hopped

This was originally posted February 26, 2010.

I deal with suicidal, unipolar depression and I take medication daily to treat it. Over the past seven years, I’ve had two episodes that were severe and during which I thought almost exclusively of suicide. I did not eat much and lost weight during…

I’m always talking about this article with people, and they rarely believe that it is true. 

Abstract:

Economic theory and common sense suggest that time preference can cause or perpetuate poverty. Might poverty also or instead cause impatient or impulsive behavior?

This paper reports a randomized lab experiment and a partially randomized

i like to get really stoned off hash during my drive home for work, look at the boston lights against the night sky and imagine that my loneliness is a caravan that will shield me as i travel through this gay earth

—Eduardo Pissimos

ohheybill:

I have found the worst 28 seconds in the history of music.

oh great we found it

SHELIDAH,
16th June 1892.
The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the ordinary duties of one’s daily life simply and naturally. From the grasses in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.

Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green. And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.

Perhaps because the whole of our life is not vividly present at each moment, some imaginary hope may lure, some glowing picture of a future, untrammelled with everyday burdens, may tempt us; but these are illusory.

—rabindranath tagore

If I told you that Ron Paul (remember him?) said that Secret Service protection for presidential candidates is “welfare” and he didn’t need it, what would you think he meant? Why of course, you’d think he meant that the kind of protection the Secret Service provides is necessary, but sometimes a candidate has fallen on hard times and can’t afford to pay for it themselves, so the government steps in to do it for them. And if Paul doesn’t need it, it’s because his campaign, unlike those of his rivals, is on sound financial footing. That’s what you’d think he meant, right? Well, no. You’d know that when Ron Paul says “welfare,” what he means is “an undeserved government handout.” Welfare was established as part of a safety net to insure that people in poverty wouldn’t spiral into absolute destitution, but today not only has the program (now called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF) been slashed to the bone, we barely ever debate it at all, unless it’s to discuss a Republican proposal to make it even harder and more humiliating to receive. Instead, the word “welfare” only comes up when someone wants to characterize a benefit as undeserved. And liberals are nearly as guilty as conservatives. The only time they use the word is when they’re talking about “corporate welfare,” by which they mean not benefits to needy corporations, but undeserved handouts to corporations. Just one more conservative linguistic victory, and one that has become so ingrained everyone uses it without thinking.

—Another Conservative Language Victory

“The problem with Paul is that his contrarian, cranky, against-the-mainstream persona is completely superficial. He speaks truth to power! He says what other politicians won’t say! He does it because it’s consequence free, and because the validity of his views and policies will never be tested because they’re virtually impossible to enact in modern American government. The Federal Reserve is not going away, but Paul can stoke distrust of government institutions and make low-information voters and uninitiated youth believe that they can transform society by knocking down the pillars that hold it up, and thus, magically a libertarian paradise will spring up where everyone enjoys “freedom” without government interfering and telling them they can’t smoke pot (or, for that matter, that they can’t open a restaurant that refuses to serve black people). It’s utopian propaganda that ultimately undermines liberal/progressive ideals because its core message is that government is a force of evil in the worldand can never be applied to positive ends. That government is what’s preventing us from living in peace and harmony. It’s a facile worldview that, ultimately, serves only to benefit Paul’s vanity (and that’s what his campaigns are—-vanity projects) and props up an affluent, white, male hegemony that would dominate in a world in which government did not protect the rights of people irrespective of their background.

The point is that having principles is easy when there’s absolutely no cost for it. Ron Paul can shoot off his mouth about what he would do and what he wants to do, but he only has that luxury because he has no real power or leverage that would ever put him in a position to actually have to back up his claims. And beyond that, his “principles” are really superficial and ultimately a fraud. Look at…his stance on abortion. He’s a libertarian when it’s convenient to him, and when people want to use their freedom to do things he doesn’t like, he’s working for the clampdown just like everybody else.

Most libertarians take solace in the fact that in a world without the protections of government, they would feel no consequences because they are, by and large, part of the hegemonic in-group that would be protected by their inherent privilege. And to them, libertarianism is the protection of that privilege, and the “freedom” to exert that privilege over others without interference.

It’s[…]a fatalistic worldview. It rejects the idea that we can make things better in the here and now with the system we have, and proposes that the only way to make the country better is to start, essentially, from scratch. Which is impossible, so its followers are perpetually aggrieved and disillusioned, and pursue dead-end activism that retards the progress of government. This, paradoxically proves to them that government doesn’t work, and reinforces their death-cult fervor.”