"Transvaluation of all Values!"

The promised atheist side of the argument. This excerpt is a somewhat weak example of Nietzsche's ideas contained in The Antichrist, but it really is impossible to sum up what he says in such a short philosophical treatise as it is, so I just drew out the conclusion. If you are interested in the rest of it, quite a short piece, I would suggest going to buy a copy.

As with yesterday, please read it, please think about it, and if you want to leave some of your thoughts in the comments, feel free. There is no right answer, only the the right process of how you got to that answer. That is: critical and original thinking.

"With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind it is the greatest of all conceivable corruptions, it has had the will to the last imaginable corruption. The Christian Church allowed, [sic] nothing to escape from its corruption; it converted every value into its opposite, every truth into a lie, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of the soul. Let anyone dare to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings! To abolish any sort of distress was opposed to its profoundest interests; its very existence depended on states of distress; it created states of distress in order to make itself immortal. . . . The cancer germ of sin, for instance: the Church was the first to enrich mankind with this misery! The "equality of souls before God," this falsehood, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded, this anarchist bomb of a concept, which has ultimately become the revolution, the modern idea, the principle decay of the whole social order, this is Christian dynamite. . . . The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed a self-contradiction, an art of self-profanation, a will to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt of all good and honest instincts out of humanitas! Is this what you call the blessings of Christianity? Parasitism as the only method of the Church; sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life out of mankind with anemic and sacred ideals. A "Beyond" as the will to deny reality; the cross as the trade-mark of the most subterranean form of conspiracy that has ever existed, against health, beauty, well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul, against Life itself . . . .

This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all walls, wherever there are walls, I have letters with which I can make even the blind see. . . . I call Christianity the one great cure, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too under-hand, too underground and too petty, I call it the only immortal blemish of mankind. . . .

And time is reckoned from the die nefastus upon which this fatality came into being - from the first day of Christianity! Why not rather from its last day? From today? Transvaluation of all Values! . . ."

Excerpt from: The Antichrist: A Criticism of Christianity by Friedrich Nietzsche.

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder 'What is hell?'"

It may be of note that I am an atheist, and have been for many years. However, because I believe in equal representation of both arguments in any debate, I will present forth a section from The Brothers Karamazov that I find to be a good example for the existence of God, or the very least - a good example of how organized religion may not always be a disease.

I will not give you my commentary, for I think today there is far too little free-thinking going on. That is to say, too few people are critical of what they see the talking heads on television telling them to believe.

That said, I might request that you read the following passage. After reading it turn off your iPod, turn off your television, turn off your computer - and just think. Think for a half an hour or so, rid your mind of all other thoughts that aren't yours, think for yourself! Break the shackles of thralldom that your mind may be in!

Feel free to post your thoughts, there is no right or wrong answer. The only important thing is that you are actually thinking and not sleepwalking through life!

Tomorrow I will present an excerpt from the opposite viewpoint.

"Look at the worldly and all who set themselves up above the people of God, has not God's image and His truth been distorted to them? They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man's being in rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says:

'You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.' This is the modern doctrine of the world. In that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. They maintain that the world is getting more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air.

Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom" who told himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, "I am fighting for the cause of humanity."

How can such a one fight, what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. For how can a man shake off his habits, what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concerns has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less."

Excerpt From: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; as contained in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

When Dalton Trumbo wrote the following words in his introduction to the absolute must read book, Johnny Got His Gun, he was talking about a different war, a different time, and a different generation.

Well, it doesn’t really matter what time he was referring to, because as you will see – his words prove timeless. Without further ado:

Addendum: 1970

Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through the crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles up our share.

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children who will never be born. (The last we can afford: there are too many starving children in the world already.)

Do we scream in the night when it touches our dreams? No. We don’t dream about it because we don’t think about it; we don’t think about it because we don’t care about it. We are much more interested in law and order, so that American streets may be made safe while we transform those Vietnam into flowing sewers of blood which we replenish each year by forcing our sons to choose between a prison cell here or a coffin there. “Every time I look at the flag, my eyes fill with tears.” Mine too.

If the dead mean nothing to us (except on Memorial Day weekend when the national freeway is clotted with surfers, swimmers, skiers, picnickers, campers, hunters, fishers, footballers, beer-busters), what of our 300,000 wounded? Does anyone know where they are? How they feel? How many arms, legs, noses, mouths, faces, penises they’ve lost? How many are deaf or dumb or blind or all three? How many are single or double or triple or quadruple amputees? How many will remain immobile for the read of their days? How many hang on as decerebrated vegetables quietly breathing their lives away in small, dark, secret rooms?

Write the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army and Navy hospitals, the Director of Medical Sciences at the National Library of Medicine, the Veterans Administration, the Office of the Surgeon General – and be surprised at what you don’t learn. One agency reports 726 admissions “for amputation services” since January, 1965. Another reports 3,011 amputees since the beginning of fiscal year 1968. The rest is silence.

The Annual Report of the Surgeon General: Medical Statistics of the United States Army ceased publication in 1954. The Library of Congress reports that the Army Office of the Surgeon General for Medical Statistics “does not have figures on single or multiple amputees.” Either the government doesn’t think them important or, in the words of a researched for one of the national television networks, “the military itself, while sure of many tons of bombs it has dropped, is unsure of how many legs and arms its men have lost.”

If there are no concrete figures, at least we are beginning to get comparative ones. Proportionately, Vietnam has given us eight times as many paralytics as World War II, three times as many totally disabled, 35% more amputees. Senator Cranston of California concludes that out of every hundred army veterans receiving compensation for wounds received in action in Vietnam, 12.4% are totally disabled. Totally.

But exactly how many hundreds or thousands of the dead-while-living does that give us? We don’t know. We don’t ask. We turn away from them; we avert the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and face. “Why should I look, it wasn’t my fault, was it?” It was, of course, but no matter. Time presses. Death waits even for us. We have a dream to pursue, the whitest white hope of them all, and we follow and find it before light fails.

So long, losers. God bless. Take care. We’ll be seeing you.

Dalton Trumbo

Los Angeles
January 3, 1970

Aspartame

Or, How You Are Slowly Killing Yourself

Chances are you drink aspartame all the time. Every time you take a sip of your Diet Coke, or put some Equal in your coffee, or consume one of nearly 6,000 other consumer products featuring the poisonous sweetener.

Chances also are that you have no idea just what aspartame is and why it has a relatively high possibility of causing you health risks, including the worst health risk of all - death.

Here is a small list of the illnesses linked to use of aspartame (known as E951 in Europe): Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain (Dr. Joseph Mercola)

And just think, America, even with knowing all of the above information, your government still approved it and labeled it suitable for human consumption. Which reminds me, there is an interesting story that goes along with that:

Donald Rumsfeld.

Most of you may know him as the former Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford in the 1970s, but more infamously as the Secretary of Defense under the Bush Administration in recent years. He is one of the original architects of death in Iraq, but also one of the architects in getting aspartame approved by the FDA. It went thus:

The Food and Drug Administration had initially put the brakes on the use of aspartame in consumer products, much to the chagrin of the company that Rumsfeld just so happened to be the CEO of, G.D. Searle & Company, whose scientists had accidentally discovered the sweetening properties.

Soon after Ronald Reagen took office, a fellow Republican, Rumsfeld reapplied for approval from the FDA, which he got - because Reagen had appointed a new, right-wing friendly FDA commissioner. After approving the poison, the commissioner left for a position in Public Relations at G.D. Searle. Sound shady? That's because it is.

Rumsfeld used his political power to poison you.

That aside, there is little you can do to avoid the substance now. But, at least knowing and watching for it should be enough to side-step most major damages. It would probably be wise to cut out most, if not all, diet soft drinks (this also might do some wonders for your dental bills) and other so-called healthy and diet concoctions.

Independent Kosovo?

'We stressed its unacceptability and the dangerous consequences of this step, which can lead to the destruction of the principles of peace and order, and of the international stability that was achieved through the decades"

Such are the words of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Just what the declaration of independence announced by Kosovo, the culmination of countless years of oppression and state-assisted terrorism by the United States, the European Union, and NATO forces, means for the EU and Europe at large is anyones guess. Mine is more bloodshed.

An interesting article had been posted on Dissident Voice that I would advise people to read, but if I were to give me input - I would feel confident in saying that this is the most blatant act supported by Western powers to plunge the world into another Cold War, or worse yet, another world war.

How soon people seem to forget that Russia, ascending from the ashes of the USSR into another veritable world power, has strong ties with the Slavic nations in the Balkans, Serbia in particular. I remember hearing this story a while ago, about a guy from Austria-Hungry taking a joy ride through Sarajevo and getting assassinated, apparently this sparked a major war or something when Russia stepped up to defend their smaller Slavic and religious brother from the massive Austro-Hungarian Empire and the relatively newly christened German state.

And Russia again appears still ready to take a bullet, and no doubt fire a few, in order to preserve what they view as the Serbian state, and the cradle of Serbian civilization - Kosovo.

With the exception of the modern genocide and Kosovo Wars my knowledge on the area and on the ethnic rivalries is not great enough to really offer a history lesson on, so I shall just refer you to the aforementioned Dissident Voice article.

The Independence of Kosovo

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Wow, ok - first post.

Perhaps I may begin with a little about myself. Right then. I am positively awful at nearly everything I attempt, except for the things that I am quite good at. I find most people to be dreadfully boring (including myself, the only time I am ever of any interest to myself is when I am all drunk, or pretending that I am someone else - or better yet, doing both simultaneously.) so I avoid them as much as possible. This, of course, leaves me with much free-time to read and write and think (or read and write, anyways) so I'd like to assume myself fairly well-read, and capable of having some interesting discussions with uninteresting people.

Right, now that I just gave you information that you didn't at all want (not that I assume anyone is actually reading this anyways, I shall use it as a platform to leave little messages so that when I am all drunk and pretending to be someone else, I can come and take a look at this and marvel at who this blessed person must be), I will now outline what I enjoy discussing. Well, I enjoy talking politics, religion, philosophy, music, and film. Also, literature.

I also like making little puns that I think are clever, but are very immature and quite irritating to everyone else, wordplay is a big favorite of mine. It may also be noted that I tend to be of the most capricious (in the archaic sense, of course) nature, so my tone changes quite often. I figured I would offer myself first as my arrogant, self-absorbed persona (as opposed to my "where is the rope so I can hang myself from the back porch" persona).

The whole truth lies within those words.