Archives for category: Politics

I Fucking Hate Science

Feb 4, 2014 //

I don’t actually hate science. I mean, some of my friends are scientists, so believe me when I say I have nothing against it. However, there is a Facebook page that keeps popping up on my newsfeed called, “I Fucking Love Science” that always makes me cringe.

Don’t get me wrong; science can be a great tool. We have longer, more comfortable lives because of it, and for that I am grateful. However, the amount of mindless knob-slobbering that goes on whenever Science is mentioned irritates me to no end.

My biggest gripe with the salivation over science is how it always goes hand in hand with the dismissal of religious thought. Like they are somehow incompatible, and that only science and reason can save us from the certain doom that the path of faith, hope, and love would certainly lead us.

Yes, there are certainly those who believe that religion and ideology are our only possible salvation while science will lead us down the path of sin and degradation, so those choosing science could just be fostering a bit of petty rivalry which I guess is certainly one reason to blindly worship at the tabernacle of reason. But which is the more destructive practice? I’ve mentioned some reasons that science is dumb in a previous blog that I will go over again, so if you are an ardent follower of my every word, there might be some overlap.

First let’s look at how science probably isn’t actually going to save us.

You remember how SimCity 2000 promised us fusion power by the year 2050? Maybe that’s just me. Anyway, extraordinary amounts of clean, wasteless energy would go a long way to solving a good number of worldwide issues. How many folks do you think are working on it? How many do you think are working on an ever-so-slightly faster microchip? Or a more efficient means of extracting crude oil? Or specific kind of bomb that only kills people who have a subconscious distaste for Freedom?

We live in Capitalism Land, ladies and gentlemen. And those scientists are working on things that will make money, because they’re only going to get grants from companies or governments that see some kind of profit behind it. And apparently scientists need to eat too.

If you are actively working against somebody who is making money, there is a good chance that people will actively work against you. Here in Canada we have an epidemic of scientists being muzzled by the government for the environmental work that they are doing in regards to the tar sands in Alberta. There are global warming deniers everywhere, simply because of how people with money paid off their own scientists to claim that it isn’t man-made, or that it is a figment of Al Gore’s imagination.

But Dan, you might say, This isn’t our beloved Science fucking up the planet, it’s people bastardizing the use of science for their own personal gains! Yes, I might say, Just like how one might bastardize the use of religion for their own greedy purposes, perhaps?

But now to shut you up even further, let’s look at how science is basically going to murder our faces. Yeah, I said it.

Everyone seems to think that 9/11 was religion’s fault because the people that did it happened to believe that America was fucking up their homeland, and their religion saw that as a bad thing, and then were persuaded by somebody to do something pretty extreme about it. But it never would have happened if science hadn’t invented airplanes and high rises in the first place.

Gun reform gets brought up every time a school is redecorated with bullet holes from an unruly youth, and the heated topic always mentions that if the student tried doing something with a knife then he would be stopped with much fewer casualties. How is the progression of weaponry not a huge black eye on the smug face of science? I mean, the atomic bombs in Japan killed 150 000 – 246 000 people. That was 70 years ago. Progress has been made on that front as well, and to think that no one would ever use such a deadly scientific discovery (again) is naive.

People will always disagree. Sometimes violently. If that violence becomes excessive, blaming it on the disagreement rather than the unchecked progress of weaponry is myopic.

Hey remember that global warming thing I mentioned earlier? You know what’s causing that? Oh yeah baby, it’s science. The great industrialization of the world, the high mark of scientific progress, the evolution from the uncivilized medieval period to the age of glorious reason, has basically bent over the planet for imminent penetration. I don’t want to turn this into a climate change blog because that’s not my ranting forte, but we’re screwed. Dumping into our oceans, smogging up our skies, ripping out our forests: all of these things in the name of scientific progress. Not just the pollution that comes from science is destroying the planet, but everything we need to fuel our addiction we have to rip out of the earth. We’re using up all our finite resources in such a way that we are causing untold damage to our planet. Which sustains us, by the way, so when it is irreparably fucked, it’s not like we can whistle a jaunty tune and carry on with our lives. We dead, folks, we dead.

Know how else science is going to kill us? You like eating? Science has “improved” on food by a substantial margin over the last few decades. No longer content to let our food not have poisonous chemicals on it, we now let our agriculture be sprayed with toxic pesticides among other fun and zany chemicals in order to make sure that there is an abundant enough crop to sell. Or a cow is pumped full of hormones in order to make it bigger, so you can sell more steaks off of it. This isn’t “improving” food; it’s making more money off of it. And if a few people get sick along the way, well, fine. We have too many people on this planet anyway, right? (I’m adding an interjection here: I work in a butcher shop, and I know what dead animal parts are supposed to look like. Looking at processed foods that have been scienced all to hell, I can assure you that they look nothing like the original pieces. At all. Just sayin’.)

So science is murdering us and our planet, and guess what? It’s murdering us economically as well.

The progress of information technology has accelerated greatly since the invention of the computer lo those many years ago. And the price has plummeted, with its computing power growing exponentially. That’s pretty swell, right? Except with technology being able to do more and more, that leaves less and less for humans to do. Instagram was recently purchased for about a billion dollars and it employs 13 people, whereas Kodak went bankrupt and employed 17 000 people, down from 63 000 just a few years earlier.

There is a Taiwanese company called Foxconn that is coming to America, and it is bringing along with it one million robots to put together its products.

Big companies will crush smaller ones with their access to expensive technologies that can predict consumer habits based on collected data, leaving the mom and pop shops to fall to the wayside of obsoletion.

This trend will continue for decades, with manufacturing prices plummeting along with the need of human workers maintaining the factories.

Big businesses will profit massively from this. The income disparity across the globe is already at staggering proportions, and will only continue to increase as science progresses and those on top will be able to produce massive amounts of product with minimal costs and extraordinary profits, while those at the bottom will no longer have any sort of employment. All thanks to science.

I honestly could go on. There are privacy and spying issues that science has enabled authoritarian governments to use on their populace; there is the decline of face to face social bonding which has been shown to help people psychologically; there’s that damned auto-tune ruining music…

When you think of things most likely to actually kill us, religion is so far down the list it doesn’t even register. It’s a scapegoat that is so easy to point a finger at because it doesn’t agree with our current cultural paradigm. But what if it’s our cultural paradigm of relying on science for everything that is actually the problem? We are already on the tipping point of absolute destruction, and we’ve already fallen so far, and you know what’s to blame? That’s right. Science.

Part of this was inspired by a lecture given by Dr. William Raduchel, titled “Will Technology Save Us or Doom Us?” as well as: https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience

Also here are some links:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/muzzling-of-federal-scientists-widespread-survey-suggests-1.2128859

http://nypost.com/2013/12/05/global-warming-proof-is-evaporating/

compared to this part of the Telegraph dedicated solely to the effects of man-made global warming:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/houston-stabbing-rampage-students-tackle-knifewielding-campus-slasher-8567296.html

2 critically injured compared to 32 dead in the Virginia Tech Massacre: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041600533.html

You can look up Foxconn and Kodak and Instagram on your own if you like if you want to check my numbers.

Tags Capitalism, Global Warming, Progress, religion, science

Categories Politics, Religion, Science

How do you solve a problem like a crippled nation?

Oct 29, 2013 //

Being in a third world country, you begin to notice a few key things about it. Mostly, it’s terrible. Extreme examples of poverty, apathy towards human life, sickness and malnutrition, whole loads of things that really just suck pretty hard. And if you’re anything like me, as an armchair pseudo-intellectual, you tend to think about how one might be able to make a difference over there while sitting in a comfy chair, in a relatively large, environmentally-controlled room.

I had been to India, and I was speaking to someone who had been doing relief work in Haiti, and I asked them if they had thought about improving Haiti as I had thought about improving India. How do you make a country less shitty? The answers are fairly obvious. In no particular order: sanitation, better infrastructure, education for women, education overall, better healthcare, better safety nets for the poor, less corruption, better heath and safety standards, and so on and so on and so on. Easy, right? Well how do you implement them? Where do you even start?

A lot of people immediately go for education as the number one. Educate people, and they’ll see how crummy life is by themselves, and then they’ll take steps to fix it. Ideal, really. But then I heard a few stories, one of which stood out in particular. My tour guide was telling our group of an instance where the Indian federal government had set up this program where students would be given free lunches. It’s great, right? For children who might not be getting even a single meal a day, having a free one waiting for them at school is a great incentive to go and educate themselves. Problem solved; India begins the long road to rehabilitation. Unfortunately for India, one of the main rules there is that nothing is allowed to go right. What ended up happening is that by the time the money for the lunches had made it to schools, it had been skimmed from so much that there was hardly any money left for the food, and what ended up being served was so unsanitary that a bunch of school kids died.

So is fixing the corruption the first step? It’s really difficult to say. When issues like women’s rights, unsafe drinking water, and poverty are staring you in the face, it’s almost impossible to say which one needs the most attention.

Even if you do decide to which to address first, and I do mean you, the reader, in this instance, the one who obviously wants to make a difference in the world, what can you actually do? It’s not like you can go up to the leader of a country and be like, “Hey mister president, you should stop being corrupt. Listen to me, for I am white and privileged!” Even if you could, having the Great White Saviour solve all the world’s woes is a problem unto itself. Countries should have the right to fix their problems for themselves. For one, those problems are more likely to stay fixed that way, and for two, there won’t ever be the niggling feeling that ol’ whitey is only after oil or out to influence the local culture.

So do you just sit around, ignoring the world’s problems while they either solve themselves or spiral out of control into a fiery inferno? I suppose you could if you really wanted to. I am merely text on a page, with no influence over you save for my reason, charm, and the dashing good looks which I assure you I possess.

There are charity donations, but charity is a fickle concept. Charity cannot fix problems. It is the “giving a man a fish” scenario. You might help a person out of a bind, but they are still stuck in a place where that bind is the norm. On top of that, there are questions as to where that money you donate actually goes. Suspicious administration fees are one thing, but there is also the question of whether or not what you’re donating to is good for the community. Are you buying food for them? Is the food you are buying in direct competition with local farmers, who now have to compete in a market where their competition offers free products? I’m not saying don’t donate to charity. It can be a powerful tool, but you have to make sure that your donation isn’t going to be a tragic waste of money.

Volunteering is another possible solution for the average idiot to help out those less fortunate. There are issues here too though; those similar to the issues with charity. Is your volunteer work something that a local could do? If you have a special skill or knowledge that just simply isn’t available in bulk in whatever country you’re volunteering in, then yes, you are an asset to that community. But if you’re helping out for free where a local could be doing the work and getting paid, then maybe think twice about the volunteer work that you’re doing.

Then of course there’s just talking about it. Who knows what solutions you might come up with?

None of the things you do will fix a country. That is up to its people. But you can make a difference on a more community-based level. And if you want to, then nothing is stopping you and you should definitely go for it. If you don’t want to, don’t feel bad because you are one among many. You’re reading this though, so you’re at least being forced to think about it, and maybe that’s enough.

Post-script: I am not getting into local help versus international help. This article is only about international because that’s what the conversation that sparked this was about. I personally prefer local charity over international charity, and if you want to talk to me about my reasons why feel free.

Tags charity, Philanthropy, Third World, volunteer

Categories Politics

A World With Too Much Yang

Oct 22, 2013 //

You probably all know what the Yin Yang symbol is.

That’s the one. That’s for those of you who think that my blog has too many words in it and not enough pictures. Anyway, as most of you know, the Yin Yang symbolizes harmony, balance… you know, Zen junk. What you might not have known is that Yin and Yang actually represent stuff on their own. Yin is the female side, and represents traditional feminine attributes: compassion, compromise, maternalism. Yang, the male side: assertiveness, strength, exertion. They represent other things too, like day and night, hot and cold, heaven and earth; basically things nobody cares about, and should care even less about for this article.

Based on the title, you can probably already assume what I’m driving at here. We live in a world dominated by male culture, and male attributes. This isn’t even just having far too many penises making critical worldly decisions, but further than that, the attributes we look for in leaders are typically from the Yang side. We want stoic leaders, uncompromising, shrewd and strong. Not just in our politics, but in our businesses, faculties, and other places with an emphasis on hierarchy. Even if we don’t want men to lead us, we want their attributes.

The problem with the domination of one side of the balance over the other is that its attributes become corrupted. Strength becomes power-mongering, uncompromising becomes unfeeling, and we are left with greedy, aggressive sons of bitches ruling our planet.

Think of all the shitty things that happen in life outside of like, disease or natural disasters. How many of them are what happens when a male attribute is taken to its extreme? Think of the dictators, the greedy corporate heads and bankers, the corrupt politicians, the criminals and gangs. How many Yin characteristics do you think they possess? How many Yang?

Jackson Katz is a doctor, so you know you can trust him, and he discusses the prevalence of male attributes, how we as men are socially pressured into conforming to those attributes, and the harm they cause in their extremes in a neat little video called Tough Guise. Unfortunately this video is is no longer available for free in its entirety, but here’s a short synopsis which you should definitely watch if you have seven minutes to spare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI

Popular contemporary feminism is even pushing women into these roles as well. Women need to be strong, assertive, and powerful. Women need to be CEOs, doctors, and politicians. In the media today, women are constantly being portrayed as basically brutish men. It’s “progress” because now women are drinking, swearing, and fighting alongside their male counterparts. How many times have you seen a female character in a movie chastise another female character by saying, “Don’t be such a girl!” The idea is still that the Yin characteristics are weak and unnecessary, and that if a woman wants to be successful, she needs to embrace the Yang.

But in a world where the Yang is running rampant and corrupt, do we really need more people actively pursuing dominant roles? Nurses, teachers, caregivers, the Yin-oriented careers are still being left behind. Being a nurse has nowhere near the amount of recognition and acclaim as a doctor, despite being just as important to the recovery of the patient. Teachers struggle for respect because “they only work 8 months of the year,” despite not just the actual amount of hours teachers put in per year, but also the incredible amount of influence they exert on the character and intellect of our children. We don’t need a world dominated by men and men-like women; we need to foster the Yin if we want to be somewhat successful in unfucking up this planet.

I’m not saying that male attributes and men are terrible, nor am I saying that women shouldn’t pursue typically male-oriented careers. Just that we need a balance with our feminine characteristics. It’s Yin Yang; harmony between the two. Emphasis on the female side would leave us simpering wrecks, but as a culture we are already shooting way too far in the other direction. We’ve had decades of women in pantsuits. How about some men in aprons?

Tags Feminism, Jackson Katz, Yin Yang

Categories Gender and Sexuality, Politics

I Fucking Hate Science

How do you solve a problem like a crippled nation?

A World With Too Much Yang

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