Maria Montessori and Ayn Rand: A foundation for a complete model of human development

The famous although largely academically ignored Montessori method and the increasingly relevant philosophy of Objectivism have many things in common. The Montessori method provides the foundation for the formation of an integrated and individual intelligence, and Objectivism provides the philosophical explanatory framework and the model for its extrapolation into the adult formation of ethics, work, and personal life. While roaming the internet I happened to find this particularly insightful article which discusses the relationship of the two in detail. I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

http://www.expert-tennis-tips.com/maria-montessori.html

The Communists Have Landed

I have to say that I am weary of looking in the news and seeing socialist / communist rhetoric spewing forth from Lord Obama and his cronies. Not only is the government buying out US companies on the cheap (a de facto nationalization strategy as illustrated by act such as this: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aqOyfIA14XQ8&refer=us ) but the very question of the propriety of nationalization is a total non-issue in the current political discourse. All that the so-called defenders of capitalism can do is equivocate on the practicality of doing so. All they can do is equivocate on the potential harm to the people. Nobody at all seems to be concerned with whether such action is morally right. Nobody at all seems to remember a little thing like human rights, rights which our nation was supposed to believe are INALIENABLE. Admittedly, most of Obama's supporters probably don't even recognize what the word inalienable even means, much less what the concept of human rights entails. No, they equate rights with an open-ended hunger. Their concept of rights is an infinite demand on what they percieve as a mystically infinite supply of naturally growing wealth. Shake the tree all you want, there'll still be more fruit on it tomorrow, right? But they don't seem to realize that if you cut down the tree, haul it over into your yard and prop it up against a shed--it will not yield fruit next year.

Now, don't get me wrong, I thing Wagoner was a fruitcake. He went crying to the government for help, and sure enough they gave him the help he so desperately deserved--a solid kick in the ass. But the point is that the free market would've sent Wagoner packing anyways and without sacrificing taxpayer money and without setting a dangerous precedent for the arbitrary government nationalization of American industries. Let the idiot CEOs fail, let the brilliant ones prosper, and let us all work to fill the jobs created by the ingenuity and excellence of the very best productive minds around us. The only jobs a government can provide are those which enable it to file, index, sort, encage, punish, and monitor the rest of us. This is because a government's sole function is to maintain and enforce the rule of law. All it can do is threaten, fine, and imprison people. A government doesn't create wealth. It produces nothing of value. It's function is to maintain an environment where people are free to produce freely. By constraining that environment, by bringing it's legislative violence into the private sector, the government in effect becomes a totalitarian force with it's eyes and hands on everybody's life, and the net result is that people are not allowed to be as efficient as they could be were they simply allowed to pursue their own happiness.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness used to be more than just words, they were a dream and an ideal worth fighting for, worth dying for, and more importantly--worth living for. And yet we find ourselves tied down in an age where the last flailing remnants of American idealism are being skinned alive, where the stillborn dream of an American society was sacrificed on the altar of "God and Society" with the self-defiant neurotic cry "For the good of the many!" What is America with no right to one's own life? What is America without the freedom to know your own mind and to act upon the values you decide for yourself? What is America without the moral conviction that one's happiness is an end in and of itself, that one's values have value, that one's dreams mean something? Those dreams mean something, Damn it! They mean something because they are fragile and isolated and occur only fleetingly in the minds of individual men and women all over the Earth. Those dreams that become generators. Those dreams that become companies. Those dreams that become the lifeblood of those who couldn't dream as well or as hard or as thoroughly. Ideas mean something, and the more fragile and fleeting, the more precious those ideas become.

The laughing dreams of children do not have to become the discarded carcasses of compromising adults. For the sake of us all, for your own sake, and for the sake of decency, don't sell out the American dream for a smile and a handshake and the burning coals of "good intentions". Vote libertarian or Vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Protest, speak out, scream out for Obama to stop his systematic, methodical butchering of the human spirit.

Why I'm an Objectivist

Well, I guess that Ayn Rand's books are experiencing a surge of interest due to the economic crisis. But amidst all the pundits weighing in on one side or the other, I'd simply like to talk about why I'm an Objectivist.

A lot of people point out that Greenspan was an Objectivist (he even wrote several of the essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). But the policies and decisions he pursued in his career make him anything but. How can the chief of the Fed, who sits in unilateral judgment over the arbitrary outlay of interest rates and the monetary supply, possibly be supportive of the government deregulation of the financial system? No, Greenspan isn't an Objectivist.

A lot of people get hung up on that deal with the Brandens, or with the Peikoff-Kelley split. The former is a sideshow bearing no relevance to Ayn Rand's philosophical ideas. It is akin to discrediting the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Somebody can make mistakes in character judgment, or bad choices and still have good ideas. That's why there is a logical fallacy devoted to just such an error, ad hominem (meaning against the man). The latter focuses on a very relevant issue, the proper moral response to dissent. I'm honestly not sure which side is correct in their assessments, as I've recently stated, I'm not sure myself how to properly discern between evasion and deception and whether or not there should morally be a different response for the two, or if they deserve to be lumped together. This jury of one is still out on that subject, and until I reach a verdict, I will be hesitant to condemn either side unilaterally. After all, error is a very real occurrence. To deny the capacity for error is to assert that we are all granted a priori knowledge of the universe, an assertion closer to the philosophy of Plato than that of Rand. And I don't believe in patently accepting orthodoxy from any source if I don't fully understand the principles involved.

Some people assert that Rand has a utilitarian value, that she provides the moral justification for capitalism. Well, she does. But that isn't a reason to believe in Objectivism. The only viable reason to believe in Objectivism is this: is it true?

To ask this question of most philosophies is to encounter a Cartesian loop of circular reasoning. Most philosophies demand that you accept either a God, or social force, or some vague and inexplicable internal sense as the final arbiter of morality. Only Rand came forth to say that what is moral is based solidly in the tangible reality and tangible demands of our physical existence. The reason philosophers scoff at Objectivism is because it is fully comprehensible. The reason why it isn't taken seriously is because it does not rest on a leap of faith, a "feeling" that something is right or wrong. It rests on reason. Philosophers have spent generations arguing about whether they can know that reality exists, how they can know anything if they can't assume anything about existence, endless wormholes of uncertainty and referenceless abstractions based on clouds of air where they simply try to rationalize their own assumptions about morality by any means necessary. There is a very real reason why we tend to think of something as "deep" which is completely incomprehensible or bizarre. It is because what many of our philosophers have presented to us as deep and fundamental truths of existence have in fact been nothing more than incomprehensible or bizarre all along.

Rand was the first one in modern history to come out and say "The Emperor has no clothes...and this is why." She stated that some assumptions are necessary, that they are in fact assumed by anyone who would attempt to disprove them: Existence exists, Consciousness is conscious, A thing is itself (A is A). Her philosophical system anticipated significant developments in cognitive science (such as the embodiment of cognitive experience and the necessity for a hierarchy of concept formation for information processing) and linguistics (such as examining the concealment of agency realized by transitivity and passivization as a technique for encoding hidden ideology). Objectivism has ramifications for economics, political science, morality, law, and education. All of these fields are traditionally presented to us as decontextualized, incomprehensible forces of nature to which we must simply react, but can never hope to comprehend or to influence.

Objectivism makes explicit the underlying mechanisms of all of these processes and shows how we are the center of all of these systems, that we are not just passive receivers of some arbitrary destiny; that we have the power and indeed, the responsibility, to act upon those systems to make them better for our own sakes. And that by working to make these systems more productive objectively, that by striving to attain our own individual rational self-interest, by seeking to attain the best that life has to offer over the entire span of one's life, that the net result is an immeasurable benefit for everyone. But that the justification is not in the benefit to all but in the benefit to one's self. That we are born into this life as ourselves, that we experience only the life that we have as ourselves, and that the pursuit of happiness is not a pragmatic end, but a moral pursuit in and of itself.

Objectivism offers HAPPINESS, whereas the other varied philosophies and ideologies of our age only demand SACRIFICE. Sacrifice to what? For whose benefit? Will my children be the happier for me having sacrificed their economic well-being today? Will I truly have any greater guarantee of security by demanding that they pay for my retirement, when in fact the economic necessities of the system will mean that social security will most likely not even exist by that time? Will they be the better educated by demanding that they be constrained to the lowest common denominator of educational quality made possible by averaging the resources of the community as opposed to what I could provide for them unfettered by the economic burdens imposed by the government? No. No. No.

Opponents of Objectivism need to make an explicit stand, one that they cannot ultimately justify and thus why they always resort to ad hominem attacks or dodge the issue. Objectivism ultimately stands for the rational pursuit of your happiness over the span of your life. It holds that as a moral virtue, the highest moral goal. To say that Objectivism is evil, is to say that the pursuit of happiness is evil. To say that Objectivism is wrong, is to say that it is wrong to be happy, it is wrong to want the best for your children, it is wrong to receive greater pay for greater work, that any attempts to advance your position in life is evil and the most we can hope for in our imperfect lives is to beg for the mercy of those who hold incontrovertible power over us, whether they be thrust into that position by design or the vagaries of the political process.

I refute this view of life. I cannot accept that I was born to be the tool of others, that I was born to be used, manipulated, milked of whatever capacity I have and then to be cast aside with the fruits of my productivity to be dispensed according to the whims of a lunatic mob. I believe in the principles that America was founded upon. I believe in this nation of principles, the only nation ever founded by philosophers. What Ayn Rand represents is not a radical divergence from American values, she represents the soul of American virtue unabashedly claiming its rightful distinction as the only moral system which does not treat humanity as sacrifical animals to be slaughtered for the sake of anyone's whims, whether they be the dreams of one man, or the dreams of us all. This virtue can only be fully realized if we accept the objective basis of morality, the objective determinants of justice and just law.

And the final reason that I am an objectivist is not just because the logical arguments makes sense to me, but that I can see the principles that Objectivism makes clear in operation in every aspect of life around me. When I see the way people react to politics, or economics, or education. When I see the things that are easy to teach or are easy to learn. The more I discover about the processes of the human mind, and society. Everything that I learn from science and my experience with other human beings in society. Everything makes sense when viewed from an Objectivist perspective. Where before, there was only a chaos of competing voices all crying for power, all crying for pity, all teetering on an uncertain foundation rocking on the waves of public opinion, I have now come to see the levers which operate those systems, and to understand the motivations driving the forces in our society. When I see the accuracy with which the themes in Ayn Rand's works play out in the news around me and even in my own personal life, I cannot refute the predictive power of her model. No other philosophy I have studied has come anywhere near as close in terms of precise clarity and comprehensive explanatory power.

And that is why I am an Objectivist. If I were to find a proof, whether it be logical or practical which invalidated the propositions of Objectivism, I would surrender the title of Objectivist and set about constructing a revised philosophy incorporating that proof. But I haven't yet. Despite all the ranting on the internet. Despite all the spite and condemnations of Rand's work. Despite all the insults and some outright lies. Not a single detractor has been able to provide a significant counter-argument. So I ask openly: if you (anybody out there at all) have an objection, bring it forth. Let's talk about this here and now. If you can show me the error of my ways, then do so. But I only ask one thing in return. That if your arguments prove to be the weaker, will you be as willing to change your views? If you are, then you're probably closer to being an Objectivist than you may think.

Apples, No Apples, Apples: The Sleight of Hand of Obama Inc.'s Elite Economic Corps of Dunderheads

OK. Now I had to read this a couple of times to make sure I got it straight. Now, I thought that I wasn't reading it correctly. I mean, circular logic has some famous adherents. Just look at Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy...or Sam Harris' justification for torture. But this circle is the most striking for how clearly circular it is. You don't have to dig too deep to see the sleight of hand going on in this one. For the whole article, you'll have to check out this link here.

But the part that floored me was this quote:

""I do think the American people in the past have shown an excellent ability to respond to adversity," Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told members of the Senate Budget Committee. "And I believe it's going to happen this time and that we're going to see a much stronger economy, not that far in the future."

To hasten that day, the Fed and the Treasury launched their long-awaited program to jump-start the market for consumer loans, including financing for small businesses, students and car buyers.

Under the program, known by the acronym TALF, the Fed will provide loans to investors who buy securities backed by newly issued consumer loans. The idea is to revive the market for asset-backed securities, which provides funding for a large portion of consumer lending.

"In our system, banks are important, but typically 40% of lending comes through the securitization markets. And those markets are not functioning well," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee.

"So we're going around banks . . . by doing something only the government can do, which, on appropriate terms to protect the taxpayer, is to try to get those credit markets opening up again," he said." "

OK. TALF. This is the system as it appears to be presented here. The government will now encourage more lending to groups which are high risk in a recession and which the markets recognize as such: students, small businesses, and car buyers. (It may be for that reason that the banks aren't loaning as much to these groups right now..duh....)

But of course, Obama Inc. and his party of looting neanderthals, think that the answer is to give more money to people who probably won't be able to pay it back. (AIG, GM...etc, etc, etc...)
In this case, they will subsidize the extension of credit to high risk groups by sponsoring securities based on packages of volatile debt. They will use the security of the United States Treasury to guarantee that debt and sell shares in it to investors. Not only that, but it will loan money to investors so that they can buy those securities. So, technically, the government will be making it look like it's selling financial instruments when really it's just handing out taxpayer money again.

If the initial loans go into default, the securities become worthless. That means the government can't collect the money from these loans, which means that the investors also don't get anything from the securities either, except that they have to pay back the loans to the government that they used to buy the now worthless securities. Which means that the government will in effect be paying for it's handouts to high-risk lenders by convincing credit-worthy investors to commit to paying for them over the long-term.

Housing fiasco redux.

What Obama and his geniuses are assuming is that the people who will receive these loans will actually pay them back. Now here's the catch. If any financial institution was reasonably confident that the people who are the potential beneficiaries of these loans could actually pay them back, then the financial institutions would loan them the money in the first place.

Why? Because that's how financial institutions make money. By lending to people who pay them back plus interest. Nobody makes money by lending to people who don't pay back. As the housing fiasco and its consequences have effectively demonstrated.

So what will happen to investors who buy large amounts of these securities, if the securities go into default (as they probably will)? Well, their balance sheets will have a sudden gaping hole where their assets used to be, and an equal amount of now unsupported debt. In short, I think that any investor who takes a heavy interest in these derivatives will be staking a lot on the dependability of the federal government to lend responsibly. And if the federal government doesn't, then we will see even more investors taken down in this thing. That will further damage the economy, destroy even more wealth (or "redistribute it" as Obama likes to say), and almost certainly cripple our nation for decades. (That is, decades more than these kind of policies have already crippled us...)

Now, now, I'll be fair. The current crisis isn't Obama's doing. It was caused by Bernanke, Greenspan, and the hypocrites at the Fed and in Congress on both sides of the aisle who have been supporting centrist government-controlled markets. That was the problem with the Republicans. They talked free markets, but they were busy getting their hands deep into the guts of it, so they could grease their own pockets, and the pockets of their buddies. That and they were spending so much time preaching about God that the secular conservatives out there didn't feel very comfortable supporting them either.

The Democrats are idealogues. I seriously believe that they think that they are helping people by sacrificing us all to the hunger of the disenfranchised mob that has been created by generations of irresponsible governance. (Although I think it's telling, how many of Obama's picks have a problem paying their taxes...)

The answer is to stop this madness, not to keep trying more of the same thing.

Cut spending, cut taxes, cut social programs and privatize them.
Privatize education.
Dissolve the Fed.

Introduce a staged retreat from social security so that we can support those who have already paid their way in, but so that we can phase it out as soon as possible. Phase out medicare and government intervention in insurance premiums.

Stop the senseless bailouts of companies that shovel out lifetime-guaranteed retirement policies to workers who retire at 48?! (Like GM....)

Stop the war on poverty. The supposed enemy in that war is the only group that can even remotely provide what is needed to alleviate the problem, by pursuing that war we intensify the poverty.

Stop the war on drugs. 1 in 32 Americans are in jail. 25% of them are there for drugs. Only 5% of homicides were narcotics related. Educate your children to keep them off drugs. I agree, they suck. They are NOT good things to have around children. But neither is tobacco or alcohol, and we have managed to keep them in control without making them into the dangerously uncontrolled illicit multi-billion dollar global industries that illicit drugs are today. In a way, the war on drugs is paying for the war on terror....paying our enemy's wages. Not unlike Prohibition and the mafia...Remove the profit, make them legal and regulate them like any other drug or intoxicant.

And, no, we don't need the self-inflated pompous rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh to rally around. What we need is a return to fundamental principles, like those advocated by Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater and the generation of conservatives who really lived up to that name. The crisis we are experiencing day by day in our sweat, our fear, our blood, and our lives...this crisis is a moral crisis. The moral superiority of laissez-faire capitalism, the objective moral reality of rational self-interest as a life-generating force, the moral supremacy of reason as opposed to the bulwarks of religion or the frantic paranoia of the social relativist---the denial of these truths is what we are experiencing tangibly, and visibly and undeniably this very moment.

This country is headed in the wrong direction, and we're speeding it up! You can't defend freedom by destroying it. You can't defend liberty by enslaving yourselves. You can't increase prosperity by punishing it. You can't inspire innovation by stifling it in bureaucratic red tape. You can't broaden minds through education by stifling teacher creativity. You can't heal bad debt by creating more of it. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality -- you who have never known any -- but to discover it." --Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

The Curse of the Merry Men

This is an interesting take on the story of Robin Hood written by an associate of mine, I hope you find it as entertaining as I did:

The government has just issued Directive 10-289, a mandate to nationalize all business and establish “stability” by freezing the economy. No wages shall change. No one may leave their jobs nor find a new one. No competition is to be allowed whatsoever. All prices, all terms of employment, all terms of sale are to be set and administered by a centralized government. In the aftermath of this directive, Hank Rearden, one of the last great industrialists, teeters on the brink of total despair as he struggles to comprehend the ramifications of what this will mean for his life and his dreams. At this moment, Ragnar Danneskjold, a renegade and pirate, presents himself to Rearden with an offering of hope and a glimpse of the world that could still be. He reveals to Rearden his true aim in pursuing the life of a pirate. That aim is to destroy a man and wipe every last vestige of his memory from the minds of the human race. That man is none other than Robin Hood.

This pivotal scene from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Part II Chapter VII) does not draw its significance from the action, but from Ragnar’s portrayal of Robin Hood and his reasons for fighting the very idea of the mythical bandit. To fully understand the significance of this we must first address this question: Who is Robin Hood? Ragnar describes him as the “foulest of creatures, the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich, whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.” The actual historical origins of the Robin Hood mythos are vague at best, but Ragnar makes clear that he is not fighting a historical character, he is fighting the moral principles that the legend of Robin Hood has come to represent.

Traditionally, Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Variations on the tale abound. Some state that he is dispossessed royalty fighting to regain what has been pillaged wrongly by the ruling regime. In this sense, the character is reminiscent of what Ragnar Danneskjold represents in Atlas Shrugged. Ragnar states explicitly that he avoids confrontations with representatives of the legitimate functions of government. He does not attack military or policing vessels. He only attacks those ships which carry resources that have been appropriated from their owners without their consent and in spite of their protest. He then takes those resources and holds them in reserve, waiting for their rightful owners to come and claim them. The rightful owners are those who created the resource, who either made a natural resource able to be utilized, or who created that which had formerly not existed. The rights to the distribution of those ideas and the benefits of that distribution belong exclusively to the creators of those values.

Oil belongs to those who make it possible to be drilled, those who do the drilling, and who process it and make it ready to be used to meet the demands of their customers. Each in turn works according to the terms they set amongst themselves in order to exchange productive work for their own survival and the resources necessary to develop their own dreams and ambitions. But if that oil is seized by some group of people without the consent of the producers, then that group is morally indefensible regardless of their social position. Justice is only served by returning the merchandise to its rightful owners. This is Ragnar’s function. He is an agent of justice reclaiming stolen merchandise. He even makes the concession that Robin Hood may be interpreted in this way “It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed…”However, as he continues, he qualifies this by emphasizing, “that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived.”

Despite potentially nobler interpretations of Robin Hood, the popular and by far most influential interpretation of the myth is simply that Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. What gives the character moral status is that his crimes are mitigated by his charity. A robber who steals simply for himself would have been dull and commonplace in an era when highwaymen abounded. What gave the story its uniqueness and longevity was the idea that this character was somehow doing evil for good and the moral complexity that this signified. The heart of this paradox is the assumption that Robin Hood was doing good by distributing wealth to those who lacked it. In common portrayals of the story it is usually sufficient only to portray his victims as rich to establish Hood as the hero. Further explanations of the circumstances of the victim’s wealth are rarely given, if at all. The core idea is simply that it is justifiable to take from those who have and give to those who do not, simply because of the need of the latter and for no other reason. This is the moral imperative of altruism. It is this idea which Ragnar hopes to destroy.

Ragnar stands opposed to the idea that rights are defined by a person’s needs. Those who adopt the altruist ethic make a claim that the more productive and the more successful a person is, the more they deserve to be sacrificed to the needs of others. They claim that the good of an action is determined by how much the benefactor lacked the benefit. Means and ends become inconsequential. Cause and effect become inconsequential. The only things that matter are who benefits and how much they need. The altruist feeds off of the need of the poor and disadvantaged. He uses them as a justification for imposing his needs on the rich, whose resources he covets. His need is justified altruistically because he lays no claim for his own use; he covets those resources for the good of others. According to this reasoning, any crime is justifiable if it is done in the service of others. Even murder is justifiable as long as it can be justified by placating some group’s need—the greater the need, the greater the moral status of the crime; the more helpless the benefactor, the more noble the deed. Morality becomes defined by a calculus of human suffering and nobility restricted to those who sacrifice that they most value to the desires of whoever may demand it.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this ethic is that the poor are condemned to suffer forever. They are guaranteed immunity from Robin Hood only as long as there is not anyone with more need than they. Only the neediest, the least able to provide for themselves—only these people are immune. Everyone else must wait for the time when they are chosen as the sacrificial victim to placate the need of the lowest common denominator. Everyone else must wait under the knife. The only way out is to compete for the bottom slot, to make a business out of begging for help and pleading one’s need to the arbitrary jury of those around you. The altruist ethic condemns the poor to maintain their poverty lest they be sacrificed for succeeding too much at the practice of survival. It forces them to compete for death.

This is why Ragnar describes Hood as a “double-parasite”. This is why Ragnar is Hood’s opposite. Ragnar defends justice where Hood destroys it. Ragnar defends human rights and the freedom of all human beings to choose their own path and reap the full consequences of their choices. Hood abrogates them all in the pursuit of his own ends. Hood is the embodiment of the collectivist ideal. Ragnar embodies the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism. Ragnar defends a moral code founded on the twin principles of “life and production.” Robin Hood represents cannibalism for cannibalism’s sake. The unstated price of joining Robin’s ‘band of merry men’ is a taste for human flesh. This is why the two characters stand in conflict. This is the true significance of Ragnar’s declaration that Robin Hood is the one man he must destroy.

Let Freedom Ring! Vote for Bob Barr!

I just have to say I saw this and I was moved. It has been so long since I have heard a presidential candidate say what needs to be said. It has been so long since I have heard a candidate praise what our nation was built on rather than apologize for those who made us great. Have the courage to fight the destruction of our freedom. Have the courage to vote for Bob Barr.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxPrULE6dUU

Pope a Hypocrite: Hoards Gold and Condemns Greed

Today's case study in what is wrong with the world is drawn from this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25754069/

The headline reads: "Pope urges young to spurn the 'spiritual desert' : He challenges crowd of 200,000 to help world turn away from materialism"

Aside from the many many philosophical problems I have with attacks on materialism, greed, and selfishness. And aside from the many many problems I have with those who promote altruism over rational egoism. Aside from these things, is there anything more hypocritical than the figurehead of the Catholic church berating people for enjoying personal comfort that they have at least done something to earn? Has anyone out there even seen the amount of gold that decks out the Vatican? If not, here's some pics:


If they're so earnest about sacrifice, why don't they lead by example and distribute church wealth to the needy rather than trying to make us feel guilty for spending the money that we earned with our labor? I mean, after all, who deserves their money more? Some guy who works his ass off every day of his life? Or some fat and indolent preacher-boy who's never done anything but sit in a high chair and rattle off how worthless people are? I'd bet on the worker over the preacher any day.

And, hell. While we're on the topic of greed and materialism anyway, why don't we look into this "spiritual desert" and see what's really going on there.

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," the pope is quoted as saying. He blames this on greed and materialism and people turning away from faith. I would argue that this despair, this fear is spreading as a direct result of the faithful. And if not directly through religion than indirectly through secular altruism.

How can a person have self-esteem, if the more successful they are at their job (and therefore more successful monetarily)--How can they have self-esteem if the better they are, the more guilty they are supposed to feel? How come excellence and the demand of greater rewards for greater excellence is condemned as a sin? If someone is good, then, dammit, they deserve more. We NEED good teachers, we NEED good doctors, we NEED good engineers. But how do we expect to find people who can fulfill these needs? Should we expect them to appear magically and just perform these functions because that is their nature? Or do we have to assure that they have an equitable return on their efforts, so that they are self-motivated to perform these functions in society? Yet oddly enough, we turn around and condemn the people who are doing exactly what we are paying them to do, we condemn them for being TOO good.

Has anyone who has sat down and blindly condemned people for greed actually fully thought this through? As we progressively enact more laws, and the religious organizations gather more followers, and the secular humanists jump on the band wagon and berate rampant selfishness and the profit motive, has anyone noticed the corresponding erosion of the economy, rampant inflation and critical shortages of teachers, nurses, mathematicians, and engineers? Perhaps the faithful are hoping that they can merely pray and have God magically deliver the trained professionals who will keep the engine of global civilization running. Or perhaps they think that those who are capable of providing those services should do so simply for the sake of all those who can't, and should serve humbly, apologetically, and with head bowed in shame for the epic force of will and dedication of mind necessary to accomplish such feats of creation as has never been known to the leaders of the religious front.

What insights have popes or cardinals or imams given us as to the structure of the universe or the fate of humanity? None. Not a thing. All they have done is preached how near disaster we are, and how we should abandon reason, when reason is needed most. Can the pope build a railroad? Can he erect a building that will not fall? Can he conjure more food from the ground or purify our water? Can he answer the dual needs of protecting the environment while not stifling economic prosperity? Can he do any of these things? NO.

All the pope can do is pray, and berate and cajole and beg. And for what? Why is he doing all this needling? Is it for the good of humanity, as he would claim? Or is it so that he can take advantage of the poor, the ignorant, and the ashamed? He'll casually accept money from the poor, and claim that it is going to help those in need. As he wears gold crowns and lives in a gold bedecked palace. He'll gleefully accept the donations of the guilty rich who, ashamed of their own prowess, seek to assuage the moral conflict that rages inside them by hoping to buy their way into paradise. And the ignorant, the church will gratefully embrace the ignorant, because to embrace God requires no discipline of the mind, it requires no rigor of thought, no effort of will. All it takes is the effort of release, of everything.

If you release your mind, your body, your will, your judgment, your soul, your self-esteem, and your pride, then you will be beloved of god. If you destroy everything there is that makes you who you are, if you destroy anything and everything that makes life good and worth living, then you will be saved by god. God wants to destroy you. The religious want nothing less than the spiritual destruction of humanity. That is why the absolute sacrifice is the symbol of their faith. The absolute of death is sacrosanct in every major religion.

Death is the ideal. A noble death is a noble goal in every major religion. No religion abhors death and reveres life to the extent that they would say, "Live your life to the best of your ability and enjoy those fruits of that ability for they are the mark of your best nature." No, instead they claim that the very qualities that enable you to survive are the qualities that you must apologize for. They claim that the more able you are to live, the more guilty you should feel. That is because, in faith, we are all expected to want to die, but not being able to, should feel guilt for our life.

How perverted and despicable a promise to humankind! Such a miserable and filthy demand! To demand that all should die to fulfill the warped philosophy of the incompetent. To demand that the worthy apologize to the unworthy, that the able apologize endlessly to the inept.

Wouldn't it be a better world, if we all stood as equals--not in the sense of some guarantee--but in the sense of having equal rights to the fruits of our own labor? That we could stand shoulder to shoulder with giants and thank them for all that they have given us in the terms of an easier, safer, healthier life. We could thank them, and allow them the freedom to enjoy the fruits of that inestimable boon they have granted us. Without guilt. Without shame. Proud and radiant as human beings, all of us. Proud that we have done the work that we were best able to do, no matter what work that is. Proud of what we have attained, and created, and managed to preserve around us.

Would it matter if we all cannot be a Vanderbilt, or an Einstein, or even an Elvis? We do what we can. We build what we can. Does anyone have the right to begrudge another the results of their own work, whatever work that may be?

I say NO! I say ENOUGH! The time has come to stay this madness. Reject religion. Reject the secular altruists who preach freedom on one side, and berate the use of it on the other. Reject all those who would offer you a collar in exchange for your self-esteem. Do not be seduced by the prospect of harvesting the wealth of those you envy--for all that road promises is that you will be sacrificed to those who envy yours.

Defend your freedom. And do it not for the good of others. Do it not for the good of generations to come, or for the protracted and unseeable future. Do it for yourself! Do it for the now! Reject all forms of statism, nationalism, religion--all forms of spiritual and physical sacrifice. Claim your birthright, claim that which is yours, not because I say so, but because you earned it. Reject the claims of all those who savor the unearned, who would make you a slave and expect you to be grateful for it. Fight them, do what you can. Speak, blog, vote, protest. We cannot afford to surrender. To surrender is to embrace death.

Religion: Laugh Your Ass Off

I've been thinking lately. Maybe the reason that religion gets to cling on to it's social respectability despite all the vicious, maniacal, and just plain ludicrous stuff it tries to get away with--maybe the reason is that we all take it so seriously. I mean what would happen, if we just laughed our asses off whenever somebody said they believed in God? What would happen if we just doubled over with tears streaming out of our eyes whenever somebody even mentioned heaven, hell, Satan, Jesus, Mohammad or Buddha? I guess it makes it harder to laugh at people who are really intent on enslaving and/or killing you (though not necessarily in that order). Anyways, a world were we could just laugh those silly freaks away and not have to worry about them anymore, is a world worth working for. Until then, here's a taste of what it might feel like to be able to laugh them all away:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k

Happy Science: Religious Cults in Supposedly Atheist Japan

It is not uncommon to hear Japan come up as an example of a predominantly atheistic nation which seems to do just fine by itself. Although as a long-time resident of Japan, one thing that has always disturbed me is the widespread proliferation of superstitions, lucky charms, and that which feeds on such things: cults.

The nefarious Aum Shinrikyo cult which was responsible for the sarin nerve gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. It amazingly still had about 1500 to 2000 members as of 2004 and has regrouped itself under the name Aleph. At it's height, it had approximately 40,000 members worldwide. This is, of course, small by the standards of the great blood-thirsty world religions. But they ended up killing 12 and injuring an estimated 5000 commuters as a result of their madness.It just goes to show that small fanatical organizations can be just as dangerous as the big ones. It's all a matter of will and timing.

Well, what got me online today, was that my wife found a promotional pamphlet in our mailbox today, and we almost died laughing when we started looking through it. It's for a new brand of religious quackery called, get this, Happy Science. It was founded by Ryuho Okawa (大川隆法) a former student of law and finance who got it into his head to make a religion and call himself a god. He claims to be "El Cantare" the reincarnation of Buddha and that he can offer the road to eternal peace. They offer seminars in appreciating your role as a "Civil Servant of the Universe" (宇宙公務員) and even give you a badge stating such that you can wear with pride (embarassment?) for having attended. (And of course shelled out a nice lump of cash to boot.) Their literature has all the standard earmarks of religious cult propaganda ala The Jehovah's Witnesses, The Door Christian Fellowship, or any other average ordinary everyday bilking mill for loonies. If you're lucky enough to live in Japan then you can even take advantage of their "Satory Land" virtual fun park accessible by cell phone. For those who don't speak Japanese "satori" means "enlightenment", so calling the site "Satory Land" is a bit like calling it "Calvary Camp" or "Salvation Fun Park". My personal favorite translation would be "The Happy Buddha's Enlightenment Funland".

What surprised me was that it seems like they're making forays into the international arena as well, with temples in Hawaii, San Francisco, and Brazil. Their site is also available in English and Chinese. Here's the link:

http://www.happy-science.org/en/

I recommend checking it out for a good laugh. Or at least it would be, if it didn't seem to be so successful. It's absolutely amazing to me that enough people are willing to support as obvious a business ploy as this and to the extent that they can have 24 temples in Japan proper and ones internationally as well. This guy's books are supposedly best-sellers. Here is a guy practically claiming to be the reincarnation of god and people are giving him money hand over fist. Of course people have a soft spot for people like the Dhalai Lhama who claim that they're a reincarnation of some ancient whatchamacallit or whatnot. But seriously, how could someone spend money on this and look themselves in the mirror. Guess Ayn Rand was pretty close to the mark when she said that the choice to believe in God is like murdering your mind.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this nonsense is that they actively are recruiting parents to indoctrinate their children with it. If you take a look at the membership page, they explicitly state how they are recruiting "Angel Members", children from 0-6 years old who can be initiated via a special "Infant Entrance Ceremony". I wouldn't say that it's big enough to be too dangerous yet. But it's never good to be complacent about such organizations. The Nazis started out as a fringe organization that polarized an entire nation. And it wasn't so long ago that the entire nation of Japan worshipped their emperor as a divine sun-god for whom they would passionately lay down every last life in a nightmare of self-immolation. (And there are still plenty of those out there. If you don't believe me, look into the controversy over the film, Yasukuni)

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of rational, even-minded, concrete Japanese out there. But there are also a lot of collectivists, fanatics, and spiritualists as well. Especially, of late, the media seems saturated with tales of the paranormal, miracles, and the terrors of modern science. Then again, their economy is set to take the fall again amidst a lumbering and suicidal welfare system and an addiction to social programs. Will reason triumph in Japan? Or will it be quacks like Okawa who end up having the last laugh?

A Decisive Argument Against Religion

This is a video posted by YouTube objectivist Nelapidae. He presents a stunningly clear, precise and cutting argument against faith. Enjoy:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQefreiEQOA

Ayn Rand: Atheist and Advocate of Reason

Here's a nice little collage of clips of interviews where Ayn Rand expresses her views on religion. I wish there were more guests like her on talk shows today.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GS6vxb4H3M

Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy

I'm taking a little break from the American story right now just to point out that in some parts of the world, fascists have taken to calling their countries democracies when they are really anything but. All one has to do is look at Zimbabwe, where the fascist dictator Mugabe actually has the gall to claim that he is an elected official. How can a thug dare to call himself a president? Easily...his boys have the guns. Countries like this are a constant reminder of the necessity of checks and balances in government and the essential nature of human rights as absolute values. Freedom is not something that can be compromised and still retain any meaning. When you hand over your responsibility to make decisions to a big mob with guns, it may not be so easy to get your right to make them for yourself back again.

And take a hard, close look at the financial chaos in Zimbabwe. The nation is on the brink of collapse. Why? Is it because of greedy multi-national corporations? Or is it really because of a government laden with corruption and barbarity that scorns all the principles of capitalism and yet still cries mournfully for succor from the wealthy nations of the world. Why are the wealthy nations wealthy? Is it because they just happened to be that way? Not so. Many of the countries of Europe and Asia were financially wrecked just a mere 60 years ago, after the second world war came to an end. What made them able to rebound and outpace their collectivist neighbors was that they adopted certain values, values which mimicked those of the United States Constitution. Those values being freedom in society and freedom in business. The extent to which they embraced these values was to the extent to which they became affluent. Where there is no freedom, there can be no affluence, nor progress. If you don't believe me, don't take my word for it. Simply look at the broken and battered nations of Africa, where petty dictators lash their people into inhumane poverty and then beg for the developed nations to grant them succor...only to expand their armies and drive around in Mercedes and Cadillacs.

The next time liberals beg for you to placate the suffering in Africa, take a good hard look and imagine who it is that your money is going to really help. Will it be the starving poor? Or will it be bloated and evil fascists like Mugabe? Think about the architecture of poverty. Who is it that drives away industry, drives away the intelligent, skilled workers from a country? Who is it that murders the poor for obeying, or murders them because they don't? It is the system of oppression which creates poverty. It is freedom which ends that oppression. So before you turn our freedoms over for the sake of the unnamed poor, who you understandably wish to help--After all, to cast a blind eye to suffering would be inhumane--before you do that, first think of what would be the best way to help.

Can we really help the most by trading in our property rights, our right to our own moral consciences and then expect that other countries will in turn value those these even more greatly? Can we seriously expect that? Or should we instead make more of a stand for our own liberties and our own rights, so that we can go out into the world with moral certainty and the firmness of our convictions to serve as a powerful example of what ideals can actually accomplish when translated into reality.

It is always best to lead by example. If we surrender our rights at home, we cannot expect the rest of the world to 'do as I say, and not as I do.'

I'll end with these links to articles and video on the Zimbabwe situation:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25432146/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25470052/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/144274

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143803?from=rss



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFJUOa_ABUg



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRS0n1inpWg

Election 2008: Socialism or Capitalism, Which Shall it Be?

Okay, well, we KNOW that McCain can't be trusted any further than we could throw him, so for me he's not even a contender. Like I said, I admire Obama's stance on religious influence in government and his respect for rational discourse in the political process. Unfortunately, he's a rank socialist, who ignores basic economics in favor of generating a populist appeal. Of course, this has long been a staple of the "democratic" party. It's so accepted that he doesn't even try to sugar-coat it. Here it is:

SOCIALISM IN ACTION



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-yopgPHbw

So, what else is there to do? Is it really a choice between Socialism and Theocracy? NO. It isn't. Of course, the power-hungry influence peddlers would love for you to think that. They want you to choose between the mixed-values of economically conservative religious extremists and socially liberal communist ideologues. What they want you to ignore is that there is a third option. That option is economic conservatism and social freedom. The price is increased personal responsibility. The price is that we can no longer run crying to Big Daddy Government to save us from our own decisions whether they go awry from ignorance or accident. So what should we do this election? Vote Libertarian. Vote Bob Barr.

He won't hand us over to the Christian zealots. And he won't hand us over to the Collectivists either. Freedom is a principle worth fighting and dying for. Don't allow the Democrats and Republicans to convince you that some are more important than others and that they should be traded like some kind of commodity of influence. Rights are an absolute of human ethics. They cannot be compromised, or else they have no meaning and offer no assurance at all. To preserve our rights is to preserve freedom. And the government cannot force freedom. The bigger government is, the less freedom we have. The less freedom we have, the less able we are to turn our ideas into businesses, to do business with our fellow human beings and in the end, the harder it is to live. If you love freedom and life, vote against both those who would sacrifice us to religion and those who would sacrifice us to society. Vote for freedom. Vote Bob Barr.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWkPMJRDBuo

McCain: Hypocrisy in Action

And if there was any doubt about McCain's trustworthiness or moral integrity, well, this should settle it. Please watch the Before and After videos that follow:

BEFORE



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbNImNX8Xuw

AFTER



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8KZpsp04XM

Election 2008: McCain and Obama on Religion

Well, what should I say? I dislike Obama because he's a socialist. I dislike McCain because he kisses up to the religious right. But after watching these two videos, there's no way I'm voting for McCain. I guess it depends on how the Libertarian candidate presents himself. But McCain is off my list. If the Libertarian doesn't impress me, then I'm voting for Obama.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9izhjnaLa3M



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg8lCLumByw

Daniel Dennett: Hypocrite and Fool

First of all, and despite the inflammatory nature of the title, I would like to say that I came to Dennett's work with a relatively open mind. I had seen some of his lectures on YouTube and I had heard about his advocacy of atheism. He seemed to be a relatively rational thinker and a proponent of similar beliefs. I was wary of his advocacy of meme theory, but nothing in his mainstream presence suggested any hint of what I was to find when I started reading his latest book, my first and last Dennett work, Breaking the Spell.

I thought Dennett might be a safe bet because he comes highly recommended by Richard Dawkins. While I disagree with Dawkins' advocacy of socialist politics and his own claims to meme theory, it has always struck me that Dawkins' attachment to memes is more of a kin to humoring an interesting analogy as opposed to seriously proposing it as a foundation for rational debate. He introduced it in The Selfish Gene, a work otherwise highly commendable for its astute and forthright explanation of evolutionary theory. But after reading Dennett's work, I am forced to reevaluate my estimation of Dawkins' intellectual honesty as well. I will give him the benefit of doubt and withhold my judgement till I have further explored Dawkins' works. As for Dennett....he embodies everything that I feared would happen in the world of philosophy when I first encountered Dawkins' suggestion.

Dennett tries to sell his book as an attempt "to investigate religion in a scientific manner". Now, I am an anti-theist, which means that I not only do not believe in any god or supernatural presences, powers, or forces whatsoever, but it means that I think such beliefs are fundamentally harmful to humanity and destructive of science and progressive humanistic thought. In this sense, I mean "progressive" as in advancing in a beneficial manner and "humanistic" as in pertaining to the notion that the lives of human beings should be the standard and focal point of philosophic enquiry. I came across Dennett as one of the so-called "Four Horsemen" of modern atheism, the others being Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It is in fact the recent spate of media coverage in recent years that drew me to start investigating their works, and Dawkins' own sense of consciousness-raising that inspired me to start this blog as an expression of my own beliefs.

Harris, while his arguments against religion are indisputable, leaves much to be desired when he starts to argue for anything. He tends to convey the impression that his assertion is sufficient to justify any demand on our moral judgments and seems quite confident that the majority of his atheist peers are as hopelessly liberal as he is. While he rightfully condemns moral relativism, he unwittingly falls into the trap of being a moral relativist, as he argues in defense of torture. This is an issue which it is impossible to defend morally unless one assumes that one party is always in the right simply for the reason that it is one's own. He blatantly ignores that if one is to relinquish the moral high ground by engaging in the debased tactics of one's moral rivals, that one sacrifices the grounds from which such one-sided moralizing can be justified in the first place. Harris seeks to undermine the universality of human rights and his argument is half-based on assumptions of some vaguely stated moral solidarity with the American vox populi.

Dawkins, as I have already stated, is at his best when he is addressing his speciality of biology and evolutionary theory. Especially as the only pure scientist of the four, this is to be expected. However, as I have also argued elsewhere on this site, Dawkins is comitted to a form of socialist politic which ignores many of his own conclusions. But I see this contradiction stemming from only the slightest of moral misdirections, his lingering attachment to christian morality and his desire to force it into biology so as to rationalize his view of morality in a world that cannot logically accommodate it. But his attachments to Harris who favors torture and now Dennett who is much worse, seriously demand that Dawkins philosophical work be scrutinized more closely. That is a task which I must regrettably leave for later. I also have not yet had the opportunity to investigate Hitchens' work closely, but that, too, will be addressed in due time.

No, the topic at hand is Dennett and his book Breaking the Spell. What it should be called is Hail the Meme and Other Unsubstantiated Assertions. I could not get more than one third through this book before I became physically ill for trying to choke down the slew of outrageous propositions he tries to foist on the reader. A book, I might add, for which Dennett says, "a reader-friendly flow for a wider audience was more important than the convenience of scholars."

Certainly scholars should have nothing to do with this book whatsoever. Of course the first two chapters deal with relatively innocuous subjects like why we should investigate religion and whether or not scientific investigation is appropriate to or capable of the task. It is the third chapter, "Why Good Things Happen" that starts to rank of shoddy (or perhaps even consciously deceptive) reasoning. I was left wondering that if this is the best Tufts has to offer in the realm of philosophy, perhaps Tufts is not quite worthy of the respect it has been accorded.

The reason is memes. Unlike Dawkins' scientifically cautious approach to the concept of memes, Dennett charges head-on taking all sorts of wild conjectures for granted. I quote:

"If boatbuilders or potters or singers are in the habit of copying old designs "religiously," they may preserve design features over hundreds or even thousands of years. Human copying is variable, so slight variations in the copies will often appear, and although most of these promptly disappear, since they are deemed defective or "seconds" or in any event not popular with the customers, every now and then a variation will engender a new lineage, in some sense an improvement or innovation for which there is a "market niche". And lo and behold, without anybody's realizing it, or intending it, this relatively mindless process over long periods of time can shape designs to an exquisite degree, optimizing them for local conditions."

...The italics are Dennett's....the confusion is mine.

First of all, as a linguist, I cannot help but notice that Dennett strategically uses the passive voice to avoid betraying who or what it is that is acting upon the design process of boats and pots and songs. He also strategically places these "customers" in the circumstance of the phrase. An approach that those familiar with Halliday's functional grammar will recognize as being extremely useful for hiding the impact of a participant or obfuscating their role almost entirely. The fact that Dennett is desperately trying to obscure is that boats do NOT design themselves. That the process of copying or innovation is something which is consciously decided by human minds, by active participants in their own existence, by active participants in the contents and products of their own minds.

But to state that humans actually DO something would be to give up the game and declare from the start that what he intends is ludicrous tripe. In fact, in order to substantiate even the possibility of his beloved memes, Dennett must beg the question by first assuming that there is no such thing as free will, as self-modification of one's mental structure, as the ability to choose which ideas one accepts and which ideas one rejects and which ones and how one modifies. Dennett must use the passive voice to obscure these facts because when they are placed directly next to the assertions he draws, it becomes obvious that what he is saying isn't worth the paper on which it is printed.

Again I quote: "Here we have the design of a human artifact-culturally, not genetically transmitted-without a human designer, without an author or inventor or even a knowing editor or critic."

THIS of boatbuilding. Where, one is forced to ask, would Dennett be if there was not some convenient boat to copy? Presumably he would be up the creek without a paddle, because he has already dismissed the possibility that somebody could conceive of a new idea and create a paddle much less a boat to carry him. Without a human designer? How could a boat come to be without a human designer? I am really forced to wonder if not only Dennett but his editor and publisher were not all smoking crack when they were going over this drivel.

If only because they permitted Dennett to start from this rather dramatic and unsubstantiated assumption and progress to "make a point that should be uncontroversial: cultural transmission can sometimes mimic genetic transmission, permitting competing variants to be copied at different rates, resulting in gradual revisions in features of those cultural items, and these revisions have no deliberate, foresighted authors."

No authors? Who is supposedly making these cultural artifacts if not human beings? Of course Dennett has already decided that humans have no free-will or control of their consciousness, so naturally they cannot be an active participant in the creation of anything. Dennett sees some undefined class of artisans who mindlessly copy designs passed down by some mysterious and undefined source and who copy even mistakes mindlessly without appraisal with no judgment whatsoever as to the content of that work. One is forced to question whether this isn't what Dennett truly hopes that humanity is and is desperately trying to substantiate it as opposed to truly scientifically investigating human nature at all.

He then moves on to try and appropriate linguistics to substantiate his 'meme-ological' musings. Language is well-understood to be a characteristically unique cognitive function. The interrelationship between language and thought is anything but a settled issue. And strong versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have been almost thoroughly ruled out by rigorous scientific study. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis basically states that our cognitive functions are influenced by our language. The strong form of this theory would imply that a person's cognitive processes are defined by their language. Theoretically, this would mean that a person cannot conceive of ideas that are not encoded in the language. This is clearly not true, as new words are coined to accommodate new concepts and inventions as they are introduced into the environment. This is a major factor which drives the invention of words, something that Dennet ignores completely. By saying that language evolves itself without any conscious modification, he is ruling out the participation of the actors, the ones who actually voice and write language, us, the human beings.

"On even rarer occasions," he says, " individuals may set out to invent a word or a pronunciation and actually succeed in coining something that eventually enters the language, but in general, the changes that accumulate have no salient human authors, deliberate or inadvertent."

?!

How would Dennett then explain the invention of words like "computer", "robot", "bug", "virus" or the slew of technical computer-based terminology which inundates us today? The invention of these terms was not an outgrowth of already extant phrases that somehow "evolved" through the accumulation of minor changes via the reproduction process and limited by natural selection. These were terms and senses that sprang out of their functional necessity, out of the emergence of new objects which had previously not existed. Objects, machines, devices, which were created, not out of some natural process, but by the dedicated application of human thought to solve real problems in a real universe, not in some magic fantasy land of actorless dynamics like the foggy cloud of disembodied determinism gone mad that rattles around Dennet's echoing chamber of a cranium. Changes in the existential universe mandated changes in language. So, too, changes in modes of thought, changes in our understanding of things have always mandated changes in our language. Language and cognition are intricately intertwined.

However, even though the words we use, through the influence of things like accent, can produce an almost evolutionary shift in language so that German becomes English or Latin becomes Portuguese, the concepts expressed by language remain steadfastly connected to ultimately concrete descriptions of the world around us. As such, the word's meaning does not change as much as Dennett would like us to think. Perhaps words can be shifted to mean things that they were not originally intended to mean, like "gay" or Dennett's pet term "bright". But when they do so, the concepts (for as long as they remain valid concepts in human knowledge) will engender the birth of new phrases which are then needed to express potentially ancient concepts which have been left unheralded by the detachment from the word which had previously served that function.

"Cat" may be "gato" or " neko" or any number of words in any number of languages, but a cat is still a cat, no matter which language you're speaking. And it doesn't take a genius to see that a word is very different from a boat. So, one once again wonders why Dennett doesn't realize this.

After becoming physically ill at this point from trying to understand how someone could present such a mishmash of arbitrary assertions which contrast so starkly with physical reality, I decided to cut to the chase and read Dennett's proffered Appendix which is a reproduction of his article "The New Replicators" originally published in the Encyclopedia of Evolution from Oxford University Press. It was hoped that reading something a bit more technical could help dispell some of Dennett's own mumbo-jumbo.

Unfortunately, fully dissecting that would take another post almost as long as this one, and it would simply be a reiteration of the arguments I have already presented. To sum it up, while accepting that there is no basis in physical reality for the existence of memes, he claims that they are simply because they are possible. However, their very possibility once again assumes that people do not have free-will or active control over the contents of their own minds or the products of their labor. In short, it assumes that ideas are generated by the very processes that would need to be established to prove the existence of the process proposed. If this circle of logic makes you dizzy, then you can sympathize with the motion sickness I got while reading Dennett's book in my living room.

Perhaps Dennett is happy ruminating on his prophesied day "when a cleverly turned phrase in a book gets indexed by many search engines, and thereupon enters the language as a new cliche, without anybody to read it." But if nobody reads it, it is doubtful that it can be said to have entered the language at all. At the very least, it can only be hoped that both Dennett and his abuse of human reason are not long for this Earth. Although with the support and following of so many prominent intellectuals, it may be that he will instead be remembered as the messiah of a brand new breed of totalitarian rhetoric, yet one known to readers of Ayn Rand's philosophical work as the "Aristocracy of Pull." For once you have abdicated belief in you own mind, then you will be very easy to control.

And petty hacks like Dennett have long yearned to pull the trigger in the face of humanity.