politics, culture, society – Page 5 – To Infinity & Beyond Forever

A Rape Culture? Humans ARE Specialists.

Posted on June 1, 2016 by D. L. Keur

I’m so tired of “new” feminists and their male proponents. I’m tired of the attempts to culturally castrate men…and other women, for that matter. I’m tired of people mouthing the words ‘rape culture’, when, honestly, they have their heads up their varied anatomical holes about rape.

I was raped–sexually, in fact. I didn’t talk about it for years…decades. I rarely speak of it, now. Why? I was traumatized. Brutally. Because the rape was brutal, done by a bunch of jocks–yes, gang-raped by those privileged boys, black, brown, and white, whose ‘bad boy’ behavior and aggression society–almost ALL human societies–encourages and celebrates.

Do we live in a ‘rape culture’? Really? You bet we do. And it ain’t just the men. It ain’t just them who have a penis and testicles. Women rape, too. And I’m NOT limiting this to sexual violation, folks. Rape is an act of domination, of overpowering and subjugating others. And it isn’t limited to males dominating, overpowering, and subjugating women or even men dominating, overpowering, and subjugating other humans, regardless of gender. Women are just as guilty of raping those around them, both women, especially women, as well as men. They may not commit a sexual violation to do it (though some do that, too, and, yes, even to men) but they do, in fact, practice forms just as or even more onerous…because they are HUMAN.

Humans are specialists in domination–dominionism. They are specialists in subjugating others–hierarchy. They are specialists in overpowering anyone and anything they can–oppression. It’s the nature of humans to do so. It’s how primitive humans survived hostile environments to become what they think is the top of the food chain–by subjugating, overpowering, and dominating. To change that, you’re going to have to change YOU and the entire species. Genetic tampering would do it. Attempting to dominate, subjugate, and overpower your perceived victimizer is only perpetuating more rape, that is you raping–subjugating, overpowering, and dominating–those you blame as YOUR rapists.

SJWs were New to Me. I Wish I’d Stayed in the Dark.

Posted on May 31, 2016 by D. L. Keur

Frothing, frenzied, enraged, loud, brazen, brash, prone to using force, and, sometimes, even oftentimes, violent — that’s the meaning I’ve come to recognize as SJWs (Social Justice Warriors to those, like the past me, who are ignorant of that acronym).

To hear them, to study them, to realize the methods they’re willing to employ to achieve their goals, is to realize that the SJWs are, quite literally, tyrants, totalitarians, and fascists, combined. Should they succeed in their agendas, they would force everyone within their reach to conform, else they would punish, even eradicate, all non-conformers. (And, yes, they want complete and comprehensive control.)

To say that these frenzied mobs are, in fact, willing to force, coerce, and subjugate everyone to their will is counter to freedom and human rights. I don’t care which ‘social justice’ they align with, the tactics and mindset seem the same: force change to their version of how things should be according to them or else. Whether it’s veganism or animal rights, whether its racism, sexism, ageism, genderism, worker rights, freedom of belief/disbelief, or anything else…whether I agree in principle or not, the tactics being employed are those of dictatorship, not of freedom, and I cannot abide tyrants and fascists.

To me, they are no different than any other tyrannical overlord. To me, they are no different than Islamic extremists, Christian extremists, totalitarian rulers, military dictators, absolute-power monarchs. They are no better than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, or any other megalomaniac the world has seen and known. They can claim ‘greater good’, but their actions and words demonstrate the awful truth. They are, in fact, nothing but more would-be overlords, their mantra: We shall subjugate. It’s our turn to wield the whip.

Inspired Because of a Conversation

Posted on May 23, 2016 by D. L. Keur

I had an interesting experience today. A lonely friend arrived to perch in my dining room for several hours. Luckily, I had pretty much finished what I had on my ‘must-do’ list for the day, and two computers were engaged in rendering their assigned duties, so, while I wasn’t thrilled to be held captive by his needs, it didn’t hurt the day’s productivity. And, in fact, I guess it spurred me to break out Apophysis and set up some parameters, then render them out on my new machine. The results were satisfying, and I may use it as a cover for one of my books.

What I found interesting was realizing just how prone to cognitive dissonance are we as a species, how pervasive that condition, and how much we deny it in ourselves while criticizing others for exhibiting its symptoms. And, all the while, reality, at its absolute expression, simply is.

So, here, as the result of, both, that conversation, and the lack of time to apply myself to the one ‘wanted-to-do’ project planned for the day, is this image, which I call Reality 5/23/2016.

The book for which I may utilize this has to do with my lifeway, zentao. There are seven non-fiction ones in the works. There may well be a couple of related novels, though writing zentao into a novel is…er…proving to be a novel experience in its difficulty. zentao likes truth, honestly, unvarnished perspectives. Anyway, so, here’s the result of all that.

The Problem with Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers and Liberals/Progressives

Posted on May 18, 2016 by D. L. Keur

I’m an outlier. I believe in compassionate treatment for those who demonstrate a sense of responsibility for self and to others, but tend toward skepticism in aiding and abetting those who repeatedly demonstrate a complete lack thereof. And that’s why I just can’t and won’t embrace either of the attitudes exhibited by the Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers or the Liberals/Progressives.

As I see it, Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers measure worth of an individual by outward appearances, blithely ignoring factors that may contribute to an individual’s failure to achieve despite their hard work and best efforts, namely luck and opportunity (which is tied to luck).

Likewise, the Liberals/Progressives are equally remiss because they turn a blind eye to the fact that there are people who do NOT want to put forth any effort whatsoever to become responsible members of society. Liberals/Progressives seem to think that everyone, if given a chance, will, sooner or later, come around and give up their choice of addictive behavior, whether that’s violence against others, indolence, or feeding some personal craving.

Both camps ignore reality, the Right condemning anyone as indolent who can’t make it, despite best efforts, the Left embracing everyone (except those who don’t embrace their ideological platform) as inherently and potentially model citizens if just given enough incentive and opportunity.

Can we have some balanced approach that acknowledges reality?

“A Great, Raging Bloodbath”

Posted on February 15, 2016January 29, 2021 by D. L. Keur

“…A great, raging bloodbath….”–that’s what a reader gloated about in a review they publicly posted. Those were the first words of their review.

I blinked, a crinkle furrowing my brow. My brain did a cross between a ? and an !, not so much in surprise at the fact of it, (I know graphically depicted sex and gore sell very well, thanks.), but because it was a gloat–an adamant one. And not just by one reader. Many readers of the same book and the same series of books expressed those exact sentiments…just not quite as concisely.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to that one review that brought me pause.

The reader/reviewer only gave the book four out of five stars. Why? Because of “unbelievable scenes” and “too convenient” plot answers. Plus, the reader admitted that the end was a “cheat.” In other words, the story was poorly written, but that didn’t matter much–one star subtracted–because of the visceral satisfaction the writing delivered to that reader.

Reading other reviews of this highly popular book, both the positive and the negative, I found similar sentiments among those ranking the book three stars and above. The positive reviews outweighed the negative by far, and all of the positive ones had one common thread: the one element that drove readers’ ecstasy was what that one reviewer succinctly summed up as one “great, raging bloodbath” of a book.

Checking the rest of the novels in the series, I discovered that, yes, that one element drove all the books in that series to crest the best sellers lists, and the reasons given were that the books all satisfied readers’ tastes for pain and misery vividly and viscerally portrayed, fulfilling their fascination with the depraved, their obsession, even craving, to witness hate mercilessly enacted in the worst kind of viciousness and violence, all very graphically rendered.

The genre was Science Fiction, a genre I like to read a lot, but now find myself either avoiding or, at least, exercising extreme caution and care when choosing a next novel for reading. …Because the genre is filled, first, with Sword & Sorcery dressed up like SF, and, second, because it is now laden with what I call ‘gruel’–gore and cruelty–and, of course, right with it, perverse sexual depredation.

These are not the kind of books I read. They are not the kind of books I write, either. But what makes my brow furrow isn’t that my preferred reading, that my own writing and published novels, can’t draw that same level of popularity among readers. (I’m not writing for those kind of readers.) No. What bothers me is what this signifies about where the prime time tastes of the culture of which I am a part has taken itself. I wonder about my fellow humans and my fellow citizens, a large majority of whom embrace this kind of ‘entertainment’ as preferred.