Dark Universe Version 2.0

I’m supposed to write here about what to expect to find from some slave narratives. I don’t like the assignment. Besides the fact that I don’t want the world to know how ignorant I am as I declare everything I said in this post as false in the next post I am supposed to write…I don’t like the fact that it’s kind of hard to write this post in the first place. I’m writing about something I haven’t read yet. There is no way this will help me in any way except to make me feel bad about how much I don’t know, or proud for knowing everything in advance (yeah RIGHT, like that would happen). It’s a bad assignment.

Anyways, now that I’m done with my useless ranting, lets move on to the slave narratives! Let me tell you what I expect: lots of violence, lots of disturbing information, lots of bondage, lots and lots of bad words, a load of anger, enough racism to make up for all the anti-racism movements that have taken place throughout this century, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of hope.

Now that’s the vague, emotional description of what is to come, but I can’t really predict any more than that, so lets leave it at that.

I know that slavery is a sick institution based on people who thought up guns quicker than the others getting some kind of right to make the others do whatever he wants, which is such a primitive way of thinking that it’s hard to believe humans can call themselves civilized beings. It’s the best and worst of capitalism in action, where the elite manage to get workers to work for even less than hardly any pay: they make them work for no pay at all.

Now get ready for some really cold-hearted thinking, as I am going to analyze slavery with no compassion at all, from a purely economic perspective.

One could say slavery was the most efficient system for generating production, though the measures taken to keep slaves under control, and the high initial costs of the slaves themselves, might counter this way of thinking. For instance, feeding the slaves as little as possible to keep them alive and working might not be a good idea, as the slaves will not be able to produce as much as a healthy worker could. Also, measures taken to keep the slaves in bondage such as hiring guards may make the institution less efficient. The concept of forcing slaves to work, which generates a general hatred by the slaves towards the owner, will also lessen production. The willing, barely paid, semi-healthy, selectively chosen worker may be a better option.

Anyways, getting away from that gruesome way of thinking, slavery can be an efficient source of production, and many people took full advantage of it. It shows how low people can go if it means they live a better life. It also shows how terrible the system of capitalism can get in terms of using people for production.

How can we escape this terrible system of capitalism which, although run by humans, manages to treat humans like tools, or less? The Communist movement tried to solve the problem, though it failed as it was unable to move beyond Socialism. Besides, the world envisioned by them was one where “knowledge” and “technology” do not matter and are therefore ignored. Is it impossible to prize knowledge and science while also valuing human life, without collapsing within a few years?

(Now, before I continue, for those who think I am going way off topic, I’ll just say that this is a problem that must be approached at some point, and is related in some ways to slavery, so I decided to approach it right here, right now.)

There is a solution, and though it seems to be a bit impossible, it is a solution that we can reach at some point. It involves a word many people think is stupid and childish by now, thanks to stupid and childish T.V. shows and whatnot. We need robots. Yes, we need automatic machinery which will do work for us. This way, we can have production while also protecting human values. I am horribly offended by stupid directors who make stupid science fiction movies where machines rebel and take over the world and do whatever it is they do when they are not directed by humans into doing things. This is one of two solutions to the problem of human values and hierarchical society we face right now, and I think we should put all of our hope in it.

Of course, the other solution is not as dreamy, and is very uncertain, and I’m not sure about telling it here just yet. If enough people really want to know about it, I might talk about it sometime, but I warn you, it will only disturb you about what solving the problem of hierarchical society really means.

I encountered a strange problem where the paragraphs in my posts would be separated by an unnecessarily wide gap.

To solve this, I had to directly edit the HTML of the post. This is done by clicking the HTML button located on the toolbar above your post when you are writing or editing it. In it, if you are encountering this spacing problem, you should find lines which are entirely composed of the following code: <p> </p> or some variation of it if you have an alignment other than the default one (like centered or justified).

To get rid of it, just simply delete the thing. Highlight it and delete it, or do it some other way. There can be empty lines, as it won’t affect your post. Just get rid of them.

I don’t know XHTML, but it’s fairly easy to figure out these things if you check your HTML and compare it to your post and what looks like on the site. As people fear, I will soon be teaching myself how to use XHTML…and I’ll share tips I find with you so all of you can take advantage of them. Stay tuned!

Welcome to one of the most heated topics of this century! Racism is defined by Wikipedia in the following way:

Racism is commonly defined as a belief or doctrine where inherent biological differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, with a corollary that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

In some places in America, racism has already been established as taboo, and it is only a matter of uprooting the subconscious feelings reflecting racism in certain people. However, racism does still exist, and it is still strong in American society.

For instance, if you look at the Wikipedia article on racism, you will notice on the top the following notice:

Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled.
Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.

Even Wikipedia realizes the danger of letting just anyone edit this topic. Racism is still not universally accepted as being something bad.

Now here’s an MSNBC article on the recent shooting that sparked a ton of anger and criticism. Now, this is a common identification of racism. We know that shooting potentially represents strong racism in the police. However, there is a lot of racism that we do not know of.

Therefore, I am now going to review the general history of racism in society. I will try to be brief with each subject, as there is quite a lot to cover.

In the Code of Hammurabi, 1760 BC, one can find evidence of an already established institution of slavery:

• If one finds a slave who has run away, and he brings the slave back to his owner, the owner will pay two shekels.
• If the one in debt sells a slave to pay his debt, and the slave is good enough, there can be no objection.
• If a slave strikes its owner, his ear will be cut off.

Though not necessarily a race-based institution, the system of having people who have less rights or no rights at all and are bound to a master, is long established.

The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1900s?, was one of the biggest institutions based on race. It was part of the Triangular trade, and an incredible number of slaves were exported to primarily the Americas during this time. It was economic necessity which started it, but America’s culture eventually formed around it and kept it in place, so that even non-slave-owners felt their superiority to blacks. A statistic of the magnitude the slave trade states the following.

The widely accepted view of the arrival of 10 million neglects to state how many left. Estimates range from 40 million to 100 million from both the Arab Slave trade and the Transatlantic trade. (see Arab slave trade). It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had Slavery not taken place. But many more died in the villages fighting their enslavers, many more died in the dungeons and many died aboard the ships. Many Africans either committed suicide or were thrown over board to lighten the ship or to make insurance claims. It is estimated that the Portuguese trade was under estimated by 50% and the British trade by a 1/3. Then there were those who died by the indirect actions of the slavers, those left to starve, those who died of European diseases.

The Indian Removal Act, 1830, was where all Native Americans in the United States were moved to reserves in the west. This was the end to a long era of struggling and suffering by the Native Americans due to western frontiersmen backed by the government pushing them farther and farther west while taking more and more of their land.

The Jim Crow Laws, 1876-1965, were laws passed by individual states and counties which restricted the rights of African Americans.

The Scramble for Africa, 1880s-1914, was the fight between European powers to conquer as many parts of Africa as they could. Resistance by the Africans was crushed, and the whole of Africa, with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, was soon conquered. The Africans inhabiting the colonies of Africa were treated like economic tools and property. A famous example of how bad treatment of Africans could get was the Congo.

Léopold II, who personally owned the colony starting in 1885 and exploited it for ivory and rubber, would impose such a terror regime on the colonized people that Belgium decided to annex it in 1908. Including mass killings and slave labour, the terror had made between 3 to 22 million victims. This prompted Belgium to end Leopold II’s rule, under influence from the Congo Reform Association, and to annex the Congo in 1908 as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.

The British Raj in India, 1858-1947, where India was exploited for British profit. An example of the racism in India is the Amritsar Massacre.
The Rise of Nazism, where many different minorities were persecuted. A paragraph from the Wikipedia article states the following.

Hitler also claimed that a nation was the highest creation of a race, and great nations (literally large nations) were the creation of homogeneous populations of great races, working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from races with “natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits”. The weakest nations, Hitler said, were those of impure or mongrel races, because they had divided, quarrelling, and therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic Untermensch (Subhumans), mainly Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and so called anti-socials, all of whom were considered lebensunwertes Leben (”Life-unworthy life”) owing to their perceived deficiency and inferiority, as well as their wandering, nationless invasions (”the International Jew”). The persecution of homosexuals as part of the Holocaust has seen increasing scholarly attention since the 1990s.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive order 9066, 1942, where some 120,000 Japanese were moved to interment camps and kept there throughout World War II. Most people affected by the Japanese American Internment, of course, were not enemies of the United States in any way.
The Decolonization of Africa, 1951-1976, a movement that seemingly ended racism in Africa. However, the reality was that quite a few of the new free African nations were run by rich whites.
The Apartheid Era in South Africa, 1948-1994, where Africans were discriminated against. The white minority controlled the government of South America during that time.
Racial Profiling in America, which is “the inclusion of race as a primary determinant in the characterization of a persons considered likely to commit a particular type of crime”. One particular example of this is the following:

In Los Angeles in December of 2001, a man of Middle Eastern descent named Assem Bayaa cleared all the security checks in the airport. He was an American citizen and he got on a plane to New York. He had barely gotten settled in his seat when he was told that he made the crew uncomfortable by being on board the plane. Once Bayaa got off the plane, he wasn’t searched or questioned any further. The only consolation he was given was a boarding pass for the next flight to New York. The luggage he had checked wasn’t even taken off the plane he was originally on. He filed a lawsuit on the basis of discrimination against United Airlines, who filed a motion that said that because of national security, they don’t have to obey civil rights protection laws. The motion was dismissed on October 11, 2002. The district judge ruled that a pilot’s discretion “does not grant them a license to discriminate,” (The Advocate, Santa Clara University School of Law Newsletter).

And that’s as far as I will go for now.

Any comments including additional, major examples of racism will be appreciated. I will try to update this article as frequently as possible according to contributions from others. Also, additional sources will be much appreciated.

Thank you for taking your time to read this article.

People need the truth, and people need entertainment. Those are two of the main reasons most people watch TV…to get facts and news, and for entertainment. So a successful combination of these two things, SATIRE, is bound to do well.

Generally, public news is very factual, but can be serious and sometunes even depressing. For instance, read this article on the “Modern Jack Ripper” and tell me it’s uplifing. However, we all must approach the truth somehow, even the biggest problems in society, and it won’t happen throught watching popular sporting events. So what can we do?

How about covering the important problems in a very sarcastic, funny way, while basically ignoring the real detailed facts which will probably cause nothing but grief and confusion. Satire is a great way to approach any issue, no matter how minor, as it is meant to be entertainment and does not necessarily have to be important, like the news must be. It’s an important tool in putting problems into words while leaving what to do about it to the common person. People do not want to learn about a serious problem without any offered solution to it…so why not just expose it in the form of entertainment and laugh it off? Then, later on, the person may reflect on that issue without somehow hating the satirical program for it.

I was about to add a short satirical clip from youtube, but the school computer won’t let me go there so I’ll just add it later. (Be warned, if any of you are pro-Bush, there is an anti-Bush message in there, so don’t watch it. And don’t whine to me about how untrue it is, because it’s completely your fault that you did not read this message or did not listen to it.)

EDIT: Here it is. Remember, it’s offensive to Bush lovers. If you start whining to me about my views on Bush, I’ll just make fun of you for not being able to follow the simplest of simple instructions.

This blog has now been officially REVIVED!!! Sorry, for reasons I could not blog here for a while…but now, you can expect the unnecessarily detailed blogs I have written before. Let me begin with the Satire Blog I was supposed to do….

By the way, this blog has now been upgraded to Version 2.0! Whatever that means, it better be good….

When you approach something you think to be EVIL, you must always begin with a stubborn assumption that the thing you are looking at is NOT EVIL. This means you must try to find proof from various trustworthy sources that there is a reason to the action you considered to be EVIL. I assure you, almost all things in this world are not purely EVIL, as they have an explanation. For example, hearing all the talk about the EVILness of the 9/11 attacks, I decided to approach this my way. Here is what I found:

Gulf War and start of U.S. enmity

Following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had put the Saudi Arabian ruling House of Saud at risk both from internal dissent and the perceived possibility of further Iraqi expansionism. In the face of seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia’s own forces were well armed but outnumbered. Bin Laden offered the services of his Mujahideen to King Fahd to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army.

After some deliberation the Saudi Monarch refused bin Laden’s offer and instead opted to allow United States and allied forces to deploy on his territory. Bin Laden considered this a treacherous deed. He believed that the presence of foreign troops in the “land of the two mosques” (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. After speaking publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops he was quickly forced into exile to Sudan and his Saudi citizenship was revoked.

Shortly afterwards, the movement which came to be known as al-Qaeda was formed.

Now, whether you think this reason is adequate is your choice, but you must also remember that these religious fanatics actually helped us in the Cold War.

In addition, I addressed this issue only because it was mentioned so much. It is true that there is still some reason to be shocked and angered by Al Quaeda for their terrorist attacks on us. However, there are other countries and people we call EVIL without any real knowledge. Nations like Iran are a different story. In my opinion, Iran is totally justified in wanting to destroy us.

And then that leaves us with North Korea. You can decide this one for yourself.

Let me mention, however, as it doesn’t say so in the wikipedia article, that the history of Korea is basically one of being screwed over by various Asian powers. So yeah, I bet they’re angry. In the end, even the U.S. and the Soviet Union “maltreated” them, and they split into two nations. So I can’t help but feel sorry for Korea.

I tell you, calling something EVIL is very easy, but you have to remember that there are almost no cases where anything is purely GOOD or EVIL. There is almost always a reason behind human actions, and it’s only when you’ve succeeded in understanding how people you once thought were EVIL actually felt at the time, that you can truly begin to understand the world as a whole. And once you experience EVIL in its essence, you can truly stop hating it and start contemplating it.

Sam says, in article “Evil”: “Everyone agrees that killing someone is evil, yet some religions believe killing everyone else is fine.”

I know, many other people have said this, in various ways. Sorry for picking on you, Sam.

Anyways, I only half agree with this statement…ah, forget it. I don’t agree at all. I’m sure most people are accusing Islamisism when saying something like this. If Islamicisim is evil, then what about our oh-so-pure Christianity?

Here’s another one, if you’re so stubborn that one won’t satisfy you.

And in case you’re saying it was different, and that the crusades were caused by misinterpretations by people, here’s Islam for you.

Christianity, Islam, Buddhism…all major world religions not only do not accept of violence, but actively voice against it. It’s when people start ignoring the clause stating that violence is evil that people start dying in the name of religion. The religions themselves are not evil…at least, not in my opinion. I think, however, that if someone is to call one of the world religions evil, he or she must call all of them evil. They have different beliefs, but their moral base, which is opposed to murder in all circumstances, is the same throughout. Just because some Islamic fanatics have trouble accepting that even people they believe to be evil should not be killed, does not mean the religion itself is at fault. This is something we must all realize before we start accusing religion of anything.

EVIL to me was far too powerful a word whose implications may not fit many of the definitions people give it. I decided to give the word my own solid definition, to limit its vague usage. I stripped it to the core and defined it as meaning one thing: CHAOS.

I’m essentially trying to stop people from feeling that EVIL is just a stronger word for BAD. That just makes the word yet another heavy insult that can be used in any way the user likes. My definition, however, separates those two words. EVIL can be either good or bad, but if it is EVIL, it is 100% evil. The example presented in the classroom of the person who murdered for no reason demonstrates my kind of EVIL, because someone suddenly deciding to kill for no real reason is a demonstration of chaos, which lacks explanation or predictability. Of course, someone who is not willing to find out or accept the motives of a killer may also define the murder as being EVIL.

The opposite of EVIL is GOOD. However, because the wordgood does have many clear definitions of varying intensity, along with the vague one that is only known to be the positive counterpart of EVIL. Therefore, I will capitalize GOOD whenever it means the opposite of EVIL (yes, EVIL is capitalized too, but that’s because it amplifies the evilness of the word; if you like, you can capitalize it too). I define GOOD as meaning ORDER or CONTROL. This seems fitting, as one of the accomplishments of the early Catholic Church was keeping society intact and controlled, with an effective combination of rewarding the good with heaven and punishing the bad with hell. The usage of both reward and fear motivated most common people, and kept them quiet and obedient for centuries under the feudal system.

More evidence for these definitions come from the systems that God and Satan present to mankind. God lays out clear, solid rules that he requires of people to enter heaven, while Satan tempts people with freedom and happiness. There could not be two systems that better represent chaos and order. Ironically, heaven is pictured as relative freedom and happiness while hell is pictured as eternal slavery and labor, but that is a different concept I may write about soon. For now, I have given official defintions to the words GOOD and EVIL that will remain unchanged within this website unless I think up something better.