I am an atheist, and at one point while growing up I thought that gay people or trans people were less valid as people because they can’t or don’t reproduce. This notion goes contrary to the notion that all human beings have intrinsic worth – that they are valuable regardless of whether they can attract the opposite sex, marry, or reproduce.
First I would like to say that even if you think that trans people are weird, creepy, gross, or anything like that, trans people are a legit category of people and they actually appear to benefit from a transition process that involves hormones, something that I have seen both in real life people and in people online. Example (fast forward to 0:37) :
“For me, I have absolutely no regrets about transitioning and it has made me a million times happier.”
But here is the thing. Imagine that these hormones weren’t invented yet or that they did not exist and that this transition process weren’t possible. Should these people be persecuted? Absolutely not.
Every single person ought to be valued not for what they have, how they identify, or who they are, but just for being a person. Every single one. Failing to do so leads down some very dark paths. For example, a disproportionately high percentage of trans people attempt suicide. In my opinion, suicide implies not valuing yourself as a person because if you valued your life, you wouldn’t take it away. Believing that human life doesn’t have intrinsic value means that people have to justify their existence in order to receive basic human decency like love, compassion, or care. This leads down some pretty dark paths. For example, the Nazis believed in a sort of quasi-scientific racism, one that does not value human life but rather puts different races or types of humans on a pyramid. This leads down some dark paths indeed, such as towards genocide. In the second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, it says “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” I think that treating people as an ends in and of themselves implies that they have inherit value or worth.
Remember that whoever you are, you have intrinsic value. You don’t have to identify a certain way, attract the opposite sex, or do or be anything special in order to possess value. For example, maybe a trans person feels that a transitioning process is right for them, but that doesn’t mean that they should commit suicide if that process isn’t available to them because regardless, they themselves have intrinsic value. We all do.
In a perfect world, I don’t think people should have to fight for human rights. In a perfect world, all humans would just get them without having to fight. Unfortunately, that is not the real world.
The problem with incarceration is that it leads people into repeated incarceration rather than preparing them for the outside world. Rather than online job training, the incarcerated have long stretches of no employment, a black mark on their applications, and no skills training. As an example, imagine a computer programmer who goes to jail.
Computer programmers need constant skills training, and the way they get that skills training is through self education. They learn on the job, online, and by doing say programming projects. A computer programmer in jail gets none of those things. They are essentially left to rot, and when they get out their odds of landing a job are much lower than before they went in. Basically, prison prepares people for more prison. That’s the problem with incarceration.
On Saturday Night Politics, they mentioned a conversation between Steve Bannon and a friend of Donald Trump. Steve Bannon said that if the pressure on Donald Trump gets high enough he will kill himself. Trump’s friend replied “no, he will fake a heart attack.”
I don’t know if this is a true story, but it reminds me of when I was suicidal. Two things contributed to this feeling:
A very severe form of depression that made it impossible for me to feel pleasure anymore. Things that I used to enjoy and things that gave me pleasure gave me less and less joy and less and less pleasure the more time passed. I literally became catatonic and I didn’t want to live anymore. The poetry I wrote back then (see link in previous sentence) wasn’t bad, though.
I had relationship issues revolving around my parents and this young woman who in retrospect liked or even loved me, but I only wanted sex and also I was temporarily hypersexual because before this period of severe depression I had bipolar mania.
Mania was weird for me because it happened at around the same time as me reaching male puberty, and I conflated a lot of the symptoms of mania with symptoms of male puberty. During this period (before the suicidal depression) I was so hypersexual that I compulsively needed to masturbate roughly every half hour around the clock, and when I was 13 I thought that this hypersexuality was just male puberty. In retrospect I totally did not have psychologically normal male puberty, but I did not know this at the time. It took four years for me to diagnose myself with bipolar disorder, and it is this mental health problem that drew me to psychiatry when I was in high school. I did not become a psychiatrist, but I did deal with these problems and learned from them. One consequence of my sexual and romantic issues that I had was that I began to loath my sexuality and myself. My demeanor changed. At one point when I was 13 or 14 I literally felt like I would have been better off if I were neutered. I do not feel that way anymore, but I did have SERIOUS psychological and psychiatric problems that I only gradually overcame and that only gradually lessened with age. In between then and now I did many things that I regretted or that I shouldn’t have done, such as stalking and engaging in bad relationships like this one in which I was psychologically abusive. You might not think it’s that bad because I was never physically violent with them, but the stalking, clinging, and “shadow relationships” were a constant, very severe problem for me. It was like an addiction, one of multiple addictions and compulsions that I experienced, but in my opinion it was the single worst of them all. I never got into drugs or gambling (with the exception of non-addictive psychiatric drugs, but even then it was very controlled and monitored), but if I did get into addictive drugs or gambling I very might well have either overdosed on drugs or gambled away every single penny. I had mental problems.
My single worst problem that was a consequence of both my mind and my body was an addiction to “shadow relationships”. I am attracted to female bodies (hips, ass, the smell of their body, and the “electric” sexual feeling in my hands from heterosexual touch), but I am not attracted to women as people. Like there is something about their “womanly” personality that just doesn’t work with me, but when you are 13 you are more focused on her boobs than on her personality. By the way, the individual in that last link, Lauren Hanley (a classmate whose personality really isn’t that sexual in real life) was the first person who I ever masturbated to back when I was 13 years old. This makes her a special woman. I think we both had visible symptoms of ADHD in middle school (like one time I karate kicked open a “push” door and later she also kicked open the same type of door by jumping up and kicking said door with a “hy-ya”, causing it to fly open), but she actually is not as stupid as people might think based on how hot and “ditsy” she is. She actually sat two seats behind me in eighth grade math class back when I had my “nymphomania” problem. We both repeatedly asked for bathroom breaks in the middle of class, but I used my bathroom breaks to masturbate and she used them to skip class and meet up with a friend. In real life nothing ever happened between us, but I would have loved to fuck her brains out ❤️.
The point is that I had problems going way back to my early years. Lauren Hanley is kind of adorable, and guys seem to love her, and I totally get it (see comments in link), but I’m kind of a little queer, I just didn’t really fully get that until later. Like I love women, I’m just not attracted to them as people. That last link was meant to be a joke. I’m a funny guy. And also kind of an egomaniac who really enjoyed Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along blog.
John
p.s. I know I say sexual things sometimes, but this is not meant to be erotica (even though some straight women seem to read it that way).
I experience two types of desires. One is sort of a short term physical desire, like an urge, and the other is a persistent, love driven desire, like a persistent long term want. The latter I tend to feel more in my chest and they tend to be “big desires” rather than “urges”. For example, maybe I want a romantic partner in my life (or maybe to one day make a kid with said romantic partner in the future). That’s more the second type of want, or a “big desire”. “Big desires” can be the foundation on which you set long term goals, like for example the long term goal of healthy weight loss or of obtaining a long term romantic relationship that will eventually lead to marriage. The first type of desire is more like the following situation: I walk by a candy store and I see a lollipop and I want [desire] to put it in my mouth. I know that sounded gay, but I am not sexually attracted towards male people – I am heterosexual.
Anyway, the first type of desire is more about instant gratification where as the second type of desire [i.e. what a person really (truly) wants in life] is almost a spiritual need or a need that one has as a person, and it can sort of guide people in the long term. Like I know that if I were single and never had a romantic relationship there would be like a hole in my life just like for example maybe never having a father would leave a hole in your life. Like there is something kind of sad about never having a father. The second type of desire, at least for me, keeps taking me places in life – it sort of pushes me forward. I guess one way to think of it is impulse (impulse driven) vs compulse (or human compulsion) in life. Candy is more like an impulse where as having a kid of your own or making a difference is more like a “higher pleasure” in one’s life, if that makes any sense. Love is more related to the second kind of desire (compulsion) than the first (impulse).
Imagine that there were a button on a table, and every time you hit that button with your hand, you had an orgasm. If you had no impulse control, you would hit the shit out of that button, but eventually you would get bored (or maybe you would need to go to “Pleasure Button Anonymous” [parody of “Alcoholic’s Anonymous“]). That orgasm feeling you get from hitting that button is like a shot of dopamine to your head. It feels good for like a second and then it goes away. Maybe if you’re lucky it’ll feel good for like five seconds instead of one second (I actually once tested out a psychiatric drug called Selegeline that caused orgasms to last a lot longer because it inhibited the breakdown of dopamine which is released from orgasms), but that transient short-term gratification is still sort of a temporary, almost instantaneous pleasure.
The second sort of happiness is a different feeling. I personally feel it more in my heart than in my brain. The United States’s Declaration of Independence has this phrase:
“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”
At the end of that quote is the phrase “life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”. Pay particular attention to the word “happiness”. What kind of happiness are they talking about? Think back to the example of the imaginary button that you could put on your table, and every time you hit that button, you had an orgasm. I don’t think that is the kind of happiness that they are talking about. That is more like immediate pleasure, and I don’t think that is what the Declaration of Independence was referring to.
I think they were referring to a deeper (some might call it “higher”) form of happiness, like a happiness that is tied to a life pursuit. A less transient form of happiness than the instantaneous gratification that one gets from the immediate satisfaction of a mere urge. I’ll make up a ridiculous example just to get a point across.
This isn’t me, but imagine that there is someone who LOVES money. Like they just want to sit on a giant pile of dollar bills. They love money the way some people love their spouse. This is kind of ridiculous, but it is meant to get a point across:
Mr. Krabs
Now in the cartoon SpongeBob, Mr. Krabs loves money. Like he just sees it and he feels drawn to it and he wants to touch it. He is attracted to money. Even though I sort of feel a physical response to physical cash, I am not attracted to money, but he is. The weird thing about touching cash with my hands is that I get this weird feeling almost like I get when touching a female person (I inadvertently experienced that sensation in my left hand during this photo shoot in Vegas), but my body can’t get turned on from touching physical cash, so the feeling I get from cash isn’t sexual. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean, but I sometimes don’t like touching physical cash and I don’t want to accumulate it – like if I have spare nickels in my apartment and I don’t want to go to the bank I just throw them away (where as Mr. Krabs would never throw away one penny).
Anyway, to me money is just a number on my online checking account that goes up or down from month to month, but to Mr. Krabs, the accumulation of money is more than just being able to pay the rent, buy food, and pay bills like the electric bill which is automatically deducted from my online checking account. To Mr. Krabs, the accumulation of money is (to him) sort of like what finding a spouse is to me. He loves money and to him the hoarding of money is like a life goal, at least during his time here on Earth (but after he is dead I think the vast majority of his money should go to the government or at the very least to philanthropy because there is no way in hell a kid can responsibly spend billions of dollars in corporate stock that he inherited from his father). Sometimes it’s hard to sell that much stock and assets at market value in a short period of time, but eventually that money should be transferred in such a way that it serves people who are not the child of a billionaire. Going back to talking about the hypothetical Mr. Krabs, the accumulation of money while he is alive is a higher form of happiness to him sort of like a romantic relationship (or the obtaining of a love based romantic relationship) is a higher form of happiness to me. Mr. Krabs really loves money and is attracted to cash the way some people are attracted to their spouse, which is why he went into business and built the Krusty Krab. Note that this is an allegory – I am not really talking about the TV show “SpongeBob SquarePants”.
Now what if I told Mr. Krabs that he had to give up all of his money. Worse yet, what if I took all his money away from him and put a curse on him such that everyone he touched turned into a pile of money. Like imagine that Mr. Krabs now has King Midas’s golden touch and everyone he touched – his daughter, his parents, his friends, his wife – they all turned into piles of money. This would crush him. Why he would hate the very thing that he loves. In my opinion, this curse would literally be a human rights abuse because it would deny Mr. Krabs a deeper form of satisfaction in his life. In the Declaration of Independence, I think that when they refer to “the pursuit of happiness”, they are referring to satisfaction in life rather than instant gratification in the form of immediate pleasure. They are referring to the “big happiness” or the “latter kind” rather than the “urge” kind or “the first type of desire” which I described in the first paragraph of this article. An urge is more like an itch that you want to scratch rather than something that one can pursue in life.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is seen as a competing theory with Kant’s Categorical Imperative, of which I believe in the second form. In Mill’s utilitarianism, he talks about two forms of pleasure – a higher form and a lower form. In my opinion, love and the pursuit of love (whether that be love of money, love of life, love of romantic partner, etc) is the “higher form” and instantaneous gratification is the “lower form”. I personally hate instantaneous gratification. Instantaneous gratification is often bad in the long run, whether it be in the form of an addiction, “junk food” [which over time causes people to become obese, ill, and die prematurely], smoking, escaping from life’s problems with a video game addiction, gambling addiction, drug addiction, or anything like that. Those sorts of things are almost like a secular version of “sin”.
In another blog post, I talked about my secular God. I may be an atheist, but I sort of see myself as like a secular prophet in a way (like I know I’m not actually magic and that I don’t have magic powers or anything like that, but I have a message). Like in human history there were prophets who spread the word during their time, and that is what I seek to do, but I am spreading my secular word. Even though I am not religious, I don’t want a totally nihilistic life and ultimately I do not believe that you have to be religious to have a feeling that something is wrong or bad and that you shouldn’t do it. I do not have to be a Christian, a Muslim, or Jewish to think that say gambling all your family’s money away and giving your children cancer from second hand smoking is a sin. It’s fucking bad. You should be able to comprehend that this is a bad thing regardless of what your faith is. Like in this [hypothetical] situation, you have literally ruined and destroyed your entire nuclear family. This [hypothetical act] is bad regardless of what your faith is. You should be able to sort of see or figure out what is bad and sort of see or figure out what is good and carve out a path in life that is guided by your sense of love and good. This is like my “secular faith”.
I am one of the most self-centered people who I have ever seen, and I admit that. That being said, I truly believe the following: That all people are created equal. It doesn’t matter if you were created Black or White, rich or poor, male or female, religious or not religious, or what your sexual orientation is. Human beings have intrinsic worth regardless of their skin color, how much money they have in their bank account, their biology, how religious they are, their sexuality, etc. You could be a person who loves money and makes billions or you could live in a tent, but either way you have intrinsic worth as a human person. I have intrinsic worth regardless of my skin color, how much money is in my bank account, my sexuality, how religious I am, or even my biology, which by the way is possible to change with years of hormones followed by one or more surgeries. I have intrinsic worth regardless of these things, and so do you.
Each and every time I look at a person’s face and see them eye-to-eye, I see that they have value as a person.
These people who I met are Black and homeless, but they have human worth:
They have intrinsic worth, as do I. There are no worthless people on Earth.
In my opinion, it really doesn’t matter if you live in a tent under a bridge or if you live in a mansion. You are a person, and I am a person, and when we are together, we are people. If we look each other in the eyes, say “hello”, and talk back and forth, we can see human value in each other. I can see the worth in you regardless of whether you are a male person or a female person, a Black person or a White person, a gay person or a straight person, etc. We are all people, and we ALL have human worth.
Sometimes it is hard for some people to see the human worth in other people. For example, maybe a male person has a really hard time with female people and he is also a misogynist, or maybe one person just has a hard time understanding or interacting with the opposite sex. Or maybe they are racist, homophobic, or have some other problem that gets in the way of connecting with and seeing the worth of another human person. But I think with love, connection, and understanding, these barriers between people can be overcome. The differences between male and female people, between “city people” and “country people”, between people of different skin colors, and so forth can be overcome. Every person is a person, regardless of who they are.
That is what this campaign is about. It is about seeing human worth. Yes, I am self-centered, but I have human worth, regardless of whether you see it or not. I am a person, and I exist, and I have human worth, and this is true regardless of where I am on Earth, what language I speak, what my sexuality is, what hormones my body produces, and so forth. Each person has human worth, and maybe I don’t see it right away, but trust me when I say that when we make eye contact and have a face-to-face conversation, person-to-person, I know that the awareness will be there. We all have human worth, and all it takes to see that human worth is human connection.
We all have human worth. We are ALL America. #Love
In the story, the King isn’t actually aware that he is naked. He thinks that he is wearing the finest clothes, and everyone is pretending that he is wearing the finest clothes, but in reality he is naked. I am sort of like that in that I am not really self aware. I sort of need to hear or see myself in order to be aware of myself. For example, it really helps me to look at myself in a mirror, see myself on camera, or hear myself on audio recording because if I don’t, I might totally miss something about myself that other people notice. For example, if I didn’t hear myself talking, I would have no idea that I sound kind of like a girl or a woman. Like just now I heard a recording of me saying something and my response was “wow, I sound like a woman”. My focus is very “external” to me and I am just not terribly self-aware. Heck, even my sense of God is sort of inverted such that when I see a Jesus reference like this or a mention of his name like this I am like “Hey, that’s me!“. I’m an egomaniac, lol, but I swear it’s not on purpose.
Anywho, being not self aware has a lot of really peculiar consequences. For example, I used to always dress like a slob and not even notice (although other people do). Working at a bank forced me to dress nice in front of a mirror each morning, and this resulted in me looking better than I ever looked working at a tech company. Always looking your personal best is really helpful when you are single, and I appreciate the improvement in my appearance.
One thing that I kind of wondered was why I really like girly stuff like this:
I really didn’t know why I like girly stuff, but I think I realized why.
It’s me. Like I talk I sound kind of like a woman, and I love myself, and that’s why I love this stuff. I love women, but I think that love is more like an extension of the love that I have for myself. I used to kind of hate women and also myself, and I think that these two forms of hate were interconnected in a similar way.
As an example, I kind of love Elizabeth Warren, and I also kind of love little girls, and I love myself, and I think these forms of love are connected. That being said, I really am not self-aware. Like for example, I remember being into Patti Smith and being surprised to find out that all the other Patti Smith fans are women. Like I didn’t know this when I started listening to Patti Smith, but then you look at a Patti Smith event and you are just like “there are no men here“. Like I remember being at a karaoke bar and picking the song “Because the Night” and I thought that either a guy or a girl could sing it because Bruce Springsteen also sang this song and co-wrote it with Patti Smith, but when I put that song on, a bunch of girls started singing along, but no guys. In retrospect if I pay attention to the song it makes sense that it would appeal to women, but like I remember being like “why the fuck are all these girls singing along?” Like I just don’t have that self-awareness.
Like in my head I come off like this:
But in real life I come off like this:
I’m like the emperor in this picture:
One interesting consequence of this is my sense of gender and attraction. I had a very masculine gay friend who was kind of attracted to female stuff, but it wasn’t sexual to him. Like I would notice boobs and he would be like “yeah”, or like he would want to grab like a fluffy pink piggy bank and put it in his cart. The thing is, I am also kind of drawn to the color pink and to boobs, but to me that draw is sexual, but to him it isn’t. Like he can notice boobs the way I do, but to me it’s sexual where as to him it’s just “yeah”, and we’re both really masculine on the outside and we both kind of notice that stuff, but to me it’s sexual and to him it isn’t.
I’m sort of like that with men, lol. Like to me men’s eyes and faces and stuff are attractive, but like it isn’t sexual to me. Like I can’t get a boner or anything from it, but I do notice it. I’m not gay, but like it’s sort of a non-sexual attraction to me that I have towards men, but not towards women. I think that’s why I like chicks who are like dudes. Like I was watching this prank video about a college girl who walks up to random guys and asks to suck their cock, and I totally see how the guy at https://youtu.be/XEfWcm63kDM?t=120 is attractive. Man this is embarrassing.
Anyway, referring back to the paragraph before the previous one, the color pink or magenta is kind of weird to me because it’s just a color, but it makes my head turn the way a hot woman does. Like for example I was in a store and I saw a bright magenta suitcase on top of a bunch of black suitcases, and I felt like a pull towards the magenta suitcase. Like obviously I can’t get a boner from a suitcase, but the way it sort of mentally pulled me felt the same as the mental pull I experience towards a sexually attractive woman. I sort of mentally associate those two things with each other, the color pink or magenta and the the female sex. Like I associate this color with “woman” or “female”:
It’s weird how a color can pull my head the same way a nice butt can pull my head, but my body doesn’t physiologically respond to a color.
Anyway, I guess that femininity is sort of like my external presentation (like the way I talk) being represented internally. I’m kind of like a bat that uses echolocation. I sort of see or experience myself through the reflection with the outside world. Like if I don’t see that I look like crap, I don’t think I look like crap, even if other people see that I look like crap. My dad is like that. I think this way of seeing the world is due to the size of one’s ego. Like I think Donald Trump is like this a little bit. It’s called being “narcissistic”, but to me it’s just me. I swear I’m not like that on purpose – it’s just my perspective and the way I see the world. My mental “inside” is like a reflection of what I project to the “outside”.
I’m like a mirror in that I sort of reflect myself.
This has an effect on the way I perceive attraction. I am actually a zero on the Kinsey scale – damn near 100% heterosexual – and it’s not “fluid” like the way some “straight” women (who date men) say their sexuality is fluid. My attraction to men is more like a non-sexual “secondary attraction” or something, but I think that secondary attraction still sort of makes a difference, especially when it comes to picking someone who I want to be in a long term relationship with. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but this is what I thought. I don’t think any scientific contraption or anything can figure it out because it’s super subtle and psychological – like you can’t measure attraction with a medical device that measures penis blood flow. Heck, they even created a thing that shows where your eyes look, and it showed that straight male eyes look at women’s eyes (which are sort of looking away or not looking at the camera) when they watch straight porn. This makes sense because the eyes are a turn on when they’re not looking at you, and you want to be really turned on to orgasm. That being said, this feeling is not what I am talking about when I mean “attraction”. Like their eyes are hot from the side when they’re not looking right at you, but like when they look directly at you it isn’t hot:
^ Like I honestly don’t even know how to respond to this. Could you move your face further away, please? ^
But yeah, like women are really hot from a distance, but up close, like face-to-face, I don’t really know what to do. Related story.
In college I sat down with a girl who was sitting by herself for lunch. I just made friendly conversation and she found it funny that I wore a nice dress shirt on top but sweatpants from the waist down (time saver!). She seemed kind of bored and there was time to kill between classes and I somehow invited her back to my dorm room for a game of chess at the end of lunch. Note that I was really excited about chess at this time and I actually expected to play a game of chess with her in my dorm room. She sort of followed me to my dorm room, we went in, I closed the door behind us, and got out the chess board. I set up the chess board and I was surprised that she had no idea how to play chess. She just kind of asked what each of the pieces did, and then there was awkward silence, and then she left my dorm room and I was confused.
Looks wise she kind of reminded me of the girl in this picture, but she wore all blue:
I think she might have been kind of interested or curious or something, but man did that not work. I literally had no idea what she wanted me to do. Like I’m not really attracted to pretty women face-to-face. Like this woman on YouTube is super hot:
Like if she grabbed me by the neck and started making out with me that would feel really hot (and I would probably close my eyes during this hypothetical making out session), but like I’m not attracted to pretty women that way, so if she wanted to do that she would kind of have to be the one to instigate it in this imaginary scenario. Like it’s not that it wouldn’t feel hot if it happened – I am just not attracted to women in that way, and it’s kind of awkward when they sort of almost want it or anticipate it or something and I am just like “it’s your move ♞”. Don’t worry – this doesn’t happen very often. Usually I meet a hot older woman who seems super cool and I want to be friends but then she leaves.
But yeah, I don’t actually have a desire to kiss women, except maybe the one who I am dating, and even then it’s sort of like a special expression of love or like within the context of dating or something like that. Like if I am dating someone and we go on a long walk and kiss after or at the very end that’s different. But in this situation she had no visible body to speak of (i.e. none of this stuff), I don’t remember how she smelled (this person who I was seeing before the Russia scandal broke naturally has this smell that makes me want to fuck), and like all I had in this situation was this pretty girl’s friendly smiling face in front of a chess board (which is all I need from a girl if the only thing she wants to do is play chess). I’m not attracted to women like as people, I am attracted to female (like the body, smell, etc). I also tend to like people who are kind of crazy bitches, but that is just me. Don’t worry – I think she is delightful – she just scares the crap out of other people.
I am homo-romantic (like towards men and chicks who are like men) and I am hetero-sexual (like towards physically female people). These are two separate things, so my orientation is “homoromantic heterosexual”.
First, how I know I am homo-romantic:
I love men.
When I am drunk I kind of want to make out with pretty boys, but nothing about male people can give me an erection. Like the attraction is more towards the person or their face/eyes, not towards their body. Also, alcohol kind of makes my “up top” attraction stronger and my “down bottom” attraction weaker, if that makes any sense. Straight male sexuality is mostly “down bottom” where as straight female sexuality is mostly “up top”. This sort of explains what I mean by that: https://youtu.be/Ip7kP_dd6LU?t=423 .
I have really long platonic relationships with guys. Like one pretty male friend I said “I love you” to on multiple occasions, went on sort of friend date walks on the beach with, and even asked once if we could make out (just out of curiosity). Like I used to have sort of friend relationships with guys.
I generally have no interest in kissing girls, and I don’t think a thought about making out with a girl has ever crossed my mind in my entire life, but one time a femme looking lesbian grabbed me by the neck and made out with me and it felt hot. To be honest, I kind of wished that straight girls did that instead of asking me shit like “Would you teach me how to make out?” Uhh… I don’t even know what to say to that, so I think the best response to that is no response. And yes, “Would you teach me how to make out?” is an actual sentence that an actual female person once directed at me.
I only date tomboys. It just doesn’t work with really effeminate women. It either feels like there are two women in the relationship or their incessant high pitched talking makes my dick smaller. I’m sexually attracted to female people, but I don’t like girls the way some guys like girls. Like when a teenager says “I like girls” or “I like guys”, they don’t mean what I mean when I say that I am heterosexual.
Second, how I know I am heterosexual:
I want to fuck chicks, for Christ’s sake.
I am un-attracted to women as people, though, so it generally doesn’t work out in real life. In real life it generally turns into a sort of friendship. I experience face-to-face un-attraction with women, and the attraction that I do feel is more physical and it is mostly butt oriented.
I only get that hot “electric” feeling that turns me on from touching female people, not from touching male people.
Gay porn is gross – 100% of my porn has female people who are getting fucked in it.
In college I tried experimenting with a guy and it didn’t work. The male gaze is an instant boner killer.
The person who I was dating before she got involved in this government conspiracy thing is kind of a hybrid. Like she has big, round, sparkly female eyes (especially when she is looking away or when you see her eyes from the side), and she is female bodied, and she has this smell that kind of makes me want to have sex with her, but she is like a dude. Like she writes three word texts and talks like a dude (sort of the opposite of how I talk) and in the past she sang male country vocals in the shower (while I tend to sing more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXw_gBlcNsM&t=348s ).
There’s like a gender balance. Also, like I mentioned before, she sort of disappeared during this crazy “government conspiracy” in which the FBI and Secret Service was involved. See:
p.s. I kind of wanted her back, but like these conspiracy people keep messing with me and she joined in. Also, she sort of intercepted me and left me her jacket. I don’t know what is going on.
p.p.s. For some reason I really love effeminate girly shit, like this: https://youtu.be/TlyrweRsILk . Why I am like this, I do not know, but unlike say Pete Buttigieg, I am not sexually attracted towards guys. To be honest, the only thing about Pete that even gives me that impression is his big round sparkly eyes. This might just be a coincidence, but I noticed these sort of eyes in masculine gay men. You can’t actually tell anything about whether a guy is sexually attracted towards males (like Pete is) or towards females (like I am) by the way they talk or by whether the way they dress is more masculine or more feminine.
Just a few hours ago, I had a thought. The thought wasn’t true, but the thought was that a person was attacking my faith. Not my Christian faith, but my atheist faith. Allow me to explain.
My atheism is like a faith in and of itself. I built my life on the assumption that I will not have an afterlife. For example, because I never believed that I will have an afterlife, I invested heavily into health (diet and exercise) and even went into pre-med in my younger years. My thinking was that if I don’t have an afterlife, then all I have is this life, and for that reason, I want this life to last a long time. The longer this life is, the more time I will have. This is an assumption that I made which was guided by my belief, or my faith, that there will not be an afterlife. This is an assumption that I made, and I built my life on this assumption. It has influenced my decisions and shaped my system of beliefs.
Now imagine that someone who was very religious confronted me and told me that my belief was heresy, that there is an afterlife, and that I will go to hell for my belief. As a non-religious person, I would perceive this as more than just an attack on an idea or a belief that I hold. I would perceive it as an attack on me. One’s beliefs are built on top of their faith, and an attack on one’s faith is perceived as an attack on them. It is perceived as a personal attack. It is a form of persecution.
Ultimately, the way I generally see the world is that human actions are dictated by the humans themselves and not by God. I see a rock, and I am the one who moves my hand to touch it, not God. My God doesn’t actually do anything – people do things, and God (if God exists) sort of just watches. This is how I perceive the world. My sense of “good love” and “evil hate” is on the inside, and if God is love, then my God is, like me feeling of Love, on the inside. For example, I could imagine that there is like a little God in each of us. Sometimes I can sort of imagine something over my shoulder, but in general I don’t see a God on the outside. Some people might see a person move and think that God moved that person. I see that person as having moved themself the way I move myself. I usually do not have an external sense of God.
Some atheists seem sort of anti-religion or anti-Christian. There were even stories of people who attacked, burned, or blew up churches (hopefully with no people in them). The story at this link might just be “Fake News” that was generated as part of the investigation into Russian Intelligence’s attempt to pit Americans against one another using the media (ex. Facebook ads and news), but let’s assume for a second that this story about an atheist running around burning Black churches is real. In general I think what is really happening in real attacks by atheists on churches is that these (usually crazy) non-religious people perceive that Christianity is threatening their atheist faith, and this is their response. This really isn’t that different from a (crazy) Muslim blowing up a Christian church or a (crazy) Christian blowing up a Muslim mosque. Ultimately, just like these faiths, I see atheism as a faith that one has, and if a religious person says “no, there is a God, you are wrong and you are going to hell for it”, that is like an attack on an atheist’s faith. Atheists just sort of assume that they are right (and this belief that they have, if it is true, means that, from their perspective, someone else’s belief to the contrary is not true). They can’t actually prove this belief that they have to other people, so their atheism is a faith that they have. They have faith that there isn’t a God (at least in the outside world) and that there isn’t an afterlife. This is a belief that they hold. This belief is true TO THEM, and they operate under the assumption that this belief that they hold is true, just like religious people operate under the assumption that there is a God and that this belief that they hold is true. Ultimately, a religious person can point and say “look, God!”, and an atheist can point the same way that the religious person is pointing and say “I see no God!”, and they can do this all day long and make zero forward progress. Ultimately the atheist is assuming that their belief is right and the religious person is assuming that their belief is right. The atheist can’t actually disprove the other person’s belief and the theist can’t actually disprove the atheist’s belief. They both just sort of have the way they see the world, and their reality and their belief is based on that. Regardless of how much each person believes “I am right”, they can’t actually change the way another person perceives the world.
I was never a religious person, and that was true for my entire life. I never saw anything as an act of God. Everything I did or everything that other people did I always saw as an act of people, not of God. If I did sort of imagine something over my shoulder or above me, that thing that I imagined never did anything. From my perspective, absolutely nothing that happens is an act of God. That is the way that I see the world. That is my faith.
Does this mean that I should attack other people’s faiths? Absolutely not. My faith is my faith and your faith is your faith. An attack on my faith is an attack on me just as an attack on your faith is an attack on you. Ultimately, the more someone thinks that their faith is under attack, the more they will want to respond or retaliate. This is true even if they just think that their faith is under attack, even if it isn’t actually under attack. If atheists believe that their atheism is under attack by very religious people, this will probably provoke a response from them. Maybe they will respond by doubling down on their atheism in response to this perceived threat on their belief system. This is equally true for religious people. If atheists attack their belief system, and they feel threatened by it, they will probably double down on their beliefs. If I recall correctly, sales of the Bible actually went up after Richard Dawkins published a book called “The God Delusion”. Richard Dawkins actually believes that he is right and that most of the rest of the population is wrong, and this is a belief that he holds, and to be honest it’s not something that he can actually prove to other people. A religious person can point up at the sky and say that they see God there, and then Richard Dawkins can pull out a video camera and say “no look – look at this video tape directed at the exact spot where you are pointing your finger – no God here”, and they can do this literally all day long and make zero forward progress. Ultimately, people have their belief, and it is their belief, and ultimately atheism is just a belief just as theism is just a belief. My belief is my belief, and I do not want anyone attacking or persecuting it. That is why, when it comes to Freedom of Religion, I believe that each individual’s faith must be protected from persecution. I believe that an attack on a person’s faith is an attack on them. No one’s faith should be under attack and no one should feel personally persecuted for their personal faith. Your God is your God and your faith is your faith. Freedom of religion for all (including people who aren’t religious).
Communism and socialism are on the political left while capitalism and conservativism are on the political right. Socialism and capitalism are fundamentally at odds with one another, but so are communism and conservativism. Allow me to explain.
A socialist institution is owned and operated by the government for the benefit of the voters while a capitalist institution is owned and operated by the private sector for the benefit of its shareholders. For example, a public library is a socialist institution while a for-profit, publicly traded corporation is a capitalist institution. A given institution can’t be both socialist and capitalist – like there is no such thing as a for profit library that sells shares on the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, when a for-profit, publicly traded corporation does something good like for example planting trees, they tend to pick things that they can use to make their company look good in say advertisements – these sorts of charitable corporate things do not replace government services like public schools or hospitals. Socialism versus capitalism is fundamentally about government ownership versus private ownership.
Communism and conservativism are less about government and more about society (i.e. the comm-unity). For example, an extreme Communist in China might notice that the country is over-populated and install a one child policy while an extreme conservative might notice that the book of Genesis says “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” and ban birth control because the Bible says for people to multiply. It is possible to be pro small government and also a social communist just like it is possible to be pro big government and also a social conservative. Communism and capitalism tend not to go together, but it’s not physically impossible for them to go together. For example, China appears to me to be Communist, but with openings for capitalism. I think communism tends to be more secular or atheist (see https://johnreedforpresident.home.blog/2019/05/23/my-atheist-god/ and Twitter thread https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1103743994675322880 ) where as conservativism tends to be more religious, with things coming more from the Bible rather than from science. When secularism goes too far or is corrupted, it can potentially result in bad or cruel science (like https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1102380374095732737 and https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1107084076706598914), but hopefully it is based on truth and tempered with some sort of morality or moral judgement. Like I personally try to tell the truth, see good things in the Dali Lama, and am not against The Church (heck, I live in Charlotte, which has a church every two blocks). In my opinion, a church like the Catholic Church should provide moral guidance, and when I look at Pope Francis, I (at the very least) see an effort to provide that.
Going back to talking about government, communism and socialism historically have been associated with one another (ex. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), but I believe that is possible to have anti-big government (or libertarian) communism, where as it is impossible to have anti-big government socialism. I’m not an expert and to be honest I am winging it, but I think it is possible to be communist and also against the state, or at the very least to try and provide freedoms. Maybe in a perfect world there could be a “stateless society”, but that’s not real. If all people were perfect and nobody ever did anything wrong, there would be no need for rules or laws, but that isn’t reality and there has to be rules and laws, but if that mentality is taken too far you end up with “tyranny in sheep’s clothing”, as Pete Buttigieg described communist China.
I think my notion of communism is more in line with modern China’s communism than with old Russia’s communism, but to be honest I don’t really know what I’m talking about because my specialization is in pre-medicine and computer programming, not in government. But I think Friedrich Engels (who worked with Karl Marx) had this notion of “utopian socialism”:
Although I see the need for some government services such as schools and healthcare (ex. public hospitals), I do not consider myself a Socialist. I see utopian socialism as pie-in-the-sky bullshit. I think that some proposals from communism can be taken without taking all of them, like for example some of these proposals: https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1097144788674101251 . My knowledge of government is weak, but I think even the founding fathers were in favor of taxing inheritances to prevent the formation of an “aristocracy” that just sort of lives off their family’s inheritance and passes it down from one generation to the next (which I think was the case in Britain back when the US was a colony). The issue I see with the inheritance tax is that I think rich people will sort of try to get around it, but honestly I’m not an expert in money and wealth management, so I don’t exactly know the way they do that. If I am elected I will get and consult with really good advisors, a good running mate, and delegate to people with more knowledge and wisdom than me, because frankly I can’t be good everything and know everything. To be honest, I think the founding fathers must have had good ideas because if they didn’t their ideas wouldn’t still be the foundation of this country, so I think a sort of combination of ideas can be created, where good ideas are pulled from multiple different places and bad ideas are tossed. Pete Buttigieg graduated with honors in the subject of politics from a top-tier University, so I think he could provide his expertise in this subject if we were running on the same ticket one day.
Please take my opinion here with a grain of salt because government isn’t my area of expertise, but anyway, a Communist catchphrase is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” So for example, each person needs to get enough food to survive, healthcare, and some education (in order to be able to get a job that pays). To each person, these needs (not cash handouts or welfare, but needs) are provided by their country, sort of like an investment into the people and their future well being. From each according to his [or her] ability I interpret as each person contributes to their society or to their country how they can. Different people can contribute in different ways because they have different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and each person can contribute to their society in the field where they have strength in. So for example I am strong in computer programming, so I can contribute by doing computer programming. Maybe someone else is really strong in criminal investigations, so they can contribute by doing that. Maybe one person is a really good mother and they do social work and volunteer, and that’s fine too. Each person contributes to their society, and their society forms a government which makes sure that they (its people) at least get the minimum that they need. No person goes hungry because they don’t have food or dies because they don’t have a doctor. I haven’t actually read The Communist Manifesto, so I am just kind of winging it, but my idea is basically that not everyone has parents that can afford to pay for private education all the way up through say medical school or who can afford to pay for that catastrophic medical, family, or mental health emergency, so the government needs to invest in its people and provide a “safety net”. I believe that there should be a “safety net” that actually works, and that can be proven to actually work in the case of a say a family emergency (like a medical emergency or a serious mental health problem) or an economic crash (like we had back in 2008). Note that government “safety net” does not mean “cash welfare checks from the government”. The USA isn’t Saudi Arabia or Alaska where people get “oil checks”. No cash checks – people waste handouts on stupid stuff and the government is in way too much debt. Former President George W Bush gave everybody a cash rebate check and in the process blew the budget surplus, and frankly I don’t think it actually helped with jobs very much. My mom just deposited her Bush “economic stimulus check” and forgot about it. George Bush was an idiot (just look at this moron announce that the War in Iraq is over back in year 2003) and he should never have been president. Seriously, we should have at least gotten the smart brother, Jeb Bush, instead.
Anyway, going back to the subject of government, I personally don’t believe that each and every person should work for the government. Like in 100% pure socialism, everyone works for the government and the government owns everything. In my opinion, this is literal insanity. There would be no private sector. How would wealth be generated? What about small (and growing) businesses?
Ultimately I consider myself a sort of libertarian communist, not a socialist communist. I like the idea of adding libertarianism to communism because the libertarianism can kind of combat tyranny and big, wasteful, expensive, and inefficient government. My ideology is fundamentally the opposite of old social conservatism, but it is not fundamentally anti-capitalist. Me personally, I am not big on money, but some people are, and good for them. I personally don’t want to step on you just because you want to build a small business, and I understand that we need good banks and good bankers (as opposed to people who build a portfolio of “toxic assets” and “Madoff” with money). Switzerland, which has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world, has a lot on money and is apparently very well run financially, and I don’t think that would be possible without their banking. Heck, I live in Charlotte, which is a banking center, and I have nothing against Bank of America (which bought Merrill Lynch after “toxic assets” bankrupted them and unfortunately produced the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression). Money making and science needs to be tempered with some source of morality or moral judgement, or else you end up with “Bernie Madoff” and human experimentation.
In terms of beliefs, I think what I am really pushing against is old social conservatism. For example, if you wanted to ban all birth control and overcrowd the Earth by having each person have ten babies, then I have a problem with you. The Earth simply can’t sustain each person on Earth having ten babies. If for every two people on Earth there were two children and everybody was taken care of, then the population of the Earth would be relatively flat, but that’s not how the population curve looks. The Earth isn’t getting any bigger, and if the population of the Earth multiplies that fast, people are going to kill each other, especially in poorer countries. Ultimately some problems like global warming and international tax havens cross national borders, and I believe there needs to be some sort of universal, Earth-wide governance. There is ultimately one Earth and everyone has to share it – we are not moving to Mars anytime soon.
Going back to my beliefs on people and government, I imagine a sort of classless, “flat” society. For example, I personally like power or status more than money, but I don’t consider myself above homeless people. Like regardless of whether you have a hundred billion dollars or zero dollars, to me everyone is sort of equal in terms of self-worth as a person. Like I sort of separate the person from what they have, and the self-worth of the person is based on the person (as a person), and not on what that person has. Nobody is God (regardless of how big they write their name on a building or how many portraits or statues of themselves they commission). I believe in a person-first or human-first approach (“all people are created equal”), where people are not the same, but their self-worth as a person is, and that’s what really matters. Unlike the way I see things, conservativism tends to be less “flat” socially. Like a conservative might see someone else as above them or below them. Like for example, they might look up to billionaire Donald Trump and down to homeless people. Conservatives also tend to be more religious than I am.
I think something about the notion that people are above you has something to do with it, like because God is traditionally thought of as above ☝️. There is this religious notion of choices that are made by and come down from God. I personally don’t see a God actively doing things on Earth, but that’s just me. Pope Francis may be very religious, but he apparently has no issue with an individual’s absence of religiosity, so I see no reason to have a problem with his plethora of it. I have a big tall ego, am not religious, am not particularly attracted to money (but am to power), and I like urban areas, and these things affect my political leaning. Ultimately, I am on the political left, and I am a registered Democrat, but I will cross party lines if and when I determine that it is necessary and right. I personally think there is too much groupthink or “lemming mentality” within groups of Democrats, and I will try to look for and borrow good ideas from everywhere rather than limit myself or my thinking. I don’t really know what the word is to describe my political beliefs, but at the time of writing I would describe it as “libertarian communism”, with a balance between socialism and capitalism.
For all practical purposes, I am an atheist, but my atheism is still sort of like a faith in and of itself. For all the religious people out there, I would like to introduce you to my Atheist God.
As a person, I have a lot of love, but it is internal rather than external. I feel it in my chest, and I love myself immensely (although I used to fucking hate myself). I am very much drawn to things that I love, and very opposed to the opposite. This is what pushes me towards certain things, this feeling that I have about things. I see indulging in things which are more like “impulses” or “pleasures” as sins (see related: https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1098271065917325312). So things like cigarettes, gambling, fucking (not like people who you are actually attracted to, but like the impulsive kind), gorging on candies, etc. Like to me eating junk food when there is a healthier optional available is bad or sinful, and good is achieved through discipline (like self discipline) and love (like self love). To me sinful acts are like engaging in pleasure without purpose – hedonism. I believe that hedonism is bad. It looks superficially appealing or “glam”, but it is bad and I do not love it. I actually hate it. It is a waste of time and counterproductive to the purpose of life, or at least of your life. My current theory of moralist is loosely based on Kant’s second formula of the Categorical Imperative, which states “Always treat others as ends and not means”.
Going back to the subject of sin or hedonism, some people kind of get drawn to it when they have nothing more important to pursue in life. For example, when I was younger I disliked my life and wanted to kill a lot of time and became engrossed in a video game addiction. It is meaningless. Writing a piece of software for someone at least has meaning, but video games are just sort of a waste of life. In a similar way, building a business has meaning for some people, but gambling is a waste of life. I personally am more into technology than money, but it’s the same idea. It’s people throwing their life away to sin or hedonism in order to fill a lacking.
As an atheist person, I see the world differently than theist people do. Everything I do is a conscious decision on my part. If I don’t make any conscious decisions, I will basically just lie there and do nothing. Or maybe my legs will get kind of restless lying there, so then I will move them to ease the restlessness in my legs, but that’s still a conscious decision coming from me. My God (which is generally non-existent from my perspective) makes absolutely zero decisions for me. I make the decisions, and my God is just kind of inside me, or maybe she just kind of floats there and does nothing. Whether my sense of God is inside me, just over my shoulder, or floating (invisible) like 20 feet above the ground, she does nothing. She just kind of is. I am her. We are one. I feel love in my chest, and that’s my God. I think God is love, but my God doesn’t do anything, and she usually isn’t on the outside.
I guess one reason for my atheism is that regardless of whether my God is inside me, over my shoulder, or above me, my God is for all practical purposes impotent. I am the one who does everything. She doesn’t do anything.
Yesterday on an airplane I listened to a religious women sitting next to me talk. The subject that we were talking about was abortion and the concept of “pro life”. I mentioned that women have periods all the time and that sperm meets egg forming a fertilized cell that can and often does just get menstruated right out. “We know that about half of fertilized eggs never stick around. They just pass out of the woman’s body” (see: https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1080710333147332608). If God put a soul in a cell when sperm fertilizes egg, then my (hypothetical) decision to have unprotected sex with a women during or just before her period would be murder because I would be creating a soul that is then extinguished through menstruation. She (the conservative woman) replied that that doesn’t count because that’s not intentional where as abortion is intentional. My response, which I didn’t say out loud, is to me everything is intentional. God doesn’t do shit. On rare occasions I will think that something is a strange coincidence and maybe that coincidence was an act of God, but then I realize that it was just a coincidence.
Going back to the topic of abortion, if the unborn baby is at eight and a half months old it’s a fucking baby – do a cesarean section for Christ’s sake. This situation was avoidable. A good medical doctor should know this stuff and be able to figure out what the right course of action is, and everyone should have access to a good medical doctor. Medical doctors shouldn’t do medicine for the money. Saving and fixing human people isn’t supposed to be a for profit thing. There shouldn’t be people who “slip through the cracks” or “can’t get care” in the medical system because the existing US medical system is this bloated, disorganized, decentralized, beauraucratic piece of shit that was formed by compromising with stupid, greedy, and even heartless people who frankly should have been told to go fuck themselves. The CEO, shareholders, and board of directors of [BLAH] healthcare company already have a shit ton of money. They don’t need any more money, so they can go fuck themselves. The same is true for the people who collect undergraduate student tuition (50 grand a year? Seriously? What a waste of fucking cash – I went to state school and made good money – private university is a bad investment for the vast majority of people). The cost of undergraduate universities in the US is crazy high, and the big loans that people get don’t exactly force them to pick the lowest price, causing people to pay for bloated “premium” education with lots of “fluff“. Both the hospitals and the universities are bloated fluff services with poor competition and excessive adverting (which looks kind of like catchy sin to me). The medical sector and the higher education sector could use some control from a higher hand. The higher hand of top-down executive control!
Anyway, going back to the story, I was saying that to me everything that I do is intentional (and not an act of God, although to be honest I sort of have this “Messiah Complex” thing where I think that I am like a little God or that God is inside me or something like that, but at the very least I don’t believe that what I do is the result of action taken by an EXTERNAL god who is not me, if that makes any sense). This includes bad things that I do or that I could do (but in general I don’t actually want to do these sorts of things). For example, if I pick up a baseball bat and hit a person on the head with it like Babe Ruth hitting a home run ball, that is intentional. I just (in the hypothetical) made the decision to kill a person with a baseball bat and then did it. That wasn’t the decision of the Devil. That was a decision that I made. If there is a Devil, my Devil, then my Devil doesn’t actually do anything. I mean yeah I get a feeling inside that killing a person by hitting them on the head with a baseball bat is bad, but that feeling is from inside the same way that my feeling of Love is from inside. My “God” or my “Devil” is inside and they don’t actually do anything – I do everything. I exert “top-down executive control” over myself – I am like my own internal God and Devil. Maybe because they are inside, I don’t see any God or Devil or anything on the outside. The closest I get is maybe an invisible feeling or something from over my shoulder or maybe a little above me, but I think that originates from inside my head. In addition, my thinking is basically that even if they (Love/God or Hate/Devil) aren’t there (which they usually are not from my perspective), it generally doesn’t make a difference because they (God/Devil) do nothing (and to me aren’t even real). I’m the one who is doing stuff, not God or the Devil. The hand of God or the Devil or whatever doesn’t move me. I move my hand, not God, and they are just there, as feelings or something from inside me.
I basically don’t have a God or a Devil or whatever (at least not from my perspective) because they are just me. I am like the God or Devil or whatever.
In addition, I think the height of my ego has something to do with my sense of worship (or perhaps has some connection with my “Messiah Complex”, which I do believe that I have, like in this Twitter thread). Pete Buttigieg said that the decision for him to be gay (a same-sex attracted male) was made “way above my pay grade ☝️”. He was referring to his God, which is way above him. My God isn’t way above me. I’m a little like Donald Trump in that I have this big tall ego, so my God isn’t that far above me. Maybe I can get up to the height of my (imaginary) God with a ladder. Maybe if I am feeling grandiose, my God or Jesus or whatever and I are at about the same height. I think that Jesus was just a flesh and blood human who I could have just made eye contact and said “hi” to if we were both living in Galilee around the year 20 AD. We wouldn’t be talking in English, but still. I don’t think of Jesus as this magic man (see: https://twitter.com/JohnReedForPres/status/1106262368500269056 ). Maybe other people thought that, but I think if video cameras existed at that time and the whole thing was on video tape, I don’t think it actually would have looked that way on video tape.
Was Jesus super incredibly influential? Yeah, but so was Adolf Hitler, and he wasn’t magic. Maybe some people thought he was (he thought was the Messiah or something, and the name he gave to himself, “der Führer”, meaning “the Leader” sort of connotes this greatness which other people bought into), but that’s not actually magic like Harry Potter kind of magic. That is more like emotional influential force. Every time a politician (or preacher) gets up on stage and gives a speech, they are sort of exerting emotional influential force. Some speakers exert more emotional influential force than others, but it’s still coming from a flesh and blood human person. Donald Trump may have given off the impression of being this super great thing that is 20 feet tall, but he’s actually this 243 pound man in his 70’s who is six feet three inches tall. If you were sitting next to him, you could poke him with your finger. Some people are more or less emotionally influential that other people, but they are all still flesh and blood people, and that includes Jesus (when he was alive, at least).
On the subject of very emotionally influential people, I think it is really important to use emotional influence for good rather than evil. Some people are really dumb and uninformed, and they will believe shit with no proof just because some emotionally influential person said it or preached it. Looking at Adolf Hitler’s quotes, I think he was aware of this:
People will believe things that politicians and preachers say even if there is no evidence, and based on Adolf Hitler’s quotes, I think he knew that he was lying. A person who fact checks everything to make sure it is true wouldn’t say “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
Measuring skulls (circumference of the skull, etc) is bullshit science. Like it’s one thing if a scientist gathers objective information, puts that information together, and then comes up with some conclusion that is derived from that factually correct objective information, but this is more like smart people intentionally seeking out information that props up something that they already believe which isn’t actually true. It’s bad science.
I can relate to Adolf Hitler a little bit, what with the ego, science, atheism, intelligence, and even an un-attraction away from or a response to physical cash money (*ugh*) [I dislike money – I would rather live in a tent than a gold mansion], but this is just wrong. I mean maybe if he had good mental health and positive, healthy relationships with his parents (there is something kind of Freudian about one’s God) he wouldn’t have lead the German people to commit mass murder. Also, there were bad economic times and a stupid post WWI policy that produced a massive economic problem that contributed to the rise of anger or hate (sort of like the Great Recession did while Obama was President), but after the WWI economic problem Hitler definitely contributed to the whole genocide thing.
Anyway, changing the subject a little bit, I think Bernie Sanders has emotional influence when he speaks, and he influences his followers, but he comes up with stupid shit like changing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00. You can’t just change the wage from $7.25 to $15.00. That’s not how it works. You consult with economists who set up a plan to gradually increase it over a period of several years to a mathematically calculated inflation adjusted number, which by the way isn’t as high as $15.00. I think Bernie just picked a number that sounded good and said it over and over again. He’s got leadership skills, and I believe his intentions are good, but I honestly don’t think he’s that smart. My preference for him is based on the assumption that he will have someone smarter and more practical (like Elizabeth Warren) behind him, keeping him from doing something stupid.
What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah, I’m not religious. Also, vote for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
John Reed For President 
