EO Wilson calls it the Great Epic of Evolution. And it is quite an amazing story, greater than any creation myth. From matter to chemicals to biology to man. That is our Bible and our Homer.
Is scientific materialist atheism such an advance? It is "true". But is reducing man simply to his sexual biological impulses "progress"? Animals and brutes are also materialistic. They have no Gods or no mystical Platonic ideals hanging over them. They are pure egoists. They are rational in the sense that they attempt to use incomplete information to max pleasure and min pain. BF Skinner demonstrated that even pigeons can be made "superstitious" in that if knocking on wood always gets them food, they will knock on wood for good luck. But that is a scientific superstition. A miscalculation about cause and effect. In that sense the wrong ideas of history have been more important than the right ideas. There were materialists in the Greek world that superficially preceded all of our predictions in natural science. And yet it was the wrong idealistic theories that really mattered. Seeing what was not there. Believing that in some sense reality is not real. So should we really be so proud that all mystical veils have been set aside? What if that false man, against his biological human nature, was in some sense more human than real man? This takes the form first of art and religion. Both forms represent the human ideal symbolically. It is only with speculative philosophy that the truth represented in those symbols is at last stated explicitly. The only truly beautiful things this hellish universe have ever produced have stood against the grain of the brutality of nature and biology.
As a young boy I wrote a tribute to liberty. Of the three sisters liberty, equality and fraternity, I hold liberty first. What good is equality of slaves or fraternity in chains? Libertas the great pure Roman goddess. Can one imagine a Goddess of liberty? Among those degenerate, scheming, Olympians? Jupiter, Minerva, Venus, those lustful tricksters all bow before the virgin beauty of Liberty. God was saddened after he lost his most faithful lieutenant Satan to treason. And so he took the fallen wings of Lucifer, and crafted an infant babe. Down to the fires of Hell, God journeyed. And there was Lucifer. This marriage of heaven and hell. This daughter of God and Lucifer. This child who would redeem the Fall and reconcile Father and Son. God and Lucifer arm in arm. What do we call this child born of heaven and hell? A voice thunders down from the clouds. Call her Liberty!
And so we have seen the five stages of liberty. Each one beautiful and Godly in its own way, but with its dark satanic side. The great Protestant Reformation proclaiming soul liberty. The Dutch, English, American, French, 1848 Revolutions proclaiming political liberty. And in the footsteps of democracy, the market, capitalism- economic liberty. And now the unholy holy marriage of liberal third wave feminism and PUA game. Sexual liberty. And the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. The end of sexual feudalism. Is it really so bad?
Is not the triumph of the Alpha-mimicry over genuine alphaness a victory for liberty, market and democracy? Virgin at 50 complains at the loss of his sexual feudal status. As a business owner he is a genuine Alpha. Men in a hierarchy submit to his rule. Does that not entitle to him to sexual dominance? And yet he laments that the homeless man on the street has more sexual success than him. Would it be a better world where those with genuine societal dominance triumphed over the mimics?
This is the world you asked for. A world of liberty and freedom. Did you not say as boy that of the three sisters, you chose liberty. That was YOUR choice. Ah my American Paris what disaster you have brought upon your Troy. You saw only love and did not see the jealousy between the sister. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. To give the Golden Apple to one, would be to strike chaos among the others. You have made Equality and Fraternity the sworn enemies of Troy. And oh what a terrible vengeance they have struck. Your virgin bride Liberte has become the whore liberty! Who else is there to blame? In a historical sense, your just an insignificant atom. But in a cosmic metaphysical sense, your choices are directly responsible for the Brave New America. This is the freedom and democracy you asked for. If freedom wasn’t what you really wanted. If your secret goal was that everyone would freely chose X, than you ought to have chosen X. Stranger in a strange land. I have returned to the utopia I built. The freest people in history. That is your creation. The fruit of your virtue. IS it bitter?
"John Searle illustrates the evolution of social facts from brute facts by the constitutive rule: X counts as Y in C. "The Y terms has to assign a new status that the object does not already have just in virtue of satisfying the Y term; and there has to be collective agreement, or at least acceptance, both in the imposition of that status on the stuff referred to by the X term and about the function that goes with that status. Furthermore, because the physical features [brute facts] specified by the X term are insufficient by themselves to guarantee the fulfillment of the assigned function specified by the Y term, the new status and its attendant functions have to be the sort of things that can be constituted by collective agreement or acceptance."
The world says that it is X. It defines itself as X. You consider it X. You hate X and wish it were Y. But what can you do? There is nothing that words of either you or the world can do that can change X. Only actually changing X can change X. Suppose that X were defined as Y by the world, and vice versa. You genuinely hate X. Not the word X. So if that were the case, you would hate what Y represented and thus hate Y. And yet you are so Confucian about rectifying names. You think if only the world would call itself Y, even if it were genuinely X, all would be will. So you read some critics of Y, who say that X is really Y that calls itself X. But that doesn’t really help. So than you try to convince yourself through fuzzy logic that somehow in its real essence X is Y. But it strikes hollow. And the best case scenario would only convince you to hate Y. But you would still love genuine Y, you simply would no longer define it as Y. So you would in no way be reconciled to the world.
Many big corporations often hire world’s celebrities to represent for their products. In most case, it is a win-win situation. The celebrities will have the chance to get closer to the public. And the manufactures will have to chance to show their products to the celebrities’ fans. Howver, in some cases, this approach does not get the right results. It is because the manufactures have selected wrong images for their products. Followings are some examples:
Even though Paris Hilton is not an ambassador for Blackberry, but the Blackberry on her hands has made many fans of this smartphone get angry.
Nicole Ritchie has become famous because of her father, Lionel Ritchie. And she is a good friend of Paris Hilton. However, she has been less famous when representing for T-Mobile’s Sidekick. And of coruse, she has turned Sidekick to the negative ways as well. It is because Nicole has never been adored by teens.
The earphones (headphone) Skullcandy looks just so ugly when it comes along with the famous rapper, Snoop Dog.
The comedian, Jerry Seinfield, seems has nothing to do with the software giant – Microsoft, but he was chosen for an advertising for the company along with Bill Gates. However, the ads has been forgotten just after 1 month of launching. A big failure from Microsoft.
HP chose the famous rapper Jay-Z to represent for its computer in which Jay-Z used a HP’s computer to save music, photos, and appoinments files. However, no body could see his face on the ads. Many people though it was not Jay-Z in the poster.
In a drawn out collapse, the Liberty Movement is given a tremendous time advantage.
Winter is slowly melting away here in the U.S., and Spring will soon be upon us. Wall Street is currently flush with delight at the year long run of the stock market (driven by fiat bailouts), which at first glance appears to be doing quite well, though international incidences such as those in Dubai and Greece have revealed how shaky the market actually is in the face of any unhealthy news. In the meantime, the dollar, recently on the edge of detrimental value loss, has made a semi-miraculous recovery in the span of a few months, especially as the Euro suffers. Official employment numbers, despite the continuous loss of jobs monthly, have somehow fallen and are for the moment stabilized. Is it time for America to dust off the old credit cards and return to the wild and rollicking carefree spending days of pre-2007? Perhaps not…
While the mainstream media puts on the recovery song and dance, the fundamental problems of the collapse remain the same, and in some cases are growing ever more precarious. Subsections of the public, unaware of the real issues at hand, are holding a misguided jubilee in the tranquil eye of a hurricane, wrongly assuming that the storm has passed.
The world is breathing a hasty sigh of relief at the beginning of 2010, but what are the facts behind the current “peaceful” economic moment? In this article, we will examine whether or not the good news is legitimate, or, if are we being lulled into a false sense of security…
Job Market Statistics Manipulated
At the beginning of the year, official unemployment stood at around 10%. This number of course does not include those people who are off unemployment benefits and still have not found jobs, or those people who are underemployed. The Labor Department then announced their intention to revise their “birth/death ratio” method of calculating job loss, which would supposedly add a whopping 800,000 lost jobs to their books that were hidden before:
Directly after this news was released, markets braced for a substantial increase in the unemployment percentage. Yet, by some act of magic, the unemployment percentage fell to 9.7%!
How is this possible? Well, those of us who were hoping for greater Labor Department transparency (including myself) should have known better. With the Labor Department, two-plus-two NEVER equals four…
As the EPI article above indicates, while the government has reportedly changed their dubious “birth/death ratio” method, they also at the same time changed their “home survey” method. This survey is meant to give the Labor Department an overall view of unemployment percentages, but now the government has sharply reduced the number of households they actually survey, making the results more volatile and easier to manipulate. This why even though nearly a million jobless people were added to the unemployment rolls, the government was still able to report a drop in unemployment percentages. Sound like a dirty trick? Yes, it is…
According to the EPI’s estimates, which are probably still conservative, over 11 million jobs would need to be created in order to bring employment rates to pre-2007 levels. This is called the “jobs gap.” To fill the jobs gap by 2013 (which is about the time frame that the government has suggested it would take for a full recovery) the U.S. would need to generate over 400,000 jobs a month for the next three years! As I think most of you can see, this is not going to happen. Last month according to official numbers the U.S. lost another 36,000 jobs. Jobs are not being created, and will not be created anywhere near the 400,000 a month mark required for a three year recovery.
Also not often reported is the span of weeks at which those who are unemployed have to wait until they find another job. This “lag time” in-between jobs has grown markedly higher in recent months as the chart below shows:
In January of this year alone, 6.3 million people (over half of those unemployed) had been without a job for more than 6 months. This is an astonishing number, and it shows just how out of touch MSM reports of recovery are. Anyone who has been unemployed for more than just one month knows how tense and uncertain such a situation makes life. Imagine the misery of a 6 month hiatus from steady work, not able to fully support ones self and not knowing when you’ll be able to again. The Labor Department, nor the media, seems to take the factor of ‘duration’ into account when considering whether employment is actually in recovery. Nor do they take into account the fact that most of the jobs lost over the past two years were high paying and specialized, while most of the scant few jobs created have been low paying service sector positions.
What is most frightening about this information is that it reveals deliberate mishandling of statistics. Instead of being more open about unemployment numbers, the government is moving to hide them further. But why would they escalate secrecy on the economy?
The Day The Dollar Died
Last week, Li Ruogu, chairman of Export-Import Bank of China, a lender tasked with supporting the country’s foreign investments, stated that China would continue to support the dollar and that reports of a break from U.S. treasuries were “absolute nonsense.” Investors in treasuries this week seemed to take the comment as a good sign that the dollar’s place as world reserve currency is assured. However, one might ask why it was suddenly so important for China to comfort treasury markets?
Interestingly, statements of China’s “affection” for the dollar have come right after their central bank decided to dump $34 billion in U.S. treasuries. Along with other nations, the U.S. suffered the worst one month treasury dump on record so far at $53 billion:
This follows a treasury dump last year by China of $25 billion, after which we predicted that such dumps would occur more frequently and in larger amounts. Apparently, we were right:
Initially, it was reported after their latest dumping of U.S. bonds that China had lost its position as the number one investor in U.S. debt, placing Japan in the top spot. Strangely, only days later this report was rescinded after the Treasury released a statement claiming that China did indeed dump $34 billion in bonds, but, they were still the number one investor in T-bills:
How is this possible? According to the Treasury, they “forgot” to include Chinese treasury holdings in third markets such as Hong Kong and Britain. This is very strange. Who holds these extra bonds and what are they doing sitting in foreign venues? Is it not convenient that these bonds appeared from thin air just as news of China’s treasury dump was hitting the bond market? And now we suddenly have a Chinese finance official attempting to reassure the world that China still wants T-bonds while at the same time they are trying to get rid of them? If this behavior seems confusing it is because this is what occurs when governments lie big; no matter how good they are at it, they can’t make the facts add up.
If one examines Treasury Auctions month-to-month, they would find that “Primary Buyers” of treasuries (who have to buy treasuries when no one else is buying) now dominate auction sales. Indirect buyers, who cannot be tracked, also make up a large portion of competitive bids on treasury bonds. It is suspected that most of these indirect buys are made by the Federal Reserve itself in order to prop up the dollar. The article below explains the process succinctly:
The bottom line is that foreign governments are NOT buying treasuries at volumes necessary to keep the U.S. afloat amidst its ever climbing national debt, and in some cases, they are now trying to quietly and gradually dump what they have so as to not arouse immediate suspicion from the markets. In fact, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve seem to be helping them do this!
The dollar is, in effect, dead, but disinformation and market manipulation, mainly by the private Federal Reserve, is being used to reanimate it for appearances. The result is the conjuring of a kind of “zombie currency,” a Weekend at Bernie’s currency that the Fed props up with strings and pulleys to fool everyone at the party.
The most obvious question here is, why go through so much trouble to keep the dollar around at all?
World Government And The SDR
Since the “Great Recession” began, economic forums and conferences such as the G20, and the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland have spoken of little else except the formation of a centralized world economy and the establishment of a legal body that has the power to run it. At the Davos “workshops,” economists and others present ideas for world governance as if they were the originators of the concept. It may not be surprising to most of us that there is rarely if ever anyone who participates in the WEF meetings that supports the restoration of national sovereignty. In fact, nearly all the participants seem to assume that a world government is the solution to all our ills. It is also important that like the G20, government officials from all over the world attend, including those from the U.S., and that very often the policies developed at these forums end up in legislation and mass media here at home. Meaning, the laws and propaganda supporting forced globalization and world government are fine tuned at the meetings and then brought to America for mass consumption. Below are a couple video examples of Davos workshops:
It is important to recognize what exactly is being presented in these two videos because they reveal much about our current economic circumstances. The goal of the G20 and the WEF, as they have stated on numerous occasions, is to dissolve national sovereignty. If they had their way, America as we know it would not exist, along with the Constitutional framework that is meant to protect our liberties. To achieve this end, a carefully engineered breakdown of the U.S. dollar is being enacted.
As we have shown, U.S. treasuries auctions have tanked and those long term treasuries already held by foreign nations are being slowly cast off. So far, the Federal Reserve has propped up the dollar by purchasing T-bonds in the place of foreign banks who no longer want them. By continually monetizing this debt, the Fed will inflate an incredible bubble in the treasury market. When will this bubble burst? The key lay in the rules governing Special Drawing Rights.
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are securities much like treasury bonds. Their value is determined by a basket of international currencies including the Dollar, the Euro, the Yen, and the Pound Sterling. The IMF claims that SDRs are not technically considered currency, but SDRs serve nearly all the functions of a currency except that they are not available to the general public (yet). It walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but the IMF would rather not call it a duck. In the end, the SDR is a world reserve currency, and its purpose is to topple the dollar.
Not long after the economic meltdown began, the IMF announced that they would begin the unlimited printing of SDRs. In 2009, within the span of a few months, SDR circulation went from $21 billion, to nearly $204 billion, and this is only the amount they have admitted to:
Governments across the world have purchased SDRs, while at the same time dropping U.S. treasuries. China in particular has shown sharp interest in the SDR as a replacement for the U.S. dollar:
It may be prudent to mention that China’s heightened dumping of U.S. treasuries began right around the time that the IMF began mass printing SDRs. And, even more disconcerting, the U.S. Treasury also quintupled its supply of SDRs in August of 2009:
Being that the U.S. dollar is supposedly the undisputed world reserve currency, why would the U.S. Treasury have any need to buy SDRs at all? Would this not be redundant? Unless, the Treasury knows that the dollar will not remain the world reserve currency for much longer….
Now we get to the tricky part…
The IMF has instituted new rules governing the SDR and those countries who trade it (called “member countries”). Drafting the “Fourth Amendment” governing SDR allocation, the IMF now requires member nations to retain a “special allocation” of the currency much higher than previous allocations. Countries who keep their SDR supply above the required level receive interest payment on their excess. Countries that fall below the required level have to PAY interest on the shortfall. That is to say, if the U.S. were to allow its SDR reserves to fall below the level demanded by the IMF, we would be punished monetarily. Also, under current rules, the interest rates of the currencies that make up the SDR help to determine the interest rates of the SDR.
The IMF claims it only acts as an “intermediary” between countries wishing to trade in SDRs, but since the IMF is the creator and printer of SDR’s, this would ultimately make them the controller of the SDR market, not some outside intermediary.
Participation in the SDR market for now is voluntary. However, what we are witnessing here is the subtle positioning of the SDR as the only alternative in the event that the U.S. dollar fails, and once again, China is the key.
China’s Slow Dollar Dive
The argument is constantly made by mainstream economists that China could never drop its large supply of U.S. T-bills because if they tried, the dollar would collapse, virtually erasing the value of their dollar holdings. The suggestion that “they are as dependent on us as we are on them” is rampant in the MSM, but, if we throw in the wild card factor of the SDR, this all changes.
If the Chinese central bank along with certain others amass enough SDRs over an extended period of time while gradually selling off their T-bonds, the SDR’s could act as a cushion to prevent foreign central banks from losing a large portion of their wealth while the dollar sinks. In fact, in the event that the Federal Reserve raises interest rates on the dollar (perhaps in response to the heightened risk of a mass treasury dump) those holding SDR’s actually benefit, because the interest they receive on their SDR reserves will also go up:
This would not absorb all of China’s losses in the event of a dollar collapse, but it would be a very effective stop gap, and ample incentive for them to continue dumping treasuries. I believe that this is the exact reason why the dollar and the Dow have been held up by the Federal Reserve for so long. They cannot allow a major dollar depreciation until the SDR is established on the world market as a ready substitute.
A good sign that this process might accelerate would be in the event that China de-pegs the Yuan from the Dollar and allows it to appreciate in value. This would signal that China is moving away from the traditional export arrangement with the U.S. Talks of a Yuan appreciation are already hitting the MSM:
Investors in the U.S. will foolishly cheer a rise in the value of the Yuan, thinking that this will increase American exports to China. In reality, China will be preparing to dump the last of its U.S. bonds, and begin exports and imports with the new ASEAN trading bloc:
This new bloc has the potential to surpass profit margins in U.S. markets, especially in the face of extremely weak consumer activity in America. As the U.S. falters under sovereign debt pressure, China will be in prime standing with a ready supply of SDRs and an organized trading bloc to take up the slack of falling exports to the West.
Shock And Awe
The illusion of U.S. recovery seems to be paramount in the plan for Globalist centralization. Every scam imaginable has been fashioned to lure the public into a sense of false comfort. In my original observations on the economic collapse, I believed that we would likely see a “trigger” event in 2010, which would set off a “rolling breakdown” that would not fully climax for a few years. Now, I am not so sure. After examining the facts behind the implementation of SDRs as well as the potentially explosive situation in the treasury market, I believe that a “shock and awe” scenario is becoming more probable. The behavior of the Fed, along with that of the IMF seems to suggest that they are preparing for a focused collapse, peaking within weeks or months instead of years, and the most certain fall of the dollar.
As I think of it now, the advantages of a sudden financial flash flood are numerous. In a drawn out collapse, the Liberty Movement is given a tremendous time advantage, allowing us to double and redouble our membership while the public opinion of the Federal Reserve and the government in general would deteriorate. In a sudden breakdown, our time will be cut short, and the public will be distracted and fearful, desperate for an organized authority to offer any semblance of “order.” A slow collapse allows for the Liberty Movement to work peacefully within the system to build a third party capable of dethroning the current two party farce. A sudden collapse erases all political activity and opens the door to martial law and illegitimate government. And finally, a fast moving meltdown leaves a much stronger psychological impression; a catastrophic waking nightmare, instead of a slow grinding depression. A world government could never be brought about due to the “monotony” of a long slow economic burnout. Too many factors could present themselves in such an extended period that might interfere with the desired end result. Too many variables to calculate. In an abrupt collapse, the Globalists would need only to gage and influence the amount of fear in the populace to a sufficient boiling point then leap in with their intended solution to the problem; centralized global governance.
I feel that in either method, the Central Bankers will fail to reach their ultimate goal, but the prospect of a direct monetary break with limited warning does make the atmosphere much heavier. One can only prepare as much as possible mentally and emotionally, and keep his eyes wide open…
Belahan Dada Paris Hilton di Twitter.
Artis Hollywood Paris Hilton kembali bikin sensasi.foto hot belahan dadanya muncul di twitter.Beberapa hari lalu, Paris menulis di Twitternya kalau ia tengah berlibur bersama kekasihnya, Doug Reinhardt. Sejak mendarat di tempat liburan mereka di Meksiko, ia tak henti-hentinya mengupdate Twitternya.
Salah satu hal yang paling menarik, saat ia menaruh foto dirinya tengah memakai bikini. Namun yang tampak jelas di foto tersebut adalah belahan dada Paris. Foto itu memang hanya menunjukkan tubuh bagian atas dara berambut pirang
Christian democracy is socially conservative and economically liberal. There is a trade-off in using the term liberal. In the USA liberal means leftwing. Libertarians complain about this. In most of the world the left is social democratic. It is true that US liberals are neither libertarian nor social democratic. And yet they are far more close to the classical liberal tradition than they are to social democracy. Liberterians would strongly disagree with me, but I think a comparative study of the historical evolution of the US Democratic Party and the European social democratic parties would bear me out on this.
The model Christian Democratic party is German. The CDU established a social market economy, that preserved socially conservative patriarchy with the single-male breadwinner by using welfare state policies to ensure that a household only needed one laborer. The Social Democrats in the Nordic states actively encouraged women to enter the market using welfare policies. The US has what could be called a night watchmen welfare state. So by the very absence of welfare benefits, the US libertarian system achieves a similar result to the Nordic feminist policies, since it pushes women into the market. However since the 1980s, Neoliberalism has swept the globe and we have seen a return to 19th century American style capitalism everywhere. So understanding Tucker Max’s social liberalism, and economic conservatism is useful to understanding the entire world.
And yet his worldview is both socially liberal and conservative. Milton Friedman’s minarchist liberterianism generally encourages social liberalism. But Max also relies on traditionalists like Homer, Thucydides, Paul Johnson, and Thomas Sowell. He also favors the economic theory of law. And yet from his sociobiological sources from Matt Ridley, Dawkins, Sperm Wars, Pinker, Wright, Greene etc. he favors a rather conservative social order. I suppose his belief is that in a minarchist social darwinist liberterian state, the survival of the fittest will naturally create a conservative order in line with Herbert Spencer. From the 18th century with Hobbes vs Locke, the strong Leviathan state was traditionally associated with a pessimistic view of human nature, while the liberal state was associated with optimistic blank slatism. This has been reversed since the 1960s, with cruel human nature used to justify the night watchmen state. This is the marriage of libertarianism and sociobiology.
Max draws on positivist Chicago School economics as opposed to natural law Austrian school.
So on the surface Tucker Max is just a hard-partying frat boy PUA. But as his reading list shows there is an entire political program behind it. I suppose you could call it bioliberterianism. While not specifically mentioned, this marriage of darwinism and masculinity, is very much in line with Nietzche’s Superman. His master morality where strength is power. Nietzsche said that Napoleon was proof of women’s inferiority, since no woman could ever dream of reaching that level of greatness. The 20th century descendant of Nietzsche is Heidegger, and in their Fight Club existentialism, there is a desire to find some sort of real experience and existence through caveman masculinity.
Make no mistake about it, as of 2010, Bioliberterianism is the official ideaology of the USA, and through globalization of the world. Most Americans whatever their status in society have embraced Bioliberterianism. This includes both the NPR liberal left and the Fox News Christian Right. Few speak in as explicit terms as Roissy, Halfsigma, and Tucker Max, but ideas don’t have to be held on the sleeve.
Is Bioliberterianism the legitimate heir to Renaissance humanism, Protestant individualism, Enlightenment rationalism, civic republicanism, and classical philosophy?
Philosophy has broken down in the 21st century since we have reached the Roissyite Utopia. Continental philosophy has descended into post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism. Anglo-American philosophy is entirely logical positivist, linguistic, analytic. Both essentially reduce philosophy to linguistics and the analysis of language. This is more clear in the Analytic tradition derived from Wittgenstein and Russell. But the hermeneutic textual readings of the Continentals is also basically based on questions of language.
One can also see Freud as the founder of the school that everything is REALLY about sex. People are to distracted by his Oedpial conflict literary theory, to see that he is the direct precursor of Roissyite bio-reductionism. Freud’s theory of human nature is entirely based on his reading of Darwin’s sexual selection. Watson and BF Skinner’s Radical Empiricism represented a revolt against Freudian psychology based on Pavlovian conditioning. Pinker’s sharp attack on blank slatism represents a sort of Neo-Freudianist theory of human nature. Freud was similar to Roissy in being Janus-faced about sexual liberation. On the one hand he considered it unhealthy to deny caveman sexuality, on the other hand he realized that all the achievements of civilization were based on suppressing this.
Alphas/Id, Betas/Ego, Omega/Superego.
Now Roissyism supposedly represents both the ideology of sexual liberation and an attack on it. It is primarily an advocate of sexuality, the conservative attack is just moonshine. It is part of individualism, which always claims outsider status even when it is on the throne. That is the nature of pluralism. Those in power, will always be the loudest critics.
Who doesn’t love Hello Kitty? That adorable Japanese cat with the red bow? Hello Kitty has invaded US territory in the form of fashion accessories such as purses, T-shirts, lunchboxes, bags, jewelry, wallets, stickers, posters. Even celebrities like Lady Gaga and Paris Hilton pay tribute to this famous kitty. This proves there is no age limit to being a Hello Kitty fan. And you can’t forget the many television, movies, and video games that have found their ways into homes everywhere. It’s almost unimaginable that a character with no mouth can speak loudly to so many American kids, teenagers and adults alike. With anime becoming more and more popular in recent years, Hello Kitty has become one of the most recognizable Japanese characters. Hello Kitty even has her own theme park, restaurants and is even on the side of an Airbus A330-200 airplane!!! Even with Japan getting hit hard with recent Toyota issues, at least they will always have Hello Kitty to pull them through those tough times.
And don’t forget about her twin sister, Mimmy. She’s cute too.
i can’t bear to do a negative, thinspo-loaded post today, so i won’t. welcome my brain’s positive ish:
^ for some reason i’m really enjoying this picture. maybe it’s the camel. i mean, i prefer llamas but i consider myself a camel-fan… and i’m LOVING that little crocheted thins on his nose.
anyway, i found it on this blog:
http://agirlnamedbong.blogspot.com
it’s been my source of entertainment for the last couple of days, along with Heroes, which i’ve been watching via netflix.com
i’m on season 2 and i’m hooked! i here it gets worse but now apparently there’s a new writer so it’s better…?
i don’t know. but i’ll keep watching regardless because of milo. he’s why i started watching in the first place. you see, i disliked him on gilmore girls because i found jess annoying. like, really?!? stop doing bad things! but i hadn’t hit puberty yet, and i think that’s necessary to get the full effect, because it wasn’t until i re-watched gilmore girls a couple of months ago that i realized how stunning he is. i mean, really! i’ve seen and/ or known plenty of men who are good-looking or cute or hot, but only two who are really– well– beautiful, and he’s one of them. and i don’t mean just the face, but the whole being.
he’s the kind of person who artists dream about. a muse…
so, yeah– um, heroes. good show. haha
erm… ok! so i think next year i’m going to go vegan. i just feel like it’s the right thing to do– like vegetarianism isn’t enough. i can do more and i WANT to do more. i’ve been feeling increasing bad about eating animal products and i wouldn’t if my parents would stop practically force-feeding me and complaining about how i’m so hard to cook for. (not that i ever ask to be cooked for. i can fend for myself)
i’ve been taking a lot of pictures, too. mostly of the snow. i wanted to get a good one of the flakes falling, but my camera’s new, so i couldn’t figure out which setting to use. i’m enjoying experimenting with it most of the time, but sometimes i REALLY want a shot, and then it’s frustrating.
sorry… i’m kind of new at this whole positivity thing. if i decided to try this more i promise to get better at it!
but before i end the post i have a really random question: if you could go anywhere in the world for a couple of days (no time-traveling or anything like that), where would you go?
Boredom: the desire for desires – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Is this all just boredom? You have freed yourself from all desires. That’s a good thing right? Except if there is no pleasure you seek, then the best you can hope for is a 0 state of neither pleasure nor pain. Which is no better or worse than nonexistence. Anything else would just be more pain than pleasure, and worse than nonexistence.
I mean for a while this was all sublated by ambition. This was all necessary sacrifice for a worthy goal. Out of ambition I acted very much like a teenage Ayn Rand sycophant would, calculating advantage, and making a point of never sacrificing self-interest when I was in direct competition. Of course this was all done out of the noblest motives, in the belief that I was best qualified to use power in a utilitarian way. In this way anything that stood in the way of my interest, stood in the way of the salvation of humanity.
We all champion the heroism of men like Cortez when they burn their ships so there is no place to retreat to, and only victory can save them. But if you are defeated the burning of bridges comes to be the greatest of blunders. Had I been successful the same facts could be rewritten under different paradigms. My childhood and teen years, would be the story of a determined hero with his eyes fixed on the prize. With complete faith in his star.
SO now I’m stuck with a profound sense of ennui. I just don’t care. The world goes on its stupid way destroying itself. And I’ve just lost touch with humanity. I don’t believe in individualism, so I don’t think there is anything I can do to make things better. So it goes beyond the evils of the world. IT is the mediocrity of the world. The shallow caprice.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
Is that true? I mean on the one hand it is philosophy that has led me to such misery. But on the other hand, intelligence as the ability to be a rational calculator, need not lead anyone to misery. It is only when one feels, that life becomes misery.
I don’t think that it is being over-educated that has ruined me. In my adolescence I had a narrow but deep education of very specific military subjects. But that broadened into wider political thought. By the time I self-taught myself a broad philosophical education in college, it was too late to make any real difference in my interactions with the world. A general philosophical education at a young age would have helped me put the world in perspective. And be more stoic and determinist about the evils of the world. To see myself more as an actor rather than writer of history.
Well what about Rodney Stark’s rational choice theory of religion? That even the craziest New Agey religions that people believe are actually logical calculations about the benefits such religion conveys. In that sense Destiny was my religion. I derived far more pleasure from it then I would have from Gossip Girl. It is true that the promise lay in the future, but I borrowed on that future promissory note. Schopenhauer says that all the pleasure we gain from expectation is deducted when the actual pleasure arrives. But since the Future never came, it turned out I was living off pleasure that didn’t exist. Does that mean that the happiness I experiance in youth was not actual happiness?
So is it about evil or ennui? Well there is nothing less boring than the noble crusade against evil. So if there are so many dragons to slay, why is the world so horrible? PErhaps there is no hope for total victory. But you are not so base, that you can’t score individual triumphs?
Well what if you worked a “normal” 9-5 job, but from Hegel’s philosophy of right, you were able to see even burger-flipping as a noble realization of human history and rationality. And then after work you had your Indiana Jones adventures with all the pluralist sects that populate diversity USA. Ok lets not romanticize it. I mean these would just be discussion groups in people’s houses. But you know full well that your not capable of swinging from vines, and escaping death-traps. I mean you have the ability to work out to the point where you may look good, and have a brute kind of strength, but you will never have the fineness of useful strength or athleticism. In that sense you are better suited to be an Indiana Jones of American diversity.
Unless of course adventure was never really what you wanted? You just wanted stability and a hierarchy to climb? Pretty much any workplace offers that. I mean you like both flat and vertical hierarchies. A flat hierarchy is democratic, while a vertical one is a ladder to climb. Does adventure have to be geographical? I mean if you want to meet Satanists, vampires, cults, mystics, wizards, ghost hunters, paranormal, through the internet you can meet them right here in USA.
So is that so different from your “grand ambition”? You find a hierarchy that you try to climb, and you also have adventures.
As for utopia, that will be one of your scenes. Isn’t the struggle for utopia, utopia itself? And while it maybe difficult to join a hippie commune right now, if that becomes a longterm goal, then you probably can do it eventually. And so you can live out your days after a lifetime of adventure, in the society you would have won had it all worked out.
How much did you ever believe in utopia? Earlier it served as a distant goal, to justify your life of adventure. And after the fall it served as a ritualistic duty without any hope of victory.
Well is that a life you could live? Work during the day, Indiana Jones at night? I mean yeah its not as exciting as temples of doom, but you tried that road and know its not for you. You may not be able to duel a Voodoo priest, but you can learn from him the intellectual consciousness behind his thought.
Utopia means stability and harmony. Yes it is true the job market is chaotic now. But if you ever did get a public sector job, you would enjoy the relative stability of utopia. You always turned down the prospect of being a public teacher. So its not stability your after. Utopia is your Kantian Kingdom of Ends. It is the divine goal, that is supposed to motivate all your actions. Its nothing you should lament, that you don’t live in it.
And what of Tucker Max? Well if this is all an elaborate mask for your Nietzsche herd resentment , then this is purely an instrumental problem. You need to learn the skills to achieve the particular goal of being Tucker Max. And if its white-knighting genuinely, then be content that women lead more fulfilling lives now than they ever have in history. A women is far better off in the Roissyverse than she was in your beloved Athens. IF women issues are the primary bane of your existence, then Athens horrific treatment of them should far outweigh their beautiful democracy. Rome itself was founded in a Tucker Max manner, they invited over the neighboring town, and then raped all the Sabine women. Don’t get me started on Genghis Khan.
So if thats what your really concerned with, than you’d have to admit that all your beloved civic republic were even worse.
And you were so afraid of being a beta male, who bought pretty flowers, long before you had heard of the term beta or PUA. So if girls really have it so horrible, then why don’t you become a beta, and try to make it a little better for them? Is it so horrible to be taken advantage of, by a girl, if you know she faces a pack of wolves at every corner who wish to hurt, humiliate, degrade, debase her out of sheer sadism? Isn’t being a beta nice-guy the LEAST you can do?
Even from a hedonist point of view, if sexual success is what you wanted and you always claimed it wasn’t, but if it was, then you would have done a lot better playing the nice guy beta, than you did playing the omega jerk. I mean your justification is that beautiful girls, get treated too nice by the world, just because of their looks, and your being egalitarian by being rude to them. But if they really do live in a tragic world besieged by Roissys and Tucker Maxes, then their beauty is a curse that gives alphas a right to hurt them. In which case you must come to the opposite conclusion, that you should be especially nice to them.
I mean can’t you just say outright “yes, I know that you are biologically programmed by your cavegirl greatgranny who got hit with a club and made a rapeslave, to submit to the alpha with the biggest club, but I don’t care about that. I’m who I’m, and I’m not going to change my moral values for you. Either accept me as a nice guy or get out. I’m not going to be a man I hate, just to please you. Your not worth that price to me, I don’t value you that highly.I insist on being a white knight torpedoes be damned!”
If any of those so-called recovering AFCs had every been “nice guys” and not Tucker Maxes in slow-motion thats what they would have said.
How can you be so certain that nice guys finish last? Just because everyone says so. The nice guys who COMPLAIN are NOT nice-guys they just pursue a conservative strategy.
They are a testament to the glory of Mises’ sexual free-market, because men much more immoral than you are forced to behave far kinder than you. I mean you consider yourself a nice guy deep down inside. But you have consciously made sure that you NEVER do anything nice for a girl, and you never have because you don’t face the pressure of the sexual free market. The sexual market forces those so-called white knights to behave more morally than they actually are. And that is what all their complaining and resentment is about.
I have seen no empirical evidence from middle, high school or college, that nice guys finish last. I’ve heard a lot of complaints online, and it is what pop culture pushes but I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. It may or may not have existed in frat college. But that was NOT what you were looking for. You condemned hedonism not Roissyism. Yes the jerks were doing well, but afaik the nice guys were as well. Anyway there are very few men in the world who would meet my standard for nice guy white knight. So maybe the problem is not that girls go for jerks, but that there are only jerks. Take your pick aggressive or conservative jerks. Conservative jerks AKA beta nice guys, would LIKE to live the Tucker Max life, long before Roissy “open their eyes”, the sexual free-market disciplines them.
Some Life-History Differences
Between r-Strategists and K-Strategists
r-Strategist
K-Strategist
Family characteristics
Large litter size
Small litter size
Short birth spacing
Long birth spacing
Many offspring
Few offspring
High infant mortality
Low infant mortality
Little parental care
Much parental care
Individual characteristics
Rapid maturation
Slow Maturation
Early sexual reproduction
Delayed sexual reproduction
Short life
Long life
High reproductive effort
Low reproductive effort
High energy utilization
Efficient energy utilization
Smaller brains
Larger brains
Population characteristics
Opportunistic exploiters
Consistent exploiters
Dispersing colonizers
Stable occupiers
Variable population size
Stable population size
Weak competition
Strong competition
Social system characteristics
Low social organization
Higher social organization
Low Altruism
High Altruism
PUAs actually take a rather traditionalist, dare I say Beta, view towards culture. Roissy himself has stated that he believes western civilization was the most favorable to betas and thus evolved towards the highest. I think there is too much confusion in PUA between alpha-beta and r/K selection.
For the most part nearly all the traits associated with alphas can also be called r tactics. Alpha becomes a pretty meaningless term when you have such large levels of civilization, and anomie. We don’t really have tribal families anymore. So I think the TERMS alpha and beta are meaningless but you can replace it with r/K selection theory and still have all the traits in-tact. For example you can have an entire K community, yet there could still be the alpha of said community. Alphaness, and I use the term loosely, is about power. While Roissy refers to the state as a replacement beta, in fact the Hobbesian Leviathan is the ONLY alpha alive today. Now I myself may use the term beta just because its popular but what I and PUAs both mean really is r/K selection theory.
R is the natural Rate of reproduction while K is Kare invested.
So morality and ethics as such is an attempt to encourage K traits. Hegel’s Philosophy of History is in some-sense the story of evolution from R as barbaric slave to nature, to K as free man consciously changing nature. Darwin saw life-history as the story of the draining of testosterone, and looked forward to the day in which the feminine traits of altruism and empathy would extent to the world. Larry Arnhart even hurls the charge of utopianism at Darwin.
That is also what the master slave dialectic is. The master is the alpha. He has all the fun in life, wine women and song. And his slave beta just works in the fields feeding Tucker. The alpha has more courage than the beta. He was willing to fight and die, the beta preferred life in chains to death. But ultimately it is the slave who is interaction with nature, who creates, and who builds. And so the world is the beta’s.
Now Roissy and Co. might actually agree with a lot of what I wrote above, but would insist the party is over and that feminism has ruined everything. Roissy calls himself a libertine capitalist. Feminism is the daughter of capitalism. The market had to quite naturally extend into the family sphere. And once women were pushed out of agriculture the discipline of the market would not let them sit on their hands. It is from capitalism, that women achieved the economic independence, that made male-female relations voluntary to a degree they had not been in the past. Precisely because American capitalism is so libertarian, women are pushed into the labor market far more strongly than they are in Christian Democratic Europe. In that sense I should feel a lot more sorry for myself than for any of Tucker Max’s conquests. I don’t just face pop cultural pressure to have a market relation with a boss, if I don’t do it I’ll starve!
Dawkins points out that the next stage in the selfish gene is Memetics. In that sense I was not really anti-survival. It is true I had very little concern whether my selfish-gene survived. But I wasn’t content to leave this world as though I had never existed. I was determined that my selfish-meme would replicate and rule the world. Even if my selfish-meme was not directly tied to me, and my name and legacy disappeared from the world, my memetic information which is just as real as genetic information would survive.
If the selfish gene is nothing but information code, then memetics is actually a more efficient way to replicate, since there is less corruption of the source code.
So my morality does not necessarily have to be in conflict with this harsh Darwinian world. It is perfectly compatible with the selfish meme.
The only thing worse than bad music, is bad music done by people who think they’re good at it. Listen to their albums is like watching a car crash in slow motion or watching one-legged man hobble across the cross walk or a dog licking peanut from the roof of his mouth. Although it’s frustrating, its somehow funny. Sadly, a lot of actors decide the next obvious step in their career is cutting the worst album known to man. Just ask Steven Segal and his album Mojo Priest!
Think you know who’re the best of the worst? Check out the gallery after the jump!
Poug is still going strong as we begin the second month of 2010. The relationship had lots of signs of potential disaster, but they’ve weathered the storm.
Last week, January 28, the happy couple partied together peacefully at Voyeur Nightclub. Paris looked cute in this black and white dress which she accessorized with a nice necklace.
Sex is what creates us, so it’s sensible that eroticism (that is, all the feelings we have about sex) will have the potential to carry our creative impulse into life, and throughout our lives.
It also works the other way. When someone is conditioned to either not think or experience sexuality with full awareness (or any awareness), or if they are programmed to respond with guilt and fear, self-awareness becomes blocked. If there is a sexual injury or the perception of one, it can block much of our creative energy, potential and happiness.
Our relationship to sex and sexuality is our relationship to existence. If we feel good about our erotic experiences, needs and feelings, we tend to feel good about life. If we are bitter, if we don’t get what we need, if we feel guilty or ashamed of our sexual feelings and experiences, that is most likely how we’re going to feel about life. This can manifest some strange ways, such as violence and manipulation, just like feeling good about sex can manifest as a passionate, creative person who creates their existence consciously every day.
Why don’t we see the connection? Well, we’re conditioned not to, principally by religion. Notice that this thing we call religion takes credit for our existence at the same time it makes sex bad. You also can’t be aware of something you cannot feel, have no experience with or don’t know exists. For 25 years, Americans have grown up with something called Abstinence-Only sex indoctrination, which in effect denies the existence of their natural sexuality (Europeans who know about this think we’re on crack).
Our biology does not give up so easily, though. The psyche’s hunger for sex (which is the hunger to fully exist), for a while, pushes through this resistance. What we find then is often a lot of programmed people who themselves fall for the deception, and it can become very difficult to get our needs met. Honesty can be met with rejection. Wanting anything unusual can be met with a weird look. Even equating sex with deep vulnerability, such as in a relationship, is frequently avoided. How often do we have the feeling that someone is just not going as deep as they can, not calling themselves present?
Imagine, then, all the thought and discussion we have about sex and issues that stem from it — and substitute the word “self.” Imagine the need, the fear, the anxiety, the desire, the deep craving, the judgments we fear and the ones to which we’ve fallen prey. Imagine everything ever said in a church sermon. Imagine the jealousy and the drama and the secrets. Imagine everyone we’ve ever fucked or wanted to. Imagine sex education, the birds and the bees, masturbation and all of those orgasms. Imagine all those sexual relationships wherein we tried to find our Self.
Replace the concept “sex” with “self” and see how the world looks through that lens. How would it feel if somebody said to you, “Hi, I really want to have Self with you”?
Or, translated: “I really want to be myself with you, and have you be yourself with me.”
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Locked-In Syndrome
THE OTHER NIGHT at Upstate Films, I saw a film called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s the true story of a man named Jean-Dominique Bauby, once a prominent writer and editor in Paris. At the age of 42, at the peak of his success as editor in chief of Elle, he suffered a massive brainstem stroke, losing all mobility and sensation except for his hearing and use of his left eye.
He could think; he could see; he could hear. His memory and imagination were intact. But he could not move or express himself — except for one eye. This is called “locked-in syndrome.” It is consciousness locked into a body that cannot respond; it is the ultimate mind-body split.
Think that sexually, we are a society of people suffering from a variant of locked-in syndrome. We may have our erotic imaginations, we may have our memories and we may have our desires. But we have untold thousands of reasons not to act on or even speak about our experiences. To some extent, nearly everyone in the current version of Western culture is erotically paralyzed.
We can have liberal values, but are often trapped in groups of people who don’t share them or don’t reveal it if they do. We can have progressive ideas about relationships, but are only able to find people who have traditional values, or with those who seek some freedom but who don’t speak up.
We might be locked inside of fear, of insecurity, or the cocoon of lies that we have told in the past — or more probably, the lies that we were told. We might be trapped inside fat, or the feeling of being ugly or undesirable.
We might have ideas, images and feelings, but lack the words and concepts to express them: trapped in a kind of seemingly imposed silence. This silence can come with the feeling that we will be struck down if we dare to open up and speak.
We might be trapped inside a sense of vulnerability so acute it feels like walking around a city naked. For many, this would translate to naked in the winter.
Some are trapped inside a sense of injury from a sexual assault, incest experience, or growing up around shifty boundaries as a kid.
We might be trapped inside a wall that was put up when we were told that masturbation is wrong.
Or trapped in the inability to ask for what we want.
Trapped inside of any version of the mind/body split — “caught in one’s head.”
Trapped inside of embarrassment, unable to speak or even feel because of the shame associated with doing so.
Trapped inside of being gay when everyone thinks you’re straight or straight when everyone thinks you’re gay. Trapped inside of being bisexual when the people around you…just don’t get it.
Trapped in a monogamous relationship when we’re really polyamorous.
Trapped inside the need to be in love, and otherwise being unable to express sexuality.
Trapped inside an image we must maintain, of wanting to seem pure and upright. Trapped inside of pride; a closely related theme.
Trapped inside religious conditioning, even if we don’t think we have it.
Trapped inside of tradition or family expectations.
Trapped inside of not knowing what we want. Trapped inside of a lot of people telling us what we are supposed to want, even though they have no clue.
Trapped inside of not trusting people. Trapped inside of not trusting ourselves.
Trapped inside the feeling that we don’t exist.
Trapped inside a parent telling us we’re ugly, even once.
Trapped inside of having been raped or molested, and having had that wound fester.
Trapped inside a myth of what monogamy is supposed to be, even if we know it’s not that thing.
Trapped inside not being able to find a lover, or a sex partner. Trapped inside of seeking the perfect person, and not letting anyone else in.
Trapped inside of feeling “dirty” and terrified of being found out.
And on, and on.
I think that in many ways, though we are walking around, many of us here are in considerably worse shape than Bauby. He at least was fully conscious of being alive. He was able to write a book communicating by blinking his one eye. Most of us are far less articulate about our erotic and emotional needs than this.
I would ask: where are we going to learn? Where is the place that the conversation is welcome? If it’s not about sex, where is the place that you can really be your Self?
Sex is Self.
Held Hostage by Jealousy
Hannah mentioned that her boyfriend would be jealous if he found out that I was photographing her topless. Then she added, “I don’t know if I agree with that.”
Her objection was phrased tentatively and non-threateningly, but her voice was firm and carried a hint of pain. She knew that somebody was trying to take over her life in a way that they were not entitled, and that was only covering up their own insecurities.
“Well, it’s your body, right?”
She agreed with this, but described some of the control issues involved. We weren’t having sex — she reserves that for him. We were just taking pictures. But in his mind, only he should photograph her — nobody else. Nobody should even see her, just him. It occurred to her that under these rules, she would be laying herself on the altar of sacrifice to cover for his insecurities.
"My jealousy keeps me monogamous."
We mused over this for a while, and then she said: “People aren’t monogamous, they’re jealous.”
I understood exactly what she meant, but asked her to explain in her own words. Here is the idea: Monogamy for most people is less about fidelity and more about not wanting to make one’s partner jealous. Or, it’s about being good, whether out of guilt, or so they don’t do anything that makes you jealous.
“So if your partner wouldn’t get jealous, you would do anything you wanted?” I asked.
“My jealousy keeps me monogamous. Seriously, what other reason would there be?” She admitted she didn’t want him to do anything that would make her jealous, either. I call this kind of deadlock gunpoint monogamy: if you move, I’ll shoot. If I move, you’ll shoot. We both better be good. Note, I don’t believe this has anything to do with love.
I wonder how many people she speaks for. Maybe not everyone all the time, but certainly for most people most of the time.
This explains cheating: someone does something behind their partner’s back to “save them” from their own jealousy. Or they don’t reveal what happened in order to save themselves from being confronted by that jealousy, and thus addressing the insecurity and attachment behind it. Or, we would “rather not know” and look the other way when we have a feeling our partner is involved in extracurricular activity.
Many people — again, not everyone — feel entitled to share their sex with someone, but not obliged to bear the brunt of their partner’s possessive rage and potential revenge that would likely follow. So most people keep quiet, well versed in what usually happens when they tell the truth.
As misguided as jealousy of this type may seem, and as unethical as it may be to cheat (which really means to lie), there’s a grain of truth inside the deception: and perhaps a more important issue lurks in there. If we’re not another person’s property, what are we then? Alternately, if we’re not free, then what does that mean?
We know inside that we’re all responsible for our own jealousy. Yet typically we either make it everyone else’s fault (“he made me jealous”), or take on the burden of shielding others from what might stir up their rage (and this is often a convenient, deceptive excuse). Projection takes many forms. I’ve noticed that the people who pour on the jealousy tend to be the most likely to cheat.
We know that being alive grants us the right to make choices; we know that “it’s my body and I can do what I want” and that “I am free to care about who I care about,” and that nobody has a right to dictate our emotions. We know that most erotic desire is biological. It’s difficult to miss how sexy people are, and that feeling comes from deep down.
But we tend to walk around inside a contradiction of desire that we can’t honestly express, and of feelings we can’t honestly share, because we fear we’ll be out on the street.
Relationships in our society and in many others are trumped up as the pearl of great price, the most valuable thing in the universe — and to many, it makes sense to avoid the one thing that could threaten this, at any cost. The result is we can gradually come to live lives of total deception. As a result, the emotional subject matter that we need to open up about in our relationships goes unaddressed. We avoid jealousy and thus avoid what it has to offer us as a growth tool; as a cosmic mirror. We avoid truth, and erotic energy dies.
Much of that unaddressed emotional material involves insecurity and lack of self-esteem. A relationship can cover that up for a while, and jealousy can quickly expose the emotional void we lived with all along. If someone wants someone else, we must be unworthy. For most people, jealousy is so painful and so entirely debilitating that it makes sense to avoid it, just like you would not intentionally put your hand on a hot stove.
The idea that one’s lover could be with someone else is often viewed as the ultimate betrayal, and the worst form of abandonment. The supposed solution is to avoid the feeling and anything that can lead to it at all costs, though without recognizing what that cost really is. Taken unconsciously, the cost of jealousy is loss of the right to exist, or the denial of your partner’s right to exist. Usually, both happen together.
Few recognize that jealousy, taken as a conscious experience, is a teacher. But sometimes the pain gets so intense that people finally get curious about what’s causing it. An enduring article on Planet Waves called Jealousy and the Abyss by William Pennell Rock consistently gets 600 unique visits every month, most of them directly from search engines. The article proposes that jealousy is an existential crisis. In other words, jealous episodes threaten the ground that a relationship stands on; and because most of us view a relationship as existence itself, threatens our own sense of existence in the world.
Jealousy, the author reasons, is a cover-up for the fear of non-existence, or death. If we can sort out all the things that mock for jealousy (envy, attachment, guilt, fear and anxiety) we can learn something about our relationship to existence. “The core is an existential problem; it has to do with illusion and the essentially fearful nature of the ego,” he writes. “In possessiveness, ego defends itself against nothingness. When we come to know and accept the nothingness at the core, jealousy and the pain of obsessive attachment cease.”
It started out with celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Leisha Hailey, Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore.
Now the closet doors have been sprung wide open.
With such actors and actresses as Neil Patrick Harris, Clay Aiken, Megan Fox, Nikki Reed, Madonna, Nelly Furtado, Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, Fergie, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lance Bass, Tila Tequila, Sara & Tegan Quin, and Lindsay Lohan – more and more people, celebrity or not, are openly admitting to being either gay, lesbian, bisexual, or to having had, at one point, a relationship with someone of the same gender – and it seems to be happening more now than ever.
So why is there this sudden up rise of young people coming out? Is it a fad? Has the media glamorized homosexuality? Or, is it the celebrities? Has being in the limelight, as well as being ‘out and proud‘ granted the lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender individuals of this world a sense of freedom to be ‘out and proud‘ themselves?
In the movie Mona Lisa’s Smile, Julia Roberts presents a slide show to her class. She asks of one picture, “Is it art?“:
“Art isn’t art until someone says it is.” one student says.
“It’s art!” Julia Roberts says.
“The right people.” the student replies.
Maybe, not unlike the student’s observation in Mona Lisa’s Smile (“until someone says it is.‘) and maybe, until, ‘the right people’ say it – maybe people feel bound to keep their preferences, opinions, and views to themselves…that is, until Megan Fox or Lady Gaga says it’s okay.
Why is it, that people with any sort of appreciable status have such impact on our lives?
Since 2008, I have had over TEN, yes, TEN people come out of the closet it to me – three of which confessed to having once had a crush on me.
In my opinion, and this is just me, I believe that eight of the ten people who came out to me are probably straight. Otherwise, maybe Freud was right – maybe everyone is bisexual.
It is my earnest belief that half of the people who are coming out of the closet in recent days, just like half the people who dye their hair green, flip the bird at police officers, and take every picture giving that stupid horned hand signal, are all just trying to send this same message: “I’m different.”
But you’re not.
You, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Osbourne, Courtney Love, every person from the bands Simple Plan, Sum 41, Blink 182, and those two Madden Brothers – are exactly the same!
But that’s off topic.
The point is. I’m sure that there are people who have come out of the closet and are genuinely gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender, but for those of you who aren’t: if we fight so hard to make it possible for all people to have right to freedom of speech, and if we all long to be in fact, free, why give up the opportunity?
If you’re secretly straight, I challenge you – be bold! Come out of the closet.
I watched yesterday the movie that Paris Hilton liked, Chris Brown and Omarion loved.
I liked it, i loved Rain, hes become a good actor. I didn’t even think about the bad boy song too much while looking at the movie.
It started a bit slow but the actually fight scenes were really cool and talented made.
Raizos (Rains) attitude rocked and he carried the movie splendid.
But me and my friend laughed our ass off when a dude said he looks like someone from a boy band, well Rain is just one of Koreans biggest pop singers. x’D
It’s a movie t watch, a totally cool movie! I’m thinking about watching it again!! : D
XoXo
ps. But Raizo still reminds me annoyingly of the name Rambo….
Other famous couples may not be able to keep it together this winter in Aspen, Colorado, but there have surprisingly no reports of fighting out of camp Poug.
December 28, the couple was out and about in Aspen, the celebrity Christmas hangout.
The very next day, December 29, Poug was partaking in their favorite pastime- shopping.
in the form of fashion accessories such as purses, T-shirts, lunchboxes, bags, jewelry, wallets, stickers, posters. Even celebrities like Lady Gaga and Paris Hilton pay tribute to this famous kitty. This proves there is no age limit to being a Hello Kitty fan. And you can’t forget the many television, movies, and video games that have found their ways into homes everywhere. It’s almost 
unimaginable that a character with no mouth can speak loudly to so many American kids, teenagers and adults alike. With anime becoming more and more popular in recent years, Hello Kitty has become one of the most recognizable Japanese characters. Hello Kitty even has her own theme park, restaurants and is even on the side of an Airbus A330-200 airplane!!! Even with Japan getting hit hard with recent Toyota issues, at least they will always have Hello Kitty to pull them through those tough times.
It started out with celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Leisha Hailey, Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore.
Raizos (Rains) attitude rocked and he carried the movie splendid.
Fashion Spot
