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Tales From The Bizarro World
Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares
Tales from the Bizarro World
Back in the 1960s, DC Comics introduced a parallel Earth called Bizarro, where everything is inverted and everyone is insane. They even have their own wacky Superman, which ends up being a formidable foe of his sane counterpart in our world.
Or not in our world perhaps. Some events make us question in which of the two we might actually be living in: what if it was some version of Bizarro?
Over the last decades scientists have been researching certain quirks in our brain, or cognitive biases, that make us act in rather illogical and peculiar ways under certain circumstances. Since Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first introduced this notion in 1972, a growing body of evidence suggests that we may not be as rational as we once thought. And this impacts many areas of our lives, including our beliefs, attitudes towards certain events, political affiliations and so forth.
A less scientific explanation for our illogical behaviors is that they may simply be the result of our imperfect human condition. That, or something in our environments could be poisoning our reasoning (we would argue, quite acutely in the case of Keynesian economists) similar to what happened to the Romans after they started using led in everyday life artifacts.
Whatever the reason, consider the examples presented below, drawn from the fields of economics, politics, health, society and even religion. Now, to be clear, we don't mean to pick on any country or anyone in particular, much less on their beliefs (except for those Keynesians). Remember, in the Bizarro World everyone is mad so presumably we are all in this together.
Let’s proceed...
- If you want to market a new medicine, first you need to spend years in a very expensive approval process to make sure it is completely safe to the public. However, at the same time, any adult can buy a particular and ubiquitous consumer product where it is clearly written in the package that if you use it will eventually kill you and all those around you
- Keynesian economists tell us that in order to get richer we must save less and get deeper into debt
- Obesity is estimated to kill three times as many as malnutrition
- World governments spend trillions on weapons every year when we already have the capacity to blow up the planet many times over. But they always come up short when it comes to cleaning water supplies, providing healthcare, upgrading infrastructure, restoring nature and feeding people
- How does a desert-like region such as Southern California decide to become so dominant in food production? All the water exported in the form of fresh produce, dairy, fresh fruits, rice and so on will NEVER return to that ecosystem
- Hemp consumption can become a destructive addiction; but so can alcohol consumption. Why is only one of them illegal, or, depending on your views on the matter, why aren’t both legal in the same places?
- A google search of “Kim Kardashian” generates 197 MILLION results (we speculate, to figure out what she actually does), just a tad less than the current US President “Barack Obama”
- Some 30-40% of global food production is wasted
- Western leaders, once the biggest supporters of free markets, now spend trillions intervening in the economy. The US government has been the world's biggest employer for many years. The (Keynesian-inspired) theme is “we had to destroy capitalism in order to save it”
- Everyone talks about the need to reduce debt levels, and yet since 2007 total debt around the world has increased by almost US$60 trillion
- Politicians in the US seem to have gotten into the habit of approving major legislation without reading it
- Pursuant to the Eurozone financial crisis in 2010, the Portuguese government was advised by international lenders to implement an aggressive austerity program. But public sector debt as a percentage of GDP ended up exploding as a result, reaching 166% last March from 108% in December 2009 – the exact opposite of the program’s goal. Nevertheless, the Portuguese government was recently praised by the architects of the program for delivering outstanding results (while being told, perhaps unsurprisingly, that more austerity is needed)
- A famous actor passionately demands in front of a UN assembly that world governments take drastic action to reduce carbon emissions and tackle global warming. Maybe they could start with him. Just a few months earlier he rented a mega yacht (complete with its own helipad) off Rio de Janeiro to watch the World Cup in style and supposedly flew his mother and himself multiple times on a private jet while shooting one movie in the US
- A country known as the "Land of the Free" has one of the largest prison populations on the planet; another with "Order and Progress" written on its flag has 19 of the world’s 50 most dangerous cities
- A UK scientist achieves worldwide fame through his widely publicized efforts to debunk the existence of God, while admitting at the same time that creation might in fact be the result of intelligent design
- In China, provincial governments have spent billions building new cities when most of their citizens can't afford living there. Many remain empty
- The Japanese government is so desperate to create inflation that it is printing more trillions of new debt, when even a modest increase in nominal yields will explode its fiscal position
- The West's financial system received trillions in financial support in 2008 to avoid an implosion of the global economy. However, it has since become even bigger and more concentrated, and as such the associated systemic risk might now be larger than ever. The people who designed this financial system are also doing better than ever
- Countries with the most abundant natural resources often have the poorest people
- Most parents unconditionally love their children and would do anything to secure their future. So why are we bequeathing a world with ballooning financial debts, less freedoms, lower education standards and increasingly broken ecosystems?
In his book “1984” George Orwell created his own version of an inverted world, where “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. That was quite a frightening vision.
If we indeed live in the Bizarro World, what does that look like to you?
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...pretty much sums it up.
Talk about bizarro!
‘More Insanity: Washington Psychopaths Consider Nuclear Strikes Against Russia’
and now Batman and Superman are fighting each other....talk about your divide and conquer paradigms, geez...
what are the poor, lost, helpless, sheeple to do????
Next thing ya know, one of the Kardashi-tards will be getting a trans-jenner sex change....oh, wait...
FUCK, everything's all so fucked up!!! lol
;-)
"Parental conditioning is the greatest slavery in the world. It has to be completely uprooted, only then will man be able for the first time to be really free, truly free, authentically free, because the child is the father of the man.
* If the child is brought up in a wrong way then the whole of humanity goes wrong.
* The child is the seed: if the seed itself is poisoned and corrupted by well-intentioned people, well-wishing people, then there is no hope for free human individual." ~ Osho, the book of children, chapter 3
Right. Let Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton program the kids. A perfect society awaits.
perfect society run/ruined by MUTANTS
M.arxist
U.surper
T.reasonous
A.uthoritarian
N.efarious
T.yrannical
S.ociopaths
Wow! So many down arrows for brilliant parenting insights from one of the most incisive minds of the last century.
Walk Away, great and appropriate quotes.
If the seed is rotten, how can a strapping tree grow from it?
Under the rule of parents, the "underage child" has virtually no civil rights--not at home, not at school, not among other relatives nor the general public. It is a condition perfect for learning the ins and outs of tyrannical abuse. Once learned, the patterns of response to abuse, and the patterns of making others respond to you though its employment, are the patterns of social behavior.
Visit sunny Yemen for a good time.
+65536: Anyone who seriously examines habituation has to come away stunned at how powerful habituation is. When parents and others force kids to habituate bogus mental processes (and bogus mental content), the job of removing and/or replacing those habituated mental-processes and habituated mental-content is astronomical.
If you think habituation is trivial, try to unhabituate your ability to walk. Go ahead, try to remove your learned ability to manipulate your muscles and body in the manner you habituated at age 1~2. Good luck with that!
I'm not sure whether undoing mental habituation is easier or more difficult, but it sure ain't easy.
At age four I realized I could not trust what adults told me, and made a very firm, very self-conscious decision to "trust no one". And no, I didn't later create or write for X-Files. That saved me from habituating astronomical quantities of mental garbage thrown my way by all the usual suspects (parents, family, relatives, teachers, authorities, government, media, etc).
I have to assume that if I had not done that, or not done that so thoroughly and as the central rule of my being and personality, I'd be just as complete a clueless fool and moron as most people. Makes my hair stand up when I think about it.
Parental conditioning is the greatest slavery in the world.
Not all parents, just those spawned by the Hippy Generation. The most pathetic of all Generations. Thanks Dad, you fool.
As the article linked above by TruthSeeker2 stated:
The driving mechanisms behind all of the different ways that we are living in Bizarro Mirror World, or a Wonderland Matrix, where everything appears to be proportionately backwards and absurd, is that everything else is controlled by the death controls, while those death controls developed to become more socially successful through the maximum possible deceits and treacheries.
The combinations of the basic facts that there must be some death control systems, and the most socially successful ones have been based on the maximum possible deceits, have been the basis of all the other more superficial ways in which things appear to be backwards and absurd, which include the bogus "solutions" to those problems, which are presented by the controlled opposition groups, that surround the core of organized crime.
From a sublime point of view, it makes sense how and why civilization is based upon backing up lies with violence, which have become the current political economy being primarily based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by international banks. Of course, continuing to "control" civilization through backing up lies with violence, after the development of technologies which are trillions of times more powerful and capable than ever before in human history is an awesome "experiment" for those people who are alive to first watch that being done.
The first generation born into a world that had an abundance of weapons of mass destruction is still alive today. There has been NO TIME for civilization to adapt to that! Instead, the morbid psychological and political habits of the ruling classes, as well as those they rule over, are based on thousands of years of being able to win wars, and to generally be able to apply the methods of organized crime to control other people. That was the way that the current governments of the USA and NATO countries, as well as Russia, and every other society around the world were developed, as the survivors of the history of warfare, selecting for those who were the best at backing up deceits with destruction to prevail. Thus, there is no almost nothing but core groups of organized crime, on larger and larger scales, which are surrounded by various layers of controlled opposition, all of which have become manifestations of runaway criminal insanities.
We can not say at the present time whether the human species will adapt to having created globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. Certainly, at the present time, anyone who is socially successful is so proportionately to them being the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, because the only way that they could be socially successful is by operating INSIDE ENFORCED FRAUDS.
There is barely any "actionable intelligence" that is derived from better understanding the degree to which the entire political economy is based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, other than those responses which mostly continue to accept that runaway criminal insanity, and perhaps find some individual amusements from continuing to praticipate. The only things that would make theoretical sense are to radically revolutionize those systems based on ENFORCING FRAUDS, however, that appears to be so practically impossible as to be pointless to perceive or promote.
It remains to be seen whether or not the human species can adapt to progress in physical sciences by changing their political science, or rather, will commit collective suicide instead. At the present time, the overwhelming preponderance of the rational evidence and logical arguments are on the side of predicting that the human species will commit collective suicide. By and large, it is practically impossible to imagine how to develop better political solutions to our problems, since those would necessarily require better death control systems, while the established systems are based upon the maximum possible deceits, and those systems are surrounded by controlled opposition groups that stay within the same frame of reference of those deceitful death control systems.
As usually the case on Zero Hedge, the article above grossly understated the degree to which we are living in a Bizarro Mirror World. Anyone who has been seriously thinking about weapons of mass destruction will have recognized that the existence of those weapons was due to a series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that some people thought about time and space. However, those kinds of paradigm shifts have nothing yet like that occurring in sciences that have anything relevant to say about human beings, because doing so necessarily runs into a head-on collision with the established systems being based upon backing up lies with violence, which systems are surrounded by controlled opposition groups that also stay within the same frame of reference with respect to basing everything upon a language of lies, which results in everything being done in ways which are totally entangled through almost infinite tunnels of deceits, so that everything ends up being proportionately backwards, in that Bizarro Mirror World, and similarly absurd in that Wonderland Matrix.
On the one hand, there has been real progress in physical science, as demonstrated by the existence of technologies which can do electronics or use atomic energy, etc., while on the other hand, nothing regarding the basis for that has been allowed to have any significant effect upon social systems which use those technologies primarily to become better at backing up lies with violence. The entire history of the industrial revolution was NOT guided by any overall genuine rationality, but rather was directed by the history of being able to back up legalized lies with legalized violence, which served ulterior purposes.
The article above indicated its superficial view of the degree to which we are inside a Bizarro World by this statement:
Hemp is the single best plant on the planet for people, for food, fiber, fun and medicine, while alcohol is the fundamental chemical of organic chemistry. It was BECAUSE hemp is the best plant, and alcohol the single most important organic chemical, that those were subjected to being criminalized. The deeper reasons for those prohibitions are that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, and therefore, in every way, on every level, criminalizing cannabis, and the prohibition of alcohol, enabled organized crime to flourish.
The article above notices the superficial distortions, but is not directing attention to the deeper distortions. All of the potential of the industrial revolution was directed by organized crime, dominating the political economy, for its own short-term profit maximization, in ways which simultaneously maximized the longer term costs from those increasingly insane distortions of ways that the economy developed. The saying that the profits were privatized, while the losses were socialized is actually orders of magnitude worse than most people are aware of, even if they superficially begin to notice that, (while it appear that the majority of them still yet do not, since even authors like that in the article above do not fully get it.)
Not only has political science not been allowed to have any kind of real progress, such as demonstrated in physical science, rather, the politics based on the dominance of the biggest bullies' bullshit world view has ended up almost completely compromising the philosophy of science, so that the philosophy of science is now just as much full of backward absurdities as everything else, because science as social enterprise was dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit just as much as every other enterprise. Since the world is almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, including throughout the dominate natural languages and philosophy of science, it is not possible to overstate the degree to which we are living in a Bizarro World.
Basic progress in science has become that everything intelligible is being understood in terms of general energy systems, where all systems, including human beings and civilizations, are acting as entropic pumps of energy flows. However, during the history of science, an arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory, in ways which reversed the meaning of entropy, as far as that relates to everything else. In my view, the ways that we understand entropy are absurdly backwards, while we are almost totally still taking that for granted, without any critical thought. That is the most sublime, abstract manifestation of all the other ways that we are living in a Bizarro Mirror World, or Wonderland Matrix, where everything appears backward and absurd, because everything is perceived in the most backward and absurd ways possible, while, at the same time, almost everyone takes that for granted.
Inverting the meaning of entropy, by inserting a minus sign into its equations, enabled the measurements of power and information to be expressed as relative positive values, rather than relative negative values. That favoured the biggest bullies' bullshit world view that their systems of backing up lies with violence have relative positive values, rather than actually have relative negative values, which also better enabled the promotion of dualism, expressed as false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals.
The more philosophical levels of the problems would require us to go THROUGH the looking glass of our Bizarro Mirror World, in order to correct our errors. The article above merely arrayed a list of particular ways that human affairs and behaviors appear to be backward in quite bizarre ways. What that may well be so, there is not enough systematic paradigm shifting to appreciate sufficiently the degree to which that is so, and therefore, how any real improvements would not be possible without radical revolutions in the ways that we perceive our collective political problems.
Both the article linked above by TruthSeeker2, as well as the article above republished on Zero Hedge, remain relatively superficial in their presentation of the nature of the problems, and do not come remotely close to going through enough paradigm shifts:
Of course, that is correct. However, there is nothing in the rest of that article which penetrates any deeper into the reasons how and why we have ended up living in such a Bizarro World, where the death controls systems are being done through the maximum deceits, while the controlled opposition to those stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding those problems.
All of the public significant "solutions" to our political problems continue to be based upon perceiving everything backwards, which results in those bogus "solutions" having absurd results, that actually make the problems worse. Meanwhile, the overwhelming vast majority of people want to continue to presume upon their common sense understanding of time and space, despite those having been proven to be totally wrong, as demonstrated by the fact that atomic bombs go boom. Similarly throughout every other area of science that one wants to examine, there has been a series of prodigious paradigm shifts, enabling progress. However, when it comes to anything to do with social sciences, that runs aground on the rocks that warfare was the oldest and best developed form of social science and engineering, whose successes were based upon deceits and treacheries.
Since civilization was controlled by backing up lies with violence, progress in physical science has primarily been employed to become better at doing that. Warfare was organized crime on larger and larger scales. Civilizations operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, as demonstrated by the ways that our political economy is based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, and so on and so forth ... The production of destruction controls production. All private property is based on claims backed by coercions. Money is the most abstract form of that, since money is measurement backed by murder, where the debt controls are backed by the death controls.
All of those basic social facts are presented through the language of the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, which presents their systems of organized lies operating robberies as having relative positive values, when those all actually have relative negative values. A host of false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals are promoted as the dominate social stories in our Bizarro World. E.g., "government versus organized crime," when actually governments are the biggest forms of organized crime controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, which currently happen to be the banksters, so that the existing murder systems back up the existing money systems, while then that money system pays for that murder system.
Paradigm shifts do not change what exists, but only change the ways that we perceive what exists. (Although given enough time, it is possible for changes in the ways we perceive the world to marginally change that world.) The degree to which we are living in a Bizarro Mirror World is far, far greater than the vast majority of people begin to recognize. The few that do, like in the article above, only present relatively superficial lists of social situations that appear to be backwards. Actually, the ways that we perceive the world are as BACKWARDS AS POSSIBLE, due to the history of civilization based upon backing up lies with violence, so that the best liars ended up almost totally dominating everything, including their apparent opposition groups, as well as the schools, and mass media, etc., and indeed, the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites dominated even the basic structure of the natural languages and philosophy of science that most people completely take for granted when they think and communicate.
Human beings live by telling stories, and by somewhat basing their behavior on those stories. However, we have collectively developed the most backward stories that are possible, because of the ways that the historical death controls actually worked. Therefore, it is towards those controls that we should focus our practical attention. HOWEVER, it appears to me that we have run out of time to adapt by going through paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive politics. The exponential progress in physical science continues to drive the growing gap between progress in physical science, without progress in political science, to get wider and wider, at an exponential rate. Therefore, there EXIST globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs, where the overwhelming vast majority of those monkeys and apes do not understand how and why electronics and atomic energy works, and do not want to understand.
Politics continues to be almost totally dominated by old-fashioned religions and ideologies, which adamantly refuse to change their metaphysics to make that become more consistent with progress in physics. Therefore, technologies which are trillions of times more powerful and capable continue to mostly be employed to advance agendas based upon backed up lies with violence. Furthermore, further progress in physical science, IF civilization could survive its contradictions while doing that, could result in technologies becoming quadrillions of times more so than anything which existed in previously known human history ...
Generally speaking, there are no reasonable hopes that human beings are able and willing to change their politics in sufficient ways to adapt to real progress in physical science. Our society is so thoroughly trapped inside of the maze of the Bizarro Mirror World, that it appears to have become terminally sick and insane. The degree to which people perceive everything backwards, and therefore, respond to problems in absurd ways that make those problems get worse, has become almost completely psychotic, in the sense of utterly out of touch with relatively objective facts.
Our political realities are almost totally based upon integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which are now are more and more jumping their rails, to no longer be able to even bother to properly legalized those anymore. The core of that continues to be that the existing death control systems developed to become the most socially successful by being based on the maximum possible deceits about themselves, and that those were then able to surround themselves with controlled opposition groups, which stayed within the same frame of reference as those deceits.
It is theoretically possible to reverse the meaning of entropy, back to what it always truly was. Doing that opens up ways to engage in creative syntheses of post-modernizing science with ancient mysticism. That would lead us away from the dualities of false fundamental dichotomies, and towards using unitary mechanisms, that understood human beings as general energy systems. However, that can not be done without correcting the ways that the concept of entropy has been reversed. Furthermore, correcting the error that we understand entropy backwards is the only way to reconcile our understanding of our world with the profoundly different views of time and space that have emerged out of quantum mechanics and the special theory of relatively.
From a human perspective, it makes sense that human energy systems are controlled by their most labile components, which are the most dishonest and violent people, and that human systems follow their own paths of least resistance, which are their paths of least morality. It makes sense that the world operates it death controls in the most deceitful ways possible. The only things which actually exist are the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. The established systems, which are currently dominated by the banksters, exist because the banksters were the best organized gangs of criminals, that were able to apply the methods of organized crime to the political processes, in order to capture control over the powers of governments, and thereby effectively privatize those powers. Hence, almost all wars for quite a while have been the banksters' wars, which were advancing debt slavery systems with wars based on deceits.
The essential aspect of the BIZARRO WORLD is the degree to which everything is "controlled" by ENFORCED FRAUDS. I put "controlled" in quotes because the deeper dilemmas are that being able to back up frauds with force never stops those frauds from still being false. Therefore, civilization is "controlled" by being able to back up lies with violence, which suffers from its inherent contradictions that the more socially successful those lies can be backed up by violence, the more psychotic that society overall becomes.
The article above listed some of the ways that our society is developing runaway Bizarro World absurdities, everywhere one looks. The article linked above by Truthseeker2 outlined the most important of the current manifestations of that. We are living in a world which has become based on runaway criminal insanities, which are getting worse, faster ... While there is nothing but the dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies, those equilibria are becoming extremely unbalanced, due to the the excessive "success" of the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals being able to dominate everything, to the degree that there is nothing which is publicly significant other than their controlled opposition, which promotes basically the same bullshit world view, and thus, inside of our Bizarro Mirror World, or Wonderland Matrix, not only are the established systems backward and absurd in every way, but also, almost all of the proposed "solutions" to those problems are also backward absurdities too.
By and large, the overwhelming vast majority of people continue to believe in old-fashioned bullshit, and want to do so. Despite awesome real progress in physical science, political science has had no matching progress. Furthermore, it now seems to be politically impossible to actually due so, due to the double-bind paradox, or Catch 22, that what is politically possible depends upon other people, who are too deeply buried in believing in bullshit to be able to recognize that.
The standing patterns of social facts are that the majority of people still believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, while the few that start to doubt that, usually on do so on relatively superficial levels, and therefore, continue to promote bogus "solutions" which are too superficial, and therefore, not only is the world "controlled" by the established systems of ENFORCING FRAUDS, trapped in their inherent vicious spirals of that becoming more criminally insane and psychotic every day, but also, the world is also trapped by the degree that the controlled opposition groups also basically believe in the same bullshit too, and therefore, only promote the same old-fashioned bullshit "solutions."
Not only are we stuck inside of Bizarro World, in which the most BIZARRO aspect is the abundance of weapons of mass destruction, along with the insane saber rattling of those kinds of weapons, but also, the overwhelming vast majority of people almost totally take for granted the ways that they are perceiving everything in proportionately backward ways, and hence, keep on promoting absurd "solutions" which are like driving while looking in the mirror, while not being aware of the way that everything looks backward in the mirror.
My current expectations are that the human species is going to commit collective suicide. Social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence, inside of which the vast majority adapt to that by becoming ignorant and afraid, combined with real progress in physical sciences, enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, theoretically should motivate us to change our politics. However, there are no signs that is significantly happening. Rather, there is only more and more doubling down on ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Of course, I will try to maintain some irrational hopes for some series of political miracles, (as well as hold on to transcendental hopes, which do not depend upon any finite facts.) However, at the present time, the only realistic corrections for systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, that have generated numbers which have become debt insanities, is for those to finally provoke death insanities. It is not clear whether or not human beings will survive through the magnitudes to which they are living inside a Bizarro World, where everything is "controlled" by backing up lies with violence, or ENFORCING FRAUDS, because that is what worked the best throughout previous human history, and therefore, are deeply entrenched morbid social habits, while the ability to ENFORCE FRAUDS only makes that society become more psychotic.
Theoretically speaking, the most important thing to a technological civilization is its philosophy of science. Tragically, the dominant philosophy of science now is just as much of a victim of developing inside of social pyramid systems as everything else. A tiny minority of human beings have actually made real progress in physical science possible, while the vast majority are not interested in that, except to use the tools that made available to tell the same old stupid social stories by taking advantage of those abilities for special effects. Overall, the most intense manifestations of the Bizarro World continue to be progress in physical science without any progress in political science, because (amongst other things) that would take radical transformations in the conceptualization of entropy, which is the scientific approach to understand evil. Rather, at the present time evil is deliberately misunderstood in the most backward and absurd ways possible, which enables human civilization to become runaway criminal insanities, with no end in sight to how much worse those kinds of astronomically psychoses are going to get ... The biggest and best organized gangs of criminals are "controlling" civilization, while most people only barely begin to see some of the more superficial aspects of that ... while then proposing similarly superficial "solutions," because they never understood deeply enough how and why the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals are currently the governments "controlled" by the banksters ...
I'm sorry but when a 'comment' exceeds the length of the article being commented on- you're abusing the privilege You either need to become a contributor or Limit yourself to a courteous level IMHO. Not commenting on the quality of your thoughts - just saying
Well ... a tiny fraction of a cent's worth of electricity, saved as a magnetic record on some server ... that hardly matters, especially since nobody is forced to real it.
From my perspective, comments like yours, Smedley, are nothing but those of useless trolls. You are not living up to the insights that made Smedley Butler worthwhile admiring, besides his military decorations, that were he stated "War is a Racket."
The article above ASKED: "If we indeed live in the Bizarro World, what does that look like to you?"
The point of my comment is that the ESSENCE of the social situation that "War is a Racket" was how and why we ended up living inside of a Bizarro Mirror World, which the author of the article above never remotely got close to adequately recognizing, as the degree to which the Bizarro World has become runaway criminal insanities.
The real situation is almost infinitely worse than the superficial list of Bizarro World items presented in that article above. I was providing sufficient depth to put that in perspective. That "War is a Rachet," AFTER the development of weapons of mass destruction, means that the degree to which we are living in a Bizarro World is plunging over "Seneca Cliffs," whose bottoms can not now be seen.
THE SHORT-TERM STRUGGLES TO SURVIVE ARE HEADED TOWARDS LONGER-TERM COMMISSION OF COLLECTIVE SUICIDE, WHICH IS AS BIZARRO WORLD AS IT GETS!
Your reply avoids the issue I raised. If everyone put up posts of the same length as you (and a couple of others) It would shut down any meaningful exchanges. Like I said, become a contributor which is what your posts resemble Your ad hominem of calling me a troll for what I consider a respectful objection is unworthy of comment other than shutting down discourse would seem to be more of a troll objective.
Verbosity Is often mistaken for eloquence
There are practically no "meaningful exchanges."
After participating in registered political activities for several decades, the main conclusion I have come to is that most people almost never change their opinions. But nevertheless, I replied more substantially to reason I post longer comments at the end of my reply below to Farqued Up.
I come from a world where failure to adapt and change to new facts and info is very very costly. Therefore we learn to communicate concisely and effectively. Innovate adapt and overcome. If someone fails to change their opinion in light of my argument- the failure is mine.
But you continue on as you see fit
Well, Smedley, I come from a world where criminally insane liars are socially successful, and regularly win elections, assisted by the mass media, which are some of the most successful professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. So did Smedley Butler himself, although he did not recognize that until towards the end of his life, AFTER he had worked long and hard to advance the established systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, around the world, for the benefit of the banksters and their buddies.
There are some areas of human activity were rational evidence and logical arguments may be paid attention to, within that domain. However, in politics there is almost total domination by systems of lies backed by violence, which deliberately ignore anything that does not assist them to become better at backing up their lies with violence. That is the EXISTING world where ENFORCED FRAUDS have been able to develop hundres of trillions of dollars worth of derivatives, all of which kinds now add together to be over a quadrillion units of speculative gambling based upon having been able to make the "money" to gamble with out of nothing.
Nothing effective is being done to prevent that from automatically gettting worse, faster, while those who pretend to be preparing for that are probably not able to operate in the right frame of reference. Meanwhile, I will continue to face the facts as I see them, and amuse myself by adequately articulating what I have perceived.
The article above was summarized in this quote:
“Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.” -- Michael Ellner The point of my long comment was to DIG DEEPER into the real reasons regarding how and why that has happened, which then should related to resolving those problems. HOWEVER, as is clear on even on Zero Hedge, almost nobody likes that, but rather, almost everyone continues to promote old-fashioned religions and ideologies as the basis for their bogus "solutions" to the runaway problems that there EXIST globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. In that world, everything is psychotic, and getting worse, faster ... That IS a "world where failure to adapt and change to new facts and info is very very costly." That may cause the human species to commit collective suicide, because there is practically NO chance that the real world of politics, controlled by backing up lies with violence, "we learn to communicate concisely and effectively. Innovate adapt and overcome." In the world of politics, pretty well the ONLY ways that there are significant forms of innovation are to develop better ways to lie and back that up with violence. We are inside of dealing with entrenched social pyramid systems, based upon thousands of years of successfully backing up lies with violence, such that the entire political economy is based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, and so, fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting dominates every decision. Within some specialized, limited social environments, there are some people that relatively respect facts and logic. However, those are politically trivial, except in those areas where that sort of science ends up mostly being employed to develop weapons, and overall perfect the ways to control other people through backing up deceits with destruction. In the world of real politics, this old adage may apply: "Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."-- Samuel Johnson
The world of human politics is a Bizarro World, because it is based upon the history of having been successfully able to back up lies with violence, so much for so long, that there is now almost nothing but core groups of organized crime surrounded by controlled opposition.
"The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled."
-- Cognitive Dissonance
That is basically what the article above did, due to the superficial ways that it reviewed the manifestations of being in a Bizarro World.
Virtually all of the content on Zero Hedge is STILL controlled opposition, in the sense that Cognitive Dissonance stated, (including even him too.) The theoretical ways out of that depend upon enough people perceiving politics is radically different ways. However, there are no good reasons to believe that is politically possible. Instead, FOR SURE, "failure to adapt and change to new facts and info is very very costly." Probably the costs will eventually become the mass murder of the majority of the human population, and possibly the end of any hope for a future technological civilization, and even the extinction of the human species. I REPEAT, because it is worth REPEATING: There EXIST globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, which serve social pyramid systems based on ENFORCING FRAUDS. There is practically nothing in politics today that is even remotely close to being consistent with the physical science that made electronics and atomic energy possible to develop. The political economy discussions in the mainstream are utter bullshit, while those on Zero Hedge tend to still be superficially correct analysis, followed by superficial "solutions," because almost all the content on Zero Hedge continues to be that of controlled opposition, that does not know it is controlled, because it continues to mostly take for granted the language that it uses, as well as the mainstream philosophy of science it presumes upon. Smedley, we BOTH live in a world where, indeed, "failure to adapt and change to new facts and info is very very costly." That is the world in which I am attempting to promote ideas which are theoretically sufficient to adapt to the existence of globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. HOWEVER, it appears to be practically a waste of my time. I write long comments in order to adequately develop the background behind my presentations, because what I have to say is NOT something that most people already know about, nor have ever even begun to think about. Yet, the tragic truth appears to be that we have collectively run out of time to adapt. The established systems based on being able to continue to ENFORCE FRAUDS have only been "adapting" by getting better at being able to ENFORCE FRAUDS, while their fundamental fraudulence has driven civilization as a whole to to become more psychotic and criminally insane. I WOULD NOT COUNT ON THAT CHANGING IN ANY GOOD WAYS (BUT RATHER IN CATASTROPHIC WAYS), BUT NEVERTHELESS, WHAT ELSE SHOULD ONE DO BUT TO ATTEMPT TO PROMOTE THE KINDS OF CHANGES WHICH COULD THEORETICALLY BE SUFFICIENT?
Reversing entropy is an oxymoron. Nothing can ever be 100% efficient.
Farqued Up, I am NOT saying reverse entropy itself! I say reverse the ways that we perceive entropy:
The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.
That is, to go THROUGH the looking glass of our Bizarro World, rather than continue to perceive everything backwards, by not noticing that we have reversed the meaning of entropy, by inserting an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory, so that the measurements of power and information would result in relative positive values, rather than relative negative values.
Since money is measurement backed by murder, which are manifestations of information and power, the ways that human beings have reversed the meaning of entropy are related to everything else that they perceive backwards. The biggest bullies' bullshit world view promotes SUBTRACTION and ROBBERY as being relative positive values, rather than being relative negative values. Any private property is based upon relatively subtracting something from the whole environment, and then backing up that subtraction with violence. Private property only exists as claims backed by coercions. There is no private property outside of some systems of public violence.
The biggest bullies bullshit world view dominates everything, almost totally, to present their lies and violence as being relatively good things, rather than relatively bad things. Therefore, we regard the ways that human beings necessarily live as entropic pumps of energy flow backwards, which causes us to continually misunderstand everything, like looking in the mirror while not understanding that everything in the mirror appears backward.
The fundamental concept is SUBTRACTION, which is the way that energy is relatively spread out in time and space, which dimensions do not exist in themselves, like energy exists. That is the main philosophical point to the correctness of the special theory of relativity, that enables atomic bombs to go boom. In general, the production of destruction controls production, while atomic bombs are the most destructive things that human beings can do, but those bombs are based on the conservation of energy, and understanding that changes time and space from being presumed to be independent absolutes, to become a relative continuum. Time and space change so that energy is conserved. Entropy is the way that energy spreads out through time and space, at least in our local environment of the Sun Earth Space system.
Similarly, quantum mechanics challenges a lot of the presumptions made on the basis of common sense regarding the human experience of time and space. The relevance of that is that human being have electronics, and the current monetary systems have become almost totally based upon encoded bursts of electricity, and therefore, most "money" now is electronic. Regarding the CURRENTLY EXISTING systems of globalized electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, most of the old-fashioned religions and ideologies have NOT changed their metaphysics to become consistent with that. Therefore, we continue to rush towards bigger and BIGGER contradictions between real progress in physical science, versus no matching progress in political science.
It was an enormous ERROR in the history of the philosophy of science to insert an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory. I an NOT challenging the basic ideas regarding entropy itself. I am challenging the MISTAKES due to changing the ways that we think about entropy so that those ways would be consistent with the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, so that their lies and violence could be presented as relative positive values, rather than as relative negative values.
... Of course, meanwhile, when I attempt to explain such concepts, that most people have never begun to consider before, that requires me to back up and take a run at that, which is why my posts tend to be longer. I am not saying things that people are already familiar with. I as saying things that most people have never thought of before. When I write longer comments, I am attempting to forestall the misunderstanding that your reply, Farqued Up, illustrates. I did NOT say that we should reverse entropy itself, I said we should reverse the way that we perceive entropy, because the ways the people take for granted now are BACKWARD and ABSURD. Those are the most abstract reasons for how and why we are living in a Bizarro World.
Master Marijuana, I would like to send my two youngest children to you for tutelage. They're pleasant and helpful and eager to learn. I feel their formal education is failing them and desire to alter their curriculum. Thank you in advance.
Yes, let's: Sealab 2021 - "Bizarro!"
It tends to befuddle to try to make sense of things which are nonsense. Also, it somehow feels wrong to watch a mutant "kid's cartoon" present more adult material, especially when that adult material is deliberately not making much sense!
There is only one solution to the heavy hang of big government, bigger government. I propose "The American Freedom From Government With Flying Eagle, Waving Flag Along With Yellow Ribbon Act Of 2015"
<sarc>
I propose the All Encompassing Government which Steals and Kills Even More Brazenly Act. That might do the trick.
Once you control the language, you control the policies.
Or....
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
And then they can control and corrupt an entire planet
Oh, and don't forget food...once they control the armies, laws, money, and food (Monsanto, etc.), and healthcare and drugs, then they control the entire planet. It's almost like somebody took Orwell's 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, and THX-1138 seriously like some kind of blueprint all rolled up in one, like a pre-determined game plan or something.
Gee, who coulda ever knowd??? ;-)
But I also think we're actually being run by the freaks from They Live
And I seriously recommend everyone watch They Live.
Rowdy Roddy Piper knew what the fuck was going on almost 30 years ago...too bad 99% of the sheeple can't wake the fuck up
And don't forget the very real possibility of: Red Dawn
With regard to controlling the language, NoDebt:
"The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled."
-- Cognitive Dissonance
It has to be supported by many false or faulty ibids, that makes it legitimate.
Thou doth grok the zeitgeist of the times.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional."
-Hunter S. Thompson
More Bizzaro stuff
a 2% representative population demographic controls over 80% of banking, MSM, political activism, & jurisprudence.
& if any of the 98% point it out or complain about it, they get criticized & kicked off of blogs & stuff.
How about, "The banksters are openly permitted to counterfeit trillions of dollars, meanwhile the public is obsessed with a geriatric chick with a dick."
Bizarro : I don't think you really are a Funt .... you think like a Dunny Fick !
Hey it is a Cartel, a Congloberate, a Mafia, a Blackmailing MIC, or the whole thing doesn't work.
Ms. Yellen has assistance.
Treasury, Jack Lew
SEC, Mary Jo White
CFTC, Timothy Massad
Fed, Janet Yellen
OCC, Thomas J. Curry
CFPB, Richard Cordray
FDIC, Martin Gruenberg
FHFA, Mel Watt
NCUA, Debbie Matz
Insurance, S. Roy Woodall, Jr.
Bizarro : "A superiority complex .... is the worst kind .... of inferiority complex !" Monedas 1929 Comedy Jihad World Tour
Bizarro Joophobia : 1.6 billion Muslims fearing 12 million Joos !
Bizarro foreign policy: Kowtowing to the tiny yet murderous state of Israel which provides nothing but confusion, death and sorrow while aggravating the people who have the oil supplies the West so desperately needs.
Congress has an 11% approval rating but also a 95% level of retention.
My entry: Lynn-sy Graham running for leader of the "free" world
He is so obviously pro-war that I actually think he will be the winner.
But all of those guys want to try on the power, so what do I know.
Yeah...and why do I park on a driveway and drive on a parkway.
Slow Sunday...
Bizarro : The other day in Walmart .... they were out of Great Value steak sauce .... the A1 economy size was more/oz than the regular size ! (they run out of their excellent GV products frequently .... the vendors of the highly advertized brands may be in league with Walmart brass ?)
Bizzaro: Ruining a good steak with steak sauce
Universal education and mass media have trained the children to reject thinking for dogmatic obedience. The neo-logic is that if you change the meanings of words the prior conclusions continue to be valid. I.e. All ducks can fly. Therefore if I redefine a mouse as a duck, it can fly.
Pride and stupidity precede the fall.
Proverbs 16:18...for those who don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Yes... we live in a world where you can check out traffic on google maps and order pizza in 30 minutes when you know he’ll be late because of traffic...
It’s a cruel and evil world...
"Hemp consumption can become a destructive addiction"
hahahahaha!
Apparently, he been smoking rope. Quick, someone send him the right stuff before it's too late!
Bizarro: My neighbor got some "Medical Marijuana" .... it is so potent .... brownie and oil and bud .... he flipped out with paranoia !
True story. In the Bizzaro world, they don't know they're paranoid schizophrenics already.
I'll stick to my commercial grade .... one of the advantages of a fevered mind .... it doesn't take much to get you high ! LOL
For now its a system based on lies. That needs to be changed. We can change it by simply not falling for every spoon fed line of BS sent our way. Its not enough for the few that can spot it we must let everyone know its all BS.
Some things we can do.
1 Get people to turn off the TV.
2 Take the dogma out back and shoot it in the head. Dbl tap!
3 We dont need to prove we know the truth. All we need to prove is they are lies.
4 Set aside our beliefs in favor of our knowing. Demand proof.
5 Learn to spot the dbl standards and reject them on the spot.
What you're suggesting sounds an awful lot like accountability and critical thinking. George Carlin had something to say about what TPTB thinks about children learning how to think for themselves.
I ofter wonder if perhaps it's an evolutionary step to think less. After all, isn't the brain a huge consumer of a body's resources? And wouldn't using less of the gas hog be beneficial to the remainder of the corpse...? I'm kidding of course...hmmm...or am I.
We'll just call it a hypothesis for now. I'll leave it up to those who know how to file for grants to design a study.
I hope the author isn't including me in'we' he so glibly claims are doing all these 'insane' things 'we' are doing to ourselves.
Fucking get it right and put the blame where it belongs, and maybe, just maybe, after that first step, some of these wrongs can be righted.
We have a huge problem in the US, people regularly confused virtual world values with those of the real world...Why Bizarro exists..sadly..
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.fr/2014/03/virtual-worlds-real-world-we-have.html
Welcome to Duperville USA-the data selling business...$180 billion a year
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/05/privacy-duping-of-america-intangible.html
"virtual world values with those of the real world ..."
David Billings has written two books, with a third on the way, regarding the difference between "nominal value" versus "actual value:"
http://economicactualism.com/
As my comment above explained, the SOURCE of all that is the same as the current SOURCE of the public "money" supply, ENFORCED FRAUDS: the virtual world values are their nominal values, based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks.
Real world values are thoroughly entangled with the ways that the public "money" supply is made out of nothing as debts, while those are ENFORCED FRAUDS, primarily because of the ways that the government demands payment of taxes using that legal tender, while that "rule of law" is backed up by the police. Around the world, the same financial system based on being able to make "money" out of nothing as debts is enforced by the military and covert operations of NATO countries, against the few remaining countries that are not already totally enslaved to the international banksters' systems.
There are the "real" values behind the virtual values, which are the abilities to back up lies with violence. Everything that has any monetary value within the established electronic systems is necessarily based upon fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, where money is measurement backed by murder, but those basic social facts are as deliberately denied and disregarded as possible by those doing that ...
Bizarro: An upvote means you're preaching to the choir .... but, a down vote means you deliciously annoyed a Muzztard or a Socialist !
I'm a laissez faire atheist who downvoted you but please don't call me delicious, Caitlyn.
For most it's a digital dark age.
Yep. Shedding some light on it sure as hell couldnt hurt.
You want Bizarro? After Bush Sr, Bubba Clinton and Bush the Dumber proceeded to destroy what's left of America, who are the frontrunners for the 2016 presidential race? Jeb and Hillary. If that isn't an indictment of our electoral process, what is?
umm, you missed 8 years their buzzy and forgot Obie the Dark Wielder of The Pen and Phone
Let's leave illegal aliens out of the discussion.
lets not forget to add "and a 65-year-old-man dressing up like a woman gets commended for bravery"
Bizarro: 10% interest is Jooish usury .... 80% tax rate is Social Justice !
Bizarro: "Taking" a shit.
Upvote for Carlinesque potty humour !
"Monkey want Banana."
Instead of waiting for the tipping point when it will be falling on all of us. Why not push it over on them?
This is the short list....no?
Yes very much so.
"Vote"?
I am not certain what that means, but I am deathly suspicious of its purpose in this place.
To me it looks like morons are in control of the western world. They are implementing the NWO and at the same time running out of money and real production. As they use the draconian system that they've created they are gradually moving up the ladder to obtain wealth. As people with money, wealth and political connections gradually become victems of the system they created, (think pedophile Hastert here) others begin to sabotage the system. The banks go broke. The military turns on the banksters, and the oligarchs fund the destruction of the system. Russia and China attack the western banking families and move in for the kill as the remaining NWO sets off nuclear winter.
Done deal.
As long as the vast majority of humans are radically insane and stupid, the predators-that-be can create endless convoluted streams of nonsense, excuses, villains and forms of fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy everything...
... and all negative consequences will fall upon human producers and savers...
... and all positive consequences will fall upon human predators and liars.
The banks can't "go broke", because the predators-DBA-central-bank will just create even more fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy, fractional-reserve debt-turds to hand to their agent predators-DBA-regular-banks.
No matter how much death and destruction they cause, they will continue to manipulate everything so others suffer the negative consequences of the ever collapsing efficiency of production they cause.
The military will not turn on the banksters. The banksters fund the military, and the military know that. And the banksters know that, which is why they will never cut off the military. They're far from being that stupid!
The predators-that-be have openly stated for decades that they ultimately plan to exterminate well over 90% of the earth population. And they most certainly will, because "regular folks" are too stupid and confused about how egregiously they are being played for suckers, morons and fools.
The only wild-card I see is something like nuclear war getting outta hand. I doubt the predators-that-be are stupid enough to intentionally let nuclear war get outta control, but they also may not have direct and detailed enough control over those who actually push buttons to assure nuclear war never gets outta control.
Even 1% of the human population would be sufficient to exterminate the human predators who are destroying mankind. Unfortunately, it appears that only 0.000000% to 0.000001% of human beings are aware enough, awake enough, smart enough and willing to take the required actions.
And so... humans are finished.
Yes, that's not what we want. But baring some super-surprising, super-extraordinary event, the vast majority of humans are finished.
Batman Meets the Riddler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVW6SH2bjYQ (3:46)
No need to be so complicated. Virtually 100% of human beings are absolutely, positively, completely, utterly, totally stark raving insane in the most fundamental way possible.
I'm not trying to be funny or ironic or silly. That bolded sentence is 100% correct.
How so?
Simple. Nothing can be more fundamental than "exists" versus "does not exist". And perhaps not so surprisingly, the classic image of an insane human is someone trying to catch non-existent butterflies fluttering around their head. So their insanity is precisely demonstrated by their inability to distinguish "real from fiction" (butterflies), or stated slightly different, "butterflies that exist versus nothing".
What most humans (as in more than 99.9999%) do not realize is... they are vastly more insane than that poor crazy man swinging his hands at nothing above his head.
Why so?
Because most humans don't realize that thousands of mental-units in their head are bogus... fictions. And so, they take actions almost all day, every day, for virtually their entire lives, because they believe the mental-units refer-to something real (something that exists).
First, let's be very clear. Fictional mental-units (mental-units that refer-to nothing) can motivate humans just as effectively as mental-units that refer-to real things. For example, millions of kids get totally excited and take all sorts of actions due to their "Santa Claus" mental-unit. The fact that there is no Santa Claus does not stop them from taking actions, nor limit their excitement, nor moderate their behavior.
The same is true for adults. A human who does not bother to carefully determine the "reality-status" of his mental-units is sure to consider many of his bogus/fictional mental-units to refer-to real things.
Humans do not form mental-units the same way other animals do. Lacking mental ability to acquire language skills, other animals form mental-units when they are exposed to reality. The first time an animal sees a tree, the animal forms a mental-unit to refer-to tree. The same is true for rock, cliff, snake, rain, river, you-name-it. When animals subsequently encounter additional instances of similar existents (tree, rock, cliff, snake, rain, river, etc), the add those new observations to the existing mental-unit. From beginning to end, the mental-unit is created and populated by exposure to real existents (reality, not fiction).
Almost from birth, humans are taught to form mental-units when they first encounter a word, not when they are exposed to something real that word and mental-unit refer-to, or supposedly refer-to. Even worse, the vast majority of content added to most mental-units is also just exposure to more words... not reality.
And so, other animals are well grounded, while humans are blatantly not well grounded. To be sure, human consciousness can be well grounded, but only in those humans who consciously and explicitly pay attention to the reality-status of their mental-units (real, fiction, observed, asserted-with-words, etc).
To say that humans are encouraged to NOT pay attention to the reality-status of their mental-units is an extreme understatement. They are treated like trash, or worse, if they refuse to accept, internalize, believe and advocate the current set of popular lies wherever and whenever they happen to live. In most places and times a human will be killed if he does not profess to believe in the popular god, or popular faith, or popular leaders, or popular social conventions, or popular laws, or whatever his parents tell him or her. In the very best cases, places and times, a human will be shunned, mistreated and given fewer opportunities to develop and advance.
And so, before humans are old enough to know better, they habituate the most fundamental possible form of insanity... accepting and believing blatant fictions and complete nonsense is real, valid, and the most important mental-units of all.
Note that evolution necessarily made this problem with human consciousness much worse than one might imagine. Since animals did not have the ability to create or populate mental-units with bogus, fictional nonsense... it was massively true that "trust your mental-units" was the single most important action to assure survival, health and success.
Any animal that failed to trust its mental-units would... walk over a cliff and fall to its death... or walk up to a predator and be torn to shreds and eaten... or walk into a raging river and be swept away and drown... and so forth. Thus "trust your mental units" was necessarily for survival and reproduction. In other words, the basic processes of evolution assured that only those animals who trusted their mental-units survived.
And so, for billions of years, animals that "trusted their mental-units" survived, prospered and reproduced, while animals that "ignored their mental-units" soon died, and were quickly and summarily removed from the gene pool on planet earth.
And so, no surprise that "trust your mental-units" is the default behavior of human beings, since humans are a product of evolution.
This is the fatal-flaw in human consciousness.
Why? Because human mental-units are not tied... or at best weakly tied... to reality. And so, human mental-units are thus not automatically trustworthy.
As I said above, a human CAN make their mental-units trustworthy... by being conscious and self-conscious about the reality-status of every mental-unit. A mental-unit that IS a fiction (does not refer-to reality) is not harmful IF but ONLY IF that human is clear that mental-unit is a fiction, and understands his purpose for allowing and keeping that fictional mental-unit in his brain.
In fact, fictional mental-units can be extraordinarily helpful, and can enable humans to achieve what no other animal can. For example, if a human clearly understands "this mental-unit is a fiction because it does not refer-to anything in reality... BUT... nothing I know makes such a configuration of reality impossible... THEREFORE... I can look for ways to manipulate and reconfigure what does exist in reality in a way that creates something this mental-unit refers-to, and thus makes it real.
This is invention. This is advancement. This is extraordinary and potentially glorious (and/or also potentially destructive). And so, there is need to consider the reality-status of every mental-unit, but also every possible consequence along long chains of real and fictional mental-units, as well as their [potential] natures.
However, let's leave aside the very positive, even glorious aspects of bogus and fictional mental-units (when clearly and self-consciously understood), and finish understanding why 99.99999% of human beings are stark raving insane.
Human predators are the masters of bogus, fictional mental-units. They spend their lives crafting bogus mental-units, inserting them into millions and billions of human brains via crafty language and incentives, and then populating and manipulating those mental-units with all sorts of self-serving nonsense.
This is why human predators utterly dominate planet earth today.
Let's take one example of just one of the thousands of utterly bogus mental-units and see how this process works, and how massively influential bogus mental-units can be.
Let's take the utterly bogus, fictional mental-unit "authority" for instance.
No human in their right mind (meaning sane) could possibly take this mental-unit seriously... or believe it refers-to anything real. Why not? Because it is obviously absurd, obviously self-refuting, and inherently self-contradictory. Here is one (of many) very simple ways to consider this mental-unit and expose it as both insane and impossible.
You are a certain kind of existent, a human being. You came to exist by being born.
Every other human being is the same kind of existent, a human being. They also came to exist by being born.
The mere symmetry of the fundamental facts about you and every other human demonstrate that "no other human can possibly have authority over you, or gain authority over you... that you don't have over them". Which means "authority" is absurd and inherently impossible... a self-contradiction.
To follow a potential example to further illustrate the point, imagine you say to some other human "I have or claim authority over you, and so you must obey me". To which the other human being would reply "I have or claim authority over you, and so you must obey me... starting by never telling me to obey you ever again".
See why the notion of "authority" is insane, absurd, self-refuting, self-constradictory? I hope so, because it is quite obvious to any sane sentient being! If you're still not clear, create a few more examples, and enjoy the absurdity that always results.
Of course the fact "authority" is an utterly bogus fiction immediately assures the mental-unit "government", "nation", "law" and endless other related mental-units are also utterly bogus, absurd, self-refuting and contradictory... because they all depend upon "authority" NOT being a bogus fiction.
But... just for fun... let's tackle that absurdly bogus fiction people call "government", because this will show another way to recognize, identify and certify bogus fictions.
This technique might be called "how did the referrent come to exist". This doesn't work for mental-units like "universe" (for example), because we simply don't have any way to "get on the other side" of the origin of the universe... if indeed the universe isn't eternal, which we also have no way to refute.
However, this "origin technique" works fine on "government", because we are quite clear no "government" existed before humans existed (and "organized"), because other animals are not capable of such nonsense (fortunately for them).
Everyone knows how "government" is supposedly created. So let's just consider the facts and process, which are not in dispute.
A bunch of human predators with malicious intent (whether you realize that or not) sit around a table, smear ink on paper or parchment, then babble words like "we created a nation called xxxxx, and every human for hundreds or thousands of miles, and for all of eternity to come, must obey those of us who created this nation, or whoever we subsequently appoint as officials of this government".
What existed before this so-called "nation" and "government" were created?
#1: human predators [with malicious intent to dominate others].
#2: paper or parchment.
#3: earth.
#4: ink.
What exited after this so-called "nation" and "government" were created?
#1: human predators [with malicious intent to dominate others].
#2: paper or parchment.
#3: earth.
#4: ink.
Quite clearly, NOTHING REAL popped into existence. Some humans smeared ink on paper or parchment. So we can say, the configuration of the ink changed. But that process is already known, understood, and is called the process of "writing".
And so, "nation" and "government" are bogus fictions, because they don't exist. They were not created.
And the earth? Well, that was there before any humans existed, so any claim they created "a physical nation" (implying it means something real) is an obvious and blatant lie of the easiest to recognize kind.
Drawing lines on a map does not make the land that the map represent pop into existence.
No matter how long, hard and carefully you stare at what happened, it is quite clear that "nation" and "government" are simply assertions that some humans invented to attempt to scam and mislead other humans to become their slaves.
-----
What may be most remarkable about this whole exercise is to realize that those mental-units that most influence the actions of most humans... are utterly and completely bogus fictions.
Which means, the entire human population of earth is doing the exact same thing that classic example of an insane human is doing... taking endless actions on the assumption that something exists that does not exist.
And so, quite literally, with extremely few exceptions, humans are a gigantic pack of radically, fundamentally insane chimps bouncing around planet earth, doing endless crazy things for no valid or sane reason.
And humans wonder why the world seems so insane and increasingly surreal?
Well, now you know the answer.
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Note that human predators understand the fatal flaw in human consciousness quite well (though often more intuitively and rigorously), and take full advantage of this fatal flaw in human consciousness.
When one considers what a sorry pack of predatory jerks pose as "officials" and "authorities" over every human on planet earth, one has to laugh (and puke) at the seemingly impossible level of absurdity required. But there it is. And now you know why.
Will you do anything about this?
No. I didn't think so.
Maybe a few will.
Vanishingly few.
BIZARRO
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Great thread. The quality(and quantity) of the comments far exceeds that of the op.