Here’s Your Problem

It’s 2016, and I can tell you’re not ready. The last twelve months really added wear and tear. You’ll have to do more than make resolutions you won’t keep, if you’re gonna roll through another year. I’m here to help, though. I’ve taken a good look under your hood, and I think I see the issue. It’s not a problem yet per se, but it could seriously affect your performance in the coming days.

Let me break it down for you.

YOU NEED TO GET YOUR MIND RIGHT

A thoughtform is a mode of thinking that people create and apply to varying social situations (also known as a “mindset”, which is reductive and implies that a mind can be set, like a clock, or cement). For instance, a person of one nationality might imagine how a foreigner would act, based upon their observations. If the two peoples are mutually aware of one another, they will dream up a version of the other, and base their interactions upon that.

This is a negative thoughtform. Accepting your perceived version of someone is not accepting them. Eventually, when someone is most honest with you, it will feel like a betrayal. You believed more in who you thought they were than who they are.

The “refugee situation” is a hot-button topic because very few people have direct contact with refugees. When it’s brought up, you have to work against people confined in a negative thoughtform: you’re attacking refugees they’ve imagined, based on their limited information and experience. Reality cannot compete with that; nothing can, it’s pride. How many times have you argued with somebody over something they dreamed?

A positive thoughtform would be this:

I don’t know enough yet to offer an opinion. I’m opposed to suffering, so I’ll learn what I can do to improve the situation. Consider the same if you’re feeling unsure, there are no easy answers.

I’m acquainted with a local bar owner who hosted a houseful of Syrian refugees, and a mogul who flew to Paris the day after it was bombed by terrorists, to interview witnesses. That’s called “putting your money where your mouth is”, and it shuts people up pretty good. If you break down and analyze your motivations in terms of positive thoughtforms, you will gradually experience a better life. This is no epiphany, either; I draw comics as nasty as I ever have, if not nastier. I just have a clearer idea of how to get where I need to go, and I don’t care about offending people; offense is a negative thoughtform, based in desire for control. If you truly consider yourself to have an open mind, nothing you read should ever offend you. Offended people have sheltered themselves in a safe thoughtform, and new ideas threaten that safety, by making them think.

Speaking of opinions:

YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO YOUR OPINION

You are entitled to an informed opinion, made after you have fully assessed the facts and evidence. You are not entitled to rant because someone insulted something you enjoy, and you falsely equate that with pain. I’m not entitled to make assassination jokes, no matter how funny I think they are (even though I already kinda did). It’s a fine line, and it gets blurrier by the day on the internet. Comedy and knowledge are often confused; witness The Daily Show, The Onion and South Park.

I don’t watch South Park, but I’ve heard it’s a fine show. I think the creators have a bright future in musical comedy theater, though it’s not to my taste. If you consciously allow a minor to view it, I hope you get knifed in the ass on your birthday. You are the problem.

IF SOMETHING IS SECRET, A LIE WILL SUFFICE

This is an aspect of social life that is far too common. On the internet, you can’t tell who’s gossipy, lying, or a narc. It’s difficult to detect bias or agenda. This is why memes spread so easily; if something is humorous and easily digestible enough, it barely matters if it’s true. Even with evidence available to the contrary, people still think Fatty Arbuckle=Coke bottle, and Richard Gere=gerbil, and have for decades.

Whenever people don’t have the answers, they will cling to a lie, or a fantasy. The World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 were widely reported, filmed, and eyewitnessed by tens of thousands of people. I was on the phone that morning with a friend in a newspaper office in Philly. She was receiving first-hand reports about the stewardesses being slaughtered like cattle, the cell phone calls to relatives that described the terrorists, and people jumping from the towers. A man literally surfed a raft of wreckage to the ground and disappeared. A platoon of local firefighters tried to assist and were crushed. These aren’t things you fabricate, or forget. It was a fucking horror show, and I was 800 miles away from it. My sister and father were at 10. No one could make phone calls once the attacks began, and for most of the day we didn’t know when they would end. For weeks, there were rotating public service announcements urging us not to linger on the “disturbing images”.

Whomever claims there were Muslims in America celebrating after the towers fell; I call mega B.S. on that. Anyone having a good time after September 11, 2001 would’ve clearly stood out. Don’t pin nonsense on Muslims, or anybody. Late night talk show hosts were crying when they returned to the air. It was around 2003 before we all figured out what was funny again. You think I’m kidding.

Fifteen years after the attacks, it’s not uncommon to speak with someone who swears that no hijacked planes hit the WTC. A World Opinion poll in 2008 states that 15% of  people believe the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11. (46% blame Al-Qaeda, and a whole 25% “don’t know”.) People immolate their reputations by parroting talking points that have already been debunked. When corrected, they verbally assault or defame their opponent. It’s the same paradigm as Scientology, or any religion. Even Star Wars fanatics have resorted to this tactic: “I’m right, you’re wrong, and now I’ll psychoanalyze why you are.”

People have become programmed to embrace corporate drone-hood. Your desire for a better life of convenience (read: laziness) is contractually exploited by conglomerated networks. This is why religious people warned you about raising kids outside of dogmatic discipline. This is what replaced it; corporate materialism. If you don’t understand the primal human urge to worship something greater, you will be plowed under by the ones who do. They’re already spiritually centered, and so are their kids. That’s why they scare the shit out of you. That’s why they’re eating us alive. They have God on their side. You have Starbucks.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT WASN’T WRONG

Only since the 1980s has it been taboo to strike a child in any way, for any reason. Meaning, up to the preceding generation, we all grew up with the threat of implied violence. Not the threat of getting hit- the threat that some day, we might go too far, and mom or dad would snap and smack us silly.

Children nowadays grow up like Kobe beef. It is not only illegal but unconscionable to strike them. The very suggestion is abhorred. Even though that’s how we all were raised. Even though that’s how it was done, throughout human history, up until about thirty years ago. I guess some folks seriously overdid it, because we went zero tolerance on the matter. It’s like living in Trial of Billy Jack, “yoga tennis” and all.

Now we have the first generation to grow up with no knowledge of physical pain, and no concept of other humans’ feelings. How many school shootings have happened in the past five years? How many in the past year? Smart people are quiet, and we they acquire weapons easily. The problem’s not the guns; it’s the void where respect for human life should be. “It takes a village” to raise a child because socializing a person properly is one of the most difficult tasks in life. Individually, everyone fails at it (it takes a village, even to be a good parent), but there again: pride. Some people will be a “perfect parent” at any cost, even if they weren’t meant to raise kids, or don’t really want to. Single parenting has limitless status potential.

How much of your life is dominated by poorly-raised children? How many places do you go in the course of a day where you have to suffer a screaming child? Movies, boutique shops, dogfights; there is no place in 2016 that some asshole won’t bring a kid into (unless bongs are sold there). Is this privilege going to raise better people, or more obnoxious assholes?

Dude w/ baby turns out to be guy we met in LV & had on podcast last year. & still brought a baby. https://t.co/uC4PzrLXuP

— Doug Stanhope (@DougStanhope) October 26, 2015

This is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with being friends with your offspring, but it’s meant to be earned, and hard-won. What was your relationship with your parents like? Were you best buddies? If so/not, how did it affect you over your lifetime? How about your peers, or spouse? Did you vow to raise your children differently from your parents, even though they raised YOU?

LOUD PEOPLE ARE STUPID PEOPLE

Smart people are quieter because they are sensitive to the perceptions of others, based on their own experience. People that can’t understand that their voice might hurt the ears of those indoors with them are stupid. If they’re not stupid, they’re ignorant of the needs of other people, which is worse. Loud people are almost always obese and negative, and they respond angrily (and loudly) when told they are loud. They slob around and consume until they get a disease and die, but only after birthing several more loud, fat, ignorant slobs. In Hare Krishna terms, this is the “mode of ignorance”. Smart people know better than to get involved, and stay quiet (also mode of ignorance). Meanwhile, the world gets louder and stupider.

There is a constant, dull thudding at all times, that the rest of you have probably acclimated to. I don’t know if it emanates from a house, club, car, or what. I can even hear it through walls and headphones. It’s noise pollution, plain and simple, and it’s all thanks to loud assholes.

Trust me. Noisy people are dumber than dogshit. (Unless they’re deafened by an occupation, and have to scream over machines to be heard. Volume by necessity of career does not count.)

APOLOGIES ARE MEANINGLESS

Here’s your method:

1. Offend a person or group.
2. An apology is demanded.
3. You apologize publicly.
4. Your apology is not accepted.

Here’s mine:

1. Never apologize.

Apology only works when it involves secrecy and titanic amounts of money, and even then it still doesn’t take. When you apologize, you capitulate. You bow your head and surrender your respect. Save that for when you drive drunk into a playground, or mistakenly grope your mom. If you’re sorry for something you wrote, you’re finished. You’ve revealed that your only artistic motivation is getting people to like you. That’s whore mentality. Nobody respects a sorry whore.

Did Mark Twain apologize? Did the Dixie Chicks? Did the Beatles? How did that go?

STOP SAYING “RACIST” AND “EMPOWERING”

Calling someone “racist” is now also meaningless. You cannot be against your own race (human, despite the behavior of some of you). Leon Trotsky coined the term, and the OED definition in 1930 echoed his:

The theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race.

Unless you are a mind-reader, in which case you do not exist, you cannot determine on sight whether someone believes in this theory. As soon as people began to claim “I could tell [he] was racist”, the word lost all meaning. Drop “racism”, “reverse-racism”, “racist”, the whole lot.

The word is PREJUDICED.

When you dislike another type of human based upon your personal negative experiences, you are prejudiced. You are pre-judging an entire group of people based on one. It’s generally discouraged because the success rate is poor. Modern women are unlikely to get on board. But that’s what it is, and it exists in everybody. Managing prejudice is a part of developing character, and human nature. It’s a holdover from the days when everyone was openly killing and abusing each other.

Society offers dozens of ways to abuse innocent people. Earlier last year, a disturbed white kid slaughtered a black South Carolina church congregation, after telling them they deserved it. That inhuman white kid is an indicator of two things: people with no respect for life will stoop lower than you can conceive, and Dylann Roof’s father is a prejudiced bag of shit. Black people scream about killing white people before doing so, and we collectively erase it from memory. We don’t want to believe anyone could be so prejudiced, unless, of course, we’re faced with an enemy we can’t understand.

Calling anything “empowering” is highly dishonest. Power equals respect, physical strength or money, all of which must be earned. It’s mendacious to imply that power can be gained by watching a movie or TV show. Never confuse entertainment with empowerment. That’s how “mega-churches” get started.

In the 1960s, there was a “sexual revolution”, and in the early going it was a real mess. This is what’s happening now- a social revolution, still hampered by antique paradigms and racial cliques. There will be many casualties, mental as well as physical. Don’t lose sight of your free will, and your purpose. Everyone is hanging by a thread, believe you me. Why do you think people who know better have been arguing for limits on free speech? That’s how fucking terrified they are. They’d cut out their tongue to appease their mouth.

I’ve been extra hard on Star Wars fanatics lately because you literally embody all I abhor about fandom. You can’t see it, but you’re following a marketing pattern like a fish on a hook. You have nullified every opinion you have regarding film; how can you make your little nit-picky criticisms of other movies, while blindly accepting everything pandered to you? How can you celebrate a faceless Disney sequel, and call George Lucas a fool?

You can’t. It makes you a hypocrite. So for 2016, at least try to be honest with yourself about your pursuits. There’s nothing wrong with being a fully-grown adult and enjoying Star Wars (or whatever passes for it now). I’ll be fifty in six years, and I still enjoy Transformers toys. I admit this is weird- they are toys for children. I’m not asking for acceptance or advice about it. If people say I’m too old for robot toys, I don’t lash out at them; they’re right. I probably shouldn’t be drawing unicorns, either. The difference is, I accept that I’m unusual. I don’t scream at the world to deal with my proclivities. Star Wars is for children and always has been; kids just used to be non-pussies, that’s all. When I was a boy, PG-rated movies could feature a Nazi gurgling on his own molten face. You don’t get to harangue people just because you’re swept up in a forced cultural phenomenon.

Don’t sweat it. You’re gonna be fine. We’ve isolated the problem.

We’re gonna have a great 2016. Even if it kills us.