The advantages of extremism

Allrighty then. Henry tries to fix the internet again. Let's see what happens now.

I found this really great old advert where John Cleese talks about extremism and the content unfortunately never seems to get outdated.
So I wanted to quote the entire thing and searched the internet for the exact text. 

Unfortunately that was nowhere to be found and I took it upon myself to write it all down from what I assume is an uncut original copy on YouTube.

__

Seriously though, we've heard a lot about extremism recently a nastier, harsher atmosphere everywhere, more abuse botherboy behavior, less friendliness and tolerance and respect for opponents. All that, but what we never hear about extremism and its advantages.

Well, the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good. Because it provides you with enemies. Let me explain. the great thing about having enemies, is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you.

attractive isn't it?

So If you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway, and you therefore enjoy abusing people

Then you can pretend that you are only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons.

And if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time. 

So if you want to feel good, become an extremist.

Okay, now you have a choice.

If you join the "hard left", they'll give you their list of authorized enemies: almost all kinds of authority, especially the police, the City, Americans, judges, multinational corporations, public schools, furriers, newspaper owners, fox hunters, generals, class traitors — and of course, moderates.

Or if you'd rather be an extremist on the hard right, no problem, fine, you still get a lovely list of enemies, only they are different ones; noisy minority groups, unions, Russia, weirdos, demonstrators, welfare sponges, meddlesome clergy, peaceniks, the BBC, strikers, social workers, communists — and of course, moderates.

And upstart actors.

Now once you are armed with one of these super list of enemies, you can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behavior is morally justified. So you can strut around abusing people and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth, a fighter for the greater good and not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.

*John Cleese

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4

Pro-Truth pledge

 

I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:

please hold me accountable.

This is a real good start. More people should do this.

Coronavirus: Can it even be stopped?

Hey Thunderf00t, as it seems, embedding your video does make it show up in search results. So I suppose I can help it spread this way.

It is really sad that YouTube is doing this to you, but it's not a perfect world eh?

Covidiots

Trump didn't take it seriously and now he's fucked up his country, Boris of UK shakes hands with Covid-19 patients and is proud of it, the Belarussian president organizes a ice-hockey tournament and plays in it himself saying "I don't see any viruses here, do you?"

I really do wish this virus would just kill stupid people.

Unfortunately the reality of it is that the stupid people in charge will just make it worse for all of us.

This virus is here to stay for a loooooong time.

Once we get it under control in all the smart countries, it will fester in the stupid countries and even if those are isolated, the virus will mutate there and come back at us at any given opportunity.

First thing you do if you find out there is a new virus; "containment", keep the virus from getting out.

China really fucked up that part, and lost face in a big way. The virus is now everywhere and all we can do is damage control. Keep the virus from spreading so rapidly that the healthcare systems don't get overrun. this is also called "flattening the curve". Which basically means, a lot of us are going to get infected, but we're going to try and spread it out a bit. And if we do that well, we there might actually be people who don't get infected at all. But it also means it is going to take way longer before the virus naturally dies out.

But the thing is, we ALL have to do it.

If there is just one stupid infected fuck who doesn't, the infection will flare up again at a much later date.

There are a lot of stupid fucks in this world and lately there are also a lot of stupid fucks in government.

Luckily this virus is actually rather mild for what it could have been.
But we need to learn from this or the next virus will take out en even bigger chunk out of the worlds population.

Perhaps now we can start listening to the scientists again?

Writers Block

Here I am staring at the overwhelming whiteness of a blank page.
Staring, dreaming dreamless dreams while awake.
There is nothing more cleansing to the mind.

But I don't want a clean mind, or a clean page. I want something to shout about, something to complain and rant about. My anger and dissatisfaction put in words might inspire and make people laugh. it works therapeutically on my own mind.

I want to write. People here want me to write.
But now, when I come here I can't help but think about the article that got deleted.
I am angry and frustrated, but also it feels like I lost.

"The Best way to kill yourself" has been erased on blogger.
It was a controversial topic, equally controversially written and I knew the moment I posted it that it might not be around for long.
Still,. it has been around for far longer then I ever expected.
This article changed what I wanted to do with this blog, it was in my way. It was also the reason to come back to my blog so many times. It was the most popular of any article I had written. It was hated and loved. But the most sad part is that there were so many beautiful and heart tearing comments there. People pouring their souls out. Farewell letters.

There is no way to fight back.
This is a free platform beyond my control. They have the power to erase whatever history we have together, or whatever article I will write in the future.

I thought it would be governed by a fair process. But it's not.
So here I am feeling useless, pointless. Anything I write here could be gone tomorrow, so what is the point of writing anything here? Do I pack up everything and move to a more safe place for stuff I want to keep? A place where free speech is still ungoverned by AI, where fairness is not compromised by a lack of (human) resources?

I mean, I get it. YouTube and Google, ABC or whatever, they can't be expected to treat every complaint about articles or videos in a fair way. It just takes too many man hours.
Or can they? I think they can. They just don't want to.

And what did I expect really?
I'm using a free service to write stuff out into the world and I expect them to keep it for ever?
Yeah I do.
And now I think that's weird. And it reminds me of something I wrote on this blog. Something about free apples, was it not?
I have come to expect them free apples from Google, even think I have the right to have them and I'm angry when I don't get them. I'm just like the rest of ya'll.

So am I going to let this Block me from writing?
It nearly did there, didn't it?

The point is, to make a difference.
If it is lasting or not doesn't matter, everything is fleeting anyway. Our lives will end, new lives will be created and everything always changes.
A white page suddenly turned into a blog post once I started poring my unfiltered thoughts and feelings onto it. But what is the point?

All I know is that I wanted to write again. And I felt blocked.

I remember the first time I experienced writers block.
I wasn't actually going to write anything, I was in class and I was supposed to make a drawing. It was free drawing, you could draw anything you wanted.
Sounds amazing right?
But it's way too much freedom, there was so much I could draw that I was totally overwhelmed by it and I froze. All idea's just were not there, my mind was as blank as the page before me.
I think I sat there staring at the page for at least ten minutes while my mind raced in circles; "what can I draw? Everything, I can't draw everything, it doesn't fit on this tiny piece of paper, besides it would take forever. So I have to make a choice. But what do I choose, and why? What is the best choice? that depends on the goal? What is the goal? To draw something? But why? Do I have to impress someone? Or do I do it for me? And do I need to impress myself? Yes,.. but how? What am I even doing here?"
Finally the teacher noticed I wasn't drawing and she came up to me to ask what the problem was. Obviously I said; "I don't know what to draw" And she just said the simplest thing and I don't think she ever knew what huge implications this sentence had on my life. "Just draw what you see"

I took what she said, thought about it really carefully and started drawing my desk, my hands and the blank piece of paper.
But the blank piece of paper was now no longer blank, So I had to change the blank piece of paper to a drawing of a desk with a blank piece of paper.......

I have always loved recursion but that was the first time I realized that it is a great way to get unblocked.

Here I was staring at the overwhelming whiteness of a blank page, but now I'm thinking, "is it okay to end it here?"

Why am I being bullied?

You want to know why you are being bullied, picked on or just generally walked all over? Well here's the short and skinny. And you are not going to like what you have to do to solve it.

I don't know how people have belittled the problem of bullying for so long. Saying stuff like "it happens to everybody" or "just man up" or even "oh, get over it".
Bullying is a serious problem that can be the cause of serious mental problems and it will have an influence on the rest of your life.

But yes, it is "normal" and there is no "cure" for this problem.(but don't stop reading)

I've had my share of bullying in school, I have analyzed it at length as to why they were doing it, and why me.
But I was young, and it took a fabulous teacher to open my eyes.

It turns out that it is human nature when in a group to pick on the weakest ones so that the top becomes a more tighter group.

So there is no cure for bullying, the only thing you can do is make very clear that you are not the weakest one.

The best way to do that is violence.
You are probably going to object to that since the ones being bullied are usually the gentlehearted non aggressive people. But you don't actually have to resort to violence, you just have to be very convincing that you will resort to violence when anybody tries to bully you.

If people are already bullying you, it is very very hard to get this in their heads. So get out of there and when you start somewhere fresh, make sure that the first time anybody tries to bully you, act aggressively and make a loud statement that you will not be treated like that or else... You probably have to practice this in the mirror and come up with some good words.

That's it, that's how I got rid of my bullies when I went to a new school. Later they tried it again and I actually kicked one in the balls. I do not approve of violence, but you have to act at the first sign of bullying. That move by the way, earned me their respect and they never tried anything again, they even made attempts to be my friends. Don't be their friend tho, be the outsider they shouldn't mess with. Because if you are inside their little superiority complex driven group, you will have to keep proving your self by bullying others.

The world is a crazy place. that is, unless you understand a bit more about human nature and group psychology. Then you will be very angry and disappointed in the people for a while and finally you will learn to accept it and use it for your own benefit.

If you are not a confident person, act confident.
If you are trying to keep everybody happy, don't. Just focus on your friends and family they are the only ones who truly deserve that.
Read my other post how being nice makes you unhappy

Being timid and trying to keep everybody happy is a sign of an inferiority complex. The main cause of this is you being bullied. People with a inferiority complex are going to get bullied. It is a vicious circle that you have to break out of before you end up killing yourself.

You feel like you are worthless because you are bullied, so you think there has to be something wrong with you. No there is nothing wrong with you. you are just better then them and they hate it. You are a better person then they are for not wanting to fight or hurt anyone. But they don't have to know that.

So go kick some balls. Preferably not literal, but be prepared to do it so that you are convincing enough. And trust me, the bullies will stay away.

Ow gawd, I really can sound like a smug know-it-all sometimes.
Anyway. That's my thoughts on bullying. Hope it helps.

Special thanks to :
ANJuly 31, 2016 at 7:33 AM
for inspiring me to write a comment which turned into this post.
Blogger.com /blogspot for it's incompatency to create ab link to a comment.

HXPanda, this is for you and everybody like you.
HXPanda 164March 23, 2017 at 3:11 PM

How being nice makes you unhappy

Article also on my site

Free apples for everybody

Dear reader, you are the kind of person that wishes to make the world a better place, you are doing that by being a better person yourself and you consider it your job to do so.

I appreciate that sentiment very much and I love you for it.

But now it's high time to take a nice vacation from that job and I will tell you why.

Even a workaholic takes a break, so why would you always be such a nice guy/girl? There is no reason why you shouldn't take a break from being the wonderful person that you are. It is refreshing and in fact, people will appreciate you more for it.

If I gave everybody at work a free apple on every Friday for a few months, people would expect free apples every Friday. At first they would think "whoa, what a nice guy for doing that". After a while it becomes a regular thing and they would just expect a free apple on Friday.

But this Friday I don't have enough apples for everybody. And lo and behold, the people who didn't get an apple are pissed off and mean to me because they didn't get what they deserved. Now they don't like me so much anymore.

Strange how that works eh? I was just trying to be a nice guy but all I get is slack for a few tiny things that go wrong.

Sounds familiar?

Now I could make it my responsibility to deliver free apples for the rest of my life, or I could turn it around.
I pick Bob who said especially mean things to me and tell everybody, "no more free apples because of what Bob said, and I don't feel that my kindness is being appreciated at all".

Boom! everybody turns on Bob for ruining the free apple deal for everybody. And I am a really nice guy again.

Now I know I was being a real asshole. My relationship with Bob has been ruined, but now I can give free apples every once in a while which is much more appreciated.

This is a really simple example just to show you how people perceive your kindness and how it progresses over time.

If you are the "good guy" all the time, people will walk all over you, use you and abuse you. That's not because they are the bad people, psychology tells us that is just the way humans work. I know you are not like that at all, you try to fight those natural tendencies. You are truly a better person for it. But you are also really flat and unhappy.

You are flat because people walk over you, get it? Okay, bad joke, I'm gonna leave it in anyway.

But why are you so unhappy?

You get negative feedback for things that go wrong, that you do wrong. Being such a nice person as you are, you take these criticisms to heart and even start believing them to be true.

You see, we hardly remember the things that go really well, because there is nothing to fix. The things that go wrong are remembered because they may contain information that helps us change future similar situations for the better. So we are hard-wired to focus on and remember the things that go wrong.

You are unhappy because you are not being appreciated, everybody needs appreciation. Also you don't know how humans really work, how they can be manipulated and how you are being manipulated every single day of your life.

Also there is this weird feedback loop going on.

You think you are something, so you act like it. People perceive that(consciously or subconsciously) and act accordingly thus amplifying you belief.

In short. Negative feedback from multiple sources makes you believe you are a fuck up. But you should be asking yourself, why do you get this feedback? Are they right? And what are their real reasons?

What can you do to be more happy? Simple, just focus on the good things in life, you under-appreciate them. Read some things about psychology like Confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, or this excellent article Cognitive Bias Survival Guide. I really think every one should learn that by heart in middle school. Do that, and you will figure out that the world might not be what you always thought it was. Knowing yourself and other people will give you a greater understanding of the world and help you achieve your goals.

Also, practice being an asshole.

Try it, it feels great and gives you a lot of freedom. Just think about it, have you ever seen someone like that apologize or feel bad for the things they have done? No! because they own up to it. Or they don't even think about it. If they call you out on it, just say that you are practicing your assertiveness training or something. Or tell them Henry Hackit made you do it. Balance is the key to everything. This includes being an asshole sometimes.

People will like you much more if your kindness is something rare and to be earned instead of given away for free every single day.