if you can dance its easy to do

An excerpt from John Stuart Mill's "Utilitarianism"

"Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness- that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior- confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."

Sounds good, but reality proves different thanks tothe United States' over-saturated market culture. Example in point: Drinking to get drunk. The market has sold us what pleasure consists of so effectively that it defies logic. Looks like our culture consists of a civilization of satisfied pigs (and that continues outside the realm of drinking).

I, myself, will continue to stay dissatisfied til the day i die. Anyone else?

Petition

Heres the link for the online petition regaurding the Jena 6.
Theres also a march in Jena on the 20th if you have the means to attend.

Abortion

I've had an assignment to read the Roe vs Wade federal abortion court opinion for moral philosophy this week, and I figured what better time than now to see what I think of abortion myself.

I will begin with my usual beggining assumption, without which I could not argue anything, that to a living human being the state of himself, namely his mind and his emotions and his body (the immediate things of which people are naturally concerned), and the state of others are the most important things to him, given that he would no longer be living if he did not value life and by asserting that primacy of life by continuing to live he demotes any other possibility of importance to himself becasue he would not be able to percieve the importance of any such things were he not alive. I do hold that if a person holds his life to be of this magnitude of importance, that by nature of the assertion that he holds life in general to be important - because without the existence of life in itself, or rather without the potential that he be born a homo sapiens sapiens, as others have - that he would not be living, so with appreciation of ones own life, we take that one must appreciate all life, and neccissarily, and primarily, the potential for life.

Now the solution to the problem of abortion becomes simple. Any stage of child, any trimester, before the point of viability or after, from zygote to organism that can readily survive on it's own (with sufficient nutrients; i mean here to sight the definition of the point of viability either way) remains the potental for life, and furthermore from a pragmatic standpoint, a life that potentially could be greatly possitively influential and good for the human race. This does mean that contraceptives become disrespecting the potential for life, and at that, in modern times, great and infulential life, and therefor against what a living being naturally wants.

There is here, as is the nature with all things, seemingly an exception. What of the great women whose lives are at risk as long as they carry a child? Does the principle of appreciating life apply here. I think through reason, though it may not be a utilitarians delight to hear, even if the most dimwitted human in history is to be born, if my reason is to follow, it seems as if respecting the potential for life should take primary importance over already existing life.

I may get back to this later to examine the social and cultural reprocussions of accepting such a belief, I may not...

Welcome To The South

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2388360.ece
Unacceptable. Its this kinda stuff that riles up the black nationalist in me....

Bin Laden Makes Americans Look Foolish

Yea, apparently he's told us that if we want to end the war that we should all convert to islam, effectively unveiling the not very well concealed fact that America doesn't want peace, we want power and we're not going to surrender our integrity (the presidents oversized ego) for it. Look at it this way; if Bush just got up off his ass and pretended to agree with what bin laden had to say, made some shit up about how we are all muslims now, and said he's withdraw all the troops, either we'd get osama out in the open and kill the idiot, or make him look stupid because he was lying so he could kill more people. It would have exactly 0 effect on us for one guy to say we're all islam; our egos are just too bug, we don't want peace, we want power, and power on our own terms. otherwise, though the verbatim translation is impossible to find, it seems to be that he's talkin straight sense here, except he wants there to be more killing, which is silly, but otherwise he sounds a lot smarter than our leader.

who dey

"predsident bush gave me a call and said he gon stop runnnin the world for 3 hours just to see what im gonna do" - Chad Johnson. Sing it. I don't think he's running the world, though. The cabinet will be doing their jobs monday night, because some things, unfortunately for you and i, chad, are more important than football.

fuck. really?

So apparently you don't need a law degree to run for various government offices. Lets get this straight. A republican government is a body of officials who are in place to regulate law, which is in place to regulate human behavior. simple enough, right.

so peyton manning is the colts quarterback. a quarterback is the leader of a football team, thats what the term means. peyton manning is a quarterback becasue he can play football very well. he also has a bright mind, which unfortunatly been wasted on football, but thats another issue.

george bush is our president. the president of the united states is the head of a republican governing body. and by the transitive property of things of this nature, he is the leader of a group of law making and regulating officials.

peyton didnt get elected to quartebackship by the colts other players who were voted in by the fans, he got there on merit and talent and promise in the field of football.

george bush got elected by a bunch of other people with no law degrees who were elected by a bunch of other people with no law degrees. are we all fucking nuts? how is it that our government, which as ive defined is a law instituting and regulating body, is run by people that dont know shit about the law?

and i actually heard this the other day that philosophy is the top major for people applying to law school, so the people who do have law degrees im sure are somewhat more seasoned in real critical thought, and possibly more interested in the actual good for humanity rather than just themselves and their ego. but probably not, it may just be one that gets accepted at a high rate so they treat it like history class.

please find this and watch

i suggest you watch tv for a few hours straight until you find this ditech commercial. it says people are smart, and i had no idea what ditech was, but my mind immeditaly went to the whole stupidity of the homeloan situation. apparently they give home loans. people aare smart. they want good rates on home loans. no, im afraid thats why theyre stupid.

do you remember?

ya'll know the marbury stinkface? check out the sports center highlights of arods upper deck homer, jeters got his own thing goin on.

A Note on Bipolar Disorder

The San Francisco Chronicle today had an article on bipolar disorder among youths (under 19) in america; apparently the rate of diagnosis is almost .5%, which doesn't make much sense, seeing that 800,000 youths are said to have been diagnosed, making this stat reveal 106,000,000 youths (a year, i believe) visit psychiatrists, etc, that seems like too many, but thats besides the two things i have to say about this:

one this is that it seems that the diagnosis of disorders like this is entirely useless, along with ADD and OCD, they are fairytail disorders, with no actual ground for diagnosis besides behavior, which as far as im concerned is controlled by the individual. there may be cases in which people do go fucking nuts, okay, well deal with that when the time comes, but when kids are sad a lot, its probably for reasons other than the chemicals in their head - i.e. complacency as a result of telling them that their country is perfect and their view of life as they've been told is perfect so all they need to worry about is themselves, so they do - which as i understand we don't know all that much about the workings of...

my second problem with this is americas obsession with absolute answers, just as i have embeded in me as i seek to disprove, or insult an propose better ideas to social norms as i do now: parents want to concrete answers why jimmy isnt 100% happy because he has the nice car and the pretty girlfriend and mommys done everything (with money) she ever could've done for him - when of course she hasn't really done much, but thats beside the point. people want absolute facts and absolute answers, in a universe that as of now we're under the empirical belief is entirely random, not to mention that metaphysicians and epistemologists are no farther along than plato and aristotle. what i mean is that people want "real" answers when we've yet to realize what reality is, they seek to, once again, transcend the ability of humanity to comprehend problems and know why it is that jimmy isnt happy, whereas all we can do now is overdiagnos in order to make the medical economy keep going and all that. this of course leads to the attitude among philosophers and politicians and individuals that we need answers rather than doing what we can where we can.

i've yet to figure this train of thought into how philosophy can be at all relevant, i probably never will, id just be seeking an answer anyway instead of doing something useful...

Stop The Madrassa

http://stopthemadrassa.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/pamela-hall-of-stop-the-madrassa-community-coalition-on-glenn-beck-tonight-tuesday-july-31/

i gotta say, i dont really know what a madrassa is, but it sounds like a prejudiced term; check out this crazy bitch. if you can somehow find her interview i just saw on cnn itd best show you how crazy she is.

her name is pamela hall and she vehemently argues that some new york public high school is breeding terrorists by teaching arabic and middle-eastern culture, but still trys to maintain that she is against racism and she wants to stop the prejudice against terrorism to end. shes taking the education board to court because they wont reveal the cirriculum, which i must say is a little weird, but shes saying the textbooks and shit are propaganda; if anything i bet the textbooks and cirriculum are slightly racist towards arabs, etc...

people just like to remind me how stupid they can be sometimes

"ConLangs"

langmaker.com

this is a website dedicated to created languages, such as clingon. yea, clingon seems to be legit, just as long as the people who speak it are actually interested in linguistics as it is relevant to culture and human thought. there's a bunch of languages, I haven't really looked at any, I just read about it in the newspaper and i really dig the idea, I'm not so sure that the apparent 2 thousand languages documented have the same idea about it as they should, but who am I to say that. linguistics is one of those things i want to have time to get a degree in because its one of those things that i think can help to encapsulate the idea of modern humanity in a persons mind. i regard those things, so far, there could be more, as anthropology, philosophy, psycology, and linguistics; i leave history out because people get a significant dose of it when studying other things, memorizing what happened when is pretty much entirely useless, the important thing is to know what has and what hasnt worked in human history.

so, linguistics. go.

this seriously may have been one of the more entertaining football games ive ever watched. despite the incredible competitiveness of tenesee to keep coming back, the extraordinary athleticism of the bears is astounding. deshaun jackson, forcett, this freshman Best , hawkin. if you havent seen this game or the full highlights at least, find them. i remind you that this is an sec defense that theyre skill players are tearing apart as i type. as a great example of why i sincerely am getting behind deshaun jackson in 2nd for the heisman - i mean, please, my boy ray ray has it no problem - check out one of the first offensive plays of the game a little hook out to deshaun and he gets absolutely rocked - this hit ranks up with that rodney harrison hit on stevesmith a few weeks ago - and holds onto the ball. just find the highlights...

back like cooked crack, yup.

this isnt the right one, but you get the idea, wasnt mr opportunity knocking when all you idiots bought those houses with flimsy loans?

New Orleans Syndrome

We Will Prevail

first off, over what, you already didnt car enough about one shooting and allowed multiple people to get murdered and wounded.

now, how are you giong to treat a football game like it has any significance to the april 16th mass murder. you are further distracting your own lack of ability to protect your STUDENTS in an educational environment, and the value of those students lives, as well as the value of your educational institution, you aren't a football club. its another case of new orleans, somehow all of the students have been fooled into thinking that this game has the significance that espn says; it does not. thiry two people were killed. many more injured, by a kid too obsesed with the media - we all remember those pictures of him with guns and shit. so here virginia tech and espn combine to create another media inspired world, except this one has morals. these kids are proud to participate in what espn says is good and touching, just as that kid was proud to destroy 32 lives because die hard said it was cool. i ask whats the difference?? i see none, there is not an iota of apparent thought in the opinion that virginia techs first football game has anything to do with that horrible morning. if anything it is an opportunity for people to run away from dealing with death and other human emotions and situations, im sure weve all done this with, to use a previous example, die hard. we just like the aristotlian opinion that when one is born into morality that he is suceptable to morality, combined with rationalism; we think were born into morality because were told that what america says is right, and we sit around and do nothing watching tv pretending that we are thinking when really were justpatting ourselves on the back for being so clever that we know how the world works and our country is right, this being equivalent to entirely deductive reasoning, in an american sense. i feel bad for all those kids who are unaware, i can only imagine that gaps between their real emotions, and the thoughts that they have seeming to be legitimate to them can only cause some sort of emotional discrepency and problems.

oh, and what about that guy, er, whats his name, michael vick? im seeing a little too much pride from college students for the school that let 32 of their piers and teachers get killed with little police reaction til after the fact and produced an asshole so arrogant that he ran a dgo fighting opperaation for years during his professional carreer and only after his buddies pleaded guilty did he consider that he was in any trouble... congratulations VT, you're a wonderful environment for murderers...yes, im aware that a majority of the students are not murderers or killers. its called hyperbole.

whatchu want nigga.