There is a product I just saw on TV that is just so bitchinly OS X that I had to share it with all y'all:

My Overstuffed Life

Check out the one called "Simply Safari"... yeah, right, 'simply.'

What these are, are kind of portable junk drawers. Designed as "scrapbooks"... but a lot of the life-snippets that --presumably preteen females--actually PUT in them, are provided by the manufacturer.

I took one look at this, and thought instantly: Panther. Tell people they don't have a life, then give them a kicked up, visually superabundant one. Where the idea is that needless complexity and disorganized mayhem equals some kind of richness of experience. Pathetic, much?

What friggin' SLAYS me about this product line, is that the whole look, the whole "coolness" factor is based on a total disorganized shambles. Like a homeless person's dumpster-purse, crammed full of all kinds of meaningless crap.

There's a lesson here, brothers.

Where the idea is that needless complexity and disorganized mayhem equals some kind of richness of experience. Pathetic, much?

You just described the whole Western lifestyle. We're all guilty of it to a great extent. Gaining a richness of experience from just being is a goal of many religions and philosophies, an idea that runs counter to the prevailing culture.

We are becoming accustomed to variety in an almost manic sort of way, not that there's anything wrong with seeking novelty or new experiences. But these days it's being taken to extremes. Hell, who in their right mind would bungee jump just for entertainment? But we need those adrenaline rushes. Like a drug, existential superabundance means it takes more and more to get that rush of feeling alive.

I believe attention deficit disorder is something we train long and hard to achieve and isn't some newly-discovered pandemic. Surely some people suffer from brains that don't allow them to have as many quiet moments or to pay quiet attention, but the real truth is that our way of life, starting with Sesame Street, video games and MTV, is making us this way. Variety is said to be the spice of life, but there really is no variety when every knob is turned up to 11. But having turned up so many knobs, the natural instinct is to look for 12. But there's much more room on the dial at the lower end. There is no true variety if it is nothing but noise and mayhem and more noise and mayhem. There's no contrast in that. Variety requires the opposites to both exist.

I dunno, bro.

I think there's plenty of rich experiences in our culture that don't have anything to do with a superabundance of trivial and meaningless sensory overload for its own sake.

I mean, I still go to the museum frequently. I still go to movies and theater. Not many CONCERTS or OPERA anymore, but I'd like to.
I still manage to read. Watch TV... really watch things, not just channel surf. There's a bazillion choices, lots of crap, but I still can find old movies, or interesting Discovery channel shit... or something. Not everything is Nickelodeon-frenetic and empty visual calories.

There is nothing wrong with novelty or originality or variety. The thing is, learning to tell the difference between crap and quality. Just because there's a LOT of something, doesn't make it good. Doesn't make it art.

I look at that overstuffed life product as a metaphor for a very interesting pop culture phenomenon. The idea that heaping distracting, shallow GARBAGE onto a life is somehow a substitute for quality experiences. What it really is, is a distraction, an anesthetization. And a sham.

It's the white man giving bags of cheap buttons and baubles to the aboriginals... crap that costs them five cents, but LOOKS like a lot. It's bullshit, but hey, it's SHINY bullshit.

Again, this is so OS X.

My overstuffed life. Jesus. What are we saying to little girls? Here's a few bright plastic geegaws, paste them on top of images of your own life, AS IF THEY ARE YOUR momentos. We won't tell anyone they're really not. Give yourself medals... purple hearts for every time you had your heart broken by a cute guy. Never did? Here's a picture of one.

I object to things that remove the possibility of having an impact on one's own life.. to really own and take possession of our destinies... in favor of some boilerplate prefab destiny that simply LOOKS fun. Having fun, going out and actively seeking fun, are so much better than just looking at symbolic fun. Some marketeer's idea of what fun is.

And buy into that conceit, and one of the end results is, you don't friggin' want to DO anything. You've adopted a kind of symbolic life, you've had a bare minimum of cultural acceptance through deciding to be distracted by this malarkey... and so you never want to BECOME.

Remember that song, "turning japanese"? I am fascinated by the idea that belonging to a group and behaving by group standards is so important that some people are willing to forego their sense of self for it. A japanese workaholic will sell their soul for a little cheap recognition from a superior. The boss gets a lifetime of backbreaking work out of the guy, and all he really has to do is give him some bullshit token of appreciation. A ribbon or a plastic flower. The worker then DECIDES to ascribe value and meaning to cheapitude.

I'm here to say that, yeah, we can do that. We can take crap and pretend it's valuable. But guess what, there are REALLY valuable things, where you don't have to self-lie like that.

In the case of OS X, sure, X-Men can live in a world of make-believe that the twiddle-a-rama is really a powerful thing... or, we can decide that it's something that should have some more meat on its bones, because toolness is more important than distracting hype. Ideas of real value are being lost in favor of facile, dumbed down, eye-trinkets.

It ain't enough for me. I'm not fooled by sparkly wampum. I want things of real value. Software that works. Ideas that have impact, tools that are a means to actually doing something productive and reaching some potential. I don't want to be market-driven, I want to drive myself. I can't be handed a mission when that mission is simply "buy this"... I need more than that.

It's the white man giving bags of cheap buttons and baubles to the aboriginals... crap that costs them five cents, but LOOKS like a lot. It's bullshit, but hey, it's SHINY bullshit.

That's hardly unique. Buy a woman a diamond and what's she gonna do, cut glass for a living?

I think there's plenty of rich experiences in our culture that don't have anything to do with a superabundance of trivial and meaningless sensory overload for its own sake.

Yes, of course there are. And some of us need help having rich experiences. For various reasons, our expectations are quite high. Rich experiences may not be enough. You could market a scrap-book-like bag that is empty; something in which to put your real life mementos. But if expectations are even higher, if one expects super-rich experiences, then we definitely need a head start. This is a natural reaction to the expectations we put upon ourselves which we quite easily glean from the culture around us. There aren't many messages these days about just having fun the old-fashioned way. No. We're shown how to have EXTREME fun. Regular fun isn't good enough.

I look at that overstuffed life product as a metaphor for a very interesting pop culture phenomenon. The idea that heaping distracting, shallow GARBAGE onto a life is somehow a substitute for quality experiences. What it really is, is a distraction, an anesthetization. And a sham.

We may be coming at this from different angles, but I wholeheartedly and overstuffidly agree. Show me where this culture is teaching understuffing, or at least quality over quantity? Think hard now. It becomes a bit difficult because quality of experience has been successfully redefined as quantity of experience. Living in a highly material and consumer-oriented world there's just little motive or opportunity for any other message. We're constantly being sold more, being told that what we have ain't enough, that that rich life experience – at least a bigger piece of it – is right around the corner if only we will buy this new thing. It becomes the pattern of our lives. Yes, it does provide a very good standard of material living, but our emotional or spiritual sides often wind up lacking. We fall prey then to such things as the UI of OS X or a pre-packaged life in an overstuffed bag.

I wish I could sit here and teach y'all how to have that successful, understuffed, rich life but it's alluded me as well. I'm sure it's there in the next upgrade though, be it an OS, a job or a girl.

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That's hardly unique. Buy a woman a diamond and what's she gonna do, cut glass for a living?

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LOL! But think about that a second. Yeah, the marketeering bullshit of DeBeers has made diamonds a fantasy lust-item, when carbon is like the most abundant element on the planet... but in fact CERTAIN diamonds are rare, perfect, flawless, beautiful... and MADE into beautiful objects. There ain't nothing wrong with beauty, with the craftsmanship that makes beauty... with paying a little extra for it, and for really rare.

But the diamond industry has become more about roping suckers. When excellence in the craft is achieved, like Harry Winston, the prices are absolutely ABSURD. The art world, same deal. There are some amazingly wonderful works of art. Masterpieces. True excellence. But take that, and add a good enough CON, you can command these lottery-winning kinds of prices. These are decided on by consensus, by markets, but a lot of those decisions are framed and tweaked by complete charlatans.

And one of the impacts of that is, that the lesser quality stuff starts getting jacked up too. With diamonds, the knee jerk of "ohmygoddiamondearrings!" and the pricetag, is enough for most women. Nobody takes the time to become a true connoisseur of beauty or craftsmanship. A CZ in a beautiful setting can be lovelier than a crappy diamond.

One that hits me close to home is the fly fishing yuppie market. There are amazing fly tyers, amazing rod builders... true American craftsmen. But to make a living, they need an angle, so they can charge those ridiculous prices. I still haven't gotten to the point where I can see spending several grand on a bamboo flyrod. I don't care if Jesus the carpenter made it with his own two hands. But they ARE beautiful objects. And they work.

However, then it becomes a RACKET. And a lot of less-than-brilliant rods get priced out equally to the classics, because they push all the right buttons. A good marketeer can find marks, simply because certain customers are out looking for a prestige item.

That's what's happening with the Mac. We are all looking for what, GOOD COMPUTERS. And we get good LOOKING ones. The prices get jacked up... but the Mac Faithful, the true connoisseurs of high tech, aren't easily fooled. Well, some are. Because Apple knows how to play them. That's what has me girding my loins.

It's not that it don't happen all the time, it's that this time, it's happening to ME, lol.

And this time, I can see through the con job, and I don't like what I see. Because when I demand high quality, I won't take less. If I'm going to pay the kind of ridiculous money that Apple charges (I mean come on, you can get a Gateway for $500 now)... it damn well better be worth it. It damn well better be every bit the tool a PC is, and way more.

And yet the "more" that Apple is slathering onto its platform is almost complete and total fluff and nonsense. Crap that is designed to deceive. Nothing of real VALUE... just distracting passive, let-us-control-you marketeering shit. Well, I ain't falling for it. That stuff is worth two cents, it's hugely overpriced for what it truly is. Mildly entertaining.

This country has places where they still teach understuffing. Take an art class. Take an acting class. Take a creative writing class. At the very least, if you have an impulse to overstuff, the critiques and dialogs with your peers will get you to really think about what you are doing.

Overstuffing is coming pretty much from the advertising (uh, my) world, and TV. From Hollywood. But there is good stuff mixed in with the bad. Because when something IS high quality, people respond. Sorry, but I think anyone but an ADD kid actually gets tired of the constant shilling and desperate superabundance, all to sell us shit.

But there are very interesting expressions of pop culture, which grow out of this...

Take your basic rap video. Huge, superabundant operas of bling-bling, booty shaking sexpots, all the gear, all the gadgets, all the cars, blunts, booze, tattos, piercings, and on and on. What separates the art from the superabundance? The intent. The MEANING of it. Is it portrayed to just make young people lust after the STUFF of culture? Or is it something else. Does it reach a kind of parody pitch and end up saying something IMPORTANT? I see this work as valuable. Sometimes despite itself. It puts its head in the beast's mouth of material culture, sometimes having fun with it, sometimes revealing just how dysfunctional and damaging unhealthy relationships and perceptions of material culture can be. One message I see all the time, though, which is quite uplifting, is this: be a creative artist, get hot with words, rhymes, ideas, dancing whatnot... and get friggin' richer than God.

That's where art and free speech come in. It's the way we deal with things like that. Our longings for mammon... for destiny. The creative work of our brethren can get us to think about important things. Now, you can go worst-case american on it: "hmm, the only way to GET that crap is to be a drug dealer..." and then rap videos become something evil to you.

Or, you can question the imagery. Thank the artist for putting the superabundant imagery in your path, because it led you somewhere meaningful. Led you somewhere new and different, got you to think about what's important.

If OS X wasn't this bad, if Apple wasn't trying to pull what it's trying to pull, I'm not sure I ever would have really, really APPRECIATED what they DID in the past. I mean I loved it, but I was kind of gullible. But they jaded me. Got me thinking. They became the guinea pig for what not to frikkin' do to a computer interface. They tried and failed. They got their hearts in the wrong place and pooch-screwed.

These are important times for the future. Because enough guys like me question this shit, and it changes the world.

And this time, I can see through the con job, and I don't like what I see. Because when I demand high quality, I won't take less. If I'm going to pay the kind of ridiculous money that Apple charges (I mean come on, you can get a Gateway for $500 now)... it damn well better be worth it. It damn well better be every bit the tool a PC is, and way more.

That's a sobering perspective. It means that Apple has to try and create value in some way – value beyond the toolness of a computer. That's where marketing, brand image, peer pressure and cultural/social issues come into play. A fourteen hundred dollar PC is going to do what a top-of-the-line G5 does for less than half the cost. We could quibble on specifics, but the bottom line is that whatever you're doing – games, photo editing, web work, print work, video work – a cheap PC is going to get the job done.

To compete with PC's Apple can do one of two things, and they seem to be mutually exclusive. They can either bring the prices down or ratchet the bullshit up in an attempt to create perceived value. And this is what we're talking about in some of this thread. Manhattan Island might have been worth more than ten dollars worth of beads to another European, but to the Indians, who had no shortage of land, the perceived value of the beads perhaps made the trade worth it. The perceived value in a diamond is that a woman can show it off to other women, boost her self image, and believe that her fella really loves her and is a good provider, and one who has made a commitment (to going in debt anyway – if I were a chick I'd look for a wise investor and penny-pincher).

This country has places where they still teach understuffing. Take an art class. Take an acting class. Take a creative writing class. At the very least, if you have an impulse to overstuff, the critiques and dialogs with your peers will get you to really think about what you are doing.

Well, it sure as hell ain't at thalo.net. But I know what you mean. For the most part, the arts I've been involved in are photography and writing. Good writing is compact. No more words than are needed. It's difficult to learn; harder to master. It's difficult to trust for emphasis phrases that do not contain an excess of adjectives or really's. Understuffing and understatement are powerful tools. I'm not sure why they work but they work. It's "I really love you" as opposed to "I love you". When every word must stand on its own, unadorned with pre-packaged sentiment and fluff, then each word gains importance. They don't need to be buttressed. The reader is left to perform the act of charging them with meaning and thus meaning is revealed. It's the impact of the pregnant pause. It's the idea that music is made up of the silence between the notes.

Exactly, brother Brad.

LOL, hey remember, I'm here as the personification of superabundance. I'm endeavoring to become a pop culture icon by speaking the language of the thing I'm fighting

And I try to show that even a worst-case american can have something to say. One powerful idea can redeem a world of crap. And people don't have to say EVERYTHING well, if I just say fucking SOMETHING well.

And here it is (again):

Less. Is. More.

Hey wait, nah-ah, Apple doesn't have to create anything beyond the toolness of the computer. They have to do a better job of maximizing the toolness of the computer than their competitors. And they had it all in black and white.

Now remember, there was stuff the Mac was better at. Print design. And there stuff it IS better at: music and video. They are in fact doing SOMETHING well, and that's kind of redeeming... it just happens to be not enough for me, and my industry.

So what I keep harping on is that EVERYTHING would be better, if the interface was superior. If every Apple engineer just re-prioritized what it is that Apple Computer is about, and it would be awesome if at the top of the list, was giving the end user the best, most productive, most efficient, fastest and most streamlined computing experience. I think the fast track to this, is building on the strengths of the legacy. Not going back, not turning the clock back, but building on that philosophical foundation. Not, and I repeat, NOT the foundation of NeXT... but the foundation of Macintosh. If there were strengths of NeXT, ga head and build on them... but if THESE are the strengths of NeXT... then I don't think they were strengths, but weaknesses. Mac = strong. NeXT = weak.

The experience that OS X gives us, is, I'm sorry to say, totally polluted with agendas that take us off that mark. Not everything is in there to contribute to making our lives easier... it's way more about exploiting us, and that's why interface Aqua is a disjointed, self-competing, inconsistent, illogical, and ugly mess. That's slow and inefficient and distracting. Because it friggin' FORGOT what is the most important thing.

The legacy had its problems, sure. But it never forgot the relative importance of a) the interface; and 2) the end user experience.

Everything that was in Platinum, was included because it made sense. Whereas, I can point to dozens of things in Aqua that make absolutely NO sense. Shit that's in there for no good reason. Most of the stuff Apple is CONCENTRATING HEAVILY ON... is a total waste. Excess baggage that does nothing but slow everything down.

Music is cool, yeah, but the emphasis on it is disproportionate and inappropriate, because so much of the OS still doesn't work worth a damn. I mean Jesus H. Christmas, services still don't work after three years. We still can't customize the appearance or fonts of the interface even to the degree that we could in the legacy!

Labels? What a joke. They are the clunkiest, most terrible, painful overdoing of what was basically a simple, intuitive, and useful feature of the legacy. And there, we could CHANGE THE COLORS.

Text highlighting still sucks across many apps and in the interface. Text is still blurry, text still doesn't work at small sizes, and pixelated monospaced type, which WOULD work, is largely unavailable.

There's massive inconsistencies and semiotic weakness in icon use, and widgets.

Window management is still butt slow.

And worst of all, the Finder is still a mess. The OS can't handle directories with lots of files without completely falling apart. The slowness to update and unresponsiveness is horrible. Ruins the whole user experience.

LOL, hey remember, I'm here as the personification of superabundance. I'm endeavoring to become a pop culture icon by speaking the language of the thing I'm fighting

Well playing a role or hiding behind a mask can be very therapeutic. One of the most therapeutic of all roles is that of a clown. It's what we do to a certain extent on the internet by virtue of our pseudonyms. The reason I don't need a pseudonym is that my main persona *is* the clown. The mask is already complete without need of anything else.

I had a friend once who (and I thought he had flipped his lid) started showing up at places dressed as a clown. He's a gentle, nice fellow, but at best he made a sad and depressed clown. But the magic of the whole clown outfit is that you still respond to it despite whatever acting talents lie beneath the costume. The Clown is amazing. We all respond to it in some way. It touches us deeply because, I think, it's like waving a big white flag that says "you don't have to be stuck in the mask you're already wearing". And even though we might not be the one wearing the mask, it somehow gives us the freedom to respond to the clown outside our own masks. We share in the play.

It's like any halloween costume, brother...
Lookit how BRAVE people are, when they're all dressed up. Yeah, they're usually total goofballs, but it's another thing that I think is totally healthy, that human beings don't do enough of. Let their friggin' hair down. Lighten up. Indulge our imaginations a little. Horse around, play.

And you don't even need a costume... sometimes it's just a prop. Remember the Star Wars Kid?

There's such power in that. And such potential ignominy. But screw it.

The thing I worry about, is that those impulses in us can get played. The Mac Faithful within me is like that Star Wars Kid. To me, MACS are "the force." I want to believe they are a power for good in the universe. I want to believe and that makes me vulnerable and gullible. And Apple knows it. And so instead of giving me a product that actually works, they're giving me the prop. Just a half-assed bell-and-whistle machine, that exploits my imagination instead of unleashing it. So I have to play make believe.

I have to swing around this OS mightily AS IF IT WORKS... when it don't.

On a side note....

I realize there's probably a quite logical and geeky explanation to this, but at first glance it seems that your suspicions, thalo, are warranted. I copy and pasted this from the Console:

2004-05-14 23:43:16 PDT - Plugin "SLP", Version "1.1", is set to load lazily.
2004-05-14 23:43:16 PDT - Plugin "SMB", Version "1.1.2", is set to load lazily.

It's like any halloween costume, brother...
Lookit how BRAVE people are, when they're all dressed up.

Traumatic memory re-surfacing. One Halloween, when I was quite little I assure you, my older sister dressed me up in a wig, make-up, etc. (Part of that "etc" may have been a dress. I'm not quite sure. The emotional scars have dimmed my memory.) Anyway, I ended up looking like Carol Burnett…at least that's what everyone said.

Let their friggin' hair down. Lighten up. Indulge our imaginations a little. Horse around, play.

That's generally what drugs and alcohol are designed to do. Get a couple drinks in me and you're in danger of laughing yourself to death. It's why I don't drink anymore. It's like that Monty Python sketch where they designed a joke so funny that it could kill. What's scary is that when some people "let their hair down" they become like Charles Manson; really nasty and mean. I wonder why that is.

The thing I worry about, is that those impulses in us can get played.

Well, there's a lot of quid pro quo in that. I don't think people are getting played as much as you think. They are willing participants.

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Well, there's a lot of quid pro quo in that. I don't think people are getting played as much as you think. They are willing participants

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Maybe Trekkies are willing participants at Star Trek conventions... when the whole thing revolves around a work of entertainment.

But in the computer world, even though Apple is forcing their market peg into a passive-entertainment hole... I think there's a lot of UNWILLING participants.

I think the Mac Faithful want the Mac to be the bomb. Uh, in a GOOD way. And I think there's a profound dissatisfaction and unsettling discomfort that it's not. And so there's DENIAL. That's not willing participation. I think if OS X was TRULY good, Mac loyalty would be at an all time fever pitch.

Right now it strikes me as half-hearted, forced. With geeks with existing unix experience being the most excited. Followed by newbie digis. Pro users, except for us, are remarkably silent. They clap at keynotes, but like I keep saying, I think like me, they are very gunshy when it comes to spending the money on new hardware.

LOL, Carol, can you still do the tarzan yell?

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What's scary is that when some people "let their hair down" they become like Charles Manson; really nasty and mean. I wonder why that is

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Worst-case american thinking........................................................ (ooh, repeating text bug just now, lol)

I think those Mansons are mostly in our heads. I'm not saying there aren't any, like drunken wife-beaters or career criminals, alcoholic psychos... but fear of them shouldn't stop US from letting our hair down in healthy ways.

And I wonder if it's better for even the evil to just get it out, safely, like being surly in a bar... rather than violently. Perhaps the whole secret of the bad behavior is that it's a RESULT of repression. People are so worried about being so frikkin' GOODY TWO SHOES all the time. Maybe it's better for them to get pissed off now and again.

I'm convinced, the very X-Men who are all wiggly about personal attacks and butt-cheek clenching constant decorum, are the same ones who can't keep it up, and let it all hang out with the ugly hate mails.

I think there's a lot of UNWILLING participants.

Yeah, they’re moving to Windows or staying in OS 9. Or they’re hacking the hell out of OS X in order to make it work better. The general consensus around the forums is that the Finder still needs a lot of work. People are unhappy with the little delays you get. It’s not responsive and predictable all the time.

And I think there's a profound dissatisfaction and unsettling discomfort that it's not. And so there's DENIAL.

OS X gets a lot of comfort points because it’s not Windows. It also gets a lot of point because of the eye candy. I ought to dig out some of the quotes that I’ve found. Some of them are hilarious. Not having bit the bullet and upgraded the major design apps, there’s not much more I can say about OS X’s stability and ability to do the job. It works quite well though for the casual use I put it through.

And I wonder if it's better for even the evil to just get it out, safely, like being surly in a bar... rather than violently.

Or on an online forum. Sure, I can buy that.

Perhaps the whole secret of the bad behavior is that it's a RESULT of repression. People are so worried about being so frikkin' GOODY TWO SHOES all the time. Maybe it's better for them to get pissed off now and again.

I was watching a little of that Joseph Campbell/Bill Moyers interview. Campell’s opinion is that we have to find a way to exist in society without succumbing to it totally. He thinks it’s important to resist certain things so that we remain human and true to our lives.

I'm convinced, the very X-Men who are all wiggly about personal attacks and butt-cheek clenching constant decorum, are the same ones who can't keep it up, and let it all hang out with the ugly hate mails.

I think we’re talking about displaced anger. It’s something that I think is very common. To live in any culture means that we subsume a part of our selves, our true thoughts and feeling, in order to strengthen our bonds and status in a group. It’s quite natural then to throw venom out at those who not only threaten the group but who illegally and immorally (from their point of view) get to speak out – something they can’t do.

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I was watching a little of that Joseph Campbell/Bill Moyers interview. Campell’s opinion is that we have to find a way to exist in society without succumbing to it totally. He thinks it’s important to resist certain things so that we remain human and true to our lives.

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Oh yeah, a classic.
I also just saw his interview with Susan Jacoby, author of a book called Freethinkers... a history of American Secularism. On the strength of the interview, I have to buy that book. That chick has got it 100% right as far as I'm concerned. And she projects this kind of goofy, middle aged star wars kid kind of vibe, behind which is lurking a sharp, insightful and profound set of ideas that I found totally engaging. Somebody who hasn't lost humanity, or just that simple joy in human pursuits. She seems spiritual and together, and she's like this total atheist. Good not because of some fear of hell or promise of heaven, just because being good is more rewarding in the here and now. Also ripshit at the current unbalanced church/state protection thing (i.e. there's plenty of protection of state from church, but lately a huge intrusion of church into state). And she's a fan of Tom Paine to boot. I was impressed. This society needs a secular humanist defender. Someone to counter the stupid excuse arguments that all begin: "well, without fear of God, what's to stop people from..."

That's one for the thalo.net reading list. Joining Skeptic Magazine.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: thalo,

Re: Susan Jacoby. I'm all for free thinkers, agnostics and secular humanists. It's just too bad that so many of them are usually thoroughly ensconced in revisionist history. The founding fathers were both highly religious and a "bedrock of human reason". Probably what made their ideas great was not, as atheists like to trumpet, putting a separation between church and state which they seem to see as the foundation for the eventual triumph of atheism and human reason. I think their real genius was that they set up the ground rules so that neither narrow ideology could triumph. They were all for free thinkers on all sides of the spectrum. People such as Susan Jacoby, as least as far as I can tell from that book review, are missing at least half of the entire point. Although many people would certainly love to live in a society free from religion, the wisdom of the founding fathers wasn't to "protect" ourselves from it as much as acknowledging the reality of religion and setting up a system where we could live with it and without it. In the ideology of "progressives" sits a tyranny as harsh, if not harsher, than any religion has ever wielded.

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Re: Susan Jacoby. I'm all for free thinkers, agnostics and secular humanists.

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I know you are, brother.

And after seeing that interview, it was very clear to me that there are worst-case atheists, which really worry people of faith. And that people who advocate separation of church and state, are often unjustly branded atheists, when they're not. FDR called Thomas Paine that "filthy little atheist" or somesuch. When he really wasn't.

I really could care less about living in a SOCIETY free from religion. I just want to have a GOVERNMENT free of religion, but one that protects religious freedom and individual expression. Unfortunately, these days I do see ORGANIZED religion as tyranny. Just like organized crime is, well, CRIME. I'd prefer my crime served in individual portions, the odd bank robber here and there.

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In the ideology of "progressives" sits a tyranny as harsh, if not harsher, than any religion has ever wielded.

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Clergy-based, organized religions are every bit the same KIND of tyranny as the PC movement on a philosophical level, I don't know about harsher. Certainly religion has had more blood shed over it. I think the PC movement has duller teeth precisely BECAUSE it germinated in a secular culture. The vocabulary police of religion used to rip out your testicles and feed them to you... today's Islamic vocabulary police issue death edicts and carry out beheadings. The PC vocabulary police of today just try to shame you into compliance, muscle you into submission with what, their sense of personal outrage at you? A little free speech? I'm much more OK with that. The impulse to control irritates me, the free speech double standard irritates me, but I can get over it... simply by choosing not to be controlled.

We all know the types of speech that could get us hurt or killed, and most of us refrain. Mostly because it's commonsense self-preservation. But the difference between a secularist and other, is usually--not always--found in THE TOLERANCE OF OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. How quickly opposing views get emotionalized. How quickly a chuckle or a shake of the head becomes a red face and clenched jaw.

Anyway, it's all about a power structure and controlling destiny. About a set of ideas you have to buy into, or else you're apostate. And belief is just too easy to play. Even belief in TOLERANCE. So it's about individual choices, and for that you need liberty.

To me the tyranny of political correctness and that of religion are two sides of the same coin. And both create tyranny from good intentions and a sense of superiority and idealogical aristocracy and penchant for trying to shut up opposing or questioning views. An inflated sense of their own right compared to the "other's" wrong.

Jacoby's illustration using Lincoln in the interview was superb. In a nutshell, it was basically that during the civil war, Lincoln knew that in the North, God and conscience were telling them that slavery was wrong. In the South, believers in the same god were pointing to the Bible and saying that it was social behavior sanctioned by the almighty. It's there in black and white. The trick was, realizing that God hadn't changed... but merely man's emphasis. The interests and agendas (religious, economic, social, financial)all impacted the way God was percieved. That's part of what happens.

The problem with this country, is that the FREEDOM of people to believe what they want, isn't stronger than the DOCTRINE of belief systems. If the choice is your belief system, vs. granting others their OWN belief systems, most "religious" people will flip out and assume that's what's right for them, is, uh RIGHT. Making alternate choices, WRONG.

That's the rub. And that's why we live in scary times. I'd rather our leaders have a secularly-based sense of right and wrong, but with the same right to believe spiritually in anything they want.

But you tell me, like Jacoby says, could an atheist get elected president? Could a practicing muslim? A Buddhist? A Hindu? An orthodox Jew? There is no reason the answer to that question shouldn't be absolutely yes. But it was a miracle we even had a catholic in the white house. If he wasn't more secular than devout, and charismatic enough to score Marylin Monroe... he'd have never made it.

Now let me check, am I an atheist? Nope. Like Tom Paine wasn't. But I'm trying, lol. I too see the reality of religion. I just think it's time to outgrow a lot of the mumbo jumbo and con-job of it. The parts of it that are only there to control and rein in, and forbid intellectual questioning.

But the same goes for any idealogy that attempts to con humanity and shut down discourse.

I know you are, brother.

Damn. After all this practice at thalo.net I still find it necessary to say, in so many words, "don't get me wrong." It's a tough habit to break.

Clergy-based, organized religions are every bit the same KIND of tyranny as the PC movement on a philosophical level, I don't know about harsher. Certainly religion has had more blood shed over it.

I'm not going to sweep the sins of religion under the carpet. But before we step too confidently into that "age of reason" we should be sure that we're actually being reasonable. The road to hell has been paved by those who rejected one supposed tyranny only to replace it with another. Here's a sobering article concerning progressives by David Horowitz.

The magic formula for living free is not to seek purity or perfection. That's not to be confused with improvement or true progress. Freedom is a messy affair. Those who try to clean it up too much are halfway down the road to tyranny.

One of the things people are being taught, and something that I think is a gross misperception aided by deliberate misinformation and exaggeration, is that we are in great danger of religion entering back into the state. I would only ask those who truly believe this to go back to the 1790's and progress through time from there. The trend is toward a very secularized state. That trend hasn't changed, only the exaggerated and hyperventilated ravings of the left have made it seem so. It's a political ploy; a fear tactic, in order to progress a particular agenda. The thalo's of the world (and there are surely many of them) would want parts of this agenda pushed forward. And I would too. But if we are to be free thinkers, if we are to be on guard of cons, then we must and should take a real look at the agendas that are being pushed under the guise of, for example, separation of church and state. Hell, we now have, for all practical purposes, state-sponsoring of the religion of Gaia. But one of the quite honest things about religion, at least in this country, is that people don't hide the fact they are part of a religion. You know their agenda, if they have one, if they are the "aggressive" type. Their agenda is to convert slobs like you and me. But the social conversion process of the left, under many different guises (diversity, etc), at least to my ear, has all the hallmarks of a bona fide religion. If you're scared to hell by Baptists then you might have an inkling for what scares me.

I just watched the movie, Equilibrium. It's a semi-Matrix-like thing with a dash of, I guess, Metropolis. The premise is that after World War III the powers-that-be decide that the real cause of man's inhumanity to man is feeling, thus they force the entire population to take a Prozac-like drug and proceed to burn all those things (particularly art) that evoke feelings. Those who are caught with illegal objects are killed. It's a chilling look at what happens when people aim for perfection through rejection, which is all that Marxism and much of the philosophy of the left is about. It's about attempting to perfect human nature by rejecting the reality of our humanity. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. This kind of denial always leads to tragedy. Like I've said before, I think the true genius of both our system of government and capitalism itself is that they don't deny human nature. They make the best use of it.

I'd like to wake up and see where we are in, say, 200 years. I suspect we will have gone through at least a couple major back-lashes and forward-lashes. We're going through a mini forward-lash right now, I believe. We're seeing it in a more advanced stage in Europe where the state is highly coercive, and all the little European workers bees are tightly managed and life is made safe and happy. If you ask me (and I'm sure you were about to), their souls (with the exception of brother Jan) are already in peril from being smothered by the state. Political correctness is just laying the foundation for further "behavior modification" and thought control. It saddens me too to see so much art that is little more than a regurgitation of leftist propaganda, because God knows we need real provocateurs to challenge us. We don't need them to become unwitting (or witting) accomplices to the propaganda (cough...Michael Moore…cough).

... in Europe where the state is highly coercive, and all the little European workers bees are tightly managed and life is made safe and happy. If you ask me (and I'm sure you were about to), their souls (with the exception of brother Jan) are already in peril from being smothered by the state.

Brother Brad, you know probably more than I do about “Europe” in a political sense.

Some remarks: I don’t think of myself as a “European”. I am a Dutchman. I don’t personally know anyone who is enthusiastic about “Europe”. People here enthusiastically hate and despise the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans. This week, or next week, there seem to be elections for the “European Parliament”. I won’t vote; only 30 percent of Dutchmen will. In national elections, on the other hand, around 80 percent of people will vote (I always give my vote to my mother to do with as she pleases; she’s a conservative, you’ll be pleased to hear).

I suppose the dream of some politicians here, is to forge a superpower. One can understand that: wouldn’t it be great to be able to tell the bloody Americans where they get off.

Yes, there are many rules and regulations here, yet I feel free enough. My twin brother, on the other hand, couldn’t stand the state's "coercion" and has emigrated to New Zealand, some ten years ago. He now lives very happily in Christchurch (and does not own a computer).

I can highly recommend this science-fiction-like novel about the future European Superstate in the year 2045: “The Aachen Memorandum”, by the English historian Andrew Roberts (a stout conservative).

Two other books for the thalo.net reading list: Martin Gardner's classic "Fads and Fallacies - in the name of science." A wonderful book.
Also good is "Cults of unreason" by Christopher Evans, which contains good stuff about Scientology.

I suppose the dream of some politicians here, is to forge a superpower. One can understand that: wouldn’t it be great to be able to tell the bloody Americans where they get off.

I'm sure that's quite true, brother Jan. It's all fine and well to tell someone to "screw off". It's what the colonial Americans said to the British. It's what we do every single day here in America. We say it to ourselves. We say it to one political party or the other. But one must be for something, and not just against or else it lapses into pointlessness, scapegoating and denial. It's a recipe for cynicism, not true freedom. And I think cynicism without a proper respect for the truth and facts is simply a recipe for tyranny.

One must organize under nobler ideas if independence is to mean anything; if it's to last. Here in America, we very nearly did become another monarchy – or something worse. The temptation was there. After King George was cast off, the colonies had to ask themselves "Now what?" There's always a power vacuum after any kind of revolution and that can be the most dangerous time. So often the thing people are fighting against is simply re-formed into another kind of tyranny. It's what happened after the French revolution when the principles of the revolution were severely perverted. Being anti-American isn't automatically being for something else. In fact, being anti-American isn't really much of a stand at all. It's a thalo-like charging of the word America with all one's own problems and gripes. It's a smokescreen for denying one's own problems.

Brother Brad, you know probably more than I do about “Europe” in a political sense.

Hey, you live there, Jan. I don't. I'm open to first-hand accounts. The problem I see with heavily socialist democracies is that enslavement, even if one's prison is a luxury suite, is enslavement all the same. One's hands needn't be shackled with iron for this to be so. If the large measure of the products of one's labors is controlled and/or confiscated then at some point we have lapsed into a type of slavery. What bothers me about the European Union, apart from the rampant and pointless anti-Americanism, is that the state is flexing its muscles and tightening its grip under the banner of economic prosperity, as if life was about nothing more than material wealth. I think unless you all organize under nobler ideas with loftier aims then this experiment is bound to produce unintended consequences; and those consequences be severe and will reflect the shallowness and incompleteness of the initial goals.

I am a Dutchman. I don’t personally know anyone who is enthusiastic about “Europe”.

That's interesting to hear because then it sure sounds like a lot of stuff is being foisted on you. It's happening here too. It's always under the guise of making us safer, or making a fairer, more just society, or any number of things. But the end result is always the same: the state gets bigger, more powerful, and takes more of our freedoms.

Yes, there are many rules and regulations here, yet I feel free enough.

We will all gladly trade some of our freedoms for security. That's the bargain of any system of government, including democracy. But as an amateur provocateur, my goal would be to ask you how much you are like that frog in a slowly-heating kettle of water. Have you become so acclimated to the propaganda of the state and of your peers that you see all as being well when it really ain't? Does it not scare you, even a little, to see the rampant anti-Americanism in Europe that is hardly distinguishable from the kind of venom that comes out of the mouths of the Islamic fascists? The moral here is that blaming other people for our own problems is a nasty, unproductive business. It simply masks the tyranny that is at home. It's rather amazing to me, particularly from the press in Europe whose job should be to find some semblance of the truth, to often be nothing more than a mouth-piece for the ever-increasing power of the faceless state. If those who can and should be speaking freely no longer do so then we are all in trouble.

Brother Brad, I regret the fact that I have to communicate with you in a foreign language: I would love to properly discuss any topic at all with you, but having to do it in English is too much of a strain. So, I’ll confine myself to just making a few remarks.

Anti-Americanism.
Off the top of my head, I’d say a lot of anti-Americanism comes down to “wanting to bite the hand that feeds you”, i.e. simply the weak resenting the strong. That’s perfectly natural and inevitable, nothing sinister about it. It’s not so much you being Americans, it’s you being stronger than us.

Some people in Europe (especially the French, I believe) worry that their culture, including their language, is being destroyed, unwittingly, by Americans bearing gifts (coca cola, Walt Disney, stupid soap-series). And they regard American culture as shallow crap, and Americans as rich upstarts who expect everybody in the world to speak their language, who have no history to speak of, have no sense of history, and are only interested in “making money”. Americans are people who take shrinks seriously. They are culturally insecure, and therefore it has been easy for European swindlers to make them pay millions of dollars for crappy European art like Picasso’s. Instead of trying to write good novels, they try to write “the next great american novel”. That’s the cliché.
From a novel I’m reading - a Frenchman is speaking: “Oh, yes. How silly of me to forget, you are American. You know nothing of world history except the name of every US president and the capital of every US state.”

Me, intellectually I am all for America, always have been, but emotionally, I notice a part of me being pleased when I see the mighty US taken down a peg or having to eat humble pie: for example your last elections that resulted in a mess, that was great. “These people think their democracy is so great, yet they can’t even organise a fair election.”

European Union. One of the things that was taken from us was our national currency. The new “euros” look horrible and cheap, and the name is stupid and ugly. In Holland we had “guldens” and “daalders’. I have read somewhere that our “daalder” was the origin of the American word ‘dollar’, back in the good old days when New York was still called New Amsterdam. Do you know if this is true?