This is an archive of rants written during the lifespan of the original CREON website. Bear in my I was a bit younger when I put these to type. I pretty much use my main page for rants these days, so this would just be redundant if not for archival purposes.

Okay, I guess I couldn't go forever without commenting on recent events. Here are my two cents worth, which, like just about everyone's viewpoint on this are bound to piss off at least someone.

When I first saw the footage of the Twin Towers collapsing, I felt a mix of mild shock and nausea. Even if there had been zero casualties, the sight of such colossal structures collapsing so violently is a striking image in itself. But of course, there were casualties, somewhere along the lines of 6,000 people killed. At least many were able to evacuate the towers before they imploded in a cloud of dust. I wholeheartedly agree that such an attack on civilians cannot go without the perpetrators brought to justice. Here's where people are going to hate me...

Personally I am a non-violent individual, and I don't wish violence on anyone, at least not in earnest. How could anyone hate me for that, right? Well, here's the weird part: in light of such a tragedy, there are people who inexplicably seem to think that pacifists are somehow complicit in terrorism. What kind of bizarre newspeak is this? Well, in order to examine this seemingly backwards mindset I shall apply what Noam Chomsky might refer to as "the test of sincerity". Let us compare instances of terrorism and examine the variables, namely, North American outrage.

On July 3rd, 1988, United States naval vessel the USS Vincennes shot down Iranian Air Flight 655, killing 290 innocent people. Rather than being put on trial, the crew was awarded medals. Now I know the death toll doesn't compare to that of the WTC tragedy, but innocent people died nonetheless. The Vincennes, by the way, had been sent to assist good ol' Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Imagine that, the US Navy gleefully helping out a "pal" who would only become a murderous dictator with the invasion of Kuwait less than three years later. Boy that Saddam was one bad cat, killing innocent civilians and all. Can you taste foot yet?

Patriotic (or more likely jingoistic) Americans would shrug that off as an "unfortunate accident". But not all the actions of the US Government have been so accidental. Some have been downright deliberate. In the fifties, for example, the CIA overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala, which had been a thorn in the side of the United Fruit Company. The government put in its place has been one of the most brutal in the western world. And let us not forget the My Lai massacre, in which an entire village of civilians was wiped out. Not even children or the elderly were spared. A bizarre manner of defending democracy overseas, don't you think? And now, in response to the WTC attacks, the US has seen fit to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan. Some of the casualties of indiscriminate bombing were supporters of the US, who are now struggling to understand how those who promised to liberate them from the repressive Taliban regime are now reigning munitions on them from above.

Time and time again I've been saddened to see people who are not only supportive of this course of action, but who condemn pacifists for allegedly impeding the "war against terrorism" with their "naive college student, bleeding-heart nonsense". I have consistently seen outrage expressed against those who question the moral rectitude of attacks on Afghanistan, and anti-Islamic sentiment has been given unofficial lisence to run rampant. It is only fitting that a human being condemn killing on the scale of the WTC attacks, so why are many now clamouring for still more innocent blood to spill? Moderates will say that this is an unfortunate but necessary action in "fighting terrorism". Presumably dropping explosives in a haphazard manner is a necessity. By this logic, and given the States' own record, perhaps those who planned the WTC attacks thought that necessary to combat terrorism committed by the US. Of course, applying one's own logic to one's self is unthinkable, it will only serve to either point out the shoddiness of our reasoning, the callousness of our actions, or perhaps both. Instead we must preach America's incontrovertible commitment to fight terrorism. What greater proof of this do you need than their rejection in 1987 of a UN General Assembly resolution to condemn "terrorism wherever and by whomever committed"? The US waging war on terrorism is like Bonnie and Clyde waging war on bank robbery: they could do the most good by ceasing to commit the crime themselves.

Like Jim DeJong said in a email to me, a lot of closet racists come out at times like this. Racism would certainly explain some of the malice and complacency surrounding Operation "Enduring Freedom" (what happened to "Infinite Justice"? Did it sound that spurious?). I mean, how else could supposedly decent people weep at the deaths of white North Americans and cheer for those of Afghanis? How could people condemn Islam with blanket statements, citing historical examples and modern-day regimes, and yet ignore the bloody history of Christianity? Garden-variety hypocrisy is one thing, but hypocrisy used to devalue other races/cultures is quite another. I can think of few things more unjust than using double-standards to decide the fate of our fellow human beings. Argh! The next time someone claims not to be racist, I think I'm gonna have to ask them for some proof first.

Having said all this, I'm sure I've ruffled the feathers of those who, in extremely poor taste, have espoused violence in the aftermath of September 11th. Their hearts ostensibly went out to the people affected by this tragedy, and now they verbally attack those who wish to avoid further tragedy. If you are such a person, please do not email me so that you may call me naive, uneducated, stupid, brainwashed, leftist kook, dead man, wussy, zooerast, sexually inadequate, et cetera, ad nauseam. What I am is someone who doesn't enjoy seeing human beings killed. Can you say the same?

We've seen this pattern throughout history: the new struggles for acceptance in spite of the intolerance of the old and conservative. Liberty must fight against convention, dissidence against conformity. And how often have we seen the underdog suffer short-term memory loss and go on to become the source of repression it once railed against? Once the nail that stood out, now the hammer that pounds it down.

Is such an attitude emerging in electronic music? It seems not so long ago that synthesized music was considered by many people to be exclusively the domain of no-talents and "fags" (nice to have homophobic detractors isn't it?). The danger is that its wider acceptance introduces an elitist or conformist element, once the bane of the new instrumentation.

Electronic music, like many other cultural phenomena, may be tainted by those two shameful blemishes of the European tradition: arrogance and pretentiousness. Just check this quote taken from the website of an unnamed electronic record label: "(a particular genre of electronic music) is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres". Wow! I guess there's no need for artists in any other form of music to even bother trying. These white guys with their high technology have evolved music to its ultimate eurocentric pinnacle! Well pardon me if I dont believe hyper breakbeats and gimmicky samples are superior to the complex counterpoint of the Baroque era, or the precise rhythms and compound measures of Africa and Asia. And I realize that in saying that, I as an electronic musician am also pissing on myself a little bit. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with not thinking you're the greatest in the history of mankind. To be fair though, many people just like electronic genres because of the exotic timbres, or because they like something to dance to.

But perhaps the more pervasive form of elitism in electronic music is the emphasis on high technology, and the notion that the degree of the technology effects the degree of musical quality. Certainly I can understand one wanting to hear new sounds and forms of synthesis, but these are usually only accessible to the wealthy, or experts in academic circles, as well as often being irrelevant to the skill with which a piece of music is created. I think if you were to conduct an experiment on this issue, you'd find that an artist with a pricy Pro Tools setup would receive more favour with critics than an equally talented artist who has only a Casio SK-1 and a four track at his disposal. Of course there is no objective measure of talent, but the question remains: is it becoming customary to lavish more acclaim upon the wealthier artists with the newest instruments? I wouldn't be suggesting so if i had not seen evidence of this underlying attitude. If the technology elevates the music so much, why not just praise the machines as much or more so than the humans who use them? I think we should not be so quick to dismiss people's music because of the instruments they make it with. And there are those who agree, people who don't buy into the elitism, who listen to cutting edge IDM and lo-fi artists with equal appreciation.

In the past nearly every revolution had its Robespierre, its Lenin, its Mao.The future, however, doesn't have to repeat these mistakes.

Before I get going on this whole rant, let me set the record straight: I love computers, the internet, and digital technology in general. And yet there are any number of things happening in the world of high-tech that get under my skin.

Let's start with computers. In spite of all the wonderful things you can do with your computer, there are still pitfalls and imperfections, especially if you use Windows. Microsoft's operating system (malpractice system?) and some of their other software are fine examples of what's wrong with technology today. They seem to take two steps back for every step forward. You've probably heard of, if not experienced first hand, the notorious bugginess of many Microsoft products. The results may range from regular freeze-ups to system crashses to DirectX related startup problems. It's as if they skip the debugging process altogether whenever a new OS upgrade or software title comes out. Okay, so I used a bit of exagerration, but it's not too far from the truth. Look at what is being said about Windows 2000 and ME. Rumour has it W2000 has over 200 bugs. 200!

And then there's the phenomenon of useful features disappearing only to be replaced to two useless ones. If you remember Windows 3.1 and the Write program that came with it, you too may miss the justification feature. Oh sure, you can make your text all weird colours in Wordpad, but most folk are going to print their documents in black and white. When I "upgraded" to Windows 98 Second Edition (naively thinking it would solve certain bugs) I found that they had removed the ability to copy highlighted text in certain dialogue boxes using Ctrl+C, something that had been very useful to me before for navigating bastardly websites (more on that later). Also gone was the use of Rundll as the default player for .wav files. Fortunately I was able to correct that by copying file type info from MIDI sequences which still used Rundll. Unfortunately, I had to contend with this system meddling again when I upgraded Internet Explorer (naively thinking it would let me set up a space at IUMA.com), execpt this time almost all media files had been switched to play with Media Player, making the previous fix impossible. I had to copy code from a cousin's computer, which was thankfully out-of-date. Also contemptable was the insertion of corporate links into my "Favourites" section.
"Surely" the geniuses at MS exclaim, "everyone will want to visit the Disney and Warner Brothers sites on a regular basis". While you're at it, why don't you put a link to an MSN service I don't want right in the menu bar?
And like me, you've probably also had to redo the settings of certain folders from time to time when they mysteriously end up displaying all wrong (do not view as web page, damn it!).

I just want to know, where do the makers this software get off thinking that they're doing the user a service by giving him less control. This is not an anti-GUI complaint like those of the DOS snobs of yesteryear, I'm all for interfaces that don't require several months to learn (cough... CSound). But Microsoft and many others are trying to give more and more control to the software and less and less to the one who uses it, under the pretense of being increasingly "user-friendly". Remember that term? Doesn't seem to get much mileage anymore. It seems "user-infuriating" would be far more accurate for the current state of things. Just ask Jaron Lanier, the man who coined the term virtual reality. He too has a distaste for software that increasingly tries to assume what you want to do, often defying your real intentions with robotic stubborness.
"I can't allow you to do that, Dave."

I now understand how contemptable the act of software bundling is. Why on earth would you want to be forced into using any of the shifty software described above?
"Where do you want to go today?" Oh I don't know, OpenBSD maybe?

Now for the Internet. If you've seen other portions of my site you'll know the bitter hatred I feel for spammers. They tempt me to go against many of the principles of Amnesty International and the UDHR, driving me into fantasies of unspeakable torture for those who fill my inbox with garbage. I also detest the increasing number of sites that demand so much personal information from you in order to use their services. Why does MP3.com need my mailing address? Why do some sites want to know my gender and age? And I don't buy into the notion of cookies being convenient. I don't want to be tracked on the web and seen as part of a "target market" which is what many cookies are used for (usually touted as "personalizing your experience" on the website). It frustrates me to no end that by disabling cookie use in my browser I am shut out of many sites and supposedly free services. Pages with a no-right-click policy also piss me. Did it ever occur to the webmasters that I might be using a slow dialup connection and I might want to open new windows so as not to have to reload old ones? Some pages that offer free downloads for some reason like to make downloading less convenient with this policy. Worse still is the sites that deny access until you "click on our sponsor". Even if I want what they've got bad enough to actualy click on the banner, I still don't get access because I don't use cookies. Guess I won't be patronizing that site again.

It's safe to say that in many ways technology has fallen far short of the utopian ideals promised to us by the inventors. While some things can and do improve quality of life (albeit for a price), you will hear many testimonials asserting that technology is often used to unemploy people. The future is unlikely to be the silver-clad paradise seen in the science fiction of yesteryear, but an oligarchy of technocrats unaccountable to the world they rule.

I once heard someone make a somewhat disturbing statement, disturbing that is, to one who considers himself a non-consumerist. This person claimed that if everyone only bought what they needed, the world economy would collapse.

Think about what this signifies, if it is indeed true. This economy is based upon the sale of non-essential goods. Is there really that much money being forked over for things people don't need, and sometimes don't really want? When you think of how poorly so many jobs pay these days, is it right that we be expected to purchase such frivolities just to help Generico sell widgets and make record profits? Excuse me if I start to sound communist here, but it clearly seems like the purveyors of useless products have an almost parasitic dependence on the consumer: they must take vital currency from the masses, offering nothing of any real value in exchange.

But let's examine also the notion of necessity. Physiologically, all anyone really needs is food, shelter, and in some climates, clothing. But does an artist "need" paint and canvas, a musician instruments? Do we "need" art, music and culture? Well, I think civilization is about more than just mere survival. I must risk angering extreme hard-liners by saying that we can afford a little bit of decoration or distraction once in a while. Still, I think that society must have become too dependent on the superfluous to have advanced to the peculiar state of self-destructive capitalism we're at today.

Personally, though I very much enjoy technology (musical technology in particular) I wonder if I don't sometimes find myself wanting something, not so much for what I can do with it, but just as a way to distract myself, to pass the time. I don't think I'd be alone in using material things to make up for a feeling of emotional unfulfillment. People have a wide range of scapegoats for the notorious "breakdown of society"; for Christians it is godlessness; for racists it is "impurity" and miscegenation; for the elite it is the ignorance of the common man. Historians, however, might point to industrialization as the cause of social fragmentation. Never before in human history have people been so ready to accept that their lot is to be used to generate wealth for someone else. These days human life is only justifiable if it is useful to this end. What surprise is it then that what are sometimes the only comforts in life the very products of the society which caused the discomfort in the first place? But what real comfort can these products be? Certainly, you can acquire all manner of status symbols, cutting edge techno-toys, consume brand name foods and beverages. What then? What good is that designer cell phone if you've no one to call? And if someone is on the other end, are they there just to witness your new acquisition?

What about people? What role do they play, if any, other than the consumer/profiteer dichotomy? Can emotional fulfillment actually be found in actual living things? I think so, even though society is not as people-oriented as it once was. Indeed, alienation is all too easy these days.

To be somewhat depressingly realistic, we may not find all the kindred spirits or the human intimacy we subconsiously yearn for. However, we don't have to fill the void with things that empty our thin wallets in the process. Over the last few years I've gotten in the habit of stopping before buying something to wonder what use it can be to me. This is not to say I live like a Spartan. I still enjoy getting a CD once in a while, the occasional video game, new (mostly second-hand) equipment to facilitate my music making, et cetera. Still, I've noticed a lot of things I can easily do without. If that ruins this perverted economy I've heard about, so be it.

Yes, I admit it, I am a vegetarian.

People have a wide variety of reactions to this. Some are quite supportive, either vegetarians themselves or people who just think it's a perfectly natural option even if they don't practice it. But there's also those who are somehow shocked to hear that I don't eat meat. While you may or may not be able to convince them that one can forego meat and still be healthy, it still flies in the face of so much Western tradition, and as we know, people can get very defensive when tradition is contradicted.

"Well, I believe animals were put on this earth for us to use as we see fit..." is one argument I've heard. Okay, so I guess non-human animals shouldn't have that survival instinct or sense of pain if their destiny is to be slaughtered and used. Oh well, typical human self-importance. I suppose the planets revolve around us too.

"But animals eat other animals, so why not you?" Yes, there are many carnivores in the animal kingdom, just as there are many herbivores as well. I hate to think though that we must slavishly imitate everything we see in nature, otherwise there's going to be a lot more people eating their young in times of stress!

"Humans are carnivores" This is only a half-truth. Humans are actually omnivores. We can eat basically anything that isn't toxic, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral. If we were truly carnivores, you think we'd have some natural weaponry like other carnivores do: long canines, sharp molars, claws, etc... If pre-technological humans were stricly carnivorous, it must have been very difficult catching a meal indeed. Look at our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. They eat vegetation and hunt the occasional animal (almost invariably much smaller than a chimp) and have even been known to practice cannibalism from time to time. Again, not that we have to emulate other species.

Now that those arguments have been deflated, let me explain why I choose not to eat meat (which includes fish by the way, they're animals too. I don't know how anyone got the idea that vegetarians eat fish!). I realized after a while what it actually was on my plate when I would sit down for beef or poultry or fish. First I just became unsettled that there might be the occasional bone or blood vessel in my food, but later on I began to wonder what it must be like to be the animal who was slaughtered for my meal. I realized that somewhere in the process there would be some suffering, and ultimately death, for the animal involved. Then I asked myself: "is it really that important that I be able to eat a hamburger or a Christmas turkey? More so than the fact that something has to die for it?" And so gradually I weaned myself off of meat, and I began to expand my vegetable-based diet. As it turned out, I've become much more eager to try new foods since becoming vegetarian. Before I would turn my nose up at just about anything without meat in it. Nowadays I can't imagine life without things like dragon eggplant, black bean soup, baba ghanouj, habanero sauce, etc.

And I'm not trying to badger people into converting either. I know what it's like to have someone try and change you to their line of thinking, so why should I do the same, even if I think I'm right? People will make up their own minds. But if they ask, I will tell people why I eat what I do, and I 'll also defend my choice of diet against the attacks of people who've never thought twice about what they put in their mouths. And maybe someday I'll even work my way to vegan status!

Everything has a price
Everything can be owned
There is nothing under the stars that can't be laid claim to
And it is done so, quite greedily
"Your land is mine if I say so"
Private armies and police
All the credentials you need to own things
Land
Ideas
Words
People
Hearts.
Minds
Lives
The entire world dismantled
The pieces sold to the highest bidder
"This is my planet! You're trespassing! Get off!"
"You're drinking my water!"
You're breathing my air!"
"The very atoms you are made of belong to me"
"You are my property, to do with as I see fit"

I was scanning the channels the other night when I caught sight of the notorious David Duke on CNN. I was saddened and amused (simultaneously!) to see that he's founded something called the National Organization for European American Rights (N.O.F.E.A.R.). First let me tell you why I was amused by this.

N.O.F.E.A.R. seems to be the latest in a new trend: middle class white people portraying themselves as victims. Presumably David Duke's group feels that white people, or European Americans as they now prefer to be called, are seeing hard times. I would suppose by hard times he means having to tolerate people of other cultures and ethnic origins, being "forced" not to deny such people employment through discrimination ("My racist clients won't like it! Business will suffer!"), having no more right to own slaves, and having some of the gross acts of genocide committed by so many historical "heroes" over the last couple of centuries brought to light for the crimes they were. Awww! You poor baby! Mommy kiss it better! It's just like many high-profile Christians claiming they are virtually an endangered species just because they no longer have a monopoly on North American ideology. These are not groups whose very existence is threatened, these are people whose positions of privilege are under criticism. And for the privileged there's nothing worse than criticism!

Mind you, there are some white people seeing hard times, but it's got nothing to do with their race, for they are the poor. The lowest classes of white North American can live in squalor "with the best of them". Still, they don't have the stumbling block of racism to contend with, but any real upward mobility is almost equally unlikely, thanks to various measures taken by the upper classes to keep them in place in what Noam Chomsky would call outright class warfare. A tiny bonus is that you're far less likely to get the death penalty in the U.S. if you're white. I'm sure other races are happy for you.

What saddens me is that this attempted sympathy tactic by mostly middle or upper class white men, which to you and I might seem patently ridiculous, can be surprisingly effective in garnering support, even that of the lower classes. But if the history of the privileged is any indicator, I doubt that the David Dukes of the world are concerned with making things better for the poor white people. Rather, if you vote for them, they will simply create new, lower levels of abject poverty for the targeted minorities so that even the most destitute "trailer trash" can look down upon them. God bless America!

I don't understand all the shock and surprise around the reports of "new and disturbing" behaviour among adolescents. The recent media exposure of school shootings for example. Yes, it is unsettling that some kids are disturbed enough to do those sorts of things, but I don't think it's news that many teens are disturbed.

I occasionally hear some refer to their adolescence as having been "the best years". I'd like to know what sort of utopian high school they went to. From my experience, high school was a high concentration of the immature, the confused and the cruel. The main groups tended to comprise of the "elite" groups administering ample portions of humiliation and hatred, the objects of their cruelty who didn't always learn from the experience and took their frustrations out on others, and the just plain miserable like myself. I think the people who enjoyed high school could have belonged to the first group, and the potential "trenchcoat gunners" to the second. Fortunately I didn't end up like the latter. Had I, for whatever reason, exploded in a hopelessly destructive fit, it would have resulted in a mere suicide, not some deluded excuse to gun down the innocent among the guilty. At my worst I didn't dare think I had the right to hurt anyone but myself. Some might think this is being overly harsh, but it's a lot better than thinking one is justified in hurting others, especially if they don't deserve it. And while I might have often contemplated suicide in my teen years I obviously never carried it through. (whew!)

The worst part is, I'm not sure there's really anything substantial behind many such incidents of teen depression. Sure, some kids have real, tangible reasons for being down, but there's so many who are probably just chemically unbalanced. Forgive my materialism if I think that antidepressant drugs like Sertraline can sometimes be a good, if not lifesaving thing. In any event, I don't think being placed in some prison-like institution with a bunch of other irrational, selfish, malicious youths helped anyone at all.

Yes, I really do think teens are capable of malice, and I think it's pretty safe to say they are not often rational (except maybe the ones that run on electricity). You might say that all teens have a "hard time" in those years, but I won't shed any tears for the ones who made it their custom to victimize others. And don't dare count all kids among the guilty just to absolve those who were, not uncommonly the more popular, conventional youths. This does not mean I condone the violent actions of those who suffered at the hands of the jocks and the preps and the trendy cliques.

Here is my plea to those of you who are being tormented just as I had been, if not worse: no matter how bad it is, you have options. They may not be easy, but if they get you out of this awful age intact, you've got to consider them, even if they aren't as glorified as the many tragic deathscenes in certain films, books, and songs. See a doctor, talk to someone who cares (believe it or not, there is often someone who does), seek alternate means to finish your education, or drop out if no one seems willing to do, or is incapable of doing anything. Maybe some of those sound bad, but they're a lot better than hurting or killing youself or someone else, just because you're a teenager and convention says you have to go to that hellish place called high school. You might think there's no hope, that nothing can improve, but just remember that you might be wrong. Any pessimist worth his salt should hope so.

In the last few months I have discovered the joys of video game console emulation on my PC. Not only could I go back and enjoy the titles I had as a kid, but I could also play games I never had, even ones that couldn't be found in North America (like the interesting Dragon Ball Z 2 for the Famicom). Using NESticle I could once again thrill to the crazy music in Rygar and Metroid, the dizzy racing of Marble Madness, or the high-jumping carnage of Legend of Kage.

But technically this is illegal. You see disclaimers at almost every emulation-oriented site. People seem especially afraid to provide NES roms. The argument is that it undermines sales and the profit of the original manufacturer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think kids are rushing to the stores to get the old antiquated 8-bit NES and the games for it. You might be able to find such things second hand, but this too would be outlawed if the greedy game companies had their way. And even when you do own a NES and games, the original was so poorly designed that it required cleaning almost constantly. So why on earth should it be illegal to preserve a game system that is no longer manufactured or supported by its inventors? Can someone tell me how owning a copy of NESticle and some roms actually hurts Nintendo?

I think it is an indicator of the pure, irrational greed of many such companies. And the nerve, to have charged kids up to $100 for an 8-bit game at the time! If there had been NES emulators available back then (and if the Internet had been more widely known in those days) imagine the money the kids might have saved! You will find little sympathy from me for the billion-dollar companies complaining about less-than-optimal profits when some poor kid is drooling over a cartridge he could never afford without it coming out of the grocery money. Not that I would endorse piracy... (and not that Robin Hood would endorse robbing the rich, haha!)

So I won't sweat the threat of legal action just for firing up NESticle and playing a rom that I never bought the original cartridge for. They have no case. Either you video game companies manufacture the old titles and consoles again, or you shut your lawyers' traps and stop your whining, because people who really like games aren't going to let them fade into oblivion, legal or not.

I remember Christopher Hitchens being asking what he thought was the most overrated virtue. Having greatly appreciated the way he angered Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect, I anticipated his answer with much glee. I was not disappointed.

"Faith" he said.

"YES!" I thought to myself.
Why is faith not such a great virtue you ask? Most of the instances in which I hear faith as being a virtue, it is often because there is something inherently untrustworthy at work. You might say faith is like trust without reason. And as you can imagine, this leaves one open to all sorts of intellectual manipulation. We are often encouraged to have faith in things which cannot withstand the scrutiny of skepticism.

Religion is the most obvious example. If Jesus would have said to me "Oh ye of little faith!" I might have responded with a flattered "Thank you!". He also said something along the lines of "only a wanton and rebellious house craves a sign". Well excuse me, Mr. Son of God! Christ, you must have spent all your time on earth as a mortal preaching instead of learning what it is to be human. We (well, some of us) tend to rely on empirical proof to live successfully, especially (though not necessarily) in important matters. So if you don't want to help us to discern you from all those false prophets we were warned about (who, no doubt, also required faith of their followers), you can just send us all to hell now for not being so credulous. Indeed, if the very son of a supposedly omnipotent god won't do so much as convince the skeptical, then all the unsaved souls roasting in Hell can be attributed to the callousness of an all-powerful, yet exceptionally lazy god. Why should god/Jesus want to be no more trustworthy than the many conmen and liars before and after him, who offered extravagant claims but could not back them up?

I guess proof is just too much to ask for.

Indeed, it is the emphasis on faith, as well as many other meretricious concepts that lessen my faith in the human race. Perhaps even Noam Chomsky would be distressed by my dim view of people in general. But let me say that I know that there are good people on this earth, Rigoberta Menchu, Peter Benenson, Dita Sari, and the countless masses of consciencious folk who are willing to risk everything for human rights or challenging pre-conceived notions, as well as those who extend their empathy toward the suffering of non-human animals. Unfortunately I see and meet very few people in North American society who meet the same level of consciousness, concern, and independence as those mentioned above. I have met all too many who have no interest in dealing with reality. There are those who are hopelessly selfish (even more so than me!), those who can readily devalue the lives of others, and those who would rather choose illusion over experience. I know how tempting it is to act and believe in defiance of the facts around us by opting for the more emotionally appealing prejudices and preconceptions, but I think in the long run it only entails confusion and grief when we find the world is something very different than what we have been told.