Happy Halloween

Working with Jigsaw

J. Krishnamurti on Death

The Privleged Lie

by Ragnar Redbeard
 
"Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought!

Too long right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted by false prophets!

No creed must be accepted upon authority of a "divine" nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted - no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!

He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.

The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success - to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us!

As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!

Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one can prosper.

Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action!

Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!

The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie - the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!

The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact - the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's knee - is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!

Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us"

Discrimination Against Men in the Justice System

Ideally men and women should receive the same sentence for the same crime.  In today’s world that is not the case.  A recent study by Sonja Starr, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan found that men receive sentences that are 63% higher than their female counterparts. 

The gender gap in sentencing is 6x higher than the racial gap between white people and people of color.  Furthermore women are 2x as likely to avoid incarceration after a conviction.  This is clearly an area where science and reason are absent from the institutions that govern us.   In many states we spend twice as much on each woman in prison as we do on each man.  To achieve real gender equality discrimination against men and women must be identified and remedied.  Neither gender should have to do more time in prison because of their biological sex.  

What is the resolution to this problem?

Certainly non-violent drug offenders and wrongfully convicted people should not have to do prison time.  Defendants often do not have enough resources to defend themselves properly.  Efforts should be made to make our legal system more equitable. 

Since 1973 the prison system has grown by more than 2 million people.  Why does the Land of the Free have more people in prison than any other nation?

For more information regarding this issue you can check out these articles from the University of Michigan and the Huffington Post:

http://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html

Grabbing Some Attention

This group of women went around grabbing men’s penises to raise awareness about prostate cancer. (not recently)

In this video a nurse examines men's testicles in the middle of a busy city:

 

Reminds me of...

I hadn't seen the Naked Gun in awhile but something reminded me of this scene. 

Inequality of Wealth Statistics

Ageism and its Discontents

Ageism is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age.

There is a good quote from the Omen 3 where the antichrist Damien Thorn talks about society’s disenfranchisement of young people.  Ageism doesn’t end when one turns thirty.  I am well into my thirties and still experience ageism.  Seniors experience ageism as well.  This leads me to ask, “How old does one have to be for their opinion to actually matter?”  It seems like there is a 10-15 year window between the time one is 40-60 years old and that is it. 

On young people:

“I mean, what is this arrogance that makes us
think that we know better than them?
We call them immature and naive. "Wait till
you're grown-up. Then we'll listen to you."
What we really mean is "Wait till you've
grown old. Then you'll think the way we do."
And so youth stands aside because
it has no other choice, and we set to work.
We ply them with our values,
we indoctrinate them with our mediocrity.
Until finally they emerge from
their brainwashing education
as so-called fully fledged citizens,
clipped, impotent, and above all safe.”

Dr. Death

The only crime Dr. Death ever committed was being oceans smarter than the vast majority of the U.S. population.  He believed in the complete autonomy of the individual to determine his or her own life.  The image that was given to him by the media did not do him justice.  There was a good movie about Jack Kevorkian that came out in 2010 called You Don't Know Jack.