You Will Still Die, Even if You Quit Smoking

Consider all the things out there that you could possibly die from. Smoking is one single thing, that might kill you somewhere down the line, among a million other things that might kill you right this second.

Quitting cigarettes provides the illusion of preventable death. Of course, everybody says they know that they are going to die, but the truth is, nobody really believes it. Eating healthy food, not smoking, getting regular exercise, all of it is with the desire to avoid death, to find a loophole in your contract with the body-bag.
Quitting cigarettes will not guarantee any kind of benefit. The drunk driver who will crash into your car tonight does not care whether or not you smoke.

Quitting will not guarantee an easier death or a longer life
Did you know that there are many illnesses that are not the results of smoking? Old and young sick people will die today who have never so much as inhaled secondhand smoke! And they die too! Some of these illnesses are painful and humiliating and just as ugly as any smoking-related disease.

The best any doctor can tell you is that not-smoking makes it less likely that you will die from certain diseases and conditions. If I don't drive and I avoid roads it makes it less likely that I will not die in an automobile accident. It doesn't make it less likely that I will die in an equally painful way from something else.

Death is, indeed, inevitable
How fascinating is that? Absolute certainty. How many things in human existence are absolutely certain to happen? It's an alien, wholly foreign concept to our imaginations. The thing that is absolutely unavoidable, the experience that is universal. Every risk you avoid, everything you accomplish, every experience you have or don't have, is meaningless in that respect. In eternity it doesn't matter if you die now or in 20 years.

Most people do not hate anything or anyone randomly...

Most people do not hate anything or anyone randomly, they have specific reasons. Sometimes the reasons are objective and clear, sometimes the reasons are muddled and have to do with their own personal failings, like personal insecurity.  The people who oppose Social Conservatism have a very specific set of reasons.

I have often heard it said that everyone is a Liberal when young and a Conservative when old. This is partly true, usually when the world changes around people, they tend to cling to what they knew when young, out of fear of their own obsolescence. The world makes what was Liberal at one point, relatively Conservative at a later point.

So, why do Liberals tend to despise Conservatives? There is an arc of change that a person’s life tends to follow as they grow into Conservatism, each point in that arc comes with a characteristic that more open-minded people find offensive.

The Conservative Growth-stages…larval to Adult | Scienceray

People and their judgments

In the recent months I have been around kids for more consecutive hours than at any other time in my life, including my childhood. I have come to realize that there were probably many times when I was a kid that the adults around me were fed up and disgusted, but kept it to themselves because I was a kid.

The only reason you feel at ease around people at all is because you don’t really stop to think about how you might come across to them. You have grown out of your self-consciousness if indeed you ever had any. Your childhood was before you were aware of the concept, were aware even of who you were and the fact that there was indeed a right way for you to act and a wrong way.

People judge. All people do. They use their opinions of you to escape from the circumstances of their lives. They assess you in order to find a flaw so that they can feel that they are superior to you, or at least not your inferior. Only the man in trouble does not judge, becoming so swallowed up in his circumstances that he does not care about anything beyond himself.

The criteria varies based on how much of life you have seen. The "amount" of life is not measured in quantity of years but breadth of experience, how much of the range of possible human events have you seen? You grow up in a small-town all your references are limited to that small town. You cannot conceive of life on the outside, but you don’t know it, you don’t know how limited your imagination is.

Good looks mean more than pretty much everything else in life

People look their best between the ages of 19 to 25, after that it’s pretty much all downhill. Often it starts way before the 25. This is the period where you need to start developing a sense of humor and finding out how to be charismatic if you want to be social and move with the cream of the crop. You will need to make money too, because money is like White Out for your personality problems.

Yes, looks matter. How often do you see good-looking homeless people? Never.

I am not saying that this is right, but it does serve a purpose. People who lack in the looks department compensate the way guys with micro-penises compensate. Brett Favre never would have been successful if he was hung like John Holmes. I don’t think that of all the athletes in the all the professional sports’ hall of fames there is one person over 3 inches, and nobody who is particularly good-looking either. Except for maybe Michael Jordan, and he must be the size of a flea.

Anyway, my original point was that youth makes everybody look better than they ever will again. I am just saying that if you are ugly when young you are pretty much screwed and need to start being a really cool person with money.

Why people think you are creepy

Staring at strangers
We can see you, you know. Long lingering stares at perfect strangers, makes the person you are staring at uncomfortable, if they notice, but for the rest of us, the ones who see you staring, it says so much. Depending on the subject of the stare, everybody thinks they know why you are doing it. If it’s a woman you might just look pathetic, or else look like a potential rapist or serial killer, that is, if you are a man. If you are a woman it might just seem just envious and pathetic, but in some cases malevolent and bitter. You look like somebody who is too far gone to control even the most basic impulse, too used to being alone to know how to handle being around people. You look like somebody who needs to be reacquainted with the concept of boundaries
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It could be your choice of porn
Lactation bukkake and things of that ilk are not appreciated by the masses, even by people with mildly exotic tastes. People dislike tastes that disagree with their own, and dislike the fact that you have judged them by not enjoying exactly what they enjoy. Sex is a perfect area for this kind of thing to arise because most people judge themselves righteous based on which desires they repress. They have probably felt shame about something they enjoyed, could not help enjoying and felt helpless because of this. They seek to feel powerful by making you feel ashamed, just like somebody, maybe their mother, made them feel bad because they looked at Hustler magazine.

Perhaps, the things you say have something to do with it
Inappropriate, appropriate. These words mean something. There is a difference between the two. Do not comment on something like, say, a woman’s camel-toe unless you are very well-acquainted with her. Perhaps even intimate. This is not a matter for the work-place, or for strangers on the bus. Even when you are intimately acquainted it’s still a touchy subject. If you decide to bring it up, just do it and then go on to something else. Leaving the room might be a good idea. Lingering to discuss the quality of her camel-toe, places you have seen camel-toes, and how you feel about them in general, is usually a mistake. Bringing up any fetishes you may have and speaking at length about them, is also likely to make people uncomfortable. Any fetishes.

The value of the lost cause

You get the security of knowing that you will be banging your head against a dead horse for the rest of your life, looking for the solution, the elusive result that will make you feel validated and satisfied. You get to spend your days thinking up ways to solve the unsolvable, thus giving you something to think about, which you would not otherwise have. It's the ultimate red herring, the plot of your life seems to be going somewhere, even though it really isn't. Just keep on thinking those positive thoughts, keep on dreaming the dream. You won't ever find your way, you will die still fumbling in the dark, but at least you can tell yourself that what you are fumbling for might be there. You get a project with which to kill time. Life is short, so spend it on a fruitless, pointless, pleasure-less task so as to make it seem shorter.

It's way more important to be able to tell yourself that some absurdly fantastic notion is worth chasing than it is to actually accomplish anything. Once something gets done then what else is there to do? You are stuck with this finished task that no longer has a place for you, the fixer. The completed building no longer needs the builder. Sure, you are validated having gotten done, but with each passing day your role of fixer/builder diminishes in memory, and you become more and more obsolete. The good contractor must cause as many problems as he solves so as to ensure a lengthy period of work. Here’s to the lost cause!

Divide and Conquer: A short lesson on race-baiting and similar divisive tactics

When people are taught from birth that they are superior to a certain other subset of humanity, the notion becomes an unshakeable part of their character. Humans naturally want to feel superior to other humans. Those people from that neighborhood, those people of that religion, those people of that political party, those people with that skin-color. The idea is to always feel that no matter how bad my life is or how much of a failure I am, I am not one of them. As long as you are not one of them, you have not sunk to the lowest low, there are still other people further down. It is where most people get their self-esteem.

What happens when there is no clear evidence of superiority? What happens when circumstances force you to acknowledge the humanity of the other person? That’s when you move away. You segregate. One of the main purposes of segregation, across economic, religious, or racial lines, is to avoid recognizing the other group(s) as equals. There is a loss of identity and people start to integrate when this happens. When you lose your identity as a specific group, then you lose the self-esteem associated with it. The source of your sense of superiority, therefore, is a carefully maintained ignorance of other racial, religious, and ethnic groups.

Bigots are not accidentally ignorant. Their lack of knowledge of other cultures did not come about because they are simply too lazy or unequipped to learn. It is a deliberate human behavior, a psychological device, to avoid discouragement of the individual, to bring people together, to maintain a sense of predictability and safety.

How divisive tactics like race-baiting really work
Demagogues and fomenters use one simple tactic: to weigh the need for self-esteem, to consider yourself better-than, the need for consistent, safely homogenous communities, against logic and fairness. Logic and fairness dictate that people be fair and react to individuals individually. You assume equality, at least until proven otherwise conclusively. By putting the two on the scales together, the race-baiter is asking you to choose between an inflated sense of your personal worth and being rational. Being rational always loses.

The divider calls upon what is already there, the needs and fears and desires, he does not insert them. Hitler did not make the German nation do anything that it was not already inclined to do. He merely focused already existing emotion and used to fuel specific actions. The leaders to inspire ethnic cleansing merely harness the forces, they don’t generate them.

The “cure”
The real solution to racism is not teaching about the equality of people, or “tolerance”, it is about giving people ways of feeling valuable and important apart from being a member of an ethnic group or religion. Failing that, you need to have an overwhelming necessity that renders all divisions irrelevant. You need motivations for forming communities, beyond income-level, race, and worship. Dictatorship, natural disaster, religion, and war are basically the only things known to have accomplished this.

Bloggers, Not Jonathan Alter, Killed Newsweek

Michael Wolff writing at Newser says that Jonathan Alter is the cause of Newsweek’s decline. Something about Alter’s “glowering presence”. Probably not. Blogs are the cause of Newsweek’s decline, just like they are the cause of Glenn Beck’s ascendance and and the likes of Sarah Palin rising to fame and power. As a matter of fact, you might as well just blame the Internet for everything bad in contemporary culture, as well as most of the good.

Blogs and the voice of the quarrelsome, uneducated, and completely unprofessional, have diminished the respect once held by journalists. People want to hear their own views validated, they do not want truth, Humans have never wanted truth. Were Glenn Beck to tell the truth, or to have any respect whatsoever for it, he would not be popular, he would not be rich, and nobody would care what he had to say. Instead of being a reasonable, fair, professional commentator, he is instead a character actor embodying the spirit of the common man, the average red state American. He is simply spewing forth the views of his audience, regurgitating that which they, and all the people like them already believe. Phrasing absurd, bigoted propaganda in more refined terms so as to make them feel smart for thinking the way they do.

To a certain kind of person, the educated professional is a boring elitist to whom they cannot relate. There is nothing there to cheer for, to enjoy vicariously. Jonathan Alter, with his reliance on learning and experience speaks from an ivory tower to which they cannot approach and have no desire to approach. The blogger, though, with hyperbole, and typo-riddled half-truths, misunderstandings, and speculation masked as fact, is entertaining, approachable, and offers a kind of clarity.

This is a blog, I am a blogger. I, too, write in the typo riddled, half-truths and speculative nonsense. I don’t think it is a bad thing. This is life, blogs are supposed to suspect, untidy, rough, organic. They are like families with several small children, barely functional, but still worthwhile, still possessing that which is of value. The idea is to make you think, to make you assess, and work it out. You are supposed to think critically, not simply accept as true. Be cynical, don’t trust.

When Stupidity Rears it’s Ugly, Stupid Head

Dealing with idiots is a skill that all intelligent people should learn. Anybody with the ability to rationally analyze an issue, and who thinks in terms of objectivity and who strives to think clearly, is outnumbered. They need to learn how to not draw too much attention to themselves, and to get around the fact that morons cannot be reasoned with.

The moment you encounter your first real idiot, or a set of them, you find that it is not funny at all. It's scary and frustrating and you can't keep that look of disbelief off your face. They off course can sense your scorn. Idiots are good at sensing when other people look down on them, mostly because it happens so often. They see your scorn and think that you believe yourself to be a superior person. Of course, you do, but they won't know why. If there is a difference in race they will ascribe it to that, if there is a difference in education or social class or religion or nationality they will ascribe it to that. Idiots never know that they are idiots and so they never realize that that's why you hate them.

The futility
It is futile to try to to convince or seriously converse with somebody who is wholly emotionally invested in the wrong idea. Relationships with them should be kept on light topics, sports, food, alcohol, weather, the little things that are of no consequence and can fill up conversational dead air around a dinner table or at a bar. They will want to discuss weighty matter with you, because things like religion and politics are how they discern their clan, the people they like. You have to be on the same dumbass page with them or you are the enemy. Your job is to avoid it. Leave if you have to, or find a way to change the subject.

The truth about them
Your average moron is twice as moronic as they let on. Lets say you hear somebody talking about “health-care death panels” at work, know that they are showing you the stuff that they thought about and are fully certain of. They know this to be true and believe their logic to be insurmountable. They are not voicing the million other idiot beliefs that they have with minor doubts, this is the shit that you, Mr educated-and-rational-thinking-smarty-pants, cannot possibly counter.

A Life Lesson on Soiling Your Pants

It happens, if not to anybody, at least to lots of people. How many places on the Internet attempt to teach you about dealing with the psychological and social fallout? Not many, I assure you.

Let’s just say that it’s many people’s idea of the most embarrassing experience possible. How you handle it will determine how you handle pretty much every bad thing yet to come in your life, and trust me, there will be many bad things yet to come. You can freak out and make yourself into a social outcast, but hiding from your problems is just a coward’s way out.

First of all, you will find that it does not really matter if this happens to you in high school, or in your work-place, or in church. In all settings you will be known as the person who crapped their pants as long as you are there. It will be used against you so get used to it.

Talk about it ad nauseam. Tell everybody who is willing to listen to you exactly what happened in detail. Describe every single awkward moment with a second-by-second descriptive replay. Seek a public forum in which you can address many people at the same time. Continue to bring it up until  you are asked to stop. If you have the presence of mind to do it, take a picture of your be-crapped self with your phone and do a show-and-tell. If people are sick of hearing about it, they may be unwilling to continue talking about it amongst themselves.

Something else you can do is poison everybody with laxatives, but this is illegal, so I am not endorsing it, merely mentioning that it could be seen (by criminals) as one. If everybody craps their pants then you will not be alone.

Tell people you were seriously ill. Induce vomiting and get yourself sent to the emergency-room. Lying could be seen as another way of chickening out, though. Not endorsing, just saying…

Joke about it. This is actually the most practical suggestion for a complete recovery here, though not everybody has the skills for it. Maybe this is your motivation to acquire them.  If you don’t you probably won’t, but it could actually make you more popular if you were to pull it off and show no trace of discomfort whatsoever, about the whole thing.

Man up (or woman up) and do what you have to do and survive. It won’t go away, but in many cases nobody will bring it up to your face. Simply going on in spite of your embarrassments is one of the most important skills for adult life, consider yourself fortunate to have been given an advanced class in it.

Note: You have to Suffer to Learn Anything