An old friend of mine is currently living in the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  While keeping up with the goings-on in her life over there, I’ve gotten a clear sense that she’s growing progressively more frustrated with how things are done in a country run by a fundamentalist religion.  I genuinely feel for her in that predicament.

Moral pantywaist apologists notwithstanding, I would hope most clear-headed people are aware of how culturally backwards things are in any country which allows itself to be governed by something as nebulous as faith, and ruled by something as archaic as a monarch.

But my contempt for that situation leads me down a path of thought that intersects with something else that I hold in great contempt; the fact that many (most?) people have a deep-seated need to subject themselves to some form of peonage, be it governmental, ideological, religious, or all three.

I get it, life is already hard enough as it is, and it’s extremely convenient to buy a pre-packaged set of morals, laws, or beliefs.  It’s even more convenient when they’re either free, or in some cases, you’d have to literally fight not to accept them.

I’m also not putting myself above this either; I consider myself a patriot, a Skeptic, and a futurist, all labels that provide others  a certain set of expectations as to my values and actions.  However, when I do label myself, for the sake of convenience, I also make an effort to “hang a lamp” on the fact that it’s precisely the convenience factor that compels me to do so.  Few people would actually care to know anyone’s entire set of values and convictions in casual conversation.  So the act of labeling oneself is useful to allow others to get a sense of who you are at the ten-thousand-foot level.

But just because you stick a label on your forehead that reads “Libertarian”, that doesn’t require you to cast a straight-party ballot, any more than wearing Joe Snuffy’s name tag makes you Joe Snuffy.  Too many people, however, do make this mistake and confuse their self-stuck labels with their core identity, instead of using them as tools for communication.  And when this happens, you start down the road towards the dangerous kind of group-think that destroys individuality, an ultimately, individual sovereignty.

A label isn’t a brand;  you should never be so attached to your convictions that you make them permanent, inescapable, and requiring vigilant devotion. By doing so you fail to allow yourself the opportunity to examine new evidence, consider new points of view, or ultimate, even think for yourself.  You also put yourself in a position where you are obligated to defend views in the face of evidence that refutes them.

The reason this issue concerns me is because of a trend I think I see emerging.  As religious faith in the western world is on the decline, it seems to be being replaced with a religious-like attachment to another ideology.  This is most noticeable in the Skeptics movement, of which as I’ve referenced, I consider myself a part.

If you follow a lot of  ”Skeptics” online discussions, you often get a sense of a “party line” to be followed, which is counter to the fundamental nature of “Skepticism” in the first place.   And when you do run into this counter-intuitive phenomenon, it can be extremely frustration.

(For the record, I’m making this criticism as more of a “heads-up”, than an assault on the Skeptics movement, lest some of the conspiracy theorists, paranomalists, or garden-variety looneys try to reference this in an attempt at validating their nonsense.)

I think I owe anyone who reads this, examples of this happening.  Unfortunately I’m pressed for time a bit on what should have been a short jotting of things bouncing around in my head at the moment.  I’ll try to revisit that later, and include my observations about the subjects on which self-labeled Skeptics likely to suspend their critical thinking as well as the types of individuals who seem prone to doing so.

But the most important thing to take away from this is that, you are not your name tag, your labels, your government, or your religion.  You are you, and when you chose to stop being you in exchange for falling in-line with a label, you renounce your individuality.   A human being is not a hive insect; cultural, spiritual, and moral laziness should never be allowed to devolve him into one.

Weirdness; I just found out that Phrost.com used to be an anime forum back around 2001. I’ve been using the handle for longer than that so it’s even weirder. Here’s a link to the Internet Archive snapshot of Phrost.com 8 years ago.

Also, “RTOTD” can apparently stand for both “random thought of the day” and “re-tweet” of the day. Which is convenient given that I’m making an effort to commit to posting regularly, and retweeting important/relevant items is an easy source of content when things are busy. I’m still not exactly swimming in the Twitter kool-aid, but I can see its value as a hub for interacting with people in short bursts across multiple platforms (SMS, Web, Social Media).

There’s no such thing as either a trustworthy Government, or a trustworthy Business. But at least it’s in the immediate, unavoidable interests of the Business to live up to its obligations; Government never has to close up shop when they overspend their budgets or fail to provide services as obligated.

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the personal trainers at my 24 Hour Fitness branch have an ongoing contest to see which of them can get their client(s) to do the most idiotic “exercise” possible.

When you’ve got a plate full of steak and sweet potatoes, the broccoli gets neglected.

You know you’re overexposed on the Internet when you do a Google Image Search for a term like “punch mma” and there’s a picture of you on page 3 of the results:

Why are the people who advocate the supremacy of the “white” race almost always the the worst examples of it?

Of course, that’s just a vapid witticism; it’s the reasons are fairly obvious. But still, it irks the crap out of me.

The Internet is a giant collection of squeaky wheels.

One of the best things about working from home, aside from the 50′ morning commute, is the ability to watch shitty daytime television while you’re working from your couch.

Like, for example, an episode of Magnum, p.i. where Thomas Magnum and his killer fuckin’ moustache are in London, and he’s somehow developed psychic powers.

Hell yeah.

I usually sit here and have Napster running in the background, playing random tracks while I write crap. It’s got this cool quick playlist thing that lets you add all songs from an album with a single click and is pretty useful as a digital jukebox.

Anyway, I load it up and notice one of the featured artists is Ice Cube, who I guess has a new album out or something. I click that, it adds it to my playlist.

After a few seconds I’m not really into it and notice the swanky icons for Presidential playlists with Obama and McCain, songs from their campaign and personal favorites. Obviously I click the McCain one and go back to posting. It ran through some very middle-of-the road crap including the Beach Boys, Sinatra, and Neil Diamond. Whatever, I’m ok with them.

After about an hour it’s run through and I decide to click on the Obama list, thinking I added it onto my queue.

Some U2 song with pseudointellectual lyrics that make no fucking sense, but could easily be spun against Obama (”The more you see, the less you know…). In fact I think I heard Limbaugh clowning on that a few weeks ago.

The song was over, and this came up:

And for a split second before I realized what was going on, Obama had earned my vote for being the coolest motherfucker on the planet. I guess I’d clicked on the U2 song by itself instead of the whole list though, because the rest of Obama’s list was just as boring as McCain’s.

Damn. Now if Obama really had the nuts to put Ice Cube on his soundtrack, I might vote for his gun grabbing ass.