I still love Van Halen.

...so I made this:

 This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Tonight, at six... We enter denial.

One of the fundamentals of Martial Arts, is the stance.

In order to fight effectively, we must operate from a stable platform. This is obvious. This skill is learned through repetition, and trial and error, until it becomes an instant response.

We need to do this, because our 'Natural Default' when confronted by something that threatens us, is to fall backwards with both hands between us and it, eyes wide, loud shout to alert others. We don't necessarily want to be stable when attacked by something we don't understand, we want to flee. And so we put distance between us and it, and try to escape to work out our available options. To regroup.

These are two physical responses.

Our mental responses, however, are exactly the opposite.

The most stable reaction to a mentally confronting issue, is to assess all of the options available to us and determine a course of action. This, like a stance, requires learning. We grow better at this as we develop skills in critical thinking.Because of this, it is not our 'Natural Default'.

That would be denial.

When we throw up a wall of denial, it puts mental space between us and the threat. It buys us time to assess options, and because of this, it is only designed to be temporary.

In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross created what we now know as 'The Kübler-Ross model'. This model outlines the 5 stages of mourning, when we are confronted with the loss of a loved one. It is to be noted that not everyone experiences all 5, and it is not a linear model. However it does break mourning down into 5 recognisable stages:

These are: Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance.

Obviously, holding on to any of these states of mind (apart from eventual acceptance) is harmful to you, and denial is no different.

People who live in denial do so because of fear. They are trying to escape the shock of something. This leads to post-traumatic stress disorder and break-downs if left unchecked.

When we watch the television or read the broadsheets (which is what pleonasts call newspapers), the stream of bad news challenging what we believe we know about the world keeps us in a state of constant mental stress. For example when millions of people in the USA lost their homes when the banks foreclosed in the economic downturn, that is certainly shocking news. Or when AIG and Goldman-Sachs destroyed the American economy in the first place. 

It has gotten to the stage where our collective denial is redeployed with every new news broadcast, as a means of coping with paradigm paralysis.

When confronted with a number of shocking facts, which all fall outside our view of the world as we thought it was, we choose the status quo- we make no decision. 

We enter denial.

Paradigm paralysis is so named because its effect leaves us unable to see the paradigm, or pattern. And that is- what we have all been raised to believe, is a smokescreen for evil deeds.

We have all heard the phrase "the media lies". It has never been truer than now, but for the most saddening of reasons. Of course the established media empires have been shown time and time again to support financial and political agendas instead of reporting news without spin. Now they've fired the journalists and replaced them with gossip columnists and paparazzi.

But believe it or not, that isn't the problem...

The real problem is that it is so hard to find a workable alternative. If that were easy to find, who would care what the established media was saying? It would be the news equivalent of MTV- great production values, cool graphics, low edification versus the History or Discovery Channels (although, to be accurate, the content there isn't always reliable, either).

But it gets worse.

With the rise of Zeitgeist (much of which has since been debunked), people have looked to sources like Truth Theory, Real News 24, Infowars, Prison Planet, News Voice, etc... Well, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.


I'm sure Peter Joseph, Alex Jones, and all the others involved started out wanting to help and spread awareness, but whether they understand it or not, they are exacerbating the problem.

While they would argue they are using the established media's own tactics against them, movies like Terror Storm, End Game, Police State 3: Total Enslavement, and Matrix of Evil are titled the same way tabloid news articles are. They are designed to prey on your fears, to make you hypervigilant, to leave you with Pre-Traumatic stress disorder.

Why manipulate content, spread disinformation, and promote terror? Simple- To be a hero. To make money. To serve their own need to feel important and relevant. And to give us a way to feel like that too.

Blaming shady organisations like The Bilderberg Group though, purposefully avoids suggesting solutions; opting instead to scare you into apathy, highlight your powerlessness, and to convince you to donate to keep the pipeline open. This is fire and brimstone, plain and simple.

And if there is truth in it, you will never know, because all of the subject matter takes place in secret meetings behind closed doors by people who deny affiliation with one another outside of meetings.

The most alluring thing about being into conspiracies is that those involved, regardless of social constraints like class, gender, ethnicity, level of education, or even maturity, feel as though they are part of the knowledge elite- the chosen few that have seen behind the secret curtain, and know things you don't know.

It is a form of elitist snobbery, except it is available to anyone

It makes them feel special, and in extreme cases (of which there are unfortunately many, and that number is rising), they display the same psychological behaviours, affectations, and protection mechanisms (see: denial) as religious extremists.

They effect a morally superior attitude, talk condescendingly to others not of ther faith, seldom offer evidence for their claims, instead opting for insults and over-use of the abbreviation "LOL" as a means to demean and infuriate those who make the mistake of attempting to engage them in logical debate.

Aside from all of that though, the biggest problem in disinformation for money. Last week this story crossed my desk. Claiming "The US Senate wants the entire USA to be a battleground", it is styled in the same manner as other 'truther' sites, automatically appealing to the alt.news enthusiast.

Problem is, the story is intentionally fake, and makes claims in quotes that are unsubstantiated at one end, and patently untrue at the other.

Again, why?

Click through ad revenue. The controversy it created resulted in tens of thousands of unique visits (to which I have just unfortunately added to!) From each visitor the site can offer nine click through ads on the first page alone, as well as an obligatory Pay Pal 'donate' button. If you fell for their bullshit, and wanted to hear their bullshit take on some other bullshit, you can read one of their other enlightening articles designed to do exactly the same thing.

"The US Constitution is gone", anyone?

If you attempt to click the author of the articles bio link, you are taken to the page of his click through for profit website, making any attempt to substantiate the validity of the claim that he has built a following of 800,000 people rather difficult.

But seeing as you are there, you can read all about how "Nth Korea may soon be able to strike USA with ultimate doomsday weapon...", and ad links from here to forever.

Alt.news is big business, people.

And it makes it more important than ever before to be critical of where your news is sourced from.

Who wrote it?

How do they know?

Where did they get it?

Why would someone else give it to them?

How are they still alive, if the power elite want this information secret?

Is their site full of sensationalist bullshit?

Do their credentials check out?

Is this news reported anywhere else, and if so, how do those sites stack up (are they part of a web ring?)

Most importantly, any news that does not facillitate an active comments section is not worth the pixels it's constructed from.

There are a lot of people in the world who are smarter than you, and comments sections of alt.news articles are a great place to hear their ideas and views, especially if you may not have thought of them yourself.

In some cases, they also provide well-sourced contradictory evidence, and in best-case scenarios, they can recommend good news sources.

The only way out of this mess is education about what is really happening now. Forget The Illuminati and The Bilderbergs, they are just distractions. Look at who is in Government, where they came from, what they advocate (all on public record).

Follow the money!

Maintain and develop your skills in critical thinking. But more than anything else, know this:

It's been 49 years since The Cuban Missile Crisis. Most of us grew up under a nuclear umbrella, with the threat of incredibly destructive weapons being aimed at us from birth, 'til death. But guess what?

We're still here.

The sun will come out tomorrow, that's a promise, and there are still a lot of great people in the world. Start at the bottom- locally. Smile at someone, be gentle. Don't engage in debate with crackpots. Take your money out of the bank and invest it in a credit union or community run scheme. Keep some cash in a safe too. Stop smoking right now. If you drink- be responsible. Buy less. Think more...about everything you do and why you do it. Don't make excuses. Get out of debt! Love somebody, even if they don't love you. Learn patience. Open up a little. Respect other people. Help the less fortunate. Learn how your society works, and most importantly, how it doesn't.. Form ten thousand opinions, then throw them all away in light of superior evidence to the contrary. Break free of your denials.

Repeat...

(Edit- 17 April 2023. Remember in 2011 when I wrote about Alex Jones?)

This is knifey, from 'the internet'..



My other blog is big in Alaska!

A Familiar Earth.

People are so strange.

I was reading an article containing colour photographs of London in World War 2, and was amazed at how the colour bought such an intense new feeling of familiarity to them. Instead of being black and white, old, disconnected pictures from another time, they suddenly transformed into scenes I recognised, streets I have walked down, a familiar Earth.

I am always more interested in the comments sections of news articles than the news itself, and while reading through I saw another familiar phenomenon- negative comments for true statements that people just plainly do not like.

Regardless of the truth value of a comment, if it reflects an unpopular opinion, or touches on a subject deemed taboo by the majority, if people can give it a negative vote, they most certainly will.

Here is the comment in question:

""Hitler only undertook the bombing of British civilian targets reluctantly three months after the RAF had commenced bombing German civilian targets. Hitler would have been willing at any time to stop the slaughter. Hitler was genuinely anxious to reach with Britain an agreement confining the action of aircraft to battle zones." - J.M Spaight., CB., CBE., Bombing Vindicated, p.47., Principal Secretary to the Air Ministry"

Every other comment, regardless of how little illumination it brought forth, had an average positive rating ratio of 50%, negative ratings, 0.

Isn't it interesting that in this case, the comment only had negative ratings?

It's not even an opinion, it is a quote, from the principal assistant secretary at the Air Ministry during the war. Click here for more information on J. M. Spaight.

Even though Hitler's crimes are well documented, it seems important to those who rated the quote that he only be remembered in the worst terms possible, even though Hitler's desire to not engage with Great Britain at all is also well documented.

"We won't hear a good word said of him".

The 1938 Time Magazine man of the year, who was a brilliant speaker, a great economist, a great strategist, a skilled propagandist, an environmentalist, animal rights advocate, and breast cancer campaigner, who believed in and pushed science and technology, cancer research (linking tobacco with cancer), infrastructure development, solar energy, jet propulsion, and who saved Germany from the brink of total financial collapse, can not have a good word said of him?

I'm not a fan of Hitler. On May 10, 1940, the Nazi's invaded my ancestral home of The Netherlands. Four days later they had killed 30,000 civilians in Rotterdam. 6 days after they arrived, they had beaten the country into submission by blitkrieg, and the Dutch were forced to surrender. My Opa (Grandfather) and his brothers all fought against the Nazi's in the war, he made The Gestapo's most wanted list.

But something I dislike even more is revisionist history, because if we paint people like Hitler to be thoroughly inhuman monsters, we will fail to see the signs in others that they may lead us down the same path (like Bush/Cheney).

George W. Bush, by all accounts, is a cool guy to have a drink with, can paint really well, he has a great sense of humour. He can fly a jet fighter. That makes him cooler than Tom Cruise. He is also the figurehead to Cheney's "foreign policy", which has brought war on an unprecedented scale to the Middle East, killed over a million Iraqi's, and has eroded the liberties of people all over the world, not just in the USA. It's important to know both sides of every story, or we simply end up ignorant.

That's the message.

This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Freedom of the Press.

Just a quick one, I can't stay away lately!

I was reading the newspaper online (that's my first mistake, right there) about a gangland shooting in my old neighbourhood of Brunswick, here is a link.

In this piece, photographer Tim Carrafa photographed a witness to the crime, in what very much looks to be a situation where she is showing a policewoman an image/images taken on her digital camera. In short- she is giving evidence to the police.

This is a good thing. What's not good, is that Tim, in all of his wisdom, elected to publicly post a photograph clearly showing the womans face, and the fact she's giving evidence against men with guns who have no issue shooting people in broad daylight. The photo in no way launched the (sketchy at best) story over the line of greatness, it's just a hastily grabbed scene, from 'the scene'. And that being so, they could have printed the story without it.

Brunswick is an ethnic enclave, a lot of people who live there know a lot of the rest of the people that live there. This photograph marks the witness for death if she is known to the wrong person, and her identity should have been kept secure, for her own safety.

I think freedom of the press is incredibly important, and I think they should be free to run without censorship. Except in cases where they present a danger to members of the community. This is just common sense. If the witness disappears, it is a tragedy, both for the witness and their family, and also for the course of justice. Testimony from missing witnesses is inadmissible in Court.

So I'd like to ask publicly, what was the photographer thinking? If you Google yourself Tim, share your reasoning behind such a risky submission?


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

The Cult of Voting.

If recent experience is anything to go by, this post should be the final nail in the coffin of my ever having a social life again. In trying to understand the motivations behind voting, I have been abused by people, insulted, accused of being deluded, and shouted down in person and on the internet.

If I was a guest on 'The O'Reilly Factor' on Fox, I would expect this kind of treatment, but to my surprise it generally came from the left direction, not the right. It is reminiscent of pro-Unionists being extremely quick to venomously brand anyone who would dare ask "Why join a union?" as a "Scab".

So what's the deal here? What's going on that is so offensive and morally reprehensible to the good people of the community?

I asked the question: "Why do people vote, when it seems to me to be a see-saw between 2 parties, neither of which offer real or lasting change?" 

If you feel your blood pressure rising at this point, maybe you should hit 'Control W' now, and save yourself the drama.

It seems like a game, where people pin their hopes on the other side, after being disappointed and in some cases literally damaged by the behaviour of who they elected the last time. And when the new Government comes to power, they are affected negatively in different ways (if they're lucky).

Most people I know cheered when Obama came to power under a banner of change. But all that changed is the figurehead. America is broke, beholden to big business interests and banks, still at war in the Middle East, still no decent healthcare, education is still not up to standard, the same old problems.

New Zealand just had their election, and having lived there for a spell, I have grown quite fond of some of its inhabitants. So after reading Facebook posts and Tweets concerning friends voting behaviours, and witnessing their heartbreak when it was revealed the party they had pinned their hopes on (Labour) lost; and that the current (National) Government would remain in power, I wondered why they had bet that way at all?. (Click here for an interesting rundown of the NZ election).

Now I am sad on their behalf, because by all accounts (at least those from people that I trust), the Prime Minister John Key is as you would expect, a Grade-A liar. His victory speech promised more jobs, better wages, and less debt, which are the three things he has managed to do the complete opposite of in his first term as Prime Minister.

And so it occurred to me, as it has so many times before, that the system is broken. Because I distinctly remember whenever Labour was in power in the past, these same people would wring their hands and complain at how they ran the country as well. That's how Labour eventually lost voters to the current Government.

The current system offers you two major parties, and a bunch of others that don't have enough support to get in by themselves, but who often receive votes from people who want to stick it to the majors, or who are attracted to policies they offer (such as The Greens Party in New Zealand and Australia).

As a quick aside- the Greens Party in Australia has many policies I find admirable, but have climbed into bed with one of the major parties in a bid for more seats/power. They're meant to be the alternative to the majors, and I find it horrifying that they would ever consider breaching their morals in a quest for votes. Also, I work as an armed guard here in Australia quite a lot of the time, and as part of this I carry a semi-automatic handgun as part of my duties. The Greens have a policy that most people don't know about, where they seek to relieve me of this weapon, and only allow police to carry firearms on duty. Admirable idea, but the police were the ones who I needed to satisfy in order to become licensed to carry in the first place, so what's the difference? Also, when I am shot dead by an armed criminal who isn't at the mercy of Greens Party legislation, what then? Am I meant to ask him if he would care to hug a tree with me instead? Just an example of a totally un-thought out policy that is guaranteed to result in the loss of lives of some good people who are trying to make an honest living, by a party many people consider to hold their best interests at heart.

You can vote for a minor party who won't get in, or you can vote for one of the majors, both of whom have a long and rich history of messing things up to bring us to the point we are at now. Again, what's the point of this? How will change unfold?

There is a very tasty quote doing the rounds, attributed to Einstein: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Is that not voting? Really...think about it.

And so the invective commences. The belittling attitudes, which I find so fascinating. Voters hold fast to certain unshakeable ideals (a lot like religious zealots), that are based on faith and belief, but fly in the face of evidence.

Let's look at a couple of those:

1. "The wheels of government grind slow, so by relieving yourself of voter responsibility what you achieve is to give more power to the powerful. Your tiny act of voting against the ruling class actually does count, your tiny act of not voting is a vote for the status quo. You could always vote Green - they got 10% and now count for something. In 3 years they might be the opposition. Slowly slowly."

Yes, extremely slowly. This way of thinking is what has entrenched the current system so deeply. Actually believing that the powers that be would ever allow themselves to be unseated by the filthy masses doesn't give our evil overlords the credit they have worked so hard for. And I'm not talking about the politicians themselves, because they are obviously the puppets. I'm talking about the (often foreign) vested interests who hide behind lobby groups, who will do anything they can to retain a Government (the Party is irrelevant, as long as they can be bought or swayed) that will cater to their desires, and in doing so allow them to amass even more of the accumulated wealth of the country, while the people who actually reside in that country face economic disaster and personal hardship.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. Even the press which is owned by Murdoch/News Limited publicly declares on a semi-regular basis the corruption inherent in Governments lying down with big business. Not to mention nations like Australia and New Zealand's obligations to countries like the USA and Britain, which send residents of the Pacific off to fight for countries on the other side of the world (and in the case of Iraq, without an honest reason to do so).

So "slowly slowly" is utterly useless in effecting change, it merely reinforces the illusion of control by voting, and to quote the author of the 'slowly slowly' approach: "...is a vote for the status quo." It doesn't matter who you vote for, you still get the Government.

2. "One has to pick a certain vision and leadership if they actually want to have a stake in what's going on around them. Otherwise you may as well sit back on your sofa and watch the world turn to shit. There are parts of the world where a free and fair election is an unheard of and very sacred privilege."

Is that so? Has the world not turned to shit already? Does voting actually offer you a stake in what's going on around you? How does it change who is pulling the strings behind the scenes? How does it disconnect their voice from your destiny, and return your country to you?

My favourite part of this argument is the 'Voting is a sacred privilege' part. Here's why:

Say I engage you in a game. I offer you two choices, neither of which benefit you. No matter the outcome of the game, nothing will have changed, only the illusion of change occurs. Why would you play it? And yet people do this. It's called gambling at the casino, borrowing money from a loan shark, or voting in your election. But people hold this 'sacred right' to them as if it was, well...sacred!

You have many rights in the Western World, rights that others in China for example do not have. But just because you are allowed to do something (especially when that something is participate in a staged and elaborate smokescreen to represent the illusion of control), doesn't mean it's sacred.

In Australia, there are laws that result in imprisonment if your letter box does not strictly conform to Government standards. I'm not kidding. In other parts of the world, people are free to use whatever they like as a letter box. Does that mean they have both a sacred right, and a societal obligation to ensure they exercise that right, when choosing a letterbox?

And by voting, you don't even get to choose your letterbox. You might get a different colour, but in the end it's given to you by exactly the same trans-global companies that gave you the last one.

Now for my favourite:

3. "People are on the streets in parts of the Middle East, often being shot and beaten because they want the opportunity to vote for their leader. As I said above, it is sacred. Every party in the end will have to lobby to business interests because that is an important part of how economies and politics work. No, you don't have to paint your letterbox, but that doesn't mean you can question why others would want to."

Actually, people in the Egypt are being beaten and shot because they are enraged by the fact that they voted for change, and instead swapped one corrupt power-hungry Government for another. Sound familiar? And suddenly, according to person #3, I am not allowed to question "why others would want to."

Not allowed? Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in stating that people in The Middle East are being unjustly treated because they are raising their voices and asking why their votes mean nothing, then informing me that I am not allowed to raise my voice and ask why my votes mean nothing?

So we have a situation, where voters believe so strongly that their votes mean something, that they take a smug "We're better than you", condescending approach to anyone who deviates from their mindset. And in my experience, people who act this way are closed off to other possibilities, thus the know-it-all attitude. People who are open actively seek debate or questions, because by answering those challenges to their point of view, they reinforce it with facts gleaned from closer examination.

Because you have the right to vote (Read: Take part in a meaningless charade that changes nothing), you only add to the situation by not voting. In essence, you become the bad guy. The scapegoat. It's YOUR fault the party we wanted didn't get in! When in reality, whether a person votes or doesn't, is irrelevant to the corporations that truly run your country for their own profit.

How many times have you heard people say things like "I've been Labour all my life but see Green as having the most progressive health policies with all of Labour's humanist approach to business and welfare. Now we have to make sure that the asset sales don't go ahead. Making money for an elite few while the rest of us suffer the consequences of rising energy costs, no thank you!"?

Sure, you could get your progressive health policies and humanist approach to business and welfare (if they keep their election promises), but you still get ASSET SALES? You'll need that welfare and those health policies, because if you have to pay for State owned assets you sold off to a corporation, so they can sell your own water back to you, you will be a great deal poorer than you are today. Here in Australia, we have to buy our own water. It falls from the sky. It belongs to all of us, it is a natural resource. But we still have to buy it back from someone else, because the Government (both major parties) allow it. They send us off to an illegal war in the Middle East, and make us buy our own natural resources. We pay for both. We shouldn't have paid for either.

4. You've got "...no right to  complain if you don't vote. Pathetic apathetic morons."


Doesn't this sum up the mindset beautifully? If you don't take part in the rigged game of illusory benefit, then you are apathetic (what about conscientious objectors?), pathetic (there's your moral high ground, right there!) morons (Some more negative judgement, without at all trying to understand why some people would choose not to vote). But the sinister undercurrent to this view is the sudden removal of rights from non-voters by voters, or at least the declared intent.


"Because we vote, then we are the right, and we in the right hereby remove your right to complain." That's really something. It's as if you no longer retain citizenship, because you don't want to take part in a corrupt waste of time. And it is this viewpoint, this morally superior, closed off to any other option, resistant to questioning attitude, that is reflected in the way Governments treat their constituents. These people seem to be brainwashed. Led to believe that it is non voters that are at fault for the way their country is run, when it is voters who perpetuate the current model, and in turn reap the (lack of) rewards from it.

I know a few of you are sitting there saying "It's easy to tear down ideas, but have you got anything constructive to say?", and to you I say "Thank you for asking!

I don't advocate voting, it's ineffective. I don't advocate not voting either. That's ineffective as well. Playing the game/not playing the game is not the issue, we need to change the game itself.

The only way this can happen, is if enough people out there in the community realise they're pouring votes down the drain, and come together to form a new political party. This party should stand on one issue alone- to change the system of voting and governance, so that it represents the best issues of the people, and not corporations. Distribute the riches of the country between those that live there, just like Gaddafi did in Libya. This will mean Europe and the USA will no longer be allies, as they are run by corporations and banks, and see any nation that conducts its affairs to the benefit of its people as a threat to the stability of their own political setup. (Just like the USA did to Gaddafi in Libya).

Here is a downloadable .PDF of Gaddafi's 'Green Book'. If you have an interest in either how a society could be run for the people, or want to know the truth as to why Libya was really invaded, you owe it to yourself to read it.

It's a matter of public record that every time a new ruler came to power in Latin America, vowing to return the power to the people, and kick the oil/tobacco companies out, the CIA either destabilised the Government, or assassinated the President. The corporatocracy kills anything in its path, by any illegal means necessary, and we would fare no better.

But if you want a way out, that's it. The game has been unfolding for centuries, and rich families have thought well-ahead to secure their means of accumulating unspeakable wealth at the expense of everyone beneath them.

But even though we've been backed into a corner, and now it's too late to wrest the power back from the 1%, there is absolutely no need to act like a smug, arrogant know-it-all over the game of voting. It's your attitude that got us here, that pushed us so far back from change that now it's no longer available to us. It is your resistance to new information, to other perspectives, that cemented the roof over us. It is your hypocritical arguments that have indeed counted as a vote for the Status Quo- because you refused to participate intelligently in any discourse that would seek to change it.

So how about climbing down off your high horses, coming out from behind your illogical arguments, and join your fellow humans in trying to work out a game plan for survival? This Cult of Voting needs to be shattered- you enslave lesser minds to your rhetoric, and that to me, should be a crime.

This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

― David Foster Wallace, Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate

Vs (From Wikipedia):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting#Arguments_against

Compulsory voting can be seen as infringing a basic freedom of the citizen. Some consider the fining of recalcitrant voters to be more oppressive still.

Some believe that voting is not a civic duty, but rather a civil right. While citizens may exercise their civil rights (free speech, marriage, etc.) they are not compelled to. Furthermore, compulsory voting may infringe other rights. For example, most Jehovah's Witnesses believe that they should not participate in political events. Forcing them to vote explicitly denies them their freedom of religious practice. In some countries with compulsory voting, Jehovah's Witnesses and others may be excused on these grounds. If however they are forced to go to the polling place, they can still use a blank or invalid vote.

Some do not support the idea of compulsory voting, particularly if they have no interest in politics or no knowledge of the candidates. Others may be well-informed, but have no preference for any particular candidate, and have no wish to give support to the incumbent political system. Such people may vote at random simply to fulfill legal requirements: the so called donkey-vote may account for 1-2% of votes in these systems, which may affect the electoral process. Similarly, citizens may vote with a complete absence of knowledge of any of the candidates, or deliberately skew their ballot to slow the polling process or disrupt the election.

Another group opposed to compulsory voting are principled nonvoters. They believe that the political process is inherently corrupt and violent, and prefer to minimize their personal involvement with it. If one adheres to Murray Rothbard's view of the state as a "gang of thieves writ large" then compulsory voting is a form of conscription into the largest mob with the biggest guns.

Supporters of voluntary voting assert that low voter participation in a voluntary election is not necessarily an expression of voter dissatisfaction or general political apathy. It may be simply an expression of the citizenry's political will, indicating satisfaction with the political establishment in an electorate.^{[citation needed]} Former Australian opposition leader, Mark Latham, urged Australians to hand in blank votes for the 2010 election. He stated the government should not force citizens to vote or threaten them with a fine.^[3]

Regarding the 'Occupy Melbourne' Protests.

Thankfully these protests have been gaining traction in the media of late, because the message is important, it affects most of us, and it is a good sign the media blackout and denial have lifted.

I agree with the message, that being, poor people shouldn't pay more tax than rich people, that Governmental representation should be equal for all people; not just those with money, that lobby groups that leverage lawmakers are funded by massive corporations, and that basically; most of everything is owned by a tiny minority, while the rest of us have to pay to live on planet Earth.

And we've all heard the argument- "They should spend more time working jobs than occupying the city". Sounds like a prima facie fair assessment, if it weren't for the fact that thousands and thousands of people in this country alone did work jobs, lost them when those jobs were farmed overseas to increase profit for the shareholders, and now have nothing to do but look for new jobs and protest about the unfair situation we're in.

With all that said, there is a right and wrong way of going about things.

In the link below you can watch a video of police moving protesters on:

http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/occupy-melbourne-riot-police-drag-protesters-from-city-square/story-e6frfkp9-1226172791776

This is their job, they were ordered to do it, and there is nothing wrong with moving protesters on when they have been formally informed that they have a time limit (which was generous in the first place), and that time limit has passed.

When you look at the footage, it shows standard operational tactics being employed, those tactics being correct usage of non aggressive body language (walking with arms clasped together at the front), moving the crowd back in a line and only using proportional force to the threat when necessary. If someone pushes back, it's assault, and they get dragged out of the line and cuffed. How much it hurts is entirely contingent upon their level of cooperation.

But I'm not writing this about the police, I want to talk about the protesters.

Who was the police liason for the protest group? Why didn't they brief the protesters in the correct way to act in a media based non violent action?

When the police move the line forward, you can clearly hear protesters screaming "Get your hands off me!", and generally screaming in general. No one was beating them. They were free to leave at any time, and if they put their hands up and broke the line, they would have been escorted away, not grabbed and dragged.

The point here is that screaming is not conducive to non violent protest. Non violent protest involves singing non confrontational and peaceful songs, linking arms, sitting down, staying calm, and above all- having someone in charge who at all times stands with and communicated with the police officer tasked with liaising with the protesters.

If they really wanted to stay, they shouldn't scream at police and on camera, they should lock themselves to something with thumb cuffs (available from any sex shop) or a bicycle lock, and make their point that way.

Before you accuse me of being an armchair critic, I should point out that in the late '90s I was the nonviolent action coordinator for The Wilderness Society, North Queensland Conservation Council, The Sydney Environmental Defenders Office, and many other groups, leading peaceful and successful demonstrations all over Australia. My job was to brief all protestors in what is and isn't acceptable in a non violent action campaign, and to ensure those orders were carried out, or I would personally hand over any non compliant protesters to the police liason officer myself. I also shared my knowledge in lecture tours of all major Australian Universities.

If you want to have a protest or demonstration, the eyes of the world are on you more than ever. The media plays the biggest part in all of this now, and if you manage your protest effectively, you reach the eyes and ears of the REAL 99%.

If you mess it up acting like screaming victims of police brutality that isn't happening, the people on the other side of the TV screen write your cause off as anarchist bullshit, and you have lost the people you need to further build the momentum of your movement.

Downtown occupation isn't the point. It's only phase one. It's an emotional leaflet drop.

You need to reach the people at home. They need to sympathise with you and your cause (and this won't happen when everyone is wearing kaftans and dreadlocks, sorry). And when they sympathise, letters get written to politicians, massive boycotts are organised against offending companies, criminal proceedings are handed out to guilty politicians and bankers, and then you get the system you want.

It's a long drawn-out process, and you don't get two chances to get Mr and Mrs suburbia involved. Don't write them off as sheep, they are your target audience.

Appeal to them, and get them on board.

In the meantime, stop with the histrionics and disorganised campaigning, and work out how to get your message across positively utilising all forms of media.

Round 1: You've failed.

I'd quickly like to link to a blog that offers a differing perspective even though I don't agree with their thoughts on police tactics. I'm tired, so I won't go point-by-point, but if the author at a later stage wants to have a meaningful debate on it, I'd be happy to.

This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

A Socioeconomic Fairytale.

There's something so dark in us, that sucks out the light.

It's our nature, it's what we're for.

But if we're for something, of course that implies a designer. What designer would make us so we fear monsters, and hunt them all down, 'til all the mythical creatures of this world are consigned to history, in dusty pages somewhere below the high tide line of what matters now?

To the point where, we're forced to make our own?

This world, these lands, have become a monster factory. The more civilised we become, the farther apart we drift from one another, even though there are honestly at least three people sleeping directly above, below, and to the right side of me as I write...

...I don't know them.

I'm close enough to read their thoughts. To hear their restless sleep. Their lonely sex noises. But I don't know their names.

And so we detach, care less, focus inward; in the false belief it offers security from the uncertain, when all that is certain, is death and taxes. And the only way to detach from the latter, is to attach to the former. The antecedent always dictates the consequent.

And as we detach, we kill little lights inside, until vast areas of dark encompass our interior architecture, filling our brittle frames with nothingness.

Like a satellite picture of the Earth with all the lights out. It's beautiful because it's abnormal.

But darkness has always been a haven for dark thoughts, black is a magnetic colour. And evil is the ferrite- hysteresis not anthropomorphism.

So the dark thoughts come- maggots of fear, loneliness, anger, jealousy, flies of arrogance, pride, worms of greed, hatred, apathy crows, leeches of revenge, and pythons of suicide. They all hang off the ribs, or wedge between dirt coloured organs, and in some cases swim through the carotid artery into the very mind itself.

They congregate, and begin to talk amongst themselves, and your mind hears this and believes the sound as its own thoughts. Like a devil on your shoulder.

Like a devil in your shoulder.

And slowly but surely, we become monsters.

You can see them blinking in the daylight, some covered in rags, some covered in jewels, and every conceivable arrangement of forms in between.

Arrogant and grotesque, or timid and malformed, or furious and mutated, they grow. "Lost in the sound of separation".

And without consciously thinking, they perpetrate the acts upon one another. Because the evil has taken root, and has grown, and now it has them.

The acts that take the light away from another, that attempt to drag that other into the gutter we now inhabit. The gutter between humans and beasts, built by civilisation. Fighting over scraps.

One must always dominate the other, and those most evil possess the requisite qualities to accomplish the work, of turning out the lights in us all.

In this story, the monsters rule.

And the good people meet with one another and strategize, ways to strengthen the walls, to enforce the civilisation, to keep out the monsters. And the towers they build of money keep collapsing, and the fear they'll lose those towers make them fearful, and one by one their lights go out, and so the devils speak to them.

And the monsters wait outside the walls, until those inside succumb to the inevitable infection, and their noises reflect delight. A dirty, foetid, evil delight; not the delight of children or baby animals.

'Til the lights go out...

'Til we all fall down.

And we all.

Fall.

Down.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Knifey is currently processing...

Cue dreaded rainbow wheel/old style hourglass icon/screen freeze.

At the moment it's:

"Life: Put food in, shit food out. Wait for death. How's that, Nietzsche/Kierkegaard?"

I'm told this is not the optimal setting for a psyche, so I'm trying to work out something better.


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

The Power of Advertising (To lose customers).

I'll leave the cute storytelling aside for today, I just want to rant about something quickly.



Isn't this CUTE?! What a great idea! And that sofa looks so comfortable!

"Yes", "No", and "So what?"

I call this 'Piranha Advertising', and it works like this: You get a team of creatives together to conceptualise your new campaign. These people are very clever, and think to a brief for a living.

"So what sucks about tram stops the most?" "Oh- I hate those hard seats they have in there." "Let's put a sofa in there!" "YES! And the sofa can reflect the comfort and security you will feeling dealing with ING direct!" "Oh yeah, we're gonna win an award for this for sure!" "Let's make sure the sofa is the right shade of orange to tie in with ING's corporate identity." "Yeah, and let's bolt that fucker down so poor people can't steal it".

See how clever they are?

Not very-. In a town the size of Melbourne, complete strangers aren't likely to feel comfortable sharing a 2-seater sofa with a complete stranger first thing in the morning while on their way to work. And I'm sure everyone else who is missing out on sitting down will be wondering why Yarra Trams let an unrelated corporate entity rip out the much more accomodating seating that was there, so Yarra Trams could make more money, but their customers just get inconvenienced. A lot like those full tram ads that cover all the windows, so tourists who want to take photos can't. Again, because Yarra Trams have sold the window space to a corporate entity. But wait- I thought WE paid for a seat with a view, when we purchased a tram ticket? Who's "fare evading" now?

I call it piranha advertising for one reason. While retaining the services of creatives, and coming up with clever campaigns that grab your attention, and spending thousands and thousands of dollars to decorate a tram stop might be no big deal to ING, all it does to people who think is, it jumps up and bites them in the ass.

Because if they can spend all that money on nothing much, on just a simple ad, where does that money come from?

YOU.

And if they can waste all that money of yours on a campaign, that suggests that they have a great deal of (your) money to throw around on expensive ad campaigns. And if they have a lot of money for that, it means they have a lot of YOUR money for that.

So what?

It means they're charging you too much. It means the profits they derive from the service they provide, are inflated to the point they can pretty much throw them around on zany ideas that could have been even more effectively carried out and much cheaper, had they used better creatives (ie: a simple video aimed at maximum virality).

ING are saying "Look at how much money we have, therefore how successful we are", when really it means "Look how much we're ripping you off."

It's not accepted generally to sell the same thing twice, to two different buyers. If you buy a house with a view, then the realtor sells the windows to a billboard company, someone is paying a big fine.

But when you buy a tram ticket, and if you're one of the first 4 people to arrive at a stop, you should expect to be able to sit down, and you should expect to see clearly out of the tram windows. How are you meant to see your stop sometimes, when the windows are covered in ads, and it's after dark?

These things shouldn't be sold, because we have already paid for them- with our tickets. Let's not get into how Yarra Trams spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with ads demonising fare evaders as they call them. Again, Piranha advertising! They can afford to blow that much money on ads telling people what we all already know, then they're MAKING TOO MUCH MONEY ALREADY.

Ultimately, these ads have the reverse affect for their creators, as public sentiment slowly rises, to the point where people hate the corporation, have no sympathy for the corporation, actively seek to do business with anyone else but that corporation.

They're spending money to make people go some place else.

Looks like the clever creatives at Saatchi and Saatchi or wherever else didn't think of that...


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

The Photographer.

I met an old man at a tram stop last week, Friday, my last day of work.

I got electrocuted, it was their fault.

The old man and I sat on the aluminium seat at opposite ends, I didn't think we'd speak until we did. He mentioned something about the frequency of trams, not in an acoustic sense, but in an "I hope I get to work on time" sense.

I did, in case you were wondering.

The conversation went to politics, as it often does with old men, and I asked him what his trade was, what he did for work.

He said he was a photographer.

I've always admired photographers. I learned the rules in design school, but never connected to them. My breath is always taken by good cinematography, I think they have magic eyes. And photographers too, how they see frames hanging in the air where we just see the ocean, the sky, a tree in front of it.

Even those Real Estate liars who make small damp houses look like Caribbean Hotels, they've got the eye, they just use it for evil. Printing money with their retinas, swapping promise for currency, termites wait on the periphery.

And so I respected this old man, he was one of the few- a visionary, a recorder of history. I listened to his words, and balanced them out carefully. And I found they allied themselves with my own, which silently pleased me.

And so he asked me, "Would you like to see one?", and I said "Sure."

And he told me to close my eyes, which seemed odd for a photograph, but maybe he was part-showman as well. Maybe he relished the big reveal, like those people in home makeover programmes do, or TV shows about previously fat people.

So I closed my eyes, and I left the grey Melbourne morning, and entered the warm, padded darkness of the inside of my skull. Blood pulsed around me in its tunnels. His voice spoke, and it said:

"There is sand in his boots, under the straps of his helmet. His eyes are glassy with tears he can't show, and all he wants is to hold her again."

And then "Would you like another?"

"Yes", I thought I really would.

"The soft blossoms are lit from behind by the blue sky, glowing pink like a freshly rinsed newborn. Their fragile faces wave to the breeze."

And I basked in it...the gentle spring, warmed by the sun, cooled by a soft wave of air sporadically, I'd never heard birdsong in a photograph before.

I turned to ask what he meant by all this, but when I opened my eyes he was gone.

And in his place was a photograph, of me, eyes closed, smiling in a tram stop in the rain.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Rising sadness.

Now is not the time to pour myself into this keyboard...I have to work soon, and work is filled with responsibility. I'm responsible for the lives and safety of two-hundred and fifty human souls. I can't cry there.

I avoid mirrors. I can't stop time from advancing, and other peoples assertion that that advance is significant has taken root in me. Am I really less valuable now, just because more time has passed?

And I thought of an old friend, and reached out. This friend is wise, wise and crazy. My friend seems so carefree, taken by the wind, and floating above the world, yet so wise from all they have witnessed. Smiling, but watchful. Making a joke, while analysing the horizon.

We used to be inseparable, but the time was wrong, and we both had other directions to grow in. Now we have totally different lives, in different countries, with different people. But I still love my friend.

And I think about how few friends I really have, how rare the friendships that I maintain. How no-one knows me any more, the me in here.

My friend wrote back, first time in years, and highlighted all of the parts of them that had changed, until it looked like my friend was coloured in bright yellow. I left it too long. I was scared they might not care.

I have to be honest. And when someone says that it shows you that being honest is not something they normally do. So you caught me out right there. But my feeling is that as much as I hide the real me, the one that only comes out when I break down, I have to admit there is so much I can't love in here.

I ride a machine, and I say ride, because I'm sure as hell not driving. And it takes me to places I feel like I have no choice in going. And I can't work out how to short circuit this machine, this body. So it will do what I need, not what it wants.

I look around, everyone has machines of their own. But some of them steer them, slow them down, speed them up. And I can't work it out. I'm in here.

So this isolation, that I reinforce by absence, that I defend vigorously. It defeats me. I defeat me.

Because I called my heart this morning. And it told me all it wants, is to be missed.

Tears fell out, the pain made noises, I breathed like I was feeling pleasure.

So while my friend floats above the world, I feel like I'm even further away, watching the whole thing on TV.

My fear, my prison.


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Just a thought...part Two.

Oh please oh please oh please...can I serve you some more, you ungrateful bastards?

*People often rush up to me on the street and beg me to solve their lifes problems.

I'm a **famous blogger. My name, is 'knifey'.

Recently, instead of staying up all night researching topics, and feeling tired and trigger happy when I go to work the next day, I decided to do a series of thoughts... things that occur to me when I should be doing other things, and note them here. Maybe they can grow up to be big blogs in future, or maybe just something to think about.

I was ruminating on the feminist movement, and all of the finger pointing that has often accompanied it. Of course men get blamed a lot, and that's because they did it.

But in just the same way as women allowed themselves to be dominated over by a patriarchal husband-figure (to a degree) by convention and societal expectations of the time, so too, were men playing a part.

As wrong as it is, if you grow up with a nigger breaking his back in the paddock for your parents, not only are you probably going to think "Well, that's the way it is", but also wonder where you're going to get a nigger of your own when you buy a farm as well. I use that word on purpose, because if you're shocked by it, you're on the right path.

So in the case of the 1950's nuclear family, I think that men were just trying to be men in the main, obeying their parents conventions, societies expectation, and womens desire to be loved by men. But also, religions demand for maintenance of the status quo. Religion used to play a much larger role in society and family than it does today- even families that didn't really believe in the whole God thing would go to Church on a Sunday, because it was expected.

Men grew up with a woman in the kitchen, so why would it occur to them to change that? Change wasn't big in the 50's. And I know it causes outrage to think that Dad comes home after work, and gets served by a woman who spent all day cleaning the house, looking after the children, and trying to keep her makeup perfect; but in the minds of men, they were paying the mortgage, car payments, and putting food on the table, so why not? Besides, Mum did it too.

Clueless idiots? Sure! Evil overlords? Maybe not so much...

So apart from the higher-ups that thought up the systems the rest of society lived by, I think mens main crime was a crime of ignorance.

I know as much as it was frowned upon to divorce back then, men also suffered their whole lives under societies expectation... trapped in marriages they maybe never wanted in the first place. Society says: "Think of the children" (which religion says it is your job to create, and to do so within wedlock, and blah blah blah...)

So I put it to you that men were controlled too, and while I in no way seek to belittle the suffrage movement or feminism, I think there is a dimension there that is worthy of consideration.

Just a thought...



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

*Not true.
**I wish.

Just a thought...Part One.

The reason we don't have the supertech future all of us (boys) dreamed of, is because the superrich build everything on the cheap with low quality materials and cheap imported labour, and leave the rest of us with nothing, except iPads that we bought ourselves, as a colourful distraction to the fact that not only don't we have amazing spaceports and personal jetcopters; the world is turning into a trash heap that they'll all leave us on to die.

Am I mad about it? Not really- the superrich are pretty goddamned smart, don't you think? They may be heartless, but they really can see a concept through!


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.

Unshakeable faith.

A lot of the time I talk about me on here, and sometimes I talk about "them" (whoever they may be, dependent entirely on the subject matter at hand).

Today I want to talk about you, and by that, I mean I'd like to open a can of worms or two, and see if you're willing to challenge yourselves, to examine your inner workings, and to update yourself- throw away useless old thought processes or behaviours that serve to hold you back from self enlightenment. By this I simply mean, knowing your mind and why it does what it does, as opposed to the religious or New Age method hinted at by the term "enlightenment".

I want your thoughts, responses, arguments (either below in my comments section, or to my email. Try and base your responses on reason not emotion. Emotion is very strong but it is also the navigation method favoured by small children and manipulative adults, so I'd like to keep it logical.

Some people have what they may call a very "strong" stance on certain issues. Issues like abortion, religion, things like that. And oftentimes, we look at those people and think "Wow- they must really know what they're talking about, they seem to have all the answers." Other people view them as smug, brainless, self-satisfied pleons that will avoid an actual argument that may challenge their belief structure at all costs. And by "actual", I mean logical.

The problem with saying "I'm conservative!" or "I'm liberal!" is that you've chosen a side before you've heard the argument.

Political parties are modeled on 'where they stand on the issues', so voters can quickly identify which party generally represents their views on a blanket of issues. Or so other voters can give up voting, because they realise the futility.

So if we're talking about abortion for instance, there are several different places you can stand. Let's make abortion our political issue for now, and take a look at what the different teams have to say about it. Afterwards, let's take a look at what logic tells us, and see what happens then.

Pro life- rights of the unborn child.

When there is talk of ending the life of an unborn child, emotions run extremely high, and rightly so. It is natural (one would hope) to protect the innocent, and so this often conservative view is exploited by right-wing and Church groups as a powerful political tool.

A typical argument is that (as they believe life begins at conception) aborting a foetus is exactly the same morally as murdering a baby who has been born, or infanticide (which is obviously a crime).

This provokes powerful images in the mind of the reader, and successfully galvanises opinion quite strongly one way or the other.

Normally I'm all for Church-bashing to be honest, but I'd like to point out what I think is a rare and wonderful statement from the United States Senator for Massachusets, John Kerry:

"I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception. But I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist...who doesn't share it. We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."

This statement sent right-wingers in the U.S. into a frenzy, inviting responses saying it "...is like saying you wouldn't ever drown your own children in a bathtub, but have no problem with other people doing it", (which is simply bad logic). The correct assertion would be to say it is like saying you wouldn't ever do something harmful but legal to a child, but if it was a religious custom of others to do this harmful but legal thing; due to the constitutional separation of Church and state, and also due to the fact that the law currently allows for this thing to be done, you are legally and constitutionally powerless to inflict your morals onto that group of people. Example: circumcision in the Jewish community.

Emotionally navigated people will be quick to point out the level of damage to a person between having their foreskin removed without anaesthetic is trivial compared to the level of damage experienced by a person who undergoes a procedure designed to kill them, and they'd be right. But we're not measuring levels of damage here, we're constructing logical arguments based on facts. Just because the facts don't match your argument isn't the facts fault.

Standing up for the law of the land, against his own religious moral compass is an act I wholeheartedly applaud, as it is a logical, not a moral one.

Pro choice- Rights of the Mother.

I feel that this is a bit of a misnomer, because this topic travels farther than simply a Mothers rights, but also the rights of the family, the community, and the child itself. But to keep it neat, we'll stick to the Mother for now.

If a woman finds herself pregnant, she no doubt is confronted with many thoughts and feelings regarding the quality of her life from that point on. Some celebrate the news, some dread it, and some vacillate from one to another.

In the same way Church groups wield Pro-life arguments as a flag for morality, left-wing/liberal groups use this one. Again, it seems fairly obvious to a liberal person that a woman should be allowed to choose whether or not to see a baby through to term when she has been raped. This is a scenario most of us would give anything to avoid, and most of us would deem it in very poor taste to attempt to make a person in this situation commit to a course of action we decide for them.

So leftists feel justified in saying "It's a womans choice, and we have no say in it". But what happens when we give the example of a girl with a lot of money and very questionable morals, who makes an active decision to not use birth control on an ongoing basis, and to instead rely on abortion procedures 4 times a year instead?

Statistics indicate that while rare, this happens. In this instance, the Mother has utilized her legal right to choose. Few, even among the left would applaud her decision making faculties. Should abortion be legal under such circumstances? Or should it be legal the first time, and after that you had better have an amazing excuse? Or obvious habitual 'offenders' could have their right to abort revoked?

OK, so most of us already know where we stand on this issue. We generally magnetically bond to one argument or another, according to our already-present system of morals and ethics. Sometimes we can be swayed, for example when a hard core Conservative sees the pain and fear in his unemployed and terminally ill daughters face, when her sexual partners condom broke, and decides his morals aren't worth the pain of his daughter, who has no chance of being a good Mother.

Now let's consider an an amazing statistic, revealed through regressive analysis by the modern champion of contemporary economics, Steven Levitt... Levitt uncovered an amazing and previously unexplored reason for why crime in certain areas of The United States dropped so markedly (as much as 50%) since the early 1990's.

The media (groan!) was running with the officially endorsed reasons: Greater gun control, more police on the streets, etc. But the reason crime dropped so markedly, was actually due to a landmark controversial decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion in 1973.

It was called Roe v. Wade.

Put simply, "...the women most likely to seek abortion- poor, single, black or teenage mothers, were the very women whose children, if born, have been shown most likely to become criminals. But since those children weren't born, crime began to decrease during the years they would have entered their criminal prime. Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime." (Stephen J.Dubner- New York Times Magazine).

So now, instead of looking at the issue from one perspective or the other, we now have a new contender for our attention and measured response.

Back in 1786, when I first undertook undergraduate studies in Philosophy, we encountered in a tutorial the perennial problem that all tutors love to tease their students with, regarding 'the maximum good'. This problem is simple to explore (but harder to resolve), and sorts the sheep (idealists, morally unshakeable, and religious types) from the goats (logical thinkers/philosophers). Because the course was one in philosophy, I took the second position, and was held in utter contempt by the rest of the class for the duration of our shared education together.

A man enters your room with a gun, and says you have one choice. 1. He will shoot you in the leg, or 2. He will shoot you in the head. Choose one. For the purposes of the exercise, we won't delve into whether you also have a gun, if the police are on their way, or if you are an expert in Krav Maga and have little trouble relieving bad people of their weapons.

Who said 1? All of you? Unless you are suicidal, this is normal. It ensures the maximum good for you. The benefit is clear. Now that we understand the premise of the game, let's play on...

You are a vegetarian. A man corners you and convinces you that if you don't eat a piece of cooked bacon, he will detonate a bomb killing thousands. This too is a no-brainer. You may have very strong ethical reasons for protecting the lives of animals, but this animal is already dead and processed, your consumption of it won't provide a demand for more meat, and you can save thousands of lives by eating it. The maximum good clearly lies in eating the damn bacon.

Here's where it gets hairy: A man with a gun tells you to shoot two of your friends dead, or he will kill a random baby. That's two lives against one. Two lives you interact with and appreciate, versus one you don't know, that has hardly begun. But you have to shoot them, which is hard. He can easily kill the baby. The maximum good dictates he kill the baby. But that's abhorrent, isn't it?

What if you merely have to choose who he kills? What if you don't have to watch? What if it's the baby versus one of your friends? What if it was one of your friends, versus a future baby that is yours? What if it was one baby you didn't know versus another baby you didn't know? What if it was you versus the baby? As you can see, it gets harder.

In the example given to my class, it was 10 people or a baby, and you had to do the killing. I shot the baby, so you're probably not talking to me now either. But the maximum good dictates the baby has to die, because it comes down to the pain of ten families versus one.

In reality, none of this matters, because situations like these rarely happen (philosophers don't run around armed conducting heartless experiments like that), and because I have completed every level of Krav Maga training short of instructor.

So why all these examples? Because instead of looking at the argument from a Pro-life versus Pro-choice perspective, we can look at it with the help of our new tool- the maximum good.

If a woman wants an abortion because she can't support, or feels she wouldn't love a baby enough, it is no longer her versus morality. It is her, backed up by the fact that statistically, her baby could go on to live a life of crime, hurt or kill people, end up in jail, or die anyway after what amounts to a miserable life; versus 'morality'. An interesting observation is that those toughest on the liberties and lives of criminals, and those that advocate the death penalty the loudest, are conservatives who have fought to ensure that criminal was born and not aborted in the first place.

Of course not every baby from a poor, black, unemployed, drug affected teen mother goes on to be a bad egg. But statistically, the chances are greater.

Through all of this, I'm not attempting to get you to change your position on abortion, but I would like it if you simply thought about what it is you base your beliefs on, and make sure they are consistent with what you may choose if you look at the problem through the eyes of the maximum good, or from statistical analysis. Note that I didn't state where my opinion lies, so I can't be accused of trying to win votes for my argument.

Unshakeable faith is the inabilty to see reason, or to respond to evidence. Kinda like not believing in pancakes, even though they're right there for you to experience. When I put it like that, doesn't it sound crazy to not think about why we think the things we do? I hope you agree, and embark on a journey to discover what your thoughts actually are, how you came by them, and if they really are the best fit for you.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.