No Peace for the Wicked

Often,
in your ignorance, you feel small, you feel miserable, you
feel that the wicked, greedy and cruel people are all
happier than you and unjustifiably so. You are hurt and
feel that it is unjust that you, who are so truthful, so
loving, so virtuous, should suffer. Just ponder over this.
Are they as happy as you imagine and is your condition, as
bad as you portray it to be? Investigate for a minute, and
you will know the truth yourself. External appearances are
often like painted pots of poison. The hearts of people not
adhering to Right Conduct know no peace – they are
probably as miserable as you, if not more. Believe that
Righteousness will never play false; it will ensure greater
joy than can be gained through all other means.

-
Divine Discourse, Feb 19, 1964.

Moonshot

Here is a wonderful, brilliant, video explaining why it was not technically possible for NASA, or anyone, to fake the moon landing in 1969.

Assault Weapons?

What is an "assault weapon"? Better yet, what is a "non-assault weapon"? Is not assault the purpose of all weapons? Let us play Wittgenstein and look at the dictionary.



Assault

Noun

Law. an unlawful physical attack upon another; an attempt or offer to do
violence to another, with or without battery, as by holding a stone or
club in a threatening manner.



Weapon

Noun

an object or instrument used in fighting.

any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war, as a sword, rifle, or cannon.



Now we can create a sketch of a definition of what an "assault weapon" and a "non-assault weapon" is. An "assault weapon," by definition, would be any object, instrument, or device used to unlawfully physically attack another person, or attempt to attack another. In contrast, a "non-assault weapon," by definition, would be any object, instrument, or device used to lawfully physically attack another person, or to defend oneself or another.



If I attack someone on the street with a shoe, that shoe is, by definition, an "assault weapon." It is a weapon, and it is being used in assault, ergo, an assault weapon. If I defend my family with a bazooka, that bazooka is, by definition, not an assault weapon.



But this isn't about bazookas or shoes or AR-15s or hollow points or teflon coated bullets or 30 round magazines (or "magazine clips" as a lot of idiots call them) or depleted uranium penetrators or six shooters or machetes or muskets or machine guns or sarin gas. This is about a monopoly of force. This is about taking guns away from legal, law abiding gun owners, leaving only the government and criminals to possess guns. This is about the vast, dumbed down populace that has been fed government propaganda for decades by the public indoctrination system so that people will vote for Obama when his policies are exactly the same as Bush's policies, only expanded to a ridiculous extent, because the same New World Order puppet masters control both of them. This is not about Bush and Obama, this is not about left versus right, this is about right versus wrong.

The Difference Between "Fairness" and "Equality"

I resolved at the end of last year to
focus on politics less, because ultimately it's nothing more than
bukkake theater (yes, talking politics is like a ridiculous amount of
masturbation on whomever is listening). I figured, three hours a day
is enough, and here I am with a backlog of three topics I'd like to
focus on already.



Turn on the news, listen to politicians, listen to the unwashed masses who congregate to shout
down anyone who does not like their pet beliefs, or the mindless
pervert Hollywood thespians who think that being an expert liar makes
them an expert in everything, and you will hear one word over and
over. One strange word. One word that can mean so many things that it
means absolutely nothing: "fairness". What is fairness?
When people say the "rich" should pay their "fair
share", what do they mean?



First of all there is no objective
definition of what is "rich". From people I've met I can
say that being "rich" means "having more money than
you currently have." If you make $60,000 then making $90,000
will mean you're rich. If that same person were to get a raise and
make $90,000, then that person certainly would not be rich, rich
would mean making $120,000. The definition of "rich"
conveniently means "having more money than I do now." Few
ever consider themselves "rich," a rich person is always
someone who makes more.


Second, there is no objective
definition of what a "rich" person's "fair share"
is. When you ask anyone who says "the rich should pay their fair
share" to give a dollar amount they foam at the mouth and repeat
themselves, louder and louder, until you give up asking. A "rich"
person's "fair share" is always "more than they are
currently paying." If someone is paying 35% taxes, then 39% is
"fair." If that same person's taxes are raised to 39% then
43% would be "fair." Like being "rich", what is
"fair" is a sliding scale that has no real definition. In
France 75% tax is "fair", an amount even Will Smith, who
promotes paying his "fair share," became outraged over
responding thank God I live in America.



However, like bukkake, the situation
gets stickier still. It's not only the "rich" who should
pay their "fair share," no, absolutely everything in the
entire world must be made "fair." But, as we have just
seen, "fairness" has no fixed meaning. So, how does one go
about making the world "fair"? Since "fairness"
means whatever those in power think it means, making things "fair"
means one thing: pernicious statism. More and more government
overreach makes things "fair." Certain groups of people are
born with unnatural advantages, mostly white men, so laws must be
made to balance the playing field. Those groups, born with unnatural
advantages, must be put at a legal disadvantage so as to make things
"fair" for those groups who are born with a disadvantage.
There must be racial quotas like "affirmative action," and
sexual quotas like "Title IX," which destroy higher
education, destroy school sports, and destroy quality productivity in
the workplace.


Now, I am not saying that people are
not born with advantages or disadvantages. I don't care. Whether
people are born with advantages or not, it doesn't matter to me. It
might be a true statement, it might be a false statement, I don't
care. I'm not even going to debate the issue.



Some people have incredible talent. I'm
not going to write sonnets like Beethoven or play football like Tom
Landry (who played for the Giants, and was damn good, before becoming
coach of the Cowboys). Does that put me at a natural disadvantage?
Who's to say. There are people with incredible talent but cannot feed
or dress themselves. Having a fantastic talent does not automatically
give someone an advantage over someone else who does not have as much
talent but works fifty times harder to develop their ability and has
greater ambition to succeed (which is something else Will Smith said
about himself). What I don't want is some law that says Tom Landry
has to have weights tied to his legs because playing football against
me is not fair. I don't want some law that says children's sports
teams can't keep score because losing hurts self esteem, and everyone
gets a trophy, and kids can't fail a class and have to be pushed
through even if they're as dumb as a hammer because no child can be
"left behind".



What I do like is equality. What is
equality? Equality is what is talked about in the Constitution.
Everyone gets a chance to prove their worth in life, even if it means
certain people have to work harder to get ahead. Everyone gets the
same protection under the law (no, killing a cop is not worse than
killing 20 ordinary people). Everyone pays the same percentage of
taxes, and surprise, rich people will still pay more than poor people
because 10% of $100,000 is still five times more money than 10% of
$20,000. Everyone is born into this world of suffering the same way,
completely helpless, confused, unaware, and frightened. Everyone has
a right to their life, liberty, and property; rights which cannot be
infringed upon without due process.



I've talked about politics now, I've
had my release, and your brains, my valued couple of readers, have
just been soiled for that release. Have I accomplished anything in
these 942 words? Not anything substantive, not anything that will
change the world, just keep my head from exploding for one more
day.


Always Love.

Spiritual but not Religious Psychosis?

There is a story in the Daily Telegraph about a study conducted at University College London that proports to claim that people who are traditionally religious, agnostics, and atheists are perfectly sane, but people who claim to be spiritual but not religious are nuts.



According to the study "[spiritual people] were 77 per cent more likely than the others to be
dependent on drugs, 72 per cent more likely to suffer from a phobia, and 50
per cent more likely to have a generalised anxiety disorder." The researchers concluded "'there is increasing evidence that
people who profess spiritual beliefs in the absence of a religious framework
are more vulnerable to mental disorder.

"The nature of this association needs greater examination in qualitative and
in prospective quantitative research.'" 

Why am I not surprised?



A person named Meg969 commented on the article "No panic folks, take it easy. :DTranslating into common English it means that 'spiritual' people know more, hear more, see more and feel more than others and so it is obvious they will feel agitated (after all they are people as well) more often than the 'rest'. Besides, spiritual people may indeed experience aspects of life to a bigger extent than others but at the same time they may find more strenght to control or abandon their addictives. Nothing new was found really. London team just trying to put it all into a negative context for spiritual people and the society in overall? I have a funny feeling this article aims to simply conclude that spiritual people are basically mentally unstable."



I tend to agree, and so does Ken Wilber.





The more perspectives you can take on the larger the field of your awareness and the less attached to this little identity you have constructed in this life. At the same time you are more tacitly aware of suffering in the world and feel more deeply. If you have not made the monumental leap to second tier you are stuck in the existential halfway house and life pretty much sucks for you.





At the same time, we can look at these findings in another way. People with higher intelligence and psychological trauma may look to spirituality as a means of finding relief from their problems because neither traditional religion or atheism have the tools necessary to meet their needs. In other words, spiritual people are not necessarily more likely to develop psychological problems, people with psychological problems are more likely to develop spirituality.



Now here's what's really gonna' bake your noodle. What is the point of this story? I could have told you all this without having to do some expensive study that "requires much more research dollars". I'm not sure, but somewhere among the 400 previous posts on The Urban Mystic, I probably did talk about this before.



My old teacher always admonished us to look at who was saying what and to understand their biases to understand what they were saying better. Understanding the Telegraph's political leanings makes the spin they put on this story very clear. What is the only thing that organised religion fears more than atheism? People who are not atheists who do not need organised religion. A center right publication like the Telegraph is sticking with the Church of England, and if people can find God without the Church then they are a bigger threat than Dawkins and his laughable rehashes of Fifth Century arguments against God's existence that are packaged in a cheap tuxedo of scientistic materialism. The Church can use the atheists as a foil to strenghten its grip on its members, but as soon as a rival appears on the God scene they start to lose it. The simple Church-atheist dichotomy breaks apart just like the left-right dichotomy was shattered in my brilliant video Integral Politics. It's all just a dog and pony show to distract you from the truth and maintain a ridged grip on power.