetic.

The Second Amendment:  Do you know a gun-nut, gun lover, or defender of gun rights? Ask them what the second amendment says, and they will say the quick and stupid answer, "The right to bear arms." This is wrong, of course, ask them what it says. The vast majority can't get you any other answer. You see, the second amendment has some very important words in it, here is the second amendment (You can see that it's so grievously long you can understand why the average Republican can't read and remember it) "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Well, lookie there, there's a very important thing there. It's about militias being required in a country where there is no standing army, and that people can have access to weapons because of that purpose. The second amendment is a historical fragment that was intended in defending NOT personhood or personal property, but "a free state", that is, the entire purpose of the second amendment was to be able to act as a quick and dirty military in the absence of a standing army. Now, I'm not even saying that this is an argument for or against the current implementation of the second amendment, or that it should be re-written based on the historical intent, I don't have a degree in constitutional law (amusingly enough, I know of a popular black man who, both has a degree in law and taught constitutional law for years, yet G.E.D. rednecks will proclaim he is destroying it, without ever having read it, much less comprehended it, in their life) but if you don't even know what the amendment says, especially a sentence long one. If you  don't have an understanding of it, and you have an opinion, particularly a favorable one, since morally and socially lack of guns are empirically better  than a surplus of guns, the default rational position outside of constitutional law should more often than naught at least be caution towards gun access. So, if you don't understand the second amendment, and are proclaim you have the right to own guns, you're a god damn idiot who makes democracy a joke. Seriously, if you "love freedom" and don't know the basic idea behind the fundamentals of part of the constitution you proclaim to love, (It's a fucking sentence, mind you, a fucking sentence they need to read and think about) you, literally, are destroying the potential good of democracy. If you had the self-awareness and understanding of anyone without brain lesion, you would disgust yourself.

Big Bang Theory: This show is pretty much the complete explanation of why America's culture, education, wit and grace has fallen so far. To give this part it's full duty, I would need a good ten pages. Let me sum up by saying a few short breakdowns of the show. Any sort of non-mainstream/nerdish reference, with absolutely no joke -> laughtrack, repeat a minimum of 5 times an episode. A bunch of supposedly intelligent PhDs who use the vocabulary of eighth graders, even on the topics of their PhDs. A super-genius who constantly behaves, speaks, thinks like the human version of Peter Griffin. This is completely excluding the obvious portrayal of aspergers and other social and mental disabilities he embodies, since apparently mental  and social disabilities are now the ultimate cue for a laughtrack. Sadly, nerd culture has shifted to where it no longer has the connotation of intelligence, so it may in fact be an accurate portrayal of people who happen to like the things the characters like, as long as we all have the proper understanding they're really stupid people who like these things. Since,  now, the old nerdy hobbies now have a connotation of average or lower intelligence, since the demographic of the types of people who enjoy them have shifted; some have seemed to have kept, like Chess and to a lesser extent, D&D ( and let's be honest, comic books have always been pretty stupid) Playing Bard's Tale 2 (let me be clear, the fairly recent remakes of the same name have absolutely nothing in common with this game) or Zork on the Commodore 64, correlated with intelligence and with good reason. Playing Call of Duty most often correlates with having a sub-par IQ and possible reading disabilities(bonus points for playing on a console... a multiplayer FPS on a controller, wow.) Now, Bard's Tale/Zork and CoD may both be called video games, but Bach and Lil' Wayne are also both called music.  In reality, the writing of BBT  is basically what really stupid people think really smart people might be like. An IQ of 90, leaders of their academic field  yet somehow portraying  the understanding of complex topics they which happen to less impressive of that of a 14 year old who scanned a Wikipedia article.

Anti-vegetarians: Let me be perfectly clear, I am one hell of a meat eater. Every day, without exception, as far as I can remember. I'm sure I've missed days due to the flu, or being severely sick many years ago, but that's about it. However, I accept that the death and particularly the treatment ranging from mediocre to cruel treatment of animals that are used is bad. Now, perhaps in a utilitarian ethical system it's for the best overall, but that doesn't change the fact you're inflicting suffering on creatures which can feel it. Even if it happens to be for the greater good, it is not something to be proud of. If you kill a child to save ten, you shouldn't be proud of killing a child, to do so is utterly insane. Proud that you saved ten, perhaps. Maybe even proud you did something that was very hard on an emotional level in order to bring about more good. But you're not proud of killing a child. If you had a choice between a non-meat meal, or a meat meal, nutritional and secondary ethical concerns being the same (such as taking far more land or energy to produce which had other negative effects, however most of those actually benefit the vegetarian not the meat eater, to my knowledge) the moral choice is the non-meat meal. However, I'll even go so far as to say (or at least be generous and say it, even if it's dubious) that there is justifiable reason to eat meat as is right now. However,  mocking those who wish to reduce the suffering of innocent creatures, and being proud to of being part of a system which causes severe harm to innocent creatures is so evil that I think these people are either true sociopaths, are have severe learning or social disabilities to the point they may not even have self-awareness.  So, basically, throw a rock in America to find one.