fillosophy

Normally, I’d steer clear of nailing down on a subject that would appear more hypocritical than seeing a priest in an F-Street sex shop on a Sunday morning preaching about how pedophiles are bad people, but a little space to justify my personality record from time-to-time on my own damn blogspace is far from uncalled for I believe, especially if it’s about ego.

I’ll start with “my type”:

Confident Egoist
These types know their abilities, in fact, they’re so intimately aware of what they’re capable of, they refuse to allow anyone to tell them otherwise. Confidence is a great thing to have, when it’s true, I’d say - most people who have a skill would love to fall into this category, especially if they were a business owner. Having a ton of confidence in your abilities gives you the ability to take risks that you normally wouldn’t if you were unsure you could “pull it off” or not, and you have to be able to just think you’re the best you can be at what you do enough to pretty much make leaps that “non-egoists” would remotely ever come close to trying.

Problem: These types are often type-a personalities as well, directly being assholes to others in order to stay in charge of their situation and refusing to be a team player, lame. This causes all sorts of stupid, and makes it very hard to deal with and take advantage of what this person actually has to offer.

Suggestion for these types: When dealing with others, make sure you forget you’re a total ego-centric douche bag long enough to hear someone out, and try to learn something new, hear something different, and consider other possibilities other than their own.

Hell, everyone should give that a shot, actually.

Self-Righteous
These people are, in my mind, near the top of the list of “Types You Don’t Need To Know, Ever”. In fact, I think it’d be safe to assume that most people, even those that are self-righteous, hate people that are self-righteous. These are the people that never talk about anything without it tying back to them, they can’t hear anything without automatically thinking about how it relates to them or effects them, and they never get involved in something that doesn’t benefit them in one way or the other. They think their ideas and plans are the best ideas and plans ever. They only openly listen to others so that they can say that they do that. They automatically internalize pretty much everything someone says about anything… you get the idea.

Problem: To be honest, the problem is the person. I’m not sure how it happens, but these people normally have a very distorted view of themselves and apply/project/request a self-value based on this distortion. They “think” they’re the greatest thing that ever walked the earth, and 99% of the time… they couldn’t be more incorrect. So, all in all, the problem is weeding these folks out of your schedule.

Suggestion for these types: I’ve never actually met a self-righteous person that believed they were self-righteous, didn’t confuse being self-righteous with supreme confidence, and didn’t try to justify who they were without looking at how “everyone else is just like them”. They’re too far gone to help… so my suggestion is simply - Take a moment and stop being yourself.

Power-Monger
Oh… the humanity. There are those types that buy Boardwalk, and refuse to play any longer if they can’t. They don’t really have much to bring to the table, but they want to take control of whatever is on it. They are so self-overrated that they think nothing (in their arena) could ever get done right if their hands aren’t all over those that actually know what to do and how to do it.

Problem: These people are useless, deep down in side they might know they’re useless, and will usually default to personal mudslinging and random drama junk to ensure they can stay on top of those that should be organizing a coup to rid themselves of these clowns. They often cause more work than needs to be done, just to keep their “I’m important” badge on their lapel, and also to make it appear as though they understand what’s going on around them.

Suggestion for these types: Tip, first. We (the skilled) know you’re worthless, but are unfortunately for some reason or another forced to deal with you constantly. Need to feel fulfilled in life? Go manage a Starbucks. I don’t want to have to deal with you in a skill-based field, and I’m sure most skill-based people are tired of putting  up with you pissing in our corn flakes.

enrique
fillosophy.net : author
enrique-gutierrez.com

Topic 1: Privatization

The ideas behind Socialized/Universal Health Care – Depending on your view on America and how realistic your understanding of the economic, corporate and medical systems is, you’ll either hope for socialized health care, or not. The main argument against socialized health care is “big government”; wherein, if you’re against socialized structure at all, and wish to see no government intervention in anything, you’ll hope to god this will never happen, and therefore, should also desire privatized fire fighting services, police services, schooling, library, postal, and military services.

Given the history of this nation’s ability to trust privatized corporations with foundational objects of structured infrastructure and support, namely telecom and utilities; the obvious conclusion in privatizing any of these services leads to the biggest flaw in “free market” capitalism, greed. Greed drives corporations to abuse the American people, obviously. The most up-front example of this would be AT&T, they’re out pining for more control over communication, and the Internet. Being one of the foremost lobbyists in the fight for Net Neutrality, and now that land-lines are optional with Vonage, Skype, and cellular network reliability on the rise, they’re out seeking what every company with share holders is going to look for… more profit in more markets.

Another fantastic example is the privatization of local power utilities. San Diego, a few years go, went from having and operating SDG&E, to it being owned by the Sempra Energy company, and of course, we’ve seen price hikes and rate increases at a rate higher than we would have ever seen if SDG&E remained a controlled, non-corporate, entity. CEO’s need money, share holders need money, and more importantly, they can never have enough money, especially your money. That is the American way, the capitalist environment in which we live, and you can hope and pray to abandon this environment, or think you can change the system from within to stop these corporate moguls from taking advantage, but in the end, they’re not people, their legal entities. They don’t die, they can even be absorbed by other legal entities, and in they will out live you, out fight you, and out control you; those are the facts.

Privatized health care has yielded no exceptions. Companies with that much financial obligation require share holders, and must be public companies; corporations require actions to be taken to make profits – not only to retain share holders, but to fulfill their legal obligation to those share holders. How is it that anyone ever wanted the privatization of a system that is supposed to help our nation’s sick, when privatization and thus incorporation, is profit based, not performance based.

A smaller scale example would be; in the sense of a salesman. You take a salesman that gets paid a salary, regardless of sales and performance, he gets paid a paycheck, and if he does a good job during the year, he gets a bonus. Chances are, that salesman will perform better than a commission (profit based) salesman, in that a commission salesman will do whatever it takes to screw a customer to ensure maximized profits immediately, and potentially losing future referral from that customer, leaving the consumer holding the shit end of the deal, which the salaried salesman doesn’t feel the pressure to maximize immediate profits, and as a result, work with his clientele to ensure they’re get a great deal on his products, while making sure his employer is happy with his performance so he can get recognized for a  job well done when it comes time for a raise or bonus. How does this apply to the health care example? Easy; instant gratification and profits are a downfall in the consumer market, and right now, the Health Care system is a consumer market, where they’re selling us our health… Putting a price tag on a cancer patient, on a finger (ref: Sicko, Michael Moore), or child care, pediatrics, surgeries, prescriptions for our elderly.

You can argue that big government isn’t the way to go with Health Care, because it will conclude to higher taxes, and for those of you who are healthy, the American way is to say “I’m healthy, and don’t want to lose my paycheck to some free riding unemployed citizen”. This mentality is VERY common, and a very common argument amongst our ‘sensitive’, fellow American. I don’t like the fact that we’re a cultureless society with out honor or values, just as much as the next intelligent being. I also don’t appreciate the lack of drive and motivation amongst or citizens. But that still doesn’t give an excuse to sink to a level of anti-humanitarianism, wishing for a nation filled with an “every man for himself” barbarian-like outlook. Hell, I think even barbarians looked out for one another in their clan.

enrique
fillosophy.net : admin
www.n-re-k.com

The state of the States… Where the hell do I start? We have the worst president in US history in office, the most corrupt politicians we’ve ever seen currently in office, and the most unimportant war we’ve ever seen as Americans going on right now. Shit makes me embarrassed to say I used to vote Republican, now I’m glad to say I only vote local, and never for people, just for propositions.

Oh no! I don’t vote, I don’t have the right to complain. How about this? Give me someONE worth voting for, and I’ll think about changing my mind on the matter. Right now, I believe firmly, that no vote counts just as much as a vote; think about it like this, if California’s voting turn out was 3.2 million people, and only 7 people voted for a person, everyone else voted for issues and propositions, I think that message would be pretty damn clear. I simply refuse to vote for the lesser of the evils.

Here’s an even greater idea. Allow us to vote against someone, as opposed to simply for someone. There’s a dynamic addition for you. You don’t have to vote on someone, but you can damn well make sure that the person you don’t want to see in office the most can have negative points added to the count… Not that actual counted public votes matter; thanks to the electoral college, but hey, whatever. It’d be nice to be able to “deny vote” someone out of office, and at least be able to say “hey… its not my fault, I cast a a deny vote against that fucktard”. Oh, I can hear the political crybabies winding up already about this one; “Just vote for the other guy if you don’t want blah blah” or “you don’t know etc etc because of X”. Here’s an earful you can take with you (eyeful really); I believe people are accountable for their actions, and if I’m willing to put someone in office that I don’t think is 100% qualified, they’re simply “more” qualified than asshat #2? I’m doing a greater injustice to this great nation by feeding into this plagued system.

Here, in not so common terms:

The System is flawed, fundamentally, on all levels, from the core, outward. The System itself is self-defeating, in that, all you have to do to ensure stability in a state of problematic upheaval is simply disallow qualified entities to enter The System, and keep the bar at or near the medium/average of where it has been or has been projectively headed toward. The factors involved in the current state of the States are the people, the media, the lobbyists, the politicians, the policies and the judiciary.

The Media
Viacom: This mass media mogul is the cornerstone of nearly everything you see in media and advertising everyday. They own MTV, MTV2, mtvU, Nickelodeon, BET, Nick at Nite, TV Land, NOGGIN, VH1, Spike TV, CMT, Comedy Central, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Flix, Sundance Channel, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, CBS, UPN, Infinity Broadcasting, Simon & Schuster, Blockbuster, Paramount Parks, Famous Players Theater, United Cinemas International, Famous Music.

Time/Warner: I love [/sarcasm] these guys… They’re allowing me to post to WordPress at this very moment. They own CNN (all of it), HBO, Court TV, Time Warner Cable services, Road Runner interactive services, New York 1, Warner Bros. (studios, film production and distrbution,) WB Television Network, Hanna Barbera Cartoons, Telepictures Production, Witt - Thomas Productions, Castle Rock Entertainment, Warner Home Video, Warner Bros pay TV, Warner Bros Theaters, TBS Superstation, Turner Network Television, Turner South, Cartoon Network (3 channels), Turner Classic Movies, TNT, New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features, Turner Original Productions, Time Warner Music, Atlantic Records, Rhino, Elektra, and 49 other music production companies, CompuServe Interactive, AOL and subsidiaries, The Knot Inc, MapQuest.com, Spinner.com, Winamp, DrKoop.com, Legend, Amazon.com, MovieFone, and the fucking Atlanta Braves.

Here’s a link clickit.

What’s my point? Simple. Money. We’re not a democracy, we’re a consumerocracy. Money runs this nation… One nation, under Washington, Lincoln, Jackson and Grant. Control the media, control the advertising, control the people in it; or at least the politicians that “run” it, because you control the money. This isn’t conspiracy theory, its a fact. Want to destroy this nation? Bring the NYSE to it’s knees; doesn’t take planes or bombs, just takes cash, credit, shares, stocks and bonds. Every facet of everyday life in the United States revolves around the economy; that’s all there really is to worry about, no matter how you look at it, no matter what angle you choose, you’re either directly effecting or 1 degree of separation away from the cash flow of this great country. Even this post on this site is surely generating some type of marketing statistic that will in turn be leveraged to turn a buck. That’s just how thing’s work; and whoever controls the direction of the flow of consumer economy, can effectively control the consumer, and thus steer everyone in whatever direction they want us to be in.

What’s so wrong with this? Ever watch “reality” television? How about the news? Perhaps you’ve caught up on some sitcoms or drama on television. Ever see Heroes? 24? Grey’s Anatomy? These shows are all simply formulated to get you to do one thing; stop thinking, or start thinking about the wrong things. They’re obvious products of a system that keeps people inside of it looking outward, never questioning, never wondering, constantly living in fear of terrorist attacks, constantly voting for their favorite idol, and constantly forgetting and turning a blind eye to what the problems of this nation truly are. The media is the opium the government needs to keep everyone sitting on their asses, eating fast foods, and buying into their system, to ensure it stays stable. After all, any type of shake up would probably cause for some type of failure of the system, and god forbid we find out we NEED a new way to do things.

Imagine what would happen if everyone shut off their televisions and turned off their radios. Think the media doesn’t understand how important they are to the nation? Lets take the web for example. How many problems has this unregulated name-space been for media monsters? How many lawsuits have you seen? How many ads do you see? How much is Google worth? … and why? Google’s great, they have everything… $500billion worth of everything. Why they’re so rich is easy to explain. They’re vapor. They provide companies with a reliable resource on the web to market to their demographic and track it in pretty charts… That’s not literally tangible by any means, in fact, the Internet, pre-online advertising, was actually not a bad place to be. Wasn’t all that informative, it wasn’t all that pretty, but it allowed people to share thoughts and documents online simply enough… and here we have Google, they make some neat shit, I’ll give them that, they’re a great place to work, that’s another feat. But they’re the Viacom/Time Warner of the web world. They make money from force feeding you advertising all day, everyday.

Advertising isn’t bad. Really. But have you ever thought why you see things so often? Why you’re subjected to Nissan, Wendy’s, McDonalds, GM, Washington Mutual, Well’s Fargo and Apple so often? Honestly, who the fuck hasn’t heard of an iPod? Oh! The ominous “They” needs to make sure EVERYONE on Earth gets a chance to see the commercials? See the ads? … Its a proven method! Keep giving the public what you want them to see, and the sheep will herd up and go to the stores. Pathetic. We’re controlled, and we’re controlled by the media, and as a result, our country’s run like a giant Wal*Mart, lots of shit everywhere to buy, lots of akward fat asses walking around, and tons upon tons of bureaucratic deals and problems going on behind the walls and register that no one is concerned with because cheese is half off.

I’m sure it doesn’t hurt Viacom or Time/Warner at all to score a few hundred thousand bucks every time one of these companies wants to try to get your attention too. This isn’t just about television, because if they can’t get to you there, they’ll get to you on the way to work via billboards and radio ads. Even clothing, your cellphone, and schools; they’re all inundated with this highly important factor in this nation’s government; marketing, advertising, and the plague of things you need, the things you want, the things They wants you to want.

I’m using They in a singular sense, since They is a unit of the corporate owners of this nation. George Carlin once went off on this same topic, to an extent, but only grazed the surface, and he was 100% right, but at the same time, he was giving that speech on HBO… Thankfully you can probably find it on YouTube.

The Lobbyist
Ever hear of an activist group? A really rich one? Here’s one; I define an activist group as any group of people or corporations that involve themselves in anything that prompts the opinion of the masses. For example. PETA, NRA, NAACP, KKK, Green Peace, Phillip Morris, H & K, Chevrolet, and Exxon. Yes, I just grouped PETA and Exxon in the same category. Why not? They’re all one in the same. It was said best in “Thank You for Smoking” when the main character, Nick Naylor, on the talk show basically said that activists want people to die from lung cancer, because if they don’t? They have no case. I’m deliberately leveraging the fact that this movie was about Big Tobacco and lobbyists, namely one; but also included firearms, alcohol, and briefly energy lobbyists.

But the funny thing about this movie is the skewed perception it has on what’s actually bad for America. Granted it wasn’t a movie about the fundamental flaws in this nation, well… directly anyway. Back to point, every facet of this nation is so beyond help, that even the non-profit good-doers are feeding into it and simply fueling the fire. There isn’t a single thing, any one group, or group of groups could ever do in today’s world to actually make a standing, long-term, much needed difference that will ensure this country advances, positively. Their problem resides in the one crack in their foundation. Its based on a system that is no longer capable of supporting any great change or advancement in the right direction that will move our government away from the corruption and utterly culture-less society they’re governing.

I should continue; but actually, there’s no point. Its simply the same point over and over and over again. The organizations that exist are greed filled. They’re relentlessly, and hopelessly flawed on all levels, even to the point where philanthropy is simply seen as a nice gesture, but will never even make a difference, or a dent for that matter…

The Problems

• Marketing & Advertising
• All Political Parties
• The Mass Media
• Corporate America
• The Fast Food Industry
• Tobacco Industry
• Firearms Industry
• Health Care Industry
• Fossil Fuel-based Energy Companies
• The Weapons Industry
• Cable Television
• Organized Religions… all of them
• Non-Profit Organizations with Lobbyists
• For-Profit Organization with Lobbyists
• Corporate Law Firms
• Consumer Level Recruiting Agencies
• Trade Schools
• Automotive Manufacturers
• Tire Manufacturers
• Petroleum-based Companies (plastics, etc)
• Housing Developers contributing to Suburbs and their expansion
• Real Estate Agencies and Mortgage Lenders in inflated markets

Agree with me or not; up to you… people lie to themselves constantly everyday, when they say that “their job is great” and “they’re happy working as a nobody at some X company” … why? Because the pay is good? The people you work for are neat? The benefits are good? Shallow dreams yield shallow goals in life that’s for damn sure. That’s what’s wrong with not only the US, but the world. Every facet of every part of these organizations and institutions have one way or another stripped out all the hope and character in humanity, by labeling it, defining it, drilling into it, and expecting to strike it rich by taking advantage of everyone that’s subjected to it. They’ve torn out the soul of our nation and expect us to seek it out in music They have formulated for us to listen to. Creativity is praised for the few who have it, and people like me are seen as complainers who don’t do anything about it…

Revolutionary actions aren’t possible if people don’t get out of the box long enough to think for themselves. Unfuck The System.

enrique
fillosophy.net : admin
www.n-re-k.com