Tuesday, October 14, 2003
If I was a more self-righteous person I'd be complaining here how my brother, sister, and I just got screwed out of a couple million dollars, but I'm trying not to be concerned about it — one can perceive things as losses, or one can perceive them as revelations. Many battles are fought to gather intelligence about one's foe, rather than to destroy them.
To talk about change is not enough. Change must happen. - Aung San Suu Kyi
Anyway, it brought me to thinking about the nature of “evil” as one commonly thinks of it: crime; theft and murder and extortion and fraud and so on. I've come to realize that common crime is actually a symptom of evil, and often not even expressed through an
evil vessel. Look at US crime statistics — one could conclude that blacks commit an inordinate amount of crimes in relation to their relatively small population. I once interviewed a doctor who told me that was due to elevated testosterone levels, but I don't buy it, because in low-income communities the crime stats are not particularly racially biased.
To put it simply, crime — common evil — is a byproduct of class inequality. On the whole people don't start stealing because they are greedy or a bad apple. They start stealing because they are responding to an imbalance — they are aware that wealth is unevenly distributed. Would crime go away if the world's treasures were distributed more fairly? Of course not. But would it be drastically minimized? I believe so.
So then you have to ask the question: are common criminals evil? Or are they just (possibly weak) people being manipulated by evil? The blood of the modern world is money. When you control the money (and the credit system and so on), you control the blood. Debt might as well be a Harkonnen heart plug. I guess ultimately this line of thinking leads one to ask what right — what duty — do the poor have to eat the rich? If you want an easier question, ask yourself whether the soldier who kills innocent civilians on a bombing run to protect corporate oil interests is evil, or whether he's just been forced to act on behalf of evil — and what responsibility does that soldier have to stop killing once he becomes aware of the big picture?
PS. Before anyone chops my head off, while I am a successful entrepreneur, I reinvest almost everything I make in trying to do good, be it stuff here or be it funding development work in Africa, anti-censorship networks, or even just interesting indie projects.
So I've been thinking about doing a re-write of the old “Christianity and Body Modification” article. It's a subject that still gets asked about regularly, and judging by the profiles, there are a decent number of people here who strongly sympathize with Christian notions as well as having body modification drives.
If you're Christian I'd like to hear from you on a few questions:
- How do you feel God sees your body modifications?
- Do you express your spirituality through these modifications in any way?
- How do you know that “it's ok” to be involved in these things, as a Christian?
- What do you think of people who say the Bible (and God) disapprove of body modification?
- What are some of the passages you turn to when confronted with these questions?
- Have you had any negative or positive encounters with other Christians because of your or their body modifications?
The forum attached to this entry allows anonymous posts so there's no need to reveal who you are if you'd like to answer privately.
And yes, I know I have the sXe article in the queue still.
(Original forum unavailable, sorry)*
I had no idea it was a holiday in the US right now… which kind of damaged my research ability for a new story I'm following up, in this case on Indiana, which requires filing of the design and placement of any tattoo done, as well as the type of jewerly used in any piercing… What I'm wanting to find out is what level of protection those records have and why the design is relevant (if it was just for outbreak tracking that wouldn't be needed).
Some of you may have seen the letter going around lately written from a “local soldier in Iraq” that's running in all the papers and email forwarding campaigns from pro-war goons talking about how well the war is going and how Iraq is a wonderful place now thanks to the invasion. The letter ends,
I am proud of the work we are doing here in Iraq and I hope all of your readers are as well.
Spc. Nathan Whitelatch
Conservative bloggers love it of course, but what's interesting is that if you type in key phrases from the letter, you'll find the one I just mentioned from Spc. Nathan Whitelatch, as well as THE EXACT SAME LETTER WORD FOR WORD also sent from Sgt. Shawn M. Grueser, Sgt. Chris Shelton, Pfc. Jason Marshall, and many many others. Whoever in the military is running this propaganda campaign was even so dumb as to send two copies of it (with different names) to the same newspaper!
Is it any wonder that no one trusts anyone?
So a bunch of people last week told me I should take my big truck up to Toronto for the Jesse James Monster Garage event — it's one of the biggest and most unusual show trucks in Canada… Clive went and took some pictures. Seeing them, and the junker baby trucks that did show up makes me wish I'd gone there to give 'em an ass-kicking. I've had a lot of cool vehicles, but I think in some ways I like my truck the most because it's “my design” more than any of the others.
Quick specs: Ford 9″ rear. Reverse Dana 44 front. 318 V8, fuelly. Police siren and PA system. 1200 Watt inverter. 9000 lb winch. 44″ Boggers. Custom rollcage, bodywork, and exoskeleton. Real human skulls. Stereo and six-disc changer with custom waterproof speaker enclosures. Etc…
