"I'm not your bitch." (says Neil Gaiman concerning George Martin in effect flipping off his readers.)
"I'm not at your beck and call."
"I don't owe you anything."
"I have a right to enjoy my life."

Some people show a lack of consideration for others and when called on it, they respond with such. Turning things into absurdly crude white and black in order justify pure selfishness.

8 days without a blog post. (80 hour work week+my marine brother visiting for the first time in 5 years...) A record.... Reading Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy and thinking about the need for people to focus on trying to please their 'over I' or super ego, or to have pride in following their own set ethical guidelines, or etc, instead of trying to please a parent, etc.

Thinking of how essential that is, that a person should question the authority of their parent (such Nevare's father early on wishes he would do...) and become something other than their follower. Neither a follower nor leader should anyone be. Except a leader of one's self. Trying to think upon how essential or not essential this is, to determining the moral character of a person...

Certainly in a dystopia questioning authority is crucial... If I ever have children, and it's looking very iffy... I do think this is something that will really stick with me. A child that still at 10, at 15... seems primarily concerned with pleasing me.... I would think that horrible.

I look at the people around me who have broken moral compasses... It is more complex. Hobb's world is simplified as most stories are. But this idea of having a strong authority figure whom you unquestioningly follow. Who's authority you obey. Whereby your only morality is to please them plays a role.

But comes a day where you become that new moral authority whom you think deserves to be obeyed without question. And your own ethical code is based on what? You who've spent your life trying to curry favor with whoever you perceived as having power over you... It would appear to be a morality based on power.

All that morality means is self interest with some long term forethought. Which is to say instead of just doing are own immediate short term self interest, we perform acts that appear to help the common good to our own detriment instead.

Those who believe in leaders and followers and believe their morality ultimately consists of doing what the leader says, actually do so because they understand that keeping in good favor with the leader is in their own best interest. It is a simple and practical short term thinking. The person who instead answers only to himself, to hell with the evil wishes of whoever has power over him, is actually practicing a much longer term self interest.

It is hard to explain. But within the difference between the two and so on. We have conflicts. Between the differences in moral codes we have the concept of evil and thus we have anger. As one person focuses on longer term good and sees another is ignoring it, they feel their is nothing for it then but force (and thus anger.) While another is focusing on short term good and sees another ignoring it and also feels there is then nothing for it but force (and thus anger). Etc.

So you spend your life trying to curry favor from whoever has power. You're practicing a relatively short term 'morality'. Then once you have power, what is your morality? What did you think their's before you was? Most likely you didn't really think much at all upon it. Mostly they weren't thinking. And neither are you. Following tradition is all. Whatever exactly you've decided to believe that tradition to be. Understanding your mind is like wandering through a mist. Coming here and there across a hodgepodge of somewhat random and contradictory beliefs. Glued together by short term self interest. And justified by a thinking which isn't aware of itself.

And I've no time.

One more time, but with feeling!



I listen with microphones and a 20 pound mini puma from thighs to ear adding his loud purrs to the music.

Holding a cat is like holding a sophisticated amoeba. It's like holding a piece of our roots; remembering the animals that to a large extent we still are. This one acts as if he's got siamese in him. But I bred him because his dad was so smart. (Yes, I know the proper vegan stance on breeding but among other things (don't entirely agree with it) I wasn't vegan back then.) I picked out his dad from a litter because he sat there looking so intelligent. It is an ability we have from an evolutionary standpoint to be able to see to some extent what people are and this cat looked so smart. And most certainly one can (or at least I can) look at an animal and tell about how smart they are. I guess (apparently) not everyone is as good at this. I love to do it. Seeing and contemplating the intelligence in the eyes of animals gives me a strange thrill. Why? (The mystery? Love of intelligence. Love of our animal roots, etc.)

This one (Loki) is so talkative and loving. Loki loves his cat tv (bird feeders) and tries to talk to the birds just like his dad did. He loves hard and then leaves you alone.

I love how he and his mom and sister remind me of our distant roots. But I hate that they're carnivores. Vegan cat food just isn't perfected yet. As of now cats do need meat to survive.

I've chased chickens around a coop to be slaughtered. They know to run. I remember clearly looking a caught chicken in the eyes. It was afraid. That's enough to know. Cows and pigs much more so than chickens. They have personalities. They feel pain.

I think about what I'm doing when I eat. The less you think, the less you exist. I ate meat for 30 years ridiculously thinking it was necessary for good health and that whole time I felt a little disgusted with myself. I know full well what it is to be a meat eater. It's about not thinking. The key to it is to be oblivious, to be stupid, to simply have a big blank spot where your understanding would be. And that blank spot is more disgusting and revolting than the corpses touching your lips. When I realized I didn't need to eat meat or boob juice or chicken periods I was so happy. There was no, "Gee, this might be hard, better make it a gradual process." The process was instant and permanent. (Well except for a bit of boob juice here and there in chocolate etc as being 'pure' would be a pain in the ass where I live.)

It is still the most happiest thing in my life. I don't have to kill anyone (well OK bugs here and there incidentally, etc) in order to continue living myself. How wonderful. How awful when I thought otherwise. I literally had the anguish as in the Anne Rice vampire books.

But still I must turn a piece of my mind off too; as I don't know a single vegan in my real world. So focusing on just how empty people's minds are would just be torturous; especially when they see me, when they see that not only do I not look like I'm about to keel over but that I most likely could kick their ass with one arm tied behind my back. Like politics, it is ultimately beyond the pale.

In politics you can be shocked and morally outraged over and over and over again and eventually, what are you accomplishing?

What makes a Chomsky continue on?

Morals are ultimately utilitarian/consequentialist in nature. IMO they are self interest with some degree of long term forethought. We attempt to predict the future. We attempt to foresee the consequences and on that basis we decide the most moral action. But then of course it's impossible to actually predict the future. The biggest problem of all is knowing how much future there will be. Furthermore actually calculating the most moral action could be very complex from day to day so although the basis of our moral codes are consequentialist, in our day to day living we end up following what looks more like an absolute code.

And with respect to this absolute code, when we 'do the right thing' we can then feel pride with ourselves for having done so. We can feel good about ourselves. We can feel that we've played the game well.

Someone like Chomsky must feel such pride in himself. And so he just keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again. Not much has actually been accomplished but as he sees it, there's not much else he can do.

If I were prominent as political gadfly like Chomsky perhaps I'd do the same. But some of these other people with their little leftist blogs which I skim here and there. It's harder to see what keeps them going. What keeps them so shocked and all. At some point I would think they ought to stray back to consequentialism... instead of being 'deontologial'. All that being shocked isn't changing anything. People keep on treating each other with the same indifference as they do to animals.

Keeping it deontoligical I guess you can continue to feel pride for 'doing the right thing'. Step out to the bigger consequentialist picture and the only reason left I can think of is just feeling pride about being erudite and knowledgeable.

Neither does much for me. But although I'm curious why they bother and don't do so myself and thus (obviously) think it wrong (but not closemindedly), I'm still glad someone is. Personally talking about imperialism in whatever it's guise has become beyond the pale to me though, for the most part.

Beyond the pale in the sense of being a moral outrage overload I suppose. I prefer to be morally outraged about things that aren't so obvious. Because with being less obvious you can at least entertain the hope that people just haven't yet understood it, and once they do, then instead of the indifference they've shown with veganism and politics (veganism just straight up indifference for the vast majority and for politics, too indifferent to ever go beyond the TV and other media owned by the billionaires to hear a different point of view) then maybe (not!) they'd actually change.

The lie of ethics

When typical atheists try to logically explain moral actions in practice all they're talking of really is self interest. Ask them about the ethicality of veganism and it turns out that morality is really just a nice word for self interst.

When you ask a christian about how one determines if an action is moral, it's just a matter of doing as one is told (along with interpreting what one has been told...)

It is a lie for such atheists to use words like ethics and morality. The christian can at least use such words, although they can't back it up with a very good reason why.

It looks like that old ugly idea that atheists are evil, which isn't actually the case at all. Because actually they do moral actions (not in their self interest) all the time. Because actually they don't truly act like atheists. In fact it's not actually possible to live like an atheist.

In fact they are more moral generally than christians as they are open more to the questioning of ugly traditions generally. And whether or not they are vegan they do act in ways that are outside of their self interest... occasionally. But whenever they do so they are going outside of atheism. They are not living as an atheist. But then when they get out of bed in the morning they've already ruined that.

...but that wasn't the point. The point was the lie. Christian ethics can't be taken very seriously. That leaves these attempts at logic which reduce to self interest yet are called ethics. It is a lie upon which our society sort of wobbles... Wobbles as although that's about the best people can manage to express/argue about, there is something very real other than that which is going on, which is making us act in ways that cannot be brought back to self interest or "god said so".

But it is such a hazy, fuzy, haphazard thing which is going on; a thing that these people can't express, s that of course we mostly do just act in our own self interest. A very short term self interest.