http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BOIargIxus&feature=related

Nolen, allow me to call bullshit.

These videos exemplify all that is wrong with OWS (trite cliches in place of an ability to formulate genuine policy recommendations along with flirtations with radicalism and political violence) and mixes it with obviously having seen/read V For Vendetta and Fight Club a few too many times without ever actually absorbing those works and what they got wrong.

Near as I can tell, all this movement has to really distinguish itself from, say, the libertarians is a weird plan to download all the apparently readily available evidence of the crimes corporations commit which they leave carelessly laying around on their hard drives on December 21. Why, exactly, the downloading shouldn’t take place NOW instead of leaving three and half months for these very same corporations to sanitize their IT systems is never explained. In lieu of such details, we’re left with ingenious ramblings about imagining us conquering freedom by becoming more free. Poetry, man. Really.

Five videos I watched and I still have no idea what would possibly make me want to follow your outfit, unless I were simply so disgruntled that I would throw in with the best hackers because, golly, they just must know the way.

For every video of yours on police brutality I’ve seen two on http://www.reason.com, a libertarian website. You want to push for laws making it legal to video tape police officers (to others: yes, it’s often illegal to do so), groovy. Oh, I forgot, we’re doing this sans specific policy recommendations. Think I’ll stay with the libertarians. At least they don’t dabble in political violence.

So you’re shocked that a billion people, a seventh of the world’s population, live in extreme poverty? What you fail to realize is that this was the way of things for everyone until barely 150 years ago. Every empire, every adaptation of better agriculture, every scientific discovery that ever took place prior to circe 1850 did NOTHING to raise average per capita income for humanity. Then the industrial revolution took place, and millions of years of prior history and pre-history gave way to economic growth. Not that everything that happened pursuant to that (e.g., pollution, the awful treatment of the still lesser developed by the early adopters of that growth, etc.) were good things, but I can’t think of a single civilization I would rather live in REGARDLESS OF WHICH STRATA I OCCUPIED than the one I’m living in now. Can you? Would you rather be an Egyptian today, or one of 200 years ago? An American today, or one of two hundred years ago? What about Europe? What about Asia? Can you name a single place that was nicer to be born into two hundred years ago than it is today? How about 100 years ago? How about 50 years ago? It’s exactly these questions that people like you can’t answer.

This isn’t to say that everything is great everywhere. It isn’t. Much of the world is currently in an economic depression; even prior to that, economic growth had slowed in the developed world AND it still was very low in the developing world; and there may wind up being a VERY expensive environmental bill to pay in the not too distant future in the form of global climate change. But what should we do about it all? Public works projects to ease the unemployment rate? I’m interested. Expand free trade agreements with the developing world and allow more immigration to the developed world? I’m down with that. Replace some of our growth-detering income taxes with pollution-detering carbon taxes? Fine. Oh, I forgot, we’re doing this sans concrete policy recommendations.

Nolen, believe it or not, you’re not the 90%, you’re in the 10%, and it’s a mixture of a strong dose of capitalism, along with a weak dose of government provided goods and services (especially education) that put you there. In every generation, there are those who want to bite the hand that fed them in favor for an articulation of nothing more than radicalism for its own sake. Guess that tradition dies hard.

God bless ‘ya, man.

What’s the matter, limp dick? Didn’t get the automatic respect you thought your ramblings deserved? You’re going to be so disappointed when December 21 comes and goes and “Tyler” comes to nothing. Next time, don’t barge into a site for the depressed with your off-topic ramblings and delusions of grandeur.

We don’t forgive, and we don’t forget!

LOL!

Nolen:

“Dallas: No, I’m not Hitler, you’re not a dictator, but Hitler did not stand alone, nor do any dictators. They stand for a cause and have supporters who back their cause. The dictators and their backers, promote information that promotes said cause. They do not expect everyone to agree with them. They simply state their perceptions, defend their beliefs, give reason for their perceptions and hope that they will “reach out” to the like-minded individuals who may be useful to that particular cause.”

You realize that that pretty describes everybody with a point of view and not just dictators, right? I mean, it describes you as much as anyone else here, right? Sure, like me, dictators sometimes eat mashed potatoes. And, like you, they sometimes go out for a walk. Is there a point buried somewhere in here?

“I see post after post on this site about how some form of society is pushing them to the brink of suicide.”

And here, as elsewhere, you see what you want. I just read the current top page and saw one oblique reference to “society”, and even that didn’t say that society is pushing them to suicide but rather than society thinks that there is something wrong with them. No, what I see when I read here are people whose anhedonia (lack of ability to enjoy anything) is making them miserable. What I see are people who are heartbroken by the loss of a relationship. And, unlike you, I don’t see them as fodder for some social movement I’m trying to get started.

“You guys are so quick to play “hero” if I attack someone’s belief system”

Wow, people getting angry when you attack them. The nerve of some folks!!!

“If you guys believe that your societies are so great, then why the fuck are you on here?”

Umm, there’s this medical condition. Those who have it lose the ability to be interested in anything, even the things that used to most interest them. They also tend to have overwhelming feelings of sadness, worthlessness. It’s thought to linked to the poor operation of the frontal cortex, though it can also be triggered via substance abuse and negative life changing events (such as the death of a loved one). It’s called “depression”. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

“I will be off the site for a while…”

HOLY SHIT!!! THERE IS A GOD!!!

“don’t think that I haven’t enjoyed these wonderful debates. They offer me insight on an assortment of psychological constructs. We are all students here and I can say that I have gained a decent amount of insight to the ones who have gone back and forth with me.”

What I’ve learned from you is how much you have yet to learn. Before you next come to a website for the depressed, why don’t you stop and learn a bit about depression, rather than simply assuming up front that whatever bullshit you are currently selling is the cure. You keep talking about us being in an information society. Good, why don’t you go out and get some?