None of you have the slightest clue what it's like to be an intellectual highly empathic person. To be a genuinely great person. But I'm in a fantastic mood so I'll enlighten you.
Being an intellectual means knowing just how high human potential reaches. It's fucking amazing. It's stratospheric. Queen barely does it justice in Princes of the Universe:
We're the princes of the universe
Here we belong, fighting to survive
In a world with the darkest powers
Yeah, here we are, the pinnacle of a billion years of biological evolution. Here we belong, born to be kings of our home galaxy. Born to build 100 billion Dyson spheres. Born to birth a race of immortal near-omnipotent and -omniscient beings. That's our human potential.
And what part of that human potential is realized? What part of the empathy, the passion, the intellect, the curiosity, the knowledge, the creativity, the desire for progress and freedom is realized? Next to nothing. Just barely enough for some people to realize how sickening, how disgusting, how repulsive is the monumental waste of it all.
Instead of living in peace and justice, we've got wars and brutality. Instead of eradicating all diseases, we've got scrambling by greedy ignorant doctors in filthy hospitals. Instead of preventing diseases as a social responsibility, we've got an industry of snake oil salesmen peddling "cures" and "treatments".
Instead of education, we've got propaganda. Instead of thoughtfulness we've got groupthink and knee-jerk paranoia. Instead of empathy and caring, we've got rabid hatred. Instead of freedom and democracy, we've got totalitarian dictatorships (like the USA's) and oppression by the rich (in Western Europe). Instead of industrialism and progress, we've got stagnation and "sustainability". And on and on and on.
Being an intellectual, a real intellectual who cares nothing for their status or ego, means knowing everything about the ignorance, the oppression, the stagnation, the backwardness, the poverty, the starvation and the internecine genocidal warfare that are constantly afflicting human civilization just about everywhere on this planet.
And being highly empathetic, being the kind of anti-psychopath that's the exact opposite of everything the USA and Britain stand for (ie, "cool" apathy, serial killers, unremitting search for power and forever grinding of steel boots in human faces), means SUFFERING. It means suffering at the very thought of what the world is.
It means CONSTANT unremitting suffering. It means constant FRUSTRATION. Frustration like you've never experienced in your miserable little lives. It means HATRED like you might have towards the monster that raped and murdered your 3 year old child. It means being grim and hateful and angry and above all FRUSTRATED at one's inability to do anything about it all!
Genuine caring when coupled to genuine understanding means constant suffering, constant depression, constant misery. It means being lost in that hopeless little scream. It means unending torture just about every day of every month of every year of your entire fucking life....
Until you find the solutions. Beautiful solutions. Every single last one. Solutions that you know you can implement. Because they're self-sustaining and you just have to set them in motion.
Then it's an absolute flip. Absolute fucking flip. The anticipation, the excitement, the fucking RELIEF from never-ending pain. It's fucking ECSTASY. Except better! It's pure fucking joy.
So you know what? None of you are anything close to being good people. You live your entire lives not caring the least little bit about your fellow human beings, not one way or another. Oh you care about pretending, enough to make some despicable symbolic gesture like giving to "charity", but you don't give a fuck whether poverty is actually eradicated.
You don't care! The existence of poverty on this world, the same world you live in, hasn't got the power to move you. Hasn't got the power to depress you. Hasn't got the power to make you suffer. Hasn't got the power to give you joy at the mere thought of its pending, inevitable eradication.
I care. And that's why I'm a great person. And you're just scum. But I'm in such a fantastic mood that I don't give a damn. I'll share my joy even with you.
I have work to do now. Goodbye scum. I'll see you in a couple decades when I'm done.
And if anybody (which I doubt, but I live to be surprised) actually wants to do anything about this miserable civilization's problems (every single last one of them) and can put up with a grinning laughing maniac for the duration, you know how to reach me.
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23 comments:
What are you going to do?
What do you care? You can't even be bothered to leave a name.
I feel the same way you do. Being a computer engineer, I'm tired of living each day next to sociopaths (most programmers are mentally handicapped emotionally). Some of them are objectivists, others are aspies (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1127451)
I've been watching all this potential for a highly empathetic society, and yet our CULTURE is killing us.
For millions of years nature has been our constant enemy. Now, our culture is driving us into extinction. This depresses me every single day, it drives me crazy. I live in a 3rd world country, where people suffer from hunger right in front of my eyes. I've experienced in loco all of this and it makes my life worse every day.
It sounds like we've got some things to talk about. Drop me a line on gmail, the rest of my email address is kinda obvious.
I've got all kinds of plans in mind. Most of them are to nullify the corrosive effects of stupidity and/or lust for power.
Actually, I just realized, one of my plans IS indeed to radically increase empathy. You'd probably be interested in it, at least to know about it. For one thing, it has a constant and relatively low cost for its global scale.
I have no plan to solve world hunger that's better than the current linear plans employed. That's where benefits are linear to the costs. But if you solve empathy then in the long term, the political and economic problems solve themselves.
In any case, I hope to hear from you soon.
Envie-me um e-mail, a sério.
yes, we should contact each other and talk :)
please, add me at gmail chat/google talk or msn, I'm online most of the time: boboniboni@gmail.com
I do believe that if we solve empathy, then in the long term, the political and economic problems solve themselves. That is also why I'm very cautious about any serious development in the AI field (AGI,FAI). Hence why I agree with most of your rantings about AI researchers. But I think the very core of AI development will have to think seriously about empathy before even dreaming about intelligent learning among organic robots and "synthetic" robots. Hell, maybe we will destroy each other before dreaming with properly investigating the cognitive code inside our brain.
The song you quoted is not about humans
And here we have another angry man trying to change the world, one blog post at a time.
I really don't know what you're trying to do by insulting me and calling me an "asswipe" and a "worthless scumbag".
Do you honestly think it will make me see the error in my ways and change me into a better person?
No.
In fact, you just create more animosity between us, which is not helping.
It's hilariously ironic that you claim to be a genuinely good person when in one of your blogs you suggest a plan that requires mass murder of over 20,000 people. That's something that would come out of the mouth of a sociopath.
Gee, I guess you weren't lying when you said most of America consisted of sociopaths. (I'm making the assumption you live in America, I apologize if I'm wrong).
It's also ironic that you explain that the root of all problems is hatred. Yet you titled one of your blogs "Hating the World and the People in It".
Let me ask you something, am I missing the irony, or are you just an idiot. (By the way, did I forget to mention that idiots are the bane of humanity and should be exterminated?)
No, to be honest actually you clearly seem to be an intelligent person, and yet you seem to be wasting all of it ranting aimlessly on a blog and insulting anyone who does not agree with your viewpoints down to the letter.
I see all this potential in you, and I see it wasted.
Sound familiar?
Oh, and just curious, have you found the solutions to the wasting of human potential? The "beautiful solutions" that are "absolute fucking flip" that bring "pure fucking joy"?
Probably not. You seem a tad too angry to be living with the "fucking ECSTASY" that were promised with these solutions.
So until you find these "solutions" you can stop blogging about trivial things like Wizards in Early MUDs and MOOs.
But then again, this is your blog so you can do whatever the fuck you want. Unlike you, I respect freedom of speech.
Oh and by the way, I enjoyed reading your blog about how Pandora should end. That's one thing we agree about at least.
Have a nice day!
> It's also ironic that you explain that the root of all problems is hatred.
It takes a vast stretch of the imagination to come up with that lying tripe from reading my blog. No asswipe, the SOLUTION to the world is hatred. Hatred of injustice, hatred of stagnation, hatred of hypocrisy. Hatred of you.
The PROBLEM of the world, and I have said it over and over, is IDIOCY. Oh and I also identify EVIL and APATHY. And you've got to be some kind of fucking moron to think that hatred is evil. Like fuck it is!
Hatred is not evil. Love is not good!
Dark Is Not Evil and Good Is Not Nice.
Empathy, altruism, ethics, morality, politeness, and kindness, are ALL entirely different concepts. Not a single one of them entails any other!
Love of the world is provably evil since loving something means caring for it AS IT IS. Well, this world is overwhelmingly monstrous and evil. So loving the world translates to trying to preserve evil and monstrosity. Since loving the world means preserving evil, loving the world IS evil.
Hatred has its just place in the world. In fact, it is NOT POSSIBLE for anyone in this world to be happy in it if they are genuinely and solely concerned with morality and justice.
Hatred is a destructive emotion just as love is a constructive one. But construction is not good, and destruction is not evil. As proof, look no further to people's constant construction of evil. Furthermore, construction and destruction are two sides of the same coin. One needs empty space in order to construct anything at all.
There are no good or bad emotions. Only good or bad values. Justice, morality, empathy and passion are good. Narcissism and apathy (the signature values of Americans and English respectively) are evil.
I guess I don't care all that much. Still, if you were actually going to do something interesting, I'd love to hear about it. Are you doing something interesting? How are you working toward solutions to the global problems that so obviously preoccupy you?
What I find interesting and what other people find interesting tend to be very different subjects. Considering you baldly state you don't care all that much, I'm pretty sure you won't be interested. Logic is a bitch, ain't it?
Myself, I'm rather curious why you hope I do something you consider interesting when you aren't interested in the problems involved. Except the obvious answer to that puzzle is that you're only interested from a technical perspective. Like an engineer.
In which case, please read engineers are inferior life forms
Oh and just so you know, what I plan to do, the technical solutions I've come up with, are downright fascinating. I just have no intention of discussing them with an engineer since I don't get along with people who spit on creativity. Unless the kinds of subjects you've inquired about are specifically and actively avoided, they invariably end up offending me in such a way that I desire to punch them in the testicles.
The only productive relationships an engineer can have with a designer are 1) active non-interaction, and 2) subordination to the designer's will. You're not my subordinate so we'll have to not interact.
Well, I don't care all that much because I think that the chances are pretty much nil that you are going to come up with anything that helps solve the problems you're preoccupied by. That said, I would love to be proved wrong!
One reason I think the chances are nil is that (just to pick one example) you specify that "to radically increase empathy" is one of your "plans" to help out the world, and yet judging from your writings you're one of the least empathetic people I've ever interacted with. You judge and dismiss people before you've had any meaningful experience with them. That is the essence of lack of empathy. (The fact that you refer to your plan as "solv[ing] empathy" is icing on the cake.)
I suspect your hesitation to share is because you actually have no workable ideas at all. Or if you do, you can't get off your high horse long enough to explain them. Either way, it seems you have little to contribute.
You can suspect anything you like, I don't care. Nor do I care anything at all about you. Your transparent ploy to "challenge" me is ludicrous. The fact you're incapable of logic is obvious.
You haven't the least notion how logic can be applied to comprehend people before having what you consider "meaningful interactions" with them. The use of your pathetic ploy when it's obvious I care neither for your opinion nor anyone else's is yet more evidence of your crushing mental disability.
Everything you've ever said, from the very first, is riddled in contradictions. I am only mildly curious about just what the fuck you are. I do know that whatever you may be, you can never be the kind of person I will respect. You're far too mentally deficient.
I do not answer to inferiors.
You've offered no insights, you've followed no implications, you've not read my blog, you've no interest in the world's problems.
These things mean that you're uncreative, incapable of analysis, you're lazy and on top of that, you're egotistical.
You're incapable of even imagining iconoclasy or dissidence. Which means you're a mindless groupthinker.
You think you're my equal when in truth you are 3-4 rungs beneath me. You actually imply you are my superior that I should put genuine effort to answer your casual off the cuff questions.
My superiority over you offends you - you accuse me of being on a "high horse" like an officer over the lowly peon that you are. As if that were a bad thing.
My dismissal of inferiors like you offends you. You claim that I cannot possibly recognize you are an inferior and unworthy of my attention without "having meaningful interactions" with you. As if!
Both those mean you're not just lazy and egotistical but arrogant and probably narcissistic. The fact that a narcissist would accuse others of lack of empathy ... is no surprise at all.
After all, mentally deficient people frequently accuse others of their own failings. This is called projection.
And mentally deficient people who are incapable of logic are incapable of discerning logical contradictions, thus incapable of detecting their own hypocrisies.
Taken together, the last two mean that yes, you probably ARE narcissistic and not merely arrogant.
I don't think I've made it clear yet, so I will.
I despise people like you.
Dismissing you is my version of being nice to you.
Well, Dick, I wouldn't call writing multiple responses to each of my comments "dismissing" me; but if you spend as much energy solving empathy as you do projecting your insecurities and neuroses onto blog commenters, you might make a difference after all!
Is it just me, or does Richard seem like a terrorist who just wants to kill 95% of the world? Hey Rich, remember to post updates on your latest "achievement", or make sure you make the headlines :D
It seems to me that most of the problem is just greed. It's unbelieveable to to me how greedy most people are, I don't think we're born this way but rather it is beaten into us that the world is MONEY MONEY MONEY and nothing else matters.
Take a mans $200,000 car and put it on a traintrack. On a different part of the track there is a child running. Well the train is coming, and is on route to kill the child. The man could either divert the train toward his car or kill the kid.
Now if you ask the American public (I'm American and we undoubtadly have the most corrupt and greedy nation) what to do, probably 99% would say save the kid. But at the same time they aren't giving a substantial amount of their money to charity. Mine is a nation of hypocrits and bastards comsumed with lust for power and money.
That really depends on what you mean by 'greed'. If you define it formally like sociologists do in terms of payoff matrices in game theory, then the four options are:
* greed - maximizing your payoff
* altruism - maximizing others' payoff
* cooperation - maximizing joint payoff
* competition - maximizing the difference between yours and others' payoffs
in which case the statement that greed is the cause of the world's problems is flatly wrong. Competition is the cause of the world's problems.
If you try to define greed loosely or even just substitute 'evil' or 'egotism' or anything else, then you run into the problem that psychologically, the categorization 'projection, reversal, empathy' makes a lot more sense.
If you then switch to saying that competition is the root cause of the world's problems, then you run into the fact that positive competition vs negative competition have opposite effects. Positive competition (the American kind - a race to the top) is vastly more destructive socially and psychologically than negative competition (kneecapping those who get too far ahead). And positive competition isn't even good technologically.
You run into other problems if you try claiming that power-seeking is evil. Adler claimed that 90% of human behaviour is explainable in terms of power-seeking. He is wrong. In fact, people do spend an inordinate amount of time seeking power, but that's because it's a prerequisite for ANYTHING you might wish to do, to have, or to be. Except homeless, powerless and dead.
The best that can be said is that anyone who seeks power *intrinsically*, and this is very difficult for most people to judge, has a very primitive mind (uni-leveled in the Dabrowski schema). But Reiss' theory proves (to me) that there are many more other types of primitive minds.
Actually, anyone possessed of pseudo-core values is psychologically damaged, and pseudo-core values can be anything at all. Explaining what they are though is a whole other topic. I mention them only because Power, Freedom and Glory are frequent pseudo-core values.
interesting post but who was Queen, I don't get the reference
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