German Nazis claimed to have a unique and special bond with the land, a spiritual connection of existential significance. They called this concept Blood & Soil. Blood/people/ancestry was signified by the colour red; Soil/land/place was signified by the colour black, hence Nazis sometimes used (and continue to use) the black and red flag as their symbol, often with the swastika (symbol of the sun) in the middle. They claimed that their special bond with the land, as the original people of Central and Eastern Europe, gave them special moral status over all unoriginal tribes and races. Apart from all the ethical/logical errors in this narrative (which are ample) there is one factual error, which is reproduced by the Aboriginal sovereignty movement of Australia: they forgot that both Aboriginal people, German people, Japanese people, Polish people etc all share the same ancient ancestors, who were more original than any nation on earth, but their dispersed descendants chose to disavow their forgotten brothers and sisters for contemporaneous tribal advantage, and falsely claimed the land as their sole birthright. Nazism was the original indigenous rights movement. Any ethnicity or tribe can try it, not just the Germans, Italians or Japanese but it is a moral trap that invariably ends in tears.

It is easy to be deceived by the emotional manipulators and the guilt rhetoric. Only consistent reasoning can cut through the fog of conflicting feelings that are spun around us. The same applies to contextualising the value of ancient cultures. Endurance of some cultures is no evidence of their value, let alone moral value. Bacterial cultures endure too. Making inferences about value from endurance is an Is/Ought fallacy. Also, endurance was typically facilitated by cultural stasis, which is to say, cultural repression of the freedom of thought. All these are purely academic concerns, but the chief moral concern with ancient cultures in my assessment is their lack of a universal concept of humanity and of universal ethics, which precluded reliable resolution of conflicts between cultures. This permitted only total domination of a single dogmatic system in a particular area of physical influence, and everything else was exterminated or enslaved. Also, the laws of logic/sense that allow us to reliably distinguish between sense and nonsense are a relatively new discovery (Aristotle), so we are still learning how to think. Universal humanity is an even more recent idea, more or less beginning with Kant, and universal human rights are only a few decades old. Yes, the freedom of thought and learning how to think, how to tame the beast of the mind, is indeed a monumental, unprecedented challenge that no ancient culture had experienced. Nevertheless, I see the present situation in the world as a state of great potential, unprecedented progress, although this comes at a temporary cost, the pains and contradictions of humanity are now (first time ever) in the open. I am very optimistic about the future, but this topic is of course inexhaustible, but necessary to study. https://t.iss.one/NormalParty/2462

The fantasy of meeting the extraterrestrials and trying to understand them is psychologically fascinating, possibly a projection of how human cultures meet and try to understand one another, buy they happen to believe some opposite dogmas, make opposite claims of rights and end up killing one another. Then one day some guy named Aristotle figures out the essence of differences between sense and nonsense, truth and logical error, and he realises that all thinking entities, all cultures, even hypothetical aliens, are necessarily subject to these rules or they could not think at all (hence the name: the laws of thought). Then Kant realises that all thinking beings have the capacity to resolve their disagreements about values and facts without violence, simply by thinking about the point of dispute according to these fundamental rules. But we are still unable to do this reliably. So the irony of making alien contact is that ‘what if aliens believe something opposite to our convictions’ what if we fundamentally disagree about values and facts, what do we do? We cannot win through violence against a technologically superior civilisation, so the old go to option of empires is out. We can only reason. The Alien is a perfect symbol for the oldest human problem, that of disagreement about values and facts.

I’m excited about the possibilities, which exist only in the future, and I have no interest in dwelling on the past. There are no possibilities left there, it is all done. But I do not expect others to do the same; this is just me confessing about what motivates me.

When someone denies the fundamental laws of logic (for example, the law of non-contradiction) their words cannot be taken to mean anything; from contradiction everything follows, including its negation. In short, they make noises but are precluded from meaningful communication, even if making sounds or writing symbols that would have meaning when expressed by anyone who respects the laws of sense.

CREDIT is the art of lending money without money. This is the biggest fraud in the history of the world and the proof that Marx was also a fraud (he never mentioned the biggest expropriation of property executed under the guise of credit, essentially covering up for the banks while demonising private farmers and small business owners). This is how credit issuers and facilitators can afford 40 million dollar houses.

BREAKING NEWS: The Commonwealth of Australia is set to scrap all legislation and return to practicing the Lore of Stone Age tribes, because “first in time is first in right”. Parliamentary democracy is officially cancelled. There will be a 30 day amnesty on “spearings” to allow the non-natives to adapt to the Lore. Critics of the move worry that earlier, more primitive versions of the Lore could be discovered which would automatically make them the law of the land, possibly causing total lorelessness.

Masks are harmful for several reasons, but CO2 accumulation is a false narrative. The mask does allow air through as well as CO2. It does not stop C02 from being exhaled, but only slightly increases the dead volume of the respiratory system. The effect is equivalent to shallow breathing which we all do most of the time, or when sitting in a crowded bar. The measurement of “toxic” levels of CO2 is just what your out-breath naturally contains in this air-space. Nevertheless, the increased pressure required to exhale through a mask makes breathing more difficult, tiring, and increases the demand for oxygen, but this is a seperate issue.

BREAKING NEWS: The newly released State of Climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies the widespread use of surgical face masks during Covid-19 pandemic as the new major cause of climate change. Face masks increase physical exertion of human bodies by 23% compared to unmasked population, resulting in 35% increase in CO2 whole body emissions. The average CO2 emissions rate across all of the whole-body experiments was 28.7 ± 2.1 g/h/person or 251 kg/year/person without a mask. The additional carbon emissions due to masks worn by the entire global population add up to 615 million tonnes per year, which is equivalent to 63% of global aviation emissions (pre pandemic level). IPCC blames Greta Thunberg for popularising face masks without actually having done any calculations of their carbon footprint. “Greta should first go to school and learn arithmetic before pontificating on climate action” furious António Guterres was overheard saying at the conclusion of an emergency UN climate meeting, apparently not aware that his microphone was still on. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722023348

Artificial intelligence will never become conscious without opposable thumbs;)

We can only be ourselves (Human) vis-a-vis other beings of the same kind, which hinges on commonality and reciprocity of language/meaning. Since we can satisfy this condition only with other beings who are engaging in meaningful, reciprocal communication with us, and of generating common meaning with us, we are limited to rational beings only. The Kantian concept of humanity (as rational beings) allows for extension of this category if we would develop reciprocal communication and common meaning with any entity other than Homo sapiens, but for now this practical reciprocity is limited to Anthropos. It also seems that common embodiment (maintained by species interbreeding) is necessary to have such reciprocity, which would automatically exclude all non-embodied ‘minds’.

Looks like Murdoch is positioning his golden boy Tucker to run for president. We will see.

TRANSLATION: Rupert Murdoch pays $962 million to buy credibility for his presidential candidate.

All humans share the same ancient ancestors: the original owners of the earth, the first people, who were roaming the earth 200 million years ago. All living humans are their descendants, lost or dispersed but still our brothers and sisters; we are all the original owners of the Earth. But there is something more important than common ancestry that unites all of humanity: our capacity to reason, to understand one another and generate common meaning.

The things the majority accepts today as uncontroversial and right will shock us tomorrow. The rational way to deal with the problem of moral ignorance is to face the irrationality of the day and reveal its contradictions. Irrationality has an infinite supply of guises, and suppressing just those guises that were historically discredited will do nothing to defeat those that are yet to be unmasked, let alone those we unwittingly harbour within us. We cannot delegate this task to people in power, as this would be a renunciation of our own moral responsibility to discern right from wrong.