JR'S Free Thought Pages
                                                                 No Gods  ~ No Masters    ~ No Bullshit

Musings on the Myths of Pseudoscientific Spirituality, Mysticism, Psychics, the Paranormal and other Mumbo Jumbo

By Swami Maharishi Johnny Reb, June 2025

If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all - Jean Meslier (1664-1729) Enlightened Renegade Catholic Priest (from “Superstition in all Ages”)

A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the non-existent - Elbert Hubbard

A mystic or theologian is someone who attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the not worth knowing – H L Mencken

How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'? --Jay Leno  

Preface

Despite 500 years of the humanist Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution we continue to be deluged by self-inflicted ignorance, stupidity and superstition that include religious rubbish, Q-Anon, quackery (aka “alternative medicine” such as bat shit crazy homeopathy), anti-vaccination conspiracies, reverse mortgage scams,  paranormal idiocy and endless supplies of palpable nonsense by medical messiahs. To add to the fraud of once illegal lotteries (to protect people against their own stupidity), the latest colossal waste of time and money is online gambling on primarily pro sports in addition to fake medicinal treatments which are being marketed relentlessly by dim bulb greedy parasites and penny market pump and dump schemes like Wayne “The Great One” Gretzky and other former and current celebrities and pro athlete hucksters.

Introduction

The notion that the human mind is capable of operating on different levels in its effort to comprehend reality is as old as philosophy itself. Twenty-four centuries ago Plato drew epistemic distinctions between what he called opinion and knowledge the ontological divide between fantasy and reality. Opinion, he said, is a kind of awareness that is uncertain, confined to the particular, inexact, and subject to change, whereas knowledge is certain, universal, exact, and eternally true. Every human being starts out in life by operating on the empirical level of primarily parental or caregiver guidance and point of view and only through great struggle and effort can he or she escape it and rise to the level of knowledge. This struggle is called curiosity, education and the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of what is real. It hopefully opens the eye of the mind to reality and truth that cannot generally be conceived from the standpoint of mere intuition or opinion. Today’s distinction between genuine scientific inquiry and pseudoscience is the modern equivalent of Plato’s distinction between logic, reason, cogent argument, evidence and genuine knowledge one the hand and mere opinion or intuition on the other.The supernatural, notions of the paranormal, psychic and occult phenomena continued to be common and widespread at the turn of the 20th century, especially in post World War I Germany and the rise of Hitler and his superstitious Nazi goons. In the social crises that followed their humiliating defeat and blame for the War, esoteric, conspiratorial, pseudoscientific and borderline-scientific ideas became powerful mechanisms of both elite conservative and far right Nazi mobilization, directed at demonizing Jews, atheists, anarchists, socialists, communists, liberals and other factions of the political left. These noxious far right wing and fascist doctrines spread to other Western countries, including the UK, US and Canada.

Spirituality and other Gibberish

Let’s begin with the vague, malleable and essentially opaque concept of “spirituality”. People who are religious always refer to themselves as “spiritual”, an abstruse expression that means whatever you want it to mean, not unlike gods, ghosts, soul (the invisible ghost in the machine according to analytic philosopher Gilbert Ryle), heaven, hell and angels. [1] Charlatan psychics can be traced back to the occult featuring Nostradamus, Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and Uri Geller, to mystics such as Meister Eckhart and G I Gurdjieff, séances, crystal ball readers, clueless deluded anti-science Church of Scientology celebrities such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta who apparently communicate with plants. Then there are the hordes of wacko Christian televangelist faith healers, astrologers (horoscopes are in the stars and at least in the recent past listed in mainstream corporate newspapers as though they had some tincture of credibility), endless conspiracy fantasies, alternative medicine (once known as quackery) and kooks from the New Age follies such as former MD Deepak Chopra and actress Shirley MacLaine. The list of mind numbing dumb ass beliefs is long. These primarily far right wing crackpots of the past such as members of the John Birch Society still haunt many perhaps in part due to our current multiple existential threats with the expectation that these moronic ideas will save us from the walking dead cell phone zombie world, the global epidemic of obesity, OCD and ADHD, environmental collapse, overpopulation of humans, species extinction, fascist politics, Trump the Terrible, increasing stupidity, declining IQs and threat of World War III. As mystics and psychics have been appropriately defined by H L Mencken and George (Bullshit is Bad for You) Carlin as those who “explain the unknown in terms of the not worth knowing”. The general public’s rejection of logic, critical thought, science and enlightenment ideas and concomitant acceptance even in academia of lame-brained ideas have continued to create a huge market for New Age pseudoscientific rubbish such as PSI, which reached a level of absurdity a few years back such as the outrageous claims of one David Icke and then Rhonda Byrne’s best- selling book of absurdities called The Secret. We seem to no longer accept eternal verities, universal categories, stable values, ethical rules or meaningful conceptions to be understood in their intellectual or scholarly context. The problems with technology notwithstanding, the success of science has been dramatic of course and the offshoots have not necessarily been salutary. Fetishes and fads such as tattoos in every square millimetre of one’s anatomy, cell phone addiction and the epistemic turn of postmodernism [2] have been rampant while truth, beauty and realty have been reduced to whatever turns your crank and gets you through the day. So, for example, if “2 + 2 = 5”,” the earth is flat”, “god and heaven exist”, “homeopathy cures cancer”, "crows are white" and that tattoo of Ted Bundy on your forehead makes you feel good and get you get through the day, why not? How about Sasquatch, Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman?  Should I hire a Scientologist to tell the weeds on my lawn to fuck off?

We live in an uncertain world where everything appears indeterminate and in a state of flux and it’s become glaringly evident in our neo-fascist politics, culture and social practises. What is perhaps contributing to these disturbing phenomena is that we currently live in a global economic village in which utility and profit override everything including truth, reality and ethics - even compassion, generosity, fairness justice, freedom, democracy and the precarious lives of most people have become commodities. Then there is the universal acceptance, primarily from misinformed liberals, of moral and epistemic relativism and specifically multiculturalism, a socio-economic and politically infused doctrine based on dubious and patently false premises. I’ll get to that shortly.

I have my own conception of spirituality and have never quite understood what it had to do with religion which it has hijacked, especially belief in imaginary friends. Spirituality for me is a meaningless and useless concept, assuming a meaning or conception can be applied to it. The word “spirituality”, like “awesome” is one of many misused and misconstrued words tossed about by every moron lacking in conceptual analysis and self-esteem who have the intelligence of a barnacle which has little or nothing to do with religion, but rather is, in my view, perhaps merely the human quest (often a lifetime endeavour) to inquire, learn, pursue the truth however unpleasant, understand oneself and what it means to be ethical, what is real knowledge and what one ought to do with one’s life. It certainly has nothing to do with belief in silly metaphysical entities, meaningless ontological references and mystical slogans, childish bedtime stories, talking snakes, ghosts, goblins, angels and supernatural sky wizards who threaten you with eternal damnation. Sorry folks; reality bites. But learning another ugly fact/truth (yes, there are such things as truth and facts) about certain sociopaths I've known that has become an increasing component of the vile species called homo sap. I’ve never felt unpleasant facts and knowledge to be forms of self flagellation, masochism or even torture; but rather enlightenment by knowing the truth and being able to distinguish fact from opinion. And when the facts and evidence change I change my mind, which is surely an essential component of logic and scientific inquiry.

During the two terms of the village idiot George Wanker Bush (yes not unlike Trump the people elected this idiot twice), there was a declaration by a compliant lickspittle journalist that the US Empire creates its own reality and that the rest of us can just take notes This is not just bullshit, but prime cut mass meta-bullshit, bullshit about bullshitting. The disdain for the minority “reality-based community” is merely the latest manifestation of a long and successful campaign of faith-based right-wing reality creation, and bullshitting about their own bullshit. For example, George W Bush and his ilk (now Trump and his cabal of fascists) have done an excellent job of redefining certain words, like democracy, elitist, theory, fact, conservative, capitalism, and liberal. The list of Orwellian redefinitions* would require several pages. Elite used to mean somebody with lots of wealth and power, like, say, the psychopathic Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Conrad Black, every moral degenerate head of the federal reserve such as the Bible banging bungling Hank Paulsen, the two village idiot Bushes, the buffoonish know nothing ignoramus serial liar Donald Trump and every American president since 1776, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet (I wonder what makes this kooky old fart money obsessed parasite tick) Leon Skum or Bill Gates. It would take pages to list these sacks of dog shit. Money talks and bullshit walks.

But then I could always turn to comforting delusions of positive thinking gurus like Norman Vincent Peale and Tony Robbins, - or mind altering drugs such as Paxil, Prozac, pot, heroin or worse, some mind destroying fairy tale religion to comfort and deceive myself. After all about three out of four people can’t get through the day without ingesting some mind altering drug, legal or otherwise Perhaps a sharp strike with a ball peen hammer on the pre- frontal cortex would work.

On the other hand there is a scientific materialism which is a multi-dimensional concept that rejects any form of dualism. I’m a materialist in the sense that I have a preference for reality, the only reality for which we can have any understanding given our cognitive apparatus restricted to five senses. We are, after all, simply semi-intelligent apes who in order to get through the day have the capacity to believe in silly palliatives and delusions such as gods and demons. If there’s a sixth sense, I haven’t been privy to it although there have been countless science fiction novels and movies suggesting there may be one. And there are people who claim to have experienced alien abduction (how about “Ancient Aliens featured on The History Channel – yes I’m serious)) and spoken with a dead man called Jesus or the mirage of the Virgin Mary. It’s logically possible that materialism is a delusion but what reason do I have to believe it? Or that there exists some sort of metaphysical dualism, something science rejects carte blanche. Nice try Descartes; people such as Descartes have ever since concocted implausible concepts such as “spirit” and “soul” to justify an alternative existence or afterlife (a contradiction of terms since when you are not alive (i.e., your brain ceases to function), you are DEAD.

Consider multiculturalism which has been for the most part unsuccessful primarily due to not only dubious premises but also typically postmodern notions about the moral and rational equivalence among all cultures. This assumption is not only highly dubious, but also in some cases ludicrous. To think that modern day Sweden, Norway, Finland or Denmark are equal in all respects to Hitler’s Third Reich, Tsarist Russia, Stalin’s USSR, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the vile British Empire and its murderous racism and plundering colonialism -  or Trump’s mythical MAGA America? I think not. The rotting US Empire will go down in flames like all others such as the Roman Empire which suffered from a bloated military and systemic corruption as we witness today in the US. Trump the Terrible claims to be a Christian and loves Jesus as he waves the Holy Babble Bible while he fantasizes about being the ruler of the world, eerily resembling Caligula or perhaps Commodus. It’s more likely that as in the Frank Zappa song, “Jesus probably thinks I’m a jerk” for Trump and yours truly not towing the Xian party line, a rather bizarre assertion coming from a dead man J Christ who quite conceivably never existed.

Christians and other devotees of countless authoritarian sky tyrants throughout history are not unlike “Free” Masons, without the supernatural component. I’ve known a few of these pathetic excuses for human beings seriously lacking in self-esteem who hold ritualistic meetings in a church like militaristic setting while dressed in clownish uniforms while engaging in bizarre practises that would embarrass an Aztec shaman managing a virgin sacrifice. What is it that motivates people to belong to such childish cultish organizations that seem like an ersatz replacement for religion? Surely there are simpler approaches to self-delusion and self-indulgence that don’t consume so much of your time or destroy brain cells. Of course in our postmodern relativist world, religion means anything that you are passionately interested in stamp collection, 24-7 social media, corporate lobbyist, hedge fund manager or member of the NRA. Rather than believing in an anthropomorphic alpha male deity in the sky who cares about your haemorrhoids, God has become a phantom god, an amorphous shadow that can almost be anything you want him (her/it) to be such as passion for barbecuing beef jerky, an arcane 13^th century political ideology like conservatism or an obsession with horoscopes. But then, as the Doors tune informs us “People are Strange”. The dumber than a barnacle obnoxious psychopathic manipulative neighbour from Hell across the street is a prime example.

A few years ago a University of Toronto psychologist and aficionado of the anti-socialist conservative elite that has a long history of attraction to the pseudoscientific – occult, paranormal and psychic phenomena wrote a silly puerile book (multiculturalism is of course akin to the anti-Christ for both political and conservative Christians) – and pseudoscience can be aptly described as not unlike a kook from the past - the medieval guru/mystic and anti-Freudian Carl Jung. He decided to follow the template and write a book of pabulum your mother ought to have taught you in your pre-school years. The hyper-conservative crypto-fascist misogynist creep was Jordan Peterson who in the banal title of a book 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, claimed that “Men have to toughen up;” After all “Men demand it, and women want it.” Peterson’s first rule is, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” and don’t forget to “clean your room.” An example of the book’s psycho babble is, “consciousness is not merely symbolically masculine but has been the order of things since the beginning of time.” Oh, and “the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being.” Not unlike Christians, the “soul” remains undefined. Many such pronouncements, didactic as well as metaphysical and mystical, range from the absurdity of neo-con political correctness to the “burden of being” have turned Peterson from a boring unknown professor of psychology into a You Tube sensation and a bestselling author in several Western countries. He claim men represent order as “chaos is symbolically associated with the feminine.” In other words, men resisting the perennially fixed archetypes of male and female, and males failing to toughen up, are pathetic losers. Peterson confirms his membership in the conservative far right by never identifying the evils caused by belief in profit before people, neo-liberal kamikaze capitalism and love of mammon, including slavery, genocide and the pillage of ongoing imperialism. Reactionary white men will surely be attracted to Peterson’s loathing for “social justice warriors” and his claim that divorce laws, abortion and other cornerstones of women’s rights being rescinded by bigots such as Donald Trump should not have been liberalized in the 1960s and 70s. But this and a whole lot more reactionary rubbish is the usual spoon fed pap that sells to the religiously inclined and the opaque notions of “spirituality” typically attracted to mystics, psychics and other forms of the paranormal and pseudoscience and their many acolytes, especially wealthy elites.

A range of quasi-intellectual entrepreneurs (aka con men), from theosophists and vendors of Asian spirituality like Vivekananda and D. T. Suzuki to Asian “scholars” such as Arthur Waley and fascist ideologues the likes of Julius Evola (Steve Bannon’s guru) set up stalls in the new marketplace of quasi-Buddhist ideas, now called “mindfulness”. Recall the post Worlds War II poet W. B. Yeats, modifying Indian philosophy to the needs of the Celtic Revival, pontificated on the “Ancient Self”; Jung spun his own variations on this evidently ancestral unconscious. Such conceptually dazed and confused vague categories such as “spirit” and “intuition” acquired broad acceptance despite the confused conceptions; Peterson’s favourite words, “being” and “chaos” began to appear in capital letters. Peterson’s own lineage among these self-help healers and power of positive thinking gurus of modern man’s” soul” can be traced through his repeatedly invoked influences: not only Carl Jung, but also Mircea Eliade, the Romanian scholar of religion that also includes Joseph Campbell, professor at Sarah Lawrence College, who, like Peterson, combined a conventional academic career with mass-market musings on “spiritual” and so-called heroic individuals. Mimicking  Campbell’s obscure gibberish, he urges we “follow your own bliss,” while urging the follower that, during an era of hyper-capitalist neoconservative and neo-liberal dogma upsurge, was ready to be reassured that some profound ancient spiritual wisdom lay behind Ayn Rand’s paeans to unfettered individualism and selfishness. Peterson considers ethical principles such as fair play that most children understand innately, generosity and compassion as vices and urges insecure compassionate men to harden their hearts against the weak (women and oppressed minorities) on the grounds that the latter are biologically and culturally inferior.

Promoting pseudoscientific mythologies and occult hallucinations as the repository of fundamental human truths, they become popular because they address a widely felt spiritual yearning: of confused men looking desperately for maps of meaning in a world they find opaque and uncontrollable in today’s FUBAR confused postmodern world that is facing ecosystem collapse, widespread corporate and political corruption, declining awareness, intelligence and wisdom as mumbo jumbo and the irrationality of idiotic marketing endemic to capitalism in which people are depicted as utterly helpless discombobulated ADHD/ OCD zombie morons  staring at a cell phone 24-7 conquers the world. The New Age nonsense promoted at the Esalen Institute (to cite one of several examples) and the misconceived self-esteem movements and lack of critical thinking in the schools have contributed to chronic stupidity and have been an abysmal failure in promoting the enlightenment referred to in Kant’s 18^th century writings.

Kant was brilliant of course but we must remember two things: (1) He lived during an era in which not believing in god was almost certainly detrimental to one’s health and in many cases, one’s life and (2) People can be brilliant but emotionally weak, in fact outright cowards in facing the realities of existence and inevitable oblivion. As you ought to know from experience, one does not advance in our capitalist regimes by being a naysayer or confronting injustices in the workplace or elsewhere. The project of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead called Principia Mathematica was an incredible accomplishment, despite the paradox that demolished their ten years of arduous intellectual toil. Even a man such as Russell had a need for some modicum of certainty and he believed that if any was to be found, it would be in mathematics. Russell and Whitehead hoped to show that Mathematics could be derived from fundamental principles of logic. It apparently took over 250 pages to arrive at 1 +1 = 2.  The realization of ten years of day after day checking and double checking propositions almost destroyed Russell intellectually and emotionally when the paradox arose. But he was able to overcome these setbacks and produce some great mathematics and philosophy. He was personally responsible for bringing Ludwig Wittgenstein to Cambridge and without that, who knows where Wittgenstein would have ended up. He was, after all, despite his brilliance - a very unstable and eccentric personality with a death wish.

Russell (1872-1970) went on to live a long a productive life, spending much of his time fighting injustice, obscurantism and human stupidity. Like all public active intellectuals on the left, he paid a huge price. Had he not been from an aristocratic background, it would have been far worse. Like Wittgenstein, he gave away his inheritance and was impoverished for long periods, having to resort to writing articles for newspapers, especially after he was banished from NYU where he was appointed professor of logic in 1940. Wittgenstein was a recluse; Russell on the other hand was a very sociable passionate animal who loved women and the intellectual battles. I read a fascinating book on the NYU incident called “Appointment Denied”. Despite the enthusiasm of students and faculty at his hiring at NYU, it was the local New York churches who lobbied to have his appointment annulled, leaving him incapable of finding an academic position anywhere in the US. The same sort of persecution and black listing happened to many others on the left during the ant-communist McCarthyism horror show in the post WW II era. Michael Parenti who grew up in the Italian ghettos of New York City was a brilliant student, winning scholarships and eventually becoming a political science professor at Yale, was blacklisted during the Vietnam War for his anti-war activities. It would have happened to Noam Chomsky as well but at the time he was untouchable due to his global academic achievements in linguistics. The Christian churches and their silly puerile faith based beliefs still wield a lot of power in local communities. I witnessed it in South Delta where I taught, in Surrey where medieval dimwits, dolts and dunces hijacked the school board (a long and ugly story and here in Chilliwack where corruption is rampant and the Christian cretins run everything, including the political machinery at all three levels of government. Anyone who thinks we live in a free country is delusional. Freedom is only permissible within the confines of narrow parameters of capitalist discourse. If you violate those boundaries, you will have the full force of the authoritarian neo-fascist capitalist state on your back. The 19th Century Russian anarchist and intellectual Mikhail Bakunin surely was spot on not only about the tyrannical anti-democratic Romanoff Monarchy in Russia, but describe precisely what we endure today with our so-called gangster capitalist "democracies" in the dystopian 21st Century. Needless to say Bakunin spent many years in brutal Russian prisons as many anti-capitalists, anti-imperialist, anti-war, social justice warriors and dissidents do today. In 1873 Bakunin wrote in God and the State and in The State and Anarchy:

A strong State can have only one solid foundation: military and bureaucratic centralization. The fundamental difference between a monarchy and even the most democratic republic is that in the monarchy. the bureaucrats oppress and rob the people for the benefit of the privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their own coffers; while in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the same way for the benefit of the same classes, in the name of “the will of the people” (and to fill the coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In a Republic the State, which is supposed to be the people, legally organized, stifles and will continue to stifle the real people. But the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled “the people’s stick.

It’s perhaps no accident that booze has been referred to as “spirits”. Reality it would seem is insufficient for those who can’t tolerate the material world – the only one we have. Even the Holy Babble instructs us to “put away childish things”; after all, why be born again when you can just grow up? Like those professional baseball athletes who point to the sky daddy after a home run. Oddly this behaviour is non-existent following a strike out or fumbling a routine fly ball. Pro sports is now contaminated by endless gambling as one can place ludicrous bets with a cell phone on any one of a number of scam betting platforms. Then these online swindlers have the audacity to moralize to uninformed ignorant users to employ “responsible safe betting” strategies. There is no such thing as anyone with a basic understanding of risk and a high school introductory probability course understands. Even worse is buying a 6-49 lottery ticket. The odds of winning anything of significance in a lottery such as 6-49 are roughly 1 in 14,000,000 – in statistical parlance this is zero, zilch and nada. Then there’s the blood and guts barbarism of UFC! [3] As with declining profits, capitalists have resorted to “anything goes. There was a time when there were protections to peoples gullibility and stupidity (after all the average IQ is 100 and descending) - “not too fucking bright” as George Carlin once remarked and half are even dumber than that.

Superstition and magical thinking are the core cognitions that drive belief in mainstream religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism and the widespread belief in the paranormal. Over 40% of Americans, for example, believe in devils, ghosts, angels, psychics, astrology, mystics and spiritual healing. Most social scientists do not bother trying to understand why people believe in religion and the paranormal, while many psychologists have characterized superstitious and magical thinking as a problem for which there is no available explanation, or as “a label for a residual category such as a trash can filled with various odds and ends that we do not otherwise know what to do with. Atheists, skeptics, humanists and the vast majority of scientists are often aghast and certainly have not ignored ontological dualism (rejected by all scientists), endless silly superstitions, magical thinking and belief in the supernatural and there exist today numerous web sites such as my own at www.skeptic.ca, international publications, conferences and dozens of excellent books on logic and critical thinking that attempt to both debunk and explain the paranormal as well as understand why people believe in such nonsense. Explanations have ranged from personality traits, childhood indoctrination, family influences, psychological motivation and flawed cognition, to emotional instability, demographics, social influences and plain stupidity and self-inflicted ignorance.

We are often told that religious beliefs provide meaning and happiness. But people who are curious and engaged with the world don’t think about the pursuit of happiness or meaning. Moreover moral understanding and the common civilities such as decency, fairness, generosity and the golden rule do not have their sources in god, religious doctrines, the state and other forms of authoritarianism. Perhaps people such as me have some rare genetic defect - a preference for unpleasant rationality, logic and empirical truth over the comfortable lie. Most people it would seem can only tolerate so much reality which I think partly explain the attraction of religious superstitions and other forms of escapism from the real scientific material world, the only one we know.

These ruminations on reality remind me of the mind-numbing post-modern business model and corporatization that was being imposed on the school system in the few years just before I jumped ship as a three decade mathematics teacher. It was all part of the movement to corporatize the schools, preparing them for the ultimate goal of rejecting any form of logic and critical thinking programs being implemented. Neither religion nor business wants that; they prefer docility and obedience with the objective of privatizing everything and transforming all thing on the planet into commodities. I can remember spending hours and hours after school on committees to come up with a "mission statement" (don't you love the religious overtones?) for our school and the Delta school district. Here's what we came up with...wait for it…..

"South Delta Senior Secondary, a great place to work and learn"

"School District 37, where learning matters"

The profundity is awe inspiring don't you think?

Of course we were instructed by the intellectual mediocrities called administrators to post those inane absurdities in my classroom of Math 12 and Advanced Placement Calculus students I taught. Being the anarchistic iconoclast that has dominated my world view since a teen, I refused. There was no way I was going to take down my quotes of Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Jean Paul Sartre, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky and other great thinkers I admired, or my posters of Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Che Guevara, Chomsky Russell and others and replace any of them with insulting mind numbing rubbish. Following Russell, Sartre was one of my most profound early influences, even convincing me, despite the consensus of many scientists, that we do in fact have free will. Despite any compelling evidence or argument, we have a strong intuitive sense of freedom of the will without which there would be no accountability for our acts and consequently, no morality. Jean Paul Sartre, in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness, introduced the notion of “bad faith”, the tortured hypocritical rationalizations and evasions we concoct to evade responsibility for our own freedom. The most fundamental assertion of Sartre’s philosophy is that we are “condemned to be free - free in all circumstances of our existence.  But what do we do with this putative freedom? Even evasion of decisions such as claiming neutrality on an issue is an assertion of the status quo, which has consequences, often dire. Even if a gun is held to my head, I can choose to resist and perhaps be killed.

Since we are compelled to be free, surely we are responsible for the world in which we live since there are no external obstacles other than those we determine by the choice of our own projects. We are responsible for the world as it is, including moral degenerates like Donald Trump who has been twice elected to lead one of the most evil empires in human history despite the fact we fondly insist on referring to such countries as “lands of the free” and “democracies’, however vaguely defined. The future looks extremely bleak indeed; certainly the worst and most depressing in my life time. Even in the 1960s with the horrors of the Vietnam War, there was a general sense of hope that the world could be changed for the better, even achieving real democracy and justice. I’ve never been one for hope, unless there is at least some shred of evidence for such a stance. Today there is none.

Corporations, their lackeys in government and most overpaid university administrators now regard universities as mere market driven machines of economic growth. Their function is no longer academic freedom, critical thought, scientific inquiry and the dispassionate search for truth and justice, but to churn out indoctrinated financial drones, superfluous managers and parasitic capitalist entrepreneurs for the sole purpose of increasing global profit for multi-national corporations and wealthy plutocrats. 

Behold the new hyper-capitalist market driven college degrees....

BA:  Bachelor of Advertising

MA:  Master of Advertising

BSc: Bullshit, Scams and Capitalism

MSc: Master of Salesmanship and Corporatism

MBA: Master of Bullying and Assholery (Donald Trump degree)

PhD: Propaganda, Hogwash and Deceit

Postscript:

Anyone achieving these lofty intellectual honours can look forward to a lifetime of wage slavery, debt penury and paying off student loans to their local mafia bank. Generations of young people are being conned and hoodwinked into a life of living in Mommy and Daddy’s basement, debt slavery, insecurity and a substandard Mickey Mouse education. And, your retirement will arrive simultaneously with poverty and death.

I'm often reminded of the cynical, yet revealing, 1960s movie starring Burt Lancaster called "The Leopard", based on the Italian novel with the same title. The story takes place in 19th century Italy during the Garibaldi Revolution. Lancaster plays a wealthy land baron and his son is an idealistic revolutionary. There's a scene in which the wise old father says to his son, something like "If we want things to stay as they are, things have got to change." This of course reminds one of another famous quote "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". When it comes to the social and political relations between those who hold power and the broad masses, it's a truism. Nothing much has changed throughout history other than we have different forms of authoritarianism, domination and tyranny. Democracy has always been a farce. The monotheisms are surely the most contemptible form of this hierarchical arrangement, but the secular variations such as capitalism are not much better. Nietzsche was right is referring to Christianity as a religion of slavery. But what is capitalism other than another historical iteration of slavery which has been the norm, as capitalism is no exception? The 23rd Psalm ought to be modified: "The Lord is my shepherd, what does that make me?"

The magnitude and pervasiveness of corporate corruption and pursuit of profit (with the full complicity of the typically far right wing proto-fascist governments throughout the world) is daunting. The neo-liberal hegemonic ideology is very likely unstoppable because these amoral bastards know no limits – the very essence of immorality. Understanding the significance of crossing lines and maintaining limits are the basis for any possibility of an ethical just society. But these assholes either do not understand this - or very likely don't give a shit. Business ethics is and always has been an oxymoron but they actually offer courses in this at our universities which have now become corporatized in which professors are on short term part-time contracts, have no tenure and are paid like a Tim Horton's dishwasher and a more recent exploitation of today’s gross insecurity of the workplace and elsewhere, a Skip the Dishes or Door Dash driver. 

I personally don't think reform of this neo-liberal (classical liberalism has been a corpse for many decades) Gorgon is possible. Much to the chagrin of conservatives and limousine liberals, putting a human face on the horrors and moral degradations of capitalism has been tried with limited success since the Great Depression. I was one of the beneficiaries of those three decades following WW II in which the working classes were thrown a few crumbs by the Keynesian model that prevailed but that has all disappeared since the late 1970s.

I also recall more vividly a few years ago during the grim days of the empty suit Pastor Stephen Harper’s obtuse Christian infused dictatorship in Canada and BNN (Canada’s Bullshit News Network) interviewing bag man and corporate criminal Lyin’ Brian (“On the Take”) Mulroney for his "expertise" on the British Brexit vote. That sack of dog shit Mulroney like his Neanderthal pal Ron Ray Gun in the US was arguably the worst Canadian PM in history, eight years of tripling the national debt. BNN has no problem with larcenous swine like Mulroney or international con man Conrad Black, as long as they are distinguished members of the global pirate elite. How low can you go? Any News source with a gram of ethical sensibilities would never have swine like those thieving asshole on national TV. Fucking unbelievable, but not for BNN of course, one of the most disgraceful TV outlets in the neo-con/neo-lib monarchy of Canada spewing out myths about self-made man kamikaze capitalism and the rigged stock markets on both Wall and Bay Streets (I recommend Bruce Livesey’s The Thieves of Bay Street for anyone with any illusions about Canada being a “democracy”). But neither do the psychopathic assholes that move and manipulate the market, comment on it and make recommendations (always to buy and never to sell, in case you haven’t noticed). Sometimes they grant a security a “hold” which to me means, sell yesterday if not sooner. Every transaction has a buyer and seller so are the buyers always right? It often takes years for markets to reach lofty heights, but usually a few weeks or months to head south with a vengeance. That much I have learned – fear, greed and the herd instinct are irrational and very powerful. Most people are not rational so all one can do is read the charts (technical analysis) and appeal to your intuitions and experience as to what the hell is going on – often a lot of manipulations, hucksterism, insider trading (stock buybacks), stock market conflict of interest and other nefarious crimes.

Most of the trades are not rationally motivated from the perspective of one agonizing over “value”. The only reliable indicator is a chart, but even the conclusions drawn from high school mathematics, i.e., technical analysis from graphs is mysticism at best. The prime time to sell is when you have a profit; in that you can never be wrong. But as some rightly claim, the market is moved in whatever direction by a tiny minority, perhaps one-tenth of one percent of the population who own most of the market wealth. I can recall back in the 1980s a study that asserted 60% of the TSE is owned by 25 Canadian families. It’s surely far worse than that today with unprecedented levels of economic disparities. Today the vast majority of trades are executed by algorithms and AI. The market can do whatever it wants; at this stage in my life I could care less. But we’ll know in a few weeks or at most months, whether these volatile gyrations are a premonition of a serious meltdown or just a “correction” as the postmodern masters of finance euphemistically refers to it. Some dimwitted cretin on BNN the other day was attempting to explain the difference between a “correction” and a “pullback”. The obfuscation made absolutely no sense but these crooks are adept at mysticism and mayhem. I wonder what these creepy financial parasites assholes called the global debacle and subsequent multi-trillion dollar bailouts of mafia banks, larcenous insurance companies and a host of other corporate criminals during the 2007-2010 meltdowns of the entire global market and financial system. If these capitalist cretins and prevaricating sacks of dog dung lived by their own self-declared rules, half the biggest banks of the world, GM, Chrysler and many other corporations bailed out multiple times would be gone (bankrupt). And that would have been a good thing – especially if they all tanked. Instead we were told to believe the fairy tale of “too big to fail” which makes no more sense than “too small to fail”. But the masses of sheep out there will believe anything from the mouths of Adam Smith’s “masters of mankind”.

I’ve read Steve Keen’s short but informative book Can we Avoid another Financial Crisis? The answer of course is obvious. No! It’s in the DNA of the chaotic out of control capitalist gorgon, despite the manipulations. The question is simply when and how severe it will be. Certainly nothing has been done to address the serious systemic problems since 2008 other than to create a financial oligarchy and the most obscene levels of economic inequality in history. The whole economic corrupt criminal edifice will eventually fall like a house of cards, which is what it is. Look what happened when covid-19 hit us? The moral degenerate Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell cared not a whit about people dying from the pandemic, only how to save the markets which as in 2008-09 prompted more trillions of dollars to mitigate the impact of obscenely wealthy oligarchs who own 95% of the securities.

One wonders why an intelligent insightful man like Keen became an economist when he knows it’s basically bullshit, more like theology than some sort of scientific discipline. John Maynard Keynes, along with Bertrand Russell member of the Bloomsbury Group at Cambridge and one of the most brilliant men of the 20^th Century, knew this. It was Keynes who candidly defined capitalism as “evil men (or wicked men) doing evil things and expecting the result to create an environment of the best for all, the common good”. When queried by an investor about what the stock market will do in the long run he replied, “In the long run, we are all DEAD.” I would never pay any financial management dick head to control my hard earned savings, especially someone operating money laundering offshore tax haven banks. Are they smarter than you or I? I think not. Investing is not advanced quantum physics. These mostly old age burnout twits who call themselves “financial advisors” (and anyone can call themselves one) do no better than picking a few securities using a few criteria such a debt to equity, the charts and perhaps P/E ratios. Then put a few of their usually overvalued stocks they want to sell choices on a dart board and fire away. A book called “A Random Walk down Wall Street” several years ago demonstrated that stock prediction is either a crap shoot or form of mysticism. None of these dunderheaded true believers and ass kissing yes men on BNN or other business channels predicted the 2008 crash; nary a one. The only two or three economists such as Noriel Roubini who did predict the global debacle were marginalized ostracized heretics and contrarians, depicted by the lickspittle mainstream as lunatics.

These dorks on BNN are such nauseating drones and true believers in the market as an omnipotent and omniscient god, the arbiter of all things. These wimpy four eyed BNN geeks are basically no better than theologians or medieval scholastics. It makes for some comic relief but that’s about it. When the next inevitable crash arrives, these guys will be hand wringing with the sort of apologetics you get from Christians trying to explain the contradictions of an omnipotent asleep at the wheel benevolent deity in a world of gratuitous evil.

Of course by the bovine excrement of the “market” - an abstract, almost mystical theological concept - one can infer the processes and machinations that resemble the non-existent deity in the sense that it/he/she is the arbiter of everything within in the human realm. That’s a belief by many economists and so-called stock market analysts. For example, why let the market decide what to do within your the dynamics of family and friends - or when to excrete nitrogenous waste, make love to your spouse, read a book or go for a walk. I’ve heard many people say on almost any example of human volition: “Let the market decide”. You hear it repeated endlessly on the Bullshit News Network (BNN); it’s the dogma, the theology of neo-liberal capitalism (the end of history we’re told). Soon of course it will be the end of all life on our dying planet.

Tommy Douglas was the consummate intelligent dedicated politician who considered politics “public service” and not a career to inflate his bank account. In fact he jeopardized his career many times by speaking out against obvious injustices and inanities that even riled up many in his own party. One that comes to mind is the FLQ Quebec Crisis of the early 1970s when PM Fuddle Duddle Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, quickly followed by military with automatic weapons, militarized vehicles with gun turrets and tanks in the streets. In the House of Commons Tommy called it “using a sledge hammer to kill a fly” – and he was right. But he was vilified by MPs, even members of his own party, for his lonely stand against violations of freedom and the fascist strategies of a “liberal” government. Tommy was surely the best Canada had to offer in the game of politics and we would very likely not have our single payer public heath care without him. He was a marvellous speaker and kind, warm caring human being – and an extremely hard worker as well. If you are interested, I have a dedication to Douglas here: http://www.skeptic.ca/Tommy_Douglas.htm

Despite his intellect I was certainly not latently surprised by Pierre Trudeau’s autocratic neo-fascist behaviour during the 1970 FLQ crisis, although in those Trudeau mania weeks leading up to the 1968 election, I was caught up in the hysteria. But those were the days when I actually had some morsel of hope for a better future. Although Trudeau was a slick con artist, I couldn’t get myself to vote for him when the great Tommy Douglas was a PM candidate. In fact I’ve never voted Liberal (and certainly never Conservative).  Pierre Vallières  in his memorable revealing book White Niggers of America had it right about Quebec and French Canada, a book that ought to be required reading in our high schools. And now we have the usual nepotism in Canadian politics at every level; the empty suit Bible thumper Conservative MP Mark Strahl in Chilliwack and who like the creepy Stephen Harper never put in a day’s work in his life. Ditto for Justin Trudeau as PM until his resignation a few months ago and whose intellect pales in comparison to his old man. But, unlike the ghoulish creepy Stephen Harper, he has a nice smile, loves his family – and women seem to like him for all the wrong reasons. But like his old man he’s inherited a shit load of money as he touts the Liberal party line about the self made man and the gods of the market.

But the days of the current roulette wheel of big finance casino capitalism and boot licking politicians are numbered. It's unsustainable and by its own internal logic there will be another massive meltdown of this vile system which is incredibly unstable (even more so than past eras of such as the 1920s and the Gilded Age so aptly described by Mark Twain. Given overpopulation of homo saps, universal species extinction, and ecosystem collapse from a multiplicity of sources, perhaps religion and other supernatural, superstitious paranormal and pseudoscientific rubbish, desperation appeals to psychics, astrologers and other frauds and charlatans is to be expected in a world of insecurity, debt and systemic political and corporate corruption.

As mentioned we are experiencing the corporatization, marketing and commercialization of everything, including ourselves and our declining intellects and descending IQs. It's like a river of mind destroying post modern pseudoscientific paranormal toxic sludge polluting our minds and violating our privacy. Rarely a day goes by without the annoyance and irritating invasion of a telemarketing call, despite call blocking and a refusal to answer any phone call, unless it's a recognizable name on the call display. I’ve frequently had to disconnect the phone. And our kids are lobotomizing themselves with endless useless zombie technology such as I-pads and i-phones. Do these kids ever read a book? [4] I doubt it; even on TV ads people are depicted as ADHD, OCD morons with no lack of self control, disciplining of either themselves or their out of control children. Business practices, advertising and marketing are becoming the bubonic plagues of the 20th and 21st centuries, as our lives and minds are endlessly invaded and debased by telemarketers and pitch men. Television has been debased for decades now, just hundreds of more channels to violate your psyche and destroy your intellect. Then there’s the internet and platforms such as the intellect destroying social media combined with a massive cultural wasteland on TV, marketing and elsewhere in which bunkum, misinformation, pseudoscience and factoids prevail a global epidemic of ignorance, stupidity and factoids. Moreover, inane mindless activities such as lotteries and betting on pro sports, the latter now legal and promoted endlessly which can be done on your already addictive ADHD/OCD cell phone. These and other idiocies have become its entire raison d’etre. Not abiding by a common sense idea that the secret to a normal looking body from the 1960s is “eat less and exercise more” not the majority of humans who now look like 600 lb blob or the TV series  called The 1000 lb sisters - but no, there’s an antidote to becoming a huge disgusting mass of protoplasm. It’s another big marketing campaign promoting Ozempic (the fat pill with dozens of copycats) which screws up your digestive system to avoid looking like an overweight blob that has heart disease at the age of 30 and can’t even get out of bed without a crane.

The Number 1 Question remains: Will the complacent docile indoctrinated masses take their noses out of their cell phones for two minutes to wake up in time to stop the Fourth Reich of Herr Trump, Leon Skum, his despotic billionaire buddies, the banking mafia and the BBBBB (Bible Banging Book Burning Bozos) and creeping fascism of Christian nationalism and lickspittle masses who haven’t a clue what is happening to them as they descend to their knees praying to their sky tyrant while they sink deeper into homeless poverty, serfdom and ecological collapse. The psychopathic asshole corporate oligarchs who own and control the world either does not understand the notion of limits or more than likely just don't give a shit. When it happens, the banks this time will likely simply steal the assets of its customers since governments are broke. They've had a lot of practise as thieves, money laundering, offshore tax havens for the wealthy oligarchs and financial banking mafia. We are arriving at the point at which governments and the out of control gargantuan corporations are merging - the biggest M & A ever; and why not? After all, governments and their police and military have always existed exclusively to serve wealth and power. But who knows when it will happen? History doesn't operate by some deterministic Hegelian formula. Not one of these corporate crook supercilious financial gurus with their Mickey Mouse MBAs and PhDs in the pseudoscience gobbledygook "dismal science" of marketing and economics, manipulated stock markets, financial predation and lack of accountability predicted the global debacle of 2008. But why should they care when like naughty children the capitalist nanny state bails the bastards out, thanks to the unthinking drug induced deluded masses hooked on the paranormal and even worse, mainstream religion such as tax free Christianity (another business “enterprise” for which profit is everything).

Notes:

[1] No one, including the Buddhist guru Alan Watts (and I don't deny his finely tuned mind) can "explain everything". I do admire Watts, especially his critiques of the mind controlling agendas of monotheistic religions, but it's been about 30 years since I've read his material. I once had most of his writings since Buddhism, unlike Christianity, provides some wisdom but I donated them to an interested friend, which I now regret. The acceptance of a sceptical outlook and fallibility is surely an intellectual virtue as is pessimism in a world gone mad and void of optimism and hope (along with faith a useless emotion). But the people who reject uncertainty and hate the idea of provisional knowledge that are the hallmarks of scientific inquiry are the religious. And the most rigidly dogmatic and cruel are the monotheisms. Even Hinduism despite its ludicrous mysticism, multiple deities and putrid caste system, is far more tolerant than Christianity.

Despite several centuries of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, Christianity has changed nothing, holding to views that they ought to know have been refuted and demolished by the latter intellectual movements. The Bible is plagued by assertions that are barbaric and tyrannical, including countless assertions that are patently false, facts that any third rate junior high school student would know. Yet this vile book of racism, denigration of women and homosexuality, torture, genocide, and countless other moral atrocities is apparently the word of an omnipotent and omniscient "creator". Yet we're told to love and worship this monster who is clearly asleep at the wheel.

"Sacred", in addition to “spirituality” is one of countless opaque quasi-religious expressions that can mean pretty much anything depending on who invokes it. For most North American indigenous cultures at least (and likely Aboriginals in Australia) "sacred" applies primarily to "mother nature”, especially the land and its primarily non-human inhabitants. For First Nations people the notion of land as a commodity for sale to be owned by anyone is verboten, anathema to their beliefs and considered “sacred”, a meaningless term for the business enterprises of both Capitalism and Christianity. What obtuse philistines like Stephen Harper and other conservative dolts like BC conservative MLA John Rustad never understand is that for the Sioux, Cree and other First Nations peoples in the Americas, capitalism is akin to the Christian Anti-Christ, anathema to their "spiritual" world view. All property is of course theft, but these cretins just don't get it. The idea that any "human beings" (the native people according to Chief Dan George in the 1970 movie "Little Big Man" - the whites were rightly depicted as "devils") could own any part of the land was sacrilege.

I've always had a problem with appeals to "spirituality" a very vague, almost opaque, concept. That includes even Alan Watts (who despite his first rate intellect, can't seem to avoid dubious metaphysical appeals) and countless charlatans and hucksters of New Age hooey and snake oil such as Deepak Chopra. The planet is polluted with these people with some kind of racket which is the cornerstone of all wars. In this sense they differ little from the frauds touting useless garbage such as the pimp Dr. Ho (apparently a chiropractor), Cold FX and the Q-ray bracelet. Cold FX even had Canada's certified village idiot Don Cherry on ads with his testimonials espousing the curative powers of Cold FX which has been exposed in independent trials as nothing better than a magical elixir. Wayne Gretzky a few years ago was touting his own pump and dump penny stock scam that claimed to lose weight with his magical chewing gum. What a slimy asshole; dumber than a hockey puck.

All-encompassing ideologies and closed systems of thought inevitably lead to persecution and violence. The reason, I think is this: When someone locks on to the idea that their notion of propriety is absolutely right and impervious to criticism, it means that anyone who disagrees must be absolutely wrong and, hence, not only unworthy of any tolerance or equitable consideration, but extermination. Even Japanese Zen Buddhism had its fanatical period during the years leading up to World War II as it was employed as an ideological tool to indoctrinate and train their military into killing machines, to die for the empire and the Emperor Hirohito. The Roman Catholic Church also assumed such a stance from the days of Columbus with their papal decrees regarding the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493 and during subsequent centuries of sanctifying the theft of indigenous lands and mass murder of the populace. The fanatical Protestants following the Reformation were really no better theft of physical property is bad enough but now capitalism has a new swindle of-intellectual property rights which is a massive fraud. Bill Gates and his high tech buddies have made billions on this bullshit.

Christianity was forced to civilize itself from torture and burning people at the stake only because it had to co-exist in with the emergence of the humanist enlightenment and scientific revolution. Praise Jesus!  The implacable problems of infinite regress and the more explanatory power of science displace, refute and rule the idea of a “creator” (whatever the hell that might mean) as superfluous. Was it the great mathematician and scientist Pierre Laplace who responded to Napoleon’s query about why he omitted God from his cosmological theories, “I have no need of that hypothesis sire”. Anything that can be accepted without evidence can be rejected by the same. Yeah, it’s so comforting that I’ll spend an infinite afterlife “praying with Jesus and his Dad on Cloud 9”. One very plausible hypothesis is that the universe has always existed. Ergo, no creator needed or some silly proposition such as a “god of the gaps”. Why not defer to intellectual humility and just admit that we do not know. But the notion of a deity is about a far-fetched as one could go in proposing filling in the gaps of our limited knowledge about origins. By the way, the anecdotes on Pierre Laplace and Napoleon have another interesting twist. Napoleon, like the great French mathematician and cosmologist Laplace, was very likely an atheist as well, but he understood the utility of religion for leaders such as himself; i.e., keeping the masses docile and anaesthetized. I think he used the expression, religion “keeps the poor quiet” or “from killing the rich.”

[2] Over the past several decades we have witnessed many critiques of the postmodern phenomenon, emphasizing its elusiveness of objectivity, meaning and the possibility of cogent argumentation that includes the enigmatic possibility of cogency of argumentation, validity and truth. One might start with Peter Benson’s Philosophy Now article Beware of Truth and the entertaining book Everything, All the Time, Everywhere by Stuart Jeffries for some interesting analysis and commentary on Postmodernism which some have argued has been in decline for at least two decades now. But to understand the impact of postmodernism one need examine the cultural transformations that led to and what many would refer to as the abandonment Enlightenment values, the special status of science and even rules of rational discourse, logic and our long standing understanding of knowledge and veracity. The place to start is The Postmodern Condition, published in 1979, was commissioned by the Council of Universities of the Provincial Government of Quebec. It is a report on the state of knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, in the contemporary world, by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924-98). In this book, Lyotard considers knowledge, including its ubiquity as his unease and worry is prescient, given computerization, internet and social media have become pervasive and detrimental influences on our lives in the half century since his report. Some of the attacks on philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and others have been exceedingly harsh, many of whom claim not to be postmodernist in denial of logic, reason and truth and who reject science and the humanist enlightenment as having any special status.

Knowledge in philosophy is concerned centrally with metaphysics and epistemology: ‘”What is real?”, “What can we know?”’ and “How do we coke to know?” respectively. The empirical sciences emerge from such questions. However, with information so pervasive, abundant and readily available, knowledge is for many people reduced to merely opinion and what they think they know. But this intuitive and often knee jerk approach is clearly more often than not reliable since for many their knowledge is based on superstition inculcated beliefs such as religion, the cultural hegemony of capitalism, indoctrination, propaganda and reams of bullshit. In line with Nietzsche’s notion of “will to power”, Lyotard would agree as money as the major source of power has become the essence of gangster finance capitalism, what we call neo-liberalism that has emerged in the past 40-50 years. This has created an oligarchy of corporations and banks supplemented by powerful billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, creating massive gaps in economic inequality and the demise of any threadbare democracy that has precariously existed in the brief three decade post World War II era. Modern economic theories employ knowledge and technology to grow with AI now threatening to become a dystopian nightmare. Technology, capital growth, AI and globalization all depend on it. Hence of science is deployed as merely a tool for technology and capital growth controlled by the corporate oligarchy and financial mafia as both knowledge and people have become mere commodities legalized through the scam of intellectual property rights.

But first many will ask what exactly is postmodernism? There is no simple definition although Stuart Jeffries offers the notion of “anything goes” capitalism which has become a hallmark of neo-liberal doctrine in an era of diminishing opportunities for profit which is sole aim of capitalism. All opinions and world views are not equal. Consequently the capitalist doctrine of greed has been transmogrified under no holds barred deregulation  zealots such as calcified conservative capitalists such as Ron Ray Gun and Margaret (there is no society) Thatcher which has been a disaster for all but a tiny minority of plutocrats and robber barons. Sadly, capitalism will adapt to anything even by cooption that will maintains or enhance their ability to make money. Postmodernism is no exception as capitalist tentacles have moved into areas that no one could have imagined , including area deemed illegal and immoral in the past such as lotteries, stock buybacks, offshore tax havens, barbaric UFC, slimy reverse mortgages that exploit retirees and online gambling which has become some sort of addictive disease entirely contaminating the dignity and professionalism of pro sports .It would seem that anything goes, the cornerstone of a deeply immoral and depraved global culture. Jeffries claims that postmodernism has created for the depravity of capitalism and everyday society “a semiotic black hole, consuming everything but signifying nothing”. It’s like being stuck in the disturbing movie Pulp Fiction. Surely no one can deny the increase not only in people’s bad behavior and increase in the sociopathic assholes in an overpopulated contaminated planet of people and their pets, the general intelligence has declined with stupidity, ignorance, obesity and general lack of moderation, self-control and self-discipline becoming the norms.

[3] Professional sports which now include poker and the barbarism of UFC have become as boring as mining for belly button lint. Even pro hockey is about as exciting as watching paint dry. There are no personalities in the game any longer; they're just robotic businessmen like the Japanese “star” of the LA Dodgers who recently signed a billion dollar contract – but   unlike dimwitted American and Latino players at least he refuses to point to the sky daddy each time he hits a home run.  Even in pro hockey the stupid fights are often staged and ought to be abolished. The endless fights in hockey remind me of Don Rickles famous jibe: "I went to the fights last night and a hockey game broke out." Have any of you ever watched any of this barbarism called UFC for more than 15 seconds without vomiting. Two people, including women fighters kick the shit out of one another in a cage with seemingly no rules, blood splattering all over the place until one guy lays there like a brain damaged zombie, beaten to a pulp? I cannot watch that shit for more than a few seconds. This is merely one of many examples of how far we've moved toward the dominance of spectacle and the depths of a moral abyss.

As is the case with several plant and animal species becoming extinct each day, time for reflection, tranquility and privacy are quickly diminishing. Corporate logos and slogans appear anywhere there is an open slot of space-time and there's a banality of similitude no matter where you go in the world. For example, try watching a professional baseball game on TV as every inch of available ground and fencing is plastered with a corporate logo. At every available opportunity during the game there is a marketing intrusion: this pitching change is brought to you by Ford, the hitting stats are brought to you by Viagra, the seventh inning stretch is brought to you by God ("God Bless America, blah, blah") and even before the game begins one is forced to endure the mind bending banality of national anthems or military drills (sponsored by your government's current imperialistic war). If you are a member of the elite 1% you might even be able to afford a cheap $300 seat for a live game and watch it from a seat where you need an oxygen supply. For the .01% there are $300,000 a year sky boxes, complete with champagne, caviar and valet service. For those working class peons who grew up passionately playing any of these sports and can still tolerate the multi-millionaire prima donna robots who play them, the cost of attending a live game is prohibitive.

Marketing has become so perverse that some pro teams claim to be a special sponsor of some deadly product like a Big Mac. Even some ordinary twits with room temperature IQs resort to fetishes such as hideous tattoos and have even resorted to selling the space on parts of their bodies to corporate marketing, having tattooed their foreheads with corporate or promotional mottos such as claiming to be the official whiskey or beer of the Toronto Blue Jays. Even the building in which the sport is played (often built with public funds) is sponsored by some larcenous mafia bank, mega-corporation: General Motors Stadium, Microsoft Coliseum, Roger’s Place, Met Life Stadium, etc, etc.

[4] Having kids in this toxic dysfunctional vastly overpopulated world that has gone off the rails seems misguided and unwise at the very least.  Moreover, there’s gross irresponsibility in adding to the superfluity of semi-intelligent baboons that are overrunning the planet and consuming the finite resources at an alarming rate (especially the richest among us). You must have noticed how many people have multiple children with two or three slobbering dogs defecating on public and private spaces (like my lawn). By the way, why do dogs insist on licking their private parts? Do these people, who clearly cannot afford those kids or canines without wealthy parents, ever contemplate contraception? Many in Chilliwack of course are Christian fundamentalists and having a dozen kids is god’s will and condoned in the Holy Babble (like the bat shit crazy Chilly Whack Mennonites and Dutch Reformed who dominate the political, cultural and real estate sleaze landscape of this increasingly contaminated and overpopulated cramped community. I’ve caught several dog owners allow their Fido (one moron has an Irish Wolf Hound that looks like a horse) to piss and shit on my lawn and then in too many cases, not clean up the mess. The dog piss of course just leaves a brown spot which I tried to impress on one dumb young woman who, while text messaging someone and ignoring (and totally oblivious to) the child in her stroller, remarked, “It’s not dog poop”. Those that do put their dog shit in a plastic bag, what in hell do they do with it when they get home? Then there are the slob smokers you must deal with. What’s with these assholes, many of whom still cause many forest fires and homes to burn to the ground? I pick up cigarette butts from my lawn and sidewalk every week and yesterday an empty pack of cancer sticks was tossed on my lawn. There’s no hope for a planet of mindless chimps and chumps; and sadly, many are our political “leaders” such as the narcissistic Orange Haired Godzilla with the fox pelt toupee running the basket case country to our south. This beast Trump, was elected again (like the village idiot “W”) is perhaps the end game for our polluted pathetic planet with his knee jerk know nothing decisions, one of which might be starting WW III. Americans seem to prefer their leaders to be dumber than a hockey puck.

The other issue with having kids is the huge responsibility and cost (about a quarter of a million bucks to bring up a kid these days assuming he doesn’t go to college). And the prospect of having a kid living in your basement until he’s 40 or 50 - or perhaps forever. Having a kid today would appear to be another of countless cases of gross stupidity by homo saps with the intelligence of semi-intelligent apes.

It’s a dumb and dumber greed driven world gone stark raving mad. How long it will take this house of cards to unravel is anyone’s guess? But it surely will by the laws of entropy and no one giving a damn if nothing else. By historical standards it’s long overdue and it’s in the nasty DNA of capitalism, an immoral system of unmitigated greed that knows no limits. Most of the bogus economy is run by billionaires and parasites such as hedge funds that would be illegal in any decent society with a pretence to ethical oversight and common decency. After 2008 who could have predicted the multi-trillion bailouts of global criminals. It boggles the mind but as is the norm, most people just shrug their shoulders like semi-intelligent chimps. When most people don’t give a shit, even within your own small community or neighbourhood, there’s precious hope for democracy, fairness or justice. The only rational philosophical position is a deep pessimism.

We all have to come to some conclusions about truth and reality and whose ideas are the most plausible and beneficial for the good of humanity.  Not being omnipotent like the Islamic and Christian sky wizards, Bertrand Russell had an interesting notion about “inference to the best explanation” which is about all we can hope for in many cases. But then the philosopher and mathematician Russell had a first class intellect and rejected what he called intellectual rubbish such as religion and anti-science nonsense. There are some thinkers whose ideas I find, not only ponderous, but almost impenetrable. One of those is the fideism of Kierkegaard. In the end we have to assume certain empirical premises and rules of logic especially the case with people who believe in invisible metaphysical entities and pseudoscientific constructs. Most people seem to have a need for comfortable myths. One can justify religious belief only by providing psychological explanations because they have no empirical support at all. This is sad, but it is part of the human condition I suppose. When you put up with an alcoholic parent for years, perhaps it forces one into accepting harsh realities that many cannot handle. Most truths are not pleasant, but what is the alternative, Self-deception and cognitive dissonance?  I’ve rarely if ever agreed with anyone’s ideas in their totality. But from my experience with the many Christians I’ve known, most have not even read the book that they claim is the word of their God. Religion is what I call a conversation stopper; all the answers can be found in a 2000 year old book written by itinerant Arabs. Religionists have not been able to provide anything even remotely resembling a coherent conception of the hateful vindictive mysterious authoritarian tyrannical God they believe in. None of the arguments for the existence of any God have been valid and one wonders how they can even get off the ground with no clear conception of what it is they are trying to convince you. I have no desire to wade through the ponderous abstruse writings of men such as Kierkegaard - or even Leibniz who was along with Isaac Newton, the co-discoverer of Calculus. Have any of you attempted to read the Book of Mormon (or is it Moron?) a book one of the Saturday door knocking devotees gave me? It’s basically unreadable. At least the Bible is, despite its lack of argumentation or humour, can be understood, even if 99% of it is not believable, save for the naive and credulous. It’s a very violent book and the Xian God is depicted at the very least a narcissistic vindictive monster who informs people like me I’ll burn in hell – for eternity - sort of like Trump, Attila the Hun and Hitler on steroids. But isn’t God just Santa Clause for adults? That’s the conclusion my high school buddy Rick Smith and I came to in about Grade 10. Then we discovered Bertrand Russell in the school library (the Catholic book burners must have missed it) who provided knock down arguments for the non-existence of fairy tales like Christianity.

---------------

If I had to recommend one book supportive of the ideas in this essay, take a look at Michael Barker’s The Occult Elite: Anti-Communist Paranoia and Other Ruling Class Delusions. Then there are the many brilliant contrarian skits by the late great brilliant George (Bullshit is Bad for You) Carlin.

Carlin on “Angels”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Virqo-pI5c

The Bastards Own You:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiML1L8IBuM

The Hierarchical Triad of Bullshit (Business, Politics and #1 = Religion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE

Addendum: (A few personal revelations)

I don't have any answers anymore - and in any event this planet is in the death throes. I read a report that the most common element in the oceans is not sea life, but plastic. We're finished as a species and our days are numbered. There's no political will with rapacious war mongering psychopaths who impose no moral limits on themselves running the world. A few months ago I watched an uncut version of Soldier Blue with Candice Bergen (what a beautiful woman and brilliant acting performance). A great movie, comparable to Little Big Man, both made in 1970. Donald Pleasance played a bit part in the movie and performed his role with usual skill. Very graphic scenes depicting the infamous and barbaric 1864 Sand Creek Massacre on which this movie is loosely based. I have a piece on the incident on my web site here:

http://www.skeptic.ca/Sand_Creek.htm

A few years ago I read The Nazis Next Door: How America became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men. I knew quite a bit about this sordid history from Noam Chomsky's writings on Operation Paperclip, but this book is both revealing - and shocking. About the same time I finally got to reading Peter Medawar's 1961 critique of Teilhard de Chardin's infamous mumbo jumbo obfuscations and obscurantisms in The Phenomenon of Man. It's probably why I no longer have the book in my library; at the time I had the book, I found it like the Book of Mormon unreadable - unintelligible actually - pretty much throughout the entire book. I don't recall ever finishing it. Perhaps it's writers of hooey like de Chardin who spawned the later generations of New Age kooks such as Deepak Chopra and countless other masters of mysticism and gobbledegook who in exercises in futility try to reconcile religious nonsense with science. And that's just for starters.

Medawar's skewering of the book was brilliant. He was an excellent writer and scientist of the logical positivist/Karl Popper tradition. I did have two of his books in my library at one time and will see if I still have them. I did have Pluto's Republic and The Limits of Science at one time; he has a marvellous analytic mind. I'd like to get his autobiography called, I think, The Life of a Thinking Radish. I think it's time for a revival of A J Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic and the tradition of demolishing mysticisms and religious bullshit. The upcoming generation will, for the most part be mindless zombies as the cell phone and other addictions continue unabated. About ten years ago in Harpers Magazine they cited a disturbing statistic: the average American checks his cell phone 46 times a day. It’s far worse today as people, like their dogs, take them to bed.

Sig Freud's remarks about the propensity of humans to self-deception and delusion are truisms. People it seems can only tolerate so much reality and truth. As both Nietzsche and Sartre understood, people would rather lie to themselves than face up to unpleasant facts. Was it Freud who referred to Christianity as a "Childhood Neurosis"? I love Nietzsche's quote about the two great European narcotics -Alcohol and Christianity. I also admired Medawar's apt quote in which he echoes the point made by Chomsky and others about the role of education, the churches and mass culture in general in indoctrination and inculcation of the "bewildered herd" into the conditions of intellectual sloth, docility and ideological compliance.

Moreover, you'd think that anyone who has read Medawar's convincing demolition of the man would be sufficient. In any event, one just needs a cursory reading of The Phenomenon of Man to realize it's nothing but intellectual rubbish and obscurantism masquerading as profundity. I wonder if Bertrand Russell had read this book, one that he would surely refer to as intellectual rubbish. Bert certainly would have given it a good thrashing. I expect Teilhard must have been charged with heresy for his quasi-pantheism and other crimes by the Vatican hierarchy. He surely would have been tortured and burned at the stake in the Medieval Dark Ages when religion ruled. But the muddled befuddlement of mainstream Catholicism is bizarre enough is it not? It seems that the calcified religious mind-set can be convinced of almost anything. There are of course psychological and scientific explanations for those who claim they have communicated with God, his Santa Elves called Angels - or dead relatives. Then there are those who claim mystical or spiritual encounters or personal experiences such as alien abduction and countless other outrageous supernatural occurrences.

Naturally of course, such experiences can be perceived as symptoms of one of several psychoses, hallucinations, epileptic seizures, mood disorders or just the normal functioning of regions of the temporal lobes of those with vivid imaginations about assumed supernatural phenomena. I recall reading books proposing that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Paul and countless other Christian mystics were suffering from a plethora of psychotic disorders. That's assuming that those former listed "mystics" and "fakirs" actually existed at all. And even if they did, how do we know what has been written about them is true? All of Christian mythology has been stolen from earlier religions, even the virgin birth and resurrection fairy tales. What happened to Paul, for example, with his zany visions and revelations on the road to Damascus? 

Some people's brains are apparently afflicted with what shrinks call Hyperactive Agency Detection Disorder (HADD), a predisposition to imaginary deities, angels, faces in the clouds and on pizzas or divinities in their breakfast cereal. Some explanations for these have evolutionary explanations in that we humans were basically breakfast for creatures that were more powerful so that we were conditioned to imagine potential threats, even those that were not there. That creak in the wall must be a bogeyman about to emerge from the wall and eat us alive. Let's face it, even less than 200 years ago people thought disease was caused by demons or other supernatural forces. Anyone who suggested a "germ theory" in which microscopic airborne organisms attacked our bodies and made us sick or killed us would be considered madness. The fact that prominent political figures, even presidents such as George W Bush espouse Bronze Age beliefs is scary enough, but when you are told that 50% of Americans believe in demons, ghosts and angels, reveals how little impact science has had on most people. Religion it seems makes people stupid and in most cases there is no cure. You cannot fix stupid as the old adage informs us. One of many brilliant comments from Bertrand Russell:

"The utility of intelligence is admitted only theoretically, not practically: it is not desired that people should think for themselves, because it is felt that people who think for themselves are awkward to manage and cause administrative difficulties."

I like to think I'm part of that extreme minority and rare group of iconoclasts and anarchists because as the consummate shit disturber at work, I was regularly the target of contempt (even from colleagues) for pointing out injustices such as violations of our contract. I think I came by the nickname "Johnny Reb" from high school quite legitimately since I had the infamous strap for simply asking the wrong questions in class (like why mind numbing Bible readings every morning?). These vicious darts flew not just from the intellectual mediocrity drones in administration, but from my own colleagues, many of them "yes men" and moles looking to get out of the classroom and into an overpaid position in management. But many teachers suffer from the martyr complex; many obviously have no life, intellectual or otherwise, outside the classroom.

I’ve always been perplexed as to why anyone would want to have faith or worship anything. It has always mystified me, even as a young teen. My fellow atheist high school friend Rick Smith and I had strong intuitions about the stupidity of religious belief and practises such as prayer but when we discovered Bertrand Russell in the school library that had miraculously not been removed and burned we were provided with confirmation in the form of compelling argument. Obviously the Christian book burners (the BBBBB crowd – Bible Banging Book Burning Bozos) in small town Prince George, BC had not discovered these heretical satanic books in the PGSS school library.

I suppose atheists and other heretics of religious and political faiths don’t go door to door is they assume that evidence and arguments ought to convince the ordinary allegedly rational realist human to reject their superstitions and religious pabulum they believe, even with some cursory reflections on the idiocy of their faith. I’ve actually found common ground with the JWs in the sense that I’m against the idea of the state and the wars they cause in the name of profit, power and greed of the rapacious corporations and wealthy elites they serve. But their solution is, yes you guessed it, a THEOCRACY (another form of authoritarianism, like the capitalist state, one of the most oppressive violent and authoritarian ideologies ever concocted by psychopathic minded humans).

You’ve probably seen the video of Australian comedian John Saffran who visits Utah and goes door to door preaching the ideas of Charles Darwin. It’s hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58wgn-9Y3c&t=205s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEPv4VEeYUo

There are other skits by Saffran that will provide your necessary daily dose of humour as an antidote to the countless horrors we hear about each day.

Faith, docility and obedience are notions our "masters of the universe" endlessly promote. Patriotism, nationalism and "love of god and country" are the biggest bullshit stories ever told. I've never compromised and degraded myself by singing sang "Oh Canada" and never will. Damn near got killed for refusing to stand during the singing of "God Save the Queen" at the Canadian Legion with my new future brother in law Harvey back in the late 1960s. During labour disputes the companies could always count on the Legion, along with the cops and company thugs, to crack heads and beat the shit out of their fellow working class slaves on the picket lines. I've always detested authoritarian environments whether the church, the military, cops or boy scouts. Moreover, most humans (as Carlin informed us) are not only very bright, they prefer slavery to freedom. They gravitate to hierarchy and authoritarianism whether religious or secular. The anarchists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and David Graeber, Chomsky and others are basically right and it is why it has been ruthlessly demonized by conservatives and other votaries of the status quo intellectual dead zone.

Karl Marx was right, religion is the opiate of the masses and the conservative masters of mankind know it. But even atheists Napoleon and Mussolini knew the value of anaesthetizing the masses with religious indoctrination. The Vatican and big business vastly increased their power under Mussolini's fascism. Let's face it fascism is just a short waltz to the political right of conservatism and Christianity is clearly as authoritarian and oppressive as any fascist regime. The churches both Catholic and Protestant moved lock step with the fascist salutes and supported Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and every other fascist regime in Europe and as in the US and Canada they pay no property or income taxes. Where do I sign up? The most important Catholic of the 20^th century Adolph Hitler never would have gained power without the support of conservative factions such as the churches, big business, police and the military. Our uninspiring education systems are mere reflections of this hierarchical edifice and hegemony as Bertrand Russell cogently argued, in addition to Noam Chomsky who was a harsh vitriolic critic. A more recent educational reformer worth reading is John Taylor Gatto. His two books I read a decade ago were "Dumbing us Down" and "Weapons of Mass Instruction" are spot on exposes of a broken system, not unlike capitalism.

The education system and the moronic capitalist culture were never intended to produce sceptical, analytic, reflective, conscious and ethical critical thinkers. In fact most people leave the system unable to think at all. I've personally witnessed the futile attempts to introduce critical thinking programs (and there are excellent ones) into the schools. But the reflective progressive people who attempt it are foiled by the conservative forces within the communities, primarily the Dark Ages Christians and business dim bulbs at the Chamber of Commerce, banks and big corporations that preserve the status quo at all costs. They have the money and organizations to do it, and they have been successful beyond their wildest dreams. We are heading for dark times folks and WW III is not a delusion; it's very real. The racist homophobic US government has introduced legislation to make LBGTQ people eligible for the military draft if it gets to that point - and it will. The crisis of capitalism will be solved in whatever manner it takes.

Brilliant intellectuals such as Marx and people like Leon Trotsky were right about "permanent revolution". But the left has had its detractors and sell-outs, starting with Stalin and his state capitalism. Look at the status of our useless social democratic parties such as labour in the UK and the NDP (once as the proud CCF socialist party and their Revolutionary Regina Manifesto), now part of the neo-liberal world kamikaze capitalist world order. Have any of you ever read a history of the post WW I German Revolution and how the social democratic SPD sold out. That was just the beginning -like the trade unions, the social democratic reformists never wanted to take down capitalism. Rather they grovelled for a small piece of the pie - and got basically jack shit for them and the suckers who voted for them. The Communist Party wherever it had a presence was at least honest and had no illusions about cooperating and compromising with the  capitalist classes who never have given a rat’s ass about justice, community, democracy or people’s needs that were and always will be invariably superseded by greed and profit.

To quote Shakespeare, “Something's rotten in Denmark” and it's going to end badly, very badly.

With respect to the failures of education systems, public or private, there have been many artists and musicians who have commented on those horrendous malfunctions and the systems of indoctrination and docility they manufactured. Consider a justifiably angry man such as Roger Waters. Waters is certainly an intelligent and thoughtful man. I really don’t know a lot about him including why he left Pink Floyd. He was apparently the creator of most of their early material, including the album The Wall and hit single Another Brick in the Wall. In that sense he was similar to another Brit with the same name, Roger Hodgson of Super Tramp who wrote at least one song about the horrors of the British school system.  

But anyone with a brain stem realizes the education systems, both public and private are, for the most part, instruments of indoctrination to churn our docile compliant unquestioning workers for the capitalist class. George Carlin never tired of stressing this aspect of “education”. That’s not to say we all haven’t had inspirational teachers who tossed out much of the mind destroying curriculum. Today education has been forced to adopt the corporate model with robotic administrators such as principals turned into mindless Chief Executor Officers (and will ultimately be privatized like all else in the commons, barring a total collapse and revolution) with all the idiocies and banalities of the top down authoritarianism leadership model of a corporation. The fact that schools are not businesses didn't enter their miniature brains. I can vividly remember when this bullshit began in the early 1980s. We had to concoct mission statements and school mottos, a colossal waste of time. Soon there will nothing but corporations. Just think about Amazon and Google and the power they wield. I think Roger Waters used the asshole English schoolmaster as a paragon of raw unjustified power but he surely understands power arises from a myriad of sources, including especially the military, religion and politics. The attached video of the students raising hell in Another Brick in the Wall and rebelling is, I would suggest, simply a metaphorical expression of a much needed real global revolution against our current global oppressor, casino capitalism and its two biggest partners, the police, military, imperialism and war.

The appalling belligerent behaviour I experienced in dealing with my only classic underachieving son (98^th percentile in IQ and high school chess champion in grade 8 in a grade 8-12 high school). His unwise numerous encounters with the cops (they are not without good reason referred to as “pigs” by the generally working class people they abuse but rarely bother the real criminals who own most of the wealth and control the political apparatus and banking/financial mafia). With rare exception, these are not thoughtful decent people. My unassuming good hearted son was never a threat to anyone which is likely why women were so attracted to him (in addition to his Hollywood good looks and athletic physique).

I had a few of my own personal confrontations with typically overweight low IQ cops as well, two of which were receiving citations for exceeding the speed limit by 10 km/h on a deserted Highway 10 in Surrey when I was returning from hockey late at night and had to work the next day. As diplomatically as was possible I inquired why they couldn’t use their time more productively like check out the local banks. Immediately they became confrontational and aggressive. The bastards are allegedly “public servants” (as I was as a high school teacher), something I also tried to inform them of. I knew they were going to give me the ticket anyway and since they do apparently have quotas to meet (the typical capitalist government money grab) I unloaded by venting my spleen on them.

Two of them I challenged in court and won by default because the lazy ass cops never showed up. One was the Delta Police and another, the Surrey RCMP, both detachments of which were incompetent, stupid and corrupt. They seem to revel in the power trip it provides for them. This is a distinct quality of the psychopath and surely for anyone so disposed, the police and military are attractive career choices. There are obviously good cops with intelligence and integrity but too many I suspect become cops for the wrong reasons.

In agree that the public needs to take control of everything (in order for any semblance of real democracy) which includes unarmed community police forces and militias rather that national police forces and standing armed forces which are a colossal waste of money (but are streams of cash or corporations, not the least of which are armament and surveillance companies). These are all long standing anarchist principles. Anytime you hear some duplicitous politician (whether it be Justin Trudeau or Stephen Harper) invoke “it’s in the national interest” be very sceptical because nine times out of ten it means the interests of wealth, power, big banking mafia and the corporate oligarchy. The process of rubber stamping pipelines is a classic example, after a meaningless consultation with interested parties such as First Nations people.

The entire global system is so systemically corrupt and criminal it simply cannot be fixed. I’m of the mind that both the state and political parties are totally undemocratic and need to be abolished. I can recall many years ago reading a compelling piece by Simone Weil on the abolition of political parties. Like the police and military, they have always been nothing but mechanisms for protection of wealth and power but now we are heading to full blown fascism – and it is global. The masters of mankind cannot help but notice the seething anger and rising civil disobedience. These bastards are not completely stupid; they surely are aware (save for the delusional Christian end times and Rapture lunatics) that global warming, endless imperialist war, rampant species loss, pollution and contamination of water supplies and soils and countless other environmental catastrophes looming. This planet is toast. Then there are the massive debt levels both public and private. The US is technically bankrupt with only its dollar domination and military keeping it afloat. Canada is in deep shit on this count, especially consumer debt and seniors, for example, frantically and desperately resorting to reverse mortgage scams (those who actually own or have equity in their homes). Many seniors live in trailer parks and derelict apartments, something you see everywhere in the dead end parts of any city. This is the future for at least half of Canadian young people who will work until they drop dead. But even the markets cannot be sustained if people cannot afford to buy the corporate cockroach’s mostly superfluous products. I’m surprised we haven’t had another massive meltdown yet, but it usually is sparked by some black swan event.

There so much to say on this which for the most part is the recognition that meritocracy and democracy DO NOT exist and never have existed. The current plutocracy, corporate oligarchy and financial looting machines and inherited wealth (all stolen by the way – Proudhon was right – all property is theft) rule the world and have created grotesque levels of economic inequality which is unsustainable. Then there is the dreadful state of global warming, pollution and our ecosystems which are circling the drain. The oceans for example are in their death throes. The livestock industries apparently are the causes of over 20% of our greenhouse gases, to say nothing of the moral issue. If you’ve ever been in a slaughterhouse, you’ll wean yourself off meat at least for a few weeks until your taste buds overwhelm you. Joan and I eat very little meat (I’ve always hated the barbecued versions of animal carcasses and almost vomit with the smell of people polluting the neighbourhood with the putrid smoke) and I would have been happy to be a vegan many years ago but could not convince my wife Joan.  

Although I’m a very social creature, I’ve been a loner much of my life in the sense that I’ve sustained no real lifelong lasting friends. Many people don’t even want to talk with you because they would rather live with their illusions about how the world is. I unfortunately lost touch with my friend Rick Smith but on our long walks to school we challenged everything, including the stifling boredom of school and the stupidity of Christianity. Rick once referred to church services as barbarism, especially the embarrassing servility and having to get on your knees in abeyance and humility and worship and pray to some mystical ethereal invisible man who we’re told lives somewhere in the cosmos. Or who is everywhere, the ultimate surveillance 24-7. Like Santa Claus (a substitute deity for kids) who is coming to Town who knows every move you make and gives nicer gifts to the rich kids on the street. Both of our parents who were not at all religious insisted we take “Confirmation Classes” in the stifling local Anglican Church. Little did our parents know to avoid brain damage we spent that time in the local pool hall.  The world would be a much different place without religion and in the West we may have had the enlightenment scientific revolution 1000 years early without Christianity. The days for homo saps are numbered and we will be very lucky (since nothing is being done in the age of neo-fascist dolts like Donald Trump) to emerge from the 21^st century without multiple calamities of any one of countless problems we face. Human stupidity, ignorance and not giving a shit, including overpopulation of humans and their pets, are arguably the most serious ones. The capitalist oligarchy only cares about profit and the accumulation of mammon. Infinite growth on a finite planet is an obvious problem most of them are aware of, but again, they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it. I’ve been an iconoclast for as long as I can remember - perhaps the upshot of living with an alcoholic chain smoking violent unaffectionate, yet highly intelligent hard working PTSD alcoholic WW II vet father.

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