FAQ: Unpleasant Truths

Unpleasant Truths FAQ
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Archive-Name: alt-philosophy/other/unpleasant-truths
Posting-Frequency: Monthly
Last-Modified: 2000/06/10
Version: .98b

Introduction
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This FAQ presents some of the truths about human life that
are most frequently denied for social reasons and reasons of
cognitive dissonance. Our theory is that by getting these
out of the way, we have the rest of our lives to enjoy without
having to constantly reinforce illusions.

1. Death is real.

There is absolutely no evidence or even indicators that suggest
there is a "world beyond the material," and there is no necessary
connection between that world and human beings after death. When
we remove the anthropomorphic concerns from religion, we can see
that the religious process is shaped around the human fear of death
and need for a "reason" to live.

Our staff suggests that the "reason" for existence is tautological
to the process of existence.

2. Social behavior is insincere.

People seem to think that in a society where we must use each
other in order to make enough "profit" to survive, that social
behavior is sincere and honest. This is not so. Whether at a
subconscious or conscious level, human beings need each other
as business partners, employees, customers and leaders. Their
behavior is as a consequence involves first protecting themselves
from possible social repercussions, and then assuring themselves
protection in material dealings through friendship, alliance and
dependency.

We are blinded by anthropomorphism here also, where a normal
couple of man and wife appears to us as a sensible, loving
relationship; none of us think to question whether or not it is
simply a friendly business partnership to raise a child, a
process which benefits both individuals.

3. No one has your "best interests" in mind.

Individuals have their own best interests in mind. They know
you only as someone through whom they function to achieve
their own goals. Otherwise, they would have to be specifically
created and lying in wait to anticipate your needs.

4. Society is inefficient and expensive.

Every business must make at least 100% return on every item
sold (meaning: double the wholesale cost of an item to find
its price on the shelf) and in most cases charge even more.
The scary fact is that it has already been sold through
at least one middle business, meaning that at every level
of transaction, the price is being doubled at a minimum.
More conventionally, the cost was a tenth of what is being
charged to the next level in the system.

5. Genetics determines most of your personality.

Despite mountains of research and soul-searching public
displays of emotion to the contrary, most scientific evidence
still suggests that the largest part (80%) or more of
personality and abilities in the individual is derived from
the abilities, characteristics and traits of the parents
of that individual. While we like to think about how on
a social level, we are all "equal" and basically the same,
it is easy to see that people have different abilities
by the nature of specialization. The "equality" myth exists
only as a social convenience to make the individual feel
accepted for his or her contribution, no matter how menial
it may be, and while "equality" is given lip service by
nearly every public figure, it cannot matter to them as they
are acting upon their own impulse and self-interest. Thus
no one is "equal" to the individual and, as the individual
seeks the more proficient specialized business partners and
friends/associates, there is clearly no expectation of
"equality" in ability, or those associates, friends and
business collaborators .

6. Evolutionary differences do exist between populations.

In our world of social acceptability, things like racism and
ethnic pride are not considered safe or "fair." The reason is
that someone, somewhere, in the crowd, might feel that they are
less "equal" and therefore less appreciated by society as a
business partner and associate. However, we can tell this myth
from a distance, as history itself shows the lie. If all
populations were the same, political and social and technological
progress would be much more closely matched between such diverse
states as Africa, England and China.

7. Self-help books, religions, and counseling services are
all businesses.

Someone writing something "for the good of others" usually means
"so I can feel good about 'helping' others." But what about the
endless self-help books, religious "friends," counseling services,
psychiatrists and psychologists? They operate as highly successful
business because seemingly, most people need help. And as businesses
they have zero financial incentive to actually "solve" any problems.
Further, what would we say about someone who was so perfect they
had nothing better to do than help others? We would probably realize
immediately that this person's perfection was illusory.

For more information, see #10 below.

8. The press lies.

The press is a business dependent upon the revenues brought in by
its advertisers. In the same way that in "polite society" one does
not say things which would offend one's benefactors, the press
studiously avoids offending its advertisers and financially-
influential readership.

9. No one is really very serious about what they do.

None of us serve a common goal in society. We serve in positions
in which others tell us what to do. Therefore, we respond not
to the external reality which shapes our natural environment, but
to the demands and symbolic achievements of the "system" itself.
Since this kind of arrangement means that we will inevitably become
sick of other people's failings and the failings of leadership, our
response becomes resentful and we stop caring at all about the
outcome of our actions. Further, since we are compartmentalized in
bureaucratic institutions, we rarely have contact with other parts
of the system, and are required to trust the knowledge of others
and pass it on to still other people.

Customer: Hi, I'd like to get my account changed from active to
inactive.

Service Representative: You need pieces of meaningless arbitrary
documentation A, B, and C, and you need to take them to counter
#666.

Customer: Last time I had to do this, I had to bring only pieces
A and C.

Service Representative: That's not true. I resent your insinuation
that my authority is not genuine.

Customer: When was the last time you have been to counter #666?

Service Representative: Oh, actually never. It's more efficient
for employees of the company to work through an internal
representative.

Customer: So how do you know that I need pieces A, B and C in
order to inactivate my account?

Service Representative: Well, that's what it says right here, in
the training manual...

10. People do "good things" for their own self-image.

Our benevolent illusion is that people do good things because
they, as people, are good, and they like good things. More accurate
predictions suggest that people like feeling good, and therefore
do things externally rewarded as "good" so that they can bask in
the adulation of others and achieve greater success in business and
social life.

11. Most people are exasperated by other people.

"Getting away from it all" is not only our vacation but also the
goal used to motivate us toward a social system. If you work
really hard, so goes the saying, you get set free by having enough
income that you don't have to do any work, and you can buy enough
land to have privacy from other people. Since we are all motivated
by self-interest, it would be illusion to insist that we all work
together for anything but the profit involved.

Many people, in the grips of cognitive dissonance, will demand some
way of justifying their expenditure of irreplaceable time on other
people. They will talk about how they enjoy their jobs, or would be
lost without their church, synagogue, mosque or friends. What they
are really saying is that without external stimulus they would be lost;
they are not speaking of people, but the social roles that people play
in reinforcing through external stimulus the decisions made by an
individual. At the core of this phenomenon is the low self-esteem that
is common to people in a society where they must answer to the arbitrary
demands of others.

12. No one is looking out for the "big picture."

All humans work for self-interest. All work in compartmentalized
divisions of whatever overall process of functionality is required
by their specific function. Everything we react to is internal to
society and the social customs which it requires in order to conduct
unimpeded commerce. Consequently, our job is to react to what others
think and hope someone else is looking out for the big picture.

But there's a catch. Since all of us have jobs or commercial status,
we must first preserve ourselves via that social device, and therefore
constantly suffer under two things. First, we must please and appease
our business associates, clients, and employees. Second, we must
fulfill the needs of our assignment without stepping beyond our position
or criticizing others higher on the scale of power than we.
Consequently, we are unlikely to go "above our superiors" in order to
question the direction of society as a whole. It's an unnecessary risk
that could jeopardize our position.

This compartmentalization is devastating. Is the President of the United
States looking out for the "big picture" and "goodwill toward all
humanity"? No. He's representing the United States in a social system
based on commerce, and thus his goals are to pacify his allies and
strike out against his competitors. So whose job is it to look out
for and plan the future? You could join an "activist" group, but since
people do things for their own reasons and not those of society as
a whole, this succumbs to the same flaw in logic. There is no one
looking out for the "big picture" or the future of planet Earth and
its human cargo.

Conclusion
----------

Dear reader, it is clear from meditation on these passages that
humanity is not the big happy family as which we like to publicly
represent ourselves. We are in fact a large self-predatory
organization whose values are determined by social convenience and
self-image.

Once this is acknowledged, the modern individual can be safely
freed from social ties to become the predator that he or she
must be in order to avoid being taken advantage of by this
rapacious society. The following links are a good place to
begin your exploration of the "Brave New World" on the other
side of socially-convenient justifications.

There are useful writings by a select few iconoclasts which
help the individual understand this problem, and begin the
process of conversion to pro-ferality terrorist.

Theodor Adorno
http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmnF93/adorno.html

Friedrich Nietzsche
http://www.cwu.edu/~millerj/nietzsche/index.html

Varg Vikernes

Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari
http://www.mtsu.edu/~jpurcell/Philosophy/deleuze.html

Arthur Schopenhauer
http://www.friesian.com/arthur.htm

Spinoza Ray Prozak
http://www.anus.com/

Rex Feral
http://www.overthrow.com/books/index.asp?showCat=Hitman&showBook=book20010310174753.tx
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