Political Corruption Goes Viral

It's not only Europe that does the corruption two-step.

Now we got abuse of Execitive power in the US and Australia.

Trump's being done for abusing his position to ruin the reputations of presidential candidates with a pay-check to Ukraine.

Now Senator Bridget Mckenzie, Australia's Agriculture Minister and Deputy Leader of the National Party, is being investigated for using $100 milion in public funds to buy 2019 election votes for the Coalition Government. The Prime Minister knew this was happening, as evident from emails to and from his office, but he still denies it.

These aren't the only public cases in recent years. We recall Hiliary Clinton's email scandal and a few lower level pollies dabbling in cash for politics in Australia.

But now we're getting into the highest offices of government.



Continental leaders must be proud.




Of course, as Lord Acton famously stated in the 1800s, power tends to corrupt. But this truism was known and planned for and analysed for thousands of years, and academically at least since Plato's Guardians in his The Republic.

Power corrupts because it does. This is an effective tautology observed from numerous examples through history and often very publically. The fact it happens so much is why so many systems and philosophies of government analyse the relationship and propose preventions, checks and balances etc, which are written into foresighted constitutions and law.

Lord Acton was not expressing a piece of insightful wisdom, but simply enunciating a well-known fact.


We all know this shit goes on. So we feel something warm inside when they get caught.

But why does it happen?
Why don't we expect it and plan for it?
Who polices the police? Who oversees the overseer?

Isn't there in infinite regression here with the concept of preventing corruption through endless superimposing supervision?

Obviously whatever checks, balances, laws, policies, probity processes, public supervision and regulatory voyeurism is happening, it's not flawless and it must appear weak enough for executive leaders elected to high office to have a go at it time and again.

Don't forget it takes two parties to be corrupt and each will need support from others who are in on it.

Power corrupts groups, not individuals.

But why does it happen at all?

Why is it so inevitable to abuse your power and position to benefit yourself? What is the morality driving that behaviour?

Is it power that corrupts, or just being human?

Being Human Corrupts.

But not all humans have the same access or power. They have the powerful Motive, but not so much the Means or Opportunity.

Sure, power creates greater opportunities to gain benefit and to do so undercover of powerful office.

Clergy abuse the power of their office and their organisation to hide their corrupt activities with choir boys and protect themselves from being found out and/or punished.

Perhaps Opportunity Corrupts, is the better truism.

In this sense, the term Power is already integrated within Opportunity. Opportunities are directly proportional to power.

The problem is immense. There are as many corruptions as there are benefits.

For every benefit, there is as many means to acquire it fairly as there are to acquire it unfairly.

That's a lot of potential corruption and the activity is not limited to the government.

Parents can do it with their kids. Businesses with each other, their clients and suppliers.

Teachers can do it with students.

Clergy with their parish.

Producers with actors.

Not just the elite.

So: Benefit Opportunity Corrupts All Who Desire Benefit.

Or more simply.

Benefit Corrupts.

Whatever configuration between subject and predicate, there is one thing missing.

What is the opposing solution?

No Benefit, No Corruption. ?  Sounds like North Korea.

Unless you're part of the government, you are living a life without benefit, so a life without corruption.

Not much of a solution. But maybe...

The Right to Offend

Do we have the right not to be offended, or to offend?

This question is troublesome. Firstly with the term "right" and secondly with the term "offend".

Rights are a more complex concept than they appear.

First and foremost, because rights often contradict each other. Example, the right to practice religion contradicts the right to freedom of speech and the right to life, as some religions practice honour killing, child marriage, death for apostasy and punishment for blasphemy.

The right not to be offended protects the offended from the offender. But the right to freedom of speech necessitates the right to offend. If we have right not to be offended, then we have no freedom of speech.

The term offend is a verb that requires an object being offended.

It therefore is impossible to offend when no one is offended.

If someone feels offended, then we say there is an offender.

So, an offender only becomes an offender after their action affects a person who is offended.

Further, anything can potentially be offensive. If you cannot say anything offensive before you say it, but only know it is offensive after it is said, there can be no such thing as an offense.

The thing said only becomes offensive after it is said. Until a thing said is offensive, it cannot yet be offensive.

Further, what happens when you are offended by someone who is offended by you?

Now you've offended each other, you are both offensive.

Further still, can someone be offended by a belief, even when not spoken?

Yes you can. We can be offended by the beliefs of Catholics on homosexuality. We can be offended by the beliefs of Muslims on polygamy, female genital mutliation.

We can be offended by a system of beliefs, let alone their expression, let alone an individual holding them.

We can be offended by a system of beliefs that makes its way into our laws without any conversation between us and the government that puts them into place.

Many of us are offended by religion. Religious people do not intend to offend, but because we are offended, we attribute the offense to an outside actor who we say caused the offense.

How can you be held to be the cause of a person's feelings? Surely their being offended is a consequence of internal causes, such as their beliefs, their sensititvities, their resilience.

All of these mad statements are only possible if we agree that offense is a creation of the offended not the offender.

It is now clear that offending is a poor candidate for being protected by a right.

The right not to offend is a free pass to anyone doing anything or saying anything.

Anyone could claim a right to kill because to be stopped would be offensive to them.

And what is offense? It is a feeling we get when we are upset. Should we enforce a right that only protects people from feeling sad and upset, and hold that right above the freedom of speech?

No.

Where are our Philosophers?

Philosophers were the first humans to organise rational thinking into structured disciplines aimed at understanding the world and the mind.

Philosophers used rational thought rather than belief or doctrine, as the means to understanding the most important issues of humanity.

The earliest philosophers noticed the power and value of the intellectual mind in understanding the world, especially the value and benefits of analysis, critique, doubt, logical deduction and induction and at the beginning of philosophy, to understand the nature of matter and being.

They noticed the relation between words, meaning and being. They noticed the abuse of assumption.

They studied language use. They concentrated on how conclusions are derived. They examined thought processes and their role in acquiring empirical and deduced and assumed knowledge.

Philosophers divided their rational efforts into studying logic and language, morality, knowledge, existence, being, reason, politics, justice, and the physical world.

They created subjects into discrete disciplines they called Ethics, Epistemology, Ontology, Metaphysics, Logic, Politics, Language, the Mind, Jurisprudence and the physcial sciences of Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology and Physiology.

They started this organised study and teaching 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece, Babylonia. Rome and other parts of the civilised world.

Philosophy is an intellectual activity that looks to refine intellectual activity, especially that natural activity that results in proclaimed knowledge, truth and statements people make that have a moral, truth and empirical value. No statement was immune to philosophy.

Philosophy invented and refined the physical sciences, called Natural Philosophy, and places of higher education and study such as the Academy, the Lyceum, culminating in the university. Philosophy dominated the thinking world for at least 2,500 years.

So, where is philosophy today?

Philosophy is a rational activity that applies to every subject of interest and wonder. There is nothing to which philosophy does not apply. It is ultimately the pursuit and love of wisdom. Philos = love, Sophia = wisdom.

Pythagoras coined the common use of the term Philosopher in this respect.

Philosophy as a critical activity, analyses the statements of other people and can identify the errors or limitations of these statements. If a person makes a conclusion based on premises, a philosopher can identify if the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

If a person makes a claim to know something, a philosopher can identify that the claim can or cannot be known.

Think about it... When you say you Know something, what do you mean? How did you come to know this thing? What do you mean, I know X?

Do you mean, you are aware of a thought? Do you mean something exists? Do you mean you saw something? Do you mean you have reached a conclusion of deduction or induction? It is clear that what we call knowledge can mean many different things. Philosophers will try to divide what you say you know from what you do know, and what you don't know.

Philosophers can, as Bryan MaGee said, clear the rubbish of thinking out of the way of our path to truth.

Philosophy can refine your thinking, so that you approach truth by the most direct path.

So why are philosophers so silent today when so much of what they are interested in is being debated?

Philosophers, like scientists, do not care about your feelings. Like scientists, philosophers care about the truth. Philosophers even argue about the nature of truth. Coherent truth and contingent truth.

Philosophers could have so much value to add to today's important issues: gender identity, religion, human rights, any issue that uses reason and claims of knowledge to reach its conclusions or statements of fact or morality.

Where are they?

This not to say that only professional philosophers can address the isssues above. Not true. Anyone can intentionally or naturally do philosophy; and they do. Philosophers have refined what we all do naturally.

I could build a house. I could have a go at removing a mole. I could teach my kids economics. But why would I do all this, when there are experts out there that do it for a living, who have years of experience, success rates, and more knowledge and skill than I have?

We don't have to leave all these important issues to experts. But we should seek the benefit of hearing what they have to say.

Philosophers are not scientists. Scientists use specific methods to make statements about the observable, measurable world that meet a highly valued criteria for being closer to the truth, but...

Scientists are only interested in the physical world. This is a world of phenomena that can be measured and known objectively. The tests of scientific knowledge depend on other people observing the same phenomena and reaching the same conclusion if and only if the physical aspects are agreed.

What if we talk about the non physical world? The mind. Thoughts, feelings, memories, mental experience? Being, consciousness, morality?

Science has nothing to say about the non physical world.

So who does?

The religious? Ideologists? The average person?

And philosophers.

The absence of philosophers in current public pedestrian and political debate is hardly even noticed by most. Philosophers are all but forgotten. Even their legacy is valued without reference to them.

Philosophy has always been a mysterious perhaps elite subject. It has the reputation of being above all our heads. It is impractical. It is unreachable. It is a hobby of intellectually superior people.

What people don't realise is that they are conducting philosophy as a mental activity all the time themselves.

Philosophers can make a huge impact in the negative criticism game, that almost everyone engages in with an opponent to their view or belief.

Philosophers have become skilled at pointing out inconsistencies, bad logic, false claims to knowledge, poor use of language. Philosophers demand definition, clarity of meaning, more information, they demand consistency and internal coherence. They see the flaws in our reasoning. This is all required before a debate can even begin to continue.

Philosophy starts at the first statement. The discourse cannot proceed before analysis of the first statement. This is the stage of discourse where language is clarified, meaning is agreed, assumptions are revealed and all relevant information is on the table. If the statement is a question, it is first confirmed as a valid or invalid question, or even a relevant question.

From there, discourse will proceed. The role of philosophy then is to analyse any statements of fact, claims to knowledge, and the logic of deducting or unducting conclusions.

The role of philosophy in any intellectual discourse on any subject is to make clear and valid whatever is said by parties in the discourse.

Particular attention is paid to agreed and consistent and coherent terminology, valid logical reasoning and assumptions or claims to knowledge.

None of this is the purpose of scientific method. All of this is relevant to scientific method, but it is not the aim to which science strives. Philosophy is the first step for a scientist to make before proceeding into the activities of conducting and expressing science.

Even after this first step, the scientific expressions will be analysed by the philosopher.

Example, scientists will conclude often that evidence is necessary before a claim is confirmed.

What is evidence? What is proof?

How exactly is a fossil evidence of the age of the planet or the evolution of a species? What rational process leads one to the other? A scientist will argue the course of reasoning to connect the two, but that is not a scientific activity, it is a philosophical activity.

Scientists assume many axioms, such as the value of repeated results in experiment, peer review, and inductive reasoning. Scientists assume these axioms are enough to reach sound conclusions.

Scientists assume the axiom of the uniformity of nature. What happens in one case must happen in all cases. What happened a billion years ago will predict what happens in a billion years. Scientists assume a consistency of physical properties and behaviours through space-time.

Philosophers challenge assumptions and axioms, which is part of their value in analysing science.

Philosophy challenges scientific method and its expressions.

There are many subjects of great importance to humanity that lie outside the boundaries self-imposed by science. Morality, thought, the mind, justice, love, memory, happiness, all things in our human experience that are not physical by nature and therefore cannot be quantified, measured or observed, cannot therefore be treated by experiement and induction to evaluate their expressions.

So philosophy not only challenges the methods and axioms of science, but also the limitations of their application.

Psychology and sociology, and their offspring, politics and economics, all attempt to acheive knowledge and understanding by the same principles science attempts knowledge and understanding of the physical world. They use experiment, evidence and inductive reasoning to study the mind.

The sciences have a completely different role from philosophy.

Science says things and philosophy tells us what can and cannot be said.

Science uses tools to achieve a result. Philosophy evaluates the tools. Especially, logic and language and meaning and the nature of the mind that produces them.

Many things are outside the domain of science. There is nothing outside the domain of philosophy.

Not all of us are scientists, but all of us philosophise.

Translating Common Language to Political

Got = received

Said = conveyed

Did = actioned

Bought = procured

Learned = studied

Read in Google = researched

Took = acquired

Took from someone else = re-appropriated

Thought = concept

Guess = estimation

Wild guess = broad estimation

Thing = issue

Problem = issue

Trouble = issue

Complete fucking mess = issue

Bullshit = assumption

Disaster = concern

No shit = clearly

Obvious = evident

Need = require

Want = require

Help = assistance

Stop = cease

Go = proceed

Go ahead = move forward

Go fuck yourself = I understand that's your opinion

Fuck yeah = I concur

Fuck no = that is not an option

Shit happens = some consequences cannot be predicted, but must be accepted

Full of shit = frequently displays unfounded assumptions

it's going to shit = that is likely

Who gives a shit? = that issue is not relevant here

What the fuck? = this is quite unexpected

I think I shat myself = let's have a 10 minute break

Who farted? = let's take a 15 minute break

I did shit my pants = let's reconvene tomorrow

Who's the fat ass? = we are an inclusive community

You're a dumbass = I disagree

No, you're the dumbass = let's agree to disagree

Talk to someone = engage with someone

Fuck them up = engage with someone

You fucked up = there are some issues with your productivity on this matter

Women Cry

"No woman, no cry." Crooned Bob Marley.

What did he mean? In vernacular he was saying, "Hey babe, don't cry."

Why are there no songs such as "Hey dude. Don't cry."?

Women cry much more than men, to the point where everyone knows this to be true by their own experience. Women cry a lot and with little provocation.

The fact that women have a propensity to cry for emotional reasons in any stressful conditions, is a truism.

The problem is that crying tends to give you more sympathy, if you are a woman.

A woman who complains about a work colleague's behaviour is more likely to have action taken against their offender if they start crying, and especially if their offender is a man.

This is not fair. It is also sexist.

In society, it is a greater offense against someone if they "caused" their female victim to cry.

The problem not acknowledged is that women cry. Men don't. In general.

The treatment should be the same, but it is not. More is done for the one crying, especially for women.

Women crying should be treated the same as if they weren't. Crying should not be given more value.

What is not acknowledged is that it is normal for women to cry in many situations. It's what women do. This is not sexist, it is making an empirically verifiable generalisation with high levels of predictability.

Women cry watching ads on TV. They cry at weddings. They cry in arguments. They cry when they're upset. They even cry with what they admit has no reason. They cry out of the blue.

Women cry.

So when there is an argument between two colleagues at work and one cries, that person crying receives more sympathy and the perceived causer of their crying receives harsher judgment.

Why should this judgment be allowed support?

Because the sight of a woman crying provokes an instinctive reaction in the observer.

Babies cry a lot. And the instinct is to feel sorry for them and to comfort them.

Adults crying triggers the same instinct.

But why is the response different between adult females crying and adult males crying.

The sight of a man crying provokes a different response. We are repulsed by the weakness of a man crying, which is why men will do their best not to cry in public.

...Unless they think this desperate act of weakness will go in their favour when they're in serious trouble.

This is Crocodile Tears. A popular manipulative tactic used successfully only because of the likely sympathy it affords. When a child is caught red-handed by their parents, they will turn on the water works to mitigate their punishment, because they know what we have forgotten: crying gets you sympathy.

If a man cries, it must be serious. Men are respected for opening up their inner most feelings in a one-off dropping of their manliness.

Men use this tactic against women who want to break up with them.

There are some few siutations in society where crying is acceptable by both men and women, even expected; funerals, mental breakdowns, tragic loss.

Reason is slave to the passions, said David Hume. It takes some effort to first be self-aware enough to identify an instinct and more effort to employ reason to take over and command it.

Therefore, as commanders of our instincts, we need to be aware and then force reason to the fore.

It is not a rational conclusion that if a women is crying they are in greater distress than if they weren't.

It is a feeling provoked by an observation that your brain cross-references with observations of infants crying. Your brain tells you, this is the same experience.

Don't be fooled.

No woman, no cry, really means, You cry because you are woman.

Crackly Female Voice

A lot of women speak with a crackly voice, especially at the end of their statement.

The voice begins normally, with the common high pitch, normal volume, a touch of the nasal, and clear tone.

The voice then finishes in a low volume, lower pitch and a crackly tone, almost a crackly whisper.

What the fuck is this?

Men don't do this. It is only women.

Crackly female voice occurs across nations. Americans, Brits and Aussies all do the same voice.

This global aspect is important.

It is also of note that this kind of speech is new. It is a recent phenomenon.

What are these women doing? Is it intentional or are they unaware? Is it a tactic?

Women don't seem to notice what their voice is doing. But then it does seem like it is a purposeful change in style of speech.

The subject or context of the conversation seems to play a role. Often the crackle comes in at a conclusion and also sensitive part of the expression.

It's as though the crackly part is distinct from the earlier speech. As though a change of mood occurs.

It's like a crackly clause that should be understood separately from the earlier expression.

There are many colours on the vocal expression, which can be chosen or occur without awareness, such as falsetto, natural, high and low pitch, high and low volume, nasal or chest voice, etc.

Perhaps crackly voice is a colour on the pallette chosen for specific effect or perhaps we should find out why it occurs without awareness and what it means.

Is it an attempt, consciously or not, to mimic a male voice?

Is it an attempt to appear sexy, mimicing a sexual moan? But women perform this style with other women (both being hetero).

Does the crackle de-escalate a sensitive subject?

Is it a parroting of celebrities, like Kim Kardashian, where woman try to mimic her in hair style, eyebrow style, lips, butt, mascara and even vocal character?



Some thinkers in the US call this phenomenon Vocal Fry. Some studies can be found to unravel the mystery. Many have noticed, such as many actresses and even Naomi Wolf who advises against this style.

It is interesting that women from the US speak in a higher register with more nasal resonance than UK women, who already speak in a low register.

Even male actors from the UK find that their voice hightens in pitch when they do American accents.

But men don't tend to crackly their voices at all.

There is a style of masculine voice that is often referred to as Gravely. But it's not the same. Male gravel voice is mostly a conscious technique applied with specific intent. A man can use gravel to sound manlier or to sing the blues.

The voice of Batman by Christian Bale is an intentional effort to disguise his true idenitity and to sound more malicious and scary.

But acting is not a good place to start. Acting requires over acting. Acting requires vocal, facial and bodily techniques to exaggerate a character and create a brand. Especially with voice actors.

What we are talking about is not acting, but just being a normal person.

Although, actors like Jason Statham express no difference between acting voice and normal voice.

Statham speaks with a naturally whispered and gravily voice.

The point of this article is to make you aware of the different expressions people employ when they communicate with you and that their various qualities mean something in the mind of the expressor.

Bodily behaviour can tell you something hidden in the mind of the person exhibiting the behaviour.

Crackley voice is another tell tale sign of what your expressor is thinking.

As yet, crackley voice is still a mystery. But at least be aware of it. See if you can unravel the mystery yourself.

Snowflakes - Where do they come from?

The term Snowflake is a nascent term used metaphorically and pejoratively to describe those people in the social and political forums of our time, as people who can't and won't tolerate anything difficult.

Snowflakes melt under the heat of a situation.

Difficult things include aggression, antagonism, conflict, negativity, anything bad especially if directed at them.

Snowflakes need counselling when they hear bad words. They are traumatised by arguments. They fall to pieces in the presence of conflict.

Snowflakes have sought safety in numbers and become a political force to destroy all bad things and the people who harm them with words, facial expressions and vibes.

They have their own terminology now:

Triggering, micro-aggression, unsafe spaces, hate speech...

They have created and manipulated terms to denigrate what they call offensive behaviour.

They protest against their feelings being hurt by negative behaviour, but instead of growing a spine, they attack the aggressor, the offender, from the safety of their bedroom or the safety of a protest. They will demand counselling and the removal of their attackers.

Snowflakes have turned traditional weaknesses into strengths, weaknesses not to be overcome but to be maintained and protected and promoted as virtues.

Policy and law now protects them. But protects them at great cost and consequence. This is the problem we need to solve.

The power of the snowflake movement, especially if it continues to grow on its current trajectory, will harm more than its target ever could.

Almost nothing true or thought will be said.

The ideal world of the snowflake is one without disagreement, argument, debate, critique.

The traditional virtues of free intellectual, rational discourse are reversed and demoted to the status of sin. Sin beyond forgiveness. Sin on pain of damnation and punishment.

Resilience, robustness, courage, fortitude, adaptability, honesty, all sin.

Even managerial, parental, governmental discourse and direction is reduced in its execution:

Directions, orders, demands, requirements, expectations, policies, from these organisations, all diluted to requests and suggestions.

This is a world where all important issues, tough decisions, difficult problems are vetted before being discussed.

A world therefore where serious problems are not solved and therefore continue to their end, where all discussion is ceased at the first offense. Where progress is ceased at the point of negativity. Where tough decisions are rejected. Where all difficult occupations and pursuits are left vacant. Where fear is preferred to courage.

The ideal world of the snowflake is a world of fragile, scared, unadaptable, weak people in charge and control over society. A world of people who rule by a fascist doctrine using a metaphorical sword to threaten any opponent, but who will drop to their knees before a real steel sword and accept their very real execution.

Snowflake World is a world that will be easily crushed by any real outside aggressor.

So where did Snowflakes come from?

We weren't having this discussion of how to survive snowflakes ten, twenty a hundred years ago. These people were the downtrodden, timid voice of the weak the meak and pathetic. They were jeered at, ostracised, ignored and ridiculed. They were powerless abberations anathema to society.

Now they advise law makers and policy makers. They are supported in schools and universities, employers and governments. Their voice is loud and powerful.

How did this happen?

Three things:

1. The Internet.
2. Politicial Correctness.
3. Modern Parenting

No surprise. These first two modern forces have enabled a myirad of minorities from political poverty to political power.

Without the Internet, minorities cannot consolidate globally nor spread their ideology.
Without PC, minorities must have their voices heard and their opponents banned.
Parents raise children intentionally or unavoidably to be weak.

 The Internet has enabled a minority rights movement through consolidating members, organising global protests, spreading information globally, responding to more and more pervasive opportunities for their targets (those in opposition are also spread across the Internet), discovery of more badness in the world (more news and current affairs, panel discussions etc available to watch and that trigger them).

PC bans opposition as hate speech. It is easier to garner support when you have no opposition. PC diminishes the power and effect of previously accepted behaviours and principles, such as open debate, freedom of expression, unbiased teaching, even language use. PC forces everyone to change their terminology to avoid offending people and to encourage and promote their ideologies, often by force of law and employer policy.

Modern parenting suffers two great forces: not being as strict as their parents, and laws and social norms that limit parenting activities, especially discipline, communication, safety.
Children now sue their parents for spanking them or even yelling at them.
Parents want their children to be safer than previously due to modern and new threats, such as paedophiles, terrorists, worsened traffic behaviour. Children grow up avoiding all risks and hazards, over-protected from the evils of germs, foods, the sun, strangers, bullies, conflict, all by the coddling of parents.

Thus, children grow up without resilience, conflict resolution, learning from mistakes, suffering through difficulty to grow stronger. They become adults and find themselves living in a society that behaves just like their protective parents. They work for employers who offer counselling, protections from bullying and harrassment, work health and safety policies, safe spaces, mediated conflict resolution.

These three forces are nascent and growing in power. Their ultimate combined conclusion is what we are seeing glimpses of now.

The meek are inheriting the Earth.

There is one positive conclusion.

Snowflakes always melt.

Stereotypes - Are they Bad?

The term stereotype is a metaphor mostly used and misused in public discussion pejoratively.

A person will be accused of stereotyping someone or a group, as an unacceptable, morally wrong, view and expression.

Stereotyping is defined poorly, but used in the public domain despite academic definition.

I.e. it has more uses than dicitionaries define. It has a range of uses. But there are themes that help us refine the spectrum of uses: a label appplied to groups of people based on erroneous assumptions.

E.g.

Blacks are strong.

Chinese gamble.

Jews are arrogant misers.

Whites are racist.

Lesbians are ugly.

Men are aggressive.

Statements like these are called false and harmful assumptions consequential to stereotyping itself derived by only a sample observation that claims to identify conformity of group members to a behaviour or physical appearance.

These statements also make the mistake of particular to universal, they paint a whole group with the same brush, based on only part of the group.

If we ignore the official definitions, as do most users of the term, we see that what is called stereotyping is merely a kind of generalisation based on observation.

Stereotyping is really just another form of generalising people groups to behave and appear with commonalities derived from enough observations of a group's behaviour or appearance to make predictably accurate conclusions, but also not so accurate consequential assumptions.

These generalisations are described by snowflakes as Stereotyping. Snowflakes and SJWs have manipulated the term to serve their political agenda.

E.g. Stereotyping is argued by snowflake users of the term as a negative, immoral and morally inaccurate activity. This moves the term from empirical to moral. Snowflakes can tackle the moral with a greater sense of social justice than tackling the empirical evidence.

But they cannot ignore the fact that people do generalise ethnic and other group behaviour based on consistent behaviour and appearance. They also ignore the fact that people do live up to stereotypes.

Specific behaviours and appearances repeated over and over again, confirmed by experience are going to be noticed. Further, most people want to be noticed for their group behaviour conformity or have no choice when it comes to inbred appearances, like skin, hair colour and eye shape. People often stereotype themselves.

The subject of the stereotyper, the stereotyped, is responsible for conforming to stereotypes.

Not all groups are ethnic. Other groups behave consistently by:

- Sexual gender
- Sexual preference
- Religion
- Age
- Wealth
- Social status
- Height
- Weight
- Profession
- Hobbies
- Talent
- Generation

Stereotypes, as generalisations, usually work because the members of the groups above consistently appear or behave in these specific ways and to the point of highly accurate prediction.

As We have said before, this activity is helped by two things natural to humans:

1. People behave and appear like herds.
2. People are good at identifying patterns.

Both of these factors are combined to support and ease the act of generalising.

These two factors are likely survival instincts. Therefore our conscious rational awareness occurs AFTER internal awareness of what our brain is doing intuitively, without reason or moral judgment. In survival or evolutionary terms, they allow people to tell the difference between their tribe and those from other tribes and thus to predict dangerous behaviour.

There is a cost in getting it wrong. Not all assumptions are true. But people tend to err on the side of caution and the side of likelihood. People tend to trust their instincts. Also, instinct and intuition occur prior to conscious judgment. You will catch yourself generalising. You can go with it or try and ignore it.

Stereotyping, if we accept the moral version of the misnomer, is not a prejudice based on ideology or immoral antisocial conditioning. It is an irrational intuitive activity that only occurs from observation, so it is not the sole product of an observer. It is a factor combined with the factor of actual  behaviour that concludes with the product. It takes two to Stereotype. Both the object and the subject are required in order to stereotype.

If people stopped consistently conforming to the behaviour shared among their group, there would be no stereotyping.

If almost always, Chinese are seen dining out only at Chinese restaurants, then a stereotypical behaviour is occuring and this behaviour will be noticed. Thus the statement is made, Chinese people are reliably seen to eat Chinese when they dine out.

If taxi drivers are almost always Indian, the statement can be made that most taxi drivers are Indian. This is confirmed by observation.

So even the assumptions consequential to stereotyping can be generalised and confirmed empirically:

Tall people are domineering.

Short people are angry.

Gay men overact.

Obese people are lazy or weak.

Rich people are arrogant.

Tradies are bogan.

Men are stronger than Women.

The assumptions, so called, above are not true for all, but true for some, and this is the point of a generalisation. The assumptions at least have the potential to be true for some, true in general.

Classic and popular stereotypes are often targeted as utterly offensive and untrue and even harmful.

When generalisations are made poorly, derived from moral principles and based on tiny samples, that draw attempts to reason unfounded assumptions, this is understandble. Many stereotypes lead to false assumptions. But that is the rational aspect of the activity. Some assume that if you do this behaviour, you wil do another behaviour.

Many stereotypes include fake rational assumptions that are derived from other than logical activity and or not even attempting to be generally accurate. They might include:

Asians are bad drivers.

Women are timid.

Gays are sex obssessed.

Jews are misers.

This kind of statement is often found to be a fake stereotype or generalisation. It starts not with observation but with a moral position, usually a kind of xenophobia, and uses stereotyping to make the morality seem like a rational logical generalisation. But true and honest stereotyping without unfounded assumption is not derived from a moral position, but an empirically verifiable behaviour that occurs in enough cases to qualify as being generally true.

Morally driven stereotyping is likely to produce unfounded assumptions rather than evidence based conclusions. The purpose of this stereotyping is to negatively discriminate against a group you don't like or you think is inferior. It may also derive from ancient instinct to preserve your own people from attack by others. As always, the instinct comes first and the rational mind kicks in to treat it. Sometimes the treatment is antisocial and an attack itself.

But this dishonest activity does not refute the fact that people behave similarly in groups.

But it's not always intentionally bad. Comedians have always represented people groups as stereotypes. Look at Apu in the Simpsons. The intent, whether good or bad, is to get a laugh. Comedians say what many think. The laughter is a relief, because we can't say in public what we think about people groups and their common behaviours. So it is no wonder some comedy is offensive to those of the group being sent up. The blame is not deserved soley by the comedian. If people didn't find it funny, it wouldn't be made fun of or joked about. But people do find stereotyping funny. Being a comedic setting, laughing feels forgivable or more acceptable than in every day life situations.

Further, movies and TV need stereotypes to perform characters from certain groups.

There are many examples of groups sending themselves up on TV, such as Crazy Rich Asians, Fat Pizza, Housos, Upper Middle Bogan, Kath and Kim, Goodness Gracious Me, Black Comedy.

Most standup comedians of minority race will spend the gig cracking stereotypical jokes about themselves.

Not all stereotyping is funny, or good, or accurate or useful. But it happens, it is often accurate, and we need to know why.

It is a human feature that different people groups tend to do the same things.

But the term stereotype is not a good choice of term to describe what it does. It is a metaphor from the original use of the term, where stereotyping was and still is a printing function.

In printing, a stereotype is a mould that is used to create the same product. Every product of a stereotyping machine will print the same thing. Its more efficient construction enabled printers to avoid the labour-intensive resetting of types and other moulds for the same machine.

The printed product of stereotyping is always the same. But this is not the case with ethnic or group behaviour or even appearance. There are exceptions, so the term is not an exact analogy when used metaphorically as above.

It is not the case that all Indians are taxi drivers or all taxi drivers are Indians. But if you hail a taxi in a country with a large minority of Indians, you are likely to observe an Indian in the driver's seat.

Rather than accepting the misue of Stereotyping, it is more accurate to explain that ethnic and people groups tend to behave a certain way in general. The fact that groups do behave the same in general is not a moral judgment. They do.

Why wouldn't they? They share membership with a community of people from whom they are bred and raised. Children in a group are indoctrinated in the morals, world-views, customs and traditions of their group, which often include rites, practices, prohibitions and other behviours and behaviours produced by consequence of ideology. Genetic heredity explains consistency of appearance.

Consistent behaviour is encouraged within groups, preserved and even enforced, but especially when members live among very different ethnic groups as minorities, to express their ethnic identity publically and to make themselves more distinctive as a group and to satisfy feelings of ethnic patriotism.

To pejoratively label the generalising of groups, as Stereotyping, you reject group and ethnic expression.

Stereotyping in this sense is not bad. It is not good. It is a generalisation based on behaviours observed among enough members of an ethnic or other group to have a high level of predictability.

People who behave like others in their group are confirming the concept of stereotyping.

Most Asian university students do study the same range of disciplines and do not usually study others.

Most taxi drivers are Indian.

If you want to stop stereotyping, you need to ask people to stop behaving and appearing the same way as their fellow group members.

Check-out Free Shopping vs Employment

Robots and Software are taking all our jobs.

Driverless cars, delivery and monitoring UAVs, diagnostic and self-help software, robot soldiers, 3-D printer manufacturing, robot surgery, the sky is the limit.

Already we have seen and are seeing more the elimination of job sectors by non-humans: travel agencies, manufacturing robots, automatic storage and sorting services, automatic takeoff and landing in passenger planes, pool cleaning, even combine harvesting.

And next time you're giggling at your little robot floor cleaner, think again. He's after your job.

Now shopping check-outs. Another entire job sector is heading to oblivion. A sector that mostly employs the most vulnerable: unskilled older people, teens needing money to fund their education and start their careers and independant lives gently, people with disabilities, new immigrants.



What happens to humanity when whole employment industries are gone?

Some argue the future of employment is in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics); the labour force can simply change tack and make all this stuff: build robots, design software.

How long is that going to last before they build and design themselves?

Plus it assumes our children are all geniuses and will become scientists and technologists. They're not all that smart. A fraction of children will have the brain power or inclination to work in STEM. A smaller fraction will have money to pay for the education and training.

Governments tell us, STEM is the future of employment of future generations. Yeah right. A future of geniuses. You don't say Musical performance is the future and so all our kids just need to be talented musicians. Easy.

The future of employment is heading toward disaster: mass unemployment, unreachable higher education (by cost, talent and genius), millions of poor, bored, angry youth and the crime and desperation that follows.

At the other end of STEM are the bulk of jobs that most of us are employed in. But even that isn't immune. Even low-skilled labour will disappear with automatic rubbish collection, gardening, home construction, cleaning services, maintenance, haulage and delivery, hotel check-in, fruit picking, all being replaced by robots.

The news is covered in the checkout revolution. Coles-Myer, Woolworths and others have started replacing checkout staff with pay and go technology.

Where will the company savings on salaries and staffing costs go? In reduced grocery prices? Ha ha ha. LOL. Watch their share prices.

Have a look at the graphs of economic growth compared to employment. They used to follw each other. Now growth and employment are splitting in different directions. Economies grow, employment stagnates. GDP soars, median income falls.

We can't blame the private sector. Their ultimate goal, the aim to which all business activites strive, is profit. They are allowed by law and government to acheive this aim by almost any means. They are supported, incentivised and encouraged to achieve their aim.

Businesses are just doing what they do. Saving costs through sacking staff and replacing them with technology. Businesses have no interest in costly public policy support, such as employment and the macro economy. That's someone else's job. The government.

The government has a lot of sway in how employers employ. Many countries have quotas imposed on businesses to employ a certain percentage of people with disabilites.

The government has the only authority, power and resources to shape and influence, to direct, employers. So what is the government doing about this issue?

Who shapes and influences the government? Us. So what are we doing?


Where are the protests. Where is the public discussion. Where is the Government?

Where is the open public and policy discussion about saving our children from the future?

Where the fuck is Great Thunberg?

She'll die of poverty long before rising sea levels.

Racial Profiling

Watching real police chat on the radio on TV shows, we often hear an assailant being described, with the aim of police patrols identifying and catching them.

Example, "We're looking for a big Islander."

News reports often refer to an incident involving a woman, and a woman of Asian appearance.

Forever it seems, these comments have been acknowledged and we move on. The issue is the event, not the person's ethnic identity. What have they done, we ask, having forgotten the description of the person and now focussed on the event.

Why has this kind of description been used for so long, by reporters, witnesses, the police and even in banter and daily discussion?

Because it's obvious. No thought about it is considered. It's a non-issue.

We as humans group things into classes based on each member of the class sharing a distinct qualtity.

If someone tells you they fell off a chair yesterday, will you ask them "what is a chair?"

You know what a chair is. A chair is a physical object identified by its appearance. Its appearance which includes features that other obejcts have and therefore belong to the group "Chairs".

Chairs are things that have potential for being sat upon, usually a platform for the buttocks suspended from the ground by legs.

It is a no-brainer that human beings have the propensity to be classified in the same way; a physical appearance held among some humans leading to the creation of a class of members that all share the same physical features.

Who would not know what a member of the class Women would look like?

Who would say, if you tell me you are dating an Indian, "I wonder what they look like?"?

It is only because people look a certain way and a way shared among many others, that we create and understand the collective term to describe them.

If every single person was a different shape and colour, we might not have a single word to class them. But they don't all look unique.

Genetic heredity and intra-breeding have created groups of humans that appear to share the same shapes and colours to their physicality.

It is no suprise when the child of two parents shares many of their parent's physical features.

On the contrary, great surprise and some awkward conversation, happens when a child has the features of one but not the other. Example, a black child to two white parents.

This fact that humans come in different features, but those features are shared, is very helpful when it comes to description.

This is how terms like race and ethnicity were easily accepted into societal vernacular.

We even noticed that there was a consistent relation between the appearance of someone and their location on the planet. Not many Chinese discovered by Marco Polo were six foot tall and blonde and blue-eyed. He would have noticed some commonalities in their physcial appearance.

Inheriting dominant genetic phenotypes through intrabreeding is the cause of these common features, we now know, but knew anyway despite the science.

Sure, it's not an exact science. Sure sometimes we get it wrong. But here is the reason why we mostly get it right.

Inter-breeding between different ethnic groups reduces the accuracy. But intra-breeding outweighs in numbers inter-breeding and so we can still tell the difference between most ethnic groups based only on physical appearance.

The proof of accuracy is in the results. The police use racially-based, physically-based, descriptions today and they work most of the time, which is why they still use it.

Recently, a movement has protested this practice. They call it Racial Profiling.

Racial Profiling is when you look at someone's physical appearance and assument they belong to a group AND this group has a propensity or likelihood to behave a certain way.

Well they do!

Not only do some humans share physcial characteristics that usually align them with an ethnic group, but they also behave in a way common to that group.

There are some particular behaviours performed differently by some groups of similar appearance from others.

That is because genetic heredity of physciality does occur among people of the same communities. A community has its own behaviours, beliefs etc.

If a village in Africa intra-breeds, the members will not only look alike, they will behave alike, because they behave within their community's norms, values, beliefs and customs.

This makes it possible to identify not only what village a human comes from, but what behaviours they are likely to display.

Racial Profilng is no more offensive or racist than Furniture Profiling.

It is not a denegration or personal attack or attack on the group of people.

It is an accurate means to identify a person when no other means is possible.

If a burglar is described by witnesses as black or Chinese-looking, the police will not waste resources to search for and detain everyone.

If you think people cannot be identified by their physcial appearance, you are deranged.

We will stop racial profiling when people stop looking and behaving in groups.

Culture Versus Tradition

The term Culture is used to signify the lore and norms, customs and beliefs of an ethnic group, or sometimes just of a group of people who contrast themselves from all other groups.

Example: The Indian culture, the Hindu culture, the Islamic culture, the Western culture, Australian culture, Maori culture, Chinese culture, French culture.

We are told, we are enriched by all the world's Cultures.

But what do we mean by Culture?

How does Culture differ from Tradition? Not much. The two terms are used synonymously.

But both terms originally meant opposing things. A traditition is a behaviour that is sustained through time to be forever unchanged. Customs handed down to generations without mutation.

However, a culture is a growth, a development from the past to the present. Culture is an evolution. It is a change from a status existing in history that has evolved and changed to become what it is today.

Tradition and Culture are diametrically opposed in meaning.

So why do we call the ancient practice of genital mutilation, arranged marriage, female inferiority to male as Culture?

These practices, by which people groups and ethnicities identify themselves, are called cultural. They are in fact not cultures, but traditions.

Thus, traditional culture is a phrase that contradicts itself.

We need to rescue the term culture, because it signifies a development and growth and change from what was traditional.

We thus need to stop calling traditional behaviours and beliefs as Culture. They are not Culture.

They are Tradition.

Culture celebrates the growth and improvement a people group has achieved over time.

Culture is change.

Trump Assassinations

Recently, Donald Drumpf (US President) authorised the assassination of an Iranian General, Solemani, by a Drone in Baghdad.

Two camps formed shortly after.

Those who thought Drumpf's action was correct and good.

And those who thought Drumpf got it wrong.

The argument of the former is that all bad people should be killed, full stop.

The latter argue that all actions have consequences and in this case the consequences are worse than inaction.

An issue poorly addressed is the principle behind all bad people must be killed no matter what.

It is no surprise that the Iranians are now in the process of vengeance.

Iran has already responded by attacking US forces in Iraq as an act of revenge. They are likely to continue.

The problem with the principle of killing all bad guys not matter what is its childish short-sightedness.

The assassinated party was not someone like Bin Laden who was not representing the policy of a sovereign state.

Sovereign states are different from individual terrorists. They play an integral role in global peace efforts. Thus, the assassination of General Solemani was an attack against the sovereign state of Iran.

A similar assassination occurred in Sarajevo on 28 July 1914. And look what happened. World War 1.

And that was a non-state actor!

If we believe that on principle all bad people should be killed despite the consequences, then we should expect a negative reaction from all those who believe in considered global policy and the principles of justice: e.g. fair trial.

Not all bad people are acting on their own authority. Some of them represent, by their actions, the polciy of sovereign nations who are privileged with internationally supported rights.

Drumpf has attacked Iran. This horrible nation is ready to defend itself and in the same way the US is ready.

Some bad people are tools of sovereign nations. You can break the tool, but the tool is not the problem. Why an actor has the tool is the problem.

The tool is broken. The actor has another tool on standby. How well did you address the problem?

The Narrative

Who knows anything about fashion and its whims, knows that fashion doesn't just apply to clothing.

The latest vernacular fashion includes the term Narrative.

Whatever cause you are supporting, or argument you are defending, the term Narrative will feature, if you want to be perceived as being intellectually current and sophisticated, "up with the latest" genius language.

The absence of the term Narrative in your expressions may work against you, in favour of rivals or comrades that include the term.

Everything is now a Narrative.

The term derives from the Latin verb for Telling a Story: an account of events.

But today, the term is misused to replace boring old terms such as Assumption, Position, Argument or anything that summarises in a fancy word what you are saying.

Today though, a Narrative (the noun) is not a personal account, but an objective account, closer to the social policy of a doctrine or interpretation or belief system held by many. Example, the feminist narrative.

The pretentious and the vain are quick to allude or express their wisdom and moral superiority with the latest fashion in words. This paradoxically makes it easier for us all to identify such charlatans, who believe fancy words add value to their authority. They are thus exposed. Everything you said before and after Narrative is now easily ignored and relegated to the status of Fraudulent Bullshit.

Even if what you are saying is correct, meaningful, important, you have tattooed the word Wanker on your giant forehead. Your words become subordinate to your falsity as a pretender.

To expose the charlatan to the public, you need only ask publically what they mean by Narrative and sit back as they clumsily fail to express the concept; often even using more tripe to answer the question.

We advise against the use of pretentious fashion, no matter how impressive it appears.

The Bushfire Merry-Go-Round

Bushfires (Wild fires in the US) are raging again in what Australians predictively call Bush Fire Season. 

This year has been and still is a very bad one. Many dead, thousands homeless, emergency services stretched thinly.

The curiosity is in the annual response to an annual occurance.

Every fire season, the same actions are taken by the Government and respondant agencies. The approach is reactive; putting out the fires with water from fire engines and aeroplanes.

Some prevention is undertaken every year; burning back to reduce the fuel load, meteorological analysis for planning, evacuation planning, respondant planning.

A few curiosities:

1. Nothing New is Being Done:

What is not done well and not well discussed in open is what is popularly called Continuous Improvement: can we do X better; more effective, more efficient etc.

What is missing from all the media and government discussions is the matter of whether we should be trying something else? Can we evacuate better, can we extinguish fire better, can we predict better, etc etc.

Can innovation and science and research play a role?

If it can, you couldn't tell. Nothing new has been evident.

In 2015, a private company joined the CSIRO agency to develop a new Mist Bomb to extinguish fire. Five years later.... not a peep.

In the US, homes at risk of annual tornado seasons usually have bunkers installed. The point is, there was a time before bunkers. So someone at some stage came up with an innovation. Someone asked, what can we do differently?

Aeroplane water-bombing was an innovation. Perhaps innovation is a good approach?

2. Bush fires are being responded to and managed by volunteers: e.g. the Rural Fire Service.

Why are there not professional seasonal full-time responders? 

Volunteers have day jobs. They are compelled to take time off work and are not paid. Stop press: Days ago the Federal Government proposed to employers they should provide paid-leave to volunteers. Better late than never.

Not paying for emergency services is a keystone of Australian policy. Ambulance services are all private in Australia: user pays.

Should we rely on an eternal goodwill from the community? We have thus far, but for how long? The pros are being outweighed by the cons, for the average volunteer. Why would you volunteer to face death every year for nothing? Even less than nothing, because you are going to be out of pocket for training, time away from work and family and other costs.

Volunteering emergency services is a cheap save for the government.

Is not the Government's primary role in any society to protect its citizens? This is the first line printed in Australia's Constitution. We have a Defence Force, but no Ambulance or Bush fire services.

3. Rural Planning has omitted fire season management.

The homes mostly destroyed by fire are remote from services and community centres, such as emergency services and shelters. They are usually surrounded by hectares of forests.

Perhaps some changes in rural planning can be made to address the factors that cause a fire to reach a property. Compulsory bunkers might be an idea. Separation between property and tree line? Ease of access to supporting community centres? Fire-retardant measures, external building sprinkler systems, breathing apparata compulsory. Fireproofing vehicles, compulsory.

Every year, homes are destroyed, people are injured or worse, businesses destroyed, resources exhausted. Every year, a formal inquiry into the disaster.

Climate change proponents and meteorologists predict more frequent and intense bush fires. 

Are we to plan for the next one like we did the last one?