The Second Korean War

Recent news in the real world has yielded an issue that I simply MUST make my comments on.
Maybe you can guess from the title of this post;
I am talking about the recent military action taken by North Korea against South Korea.

Of late, my main source of news is the Australian media. With internet and similar technology, we are no longer a day or two behind the rest of the world. However, despite this country being the birthplace of Rupert Murdoch, we have no endemic, worthy investigative media. By this, I mean to say that we get all our news from overseas sources, like Reuters, CNN, Fox (god help us all).
So it's filtered, it's biased, but in this case, it's second-hand.

What I know is this:

North Korea fired some short-range missiles and hit an island that sits in the contentious border zone. The island, the name of which is too long and difficult to pronounce that I will ask you to look it up, is a particular doozy in terms of territory. The island is inhabited by Koreans who consider themselves denizens of the South, and the UN (at the end of WWII) agreed that the island is inside the South's territory. The North, however, never ones to buck their tradition of disagreeing with everything the UN (and USA) say, have declared that the sea surrounding the island is Northern territory. So, to recap this paragraph: the Island is globally recognised as South territory, and occupied by South people, but the North recognises the water the Island is in to be North territory, against UN confirmation.

What are we to do?

I would hope that I have made any reader of this blog aware that the Korean War (started in 1950 by the North) has NOT actually ended yet. Whereas most wars officially end with a peace treaty being signed, there is NO peace treaty for the 1950-53 war in Korea. The North and the South did not make up, and are not merely noisy neighbours to one another.
The Korean situation is one like no other, and is, quite frankly, utterly unnecessary in this modern world, a relic of the Cold War that must be erased.

If I were to tell you the long and interesting story of the Korea War (1950-53), you would go way from me thinking this: "What a fucking waste of time, energy, resources and lives; although Japan did well out of it..."
Yes, after three long, brutal years fighting up and down that peninsula, it ended in a stalemate, with the Ceasefire (not Peace Treaty) drawing the lines exactly where they had been drawn before the war began - ie at the 38th parallel.

Now, we exist in a world where there are two Koreas. One is bat-shit insane, and the other is questionable. Both have been moulded in culture and identity by the existence and hatred of the other. Both harbour unsecret desires to annex, of perhaps destroy, the other.
But the juiciness of this particular issue does not end there! Oh no!

Think about where Korea is. Think about any news you saw the last few years, since the 2006 'nuclear' test conducted by the North. Have you heard the phrase "North Korea won't return to the six-party talks'?
Six-party talks.
Who could the six parties, the six interested stakeholders be in the Korean situation?

Well, obviously two of them are North Korea and South Korea.
Expanding outwards geographically, three more candidates are easily spotted, as the only three countries that exist around the peninsula: China, Japan, and Russia.
That leaves one seat left.
Need it be said, that seat belongs to the USA!
North, South, China, Japan, Russia, USA. Six parties.

Let it be know and clear, the war in 1950 was started by the NORTH. Kim Il Song was his name, the leader who led the North.
Why did he do it??
Stay with me: I am going to give you the condensed version. Ask me for details later. (I strongly urge you to look at a MAP as you read this)

Pre-WWII: Japanese Empire includes all of Korea (and eastern China, Taiwan, many islands)

After Hiroshima nuke, before Nagasaki nuke: Russia declares war on Japan.

End of WWII: USA takes the home-islands of Japan, and the rest of the Empire is decided on. Because Russia got in just in time, Stalin lays claim to half of Korea, and half of Japan (namely Hokkaido). General MacArthur, US Occupation leader, refuses Hokkaido, but must allow halfo of Korea. HENCE, North goes to USSR administration, South goes to US administration (same spirit of the Germany divide at the end of WWII) NEITHER superpower is happy with the arrangement, both of course wishing to hold the entirety of Korea.

USSR and USA spread their own special ways of doing things in their own halves of Korea. Stalin helps install Kim Il-Song, complete with personality and half a brain. Kim runs with what he has, and with Stalin's blessing builds up a cult around himself.
President Truman installs a government that aspires, somehow, to democracy, but leaves us with someone whose name I never actually learnt, and that's after doing at least two university papers on the subject (so the leader of the South was unimportant).

Next important thing to note: USA Congress, President Truman, and General MacArthur all agree that Japan requires the most attention. Their motives are clear: just as a dependant Western Europe could provide new markets for capitalism once rebuilt, so too could the industrial potential of Japan (Japan did just wage a war with amazing effort. This cannot go ignored). Rather than punish Japan, the USA sought to rebuild it, and placed the bulk of post-war troops in the Japanese territories. South Korea was left marginally defended.

Kim Il Song understood the lax situation in the South, and took his advantage. On June 25 of 1950, he attacked from the North. Southern forces and US support were caught with pants down, and routed all the way back to Pusan.
The USA had to retaliate, and Truman seized the opportunity to show how effective the new UN could be. Miraculously, Russia was not present for the meeting in New York when the UN decided to sanction action against the North's aggression.
MacArthur came in, undid the Northern army's work, and got all the way back to China.

MacArthur had an itch he needed to scratch:
In the five years since Japan was defeated, Mao Zedong had managed to unify China (until this point a broken, divided mass of aimless wandering and civil war). The bad news was that Mao called himself a Communist, and came to power through no help from the USA. In fact, he was good friends with Stalin, and hated the USA intrinsically.
MacArthur's itch: having pushed the communist North all the way back to the Chinese border, MacArthur wanted to use nukes on the Chinese army that had volunteered to bolster the North Korean efforts. TO be clear, this means the USA goes to nuclear war with China, and Russia as an ally of China.
As Truman rightly thought: not good. Truman was already dealing with the idea that he'd personally allowed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen. Over his dead body would he allow MacArthur to nuke Chinese civilians for the hope of getting military targets.
MacArthur and Truman had a tiff, and Truman pulled rank and fired MacArthur's arse in 1951.

This really is an interesting story, but what does it mean for Korea now?

Well: MacArthur's replacement was a man whose name escapes me, for reasons I will now make obvious: the replacement General was not as good as MacArthur. Plain and simple. the frontline of the Korean War fluctuated twice more, once south, once north, and by 1953 both sides were seeking diplomatic ends to the conflict.

In peace negotiations, no solid agreements could be made. In fact, the 1953 talks were so unsuccessful and lacklustre that all they really succeeded in doing was to call the 38th parallel the official borderline, and declare a de-militarised zone (DMZ) on either side of the line.
This seems like an OK idea, until you figure that a map is just a representation, and a line on a map does not take into account the villages, buildings, and families that had been severed by that 38th parallel. Really, nothing could be brought to a close in 1953, and it's safe to say that the only reason the 38th parallel was agreed on was because the idea already existed. It's a twisted form of incumbency.... the worst reason to do anything if you ask me.

To this day, on 25 November 2010, the 38th parallel still exists.
President George Bush dropped the ball on everything, including nuclear development of the North. However, it isn't totally implausible to think that China just gave nuke technology to North Korea (the same way they gave it to Pakistan in 1998).

So now, today, we have the NORTH: still batshit-crazy, led by the 'divine' son of Kim Il Song, Kim Jong Il, in possession of Nuclear weapons, closed off and pariah, stubborn and unpredictable.
The SOUTH: actually made the jump from Developing to OECD nation (Developed, though their methods are questionable in terms of longevity), close military alliance with the USA, their own version of Democratic, non-nuclear, but more than capable of fast development of weapons (or could just ask the USA).

NEITHER the North nor the South should EVER be said to be "good" or "evil". These are words only fit for fantasy novels and the Bible, not for the real world.

From my perspective here in Australia, and for a year or so living in Japan, I can say that the North really does seem to be belligerent. But who can blame them?
They backed the wrong horse in the Cold War. China is their only ally, and treats them like the cousin at the family Christmas party that they wish hadn't come. They have no profitability in ANYTHING, their leader is certifiably crazy, US dollar counterfeiting is the main industry, and there is no contact with the outside world.

North Korea has therefore become the most dangerous thing in human sociology. From the outside, what we know urges us to say that the entire country is inhabited by brainwashed sociopaths, who live in starvation and fourth-world conditions and still thank their Dear Leader for it all.

If the North were to start another war, things would go very differently. Like I said, Kim Il Song had a golden opportunity when the USA was busy focusing on Japan in 1950. There was no strong military presence in the South, and his attack was one of opportunity more than anything else.
NOW: The South is ready, and has been ready for generations. The general population (and I speak from personal experience here) falls into three main categories: culturally staunch, and unresponsive to the idea that other parts of the world can be different; liberal and capable of wanting to get out of it; or somehow missed all the news and propaganda, and cares more about their phones and hanmail. I'm yet to meet a Korean who doesn't fall into one of these categories.
Sadly for the young men, every single young man (unless he can escape) must serve two compulsory years in the national service. This means that at any moment the entire male population of South Korea is capable of arming himself, and reporting for duty. Surveillance and weapons technology has been boosted by the US alliance. All of this is because the South does not want to be caught off-guard again.

So why would the North fire those missiles the other day? This is the question I came to answer.

The Answer: Kim Jong Il, the batshit-insane leader of the North, is dying of about six different ailments and cancers. he had three legitimate sons (and god knows how many illegitimate). One is a poofter, and openly so. One was caught trying to get into Tokyo Disneyland on a fake passport a few years ago. The youngest is a giant question-mark for the West. So, when it comes time to decide whom to leave the nuclear weapons and cult-demigod leadership to, Kim's choice has already been made for him.
The unknown son, his name is Kim Jong-Un. remarkably unimaginative, I am sure his name is some sort of musty old Korean convention that pays tribute to the wonderousness of his father.
All we know about Jong-Un is that he went to a school in Switzewrland for a few months, and loves basketball. This has led a friend and I to imagine that when he takes the reins from daddy, he will start to offer governmental positions and honourary military posts to the likes of Michael Jordan and Shaq, in the hopes of getting his boyhood heroes to show-up for his 26th birthday party and eat Kimchi with chopsticks made from farm-workers' bones.

This person, Jong-Un, is too easy to make fun of. And that is what you get after decades of fucking crazy shit such as what happens in North Korea. I had a history teacher once suggest that the North was misunderstood. I think that has some merit, though very little. They are misunderstood, yes, but they do a damn good job of both playing close to the chest AND throwing curveballs. I hope that mix-up of analogies makes my point clear.

The missile attacks the other day are explained thusly:
Jong-Il will die soon. He hogged the spotlight inside and outside of Korea for decades, and didn't choose his heir until only last year! The North Korean media goons are in overdrive, fabricating the backstory for Jong Un, just like they did for daddy so many years ago ("born on a mountain-top, surrounded by angels, >and other fantastical ego-masturbation garbage inserted here<")

The missile strikes were undoubtedly for the benefit of those INSIDE North Korea, not outside. the target was marginal, questionable, and only killed a few people. Personally, it is unacceptable, and although the UN won't back up its condemnation of it with anything of substance, I wish it would! But from the North's view, it was a use of weapons (check!), on the decision of the new leader (check!) that hurt the South (check!) and got some attention abroad (check!). All the boxes are checked in the North Korean media's handbook for making a new leader known. Even more proof for me is the fact that for several months North Korea featured nowhere in global media.

So the conclusion: the attacks in the last week are negligible. They SHOULD lead to the UN finally doing something about North Korea, but they won't. Russia has other things to worry about (like rebuilding the USSR under Vladimir "this time it's permanent" Putin).
The USA could not possibly launch any kind of conventional military intervention - I hope you;ve been reading the news at any point in the last two years to know WHY I just said that. The USA could use their stockpiled nukes, but probably not. Japan can't do anything, having cut off its military balls when it tried to attack the USA 60 years ago, and with the birthrate and all the other cultural adaptive problems, there won't BE a Japan to do anything soon enough.

China is the only party that might be able to do anything about North Korea. I've outlined the relationship. China is too economically tied-down with the USA, and too geared towards profit-making to engage in a costly war for or with the North. If anything, they will send strongly worded messages to whichever Kim is in power, and hope for the best.

In short, no-one will do anything. The missile attacks on the South Korean island are an isolated incident. The North will continue to shriek like a spoilt child every few months, and the South will continue to burn through many billions of Won to counter the possibility of the North attacking again. This will continue ad infinitum into the future, until someone makes an active choice to intervene. Even then, economic circumstances will dictate just how far one can move.

So, there will be no second Korean War. Not now, anyway. And if I'm wrong, then it will become nuclear quickly, and there will be no-one around to tell me I was wrong.

I hope that lets you sleep easier. Not the holocaust bit, the rest of it, about no war happening.

Good Night.

From The Tominator.

To Uluru, and Beyond!

My Peoples,
I write to you with news that some of you may already know, but which I should say here in my humble blog, nonetheless.

A week from tonight, next Sunday, I will be going to bed in a place that I have never been before. After a (somewhat needlessly) protracted stint in Sydney, I have finally recalled what is most important and necessary at this point in my life. It is not a woman, it is not money, no. It is ADVENTURE!!!!!!!!

I will be arriving in Uluru, Ayer's Rock, smack-BANG in the middle of Australia, to begin a new chapter as a Japanese Language Tour Guide.
In this endeavour, I have so far identified three key objectives that I must achieve:
1) See the Rock, and the amazing surrounds (more of my own country!)
2) Get experience in Life, and also in a job of a kind that I have not really done yet (a break from teaching, FINALLY!), and also some field study for my grand political Theory of Everything, Societal Evolution, or "SocEv" as I now call it for short.
3) Create Contacts, meeting and fostering relationships of all kinds that will one day form part of my global personal network.

I think these goals are pretty damn good, and three seems like a good number. Most of you will know that I also had three goals when I last went to Japan, and I managed to accomplish all of them resoundingly and in full, even if it took me 15 months.

At this point, I don't know how long the Uluru stint will last. The answer to that will very likely be clear come April/May of 2011 (next year).

But for now, since it is 11:40pm, and I want to get up before 10am tomorrow, I will leave you with this post as it is, and these final words as I spend the next 6 days prepping for my departure, and bracing myself for the searing, dry heat of up to 45 degrees Celsius in the Australian desert:

It ain't over till it's over.

Your life is only as small and boring as you have neglectfully allowed it to be.

I'll see you on the other side.

From The Tominator.

Aussie Dollar

Recently something amazing has happened in Australian economics.
Long ignored by the rest of the world as a backwater of the British Empire, and then as a 'European transplant' on the arse-end of Asia (thank a former Malaysian PM for that pearl), Australia has been a quiet achiever in pretty much everything we do:
- When we had active secondary industries, we made quality goods, and even sold them abroad.
- Currently, our primary industries are feeding the inexhaustible hunger of China's rampant growth.
- More actors, directors, and films in Hollywood than you may know are of Australian origin (or from New Zealand but claimed by us because hey, what is NZ going to do about it??).
- Our politicians, more notably our last PM (knifed in the back by his own party, see earlier blog posts) have liked to use the phrase: "we punch above our weight". This applies truly to our commitment in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, and every other American war since WWII.

So, as you can see, we have been quiet achievers, but also high-achievers.

Economically, it has been a different story.

The Australian economy was a protected economy leading out of World War II. There is little wonder why, since it was based on agricultural exports (mainly wool and food to Europe), and a general aura of racism saw Australians constantly weary of the fluctuating Asian economies in most immediate proximity.
But in 1983, our dollar was floated. The PM and Treasurer at the time (Bob Hawke and Paul Keating respectively) were the magic team of the Labor Party, and it fell to them to do it. In short, the boom period of the 1950s was sustained by a very socially conservative government, which remained in power (though under differing leaders) for 23 years. By the mid-1970s, social change was briefly enacted by a new PM Gough Whitlam with a famous election in 1974, and an ensuing Constitutional Crisis (the first of its kind in the country) followed by the Dismissal of the PM brought that wave of reform to a grinding halt. (this is a pretty big part of Australian history. I'm not going to do it justice in this context, however. Ask me later!).

The next PM, an ambitious, imperious, yet sad and uninspiring man, Malcolm Fraser, then enacted similar reforms to his dismissed predecessor, only on a much easier-for-the-public-to-swallow basis.

Then America faced facts about Vietnam in the mid-1970s and felt impotent, and the world at large was also hit in 1979 by the Oil Crisis. Economies tanked overnight, and fear was injected into the veins of politicians everywhere. Australia was no exception.
After the recovery in the early 1980s, and the dawn of the Reagan and Thatcher eras in the countries that mattered (USA and UK), the rest of the developed world followed their new ideas.
Thatcher and Reagan, led by the nose by economists who had lost big in the 1970s, allowed their governments to stop behaving like national governments and start behaving like money-grubbing capitalist corporations. Hence began the 1980s corporatisation of national governments - also known as Reaganomics. (I think 'Thatchernomics' is harder to say and type.)

Australia, ever-dependant on the whims of the "great and powerful friends" had no choice, and was not spared. Some of you may know the mechanics behind a protected economy. Hawke and Keating 'floated' the Aussie Dollar, and we all watched in 1983 (not me, I was born in 1987) as the dollar, no longer supported on artificial stilts, sank to find its 'real' market value. It settled somewhere closer to 50c US than above US$1, where it had always been. Needless to say, we had ourselves a little recession that year. But Australian history remembers it as "the recession we had to have", as for a decade later, right up until the crash of 2008-09, Australia rode the crest of the wave of boom-time, which began that day back in December 1983.

For those that don't here is the short version:
Protected economy: the national government states the value of the dollar (or currency). It is NOT as simple as that. Regular people and especially stock-brokers cannot be expected to agree on the value of the Australian dollar, and trade at the stated value ad-infinitum. If anyone wants to sell an export or buy an import, one has to agree with outside economies on the value of the currency being used. And at the most basic level, unless the economy is entirely cut off and isolated from the rest of the world, the BANKS have to transact currency exchanges daily.

In the Protected Australia, tariffs support home-grown industries. Whereas it may be cheaper to buy a Japanese Toyota than an Australian Holden in the 1970s, Mr Australian Taxman comes into the scene and says "You must pay an exorbitant price if you ever want that Toyota to come into Australia!"
Domestically, the national banks must control the value of the currency. This is done, in the simplest terms, thusly:
Today, the Australian Dollar must be set at US$1.20. Yesterday it was $1.15. Tomorrow, it needs to be at $1.10 (...for whatever reason - it's not important WHY, just HOW right now in this example).

So, Yesterday = $1.15 Today = $1.20 Tomorrow = $1.10.
Since we can't just agree on the value and go about our business, the value MUST be backed up and supported by something.
**Quick note: every damn term used in economics is metaphorical. I'm sorry. It gets hard to follow. I'll make it quick. But ask yourself: why all the Metaphors?? Because none of it really exists! It's all rhetoric! Did you get the same answer I got?
To support the value of the dollar, the Australian national bank (once the Commonwealth Bank, now the Reserve Bank) had the legal prerogative to BUY or SELL Australian currency at will. By buying up currency today, the supply of AUDollars lessens, and its value goes up. Hence the bank could artificially change the value from Yesterday to Today from $1.15 to $1.20.
Tomorrow, to hit the mark of $1.10, the bank can sell the currency to whoever wants it. And there is always someone who wants it Tomorrow. After all, Today it was worth $1.20!
The Bank could therefore artificially control the value.
Of course, there are other more drastic measures a national bank could use, too - like printing too much, or burning a whole pile of cash. But things never got that bad down here.

And NOW, on November 4, 2010, things seem to be good! Amazingly good! Incredibly GOOD!

And it is incredible - not credible.

This week, for the first time since 1983, the first time since artificial valuing and protection, the Australian dollar, which is free to float on the international markets, and the value of which is determined by the free market, rose to and above PARITY with the US dollar.

Let me put this into crystal clear perspective for you.
Australia = long-time backwater, never truly 'independent' from the Queen (not that we needed to be), quiet-achiever, incapable of protecting its borders completely, arid desert continent, less than 10 major cities, and barely 2 with populations over 1 million. The largest our population ever hit was the current census, which stands at an estimated 23million (based largely on immigration). We have a constant drought, we sold all our secondary industries to China, we sell China our Primary industries at unnecessary discounts, and our tertiary industries are bloating into incompetence. None of our Universities are older than 150 years, and no-one in the rest of the developed world grows up wishing to attend any of them. We have no space program, a small military, no nukes, and always follow someone else's lead. If ever any major nation pays attention to us, it is always met with an initial shock, akin to the one you get when you attend a big meeting and daydream for a few hours before someone calls your name for the third time and you jump and wipe the saliva off your face!

USA = Superpower, leader of the free world. First man on the moon. First to develop nuclear weapons, won the war against Germany AND Japan AT THE SAME TIME!, controlled the Keynsian global economic system, fights wars in other countries at their own pleasure, home to major global universities, contains California (which in and of itself could be a G8 nation if it were independent), largest population expansion hit over 300 million, top of the world, etc etc. yada, yada, yada. If you are not aware of the status and power of the USA, then you really should keep hiding under that rock you've been under for decades and decades.


I realise these comparisons are unedited, but they are clear and true.

So, I ask you, HOW the HELL did we in Australia get to parity with the US dollar????

I can tell you, that NOTHING has changed, and nothing could have possibly changed, to make the small Australian economy rise to match the US dollar, no matter how high above our own weight we punched.

So if Australia's dollar didn't go UP, then.....
...I guess the US dollar has sunk that much!

For a country that lives and breathes by the free market, the USA is totally ignoring what the free market is saying about the state of its own economy.

President Obama, who, as of yesterday, now faces an absolutely hostile House of Representatives in Washington DC, has succeeded in accomplishing absolutely NOTHING to change the horrific course of events that George Bush set in motion as he stole America's future.

I can see a pretty clear future for America, and I am going to tell you about it in the next post. I warn you, though, that it is not pretty, and may seem quite bleak indeed. For starters, it will use the phrase "President Palin". But I strongly recommend that you read it, just as soon as I post it!

America, just like the Galactic Empire of Asimov's Sci-Fi epics, is on an irreversible slide into decay and ruin.
But time marches on.
We will need to change our perspectives in the new world, and remember one thing:
We did it to ourselves.

Freedom is not a concept to be taken lightly, and not an idea to be twisted and exploited.


From The Tominator.

Tomfucius Say: Getting stuff DONE

Tomfucius say:

"If you want anything done, you must do SOMEthing!"

Follow your Dreams

Ask yourself two questions.
The First is::

"Do I really enjoy the job that I am doing now?"

If your answer is a full, hearty, and resounding "YES! By golly, YES!!!!", then you don't have to ask the Second question.

If, however, your answer is anything other than that, then:

The Second question should be::

"How much did they pay me to give up on my dreams?"

From The Tominator

Tomfucius Say: trust & money

Tomfucius say:
"You can never know nor trust ANYONE; however, when MONEY is involved, people tend to come through, especially when it's THEIR money!"

Money is God (a short note)

Ever since I started this blog on a lonely night in Mito, Japan, in 2009, I have promised myself (and my reader/s) that I would post my personal triumph and public outrager where I declare and explain that MONEY is GOD.
Here it is.
In the post preceding this short note, I have published, finally, my first part of my magnum opus. I hope you can understand it.
The second part, which will consist of a further in depth continuation of the Realisation, is coming momentarily, and will go immediately after this post.
Enjoy! (I have!)

From The Tominator.

GOD IS MONEY (part 1)

Money. It is God.
For ever-so-long, I held an idea about God that could have had me branded a number of names, from Atheist, to Blasphemer, Heretic, or even Devil.

I would not have called myself any of these names, as I don't agree with any of them, so if I happened to be the only person in existence in this world, none of it would matter. But, as reality dictates, I am not alone. Around me, in the present day of 2010AD, there are over 7billion human beings on this planet. At least 90% of those that have been asked and documented have admitted to believing in a Supreme Being of some sort, namely, a God.

In earlier ages of my species, there were many Gods. Their names still exist, and those of use who speak English or any of the Western European languages, say them on a daily basis. Hardly anyone is aware that we are doing this, but the facts are not changed by negligence of mind.

In the current ages, God has been largely agreed upon as a single being, not many; and is said to be the most powerful being in existence. Indeed, God is the Creator of all existence.

So what was the view that I held until recently?

I would have said that "God does not exist". I suppose I am lucky, if luck is the right concept, to exist in a free and developed country in the early 21st Century, because words like that last sentence would have had my head separated from my body in earlier times or a different nation.

Before I tell you my new perspective on God, let me first define what the subject is, in the most exact terms.

There are, in terms of population size, five dominant religions in the world today, in 2010AD. In terms of cultural dominance, I am safe to say that the number cuts down to THREE. To be clear, these dominant religions (Big Three) are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The other two to note are Bhuddism and Hinduism.

Through not coincidence at all, the Big Three are related as closely as any religions can be. Depending on which Biblical story you choose to believe, there was first Judaism, and Islam split from that. Jesus Christ was a Jew at birth, and the religion that bears the same name separated from Judaism (if Biblical stories are to be believed again) over the idea that Jesus is the Son of God.

All the Big Three are Monotheistic religions. This means that their followers worship only one God: 'mono-' meaning 'one', and '-theis' or (some derivation) meaning 'God'. Jesus Christ's status as the Son of God has been carefully defined by Christians as not betowing God-classification upon Christ.

The Other Two, Bhuddism and Hinduism, can be classed, in the most general terms, as native religions of the Asian region. For historical reasons that can be explained and discussed at another time, the peoples of Asia stayed put for centuries and harboured their own religion. Hinduism never really left India, and Bhuddism remained in southern Asia for a long time, extending only as far as Japan through time.
Conversely, the peoples of the Middle East, birthplace of the Big Three, spread their religion through migration, wars, and, most importantly, Empire building. Right up into the pre-World War I age, those empires were still spreading their religion, actually counteracting the Asians' slow starts, and for very strong reasons.

So, the first big question: WHAT is God?
Using my ambient knowledge of the Big Three, I can put up a general and agreeable definition of what God is.

God is the Creator. Biblical stories of Genesis tell us that God created everything in the space of six days, and rested on the seventh.
God is supreme. With the power to create everything, God also has the power to destroy everything. This is epitomised in ideas like the Rapture and Revelations, the final book of the New Testament of the Bible.
God is a he. All of the Big Three have made a point of defining God as a male, and always using the male pronouns when talking about Him.
God looks like us. On the sixth day og Genesis, God decided to create Man in his own image. Woman, apparently, came later; there is some story about God making Eve out of Adam's rib (?).

God has a very colourful attitude and personality. I suppose you'd want Him to have some, after all - it would be a boiring world if God was a pencil-pusher.

According to the Ten Commandments, the rules that God dictated to humanity via Moses:
1) I am your God:
He wants to make this very clear.
2) You shall put no other gods before me, or make yourself an idol:
God is jealous, and this may or may not mean that God is aware that other gods exist.
3) Do not take the Lord's name in vain:
God wants us to take him seriously, and never say bad things about Him.
4) Remember the Sabbath Day:
God wants us to rest at least once a week. Personally, I think this Commandment stems from a very human desire to slack off at least once in a while.
5) Honour your Father and Mother:
God prefers us to recognise a hierarchy of society, and there is no better place to start than at home.
6) You shall not murder:
That's God's job. We humans are to respect the fact that if we cannot give it willy-nilly, we should not take it willy-nilly.
Commandments 6, 7, 8 and 9 all relate specifically to issues of personal self- control. The biggest question raised collectively would be the idea that all- powerful God cannot control us all individually.
7) You shall not commit adultery:
God wants us to control ourselves. This is a VERY interesting rule. Given that Abraham, the guy who starts the Jewish story, had sex with both his wife Sarah and his mistress Hagar. It also brings up the first questions about the nature of Marriage.
8) You shall not steal:
God wants us to recognise personal property and privacy. This is interesting only in so far as notions of personal property only came to the fore in human history with the development of western liberalism.
9) You shall not lie:
God wants us to tell the truth. "What is the Truth?" is another epic question, though...
10) You shall not covet your neighbour's wife:
This has been more widely recorded as "do not covet anything your neighbour owns". It's all about God not wanting us to be greedy or jealous. Again, matters of personal self- control (because God can't control us all directly?).

What is interesting to note at this point is that vast majority of the Ten Commandments are "do not"s. As for the "do"s, it really only covers worshipping God exclusively, recognising hierarchy, and of course, taking a rest.
Some smart-arse scholars might suggest that the "do not" nature of the Ten Commandments means that anything not covered could easily be permissable. It would therefore be OK to be sexually promiscuous, to beat someone to within an inch of death then stop, or even to simply borrow and forget to return.
But then, of course, equally smart-arse theologians will declare that the inherently broad nature of the Dos and Don'ts can be argued to cover any number of human interactions.

I want to concentrate on the conflicting ideas presented by the First Commandment, and by Commandments 6-9. To be sure, Commandment #1 can be ambiguous. But if we take the Creationist story into account, when we call God "God", we are calling Him the Creator of all things, all life, all objects. His power is omnipotent, and he is therefore everywhere, watching, and in everything. he is so important that we are supposed to start all pronouns relating to Him with capital letters.
Why, then, does God insist, with four subsequent Commandments, that we control ourselves?
Is He realistic about the nature of humans as hedonistic and greedy beasts, or did he stuff up on the Sixth Day, and only create aesthetic copies of himself (as opposed to spiritually pure and clean, like Him)?
That last paragraph can only be reconciled through the Orwellian action of doublethink! but since Big Brother ain't around, I'm taking the liberty of dissecting it.

If God is everywhere and omnipotent, or at least powerful enough to create all of Existence, why can't he control all of us?
Why should God have to tell us how to behave, if indeed he created us?
Wouldn't the Omnipotent God be powerful enough to create human beings that can behave themselves?
Does God simply enjoy watching us from on-high, like some sort of ant-farm?
Did he create us as we are - insecure, emotional, and greedy (to name a few imperfecetions of my race) just to watch it all unfold?
Why does the Supreme Being need that sort of dramatic entertainment?

To say the least, God seems to have some very human attributes about him, and not the other way round.

To keep this all on track, I am going to answer some of the questions I have already raised. it will be easy, because many of them have the same question.
For all Questions of God's control over us, the answer is this: He DOES.

"Whoa!" I hear you say. What am I talking about?

Well, let me get empirical for a moment.

Most Atheists have spent their entire lives attempting to disprove the existence of God. This sad fact is the main reason I do not call myself an Atheist. But to borrow from them for just a moment, the idea that they all keep putting forward is that there is no proof of God's existence. God cannot be scientifically proven to exist, nor can much of what He is said to have done.
This is true. Even the religious among us can agree that there is no scientific proof for God.
The question this raises for the Atheists, then, is "how can you still believe in God if you know he cannot be proven to exist??".
The answer can elude those Atheists for more than a lifetime. it is, as always, a question of perspective.
An Atheist will never understand a Religious person's thought-patterns as long as he/she thinks like an Atheist. Most Atheists require that scientific proof, and usually resort to demanding it. Religious people simply do not demand it.
Blind Faith, as demanded by the First Commandment, is all that is needed to keep God alive, real, and true for ANY religious person. Blind Faith, by no conicidence, is also a very easy thing to do. It requires: (1) no thought, (2) busying oneself with other matters, (3) stubbornness. Each of these three factors comes instinctively to all members of the human race. After all, what I'm doing in my life is infinitely more important that listenting to what you have to say, isn't it? And vice versa? Right??
That last sentence, as a matter of art, contained all three factors mentioned. Read it again, and see if you can find them. When you're done, move on from HERE>

So, Science is not going to answer the question "What is God?". At least, not in any direct way.

However, if we move away from the need for measurements and documented proof, and into the intellectual reality, the answer can be found.

"What is God?"
So far, God is everywhere, all-knowing, and affects everything that humans do. He creates the world, and it is only through God that anything can be changed. He places broad and heavy restrictions on what humans can do in their lives, and He also provides the basis for our day-to-day culture. God professes to have total control over everything, and could easily be assumed to actually have it, too (based on his past achievements), but God still requires humans to watch their own step and control themselves.
He is present, He can inflict great harm, but he takes no responsibilty for it.

At this point, with that summary I just gave you, it starts to become clear how desirable a God-like lifestyle would be, doesn't it? All the power and none of the responsibility?
It should come as no surprise that the larger part of modern society, everywhere in the world, has sought to live this way. The High section of all societies has made the effort to live like Gods in their own realm. And, interestingly enough, they have all failed spectacularly.
But more on that another time.

Before we find the latest incarnation of God, let us first agree on what sort of incarnation God could possibly have. To do this, we need to reconcile the mutually contradicting ideas of the Atheists (prefix "a-" meaning "no", "theis" meaning "god"), and of the devoutly religious.

One says God does not exist, the other says He is everywhere. One says God cannot be proven, the other sees not reason for proof. These really are mutually contradicting, mutually exclusive viewpoints, and they cannot be reconciled in their more popular forms.

But if we branch out for a moment, and think of other ways God might EXIST, both the Atheists and Believers are magically in complete agreement.

God is not a person. God is not a being. God has no real physical form whatsoever. Who decided that there had to be a physical form, anyway? That's remarkably arbitrary, isn't it? There are many, many ways for a thing to exist, why just settle on the physical?
Answer: The physical is the first, and easiest, form of existence for human beings to understand. We like to take the easy way out whenever we can. Arbitrary assumptions are also a powerfully seductive mode of thought for us humans.

God is a concept. He is an IDEA.

Why have I chosen this form of existence? No, it is not arbitrary. I choose idea because it fits the facts.
God is everywhere, he is omnipotent. Once we confront the fact that our reality is really only what our senses tell our brains, and that an idea is born and borne inside the brain, God is suddenly realistically omnipresent and omnipotent. The idea of Him, or of becoming like Him, can consume human minds utterly.

Ideas can exist, and they can be remarkably resistant to logical rebuttal. God as an Idea, therefore, can both exist, and not require any proof of his existence. It becomes a simple matter of "I think God, therefore, He IS". This definition of an Idea is completely plausible, and satisfies the scientifically-minded.

There you go. Two paragraphs, and suddenly the Believers and the Atheists are in total agreement!

Most importantly, Ideas outlive human individuals, and even generations. They exist, physically, as written documents and hihg-minded books. God really only physcally exists as a character in the Bible (literally meaning "book"), and as the subject of countless written accords, such as the one I am writing right NOW!
In effect, I am propagating the physical existence of God simply by writing this, and all the Atheists from all the ages have done exactly the same thing.

Since all of this is undisputable, the only possible way that God could cease to exist is if we were to burn all the books that mention Him, and erase him from our minds, and never talk about Him again. The Atheists would then be out of a job, and by no coincidence, out of a reason to live.

But by burning that many books we'd be left with nothing to read, and like I said before: ideas are notoriously difficult to push out of your mind. Aren't they?

As an idea, God achieves so much more than He ever could if He were truly corporeal.
Not only is he omnipresent and omnipotent, ("omni-" meaning "every"), invading our minds and staying there no matter what; God also comes up in any recorded form of culture. The central raeson for His omnipresence in this sense is the seductive simplicity of His Idea. Since time immemorial, God, singular or plural, has served as the stand-in explanation for any gap in human knowledge. The sun rises, not because the Earth is round and revolves around an enormous ball of thermo-nuclear energy (the Sun), but beacuse God did it.
Humans are not the dominant species of this Earth as the result of a very long and involved, continuous process of physical and intellectual evolution; God did it.
Even now, in 2010AD, in parts of the Developed world where Convenience has become paramount, people are turning back to God as an excuse for everything because the mere idea of exerting effort to learn scientific reality is just to damn inconvenient.
We didn't win that war, or get pregnant, or enjoy or suffer any of the good or bad things that happened to us because of any from of personal responsiblity.....
.....GOD DID IT!!!!!


So now that the Atheists and Believers can agree on what kind of incarnation God can have, we can look at the Incarnation itself.

God is:
omnipresent
omnipotent
invades our minds
subject of almost every book and story ever written
exists much more on paper than in the physical world (and questionably even then)
a simple idea
an idea that will not die owing to its seductive simplicity
a good stand-in reason to explain anything at all
an effective and all-encompassing stopper on any kind of advanced thought

In the modern age, 2010AD, what is the physical incarnation of God?

What fits the bill of facets laid clear and simple for us just above this sentence??

One word:

MONEY!

Democratic Peace

I feel compelled to write a little something tonight about the Democratic Peace Theory.

In my personal musings over "Societal Evolution" (my own theory, in production, likely to become my future University Masters thesis), I have a stage of "the country" called "Hegemonic Pax". Hopefully, one day all three of you reading this will know more about these stages (if I ever get around to writing it, and by golly, I WILL!).

"Hegemonic Pax" follows directly and inextricably (as far as I can tell) from its previous stage, called "Full Democratisation".

Tonight, in spite of my limited research resources, and in efforts to avoid the easy-come approach of looking at Wikipedia alone, I have sought the internet for other sources.
Again, I am not at Uni again yet, but the Internet has its own unique way of providing sources that range from credible, con-artist, all the way to outlandish.

Tonight I found an online essay that I would, upon first glance, class somewhere towards the outlandish end of the spectrum.

This guy, whom I will name only so you can form your own opinion: see this site here: type this into Google and take the first hit: "The Myth of Democratic Peace".

I haven't bothered to read it through all the way yet, but from the first few paragraphs, and the old TOMAC analysis of a source (which I learnt in high school History class - didn't you??)
I can give you this preliminary assessment:

Type: website, online essay

Origin: self-published (ie not vetted or edited by anyone of particular import)

Motivation: to get his idea out, to challenge the Democratic Peace theory, and hopefully start a new wave of political paradigmatic thought (.....we all feel like that sometimes....)

Audience: whoever will read it. or whoever happens upon it after a Google search.

((I'll be honest, I have forgotten what the C in TOMAC stands for.... this does not bode well... and Google isn't telling me either. That does not bode well for the internet at large! AAAAAAAH!)
Maybe the C stands for Credibility? in that case, for this essay, the credibiltiy is LOW on the outset.

Anyway, let me explain that preliminary assessment:

The author, whoever he is, calls the USA the "quintessential" democracy more than once in the opening paragraphs.
The USA is NOT the 'quintessential' democracy. Reasons::

1) Ancient Athens was the quintessential democracy, with all (free, male, of-age) citizens having a vote, and the population small enough to get them all in the same area to call out at each other.

2) An Athenian-style Direct Democracy is not possible in the modern age, with sheer population size.

3) The USA's electoral system is so opaque that many, many people are disenfranchised, usually by accident, every year, PLUS voting is not compulsory. A 'quintessential' democracy would have compulsory voting, and all votes accounted for. Would it not?

4) This particular essay was written in 2002, between the Sept.11 attacks in 2001, and the full swing of the war in Afghanistan in 2003. We all knew, even in 2002, that George Bush Jnr. really did steal his election win in the 2000 Presidential election. And if he stole it, it is not a democracy, is it? Let alone a quintessential one!

Also, this essay has hinted at 'dubious examples' of democracies going to war. It has explicitly mentioned India and Pakistan going to nuclear war as a possiblilty, and eluded to this eventuality being a counter-argument to the Democratic Peace Theory.

This is simply wrong.

As far as I know, unless they had ana election in the last year which I missed totally, Pakistan has been through a slew of leaders over the last decade, and NONE of them were democratically elected. The tradition in Pakistan had been to quite literally stab your predecessor in the back. More recently, it has been figurative, but certainly never democratic.

India is claimed to be "the world's largest democracy", by virtue of having over a billion people, and having a parliamentary, Westminster-inspired governmental system.
.......however:
I recently worked the Federal election in Australia (which was only JUST decided three days ago, two weeks after I worked at the polling place!).
I have witnessed first-hand the amount of paperwork and bureaucratic sorting, counting, etc. etc. that has to go on to make it all legitimate.
Put simply, India has OVER a BILLION people! No parliamentary government of that size could be called remotely democratic, because no matter how big the House of Representatives room is, the ration of Representatives to People will be too large to have any voice heard properly. The paperwork in India is already notorious, so imagine how bad, and HORRIFICALLY UNENDING it would be to hold an election that was transparent, accountable, and true.

India and Pakistan, and their ceaseless border dispute over Kashmir, and their religious disputes too, are not democratic. But maybe if they really were democratic, they would be at real peace!

And just to throw one in from left-field here: we all know that Iran is not democratic, but they hold fake elections every so often anyway.
Despite the fact that the Ayatollah has supreme authority over everything in Iran, you'd only need to look as far as the fact that Iran is defined as an "Islamic" Republic. The religious underpinning of the state's definition renders it immune to peace. The same goes for Ireland and Northern Ireland, and any other religiously-defined state and its disputes.

So, so far, this paper seems to be presenting nothing of any political merit to denounce democratic peace.
For all you peace-mongers out there, this is a GOOD thing. It means that World Peace is theoretically possible, as improbable as it may be.
I will give you a warning though: should Democracy provide Peace, it will not last. I'm sure I've written something on "Dramatism" or "catastrophising" in this blog before. If not, ask me, and I can give you solid reasons why even at the best of times, humans need something to spice up their day.
Peace, in short, would be too boring. Itchy feet, itchy trigger-fingers. You ARE aware that the USA went from Clinton's Pax directly into Bush's War, aren't you? It was no accident, and it was not entirely dependent on the events of September 11.

I shall, though, read the whole essay, when I get the time. He mentions something about the USA's democratic processes directly bringing on the September 11 attacks in 2001. I'd love to know if this has ANY reasoning behind it, or if it is just another baseless, emotionally-charged assumption. there could be a very good reason no-one else has read this essay.

And in a final note for tonight, tomorrow is September 11 here in Australia. It is only symbolic here, because it was on the morning of Wednesday, September 12, 2001, that I awoke to a changed world.
Nine years.
And what have we, as a world, accomplished in 9 years to fix.... anything...?

Ponder that as you ponder burning any books tomorrow. I wish I could write smoething eloquent about that.

From Tom.

Taking the Easy Way Out - Humanity At Large

It has been a trend all too familiar for this species of ours: Taking the easy way out.

I just watched one of my favourite YouTube vidoes again. It's the video of JFK speaking at Rice University in September, 1962. It is commonly known as the "We choose to go to the moon" speech.

He references people climbing Mt. Everest, exploring the New World, and parallels it to going to the moon. Essentially, for whatever other reasons may have been present, whenever a great leap in human history has been made, it has been because "we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Now, I'd ask any human being on this planet, including you, dear reader:
"When was the last time you did something because it was hard?"

Assuming you actually HAVE an answer to that question, there are so many follow-ups possible, all revolving around "how long did you stick it out", "what happened in the end", etc. etc.

But I want you to empathise with yourself first, and ask this question:
"Before I did the Hard Thing, had I already attempted and/or discounted all the Easy alternatives?"

I wouldn't be surprised if the answer for every human being is "Yes."

Your dictionary will tell you that there is a word spelt like this "masochist". It's meaning, quite bluntly, is "a person who enjoys pain/suffering/hardship". In the Modern Mediocratic world, I wouldn't surprised if at the first mention of the word "masochism" your mind spun straight to the term "sado-masochism" or "S&M". Reason being: the Mediocracy has overplayed the sex angle so much that sex no longer has a choice but to occupy the forefront of our minds.
This is a sad fact, I know, but since most people are going to relate to it, I'll run with it for a moment.
"Sado-Masochism" consists of two words conjoined with a hyphen, "Sadism" and "Masochism". Respectively, they mean "I like to hurt people" and "I like to be hurt". Obviously, this represents a match made in heaven, at least sexually speaking.
It also represents among those that don't indulge it, a relationship of somewhat extreme behaviour. It's nature is one of pain and joy in another's pain, which would traditionally be considered "evil". "Hell" is another word that comes to mind, since we're talking about traditions. Whatever your personal vision of Hell is, we are all bound to picture a place where pain and suffering and hardship is experienced ceaselessly. I know what my own Hell is. So did Bill and Ted on their Bogus Journey (cue reference to 1980s sci-fi movie binary, about which almost no-one knows these days).

So, I have established that pain/suffering is, in the simplest of terms, Hell; it is just plain evil. If I have lost you up to this point, re-read that last sentence, then carry on with me!

Why, then, should I, you, or any other human being wish to pursue hell?
Why should a species such as ours, hardwired to avoid pain, and consider those that seek it to be evil, wish to undertake any sort of activity that will bring on more pain?

Near the end of Kennedy's Rice University speech in 1962, he makes absolutely no illusions about the fact that the space race will be "the most hazardous and dangerous" undertaking ever in human history.

What would you rather do?

Many people, hands down, are going to answer my rhetorical questions by taking the easy way out. I'm not talking about walking away from my blog here. This time, by "easy way out", I mean in the basest way taking the easiest possible alternative response. And that response is "I don't want to be in danger."

It is understandable. I have my room here in Sydney, you probably have some little hole in the wall that you want to snuggle up in and forget about everything at least once a day. If you haven't got it, you yearn for one.
The simplest and easiest solution is to do nothing at all. Once the base thought is made ("I don't want to be in danger"), the reaction will be to do nothing at all. And be honest with yourself. If you could get away with it, you would probably sit on your arse and do nothing. Not move. Not speak. Exert absolutely no energy or effort whatsoever.

But now, as my point comes into view, I will blow your mind with the first of many simple scientific facts: Even when you are sitting down, "doing nothing", you are still exerting energy!
....take a minute. ....... have you scooped your brains off the walls? yes? OK. Let's continue.

I made a big deal out of that last paragraph for the following reasons.

First of all (and most grandiose): you cannot escape science.
For a very quick reference, Israel, a religiously founded nation with a religious government, subsidises the lives of a certain type of ultra-orthodox Jew. These people essentially do nothing but whatever it is said in the First Testament of the Bible that Jews should do. In terms of Reality, they pay no taxes, don't join the army, and collect monetary benefits for no reason other than being good Jews and existing. Their numbers have grown since Israel's founding, from a mere rounding error in demographics, to TEN PERCENT of the Israeli population.
My point on this brief tidbit? The ultra-orthodox religious lifestyle, with it's easy-to-swallow notions of a Supreme Being telling us all what to do, no matter the "hardship" rituals that they do (without any gain too, I might add), is a life that actively and resolutely ignores science. Their lifestyle is extremely attractive, and their numbers grow. They are now so large that they are a totally useless burden on the Israeli tax system, which, like it or not, is the lifeblood of getting-anything-done.

Science, or in this case ignorance of it, is going to get you.

Even when you sit down, you are using energy! Your blood still pumps, your brain still fires off synapses. Your lungs still respire. And perhaps most relatable: your digestive system still digests.
See where I'm going??
In this sloth fantasy world where you can do absolutely nothing at all, the fantasy will only last as long as your last meal. Eventually, no matter how little you do, you are going to feel HUNGRY.

Most scientists and artists/authors have said on their own accord that HUNGER is the basest urge. Zombie and vampire stories (both teeny-bopper and horrific) spawn from the idea, as do bacterial and viral outbreaks in real science (which, sybiotically, feed and grow most of the zombie and vampire stories!).

So, from doing NOTHING, we are now suddenly HUNGRY.
Well, it's not really 'sudden' per se. I've never really gone from feeling totally full to starving. And if you follow a proper diet, the transition from nourishment to famishment is quite long - maybe 6 hours or so???

And what are YOU going to do, now that you are hungry?
Well, your limbs haven't had time to atrophy yet, so it is only in your mind that you are lethargic and reluctant to move. But that base feeling of hunger isn't going to wait for you.
And just like that, your fantasy world of Doing-Nothing-ness is shattered! ...you have to MOVE to the fridge and grab something to eat.

But, depending on how long you did nothing for, and indeed, how long your mind has fixated on the fantasy (long before you actually grooved your backside into the couch), you probably don't have a job.
And PRESTO! Enter here: all the intricacies and pseudo-sciences of ECONOMICS. I have little time for economics personally, so long story short if your heart and mind weren't into it, you'd have lost your job, your bank account dried up, and your fridge, through no accident of god, is EMPTY!

It would appear, at this point, that your existence now hangs in the balance. And the culprit? You took the easy way out.
Like it or not, now both science AND economics has got you. For the sake of mere existence, You can no longer do Nothing.

Now, read back over the blog-post so far, and get that all in your head again. I see some seeping out your left ear.

.....................................

And away we go again!!!!!

So, "Nothing" isn't an option anymore.

Since humans like to follow the path of least resistance, we'll take the next best option to Nothing. That may be anything, really, depending on how low you are willing to go.

If we stick with the generic human, then we have a person who has no will, no ambition, and no particular desire to go anywhere or do anything.
Lucky for this person, modern Mediocratic Capitalistic society is now tailor-made to this kind of person! To get along these days, the least one needs to do is take a skill-less job, meet credit-card debts half the time, not kill anyone, and watch 24-hour cable news on TV.

Here the paradigm shifts again. And again, it ain't really "sudden". It's been in motion all the time, we just don't notice it. It's like how the Earth revolves on it's axis to bring the sun across the sky. You don't feel the planet slipping out from under you, but thee is ample proof that it IS moving slowly and steadily.

Our generic human has gone from going Nothing, to adapting to the basest mode of survival. humans are social creatures, so unless this generic human talks to someone (even phone-sex hotlines), his brain is going to turn to mush and he'll die again.
To satisfy the need for interaction, these days Mediocracy provides its own substitute: loud-mouthed, rhetoric-filled stand-over men and women on the 24-hour cable news channels.
The emotions conveyed (in a notably brusque and abrupt way) are enough to jump the void between TV studio and viewer, and the generic tv-watching human feels a tiny, little, miniscule jolt of emotion every so often - enough to keep them going until the next one.

But what is really happening at this point?
Well, the generic human being is LISTENING. Again, not Nothing, but something. The base need to interact on any level makes the human listen to the TV. Since "Nothing" can no longer be Done, the human actually finds it easier to listen and follow along with the Lowest-Common-Denominator (LCD) drivel that the TV spits at them.

For easy typing purposes, and in a slight reference to a technological pun, I will now call our generic human an "LCDH" Lowest-Common-Denominator Human.

LCDH starts doing what he is told. LCD information is very easy to ingest, and along with the fast food, which is easy to obtain and eat, the LCD sits in front of the TV, gets fat, and eventually dies of obesity/stomach cancer/heart attack/stroke/whatever-the-hell-else-horrible-disease-is-caused-by-obesity.

AGAIN! existence itself is brought into unacceptable peril. First it was Nothing, then it was the Next-Best-Thing-To-Nothing.

What's an LCDH to do?

I think you can follow my logic here. Eventually, and quickly, the Lowest-Common-Denominator Human finds his own Next-Best-Thing to the Next-Best-Thing, forever approaching DOING-NOTHING, by seeking the EASIEST POSSIBLE WAY OUT. I say "way out" because that is where it inevitably leads! OUT of EXISTENCE.

By seeking the easiest possible thing to do, the human being places a limit on himself, brings down a heavy roller-door, slows down to a crawl, and is eventually eaten alive by the tides of time and science.

I was recently told that in the good old days, about 5000 years ago, early human beings did little more than pick berries and fuck each other senseless in group orgies. Sounds great, except for the fact that sexual beings are also fertile beings, and the original intention for sex was to creat more beings. Eventually, agriculture was invented to meet the demand of all the open, empty mouths, and so on and so forth things develop until today. Had the early humans taken the easy way out, and just fucked each other senseless in group orgies all day long, they would have all died of hunger - the berries and foraging trees would all be gone, and the only known food supplies eaten up. Our species would have died out, and the Earth itself would be a barren wasteland.
So, as good as sex feels, EXISTENCE still trumps it.

See what I did there? I logically concluded that Life and Existence itself is better than Sex! So put that razor blade away!

Bottom line in all of this (for now):

Taking the Easy way out is a guaranteed, sure-fire way to figure out be reminded just how mortal you are. In a Universe that is literally limitless, an intelligent being that takes the easy way out his entire life cuts himself off from it all.
Seeking base pleasures, satisfying only base needs - it all snowballs whenever Reality is injected into the scene. Suddenly (but not really) it seeking the easiest thing to do becomes the Hardest thing to do.
To get the world we live and share today to where it is, other people have sought to do the hard thing at the time. They have sought to climb mountains, cross oceans, and even rocket to the moon. Every step has been intrinsically linked to technological development. With each development, what constitutes an "easy life" changes in fundamental definition.

And where we are today, things are so complex, so much exists, that to stop now would be to give up on our existence itself. Every Damn Step of the Way, we've been told by our own actions that seeking progress and development and improvement for its own good is the only way to go.
If nothing else, it cuts out the hardships and suffering that come from the frequent and regular lapses in concentration, which are of course brought about because it seemed like the easy thing to do.

Personally, I can say that all this means I should try to be the best person that I can be. This involves not settling for bad choices, and not making bad choices more than once. At first realising that I don't know everything about the Universe, and at the same time knowing that I can if I really want to.

Human beings are not built, not evolved, and not supposed to sit around and do nothing. If we do nothing, we will die. If we take the easy way out, we will die.

Right now, in the Mediocratic world of 24-hour TV, pop-music, teen-vampires and all the other LCD factors, we are settling ourselves in for a nice, long winter's nap.
Why do the hard thing? Why go where no-one has gone before? Why climb that mountain, or cross that ocean?

Because Life itself is breathing down our necks, and it is going to abandon us if we sit around for the next eternity.

Why go to Mars or Alpha Centauri? Why develop new energy sources and ways of governing?
Because, just like every step in time before us, one day, sooner than you think, the same sort of crisis that led to agriculture, the steam engine, and nuclear power is going to strike us. Existence will get the better of us. Science, as the natural, passive force around us, will render us obsolete.

There really is no choice in our destruction if we do nothing, just a delay. The real choice exists, as it always has, right NOW! There is NO time like the PRESENT.

"Progress" is the only way forward. (Have you ever read the dictionary??)

I know I'll be trying harder to improve myself. I hope you do too.

From The Tominator.

From New Angles - Japan

In all my harpings to my friends and on this blog, it may seem that I hold a rather sardonic, if not downright negative view of Japan. I say this only because I realise that a lot of the time my writing can come across as exaggerated, not because said viewpoint is true of me.

As a Political Scientist, it is really my duty to take everything with a grain of salt, and to be critical (in a good and analytical way) about things, and the closer a subject is to me, the greater the scope of critical thought I can and will put into it.

So let me share with you a recent development in my critical analysis of the world and the massive shift in thinking it has allowed.

I have been job-hunting, as anyone who reads this blog already knows, and in between the rejections, non-responses, and applications, I find myself with time where I cannot amuse myself the usual way (ie outside entertainment) because it simply costs money that I don't have. But my brain works for free (though I really would like someone to pay me for it).

The "Evolution of Societies" or "Societal Evolution" is the name I have given to the new theory I am toying with. It should be noted that the word is "societal", and not "social", and the reason for the distinction I shall explain later. I promise.

But to the point for today, and where Japan comes into it::

I have identified a chain of evolution that any generic country could feasibly follow. Regardless of culture, language, race, or other such differences, this chain of stages appears to be a natural progression. I am still deciding what the final stage-names will be, but for now, I've been using these: Tribalism, Feudalism, Aristocracism, Preliminary Democratisation, Industrialisation, Capitalism, War, Full Democratisation, Hegemon, De-Industrialisation, Advanced Weaponisation, De-Democratisation, Downfall, (Repeat).

Like I said, I haven't decided the final names, because I want the names of the stages to reflect their relative developments.

The USA, and Western Countries today, would fall somewhere in the Hegemon-DeIndustrialisation stage.

Japan is still in the Feudal stage.

that was a big call, wasn't it??

Now ask yourself why does Tom think Japan is still Feudal?
And then ask yourself why I want to call this think "Societal" Evolution, and not simply "Cultural Evolution". The short and suspenseful answer is "Societal" is vastly more encompassing.

One more question for your alone-time with the lights off: Does a seemingly natural progression ALWAYS unfold the same for everything??

Stay tuned. I am going to flesh this thing out, and I'm going to use this blog to do a lot of it.

And the good news (apart from the coming political critical theorisation), is that this means that Japan can finally be seen as not just a stagnant culture that is whithering and dying, with absolutely not recourse or chance for redemption and revival.
It is now put into a broader context, and successfully related to the rest of humanity, as it bloody-well should be!, and given the opportunity, (regardless of probability) to change and redeem.

This should be good.

Suspense for now.

From The Tominator.

Wikileaks and the Afghan War Diaries

Wikileaks and the Afghan War Diaries

I was alerted to this on the train home just yesterday:
Wikileaks, the more aggressive cousin of Wikipedia, has released several thousand documents that are claimed to have come from the Pentagon itself. These documents pertain to activities by the US and Coalition forces in Afghnanistan. Among the more sensitive pieces of information is the allegation of evidence of war crimes being committed on both sides of the war there.

Owing to the somewhat trashy nature of the first source I read, I had to find other, more credible sources on the internet. Given time restraints placed on one by life in general, I managed to go right to the original Wikileaks website. Since there really are over 70,000 reports to be read, I certainly have not had time to read them all. But since this is an opinion piece and not an investigative expose that I am writing, I can proceed with validity.

The allegations levelled by Julian Assange (Wikileaks creator) are that war crimes are being committed by US and allied troops. Keeping this as the crux of the issue, I want to address the question that any interested party might be asking:
Should the information have been exposed at all?

For many people, including especially in the rabid right-wing US media, the answer is as clear, simple, black-and-white as any question in their lives: NO! This would also go for anyone related to the US government, let alone the Department of Defence.
Their reasons are clear, too.

Where the media is concerned, there is a dollar-value on everything, and something like this presents a high dollar-value, namely in political controversy, anti-foreigner sentiment (Wikileaks founder Assange is an Australian), and war coverage. And let us not forget to mention the mountain of 'talking points' that they now have to dig into.

For the US military, it is definitely a question of security. The lives of troops on the ground in Afghanistan, the security of the Pakistan alliance. And, like any other war in modern history, this leak could seriously jeopardise public opinion and support of the War.

I'd now like to make s few things clear for my readers. Starting in no particular order:
Public opinion on the War in Afghanistan is no longer an issue. When Lindsay Lohan going to jail garners more press coverage, or Justin Beiber's appearance anywhere prompts larger riots than the War itself, politicians should rest their weary heads, well-assured that no-one is going to picket their electorate offices. The lawns of government buildings will be a manicured tomorrow and next week as they were yesterday. There is simply nothing to fear.

I have heard stories of the demise of the Vietnam War. In 1970, there was a massive rally in San Francisco, and others across the USA, hippies, wokring class, mothers and widows all demanding with a particularly loud, singular voice, the end of the War. Vietnam went on for a protracted 11 or 12 years, depensing on when you want to state the starting time. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam are all similar in their origins, all having never been formally declared as "war". They just sorta happened.

Regarding concerns over the security of the troops and the alliances, more needs to be clarified:

Pakistan has a long and proud history of dragging its feet into alliances. There is the ongoing predicament between it and India, which will never be solved. Both sides of the conflict choose to define themselves in mutually exclusive ways, thereby disallowing any possible form of co-operation. Kashmir doesn't need to be Muslim or Hindu, it just needs to have a government. Pakistan managed to loose an entire half of its territory in the Cold War, when Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) decided to cede. China propped Pakistan up as an irritant to an independent India, even gave them nuclear weapons!
For the last ten years, Pakistani leaders, all taking power after coups, have whinged and whined to the USA for more moeny and materiel, to fight an enemy that slept on their doorstep. Pakistan's numerous governments have for decades tolerated Afghan refugee camps well inside their eastern borders, and at no point since World War II ended can that border be described as anything less than "porous".
My point? Pakistan will hang off the USA's coat-tails as long as it has to, until another great power comes along. This event will occur when the USA hegemon finally collapsed (I'd give it inside of 5 years), and wither Russia or China will rise to the job vacancy of offering a counter-weight to India.

Troops on the ground are already in serious danger in Afghanistan. Each and every day they face lethal danger. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are, by their very name, created and planted everywhere and anywhere, on the roads, in buildings, markets, etc. Intelligence support comes from bureaucrats who wear suits and ties and sit infront of big screens in darkened rooms back in the capital cities of the country they belong to. The bureaucrats are in no danger at all, and couldn't really care less about the lives of the soldiers that they are ordering around like a game of Command and Conquer or Call of Duty. Intel is gathered from the shadiest of sources, most of whom are natives of Afghanistan, and care equally little about who wins what battle around them. For the troops, the enemy is even harder to spot than in Vietnam - at least back then the VC wore their little black pyjamas. I find it very hard to see how the leaking of documents by some slight-framed Australian greenie could make things worse for them!

To put the political situation very simply, the people of Afghanistan have never experienced democracy. They barely experienced Feudalism. How can they possibly be expected to grasp and appreciate the freedom that our troops are supposed to be forcing on them?

And of course, the media again.

Media has evolved over the last century from newsreels at public moving-picture theatres to full-on, opinion-laced 24 hour non-stop cable news programs. Where the journalist was once defined as an impartial deliverer of truth for the public to decide, they are now salesmen, pushing a product that is invariably dictated by the owner of the media empire. In most cases, this is Rupert Murdoch. But he's not the only one. Other media companies, in frail hopelessness, have attempted to emulate the Murdochracy, rather then supercede it with actual factual reporting. Governments will rise and fall, but media empires will last forever, so it seems. Victors once wrote the history books, but history is now being written in glorious real-time on your iPad.

To end my writing here, it would be hoped that the Wikileaks leak of the Afghan War Diary would serve to bring into serious question the nature of the War, with such force and vigour as to make policy-makers tear out the umbilical links that keep them silent on the war, and call the troops home. Like that photo of a VietCong soldier getting his brains blown out, which ended the pro-Vietnam war sentiment irrevocably.
The Afghanistan War was started as a knee-jerk to September 11 2001. We are finding ourselves in a world where people are being born and growing up without even knowing what happened on September 11, 2001. The next generations are conditioned to accept that Afghanistan is a war that had no beginning, and shall have not end. Much like Israel and Pakistan-India.
10 years later, we are still paying heavy prices in blood, matieriel, and MONEY for the Afghan War. The lessons of Vietnam have been unheeded, and the USA is dying.

Will Wikileaks' actions bring about the change in policy? In my humble opinion, I wished so, but NO. No-one cares anymore. A hundred years ago it would have forced a Second Civil War and maybe even a revolution. Forty years ago, it would have torn the US government in half. Thirty years ago, ti would have caused a President to resign. Ten years ago, a Democratic President would have been impeached by a bitter, hypocritical and resentful Republican controlled Congress. Now, it will take a tenth-page single column in some trashy, lowest-common-denominator publication that is broadcast to your iPad.

The War in Afghanistan will end when the USA does. Let's say approximately 2015.

Downfall of a PM - the Media

Australia just got its first female Prime Minister. Obviously, this is a HUGE historical issue, and I will give it due analysis in my next post.
But for now, I want to say something short about the manner in which it all came about:

I also realise that I may or may not be forfeiting any future career in journalism by saying this, but that's the cost of exercising my own right to free speech, I suppose.

His name is Kevin Rudd. He was the Prime Minister of Australia. He took office after 11 years of socially conservative, economically liberal Liberal Party rule. He had the Unions behind him. He was one of the most popular PMs when he came in, and retained high popularity right up until a few months ago. He led Australia, with his Cabinet, through the worst recession since the Great Depression, and this country also came out of said recession in the best shape of ALL the OECD countries. He tried, three times, to introduce a carbon trading scheme to reduce greenhouse emissions, and was held back on that front by both a petulant opposition, and a weak-kneed Labor Party (his own party).
And all this, within one term (that's only THREE years here in Australia), he was today deposed as leader of the Labor Party, and therefore as Prime Minister of Australia. His deputy, Julia Gillard, was the challenger, and his best mate, Wayne Swan, who was the Treasurer, is now her deputy.
It is all good and historical for Gillard, and I suppose Swan too perhaps.
But let me tell you the key reasons Rudd doesn't have his job anymore::

Firstly, the Australian Labor Party is like the Democratic Party in the USA. How so? In that it is the party more likely to introduce social change legislation, and more likely to tax rich people. It is also the more likely to fold and buckle on itself, which is what has happened here today.
The laughable thing about this is that we have another Federal election mere months away, and they decide to throw it all out here and now.
Perhaps the ALP is going for the Palin-effect - wishing and hoping that all the alleged problems with the current government will be swept quickly under the carpet and simultaneously outshone by the fact that Gillard is a woman. We may also get the alleged Hillary-effect, whereby the women of the country will scream and whinge and chant "I am woman" and talk about "not betraying my sex" and promise to vote for Gillard purely on the basis of her gender.
This concept, by the way, is bullshit. It didn't work for Clinton, or Palin for that matter. Women just aren't that stupid.

The other reason, that is, in conjunction with the utter spinelessness of the Labor Party is this:
The Media.
No surprises there.
The Australian media can be just as incessant, negligent, narrow-minded and useless (among other traits) as the US media, or any other developed nation for that matter.
This is the home of the Murdochs, and the Packers. Journalists will group together like some sort of oppressed racial minority and then inexplicably spit fire and brimstone and all manner of shit at anyone who offends one of their own. I will cease my criticism of the state of Australian media for now, ending with this question to you: is it good to have a united media front as such, regardless of accuracy or perspective?
The Media has done all it could to undermine Kevin Rudd, and by god, they have succeeded exceedingly! He just quit the Prime Minister-ship! They will now seek to destroy Gillard.
If and when a Liberal MP becomes PM, they will seek to do the same to him/her, though not so much. This would be because the Libs favour big business, and media is big business. It's that simple.
Most recently, the government, under Rudd, introduced the idea of a "super tax" on the mining industry. It is not what it sounds like. "Super" does not refer to superannuation (retirement funds), and does not refer to a massive increase in taxation in general. It means 'more than usual' profits gained by the mining industry.

Since secondary industries (factories and production) in this country have been all but shut-down, dismantled, and sold for parts at reduced prices, the only source of income this country had to rely on in terms of exports had been primary industries. And lately, mining has outstripped agriculture. Who would have thought, back when the English brought their convicts here, that there was gold, iron, copper, tin, silver, coal, uranium, nd all other manner of highly useful and valuable mineral deposits buried underneath the broad, brown, and barren landscape of New Holland (modern Western Australia)?
we know now, and we have giant mining companies like BHP and Rio Tinto, both Australian and foreign, digging it all up and flogging it to China.
As always, when money starts moving, the government sticks its nib in and stems the tide with a tax. Because it happened under a Liberal, Big-Business-loving government, the only tax stopping the deluge of MONEY from the mining boom was a paltry 3% or so, based on what were essentially start-up costs of the mines.
Lately, the ALP and Rudd have decided that the billions of dollars the mining co.s are getting from digging up Australia's metals and selling was excessive to the extreme, and that given the oddly depressing economic situation of the world, the Australian people could make a better run at these "super" profits.
OK, so whoever came up with the term "super-tax" should be shot. It just sends the wrong message, which can be misconstrued in so many ways, the main ones I already outlined above.
"Excess Profits Tax"? "Mining Endowment Tax"? "Primary Industry Gross Accumulation Tax"? I just came up with those off the top of my head, and all of them sound better, and makes it just a little harder for the Media to misconstrue it as it has.

But no, the ALP's backbone stopped the show and broke itself, so that the coming election didn't have to break the sweat. "Election, sir, I wonder if I could hobble myself so you don't have to. Can I? Really? Ok!" >crack!<

The Media took candy from a baby on this tax (and this is only the most recent example), and took sides also, egging on the mining industry to run outlandishly inaccurate advertisements on TV, declaring the END OF AUSTRALIA, because retirees won't get to invest their money into over-priced mining stocks, (and watch it all vanish, as only a stock-market can do).
The country will plunge into a horrific recession! And why? Because the CEOs of the mining giants can't buy an extra ivory back-scratcher!
Incidentally, this week a group of Mining industry leaders were in Africa, seeking areas to which they could flee, skedaddle, and take Australian jobs with them. They all had the bright idea to get on the same plane, to charter the plane from some dodgy African government or company (they're all dodgy there), and lo and behold that plane crashed. I cannot express too much sympathy on this news, aside from condolences to the families of the people. And to warm what may have just sounded cold-hearted, I said it because we didn't lose any people who were going to go on and change the world for the greater good. Did we?

The Media then was negligent enough to allow an insignificant Liberal MP to say on camera that those 6 top-dogs died because the Super-tax drove them off to Africa, etc. etc. No, sir, they died because their GREED drove them off to Africa.

To put the Super-tax thing to rest for now, all it ever was was an increase, and a marginal one at that, on the tax on the mining companies. It would cease the paltry 3% (ie nothing) that the govt. was getting now, and begin taxing the outrageous profits of the Mining companies. The result would be a drop in the bucket for the Industry, but comparatively large increase in income for the Australian Government. That means more money for roads, schools, libraries, and other stuff that separates our civil landscape from Africa.

What did the Media really do to lead directly to today?
They overblew the entire thing. They broadcast images of a few hundred union marchers in Sydney, and said that the Australian Council of Trade Unions was no longer on the ALP's side. They gave voice to idiot MPs and mining executives, and even attempted to make it seem like they were being unnecessarily personally offended and made to do without by the tax.
The Media declared united and therefore unilaterally that the govt. was losing the mining tax issue.
And what did the ALP do in response?
The ALP buckled, as to be expected, fired its most popular leader and installed a woman on the badly disguised premise of the Palin-effect. (Palin lost her election, by the way. Remember that, Media??) "Oh shit, we ARE losing it!" "Oh shit, we are going down FAST!"
The ALP's relationship with the Australian voting public is based much in melodrama. They assume that the public is a scornful mistress, which will cut, turn, and run away from them as a lover at the first sign of trouble.

John Howard, the soulless Liberal PM preceding Rudd, stayed in power for ELEVEN! years, because he understood the real nature of the voting public. Firstly, never listen to polls. or at least not for 95% of the time. Secondly, he realised that the public is not a scornful mistress, but more like a suburban housewife - we will stay put and do nothing, suffer countless incidents of domestic violence, never confront issues head-on, whinge incessantly and indirectly, be murderously passive-aggressive, and put up with almost ANYTHING to keep our man with us. Howard cooked his own goose when he tried to drastically reform labour laws, and the only reason that did him in was that he'd already spent 11 years doing nothing of import, and I guess it was too out of character. Actually, another reason is that among the useless population of the ALP members, there was someone who realised that workplace relations could be a point of contention in the 2007 election.

I don't want this to seem at all like an indictment upon Julia Gillard. She has been, for more often than the public ever realised, the real power behind Rudd's office, doing all the work, effectively, while he gallivanted off to observe(but not actually participate) in international affairs, and ask the US president to visit, knowing full-well that himself and Australia are just not important enough, even if the Gulf of Mexico wasn't transforming into an oil-ocean.
But the beaten housewife that the public is was never really aware of the work Gillard has been doing in the background. So it cannot be used as reassurance for her selection as Australia's first PM today.

That's Australian politics for you.

From The Tominator.

On Absolutism

Absolutist thought is only going to take you in one direction. And when you reach the end of that road, expect little.
Why?
:: That's the way it is.
(I'd give you a better reason, but as an Absolutist thinker, you will be satisfied with that.)

Reality Strikes

I have comeback from Japan twice now, and left my job in Sydney once. And each time I played the numbers game.
What I mean is that I collected as many contact details from as many people as possible, saved them, and when I got back Home, I try to contact as many people as I can.
Sometimes I don't contact everyone.
Usually, most people don't contact me.
The reasons for this are simple: People's lives get so small and involved that they forget about the world outside their field of vision. Right now, most of the people whose contacts I got (about 100 people) back in Japan are busy with their job, their family, some kind of travel, their laundry, their car, riding a train, or any other kind of daily activity. And in their lives, each of them has deemed, perhaps subconsciously, that whatever they are doing is more important than contacting Tom.
I should not take it as an insult. SO many people are like this.
There is, however, one person who I do take is as an insult from - my ex-girlfriend. We were still somewhat enamoured when we broke up, but now, as I expected, her job is far more important in her mind than communication with me. And I have no way of talking to her now, because she works 23 hours a day, and won't answer her phone while she is working! -- but that is another story that I am not sharing on this blog.

So now we know who our friends are, I suppose. This is one way of looking at it.

I will say that I feel sorry for the bullshit my friends suffer in Japan:
"Why didn't you plan out your life when you were in High School??"
"Why aren't you married??"
These are all questions that a COMMON Japanese person will ask you, I am sure.
Whe I left my job at AEON, how many people asked me "What will you do in Australia??"
Everyone.
How many had a surprised look on their face when I said "I don't know."
Everyone.
This is because it is common, apparently, for Japanese people to p[lan out their entire lives when they are 16 years old.
I tell you that when I was 16, I was a very, very unhappy Tom. And if I were living a life that I had planned out then, I would be living an unhappy life now, too.
I am by no means living the high life now, by the way. I had a year and a half of genuine, good and educational experiences while I was in Japan, and now I am living like I am still in High School. This is incredibly depressing. But I am not writing this to depress you.
The question I often find myself asking is this:
"Do you have a time machine???"
Do I have a magical machine that will let me travel back in time, into the past, and do things all over again?
The answer, of course, is NO!
So I should not live as though I "could have, should have, would have" done this or that.
Re-doing things in the past cannot be done, so I should not wish I could do them.
Do you follow me?

So, my problem then, is to live in the Present. Essentially, I think, I should live in the present, hope for the future, and learn from the past. I do believe that most people, including myself more often than not, live in the past, eke through the present, and stumble into the future.

If I live for the future, it means that I have grand expectations, plans, a life-map that I made when I was 16. LIFE is not obliged to follow my plans. Why should it? I am one of 7 billion people in the world, why should the Universe do as I, one person, Tom, instructs it to do?????
Be careful, though.
Thinking like this can quickly lead to more depression, based on the feeling of: "Whaaaaaa! I don't matter at all in this world. Whaaaa! I should just die, should never have been born."
This is stupid thinking.
Why?
Firstly, I am one of 7 billion people in this world. The Universe does not cares with equal, in equal amounts, whether I live or die. Since I am alive now, and that line of 'reasoning' presents no reason at all to end my life, I am forced to default directly to something akin to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." ie nothing needs to be done.
I know, I know. This presents a LOT of rational thinking. So sue me. Rational thought has embedded itself in my though processes over the last few years, and I am not going to get rid of it, because it can provide me with Certainty when Irrationality would send me into the drink.

Secondly, the idea "I don't matter in this world" is wrong. "This world" as I choose to define it now, is MY world.
The ONLY world I know is the one that I see between waking up in the morning and falling asleep at night. My World can get damn small sometimes, but other times, like my trip across Japan, it can get really, really big! Sometimes too big.
And who is the most important person in this world of mine? It is ME! It's MY world, after all.
And your world is YOUR World. We happen to share a lot of the same things in our separate worlds. We share the planet, the air, the water, all the food and petrol, and we also have the ability to communicate with each other.

THAT is where is gets interesting.

I could exist in my world forever, the only person, the only thing that matters. This would be achievable with a lobotmy, zeroing in and remiving the parts of my brain that function and desire communication in all forms on all levels.
But I also have an ability to communicate with others, and I want to do it more often than not. I think this is part of being a Human Being, (and maybe you should ask your nearest neurosurgeon, but I think that lobotmy would remove too much of my brain, and leave me in a state mediacally and commonly referred to as a "vegetable".)

It is also the beginning of the Difficulty.
To date, I cannot find a way to make my communications with other people's worlds work to my advantage.

I exist in a time where MONEY is more important than GOD ever was, and I don't have any money to speak of. Why is it important? Because I have to BUY my food, BUY my clothes, BUY my petrol. If I ever move out from my parents' house, I will need MONEY to PAY RENT on my apartment, BUY electricity, water, gas, etc. At some point eventually I will have the unbridled privilege of paying a mortgage! Handing over half my yearly income to a bank, and the other half to the tax man. I will never reach a tax-bracket that will allow me to claim exemption from paying taxes. Never, at any point in regular life, will I be free of some kind of thought regarding MONEY.

In fact, the only time in life (in general) that I do not have think about money is when I write things, similar to this. I guess it is philosophising, or something like that.
To date, and at least for the last 5 years or so, I have done a lot of philosophising. A lot of thinking. A lot of wondering, pondering, and making grand assessments about my world. I have had what I thought were noble ideas about what is right and wrong, presented my views on good and evil sides of things (because "good" and "evil" are only viewpoints, after all), and said grandiose stuff and tried to make WHOEVER WOULD LISTEN think more than they would.

But in the modern world, that kind of activity is useless. I could only offer the kind of thing that busy, money-making people would see and think: "I have a little extra money, a boring life, and some time on Saturday. I think I will go to that philosophising guy's lesson." at which point they will pay me, and for 30-50 glorious minutes I will be the most important thing in not only My world, but that money-making person's world, too! This is in fact the nature of my existence at the AEON job in Mito. For 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

And look at me now, I am so desperate to tell and talk to people that I am giving away my best product for FREE! And yes, that IS the sad reality: I have to refer to it as a 'product', and put a monetary value on it.

So, I realise this post is too long.
I don't want you to get the wrong idea from what I say, because it is very easy to do that.
In the last page or so of crap that I have just written and posted, I have been coming to grips with reality. For someone like me, who has ambitions that are more Dream than Reality, the conversion of Dreams into Reality is a very difficult process. I do not even know where to begin.

I have a friend, he is studying to be a psychologist. He will make more money than I ever will, and he will be more successful than I ever will. He said to me that I need to tone my presumptions about life down a bit, and seek just a stepping-stone. He is right, because I constantly feel that I will someday make some giant, unsupported leap from anonymity to fame and fortune, despite Reality.

That is what I will try to do. I have no direction now, so I will start with that, and I suppose I will have to build a path from scratch, unless I can numb my delusions of grandeur away, and one day focus on doing a job or living a life that may not be grand or important, but it will let me pay the bills.

A few days ago I began the process, in my mind, of relinquishing all delusions of grandeur, so that one day I may be able to accept the life-role of becoming some kind of suburban serviceman, perhaps a tradesman like a carpenter or plumber. In such a life I will have to be satisfied with working physically demanding jobs, then screwing my customers (monetarily speaking) for all they are worth, confident in the fact that I can do something that they cannot. I will probably wish I would have been a lawyer, doctor, or investment banker, because then the work wouldn't be so physical, but I could still screw my customers.

(I'll put a little disclaimer in here: I know some doctors, and might meet a banker or lawyer or two one day, and I am sure that they are not all bastards. To those people, I will dose this Reality: your colleagues are making a bad name for it. I'd say sorry, but I am not liable, and have no control over it. Ask your lawyer colleagues why that last sentence sounded so fucking pansied.)

I'm starting to wish that the milkman's job was still an option, then at least I could screw my customers the right way.


What is my ultimate message in this post? I think it is:
Life is not going to go your way without good and solid reason,
And also:
Confronting reality is the first step. One cannot walk a path if one does not know where the first stepping-stone will bear the foot.


From Tom.