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Chilled energy fixes me incomplete; writhing without sleep, I live an unfinished lie.
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Chilled energy fixes me incomplete; writhing without sleep, I live an unfinished lie. Here my thoughts and holes. Fill them in, please. I can't finish on my own. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Some of us will die keeping fools from fighting. There aren't many like me, I don't think. That's probably a bias. Maybe there are many that believe this. But, there are surely no shortage of fools, or cowards afraid to fight. In the end, I think that's the future. I think, by welcoming our violent nature, we are coming to a new time; an era where some exist to wait, to wait to stamp out the first fool to fight instead of negotiate. We are the next pressure. Social evolution is the next step, I think. Embracing, allowing, and creating systems that funnel our instincts to maximize capacity and minimize waste. |
| I was thinking about military frameworks; namely its structure, purpose, and control. The current system of military states (independent coalitions with immediately deploy-able forces) will not likely ever allow for sustained peace. Within the tide of men, one leader's mind will always change, one military will always be on the offensive and another will defend. As long as military power is a negotiating tactic, there's no reason to believe in a longer peace term (I don't think war can be avoided totally - little has changed in the way we conduct aggressive politics). I wondered what the military of the future would look like. If a country were to take the lead, what steps might they take to build a system of attack and protection that would simultaneously defend alliance nations as well as stamp out irrational hostilities. It's not like war isn't without purpose. The fight carries our brethren abroad, infects foreign women with a generation of peaceful mud-bloods (in case you didn't know, we're more apt to like someone related). I came up with an idea. It's more of a policy duo that covers every international conflict I can think of. (1) Sword and Shield. (2) Simple deployment algorithms. Unique, right? It requires a hard look at conflict and when outside nations should bother to get involved. Read on. My biggest beef with current military tactics is deploying the same minds, same people, and same weapons for offensive, defensive, and peacekeeping missions, because we've decided to put all of our resources into two disjointed sets: intelligence and awe. Most of our military is quite useless in this framework, unfortunately. Never will a situation arise where our current system could ever fully deploy - so, always, we're investing in training and technology that will never be properly used. I was an engineer for a while. I can tell you this, it is very difficult to design a gun you can use as a shield. You end up copping out and putting it in a tank or mounting behind armor. I've seen it. You can too at military.com. The same goes for defensive technologies. It is rather difficult to have a 2 ton plate of armor get up and shoot someone (though the reflexive armor is pretty darn cool). The problem here isn't the engineers. It's the leaders that believe in total war trying to create flexible mobile fighting forces for sustained combat - the same mode of war we've been in since the dawn of man. (1) Sword and Shield. The Sword: An ultimate force active only against hostility. The Shield: An ultimate force of passive defense, deploy-able and stationary. **Here's the trick. No warrior gets both. Don't allow it. Trying to equip all of that is unnecessary anyway unless you're doing police work. The level of sophistication demands that both Sword and Shield be free to explore research and development of their own accord with the governing bodies only responsible for allocating total funding to the both. There need not be, and should not be, an intermediate controller between organizations. Intelligence will be vital for both, and so I suggest that units involved with information processing/data collection continue to do so independently and as a part of the policing force for whose jurisdiction they are tasked to observe. (2) Simple algorithmic deployment Go or No Go. **Done. As honorable as it is to save countries around the world, to promote stability, there are longer lasting ways of doing so than killing off their leaders and recycling locals until a good company comes along (and by company I mean multinational corporation with solid enough interests to control the ruling party no matter how disorderly they are). The President, the Senate, and the House need only agree on one thing - did we get attacked violently, with the intent to do physical (not economic, nor political, nor libel) harm by killing one or more individuals of the alliance where those individuals did not commit any known illegal act with obligatory sentencing. If the answer is 'yes', then sword wipes out every trace of the hostility, all the way down to the foundation: every gun and all ordinance destroyed, every route of transport demolished, every harboring facility leveled, every person with any knowledge killed with methods to do so as swiftly and completely as currently possible in the most economic fashion available. End of story. If anyone has the balls to attack, and our leaders have the guts to say to approve the intelligence communities assessment (list of targets), than Sword is unleashed. Within days if not hours, many will die. Then Sword is sheathed. The list of targets is published publicly. Humanity can decide if we were off or close to the mark. Next time, sword will be sharper, and sharper, and sharper, and the intelligence community will have the unbearable task of deciding who dies. Once unsheathed, Sword can not be stopped, as there is no direct control of their operations in government (there should not be). Once the choice is made, it is best to let it play out like an experiment. Otherwise, there is no way to gauge if the intelligence community is in fact doing their job, or if Sword is capable of the level of destruction for which it is tasked. This is much different than an alliance military. This is two sets of programs, one to develop methods to destroy, the other committed to limiting damage of attack. Shield will always be developing better preventive measures, better sensors, stronger buildings, and more effective screening tactics. Sword will always be developing weapons of destruction, massive and surgical. For if it could be, the blade of Sword would be drawn so swift as to only be a glimmer, so fast it would seem an eternity before blood ever touched the ground, long enough to decide if we were right and righteous in our decision. What did I say? |
| You keep coming. You keep reading. I see the views. What do you want to see. I'm just wondering. Don't worry if you think any answer might dissuade my proper rants or stop a raging rave of emotion I deem necessary to sculpt into words. I am curious. Why do you keep reading? I would like to know I might try to please, even if I don't. I would like to make, on occasion, to say, that is, something someone wanted to read, needed to read, resounding, even. Yeah, kids. I don't care what genre. Within each are all elements of man. It would be difficult to escape our nature when expressing ourselves. Even in math, look at all the damned coefficients that make no sense, all the relations that so easily could be unity, or our dismissal of other's coefficients by the ingratiating proportionality sign. Never mind. I don't know how to ask in such a way you won't give me a crap answer. I believe, truly, in your good intent. It's just, a great answer to an awful question is still as useful as mud pie - which isn't' useless at all, just not what I want. And, it's all about what I want, because I'm writing. I guess it doesn't matter. For all your advice, I could probably post fluff pieces and check the stats to see what criteria draws attention. Still, it's not popularity I want. I just want to have the discussion right. I want to know the message is there and might come back, one day, in a form that makes me, myself, greater. That makes no sense. Reciprocal altruism is a lot to hope for in a one-sided conversation. Still, maybe a voice will punch me solid in the block. Words will rip. I might just learn something. Because, as much as I don't want to admit it, there's a purpose to my writing. At some point in my life, I decided it a worth investment of my time. I really wish I knew why. I think, if I knew what I was getting, I could find my voice. If I find my voice. Well, I don't know what happens then. Power, maybe. Satisfaction? Certainly not happiness, no. I want to know what's working, how it's working. What the hell am I saying? That's the question. Answer it. I'll start posting it at the end of all my blogs. What did I just say? |
| I was thinking about ideals. I thought about frameworks of emotions and evolutionary cognitive responses to stimulus and stress. I thought and thought, "What always works? What are doing despite bad politics, bad education, bad anything?" I came to a conclusion: Ignorance is pain and poor expectations. For me, this is profound. For years, I was the adage "Ignorance is Bliss." My life, to this point, has taught me only that ignorance serves no one and nothing. My next question was how does this shape a political ideal? The answer came quickly. Don't give incentives for mistakes. Life and death, success and failure, are inherent to humanity. There is a monstrous opportunity cost to buffering failure: failing to to pay for success. Applying this is hard and cold. But right now, I don't have a better answer. Of course, getting to the root of things, seeing the problems that actually need to be fixed, and differentiating the stress of living from the investments of tomorrow, is very difficult. Morals get in the way. They shouldn't, I don't think. Not when a coalition's money is at stake. Am I small government? No. Am I big government? Absolutely not? What am I? Efficient government means nothing without a way to test efficiency, which requires those root goals again. Do I have root goals? Are there many? Just one? Just one, I think. Increase the coalition's capacity. If you're an evolutionary psychologist, you'll understand what that means. Basically, any decision must increase the net ability of the group to compete and perform, both within and without the coalition. Systems must have failure built in. This isn't the case right now. It's always about having everyone succeed. How much waste is there buffering bad choices instead of rewarding good ones? Incentives are interesting little buggers. They don't necessarily act in the best interest of the individual, or the group. Incentives just increase the number of people making a decision for whatever reason. They don't create decisions. They don't take them off the table. They just open the floodgates, push the tide of man along a path. Understand, then, that any aide to failure is an incentive to fail, not to succeed. Likewise, any aide to success is an incentive to succeed, and not to fail. Simply put, if there's no money for failures, people won't make the choice to fail as often - won't let themselves fail. What about safety nets? What about the people that want to fail early? Suicide. What about the elderly? The young? Simple, again. So simple. Whatever the leaders choose to do, choose to invest in (as they don't 'do' the 'doing' much themselves) you only reward success. You only pay for programs, for people, that increase the coalition's capacity. It's so simple, because if you don't, then you're paying to slow us down. If you pay for people to drain, they drain. Now, some would drain anyway, regardless. Paying, though, giving incentives for being negative aspects of society, only serves to create a larger populace of wasters. Simple as that. Is this sad? No. Why would it be? Nature selects for success. Why in Hell should humans select for those elements that decrease our ability as a group, as a race? How profound for me. Is medicine expensive? Yes. Should it be. Yes. Believe me, if it wasn't money preventing everyone from being immortal, it would government telling those not up to spec to die. Why? Because we'd have to. What about sustainability? What about growth? Again, and God it's so easy, the choice is simple. Pay for nothing that decreases the group's ability to perform. There are a lot of small questions, with complex consequences, with uncertain outcomes. Sorting, analyzing, each step in a great plan is a monumental job. The complexity arises not from morals. The hard part has nothing to do with right or wrong. What's difficult is building a model that approximates the answer: positive or negative? Luckily for us, after launch, you can see things crash. What I don't understand is why shoot the same rocket again and expect it to fly? Why would one person? Easy. Hope. Why would leaders of the group? Easy. Hope. Because one man is just that, it's imperative to have a baseline requirement for any action. Because you can't stop variety, risk, random expression, it's imperative that the big decisions are all made algorithmically. Should we fund this? Will it make us better? Simple. Someone does the work. A group of researchers analyze society; analyze moves in sentiment; construct models that give a plus (a go) or a minus (no go). Execute. Wait. Were we wrong (drop it. let it die)? Were we right (more money)? So simple. What's this tell me. What's this framework, if it's near true, mean about politics today? The power plays are a game. The various plans and approaches, the screaming and shouting, is all a game. The winner will always be one of them. The loser will always be the group. The group loses every time. How profound. The most powerful men in the world are so..unimportant. Because, all they can do is accelerate the natural course one way or another. They can slow what will be done, or bring the unimaginable to life faster than any expected. They aren't special. The models are. Humanities ability to approximate plus or minus is all that matters. The leaders ability to set aside instinct and listen and react are all that matter. It is clear to me now that our current system of government is incomplete. There's another stage. Another system that hasn't built in. Checks and balances. That's what made us move so fast. The fact that someone could see and say that leaders were operating in opposition to gain opened to door. Again, rating gain is hard, harder than the best of the best can manage (for anyone tracking mutual fund performance, you will understand). Basically, in order to know whether or policy or project is go, one needs to know if it will succeed or not and if it's consequence lends to greater capacity for the coalition, for the species, or less. For some things, this is easy. We know science always brings greater capacity - it is it's sole purpose, to be able to model and manipulate more accurately, more effectively. Hence, any investment in science is likely a good one. Education is required for science to succeed. So, one must invest in education if one is to compete in science. Everything else is suspect. And even investments in science and education must hold to the simple rule: plus or minus. Obviously, you quickly reach a conundrum. How do you know if an uninvented object can further human capacity? That's what dreams are for. What do you dream it will do? Will it save us? Will it empower us? That might be the best option we have at the moment. For everything, keep decisions simple. Are you rewarding failure? Then you're hurting humanity, whether you like it or not. Don't be ignorant about what gives incentive. Every act, every reciprocation, all attention, are incentives. You must always look to the net incentive. Picking up the child after they've fallen, will, on average, not net an incentive to fall if the fall was more painful than the helping hand was comforting. But think..... |
| I'm sorry. But, I'm not. Not, at least, sorry for what you think; for what I said. That's my fault. I'm sorry I think of you as a friend. I take advantage of that feeling in me. I press, even, an intimacy onto you that doesn't exist, I know. I promise I'll stop. I'll find it elsewhere and stop bugging you. I need you, though. I need you now. I think...I think you're the only person I know with the sense of family...the right sense of family..oh, the only person with that image of family...mmm. You're really the only person I can talk to about this crap, so I put it on you. For that, I'm sorry. My trusting you, believing you're a good sounding board for my worries...It's out of respect. I respect you; trust you; as much as I love you. So, thank you for being there for me. I really can't thank you enough. It would take a lifetime. **Doesn't that sound like a proposal. No way I can put this in a Christmas card. She'd freak out. |
| If I live everyday open to understanding, and chief to change, I think I might live my dying day right and righteous - the day before I begin to forget what was worth knowing, whenever that comes. What people so rarely consider is how difficult it can be to garner knowledge from those who would not teach, but preach, and how easy it can be to die early, ever forgetting on the eve of what is important for sickly replacement lessons never meant to be understood. I think this is my 2AM fancy way of saying though everyone has a lesson to teach, and everyone I meet could make me a greater person, I risk contagion if I stray too close to the diseased. Contempt is an evolutionary trait that keeps us from wasting our resources on those untrustworthy and without capacity, I believe. And so, with honest contempt, I say many of whom I met I wish I didn't, and with I spent more time with the few who mattered. But, on realizing this, everyone is gone. I cut them away when I felt myself stray. And now, I have no one to talk to, and learn so little these days. I want a vacation. I need a wife. A man, -Vince |
| I think, maybe, when I get to 500 views...I think, just then, a switch will click in my understanding. Why do you read this crap? I don't know, but I couldn't be more thankful. I'm just a kid, not a young one, but dumb enough just the same. I'm not particularly original, or all that interesting. I like girls and pretty places. I think about sex too much. I like to sleep. And...and I love to write, and love knowing someone might 'want' to read it. Isn't that strange, my wanting to affiliate with strangers? I don't know you. You're just a number; a view. I appreciate it, though. It keeps me going... Thanks. |
| I think, maybe, when I get to 500 views...I think, just then, a switch will click in my understanding. Why do you read this crap? I don't know, but I couldn't be more thankful. I'm just a kid, not a young one, but dumb enough just the same. I'm not particularly original, or all that interesting. I like girls and pretty places. I think about sex too much. I like to sleep. And...and I love to write, and love knowing someone might 'want' to read it. Isn't that strange, my wanting to affiliate with strangers? I don't know you. You're just a number, a view. I appreciate it though. It keeps me going... Thanks. |
| I have a few roommates. It's a big place. We're comfortable. One of them is Muslim from Iran. He'd been walking cocky denouncing idiotic western approaches to foreign politics, and I decided to tear him a new one. I asked him: "What is the Nation of Islam doing about the polarization of Western society against a radicalizing population of Muslims?" He said, "It's wrong man. To think that way is wrong." Understand, English is his second language. I was likely speaking quickly, maybe he didn't get it. It's ok. I repeated the question. Still no answer. So, I asked another one: "Historically, Islam has violently conflicted with every native or colonizing society it's encountered, eventually. Since the 'Golden Age of Islam' every time a concentrated group of Muslims had an economic or territorial dispute with a modern (diplomatic/capitalist, socialist, or communist) peoples, they've reacted violently. Today, both governments in the Philippines (Catholic) and Thailand (Buddhist) are rethinking their policy toward Muslim immigration because centers of Islam have generated enough radical elements to spell violence and disharmony in the areas given to them - in both cases, to my knowledge, land, aid, and diplomatic relations were offered only to be met with contempt, hostility, and violence. Why is that? Is this to be expected in the future? What about in America, where Muslim populations are currently dispersed, but density in certain areas is increasing? How is the Nation of Islam addressing this view to insure we DON'T commit genocide?" He had no answer. Again, maybe I was speaking too quickly. So we switched to war tactics. He said, "Do you think it's right for soldiers to kill civilians when they are at war with terrorists?" I replied, "Are you sure you want to put it in terms of wrong and right? What about the terrorist who uses his family as a human shield to fight a war he cannot win with the tactics he is using? Terrorist military leaders are well aware that killing civilians, especially those of THEIR OWN PEOPLE, does not win wars - in fact, it's how you lose them. The only purpose it serves is to polarize the remaining population, oppressed under the terrorist regime (when terrorist sympathizers outweigh moderate civilians, it's considered a revolution by the way, and then full out war might be waged with regional resources when the governing bodies are overthrown). " He said, "It's different in Islam. Islam is not like that. You know of Jihad, right. Only if we are attacked, can we commit Jihad." I put the fact he didn't answer my question aside. I was speaking quickly, and maybe he didn't understand. I put forth, "But the framework of Islam allows any threat to the religion or practice of it to be conditions for Jihad." He said, "We believe differently than Americans. Yes, if our religion is in danger, we fight." I had to say, "But, you kill your own people directly. How is it alright for your Jihadists to fight amongst civilians, when Western soldiers only engage from designated outposts?" He said, "If it is Jihad, fighters will do what they need to win." I finished him with, "But, the terrorist leaders know that killing your own people will never win. The fighters know shooting from amidst civilian populations will bring collateral death. They know, from history, that what they're doing only serves to destroy their people, to radicalize them, to turn them into the Jihad as well." He didn't reply. I continued, "My biggest question isn't even that - it's why, culturally, Muslims protect terrorists from police action in their own towns and abroad. How is the terrorist serving his neighbors if he risks their lives with bomb-making or retaliation from invading forces? Why not work in the desert, like they're supposed to. Why don't you call out against these people, remove them from society, say they are enemies of Islam?" He understood me. I left. He called his uncle, and in Arabic told him I was an American soldier and asked if America is going to be a problem for Iran. I didn't tell him I trained as a translator. He doesn't need to know. In fact, who the f*** is his Uncle? Who knows who, what, and where I am, that has no business knowing? I hope he's being watched. I hope his and all his friends and family's phones are being tapped. Yeah, I profile. Why? Because, it's what humans do to recognize potential threats. You tell me, someone, does Islam inherently hold the capacity for violent interaction, more so than any other religion widely practiced today? I don't know. I probably wouldn't mind if Israel blew the f*** out of the rest of the Middle East, though. Honestly, what do we lose. It's not like we'd lose any oil, any money, or any trading partners. I'm just sayin'. If an Iranian can't answer these questions, who can? If the Islamic community fails to face the polarization of Western society, what's to stop another genocide? I think people take for granted how hard democracy is, how hard progressive peace is. Who will answer these questions to the world, before the world asks and finds its own answers? |
| If a 'relationship' concedes some mutual exchange of resources, what is Love? "What is Love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more." That might be the most accurate description I've ever seen. Love is the temporary reprieve, the end of the co-evolutionary arms race, the treatise of arms for the sole purpose of raising a child (approximately seven years/reproductive opportunity). Ladies beware. Love doesn't exist without the potential for child bearing. And, if no child is bore, what most consider 'Love' late in life is really a long, deep, relationship (Relationships, by the way, are social bonds proportional to the quantity/quality of mutual resource exchange and the time spent together. That is how our brains work. Our hearts pump blood. It makes no sense whatsoever to put any other functions into something so important as a heart. It already has your life on the line. Stop giving it more responsibility. It's bound to have a panic attack). Don't confuse your best friend for your soul mate. She'll leave you when a rich, fertile, bestial thing comes walking by. Or worse, she'll sleep with him and con you into raising the baby. Again, this is how we work. He's just waiting for that twenty something to bend over and say, "Come here, Daddy." We're that easy. Don't think we're not. And, don't think we'll tell you. We'll leave her a single mother and come back to our rich, dry, wife, and actually BE happy. Yeah, that's a happy man. All the sex, none of the worry. We're built for it. Don't think we're not. Did you know: 10% of all children born in western societies are being raised by someone other than their biological father? Did you know the men raising these children don't know, because either the woman didn't check, forgot, or forgot to tell them? Cuckoldry it's called. One in ten fathers you know could be a cuckold. Does that make you want to test your kids? It should, if you're a man. If you're a woman, don't let your man read this. Cheers, -Vince PS I don't think any of this is evil or wrong. It's how we arrived where we are today, whether we like it or not - the liking of which might be biologically adapted as well (probably is). |
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