The content of this page consists of reflections on my day to day life, and/or to express insights about human behavior, the application of morality, or analysis of articles and narratives of political, economic, or a social nature.
This is the successor to the Daily Journal 2 which has entries dating from 8/28/2022 to 8/29/2023. DJ2 was preceded by The Daily Journal which consists of entries beginning in 2017 and ending 8/24/2021
11/30/2023
Writing more frequently awaiting the rejection of my submission to proceed to the next submission next rejection. I doubt the concepts will be understood enough to understand the significance. The paper identifies that an omnipotent being existing within an eternal space is limited by their experiences or knowledge of objects. Anyone who believes there are eternal spaces has to acknowledge that even an all powerful being in an eternal space eventually requires exposure to new things since over the course of forever all things that can be created and experienced will be undertaken so many times as to render them unstimulating. Eternal existence requires novelty, and novelty cannot be created within the space because what is created is a product of the experiences of the beings within the space. The universe is the perfect solution to that problem as an instrument to randomly assemble matter towards increasing complexity with the most complex thing it can produce being intelligent life. I can’t say for sure that the universe exists for producing the novelty required to sustain eternal existence, but if eternal spaces exist the universe is the perfect solution to a known problem of such a space. In the paper I discuss some existential implications inclusive of objective morality as a determinant of conscious motion. Mainly to show how omnipotence can be shared without creating a problem among objectively moral beings, but also to show the necessity and probability of separate spaces if an eternal spaces exist, which is a belief shared by the majority of the population.
I’ve submitted various papers to journals but they’re typically responded to with generic rejections, no indication that anything was understood and no questions for clarification. Sometimes it’s the wrong field, while other times it really doesn’t make sense. I submitted various versions of Liberty as the Basis to moral philosophy journals and received generic rejections. Not only is it a moral philosophy, it’s an explanation of moral functioning, the identification of morality as a determinant of conscious motion, completely consistent and applicable, and ideal based on the human constant which is desire, while identifying fundamental human moral failings that produce the negative results that we see on this planet. I’d have been fine with having those assertions challenged, either principally, or through scenario or example. I probably submitted ASC to the wrong journals. I submitted RUSC to several economic journals where it was rejected without explanation. The idea itself opens doors into economic research to forecast the effects.
The rejection of RUSC is a betrayal of academic duty on two fronts. 1st, it’s an idea that claims if implemented can substantially increase the wages of unskilled workers, increase tax revenue, and decrease government spending. The aim of academics is to increase knowledge for the betterment of humankind. Unless there’s something fundamentally flawed, the idea should be known to those in the field it pertains to, and it should be researched so the public knows the spectrum of what it could accomplish. If it is fundamentally flawed that explanation could be provided in the rejection and I should have an opportunity to respond to that.
There was one rejection for the Balance Stimulus where the editor provided a few paragraphs of criticism. I responded to and believe I overcame that criticism and he did not reply. In the American Prosperity Proposals I included that dialogue, his explanation and my responses.
I went through the first few sections of APP today but forgot to add the part I wanted to add. Two to three entries ago I had a YouTube exchange that answers the work and save to improve your income cliche. I wanted to add that. I have that other short book to finish that I was initially compiling as a research paper. I’ve been spending a lot of time yesterday and today watching videos and researching for an Airtasker’s job. The job looks pretty easy. From what I can tell it consists of bolting down two upright beams and attaching a few accessories to them. As for not resuming my work on the examples of bias book it’s difficult to be motivated to do something when there’s no outlet for it.
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I found myself in another example worthy exchange which benefited me much more than the example of bias. It reminded me of another exchange I’m using as an example, where the participant tried to argue that the foundation of liberty is well being since a byproduct of objective morality facilitates desire, and the fulfillment of desire produces positive feelings which cumulatively represent positive well being. There were a number of things he failed to acknowledge like the well being of one being in conflict with the well being of another, how well being is uninformative morally, but most significantly, how you can say well being is the foundation of anything since all things are done for the improvement of well being. The example I used in analysis was that physics is ultimately studied for the purpose of well being, by the student and for the advancement of knowledge and practical application. The foundation of physics is well being. A physicist may say observations and math are the foundation of physics. He’d then ask but why are we observing and creating equations to measure motion? To advance knowledge for practical application to improve well being, well being is the foundation of physics. That’s how a lot of that exchange went and it was very irritating. 😂 At one point I told him if a horrible accident befalls him I’d be happy about that, but that doesn’t mean I would impose on him or want anyone else to impose on him to make the point that my morality and concern for his well being were not connected. I meant it too in the moment. There comes a point where I begin to suspect that the exchange has degenerated in an effort to antagonize. Sometimes it clearly is that and I have an example of that within this new book. It’s easy for me to get sucked into that shit because I’m working within the motion of the subjects, so just about anything someone says I know the relationship it has with the content and can explain it.
Lastly before I mention why I brought up this exchange, concern for someones well being or consideration for someones well being is not a moral product. Empathy is its own value sourced from different ideas about life and the human experience. Some people can imagine what it must be like to be locked within the circumstances of others and feel what they believe the person may feel. Some people can draw from their own experience being in similar unpleasant circumstances and remember what that felt like. On the other side of it, people can remember what it was like when someone helped them, and through those memories when they help someone they experience feelings comparable to what they anticipate the person will feel. In idea of what a person understands themself to be doing there can be positive feelings. I’m making these few brief statements on empathy because I stated that well being is not morally informative, where others who are empathetic or those who pretend to be for image promoting purposes would think their concern for the well being of others is moral information. Altruism does not exist, the feeling one experiences through an altruistic act is greater than the feeling they can experience in the moment through the substance sacrificed. Empathy, what parts of it are innate, what parts are from experience, and what parts are from idea, is still a subjective value. It can only be morally informative if an individual’s pride is attached to an idea about well being. It immediately falls apart as a moral standard in a setting where action or inaction will impact the well being of multiple people differently. In objective morality, well being is not informative.
The reason I brought that exchange up is because this recent exchange began to go down the same course. In the previously referenced exchange the participant basically accepted th
liberty as the basis for morality while arguing that well being was actually the foundation. In this exchange the participant acknowledges the functioning of morality through self worth, but claims fear is the basis for moral function. The reasoning being that immoral acts are abstained from because when a person commits an act they believe is wrong, it forces them to acknowledge they were wrong, changing their perception of themself, reducing self worth, and producing a negative feeling that can persist and recur. He basically agreed all of that is true, but claimed people abstain from the acts because they’re afraid of the reduction in self worth. I won’t go into all the ways that this reasoning is erroneous, obviously, it ignores the fact that even if moral prohibition was fear based, it’s only fear based because a negative feeling is produced through a reduction of self worth caused by a change in self perception. Of course it isn’t fear based. It’s based on pride, which is the reason it functions in decision making through self worth. A person doesn’t violate their morality because it’s behavior they’re not proud of, and they act in accordance with their morality because they’re proud of such behavior. It’s similar to other subjective value standards, I used fashion as an example where a person who wouldn’t wear a pink shirt doesn’t abstain from the wearing the color because they’re afraid of it, it’s because they don’t like it and are not proud of it. Other subjective values differ from moral values in that a person who doesn’t wear pink shirts doesn’t have a problem with a person who does, whereas a moral value is applied to self and others. For example a person who believes theft is morally wrong doesn’t just think they shouldn’t do it, they think no one should do it. That’s the distinction between moral standards and other subjective standards, both are connected to different degrees to self worth, but one is applied to the individual and the other is applied to all.
From this exchange I began to understand better just how much of human behavior is rooted in the maintenance and advancement of self worth, but also how of consistency with one’s morality is rooted in pride. I alluded to this previously in an entry dated to February or March of 2023. There were a series events throughout my time in Abilene, TX that I described as representing moral pride. For example, it was somewhat late and there was a truck in the right lane that was headed straight who saw me with my blinker on in the right lane behind him but at a distance. He put his truck in reverse and moved into the middle lane so I wouldn’t have to wait for the light to turn. I understand what motivates that kind of behavior. While we can insert empathy and there is some of that, or in some cases all of that, but either way, the act is motivated by how you see yourself for having done or not done it. Where if you don’t move you think about not wanting to be in the person’s way, and when you do move not only are you glad to not be in their way, but you feel good to see yourself as the kind of person who will put forth effort to not hold someone up unnecessarily.
Not to get too far off topic but this is a major problem I have with the tenets of eastern philosophy. What they call the ego is never tamed or broken, it’s just channeled into following the tenets of the philosophy or religion. Now the individual’s self worth is based on how consistent their behavior is with the tenets of the religion, and they feel good in consistency and bad in inconsistency the same as other subjective standards.
Monotheism functions the same way but with a buffer. Where a person who truly follows their religion which excludes most Christians, Muslims, and Jews, their self worth is based on how consistent their behavior is with the religion. The buffer is the deity, and what people call a personal relationship is essentially the uploading of the things they do, and they believe the deity will understand and excuse them. In monotheism, moral self worth is a product of how the adherent perceives the deity as perceiving them. This is detrimental to moral reasoning and application, because anything that is wrong but that they believe is forgivable, is essentially not wrong. It has no impact on their behavior because it has no impact on their self worth because they think the deity doesn’t care.
Self worth isn’t limited to moral application, or subjective standards. Some people’s self worth is more determined by how they perceive others as perceiving them, and this is the basis for what I call image promoting behavior. One example can be found all over social media. Comments on tragedy’s or celebrity deaths expressing grief is often an effort to show others they represent a popular value. In this case compassion, and they feel good in perceiving others as having a higher opinion of them because that perception increases their self worth.
After the maintenance and advancement of self worth there is entertainment. I’m using entertainment broadly to represent externally generated positive feelings. Within everyone there is some balance between the two, but in recognizing this distinction we can identify people’s moral proclivity through this balance. Internally generated positive feelings through consistency with moral and subjective standards in pride or self worth, and externally generated positive feelings through entertainment. To clarify, image promotion is an internally generated feeling as self worth increases based on a person perceiving others as having a higher opinion of them regardless of whether others do or do not.
I’ll provide a few examples of the difference in tendency. Using a previous example from the recently referenced exchange, a person wouldn’t wear a pink shirt because it conflicts with their value of masculine imagery, where a man such as they see themselves to be doesn’t wear pink shirts. The question is how much pride in that standard does the person have? At what point would they abandon that standard to advance a material interest? $10, $100, $1000, etc. The example is to say there are people who have very little pride and are content through entertainment. At some point for everyone depending on the subjective standard a person will capitulate if the value to abandon the standard reaches a certain point, but for many the value of maintaining standard is so low to rarely impact the decision making process. Moral standards function the same as subjective standards, with the difference being that a person will not abandon some moral standards for any price.
A better example came to me today watching a video of clips from the show scared straight. The clips featured kids who were not intimidated. The show disgusts me because fear shouldn’t be used as a tactic to gain compliance. It prioritizes authority based thinking which is another topic altogether I don’t want to unpack here.
In one scene an inmate opens up the top of his jump suit exposing his chest hair and another inmate hands a child a comb and says comb his chest hair while they yell degrading things at him. The child combs the man’s chest hair.
They move on to the next child but he refuses to do it.
The difference in the action is based on that balance between pride and entertainment or internal versus external stimulation. The first child has prioritized entertainment. It feels bad to be yelled at and threatened, and he is probably afraid so the quicker he combs the man’s chest hair the quicker they will leave him alone and he will feel better when they take their attention from him.
The second child probably knows they’re not going to do anything to him. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s probably less comfortable with the men talking shit to him. He doesn’t take the comb because it violated his subjective standards that he as a man doesn’t comb other men’s chest hair. He will feel better about himself in enduring whatever he has to endure externally than he will to avoid the external and have to endure the perception of himself after having combed a man’s chest hair. There was a person in the comments section who wrote he was low key proud of him for not doing. I liked the comment, but there shouldn’t be any low key about it. I was proud of him.
That isn’t to say I was disappointed in the child who did it, he was younger, but also just developmentally immature. The problem is being put in such a position and responding as he did could influence his development into manhood, possibly predisposing him to being a less prideful person for having committed such a shameful act. We hope he can separate himself from that incident recognizing that who he was who did that was a different person than the person he will be in the future.
That balance is defining, and people who are consistent with their values have to be proud people even if they don’t show it. People who are not proud people are willing to compromise quickly to gain a reward or to avoid a consequence.
These are just some rough notes concerning the thoughts I’ve had about self worth or pride, versus entertainment or external stimulation.
Once you click a video on YouTube you’ll get other videos in your feed similar to that video. In the previous entry I reference a Jordan Peterson interview and reflected on a statistic he mentions. I see another video today and click it and he mentions how IQ is an indicator of whether or not a person will be successful. My first thought was that a person’s IQ is influenced by the economic circumstances of the household. I googled the correlation between household income and IQ. The first result was a study showing only a marginal difference which on the surface seems to contradict my initial thoughts. But upon closer inspection the study was a small sample size from Sweden, where the distribution of wealth and income is much more equal. The higher the number the more inequality on the gini scale. Sweden has a Gini coefficient of .30, and the US has a Gini coefficient of .41. To put that difference into perspective, the difference of .11, if you added .11 to the US the US would have the greatest economic inequality and if you subtracted it from Sweden, Sweden would have the least amount of inequality. This is to say there is a substantial difference between the environment of the bottom 40 percent of income earners in the US and the top 60 percent and the difference between the two groups in Sweden. Not only will the difference in environment be less dramatic in Sweden, and less dramatic on intellectual development, but Sweden may have reached the minimum income required to not produce disadvantages in intellectual development.
I searched again looking for a study that draws from the US. The study I found included over 14,000 participants, who were tested 9x between the ages of 2 and 16. The study found that those born into lower socioeconomic status had IQ scores at 2 years old that were an average of 3 points lower than those of higher SES. At 16, those from lower SES, on average had IQ scores that were 18 points lower than the group of higher SES. In the United States, IQ may be an indicator of success, but household income is an indicator of IQ.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641149/
11/27/2023
I watched a Jordan Peterson interview and he mentioned that 10 percent of the population was people with IQs of 83 or less. Then he implies that it is nearly impossible to be productive with such a low IQ and uses the example that the military found that this was the point where a person wasn’t fit for military service. I commented that improving the environment would improve intellectual development and so the statistic shouldn’t be viewed as what are we going to do with 10 percent of the population who isn’t smart enough to be productive, the question is what steps are we going to take to ensure we can maximize the intellectual potential of our population, to reduce the number of people whose opportunity is limited by their intelligence?
By improve the environment I mean household income which means improving income opportunities. This is one large piece of the puzzle. The second hurdles are the popular misconceptions that form the basis of people’s perspectives, and it can be addressed externally or internally. By externally I mean information is accepted that shows what is popularly believed about most things is false. Internally means people become objective enough to recognize contradictions between what’s known about a subject and what they’ve been told about a subject. In either case, a more accurate understanding of the world increases the potential for intelligence because information isn’t viewed through a lens that’s built on false ideas about fact and function. Perspectives must be maintained to maintain values which is why popular misconceptions are particularly difficult to move and are intelligence limiting. Intelligence limiting because people cannot learn things that challenge their beliefs. A conceptual understanding of ASC has intelligence enhancing benefits by creating conscious awareness of the organization of objects and analysis of sequences.
I received a reply from a commenter who stated 80 percent of intelligence is hereditary. The implications of his comment was that low intelligence was primarily genetic. There’s obviously a few problems with that assertion. The first is that there is often disparities in intelligence measured by IQ tests between parents and children. Second, there is no way to know how much of the similarities in IQ are a product of inherited circumstances versus inherited genes. The child may have a very different potential for intelligence but his or her development is limited by their circumstances. Or the potential may be similar and both have a very high potential for intelligence that is limited by their economic circumstances that tend to produce desperate habits, coping behavior, and excessive value on social relationships. All of which has its own byproducts and creates an environment that is not conducive to the development of the intellect through productive interests and the absence of stress.
The primary reason that intelligence being 80 percent hereditary is irrelevant, and the statistic that 1 in 10 has an IQ of 83 or less, is we don’t know at any given time how much of a person’s generic potential for intelligence is represented in an IQ score. A person may have a 90 IQ score but how much of their genetic potential for intelligence is represented in that IQ score? If it’s 50 percent of their genetic potential they have genius potential. Obviously an exaggeration but we don’t know. Are there concepts they could learn, false beliefs they could disconnect from, circumstantial improvements to decrease the physiological limitations imposed on intelligence by stress? The example I used in comment is a 10 year old child who has spent half his life going to school is probably going to have a much higher IQ score than a 10 year child who has not, but the score itself only tells us about their current abilities and doesn’t tell us anything about their genetic potential for intelligence. The same as an estimated 10 percent of the population having an IQ of 83, doesn’t mean that 10 percent of the population only have the potential of an 83 IQ.
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Raking leaves requires a lot more time than I thought it does. I estimated that it would take me about 6 hours to rake and bag a fairly large property full of leaves. It ended up taking 16 hours. I also didn’t anticipate how labor intensive it is but I did become ambidextrous with the rake. A lot of bending down and never ending repetitions with the rake. I bid it for $225, but he gave me a $50 tip which helped. I don’t really take breaks. Other than this morning where I needed to warm my toes up the rest of that time other than the occasional pull from my vape or drinking a water I’m completing some part of the process the entire time. That’s probably at least 20 plus hours worth of work for the average worker.
I had to break it up into 3 days. I may have completed it the first night but the homeowner wanted me to stop after it was dark. I was preparing to work until it was finished which would have been in the neighborhood of 2am. Although I may have stopped before then because I really didn’t know how much more I had on the first night. I couldn’t finish it on the second day because I already scheduled a job for that day at 1pm to unload a truck of tires. I did 4 hours from 8 to noon and then went to the tire job. I sat at the tire job for about an hour and half but the truck didn’t show up. Still received most of the payment though. I was considering going back to the leaves but I wouldn’t have had time to finish so decided to rest. My body was pretty sore from the previous day.
Did a light day at the gym, only doing 8 instead of 12 sets each for biceps and triceps. My biceps were somewhat sore from pulling the rake. Had to take a shower so I figured I’d do something.
I left Texas. DFW there’s postings but for the service jobs the money being offered ain’t shit, and CL postings I don’t know what’s going on. There’s listings, but I responded to one 4 minutes after it was posted. The phone went to VM, box was full, and he didn’t respond to my text. It’s hard to get to it faster than that.
I looked at the weather and the 10 day showed temperatures at night above 30 in the Midwest which is comfortable. Last night and today temperatures have been below that. Then I wake up in the middle of the night and have to turn the car on to kick the heat on. It’s supposed to warm back up for about another week. No need to resume that southern migration just yet, but eventually I need to figure that out.
I have a modification I want to make in the American Prosperity Proposals and although I probably cannot use the exchanges as a paper, I think I’m going to resume working on that to publish as a short book.
I’m pretty much out of phenibut and don’t feel comfortable spending money to order more. It’s a 60 to 100 plus dollar expense. I need to have more money on reserve to make the purchase. I’m worried about how that is going to impact my mood.
11/21/2023
Fox news reported on a TikTok trend of people reacting to Osama Bin Laden’s letter to America. There was a man who was talking about reeducation of children on 9/11. What would that consist of? Going into great graphic detail on the attack to create an emotional response against those who perpetrated it, while implying that they were motivated by religious zealotry? That’s definitely the way 9/11 is marketed, evident by the popular perception of the event.
Young people reading the Osama Bin Laden letter can be a very powerful thing to people who have a mainstream perception of the country they live in. Whether they believe it or not, it creates questions through the legitimacy of the grievances. When the nationalist bias comes crashing down it can lead to questioning and radicalization. I’m not talking about the nationalist bias of the right that sees this country as perfect in everyway, I’m talking about the general false assumptions about the country held by the left and the politically uninterested. Wokeness is a product of that, where the problem is when possibilities about the world open up they find a group and fill up all those possibilities with propaganda and become invested in a different lie.
My expectations of the curriculum is based on knowing education on 9/11 cannot go too deep into the history or cause without teaching the legitimacy of the grievances and demonstrating responsibility of US foreign policy for endangering the safety of the public.
If you read the Water Treatment Vulnerabilities paper from The Defense Intelligence Agency dated 1991 it states in great detail how the bombing and sanctions were going to produce the deaths of children and the elderly. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228467667_The_Role_of_Iraq_Water_Treatment_Vulnerabilities_in_Halting_One_Genocide_and_Preventing_Others
The sanctions were in place for 10 years and are estimated to have killed a million people over that time, 500,000 of which were children under the age of 5. If you Google the figure within the first few articles there are claims that Saddam lied about the numbers but the numbers came from UNICEF and we’re being observed by people on the ground, like Danni’s Halliday and his successor who presided over the oil for food program, both of whom resigned because they didn’t want to be in charge of a program that was producing those kind of results. Halliday reported that hundreds of children were dying everyday. The source below is not a source but had citations for these assertions within them.
https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/madalbright.html
To justify implementing policies that were murdering children the US claimed it was to prevent Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons. The policy was actually intent on punishing the population to try to force regime change. There is a lot of evidence to that effect, but if your strategy to prevent a country from building a nuclear weapon means killing hundreds of thousands of children that isn’t a viable strategy.
Osama Bin Laden was interviewed in 1997 by CNN’s Peter Arnett and was asked about targeting civilians. He said “American civilians are not targeted in our plan…a reaction might take place as a result of the US government targeting Muslim civilians and executing more than 600,000 Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. As for what you asked regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and in other places.”
A US Air force planner was quoted in the Washington Post about the impacts of strategic bombing on the civilian population “The definition of innocents gets to be a little bit unclear, they do live there, and ultimately the people have some control over what goes on in their country.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/06/23/allied-air-war-struck-broadly-in-iraq/e469877b-b1c1-44a9-bfe7-084da4e38e41/
The US holds the same view of Bin Laden on civilian responsibility for the actions of their leaders. The difference of course is that Osama responded to the killing of civilians whereas the US is the one who began the practice. At any rate, interference in other places against Muslims is unlikely to have produced 9/11 since the interference in those countries and territories had been ongoing for decades and as of 97 American citizens were not targeted in their plans. Had the US removed the sanctions before 2001 it’s likely 9/11 wouldn’t have happened.
Iraq was a country of about 24 million people. Can you imagine if hundreds of children were dying everyday in Florida because of the actions of another nation, and Florida had no recourse? After 10 years of this, although you may not support the actions of people from Georgia flying planes into said nations buildings and killing civilians, you could understand why they did it. I obviously don’t support Osama or the 9/11 retaliation, but I understand why he did it, and it was ultimately a product of US foreign policy.
That’s what’s true and you can’t teach that US foreign policy knowingly killed a million people, the majority children, and 9/11 was the reaction to that policy. Instead you teach them extensively about the event so they develop sympathy for the victims and hatred for the perpetrators, emphasize religion and other less important grievances to leave the impression that the main cause was religious zealotry and maybe the US supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. It’s an easily spun subject.
Fox News viewers or non-fox viewer sees the report and hears the man mention how people in their late teens aren’t old enough to remember 9/11 and that’s what they walk away with. Stupid kids are reading the letter of a terrorist and finding his grievances legitimate because they aren’t old enough to remember 9/11 and need to be reeducated. People know nothing about a lot.
That’s one subject. Nearly anything a person believes outside of their vocation or hobbies is BS. That’s the world I live in, why I’m isolated and have no outlets for my material and ideas.
I was working on a paper using social media exchanges to demonstrate how bias obstructs communication and limits intelligence. I finished the first draft of analysis for 9 exchanges and for the tenth exchange I wanted to use a post about the problem with eternity, but I didn’t have an exchange that demonstrated bias conclusively within that subject. Over the previous days my morale was beginning to wane since even if the paper received any serious consideration it’s extremely unlikely that I would get consent from the participants in the exchange. Which isn’t required for publishing outside of an academic research setting but is required in that setting.
I decided to put together a paper on the problem with eternity. The idea is simple but a much more probable explanation than a morally inconsistent benevolent tyrant who created human beings to be his eternal servants or to be eternally tormented, which ultimately means the universe exists to stroke its ego through praise, worship, and obedience.
The problem with eternity is more probable than the universe existing for no purpose at all, and more probable than the eastern religious explanation claiming that the source is nothingness that experiences itself subjectively and the purpose is disconnection from everything to merge back into the source. An idea that denies that everything that happens in-between nothingness and the return to nothingness serves no purpose.
The problem with eternity is that the quality of existence is limited by the experiences of the beings within an eternal space. With unlimited ability to create, experience, and interact, eventually existence becomes a burden because everything that can be created and experienced takes place so many times that everything loses its appeal.
The universe began simple, as hydrogen and helium. Through the forces of the universe stars are produced that create heavier elements through their life cycle. These heavier elements produced planets and on at least one planet life was produced that increased in complexity to become intelligent. Fundamentally, the universe functions to increase complexity and the most complex product of the universe is intelligent life. The purpose of the universe is the random generation of intelligent life.
The universe is the perfect solution to the problem of an eternal space being limited by the experiences of the beings within that space. Anything produced in an eternal space is the product of the beings within the space where nothing truly new can come into being. The universe solves that problem by being the random generator of environments and life. Life that creates objects that can be incorporated into that space for creation by the beings within that space.
I go on into the possibility of survival of consciousness after death since the consciousness that comes into being could be incorporated into that space further enriching it. I also touch on the moral duality between objective and subjective morality as determinants of motion and the requirement of separate spaces to accommodate different modes of moral operation. It’s an ideal, consistent, and linear conception of existence based on the observable universe and the conscious experience.
The problem for me is that metaphysics is such a limited field and academic publishing requires such a long time to be accepted or rejected. Even if accepted, what kind of attention does it create? While proliferation of the idea, in acknowledgement if not widespread acceptance is a very small part of my overall material and potential contribution to improving this incorrigible species operating at such a minimal capacity. I’ll finish the paper and submit it in the coming days anyway.
I’ve been having trouble finding work this past week. As is typical I don’t really like where I’m at and my options are limited as we draw closer to winter. It’s strange because a year ago I felt a little bit better in this region. Spending 7 months in the Midwest I’m now uncomfortable here. It’s also difficult for me to gauge how impactful enduring the circumstances I’ve endured is on me. Maybe I can check some older journal entries to remember my state of mind and compare it to where I am now, but the point is, it’s difficult to know how much different I am compared to times when I had more opportunities for interaction.
As predicted, the glimmer of hope or convincing myself I was doing something worthwhile would soon be replaced with the acknowledgement that there is no outlet. Living in 1984 and understanding it profoundly with no way to penetrate the contradictory perspectives of the sleepwalking puppeted population. I do feel like I need to go. Usually when I feel like this I’ll find an AT job somewhere but there hasn’t been anything on AT lately that is worth the trip to an acceptable place.
11/15/2022
I do not feel good today. If you’re familiar with my circumstances over the last 10 years you may think this a regular thing but it isn’t. I typically feel fairly good, or at least not bad despite the acknowledgement that my situation is effectively hopeless.
Even during the spring when I thought seriously about suicide it wasn’t because I felt bad. Angry yes, and often stressed, some of it my own doing, but not bad, where I’m sad or experiencing low self worth. Suicide was more about how much sense it made. Makes sense because my life is completely stagnant and without possibility for improvement, but outside of that there isn’t much pain that I require escape from. I reached a point where as trapped as I am, I decided I’ll stick around and watch the idiocracy until I’m inspired to try something or naturally check out. There was some underlying reasoning behind that decision.
I ultimately reached the decision when I was surveying a location. When I reached the location it seemed stupid to me to find a location and not do it. Why find a place for a future date when if the place is suitable I’m there and have the implement?
I ended up just hiking in the area because while I was in the car I decided not to take the rope, because I’d feel fake to myself if I took the rope and didn’t do it. I remember the moment and that was the essence of what I thought.
The decision against suicide was essentially made in the moments preceding. In the car if I took the rope I may have been compelled to do it because I’d feel fake to have taken the rope and not done it. Apparently doubting subconsciously I was going to follow through, I spared myself the feeling of being fake by not taking the rope. Subconscious mind creates objectives to avoid negative feelings through the protection of self worth. My value of realness may have affected the outcome.
Had I taken the rope the comparison is between the feelings that come from the idea of being trapped versus the unknown, and the feelings associated with the implications of not having done it. This is to say, if I take the rope I may have done it, so not taking the rope was the decision not to do it, because the blow to self worth in returning to the car with the rope may have compelled me to do it to not have to return to the car.
Interesting ASC, but I only bring it up because I rarely feel bad. I rarely feel bad because my actions are typically consistent with my values, and nearly always consistent with my morality.
I do feel bad today. Some of it is the build up to the next rejection. I decided to use my social media log, old FB exchanges as the subject of research, where based on the responses bias can be shown, the inability to accept information based on the consequence it has to apparent values. I provide analysis and show interaction by interaction how the response fails to connect to or demonstrate an understanding of the previous reply or how it doesn’t pertain to the controversy. I have 8 case analysis rough drafts finished and at least 2 and potentially 4 more to go. After this I need to write methodology, possibly background section, a summary, an abstract, edit and organize the analysis’, conclusion, citations, and may need to try to get consent from who I reference as participants, which could in itself prove difficult since they make themselves look stupid. Then I submit to different journals and it will probably be rejected, probably without being read in its entirety. I think about that and that does not feel good.
Last night I accidentally scheduled a job for today installing handles on cabinets. I originally intended to schedule it for Thursday but I thought yesterday was Monday so I told the customer Wednesday which was today. I have installed handles and understood how to do the job but did not execute it very well. I had my measurements and was confident in my marks but the holes were not lining up. I had to wallow out the holes up or down to get the screws to line up with the holes. Not a big deal because the hole is covered by the screw on the backside and the handle on the front but it was changing the orientation of the handles so they were not completely plum.
The first 4 I installed weren’t perfect but passable. It was also taking a lot of time, but I figured my efficiency would improve. On the third set of handles I decided to use the handle as a guide for the holes. The holes still didn’t line up with the handle holes and one was very crooked. It wasn’t a good tactic and I had no way of straightening the handle.
At that point I decided to just concede the job. There were in the neighborhood of about 50 more handles, and I didn’t want to install 50 crooked handles in this guy’s new kitchen and bathroom cabinets. I showed him the crooked handle, and the others that were marginally off and told him I thought he’d be better off finding someone else to do the job.
After going to the gym I thought about the job. The main reason is it doesn’t feel good to not be able to do something, especially when that failure impacts someone’s property, and results in me missing money. Thoughts are produced to understand why it happened which may allow me to avoid a similar outcome and the accompanying feelings in the future, and also to restore self worth by understanding the cause of the poor performance.
I would have been successful if I would have had the foresight to purchase a T square. That would have ensured that my marks were accurate whereas using a tape measure there are more opportunities for something with the tape to produce an inaccurate measurement, where a 1/16th of an inch can be the difference in the holes aligning enough to reach the threads with the screws. Even though I know a T square would have facilitated success, I still don’t feel good about the failure.
11/7/2023
I had a comment exchange on YouTube that represents a familiar theme and my biggest issue with conservatives which is their refusal to acknowledge labor markets. I’m chronicling the exchange because it represents a rare instance where an individual begins with the perspective that income opportunities are adequate and at the end he acknowledges that they are not. I tightened up a portion of the argument in a way I haven’t done before which is also worth chronicling. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to agree with him that democrats do not have solutions, use the struggles of poor and middle class Americans to advance the interests of their donors in service of maintaining poverty, and rely on the maintenance of struggling poor and middle class people to win elections. A different topic addressed in other areas.
There was a poll question asking what will it take to achieve peace?
Orion Simerl
Ensure all people have adequate opportunities to have time and money. Adequate opportunities means an individual’s income meets expenses, allows for a reasonable amount of discretionary spending, and accumulation.
Theoriginajohingait2450
Discretionary spending and individual’s income meets expenses? People should make their own way in life. Why do all these things need to be handed out like they are children or unable to work?
Orion Simerl
Who said anything about handed out? The fact of the matter is the median average income is about 30k per year, which means on average half the adults in this country have an income of less than $30,000. For an individual to improve their income requires time and money, to improve their human capital or to bring a product or service to market. When most of an individual’s time is spent working for an income that only meets their expenses they are trapped in those circumstances never having the time or money to improve their income.
Theoriginajohingait2450
That’s nonsense. People get what they want out of things. I have a family of four, a wife and two kids. When we had a household income of $80K we paid for EVERYTHING and made ends meet while our kids were in daycare, and paid for that as well. We never once needed anyone to help us out or went on any type of assistance. I know plenty of people who make $100K+ on just their income and don’t have anything to show for it. It’s because they spend their money on frivolous things that mean nothing and they don’t get anything in return. What people need to be upset about is the fast tracked inflation that has been going on and has been in play for decades That has nothing to do with businesses and solely comes from the government spend more than what comes in and then printing money they don’t have, which clearly devalues the dollar. It’s all basic economics.
Orion Simerl
Nonsense is asserting something is nonsense based on a person experience that is at odds with the reality of basic economics. 80k is median household income. That means half of households have less than 80k per year. (2.5 adults per household is an individual average share of 32k) Average wages of people working in retail and fast food is 27k per year. That represents 25 million people or roughly 12 percent of the workforce. Basic economics is how does one improve their income? They either invest time and money to improve their human capital or they purchase capital to bring a product or service to market. How does one get money if they have none? They invest their time working a job. And what determines how much someone will be paid? It depends what people are willing to do that job for in that area. Most unskilled people will work for a wage that allows them to survive. This is why many people are trapped in their circumstances. Realities, substantiated by the numbers. Things you cannot understand because your nationalist bias precludes it.
Theoriginajohingait2450
You just argued a case against yourself. What exactly is my “nationalist bias? I’d dying to hear that. Those people in retail and fast food are not a good example either. Lol
Orion Simerl
Saying I make a case against myself without an explanation or evidence is an empty assertion. Let’s see what you’re disputing and how you’re disputing it.
1: To improve one’s income requires an investment of time or money,
a: because income is derived through the sale of labor, or bringing a product or service to market, b: and increasing human capital requires time and money, and bringing a product or service to the market requires money.
What part of this do you disagree with and how?
2: the wages a person is paid is based on how much people are willing to work for in a given area. For example, if you were starting a roofing company, if you had the money to invest the first thing you need to know is the cost of labor. If you can find a guy who knows how to roof for $20 an hour, you’re not going to pay him $30 an hour just because you can afford to. Of course if you can’t find anyone to work for you for $20 next you’re going to offer $25. The labor market is determined by what people in a particular area are willing to work a particular job for.
3: When a large proportion of the population doesn’t have money, these people are willing to work for an amount that allows them to survive.
A: this is evident by half the adults in this country having an average income of just $30,000 per year. Half the adults in this country have an income share that is less than that.
Take me through that budget, where on 30k a year you can meet your expenses, have some discretionary spending, and how long does it take to save 20k to do something with? Half of adults have less than that (30k per year income share).
4: when a person’s opportunities for income require most of their time and their income only meets their expenses, they do not have time and cannot accumulate money.
5: I mention retail and fast food because I’m familiar with the volume and the average income these employees earn. Now we’re not talking about median average income share, we’re referencing specific individuals who make up close to 25 million hard working people. We can add hospitality workers, day laborers, and others who represent a substantial amount of the workforce and earn inadequate wages that leave them trapped within their circumstances. Do we want to have fast food, stores where we can buy things, hotels, and in some way or another all the things we enjoy on a day to day basis? If we do, people need to do those jobs. And if people are going to do those jobs they need to be paid wages that allow for accumulation, where today the average wage in those industries are not sufficient to meet expenses if they live by themselves, much less produce accumulation. The number of people who earn low wages proves the claim that people’s opportunities for income in this country are inadequate. You can’t have half the people in this country earning an income that they are incapable of living alone on, and claim the problem is people don’t know how to save. If I give you $100 for $110 item you can’t bring me change because there’s nothing left over.
As for your nationalist bias, it’s probable, based on your refusal to acknowledge that inadequate opportunities exist for income for huge swaths of the population. That acknowledgement undermines a perspective and value structure built on the greatness of your country. That’s one explanation for your denial. The second explanation, in the absence of nationalist bias, is a personal bias to protect self worth, where acknowledging that your success is just as much a product of your opportunities as it is product of your abilities, and others lack of success may be just as much a product of their lack of opportunities as it is a lack of ability, changes how you see yourself and your success.
Theoriginajohingait2450
Nicely done with the copy and paste feature! Then what’s the solution, professor?
Orion Simerl
There’s no copy and there, but there are a number of solutions that will increase wages, increase federal revenue, decrease federal spending and increase profits for businesses in certain industries. One is called the round up service charge tax credit incentive. https://www.oplnow.com/round-up-gratuity-tax-credit-incentive/
(Note). YouTube removed the comment for the link so I replied with a disguised link to oplnow.com
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Fortunately I was able to find a few days of work last week at Tire Hub in Cincinnati that I should be able to stretch until I get paid from this job scanning items. I was hoping to wrap this job up early because if it wraps up by Wednesday and he releases the funds on Wednesday there’s a decent chance of getting it by Friday. That’s probably not going to happen.
I fucked up yesterday with my hand bumping something on my phone where items weren’t scanning. I wasn’t checking to make sure they were scanning I was listening for the beep that notifies you when the item scanned. Something came up from the menu and the scans were not recording. I lost about 2/3rds of an aisle and those aisles take 2 hours an aisle, some more or less depending on the type of items.
It seemed like a job you could move through pretty quickly focusing on the task but there are so many items it takes time even if you’re doing 6 to 10 items a minute. I think 10 items as an average represents the upper limit of what is possible since the barcode is in a different spot on different items. While you may be able to do 15 items in a minute when there’s one brand of similar items, the next brand may have the bar code in a different place, and you may spend 10 seconds just to find the barcode. This is a rough estimate, I didn’t time myself, but the point is, it takes a lot of time.
We have 17.5 aisles left unless there are still areas he has to add. I don’t know how everybody else is moving. It’s kind of a hard job to fuck off on because if you’re not scanning you’re just standing there and that’s the recipe for a slow day. Unless people are moving faster than I am, and they very well may be, we probably won’t finish tomorrow, but should have an early day Thursday.
Mark from Premier called the other day but I missed the call. He sent a text after it. I think it’s about time to do the shower doors on the second tower of the Urby. I have to presume he’s trying to get in contact with me about that. It’s tempting, since I do need the money but I’m really not interested in jumping back into that bullshit. Doesn’t seem like the vehicle.
I was thinking about OPL earlier as I make additions to this paper much slower than I’d like to. I’m writing an analysis on an exchange that shows a bias in ignorance, where a person doesn’t ask obvious questions about a subject because asking those questions challenges their preferred conclusion. This exchange also serves as an example of the development of a personal bias, since there is another exchange with this person who claims she’s concerned about improving wages and decreasing the wealth gap but provides largely non-substantive explanations for why she doesn’t support Round Up Service Charge that would increase wages by between $4 to $15 per hour for about 25 million people who make about half the median individual income on average. Also increases federal tax revenue, decreases federal spending, increases profits for affected industries, and increases wages through market forces for 10s of millions more unskilled workers, among other benefits that come from an empowered underclass consumer, and decreasing the demand for new coin currency. Her resistance seemed like it was more of a bias against me as the source given our history of disagreement, most notably the exchange I’m using as an example.
In thinking about RUSC (I think I mentioned a state adaptation in a recent entry) I thought about how well the OPL strategy was laid out. In prioritizing a proposal that has a direct impact on 10s of million of people who will directly and substantially benefit. Identifying perennially contested districts that on average are decided by 15,000 votes, and many far fewer than 15k, some 1000s, some 100s. Create the voter blocs in those districts that allow this marginal number of people to swing elections and swing the house and use that leverage to gain consent from both parties to pass legislation that serve popular interests. This would happen because neither party would want this group of people to be able to decide elections, so to neutralize that power both parties consent to and pass legislation. Gain consent of industries who will benefit from legislation and benefit from the ability to swing elections to one party or the other, as well gain funding from these industries. This creates a vehicle to pass legislation that serves popular interests every election cycle.
The easy part seemed to be gaining the interest and support of those who would directly benefit from RUSC, but canvasing priced ineffective as people were unable to recognize their own best interests. I couldn’t get a response from media, couldn’t talk to anyone of any value in industries that benefited from RUSC, couldn’t get any meaningful responses from the academic community, political parties, or economically interested activist groups. The point of the reflection is in the failures over this time I forget how sound the strategy was.
Now, I’m going to try the academic route which is a flimsy proposition since the educated are no less committed to their biases and no less limited by their scope of knowledge than is the general public. By scope of knowledge I mean they know their field deeply but their breadth is narrow and their ability to conceptualize new ideas isn’t necessarily much better than the general public. At least for the moment the process and prospect is motivating and contenting.
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I was correct in my estimation. I finished Wednesday and have ¾ of one aisle to finish and 2 short aisles to finish that should take about 2 to 3 hours. Had I not messed up on Monday I may have been able to finish Wednesday, maybe working an extra hour. It is what it is.
I was a little bit bothered but it makes no difference either way so I’m not going to contest it just for the sake of contesting it. The guy I’m working for said he’s still going to pay me for the full day, but that isn’t the nature of our relationship. Airtaskers is a flat fee to complete a job. He’s already paid the $800 to Airtaskers and upon completion he releases the payment. In his description he mentions $25 an hour 9 to 5 Monday through Thursday to scan items, but the job is still scanning the items for $800. If it was completed on Monday it’s still $800 to complete the job. The result is same so I’m not going to dispute that detail just to dispute it. No sense in creating an unnecessary controversy that could impact payment or impact my review.
10/302023
I was headed to Texas for the winter. I was slowly making my way there looking for work along the way or work I could schedule. I also had a flat tire which ate into my money after finding a moving job in Rolla, MO. I made it to Springfield and my offer was accepted on a 4 day job in Indianapolis for $800. The problem is the job doesn’t start until the 6th. From where I was at it seemed like a good idea to get close to the area.
I’m a little concerned about the job because the poster appears to be out of state and hasn’t used this app before. His ad stated that he needed 4 people so he posted another ad on the app. Someone responded and he didn’t accept their offer. Of course he may have found the other three through another medium. With the app when you accept someone’s offer you have to pay the money to the app and then it goes in escrow and it’s released to me upon the completion of the task.
Today I was near Indianapolis where the job is starting on the 6th. It’ll be difficult to stretch my money that long so I’m constantly checking for postings on CL and other apps. This morning I check postings in Louisville and there’s a moving unload near Louisville for noon. I’m about 2 hours away and it’s 9 o clock. I reply and he says he still needs help but he has to get to the location with the truck to see if he can fit. He provided a preliminary address near the actual address. I drove to about 10 minutes from the area marker.
I text him before noon that when he knows if the truck will fit I’m 10 minutes away. Later he texts me an address and I reply I’m 20 minutes away. As soon as I reply he replies that two guys just showed up.
I called him a piece of shit for lying.
He contended he wasn’t a piece of shit that it didn’t make sense to have 3 guys. I explained that he was a piece of shit for lying and telling me he still needed help. If other guys are showing up at the same time you give me the address that means you already gave them the address and told them to be there. He told me he still needed help and made up the story about needing to see the location in case they didn’t show up. I was pissed off because it cost me $10 in gas to get down here, and it’ll cost me $10 to get back, and I didn’t make any money. After explaining that in fewer words I told him I was on my way. Not that I’d be completely unjustified if I went to the location and whooped his ass, but I’m not looking for the consequences that come with that. I had no intention of going to the address, but I thought I’d tell him that to put a little anxiety on him over the course of the job. Where he has to take a second look at people getting out of their cars and moving around the site.
Instead I worked on my paper just about finishing the point by point analysis for the second case study. It’s flowing pretty smoothly now, probably take a week to finish organizing the case studies, a few days to write the methodology portion, to add references, and edit and format. I should be able to finish most of it this week.
7 days until the job starts but it may be 14 days before I get paid. Right now after my phone bill is deducted I have about $200. Hopefully I can find something for $100 to $200 to get me to the 13th.
Then I’ll probably be headed back to Texas. I have considered going to CA. Mainly because one of the apps I typically find the best jobs through has more jobs posted in CA than any other place. The reason I plan to head back to TX is because it’s warm enough to survive in my current shelter accommodations, and I can usually find enough work during the winter.
I’m a little irritated with myself right now having wasted money on fuel and time heading out to TX and then turning around to work this job next week. I should have probably worked that other job (previous entry) for the few more days it was offered but 3rd shift, a lack of sleep, and other factors prevented that at that time.
Finish this paper. Submit it to a few journals, and maybe create a solicitation.
10/24/2023
I’ve been working on this paper and probably need to start over yet again. The content is simple. Identifying that reality consists of objects in motion, motion consists of cause and effect and since all people have the capacity to understand objects and to sequence motion all things can be understood by all people. Eliminating innate stupidity I identify the barrier to human intelligence and communication which are mechanisms of belief preserving behavior. The inability to communicate is the fundamental problem that human beings have since any negative result can be understood through the causes that produce it and eliminating the cause will eliminate the effect. The research aspect is using organic social media exchanges to show the barriers to communication through the responses from the participants. Participants who do not know they’re participants because the debates are organic. It shows how people who use this platform think and what they believe which is evidence for the mechanism of denial and how their minds organize objects.
The problem I’ve been having is in writing the intro it’s difficult for me to not go to the base components of reality, the perception of it, and the organization of objects and prioritization of objectives which consists of assignment sequencing and comparison. Previous attempts to submit ASC have revealed that people in those fields do not understand it. So I spent a few days writing an ASC summary which includes a lot of unpacking to feel like it won’t be understood, and if not understood they probably won’t finish reading the paper. It’s simple, and I articulate simply the significance of these simple observations. If the significance of what’s being stated is not understood it prevents the conclusions from being understood in their entirety. If you can’t understand how one thing is true, you cannot understand what the consequences are of that thing being true, in the things it causes to also be true, and the things that it precludes from being true. The writing is difficult from a motivational standpoint. I’m writing things I’ve already written and have written better in other places, it’s not an enjoyable endeavor, especially when the chances are very slim.that it will be understood. The sickening part of is it is as simple as it is accurate.
I’m going to need to rework the intro and start over on this paper. Maybe I’ll collect my examples first.
I’ve been thinking about other things as well. Education, the potential of ASC taught to children but even more so about what should be included in the compulsory curriculum. There is a lot that students are forced to learn that has no practical application for most of them, and I think specialization should be introduced earlier to allow students to focus on subjects they’re interested in or that apply to some specific ambition. Also modifying the environment to be less the conditioning of authority and more an opportunity to learn things based on utility, including the welcoming of objection. This requires a lot of research in learning the present curriculum and thought in proposing essential subjects and the degree that one needs to know them, as well as thought in how things can be added and the environment can be more conducive to learning. There’s no guarantee I’ll ever get to that.
I also thought about a different implementation for the Round Up Service Charge to be applied at the state level. Instead of offering businesses a tax credit incentive and exempting them from paying payroll tax on their employees RUSC income, a state could require business that meet the criteria of high volume transaction businesses to implement the RUSC and treat it like a tax appropriated as a benefit to not harm businesses through additional payroll tax. Essentially, it still functions the same where the business is collecting the service charge and distributing it to their employees, but the legislation will treat it like an appropriated tax processed by the employer so it isn’t counted as wages but would still be subject to income tax since it is part of an employee’s income even if not technically paid as a wage. For RUSC info https://www.oplnow.com/round-up-gratuity-tax-credit-incentive/
I don’t know what I’m going to do with the state adaptation but I do have an idea for it should there be an outlet for it. I originally created it the way I did because I wanted to incentive businesses to implement it to gain support from business in order to pass it federally. Something that benefits all parties, the employees, the public in labor market improvements, the public in increases revenue and decreased spending and the businesses in the tax credit. The problem was it was impossible to get a hold of anyone to gain their support. The workers at eligible businesses were unresponsive to in person solicitations. Political parties, universities, and economic justice groups were also unresponsive. No objections, no support, no feedback, just the complete refusal to engage with the idea, or it’s creator and promoter. Or even to engage with the associated idea of OPL, which is a tool to pass legislation.
In the previous entry after all the complaining about the job I recognized an industry inefficiency. Labor decides efficiency and when labor is incentivized there is the potential for the customer to have work completed faster, which means more money for the contractor, subcontractor, and labor. Some may look at that as a sign of a person being smart but it isn’t. It isn’t something that denotes any ability above what the average person possesses when their thought processes are not contaminated by biases and social concerns. It’s merely the perception of objects and the effects that they will produce.
The first object being the labor budget. The job was scheduled for 5 days with 3 laborers being paid $200 per day. Math represents cause and effect sequencing, which defines the labor budget as $3000.
This tells me that the contractor can afford $3000 for the labor on that project and still make profit. Simple objects and cause and effect sequencing.
The effects the labor budget can produce are forecast, where laborers (object) can be incentivized through the labor budget (cause) to complete work faster (effect). Completing work faster (cause) means (effect) the laborers, subcontractor, and contractor make more money, and the customer has their job completed faster. For the customer this may result in more customers or more (effect) sales within the store as the work increases the appeal of the store through an improved appearance (cause), or facilitates better productivity from their employees.
Recognizing an inefficiency based on 7 days of work and a few pieces of information is merely a product of being in reality and understanding the interests of those involved in producing the opportunity.
One of the greatest potentials of my work is the potential to improve human intelligence. Understanding the framework of the mind, what intelligence is, and the impediments of intelligence which largely consists of bias and authority based sequencing. No less important is objective morality, and the implications it has for understanding the nature of existence. No less important is addressing inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money. It’s all essentially one fabric, all connected. If I can attract attention through one thing it’ll open up doors for everything. The other day I just thought about how truly insane it is that these things exist, and I’m the only person who knows about them.
10/21/2023
My dilemma was likely solved through the first day at the new store. The dilemma being whether to work another week at a store about 60 miles east of the current store. In total, there are 7 registers and the jewelry display. The job entails unfastening the accessories on the counter, removing the panels, stripping material on the panels, cutting and adhering new material and putting everything back together. Yesterday we finished 5 registers, and at the beginning of the job scheduled for 5 days we were confident that we could finish it in 4. Stefan told us he would pay us extra if we finished in 4 days.
By the end of the day it was pretty clear that we will probably finish in 3 days. We have two registers, the jewelry display, and some odds and ends. Most likely we’ll finish the registers and probably the doors and drawers for jewelry display tonight. This leaves us the corner guard and strips on the exterior of the jewelry display for tomorrow and there’s no real reason why wouldn’t finish day 3.
After we were pretty well wrapped up Stefan asked Sean if there was an outback in Louisville. He affirmed that there was. He said if we finish day 3 he was going to take us to Outback for a steak dinner. I may be misinterpreting the gesture, but it seems like he’s trying to float the steak dinner in lieu of the extra money he said he’d give us if we finished early. The problem is he didn’t tell us what or how much he would give us for finishing early.
In consideration of this development, if he doesn’t pay us extra when we finish on day 3 I’m definitely not going to the next job. If you budget $3000 for 3 guys for 5 days, and they complete the project in 3, not only is he saving $1200, but 2 days of work, and then you want to give them a $40 steak dinner and take 2 to 3 hours of their time to do it, that’s pretty shiesty in my eyes and I don’t want to help such a person.
He’s also a bullshitter, so this may not be the situation as I see it. He appears to be a subcontractor for a larger company who has the contract for the renovations for these stores. That’s what the situation appears to be but it could be different than that. He may be more of a project manager for the stores who receives a set amount to complete the stores and the company pays his labor. The reason I suspect this could be the case is because someone calls the stores every night to ask how many people are there. There’s no other reason for this unless labor is a direct reimbursement, to make sure he isn’t padding his end of the deal by claiming he’s paying more in labor than he actually is.
Instead of him working off a budget, he may be working for a predetermined amount to complete the job and is reimbursed for labor and materials. If that’s the case, he doesn’t have the room to pay people extra without cutting into his own wages. While initially he may not have expected us to complete the job early which is why he offered the bonus, by the end of the night it became apparent that we would, so he offered the steak dinner as the bonus. For us, we’d be better off dragging ass and stretching it out for 5 days.
This is a suspicion, not necessarily a high probability, based largely off of the contractor calling the store and asking for head count every night. Maybe steak dinner is in addition to a bonus. If that’s the case then maybe I will do the next job.
The work is easy but I don’t like not getting enough sleep. I slept for 3 hours the first night back. Yesterday he said some as shit. He was cutting and I was fastening the corner guards behind him. He pointed out a piece that was short where the ends didn’t match up. He asked me to let him know if a piece a wrong. When we came in on this job there was already corner guards installed that we were replacing. There were gaps between some of the corners where the 45 degree angles meet and there was a caulk in between. I commented to Tim that if that was acceptable my cuts were good on the first job. When he told me I should be checking his work I told him I didn’t know it was wrong be ause there were pieces we pulled off that looked like that. But generally, this is my 5th day doing this work, my 3rd day exposed to applying corner guard, and it’s your vocation. Wtf do I look like telling you I think something you did doesn’t meet quality control standards? How would I know what is and is not acceptable? If you cut the pieces and put them on the table when I come behind you I’m thinking that the work you did is acceptable to you, otherwise you would have redone it. Instead of saying I fucked up we need to redo that piece you try to put it off on me like I fucked up for not catching your mistake that I have no way of knowing is a mistake.
While not influential in my decision to work one more job with him, he mentioned Israel Palestine again. It reaffirms what I talked about the other day when I was talking about American ignorance producing problems out of nothing. Seeking bias reinforcement through subjects that individuals have no interest in. I finished my yogurt and pasta salad and was leaving the break room when he told Sean two weeks ago everything was fine lol. People build conceptions of topics based on headlines, incomplete biased summaries and have no clue what the fuck is actually going on. There’s no purpose in launching into a long winded history of the conflict, the creation of the state, occupation, siege, the conditions imposed, and the maintenance of tyranny by the United States and Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He isn’t interested in that, he’s interested in appearing like he knows something by parroting propagandist headlines to people who are uninterested in the conflict to appear smart, and to reinforce his own biases. I’m not going to help him or anyone else understand or develop perspective about a subject they’re not interested in.
With all this said I don’t dislike him aside from my underlying dislike of fake self deceiving people which includes most people on this planet, but doesn’t interfere with how I interact with people which is based on their behavior. The work is easy, he’s easy to work with and get along with, and he’s very easy going. I’m also not trying to socialize with him because it doesn’t work. We met up in the parking lot and this particular parking lot has loud music playing through the speakers. There was that song stay with me on the speakers. We were commenting about it and I said something implying that he was playing the music, and said I don’t know yet if I’m going to the next job. To understand the joke you have to be aware of the suggestion that he’s playing the music because he wants us to do the next job with him. Without that awareness my comment just seems like I’m stating out of the blue in an exasperated tone that idk if I’m doing the next job. I started the evening feeling like a jackass.
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We pretty much finished the job the third night, there were a few hours of work for night four and Stefan and Tim were the only ones working on the 4th day. I’m not upset Tim was chosen for the 4th day he clearly had the most applicable skill to job and should have had the first opportunity.
We saved somebody $1000 on labor essentially finishing 2 days ahead of schedule. As I suspected, Stefan is less of a subcontractor and more of an independent contractor to the contractor. He’s not providing the service stipulated in the contract as much as he is proving services to the contractor that includes fulfillment of the work in the contract. They provide materials and pay for labor and he gets some per job amount for completing the store. He offered to take us to Outback on Friday, but I didn’t respond.
He was BS ing about how investors demanded that Ross update all their stores and now he has more than he can complete. He says that the company he’s with mentions their crew in California completing stores faster but claims the difference is they don’t have to drive as far.
I don’t think this is the difference. If you have a 4 person team who knows what they’re doing you can probably finish a store in 1 to 2 nights. Perhaps the other crew gets a labor budget based on the job. Now instead of not being able to hold a crew together for $200 a night or incentivizing your crew to move slower you have a crew who is incentivized to finish a job for a set amount. At this store scheduled for 5 days that amount would be $3000. Each one of us would earn $1000 to complete the store. The first store had two fewer registers and was 4 days. The next store was the same as the first. There was 100 miles between all three stores and only about 20 miles between the first and the second. If we knew what we were doing there’s no reason we couldn’t have finished all 3 in a week, if incentivized by by a $2800 paycheck. Which is what would be paid out 4 days on the first job, 5 days on the second, and 4 days on the third job. Who knows how much he would make if he could complete 3 jobs per week?
I know these jobs could be completed faster. Despite our lack of experience and mismanagement we finished the second job in 3 days. He would shut down every night about an hour and a half before we could be let out. He also didn’t know how to prioritize tasks to keep us busy. The only reason there were still a few things to do day 4 is because he focused on tasks on day 3 (second job) that left one or more of us without anything to do for long periods of time. For example, instead of having more people than were required to prep for laminate, and replace base and tile, he could had Tim start with corner guards on the completed side and this would have been finished in 3 to 4 hours. Instead we were looking for things to do while he applied laminate and we spent about a half hour pulling and replacing base and about 20 minutes replacing tile. Maybe about 10 minutes taping. The rest of the time we were standing around. He likes to take breaks. We wasted anywhere from 2 to 3 plus per night
If you had 4 people who were effective in all aspects of the job I think you could finish most stores in a night. Mark, Adam, myself, and Chris could do a store a night, with a few weeks experience. I’m not interested in doing that. These are just my thoughts on the inefficiencies of the retail remodeling industry. If the laborers had access to the full labor budget per store, the company would complete more stores and make more money, the quasi sub would make more money, the laborers would make more money, and the customer would get more stores completed faster.
I made my decision not to return on Friday. Then I purchased the remaining things that I needed, laptop, eye exam, a few odds an ends, and a few months on both my websites. Ordered some phenibut the week before. Since deciding not to do the last store in Lexington yesterday I haven’t felt good about the decision. I could have made 400 to 600 dollars next week. There were a variety of factors that led to my withdrawal, and a subconscious insight following a better understanding of the decision.
As previously mentioned the work was easy, the job was managed poorly, and our efficiency was being taken advantage of. The shift was terrible for someone living out of their car. I get about 3 to 4 hours of sleep per night which wreaks havoc on my mind and body. While this part sounds crazy I had call it premonitions or a haunting about the consequences of continuing the work that consisted of details related to things that happened and that I expected to happen. I cannot go into details about those things, and any effort to attempt to sounds crazy. It feels bad not going to Lexington because $400 is about 2 weeks of security in expenses, where now I probably have about 2 weeks of expenses which could be less because I have nowhere to go.
Subconsciously, the work was motivated by the value of the things I needed to purchase, phenibut, contacts, a laptop, web hosting, and a few weeks of expenses to write my paper. Once I have that the comparison between all the negative aspects of continuing with the job and the additional security of making another $400 swings in the direction of foregoing the final store. Consciously the most notable signature is thinking I have two weeks to find another a job, where the subconscious is what is felt thinking about the different aspects of the decision, feelings attached to being offered additional pay that was reduced to a $30 steak dinner, the BS of the job, the sleep deprivation, and the unease that came from the haunting, all of which was not offset by the needs that I already met.
10/15/2023
Finishing the first project with the guy I’m working with taught me that we fuck off for the first 3 days and then hammer on the final day. At least that was the case at this store but some of that was because material didn’t arrive on time. There were parts of the job that we had to do a few times whereas if we had material we’d only have to do it once.
I’m socially off with this group. Some of that I’m sure is due to sleep deficiencies and probably a product of different life experience, perception, and values. Content, timing, and delivery are just off. For example, I knew there was an open box of screws and I was handed a box of screws. I asked if he wanted me to use the open box first and he said it didn’t matter. When I was working FF&E Mark was particular about using the open box. In that setting he might have 20 boxes of screws just to make sure we didn’t run out. At the end of the job he has 3 different kinds of screws and 10 open boxes of each that he can’t return, and he makes his money on how far below he comes in on the budget. The situation reminded me of Mark sarcastically joking one time that the Premier way was to open up a new box anytime you needed a screw so he could never return the excess. I tried to insert that to fit the dialogue but it can’t translate since the nature of Mark and Stefan’s businesses are different in that respect. Over the last few days like I said I’ve just been off.
When we were breaking Stefan was asserting conspiracy about the fire in Maui, money to Iran in a prison exchange, and finished by mentioning how NYC spent over a billion dollars to secure housing for illegal immigrants. I saw that NYC was spending a lot of money renting hotels, but at the time I saw it the billion dollar price tag was a projection of how much it will cost over the span of a year.
I was content not to insert myself into the conversation, first because he didn’t seem like he had any substance to his conspiracy theories, he was more or less speculating, so there’s no conversation that can take place there. Also, I don’t know much about the fire, and it was the first I heard of the prisoner swap so I’m not capable of having a conversation about those subjects aside from disputing details that are in conflict with other known facts. Of course illegal immigration and conspiracy in general I can speak on and had to when he said that I don’t have anything to say about that. This wasn’t a socially off moment, not completely crisp and I ended with an unrelated assertion I didn’t properly unpack, but I did lecture American ignorance from the right and the left producing an illegal immigration problem pretty well.
Since the topic generally was conspiracy, more or less government conspiring against the population I just stated that all acts (of the government) are motivated by the money behind them (industry). The implications being that the government doesn’t have its own interests to advance through conspiracy. I said it was the people’s fault generally because people seek to reinforce bias. Then I used the illegal immigration example to show how American commitment to bias reinforcement is producing an illegal immigration problem when there wasn’t one when it was initially asserted. It’s a post from a few weeks ago (IDK within the previous 10 entries) if you’re interested, I’m not going to rewrite it.
As of now if he calls me Monday as he said he would I plan on doing the next store with him but not the following. I was seriously considering not doing next week’s store last night. We started the day with a few hours of country music which has a self perceivable negative impact on my mood. Some of the music and singers sound good but the content is so disgusting, it bothers me to think how widespread the perceptions are of people who this music resonates with. Half the songs are about a shitty life and struggles within the greatness of America that they don’t understand is producing their struggles. Or over the top love songs, drinking, religion, and other how to be content with inadequate opportunity content. It’s almost like listening to someone chew their food with their mouth open as a parallel for an audible produced sensation.
I was also struggling with a task. About half the work we had left was cutting this plastic decorative corner bead and fastening it to the surface around the register. The first two pieces went together perfectly. Then there were vertical strips already in place from the previous day that were uneven so when I put the top strips in place they weren’t sitting flush. Then my 45 degree angles weren’t matching. Then somehow I kept cutting my strips short and was failing at the task. He asked me how I was doing and I let him know he’d probably be better to have me do something else. I didn’t want to waste time and materials. Later he did the cuts and I did the fastening and we knocked it out pretty efficiently but there was a lot of it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 screws, pre- and countersink drilled.
The previous day I felt better about my performance having been pretty efficient in the disassembly and reassembly of the jewelry display doors. Efficiency aided by Tim who made a few key observations in the slot to install and remove the sliding door guides, and locating the track on the reinstallation.
My sleep is very important to me at this stage in my life and although the pay is good considering the difficulty of the work, it isn’t above what I can earn through Airtaskers, or even other CL work, if I were to find a few jobs in a week. The difficulty is finding the few jobs in a week. Which is why I’m pretty committed to the next store which is in a city about 10 miles south of where this store was.
Another minor irritant was Sean taking a tool I was using when there was another of the same tool in the inbox. I brought it to his attention and he acknowledged that he should go to the tool box to get a tool instead of borrowing the one I’m using. Seems like a good natured dude(doesn’t intend to be harmful), something I mention as a person who considers the intent of people’s actions.
Everyone performs their role well and I feel fortunate to be working with Sean and Tim.
Stefan irritated me towards the end of the night. There were about 5 corner pieces I needed to drill pilot holes for, counter sink divets, and screw in. Stefan asked Sean to go behind me and screw in the screws where I would just do the drilling. Maybe earlier in the night that could have been a good strategy but I’ve already done 90 percent of using 200 fasteners and had a good system. Sean does one piece and then Stefan put him on something else. When I finished I was tempted to not go back and screw the remaining pieces but ultimately didn’t have anything else to do at that time.
The country music, failing at the task, and most importantly my sleep and desire to get back to this paper had me feeling pretty confident for the first half of the night that I wouldn’t be back on Monday. But by the end of the night and considering what the money means to me right now I think I intend to work the following week. It means phenibut, contacts, laptop, OPL web hosting, and a few weeks of security if supplemented by intermittent work. Right now I have about enough money to make those purchases.
I slept another 4 hours last night. I went to the gym yesterday and my workout was shit. I’m hesitant to go to the gym today based solely on how tired I am. I’d rather rest today, then get a good workout tomorrow and Monday.
10/13/2023
There were two random happenings in succession of one another one that were seemingly the introduction of the same moral dilemma, but very different in terms of circumstance and consequence. If I didn’t delete all my posts about the subject, the following is an example of events in my surroundings that feel like they’re manufactured. That isn’t to say that these events were more than coincidence, it’s just an example of the kind of thing I’m referring to in past posts about feeling experimented on through the manipulation of my environment.
There are more important lessons from these experiences.
In the first experience I went to a vape shop to purchase a coil and vape juice. The total was $24 and some change. The clerk told me I could get a 10 percent discount if I provided them basic information for marketing purposes and brand loyalty. I did and I tipped him a dollar since he presumably saved me about $2.50 on my purchase.
In my vehicle I noticed I had two coils. I went back and forth for a few minutes in comparison, in going back in and returning the coil, the effort, as well as the price even after a supposed 10 percent discount where the products were being sold above market value. I ultimately decided to keep the coil because of a perception. That perception being that the act would be seen mage promoting, or doing something to improve yourself worth based on a belief that others have a higher opinion of you for the act. The value was to preserve self worth from the anticipation that I would perceive the act as being perceived that way, and I believe the price paid was fair market value since I’ve often purchased those products for much less than $27. The company didn’t lose money even if through error the company didn’t get the full asking price. Secondly, it isn’t wrong that I kept it because you cannot impose on my liberty to correct your error. Even if it is just a minute or two and a 30 yard walk round trip. You don’t get to make me do. That’s retrospective, in the moment I didn’t like the anticipated feeling of looking like I was trying too hard to be good, the idea had self worth implications.
Immediately after the vape shop I went to Walmart. At Walmart I canned my item and was about to pay cash at a self checkout. I reached into my wallet and grabbed a bill but when I went to insert it there was already a $20 that someone must have left behind. I grabbed it and looked for an associate. I saw the associates but they were too far away to holler out to.
I decided I would pay for my items and walk the $20 over to them. The store associate saw me looking around as if I needed assistance and asked me if I needed help with something. I explained the situation and gave her the $20. She said “oh my tip”.
We know why I made myself the benefactor of the vape shops error, I didn’t like what it looked like to correct it, and I felt their prices were above the market average. In this situation I’m thinking I don’t know how bad the person who left that $20 needs that $20. The money loses its value to me because I could have made somebody’s life very hard by keeping it, and the value of the $20 is not greater than the feeling that comes from having created the possibility that such a person could reclaim their money after thinking they had lost it.
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I’ve had 3.5 hours, 4 hours, and 5 hours of sleep the last 3 nights. Yesterday I was too tired to work out, that fact manifested through the justification that sleep deprivation compromised immune function so I should avoid additional stress from exercise to minimize my chances of getting sick. Rarely sick, but I am very conscious of the impact on my mind and body from not getting enough sleep. Yesterday I decided that I’ll stop stressing about it, where it’s a subject of attention and a priority. Where I’m spending 2 hours or more per day with my eyes closed trying to fall asleep. I’ll sleep these upcoming days off, work the following week, and then I have a decision to make.
There’s a third store and another week of work about 75 miles from next week’s store. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to do it. Obviously if it was next week today I’d say yes I’m going to do it, but I’m in bad shape from not sleeping well over 3 days, so there’s no telling what I’m going to feel like after next week. It’s just the 3rd shift and my circumstances are least conducive to that shift because it’s bright outside during the day. I really don’t want to miss that money either though. I think I ended the last entry on that same dilemma.
10/11/2023
A man asks generally if others have been keeping up with what’s going on. It was in reference to the recent developments between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. He said they’re decapitating babies, they cut 40 babies’ heads off. This immediately struck me as Israeli propaganda. I searched for the source and the source is the IDF. The IDF took journalists through an area that was attacked and told journalists that they found decapitated babies.
Men, women, and children were massacred but the claim that 40 babies were decapitated is not true. In fact the daily mail reported that 40 young children including babies were killed. This isn’t to minimize the appalling nature of the event, but there’s definitely a difference in the implications, especially when taken in isolation. As awful as this incident is, people should have that same level of repulsion to it when it has been done on a much larger scale to Palestinians. In operation cast lead homes, buildings, schools, and other civilian infrastructure was destroyed. 1400 men and women were killed including 300 children. That’s one example among many, to say they haven’t done anything to Israelis, that Israelis haven’t done to them. I’ll condemn the Palestinians for their atrocities, when others condemn Israel for theirs. That isn’t to say I ever condone the harming of children, just that I think I can I understand it. When a nation has killed your children, I imagine that such an experience would cause people to want to kill the children of that nation.
First you don’t turn on your TV and listen to your favorite brand of propagandist news and understand the nature of the conflict. It has nothing to do with religion, prior to the early 20th century there was no animosity between Arab Muslims and Jews in the region. At the end of the 19th century Theodor Hertzel created Zionism based on his book the Jewish state intent on establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Jews from around the world began to migrate to Palestine, buy land, and build Jewish communities. They also lobbied the British government which was important as WWI put Palestine under British authority.
During the rise of Hitler and WWII Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically. By 1948 about 32 percent of the population was Jewish, but Jews still owned only 6 percent of the land. In 1948 while the world was sympathetic to the atrocities suffered by the Jewish people Britain made good on the Balfour Declaration and created Israel, a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. Israel was awarded 56 percent of the best land and the Palestinians awarded 42 percent.
The Palestinians didn’t agree with the UN decision which led to a war and a myth. The myth being that Israel supported by their deity stood up to all the neighboring Arab forces and was victorious. In actuality Israel’s ties to Britain left them superior fire power and what little support Arab nations did provide the Palestinians was uncooperative because the goal wasn’t the creation of an independent Palestinian state, the goal was for each supporting power to get something out of the victory. Under the British mandate Jews supported the British in putting down insurrections and the Palestinians were disarmed prior to the conflict.
Israel used its victory to expand its borders. After expanding its borders forcibly expelled the Palestinians, people who had lived there for generations on a moment’s notice were forced to leave their homes. There were massacres and rapes.
For the last 30 years or so the West Bank has been occupied and under siege and Gaza has been under siege. By under siege I mean they have no official interaction with the outside world that isn’t regulated by Israel. Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”.
The United States has forged an alliance of mutual interest so international law doesn’t apply to Israel, since the US has a veto in the UN Security Council, and is the dominant military power in the world by a large margin. The position of the United States is that a two state solution can only come through direct negotiations. Israel has no interest in the creation of a Palestinian state.
For decades this has left Palestinians under the complete control of Israel. In the West Bank Palestinians do not even have freedom of movement, are subject to arbitrary search and arrest, are murdered by the IDF, are murdered by settlers, and are still being expelled from their homes as Israel continues to expand into the territory. Neither Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza can freely import or export. If you remember the Gaza Flotilla years ago where efforts were being made to send humanitarian aid were being turned away by Israel, and one vessel was attacked 10 civilians were killed.
There’s an ebb and flow of Hamas responding to Israelis’ tyranny, followed by the bombing and invasion of Gaza. What else can they do? They cannot develop and have any decent quality of life. They will never have a two state settlement, and eventually Israel will annex the West Bank through settlement expansion. You have no freedom and your oppressor murders your children and your people. It’s one thing to not understand savagery when it is unprovoked, and it’s another when it’s reciprocation.
No one should ever consider themselves incapable of an act that hadn’t been perpetrated against them. What would you do if one day you had to pull the bodies of your wife, child, and your neighbors out of rubble from a bombed out building? If those responsible for it denied you to develop economically, to import and export, to have basic necessities like piped water, clean water, or water that didn’t cost a large percent of your income? If they said you couldn’t have a country, and we’re actively taking the territory that is at least yours in name. There are few jobs, very little money, many people without enough to food to eat, on top of repeated bombings, detentions, and massacres. Living with no freedom, and no prospect of freedom.
It isn’t necessarily that the Palestinians atrocities are right because their actions are reciprocation. It’s that Israel is responsible for the nature of the relationship. Israel refuses a two state settlement and is content on maintaining siege and occupation and absorbing the relatively small peeps of retribution while they expand settlements and can eventually annex the West Bank. The Palestinians can do nothing.
I haven’t been following developments because the subject has become irrelevant to me. Israel and the US have no interest in creating a Palestinian state so no two state settlement is possible. A few years ago I left the subject proposing the only realistic solution to peace and prosperity for both Israel and Palestine.
I proposed that the Palestinians collectively sell the land nationality to Israel and distribute the money to the population on the condition that those who receive money take up citizenship in a country abroad. Nations would make pledges to fast track citizenship for Palestinians who accept the offer. 360 Billion dollars is a per head allocation of roughly 84 thousand dollars per head. This means the average household would leave with 528 thousand dollars. Likely more because unused funds due to the preference not to participate will be distributed to those who did participate at the conclusion of the program. The program costs 5 billion dollars to initiate which includes travel, and administrative costs. This figure represents about 60% of the annual Israeli budget. If needed Israel could borrow the money for this investment or raise the money through the sale of land for development by international investors. Considering the savings on security and defense in the coming years the price will be recouped and then some.
Palestinians may not accept this, but if Israel made the offer, at least they would have an option. Otherwise, the Palestinian future will be the same as the Palestinian past, culminating in Israel absorbing the West Bank and Gaza.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, which will be determined by how effectively Israel can market the attack. The next step may be the occupation of Gaza where Israel may try to establish a West Bank situation in Gaza. This was unsuccessful in the past which is why Gaza has essentially been left to drown in its own swaller, aided by intermittent invasion and bombing. I don’t know if it could lead to anything more than this, but convincing large portions of the world population that Hamas is worse than Isis creates consent for a lot of action, including the potential annexation of the Palestinian Territories.
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As for me, I am tired. I found a multi-week project paying $200 a day but it’s a long 3rd shift, 9pm to 7am. I slept about 3.5 hours. I have the opportunity to work about 12 days out of the next 3 weeks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to work the next two weeks to catch up on expenses and have a little bit of a cushion until the next job comes up and I work on this paper. I need to pay my OPL hosting in a few weeks, I need an eye exam and contacts, phenibut, a laptop, a new hat, and an oil change. Then I’ll probably be headed south for the winter.
I am aware of the impact of sleep deprivation on my mind, mood, and health. I worry in part about how the paper could be affected through this work and the duration of my participation. Based on expenses and the opportunity for temporal security I probably need to work the next two weeks, but with the opportunity to work a third week it is difficult to leave $800 on the table, so I’ll see when I get there.
10/2/2023
Money is running low and worthwhile opportunities have been minimal. My circumstances continue on a cycle of not being, and being stressed about upcoming expenses. A very small amount of money determines how my mood and values are impacted. If I have over $200, despite my circumstances generally being as they are, I don’t feel stress from the impending inability to meet my expenses. Very basic expenses like food and fuel. I’ve been semi stranded a few times waiting for money from jobs I get through Airtaskers. Above $200, although what I can do is obviously limited by my lack of funds, mood isn’t impacted by stress that comes from the impending inability to meet basic necessities.
Above $100, but below $200, the stress is introduced, but it’s caused by a different perception. It isn’t the inability to meet upcoming expenses, it’s the anticipation of being below $100 and the stress that accompanies that situation that produces the stress at the intermediate level. Essentially, I know how it feels under $100, and the stress is a product of feeling what you anticipate you’ll be feeling in that situation as you see it on the horizon.
Under $100 the stress increases as my money decreases and may increase more when I have a phone bill, gym dues, or website hosting upcoming (10 days or less).
There are times where I’m momentarily well above $200, but the problem is expenses I put off have to be caught up on, tires, oil changes, phenibut, contacts, etc. I’m almost out of phenibut and there’s no reason to believe I’ll have the money to order some anytime soon. I was without it for at least a few months and that had significant perceivable impacts on my mood. We can isolate that and understand that there is stress in knowing soon I’ll be without phenibut. There have already been many quality of life reducing transitions that have been made in the last 9 months. Each impending is its own separate stressor, all of which are worn together as general financial stress.
I’m down to about $40 and the under $100 stress is present. It’s actually compounded by the anticipation of the $100 to $200 stress, since I do have about $100 coming tomorrow or the next day from a patio furniture assembly I did on Saturday. I haven’t been able to find anything else since then.(Today is Tuesday 10/3 job was 9/31).
There was a CL post in Columbus about loading junk I saw too late on Sunday, and it was reposted Monday. I recognized the ad from some of the content as having been posted a few months back when I was in the area looking for work. There’s a line that’s very telling where the poster states he doesn’t want to see anyone’s underwear so if their pants aren’t worn as he wants them to be worn he’ll tell them to fuck off. It may have been this ad and it may have been another where a dress code is prescribed as cargo pants and some other goofy shit that doesn’t have anything to do with the service.
I did respond, but only because it was the third time I saw the ad and each time I saw it I thought what a cunt. I wrote that it was no wonder why he couldn’t find anyone that wants to work with him because he seems like a cunt based on the ad. If he found anyone who did good work and wanted to work with him the day before he wouldn’t have posted the ad the following day, and if he found anyone a few months prior he wouldn’t have posted either of the ads.
First, if he doesn’t want to see people’s underwear, maybe he shouldn’t be looking at people’s ass and genitals, and then no matter how people were wearing their pants he wouldn’t be seeing anyone’s underwear. It isn’t something that matters to the service, but seeks to establish authority over the individual. He thinks he is or he’s trying to pay someone to do what he says, when he should be trying to find someone who will load and unload junk.
What quality of workers are you going to find who are interested in that arrangement? You’re going to find people who are either very desperate at the moment and they may give you one good day, or you’re going to find people who have low levels of pride. Someone who doesn’t have pride in themselves and in what they do, is a person who is going to do the minimum required to get the money. By trying to impose subjective preferences you immediately reduce the field of workers to those who are least likely to perform well or least likely to return.
In interstate moving I hired multiple people who worked well who sagged their pants. People who I took on the road I let know I didn’t care what they did so long as it didn’t compromise their performance on the job. I had two young dudes with me who drank 211s in the morning on the way to a pick up. When we got there there was no one indication that they were drunk, had been drinking, and we completed the job efficiently and with the appearance of professionality.
In construction I supervised multiple crews on multiple jobsites and rarely had to tell anybody to do anything, outside of how things needed to be done. A lot of weed smoking pants sagging mother fuckers did good work.
My pants are typically worn on my waist so the rule doesn’t apply, but I don’t provide do as you say services, I provide labor services, so that wasn’t really an opportunity for me.
This entry was really just to chronicle the spectrum of financial stress, where it begins, how it evolves and compounds, and the objects generally and specifically that produce the feelings through the thoughts.
Addition
I didn’t want back to back entries about the impact of financial stress and the influence it has on behavior and perspective. I wrote the preceding on Tuesday, today is Friday.
Thankfully, I did find a job that didn’t pan out but I was still paid for it. Otherwise I had that $100 from the furniture assembly that was half gone on food and gas. Which has put me in a position where I have a matter of days to find a job or I am going to be without everything. That does not feel good. With nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no way to influence the outcome I want, I put more and more time into unproductive outlets that remove the feeling not only of being trapped, but trapped on a conveyor belt headed towards increasingly worse circumstances. Acknowledgement of immediate and impending circumstances, and experience the stress of both.
Putting together a new project and believing it is going to generate any attention is a longshot with a proven track record of the opposite. When I have enough money the project takes on life because it seems worth doing. When every moment has the underlying feeling of impending dread, this influences your thoughts to feel like it’s not worth doing. That’s a subconscious objective to remove the negative feelings imposed by the circumstances. One manifestation has been playing more phone games. The justification is over time you earn some money, and it has helped me out, but the motivation now is more about being engaged in the game and experiencing the positive feelings from that engagement, which temporarily suspends awareness of the circumstances that produce the stress. Playing spades online has been my highest valued objective because I can’t find work, so it’s the subconscious identifying the game as highest valued objective within my circumstances, to create a positive feeling within negative circumstances.
On Tuesday when I wrote the first part of this entry, I felt pretty good for only having $40 on me, but I knew I had the $100 coming on Thursday. Now that that has come and passed the pressure has kicked up in a way I did not anticipate on Tuesday.
The hope is something will come along soon. If not we’ll see what happens. I’ve mentioned in previous entries why this happens to be the best life has to offer me, because you cannot market truth to a people committed to biases and values that rely on a false understanding of reality. I can’t sell a book, sell a class, gain support for legislation that benefits all impacted interests, or gain funding in the organization of those ends. I work to save money to promote and nothing happens. Or I survive in the interest of the possibility that something will change knowing the probability that it will not. General ignorance denies the market value of my discoveries, insights, and ideas, that doesn’t change the value they’d have to an intelligent species that prioritized intelligence.
Addition 2
It’s unfortunate I didn’t write the thought down yesterday, but I was going to add that this stress can pass instantaneously. One job that puts me back to a place where I have basic expenses covered for about the next week while looking for jobs immediately relieves the stress and changes perception and prioritization. My mind shifts to potential outlets and the procuring of needs past due. I need contacts, a laptop, phenibut, and have a big expense next month for OPL website hosting. I like to have the money I have now, then the cost of an expense before I make the purchase. Otherwise the cost of the purchase puts me back into financial stress.
It’s also somewhat important to note that I did not take any phenibut yesterday, which probably played a role in amplifying the stress. Amplification through deduction, where without the phenibut there isn’t enough of a boost to my mood to interrupt the cycle of negative thoughts and negative feelings. Contrived optimism isn’t helpful because the circumstances are real. I imagine if I subscribed to the notion of positive thinking or faith contributing to outcomes as is the superstitious fad, then each time I’m approaching the brink of collapse I would think the positive thinking had something to do with it.
Before I found this job I was going to take a poor day. Spend no money, eat a few pb sandwiches, clean out my car, and monitor CL and the other apps I use to find work. It essentially buys me another day for something to come up. It seemed better to do that when I still have about $100 than to do that when I have $20. When you’ve been looking everyday for a week and nothing has panned out there’s nothing to say that you won’t have another week like that.
It comes on incrementally and passes immediately. It’s the slow boil of the frog in the sense that it builds as circumstances deteriorate but it’s easy not to notice until you reach the boiling point. At the boiling point or near it the aggressive responses that it produces if the circumstances are not addressed fuels more aggressive responses. There were a few minor incidents over the last few days I didn’t chronicle because it could be perceived as braggadocio, but any of these 3 incidents could have quickly escalated into something very consequential
9/30/2023
I began compiling for a paper to demonstrate how biases asserted to preserve values obstruct communication and limit intelligence. Including authority based thinking which is in part a product of bias. What that means is I intend to use social media exchanges to show how people are prevented from understanding things that challenge their beliefs. This possibility of an outlet is a boost in mood over the duration of the project. If it proves ineffective then I’ll add another book to my website and resume my despondency at that time.
I don’t have an elevator pitch. Had a brief conversation at the gym with a man who asked me about the website on my shirt. I made a few points but wasn’t as sharp or pointed as I should be. This is due in part to the breadth of the subject matter, but probably more so because I haven’t been promoting in awhile. Since everything is novel, everything requires a summary explanation that has to be unpacked but can rarely be unpacked through a casual conversation. A sub par performance, but not too bad considering the circumstances.
The last few days after beginning to write and compile, I broadened the scope of the aforementioned paper. As I was about to write the core elements from the foundation of assignment, sequencing, and comparison, I realized I was recreating content that has not been understood previously. The protection of value through biased governance is the defining characteristic of human beings, and ultimately the source of all human problems, so I’m going to limit the scope of the paper to demonstrating barriers to communication through social media exchanges, and identifying the causes through deduction.
I’ll also be defining intelligence since some findings of bias could be challenged on the basis that some people are not smart enough to understand things. This is for the most part BS. Obviously people who have physiological impairments or disease may have a limited capacity for intelligence, but absent physical cognitive impairments all people are capable of understanding all things. What a person knows is a product of values and biases that direct attention and prevent them from learning things that challenge their beliefs.
How do I know this? Reality as perceived through the conscious experience reduces to objects in motion within space and time. Motion is the product of cause. Everything that is, is because of some preceding cause. This means all knowledge reduces to objects arranged in cause and effect sequencing. Absent biases where a person refuses to accept an observation because of the impact it will have on their values, all people have the capacity to understand all things, because all complexity reduces to objects assembled in cause and effect sequencing
Half of intelligence is the unbiased ability to identify causes, and the other half is the ability to understand the effects objects can produce in utility to some valued end.
I was on FB collecting some exchanges and there was a Neil Degrasse Tyson post about people denying the existence of metaphysical spaces. I supplied an explanation for the most likely cause of existence based on the conscious experience and the function of the universe. I deleted it the following morning. The main reason is because it will be mostly understood at the margins and this understanding can create prejudice against me. Where people do not fully understand the explanation and think my main goal reduces to this explanation when it isn’t a priority. Priorities are the promotion of liberty and truth, to correct self deception and inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money, elevating the general intelligence of human beings and producing quality of life improvements. The existential explanation is just the most ideal and probable explanation for existence.
On every subject where something cannot be known definitively, a person’s preponderance of evidence leads them to believe one thing or another about it, even if they don’t share the position with others.
Everything that is, is the result of some preceding cause. To understand what caused the universe to exist we can identify why the universe exists based on what it does.
I’m not an astronomer or physicist but when the universe settled into its current state it began as one element. This element through the forces of its environment combined and created stars and these stars created more elements. These elements combined to create more complex structures. Fundamentally, the universe exists to create random complexity. The most complex structure the universe can create is life. The universe exists to create life randomly.
What purpose does the random creation of life serve? Many people believe that a tyrant deity created human beings to stroke his ego and serve him for eternity, or be tormented for eternity. They hedge that bet through praise, prayer, worship, and obedience. While specific beliefs are internally and externally contradictive, generally there is no evidence for such deities existing, and logically such behavior is irrational.
There’s no evidence of any result on this planet being produced by supernatural means. This fact has two major implications. The first being praise, prayer, worship, and obedience serve no material purpose. The only purpose those acts serve is the positive feelings generated by the false beliefs that motivate the acts. Second, it demonstrates that the creator doesn’t impose on his creation which suggests morality and purpose.
Morality in the sense that supernatural intervention into human affairs even when benevolent disadvantages all relative to the benefactor, it’s essentially circumstantial imposition, but also imposes on human will generally by denying human beings the opportunity to produce their own results.
Purpose is implied because absent a moral principle preventing supernatural interference, supernatural interference may be abstained from I’m order to not contaminate the results.
Morality, what is believed to be right and wrong is a determinant of conscious motion. People typically abstain from action they believe is wrong. Understanding morality as a determinant of conscious motion creates a core moral duality.
Desire is present at all times. The human constant is that at all times all people want to do what they want to do. In the absence of imposition all beings can do as they please which is ideal. This means objectively, right action is unimposing and wrong action is imposing. It also means any moral code that claims an unimposing act is wrong, or an imposing act is right is the imposition of a subjective preference. There is one morality of liberty, and there are an infinite amount of moral codes based on tyranny because there are an unlimited number of subjective preferences that can be imposed from one to others. There is a lot of unpacking of liberty to demonstrate it is 100 percent applicable and correct to all possible circumstances in all possible spaces containing two or more conscious beings.
The deity belief is now irrational for two reasons. The first is the observable fact that there is no supernatural intervention taking place on our planet. The second relates to the question of the survival of consciousness after death. If consciousness survives death and there is a heaven and hell so to speak, these separate spaces exist to accommodate the motion of different modes of morality. One space all beings are governed through liberty based morality and do anything they want that does not impose on others. In the other space beings impose on one another as they please, presumably competing for supremacy. Deity belief is irrational because if consciousness survives death, and if separate spaces exist, people go to the space that is consistent with their moral understanding and application, not to the place some benevolent tyrant deity places them based on their efforts to stroke its ego.
Personally I do believe consciousness survives death and I do believe there are separate spaces. I will explain momentarily why I believe consciousness survives death, but I believe there are separate spaces because one space for both modes of morality would produce eternal conflict as the Libertees propensity to prevent and neutralize imposition would be in constant conflict with Tyrant to impose. It’s unlikely the universe would come into being in that scenario. Whether consciousness survives death and separate spaces exist for the habitation of consciousness is irrelevant to morality and behavior. Separate spaces shouldn’t motivate moral behavior because liberty is ideal for human beings, it is inherently beneficial, and doesn’t require the fear of consequence, only acknowledgement of self interest.
The idea that a tyrant deity created human beings to be his servants for eternity or to be tormented for eternity projects evil onto a creator. These are circumstances the creator would not want to exist within, and purposes it would not want to exist for. Deity worship is irrational because the deity doesn’t benefit people while alive, doesn’t benefit people if consciousness survives death, it assigns an evil purpose to existence, and is unideal. Why would you believe in an all powerful deity who is evil and unideal, since being all powerful he could be ideal? The deities can also be exposed through the details of their doctrines, in internal and external contradictions, and the dictates even if universally followed not producing human behavior that is beneficial to human beings, or being at odds with inherent human desires.
The general conclusion concerning a creator, is that the creator cannot create beings for purposes it would not want to exist for. At most a conscious creator creating conscious beings is reproducing.
Why does the universe exist to randomly produce life? Whether 1 creator, or an innumerable amount, an all powerful eternal being or beings in an eternal space of limitless potential have a problem. Imagine you were in a space where you could create and experience anything. How long would it take you to create and experience everything so many times that none of it was worth doing? It doesn’t matter how long because you exist for an eternity and what can be created and experienced is limited by the experience of the beings in that eternal space.
To overcome this problem requires the existence of something that is able to create life randomly, to add to the experience of the space. The universe is exactly the solution to the problem of a space of limitless potential being limited by the experiences of the beings who inhabit the space. The universe is the facilitator of perpetual liberty by ensuring the beings have access to new experiences and new beings that are not the product of their experiences.
In this, there is also perfect reciprocity between creators and creation, and a certain irrelevancy to moral governance beyond what that moral governance produces for the species. Reciprocity in that everything created by the creation adds to the enrichment of eternal spaces. A species that is entirely tyrannical still benefits eternal spaces through all the things they created which can then be incorporated into the spaces of limitless potential. The consciousness that survives death will all be incorporated into the space of tyranny as they’ve chosen but that doesn’t prevent a space of liberty from benefiting from everything they have produced.
I believe consciousness survives death first because of the utility it has to eternal spaces, and due to moral necessity. Any creator would not want to exist and then cease to exist, so to create a universe that produces consciousness only for that consciousness to cease to exist is essentially creation for the purpose of murder. Obviously, the more beings a space of limitless potential has whose moral understanding and application is liberty the more that space can create and the beings can experience, so survival of consciousness has utility within this most probable existential theory.
9/27/2023
Illegal immigration is a clear example of how the American people’s commitment to biases produces problems. It was a bipartisan effort. People in this country from the left and the right developed strong opinions about a subject they weren’t interested in understanding.
In 2015 when Trump was running for office he campaigned on the issue that illegal immigration was a big problem. He campaigned on this idea first because it was politically advantageous since people on the right have been conditioned to believe that illegal immigration threatens their way of life, as well as a justification as to why poor Americans are not doing better. Secondly, to give a bunch of public funds to private companies to build a wall.
If anyone from either side had any interest in the subject they would have looked at the historical trend. In 2000 there were 1.6 million cbp apprehensions at the border. From 2009 to 2015 there were less than 500k each year with most years remaining below 400,000 apprehensions. As apprehensions increase or decrease presumably the number of people who are attempting to cross the border has increased or decreased. If people wanted to understand the problem they’d have discovered that there was no problem with illegal immigration when republicans were promoting the idea that there was.
Second, they could have researched the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the United States and would have discovered that there were a million fewer illegal immigrants (2015) from the southern border than there had been several years prior, representing close to a 10 percent reduction in the estimated number of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration wasn’t a problem when Trump and republicans campaigned on and convinced their supporters that it was. It takes all of about 10 minutes to research the correct position.
How did half the country believing illegal immigration is a problem produce an illegal immigration problem? Since the republicans drew attention to a problem that was not a problem the democrats took an extreme opposite position to create support against the republican position and absorb new fringe (illegal immigration) proponents into their party. The election of Biden and rhetoric and policies removed the deterrent of being deported and encouraged people to begin immigrating illegally. It still wasn’t a problem until 2021 where we jumped to over a million apprehensions, and in 2022 we had over 2 million apprehensions. Significant since from 09 to 2020, the US averaged 438,000 apprehensions per year.
A prime example of how the ignorance of the American people produces problems for the American people. If republicans do not promote it as a problem when it was not a problem we don’t have the democrats federally promoting rhetoric and policy that led to what appears to be an illegal immigration problem.
Great for Trump(or Desantis) 2024, especially since democrats are reversing on that rhetoric and policy, and bussing immigrants to blue states has produced images that are very effective propaganda. Bussing exaggerates the problem but I think it is an effective tool to discourage rhetoric that produces border insecurity. Exaggerates it in the sense that if you concentrate the number of people in an area it’s going to create a problem that wouldn’t exist in natural disbursement.
American ignorance has created a spike in illegal immigration. It’s the people, not industry, politicians, or the media, just the people’s choice to believe what feels good instead of what is observed.
–
The following are just comments I had about two irrelevant stories I saw.
On Twitter, Megan Kelly commented on how the Senate changed their dress code and they should just put on a suit. There were a number of tweets supporting the message. I commented it was another thing to add to the ever increasing list of things Americans are concerned with which are irrelevant and have no impact on their interests. Kelley knows people generally have a negative opinion of the Senate and commenting on that thing in a negative way will draw attention because it reinforces her audiences negative stereotype of the Senate. Not necessarily knowingly, she probably takes the position because it reinforces her own biases that will resonate with her audience.
Yesterday while I was at the gym I saw a news channel reporting on Russel Brand being charged with sexual assault. It’s covered because Brand has been a vocal opponent of the news station. I’m not a fan of Brand, but reporting the allegations is irrelevant to the interests of the American people but it’s reported to discredit him, and because it will resonate with people who have a negative opinion of him. It makes them feel good to know something bad has happened to someone who they don’t like. Otherwise, completely irrelevant to their interests.
9/16/2023
I still receive FB notifications from a group I haven’t participated in in months. Participation is little more than an irritant when what’s being stated isn’t understood evident by the replies and exchanges. I saw a post that was essentially lamenting self deception, or the refusal to acknowledge information that challenges beliefs. This is the defining feature of this species that takes place through mechanisms I am very familiar with. I consider that human feature to be responsible for my circumstances.
I made the following comment on the post
Comment:
The worst part about it is it’s difficult to know if a person cannot accept a point because of the implications the point has for their perspective, where the response is a product of conscious or subconscious denial; or if the person cannot understand the point because their ability to think has been contaminated by making assignments of truth based on feeling, and now their reality and ability to comprehend is completely arbitrary. I don’t know if anybody in this group comprehended anything I wrote in it. Criticism or praise showed comprehension at the margins that failed to demonstrate an understanding of the points being made. Lost zero arguments in this group, but stopped participating because there is no benefit in arguing with people who do not understand what you’re saying.
Self deception, which is what people do when confronted with information that challenges their beliefs is rooted in subconscious function. The subconscious is always set to objectives to produce positive feelings. This is why people consume information that reinforces beliefs (a person’s truth is associated with their identity and identity is the basis for self worth(1))because it produces positive feelings, but also avoid challenging information which produces negative feelings. The negative feeling is a threat response because a person’s value of objects is under threat. The first object being their value of self where if they do not have a high enough value of the truth(2), they will feel bad for being wrong, and may lose a part of their identity. For example, if a person has a nationalist identity and learn the country was not founded on the principles they believed it to be founded on that’s a huge blow to their identity. The same as a racial justice activist discovering that race is not a source of disadvantage takes away a great portion of their identity and takes the joy out of a great deal of things they do in life.
1: Being right is validation of what we know and what we are. When something builds on what we think we know speaking to an underlying point of something we believe that validation causes us to see ourselves as being right, having knowledge, or being intelligent which is the basis for positive feelings rooted in the increase of self worth.
2: Identity is a product of values, we are what we like, unless the truth is the top identifying value, seeing ourselves as wrong can reduce self worth. When truth is a high or the highest identifying value there typically isn’t the negative feeling and self worth improves as the individual recognizes their truth becoming more complete. The quickest path to right is abandoning what was wrong. A high value of the truth, in understanding it’s utility, causes truth to become an identifying value, and self worth improves through the discovery of something believed to be true actually being false. Self deception is caused by a person being ignorant of how truth serves their self interest, the moral implications of self deception, followed by material benefits they may get from maintaining a lie, and an inflated value of the perception of others. The last point meaning the maintenance of a belief appearing to be true to others is believed to improve others perception of them, and perceiving others as perceiving them better improves their self worth.
The 2nd aspect of denial is maintaining our value of objects. Much of what people like and do in their day to day life relies on their perspective and their perspective consists of what they believe is true. Changing what they believe is true often takes away what they can experience joy from because values rely on our beliefs remaining intact. If the racial justice activist discovers their cause has no basis, they can no longer be important in that group, no protests, no blog posts, no moral affirmations through those efforts, and for many, huge material losses in the money they made through the promotion of the cause. Worse still, there is the negative feeling that comes from all previous efforts being for nothing resulting in a loss of self worth.
Often people will become angry, fearful, or disgusted and remove themselves from the controversy. Or as was my situation in this group you become frustrated because people cannot comprehend and you remove yourself because there’s no satisfaction in being unable to convey any information.
The last form of denial is conscious denial where a person may comprehend the points but pretends that they do not.
There is the will not. But there’s also the cannot. That is pretty much how I summarized it earlier. These are people who are scatter minded(3). When they receive a piece of information they’re often unable to connect it with succeeding pieces of information to understand what is being stated. Often to protect their beliefs which they may perceive as being challenged based on comprehension on the margins they will try to challenge that piece removed from context while failing to recognize how their challenge means nothing to the central point one way or another.
3: In digging into past perspectives, inferences from observing others and comparing those things to my present perspective scatter minded I would best describe as unconnected patches of short sequenced objects. In other words, in the sea of a person’s mind there are all these blocks of a few pieces of information, their understanding only goes a few causes and effects deep and most of it cannot be connected to form a cohesive picture. New information is contaminated by how it relates to these blocs of understanding, but it isn’t perceived as the object that it is and isn’t connected to succeeding pieces of information. There is no innate capacity for intelligence beyond inborn physical cognitive defects. Reality consists of objects in motion and motion consists of cause and effect sequencing. All complex things reduce to simple objects in cause and effect sequencing. Which is why I’ll sometimes call people stupid, because it isn’t an innate disadvantage, it’s a choice of values.
The worst part about not being able to communicate information that challenges beliefs is you don’t know if it’s subconscious denial where the preservation of values prevents comprehension, if it’s conscious denial, or if they cannot understand due to a lifetime of poor thinking habits.
9/13/2023
I’ve written on several occasions that every place is a different proportion of different ignorance. I mention this because I’ve never itemized what those different brands of ignorance are. There are democrats, and republicans, and there are those who don’t understand that their indifference to government affairs impacts their circumstances and the circumstances of others. Why I cannot support republicans comes down to 3 core elements, and a few issues stemming from those 3 core elements. But the core elements consist of false beliefs tied to the nature of existence and identity.
I do believe the Republicans are the lesser of the two evils because their platform is not divisive and they are far less the party that is promoting problems that are not problems, and enacting policy that impose on the liberty of citizens. Liberty isn’t distinct from security but inclusive, as in to be free from having your person or property imposed on. I cannot support republicans because the evil in that lesser evil is significant. If the Republicans got everything they wanted we would still have the same problems we have today, which is a lesser of two evils since if the democrats got everything they wanted we would be worse off.
The biggest problem I have with Republicans is their refusal to acknowledge labor markets and the inadequacy of income opportunities for many people in this country. A rising median wage is only of consequence if the increase is higher than inflation which hasn’t been the case long term, and especially not in the short term where in the hysteria created around COVID we mortgaged the future in a vain effort to extend the lives of people who were already knocking on deaths door. Supported by all brands of ignorance to one degree or another and where those who opposed often opposed for the wrong reasons. That’s another topic altogether discussed more in depth in The COVID 19 Media Project.
When median income is mentioned the number provided is the median income of people participating in the workforce, not the median income of all adults which grossly exaggerates the median income. While the median income of adults included in the workforce is about 50,000k per year, this represents only about 60 percent (workforce participation rate) of the adult population, half of which make less than that, and many substantially less. Not all of the additional 40 percent of adults not included in the workforce are retirees. Some are gig workers, others earn incomes that do not qualify for taxation and do not file, others are discouraged workers who have been unemployed for a period of time that qualifies them as not included in the workforce. The median income for all people is the house hold income divided by the number of adults per household which is 2.44 last time I checked. The household median income as of May 2023 was estimated to be 81,454, divided by 2.44 is 33,382. This represents the individual median income for all adults including those not in the workforce.
Even for those working and right in the middle. What does a 50k per year income provide in most places? Monthly take home is $2950. Average rent for an apartment in the US is $1700 per month. Average utility bill is $185 per month. Average cost of fuel per month is $175. Average cost of groceries is $400 per month. After food, shelter, and energy consumption the average person has $490 a month or $123 per week for whatever other expenses they have.
These are averages, and obviously those who have lower incomes will find apartments that are below average, will use less electricity and gas, will travel less, etc. But the proportion of their income they spend on below average expenses will be the same. Or they’ll be forced into roommate situations, some probably relationships they otherwise wouldn’t maintain if not for financial dependency.
The point being is many people in this country, likely more than half earn an income that is roughly equal to their expenses. They live within trapped circumstances where the income they earn requires most of their time and only suffices for expenses where no accumulation can take place to position themselves to earn more money. This is a product of labor markets since companies no matter how successful they are or become know the amount that people will work for to perform a particular job in a particular area. They’re not going to pay more just because they can afford to and their employees are responsible for their profits. I’m not criticizing industry for paying employees the market rate since people typically won’t pay more for a product or service just because that product or service is going to make them money. For example, if a person is selling their home and a contractor makes a repair for $500 that increases the home value by $10,000, the homeowner isn’t going to contact the contractor after the sale and give them more money.
Minimum wage increases and universal basic income are not solutions to this problem. The latter with federal implementation will likely cripple the economy and the democrats limited implementation, often race based with a small sample size in different places tells us nothing. It’s propaganda to attract votes by creating the idea that if elected they’ll give poor people money, but it does not improve income opportunities.
That is my biggest problem with the Republican party, their refusal to acknowledge how labor markets produce inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money, how this inadequacy produces most societal problems, and the need to address this problem to increase the liberty and prosperity of all people including reducing the byproducts of the problem. The Republican’s refusal to acknowledge labor markets typically stems from my second problem with Republicans which is nationalism.
They don’t know history well enough to know that what you see today, is exactly what the founders envisioned. The American revolution wasn’t a transfer of power from the king to the people, it was a transfer of power from the king to wealth and economic elites. Today the economic elite are represented by industry.
Your patriots, the important ones were patriots for their own interests, and the common patriot was a mercenary. They teach you in grade school social studies that the war for independence could not be maintained without paying the people to fight. There are letters from soldiers who state they enlisted for the prospect of food, money, and land, not ideal. A revolutionary fights for ideal, a mercenary fights for money.
The United States began as and remains an instrument of industry to decide important matters of the state, granting concessions as is required to maintain the contentment of the masses. The attention of the masses is directed to things that are unimportant and directed according to their subscripted biases. This isn’t a deviation, this is an organization that has been passed down for generations.
I don’t think systemic changes are required, the current popularly obstructing mechanisms of power can be used to pass popular legislation. Except that 1: the public is too oblivious to reality to recognize and act on their own best interests. Oblivious due to their biases that directs their attention towards largely irrelevant matters, and 2: nationalist biases that rely on maintaining the belief that the United States was born out of undefiled principle, and not out of advancing the interests of those who were responsible for creating it. A belief that has been disproven through the statical analysis of the founders interests and voting tendencies by Robert A. McGuire. A belief that is disproven through the founder’s words and actions.
Nationalism is a problem because nationalist are precluded from recognizing there are serious problems that need to be addressed, outside of what they’ve been trained to believe is a serious threat from the other business party. The slogan make America Great Again is a stupid slogan, that’s supported by other stupid slogans. It’s a stupid slogan because there is no point in this country’s history, when the country was great. What measure would you like to use? People are conservative and nationalists because things haves worked well for them, and people typically associate primarily with those of the same socioeconomic status, so things are good for others too as far as they can tell.
Most problems stem from inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money. The false belief in the fairness and infallibility of the US economic and political systems prevent the address of inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money.
Finally, republicans generally subscribe to the Christian fiction and this fiction influences their social legislative agenda. You believe in an unjust, hypocritical, and contradictory benevolent tyrant that skews your perception of reality and limits your understanding, through bias that prevents you from accepting things that challenge that belief. I’ve summarized these things so many times I’ll leave you with the entry date and link to the journal that proves those assertions (DJ 2: Entry 1/7/2023. Also see Liberty: The Definitive Moral Truth for more thorough explanation). If you’re a Christian reading this, the assertions themselves have produced some level of anger, fear, or disgust that will prevent you from following the link, but it has been demonstrated. That scenario is an example of how people following their biases produce their ignorance, which is why people can be responsible for their ignorance.
Those are the three main reasons why I do not support republicans, otherwise both parties point the public at social issues, irrelevant controversy and reality TV like narratives while carrying forward the interests of their donors and selling those interests to the public through vague terms that cause the public to believe it represents their interest.
Most of my agreement with republican positions is represented in what I despise about the democrats, which is nearly everything. Disagreements on specific policy either stems from religion influencing matters of the state or strategy for accomplishing a stated goal.
For example, if Texas passed everything they were trying to pass a few months ago with the 10 commandments in schools, prayer periods, and at school chaplains this is a clear violation of the separation of church and state but more importantly it’s harmful to the development of children. At least equally as harmful as the teaching of gender identity and school psychologists.
An example of a stated goal but different strategy would be border security. Illegal immigration from the southern border is not currently a problem but it could be on the cusp of becoming a problem. It’s on the cusp of becoming a problem because it has long been an issue used to activate the republican base. Used as a scapegoat for why low income Americans are not doing better, and used as a threat to the way of American life. Under Obama when the estimated number of illegal immigrants began to reach near 12 million, Obama implemented policy to secure the border and sent ICE to arrest illegal immigrants. He also had policy in place for repid deportation. Immigrants spent 2 to 3 weeks (don’t remember the exact figures, compared average detention stay under Trump and Obama) less time in detention under Obama than Trump. I looked this up since longer stays produce overcrowding and exaggerate the problem. This is what has put us on the cusp of an illegal immigration problem.
Not the longer detention stays, but the exaggeration of the problem. Trump in 2016 campaigned on the idea that illegal immigration was a serious problem after Obama had decreased the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country by about 2 million from close to 12 million. In part because as previously mentioned the issue is successful in activating the republican base, and second because construction companies would make billions to build a wall. Made possible by a mass of people incapable of critical thinking who believe things based on how the things make them feel, and their feelings are determined by whether the thing is consistent or inconsistent with what they already believe. Don’t worry, the other brands of ignorance do the same thing, which is why people hate the truth.
We may be on the cusp of an illegal immigration issue because republicans made the issue important when it wasn’t, and democrats used it as an issue to rally their base by being opposed to it, then using rhetoric and implementing policy that encourages people from other countries to immigrate illegally, and limiting the power of CBP, ICE, and the courts from preventing, apprehending, and deporting illegals.
The solution is very simple. A return to Obama immigration policy with an increase in resources as needed by CBP and ICE to respond to any increase.
We know that as long as the illegal immigrants population from the southern border remains below 12 million, illegal immigration does not impose on the opportunities or social services of Americans.
If you want to know how much of a problem illegal immigration is, don’t be emotionally moved by pictures and statistics you have no context for. If you see a report that there were x amount of encounters and arrests by CBP it means nothing to you unless you know the historical trend. Over the last 20 years in that month how many encounters and arrests are there? If there have been more in that month in the past then you can begin to understand what that number means. If it’s unprecedented by how much and then you can begin to develop a conception of the problem or if it is a problem.
On to the democrats.
Both parties represent the interests of their industrial donors and then sell the public on how the service to those interests is actually beneficial to the public. Republicans typically do this by conflating the interests of industry with the interest of the public, and deception related to that end. Tax cuts cause poor and middle class republicans to believe they’ll be keeping more money while it primarily benefits wealth and industry. Or measures that benefit industry are said to benefit the public, where the more advantageous the environment is for business the more investment takes places, jobs, etc. Democrats often use this same line when they’re pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars into renewable energy subsidies using public funds to build privately owned infrastructure, and they talk about all the green jobs that will be created. Democrats are worse in that while the Republicans deception or ignorance pertains to the outcome of their carrying forward industrial interests Democrats rail against industry while carrying forward the policy that benefits their industrial supporters.
Democrats pander to the struggle and hopes of the underclasses while providing nothing of benefit except when it will benefit their donors. ACA was a prime example where health care was provided not through a public option but through a voucher system where indigent Americans could use public funds to purchase private health insurance at premiums where 15 to 20 percent of the cost went to profits.
The latest fad is universal basic income, which is essentially the return to welfare. UBI does nothing to increase the income opportunities for people and in many places where municipalities are testing it, it’s nothing more than a PR stunt. The tests often consist of less than 100 people receiving benefits and there is no plan for widespread implementation or a funding mechanism for widespread implementation. The tests encourage ignorant poor people to vote for democrats based on the prospect that the government will give them money.
If UBI was federally implemented, in accordance with Andrew Yang’s plan it would produce economic contraction. Yang planned on placing a value added tax on all products to pay for it. This value added tax would be passed down to consumers increasing the price of everything. More importantly, it would lead to a great decrease in production as many people would live off of the UBI, supplemented by other government benefits and wouldn’t work. That’s the main problem with UBI is it doesn’t create opportunity for people to have better incomes, it just services an impoverished situation.
While the democrats rhetoric is geared towards economic inequality, they’ve driven a wedge between underclass goals by making disadvantage synonymous with superficial differences that are not indicative of disadvantage.
The most significant partitioning of people is through the misrepresentation of facts to claim that race is a source of disadvantage and the assertion that systemic racism is a problem in the United States. The greatest source of disadvantage in the United States is a lack of opportunity for people to have adequate incomes that allow them to accumulate wealth. If you don’t have money or adequate opportunities to make money this disadvantage will predispose you to nearly all possible negative outcomes.
Since proportionately, black people are more likely to begin poor as the succeeding generations of people who did experience systemic racism there will always be racial disparities that are not caused by racism, but are caused by a larger proportion of black people beginning poor. When you compare statistics by race it will show white people as a whole having better outcomes because there is a greater proportion of white people who start from economically advantaged circumstances. When income is controlled for these disparities are greatly reduced and in some cases eliminated. I addressed many of these things specifically in the Racial Perceptions.
POC has become synonymous with disadvantage and white has become synonymous with advantage despite the fact that white people not only represent the majority of poor and impoverished people in this country, but there are more than twice the number of white people living in poverty than there is black people living in poverty.
There are black people who are poor today because of past systemic racism. But they are not more disadvantaged today than poor white people who are poor because their families’ income opportunities were relatively equal to their expenses and so they had nothing to pass down to succeeding generations. In the book Racial Perceptions (short book) I address popular misconceptions coming from studies and narrative to demonstrate that race is not a source of disadvantage, and that poor black people today are living with the same difficulties that poor white people have been living with for generations. Obviously better than poor black people from previous generations who were denied education, housing, income opportunities, equal protection under law, and services public and private, supported by political and social systems. We have pre civil rights act rhetoric in a post civil rights act world, where the social environment has long caught up and surpassed the spirit of the law.
Poor black, white, Latino, indigenous, Asian, etc all have a common interest in policy that prioritizes the creation of better income opportunities. Race is one of many tools used by the left to fragment the underclass and maintain a poor population in this country. The maintenance of a poor population is important to many industries in preserving a desperate workforce to keep labor costs low, and because if people have quality income opportunities they are more likely to become conservative accumulating property to protect, income that is taxed, and a system that they personally benefit from. If the Republican Party wanted to destroy the democrats they’d have adopted my legislative agenda and eliminated the democrats base by eliminating the poor through the creation of opportunity. They can’t because they’re too invested in nationalism, where acknowledging systemically created stratification contradicts the myths they hold supreme about this country and these systems.
Obviously there are many upper middle class and affluent white democrats who subscribe to the narrative that systemic racism exists and race is a source of disadvantage. Their subscription to the idea comes from the tendency of people to only associate intimately with people of a similar socioeconomic status. In the same way poor people in primarily black neighborhoods see primarily black people and think poverty is a product of being black, affluent whites see other affluent whites and think being poor is a product of being a POC. Of course others support the narrative for social and material benefits, and don’t really care whether it’s true or not. It’s true to people so they can use the issue to improve how they perceive others as seeing them which improves self worth and is a source of positive feelings.
We have the creation of the concept of gender identity which is used to instill biases that can be used to manipulate people. I explained this about a week or two ago in another entry. The human mind is directed by values, which are the assignments of feelings to objects, in simpler words what you like. Every object can have a masculine or feminine stereotype attached to it. And what one considers masculine another may consider feminine so it is subjective. This means all gender identity is, is the assigning of masculine or feminine stereotypes to your values, and for that sum to be what you identify as your gender. Which is why non-binary is the most ridiculous identity since ultimately your values fall one way or another.
If a man wants to wear makeup, talk like a woman, change his body, wear dresses, and anything else he has the right to express those values, but it doesn’t mean he’s a woman. It means he likes those things and so he does them.
The problem is gender dysphoria is being promoted and the importance is manufactured. Teaching children that some boys are girls, girls are boys, and some are neither, and that the distinction matters. Then allowing a child and/or ignorant parents to change the hormonal balance and genitalia of children who have been prompted to make gender identity a central focus. These people should be in prison. It is exactly brainwashing, to create a fictitious concept and teach children that it is important. But then again, so is the introduction of religion into schools but the difference is the harm isn’t as easy to track.
While I agree there are some states that have passed laws that impose on the rights of people to express values associated with the opposite sex, I also believe that many of these laws are push back from a trans agenda that imposes on others. In the promotion of gender identity itself which doesn’t exist outside of being a social construct, but also in efforts to de-gender bathrooms, biological males competing against biological females in sports, and generally claiming that gender identity is a source of disadvantage.
I agree with laws that put age minimums on hormone therapy and gender surgeries, but to the extent of 18 to 21, where Oklahoma’s efforts to raise the age to 24 or 26 seems like an excessive burden for an adult who is interested in changing their genitalia or using hormones to allow them to better express the values they’re trying to express. Tennessee passed a law that a man cannot perform in public impersonating a woman under the pretext of protecting children. This law has already been ruled unconstitutional in a federal court. It’s been demonstrated time and again that LGBT people have equal protection under the law.
Gender identity is not important. Your behavior is what it is irrespective of your gender identity, which is your assignment of masculinity or femininity to your values and calling the difference your gender. There’s no genetic basis or hormonal imbalance that predisposes someone to gender dysphoria. It’s a learned concept, and the values that constitute it are developed. And again, there’s nothing wrong with a person expressing values associated with the opposite sex, but no boy has ever felt like they’re a girl and no girl has ever felt like they were a boy. Evident by the fact that being born the gender that they are there’s no way for them to know what the opposite gender feels like.
The democrats have seized on the opportunity to manipulate LGBT people through the idea that gender identity is important and gender identity and sexuality is a source of disadvantage. LGBT people are not denied educational opportunities, housing opportunities, employment opportunities, services public or private, and when they are they have protection under the law and there is remedy according to the application of the law. LGBT is a brand, a division, and a distraction that prevents attention from being paid to matters that impact people’s quality of life, including LGBT peoples.
Just reiterate the main point since the introduction of logic into the issue means I’m a bigot because they have no rebuttal, if you ask any trans person what makes them trans there’s only two responses, 1st how they feel but we’ve already established they cannot know what the other gender feels like because they’re not that gender, and 2nd, they can list the things they like that are commonly associated with the opposite gender. Gender identity is a person identifying their gender based on how they perceive their values as being more masculine or feminine. And most people don’t care so long as the expression and promotion of those values doesn’t interfere in their lives.
You cannot force people to participate in your fantasy. As I stated in the previous entry discussing the subject, if the costume is convincing I’ll typically refer to a person based on the image they’re projecting, especially in reference to others since the pronoun of the projected gender more accurately describes the appearance, but they and them is reserved for describing more than one.
I agree with democrats on abortion in that women should have the right to choose whether or not to carry a fetus to term. I don’t believe a fetus has rights since a fetus has not been born, and believe the argument that the state has an interest in the probability of life has to be shown to be harmed by the number of abortions that occur.
I am a proponent of a woman’s right to have an abortion not for legal reasons which I’m not well informed on, (I’ve skimmed Roe. v. Wade and my impression of the case was that it was more about doing the right thing than it was applying the constitution) but moral reasons. First, there is no imposition taking place because a fetus has no experience that it is being deprived of. It isn’t conscious, and therefore it experiences no harm or loss in being aborted. 2nd, I’m a proponent of abortion because a child born into a disadvantaged situation with parents who lack the resources and capabilities to properly raise a child is predisposed to having a low quality of life and becoming someone who imposes on others. The 2nd moral reason is to limit circumstantial imposition that often leads to a person imposing on others.
If people are truly interested in preventing abortions they should be interested in ensuring that all people have adequate opportunities for time and money in an effort to eliminate the primary driver of abortions. The effort is for ignorant and irrational purposes, but that is the best way to fulfill those purposes.
If you are a proponent of abortion it isn’t currently a federal issue since the only federal effort to ensure a woman has the right to an abortion is through a constitutional amendment and there is no chance of passing a constitutional amendment anytime in the near future. It’s an issue of the states or it’s an issue of the courts.
Since the democrats cannot address the failings of policy aimed at reducing gun violence in general, or the elements of American culture that produces people who want to kill others indiscriminately they align themselves against the implements. They avoid gun crime rate statistics that show gun control has no and limited impact on gun crime and focus on gun death rates where deaths produced through self defense is included with deaths produced in the commission of a crime. They fail to demonstrate that stricter gun control prevents mass killings or reduces the number of casualties, yet promote and have convinced ignorant people that it does.
They make silly arguments against the 2nd amendment claiming that technological superiority of the US military can put down any insurrection while failing to acknowledge that the control of territory requires men with rifles. Where should the government ever become an entity that is at odds with the constitution the people of this country are afforded the right to possess the means to defend themselves against such tyranny. More importantly, morally, and legally, people have the right to defend their persons and property from perpetrators and imminent threats of perpetration.
As previously mentioned, since the republicans made illegal immigration an important issue when it wasn’t, democrats seized the opportunity to rouse the lemmings they’re leading to take the opposite position. Rhetoric and policy is increasing the number of illegal immigrants in this country. That position changing since states along the southern border began bussing migrants to sanctuary cities who are not only asking those states to stop sending them, but are telling migrants not to come to their cities because they don’t have the resources to accommodate them.
We know fewer than 12 million illegal immigrants from the southern border (natural migratory disbursement) does not impose on the opportunities of Americans or overburden social services. At some point above that it will. I recognize that migration from Latin American countries is primarily a product of over a century of US foreign policy towards those countries that have produced the circumstances that cause people to want to seek the better opportunity in the land of the exploiter. I wish the best of luck to any of those people who want to take that chance in pursuit of a better life. But, the interests of the American people, including Hispanic Americans must be protected, and immigration law must be enforced. The Obama Administration did an excellent job in the enforcement of immigration law reducing the number of illegal immigrants from the southern border when the number began to approach 12 million.
The climate change policy of the democrats isn’t intent on reducing emissions but intent on funneling public funds to their industrial donors. Subsidies, contracts, funding private research and development, and regulating industries that are not aligned with the democrat party. If the democrats were concerned with reducing emissions the first step is grid energy and instead of subsidizing private profits by using public funds to build private infrastructure, they’d have built the infrastructure outright as Sanders proposed; selling the power to utility companies at a rate that allowed for profit to build more infrastructure and transition to renewable energy. Instead Biden and Obama spent 600 plus billion on privately owned assets, and less than 14 percent of US grid energy is generated through wind and solar. As I’ve mentioned before subsidies can reduce renewable energy investment since a republican administration may not pass a large renewable energy subsidy and companies involved in those industry may wait to invest in renewable energy until the public is going to pay for most of it.
These people are almost unimaginably stupid. I say stupid because it is the habit of accepting things as true without any understanding of whether the thing is true or not. Not only democrats but most people in this country. For democrats they can see 3 controversial uses of police force during the course of a year and claim there’s a problem with police. Don’t have the objectivity or common sense to ask what would constitute a problem? How many police contacts occurred during the span of this handful of sensationalized incidents, that you now believe represents policing? Worse still, you are usually wrong about these incidents because you don’t know the law, where the officers actions are in accordance with the law. You form strong opinions over captions and pieces of events. Anybody who claims they’re concerned with law enforcement but doesn’t know the law isn’t really concerned with law enforcement, they’re concerned with how law enforcement appearing a certain way can benefit them socially and materially.
On the state level and locally not enforcing the law is not a solution to crime. I know, I was a criminal for about 15 years who associated primarily with criminals. No bail and no jail or prison time there’s no deterrent. Some criminals will notice and appreciate this and vote for democrats. Another example of keeping disadvantaged people disadvantaged because crime remediation begins with efforts to eliminate the he circumstances that produce criminals. Being born to households that have inadequate opportunities for people to have time and money. Democrats rely on maintaining.a large poor population and want to service the condition to maintain the base. Free money that doesn’t improve opportunity, legalized criminality that doesn’t improve opportunity, student loan forgiveness in the prioritization of advantaged interests over disadvantaged interests, and the assertion of problems that are not problems does not improve opportunity, and divides the underclasses obstructing the obtainment of better opportunities.
It’s everywhere. I skimmed an article about the mass shootings in Jacksonville and read how the white house has identified white supremacy as an important national problem. Then cites 4 incidents linked to white supremacy over a 5 year period. No one who subscribes to that brand of idiocy has the wherewithal to think how high 4 incidents in 5 years ranks in terms of a national problem, or can think of any other examples of it personally or publically as evidence that it’s a problem.
I cannot be a republican, and I cannot be a democrat. Both factions rely on the biases and ignorance of the population to manipulate them into a false perception of reality to gain consent for policy that remunerates their industrial donors who select them to be candidates you can vote for. I really haven’t scratched the surface on the particulars of my issues with either party. In 2019 and 2020 I was covering current events on a daily basis including some of the soap opera narratives. But it didn’t attract any attention and was ignored as is everything else that exposes holes in people’s perception.
The remainder of this country who is politically disinterested believe some of the same stupid shit the politically interested believe, or some other stupid shit, astrology, energy, ancient aliens, or are focused on some goal to improve their circumstances while oblivious to how political, economic, and social systems limit their opportunities and the opportunities of others. Maybe the kind of people who just want to vibe because they’re too unaware to understand what makes them happy or lack the ability to articulate it. People with warped and incomplete understandings about reality, people who are more concerned with appearance than they are with what is.
The point is, everywhere is a different proportion of different types of ignorance, and the ignorance is willful. There’s no place in particular I want to be, because I’ve been everywhere and people are all the same. Great variations of ignorance and stupidity, but it all falls into those categories.
9/7/2023
I finished reading the study I mentioned a few days ago about comparing the methane increase from natural sources from 2006 to 2022 to past glacial termination events and it seems more probable to me that we’re in the midst of a GTE now than it was after watching the video and reading the first few pages.
The driver of methane emissions from natural sources is an expansion of air currents and increases in ocean temperature causing more precipitation in tropical areas, and the increase in precipitation and warmer temperatures is producing increased microbial activity generating more methane emissions. This is the main source which is being supplemented by increased activity as northern regions in central Canada, Alaska, and Siberia warm, increasing methane emissions from active sources (microbial processes) and decomposition from frozen sources as permafrost melts. This is what happened in previous glacial termination events.
The most concerning aspect of the comparison is the numbers. According to ice core data a driver of these glacial termination events and rapid warming of the planet was a rapid increase in methane caused by the same processes mentioned in the previous paragraph that are happening today During the IA glacial termination event a total CH4 reached 150 ppb and the increase was about 6ppb per year. Right now we’re estimated to be at about 150 ppb and since 2006 methane levels have been rising as much as 14.5 ppb per year on average.
The glacial termination events referenced have methane totals ranging from 150 to 400ppb. At 14.5ppb per year we can be at the upper end of all glacial termination events in less than 20 years. The 14.5ppb is not static, there has been annual growth. 14.5ppb as an average of the last roughly 15 years does not mean the next 15 years will average 14.5 ppb increase, it could average 16 to 20.
The main differences between today and previous GTEs is the anthropogenic element of our modern climate. The increase in anthropogenic methane is insignificant compared to natural methane emissions representing about 15 percent of the growth in methane, but the anthropogenic C02 emissions are significant. The key driver of natural methane emissions is temperature in the warming of oceans producing a greater amount of evaporation and precipitation, expansion of that precipitation as air currents expand, and a higher temperature playing a role in microbial activity in wetlands driving methane emissions. Increases in natural methane emissions are being driven by anthropogenic warming, and the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and methane are creating an environment that is unprecedented in the rapidity of changing atmospheric conditions, and the potential for radiative forcing (warming).
In Anton’s video he mentions 4 degrees C of warming within decades. This was alarming to me because 4 degrees C of warming in decades means the collapse of human civilization. The core elements of survival, food production and water availability will decline precipitously in a 4 degree warmer world creating massive shortages that will lead to a breakdown of society. However, although the study states that previous GTEs have had rapid warming followed by cooling that takes 1000s of years there’s nothing that states 4 degrees C global average temperature increase in decades. There is a quote that stated there was a rapid 6 to 12 degree C increase in temperature that led to a huge increase in methane in the following decades. That 6 to 12 degrees C of warming is 9 degrees C of warming with 3 degrees variability that occured within a decade about 12,000 years ago, but that increase was not a global average increase and occurred during a period where that area (Greenland) was much cooler.
My conclusion of the potential for a rapid shift in climate occuring in decades instead of a century based on the video and only reading a few pages of the research was premature. This doesn’t change the significance of the study or the probability that we have precipitated and are in a GTE that will be different than any other in earth’s history due to the anthropogenic element.
The study is significant because reducing emissions is not going to avert a level of warming that will prove catastrophic for human civilization. In 2020 (Understanding Political Functions Through Recent Political History) using historical data and projecting it I found that a 4 degree C increase from the pre-industrial global average temperature would likely be reached within the first decades of the next century. Roughly a 100 years from the time I researched and wrote it in 2020. That estimate and projection included the current rise in global emissions and emissions from melting permafrost. What I did not know then but now understand better through this research is the rapid growth in natural methane emissions and how that growth corresponds to rapid warming occurring at periods in earth history where the climate reorganized. The study itself mentions how climate models are primarily projections from anthropogenic sources of emissions and are not properly accounting for this rapid growth in natural methane emissions.
It seems plausible considering the unprecedented change in atmospheric composition from anthropogenic sources creating this surge in natural methane emissions comparable to what has been observed during GTEs that we could experience catastrophic levels of warming within decades instead of a century. Even if we have 100 years, we’re past the point where emissions reduction is going to avert catastrophic warming, and even the near elimination of anthropogenic emissions (impossible) is not going to stop the growth of natural emissions driven by the warming already taking place. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to reduce emissions, which is still important, but we ultimately need to figure out how to cool the planet.
There was a study I mentioned where a group claimed they could preserve polar ice through the introduction of aerosols. This has been met with criticism since the decay of these aerosols will destroy ozone which will lead to human beings being irradiated by the sun.
Conceptually the goal is as follows. The sun produces heat and between the earth and sun there is space, and atmosphere. We need to introduce something either in orbit or into the atmosphere to reduce the amount of heat that reaches the earth. Otherwise, we need to remove CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere to allow more of the heat coming from the sun to escape the planet. We may have 10 to 20 years to figure out a solution or 40 to 80 years to figure out a solution.
Given the organization of society especially in the United States there will be no solution. This study references other research that has been ongoing from 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2021 that isn’t receiving mainstream attention and isn’t part of the mainstream narrative. Democrats are not more concerned about climate change than Republicans, they’re concerned with using climate change to regulate industries that either don’t support their party or support republicans more, and to channel public funds to subsidize the industries that do support them under the guise of addressing climate change. And if the growth of natural methane and the comparison to glacial termination periods of the past does become part of the mainstream narrative it will be used by republicans and their supporters to deregulate industries that support republicans and for the rank and file to deny CO2 emissions as a driver of climate change.
The human moral failing is the value of short term personal interest including the maintenance of bias over the truth. A few days ago I thought that the growth in natural methane corresponding to the growth of natural methane from glacial termination events meant a 4 degree C rise in global average temperature may be 4 decades away. Now I know that it isn’t certain but is still a possibility. At that time I stated I didn’t have a problem with the chickens of tyranny coming home to roost. By that I mean that the indifference to human problems, that is produced by ignorance, that is produced by the commitment to bias, has created a situation where rapid warming precipitating the collapse of human civilization is what humans get back from what they send out.
I speculated a few years ago in the book Liberty: The Definitive Moral Truth that climate change may be a moral check on intelligent life to prevent the perpetuation of tyrant species. The reasoning being that tyrant species would be incapable of responding to climate change due to widespread deception and the address of climate change being in conflict with dominant interests. What we observe. While some people believing the collapse of human civilization is imminent (30 to 80 years) may become zealous in creating awareness and promoting solutions to avert the catastrophe I am indifferent to the prospect. I see it as just another human choice. I see it as mercy from a morally and intellectually stagnant species that has reached its ceiling. I see it as justice, where the wrongs that currently exist will cease to be perpetuated on future generations.
Existentially, as a person who believes in the survival of consciousness after death and understands that morality is a determinant of conscious motion necessitating that there be a space for liberty based morality, and tyranny based morality, there is no purpose in perpetuating a tyrant species where a vast majority of its members will be populating a space of tyranny. There is some purpose since I believe the universe exists to solve the problem of a space of unlimited potential being limited by beings of limited experience. That means if you imagine a group of beings who can create and experience anything at will with infinite time, those beings will eventually create and experience everything so many times that existing will become stale. So the universe randomly assembles matter producing life that creates in that randomly generated environment and what they create adds to the experience of the beings who exist in the space of unlimited potential. So existentially there is some benefit to the perpetuation of a tyrant species as what they continue to create can be incorporated into the eternal existence, even if most of their members’ consciousness will survive to a space of tyranny based on their moral understanding and application. At this point in technological development I think enough has been created and produced to adequately serve that purpose from this species. In a lot of ways despite what will eventually be a period of widespread dramatic suffering, there is some positive in catastrophic warming from an existential perspective.
9/4/2023
My registration is expired and I’ve been pulled over a few times in this situation. It’s obviously stressful because it could end in a situation where I lose my car and then I essentially just am where I am. Today I was pulled over and had some marijuana in a state where marijuana is prohibited. To add to the stress I smoked some out the window of the car less than an hour prior to being pulled over. Anytime I smoke I use eye drops, hand sanitizer, and spray air freshener but it’s difficult to know whether I’ve adequately masked the odor. My stress level increased when the officer asked me if I had anything illegal in the car. It’s not a question that’s always asked during a routine traffic stop and when it is asked it’s usually because the officer has a suspicion based on some circumstance, like he smells weed.
I mention being pulled over because the experience is actually a net positive on mood despite the stress of the interaction. It’s like roller coasters, skydiving, or some other high stress activity where much of the pleasure is derived from the introduction and release of stress. I realized after being pulled over that I felt much better than I did prior to being pulled over and as the cycle of mood functions, this improved the kind of things I was thinking about, the way I was thinking about them which in turn improves how a person feels. Interaction produces thoughts and feelings, feelings influence thoughts, and thoughts influence feelings and perception.
I was also thinking about the base source of feelings, where feelings are generated by external stimulation where objects and objectives feel good, and internally through idea, interpretation, and application, as well as through the perception of threat, but the possible development is whether all internally generated feelings, in regard to the motivating and prohibiting of action is rooted in self worth. Morality, subjective preferences, truth, and identity all generate feelings from ideas connected to self worth.
This causes me to question the motivation of the subconscious response that produces denial of information that challenges beliefs. The response itself is feelings of anger and/or fear. My understanding is inclusive of two explanations that may be present simultaneously. The first I cite is the subconscious protecting a person’s values of objects. What a person does is based on how the act is believed to make them feel. How many acts cause them to feel is often dependent on what they believe is true. The subconscious produces a fear or anger response since the discovery of a core belief becoming false means they will have fewer things to derive positive feelings from. The emotional response to challenging information may be the subconscious protecting an individual’s value of objects, since the subconscious is always set to an objective to produce a positive feeling.
While this is true, and the preservation of perspective is required to maintain a person’s values of objects, a person’s truth is their identity which is tied to self worth, including moral values. The subconscious is protecting against a threat to a person’s values of objects, but is the only object being protected self worth; and the value of objects that rely on their beliefs remaining intact just a byproduct of the mechanism to protect self worth?
The protection of the value of objects I think is more relevant to conscious denial where critical thoughts are met by fear, pushed down, or inadequately justified to avoid discovering a central belief is false. In these situations in my past experience a person is more aware of the implications to their interests of discovering that a belief is false.
If anyone is familiar with my observations and assertions on subconscious processes they may note how I believe the subconscious is responsible for the production of thoughts. Oftentimes we can know based on circumstance and why we are thinking what we are thinking. The question would be how can the subconscious produce critical thoughts and also produce feelings and thoughts to justify or suppress the thoughts that it produced?
The mind has to have consistency. There is a built in mechanism of truth, and contradiction is often identified and has to be resolved. Many people’s minds are held together by road blocks where contradiction is supported by some absolute or unanswerable question that supports their organization of objects. An objective is created to achieve greater certainty or consistency when something prompts the person to consider a contradiction, but then is met by a response to suspend objective inquiry based on the ramifications of discovering the belief to be false.
The mechanism that organizes objects isn’t preempted by the mechanism that prioritizes objectives, but engages when object organization creates a threat to the value of objects.
I can say with certainty based on past experience that conscious denial is a product of protecting a person’s value of objects based on the thoughts that occur in response to critical evaluation. Thoughts pertaining to how information impacts interests. The question is, does the mechanism engage when confronted with challenging information as a threat to a person’s value of objects sometimes excluding value of self, exclusively based on value of self, or both some of the time, or all the time?
The problem with human beings as it relates to denial has a few different causes that are intertwined. First is a concept I reference as deity. I call it deity because it refers to the approval a person seeks, and often religious people seek the approval of their deity. It isn’t static and people often have many deities including their deity, self, and others, and the value of approval will often decrease or be justified depending on the value of objectives that may be in conflict with maintaining or advancing approval.
For example, I did a landscaping job a few days ago and was responsible for the disposal of a few bags of yard waste that took up my entire backseat. I chose a minor moral infraction in service to my immediate interests. There was a house under construction with a rollaway dumpster. There was a sign on the dumpster, property of some company you’re on camera.
The infraction is minor because although I’m essentially using his rented property without permission, limiting the space he has to dispose of waste he paid for, that isn’t occurring to any significant degree. 4 bags of weeds once construction material is placed on top of it is going to compress into a space that’s so small as to not have any effect on what he can place in the dumpster. In other words, anything he could fit in the dumpster prior to me adding the bags he will still be able to fit with the bags in there. I imposed on his property but he suffered no loss of liberty. It’s a moral infraction conceptually but not materially.
I seek approval of self which requires right moral application, but chose an immoral act to relieve the circumstantial burden but maintained approval of self and self worth through knowledge that the bags should crush down into a space that doesn’t limit what the owner can fit in the dumpster.
As this relates to self deception, many people place a very low value on self approval. They’re more concerned with consequence and benefit from external stimulation, where acting consistent with truth, morality, authenticity, or their own subjective principles doesn’t produce strong enough feelings to compete with external stimulation or having fun. Self approval is usually less about approval of self internally and is instead a reflection of their perceived approval from others, including their god or deity.
The value of the truth is evident in how self deception imposes on motivation and intelligence, and obstructs communication which has consequences for others. People don’t understand this so unless it’s others being truthful to them in some areas of interest it doesn’t become a conscious value. If it isn’t a conscious value that is tied to self worth, and if self worth isn’t tied to self approval, the subconscious will impose feelings to protect value of objects, and value of self when a person is confronted by challenging information or when critical thoughts are produced to gain consistency of mind.
9/2/2023
I watched a video by Anton who is the owner operator of the What the Math channel and read a few pages of the study that is the subject of the video. The implications of this paper are more important than any story covered since its publication. Throughout earth’s history during periods it was habitable for life there have been cycles where warmth and cooling take place. There are several predictors of warming periods with the last stage being a rapid increase in methane succeeded by a rapid increase in temperature.
The study compares the increase in methane from natural sources to other periods in the earth’s history where methane rapidly increased, and the data suggests we are entering into a period of rapid warming that cannot be stopped. Essentially, every other time natural methane emissions have risen as they have been observed rising since 2006, the planet entered a period of extreme rapid warming. Not 2 degrees by the end of the century, but potentially 4 degrees in the next 4 to 5 decades. If this happens it will produce the collapse of human civilization.
Before I express how I feel about that, there are solutions that require a changing of focus. First and foremost we need to finance research to develop technology to cool the planet, and offer ridiculous compensation for those who can measurably reduce the temperature of the planet. That has to be the goal. This is something I advocated for before this study was published, the only difference now is we may have only decades whereas I previously believed we had about 100 to 120 years based on historical data.
The second solution to prevent a rapid rise in temperature would be to eliminate the source of methane. The study cites biogenic processes in tropical wetlands as being responsible for the increase in natural methane emissions. I presume this refers largely to microbial activity so I have to imagine there is a way to sterilize these areas and whatever the consequence is to the wetlands is far better than a 4 degree increase in the global average temperature in the span of decades.
I mentioned the story to my daughter who is an occasional watcher of What the Math. She’s a senior in highschool and she is exceptionally intelligent. She has been nationally recognized for academic performance and has taught herself AP classes like chemistry and biology and received college credit based on her test scores. It’s her, the book, independent research on the material, and the tests. I was considering telling her she may want to think about a field of study that would position her to figure out a solution to cooling the planet since it may be a challenge that has to be overcome to ensure the perpetuation of human civilization. I don’t want to put that on her shoulders or steer her into a field of study that she isn’t interested in. I think she could do it though.
As for me I recognize that impending disaster could be beneficial to the advancement of objective morality and the existential implications of objective morality, but like my material it isn’t likely to be covered without powerful interests benefiting from it. I have some ideas for it.
Outside of my personal interests, which is the advancement of liberty and truth, I don’t mind the idea of the chickens of ignorance, indifference and bias, the assets of tyranny, coming home to roost.
Below is the link to the video, and in the video description is the link to the paper.