Many of the things that I dislike or disagree with can be found in category 2. This is part of the reason why I maintain such a low profile in public and make no move to gain a position of power or find a wife. I'm not that interested in the society that humans have made and I do not revel in its wonders as I do with those in category 3. This is also why I do not vote. No candidate has yet shown any interest in improving the well-being of human life.
These are the things that need to happen in order for me to show a greater interest in category 2 beyond that of science fiction, movies, and music.
- Health insurance needs to be abolished. All health care should be paid for by taxes, without raising taxes.
- All prisons need to be destroyed. If a person is so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to roam free, then they should not be a part of our society.
- Car insurance needs to be abolished. The tests necessary to grant a driver's license should be far more rigorous than an infantile multiple choice exam and a 15 minute observation by a yawning old person. And, as Robert Heinlein once stated, "If you don't have a gun, then you'll grow eyes in the back of your head." No insurance will create better drivers, as a man lost in the woods with no weapon will make better choices.
- All professional athletes should be capped at $250,000 per year. Too much money is given to people that play games. The extra money should be re-routed into health care or NASA. $250,000 is an unthinkable amount of money and will still offer a very, very high quality of life. Any athlete that complains about the salary cap should be kicked out immediately and forced to work for minimum wage at a fast food restaurant.
- Teachers should have a base starting pay of $100,000 per year. The status of teachers should be higher than that of doctors and lawyers, since they influence the future actions of humans. Doctors fix people that have been unlucky or have been stupid. Lawyers are involved in a game that should be handled by scientists.
- All U.S. soldiers should be ordered to leave their foreign posts. We have nuclear weapons. Any foreign nation that gives U.S. citizens trouble should be repeatedly tapped with mushroom clouds until they learn how to behave.
- There should be no penalty for using illegal drugs. None at all. Rather, the people that make and distribute illegal drugs should be executed without hesitation.
- Adults should not be defined by age. Why are a 17 year old and an 18 year old classified as two completely different kinds of people? Why isn't the split at age 24? Why not 35? Why not 42? Who the hell decided to declare that 18 year old people are suddenly adults?
I stated:Idolores wrote:
Oh God. I so don't want to see how I was back then.
Or, more precisely, your semaphoronts. "Semaphoront" is a word I find to be very interesting. I learned about it through my studies of phylogenetic systematics. I would imagine that all graduate students in biology are familiar with that word, and it is probably rarely used outside of that specialty.
The philosophical implications are never ending, since I can't come to a decisive way of thinking about it. It is clearly defined within biology, but in plain English, it refers to an individual that exhibits life processes during a period of time (not a 'point in time'). The period of time itself is not defined. This is most useful for creatures that have different forms, such as insects. It is easy to see their semaphoronts, since the structural changes are distinct.
It's more complicated with humans, since we retain the same basic shape throughout our lives. This is why I tend to think of it in terms of psychology. But I have no concern for whatever psychologists have invented, such as 'adolescent' or 'adult', since people of vastly differing ages can act roughly the same or completely dissimilar. The laws we have invented are even less satisfying, since they claim we are adults at age 18. I don't like any of it, so I have to make up my own classifications. I believe the semaphoront is a good start for reclassifying the stages of people since it focuses on individuals and not large groups of people. Each person changes at a different pace and it is wrong to use pre-defined ages to determine what a person is.
The bottom line is that you don't want to "see" your younger self anymore than a fly wants to see itself as a maggot.
That's enough of category 2. Onward to category 3, which I enjoy with heartfelt enthusiasm. You got a taste of my love when I was writing about the concept of a semaphoront. The word exists because of humans, but the stages of a life-form are quite real, which makes it category 3. But wait a second...isn't politics real? Isn't health insurance real? Of course they are, but if we humans suddenly disappeared, then politics and health insurance would also disappear. All the category 3 phenomena would be quite content whether we existed or not, such as protons and neutrons.
