philosophy mine

They do not know who they are. And that is our problem

And just what morals does one have simply by believing in God? How does God inform you of your morality? God talked to the Son of Sam serial killer, right? So, a "belief in God" by itself can supply one with morals of any kind? So, morals do not "come from God" but actually come from religous texts such as "The Bible", so the argument really goes. We all know that modern day Christians can only pick a few particular quotes from "The Bible" to support their "morals." I.e., no Christian would openly support stoning adulterers. (That some Muslims actually do is sometihng I will address later.) And since most religious people only use "The Bible" for quoting, and do not study nor understand its history, we can assume that the "morals" they derive from from it are quite narrow in scope. Like the "Ten Commandments". So let's say that our morals from God are the "Ten Commandments". And people say that that is where they get their morals, and that you should too. "Where else?" is the question they ask. Indeed! Here is the answer. Examine any non-Western culture (non-Christian, non-Biblical) and that all have certain codes of conduct and behaviour that they live by. Never do we find a culture without morals. Never. They all have them. Morals are inherent in humans. Morals are how human beings learn to live toegther, to be productive, to be healthy, to prosper, to deal with problams. Every culture that ever arose on this planet had such laws -- verbal or written. So, did these morals come from God? Well, one could take a deist (or pantheist?) point of view and say that like the laws of physics, there are inherent, in cellular structure or DNA, some "law" that results in cooperation among peoples being the natural state of mind. Cooperation, colaboration, is what makes people people. But, the question is about religious doctrine based morals, and whether it is only by this religious doctrine that we learn morality. I think that I have already disproven that but I shall continue... The question is actually a false one. For the people stating that we "can't be moral without God," are those who believe in and want to force others to live under a particular religious doctrine, or book: Bible, Koran, Talmud. And they are saying, crying! that "We get are morals from our book! And our book is from God!" Well, ask them, "Are you people so morally incapacited, so intellecutally constipated, that you cannot fathom the working out of a set of morals based on reason and logic?" Well, morals actually do come from reason, and debate. Ask them; "Have morals ever changed?" If they say no, ask them about burning heretics. Ask them about slavery. Ask them about lynching. Ask them about segregation. Morals change as society changes. What does not change are those basic human principles such as "All men are created equal," and "laws are made by men among men," that men -- not God -- came up with, based on reason and logic.

I do not make this statement lightly nor out of passion. Any human being that states that they are always right is a fool. They are fooling themselves, and in the case of pundits and presidential candidates, they are fooling their followers.

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Conservative Zone."

Here is a question to ask a person who advocates the "Ten Commandments" in Courtrooms: "How can you justify the placing of the Ten Commandments in a Court of Law that may sentence a man to death?" I am sure that religious people will simply apply some circular logic to this and "keep their faith". There are several arguments, I suppose, that explain or reconcile "Thou shall not kill" by those who support and even advocate killing while at the same time say they believe in the word of God as is written in "The Bible". One reconciliation is that "not kill" really means "not commit murder". Ahem, well, is the word of God not perfect then? How many times have we heard our Christian "leaders," Falwell, Robertson, Buchanan, etc., speak those immortal words, "I believe in the absolute literal truth as written in the Bible."? Oh, it was a translation thing, the Hebrew Bible said "not commit murder". Etc. Etc. Whatever. If "Thou shall not kill" does not mean "Thou shall not kill" what else in the Bible does not mean what it says? How can you abide by words that do not mean what they say? How can you abide by people who do not mean what they say? Either the Bible -- whatever version of the Bible that you read such as the "Authorized King James Version" -- is literally correct or it is not. If it is not, nothing of it need be in any of your laws. And if it is -- as many say it is -- then why are religions everlastingly involved in circular arguments over its meaning? With each faction picking (and interpreting) passages to "prove" their side? Each side so often resorting to killing those whom "do not believe" their version? Do any of you understand this? Is it not better, in the physical world of courtrooms, to have laws crafted by the people and for the people? And to leave the spiritual world to the churches the laws they say are crafted by God for your souls? Would it not be better to have upon our courtroom walls these words: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Guess where that quote came from? I wonder how many of you know.

[From my "Bush Years" essays.] In war, men who faced their enemy on the field as enemy, sometimes faced their enemy, during lulls in the fighting, as comrades. One example, recounted in the companion book to Ken Burns' film documentary of our Civil War, is a southern private's noting that some men and Yanks "...talked over the fight, and traded tobacco and coffee and newspapers as peacefully and kindly as if they had not been engaged for... seven days in butchering one another." In order to live with the pain of war we have notions of honor; that we meet the enemy as enemy in battle, and meet the enemy as fellow men when the fighting has subsided or stopped. We meet honorably on and off the battlefield, so that we retain, in the end, our humanity. Today, although most of our culture -- and the heroes of our most acclaimed novels and movies -- have this notion honor in war, most of our pundits in the media, and most of our leaders in Washington, talk of anything but this kind of honor. Indeed, they often decry and deride even hints at even discussing discussion with our "enemies" (applying that label to some countries with whom we are not at war). We are told, by our media and by our government, that no actions by our enemies in the Middle East are honorable. And we do have a notion that our enemy is not honorable. Flying a plane into a building is not honorable. A bomb on a bus is not honorable. Fighting among civilians is not honorable. Our fields of battle, though, have changed. No longer do men line up to face each other on level ground. No longer do rows of tanks bear down upon rows of tanks. No longer do jets dogfight other jets. In cities is where our wars are fought now. Among buildings is where we face each other now. Tanks roll unopposed down streets now. Jets drop five thousand pound bombs from high in the sky now. Without doubt, causing the deaths of civilian men, women and children is without honor. We learned of the pain of civilian deaths on September 11, 2001. Shall we discount, though, without discussion -- as many in the media suggest -- Iraqi and Afghani civilian deaths? If we were to discuss enemy civilian deaths, should we discuss the decades of conflict in the Middle East? Have all the deaths of "enemy" civilians been honorable? If a measure of honor is in civilian deaths, how do we fare? If a measure of honor is in prisoner treatment, how do we fare? If a measure of honor is in due process, equal justice and fair hearings, how do we fare? Upon the fields of battle in the 21st century which America must stand and face her enemies, with sword or with pen, we must remember that among who we face is our own reflection. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right," Lincoln began the end of his second inaugural. "Today, how shall we begin to bind this nation's wounds? We should, and shall, care for those who have borne the battle. To achieve, though, a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations, we must recall the meaning, the measure, of honor. Malice toward none, and charity for all must be extended to all nations, including our enemies, real or imagined. If not, we risk extending war into the rest of the 21st century. We cannot wait for others to extend charity to us first." Today, how do we fare?

What is "Evil"? It is Man hurting Man. Remove all humans from the earth and evil would no longer exist.

Several years ago I wrote many little essays on a little blog I had. That blog no longer exists. But let me post occaisonally from it - as I did once before. These though, are just some notes I had. Though written nearly 10 years ago, they seem... somehow... still valid. -- They really, truly believed that it would be a quick overthrow followed by a popular uprising to rebuild the country [Iraq war]. Boy were they wrong. -- Their way, terrorism will not stop. Terrorism cannot be bombed to elimination. -- If you do not know your own history - the history of your own country - you will always see every grave issue as a battle of "Us" vs. "Them" about which "winning" is the only solution. -- We look at suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, as horrible, deplorable, evil acts. And we follow up with missles, assasinations, renditions, torture, and then wonder why we have not won.

Sometimes I post words bordering on crazy and even stupid, and I oughta probly tone down the expletives - though an intelligent person should be able to discern between an adjective being applied to a thing, an idea, a law, or to an implementation of such (this being an ever increasingly "device dependent" society), and being applied to a person or a group of people. The latter does not include a person's or a group of person's actions. As for actions, let me explain it thusly: Not all Right-wing Conservatives are bigots. But all bigots are Right-wing Conservatives. (Any African American who is bigoted toward gays almost exclusively fit the "Right-wing Conservative" label - such as Ben Carson - though the label sociopath seems to fit him as well.) (Any African American who is seemingly bigoted toward whites - or the police - just may, historically and environmentally, have some justification for their attitudes. Something lost on the majority of Americans and absolutely and all consummingly on Right-wing Conservatives.) Perhaps, later more...

This is about Computer Programming and I get opinionated here. And remember, these are just opinions, and others will differ. Concepts (and implementations of them) such as JQuery and Node.js and Bootstrap, at first glance seem to simplify the "website creation process". But, in their implementation, they are fucking massive!. Hundreds of fucking thousands of fucking lines - being "minimized to one line" only hides that fact. (If you are offended by the word fuck, well, I hope you will just move on...) Tell me? How many websites that include JQuery use only one or two percent of it's capabilities? And how many websites include that file from a "Cloud" hosted domain? And how many others do exactly the same? Can you fathom the affects of the millions of HTTP requests to a single server's file every second of every second of Internet traffic? Twenty four seven? Languages like PHP improved "The Web" beyond measure. Languages like Java and C++ set back programming progress for fucking generations as they only added - in my opinion - shit syntax that just "got in the way". The first C++ compiler I had the displeasure of using, was called Glockenspiel C++, and I soon learned and was abhorred by the fact that it was just a C Compiler, pretending to be a C++ implementation. (A dos port of "cfront", something unknown to me then and now.) That was in the days of the z80 and when the 80186 was new - when I had the immense satisfaction of adding an 8087 to one of my computers to speed up some computations. What Glockenspiel C++ produced was horrible code, as I had to look at it when debugging. What it produced was C code, but all identifiers were horribly obfuscated and could not possibly be followed. But obviously! It was C Code! C++ implemented in C! Why use C++ Syntax when you could do the same fucking thing in C! C++ was exposed as fucking bogus. The C Programming Language book by Kernighan and Ritchie was one half inch wide on my shelf on programming books. The C++ Programming Language book by Stroustrup was nearly two inches wide in comparison. Additionally, as I read the C++ Programming Language, I kept encountering "exceptions" to the language, i.e. "this syntax fails in this manner and won't work, so you need to do this to get around that...". Something that occurred again and again. I despaired. I wanted to be a "low life" as the assembler coders were then called. My "gurus" I thought of them at the time. (I miss them and their knowledge and attitude to this day.) The Java Programming Language is also an example of this "high-falutin" crap pushed to the programming community by corporate minded people and organizations. Java was a massive shit dumped upon programmers by a corporation whose only goal was "control" and "capture". (And was lately exposed as a fucking fraud.) This fucking "Rant" was inspired by the first release of my designed programming language I call the Rulz Langaage, https://github.com/AndovaBegarin/Rulz/. So There. (Sometimes Tumblr's editor gets paragraphs wrong.)

I am, literally, a Sreet Photographer. I take many photographs of manhole covers, for example. I just uploaded one. (There is a Google+ Manhole Cover Community for these images.) Well, yesterday, midday, walking down a crowded street that was a tourist destination, so there were many tourists, and locals, walking about. I was on a "Photo Walk", and that manhole cover was new to me and interesting. It was in the middle of the right lane (the side I was on). I waited for a time when no cars were coming down the road and stepped out with raised camera and took the shot. (A truck in the left lane was coming near and slowed down as it did so.) But I was in the road for not more than 10 seconds. "It worked!" I said out loud as I had taken the shot blind, holding the camera above my head. Excellent! Then I started walking, and, passing me on the sidewalk, coming accross the street no less (which needs to be noted), a guy says to me in a loud, angry voice, "That was really stupid!" And my first mistake was to say, "What's it to you?" Well, that triggered this guy. He went immediately into a rage, saying angrily and loudly, "I'm a cop!". He then stepped up to me, inches away, face twisted in rage, and shouted with deep anger, "You don't stand in the road taking pictures!" And on he went, saying several other "You don't ..." things, in a complete fucking rage, mouth twisted, eyes behind black sunglasses, a large hulk of a man in a tight black t-shirt and nearly shaved head, inches away from me. Spewing hateful adminitions toward me. As was meant by his tactics, I was immediately going into "shut down" mode and do not remember all he first said. But then I started responding. "I waited until there were no cars coming. I was taking a picture." "That truck had to slow down! You do not stand in the road taking pictures!" and on he went, stepping a few inches closer to me after each hateful spew. That's a taught intimidation tactic Cops have -- show anger, get close, shout control words. And for every word from the "Perp," increase the anger, step ever closer, shout even louder. He did this four fucking times until he was an inch away from my face. He was the typical embodiment of an arrogant man showing that he was ready to get violent. At one point shouting, after I started questioning his actions, "Just walk down the road." Pointing the way I had come. I did not move. I stood silent most of the time. He increased the intimitation with an even louder command, "You do not take a picture in the middle of the road! Do you understand me?" I was silent. He stepped even closer. "Do you understand me? You do not take pictures in the middle of the road!" I eventually said something like, "Why do you seem like you're gonna beat the crap out of me?" He leaned even a little closer, and in a really low voice, but through gritted teeth, still edged with rage, said, "I'm not going to beat the crap out of you." And continued his scare tactics, "I'm just telling you do not stand in the road taking pictures." Almost in a whisper, but still through gritted teeth and edged with anger. "But I don't understand your anger, and why you seem to want to attack me or do violence." Still with subdued rage, he slowly reiterated again his control words, "I'm just telling you, do not stand in the road taking pictures. Fair enough?" "Fair enough," I capitulated. And he walked away. I should not have capitulated. He was wrong. I should have asked, "Cop? Of what town?" (he could have been a fucking tourist), "Are you on duty?" (he had street clothes), and more. But I should have just not responded to his first remark and ignored him. But this demonstrates the trained, planned, and executed intimidation and control tactics that cops do all too often. He was not a "Policeman". He was a "Cop". And all across this country Cops perpetuate this kind of trained, deliberate, anger toward many people every fucking day.

Manhole Cover, Hyannis, MA.

(And Republicans are only in it for Money 'n Power - and the NRA supplies them with both.)

This is version one. I have a few more up my sleeve...

Some Shits Endemic to the United States