Is it too much to ask that humans have a "reality-based" government?

Yea, looking at the word 'government' - this word has got to go. What educated populace needs to be governed? I don't want to be governed - in fact, the very idea makes me want to itch. Or shower. Or take bats to security cameras. Get this goddamn governing thing off me. That includes the old man in the sky with the long beard first and foremost.

What we need is a new 'network.' A network based on 'reality' - which addresses the problems of the humans involved in the network realistically. While I am a huge advocate of all culturally-sponsored flights of fancy, a new seriousness must be developed within future societies toward reality. There must be a strict line adopted between the promulgation of reality and everything else. If somebody purports to be a conveyor of reality - they will be held to the highest of standards, and if they are found crossing that sacred line - attempting to pass off lies or fiction as reality with the motivation being to mislead the public - they should be held accountable for this. Perhaps they should have, tattooed to their forehead for the rest of their life, the word: VAUDEVILLE. Or, simply: ASSHOLE. And forever after, the only job they will be given is as the ecovillage clown.

The best two tools the human race has right now of detecting reality are: science and [the Edward R. Murrow brand of] journalism. Anybody caught messing with reality at a serious level will be dealt with. However, this only applies in the serious cases where the motivation involves greed or malice and the lies cause harm and/or deaths. All incidents involving the Cacophony Society or other honest practitioners of phenomonology will be deemed legal and entirely good-hearted . . . note: it is the motivation and the result in messing with reality which is the all-important thing.

A crime family which makes the Sopranos look like your neighborhood lemonade stand has taken over America, looted the U.S. Treasury - and has heartlessly and maliciously fucked with our reality by lying to us over and over again and by waging a vicious, virtual nuclear war on science and journalism - reality. Fucking with our reality has led to the coming bankrupty of the country, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, over three thousand dead American servicemen and women and the rise of Anne Coulter. Humankind has had enough.

I spend as much as time as anybody in the comforting, personally-designed land of fantasy (you know, culture, daydreaming), but I must base my cosmology on reality. Sometimes reality can be such a pain the ass, you need a break. Sometimes you can't take more than fifteen minutes of reality a day, depending. People like Amy Goodman spend so much time with reality, they develop hard reality shells, like what firemen wear into the inferno. The ability to withstand prolonged doses of reality is like developing callouses on your mind: it requires training, practice, experience. Often, highly intelligent people who haven't found a way to deal with or bland the effects of reality resort to suicide. Reality can be a bitch. It can make you curl up in the bath for days, not wanting to leave. It can make you watch American Idol.

But reality is also the thing you access when you look both ways before crossing the road. You know the old saw about the foxhole inspiring prayer in the atheist? Well, even Billy fucking Graham must access reality when he crosses the street.



Like Edward Albee once said [pp - speaking of his Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf], "It's OK to live in illusion just so long as you have a base in reality."

Yea.

If humankind is going to get any better, people who maliciously fuck with reality need to get maliciously fucked by reality.

See also: Church of Reality.

Labels: asteroids, edward albee, nasa, reality