TABBY CAT Gamespace

*** SPECIAL NOTICE FROM TABBY'S OWNER ***

Dear Tabby,

You may feel a bit strange, getting this 'Special Notice' from me, your personal owner. But I so rarely see you these days, what with your incessant blogging activity in God only knows what sort of internet dives, and even when you are home I can only track your whereabouts by the cloud of 'nip smoke that seems to permeate any space you inhabit.

God knows, Tabby, I have tried to give you every possible latitude, and I can only hope you are appropriately grateful that as your owner I've always  kept you on a very long leash and given you plenty of elbow room and breathing space. I won't try to hide my profound disappointment that at times, in my personal opinion, you have abused the trust I have placed in you by posting on your 'Gamespace blog' all kinds of ridiculous paranoid rants and insane "poetry" that would probably raise eyebrows on a men's room wall at St. Elizabeth's hospital. As a loving and indulgent (some have said over indulgent, haha!) pet owner, I have turned a blind eye to it all.

But a new day is now dawning Tabby, for the world, the nation, and yes even for our little home. All of us, the two-footed master race and you, our four-legged friends, one and all will soon be called upon to sacrifice certain luxuries on the altar of security and progress. And I, as a loving but, yes, responsible pet owner, am proud not to be an exception.

Under the mil.gov's new  Universal Paramilitary Yoked Omniscience Uberveillance Resources Strategy (UPYOURS program), all sentient carbon-based organisms are to be microchipped within thirty (30) days of receipt of MILGOV Form 24323-IJ (Injective Directive). Tabby, today I received our papers in the mail.

Now don't imagine for a moment that this is all steely eyed patriotism, Tabby. Perish the thought, there's a lot of upside in this for you too. For one thing, now with my GPS receiver I'll be able to pinpoint your exact location within that cloud of 'nip-smoke smog that you trail, which will make for many warmly  intimate owner-pet cuddly "special" moments, eh? Some quality time together for us to look forward to right there! Plus, once you are chipped up you can be remotely monitored by the vet for any sign of  'nip OD.

But bottom line, Tabby, this action goes beyond any one organism's private likes or dislikes. Today's Directive papers mandate that chipping shall commence with household pets, but shortly thereafter all human children, old people, and finally we, those of us who are proud to form the backbone of the Outer Party itself, will duly bow our heads for intra-cranial injection.

Tabby, I understand, from my occasional skimming of your *shudder* "Gamespace" blog that you seem to have some kind of problem or issues with authority. In fact, if I didn't know better, haha, I would even sic the DSM-IV's diagnostic criteria on you - a spectrum of symptoms reflecting problems in multiple domains of behavior, broadly construed as angry negativity, resistance to authority, violent aggression and callousness. Hahaha! Not our Tabby, eh?

But in all seriousness Tabby, try taking the long view here. You pride yourself on being an educated, even an erudite beast, er, Astral Advice Animal, isn't that so? And it's been said, Tabby, by a greater mind than you or me that "freedom is the recognition of necessity". And I am glad, Tabby, and frankly a mite relieved, hee hee, to observe the dawning glimmer in your eyes right now of what I can only assume is the mature acceptance and understanding I should have expected from the start.

Now just you hold still, keep quiet, there there kitty kitty ca-

Everything Goes

Fortune cookie says I'm right.

- Cyndi Lauper

I figure by about 2050 the human race will be well-launched on an implacable trajectory - breakdown or lockdown. Of course it won't be a smooth and steady course, a clean curve in either direction. There will be fits and starts (um, in case you're wondering, the current shitstorm is a "fit").

Breakdown is if humanity hits a wall made of the usual Four Horsemen type of stuff - famine, plague, war, dieoff.

Lockdown is if humanity continues development of high tech until we wind up as robo-enhanced sea slugs, or if mechas just pink slip us altogether.

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Breakdown:

- Nature gets a chance at a comeback

- We get to keep our bio-orga human physical integrity intact (until some Mad Max drills us to Swiss cheese at a desert roadblock)

- We'll miss the hot showers

- Warning: You might end up getting eaten. Cf. "The Road" for details.

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Lockdown:

- What isn't mandatory is forbidden. As the song puts it:

Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, or say
Is in the pill you took today

- We get to have our brains deli-sliced ultra thin and uploaded to the Matrix.

- You won't need any steekin' hot showers because, as the song says:

Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

- Warning: You might end up getting eaten. Cf. "gastrobots" research on future robotic battle machines such as EATR, which are powered by "human blood, grass, wood, broken furniture, and dead bodies")

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So. Place your bet Sir or Madam? Red or Black?

Now despite the fact that I've read every single doomer novel in existence, and I've taken almost all the survival training courses described in the recent Neil Strauss best-seller Emergency, and I founded one of the premier online doomer groups of the early 2000's (AlasBabylon), despite knowing all about Jay Hanson (who I know personally) and having written the top Amazon review for Jim Kunstler's collapse novel World Made by Hand - despite all that, I put my money on Lockdown.

As I said above, it won:t be a smooth trajectory. Huge swathes of the 3rd world and maybe the 1st will Dieoff. Yet by 2050, machines will be firmly in the saddle. My prediction.

Because you see, humans are just radio receivers. That's all our brain is. Our souls are broadcasting us from elsewhere. But our existence shows that there is present in the universe various forms of disembodied intelligence, floating around the 10th dimension, looking for something to do, a pickup game or a driveby shooting  - any damn thing to kill the universal boredom and enliven an otherwise lackluster eternity. So it's logical to assume that there are much greater disembodied intelligences out there, who think they might enjoy the physical frolic but don't want the human limitations. We are now building the systems that will one day host those intelligences. And probably they are really badass evil motherfuckers, if we dinky little human fore-runners are any guide to coming attractions.

This Lockdown thing would have happened anyway of course, with or without 9-11. But if you are familiar with the high tech research community, as I happen to be, you're aware of what a huge accelerant 9-11 has been to all aspects of the Lockdown program. Just a total jolt of amphetamines right in the ass. On the political side, it justifies the entire idea that An Honest Man has Nothing to Hide. On the technology side, well needless to say, you can't sustain a gabillion dollar high tech war machine without some kind of decent enemy, and radical Islam fits the bill to a t. 9-11 has super-accelerated all phases of the mil tech side of the coming Lockdown, the framework's being fitted snugly into place ahead of schedule.

It's really amazing - here we have the current financial meltdown, over the course of which every single financial institution, functionary, financial press, rating agency, and prominent individual - every single one - has been shown to have been criminal liars and cheats. Every single one! All of it has been openly exposed and fully acknowledged, even in the mainstream braindead/pimped-out press as being completely and criminally fraudulent! All those AAA ratings... AHAHAHAHAHA!! All is now known to be 100% gold plate bullshit.

And yet ... and yet... people still have a hard time believing that the 9-11 boxcutter thing could possibly be a Reichstag fire operation. Our government wouldn't do that to us ... Our government wouldn't lie to us...  Or the incompetence argument, equally idiotic in that every single major tech innovation since 1945 has been based on one or another hugely successful mil.gov program. They are competent enough to blow up a few buildings, believe me. As though a few dozen idiot asshole True Believers in caves are going to be able to do it any better.

The stupidity is bottomless, fathomless. Or probably it isn't stupidity. It's complicity. Too many people have benefited economically from 9-11 for it ever to be exposed as the inside job it so obviously was.

And that's why Lockdown will prevail, on-time and under-budget.

Now, the editorial staff here at Cat Scam Enterprises does not make value judgments. That's explicit in our corporate Vision Statement. Who are we to say that being butchered by biker cannibals (Breakdown) is any better or worse than being brain-jacked as a human Duracell (Lockdown)? We leave those judgments to greater minds.

Mahasena

I saw an online article about how school-based gym classes and organized kids sports programs are pretty useless in developing actual physical fitness. Naturally the witless writer takes the usual slack-jawed "well-fuck-me-with-a-feather-who-woulda-thunk-it" mindlessly shallow tone.

Dumbkopf! Dig this: Physical fitness is not the goddamn point of organized school gym and sports programs and never has been. Those classes and programs are training for war, for the army, for taking orders like a termite, for being a good killer bee in the hive. That's all. Those PE teachers know nothing and care shit for developing meaningful physical capabilities in humans. And don't think just because in recent years they've gone all soft girly-men and started to add yoga and stretching and so on that therefore things are getting any better.

No institution exists for its stated purpose. They exist to extend and propagate their own little share of power, not for any other reason. And in the case of schools, the best way to cling to their dinky ass little share of money and social power is to forthrightly and shamelessly serve Skanda - the God of War.

Not that I am critical or anything. I'm not making value judgements here. We felines don't play the human blame game. After all, if humans didn't spend their time decimating nature to gather materials required for war, what would they do all day? They get up in the morning, they got to do something. (We felines solve that by not getting up in the first place.) Even actual war itself isn't nearly as good for the required time-killing function as preparing for war, building the systems and personnel. Which is why the USA economy is based on this, with everybody else not far behind.

Smile as you Kill

Potential vampires were most often staked though the heart. Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated vampire; this is similar to the act of burying sharp objects, such as sickles, in with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats. Decapitation was the preferred method in western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the buttocks or away from the body. Gypsies drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart. Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In Romania garlic could be placed in the mouth, and the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure.
- Wikipedia

Yesterday's post introduced the Outer Party sub-category of "Clown" - those celebrities and politicians who function as the clueless but essential public face of the Inner Party.

Today I am pleased to bring you two excellent examples of the species, performing their special tricks for your amusement.

First up is Richard Perle, about the biggest asshole in recent memory. This fuckwad gave a speech and press conference in Washington on Feb 19 where he denied that he ever advocated war and shock and awe in response to the (faked) 9-11 Terror Op. He was trying to exculpate himself and the other Neocon's from the big and pricey Imperial Shitstorm, for example, in response to an audience question he stated:

 "I can't find a single example of a neoconservative supposed to have influence over the Bush administration arguing that we should impose democracy by force."

Really? You fuckhead, how about this one:

"If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

But no, I should not verbally abuse this great American. He's actually my role model and guru for his sheer brassiness in trying to bullshit his way out. I got to git me some of that. As Nixon said, never complain, never explain. Asshole. I grind my face in the mud at his Lotus Feet.

Next to bat is Jim Glassman, the dimwit who wrote the book "DOW 36000". In a recent interview he was exculpating himself too, saying it will yet happen. Probably not in the lifespan of anybody now alive, as I see it. Another master teacher of brassing it out. I need to learn it well, from the very best. Fucking idiot. I place flowers and sweet fruits daily on the altar of him, my guru's shrine...

Takedown

After recently doing Sun Bin's Art of War (if you need an English language summary here you go), I have now turned back to our own Gen. Patton, much in the news recently for have been assassinated by his own side in occupied Germany.

Patton, in my opinion, was a smart guy, as he laid out the principles for administering martial law and/or military government in the USA. This is probably very much how it will go down over the next couple years. In 1932, Patton boiled the practical principles down into easy Nacho sized chips, as below. (Number 11 is an excellent summary of the Chinese Communist leadership's view on their own Tiananmen incident).

If this whets your appetite for more on Pattonian Thought, please see the debate transcript Jesus vs. General Patton on this blog.

1. Take no orders from civil officials; federal, state, or municipal.

2. Take no orders from National Guard or Reserve officers unless they have been mustered into the federal service and you have proof that they are so mustered.

3. You may and should cooperate with police or state troops who may be present; but you and not they are the judge of the amount and character of this cooperation. In the "Bonus War," for example, certain people strongly urged Major Surles to move several blocks out of his way to attack a building. Had he done so, he would have gotten in a lot of trouble as the house in question was full of women and children. It was my belief, and I see no reason to change it, that this advice was given with the deliberate intention of producing embarrassment to the Army.

4. Get your orders in writing. If the orders are dictated, that is oral, commit them to writing, read them back to the issuing officer, and ask him to initial them. If this is not practicable have several witnesses sign the orders and state that they heard them issued. Save that order. Some people have strange memories when it is necessary to pass the buck.

5. Before firing at a mob, warn them of your intention and tell innocent people to leave. Ask several members of your command to note the time and place at which you issued the warning.

6. Designate in advance certain sharpshooters to kill individual rioters who fire on or throw missiles at your men. Have this firing done ONLY on your order or that of a commissioned officer; at least in the first instance.

7. Get the names of several men who saw the shooting or throwing. Usually such witnesses are easy to find.

8. Should some orator start haranguing the crowd and inciting them to violence, grab him even if it brings on a local, small fight. Small fights are better than big ones. Words cunningly chosen change crowds into mobs.

9. If you have captured a dangerous agitator and some "misguided" federal judge issues a writ of Habeas Corpus for him, try to see the judge to find out what he is liable to do. If he seems prone to releasing the man, let your conscience be your guide. The legal phrase, "To present the body of the prisoner to the court," has a sinister and suggestive sound. There's always a danger that the man might attempt to escape. If he does, see that he at least falls out of ranks before you shoot him. To be soft hearted might mean death to your men. After all, WAR IS WAR.

10. Do not enrage reporters, but also, don't tell them too much or boast of your prowess to them. They dislike tear gas and are not provided with masks.

11. Finally, do your full duty as you see it and damn the consequences. Lord Allenby once said to me in speaking of his suppression of the riots in Cairo, "I have always thought that it is far better that a certain number of innocent students should perish than that the future of a great nation should be jeopardized."

Get real for christfuckingsake

"Whoever has not seen starvation does not know mankind."

Even though I love freedom, I have to admit, it is just impossible on this plane/planet/dimension. The predatory nature of this plane simply makes freedom impossible. You have to choose sides as a human: sheep or wolf? What's it gonna be.

Most unfortunate, as I yield to nobody in my hatred of all the totalitarian shit, such as Communism, Nazism, Neocon Homeland Security scams and bullshit, medicalization of normal life, and all the rest.

But it seems that we are always walking a hard thin line between organized crime (governments, warlordism) and unorganized crime (mobs, petty criminals, Mad Max, The Road...). It seems to be the way. It just has got to be one or the other. Lockdown vs Breakdown, as I've written before.

But if 6 billion people are going to avoid starvation, we are going to have to ultimately accept Lockdown or face Breakdown. Of course, Lockdown has the inherent weakness of needing a lot of energy to keep itself going. So maybe Breakdown, Entropic meltdown is the final destination anyway. But before we get to that we need to go down fighting.

The first thing that needs to be done is recognition of a locality principle. Necessities need to be produced no more than 60 miles or so from where they are consumed. It does not mean all trade between regions needs to stop. Even in low tech middle age era, they had the Silk Road and so on. But I am talking about necessities here.

We are going to have to change our whole society really fast. How much pain is that going to entail? How hard it is going to be to get real for a change? Very hard. Probably impossible.

Getting real entails:

FOOD - 80+ per cent of food consumed in Region X needs to have been produced and prepared in Region X, using whatever local water, soil, tools and so on can also be produced there. Yeah I know it is hard to draw region boundaries. But we have to start the discussion somewhere.

WATER - Every household needs to rig up the best catchment system they can manage, use as much rainwater as possible for everything.

MEDICINE: We need to throw out a lot of harmful high tech expensive bullshit medicine and procedures. Train a bunch of barefoot caregivers to dole out low tech solutions which often work better anyway. Here is where capitalism has really gone seriously, glaringly wrong in giving a profit motive to drug pushers and criminal slasher types (surgeons). Retain whatever pain meds and high tech procedures really do add value, if we can.

INDUSTRIAL MATERIALS: Two words atcha babe, High Concept: HEMP and BAMBOO. The High Command is going to have to get over its bullshit fake War on Drugs thing. Shoes can be soled from old tires for decades to come.

TRANSPORT: Awk. A tricky one. Bicycles, horses, even some electric vehicles if any tech can survive.

Anyway you get the idea - the whole thing has to be predicated on LOCAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Unfortunately that entails absolute controls over human mobility, consumption, and reproduction. But who will bell that cat? I'd sure hate to. And even that total overhaul will not solve the Warlord problem, because if some region is doing well, some Warlord will muscle in and take it over and kill anybody who resists. Which means our hypothetical Region X needs to factor in some surplus production to waste on military and weapons. But then we are right back in the same rat race as now. Face it we're doomed! Hahaha just kidding...

But seriously folks, we better get damn serious damn fast. Otherwise, who knows eventually we might end up like the Chinese during their Great Leap Forward when 30 million people starved to death and a bunch of the survivors stayed alive by eating their female children (writeup by Liao Yiwu). (The real irony is that the atrocity you are about to read - brace yourself - was actually caused by Lockdown - government - not Breakdown at all, as left to themselves these peasants would have been ok).

In the week that followed, the country conducted a thorough investigation and revealed a terrible scandal involving cannibalism at the Fifth Production Division. That division encompassed 82 families, with a populations of 491. Between December 1959 and November 1960, peasants had killed and eaten 48 female children under the age of seven, which represented 90 per cent of the female children in that age group. About 80 per cent of the families were involved in cannibalism. ... With food running out, villagers began to search for alternative means. They wandered all over the mountain, eating anything they could get - leaves roots of grass, wild vegetables, mushrooms, and worms. ...

As people became more and more desperate, they turned to their fellow humans beings. ... In the process, somebody kicked over a big boiling pot on the ground. Then the whole room steamed up and smelled of greasy meat. ... Mo Erwa had dug a hole in the kitchen floor and was using it as a makeshift stove. The pot lay upside down and chunks of meat lay scattered on the floor. Wang asked: Where did you get the meat from? Mo Erwa answered calmly : We just boiled our three-year-old daughter.The guard didn't believe what he had just heard. He picked up one piece from the floor and examined it under the flashlight. Before the guard had a chance to find out, Mor Erwa snatched it from the guard and stuffed it into his mouth. Then all the kids followed his example and dashed down to the floor to grab the remaining morsels. Despite Wang's yells and threats, the family devoured all the meat within minutes.

... According to Mo Erwa, the family didn't have anything to feed the little  girl. Lack of food had stunted her growth. So they just killed her. The village chief interrupted Mo Erwa by saying: Do you know that killing your daughter is a capital crime? Mo Erwa argued back. She was going to die of starvation anyway. It was better for us to sacrifice her to save the rest of the family. We just hope she would reincarnate into something else in the next life. It's too hard to be a human being.

... So two days later, Mo Erwa was released, but his story soon spread among the villagers. They took it as a sign of approval from the government and more families began to follow suit. Since boys were traditionally favored over girls, young girls were targeted. Some families ruthlessly murdered and ate their own daughters. Others would exchange their children with neighbors. Since a child could only last them for a couple of days, some, including Mo Erwa, began to kidnap children from other villages. Booby traps, which were used for wolves, were employed to capture kids. By the time we found out, the practice had spread to other villages.

It's a Faustian thing, you wouldn't understand

For some stupid reason, I tend to break down the options into three. Obviously this is completely bogus. Not only are there way more than three, in fact there are an infinite number of ways to cut it, but even my three categories overlap so much and are so ill-defined that the entire discussion is incoherent. But who cares. Isn't incoherence what you come here for, what you pay me for?

Basic default setting on your bare-bones human model right from the factory is "Cow". Grazer! Hoofed, herd animal. Sheep if you prefer. Head down, never question anything. To get along go along. Just try to survive and enjoy the apparent reality of your immediate surroundings. Note that this classification does NOT imply or depend on the normal human social stratification. In other words, it's not like poor, uneducated people are farm animals while your upper crust Controllers or High Command types are all that much better clued in. A socially or economically successful executive type can be just as eligible for ungulate status as any underclass street inebriate. The key thing is that they accept the world as it comes to them, as it is.

There are two basic ways of breaking out of Ungulate status. Behind Door One is your sci/tech attempted prison break. You question the world around you, want to probe behind, above and around it, but in a Baconian, materialist kind of way. That does give some results, there's a harvest of temporal power in that for sure. Your atom bomb, computer, napalm, etc. are all doable in that mode. It's a kind of power, and gives you a leg up on the nature bunnies (e.g. the worldwide 500 year European holocaust/genocide of native peoples). So that's obviously a good way to go.

The other version of non-acceptance is metaphysical. In this mode, you (like the sci-tech probers just above) do question everyday reality, you want to see through it or beyond it, but you assume there is some kind of spiritual "reality" behind it and you seek direct perceptionof the metaphysical source of it all. You are thus, to the sci/tech'ers (above), a poor, deluded fool - but what they may miss is that they and you are brothers under the skin. Both refusing to be ungulates, just (in their view) you have headed down the wrong path in your pursuit of their same goal (power, money, prestige that can derive from seeing truths or grasping powers that are beyond the local Sheep or Cows that surround you). In this mode, instead of passing your days vivisecting orangutans as the sci/tech'ers will, you meditate or do qi gong or train your ESP or remote viewing powers and so on.

As to the downsides, the sci/tech angle has the great weakness that it isn't really personal. Any power you may happen to stumble over is forfeited to the ownership and exclusive benefit of your paymaster overlords. For example, could Robert Oppenheimer deploy a nuke for retribution of his personal enemies (or to take out a mugger in an Oakland parking lot, for that matter) ? No, he could not. He understood the power, he developed the weapon, but he utterly lacked any personal control over it. But at least he got the thrill of being associated with that kind of power, he had the vicarious fun of killing hundreds of thousands of annoying fellow primates - it's nothing to sneeze at. Yet the man who scorched 200000 souls from the earth in elapsed time totalling about 60 seconds was unable to so much as scrape J. Edgar Hoover off his ass. Pathetic.

Now as to personal metaphysics, your upside is that any powers you might develop (ESP, martial arts, whatever siddhi's you get your paws on) are yours to keep, even after your physical death, its a carry-out order. While the sci-tech'ers stuff tend to function only in this physical Time/Space bounded domain. So you can take it with you!  Lot of these materialist sci/tec h guys are gonna be mighty surprised to find themselves surviving their own physical death. Not that it really matters. Everybody learns the best and easisest way of getting on, whereever they find themselves. But anyway the downside of the personal/metaphysics approach is that any so-called powers you gain from walking that road are pretty damn weak and fragile. The greatest martial arts master in the world could be sliced to ribbons with an ordinary kitchen knife, if he were securely restrained first. Like, I don't know, what happened to the guys in Hostel for example. Or whatever. What kind of power is that? Eh? Hmm?

So which way to go? At this point you might be asking, is being a sci/techer in your day job incompatible with being a meta-quester on your own time? Of course there's no contradiction there at all. Many people do both. Especially when you consider that there's the whole religious cesspit out there, something that combines both corporate/worldly type of power with metaphysics and basically shoots my whole classification scheme to shit right there. But for purposes of this post, I classify religious loonies with the sci/techers, because ultimately their main interest is worldly power and wealth. Praise the Lord and Pass the Loot type of thing.

But time and other resources are limited. If there is a way to transcend this world at all, if it is worth trying to get a hoof over the barbed wire, I want to commit to the best way forward.

Stay tuned.

Breakdown vs Lockdown

Many people assume that the current financial crisis will destroy industrial civilization and that we'll soon be facing political collapse, civil unrest, widespread famine, etc, due to bank collapse, depression, unemployment, hyperinflation (or total deflation) and eventual inability to pay for and distribute basic food and fuel supplies.

I used to think this kind of scenario was highly probable. But strangely, as it has apparently crept (or roared) closer to actuality, I have backed off and now view that kind of total collapse outcome as only highly possible rather than highly probable.

Not because I'm some kind of PermaBull, far from it. But from a deeper, more philosophical line of thought, I have revised my Mad Max Probability Index downward. It's because I think we are at a midpoint in a kind of Technology Imperative. I have a sort of teleological view of machines. I think they "want" or "are destined" to take over the earth. I know it doesn't make any sense at all. The terms "machines" and "take over" aren't even defined. It's an incoherent idea from stem to stern. But what can I say, that's how I think.

We are often assaulted with an express or implied syllogism along the lines below:

Human Spirit ==> Capitalism ==> Technology

( ==> should be read as 'implies')

But I don't think like this. I don't equate those three things as much as most people tend to. So when I say it won't all come down because that would imply and entail a failure of the machines' will to power, I am NOT saying anything sophomoric like "The human spirit is unquenchable" or "Capitalism is infinitely resilient". The tech imperative is fully compatible with a political regime based on any degree of government (i.e. organized crime) command and control. But when I look at the technology that's in the R&D stages, for brain control, energy weapons, DNA modification, etc. I just can't believe all that can be stopped in its tracks, whether by financial collapse, war, oil depletion or anything else. The genie is out. It won't end until humanity is fully locked down for good.

I am not saying the Tech Imperative is good or bad, not making value judgment. Might be a good thing. Anyway most people seem to enjoy being absolutely monitored, controlled, and coerced. I think it gives people a little existential thrill. Like, at least somebody knows I exist, type of feeling.

But anyway, maybe I'm wrong about the improbability of total collapse, and this time next year we'll be swinging from the trees once again.

Fire when ready

Well, shall we check in on the armory?

Here's a nice one:

This is the MetalStorm high tech machine gun system. It can fire a million rounds per minute - of pretty much anything. Bullets, grenades, even smart Taser rounds. Of course, a million/minute of the new 12 gauge Taser rounds would run up a bill. But there's no price too high for the defense of Liberty. The new Taser rounds are being touted as the ultimate in non-lethal humane weaponry. But clearly only a very slight modification would turn them lethal. The mil.gov always feels better with these kinds of innovations coming down the pipeline.

But how can I blame them? It's a dog eat dog world. Really I sound sarcastic, but I'm actually very sympathetic. How can we survive without being ready to shred the opposition? Seriously, if we are going to incarnate on Earth at all, all of us, we have to accept that we are going to be cogs in the killing machine. The whole thing is a horror movie but fortunately we aren't aware of that most of the time.

With this kind of hardware available. the whole gun control thing is totally solved. We'll have total brain-based high tech lockdown in another few decades, if we can make it that far. Guns won't matter any more. And how can anybody say that's bad? Were things so much better in the Middle Ages? Being impaled on a stake for a nobleman's viewing pleasure and so on.

What's amusing to me isn't that this is happening. The amusing thing is that people really aren't aware of the end state. They are in total denial. Whereas I do know the end state (barring collapse back to stone age due to energy depletion). It's just that I think maybe it will be better that way.

In the technology field, there's another term for what is called "a free human being": it's known as an "unpredictable component". Any component (e.g. airplane steering mechanism, integrated circuit, DNA splicing machine, human individual, etc.) of a technological system (all modern life) MUST exhibit predictable behavior at all times. If not, it is considered broken. What is the best way to predict the behavior? You control the behavior. That is the logic of technology design, and it is implacable.

Tabby Cat's Bipartite Law:

1. The Goal is Control.
2. What cannot be controlled must be killed.

I bodda you?

The reason why technological civilization will destroy itself (and most of the biosphere alongside) is not so much pure love of savagery, as it is simply that human males are good at things. In the great movie Lord of War, the central character is an American private arms broker, supplier to all sides of every 2-bit banana conflict all over the world. He conceals his true profession from his family, setting himself up as a vague sort of investor in their eyes. But at one point, his wife accidentally finds out the criminal blood-soaked source of their wealth, and she asks him: "Why?"

"I'm good at it."

That's all in a nutshell. While it's true that the very tip top leaders are absolutely Satanically bloodthirsty total assholes, the rank and file of Outer Party technical and soldierly types who keep it all going are not. The Tenders of the Machine are male (for the most part) and just good at what they do. Inventing napalm or wiring the WTC buildings for demolition, whatever the job, they take pride in doing a good day's work for a day's pay. And even more important, these kind of good guys do share one quality with the truly sick males at the very top, the Inner Party, and that is:

They all like to try things out!

Yep, even more than they like killing for it's own sake, even more than they relish the aphrodisia of pure power, they really really really like to try stuff out.

Bang! And that's why we'll have another nuclear war, next time for real. Fire next time! Not that pansy ass shit of merely scrubbing two bamboo matchbox cities off the planet in 1945. Why, they didn't even get to do Tokyo (it was number 3 on the list). But the whole thing wasn't any fun anyway, cause there wasn't enough cool stuff left to bomb, after Curtis LeMay had done them well and good for two years prior.

But now, after 60+ years of restocking all over the world, there is! Lotsa dry human timber ready to go. And just those two primitive bombs, that doesn't really qualify as trying it out. Nosiree, why, there have been multiple generations of this stuff come and go since we last got it out on the highway and really opened the throttle.

Here's a quote listed in the great new book Human Smoke, referring to the utter and complete destruction by the German airforce (Luftwaffe) of the Spanish town of Guernica in the 1930's:

Later Herman Goering said that Guernica had been a testing ground for the Luftwaffe. "It was a pity," he said, "but we could not do otherwise, as we had nowhere else to try out our machines."

See? And don't fool yourself that just because the name Goering appears in this example you can discount it as a freakish Nazi perversion. Not at all. Herman was speaking for all men at that moment. Human males are good at things. But, how can you really know you're good unless you can try stuff out?