Social Media Changes Lives

Facebook just doesn't cut it for the life-changing.  When I get on facebook it's mostly just lots of jokes and people acting like dicks and dick jokes and dicks making jokes. 

Myspace did.  En serio.  Around the same time in my life, there were two major events where myspace played a major role in the life-changing.

1. It's how my first boyfriend and I got together.  This is a big deal for obvious reasons.  Mostly that the first time you fall in love is a rite of passage, it begins the training process for your current and future relationships, and it shows what love is and how to do it.  This can either be a very good or very bad experience, but either way it more or less sets the tone for future relationships; a tone that is a pattern, and a pattern that is difficult to break.

2. It played the role of introducing me into animal rights issues.  I don't remember who posted this or how I found it, but I saw a post about animal testing that included pictures.  I spent the following 5 hours learning everything I could about animal rights issues, watched the horrible PETA factory farm videos, and decided that from then on I would stop eating animals and no longer buy products that test on animals.  That was something like 8 years ago and I've been living like that ever since.  It took about 7 years until I worked up the self control to become vegan after trying multiple times in the past.  Living in Honduras, I'm a lot more lax about the vegan thing, but these issues have become a part of my psyche.  This one night, one post I saw on a social media sight when I was 16 completely changed my life.  I have recently decided that, because of this complete alteration of my mindset, I'm going to live my life as an advocate and activist for animal rights.  I have a tentative plan at the moment, which heavily involves animal sanctuaries and graduate school.  Because, if one of your life goals is to open an animal sanctuary, you have you start somewhere.

So, thank you myspace, for creating an open space where people can send each other surveys about what we like best about each other and starting relationships.  And thank you, myspace, for creating a space where we can post about what we are passionate about so for to educate others.

Inspiration can come from the least likely of places.  Even a website that has since become a joke.

This is how I will live my life.

Thank you myspace.

Economic Problem Solution

Let's get rid of money!!  How, you ask?


Robot slaves.

First, I'll say I do not take issue with the term "slave" in this case.  These robots are meant to act like the machines they are, and are never meant to become sentient, unlike many of the science fiction issues with robots that have arisen.  "Slave" similar to they way our computers and cell phones are slaves.  So, ok, tools, I guess.


The idea is: we create robots to do all of the work so that we don't have to.  That way, we can have food, products, free time, health... it would be great!  Then humans can spend all of their time worried about whatever they want to worry themselves with.  This does not mean that we could not also contribute to the work-system that would be put into place, but the thing is, we would only be contributing because it would make us happy to, say, own and run a farm or well, maintaining the robots.  There would be no need for government or money.  It would be for the pure joy of hard work, which is essential to the human experience.  We could get out from under the thumb of Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Oil, Big Corporations.  We could feed ALL of the hungry people in the world.  We could house all of the homeless.  We could travel anywhere, at any time.  We could worry about being good people instead of being assholes for the cash.  Fabulous.

 Moreover, the environment would no longer be an issue.  Without the constant squashing of earth-friendly energy by the oil company money, scientists would be free to work on and develop there energies freely.  There would be no issues with funding or exposure.  We would just implement the most sustainable lifestyles with no cost to anyone.

And since we are no longer constantly trying to gain resources, and no government means no more need for reinforcing power structures; there would be no more war, no more civil rights abuses, not more genocide.

And on those notes, classes would be meaningless.


Now, as we have all been warmed be the science fiction thought experiments that have been presented to us, the issue of robots becoming self-aware, epithetic, feeling, or thinking is an issue that needs to be addressed before we take this idea seriously.

The Asimov Laws of Robotics

These laws are presented assuming that the laws can be programed into the robots as we understand them in English and that robots are not used as military weapons.

0.  A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1.  A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2.  A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Problems with the Laws


The language of the laws requires very specific definitions.  "Human," for example, needs to be able to be applied to every single Homo sapien on the planet. Perhaps some sort of DNA analysis could be the indicator.  This is assuming the the androids we come up with are nothing like the cylons, and are very clearly machines.  Robots must have a very clear distinction between robots and humans and never confuse the two terms.  Period.  Why we would make sentient robots in the first place is beyond me.  Just because you can does not mean you should.

There have been many other Laws presented; these are the most famous.  We should be open to others, and decide on that upon creating the robots.  The greatest minds of the field should work on this, provided they think of the tools here as entirely egalitarian and without any learning or empathy loopholes.  Plus, we probably won't get it right the first time, so it'll be a learning process.  I just don't want the next great war (or the one after) to be humans against machines.  We would probably lose.


Problems with the Solution


Similar to people's issues with communism, a potential problem with this solution is that people will become lazy because they have no reason to work hard.  Perhaps this will happen with some people, but maybe that's just how those people will choose to live their lives.  Others will be adventurers and travelers, philosophers, doctors, artists and writers.  In fact, people would have the ability to do whatever they loved at any time.  I do not believe the meaning of life would be lost, it would just change.  Maybe.  I guess that depends on what you think the meaning of life is for you.  Problem solved.

Well, ok, I'm not naive enough to think that those in charge of distribution and creation initially would have equal power to those who have little or no involvement in this.  I suppose this issue would come to the "divine beauty of the human heart," as it were.  Eventually, ideally, this would no longer be an issue because some sort of formula would come into place that would distribute robots as needed.  We would also need some way of identifying and closely watching the sociopaths of society so that no one would be able to change any programing in favor of total domination, and those people would have no connection to the robots at all in any way other than the layman's interaction.  So, as long as that whole thing worked out, problem solved.



So, you're welcome.  We'll see if the politicians will implement this...  The jerks.

Great Moments in Life

1. The moment I realized I no longer have body issues.  It was an amazing moment.  I was taking a shower and looked down at myself and realized that I love my body.  It is truly the only thing in the world that I have, that I can or can't count on.  It is my home.  And as a female in the US, this is something that doesn't always even happen.  In the media, such as What the Bleep Do We Know? and in Eat Pray Love (one is awesome, the other is a piece... you make the call), women don't have a chance to experience this until they are older: late 30's or 40's, and only after they have had important life experiences.  The fact that this happened when I was 19 is something of an anomaly, and if I am to understand the conversations with other women and the media at face value, body-acceptance is something that should be, but is yet unattainable for all women (and all men, for that matter).  It is too often that I see and meet amazing, beautiful people who have these detrimental mindsets, and I think it is the responsibility of all people to attempt to quell this.  No, I am not perfect, nor do I think I am, and neither is anyone else.  But this isn't the point.  The point is that we are all human and that requires love toward each other and toward ourselves.  Anyway, I'm really into Dead Prez right now, so enjoy, and keep doing you, Baby.

"Beauty exists not just on the surface."

2. Concerts and music festivals.  There's always at least one moment during a festival or concert where it becomes clear how beautiful the energy of a crowd of people all celebrating the same thing, all experiencing joy, really is.  I experienced this most intensely when I saw MGMT at Austin City Limits in 2008, when they started to play Kids.  The crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands of people lost it and everyone was singing and dancing.  It was very much a spiritual experience.  But maybe this feeling is why humans have religion, if we want to think about it in that way.  If anyone has experienced this at a concert, they know the feeling I mean.  How could humans back in the day having the same feeling or similar experience not take some spiritual opinion out of that?  And since it is based on mutual experience with other humans, a group is formed.  The feeling is attributed to something outside of themselves.  Rituals are created in order to continue to have the experience.  Stories are thought of, visions are had, to explain it.  It goes from there, and eventually it becomes stale and gay people aren't allowed to get married and women are closer to evil than god.  Unfortunately, I have not studied this at all, but it seems to make sense, so, I think it's the case.

3. When someone notices something about you that you think is special, without prompt.  For example, I have a freckle/mole on my forehead that I've always thought was unique.   My high school boyfriend and I were making avatars on the Wii, I made his and he made mine, and he made a point to put that freckle on it.  It was small, and something stupid, but it meant a lot that someone saw something that I loved about myself that they also thought was important, or to be presumptuous, special.

4. Anytime a deep and pure emotion is experienced.  It can be for any reason, positive or negative.  Pure sadness is just as positive as a feeling of pure joy, as ironic as that may sound.  But think about it.  To feel is to be alive, and pure emotions are beautiful.

5.  The first time I felt like a woman (or I guess, a man, if that's how you swing).  When I shaved my head, the first time I looked in the mirror afterward, I felt more like a woman than any other time in my entire life.  A woman's hair is one of her most important expressions of femininity, and frequently, women shave their heads in times of mourning, or their heads are shaved as a form of torture.  Mine was sort of in mourning, it was a strange time in my life, but when my hair was gone, it was very therapeutic.  This must be due to the social import of looking and being feminine for a female, and having the ovaries to break through that, and to be strong for myself.  And to be strong is to be woman.  You go, Grrl.

Everything here rocks, right?  And why do we experience these?  Why do we experience all the awesome things not listed here, like watching a really beautiful sunset, or chilling with really close friends, etc?  Because of the god in each of us, as the Dead Prez would probably agree...

I realize it's probably tacky to have two music videos 

by the same band 

in a post that isn't about the band...  

Fuck it.