Saturday, November 3, 2018

Nature versus Nurture

The debate about Nature versus Nurture is a perfect example of a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy. The human character is made up of both hormones (Nature) and history (Nurture).

HORMONES (Nature) HISTORY (Nurture)

Your hormone levels and availability of receptors are inherited and regulated based on the programming of your genetics. Your history includes what you learn from your parents, school, church, your friends and the mass media.

Hormones and history play a role in lifestyle choices and affiliation. For instance, you are either generally happy or not. You may not be a happy person generally so you develop habits that contribute to the release of extra dopamine, such as certain drugs, alcohol, gambling, sky-diving, trolling on the Internet or other forms of risk-taking, running or other forms of intense exercise.

Masters and Johnson discovered that human sexuality is on a spectrum between homosexuality and heterosexuality, instead of the long-held either-or thinking. It's not a lifestyle choice, it's a genetic trait. People cannot be recruited into or out of homosexuality who are not already predisposed.

When you hate someone, a group or a situation, you are falsely attributing your hormone imbalance as being caused by that external source. Hate is a symptom of chronic personal frustration which indicates a hormone imbalance.

Your economic circumstances may contribute to your personal frustration and you may deal with your feelings through the aforementioned habits, or you can remember that you own your feelings.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Abject Consumerism

What are things most consumers don't think about most of the time?
  • The working conditions of the laborers who cultivate, raise, mine, refine, forge, build, transport, display, advertise and sell, the goods consumers want.
    • Wages
    • Benefits
    • Hours per shift, week, month or pay period.
    • Physical safety standards
    • Discrimination, favoritism, cronyism, sexual harassment.
  • The impact on the environment where the raw materials are extracted.
    • Erosion, flooding, fertilizer runoff, animal feces runoff, chemical contamination, air pollution, adjacent property values, 
  • The waste generated by what is left over after the goods are consumed.
    • Plastic in the oceans and landfills. chemicals seeping into rivers, aquifers and water tables.
  • The sustainability of the resources from which the goods derive.
    • Over-fishing depleted the main source of food in Somalia, leaving many with no choice but to become pirates.
    • Deforestation of the Amazon and Canada.
    • Depletion of soil nutrients.
    • Drying up water reservoirs and rivers.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness requires the following conditions:

  • Frequent reminders of lower class status through the mass media.
    • The portrayal of super-realistic lifestyles of people on television or in advertising.
      • You never see those people excuse themselves to use the restroom.
      • Perfect outfits and hairstyles, all the time.
      • Perfect bodies, always healthy and fit.
  • Frequent reminders of class lifestyle comparisons and identity.
    • The payments on your credit card or loan debt.
    • The high prices on fancy food items at the grocery store. You must settle for less, so you are less.
    • Unable to shop at stores other than those mocked by higher status people.
    • Unable to eat anything better than cheap, bland unenjoyable food.
    • Unable to afford "popular" brands of clothes, vehicles or toys.
  • Frequent reminders of class through denial of vital services due to lack of affordability..
    • Medical care
    • Dental care
    • Home repairs such as roof, heating and cooling, plumbing, insulation, siding, paint.
    • Transportation maintenance and repairs, like brakes, fluids, tires and lights.
    • Unable to own a car or pay for a drivers license.
Symptoms of people suffering from Learned Helplessness:
  • Anxiety
  • Frustration
  • Depression
  • Anger
  • Aggressive driving and road rage
  • Seeking the slightest faults in other people in order to feel better.
  • Feeling anger when someone at work who wasn't there as long as you, is paid the same as you.
  • Negative criticism instead of positive criticism.
    • Name-calling, public mockery of others' mistakes, "dressing down" someone.
  • Short temper
    • Frequent outbursts of anger in minor situations
  • Domestic violence
  • Substance abuse
  • Smoking: If you think you enjoy it, you are in denial.
  • Authority abuse
    • Making an employee's life a living Hell by scheduling him to work on a day he requested off months ago.
    • Murdering unarmed black people
The consequences of suffering from learned helplessness
  • People within the same class substrata blaming each-other for their circumstances, instead of blaming those who socially engineered Learned Helplessness
  • Delusional rationalizations justifying the above listed bad habits.
  • The willingness to accept employment for less pay than you can really afford.
    • Willingness to undercut fellow workers will earn you only contempt from the ruling class.
The Ruling Class is attempting to sow doubt about the truth of Learned Helplessness by calling the facts of our economy, a myth created by a cult of Populists.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The Engineering of Mental Illness: Weaponized Complexity

The gradually accumulating frustration you are feeling due to circumstances beyond your control, may be engineered. If you can keep a detailed list of every day-to-day or special circumstances that make you frustrated, even for just a moment. It may be possible to identify a pattern of manufacturing and ultimately the true source of your anxiety, depression, physical illness, chronic fatigue, etc.


Sunday, January 21, 2018

Anger is a developmental disability


When you're an adult, you should have the capacity for introspection, the ability to examine your own emotions.

According to many theories of cognitive development, by the age of 25 you should have full ownership of your emotions, and you should understand that you choose how to respond in any situation. You should know that anger is a completely inappropriate response to any situation.

When you take ownership of your feelings, you know that you choose how you feel, unless, like me, you suffer from chronic anxiety disorder, then negative thoughts and feelings will play on the surface more frequently. But since I own my feelings, I know that what I perceive around me is through a lens slightly tinted with negativity.

You feel any way you choose to feel. Everyone chooses how they feel unless they have a neurological disorder. I may not be able to choose not to feel anxious most of the time, but I at lease understand that the feelings of anxiety are mine alone.

That means that feelings are not any other person's fault. Take the fight-or-flight response any way you like, but don't let your emotions cloud the situation and make you unnecessarily violent.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Renters versus Employers

Employers are complaining that they cannot find workers because they don't want to pay wages high enough for workers to afford housing nearby. When wages do go up, landlords raise the rents further out of reach.


Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The Separation of Truth and Power

Morality is made up of empathy, fairness, and reason. If you have those skills you should feel guilty for not telling the truth. Part of the sociopathy diagnosis includes lacking empathy and fairness. Other conditions can then be applied, such as Narcissism and Megalomania.

People in power can develop contempt for journalism and refuse to be interviewed, but this contempt seems to have developed almost quantifiable stages of extremes to the point where someone such as the United States Ambassador to The Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, apparently has contempt for the media to such a degree that can only best be described by other sources here, as I myself have few words:
The news media, also known as the 4th Estate, serve to educate the public so they can make informed civic choices, but the public has grown cynical of the news media and cynical of congress, to such a degree that the majority of the public does not vote.