What makes humanity humanity is society. I'm sure you've heard of feral children before, and that about answers the question right there. We are only as instinctively evolved as how we were raised to be. In the nature vs. nurture argument, nurture is vastly more important.

I would wish for great success and fortune for me and my family for the rest of eternity. So basically, to be kick ass in every venture I make.

Fiscal spending would be about the same, but less would be blown on bailouts and more on National defense. Also, the white house would take a firm stance against abortion and be much more conservative on social issues of that persuasion.

CEO maybe, but manager who pulls in well over 100k a year is a pretty common occurrence. Most of the high earners in the US are first generation new money, so the American dream is real but not unrealistic in its scope. You can better yourself through education and hard work, but to jump pencil pusher to CEO in one generation is, as all logic would point to, almost impossible today.

At 5/9/09 08:20 PM, LordAdon wrote: hold on, more pay? that would be because the person is too greedy.
and what exactly is something that goes wrong?

Fact is some people deserve more pay because not everyone is equal, so why in God's name should they be treated as such? Some people are just plain smarter, faster, stronger and more cunning and as such will do more for society in their respective roles than the dumb, slow, weak and ignorant. That is why they deserve more, because they do more and they do it better. That is one of the many reasons why communism is a joke.

At 5/2/09 04:25 PM, Phratt wrote:

At 5/2/09 02:29 PM, Chickidydow wrote: blah blah

In my opinion, you seem like one of those "independents" that find the flaws and negatives in every political idea but come up with no solutions of your own.

In my opinion you seem like a confrontational dick who goes out of the way to ignore the purpose of a thread because you think your above the norm and better than somebody else based on nothing but first impressions.

My father is a party-line republican who hates Obama, gun control and is actually a bit of a bigot who refuses to listen to anything he doesn't believe in. My mother goes with whatever he says, but mostly out of dis-interest in politics. She's a devout Catholic and gets most of her values from there, but on anything that isn't based on social issues she tends to be conservative, but easily coerced into any viewpoint.

My eldest sister and her husband are pretty much as conservative as my father, except they are a bit more religious like my mother. My dad is a heathen who doesn't go to church except on holidays. My other sister and her husband are the black sheep of the family, both worship Obama as the lord and savior of the United States. Their both staunch environmentalists, even though they've never done anything to help the environment whereas my hunting father has donated thousands of dollars to the conversationalist organization Ducks Unlimited. Besides the environment taking priority, they both seem to have socialist tendencies.

My brother-in-law in particular has admitted that he would be fine with free-market if the United States was run as the constitution says it should be, but until social injustice is wiped out he is a socialist. He says he follows the teachings of Jesus, but because he believes in his word so much he can't follow a hypocritical church and is instead a Buddhist. We don't talk about politics when their in town.

I am a moderate libertarian and am above all a pragmatist, I like to apply logic and common, realistic sense to issues and tend to demonstrate a certain level of relativism to social issues.

I see our world, except it doesn't suck as much, no one dies and Jesus is my neighbor.

Kev-o, are you familiar with the Ik? An ethnic group that one day lost a forest it depended on for its cultural and economic prosperity.

When it lost this forest it became anarchy where survival was valued over everything else, children were thrown out of the hut at age four to fend for themselves and are taught from then on to help only themselves and screw everyone else. Not formally of course, because humans are socialized informally by society itself, when there is no society, no loving social interaction and a safe place (which is needed according to the Erikson stages of social and emotional development) and are sited to pick on the blind and weak as they die and beg for help. All cultural relativism aside, this is a sick, terrible and hopeless place that shows empirical evidence that anarchy is a load of shit.

You say that its worked for small amounts of time, I say that is has been failing in places and tribes like the Ik for even longer.

At 4/26/09 09:41 PM, LordAdon wrote:

Lol, the United States? Sure, there are problems, but it works. If it were truly BROKEN I would directly feel the effects. I could also use Canada. Or a lot of European countries. And so on. You could argue against that point, but I think we would both agree that those countries are several times better off than China or Communist Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea.

The U.s. government is corrupt, and very close to fascism.

Look how far staling got with his communist rule. His greed then took it down, but still.

Also, the government systems in canada and europe are alot different than those of the U.S.

Are you serious? No really, your just so biased to your viewpoint that you bend reason and fact to fit your own skewed perspective. United States is only a fascism in the eyes of a conspiracy theorist, and the only difference between Canada/Europe and the U.S. is a marginal amount of regulation and health care. Your really going to cite Stalin as a pro-communist point? Seriously, you can't be serious.

At 4/26/09 11:44 AM, IdentiC wrote: Clarification;

Under Socialism there is Communism and Socialism. I see lots of people confusing these two with eachothers, but in reality there are loads of differences. Both have a strong state, but thats where the simillarities stop. In communism the state is supreme. Everything is owned by the state, and also, split equally amongst everyone.. The problem is that this system is so easy to abuse for those in power, that people in the end gets to suffer for the leaders abuse.

Socialism on the other hand is a far more liberal form of Socialism (confused yet? :P). The state controls the infra structure of a country, as in police, fire fighters, hospitals and so on. The major difference is that you get to reap what you sow. Work hard and you will have a greater benefit, whilst as a communist it gets split equally. Then again keeping the infra structure going also make socialism have higher taxes then general. Also, if you start up a factory you own it in socialism, while as a communist the state owns it.

What am i saying here then?

I have no idea..

It's a bit more complex than that, a lot of people have different ideas about socialism and how it should be run, but it is almost always involving a strong central state and heavy economic regulation. Communism cannot exist without the dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx's answer to how a utopia could be formed. It is a socialist state where a soviet-esque council of the educated communists would rule and regulate everybody else. It was thought that eventually, as the soviet re-educated the population to be content with Marxist ideals, the state would wither away out if simply being unnecessary. Of course this all sounds well and good, but when you factor in humanity and its predictably unpredictable way of doing things you get a few problems.

Socialism can exist without communism, and it does. Many modern European countries have fundamental socialist principals in their governments, and it appears that socialism is today's new way, just as during the enlightenment Democracy was all the rage. The disagreements in modern politics come from different types of socialism, or more correctly, different levels of regulation and personal freedom. It will fall out of style and who knows? Maybe libertarianism will be politics' next big thing.

Growth? Growth on the backs of the starving, exploited masses. The true bourgeois is the socialist who would stand up and rally about injustice one day and sign away a village to a gulag the next. In nearly (If not all) countries who have ever instated the early stages of communism (In other words: instate heavy economic regulation and take away personal liberties) things have immediately gotten worse. The standard of living plummets as does economic prosperity. Russia is a rare exception simply because propaganda made things look much better there than they actually were.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution" all sent China on a one way trip down a long hill of poverty and strife. At least in democratic governments there is at least some form of transparency, and you won't get thrown in prison for poking around. All prosperous modern day countries all have some form of Free Market, and the most successful, the countries with the highest GDP and the most transparent governments are the ones who are the freest. Hong Kong and the United States, Singapore and Ireland, all score very high in economic freedom and all have populations that have a very high GDP per capita and live very well because of it.

The difference I see between the communism idiots try to work for, the "Utopia" that will never happen, and the pragmatic and realistic Republics we have today are that one is just a way of treading water and lowering standards while the other is the one of progress. I'd rather move forward rather than trying to be content with staying in the same place forever, losing my initiative, my drive and eventually my sentience while under the boot of the commune.

At 4/25/09 10:01 AM, RubberTrucky wrote: I don't see why privacy is that important. If it helps to stop child pornography or take away people who actively searches for it, then why not?

Until they use this monitoring to really silence every critic who blogs about how much the government sucks, there is no problem.

If I may take the stance of the avalanche theorist, you give a little bit of leeway in your rights and before you know it it's George Orwell's 1984. That's pretty much the only way I could see it happening in this country, it would have to be subtle and backed up with justifiable reasons at first, but suddenly it would like it is in Australia or the U.K. where you can get arrested for writing a story on the internet that the government doesn't like. I doubt people thought it would get out of hand in Australia either.

Libertarian, as I thought it would be.

"Terry, what the fuck are you doing."

Terry King was walking down the car-cluttered streets at a quick pace, head down, ears open, thoughts abound. He didn't know what he was doing, that was what he was trying to figure out. As his mind raced from each idea to the next he once again felt himself whispering those words.

"Terry, what the fuck are you doing."

I don't know, he thought,I just don't know. His sweatshirt felt hot on him, sweat pouring off his neck and causing his clothes to stick to his back like vinyl in an old car. His free hand was switching positions every few minutes, either curled up in one of the front pockets of his sweatshirt, struggling for room against his rounds, or airing out in the cool air. He didn't know where he was going, and was fighting hard to keep alert in the midst of his frantic thinking. Where should I go? Was the question on his mind at the moment. The hand that gripped his axe swung forward and backwards like the cliched empty swing in the wind. The lucidity of his mind teetered.

He had been this way for only a few minutes, his first free few minutes in a long while. First he'd seen the chaos; fires, death, the images we associate with hell outside his apartment window. Then it went silent and the crazies left. The noises in his building didn't leave. Struggling, crying, muffled growls. He'd crept out at nightfall, unsure of what to do or where to go, but sure he wasn't going to be hiding in his eventual coffin for long. He'd found things on the bodies, mutilated corpses with bites in them, torn clothing and dried, crusty blood. From a firemen he had found an axe, from a mangled pile of only God knew what he had found a gun, and from the signs of life around him he'd found his sanity.

They were only small things; an empty can of soup still wet with broth, a dead fire near a tree that was missing a few branches, a car left running in front of an un-navigable lane of wreckage and congestion. These small things had kept him going, kept him thinking, kept him hoping. Like that old Emily Dickinson poem, it was there where he was willing to see it, willing to hear it. And there he walked, Terrance King, eyed down and ears open as the morning's first light touched his sweaty face.

A sound met his ears and his thoughts stopped. His chin rose from the ground and his eyes scanned the street. He examined the are carefully, got a feel for it. It was an old looking street, cracked pavement lining the sidewalks which ran in front of two identical rows of houses, the venerable two story ones you see sometimes in black and white movies, with stairs running up to the door and running down to the basement. No movement, no life, but the sound was still ringing in his ear. A sound of metal falling onto concrete, something everyone hears at least once. His eyes crawled along, careful not to miss a single detail. Green paint, red brick, an old chevy, a-. He stopped as the grip on his axe tightened and his poise got lower. A tipped over trash can.

He moved forward slowly, heedful of where he stepped and just as heedful about where he stood. He was practically crouching now, keeping below the heights of the cars as he neared where he had spotted the can. It was about twenty feet from him in front of an old gray house, the sun casting a shadow from behind it, shrouding each and every invaluable detail in an extra layer of deadly mystery. His foot raised vertically, moved forward a few inches and lowered again softly. He saw more now, through the windows of cars. The can rolled gently back and forth, the steel scraping on the rough stone and the steps in front of it leading into the home guided his eyes into an open door and darker shadows. He raised a bit, realizing whatever it had been had escaped into the confines of the building.

Terry walked up the steps quietly, his grip ever tightening as his ears struggled to hear anything in the silence of the morning. When he reached the creaking door he paused a moment to think. Should I announce myself? Sneaking in could kill me, but so could barging in. Suppose they know I'm coming in prepare an ambush? Suppose they have a-. His thoughts were interrupted. A bang from inside rang clearly in his ear, not far from the door, startling him. He jumped back, nearly tripping and falling backwards down the steps, but he managed to catch himself on the old railing with his free hand. He raised it and wiped the new sweat from his face, only to find too much there to get in one go. He struggled to get all the salty liquid off of his skin, but his hand was saturated with it and would hold no more. He panicked, wiping it on his jeans desperately and then dragging it across his neck, cheeks and lips.

GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF! His mind screamed. Christ, Jesus Christ. Fucking quit it. There was another crash, a plate shattering on a hard surface, another familiar noise. This snapped him out of it. With renewed focus, Terry took his first step into the dark, forbidding house. Carpet met his foot, filthy carpet and the stench of rot and pestilence. His eyes fought to adjust to the light, and soon he registered the room around him.

Ugly peach carpet stained with black, the stain emanating form a dark pile of unknown a few feet in front of him, a row of stairs leading into the unknown at his left, two closed doors to his right and an open door to a light filled room ahead. He took a few more steps towards the unknown shape, no more than a foot in diameter, that lay near his feet. He crouched down towards it to try and get a better idea of what it was when he realized with horror and disgust that it was a dead cat. Jumping back his mind raced. Gah, fuck! Why did I even bother coming in here? Then he remembered the crashes he heard, and listened even harder for noise. A muffled wheezing from the room in front of him was all he could make out. Taking the axe in both hands now, he moved forward into the open door ahead of him.

As he approached it he saw linoleum floors and counter tops, shattered dinnerware and overturned pots filled with either marinara sauce or blood, and he realized it was a kitchen. Before he came close enough to see the whole room he heard another crash, though this time it didn't surprise him, he was ready for it. He fought a few moments with himself again. Pros and cons of announcing myself, uh, fuck, what should I do?

On an impulse when whatever was ahead of him let out an ugly cough, he said very loudly and clearly, "Anybody in there?" This was met with a moment of silence where Terrance felt the sweat pour down his face like a waterfall, dripping on the ugly peach carpet and making a little, salty puddle. Then, seconds later, a screech, then a burst of noise as whatever was in the room rushed to leave it, rushed at Terrance. Terry raised his axe high above his head in anticipation as the dark, hideous shadow of some nightmarish thing came onto the trash covered linoleum, and then he caught a glimpse of it. Fat, broken, bloody lips; dirty mangled hair; a torn plaid, collared shirt; gashed and cut skin; the image of it stuck out clearly in Terry's mind before he heaved the axe down with all his strength on top of whatever it had been, splitting the skull and spilling out more dark liquid on the carpet.

It sat there, motionless in a heap t his feet, the thing's insides still sticking to his axe. He was panting, sweat dripping off his chin and meeting the thing's blood. Terry let his axe fall from his hand. I killed it. He wiped his face again, only to find a fresh splotch of scarlet on his skin. He thought about it all a moment more before picking up the axe and leaving the house, walking the street again.

"I killed it. Terry," he whispered quietly as the sun rose even higher, "What the fuck are you doing."

((I will be out of the country for a week so I figured I'd leave an open first post. Use him as you please until I return.))

1. Chickidy
2. 20
3. October 23rd, 1988
4. I am interested in joining this crew simply because I am interested in sharing my ideas and learning those of others. Free and open exchange may pave the way to me having a greater understanding of those I disagree with, allowing me to more easily coexist with the philosophical parallels of this crew I find in my own life.

There is no proof to support the whole theory of microscopic universes spiraling into eachother, and the proof against such a ridiculous idea is that the universe, as we know it, is an ever expanding collection of stars and planets. The theory is that these constantly parting sky-born bodies are present in each and every cell in my body.

A cell is a self-contained group of organelles, floating about in a pool of cytoplasm and collected within a plasma membrane and possibly a cell wall.

How could the universe continue expanding in this tiny, microscopic building block of life?

How is it that the intensity of a billion suns does not burn away the cell?

The idea is illogical, the stuff of LSD abusing perception versus reality people, the sorts who say we only see something as it is because we perceive it that way. A load of garbage if I ever heard it.

How do I join this club, there are some things I've been mulling over that I'd like to share with a group of people who may take it seriously.

((I apologize for the late profile. I just never really got the inspiration I needed to get back into it, but I will give the Survival RPG the old college try, I owe that much to what got me into RP's in the first place.))

Name: Terrance King

Age: 26

Current Location: The streets of downtown

Weapons: A Browning 9mmx19 Hi-Power, or GP 35., a few clips and a fire axe.

Other Equipment: A little change, a wallet, a ring of keys, the standard stuff

Physical Description/Clothing: Terry isn't overly muscular, but he is well toned, with a concentrated muscle mass remaining close to his bones. He has an overall light build, messy black hair and a gruff beard. His green eyes are close together, hugging the sides of his short, thick nose. He has a large forehead and a pair of thin, chapped lips. He has a noticeable tan all throughout his body, giving his skin a strong, orange look to them. He wears a pair of dark, blackish jeans, a pair of soft-soled white shoes and a loose, navy blue, zip-up hoody with two white T's underneath.

Personality: Terry is a pretty reserved fellow. Outwardly, he's very open and appears to be quite the warm, genuinely fun loving individual, but below the surface he values friendship and other people only as much as what they can do for him. He has a cold, calculating, somewhat over-educated mind
filled with lots of ideals and a cruel outlook on the world around him which, if discovered by others, could land him into trouble. This is why he puts on a show of the party animal. He is not without morals, and is quite stern in his convictions, but he has his priorities straight, and the top one is his own well-being.

Character background: Terry is a college-grad Sociologist who fell into a factory job at a bottling plan while looking for one more suited towards his degree. He resented his family and cut all ties with them, and grew quite discontent with his life in the city. His apartment was crappy, his friends weren't really all that friendly and he all around didn't like where he was. Just as his lease was coming to an end and he was preparing to move the break-out changed everything. He still isn't quite sure if he was happier before it or after it. All he knows is he wants to survive.

An April's Fool joke with the manifest function of a quick, cheap laugh and a latent function of greater appreciation for the freedoms we have. I quite like that function.

I always find it funny to see leftists who claim to be socialists using the freedoms granted to them in western countries to protest against the very freedoms and policies they are using to protect their protests from the national government. Socialism in general can be spun in many ways to protect the individual, but outside of the mixed European economies where it is most often pointed out, it seems to always degrade into a fascist dictatorship.

Sometimes I think we might be heading down that scary road, but then I remember no matter how vocal the extremist left is the majority of people in the United States are moderates who truly value what they have and wouldn't honestly give it up for anything.

Thank God for middle of the road politics, that's the best kind of politics if you didn't know.

1) Your labels are a bit narrow, but I'd say I'm middle of the road slightly leaning right on economics, politically and socially I'd consider myself a moderate libertarian.

2) The system is a consistent living fund for those who don't like to work. I admit, some who are more than likely going to find a job and get off it as soon as possible benefit from the program, which is fine, but just as many see it as there ticket to treading water without a job. It has instituted a false sense of entitlement in many of the lower class who claim they can't find jobs, whereas people coming to this country who can't even speak English manage to find jobs without a passing word of complaint.

3) I don't want to yank the rug out from under the honest folk living off of it who are looking and finding jobs, and in this time of economic downturn many more good people out of work will require its help, but I have a suggestion on how to change it for the better. Nixon had an idea deemed 'Too Liberal' by his Republican counterparts that I think wasn't a bad one. Give them a set amount for the first year or so to live off of, if they find a job then give them no more, if they make no effort to find a job then give them no more, if they make an effort to find a job then extend it for a short while more. It will, in a sink or swim kind of way, force the lazy bastards benefiting from the program to get off it within a set period lest they be left to drown.

Special circumstances will need to be taken, of course, for as with all things this is not as simple as what I've written above. The concept, I believe, is a good one while all that remains is hammering out the details.

4) I doubt our country can afford expanding it when its already on the path to financial ruin. So, its a bad idea in the short run. In the long run? Still a bad idea. It puts more entitlement in the hearts and minds of our less fortunate kin, increasing the likely hood of the 'lazy bastard' anomaly that springs up wherever the poor live mainly on the program's handouts. It isn't a problem of finding jobs, its a problem of willingness to find them and work. Once again I say that there are exceptions.

Every news source is paid for by somebody and everybody likes to here the news somebody they agree with prints. Demographics and special interests rule the media, there is no free press for the people anymore. All we have is various sources of different kinds of propaganda. It sucks but it's life..

At 3/3/09 07:38 PM, punchyguy wrote: Hello there. Im conducting a political survey just for the hell of it. But this is serious. I will list some issues and you tell me your (unless of course you do not wish to share this information) Age, political party, gender and country. Tell me how you feel on these issues and I will come up with a generalization based on these awnser.
1 Abortion
2Gay marriage
3Oil vs. Alternative energy (wind power, water power, etc.)
4War on Terror (you dont need to be from the US to awnser)
5George W. Bush (have fun with this one!)
I would highly prefer you be mature in your awnsers.

I'm not a member of any political party.
Male.
The United States of America.

I am against abortion almost completely, I think in order for it to be present in society significant changes need to be made on how it is carried out and handled by society as a whole.

I am pro-gay marriage.

I think that currently, any energy other than oil is impractical so oil needs to be used for the time being. That being said, alternative energy should be researched more, and when oil finally runs dry the necessity of alternative energies will drive the scientific minds of this world to discover practical applications of things like hydro-cell power very quickly. I am not for government grants.

I think the war on terror was, in hindsight, a bad choice. After deposing Saddam Hussein we should have up and left. Afghanistan should have been the primary objective from the beginning.

George Bush is unpopular because of the times. People say they didn't vote for him so that doesn't make him their president, well a lot of people did and you can't pick and choose which president you follow. You can scrutinize him and his choices, but you can't turn your back on him. He was president during a dynamic and volatile time, a time where any but the best of men in his position would be unpopular. He is now the scapegoat of the current administration, and that is just wrong. I have enough problems with the current leader without him playing the blame game, but he is my president, even though I didn't vote for him.

((Jesus shit, I thought it had died but here it is again. It warms my heart to see my first RP revived and running again. I might see about posting up a profile and joining in when I manage to get some spare time on my hands, and this looks pretty casual and slow moving. For me right now, that is right up my alley.))

I would say, "Great, your here with my handouts. I'm glad I quit my job, dropped out of school, dropped my health insurance and adopted a false sense of entitlement. Money or GTFO."

At 2/28/09 07:13 AM, Podburrys wrote: Tell her you only like her as a vagina.

This is the best thing I've heard all day.

At 2/21/09 12:26 AM, GrammerNaziElite wrote:

Oh please. The first excuse was that he was "jet lagged".

For God's sake, everybody trips up while talking. EVERYBODY. I doubt he would have said, 'I just made a mistake', because people seem to think of Presidents as Gods, who are exempt from our life problems, such as getting it caught in the zipper or masturbating.

I'm sure it was a mistake and not a joke, but that doesn't make him any less intelligent.

I bet you were saying this all the time when Bush was in office, right? No bias up in those words, right?

Do it and get Randy Jackson's signature on it, HE WAS IN JOURNEY!

At 2/9/09 08:00 PM, ixintro wrote: What I thought was really impressive about it was how many continuous action sequences they had without any cuts, the longest one near the end of the movie was freaking 8 minutes long!

Watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and you'll probably shit your pants.

Do I even need to say it?

The ideas of Marxism, while bearing some validity, are for the most part a simple phenomenon of human society in general, and to a greater extent nature. I could argue that the poor versus the rich is in line with the prey versus the predator, it isn't some great evil that can be undone, it just happens. The idea of communism was a utilitarian wet dream and still is, it will never happen and has never happened. It only seemed relevant during Marx's time because conditions were so different then and are much different now, though you wouldn't guess it watching redtube and hearing assholes bitch about capitalism.

When you throw this ill-begotten idea at anything the standard of living plummets for the well off and stays the same for those already living in the ass-crack of society, there is no improvement with collectivism. It is the most empirically wrong and pragmatically backwards theory ever conceived and has no more place being applied today than it had any place being used yesterday.

A can of hair spray and a lighter would fix your problem, assuming that drywall is fireproofed.