Trigger warning? Screw Political Correctness! The title already speaks!
Summary: Rape in Sword Art Online (SAO) world is necessary as catalyst for the storyline to come. This would allow higher pace in storytelling by burning many loose ends.
The most recent episode of SAO Alicization (Episode 10) gave us 30 seconds (give or take) of sexual assault. Some may say it is agreeable to include, others says it’s too tough. Allow me to analyze that based on what the canon says. Also, I refer to the Yen Press translation for the canon.
First up, the rape scene itself. If you hadn’t watched that episode, final warning as spoilers are imminent. We all agree that Raios and Humbert assaulted and raped Ronie and Tieze. They committed such heinous act by restraining the girls using rope (physical restraint). Then the rapists gleefully molest and nearly raped both girls until…
Next scene involves Eugeo slashing either rapists (I did watch, but I didn’t care to learn which one is which, asshole is asshole). The slashing creates quite a bit of blood splatter. Explicit blood, to be frank. If you’ve read the Novel, you’d know what happen next already.
Those who disagree says that this level of cruelty is too much for garden-variety shonen action anime. It is arguable that such cruelty should be reserved only for seinen. I agree with that point. However, there is hint in the canon that the rape is essential to allow the story to progress. Before continuing, I need to warn you that everything beyond this point is mix of spoiler and my opinion. Read the novel and take what I’m saying here with Gigas Cedar-sized grain of salt. Read more…
If you’ve been into what accounts as “right-wing propaganda media” recently (as far as late 2015, IIRC), you may have heard something along “special snowflake” or “snowflake generation”. You know, those twenty-somethings who whine, protest, and cry for “social justice” cause.
Oh yeah, in previous paragraph I used loads of quotes as that’s what I could comprehend, exact words. Most cases, those snowflakes are exactly what people think of snowflakes: brittle.
What is it?
Age-range wise, they are millennials. That’s right, they are the future of the nation.
Mindset-wise, they are what we often call “Me Generation” who are entitled, self-centered. They think they are special just because they exist in this world. They love to virtue-signal everything, but when confronted about what they’re virtue-signaling about, they outsource it to government. Confront those snowflakes with facts they disagree with and they are practically triggered to an inch of their feelings.
They are practically all into social justice warriors who are basically forcing equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. Snowflakes are esentially younger version of Social Justice Warriors in any taste possible.
How do they announce themselves?
Easy, just look at how they respond to opinions contrarian to their belief system. Snowflakes will suffer massive mental breakdown
Where did they come from?
There are many sources, but usually they were in chains.
- Single-parent family
- Daycare centers
- Feel-good schooling
- Lack of rigorous discipline
- Victim mentality
- Affluent society
I cannot pinpoint where is the smoking gun from all of those. Maybe smoking guns, cannot be confirmed nor denied either.
Single-parent, thanks to unbalanced love and single-perspective, tend to rise “bad” child. Generally, parenting should allow for different perspective as children grows.
Daycare centers, while aiding parents who have to have dual-income to make ends meet, put children under non-family settings. One adult per three infant ratio is already in dicey situation, let alone typical daycare that has one in five or six.
Feel-good schooling is probably one of the most incriminating cause of self-entitlement feeling. This system rewards one just by showing up, even when they accomplish nothing.
Lack of rigorous discipline reinforced entitlement mentality, thanks to no retribution given for any wrongdoings. The best bet against such mentality is by making every action, be it good or bad, carry its own consequences.
Affluent society produces and comes from hyper-productive member of society where one small group of people can produce everything entire society needs, leaving some parts of society can live without producing anything much of value
Where can I find them?
Last time I checked, they’re basically anyone who cause a ruckus in any protest who somehow are unable to know what they are protesting, their endgame (aside from what they are promised for). You may find them in any protest and try to engage them in discussion, seven times out of ten they will have no idea about what they’re protesting or being so fanatical they will essentially scream at you (usually both).
Usually they’re available in leftist community. If I’m correct, they stick to the left side in political spectrum because of their entitled mentality. Any political candidate would promise things to snowflakes and those snowflakes would vote for them.
You may also find them in colleges, majoring in gender studies, culture studies, basically anything that has little to no employment values. Such majors exist primarily to cater to victim mentality as what those majors offer are oppression, victim status, and critical theory. While it is good to have “diverse” perspective, the “diversity” in those majors are generally superficial “diversity” of gender, race, sexuality, and many more except intellectual diversity.
What can they do?
At best, causing major disruption and some kind of meme. Disruptions are plentiful whenever “alt-right” personality (anyone they disagree with) are about to talk in their places. They also take control of academia by basically censoring whichever topic they disagree with
At worst…elect them to office and Buddha knows what they would do to a nation. They have already had sizable part of populations whose are young adults graduating from left-leaning colleges. They now begin pushing for more and more regulations in the name of “social justice”
How to stop them?
I think it is imperative to actually trigger their tantrum and then refuse to entertain whatever their demands are. This is to thicken their skin and making them less reliant on “muh feelz”
P.S: majors with good employment are usually business, science-technology, engineering, design, medicine, basically if you can quickly find a work closely related to your major straight after graduation, your major has good employment.
When I saw EU demanded Western Nations to accept migrants (what they called ‘refugees’) with all its immediate consequences, I began to wonder, “How to stem those wave without causing havoc elsewhere?” Then I read at my InfoSec papers and, “AHA! Why absorb them while we can stop them there?” I also thought about Rohingya (if they were actually persecuted instead of excessive defensive maneuver by the Junta)
I then worked out a scheme about how to stop refugees from entering Europe. So I outlined the scheme.
Current Situation
- I assume the refugees are actual refugees.
- I also assume the government welcomes any and all necessary steps to ensure the refugees are protected.
- This case only applies to war refugees, not natural disaster
Endgame
Stopping refugees from going elsewhere and causing disaster in their host countries.
What to do?
First, establish safe zones in troubled country. This should contain enough arable lands, water supply, and easily defended for a county-sized population.
Second, protect those safe zones using whatever force necessary. A battalion or brigade should be enough per safe zones. Ask UN to send large multinational forces, one country at least one battalion. The force also should include some police force in addition to military, perhaps a reduced battalion of soldiers but added with one or two companies worth of police (heavy on riot police and detective forces).
Third, establish refugee corridor, similarly defended as the safe zones. If necessary, threaten all belligerents: any attack on refugees within safe corridor and zones shall be considered an act of war and be answered accordingly. These corridors should be clearly marked as humanitarian corridor in order to enjoy such protection.
Fourth, when refugees has arrived, supply them with basic necessity AND farming ability. This is crucial to make them self-reliant and stopping them from going to other countries by tying them to the land. In case agriculture is infeasible (due to unsuitable geography), limited industry or service should be encouraged. Some examples including handicraft, software engineering, trash recycling, and more as long as it cannot be abused to manufacture weapons.
Fifth, as soon as refugees become self-sufficient, begin reducing supplies to them and begin trading with them. This is as incentive to give them reason to live and to test their actual character.
Of course, education, healthcare, and any non-material necessity should be given to the utmost extent possible. One should think those refugee areas as small, semi-independent countries (in war-torn countries, non-functional central government is assumed to be defunct)
In Indonesia, I’ve seen several cases where young people wants to get married ASAP. Yes, as early as after finishing whatever schooling they have. I said schooling because it is what is actually measured as education while education and schooling are two different beasts.
Before moving on, what is education vs schooling? Education teaches HOW to think while schooling teaches WHAT to think. Education measures your value by what can you provide for society and schooling measures your value by what you can repeat from instructions. Roast me for anti-schooling.
Move along, I figure out that marriage is a carefully deliberated decision instead of rushed whim. I’ve seen what happen when a marriage is rushed (by accident, anyway). It was my cousin who were rushed to marriage by accident. Another cousin of mine was married after deliberation as well, so I’ve seen both sides while waiting for the result of those different marriage.
Why Marry?
Easy, it is to legalize the ability to exchange genes and producing offspring. This legalization is to ensure that the offspring (children) can get the best assistance community/government can provide. While it is possible to have children outside this legal cover and still get assistance, I don’t think the support from community is going to be complete without rumors and gossips.
Why marry early?
There are several reasons why aside from accidents, two major ones are: manpower requirement, and family assets. Both reasoning revolves around decision-making that benefits early marriage. I’ve heard someone discussing about family assets necessitates early marriage, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. In regards of manpower requirement, I’d say that in pre-automation as well as in protracted war, more manpower to be used as worker or conscripted into military is better for simply more output, albeit at reduced efficiency.
Why delay marriage?
Easy, readiness reason. In modern life where marriage is total commitment, you need whatever resource you can muster for what supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime commitment. Financial commitment is pretty much obligatory in it, not to mention maturity and physical readiness.
Where do you stand?
Anyone who rushes their marriage tend to be less deliberate in their decision. It is as simple as that. My stand is to delay as you need. Trade time for readiness, particularly financially.
When I see it, there is a strong contest between those who would allow schools to compete as if they’re business entities against those who would no allow competition. I’d say that both sides have points that merit discussions. Proponents of school competition point out that competition breeds innovation while opponents point out about equality of opportunity.
No competition
Why?
Schools should not compete for students for the sake of equality. They claim schools would grow naturally without pressure of competition.
Competition is also inherently bad for those unable to compete because they will be inevitably lose the market and have to be out of the market.
How?
There are three ways schools can be made non-competing. Zoning system where students are assigned schools based on where they live. Regulators also disincentive competition by strictly regulating what to teach at any point. Schools can be prohibited from selecting incoming students.
Rebuttals
Equality in education is nonsense as everyone is unique and schools are supposed to teach only the basics and allow children to grow according to their talent. In such systems, the most talented students have to throttle their growth of talent. This would be catch-22: set the bar high and there would be bazillions of failing students, set the bar low and the ablest would be unchallenged.
Let us see an analogy about public services. When someone exercise total control over a service, no one has legal choice otherwise. The result: bad service, high price, and no improvement. However, once market has the choice due to multiple parties competing in a service, the result is astounding: good service, competitively low (or at least reasonable) price, and plenty of improvement. Why? Competition pushes any provider to innovate and improve to get that little market slices.
Full competition
Why?
With competition, come pressures for schools to innovate for the sake of their “customers” (i.e., students and their parents). This proposal allows schools to specialize to cater to unique needs of every niche market of education.
Now I ask why schools in urban area is significantly better than rural schools. I say that urban schools (even urban poor schools) have to compete in quality and many have to specialize to certain need.
How?
Regulatory agencies are pretty hands-off about the curriculum except the ideal of what the children should be when growing up and what to teach at bare minimum, the rest is up to individual school to build their own curriculum.
Rebuttals
With intense competition, there would be every incentive to jack up fees for the sake of quality enhancements. The result, huge gaps among schools, those who can afford to set fees to their need and those unable to levy any fee. While governments in many places can provide some sort of vouchers that is attached to students, the question of sufficiency remains.
Also consider what the parameters of school quality are. If regulator set a parameter, then resource-strapped schools (these schools would be plentiful) will compete fiercely to fulfill that parameter while neglecting other aspects.
Reality check
Competition would be limited to the willingness of students to live away from their parents at fairly young age (sometimes 15) and availability of such schools that cater to their ability within reasonable travel distance. This would essentially zone students over reasonably large zones covering multiple schools and allow some choices.
Indonesia Case
In Indonesia, there used to be some sort of competition among schools starting from junior high level when teenagers can travel within district (kabupaten) limits or across districts if they happen to live around “district frontier” (perbatasan antar-kabupaten). At least, top tier students from a district can pick a school as they please and schools would have to compete for those top-tier students.
By senior high school, the extent of competition can easily expand to multiple districts or even entire province if the province is small enough. At this point, the quality gap across schools would be humongous where several schools can have everyone graduating continue to top-tier universities worldwide while others would have to contend with only senior high diploma.
In rural areas, schools are naturally zoned according to where they are as travel to better schools in either other rural area or in urban area are nigh-impossible. Given the results of competitions and standard exams, rural areas tend to lag significantly behind urban schools, even schools catering for urban poor (the ones that has no reason to select students). This means, competition is the main driver, even adjusting the school facilities and money factor.
However, recently (starting from Academic Year 2016/2017), local government begin zoning schools in order to equalize schools
If you’re thinking outside what mainstream media tells you to, you may know several famous Internet figures like Paul J. Watson or DaveCullen or Sargon of Akkad. They are known for center-right thinking scope while current mainstream is notorious for leftist scope. Why I’m bringing them here is that they are being censored by certain video-sharing sites we all know and love.
First of all, why do they censor?
I have several theories as to why.
First theory is they are private companies, they’re free to do so. Usually to cater to the majority of the users. When majority of the masses within digital service is so dumb that it takes little to upset them, the service would have to cater to them as they are by far the most profitable and it tips the balance towards the upset-able group. In addition, for “free” services, there are two options: either you pay or you’re the commodities sold to third parties. If you’re posting what the majority of users hate, you’re judged as defective commodities that must be removed.
Second theory is about advertiser. In order to make the service advertiser-friendly, they must pose as “harmless” services that advertisers would burn their money advertising at that service. Related to the first theory, this service would have to ruthlessly purge anything deemed “dangerous” to advertisers. With advertisers setting what they want the site to be, this means anything advertisers dislike would be purged.
With motives taken care of, how do they do it?
It is a sliding scale of disincentive vs removal
The least obvious one is disincentive that removes any incentives for content-creating users to create content. There are two disincentives, namely financial and outreach. Financial disincentive is used to attack full-time content creator while outreach disincentive is the main killer by hiding certain users from most users. Financial disincentive cuts any funding provided by the site and only allows either sponsored or amateur video. On the other hand, outreach disincentives stalls the reach of the dissenting users.
Then the scale slides to soft removal by placing the content within certain zones that must be accessed certain way. This method hides the content from mainstream in order to protect the masses from anything the service provider deems inappropriate. Sounds good? WRONG! They actually censor the service from dissenting opinion that hurts feelings
Then comes restriction of new contents. With this method, content creator have to deviate from their usual content if they’re making particularly questionable contents. Existing content stays, probably in conjunction with the hiding certain contents or more likely removal.
The worst is outright removal of existing content. This is technically digital equivalent of book burning. I think this book burning equivalent is enough explanation to forcefully remove ideas/opinions from existence.
Any idea on how to protect yourself from it?
I can figure out just one: redundancy (stash everything in multiple services). With this defense, you need to upload your content to multiple places and call it a day. When one service begin censoring you, then you can keep uploading on others and introduce every follower/subscriber/whatever to your next platform.
Last resort: utilize physical delivery services and build your very own Internet. This is kind of drastic approach to disseminate contents, but desperate situations call for drastic actions.
First of all, I’d ask anyone who identify as Social Justice Warrior to move along, this is heavily triggering. All sort of triggers are here.
No more SJW here? Okay I’ll begin:
How come discrimination is used against discrimination?
Let us see the supposed “discrimination” conceived by those so-called Social Justice Warrior before seeing their proposed solutions.
They conceive that discrimination (at least in the west) is caused by “systematic patriarchy” that benefits white, straight, cis-gendered male. It is apparent that the success of this group (white, straight, cis-gendered male) is disproportionate compared to its population contribution. I’d say that such disproportion is caused by mindset factors that is influenced (partly) by race, but race influences mindset by how success is defined by it. This is where the SJW actually attacks, they attack the mindset and using cultural relativism as their primary weapon.
While it is true that the “beneficiary” groups are considerably more successful for the past centuries (since Renaissance), we need also to see the cause of that. Renaissance is basically the revival of Greco-Roman advancements in science, philosophy, et cetera. With such Revival, comes the freedom of thought that allows every idea to be contested against each other and let go shall the idea is proven unsound.
They propose so-called “Affirmative action” that gives certain quota to certain group. While on the surface it works good to the ‘disadvantaged’ group, it reduces the bar to enter competitive aspects to several groups while increasing the bar for others. What I have to say for this is that such actions are useless if it actually discriminates against certain, previously ‘advantaged’ group.
Now they also proposed that the ‘advantaged’ group must pay reparations in form of tax or whatever else. I couldn’t wrap my mind on it. They claimed that the greatness of Western society is built on top of other races’ misery by slavery and forms of discrimination. What I have to say about this reparation thingy is to ask whether such a misery is inherited all across races?
Hold on, Cultural relativism? What is that?
It’s a term coined that treat every aspect of every culture as equal without regard of what it actually does. Some culture may treat personal space as non-existing space while others assumes every non-public space is someone’s personal space. There are several aspects of culture that are absolutely better than others, such as respecting life-liberty-property, treating others as peers, and equal rights. This is what makes some cultures are actually better than others.
However, we should consider that this thing is completely disastrous as we’re progressing toward one-planet society with distinct culture. Where will the end result be? Either freedom or tyranny, choose one. Freedom-loving planet versus Planet-wide tyranny, take your pick.
Why they actually discriminate to stop discrimination?
I don’t exactly know why, but to guess will yield double standard as answer. Under assumption that they have double standard would yield trivially easy answer: they want to be on the top without true effort.
On second thought, they want to shock other people by creating antithesis of current thesis of “discrimination” under expectation that the synthesis would be equality of outcome.
Any solution?
For me, it is simply by allowing equal opportunity in everything. No one should identify themselves to certain group, everyone is unique. My proposal is by having true diversity which is diversity of opinion as opposed of diversity of identity. Also equal opportunity instead of equal outcome, no one should be forced to be on top just on the basis on how they were born. Everyone on top should be on the basis on how they perform
As of now, we are handling with a lot of data. Personal data (what could be traced back to you) could be pretty substantial fraction of what you have in person which is pretty sensitive. Remember that personal data could be used to trace and identify you, this means preventing such data from ever falling to unauthorized hands. Now we have our goals: preventing personal data from leaking outside.
One way to secure it is using cryptography. Cryptography itself is an art (or science, after 1970) of obscuring your data to make it looks rubbish or, at the very least, innocent enough to pass for something uninteresting (like coding incriminating words into something innocent). In case you wonder why the fock do I get my hands on this, I happen to formally learn this in postgrad while my undergrad thesis involving application of cryptography (even though my undergrad major does not offer cryptography).
Okay, could I see it in action?
For that, let us introduce three characters from Sword Art Online franchise: Asuna, Kirito, and Sinon. While Asuna and Sinon are the so-called ‘honest’ party, Kirito is called ‘adversary’ who wants to know what his girlfriend is up to with her archer ‘partner’. In this scenario, we assume Kirito being an expert in breaking cryptography and has access to his school’s computer network and that network could be mobilized to form one huge-ass supercomputer in addition to his 24-core computer.
Sinon and Asuna would communicate over ordinary network which Kirito can always overhear. Sinon and Asuna are well-aware of it and wants to allow Kirito to overhear their conversation but not much information could be derived from that conversation. To achieve that, Asuna and Sinon would make their conversation garbled before leaving their proximity and re-translate it back to plain language when it arrived at the other side. What Kirito hears would be that garbled transmission and he could only wonder what the fock his girlfriend and her partner are talking about.
Sounds good, eh? The adversary cannot figure out what honest parties are talking about even if the adversary can pick all conversation they are having. It sounds pretty good, but the reality is the cause of headache of many people.
Before we move on, is there any special terminology that you use?
- Cryptography: the technique of concealing information
- Cryptanalysis: the attempt to break cryptography
- Break: read the information without accessing the key directly and/or obtaining the key
- Key: Element of cryptography that is used to conceal or open information
- Encrypt: The concealing of the information. The conversion of the information into garble is called encryption.
- Decrypt: The opening of concealed information. The conversion from the garble back to information
- Plaintext: The information that needs to be concealed
- Ciphertext: the concealed information
You’re talking about concealing information. Is it the same as hiding it inside something else?
Not exactly true. Hiding it inside some innocent stuff (e.g. concealing your password inside a picture) is called steganography while cryptography is “concealing” (in quotes) the content such that it looks like rubbish (converting a text into nonsense sequence of characters, for example).
I’ve heard about many types of cryptography, care to organize and describe it?
There are two broad types of cryptography: symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. They differ in the key system. Symmetric key require both honest parties to share one key. Asymmetric key, on the other hand, require two keys; one for encryption and the other key is to decryption. It is plain and simple.
Symmetric key encryption, as its name suggests, uses identical key. It is fast, (with logic gate engineering) easy to make the hardware of it, and its key can be generated quickly from a password, regardless of how simple it is. However, this require some trustworthy party to manage all those key and distributing key securely is logistical nightmare. In our Asuna-Sinon VS Kirito case, we need some trustworthy party to distribute or manage their key, Let me introduce Agil to manage their key. It is not guaranteed that Agil cannot be bribed or coerced (through MMO duel, perhaps; after all, Kirito is MMO champion).
Asymmetric key allows for insecure key distribution by allowing both party to PUBLISH the encrypting key and keeping their decryption key in person. Theoretically, asymmetric key also allows for signing the message for the sake of ensuring that the one communicating is indeed what they claims to be (in case Kirito happen to pretend to be either Sinon or Asuna, this method allows either party to verify without sending more messages). So it is pretty secure and versatile, eh? Indeed, but it comes at a price: it is painfully slow as hell and you cannot generate keys at will.
Symmetric key allows for fast hardware implementation because it involves bitwise operation while asymmetric key is strictly mathematical operation. In symmetric cryptosystem, we manipulate a bunch of bits using logic gates while asymmetric ones manipulates those bits as crazy-large integers (from 100-digit up to 1500-digit).
Symmetric cryptography (the ones using symmetric key) is defined as secure if they are secure in hardware. Asymmetric cryptography (asymmetric key) is defined as secure if they rely on nigh-irreversible mathematical function at the time of use. As technology marches on, there is definite chances that technology marches on to a level where this “nigh-irreversible function” becomes outright trivially reversible.
Symmetric cryptography can also be divided between stream cipher (encrypting as data flows) and block cipher (pooling the data until certain size is reached then encrypting entire thing) while asymmetric cryptography is definitely block cipher because the input must be converted to big-ass integer (sometimes up to one THOUSAND digit depend on the size of the key)
Let’s say I’m Kirito, what method can I use?
First up, you need to know that the best cryptography algorithm is public algorithms. Wait, what? Public algorithm is more secure than obscure algorithm?? You gotta be xhitting me! Trust me, public algorithm has been through tests after tests against brigades of cryptanalysts across the globe. If you go to war, which weapon would you choose? The battle-tested (in this case, the public algorithm) weapons or obscure, only claimed to be “effective” by the creator, one? If I were you, I’d pick the battle tested one. So, you may be assumed to know the algorithm (primarily if you know what software they use, you can go to their website and check the algorithm they use). The methods listed is sorted according to the amount of information you have at hand which correspond to how easy you can attack their system.
As we know, there are three major ingredients in cryptosystem: plaintext, key, and ciphertext. We obviously have the ciphertext, but we want the plaintext (and optionally, key). Why key is also desirable? when we commandeer the key, we can easily know their future transmission and hopefully some juicy information that they’re desperately trying to protect from our eye.
The most painful is if you only have the ciphertext (ciphertext-only attack). If this is all you have, then good luck attacking modern cryptographic algorithm as modern algorithm uses diffusion and confusion method that totally scrambles the ciphertext and leaving virtually no information about the plaintext.
Then you have some plaintext with its corresponding ciphertext (known plaintext attack). You did not have access to the system already, but you know the plaintext and ciphertext pair
Chosen plaintext attack: You may also access some other cryptographic machine (if you’re Kirito, you could ask Asuna to encrypt your test data). This is the minimum level of security required by most cryptographic software.
Chosen ciphertext attack: If you’re able to access their copy of cryptographic software (which I assume to have the key), you are able to encrypt and decrypt at will. What you want is the key of their cryptosystems.
While there are a lot of criticism of materialism, I think there are reasons why do we have such materialism in place. I also shall see it from both sides as to whether materialism is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I deliberately put quotes as there are both arguments to it.
What materialism is
It is (stripped of all connotations) a desire to collect wealth from material goods (the ones that we can feel using our senses).
How come materialism be seen in bad light?
Our desire for material good means we must get it from somewhere using our ingenuity to create something else as exchange. It is our nature to have material goods, well formed since we were a single cell organism as our survival mechanism. However, modern life has kicked that instinct to have material goods another notch.
Consider that we also have other so-called “Fellow Earthlings” from whom we obtain our material wealth. These “Fellow Earthlings” could range from those poor people in poor countries, endangered animals, up to and including the environment. To some hardcore environmentalist, if it is in our planet Earth, it is our “Fellow Earthlings”.
Put two and two, we have our materialism problem. We have desire for material goods which come from our planet Earth and made by fellow mankind. When we see how our material goods are made, we often see the manufacturing in such a bad scene: borderline slavery, horrible conditions, super-low wage, et cetera.
Why does it exist, anyway?
First up, materialism is an outgrow of our desire for material goods. We know that we evolved to demand physical proof, that’s why we often ask for receipts and print-outs when emails and digital records are actually sufficient. This evolved from “proof of kill” demand back when we were hunter-gatherers: we believe smaller kills more than stories about bigger game that went away.
Then we are living in era of affluence thanks to Agriculture Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and now Information Revolution. This era spurs a LOT of wealth compared to, say, 1960s when Information Revolution is not exist yet, let alone when we compare to pre-Industrial or Pre-Agriculture. Agriculture Revolution and Industrial Revolution allows us to have more material goods cheaply thanks to mass production. Our current affluence is also caused by more efficient use of time and labor, creating more wealth overall.
When we combine material affluence to our evolutionary direction, we could clearly see that our wealth would definitely go to material goods. This would entails consumerism (the desire to consume material goods)
Why you defend it, anyway?
I chose to defend it because of what those anti-materialism are bashing at the core. They bashed capitalism as the root cause of the problem. To me, they wrongly aims at capitalism, the system that allows them to enjoy modern life, as the source of materialism. Capitalism is merely a system that enforces voluntary exchange of goods and services with currency as facilitator to ease exchanges.
If I am to point which one is at fault of suffering of others for our want, I direct my birdie at corporatism. Corporatism is a system that allows government to be in bed with bigger players in the market, usually through lobbying, but could be through campaign support as well. This system would push actual capitalism to the sidelines and only applicable against smaller players (the actual backbone of capitalism), while at the same time giving bigger players ‘corporate socialism’ (they win, they keep the benefit; they lose, taxpayers foot the bill).
Wait, what? You introduce corporatism? Is it scapegoat of capitalism?
I’m aware you remain vehement against capitalism and I introduce corporatism as the one at fault, but hear me out first, capitalism is different beast from corporatism. Capitalism is voluntary exchange of goods and services while corporatism is essentially induced oligopoly (based on current market position).
Capitalism requires healthy competition among all players regardless of its size with smaller players forming the backbone because they are the most daring without much worries whether it sells or not. If it sells, then they hit the jackpot. If it fails, they can simply fold and go away. Big players often worry that they would lose customers (which often spells doom for bigger players) if their daring ventures fail. That also explains why bigger corporations would prefer buying small but growing businesses, to ensure they remain clear in case their venture goes south and they can simply deny responsibility to the bought smaller business. In capitalism, it is easy to get in and get out of the market as both buyer and seller, ensuring consistent competition.
On the other hand, corporatism demanded that they are the only players in the market, allowing them to get to know each other and forming some sort of cartel that control prices on whim. If you’re small player, your burden will be enormous to stay competitive against status quo player: no major innovation, taxes, regulations, prohibitions, anything goes. On the other hand, if you’re big player, you don’t have to worry about being competitive against smaller player; all you need to do is ask for the government to tailor regulation specifically to disadvantage your smaller competitor. You can lie about “systemic economic disaster” or “unemployment” or anything.
Do you have rebuttals?
Yes I have. There are three major arguments from the other side: environmental problem, earthling suffering, and the empty feeling
First of all, environmental headache is the result of unsustainable extraction. I’d say that once recycling is economically viable, this won’t be much of a problem. Time-wise, this is not exactly the best solution. Of course, we can devote more investment in recycling. Can we recycle anything? Theoretically, there is nothing we cannot recycle. The problem is not possibility, but economic feasibility. Whether it is economically competitive against extraction or not to recycle anything. In the end, when we’ve extracted everything, we will end up with scraps that is actually cheaper to recycle then extracting diminishing resources.
While it is true that we’re pumping those blasted carbons to the atmosphere, we can simply plant trees and care for them as trees are happy with our carbon dioxide output, water, and some extra nutrients now and then. Nature will eventually comes to balance what we do regardless of what we think it should be. Carbon dioxide causes global warming and other bad stuff, no question, nature will balance it if we help out by planting trees and/or reducing our use. Your call.
Second issue that bugs me is “suffering of fellow earthlings”. Animals are being disrupted from their merry life, plants being killed and/or manipulated, poor people in poor countries enslaved or killed for our pleasure. What I could say is that feel free to empathize with them. What I could see is when everyone wakes up to their suffering (and actually stop using it instead of virtue-signalling kindness), the market will press the producer to be as ethical as possible. Until that day comes, I would let the market to decide and go along the market force instead of forcing myself to virtue-signal.
Last issue of concern is the feeling of being empty. True, material goods will not guarantee happiness, but you will suffer without material goods that you unknowingly need. If you can fulfill all your need, then you won’t want much and you’re already not in the materialism path. However, when you can’t fulfill your actual need and focus on wants, you’re down the materialism path. Congratulations. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I would rather say that we need to slow down and contemplate on what we actually need to satisfy our life.
Conclusion
My position is that materialism is not a good deal, but you will have hard time pushing people around to discard their material desire. My resolve is simple, see what I actually do and figure out what I need to do that. With that in mind, I can reduce what I want to absolute minimum.
For anyone, you may want to educate yourself and come up with whatever justification you want to sustain your position.
Growing since the old times, the battle of The People’s minds reaches full steam around election times. There are sides in this eternal war, each claiming to be the truth while claiming everyone else that does not adhere to its narrative. While every side tries to present as the truth, there always some other across the fence that claims they are fake. Hence, we shall discourse this in detail.
What is fake news and its difference against real news?
Objectively, fake news is lie presented as news. This often occurs in sites that wants to gain audience. As opposed to true journalistic, fake news presents whatever certain group wants to hear in accordance to their interest. True journalistic spirit looks for truth based on evidence regardless of whose interest it is for, be it for their side or opponents’ side.
Why do they make fake news and What is their intention?
As stated, it is to build solid echo chamber where no dissenting idea can dream of gaining traction in any group listening to such a news. In this case, we have groupthink phenomena which gripped every extremist in any spectra, be it liberal or conservative, libertarian or authoritarian, or even centrist. The job of fake news organization is to censor dissenting views to their group idea.
In groupthink, most hardcore members have serious confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is tendency to see their sides’ ideas favorably and dismissing dissenting opinions. Fake news organizations feed on this bias by supplying informations that confirm their opinion and telling contrary facts as fake.
Another reason for fake news forgery is to disinform The People. This goal is primarily used during wartime as propaganda from the enemy saying that their side is doomed. Currently, this goal is used to confuse everyone into distrusting certain group (usually the rivalling faction).
How do they write it and How can we know its real worth as news?
The easiest one is by outright fabricating news such that those information seems legitimate. This enables one to create something pretty much sensational. The problem is that it is blatant lie which can be checked straight to the source.
Other nice way is to spin the existing fact and present the spun fact as the fake-news-journalist’s organization (I assume that they’re in an organization) leaning. This way, the fact can be checked, only the organization of the facts is unreliable. The way to trace it usually is a bit deeper, one need to figure out the intention of the news article, whose interest it is. However, this method needs systematic review of the news to figure out who they are attacking and the fact that they spin. They may spin such information using whatever fallacy possible (anything up to ad hominem, may exclude outright name-calling).
Knowing a fake news requires systematic attack to the outside of our bias while knowing that we’ve been indoctrinated would require us to see our bias. This would require critical thinking and outside partner whose opinion is diametrically oppose ours in which we and our partner there gentlemanly agreed to disagree
Conclusion
To conclude, fake news is lie designed to give certain groups favorable viewpoints by satisfying their confirmation bias. They engineered facts to suit their viewpoints by spinning the interpretation of the fact and fabricate lies as needed. We need to see our bias to see clearly whether it is a fake news or not.
Journal of The Cruiser 