Narrow, Shallow and Small.

Narrow Why does every debate and every issue have to revolve around gender? What makes men and women different, be it biologically or culturally, always seems to be the main focus. How has society separated and suppressed women this time? Granted, I myself have made such observations from time to time but I don't see it as the mainstay of my intellectual self. I have other things up there, in that noggin of mine. Other ideas and musings that do not touch upon feminist theory or opposing ideals. What sort of cognitive pretzel would you have to twist yourself into in order to make absolutely everything about gender equality? Shallow We all live in a miniature world. Everything is so close these days, and so fast. Immediately accessible to anyone at any time. This is mostly a good thing. One side effect though seems to be the ever decreasing attention spans and simpler trails of thought. Quite often people can't even hold one encompassing thought in their heads for more than a few minutes. Let alone two directly opposed ones. These aren't kids with ADD, ADHD or some other disorder, these are "normal" adults. It is quite possible that this has always been the case and that it's only become much more visible now that everyone has a way of expressing themselves to a greater number of people. The Internet is the great repository of this brain-goop. The great mental meltdown of society.

This is where we live.

This tiny little world we live in is all our tiny little plastic brains can handle. Everything is clear-cut, prefabricated and safe in its sameness. Selecting what you want to see and hear and feel. Not everything is going to revolve around what you take an active interest in. Not everything is going to be about child welfare, the environment or gender equality. Noble subjects as they may be. Human society and life is infinitely more complex than that. Small The entire concept of personal responsibility has utterly gone out the window. Like some fad that we've found quaint and discarded. Nothing is your fault anymore. It's your genes, upbringing, circumstance and society that's to blame for everything that's wrong with you and your life. Of course all of these different aspects play a role in shaping people. But you do have a brain with a cerebral cortex capable of reason and thought. It's a wonder anyone gets held responsible for anything anymore. You can't keep up with being a parent and working? Maybe you should have had less kids. How about you at least get the first one right before you pump out another one? A smaller house would mean less cleaning. Less frilly and expensive clothing would mean less laundry and less shopping. You don't need to be a top executive at a soulless corporation some day. So what if the lawn is untidy? Trust me, all these pointless activities and fads that you're wasting the best years of your life on won't mean anything. The one with the most toys doesn't win, they just leave behind more garbage to be thrown away and discarded. After all, we need to make way for more pointless shit. Are we really such small people? This is not as pointed or succint as it ought to be. I hope to one day be smart enough for that.

Plastic bags.

Returning to the topic of environmentalism. According to a poll in a Swedish evening newspaper (not the best source I know) 72.2% of people want to ban plastic bags. Apparently because they are bad for the environment. Why don't just those 72.2% stop buying the damn things and we wouldn't need a legislated ban. That even 1% of the population would want this is depressing. People in this godforsaken country really do want to be disciplined by the government. Like some stern father who lets them know what they may or may not do, in all aspects of life. I can only guess that they find some sense of security in that.

A menacing killer.

The scary thing is that people may actually believe in this sort of soft policy/journalism fluff. The planet will not go tits up because of some plastic bags, trust me. Maybe the fact that many industrialised nations still pump their sewage, mostly untreated, straight into the ocean should concern people a little bit more. Literally being up a shit creek some day doesn't sound too exciting to me.

Greenpeace.

Greenpeace's problem with nuclear power, deforestation, killing baby seals and such are all well known. It's the face of Greenpeace we've come to know and....know. One might think they are just a bunch of well meaning hippie types, cruising around in some rickety boat. Seldom washing, having hot hemp fueled hippie on hippie filthy sex in their downtime. I know I sure did. Over the years however I've come to have a very different view of these people. I've essentially grown to hate them. Not for their anti-nuclear, no-baby-seal-killing-stance which is all well and good I suppose, even though I don't necessarily agree with them. A whale would kill you and your entire family if it had the chance. No, what makes me hate them are the inane and sometimes insane fringe ideas they also bolster. Let's just talk a little about their fervent opposition to genetically modified foods. Sure, if it was just in an attempt to stomp those corporations trying to wrangle poor farmers into a system of re-buying seeds every year for crops that have been genetically designed to not produce seeds of their own and dying just after harvest. A policy of going after that type of corporate practice would be commendable. But Greenpeace opposes all types of genetic manipulation of crops or cattle. Guess what fuckers? Every type of farm animal alive today has been genetically modified. Just not by such a direct process but instead by selective breeding over thousands of years. Same goes for our crops. So I guess they're against being more efficient? "The technology behind genetically modified (GM) food enables scientists to bypass natural selection and evolution by transferring genes from species that would never normally breed together." More of their insanity here. Wow, holy shit. We mustn't break the process of natural selection! Certainly not in order to feed people. I guess going hungry is a small price to pay when knowing that you've protected some indigenous plant, rodent or bird in some part of Africa. A part where "normal" crops are next to impossible to grow successfully for any longer period of time. I have another little piece of information here Greenpeace: Breaking the process of natural selection is what got us here. Using their type of logic you shouldn't get yourself vaccinated or fly in airplanes because it somehow goes against "nature". For the most part it's not like scientists are crossing a blueberry with a damn octopus. If I could speed up the plantation of genetically modified crops that would yield greater harvests by stomping rodents to death with my boots and kicking over a shrubbery I'd be doing so right now. I unlike Greenpeace like people more than some rare fucking species of hamster occupying an ecological niche in Africa. No, the crops or cattle escaping into the wild would not bring about some doomsday scenario. Oh shit?! The people would have more food to eat, for free? Good God, No! The planet is becoming overpopulated pretty fast so unless you want to start sterilizing people or killing them at the age of 30 like in Logan's Run the only other option is figuring out how to get more food out of the earth. Sidenote: Could someone please explain to me why they keep getting in the face of fishermen? Don't you think they'd be doing something else rather than risking their lives on the high seas if they could? When your father, grandfather and his grandfather were all fishermen you pretty much know where you'll be spending your adulthood. It's not like they go out looking for fish to torture and whales to rape. Having to clean out a hippie from your netting or scrubbing their little dingy of the hull isn't exactly a thrilling prospect.

More equal than others.

Today is International Women's Day. We probably all know what that means. Some marches, some panel discussions on TV about inequality and idiots spouting off all around. Indeed there are obvious cases of inequality all over the world. Therefore there must also be massive inequality here, in our Western democracy. Right? That is somehow a foregone conclusion. The problem always seems to be pinpointing exactly what this actually manifests as. Wages are more often than not used as an indicator of equality and thus some deduce that women, who in general make less, are disfavored by a social pattern. Or perhaps by a concerted effort from men. In a way, the latter is more realistic. I'm not claiming men sit around in a gentlemen's club, puffing cigars and sipping brandy. Planning out how we are going to suppress women. At least not any men I know. Maybe I haven't been invited, fuckers! Corporations think rationally, to the point of being absolutely amoral. "Can we somehow pay half of the workforce 20% less? You can? Then let's do it. Fetch my hat and cane Jeeves! I'm going to fuck some people in the ass." Yes, rich white motherfuckers who don't give a shit about you and me are trying to pay their workers less so that they can make more. There's nothing complex or unexpected in that logic. Money is the driving force of everything in our world. If an industrialist could pay his male work force 20% less than the women he'd be doing that instead. Yes, the original reason for this wage discrepancy was institutionalized inequality. During the industrial revolution! Considering that we've gone from about 10 000 years of overt female subjugation to a 15-20% wage differential in less than 100 years I say we're doing pretty well thus far. And the reason why most of the rich white industrialists who control our world are male is equally simple. Groups of friends, men in this case, hang out and do each other favors. Few people circulate in and out these groups and thus women are excluded. A bunch of girlfriends are talking/watching a movie/kickboxing a polar bear or something, what are the odds that a guy is also hanging out with them? Without being a third wheel type boyfriend or gay? The important thing to remember here is that our style of government is what makes our society the most equal and fair the world has ever seen. Yes, there, I said it. Western style democracy is not only different than all other styles of government. It's superior. Our society is superior to all others. Shouldn't 51% of all days of the year be women's days?

Random politico.

Ever since the events of 9/11 the western world in general and the United States in particular have been obsessing over the dangers of terrorism. There are certainly many real threats, but the tools available for fighting terrorism are often very intrusive. At which point does personal freedom and privacy end for the benefit of the general public’s wellbeing and the protection of society? How much should we be willing to give up for safety and peace of mind? The word ‘terrorism’ of course implies that you cannot have terrorism without terror in some form or another. The terror is essentially always the threat of bodily harm or death in seemingly random acts of violence perpetrated by some aggressive and remorseless assailant. The strategy of a terrorist is to use isolated acts of violence in order to instill fear and confusion into the population. That means a very small group of people can cripple an entire society with relative ease. They are able to do so since normal people have an inability to understand risk. Allow me to demonstrate by using an example. After the large-scale terror attacks against America in 2001 airline travel essentially stopped completely for days, even weeks. After the first couple of days it was not because of any government control, people were just too afraid to fly. The industry’s stock plummeted and thousands of people lost their jobs, furthering the damage upon the fabric of society. This is despite the fact that even after these horrendous acts it is safer to fly than drive your car. It is probably even safer than before considering the increased security and fewer number of terrorists. This fear and inability to understand risk drive people to accept their leader’s infringing on their personal freedom and rights. Sometimes it even seems as if they demand that their rights be reduced in order to at least give them the semblance of safety. We are simply fooling ourselves. Society and the world we live in contains far too many dangerous situations to ever be completely secure. Even an airplane can never be secure beyond a shadow of a doubt, far too many people have access. This is necessary to ensure the operational safety of the mechanics of this incredibly complicated piece of machinery. A much more effective method than law enforcement going to extremes in their surveillance of the populace is to educate the population to think rationally about the perceived dangers from terrorism. What are the odds of being killed or even injured in a terror attack? What are the odds of an attack taking place in your neighborhood, or even your country? Curtailing the rights of huge swaths of the population is not only wrong from a moral standpoint but it is also as I have argued ineffective. The only way to disarm the terrorists is to take away their main weapon, terror itself. It is our government’s responsibility to guarantee our safety to a certain extent; I have no objection to this, obviously. However it is also their responsibility to guarantee that fear among the population does not grow completely out of proportion to the reality in which we all live. We do not need generalized statements from our leaders and reduction of our rights. What we do need is competent leadership and reassurances based on facts.