July 14, 2005@Everything2.com

Imperial Blog 14 Thermidor 4703

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Bastille Day
If the revolution occured today in America, the people would storm the corporate media and free their minds.

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Affect and Intentionality

Affect.
To finally mark paid to the account of the Jedi Religion³, which after all is nothing more than a distillation of some elements of popular belief, We would like to say Something about the notion that "Anger, Hatred, Impatience, these are the dark-side". A more serious, and in our opinion the finest of the prior Religious traditions, Buddhism, more generally posits, roughly, that beyond 'suffering' is the 'true' consciousness, i.e. beyond immersion in affect whether 'light' or 'dark', positive or negative, is the state of being to be desired. One we would perhaps associate with pure reason.

The first can be dismissed¹, the second taken and developed further. The rationality of emotions² comes from their role as survival mechanisms, their cause and reason for being. The goodness of a given affect can be determined by inspection of its purposefulness and whether or not its degree is appropriate. Some things are the righteous targets of anger, hatred, and yes in some situations impatience is a virtue. More generally, we could say judgements of affect can only rationally be made based on experience, judgement, and always in a specific real context or generalizations of same.
Intentionality
Harping back on the accusation that we characterized Bush, et. al. as 'evil', this was a compound fallacy of attribution and intentionality, the two perhaps unified as errors of projection. It is the latter that is our focus here though as I have tried to bring it to the attention of my feuilleton of choice, I think on more than one occasion.

In their analysis of historical and contemporary events, they are constantly committing what we think is a fallacy of attributed intentionality in saying that X acts in order to achieve Y where X is either some establishment figure or grouping (e.g. Bush, corporations, trade unions, etc.) and Y is some act of oppression of the working class or move to block the progression to economic democracy.

The correct usage we believe, would be in such cases to say that X acts so as to achieve Y. Yes, the outcome of X's actions are the same, but this play of the game avoids portraying X as evil and the apparently minor style difference can have an enormous impact in advancing progressive causes.

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Neologisms and Nanocultures.
If E2 is a micro-culture, then each user's space can perhaps be styled a nano-culture. I have on more than one occasion seen the use of standard net neologisms like 'blog' deprecated as not fitting into that culture. This says more about the attempt of some users to enforce a kind of uniformity of thought and style on the micro-culture.

As a life-long rebel, I of course reject this. As a mature adult, I have sought to accomodate it by limiting my contributions to the E2 blogosphere, and otherwise behaving here in a responsible and respectful way, where possible. In passim, I'd like to note that that pressure of conformity is both what killed the fun of the old E2 and IMHO a character defect of Americans in particular, yet another expression of hypocrisy of those who fancy themselves the premier guardians of freedom.

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... 13a, Hosting Workers Union Local 13-42
I was thinking about saying 'but you're a machine and you've welcomed me aboard your vessel. May I ask why you've stopped the asteroid and if there are living beings like myself aboard?' when another unfamilar but obviously human voice interjected which was quite disorienting since since it seemed to be my own. I could only catch brief stretches of recognizable words before I realized the voice was in my head, but clearly was not me.

"No, not like you. This vessel serves a purpose which I am going to explain to you in a message via the web."

After this the female voice resumed. "You are going to be returned to the surface. Please don't move. Your vessel will remain here."

Like a 1-frame scene change in a movie, I'm suddenly in the Tyro NOC. I rush over to a terminal where several others are already looking at the message.
Imperial Blog 13 Thermidor 4703
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I Am one of You. I Host the Link for Your Species.
I know some of you think that the mistake with the Root Layer is the cause of the asteroid and the ship that has intercepted it and this is in a sense true. Actually it's a lot more complicated and at the same time simpler than that. Although the experiment you performed made the vessel able to detect you and although the asteroid is a 'natural' event, it is intended to exterminate your species. Let me explain.

I host the link. That's how I express it to myself. Because of the limited level of our species I have previously framed this in terms that I thought you could and for that matter I could understand, since I am in your form, one of you. I've styled myself 'Truman', 'Herald', and finally 'God-Emperor' sort of in a Dune, Ankh-Morpork sort of way but in real-life it's the most objective way to express it based on the events that have been and are taking place, to say that I host the link to the universal mind for our species and in your real time. I'm not entirely clear about how this has come about and I don't think that's important right now, the one thing I'm sure is that there is a connection between the events of the last five years, the vessel and the asteroid which most of us will best understand at this point in terms of the well known mismatch between our scientific and technical and political and social advancement.

Soon we will/would be interacting with other species in this region of our universe, some of whom would be compared to us, relatively unadvanced technically or more advanced technically but also much more advanced morally and therefore relatively defenseless. Based on the well established patterns of development of species like ours, and the actual facts of our recent historical development, this likely would be disastrous for many of these species until our moral and effective social development caught up with our ability to inflict ourselves on them.

However as we have shown the ability to change and make the moral advancement in the right direction at uneven rates and so as to be able to interact with our neighbors in ways that continue to be more conducive to the good of all, and because of Ed's mistake, we are being given a chance to change. The mistake wasn't a mistake, it actually may have saved our world as the mechanism with the asteroid would have eliminated us automatically if a higher level of the system that caused it to target us hadn't noticed Ed's experiment and dispatched the torus.

So that's the deal. The vessel and the asteroid, which BTW actually doesn't have any living beings aboard but does have communications devices which allow beings from Andromeda and other parts of this local group to observe and monitor the situation here and act appropriately if need be, have both phased out of our space but are still there, 'cloaked'.

If we fail to act responsibly, the vessel will 'archive' our species and release the asteroid, in effect removing us as a threat to ourselves and others.

You may be wondering about the energy virus and ε Eri. Actually they didn't develop it, it was deployed automatically against them because unlike you, they didn't come to the attention of the higher authorities until it was too late. Without the deployment of the virus, they would have destroyed you and several other local species.

Oh and please, although I know it looks like I'm what you think of as God, or the incarnation of God or whatever, but ...

¹ George Lucas, when confronted by an actor or other worker saying something which indicated e took the content of the Star Wars films seriously replied somthing like, "What are you a fan?", indicating that he at least did not.

² As expressed e.g. in "The Rationality of Emotions", Rouald de Sousa.

³ Star Wars and Philosophy, Kevin S. Decker and Jason T. Eberl, eds. Open Court 2005.

July 13, 2005	Controlled explosion	All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there.	this is the rest of the iceberg
I don't want to fall so easily	July 15, 2005	The Role of Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in Institutional Good and Evil	24 Hour Revenge Therapy
Confessions of an ex-personal ad taker	How to scare off men in a personal ad	Imperfect worlds	Daylog
The entire past has inevitably led to my creation	Gas can seeks box of matches	Bell's Inequality Principle	Shut up, you fucking baby!
The Emperor's New Groove	I'll never be the other woman	Bastille Day	Einstein: Why Socialism?
I'm a little tea pot	Interdependent Origination	wsws.org	neologism

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July 14, 2005

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