How to Tell if there's a Conspiracy

Conspiracies exist. Everywhere. A conspiracy is defined as an attempt to do something unethical, which you don't want anyone beyond your circle of friends to know about. Of course, there are times when doing something unethical is necessary, usually to protect yourself. However, unfortunately, there are certain people in the world who are ignorant of the effects of unethical actions, which are always bad. These kinds of people commit conspiracies and think they'll "get away with it." You never get away with a conspiracy, but if you were trying to protect yourself, or something similar to that, then you may be able at least to survive the negative effects of the natural consequences of when the truth comes to light.

How to Tell if There's a Conspiracy:

You check the independent channels. They won't know all of the truth. This is because they're independent. They don't have a lot of social resources, so they can't access all of the truth. Some of them, you can't trust. Some of them have been infiltrated by conspirators who don't want the truth to be known.

You check the people who you think are committing the conspiracy. They'll mechanically repeat the exact same thing: "There is no conspiracy here." Or something relevantly similar to that. If they actually did make a mistake, and as a matter of fact they are decent people and not conspirators, they will send out marketing information revealing exactly what the mistakes were, who made them, and what they're doing to correct the problem.

You check the people who you trust, who have seen the truth. This is called an empirical observation. Eventually, you'll find a couple empirical observations through the appropriate channels which contradict the last mechanically repeated statement, "There is no conspiracy here." Then you know there's a conspiracy.

However. Even at this point, not all the questions have been answered. You don't know for certain who is the one committing the conspiracy. Depending on how much you've been hurt by the conspiracy, it's up to you to determine how extensive of an investigation you want to make to determine who the real conspirators are, and it's also up to you to determine how you're going to use violent means (like the government or the law) to neutralize the conspiracy and bring the criminals to justice.

This goes for corporate conspiracies, Illuminati conspiracies, government conspiracies, raver conspiracies, Satanist conspiracies, Buddhist conspiracies, etc.

When I Would Vote Republican

Psychiatry is Thought Policing. The Thought Police, especially in public schools, are trying to outlaw emotions and vast territories of free thought. There is nothing positive about psychiatry.

In order to advance their agenda of control and mental slavery, the Thought Police first make school life intolerable, then when any student in any way expresses how intolerable school life is, they use fear tactics to frighten parents into believing their son or daughter has something called a "mental illness" (a thing which they simply made up) and that the kid cannot be trusted to think for themselves. They then encourage every effort to forcibly disallow the child to think for themselves and make authority figures think for them. This, of course, causes the child immense suffering, which they will obviously express, and when they do, it confirms their proposition that they have a "mental illness."

No tactic is too extreme to force the child not to think for themselves. Schools have been known to put children in isolation for hours and not allow them to go to the bathroom. They also torture children with electric shocks to get them to fall in line. If they express suicidality (who wouldn't in such a situation?) they use police force to incarcerate them and deny them all basic rights in a "mental hospital" (prison). Abuse is rampant at these hospitals. While according to the first Amendment, people should be allowed to videotape orderlies at these hospitals, if you try to force them to respect this right, they will violently tackle you to the ground, take away your camera permanently, put you in isolation, not allow you to eat with the other inmates, and put you on a higher dosage of mind-killing medications in order to subdue you.

Parents naturally have a bond for their children. So when they are afraid for them, they take control of the situation. This instinct is twisted and perverted into a sadistic form of mind-control and manipulation by the Thought Police. If you can get a parent to believe that their child has illegal thoughts ("mental illness"), they will use any and all tactics to force the child to think the way they prescribe. They will try to "help," which in essence means torture and traumatize the child into allowing the parent totalitarian mind-control to force out the illegal thoughts.

How do they frighten parents into becoming proxy Thought Police? Consider a publication I found at the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, entitled "Red Flags in Children's Behavior." What exactly are some of these "red flags?" For adolescents, some include, "drug and alcohol use," "difficulty with relationships," "inattention to appearance or grooming," "risk taking behaviors with little thought of consequences," "extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure," "social isolation." In other words, being a normal adolescent is illegal. In order to satisfy the Thought Police, you must be a completely abnormal teenager--a freak. But of course, if you ever get depressed because you're a freak, that's an illegal thought, and they will bear down on you using every tactic they have in their arsenal.

According to the Thought Police, humanity is illegal. And to punish being human, they will torture you and traumatize you any way they can.

I am a solid Liberal, but the Republicans have a great track record against psychiatry. If Democrats EVER take up the position that we should "help" people with "mental illness," I won't care about the environment, I won't care about gay rights, I won't care about rampant corporate corruption, I won't care about civil liberties, I won't care about domestic spying, I won't care about foreign wars, I won't care about militarizing the police, I won't care about the war on drugs, I won't care about regulation of Wall Street; if Democrats EVER try to "help" people with "mental illness," I WILL vote Republican. Period.

It is imperative that right-thinking people let the world know how we feel about the disgusting anti-human institution of psychiatry and oppose it in any possible way we can.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Hacking vs. Lying

In my opinion, this is the most interesting of the series because it involves a brief philosophical treatment of a very new concept. I am going to use the "programmer subculture" definition of "hacker," which is someone who manipulates computers in ways they weren't meant to be. I will distinguish this from "cracking," which is simply unlawful access to a computer.

Hacking is not cracking. Nevertheless, I feel there must be a little leeway given against the law in use of the term. If you do something online that's only a minor transgression of the law, but nevertheless have ethically praiseworthy or at least neutral motives, then I believe you are still "hacking."

How does this relate to lying? Well, it raises certain ethical issues. Hacking is essentially "gaming the system." It is a blatant misrepresentation of your motives. And we needn't be talking about computers here. We can talk about things like political maneuvering done in congress, or journalist misrepresentation in search of a story. The fact of the matter is, however, that it usually involves computers. And this is what makes hacking ethically neutral, as opposed to lying, misrepresentation, or "gaming the system" per se, which are all unethical.

So what's the difference? Hacking is done openly. Example: you're calling a company with an automated menu on the phone. You know you will have to misrepresent yourself in order to talk to a human. You're not cracking, because your motives are ethically sound—maybe you want to know the washing instructions for your kid's new sweater. If you were straight up misrepresenting and not hacking, you wouldn't ever want to tell anyone what you did. But that's not the case. You were hacking, because if someone asks what you did, you can tell them; it's not a big deal. If there are restrictions to who gets to know what you did and why, it's only because those people are the people you're hacking. It's not because you need to keep a secret from the general public.

Hacking is a product of the Age of Aquarius. It is an "open" act in my use of the term. (See my Principles of Openness for an explanation of my use of the term.) And furthermore, I believe that my outline of the notion of hacking is sufficiently concrete to be protected speech under the Constitution of the United States, as it should be.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 3: Compassion

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Compassion

Due to the fact of the two previous points, particularly the first, it is necessary to insist on higher standards for compassion. Yes, that means compassion for murderers, rapists, adulterers, kidnappers, drug dealers, and so on and so forth. We all like to villainize people for certain things. But the fact of the matter is, you never know anymore whether the information is accurate, or whether the act was more pitiable than hateful. At the very least, I tend to think we should be even more careful not to judge. Cyberbullying is a terrible risk with the Internet.

Drugs: Should They Be Legal?

First of all, I would like to point out that people should avoid drugs. I think doing drugs is useless if not dangerous. The benefits aren't really benefits, and the dangers are real dangers. For example, many people may get into drugs to change their reality, and not finding substantial change, they may take more and more dangerous drugs until they find themselves in a very bad situation. This is a real danger. (Drinking alcohol is also dangerous for the same reason.)

Note, however, that I also disapprove of gambling, frequenting strip bars, watching unethical television shows, not holding the door open for people, spending too much money, driving motorcycles, and other things. That doesn't necessarily mean that these things should be illegal. It is a very serious decision to make something illegal, and when making this decision, one should analyze the act not just in theory, but also in practicality.

I think marijuana, mescaline, psilocybin, and possibly ecstasy should be made legal, on three grounds. One: doing so would bring some positive benefits to society. Two: doing so would alleviate many negative effects on society. And three: the essence of the decision to take these drugs doesn't feel like something that should be illegal.

Here are the positive benefits to society. Alcohol has strong cultural significance, thus alcohol culture is very prevalent. Legalizing other drugs which are as dangerous or less dangerous would legitimize and bring into the open other drug cultures (like marijuana culture, or ecstasy culture) and increase cultural plurality. It would also legitimize a significant sector of the economy. (Admittedly, these are not very significant benefits analogous to, say, what legalizing free trade, free competition, and free markets would have been in the 15th century. However, the negative effects that would be alleviated are quite significant.)

Since drugs are illegal, drug selling is illegitimate. Currently, there is a market imperative for marijuana, mescaline, psilocybin, and ecstasy, because their users don't feel like they are doing anything wrong to take them. Thus, there will always be drug sellers. Legalizing these drugs would legitimize selling them, which would bring drug dealers to much closer public scrutiny. This would reduce the dangers associated with these drugs, such as selling a more harmful drug in the place of a less harmful one, lacing the drugs with very harmful drugs like PCP or, in the case of psilocybin, selling poisonous mushrooms. (Dancesafe is a good organization that tries to reduce some of the dangers associated with using ecstasy. I know of no such organizations for the other three above-mentioned drugs.) Legalizing these drugs would also reduce crime — selling drugs would not require criminal networks and would not be done in conjunction with other crimes. Also, making a clear distinction grounded in objective facts between dangerous drugs and non-dangerous drugs would reduce the gateway effect of the less dangerous drugs. In other words, marijuana would be less associated with methamphetamine, so taking marijuana would less often lead to taking methamphetamine. These are the negative effects of the drugs that would be alleviated if they were made legal.

Finally, the essence of taking these drugs, for many people, does not seem to be illegitimate. In other words, many well-informed people do not feel they are doing anything wrong or particularly rebellious by taking marijuana, mescaline, psilocybin, or ecstasy. It is analogous to drinking alcohol. I think in order for something to be illegal, it should be so dangerous that the harm would outweigh the benefit, and practically speaking, making it illegal would cause more benefit than harm. It should feel wrong, or dangerous. It should feel harmful to society. I don't think doing these drugs is like that. In theory, doing a drug like methamphetamine does much harm. In practice, it does much harm as well. In practice, doing marijuana also does harm, but mostly only because it is illegal. In theory, doing marijuana does not do much harm. So many people do these drugs, especially when they are young, because they feel it is not harmful to do so in theory, and they are not well educated about the harm it does in fact (or they feel that society deserves this harm, because certain drugs should be legal). Thus in the case of the illegality of certain drugs, it is not the drugs that are made illegitimate, but rather the government. This, I think, is a real danger.

Now I do not support the idea of doing drugs just because they should be legal. It is a fact that they are illegal, and doing illegal things is harmful to society. I would also like to reiterate that even if drugs were legal, I would not admonish people to do them, because the "benefits" (i.e. experiencing a drug induced state of mind, or experiencing reality in a different way) are not really true benefits: one is not made more educated, more morally upright, more free in spirit, more connected with reality, more friendly, more open, or more wise by taking drugs. However, practically speaking, legalizing certain drugs would probably benefit society a great deal. Also, I feel this change is on the horizon: The Pita Pit, a highly successful, corporate fast-food chain, markets specifically to marijuana users. If this is so successful, it indicates that marijuana is used by a large bloc of voters.

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Now consider this interesting, Libertarian view: Over Four Hundred and Fifty an Hour? Life is Full of Risks. The author (Ralph Maddocks) claims that all "consensual acts" should be legal. According to Maddocks, only acts which cause harm to others or coerce people into doing something without their consent should be made illegal. Thus, all drug taking and prostitution should be legal.

This is an interesting philosophical point of view, but unfortunately, I think it is a wrong one. I think an act or thing should be illegal if it causes more harm than good, and if making it illegal causes more good than harm. I think I have successfully argued that although taking marijuana, psilocybin, mescaline, and ecstacy often does more harm than good, making it illegal does even more harm. The same cannot be said for other drugs or prostitution.

Let's consider prostitution. One might feel that "employing the services of a prostitute" doesn't cause much harm. I think objectively, it doesn't, if one behaves safely (i.e. tests for STDs): sex does little harm to the body, and in terms of money, the situation could be beneficial for the prostitute. Subjectively, for most people, I think hiring a prostitute simply feels perverted or wrong, so subjectively it probably does more harm than good. But even if sex with prostitutes did not feel perverted, I still don't think it should be legalized.

The strongest argument for legalization of prostitution, I think, is one based on sympathy for the prostitute. Prostitutes may not have other ways of making a living. However, there are other, more effective ways to ensure the welfare of prostitutes or would-be prostitutes. Further, legalizing prostitution, unlike legalizing the four above-mentioned drugs, would not significantly change the nature of the act. Even if it did not feel perverted, sex with a prostitute would have the same lack of benefits and potential downfalls if legalized, because there are no downfalls associated with prostitution which arise solely because it is illegal. In other words, prostitutes are not laced with PCP, they do not engage in criminal networking to the same degree as drug dealers, and so on. Thus, I think prostitution should remain illegal.