// 0006 Consensus is – objectivity isn’t

Sometimes I hate talking with people.

And, yeah, I’m brash, opinionated, controversial… all that. I’m a foul-mouthed, mid-aged white guy with nothing better to do. Fuck if I know anything.

I’m still open minded. You don’t come to the point of looking into issues like flat earth and religion without having given it your best shot to try to understand where people are coming from. And, I can still admit when my arguments don’t have legs to stand on.

But this is my blog. And I will do whatever the fuck I want with it.

Today’s topic? Objectivity. And I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if it ain’t a loaded gun.

I’ve talked about the fact that “facts aren’t facts” before, and I know that gets people’s underpants in an uncomfortable, twisted bunch. Either way, consider this an elaboration on this idea. And give me my fucking space to say my damn piece.

Objectivity is impossible. It always comes with bias. And if you think for a moment that you’re going to find “objective” truths in this time of chaos and mass hysteria, then your IQ must be that of a doorknob.

But even outside of all that noise, objectivity doesn’t exist. History books, encyclopedias, internet archives, Wikipedia entries, the news… whatever source we’re dealing with, there’s no way to present the “truth” in a way that will be understood the same way by everyone reading, listening or watching.

“But I was there, I saw it!” I’m not arguing with you. There are plenty of other people that saw it too.

But this is what we call consensus. I suppose you could think of it as objectivity’s bastard cousin, but in this world, we only get one. You can’t have both.

No one on this planet was there for every historical event. And, no one is recording all the boring, mundane events, such as the fact that I woke up at about 11 AM this morning. I’m sure I could get consensus from my family, but the rest is for shit. No one gives a damn that I got up at 11 AM. It’s unimportant. Yet, how do you know that’s not the butterfly that turns into a tornado?

Someone swears their grandparents were multimillionaires, yet they can’t rub two nickels together. Sure, maybe their grandparents were rich. Maybe they weren’t. I can’t verify it. And, “rich” being a subjective term, we’re already having trouble establishing objectivity.

“Here, I’ll show you – here’s a picture of my grandparents.” So? I’m sure most of us could dig up a picture of our grandparents. And, if we didn’t fucking like them, we’d still be able to Photoshop them into a suit and dress with Zurich in the background.

This ain’t some “guilty until proven innocent” bullshit. People really think they know what the truth is, and they really think they’re right, and they get really fucking angry at you if you don’t agree with them. Ever notice that?

Try saying something to your friends they wouldn’t expect you to say, and instantly they’ll try to draw you back in line like you were a crab in a bucket. Is it so godawful that there’s a diversity of beliefs out there?

Man, life is whatever you make it mean. Give up intellectual laziness and go study Werner Erhard for once. Understand what it means to drop your stories and your interpretations of life. Get a sense of what it’s like to be “on the court” instead of in your head.

People fucking go around like we know what’s going on in their head all the time, and it just ain’t so. If you’ve got something to say, speak up already. Stop living in your head.

Unexpressed expectations are premeditated resentment. Ever come across that gem?

Look, we can agree on some things. I don’t think anyone is going to cry about me saying that Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor. That’s easily verifiable, as the man is alive and well. In many ways, it still comes down to consensus though. And, if you want to get more specific, let the clusterfuck begin. I don’t know when he woke up this morning, do you?

Now, this is where people like to bring in another clusterfuck called cognitive bias.

Has it ever occurred to you, though, that cognitive bias was created by some guy who was unhappy about the way others thought, and just wanted to be justified and validated in his rightness? His bias is that everyone should agree with him. Fucking Christ, has that never crossed your mind until just now?

It’s an Inception of biases, which is why I called it a clusterfuck. This shit gets confusing fast when you look at it with a fresh pair of eyes.

My head starts swimming the moment I even hear the term “cognitive bias”, because I’m trying to figure out how someone thought they were so right about themselves, others and the world, that they figured they could set themselves up to be more right about their rightness by pointing out problems with other people’s wrongness. Motherfucker.

People all have varying degrees of knowledge, experience, understanding, IQ and so on. We synthesize information differently, and our context for certain subjects is different. We all react differently to what’s being said or done on an emotional level. Cognitive bias? Fuck no. This is what it means to be human, dipshit.

So, give up objectivity. All you do when you perpetuate the idea is succumb to intellectual laziness and hold tightly to your rightness. You’re not fucking right. I’m not fucking right.

There’s only one tool we’ve got to work with. It’s called consensus. It’s about agreement. Enough people agree about something, it’s called “truth”, but you’ve got to recognize that truth is a moving target, for all the reasons I’ve already pointed out.

So, the maker didn’t intend anyone to have a grasp of truth. It’s got nothing to do with the experience we’re living. All we were given was a way to agree on a set of “facts.”

That is why I say facts aren’t facts.

- Anderson

// 0005 Breaking free from The Matrix

Can we all agree that we are part of a system?

And, that system isn’t as complex as it appears. It’s just that there are systems within systems (an Inception of systems) that masquerade around to make the entire thing look more complex than it is.

You know how it is. The financial system looks like a confusing clusterfuck when you don’t understand the jargon, but when you do, you realize it’s not as mind bending as you once thought – it’s just drawn that way.

Government is a system. Traditional education is a system. And, organized religion is a system, even if it didn’t start that way (the fuck it didn’t).

Well, if you know me, you know that I’m building to something, like Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig In The Sky.” And, viewer discretion is advised, my friend, because I’m about to leave you feeling about as uncomfortable as an unnecessary bloodbath in a Tarantino film. That film you claim your religion doesn’t permit you to watch (but you do anyway, because 10 commandments be damned).

Yeah, today’s topic is religion. One of the three taboos. So, what?

Now that I’ve touched on flat earth, the beast is out of the cage. If you can’t handle it, fuck off.

At the front, I wanna say that I have no problem with religious people. From the outside looking in, though, it’s easy to see how stuck they can get, like a dog in a three-inch fence. Sure, he could jump it. But if he’s been trained not to, he won’t. And, if he’s been punished severely enough, he’ll never go near that fence again. The fence may as well be imaginary, because it doesn’t need to be there to stop the dog from leaving his designated square of grass anymore. He’s got major pain associated with that kind of disobedience.

I don’t pretend to know who the almighty is. I have no idea what his values are or what he believes.

People say you can find it in a book (that he didn’t write). They say that you can hear his voice if you seek him (we’ve all got inner dialogue). That you’ll be “saved” if you ask his forgiveness. That he’ll show up in your time of need. Whatever the fuck any of that means.

Look, it just sounds to me like you don’t understand the system yet. Because if you did, you’d see that this is basically just a way to keep you disempowered. If you always think someone’s coming to your rescue, you’ll live your life waiting for her. Even Dorothy had to make her own way, chicken shit. If she didn’t go tumbling down that yellow brick road, she’d never get to go on an epic journey and meet the wizard.

I have no problem with spirituality whatsoever. But the things people say about god – like the things I just rattled off – have nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with control. Control is basically synonymous with the system, though they certainly don’t teach that in kindergarten, let alone college or university. To spell it out for you would just be embarrassing.

So, let’s go back to a rather provocative thing I said earlier. You probably missed it, so here it is again – I have no idea what god’s values are or what he believes. Put your reading glasses on and take a close look at that statement again, because there’s a good chance you’ve never questioned this on your journey towards heaven, enlightenment, nirvana, blossoming of human consciousness, or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

If you and I are supposed to be bound by some “spiritual” laws (take a hint – they ain’t spiritual), then don’t you think god himself should adhere to the same laws? Why does he get to be outside of it all? What makes him justified in sending people to hell?

Call me a fucker if I’m wrong, but don’t your sacred texts say something about “thou shall not kill”? And, don’t the same holy texts say something about god destroying nations? I know they do. I’m not a fucker.

By his own logic, god himself should be burning in hell with “sinners.” Because he’s envious (jealous too, apparently). And vengeful. And a murderer. And, he doesn’t live by his own defined standards. You know as well as I do, he’s guilty on a myriad of other counts. If he was a man on earth, we’d have him jailed and sentenced to death. Ah, but you want to say that already happened, right?

Oh, not to mention… he’s responsible for creating evil. I know you’ve got some fucked up logic to explain how that works, but outside of theology, would you honestly trust a guy who says he loves you and then aims a cannon at your 1,200 sq. ft. home with a white picket fence, golden retriever and 1.93 children?

Blow me. You’d do exactly what anyone else would do. You’d piledrive that bastard into the ground faster than you can say “crucifix.”

Yeah, I know you don’t get it. Because you don’t allow yourself to go there. Don’t jump the fence. Don’t jump the fence. Fuck the fence! Allow yourself to think critically for just a moment. You might see something you never saw before.

And, by the way, if you didn’t know this already, you’re already in hell. Welcome.

If hell is separation, we couldn’t be more separate from each other. No one can read anyone else’s minds. We fight over petty shit. Quarrel over toilet paper at the local grocery store because we think that’s going to save us from a pandemic. Christ.

No one said hell wasn’t a party. There’s plenty to do here. It’s just that we’re never satisfied. Nothing is enough. More food. More drink. More sex. More drugs. More, more, more. Satiation is unattainable.

I can’t believe most people think we’re in some kind of in between place, between heaven and hell, like limbo or purgatory. And, I can’t believe that some people believe you go to another in between place after you die. For fuck sake.

Look, I get it. You’ve had a good time here. And, you’ve also had challenges. But at a core level, we are all disconnected.

Heaven is unrestricted intimacy without promiscuity. John Eldredge, a Christian, said that – look it up!

This world is one of contrast. Highs and lows. Ups and downs. Beauty and ugliness. Young and old. Life and death.

But we don’t exist in three or four realms, as some claim. We only exist in two – in the physical and the spiritual. And, while they do coexist, while we’re here, our physical experience is far more pronounced.

When you exist in the spiritual realm, it’s pure bliss. The disconnection is gone. The contrast is gone. The hunger and thirst are gone. You don’t live there right now. You only get a taste of it in this physical experience, an experience of your choosing.

Now that I’ve destroyed religion for you (but only if you were ready to disconnect from The Matrix), let’s replace that hole with the pure simplicity the maker himself intended…

God is love. That’s it. Anything else you can attach to that statement is some bullshit someone made up to leave you feeling like you weren’t in control. Like you couldn’t take the bull by the horns and tombstone drive that behemoth into the ground like the chiseled, bronzed macho you are. Like you couldn’t do anything with your life. That it was all about waiting for someone to come and save you. It’s not!

Save yourself, before it’s too late. Because spirituality is about relationship with self. Go through the scriptures and replace every reference to god with “me” or “my subconscious mind”. You’ll see some things. I challenge you to do this exercise. NOW.

There are enough fences around you. Start breaking them down. It’s what you were meant to do.

- Anderson

// 0004 Be an artist or be a business owner, make up your mind

Alright young buck, it’s time to get your shit together.

You’ve been whining and bitching about how you want things to look, when you should be sticking to your guns, which is bringing in customers. And, you’ve got a talent for it, so why is your face green as grass? You’ve got something he ain’t got, and he got something you ain’t got. It’s a match made in heaven, like a Les Paul and a Marshall stack – but only if you don’t abuse the shit out of him.

If you can’t leave the creative guy alone, then at least throw in a word of encouragement every once and a while – “you’re doing great”, “keep it up”, “rock on brother.” He needs fuel to keep going, and last I checked, fuel ain’t free. Plus, you should be giving him way more uninterrupted focus time.

It’s awesome when you find a creative who can do your work, keep to deadlines and churn out masterpieces like they’re Picasso on Adderall. But you’ve got to look at them as a depleting asset, not as a bottomless can of juice you can keep squeezing. If you’ve got them running a marathon and keep asking them to sprint, how do you think they’re going to feel after a while?

Yeah, sure, some course correction is par for the course. But there’s a time and place for that. Asking for a fuck ton of changes on your lousy project when the creative is about to burn out is like asking a shark to turn away when you’re the only one bleeding out profusely in god's blue ocean. Good luck.

At the very least, use the traffic light system.

Green light for “Go, I’m ready to take on anything you’ve got.”

Yellow light for “I’ve been in the frying pan for a while, and I’m starting to get crispy around the edges.”

Red light for “Stay the fuck away, I’ve got more on my plate than you can possibly conceive or imagine.”

Ask your creative, at least once per week, where they’re at. And, if you get the red-light treatment for longer stretches, then get a hot clue, you fucking moron, and give them some paid time off. Yes, I said it – PAID time off. That ain’t a four-letter word.

If you can’t give them two weeks, then send them away for a leisurely long weekend. That’s going to do them, and your working relationship, wonders. A few off days can give both of you a much-needed perspective. And, if you don’t do it, guess what? Resentment is going to build on both ends.

You’re gonna feel like the creative isn’t hearing you and like they aren’t hitting your targets. Although you are mostly to blame, because you’re often asking for something arbitrary, and can’t properly articulate it in a standard operating procedure. Your target is in your head, and you expect people to read your fucking mind. Douche.

The creative gives birth to art. And, their art is their baby. If people don’t treat their baby with care, you’re going to see steam blow out of their ears.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t room for constructive criticism. Of course, there is. But if you can’t be tactful in how you deliver it, fuck it. You might as well tear the creative a new asshole and ask them to hand over their over-leveraged life.

The greatest sin, though, is to ask the creative to change their workflow when you’re getting awesome results from their work.

Author Dan Kennedy says he gets on the phone with several clients every single week just to convince them to keep their high ROI ads running. Those entrepreneurs get bored of running the same ads but that doesn’t make a fuck load of difference. Keep doing what’s working. Wise words. Burn them into your thick skull.

Stop trying to be an artist in your business, dipshit. You’ve already got one.

You think the creative doesn’t know when he’s being exploited? Trust me – he’s not in the dark about any of it. And, he might bottle it up for a while, but he’s bound to burst at some point. If you don’t mind losing him, screw it. But if you have any desire to keep your talent, you’d better shape up or ship out, fuck tard.

When humans get bored, they invent problems that don’t exist.

I don’t care how boring or mundane your job is. Stop inventing problems that don’t exist. Don’t force your people through those blood-stained gates. Get them to keep doing what’s working, ass wipe.

- Anderson

// 0003 Important lessons from flat earthers

Before we get into this man… seriously. Don’t take me for a flat tard.

I think I’m probably more open minded than the average person, but I’ve been looking into this whole thing for a while, and, I gotta say… Unless you’ve dug into both sides of it, you shouldn’t strut around like you’re the almighty. You just hear Neil deGrasse Tyson say “it ain’t so” and suddenly, you’re parroting his arguments like they are creed from god himself. The man who couldn’t explain gravity on his best day. For shit (look it up).

Yeah, OF COURSE you’re gonna have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of the earth being flat. That’s a given. You’ve been conditioned your whole life to react that way (care to take control of your thoughts for once, cookie cutter?). The question is, have you checked the facts? Have you done your research?

I don’t need your answer. I already know the answer, which is why I’m prepared to raise some hell and ruffle some feathers if need be.

I’m not saying I’m a flat earther. Frankly, I don’t know what the shape of the earth is. I haven’t been out to space (and if you’re reading this, chances are you haven’t either – only 500 to 600 people, in all of history, have – Google it for yourself).

But that’s about the ONLY sensible conclusion you can come to after doing some basic digging. You don’t know. I don’t know. And, it’s not like we’re owed the truth by a government agency.

So, here are my top lessons from flat earthers.

Question everything

How the FUCK could you possibly think what you were taught in school was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Oh, you thought you were getting an education, that you were entitled to the facts because you paid a bunch of money. Did you ever research WHO started the school system as we know it today? Do you know WHY he started it?

And, no, I’m not fucking using “he” as a catch all pronoun. Don’t bring that political wrongness into this discussion. Please. Leave it alone.

Okay, so get out your pocket calculator and program that TI-83 to dogpile Mr. Google. Who was the education system created by? Did you find it yet? It was started by Horace Mann. I don’t know him from Adam, do you? I don’t trust this man to create a curriculum for my life, do you?

Tell me this doesn’t grind your gears – Mann thought that unruly children should be turned into disciplined and judicious republican citizens. That’s why he created the system. What the fuck? It’s on Wikipedia, bro. Who the FUCK is Mann to talk about other people’s children? Not to mention, he wanted to push his political agenda on them. Christ.

And, while the language you’ll find on other sites has been prettied up a bunch (celebrate the accomplishments of Mann or you’re a blight on society), no matter how much makeup you apply to a pig, you’ve still got yourself a bonified Floyd. We don’t need no education…

You can do your own digging and agree to disagree (don’t give me shit unless you’ve done your homework), but the education system was put in place to make us factory workers man. And, it wasn’t created to foster an open environment of learning. We all got spoon fed from the same barrel of barf they update occasionally to reflect the slight change in their agenda. What else?

You weren’t given access to the truth. You couldn’t handle it. You got the history in chunks, my friend. BELIEVE it. They ain’t gonna teach you or me the R and X rated versions of history – the real versions – especially when we aren’t even old enough to drink.

You thought you knew a thing or two about World War II? Fuck off. Go do some real research now that you’re an adult.

It is healthy to question everything? It ain’t just healthy, man. It’s necessary if you wanna get to the bottom of it all.

Flat earthers have realized this. They questioned one thing and suddenly saw the sweater start to unravel, and what they found beneath was more than a little compelling.

Facts aren’t facts

I already know people are gonna have a heart attack over this (except for the few who’ve realized this for themselves), so let’s take it in stride, shall we?

You’ve heard before that science is just the best answers for what we know today, and it’s continually updated as new findings present themselves. Nobody has an issue with that kind of change.

The distance from the earth to sun is the perfect example. Today’s it’s accepted that “The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace…” and it’s approximately 93 million miles away (92.96 million miles if you want to be more precise). But it wasn’t always that way. Nope. The figures kept changing through the ages. 1 million. 10 million. 50 million. 80 million. Go do your research, fuck tard.

Okay. So, I get that we can supposedly use math and instruments to figure out the sun's distance from earth. The only problem? No one has fuckin’ taken a tape measure from the earth to the sun to verify this fable parading around as a fact. I didn’t do it. You didn’t do it. Who did it? No one did.

Forget the “logistical” impossibility here, because frankly how do you know the sun gets hotter as you get closer to it? That makes no fucking sense, because apparently once you leave the atmosphere of earth, you go directly into a vacuum (and apparently, it’s 2.7 Kelvin – they made that measurement up just to describe how cold it is). Because we see that in nature every day. It makes way more sense to think the sun is localized, not that there’s an arbitrary barrier between us and it. Care to explain to me how your model is simpler than that?

And, again, who are we counting on to confirm this? Some physicist mired in history you never met (who may have had his own agenda in sharing his point of view)? Someone who’s never been to the sun? Oh, really? You trust that guy? The one who sat in his ivory tower talking and thinking about theories instead of going out and confirming the simplicity of the reality we experience every single day? That guy was too chicken shit to get into a spaceship, trust. You’re saying you’re gonna trust that guy. Really.

In saying that, I know I’ve got fingers pointing right back at me. I’m not asking you to trust me any more than you trust Einstein. But fuck. Show me the damn tape measure before you go spouting off about facts any Jeopardy contestant would know. Memorizing facts doesn’t make you smart.

There are plenty of other facts that aren’t facts. We encounter them every single day. One day bacon is good for you. The next day they say you shouldn’t eat fruit because of the sugars. If you can’t see that you’re a little kid circling in a teacup of lies, I don’t know if I can help you.

And, while I’m at it, don’t get your panties in a bunch over the term “they”. We all know who “they” is. It’s the powers that be. You can deny them. You can pretend they don’t exist. But that doesn’t make them go away. Although I admit they do a damn good job of hiding.

Now, even if what I’m saying is true, it doesn’t automatically make the earth flat. You gotta call a spade a spade, but if I’m right, it does call some things into question, don’t you think?

Do your own homework

Flat earthers are quite possibly some of the smartest, most educated people you will find. By now, you can find dozens of debates on YouTube to confirm this for yourself.

And, yeah, if you gang up on a flat earther who’s trying to make her points and interrupt her every sentence with “yeah, but FACTS!”, you’re about the dumbest Neanderthal to come crawling out of a cave this millennia (evolution is also bullshit, but its time is coming – let’s leave it for another time). Give her some fucking space to explain herself. If you aren’t the least bit open minded, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Here’s the shocking truth. About 80% of the time, flat earthers stump their opponents and win the debate. It’s true. That doesn’t mean some of them don’t lose the debate, and in the case of Allegedly Dave, I gotta say… I love you buddy, but if you want to keep showing up to debates, you got to keep sharpening your saw, man.

Anyway, even a simpleton could figure out that there would be no need for a debate if there was any form of conclusive proof to show that the earth is the shape they’ve been saying it is for centuries (not from the beginning of time, as some claim – do your homework, asshole). BAM! There’s the picture of earth. Done. Closed. Finished.

Nope! It doesn’t exist. There’s no photo of earth. Even NASA admits that it’s pieced together by strips of data. Okay, so you’re saying you can send a fucking multi-Kelvin proof high resolution camera into space and send photos back to earth using high speed internet, but you can't get far enough out to take a decent picture of mother earth? Blow me.

By the way, what kind of secret government agency industrial strength internet connection have you got anyway? Because sometimes the fucking Starbucks WiFi craps out on me when there are more than three people in the café!

There’s a mountain of evidence showing that, at the very least, parts of the moon landing were faked. President Nixon takes a fucking phone call from space and there’s no delay? But now when you want to talk to astronauts on the space station, there’s a 30 second lag? Christ man, if you’re going to fake it, at least be consistent with your lies.

All that to say, if you’re going to participate in this discussion, you better not throw around the same bullshit everyone else throws around (the masthead of the ship disappears first…) because there’s a good chance there’s already a solid argument against it.

Don’t trust “debunked”

Whether it’s flu vaccines, flat earth or Zeitgeist: The Movie, there are “debunked” sites and videos for practically every conspiracy, or for that matter, slightly controversial topic you can name.

Joe Rogan couldn’t look like more of a dumbass when he tries to discredit flat earthers, because he just rehashes things he’s heard from “scientists” without looking into any of it (see previous point – do your own homework!). He has no clue what the arguments are. He just dismisses it as ridiculous outright – the same thing you see in the top results when you search for “flat earth” on Mr. Google or mistress YouTube. They want you to dismiss the topic altogether. Go no further. Full stop. This is bullshit.

This is no different when you look at a doc like Behind the Curve with Mark Sargent, who honestly does a piss poor job of representing the flat earth. I don’t know if he’s controlled opposition or some basement-bound nerd who saw an opportunity to gain notoriety, but the movie is doing the same thing Google is doing – trying to get you to dismiss the idea before you’re presented with evidence to explore for yourself. Yeah, you’re not allowed to make up your own mind about any of this.

Rogan used to be the man when it came to conspiracies. Now that he’s popular, suddenly he’s changed his tune. Do you trust a guy that can be bribed so easily? Well, I guess you must, because… look at who you elected.

The fact that you walk away from a “debunked” video satisfied that your research is complete, just goes to show you how intellectually bankrupt you are. You’ve got the attention span of a fishbowl, and you assume none of it ever affects your life, so what difference does it make anyway, right?

Well, if the 9 – 5 is serving you well, you like to binge watch Netflix at night, and you don’t mind being dead or broke by 65 (this is what the stats are saying, my sedentary friend), then fuck it. Be lazy. Don’t challenge your intellect. Bring out the Cheetos. It’s time to watch 12 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond consecutively and pretend like we don't just bring the same scenarios into our daily lives. Arguably, that’s still a better use of your time than tweeting about the coronavirus like you’re the victim.

You can learn a thing or two

You can learn a thing or two from flat earthers, but only if you’re open minded. Fuck it if you don’t care and fuck it if you’re not going to do your own research.

I’ve said enough.

- Anderson