Arguing On The Internet

Something that has been a recurring temptation that so many people on the internet find irresistible is to get into pointless arguments on the internet. Even those who are conscious of this, and therefore have no excuse not to know any better can’t resist it would seem. I know I fall into this trap from time to time. It was a few weeks ago that I was engaged in a pointless exchange with a paranoid End-Times fundamentalist who was obsessing about the Communist takeover that people 50 years ago were so deathly afraid of. He even insisted that the Islamic fundamentalists who have been causing the West so much trouble, and the Islamic fundamentalists who have been involved in overthrowing Qaddafi in Libya and attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria were funded by “The Communists” (never mind that it’s the CIA doing the same things they’ve been doing for the past 60 years).

I went into it, attempting to debate in good faith, make my case, show some evidence and come to a reasonable conclusion… after all, the Cold War has been over for more than 20 years after the countries on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain suffered a cascade of critical failures and total collapse, and China and Russia have, in recent years, been in many ways more capitalist than most of Europe and even America, all of whom have been flirting with ever increasing amounts of socialism that is more likely to degenerate into fascism than regress into Communism. North Korea is now the only country in the world who still seems to think that Communism is a good idea.

But no matter how much evidence I presented, how logical my arguments were, how vigilant I was in calling out his sophistry, he ignored evidence, projected his own sophistry onto me, and even accused me of projecting. All of this on top of ad hominem attacks, and he was completely dismissive of the notion that ad hominem is the most common, most blatant logical fallacy employed in arguments. He also couldn’t get it in his head that the world isn’t so black and white that my case that China has been doing capitalism better than the US lately does not mean that I support the regime in China. So, it turned out that in psychological terms, he was Splitting.

While I had realized the only way the argument was ever going to go was in circles, it went on far longer than I would have liked. Upon looking at his channel on YouTube, he had no videos of his own… just a playlist titled ‘Research’ composed almost entirely of videos and documentaries pre-dating 1989, back when there was a real Communist threat, with a Bill Still documentary about currency being the only exception. It was clear that there was nothing to be gained, even the gratification of winning the argument. The fog of Red Terror in that one’s mind was as impenetrable as a brick wall. I eventually mustered the will to cut him off.

I’m certainly not a moron. I’m smart enough to know better than to get dragged down into a mudfight with morons on the internet. I know there are also a lot of other intelligent people who get trapped in the same kinds of mud pits with the swine, attempting to cast their pearls in the hopes of talking sense into the senseless. It is definitely a curious phenomenon that we end up succumbing so easily to the temptation of arguing on the internet. Especially when we come across psychologically damaged people who see no problem with being the kind of person who will hurl spiteful, hateful, vitriolic abuse the moment you try to engage them in discussion. The kind who wants to humiliate everyone who has the nerve to disagree with every piece of ridiculous, insane, ridiculously insane and insanely ridiculous nonsense they believe.

The important thing is not to defeat these asses and swine. You definitely shouldn’t be feeding them pearls. It’s all well and good to take the high road and go into an argument in good faith, but when good faith is not appreciated, why bother continuing to argue? Either the person is a moron, or we’re actually arguing with their personality disorder more than we’re arguing with them.

Yet, despite being conscious of all of this, all too many intelligent individuals still get roped in. Oh Internet.

Status Report

Well… it’s been nearly two years since I last blogged. I can’t really say for certain what made me stop. I suppose one thing was that I needed to reevaluate my state of mind at the time, because I was going through a 2-3 year long process in which my old worldview, the perception I had of myself, and most of the belief systems I used to adhere to were imploding. It definitely got very messy, and I tumbled down a few of the wrong rabbit holes in my efforts to find something to rebuild myself with. A phrase I often heard when I was going through this process was the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.  It definitely fits with what I went through. For the past year or so, it’s all pretty much passed, and for the first time in a long time… possibly even my life, there’s a new clarity.

So… since the old belief systems are now dead to me, where do I stand? Well… for one thing, I no longer consider myself to be an atheist. The best word for where I stand on spirituality right now is Pantheist. Of course I still don’t believe in the polytheistic gods of our ancient ancestors or modern Hindus, nor do I believe in the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions. I don’t even like to use the word ‘God’ because of the baggage it carries after centuries of religious oppression that Western Civilization has endured. Of course this is just a personal aesthetic preference, but when it comes to what I believe in place of ‘God’ or ‘no God’, I consider the entirety of the universe to be the truest, purest ‘divinity’. I don’t know what to call it. I’m just not as comfortable as Albert Einstein (a pantheist) was with calling it ‘God’. I also came to concede through this thought process that not everything in life can be explained away by pure left-brain logical thinking. While I certainly still hold to a skeptical world view for the most part, there are some things beyond explaining… at least at this point.

As for politics… well, I can’t honestly say I’m an anarchist anymore. I certainly lean that way when it comes to the ideal. After all, I think anyone should be in favour of the kind of society where there is no monopoly on the initiation of force such as the ‘State’ that is given the authority to eat out our substance and spend that on bureaucracy and certain services we’ve been brought up in this paradigm to believe can only be done by a government. I still believe that outgrowing the need for the State is an important step in our evolution. But that needs to be tempered with a realistic outlook. There are far too many, be it welfare recipients, public sector employees, soldiers, policemen who rely on this system for their paycheck. Getting rid of the State, or even so much as cutting down its size cannot be accomplished as quickly as many anarchists and libertarians would like. Stefan Molyneux himself even concedes on many occasions that it will be a multi-generational process, and that it won’t come without a thorough analysis of our own personal issues, and most importantly the way we raise our children. I certainly agree with his emphasis on better parenting and parenting that does not encourage unquestioned acquiescence to arbitrary ‘authority’ or ‘might makes right’ as things like yelling, screaming and spanking do. But ultimately, when it comes to how to get to this world without the need for governments, nobody has the answer on how we’re going to get to that better future, or even if it is going to happen at all. So it is best not to be caught up in it.

As for conspiracy theories… well there certainly are some real conspiracies. You’d have to be living under a rock on Mars for the past few decades to not see such things as real. I’m still not convinced on the ‘official’ story on things like the JFK assassination and the apparent killing of Osama Bin Laden (which was recently made into the blatant propaganda movie Zero Dark Thirty. When they get Hollywood so deeply involved in pushing a narrative, I have to find it even more questionable), there is definitely collusion between corrupt politicians and government officials and certain entrenched corporate interests such as big pharma and the Military-Industrial Complex, 9/11 is still a difficult subject, agent provocateurs are definitely embedded in the mobs of protesters during G20 summits and Occupy Wall Street protests, the Corporate Media definitely won’t ask any questions to the politicians not pre-approved and they definitely try to trap our thinking in the phony left-right paradigm, the Alternative Media is starting to see signs of some of the same cancerous rot that has gone terminal in the Corporate Media, public schools are specifically designed to discourage independent thought and critical thinking, economic hitmen and CIA jackals definitely undermined the sovereignty of people in developing countries for the purpose of pillaging their resources, our governments are working very hard at tricking us into giving away our liberties, and there is most likely an impenetrable shroud of coverups surrounding the issue of extra terrestrials and any possible visitations we’ve had over the years.

Honestly… such things shouldn’t be so controversial… those are the things that are right there in our faces. And one common factor in all of that is that they do not necessarily require any deliberate design for a totalitarian New World Order built by a shadowy secret society of globalist hybrid reptilian Illuminati acolytes who perform Satanic rituals at Bohemian Grove. Explanations for these things are very simple indeed. Greed, lust for power, sociopathy, fear, dangerously misguided good intentions… take a pick and feel free to pick more than one. You can’t necessarily say that such things are definitely not true… only that they are most likely not true, and that in the absence of the extraordinary evidence to back these extraordinary claims, focusing on these theories isn’t particularly helpful to anyone other than the paranoia profiteers and conspiratainment con artists all over the internet.

Finally, on the issues of mental health and personal life… I know that higher than average anxiety is something I’m stuck with for the rest of my life. I was always a very sensitive individual, so it’s something that will always affect me. That said, however, life has been improving. I definitely consider myself fit to go back into dating, for one thing. I dated quite a few times last year, had another girlfriend for a few months as well. Didn’t work out in the end, which definitely sucked, but I’m managing such things a lot better. Career wise, I’m still fighting the scourge of procrastination to try and get some novels written and ready for publication, but other than that, working towards a career working with computer hardware. I wish I could have figured that out 10 years ago, but hey… at least I know now, and I understand that some people twice my age still don’t know what their true calling is. All in all… things have been looking up for the past year.