The government’s out to get us, man!

It’s been another one of those long days where it’s 3:40am and my brain is still too active for me to go to sleep. And then I see a George Carlin quote: “….They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking….”

The quote’s a very long one about how governments don’t want educated, smart people who think for themselves because that would make it harder for the government to steal from everyone. And Carlin basically says that the government keeps education at a low level as a means of achieving national stupidity. Now, I’m not sure if he was serious about the last part, but I know he’s serious about the rest.

And it sucks, because I love George Carlin, but this anti-government crap is all so idiotic. And I’m not saying that against anarchists or people who simply do not believe in the establishment known as government as they see it as an inefficient means of maintaining freedom. I’m talking about the Big Brother idjits. Yeah, some of that crap is legitimate. I’m not naive; I expect that the government watches us and probably violates our freedoms in several ways, whether or not any laws are actually broken (I’m sure some are some of the time). Some laws are passed that expressly violate our freedom, like the NDAA. And there are some conspiracy theories floating around that have validity.

But the concept of mistrusting government to the point of fabricating scenarios in which governments benefit from keeping their people ignorant is lunacy. The “government” isn’t out to get us. Why? Because “government” isn’t a thing, like a cat or a table (I’m really good at examples). “Government” is a title created for PEOPLE. It’s not its own entity, it’s not a machine like that weird computer in that Shia LeBouf movie that was exactly as terrible as everyone expected it would be. Government is PEOPLE. And while I would be (one of the) last people to claim that people don’t have selfish and anti-social agendas, it’s pretty idiotic to assume that the people in government are worse than normal people.

See, the government is an institution created for the maximization of liberty. You can argue that it was created to control people, but I don’t really care, and it’s not a point worth arguing. The point, however, is that as long as government is ruled by people, the government will reflect the people who control it. There have certainly been cruel tyrants who seized power to improve their lives, to the detriment of others. But it’s the constriction of government in civilized, peaceful society that prevents tyrants from rising (obviously coups are another matter entirely). And as the government reflects the people who control it, and as the people who control it are selected by (admittedly) a bunch on uninformed idiots, then the people who control the government are people from the nation, chosen by the nation. What that means is that rulership, in the democratic world, passes on from person to person, meaning that the “agenda of governments” (to keep people down) is non-continuous. After all, it’s rather difficult to logically claim that each and every governments under each and every ruler has used government for evil. And if it’s non-continuous, then the “agenda of governments” (AoG) cannot exist. If said AoG is disrupted any time a ruler is kind and beneficent, any time a ruler does not use the throne for evil, then this AoG cannot be a agenda of GOVERNMENTS and must therefore be relegated to an agenda of man. It’s not GUNS who kill people, it’s people who kill people. It’s not GOVERNMENT that makes the world an awful place, it’s the rotten apples that infect the bumper harvest.

So stop with your inane anti-government crap. Don’t focus on government as an evil entity looking to rob you of the contents of your child’s piggy bank, because that perspective is both not productive and not accurate. Focus on PEOPLE who ruin things for others. If the government is enacting something you think to be ridiculous, find out who’s responsible and do what you can to ensure that someone who is right for that position gets the job. What right do you have to complain about the state of the world when you picked the leaders without informing yourself?

And by the way, don’t mistake idiocy and incompetence for negative intentions. I highly doubt Santorum, Bachman, and all the other social conservatives sit up at night and plot how to make the world worse for gays. I DON’T doubt that they’re ignorant enough to think that their policies are what’s best for the world.

To wrap this all up, why do people seem to like attributing evil qualities to the “government” as the source of the world’s problems? Well, saying it’s “government” keep the enemy as a shadowy and unknown figure. Uncertainty and anonymity are quite intimidating, and that helps attract people to the cause. Also, insisting that there is an AoG that keeps the people down is a cry of futility. It’s an excuse for inertia, a rationalization for inaction; past, present, and future. The funny thing I can’t stop thinking about is that if there really was an AoG, and the government wanted to keep us stupid and immobile, one of the more effective ways would be to spread word of the AoG, precisely BECAUSE it’s an excuse for inertia. How picture perfect is it that these tinfoil hat wearing sheep, watching Alex Jones videos and leaving angry youtube comments on every video pertaining to freedom and government, would actually be propagating the effect of the AoG if it existed?

Innocent until proven guilty is a LIE

What spawned this post is this article (http://gma.yahoo.com/rare-disease-mimics-child-abuse-tears-family-apart-210441467–abc-news-health.html), though I’ve thought about this before.

Article summary: In 2008, a 3 month old girl was found to have broken bones. As a result, her parents were accused of child abuse, and the girl was taken from her family and put in a foster home. Then, her father snapped and killed his wife (the mother) before killing himself. Both parents were respected police officers. And then it turns out that the baby had Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which causes bones to be broken with normal child handling. This means that it wasn’t child abuse, but an undiagnosed disease.

This story is one of the saddest I’ve come across recently. It was enough for me to dust of the ol’ blog and preach. And the issue I’d like to address here is the fallacy of innocent until proven guilty. Now, I understand that it can be dangerous for social services to wait until guilt is firmly established, but things like this CANNOT HAPPEN. The sad thing is, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. CPS or social services have, many times, removed a child from innocent parents. And I understand that this is a complicated issue, because if they don’t take the child and the abuse escalates, that’s their fault. I’m not saying I have a solution, either. I don’t.

But when it comes to areas like child abuse and rape, nobody is innocent. As soon as the words “child abuse” are brought into play, people instantly look at the parents differently. Close family friends and relatives MIGHT not, but even a close friend could think, “Well, they seem like nice people, but I don’t actually know for sure.” And that’s sound logic. But the father of this child was driven to awful things as a result of this unfounded accusation.

The lesson? DON’T ASSUME.

Sandra Fluke and the Contraceptive Coverage Debate

First of all, I’m sorry for not posting in a while. School’s been heating up.

Recently, there’s been a lot of debate over the issue of insurance covering contraceptives, and particularly employers who give their employees insurance being forced to cover contraceptives, even against their own will.

Sandra Fluke is a 3rd year law student who was thrusted into prominence by Rush Limbaugh spewing forth vile insults directed at her, like slut and prostitute. He claims she wants to be paid to have sex. However, he’s wrong. She doesn’t want to be paid to have sex (although to be honest, I think all of us would appreciate it at least a little bit if someone slipped us a few hundred afterward), she wants to be able to afford to prevent pregnancy.

So basically, Rush Limbaugh is an asshole, and Sandra Fluke is a law student who can’t afford her Plan B.

My thoughts on the matter? Well, I hate to say it, but I’ll have to agree with Rush on this one. But not for the same reasons as him, and not with quite the same vigor. Personal choices, like sex, that society has clamored to keep the government away from, due to their more personal nature should not receive coverage. If you want the government to stay away from legislating things you believe to be negative because they have no right to meddle with personal lives, then that means that even things you believe to be positive should not be legislated. Otherwise you’re a hypocrite. It’s not that “you’re being paid to have sex,” it’s that if the government has no right to involve itself with an entire realm of behavior, then you don’t get the benefits OR detriments of government interference.

Now, to be fair, Sandra Fluke is framing this issue more as a women’s rights issue, which I think makes little sense (yeah, pills are more expensive than condoms, but so what?), but she isn’t necessarily being a hypocrite in this instance.

Awesome customer service

My phone has been broken for months. It’s the Samsung Impression, and after about 6 months of usage, the touchscreen stopped working. As my phone was still under warranty, it was replaced. After another 6 months, the same issue happened. I looked it up online, and it seems it’s a common defect with the phone. I didn’t break it, it simply stopped working.

So I went to an AT&T store and was told my phone could not be replaced again because the warranty extends one year from the purchase of the original phone. AT&T knowingly sold me a phone with a manufactured defect. And I had to deal with it.

My upgrade came on February 2, so I called AT&T so I could get a new phone shipped to my house. I was told it would cost $100 to get a phone with my upgrade, one that in-store, I could get for free.

Thanks AT&T. You’re all a bunch of assholes. That’s a good way to instill consumer confidence, telling me that AT&T doesn’t offer INTERNAL price matching.

Hitman Apologism

As the title says, this is about hitman apologism, a phrase I just coined to describe a certain branch of rationalization for conventionally unethical behaviors. I’ll sum it up like this: can a rational agent ever not be morally culpable for carrying out certain unethical behaviors on someone else’s behalf?

This question has two distinct levels of implications that are ostensibly different. But we shall see if they really are (I don’t want to squander any potential surprises and/or unexpected leaps of imagination and thought like I usually do).

But before I introduce the two implications, I’ll phrase the previous question in a different way so you can think about it from a different angle: if you’re accomplishing something immoral for someone else, but you have no personal attachment, motive, or vested interest to commit such acts outside of fulfillment of the beneficiary’s desires, can you avoid moral culpability?

Think more.

The two ostensibly distinct levels here are benevolence and avarice, and two more “distinct” words in the dictionary, you’d be hard-pressed to find.

-The former relates to these two identical, and yet phenotypically distinct, questions quite easily. Say your mother is going to die, but before she dies, she wants to hold a puppy. But since you don’t have any money (you spent it all on your mother’s healthcare) or a puppy (there’s a Korean couple living next door), you steal one to satisfy your mother’s desires. Oh, and your mother knew you’d have to steal it before expressing her desire.

• Analysis: this is an example of using immoral means (theft) to accomplish a moral end (human comfort). So there are a few ways to look at this. A pluralistic perspective might say that people have the prima facie duty to help others, and the prima facie duty to not cause harm to others. This act accomplishes one and violates the other. However, not all prima facie duties are equal, so it’s up to you to prioritize these two duties to decide if it’s worth it. Some may say that the ends justify the means, and some may say that the ends never justify the means. This isn’t Hitman Apologism, but it’s an interesting question. My favorite response is the Principle of Double Effect (I’ll explain it in a little while).

-The level of avarice is where the “hitman” part comes in. Take a hitman, for example. Well, not that one. A different one. Good. That hitman is routinely hired to kill people. But he has no attachment or vested interest in the endeavor, apart from the fulfillment of the client’s desires. And if he doesn’t do it, someone else will. So from a consequentialist perspective, it’s going to happen anyway, so it’s not really that bad. And from a deontic perspective, he has no actual desire to kill the man/woman. So why not make money?

• Analysis: This is actually a ridiculously complex issue. In this case, you are simply the means to an immoral end. Therefore, neither the means nor the end justify themselves. However, the fact remains that whether or not the hitman accepts the job, the result will be the same. If you believe in the concept of moral obligation (the “ought” in life), then you could say that the morally obligatory choice the hitman has when he receives a job offer is to save the victim’s life (probably by eliminating his enemies in a Jason Statham-esque climactic final showdown). However, if you don’t believe in moral obligation (NOTE: not believing in positive moral obligation is not the same as believing anything goes. I mean that if you don’t believe you can be morally obligated to help someone else), then you could logically say that you may as well take the job, seeing as you have no obligation to save his life, and not taking the job won’t change anything.
• Personally, I don’t believe in moral obligation. As Bertrand Russell said, “Ought is the effect of somebody’s imagined disapproval.” That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do the right thing (I do the right thing at least twice a day), because I believe you should do what you believe you should do (and your belief as to what you should do should be the consequence of constant reflection and probing. Never stop questioning yourself). But the idea that there exists an intrinsic obligation to act a certain way seems ridiculous to me. Life has no intrinsically designated purpose, so there can’t exist an intrinsically designated system of moral obligation.

So the Hitman Apologist argument does hold some water. However, it’s really not that realistic of a perspective to have. From a hypothetical perspective, yes, I understand how a hitman’s actions may not be that bad. But the hitman still kills people. The profit part doesn’t mean much to me, but the whole KILLING PEOPLE PART is still awful. What makes it wrong? The act of ending a life is wrong. Yes, THE ACT ITSELF IS WRONG IN EACH AND EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE.

Is there ever justification? Yes, quite often. And that’s where the Principle of Double Effect comes in (I believe it was coined by St. Thomas Aquinas, but don’t quote me on that). The PDE is a way to evaluate actions that have both positive and harmful effects outside of the comic-book-black-and-white-right-or-wrong ethical systems that many people seem to have. It holds that if the nature of the act itself is, at worst, morally neutral, the intent is positive, and the good outweighs the bad (which the actor must minimize to begin with) in a situation where the “good” is necessary, then the act is morally justifiable.

Now, I like to edit that a bit. My criteria are:

1. The intent was positive

2. There were positive consequences that were AT LEAST on the same level as the foreseen harmful effects

See, my issue with Aquinas’ characterization is that, as I said, the act of ending a life is ALWAYS negative, even if it’s Osama Bin Laden or a child molester (to understand my perspective, read this: http://wp.me/p1IaDu-26). Aquinas believes that the nature of the act itself absolutely reflects upon the morality of said act. Well, the nature of ending a life is awful, and therefore, if the nature is morally repugnant, then the act (according to Aquinas) must also be morally repugnant. And yet that conclusion seems wholly incongruent with what humans accept to be true.

Now, I’ve never been one to discount anything because it goes against conventional “wisdom,” but since morality is a human construct that has no basis in actual truth, that’s just fine. It’s kind of an anticlimactic solution, I know, but the reality is that Hitman Apologism makes a lot of sense. It’s not a true justification for contract killing, because true justification would be impossible. Like I said, ending a life is ending a life. And ending a life is terrible in any circumstance. Taking Grandma off the respirator is terrible. However, the act of causing death in itself can’t be the only thing that matters. And therefore, Hitman Apologism is an entirely rational argument for how people who commit immoral acts can still be good people (oversimplification).

And if you don’t agree? Feel free. Explain why in the comments.

The importance of small pleasures

This entire post was inspired by this picture: http://imgur.com/gallery/KjLck

It’s a picture on a website frequented mostly by teenagers, many of whom are immature and socially awkward, but also by adults and all sorts of people (religious, irreligious, opposed to religion, people from all over the world, etc.). Most of these pictures focus on funny pictures with cute captions (and memes, which, for those who don’t know, I’d probably define as a sort of specific internet fad based on a specific image or phrase), though there are a good amount of art, photography, science, etc.

If you look at the picture, and then the top comment, you’ll see someone went out of his way to help a random anonymous stranger. Now, I don’t know how difficult it is to completely restore photographs using photoshop or if there’s basic software and a program that you can just use to do it immediately (I’m sure that technology exists, but has a prohibitive cost). But either way, it was still an action that required some inconvenience on behalf of a stranger. But this stranger recognized that this picture is symbolic and could have enormous emotional significance to someone, even though not having that picture would have been okay. It’s not as if avoiding helping this stranger out would decrease the quality of life of the stranger’s sister. It’s not aid after a massive disaster, it’s a small gesture. Yet it’s one that obviously means a lot to someone, even though the odds were that the Good Guy Greg (it’s a joke from that website. It’s not particularly funny, but it’s relevant, and I ain’t got nothin’ better) would never really get any recognition. There could be an initial, “THANK YOU SO MUCH OMGOMGOMG,”

He had to know that. And he did it anyway. See, the grand gestures really mean the least. People know their grand gestures will go recognized, and will be immensely appreciated. And while there certainly are people who truly care about others, it seems to me that people will be more willing to make a grand gesture than a small gesture to a stranger. Those small gestures are evidence of humanity and empathy. Large gestures always have either a show-offy nature, or the nature of a forced hand on account of potential guilt (humans avoid guilt at all costs, because it’s a killer. It feels worse than anything else and can cause many psychological issues) with the presupposition that it will be recognized.

Doing something simple and small anonymously is the ultimate kindness. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, I’m not the first to think this way. The Jewish tradition holds that the greatest form is charity is anonymously finding someone a job. It’s the highest form of charity, but it requires the least amount of effort and least amount of recognition for the action. It avoids all the negative aspects of good deeds: potential awkwardness, uncomfortably gracious recipients, expectations, shame, self-doubt, a view of failure, a loss of independence and manhood, etc. And yet it shows that you care, because you probably won’t get a thank you letter.

Another example: an African male named Omari was injured. How? By protecting the orphanage of 35 children from thieves (not for the first time). He took a machete to the face. Someone posted about it on reddit.com and suggested that people donate to help build a cement and barbed wire fence to protect the children. I believe about 2,000USD was needed. Over 50K was raised, just because someone posted about Omari on reddit, some people who knew Omari commented that it was the truth, it was verified, and the results are incredible. Such a small act that had such an enormous impact. And yet, though the result was fantastic, the gesture remains small, because of the ease and the usual lack of recognition.

How deep do we think?

This is going to be more of a stream-of-consciousness style post. I don’t necessarily have my own opinion on the subject, as I haven’t really spent much time considering this question, which is pretty shocking to me, since it seems like such a basic question.

And that/those question(s) is/are: How is thought measured? Can it be measured? Is thought even linear?

The reason I bring up these questions is because I was recently pondering the question of whether spending lots of time to solve a problem or answer a question is actually more constructive than giving the question a moment’s thought and then answering. While this obviously doesn’t apply to math or other scenarios where the question itself must be defined or translated into a less complex language/phraseology, it’s quite interesting to think about. Also, I’m sure we’ve all had dreams that felt like they lasted an eternity only to wake up and find out that it’s been two and a half hours since bedtime. And there absolutely are situations in which we will think and feel so much in one single moment.

I’ve had incredibly long trains of thought that were borne of a moment’s consideration. And I’ve also made no real progress (defined in terms of the original goal of answering the question/solving the problem) on questions that I’ve puzzled over for hours. And vice versa.

The problem with attempting to analyze how our thoughts work, is that it’s impossible to have a controlled experiment, for the amount of external factors that would completely interfere with the study is innumerably vast. Human thought is hugely influenced by EVERYTHING around it. Aside from all of the triggers that you might see, hear, touch, feel, or taste that bring up memories or states of being that occurred previously, there are many factors that simply affect mood, and through mood, thought.

So it would seem logical that extended deliberation (on non B&W issues) isn’t actually the process of spelling everything out in your head, but rather waiting for certain triggers to bring about a new state of mind or memory that could alter your perspective.

But maybe I’m just looking at this the wrong way. Maybe memories and external stimuli aren’t external factors, but are truly part of the way we think. After all, we’re human beings, and that’s how we work. It would be impossible to think without any of those “external factors” influencing us. Therefore, those factors must be a part of our process. Obviously, they’re not always the same, and sometimes they may not have a tangible impact that we can possibly be cognizant of, but they’re always there. Think about it; I know I still have to.

I always love getting comments, but I think that this question is really so interesting and can have so many different interpretations that I would ESPECIALLY love to read your thoughts on this matter. Please share your opinion, even if it’s just a small point.