Just trust the billionaire! A response to “5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked”

I too initially thought the criticisms of Mark Zuckerberg’s new philanthropic foundation were in bad taste. Perhaps a little bit of sour grapes. Overly cynical.

Picture of Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and their baby daughter Max Zuckerberg

But then I took the time to read some of the criticisms and realised that they had some really good points. So I was interested to see Quartz’s ‘Debunking’ of those criticisms.

I was, unfortunately, disappointed.

Here is my paraphrased summary of their “debunking”:

Mark rightfully wants to have the biggest impact possible with his philanthropy. Therefore he is right to found his own corporation so that he can avoid paying taxes on his capital gains, and retain control of everything. Who are we to question him? And besides, you’re just jealous.

My natural inclination is actually to give the benefit of the doubt to Mark. I do believe he has good intentions. But that doesn’t make the criticisms of his move any less valid.

In a move advertised to “make the world a better place”, his first step is to avoid paying a fair amount of tax on his massive profits. That really does not inspire a lot of confidence.

Everyone not in the Billionaire class seems to be stuck paying all of their tax bill every year – but for the mega wealthy, they are special. They get to make all of their money, and keep it to!

Oh I know, he doesn’t actually get to “keep it”. It goes into the LLC.

….which he controls.

Just stop and think about this for a moment. What does a multi-billionaire do with the extra billions he has in his bank account anyway? He certainly doesn’t need it for ‘cost of living’ expenses.

Once you get past the first billion or two, everything else is just waiting to be allocated to things you think are worthwhile. Like putting it into chosen charities, or investing it into startups and companies you think will make a difference, or potentially using it for political campaigning. ie: Exactly what Mark’s LLC will be free to do.

So the reality here is perfectly clear. Mark has simply arranged things so that he can move all of his capital gains out of the company, into his control (not ownership), without paying any tax on it. It’s brilliant. He, and his family, get everything, in perpetuity, without ever paying any tax on it. Not even estate taxes!

This means his entire lineage will be in the control of many billions of dollars of wealth without ever needing to worry about earning anything. Not that they get to spend it on their own cost of living – it isn’t *their* money. Sure. But they can definitely choose to hire themselves if they need a job…

Better still, when you control vast quantities of capital (which can be invested into companies and political campaigns), it is amazing how many other wealthy people (but not nearly as wealthy as your LLC) are willing to go out of their way to wine and dine you in the most extravagant ways possible in order to secure your support.

Being in control of a lot of money has many significant benefits which go along with it.

So basically, this is a great way to lock in your profits without paying capital gains tax, and also guarantee that your dynasty remains for many generations to come, never needing to pay estate tax either.

A great big F you to the government. And a call to the population to “Praise me!”

In my opinion, the criticisms against Mark and his “Philanthropy” stand. Nothing has been debunked.

Now we have no choice but to let him carry out his business as he sees fit. Hopefully he will actually live up to the ideals he has set forth for himself. Hopefully he will actually make a difference. Hopefully he will make the world a significantly better place.

You’re in charge now Mark.

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Why they can’t Coexist….

Found this on Facebook. Just wanted to transcribe it here, partly because a friend couldn’t clearly see the text on Facebook 😀
Why they can't coexist meme image

Why They Can’t Coexist. Original, apparently from Truth-Saves.com.

The texts of [Christianity], [Islam] and [Judaism] order the elimination of [equality], [paganism], and of each other. Both [Islam] and [Christianity] claim to be religions of [Peace], but [Peace] is a world without [Islam] and [Christianity].

[Islam] and [Judaism] have conflicting promises of land ownership. [Paganism] is a very broad term but all of [Paganism] support living by non-evidence-based-claims, causing conflicts for [Peace]. [Taoism] says to find harmony in everything, good or bad, preventing the seeking of [Peace] and [Equality]. The less a self-proclaimed follower of [Christianity], [Islam] or [Judaism] actually follows the teachings of [Christianity], [Islam] or [Judaism] the more [Peace] and [Equality] can thrive.

[Christianity], [Islam] and [Judaism] claim their way is the only way and cannot coexist with anyone. [Taoism] can only coexist with the [Pagans] who also follow [Taoism]. [Equality] can coexist with most of [Paganism]. The only ones that allow for completee coexistance with each other are [Peace] and [Equality], and the unmentioned [Atheism] and [Humanism].

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The Stoned Ape Hypothesis and the Original Memetic Cambrian Explosion

A thought struck me after attending Burning Seed over the weekend (Burning Man for Australia) about the value of psychadelics in human prehistory.

Terence McKenna and the Stoned Ape Hypothesis

Alex Grey Artwork Psychedelics and creativityI’d heard of the Stoned Ape Hypothesis in the past, but have never done much research into its exact claims. Skimming the Wikipedia entry on it and a few other overviews and comments on it, it seems that the main claim is that psilocybin (the active molecule in magic mushrooms) lead to increased fitness in the humans who consumed it through greater hunting ability, greater sexual activity and enhanced religious and creative expression, and as a consequence, that lead to increased selective pressure for brain size growths.

I’m not really here to comment on that particular hypothesis at all. It does sound like a bit of a stretch to me to think that mushrooms may have actively directed our biological evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. I don’t discount it entirely though.

Memetics and Cultural Evolution

That said, I do think that there is a very good reason to suspect that entheogens (any naturally occurring psychedelic plant/organism) may have played a very real and significant role in the advancement of human cultural evolution ever since we evolved the ability to form advance cultural concepts (language, art, advanced tools, etc.).

It is no secret that human brains are copying machines. We learn by watching others do things, then seeing the positive outcomes of those actions, we copy them and attempt to recreate the positive results.

In the wider context of a tribe, it seems like we tend to codify certain activities into traditions. There is a certain way that activities must be done in order to work. If you don’t follow the ritual correctly, then you will probably mess up the meal, or fail in your hunt, or build a shelter which leaks, or whatever. So creativity in implementing well established cultural traditions ends up being quite strongly selected against.

And this is where entheogens may have a particularly strong value.

With the way that they affect our neurobiology to confuse neural pathways and thus enable ‘lateral thinking’ by simply allowing us to follow not-well-established neural pathways, creativity is very strongly enhanced(1) under the effects of psilocybin, mescaline, ayahuasca, etc.

They also tend to somewhat reduce our ‘care factor’ while under the effects. This may be equally as significant since cultural traditions are often quite strongly enforced in a social sense, and people acting out of line with them may be chastised, ostracised or even physically punished. But as we all know from the cliché stoner stereotype, no one under the influence of any psychedelic seems to really give much of a shit about anything, much less what you think of them.

These two psychological aspects combine to create an amazing potential for humans to step outside of what might be incredibly rigid social constructs and even rules, to create something almost entirely brand new. Whether it be the first art, or a new form of art, or a new method of cooking, or a new way to hunt, or even just a minor improvement to an established system…. It seems like psychedelics may have actually had a significant role in forcing forwards human cultural evolution.

To clarify:  the selective pressure on human cultural evolution would remain the same (Does it work? Do people like it? Does it make life easier? etc), but the psychedelics would have increased the amount of variety of cultural units (memes, ideas, concepts, whatever) which could be selected, and thus increase the opportunity for human culture to discover new things and improve our ability to survive and thrive.

The Cambrian Explosion of Memes

I worry as I write this that I am saying something incredibly obvious.

This phenomenon has been observed repeatedly in modern society already. Whether it be from comedians, a few famous change makers themselves, or even scientific studies which show the power of LSD in research. It is just that I had never before personally applied this notion to the limited cultural experience of humans in our earliest stages of ‘humanity’. The stages at which our experiences of cultural units – ideas, or memes – would have been so extremely limited on account of the newness of our ability to create them. And with that limited exposure to new and novel ideas, so to, I believe, our ability to be creative would also have been limited.

Perhaps psychedelics pushed the envelope and artificially created diversity of ideas where there was otherwise almost none, and in doing so, was a powerful stepping stone, potentially bringing about the first ‘Cambrian explosion’ of cultural ideas?

Do psychedelics artificially increase the mutation rates of successful memes?

Footnotes

  1. This article states that the scientific research on whether psychedelics increase creativity is inconclusive – though it is largely on account of the fact that research has been stalled for the last 40 years thanks to the unjust war on drugs (my words, obviously) – and the research techniques used back then were not as rigorous as we use these days. Nonetheless, the anecdotal evidence and not-exactly-perfect research results seems quite strong to me.
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The Seven Questions of Basic Income Implementation

From the first meeting of our Implementing a Basic Income in Australia group, I presented my outline of what I think are the fundamental questions which need to be answered before a Basic Income can actually be implemented.

In order to answer these questions we want to organise a range of experts like Caravan finance brokers, on social and economic issues into working groups so that they can discuss the consequences of each decision and how it will be beneficial or detrimental to society, economics, welfare, well-being, employment, power imbalance, freedoms, etc.

The questions are:

  1. How Much / How Often?
    $1 – $10,000+ / Paid daily – Paid annually
  2. What scale is it implemented on? Where?
    Small town? Council? City? State? National.
  3. Who gets it?
    Everyone? Citizens? Residents? 18+? Based on tax return submission? etc
  4. How is it funded?
    Local government? Federal Govt? Increased taxes? New (resource?) taxes? Debt? Transaction tax? Charity? Crowd funding? New money straight to the people?
  5. How long will it run for?
    2 years? 10 years? Indefinitely? 5 years on, 5 years off, etc?
  6. What does it replace?
    Replace all welfare? Just unemployment benefit? Nothing? Minimum wage? Wait and see?
  7. Will there be a transitional period? What will it look like?
    Instant implementation, or gradual implementation over time?

(Have I missed any? Please leave a comment below if I have!)

The answers to each of these questions often influences the answers to others. For example, if you want a National (Q2) Basic Income, it will be virtually impossible to fund that through Charity of Crowd sourcing (Q4), but there is a chance that you could fund a Partial Basic Income (Q1) for 2 years (Q5) in a small remote town (Q2) via charity (Q4).

Of course, a partial income in a small remote town isn’t the ultimate goal, so then we’re talking about a first step implementation. A trial, or a demonstration of value, hoping that it will grow to other towns or else convince enough of the population to enact a nationwide Basic Income. In this case, we’d have to design the best “initial test case implementation” and then a second “Ultimate goal implementation” and perhaps even design the strategy which will take us from the initial test to the ultimate goal.

Whether we want a small test case first or not is still to be answered. I don’t believe the NHS, medicare, welfare etc had incremental steps to implementation, so perhaps it is an error to think that a Basic Income would need it. Perhaps we should instead be focusing on the best possible design for Australia, and then fight for grassroots support of that system while lobbying political parties and getting the support of influential think tanks.

This is all just a first step. We still need to reach out to existing Basic Income organisations (BIEN, QUT, Utrecht University (BIParty NL) etc) to see what information, research and conclusions they are able to share with us which will help inform our answers to these questions.

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The problem with the new atheist movement is…

I had a short conversation with a good friend yesterday which consisted of him (an atheist) telling me that the problem with the atheist movement is that they don’t provide an alternative option to replace the role that religion has fulfilled in our society for so long.

I often have atheist friends tell me that the new atheists are doing it wrong. That they should be doing X other thing instead of what they are doing, or that they should also be doing Y, or that they are wasting their time because some particular philosopher destroyed the notion of God hundreds of years ago, so this is all old news.

All of these sorts of criticisms of the new atheist movement strike me as exceedingly odd.

It is like claiming that climate change activists are doing it wrong because they aren’t personally replacing the coal and petroleum industry with an alternative energy infrastructure. It is like claiming that websites like Skeptical Science are a waste of time because climate scientists have known for decades that climate change is caused by humans. I never heard climate change advocates making these arguments because it is obvious that they are nonsensical. The alternatives exist independent of the activists, and the scientific consensus isn’t reflected in public opinion – therefore the activism is still needed! The atheist movement is no different.

So, when I hear that the new atheists should provide an alternative structure to religion, I think: No, that already exists. It comes from philosophy (morality), science (explanations of the world), sports teams, family, hobbies groups, etc (community). The atheist agenda isn’t to transform society – it is simply to fight for representation in a society which has clearly declared that non-belief is unacceptable, untrustworthy and to be despised.

My understanding is that the atheist movement as we currently know it was basically started by Dawkins giving this TED talk. I think he very clearly outlines why we need this movement, and what its objective is. And I agree completely with him.

Religions cause people to make decisions which harm themselves and people around them, and they do so because they believe that the creator of the universe commands it. They don’t do it because they are intentionally trying to harm people, or because they are necessarily biggoted – they do it because the book commands it.

Yes, there is overlap. Yes, sometimes bigoted people will use the bible to justify their bigotry (as if that is much better), but just as often people will be bigoted just because they believe that the creator of the universe has commanded them to be!

How do you rationally argue against that?

You can’t. You literally cannot make a single argument against “I have to be a bigot, because the creator of the universe has told me that I must behave this way.” The basis of the position is not founded on rational thought – it is founded on authoritarian command. Therefore the only way to correct the erroneous bigoted position, is to undermine the authoritarian command itself. You have to show that the belief in the commander is false. It is the only viable option.

Let’s make this crystal clear. At the very same party where this criticism of the new atheists took place, another good friend pointed out that she was a feminist prior to discovering christ herself and becoming a true believer. In doing so, despite it going against everything she felt and believed, she knew that because God was real and because the Bible was his true word, she must submit herself to her husband, she must see gay people as sinners, and other such commanded positions. These were not positions she wanted to hold – it was just what the bible very clearly told her.

Multiply that experience across the population, and you now have a basis for terrible laws and government policy which leads to vilification and sexism.

Or, lets look at another example of religion doing harm. As I write this article a news story is running about a Jehovah’s Witness family denying their son a blood transfusion. This will kill their son. Do you think they actually want their son to die? Do you think they have some sort of weird bigotry against blood transfusions?

No. They just believe that the creator of the universe has commanded them to do this, so they are obeying the command.

You cannot rationally argue against this position. You can only rationally argue against the underlying belief in a universal creator and master.

And that is what the atheist movement is all about. Fixing the actual problem.

For too long religion has influenced politics, law and social convention despite evidence. And as the “Nones” have grown in number over the decades, their influence has stayed non-existent. This is the problem. This is what the atheist movement cares about.

If you too are worried that the atheist movement might be wildly successful, and leave devastation in their wake as millions of people wake up without religious structures to prop up their meager existence – then go and start your own Humanism Organisation which provides everything religion does, just without the God stuff, and fill that gap. Just don’t be surprised when you find out people are surprisingly capable of filling the gap all on their own with the innumerable other options which already exist.

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Following up from my last post: In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas

Almost perfectly following up from my last post I came across this article today which expands on what I was saying and looks specifically at the University side of things, and on our growing fear of upsetting people.

I think personal relationships require a lot more delicacy when it comes to offending – these people are your friends and you don’t want to hurt them. But when it comes to higher education, there really should be no question. Challenging ideas and confronting concepts should be part of the experience.

In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas

Probably best to just read the whole article, but here are a few of my thoughts on this:

“I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

Of all of the things to ‘get used to’, I would think that this would be one of the good ones.

We should not live in a society were we should grow accustomed to murder, or rape or the sight of starving people in the streets. We should rage against these things, and make them disappear entirely from our world experience so that everyone feels shocked and confronted by such sights.

But learning to deal with viewpoints which go against our dearly held beliefs… this is something we should be encouraging in everyone. Everyone needs to develop the coping mechanisms necessary to express and receive ideas which challenge their being.

And a few of my other favourite excerpts:

A junior named Adam Shapiro decided he didn’t want his room to be a safer space. He printed up his own flier calling it a dangerous space and had that, too, published in the Columbia Daily Spectator. “Kindness alone won’t allow us to gain more insight into truth,” he wrote. In an interview, Mr. Shapiro said, “If the point of a safe space is therapy for people who feel victimized by traumatization, that sounds like a great mission.” But a safe-space mentality has begun infiltrating classrooms, he said, making both professors and students loath to say anything that might hurt someone’s feelings. “I don’t see how you can have a therapeutic space that’s also an intellectual space,” he said.

why are students so eager to self-infantilize?

And the conclusion:

A few days later, a guest editorialist in the student newspaper took Ms. El Rhazoui to task. She had failed to ensure “that others felt safe enough to express dissenting opinions.” Ms. El Rhazoui’s “relative position of power,” the writer continued, had granted her a “free pass to make condescending attacks on a member of the university.” In a letter to the editor, the president and the vice president of the University of Chicago French Club, which had sponsored the talk, shot back, saying, “El Rhazoui is an immigrant, a woman, Arab, a human-rights activist who has known exile, and a journalist living in very real fear of death. She was invited to speak precisely because her right to do so is, quite literally, under threat.”

You’d be hard-pressed to avoid the conclusion that the student and her defender had burrowed so deep inside their cocoons, were so overcome by their own fragility, that they couldn’t see that it was Ms. El Rhazoui who was in need of a safer space.

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Perception of Victimhood vs Reality

I’ve been struggling lately with the concept of allowing someone’s personal negative experience to give that person a free pass to interpret aspects of that experience however they wish, regardless of the factuality of those interpretations.

To provide a clear example, imagine a mother struggling with a severely autistic child, and blaming that autism on the MMR vaccine. The evidence is quite definite that MMR cannot cause autism, so the conclusion reached by the mother is simply false, but because the mother is in an emotionally difficult position, are we meant to placate her and say nothing? Are we meant to ignore that falsehood being perpetuated by her in order to not upset her already difficult life and emotional state?Visit https://functionalspeechtherapy.com/speech-language-therapy/ site to know what the experts say about this case.

Isn’t it condescending to think that someone can’t handle being corrected just because they are upset?

Of course, no one ever likes being corrected, and there seems to be a strong social trend towards NEVER UPSETTING ANYONE EVER, which seems problematic to me at the best of times. I mean, where is the emphasis on harm minimisation when we don’t dare correct someone who is spreading falsehoods which could cost lives? Just because someone ‘feels’ like doctors can’t be trusted, and we should all listen to some online health guru who espouses natural treatments to a range of medical conditions including cancer, does that mean we should sit by idly and let them misguide other people? What if that person has cancer themselves?

It definitely seems to be the socially accepted method. Don’t say anything to upset anyway. And definitely don’t say anything to upset anyone who is already in a difficult position.

I think this gets worse too, when people start imagining personal assaults where none exist. The most extreme example of this would be the cliche schizophrenic, who sees secret agents spying on them where the reality is just regular people on the street. This person could be incredibly upset by the constant harassment they are experiencing at the hands of the “NSA” or whoever, and thus would expect the same social grace to not have this absurd belief challenged.

That is the most extreme example, but like all mental extremities, all people exist somewhere on a spectrum, and we all project our mental focuses onto our world. This Key and Peele skit makes the point quite nicely I think:

Of course, not all people who interpret neutral events as personal attacks are actually “assholes” as this video puts it, but I think this sort of projection of persecution fears is more common than we think. And I think we are at risk of letting them become the norm, and having a world with too many false-incidences. ie: A population of people under assault from no one but themselves. Rallying together friends to support them in their time of need, against nothing but a personal interpretation of events.

It seems like that would take an awful lot of energy and resources to fight against an imaginary enemy.

I think we have enough genuine problems and real scourges without creating an army of imaginary ones too.

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Transcendence – How it should have ended

So I got to watch Transcendence on my flight yesterday, and I was very impressed with it. I went in with extremely low expectations because there have been so many bad philosophy of mind / AI / futurism movies out lately that I think I just assumed this would be another where it was made by someone who clearly had no idea what current thought on the near future will be like, and was almost certainly going to do the usual “Fear science and technological progress because it might kill us all, steal our souls and take away our humanity!!!” – which seems to be the modus operandi of just about every science and technology focused Hollywood movie.

It is quite sad that my first assumption of a movie about uploading would know nothing about uploading, but Hollywood has given me too many examples of people making movies about things which they know nothing about. I mean, when you watch Morgan Freeman (someone who presents a Science show!) say “It is estimated that humans only use 10% of their brain” you tend to feel like it is all beyond hope.

Well, anyway, I’m quite happy to say that it didn’t go too heavily on the ‘fear technological progress’ bandwagon (for the most part). There was definitely a fair share of “Beware the all powerful AI!” fearmongering, but I actually felt it was largely justified. There is a very valid reason to be fearful of run away AI (Terminator). So that wasn’t too bad.

And more importantly, it  seemed to have been written by someone who does actually have a clue about current futurism ideas with regards to uploading, AI and other associated technologies. The whole story was by and large quite realistic (within the usual realms of “lets speed this up for the sake of it being a movie regard).

What I am saying is that, if super intelligent AI was created, in this sort of a setting,  the series of events which follow could go something along these lines. The choices it made were (mostly) clever and progressive, and revolutionary in all the right ways….except for one obvious error…which was of course necessary for the ‘drama’ component to the movie.

Which brings me to the SPOILER ALERT part of this post.

If you read past this point, I will be revealing plot devices and how the movie ended and how I think it should have ended. Last warning.

The main error the AI made was ‘networking’ the minds of the people it healed together, so that they could communicate with one another over the network, and, so that it could inhabit the bodies of those people and take over control… Sure, many people would love to volunteer to be networked with AI (especially if doing so would heal all illnesses and weaknesses and make them super strong!) but very few people would like the idea of being taken over by that AI, and vanishingly few people like to look at other people being controlled by an external mind of unknown intent. And so predictably everyone who was ever allied with the AI quickly turned against it when they saw this Cult like behaviour from this ‘army’ of individuals that it was building which it could control.

It was creepy, it was weird, and it was the one step which really made it easy to fear the AI.

Of course, the nanobots slowly replicating their way across the planet is also a terrifying idea because there is the fear that they will grey-goo the planet, but that probably would have gone unnoticed or ignored if not for the growing number of people terrified of the ‘army’ that the AI was building (even though the respective threats are quite out of proportion).

So, first most obvious thing that the AI wouldn’t do (being far more intelligent than us mortal humans), is it wouldn’t take actions which would obviously turn humanity against it.

The movie also fails to consistently apply the AI’s ability to read people, but again, this is just a necessary plot point for a movie.

How it should have ended

OK, the main point of this post. Assuming all of the rest of the plot devices need to stay in place to make a good movie, I think they screwed the ending up just a little bit. They had the AI keep Evelyn outside while they were being bombed (without a good reason) until she was injured, hoping to force him to upload her (and the virus she was carrying). Of course, the AI knew about the virus and was saddened by the fact the Evelyn (his wife and creator) had lost faith in him and wanted to help destroy him but there is absolutely no reason he wouldn’t have removed her from the dangerous situation of being under mortar and artillery attack. Her injury was easily avoided, and thus the whole “I can either save her or upload the virus” conclusion to the movie is unrealistic.

That, and the fact that he can show Evelyn “everything” and have her understand that he really was healing the planet and people, gives us the real solution to the movie – if Hollywood didn’t need to have everything back away from a utopian finish where everyone is happy and the world is completely provided for – he just needed to do that trick with the people attacking him.

I think a nice finish would be to have him get into Max’s head since Max represented the well informed philosophical voice of concern over the risks of the technology, and bringing him around to understand the vision and reality of the situation would be the seed needed to bring everyone else around too. And then you could have the usual movie tension of Max arguing with the neo-luddite crazy woman, convincing the soliders and all the rest of that jazz. (Though of course, the easier solution would be to just show all of them the same thing he showed Evelyn all at once – but that is a little bit too easy).

So yeah, there was no need for the false choice of saving Evelyn or Killing himself in order to save Max’s life. He could have easily shown everyone what he was actually doing, and then everyone could have gone on with life where everything was provided by the omnipotent god like being taking care of everything – but instead, because Hollywood still reflect American values, the better solution was to destroy the godlike AI taking care of everyone (socialism!) and send everyone back to the hardship and struggle of existence to which they are so accustomed. (which, btw, the movie didn’t cover at all – making it look like “losing the entire internet” would just be a minor inconvenience, and not the end of the modern world as we know it, which it would be).

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Unchristian behaviour….

I think this concept can be applied to just about anything whenever someone seriously talks about a behaviour being unchristian. Just remember that the core Christian ideology is that “Jesus died for your sins” – and they are PROUD of that fact! They are proud of the fact that their entire belief system is based on the idea that an innocent person can be punished for the crimes of others.

So I look forward to seeing more remarks about how the Christian spirit teaches us that we should be punishing innocent people for the crimes of others.

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The (almost) utopian world of the conspiracy theorist…

The world of the extreme conspiracy theorist must be an amazing place. Wars don’t kill innocent bystanders, terrorist organisations either don’t exist, or lack the ability to execute acts of terrorism, mentally disturbed individuals don’t ever go on murderous rampages, illnesses never happen when people are left in a natural state, and everyone gets on with each other perfectly….

If only it wasn’t for Them.

Them. The ones pulling the strings to undermine this perfect utopia of healthy cooperation which naturally exists.

The government. The Illuminati. Aliens. Who it is who controls the media, false flag operations and international ‘accidents’ is hard to say exactly, but they definitely exist, and they are preventing us all from living our perfect lives of contended happiness and compassion.

Welcome to Conspiracy Theorist Utopia (CTU)

Wars Can’t Harm Innocent Civilians!

They fabricate planes full of people exploding in the sky through elaborate plans carried out over several months with the participation of numerous nations in order to create the illusion that war kills innocent civilians of even wealthy countries! Because in our perfect utopia, planes can’t crash into the ocean, and pilots can’t be suicidal… or more importantly, some accidents can’t possibly go unexplained. No, in CTU, every event has a deliberate cause and must be explained, and it is all connected to acts by some incredibly powerful and controlling force (probably not God though – that is religion, and this isn’t religion).Planes can’t crash or go missing, and other unrelated planes definitely can’t be shot out of the sky by rogue militarised forces with weapons specifically designed to shoot planes out of skies.

What sort of a world would that be, where human beings would willingly shoot planes out of skies? A horrible one. And in CTU, everything is perfect and nice and friendly. Except for Them.

Terrorist Organisations Don’t Exist, or They Are Harmless

And the idea that a large organisation of people like Al Qaeda might exist, is completely unacceptable in CTU. People who have had their lives upturned by continual war and conflict between foreign nations, which have used them to fight each other, funding the warfare, providing weapons and training, then leaving them with nothing. The idea that these people could exist, and that they could hate our nations. Hate us. And then use that training, and that hate to organise an attack against us…. simply doesn’t make as much sense in CTU as our own government fabricating hatred of our people in order to justify the fabricated attacks that they made, with notreallyplanes on the buildings which were actually demolished with thermite anyway…..

Yes. Convoluted inside jobs carried out by the thousands of people it would have taken to carry it out, all of whom have friends and families in the USA, many of which would know people killed in the attack and affected by the outcome of the attack is far  more likely than a foreign organisation driven by past hatred actually attacking the nation it sees as its enemy.

Disturbed Individuals Don’t Ever Go On Murderous Rampages

Another highlight of CTU is that disturbed people never go on murderous rampages. All events which involve mass shootings are fabricated events set up by them to create  a public backlash against gun rights, so that they can start taking guns back off the american population. Which they will start doing any day now!

So all of those mass shootings weren’t really done by civilian, mentally ill or troubled people. No they were done by trained operatives or government agents of whoever it is that works for them. And all of those people crying over their dead children and loved ones? Crisis actors. In CTU, people don’t actually die. They just pay people to pretend they have lost loved ones so that the general population falls for the trick of believing that people might die when they are shot with guns…

We Are All Perfectly Healthy…

Not only do people not die when they are shot with guns (or gun shootings simply never happen – however you want to look at it), but we’re all perfectly healthy…well, we would be, if it wasn’t for those evil pharmaceutical companies, evil lying doctors who should know better, fluoride in the water, chemicals in the air from chemtrails, poisons in vaccines, man-made diseases and the genetic manipulation of our food…. we would all be perfectly healthy and never suffer from any form of illness.

They are constantly raining sickness-causing agents upon us all to make sure we stay docile and controllable. Nature doesn’t have any flaws, and humans are of course designed to be perfect and immortal in their natural state. Cancer obviously couldn’t exist if we were left to our natural state – so it must be a manufactured illness through ‘toxic’ chemicals being pushed onto us so that the pharmaceutical companies can make money from our suffering. AIDS is a created disease. Vaccines only hurt us, and don’t even stop the illnesses they are meant to stop – they are stopped by simple hygiene and eating well!

The New World Order

The perpetrators of all of this misery are an incredibly well organised group of people who control everything from large corporations, to independent research institutes, virtually every scientist on the planet, nearly all of the politicians, public servants. They are the ultra-wealthy ultra-elite and despite their ability to control so many people in so many countries and industries and affect virtually everything – they want to destabilise the entire system and bring it down to its knees…so that they can have…more… extreme wealth and extreme power… than …

OK, this just makes zero fucking sense.

I get it. It is nice to think that random tragedies are somehow orchestrated and controlled… but they just aren’t. Not usually anyway. I can’t say that none of the tragedies of the past 100 or more years haven’t been manufactured or taken advantage of in some way, but for the most part, there is no need to manufacture a complicated conspiracy to explain shit which just happens all the time.

Planes crash! They do! You don’t have to make up convoluted stories to explain and justify it every time it happens.

Innocent people die in wars all the time. And not all wars are just, or justified. They are just a consequence of our flawed psychology.

People do go on shooting sprees. This is just a fact of life when you have a population of 300+ million in a country with just as many guns – it only takes 1 in 300 million to decide to shoot into a group of people for it to happen! It is actually surprising it doesn’t happen more often!

People get sick! As a matter of fact, people are getting less sick and living longer now than ever before in history – you just need to look at the actual stats to understand this instead of imaging some idyllic past where everyone lived in perfect health all the time! There is no evidence of that ever being the case, and even with endless piles of web pages telling you how you too can live sickness free by just avoiding XYZ and only eating ABC, we still don’t see any of the people following those regimes actually being illness free! Because they’re all bullshit.

How about we start dealing with the tragedies of this world as they are, rather than trying to solve non-existent riddles and causes which complicate them unnecessarily?

Things might actually start getting better….

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