Buddha: Take Two

Reply to these comments

One of the great things the Buddha said that will single handedly dissolve many of your points:

"Do not believe in anything because you have heard it.

Do not believe in anything because it is spoken by many.

Do not believe in anything because it is written in religious books.

Do not believe in anything on the authority of your teachers.

Do not believe in traditions just because they have been handed down.

But after observation and analysis,

when you find that anything agrees with reason

and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,

then accept it and live up to it." 

This is all good advice, but it contradicts some of his other teachings. This could be because, like any other religious text, it was written by multiple authors, all with slightly different but socially compatible agendas. Religions, regardless of their origin points, are fueled by dogma, so any good ideas get drowned out when the fervor gets initiated; there is a lot of "Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Put that in there, too, and we'll probably get more people to listen to us." Sometimes, what sounds good is good, and sometimes, it isn't -- but none of this matters to those more interested in control than genuine enlightenment.

Keep in mind that the Pali Canon was written four hundred and fifty years after the supposed death of Siddhartha Gautama -- plenty of time for distortion, contradiction, and multiple personal interests to sneak in under the guise of "Buddhism." Even if it's written somewhere that the Buddha said something wise once, that does not justify other written, unwise statements. Hitler said a few sensible things in his time, for instance.

Of course, both the good and the bad came from a whole posse of people, and not from some mystical man towering above us normal peons; this automatically elongates the already lengthy shadow of idiocy looming over those who foolishly venerate a single man for somehow being neurologically unique. Nothing is more intellectually dangerous, and there are strong parallels between veneration of a man who can, according to the texts, never ever arise again with such brilliant (even though they're all either really obvious or incorrect) ideas on the one hand, and a man who is the only son of god who will come only once to bring us salvation on the other. The template, to the modern observer, is cheap, obvious, and a by-product of early civilization. It is the ideal logical fallacy: "You don't agree with this idea? Well, I heard it from this guy who is special. Therefore, I'm right."

It is probably impossible for a single human to be intellectually unique, so even if the Buddha was right to declare a puny list of four assertions the end-all-be-all, that would in no way justify anyone's abandonment of independent peer review in favor of adulation. I don't care how many layers of hell you've descended into for the benefit of mankind; you can't get away with putting together definitive lists and closing them off, never even once imploring others to add to or subtract from them.

It makes no sense to declare that one should not believe something on the grounds that it's written in a religious text, then turn around and also declare that you possess not just truth -- which is elusive and maybe even impossible to attain for humans -- but noble truth.

I wonder what would have happened to Darwin if he'd declared evolution "The noble, indisputable truth of life's procession". All those other scientists with their annoying journals and independent studies can go to hell!

There really is a pretty profound difference between "I know for certain that I am absolutely right about this, but please, come to the conclusion that I'm right on your own" and "This is what the evidence is currently indicating, but let's keep running the experiment and see if something new happens, or if we're missing something." If the Buddha were ever to promulgate the latter, there would be no Buddhism.

Furthermore, the Four Noble Truths are stupid to begin with. They basically advocate the idea that one can achieve freedom from craving, desire, and other forms of suffering through the Noble Eightfold Path. Obviously, we cannot extricate ourselves from our environs while alive, so there is no such thing as freedom from negative sensation without the termination of conscious experience altogether. In the Pali Canon, the Buddha is doing exactly what L. Ron Hubbard did by claiming to know not only why people suffer, but how to end it all and enter into a state of personal heaven as well. In short, he was a sophisticated swindler, handing out pamphlets advertising his -- and only his -- special ability to fix everyone. Capitalism, anyone?

Simple, one-size-fits-all, too-good-to-be-true methods for feeling perpetually blissful should always be scrutinized -- though, again, we should be careful not to project the agendas of the authors of the Buddhist texts onto whoever really was their original inspiration, given the ubiquity of distortion in the ancient world. The real Buddha could have been nothing more than a wiser than average guy with ideas that were great for their time but antiquated today.

1. The Numbered Lists
Numbered lists are a mnemonic device from oral cultures not an exclusive enumeration of dogma. There are two possibilities- that (a) the Buddha, wishing his disciples to be able to memorise his teachings, presented them in list form, or that (b) the subsequent process of oral transmission resulted in this format.

Does this really matter, though? Prior to plumbing, it was necessary to construct wells, but their then-necessity doesn't justify our continued drinking of unclean water.

The Buddha did entertain the arguments of famous philosophers and those of other sectarians and his contemporaries. These arguments are recorded in numerous places in the Pali Canon

This parallels the mythic intellectual hero (as opposed to the real person; see a pattern, here?) Socrates' rigged fights against the sophists: Relative to the morons espousing obvious gibberish, the hero appears wise and all-knowing, which provides further justification for submission to his agenda, and even his deification. This obvious false dichotomy is also a known tactic among physical fighters, and very effective against those with limited perspective.

What the Buddha actually did was suggest that his students become enlightened themselves - to see that things were really as he described them.

And, conveniently for him, they all wound up agreeing with him! No one ever stood up and said, "This is stupid. How is getting acquainted with how my body deals with the world going to end my suffering once and for all? How is it going to help that starving baby bird over there? Where's the absolute correlation between conscious willing and physical consequences?!"

I wouldn't describe meditation as contrived or requiring extensive training: how 'contrived' is simply paying attention to one thing?

Our brains have physical limits to how long they can remain concentrated on one thing at the expense of another, especially when the other thing is your intestines hanging out.

That being said, the underlying cause of pain is getting born! The Buddha fell upon the rather obvious solution when he suggested not getting reborn. 

The way to prevent your rebirth is by promoting the idea that no one should reproduce; if no one reproduces, then the infinitude of "yous" that come and go from each sentient organism's consciousness will eventually cease to emerge. Learning how to sit really still and ignore the world's attempts to engage with you is useful while alive, but it will not prevent your rebirth.

For example, if you have a child, but then go on to become the best meditator ever, this latter change may bring you happiness in moments where you would have otherwise been very uncomfortable, but your ascension to nibbana is rendered illegitimate by the existence of your child, who is interconnected to you and will suffer throughout his or her life. The correct path to nibbana, then, is not perfect mindfulness and higher realization, but the extinction of you, your child, and every other sentient creature -- regardless of how the extinction comes about. Certainly, the planet being instantaneously vaporized by a gamma ray burst has nothing to do with enlightenment or mindfulness, yet it is the real nibbana after all.

the most authentic position of Buddhism is completely indifferent to whether gods exist or not...this point is largely doctrinally irrelevant to Buddhism.

It really, really shouldn't be. The existence of gods has profound implications regarding existence and the nature of cause and effect. If gods exist, then there necessarily is a kind of functionality inherent in the system that we call the universe, for gods are human-like in desire and overall essence. Their existence may not change the fundamental nature of sentience, but it could if there really does turn out to be a reason for all the madness which we call life.

Having observed the paranormal in front of my own eyes as a child, I am tempted to take seriously the anecdotal evidence of others' encounters with non-human beings- the type of experiences which are actually censored by current scientific dogma.

I don't doubt that someone like the Buddha had paranormal experiences, but said person also did not have access to modern scientific knowledge or methods with which to properly and negatively analyze the experiences. Today, if we encounter what we perceive to be an apparition, we can first realize the importance of negatively analyzing the encounter by actively seeking out all those alternatives which potentially discredit the default assumption:

1. We now have evidence that our perception of reality is a filtered aggregate of abstractions constructed by neurons, each programmed to provide us with an analogy of the information they receive from the "external" world. Sometimes, the analogy appears grossly inaccurate, especially when subjected to unusual stimuli. In layman's terms, we may call this phenomenon an hallucination.

2. Humans enjoy pranks and hijinks, and must not be underestimated for their ability to deceive their peers.

3. Given what we know about sleep, comas, vegetative states, mental retardation, other species, etc., it would be silly to assume that a person's soul becomes physically locked away when the brain shuts down, only to become free and fully aware after death and in the absence of that which it apparently needed in order to be conscious in the first place.

...and so on. Anyway, your misconstruction of science as not only an ideology but dogma is counterproductive and ironic. Science is a process, much like the processes of baking a cake and refining oil. The outcome of each experiment must be independently verified by unaffiliated individuals, and if such individuals refine or overturn an idea decades after its introduction, then "science" welcomes the update.

The position of suicide in Buddhism is more complex than you make out. At the same time as the Buddha, another teacher, Mahavira, was teaching a religion, Jainism, that would ultimately espouse suicide as the height of saintliness.

...And Jainism is not Buddhism, let alone the original teachings of the Buddha or his spokespersons. Anyway, if that's really what Jainism advocates, then it, too, is foolish, for suicide is a waste -- save for cases of extreme depression, terminal illness, etc. -- in the face of the source of the problem: reproducing DNA material. If we fail to end all life, then "we" will continue to exist for billions of years to come; we just won't remember any of it.

The universe feels; sometimes, parts of it remember the horror, and other times, they forget, or never experience it to begin with. If you have both stomach cancer and heart disease, the elimination of your stomach cancer may make your stomach happy, but the body is nevertheless suffering somewhere else.

Buddhism condemns violence: suicide is ultimately violence against oneself.

This is more of that goofy absolute rhetoric that I outed in the first post. It's the same as the Four Noble Truths or the Ten Commandments in its defining something as free from exception: What was the value metric used to come to this conclusion? Some things may always be bad, but we have to do the math to determine whether the outcome is negative, zero, or positive before we can say for sure.

Likewise, the trappings of a monk have persisted largely unchanged (in Theravada Buddhism) since the time of the Buddha. Wearing one's robe correctly and shaving one's head are simply part of the practice of renunciation- these things are not arbitrary ritualisations, they are the customs of those bent on renunciation.

There's nothing arbitrary in shaving your head to represent your restrained lifestyle? What if I were to tell my lackeys that they have to wear KISS T-shirts in order to symbolically express the very same lifestyle -- and what if they all were to wear KISS T-shirts, with none questioning the practice? Would that be healthy, independent rationality, or would it be, like Scientology, a manifestation of an age-old human pitfall?

The Buddha stands out among all people who have ever inhabited the earth as someone who could credibly talk about what it means to have a mind without limits.

Good show!

Sexual attraction is racism

Historically, we have proven a very myopic species. Whenever we collectively come to the realization that some facet of our culture is destructive, we never attempt to extrapolate from that realization, and instead pass it on to the next generation as "tradition" to be memorized and subsequently parroted without regard for its fundamental essence, or what essence of which it is a manifestation.

Is ritualistic human sacrifice a bad thing? Yes, very bad. Okay, we've figured that out, so we're set.

Oh, gladiatorial combat is a bad thing, too? Yeah, that makes sense. Well, it's been a few thousand years since our last decree and all, but it's still a good thing that we figured this one out. We're set now, right?

What? Don't tell me that slavery is wrong, too! Jeez, nothing fun is acceptable, is it? Well, at least we're making progress. We deserve a pat on the back, now.

You've got to be kidding me. You mean that even though other races get paid for their labor, now, they should have access to the same resources as us? Fine. That sort of makes sense. Hey, it only took us a hundred years to knock this one out. Contrast that with the few thousand that it took last time! We're obviously becoming more progressive and rational as a species.

But don't you dare propose that gay people should be allowed to get married. That is absolutely off limits.

Upon making the realization that humans shouldn't be forcefully and selfishly sacrificed to the gods, it shouldn't take much time at all to realize that homosexuals should have access to the same resources and institutions as heterosexuals. Why does each of these realizations take so long to make, in spite of their occupying the same fundamental value space?

The problem is that the realization is never that sentience is the kernel of value, or that symbolic cultural assumptions need to be rigorously and scientifically challenged; instead, it's that mass murder should not be a form of entertainment, or that blacks are people, too. In reality, these latter phenomena are just surface manifestations of the former; if eating food that tastes good is important, then we should realize this in the fundamental sense rather than make the claim that because we once ate a good-tasting apple, eating apples is important.

Of course, the above analogy gets into the nature of variability and value equations, but this blog has hit on those concepts enough by now, I think. Just keep in mind that after gay marriage, there's the right to die, and after that, there's outlawing impregnation, and after that, there's the idea that sexual attraction is racism.

When it comes to sexual attraction, we can abstract the focal qualities of an individual into two primary categories:

1. Those qualities which sexually attract us to the individual

2. Those qualities which make the individual a valid companion capable of making calculated, informed decisions and being rational overall (which increases the likelihood of the individual understanding us, reciprocating during conversations, and enjoying our company)

In the case of category 2., the individual needn't even be part of the particular gender or age bracket to which we are sexually attracted, underlying the ultimate superficiality of sex. This should come as no surprise to "antinatalists," however -- that is, if they've embraced the idea that the phenomenon of sexual reproduction is fruitless, aimless, and insipid.

It's important to understand, here, that at a racist organization, the above two categories are very much the same in the abstract, but manifest in physical substance as the following:

1. Those qualities which we have culturally -- and, to a much lesser extent, genetically -- come to embrace or find symbolic security in, due in part to the evolutionary power of xenophobia

2. Those qualities which make the individual a hard worker capable of filling the role offered at our organization

Big tits and a cute laugh are to human companionship what light skin and Caucasian facial features are to corporate employment. If you want your company to do as well as it can, then hire people based on their skills rather than their skin color; if you want your social life to be as fulfilling as it can be, then live and share your life with interesting and intelligent people rather than sexually attractive ones. We should have figured this out as soon as we stopped rolling human heads down pyramid steps, but, well, we suck.

On humility

In spite of our need to remain humbled by our limitations as finite cognitive processes, it is perfectly permissible for us to think that we have better ideas than other people. After all, if we're not all that confident in our present assessments of the environment, then we shouldn't be presenting said assessments to the public. It is not okay for everyone to "have an opinion" on every conceivable topic. For example, because of my ignorance regarding the reliability of one spaceship over another for the purpose of getting to Mars, I keep my mouth shut on the matter; to do otherwise is to promote information pollution (side note: this is why the idea of a representative democratic republic is a poor one).

Conversely, if someone is confident in his assessments of the environment -- due, in part, to peer review and repetition -- then we should not scorn him for this, or reference his alleged "superiority complex." Of course, we should not take him -- or his independent peers -- at his word, but dismissing someone merely because he thinks that his ideas appear to be more rational than yours is a fallacy. "What, do you think you're better than me because you believe this stuff?" is not a valid argument in any scenario, and least valid where the purveyor of the assessments has no vested interest in proving his superiority.

I will say that suffering contains value instead of that it's my personal opinion that suffering contains value not because I know for a fact that suffering contains value, but because prefacing every single statement with "Gee, I guess this is kind of possibly right, but it's just my opinion, so feel free to think whatever you want and not listen to me!" would be tremendously impractical and counterproductive. Basically, the impractical part lies in the politically correct tedium of it all, while the counterproductive part lies in the ensuing "You can think whatever you want" clause, with the latter promoting the meme that all ideas are equal.

No two ideas are equal where their qualities or quantities differ in any way whatsoever, and the only apparent reason for why anyone thinks otherwise is because they associate ideas with personal identity and individuality. If no one defined themselves by their ideals or ascribed any emotional significance to the fact that they held those ideals personally, then no one would cast random accusations of superiority complexes whenever someone else felt confident in an idea; in essence, no one would ever feel threatened by new information or in any way consider it a weapon to be wielded in some struggle for social dominance. It's like gift-giving: If everyone were to give gifts out of kindness instead of to display their philanthropy to a social circle, then no one would raise an eyebrow or accuse any gift-giver of ego-boosting.

There is a clear difference between knowing that you're right and seeing the data as pointing in your direction more than in the other directions. Decision-making is a matter of both quality and quantity, and most of the time, the involved quantities cannot be represented by a binary quandary. If my idea is a 7 and yours is a 6, who's to say that there isn't an 8 out there somewhere, awaiting discovery? Even if I'm less wrong than someone else, that doesn't mean that I'm right. Approximation is all that we can do with science -- for now.

Avoiding optimism bias

If a potential quality that you're contemplating is desirable to you, consider a potential quality of similar likelihood which is undesirable to you before deciding to chase the former quality.

For example:

1. The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 20 million*. Yeah, those numbers are outrageous, but I'm going to play the lottery, anyway. You never know!

2. The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 20 million*. Phew, that's good to know. That's one less way of dying that I'll ever, ever have to worry about. It's basically a guarantee that it'll never happen to me.

Funny how we think about things differently depending on whether they benefit us -- even when the data are exactly the same in all instances! Regardless of what topics you're entertaining, always be sure to control for optimism bias during the decision-making process.

* These odds were fabricated for the purpose of the example.

Arguments against balance in the universe

1. The ratio of "empty" space to stars and planets is astronomical. If life is part of some magnificent order, then why is the universe filled with cold blackness instead of green pastures and lakes? The current compilation of evidence points toward there being very little, if any, physical advantage in existing as a complex cluster of matter -- especially the kind that moves around and consumes other clusters of matter in order to resist entropy. Almost all of the universe is hostile to large masses, and life in particular. Seriously, just exiting the Earth's atmosphere is incredibly dangerous for sentient beings. How unfortunately small our safety zone is when contrasted with its encasing!

2. Extinction events happen all the time. Was there balance on Earth during the Permian Extinction, when upward of ninety percent of marine life vanished outright?

3. There is nothing against which we can compare the universe, so any relative statement regarding how structured or balanced it is is shortsighted. The universe's processes are orderly? Relative to what?

Actually, we can compare the universe's processes to another kind of process: the human kind. I'm pretty sure that no one on Earth would think it a good idea to build a computer case the size of a stadium just to store parts no larger than those found in modern PCs.

And if someone ever did? Perhaps the people of the future would marvel in awe and wonderment at the result, but that doesn't mean that they would subsequently desire to imitate it. Fascination does not entail admiration.

Re: Entropy

So I got the following anonymous email today as a complement to a comment somewhere regarding the inevitability of the heat death of the universe:

Even if truth hurts, it is better to accept it and face the
consequences. I. e. that life is ultimately pointless and heads
nowhere. We lost. I laughed. Then cried. Soon I'm dead. Thanks. Not.

First, I want to point out that the reason for why I am writing my reply here rather than via email is because this message was sent by an Austrian remailer. I've had stranger things happen, but regardless, I'm not a fan of one-sided conversations where one of the parties isn't allowed to participate or defend his stance. The reply, unaltered, to... someone:

1. Why are you using a remailer? What are the consequences of revealing your email address to me? Is it so frightening to you to have me know who your ISP is -- or even just your mail provider? What could I possibly do with this information? Google you? Yikes!

Guess not everyone is into the idea of transparent communications.

2. When the ostensibly true "hurts," I embrace the pain for the greater good. What hurts more than the truth, though, is the human species' insistence on promoting absolute certainty with regard to epistemological claims. I find it fascinating that you are able to predict, with such alleged precision, events trillions upon trillions of years into the future. The time scales involved in your claims are absurd to imagine; as a result, your conclusions are even more so.

3. Current predictions regarding the heat death of the universe do not utilize the life variable, because doing so would make any subsequent claims baseless and erratic in conclusion. Life -- and, consequently, intelligent information agents, both artificial and organic -- resist entropic decay by actively seeking to keep themselves indefinitely open as systems. Given that I have no idea what the universe will look like in a trillion trillion years, I have no idea what the implications are for both the success and the failure of these processes. I also have no idea whether one outcome or the other will result; the future of information is more uncertain now than it has ever been in human history.

4. We are presently unable to detect approximately 95% of the universe, and only speculate that it exists because we can measure its effects on the 5% that we can observe. In what ways intelligent information agents will be able to utilize dark energy a billion years from now is unknown.

Something to keep in mind, here, is that, if protons decay into nothing at some point, the universe will not be empty afterward; on the contrary, it will be filled with energy -- so much energy that the energy content at this instant will be laughable by comparison. If current models of the universe are accurate, then dark energy will continue to expand the fabric of spacetime for, potentially, eternity. Does this mean anything for intelligence one way or another? No, because we don't know what dark energy is.

5. During Einstein's time, we only had evidence for the existence of a single galaxy; today, we are aware of hundreds of billions. Furthermore, recent evidence in the field of astronomy has pointed toward the possibility that the universe is at least 250 times larger than we've been thinking it is, and that, as a result of inflation, the light cone spanning the diameter of the visible universe is minuscule in contrast to the vast distance separating our central point of observation from all of material reality outside of the cone.

The moral of the story is thus: Never forget that your time period containing all of the answers to the universe's mysteries is an immense coincidence for you, and that everyone to have ever thought this has been wrong to date. Sometimes it is better to accept that we do not know much about our bizarre situation than to feign authority out of some psychological need to feel secure in our certainty that, yes, the universe is a fatalistic place, and there's nothing that we can do about it.

It may feel good to believe that everything is okay, but feeling secure in our certainty has the same effect regardless of whether we're sure that it's all okay or that it's all terrible. I can tell from your reply that you are consoled by your indisputable grasp on truth; it is, after all, easier to accept that everything sucks -- or that everything is wonderful -- than it is to accept that our context is a gigantic unknown. It's human nurture to tend toward confidence and security, after all. Not having an answer causes discomfort. We can't have that!

Having said all of the above, I have no hope for the future, and think that the most likely outcome for life on Earth is that it will all get eradicated when the sun becomes a red giant. If this does happen, it will be a horrific event, but it is possible that afterward, there will never be any horrific events anywhere ever again. 

Individualism and the absence of goal-setting on the Internet

Let's get one thing straight: The Internet is dominated by a handful of corporate* websites that are for-profit. Government websites and personal hosting space are almost nonexistent; can you name a site that you regularly frequent that isn't corporate-run? When was the last time that one of your friends decided to invest in a few servers and implement something like IIS or FTP for hosting sites or files? Was it practical? Did it prove useful?

On the Internet these days, ads and unskippable commercials abound; incentive and encouragement are given to those who help the corporations in question make money -- so long as such people aren't associated with ideas antithetical to the corporations' pursuits, that is. If you don't give a particular site a bad image or speak out against it, you're acceptable; if you have an interest in genuine goals and completion of finite, quantifiable tasks, however, you're in trouble.

This problem is compounded by the fact that, not only is the Internet run by corporations, it's more or less run by a number of them no larger than the amount of fingers on your two hands. So long as the incentive for providing a web service is profit, no resultant product site is going to be geared toward encouraging people to better themselves, or work. Work, in this society, is not something that consumers do; it's something that producers do, and while most people take on both roles at various points in their lives, they almost never take them on simultaneously.

People aren't interested in making society better unless the betterment of society is incidentally profitable on a personal level, so if they're not getting paid -- especially if they're expecting to be provided a service for purposes other than "work" by someone who is getting paid -- they're not going to be interested in doing anything that isn't for themselves. And, as the saying goes, the customer is always right.

Or is he?

When you really think about it, it does seem as though the primary cause of the monopolization of the Internet is the apathy and selfishness of the average e-consumer. "Here's a new technology that allows you to make videos of yourself and broadcast them to thousands of people; do whatever you want with it except take your clothes off or badmouth us. Oh, and since you can do whatever you want with this functionality, there's no need to go to any other sites with similar functionality ever, ever again!"

This line of thinking keeps the website's superficial, outward integrity in tact while simultaneously enabling the customer to fulfill his every most base desire, regardless of how much of a waste of time the desire is when put into the context of a finite existence continuously guided by decision variables affecting all of sentient life. In other words, the owners of the website get richer by encouraging its users to use the service for pretty much any reason they want, which usually turns out to be one that doesn't involve helping someone else; in simplest terms, the website has no goals.

Sure, there is a distinction to be made between continuous goals and finite goals, and profit is a continuous goal, but what about the latter type? To me, a goal in the truest sense of the word is any completable construct representing the need for an object that can be quantified. For example, "make money," as previously noted, isn't really a goal per se, but "make X amount of money" is, as it contains a quantity variable, and, once the quantity is obtained, the goal ceases to exist.

The problem with our current framework for the Internet is that, not only does it disregard attainable goals, it actively seeks to prevent them from emerging, as it treats the Internet as an end in itself (for the consumer) or a means to the end of profit (for the producer) -- rather than as a means to any other imaginable end, including real, quantitative goals.

Without intervention from an external body -- whether a government or something similarly authoritative -- the Internet, like much of our economic system, will continue to foster goalless profit-seeking, which, while superficially beneficial to the consumer for mere minutes at a time, is ultimately only materially beneficial to a fraction of the human population smaller than the population of the average city. Perhaps someone unaffiliated with a particular website has brilliant ideas, or is working on a project that would be of interest to you, but because the project isn't in the best interest of the two or three major websites capable of hosting it, you never learn that it exists. What a travesty this is if true.

Imagine a world where websites actually promote goal creation and completion. By this, I don't mean vapid social networking "gaming dynamics" (i.e. allowing users to set commenting goals, story writing goals, etc.), which only encourage further self-absorption in the same manner that the video games after which they're modeled do; I mean things like providing propositions for a community, convincing others that your ideas are reasonable, and finding new avenues for promotion and discussion.

A real-world example might be something like a YouTube, Blogger, or even Wikipedia specifically geared toward philosophy, science, and social welfare vlogs/blogs/articles as opposed to just about any non-"offensive" videos or articles that one could imagine. A mission statement or declaration of methodology and goals would be evident everywhere on the site, and all users would be subject to bans based not on how their content affected others emotionally, but on whether the content was logical and conducive to the goals proposed by the site. There would be no owners, and everyone would have access to all editable components and modules.

In this scenario, suddenly, the aforementioned sites are no longer doing everything [legal] that they can in order to get ahead of everyone else; instead, they're working toward seeing demonstrable, practical results of proposed solutions to the world's problems. Users are encouraged not to simply behave themselves, but to actually do work. The dichotomy of user and designer has collapsed; everyone fulfills both roles simultaneously, creating a positive feedback loop of suggestion input and implementation. Everyone involved consumes resources or uses services in order to make other resources and services better, with the latter resources and services doing the same, etc., all to the end of improving society.

So long as problems exist, it should be every major organizational entity's goal to solve them. This goal can be broken into a plethora of sub-goals, of course, but it should nevertheless lie at the foundation of every organization's agenda, no matter the circumstance. Until we stop treating everyone as a source of our own personal satisfaction, though, this will not happen.

So just imagine it for a second. Imagine being able to edit someone else's blog, because you've both agreed beforehand on the direction and goals of the blog. Imagine participating on (and owning) a YouTube channel owned by fifty other people, each capable of uploading and favoriting videos. Imagine being able to, as something like a site moderator or administrator, suggest whether someone should be removed from the group or have their videos deleted, but not being able to actually do those things on your own without the input of the entire group. Imagine being able to alert everyone involved to potential areas of expansion. Imagine a website that exists not to provide people a service, but to get something done. People "get things done" and set goals all the time in their own personal lives, so why shouldn't a website advertise itself for this same purpose? A simple "Calling all interested parties: We need someone to start writing material on X subject. So and so is already working on Y subject, but if you think you have a better way, let so and so know" would suffice.

It would certainly beat what we currently have.

The interesting thing is that most of the above is possible right now on a small scale, but the services provided by the sites that can be used in this manner don't exactly help in any significant way. While it's certainly possible for you to write a blog or book on a topic that is actually important, without promotion from a major organization tailored specifically toward promoting and regulating content like yours, it probably isn't going to matter much.

Oh well. Until progress in this area is made, the alternative should be group YouTube channels, group blogs, wikis, etc.

____________________________________________________
* Wikipedia is an interesting exception. I'm in support of its method, but not its goals. Modern people tend to conflate method with goals quite often, which is unfortunate, because the technology is fantastic, in this case, and could be used in a more stringent and socially beneficial manner. Instead, Wikipedia contributors are content to delete articles for interesting ideas unfamiliar to the general public, for example, but if something which promotes horrible values is incredibly popular, it's "relevant" to humanity in some skewed way, and thus worthy of an article according to the site.

I'm not against providing or caching information on every conceivable topic, because free information, no matter how trivial, could prove useful to someone in the future. However, even if one concedes this, Wikipedia's only "goal" is to let people learn more about things they've already heard of. Popularity is only one form of relevance; relying on it to demonstrate the benefit of your website to society at large is, like democracy, a form of argumentum ad populum.

Going beyond technical solutions -- into the territory of meta-cognition and abstraction

I'd like to address a commonly held misconception regarding the functioning of human societies -- specifically pertaining to the nature of social conflict. It seems that organizations such as the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement subscribe to the notion that conflict is the result of material scarcity. This concerns me, as I see some potential in the general direction proposed by those organizations -- and am, as always, interested in the revaluation of our society and culture -- but see no merit in passively espousing the "scarcity" point of view.

The problem with this proposed line of thinking is that it brazenly ignores the intensity and fervor with which the average person defends his preconceptions -- about life, politics, economics, religion, practical matters, art. Even in a society free from social stratification, material inequities, barter, ownership, etc., there would still be a need for stringent monitoring of thought systems, for having open access to material resources would in no way mitigate the stresses of philosophical division. For example, sure, there would be less incentive to steal in a society where no one could profit from reselling a stolen item, or where no one would cache items in order to conceal them from neighbors, but would this so-called technical solution have any impact whatsoever on whether someone thought that the purpose of life is to reproduce and have fun? I think not.

Hunter-gatherer societies were almost universally egalitarian, and rarely generated murder or went to war with one another, but they were also notoriously superstitious in constitution. Technical solutions should be greatly favored over the band-aids and services which are in current practice, but they're only part of the solution as long as minds are involved.

Ideas should do battle... fairly

The process of memetic selection, while possible in the face of apathy, or even a lack of awareness that it is ongoing, appears best conducted with a certain degree of seriousness and passion for making progress. This entails not only that those involved should hear all new information introduced by a peer, but also that such information should be presented as though it bears considerable gravity upon the circumstance of being human.

The real issue, though, is that it's hard to make a fight of ideas fair; everyone seems to possess some kind of preconditioned conception of what the best course of action is, and either is unwilling to hear the opposition, or sees the fight itself as some kind of bizarre, frivolous game where the goal is to win (especially where an "in-group" is watching, or where there is some set of figurative "belongings" to guard and protect). Cognitive biases, when combined with a genuine lack of respect for the pursuit of understanding, breed cheating in the forms of: slander, trolling, character assassination, poisoning the well, group bullying, scare tactics, threats, red herrings, being louder than your opponent, sticking your fingers in your ears, propaganda, falsely associating an idea with something obviously stupid or horrible, hyperbole, making unfair comparisons....

You get the idea.

If you have your "thing" that you like to do, and define yourself by that "thing," you're going to do everything that you can to make sure that you are "the one who does his thing" -- even if it means throwing sand in someone's face, distracting the fighters, or otherwise throwing a wrench into the works. Not only is this unfair, it's unproductive, and usually an implicit admission of a lack of regard for the process of selecting the best ideas; this lack is corrosive to mutually beneficial "discussion" relationships, and often leads to unnecessary conflict, passive aggression, and other negative "forces" which have absolutely no business in any selection process -- whether of ideas or something else.

I couldn't fathom a scientific, peer reviewed journal being criticized by a particular institution with terse comments like, "Are you kidding me? Do you really think that Neanderthal DNA is present in the human genome?" or "Oh God, not more of that 'dark energy' crap again. Save it, Einstein," or "What you have to say about the structure of the DNA molecule is nice and all, but don't you hate Jews? Get out of here, Jew-hater!"

If you don't have respect for the rules of the game, don't play.

A note before you comment: There was a misunderstanding or two recently in some of the comments sections of my posts. It is unlikely that this post is referring to you personally in any way, regardless of who you are; clarification was provided in at least one instance. My mind works by relation, meaning that I get ideas based on tangential experiences; the ideas are very rarely direct reactions. This post applies universally, as far as I can tell, and is something that all of mankind should heed.