A Lesson Concerning Cats, Mice, and Cream

Just got this in an email from my engineering professional society's local office - They want us to come out and  "give back" [barf]

SA ASCE Members,

Registration for Habitat for Humanity on April 24th is now posted to the website. If you can, please participate in this worthwhile effort to help build simple, decent, affordable housing in partnership with people in need.

Kimberly Corbett

To which I promptly replied

Kimberly,

How does feeding a cat cream, help him desire to learn to catch mice?  Just a thought from a curmudgeon that does not have to toe the line anymore.

Does anybody think that she, or any at the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), will get it that this sort of "giving back" does nothing more than help perpetuate the very thing they, in their misguided way, are  trying to "help"?

Poor people get enough help from others- that is why they remain poor. It ain't rocket science.

Starvation the Best Cure for Poverty - So Says Heartless Bastard

Here today, a friend sends me a story that reads like something crafted directly from the center of "the collective".

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct."

No, Mr. Keltner, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of YOURSELF. Taking care of others is one of the tools that a human can selectively use to do this, like for example, when our ancestral cave-man (or woman) would rescue THEIR child from a saber-toothed tiger (so as to save their little worker-unit without which they would have a harder time surviving(;  or when you rescue YOUR child from a burning building (and in so doing protect yourself from a sense of YOUR loss and also protect yourself from doing without a caregiver for your old age).

So then, however hard and unpalatable to accept the truth of the matter is that, whenever that (helping others) is done, the underlying basis for all of it is that the fundamental task for survival is to take care of ones self. In doing that, we may take care of others, and we may cooperate (like when we cooperate to kill others in war?), but those are tools directed and selectively used to achieve the end - survival of ourselves (and our spawn). [See my other articles regarding selfishness and altruism  - and how they are EXACTLY the same.]

Contrary to the disingenuous nature of this article, meant, I suppose, to influence the masses into committing suicide for the "need" of others, the real truth is that we have survived to this point is exactly because our ancestors and antecedent cultures operated from a foundation of helping ourselves (NOT others). The underlying theme, therefore, of survival is service to ones self, NOT service to others.

It is so sad that in today's Politically Correct climate brought about by the hot putrid off-gassing of a culture gone soft and lazy, children though are being taught a different thing - a thing that if left unchecked will result in the extinction of our culture, and later our species. For we are raising a generation that see nothing wrong with spreading the wealth; that goes to bed every night dreaming about how they should sacrifice themselves at the altar of another; and dream dreams of how their social responsibility is to become do-gooders instead of doers. To bad for our future society that in so thinking and dreaming they evolve having no concept of property, or property rights, and thinking that people are entitled simply because they have "need"  - and that the yardstick of "need" is "Does the other guy have "more".

As Ben Franklin said, "....the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." Hey that is Math 101, but certainly not in today's classroom. Unfortunately, there, today's youth are being taught that the proper thing to do is to "give back", and being taught to think that people like your dear correspondent are  oh, so cold and heartless when they rail, fulminate, declaim, and inveigh against the cancerous malignancy of the "giving back" philosophy.

And another BTW - That part about taking care of our "vulnerable offspring" which Keltner conflates into evolving based on taking care of others, . No Mr Keltner, we take care of OUR vulnerable offspring.We want OUR DNA to survive, not the DNA of others.

And BTW #2 ...... Sympathy is NOT our strongest instinct.

Words Are Dangerous Things

Feb 2040
Port au Prince- Haiti

In a surprising turn of events, do-gooders all over the world had their sensibilities shaken as they came to learn that much of the aid that was collected for Haiti after the earthquake of 2010 was of little use, for  twenty  years after that devastating earthquake, Haitians still live in conditions of poverty and disease that are essentially the same as that in which their nation existed beforehand.

Such turn of events has been used by the World Nations League as poof of the niggardliness of the Western Nations and Prime Overlord Amid Kerchi chided the "West" that although they had risen themselves up from poverty and strife by having a  national pride of self responsibility,  and were now after years of national work and toil enjoying the fruits of their labors, that they should "give back" to those that are not interested in the least in helping themselves and instead demand to live off the labors of others. 

The United North American League, responded to these allegations of neglect that prior to the quake, saying that they had spent over 3 billion in aid to the Haitian nation and that such expenditure over  17 years of "giving" was of absolutely no use, citing the facts that employment and poverty at the commencement of their giving was at a lower level compared to in the subsequent years.

As example of how this all came to be, President Jacobssen of the United North American League, played at the  World Nations League general assembly a tape of a 2040 interview with Jamil JabJube a citizen of Haiti.

When asked about the impact of foreign aid to his country, Jamil JabJube said that after 1960's when the aid started pouring in from the western nations that had been made guilt ridden from their misunderstanding and conflating of the concepts of  responsibility and poverty, that people like him had seen that there was no need to work and  provide for their families, as the lower cost option was to be shiftless and wait for aid to come from a West that can always be black-bagged into a sense of guilt. Indeed, he was proud to live in a nation that has such poverty, as it helped in achieving his aim of getting something for as little expenditure of energy as possible.

He cited that he has 13 kids - all qualifying under the Western Nations Guilt Plan for direct payments and medical attention. He further stated that while in generations previous to his, married and unmarried couples practiced Haikde and Jayal, forms of sexual self or mutual stimulation and gratification without intercourse that had been developed over centuries of their society's evolution as a means to relieve sexual tension without the risk of pregnancy and consequent increase in population that would, if not practiced, soon strip the tiny nation of all its sustainable resources, there was now no need for such practices for no matter how bad it gets, as the Western guilt can always be counted on.

He went on to say that in the last 50 years the so called Western Aid has completely destroyed their one means of rising out of poverty (working/doing it themselves) , reiterating that it is because the aid has made it so that there is no need of practicing Jayal and Haikde which results in a swarms of povety stricken children and indeed has created a nation standing at every street-corner of the world demanding "need" payment to their outstretched palms.

He further heaped contempt and disdain on one particular class of do-gooders  - those that come over for 2 months every year and build a couple of homes for those that are considered "deserving" and after doing so, then jet  back to their lives of luxury and leave a couple of Haitian families in a "new home", which does nothing more than cause envy and jealousy among the neighbors.

He said that when everyone is poor, nobody is poor and such "charity" upsets the delicate balance of life that rests of personal responsibility. Citing the philosophical truism that wealth created by ones own initiative is hard enough to protect from attack by those "in need", the said that it is even harder to protect when its possession has merely been handed over. As example, he said that a man who builds his own house while the others sit and watch is soon beset by the jealousy of his neighbors, those same neighbors are even more jealous when he got that house without having to do any work other than being  judged to be "in need" and "deserving".

Asked why the Western League persists in sending "aid" he said that it is because those nations have forgotten  that need does not create a "deservement" and have conflated the word and concept of "deserve" with the concept of "a claim" and the concept of "need", citing the very definition of the word as shown above as proof. He said that the beauty of the English and French Languages of old were that they had a plethora of words intended to convey subtle but important distinctions on meaning, and that the lazy American and Western minds, due to a dumbing down from  the "no child left behind" education system which acts so that "no child gets ahead, has started conflating ideas and concepts that should not be so associated.

He ended his interview by reminding that "lack of" something should not be conflated with "need" for something, and that neither should be conflated with "claim" for something , warning that a society that does not understand the boundaries and fences erected make these terms good neighbors, will create a nation of citizens who try and stake a claim based simply on their "need".

The American "Poor"

This was sent to me by a friend and undoubtedly is floating around but it is too good to pass up. My understanding is that this is Michelle Obama serving up chow at a homeless shelter and that she brought along some of the things from the White House Staff kitchen.

Couple points here.

#1 - Mushroom Risotto??? What the ^%&# ... at a homeless shelter? And they say they are poor and helpless.

#2 - That cell phone ... yeah, taking the government handout but ya got yourself a cell phone. How the hell do you pay for that? I know exactly how you pay for it - you take money robbed from me to pay for stuff that you should be paying for on your own, and thus you have spare change to buy cell phones. I bet 10 bucks you have a color TV too .. out there in your homeless shelter.

#3 - Where do they send that phone bill to if you are so homeless. (spare me the comments about prepaid cell phones - this is a blog and being used to make a point)

#4 - This is the "American Poor" - the richest poor in the world.

Powerful - Oh, Really Now

To corrupt thought you must first corrupt the language. Once the language becomes corrupt you can then mainline any drug you want to push.
~ Seneca 2009 AD

You are Powerful?

Because you live in a mud hut, is this how you are powerful?

Because the society in which you live has not, in the 2000 years it has been around, been able to create a societal system such that you can live in something other than a mud hut?

Because your country is ridden by disease, poverty, starvation, warfare, illiteracy, tribal fighting where your brothers and sisters are hacked to death in the still of the night by machetes,
and a host of other things indicative of the very lack of power?

Because you have your picture posted as part of a campaign for others to send you money?

Yeah, Right. You Are "Powerful".

To corrupt thought you must first corrupt the language. Once the language becomes corrupt you can then mainline any drug you want to push.
~ Seneca 2009 AD