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unable to find meaningful answers to existential questions? become a peaceful humanist...
One more quote from Louis Betty’s book, explaining the Houllebecquian worldview:
The unbinding of humanity from God lies at the heart of the historical narrative the reader encounters in Houellebecq’s work: lacking a set of moral principles legitimated by a higher power and unable to find meaningful answers to existential questions, human beings descend into selfishness and narcissism and can only stymie their mortal terror by recourse to the carnal distractions of sexuality. Modern capitalism is the mode of social organization best suited to, and best suited to maintain, such a worldview. Materialism — that is, the limiting of all that is real to the physical, which rules out the existence of God, soul, and spirit and with them any transcendent meaning to human life — thus produces and environment in which consumption becomes the norm. such is the historical narrative that Houellebecq’s fiction enacts, with modern economic liberalism emerging as the last, devastating consequence of humanity’s despiritualization.
“Materialist horror” is the term most appropriate to describe this worldview, for what readers discover throughout Houellebecq’s fiction are societies and persons in which the terminal social and psychological consequences of materialism are being played out. It is little wonder, then, that these texts are so often apocalyptic in tone.
Tara Isabella Burton suggests that the apocalyptic violence we keep seeing in these mass shootings are social and psychological consequences of metaphysical materialism. She’s right, I believe.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/mass-shootings-materialist-horror-houellebecq/
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This is a lot of bullshit, hogwash, sloppy-craping-cow dung, and whatever you think of, that does not smell very nice…
A lot of conflicts, terrorism acts and mass shootings have been done in the name of religion(s) and we’re still in the mist of this holy rubbish. Please do not blame materialism, nor secularism for this “apocalyptic violence” which started under supervision from god, about 6.000 years ago when Cain killed his brother Abel… Today, blame Trump if you will, or Obama as well, and all the other idiots before these two loonies who had enough sociopathy or psychopathy to deem themselves in charge of the meat-grinder, including such luminaries like the pope and Mohamed.
All these conflicts, terrorism acts and mass shootings stem from simple indoctrination, repeat brainwashing and the availability of killing machines, including guns and knives. Remove the machines to lessen the temptation, though it does not eliminate derangement of the mind...
Simple indoctrination is rather easy to perform, but to understand the process is rather complicated. We have the ability to self-delude with repeat of ideas — including belief in Father Xmas which leads us to distrust adults when we discover it’s a hoax, and little Jesus when we discover it does not make any sense (this one is a bit harder to debunk, not because it is nonsensical, but because it can be deeply ingrained in our psyche till the day we die). We have an easily manipulated imagination that is triggered by many factors — from a barking dog to the explosion of an atom bomb. And we repeat the delusion till we accept it as truth.
Today at the press club, the minister for something, Greg Hunt, has gone on spruiking about 3,063 people (or such) who have committed suicide and he announced his glorious government will indulge in yet another survey/inquiry with 60,000 people, within a vague ageism range.
Yes, spending more money on statistical uselessness is important to government in order to appear to be doing something, apart from a habit of insulting the other side of the chambers which responds in kind. In these volleys of mostly unreasonable arguments, we can gauge we the mad people (all of us) are well represented by our elected representatives.
We pick the maddest amongst us and we give them authority to dictate stupidity as a common denominator. Nothing to do with secularity, but more to do with traditions, in which religious hubris has played a far too long part — including the freemasons.
Freud and psychoanalysts have know the source of our crappiness more than a century ago. The point thus is how we can minimise suicide and terrorism in a social network of people who could turn mad at any moment. Are suicide and terrorism linked? More often than not if you believe Mohamed was a prophet. It’s about conviction that the solution of problems is such as to make it terminal. But the problem does not have to exist or be critical like being cornered by the Gestapo — and often the ideas become an obsession for no purpose. Reason becomes side-swept.
What is reason?
Wow! The subject is huge, considering we’ve been lied to about our purpose of our existence for millenniums. That we discover that our existence has no purpose should not be a reason to commit acts which are related to a belief. Actually this discovery should liberate us and make us accept the relative value of being alive. WE ARE ALIVE! As soon as this becomes evident, as it should, we come at peace with the sciences of evolution, of cosmology and quantum mechanics. Reason should be our way through hubris of anything crap: crap includes religion, social ineptitude, hate of others, desires to grab power, sexism, racism, etc…
And all these craps are on offer through various ideologies, INCLUDING THAT OF BELIEVING iN GOD.
So what is at the core of our stupidity (I mean that of terrorists, suicidal persons and of mass-shooters)?
It does not take long to become indoctrinated in whatever.
Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies (see doctrine).[1] Humans are a social animal inescapably shaped by cultural context, and thus some degree of indoctrination is implicit in the parent–child relationship, and has an essential function in forming stable communities of shared values. In the political context, indoctrination is often analysed as a tool of class warfare, where institutions of the state are identified as "conspiring" to maintain the status quo. Specifically the public educational system, the police, and mental health establishment are a commonly cited modus operandi of public pacification. In the extreme, an entire state can be implicated. George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four famously singled out explicit, state-mandated propaganda initiatives of totalitarian regimes. Opinions differ on whether other forms of government are less doctrinaire, or merely achieve the same ends through less obvious methods.The precise boundary between education and indoctrination often lies in the eye of the beholder. Some distinguish indoctrination from education on the basis that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.[2] As such the term may be used pejoratively or as a buzz word, often in the context of political opinions, theology, religious dogma or anti-religious convictions. Even so, the word itself, which came about in its first form in the 1620s as indoctrinate meaning to teach or to instruct, modelled from French or Latin.[3] The word only gained the meaning of imbuing with an idea or opinion in the 1832.The term is closely linked to socialisation; however, in common discourse, indoctrination is often associated with negative connotations, while socialisation functions as a generic descriptor conveying no specific value or connotation (some choosing to hear socialisation as an inherently positive and necessary contribution to social order, others choosing to hear socialisation as primarily an instrument of social oppression). Matters of doctrine (and indoctrination) have been contentious and divisive in human society dating back to antiquity. The expression attributed to Titus Lucretius Carus in the first century BCE quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum (what is food to one, is to others bitter poison) remains pertinent.
Read more:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination
Meanwhile something which could appear the same but isn't...
Brainwashing:
Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject’s ability to think critically or independently,[1] to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into the subject’s mind,[2] as well as to change his or her attitudes, values, and beliefs.[3][4]The concept of brainwashing was originally developed in the 1950s to explain how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them. Advocates of the concept also looked at Nazi Germany, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions of human traffickers. It was later applied by Margaret Singer, Philip Zimbardo, and some others in the anti-cult movement to explain conversions to some new religious movements and other groups. This resulted in scientific and legal debate[5] with Eileen Barker, James Richardson, and other scholars, as well as legal experts, rejecting at least the popular understanding of brainwashing.[6]The concept of brainwashing is sometimes involved in legal cases, especially regarding child custody; and is also a theme in science fiction and in criticism of modern political and corporate culture. Although the term appears in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association[7] brainwashing is not accepted as scientific fact[8] and has been characterised as pseudo-scientific.[9]
Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing
What is the difference between brainwashing and indoctrination?...
As mentioned, brainwashing is more associated with replacing one indoctrination with another. This was used to a discreet level of delicate manipulation during the war (WW2) with double-agents.
We’re often suckers for ideas and concept that make us belong to a group. But we can also develop individuality in our brainwashing — that is to say WE CAN BRAINWASH OUR OWN SELF with crap on offer from others. We pick and choose our shit. We can reinforce “the wrong ideas" in our psyche, especially if the rest of our social network is obviously disturbed or imbued with the wrong perceptions. We decide "we can do better that them", thus we slide into our own reinforcement of the value of being stupid.
Crap has been available as valid ideas for a long time, since the world was made by god, under the auspices of dirty old men and a couple of idiots who ate the apple. So some deranged person(s) escape(s) the coop — the social loony bin which keep us under sedation with epithets like patriotism, crusade, king and country — of deranged pacified persons — with a dummy teat in between their lips. We’re all mad. We don’t need another inquiry to tell us this. What we need is a way to make sure there less mad people on the streets and make sure our kids are versed into the happiness of being peacefully mad, so they don’t kill themselves — for thrills or despair.
Okay. Despair is at the core of flipping the overcook hamburger in our head. So what can induce despair? Often it’s the loss of identity that we were indoctrinated with. We’ve been told we, in the West, have had a superior civilisation to the rest of the planet and suddenly, some ning-nongs in government, including Merkel, decide to dilute this exclusivity by pandering and importing some other cultures in our bosom.
Suddenly we’re stretching our comforts into having to become more compassionate. We ALWAYS were "compassionate" in our own circle, but for some, people including towel heads like Jews and Muslims can become a problem, as some restrictions are often placed on eating pork and being naked — as “we loose” our privileged jobs or superiority. A few of us, madder than us lot possibly will flip their lid.
And we’re told compassion is for our own good as we bomb the place where these newcomers come from, under fake, false and invented reasons. This does not make sense, does it? Take your pick. The newcomers were perfectly happy where they were before we bombed the shit out of them for flimsy excuses, such as change style of their rulers' underpants.
Thus we develop resentment. It comes in different flavours. For example, we are told by the authorities that in order to save for a deposit to buy a house, we need to forgo some pleasures such as going to the flicks, we need to eat mad-cow gristle and recycled noodles. Then we see the hard-to-do high-end of town bragging about their seventh negatively geared houses in front of a frugal Lobster Termidor meal at Otto’s. Poor sods we think… No! We think that life is UNFAIR. And we have as much chance as competing as to win Lotto...
And most of them negatively-geared fellows are politicians that we elected to rob us and stop us from knowing the truth, while they hide behind “in the national interest” — as we all know, the truth hurts.
We’re born to be sheep, we know, but we cannot be black sheep. The rotweillers who run this concentration camp we call society are clever. We either obey in fear of the police (thought, and otherwise — the brawny unclever ones), obey because we’ve been indoctrinated to believe in Father Xmas is the right thing to do, or we obey because our debt has become such a burden we cannot raise our head to breath in fresh air.
Some of us revolt. One person who revolts is a terrorist. A million people who revolt is called a revolution, like in Hong Kong.
So in the end, secularism and materialism HAVE NOTHING TO DO with terrorism, mass shootings nor war. What all these have in common is usually due to inequalities, various forms of delusions, including not being able to discern between violent games and reality, as well as religious indoctrination and lying politicians.
Gus Leonisky
Freudian slipper...
- By Gus Leonisky at 14 Aug 2019 - 6:45pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world...
In 1947 Julian Huxley, English evolutionary theorist and director-general of UNESCO, wrote Mohandas Gandhi to ask him to contribute an essay to a collection of philosophical reflections on human rights. Gandhi declined:
I learnt from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights to be deserved and preserved came from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world.
Huxley should not have been surprised by the rejection. As far back as Hind Swaraj, his masterpiece in political theory, Gandhi had bemoaned “the farce of everybody wanting and insisting on … rights, nobody thinking of … duty.”
And during the Second World War, when another Englishman, H.G. Wells, solicited Gandhi’s support for his bill of rights defining war aims, the mahatma recommended that Wells write a cosmopolitan charter of duties instead – a statement of what citizens of the world owe to each other. A few months after his exchange with Huxley, Gandhi was dead. Assassinated in January 1948, he did not live to see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations General Assembly in December of the same year.
Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/reclaiming-the-language-of-duty-in-an-ag...
cheap!...
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At least five Philadelphia police officers were shot in Upper North Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon in what officials called "an active firefight," prompting a massive police response.
One officer was shot in the head and is listed in critical condition, while another was shot in the hand and a third in both arms, according to Fox 29. The outlet also reported a fourth shot officer whose head was grazed by a bullet, a fifth who'd been shot but they did not elaborate upon his condition, and a sixth who'd been wounded in a car crash as well as a pedestrian in the accident. Fox 29 reported at 5:59 p.m. that a sixth officer had been shot.
Read more:
https://sputniknews.com/us/201908151076553128-at-least-3-cops-shot-as-ac...
an AR-15 between their legs...
from Chris Floyd:
In response to the mass slaughters this week, the "writer" and "political thinker" David French tweets:
“Few things concentrate the mind more than the terrifying knowledge that a person might want to kill someone you love. It makes you aware of your acute vulnerability. [Here’s] why a criminal who comes to our house will face the business end of an AR-15….
French then links to an article he wrote for National Review -- complete with a picture of AR-15s “on sale while supplies last" -- which speaks of death threats he's received. (You will forgive me if I don’t link to the story. It’s not my job to feed the gibbering, moaning shade of William Buckley with the clicks he craves to ease his suffering in the shivering precincts of Hades.)
Upon reading French's chest-pounding discharge, I then gave what I believe is a reasoned, dispassionate, yea philosophical reply (edited here to eliminate the tweet-breaks):
And what if they come IN blasting with the "business end" of an AR-15? The Dayton guy killed 9 people in 30 seconds, with cops there who had the "business end" of their guns primed to go. God, the sickening faux-toughness of you cringing, rightwing cowards.
And by the way, I grew up in the so-called "real" America -- the white rural South -- that all you wingers have wet dreams about. And we slept with our goddamned doors unlocked. Why? Because back then there weren't a million fake tough-guys running around substituting AR-15s for their manhood.
And I'll tell you something else for nothing. I've had death threats ever since I started criticizing YOUR dipshit leader Bush Jr. in print years ago. I get them now from your fellow rightwing fake tough guys. And I wouldn't have one of your penis-substitutes in my house. Why?
Because I'm not a cringing little coward who would put my own children at risk with deadly weapons in the house just so I can do John Wayne cosplay oiling the "business end" of my AR-15. The "business end" of your oiled metal dildo won't keep you or your family safe from the gun culture you rightwing dipshits have been pushing for decades. YOU and all your fellow rightwing travellers have flooded the country with guns, even as your extremism -- yes, even the "Never-Trumpers" -- have pushed violence and hatred at every turn.
You want to protect your family? Then fight against the gun culture, fight against rightwing hatred, fight against the disempowerment and despair you rightwing extremists have advanced for decades, fight against the militarization and brutalization of our whole society which both you and your fellow travellers, the "centrist," interventionist neoliberal Democrats, have imposed on our collapsing, corroded, corrupted land.
"Business end of an AR-15." Jesus Christ, aren't you ashamed before your family to be so damned pathetic?
Read more:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/mobile/articles/manliness-is-a-warm-gun-bang-bang-shoot-shoot-
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See also:
http://chng.it/2HzNCJkNpZ
some bitter pills of gun control...
american guns at the source of immigration to the USA...
As the gun control debate resurfaces in the United States after every mass killings — the latest in El Paso and Dayton — US guns invade neighboring countries. A real scourge, they are used in many attacks and murders in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Jamaica, which has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, is one of the most affected countries, reports the New York Times in a lengthy survey released on August 25. However, the legislation is considered relatively restrictive, the license to carry weapons being issued under specific conditions (medical history check, legitimate reason to possess a firearm, automatic weapons prohibited ...). Some 45,000 legal weapons are in circulation in this country of nearly 3 million inhabitants.
Yet the Caribbean island is submerged by illegal guns. The authorities, who estimate that 200 firearms enter the country illegally each month, routinely request US authorities to examine weapons seized during police raids, on roads and at ports. Of the 1,500 weapons examined from 2016 to 2018, 71% came from the United States.
A weapon bought in South Carolina found in Jamaica
The course of a particular weapon could be established, from the United States to Jamaica, thanks to a ballistic analysis. In a country where firearms play a central role in crimes, names are even given to them to keep a count of the victims they make. This one, called Briana, will have made nine.
Originally, this 9 millimeter Browning was purchased in 1991 by a farmer from Greenville, South Carolina. The gun then disappeared for twenty-four years before suddenly being mixed with several bloodbaths in Jamaica, in three years. It will eventually be recovered by the Jamaican police after a shooting.
The erratic tracking of this weapon is far from a surprise. A law ratified in 1986 by President Reagan, under pressure from the National Riffle Association (NRA), prohibits the creation of a national firearms registry. If licensed arms dealers register their sales, they are generally not required to report them to the authorities. If a firearm is stolen, lost or given to a third party, statements to police stations are not always necessary. Tracking the 300 million firearms in circulation in the United States is an impossible mission.
"It's a typical gun crime," says Joseph Blocher at the New York Times, a law professor at Duke University. "They are almost all from a legal sale and are then transmitted, stolen or disappeared in another way before reappearing in a crime."
Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala ...
Jamaica is far from the only country in this situation. In Mexico, a ballistic study of firearms found at crime scenes indicates that 70% of them are of US origin, explained in May The Economist.
The rate of firearm homicide in Mexico has risen from 16% in 1997 to 66% in 2017. During these two decades, more than 16,000 Mexicans were killed by a weapon manufactured in the United States, against 14,542 Americans. during this same period. To sum up: an American weapon is more likely to kill in Mexico than at home.
How do these weapons cross the borders of the United States? They come mainly from Florida ports, hidden in the middle of other imported goods. In Honduras, where half of the unregistered weapons also come from the United States, smugglers are known to pack firearms in aluminum foil and immerse them in paint to prevent detection by X-ray equipment. when they do not just bribe customs agents.
Once in Mexico, the weapons end up in the hands of drug cartels or are sent to gangs in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Countries facing an epidemic of armed violence, pushing thousands of people every year to flee their home country. With as main destination the United States.
Read more:
https://www.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2019/08/27/la-circulation-des...
Translation by Jules Letambour.
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home-grown terror group: the NRA...
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed an official resolution that declares the National Rifle Association (NRA) a "domestic terrorist organisation".
Key points:In the wake of a number of recent mass shootings across the US, and specifically the shooting that killed three people at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in San Francisco, Supervisor Catherine Stefani introduced the bill in late July.
It was passed on Tuesday, accompanied by an official declaration denouncing the NRA and calling for urgent gun control action.
"The National Rifle Association musters its considerable wealth and organisational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence," the declaration read.
"The National Rifle Association spreads propaganda that misinforms and aims to deceive the public about the dangers of gun violence.
"The leadership of the National Rifle Association promotes extremist positions, in defiance of the views of a majority of its membership and the public, and undermines the general welfare."
Ms Stefani mentioned the rate of gun ownership in the US — a country with more guns than people, she said — and said that this action was "a step in fighting the negative action of the NRA".
Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-05/san-francisco-declares-nra-a-terr...
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six dead in chicago...
Various shootings left 35 people injured and six dead in Chicago this weekend [20-21 Augtst 2021]. Among the wounded are three teenagers.
At 9 AM Saturday, a gunman shot into a home, hitting a 63-year-old man while he sat on the couch. It’s the latest in a disturbing pattern of gun violence in victims’ homes.
A 19-year-old boy was shoot standing on the street just before 7 PM Saturday. The gunman shot him in the chest, but police do not have any suspects in custody. As a result of his injuries, the boy died.
Later, four people were injured in a mass shooting around 1 AM Sunday. A 17-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl suffered injuries. At the time of the shooting, they stood around a residence.
Then, roughly thirty minutes later, a 14-year-old started an argument with a group of people on the street. As a result, the group stabbed him twice, punched and kicked him before they shot him.
Read more: https://saraacarter.com/chicago-shootings-injure-35-kill-6-over-the-weekend/
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After a decline in deadly shootings, gun violence in US cities has been on the rise again since 2018.
Washington DC has called a public health crisis, despite the city having some of the nation's toughest gun laws.
So what can be done to address the problem, and which communities are hardest hit?
Video produced by Roderick Macleod and Alexandra Ostasiewicz
Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-58207384
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings
Note there is a discrepency between the piece at top and Wikipedia in the number of dead people on 20/21 August...
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