http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197Well, this begs the question of what classifies a system of narrative myths and values as a religion?
I would argue that Democratic Secular Humanism is a mythology predicated on a faith in the logically false use of probability, statistics and equilibria in economics as a source for policy. As such it is no less silly than belief in an omnipotent being. And it’s probably more dangerous.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-22 19:57:00 UTC
I think I am the luckiest guy in the world.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-22 19:51:00 UTC
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/21/trump-i-screwed-gaddafi/The point he’s making is that we are getting ‘screwed’ around the world all the time, and that we need to stop giving away our future.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-22 09:07:00 UTC
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/valve-disappointed-in-ad-agencies-for-marketing-almost-worthless/An honest appraisal. Now, the fact that Valve owns their own client base and distribution system, and that as a game company they have strong creative and storytelling, makes them an uncommon client. But the criticism stands.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-18 10:02:00 UTC
So, this silly person sends me a religious diatribe quoting scripture and all manner of other deists as if it’s some scientific and scholarly work that will convince me that it’s the will of god that I do this or that. What I love most about their arguments, is a failure to account for the ‘other gods’. The majority of people worship some ‘other god’. They have some other doctrine. Some other set of social assumptions. Yet they all take on faith that their god is the right one, their prophet the correct one, and their interpretation the best one. But if we look at the OUTCOME of worshipping a particular god as the measure of any religious philosophy, the LAST god you want to worship is Jehova or his Janus-masked inverse Allah. They’re a near guarantees of social, economic, political, and technological failure. Or the poor Russians, who, because of their trade relationship with Byzantium, the Czar chose Byzantine Christianity over Western Christianity, and forever exacerbated their cultural and economic problems. And under that analysis, the Chinese repression of organized religion is a much wiser strategy than is our convenient and commercially beneficial strategy of “tolerance”. Now, I’m not anti-christianity by any means. I understand the value of Christian monarchy, and the christian ethos. But I also realize that christianity is european paganism more so than it is biblical. But you can’t argue with these people using reason. You have to meet them on their turf. It gives them nowhere to do. So I use this kind of argument pretty frequently. It almost always works. And the outcome is almost always humorous:
There is only one true god, and only one true religion. Zeus. Jupiter. Dios Pater. Dyaus Pitar. Sky Father. Sun God. The God of Indo-European peoples. His prophets are Homer and Aristotle, his acolytes are the rational philosophers, his ministers lawyers and judges, his clerics are the scientists and technologists, his disciples are the warriors and craftsmen, his laws The Natural Law for men, and Science for the universe. Their tools are reason, technology, and the transformation of the earth for the benefit of man, in order to make the universe a heaven for man. Zeus desires only that his children join him, and take their place next to him, among the gods. He asks nothing in return. He only offers wisdom. The other prophets, the prophets of the false gods, are all dupes of the devil. They do the devil’s bidding. They serve the devil’s ends. They spread the devil’s lies. Jehova is the devil. He teaches submission. Only the devil wishes submission. Only the devil would wish submission. Submission is the end of man and the beginning of slavery. Jehova is the devil. The god of the hindus, buddhists, jews and muslims is a god that creates ignorance and poverty. This is the truth that history reveals to us. Allah is the devil. The god of muslims. He asks submission, and in return, his worshippers live in ignorance, poverty, violence and are the lowest peoples of the earth. The Hindus, and the Buddha teach followers to ignore the real world. To pretend it does not exist. And they live in poverty and ignorance because of it. Zeus is the one true god, and reason is the one true religion, and history is the one true mythology, and study and accomplishment are the one true ritual. We worship Zeus by with our achievements. We listen to his advice. We honor him by raising ourselves from animals to gods. Only reason, history, study and technology make it possible for man to join the gods, by transforming the real world into heaven. Only a devil would want man to seek submission and ignorance. Jehova is the devil in disguise. Selling the slavery of ignorance and pover under the ruse of false salvation and submission. Zeus seeks nothing in exchange. Jehova has nothing to trade. Allah has nothing to offer but ignorance. Hail Odin! Zeus! Jupiter! Dios Pater! Dyaus Pitar! Sky Father! Sun God! ((Thanks to the Monliari Society for inspiration.))
March 15th, 2011
Ok, so before I get started here, let me avoid a little criticism right from the start. I’m not a typical agency guy. While I’m the CEO of a fairly large agency, I’ve also been founder, CEO or a principle at companies in a variety of fields from technology to law. And in each field we humans see the world through different lenses. I have a lens too. And fundamentally, I’m a political economist.
A political economist is a certain kind of geek. It means I think in terms of society, incentives, habits, beliefs, institutions and organization, as well as money and all that money entails. And it also means that i’m not politically correct, or even very tempered in my observations.
That’s not my job. Something is either true or not, and useful or not. Whether people like it or not isn’t something I worry too much about. There are plenty of people who can do that. THere aren’t that many of us that predict trends.
Furthermore, on top of being a little controversial, I’m a contrarian. That term has a technical meaning. It means that I look for the point at which fashions and trends ‘fail’, or ‘top out’, and the consequences of those trends and their failures.
Lastly, the division of knowledge and labor in the world is also divided into time periods. So some people think in short term, some medium term, and some long term, and people like me look at the very long term, and I try to understand how organizations react to changes in society.
So, I see the world through those lenses. And through those lenses I try to find patters that will inform us and our clients about the likely course of events, or the reason some events occurred. In other words, my job is trends.
And it turns out, whether by luck or skill, I”m pretty good at trends. That puts me at odds with most marketers. In fact, you would be surprised how many of my postings the board of directors asks me to take down. It’s one of the reasons I don’t write on this industry very often. It’s because I’m largely a critic of it. I’m a critic of it because I understand that marketing is a social science and companies, people’s livelihoods, as well as our national competitiveness are significantly impacted by whether we are good at marketing or not.
So, my job is to be right on long term trends.
http://www.puretheoryofmarketing.com/
http://mitnse.com/Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors – MIT’s Oehmen
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-15 05:22:00 UTC
Arriving in Atlanta after a week in New York is like entering a sensory deprivation chamber.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-13 19:33:00 UTC
http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.1.1The Top 20 Articles Of The Past 100 Years from American Economic Review. http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.1.1
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-13 18:48:00 UTC
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/living/not-as-old-as-you-thinkYoga is a modern invention, and largely American, or at least western rationalist in origin. Not one of my areas of interest, other than the pervasive distribution of thought around the world, and the merging of different bits of it from here and there.
Source date (UTC): 2011-03-13 18:38:00 UTC