The F YOU Fund

From the early 90's until mid-00's I listened to AM Talk Radio on a daily basis, with Tom Leykis my usual afternoon show after listening to a morning full of right wing kool aid - ala Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Micheal Savage, Dr. Laura and other such personalities. The influence of the Tom Leykis show certainly laid the ground work for my eventual discovery of these fringes of teh Interwebz we now refer to as the manosphere. He was the first mass media voice I ever heard who really drove the point home about how corrupt and unjust the family court system and marriage 2.0 had become in our culture. He also repeatedly lamented the loss of masculinity in the culture at large and castigated network TV for becoming nothing but "One big, giant vagina."

A common feature of his show included segments in which callers would phone in with their personal stories of relationship woes, and ask him for his advice on their problems with women. Most of those callers problems were basically men who had become beta-ized, pussy whipped and forgot they had spines and let their women walk all over them and run their lives into emasculated disgrace. Leykis repeatedly excoriated the airwaves about this, and he was the first mass media person in my estimation to lay the blame for this widespread lack of testicular fortitude in the American male at the doorstep of the single mother household.

"I am the Father you Men never had."

Many of his shticks and routines have stuck with me throughout the years. He was preaching "Game" before we were calling it that here on teh Internwebz.

But his advice for men on love, marriage, divorce, (I believe he coined the term "vaginamony,") where only a part of his show.

He also spoke a lot about personal responsibility, and about making short term sacrifices to realize long term success. He frequently discussed how he was enjoying the best luxuries of life his radio show success has given him - owning nice properties, driving luxury cars, having season tickets to box seats at hockey and basketball games, and always drinking the finest vintage wines...but he always made it a point to say he only enjoys such things now because he was smart, frugal and lived within his means until he finally reached the point where such expenditures on these things would in no way endanger his financial health.

He frequently advised young men to avoid going into major debt to drive nice cars they couldn't really afford, or to take out ARM that would adjust in 5 years into mortgage payments they could knowingly never afford. Much of his advice to young men have been echoed for years now in these sectors of the web.

But one piece of advice he frequently gave out was something that stuck with me years later, and I've recently realized actually can be extrapolated into all areas of any person's life. He called it the establishment of the F YOU fund (of course, Federal Broadcasting Regulations prohibited him from saying what he really calls it).

The F YOU fund is one in which you set up a budget and figure out the bare minimum of your monthly expenses that you absolutely must have. Your rent or your mortgage payment. The total of your necessary utility bills like electricity and water, and the amount of money you need to pay for your groceries, gas and car payments. Unnecessary luxury bills, like cable TV, magazine subscriptions, etc., should not be included in the calculations.

Once you've come up with the figure required to pay for the bare necessities of your life on a monthly basis, you should always take any left over money on every pay day, and put it into your F YOU fund. Don't buy a bunch of nice clothes or eat out at nice restaurants or take girls out on expensive dates, or do anything else until you've built up your F YOU fund.

The point is to build that savings account to a level for which you could cover all your necessary monthly expenses  for a year or more should something happen to your current employment situation.

Once you've reached that stage, you've achieved true freedom and self determination in our modern world.

Once you've got that amount saved up, you no longer have to compromise your personal standards because your boss or your company demands it of you. You don't have to take a pay cut or an assignment that compromises your personal integrity, because you've got your F YOU fund.

You can look at the person or persons, or company or corporation, that is asking you to sell out your principles or take advantage of you and simply tell them F YOU. Because you're not worried about ending up unemployed, homeless and losing all of your valuable possessions, you don't HAVE to compromise. You can walk then and there, and have a nice, comfortable cushion to go out and find another job elsewhere that doesn't require you to compromise and not worry about losing your house or your car or having the electricity shut off or resort to eating cat food and ramen noodles.

Because if you put yourself into a position where losing your jobs means losing your house, your car and your means of basic subsistence, then you are not free, you are a slave to your things. And Leykis larger point was a good one: If you are not free, then you are not truly a man.

I may not remember his words on this verbatim, but that was the essential point he was making.


Boiled down to it's essence, the F YOU fund is nothing more than realizing that you need to order your life so that you are not in a position to be forced to do something....or do anything you don't want to out of a position of fear.


If you haven't done so yet...start saving.

The Longevity "Paradox" - Alcohol

Continued from here:

In the statistical long run, the moderate consumption of alcohol and usage of tobacco products actually extend the lives of those who are able to do so without crossing the line of use into heavy overuse and abuse.

Your average person in today's Brave New World order considers the consumption of alcohol a net negative to general health. While some folks readily recognize the benefits of moderate consumption, it's not hard to find many, many folks that consider being a teetotaler to be one of the best things one could do for their overall health.

"I DON'T DRINK" is a phrase I've heard from many a person who states it as an article of faith that they abstain due to self-proclaimed commitment to a healthy lifestyle. You see the sentiment in health conscious regular commenters at a place like Mark's Daily Apple.

On the other hand, you meet people who enjoy the drink, but feel guilt racked about it and feel committed to serving some form of penance for committing the occasional transgression to their health. Now out of control alcoholics who recognize they have problems with self control and moderation should be reticent about the potential of abusive levels of consumption...but I've heard similar sentiments from a number of folks who are occasional, moderate drinkers. 3 beers on a Friday after work sort of thing. This is the cognitive dissonance of the person who likes the taste and mild sedative effect of a couple of drinks versus a lifetime of cultural indoctrination warning of the health effects of excessive consumption and anti-drunk driving propaganda campaigns. This imparts a mindset that moderate alcohol consumption is a "guilty pleasure."


Just another facet of the fear-based programming we are constantly bombarded with. It is similar to the endless promotion of solarphobia by the sponsors of the sunscreen lobby and a pharmaceutical-industrial complex that relies on a never ending supply of customers to treat the multitude of afflictions that develop from persistent Vitamin D3 deficiency.

Everyone knows alcohol is bad for your health!

Dr. Micheal Merzinich writes in Moderate Drinking and Longevity:

I have earlier described evidence from a large British study that identified a positive impact of the moderate consumption of alcohol on longevity — in their case, apparently adding about 1.5 years to a lifespan.

Now, from my own university comes another large, careful study that supports this conclusion, while doing a little better job of eliminating other possible factors that might account for this longevity benefit. For example, moderate drinkers in the U.S. are a little better off financially on the statistical average, and have other lifestyle benefits that stem from their advantaged position. In the UCSF study led by Dr. Sei J. Lee published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 12,519 individuals over 55 years of age were tracked over a 4 year period. At the end of that period, 50% fewer moderate drinkers (equivalent to 1-2 glasses of wine/day) had died than did those who either drank less, or more. When other factors that could also impact mortality (for example, related to physical or mental health, or being financially better off) were ruled out, still 25% fewer moderate drinkers had kicked the bucket than had either teetotalers or heavier imbibers.

There is plenty of speculation as to why this is so. There has been plenty of research into the anti-oxidant properties of poly phenols in red wine, for example. But the statistical studies that show increased longevity from moderate consumption don't differentiate between red wine and other forms of booze. And there has been plenty of other studies done on this besides the one cited by Dr. Merzinich.

From Alcohol, the World's Best Medicine (Now there's a great article title!):

Moderate drinkers tend to live longer than those who either abstain or drink heavily.

- The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has found that the lowest death rate from all causes occurs at the level of one to two drinks each day.10

- Drinking alcohol in moderation (1-2 drinks per day for women and 2-4 for men) was found to reduce risk of mortality significantly according to meta-analysis of 34 studies of alcohol and total mortality among 1,015,835 men and women around the world.11

- An exhaustive review of all major heart disease studies found that “Alcohol consumption is related to total mortality in a U-shaped manner, where moderate consumers have a reduced total mortality compared with total non-consumers and heavy consumers.”12

- A Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to be 21% to 28% lower among men who drank alcohol moderately, compared with abstainers.13

- A large-scale study in China found that middle-aged men who drank moderately had a nearly 20% lower overall mortality compared with abstainers.14

- Harvard’s Nurses’ Health Study of over 85,000 women found reduced mortality among moderate drinkers.15

- A British analysis of 12,000 male physicians found that moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of death from all causes during the 13 year study.16

- A large study of about 88,000 people conducted over a period of ten years found that moderate drinkers were about 27% less likely to die during the period than were either abstainers or heavy drinkers. The superior longevity was largely due to a reduction of such diseases as coronary heart disease, cancer, and respiratory diseases.17

- A twelve year long prospective study of over 200,000 men found that subjects who had consumed alcohol in moderation were less likely to die during that period than those who abstained from alcohol.18

- A study of more than 40,000 people by the Cancer Research Center in Honolulu found that “persons with moderate alcohol intake appear to have a significantly lower risk of dying than nondrinkers.”19

- An analysis of the 89,299 men in the Physicians’ Health Study over a period of five and one-half years found that those who drink alcohol in moderation tend to live longer than those who either abstain or drink heavily.20

- An Italian study of 1,536 men aged 45-65 found that about two years of life were gained by moderate drinkers (1-4 drinks per day) in comparison with occasional and heavy drinkers.21

- A study of 2,487 adults aged 70-79 years, who were followed for an average period of over five and one-half years, found that all-cause mortality was significantly lower in light to moderate drinkers than in abstainers or occasional drinkers (those who drank less than one drink per week).22

- A large prospective study found that older men consuming up to about three drinks per day and older women consuming over one drink per day had a dramatically lower risk of dying than did non-drinkers.23

- A large study found that moderate drinkers, even after controlling for or adjusting for numerous factors, maintain their high longevity or life survival advantage over alcohol abstainers.24

- A Danish study of about 12,000 men and women over a period of 20 years found that abstaining from moderate alcohol consumption is a health and longevity risk factor. Choosing not to drink alcohol increases the risk of illness, disease and death.25

- A 14-year study of nearly 3,000 residents of an Australian community found that abstainers were twice as likely to enter a nursing home as people who were moderate drinkers. Drinkers also spent less time in hospitals and were less likely to die during the period of the study.26

- A prospective study of middle-aged Chinese men found that the consumption of two drinks per day was associated with a 19% reduction in mortality risk. This protective effect was not restricted to a specific type of alcoholic drink.27

- Alcohol prevents more deaths than its abuse causes in the United Kingdom, according to research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.28

- Scientists at the University of London concluded that light and moderate drinking saves more lives in England and Wales than are lost through the abuse of alcohol. If everyone abstained from alcohol, death rates would be significantly higher.29

- The Cancer Council of New South Wales concludes that “If the net effect of total alcohol consumption on Australian society is considered, there is a net saving of lives due to the protective effect of low levels of consumption on cardiovascular disease.”30

It's not just related to longevity, but also better general health and well being:

Moderate drinkers tend to enjoy better health than do either abstainers or heavy drinkers.

- A nation-wide survey in the U.S. revealed that daily moderate drinkers experienced significantly less acute hospitalization.31

- A nine year study of indicators of good health found moderate alcohol consumption to be associated with the most favorable health scores.32

- A study that examined nearly 10,000 men and women at age 23 and again at age 33 found that the moderate drinkers experience lower levels of poor general health, long-term illness, and psychological distress when compared to abstainers and heavy drinkers.33

- A study of nearly 20,000 Spaniards found that moderate consumption of any alcohol — beer, wine, or spirits — was linked to better overall health, compared to abstinence from alcohol.34

- A nation-wide Canadian study found that moderate drinkers who consumed alcohol daily had 15% less disability than the general population.35

- A Dutch study found that moderate drinkers under stress were less likely to be absent from work than were either abstainers or heavy drinkers. The investigators concluded that “abstinence is at least as unhealthy as excessive drinking.”36

- A study of 3,803 individuals age 18 to 101 found that lifelong teetotalers as well as former drinkers are consistently less healthy than light to moderate drinkers (those who consume up to 60 drinks per month). The health superiority of light and moderate drinkers extends to both physical and mental health.37

Regular, moderate consumption also appears to be good for your bone density. Consider the following research - Moderate alcohol intake associated with bone protection:

 In an epidemiological study of men and post-menopausal women primarily over 60 years of age, regular moderate alcohol intake was associated with greater bone mineral density (BMD). Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University found associations were strongest for beer and wine and, importantly, BMD was significantly lower in men drinking more than two servings of liquor per day. The results suggest that regular moderate consumption of beer or wine may have protective effects on bone, but that heavy drinking may contribute to bone loss (see also Tufts University, Health Sciences).

So what to conclude from all these studies? Moderate alcohol consumption in combination with a healthy diet and exercise lifestyle seems to be the best combination to achieving good health and a long, natural life.

As I wrote in the first Longevity "Paradox" post, to those who consider our earth over-populated, and to those who desire to cull the herds of sheeple down to keep their COMPANY STORE running, there had to be a number of ways to mitigate the longevity and health improving effects of a lifetime of moderate consumption of alcohol.

To start with, all you need really do is compare different cultures and their approach to alcohol consumption. In the US, we have a National restriction on alcohol consumption or possession to anyone under the age of 21. In most European countries, there's a restriction for serving alcohol in establishments to the ages 16 - 18....but it's not a crime for minors of younger ages to drink at home if their Parents allow them to - whereas in America, it's considered a crime -- and even abusive -- if a parent allows a child under 21 to have a sip of alcohol in the privacy of their own home.

What does this do? It promotes a culture of binge drinking when American kids are on the cusp of adulthood. On one hand, we have the State saying alcohol is utterly verboten to young adults and adolescents, on the other, we have a mass media driven popular culture that glamorizes the college partying lifestyle. Movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds portray binge drinking as a rite of passage for college youth. By arbitrarily raising the drinking age to 21, it creates an artificial demarcation that purportedly signifies the difference between irresponsible youth and mature adulthood.

But kids don't start attending college at 21, most start at age 18 or 19, and they have been raised with the expectations that the college party experience is supposed to be the best years of their entire lives. They get invited to parties where the older students are boozing it up, the under-agers long for the artificial adult status bestowed on 21 year olds...so you get the binge drinking phenomena we are all familiar with.

The key here from those intent on curbing moderate consumption, is instilling behavioral patterns in most people when they first discover the alcohol. Under 21 teens yearn to be recognized as mature, independent adults. But they can't order a beer or a glass of wine at restaurant, or even attend concerts, shows or nightclubs with strict age restrictions. In wider society, they are not treated like adults - yet they are allowed to vote, enlist in the military, sign legal contracts, possess and use tobacco, get married and divorced, have children and work full time jobs. This is essentially using alcohol consumption as the ultimate tool of deliberate social engineering to extend adolescence.


Contrast that with the typical experience of a European - excluding the UK, who's legendary, society wide drunkenness rivals the US college scene.  On a pilgrimage to pay homage to my favorite whiskys, I visited UK cities such as London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Inverness . Every night I spent in these cities seemed like a nightly celebration of drunken hell raising and debauchery. Fun, fun, fun! But I digress...

People I know who come from France, Italy, Spain, Germany etc., have all told me similar accounts of growing up in a culture for which the attitude and approach to moderate alcohol consumption are taught from a young age. They were trained to drink moderately by their families, in the privacy of their homes. By the time they hit 18, there is no "mystery" nor desire to "reach adulthood" by jumping head first into binge drinking to "prove themselves" to their older peers in their social circles that they can "handle it" like an adult.

I certainly felt that sort of peer pressure when I went to college. Of course, by the time I got to college, I was already an accomplished binge drinker, as I had started in high school. When you're 15, you like to fool yourself into thinking your as capable and mature as a 25 year old. Only when you hit 35 do you realize what a fool you were 20 years earlier.

In any case, the contrast of cultural attitudes about alcohol between countries with a 21 age limit and strict prohibition on young adults and what happens when it's left up to the discretion of parents in the family home and a general laissez-faire attitude towards youthful drinking is stark.

Despite the so called legal standard that's supposedly in place to keep alcohol reserved for "mature adults ready to handle it" the results speak for themselves. Taken at face value, it appears that our culture is steadfastly opposed to the abuse of alcohol. But a more nuanced consideration of the results of the laws and social policies and mass media narrative concerning alcohol consumption brings me to the conclusion that they either want people to become hopeless alcoholics or teetotalers who swear it off for good.

 In this way, the longevity and health benefits that come from the moderate consumption over a lifetime are inhibited. If there's one thing about life destroying levels of alcohol consumption versus moderate, life extending and beneficial-to-your-health consumption, it's that both are patterns of learned behavior, formed during our initial introduction to consumption of the substance.

For every person who emerges from his binge drinking 20's into a moderate consumption pattern (like myself), you will get a bunch of others who either go off the deep end into alcoholic excess or have to quit drinking cold turkey. In either case, neither will experience the benefits of moderate, reasonable consumption.

From the view of THEY who want as many sheeple dying and getting sick and in need of the medical-pharmacuetical complex, this is the goal.

For example consider the ridiculous drinking and driving laws we now have in most places. .08 blood alcohol level could result in a DWI/DUI arrest and suspension of driving privilege and possible jail time. In other words, 2 beers after work could land you in trouble with the law.

Simply ludicrous. Yet the average teetotaler who is convinced of the detrimental health effects of even a single drink, are also the sort to wholeheartedly endorse such a totalitarian and unreasonable standard.

In a similar vein, we have been inundated for the last 20+ years by our mass media message about "drinking responsibly." Does that mean moderate consumption and avoiding alcohol induced retardation? Nope. It simply means find a designated driver. This is another subtle means of promoting binge drinking.

"We have a designated driver! Let's get hammered!"

Or, "We got a hotel room, (or a limo, or a taxi), so we don't have to worry about drinking and driving! CHEERS!!!!!"

When you look at it, our culture in the US has a number of indirect ways that promote binge drinking behavior patterns and discouraging moderate, daily consumption. This, in my view is done quite deliberately. Population control measures from the owners of our society have set it up this way. Can't have all these sheeple with improved health and longevity living long enough to start collecting entitlements!

Aside from the cultural aspects that discourage moderate consumption and encourage binge drinking debauchery, another way to shorten the average lifespan of the useless eaters, is to do what they've done with everything else - adulterate the quality of the product or even outright add literal poisons into it.

Most people who are raised in a culture of moderate consumption care about the quality of the booze they imbibe. They care about the region where the ingredients to make it come from. They care about the process of manufacture and how to enjoy it properly. Conversely, the binge drinking culture encourages a mindset of getting as intoxicated as quickly and cheaply as possible.

High quality alcohol manufacture is an artisan craft. Micro-brewed craft beers are "living" beverages, carbonated by the natural fermentation process. Mass produced corporate swill is "dead" pasteurized fare and injected with C02 to carbonate the beer. Same goes for mass produced box wine versus properly aged bottle and cask wine. High quality tequilas and mezcal are made with 100% distilled agave, and high quality whiskeys and rums are aged for years in oak barrels, a process in which the charred innards of the barrel wood work like charcoal filters that remove the impurities of the distillate over time.

As anything else, time is money, and quality produced alcohol takes time. You get what you pay for. The moderate consumer of alcohol will look at a more expensive bottle of booze and consider how long it will last them with their moderated consumption patterns when deciding on what to buy. No aficionado I know of drops $80 for a bottle of single malt, intending to drink it all in a single drinking session that night - unless they're buying it specifically to share with a number of people for a special occasion.

I have bottles of Scotch and Bourbon that I bought 6 or 7 years ago for which they still have little less than half their contents left. For the binge drinker, finishing a bottle is a matter of pride. "We finished the whole bottle and we were SOOOO WAAYYSTED, DUDE!"

For the aficionado and moderate drinker and collector of fine spirits, it's more like "Damn, I finally killed that bottle of Laphroaig, now I gotta go get another one or my collection of Islay malts will not be complete!"


 


There's another aspect of this topic I find amusing - the definition of moderation. According the official guidelines, this is only 1-2 drinks per day.

Meh. I go by my own definition.

No matter the amount I drank, if I feel zero after effects the morning after, I consider the amount imbibed perfectly moderate. I can easily drink 4 beers and 4 drams of whiskey and awake the next morning feeling 100% normal...but I normally don't drink that much. But even when I do drink that much, that usually occurs over a long period of time (6-8 hours) and involves a full meal of food as well. I like to think of it this way - a hangover indicates I've overdosed. No hangover means I drank exactly the right amount. Works for me. Like I said earlier, it's been well over 2 years since I last had a real hangover.

My regular pattern of moderation involves 2-3 micro-brewed, higher alcohol-content pale ales, stouts or porters. Sometimes, I'll also have a dram or two of whiskey or tequila from my liquor collection to finish off. (I use the term "dram" because I despise the word -- and practice -- of "shots." High quality spirits were meant to be savored by sipping, not slammed down your gullet as quickly as possible while trying not to gag on the burn.)

The binge drinker will only care about how cheap it is and how fast they can get drunk on it. They buy bottles with the intention of finishing it within one or two drinking bouts...either by doing shots or mixing it with sugary substances to cut the bite of impure and cheaply produce rot gut. Doesn't matter if they drink mixto tequila or cheap, barely aged whiskey blended with un-aged grain alcohol, or un-aged Rum made to mimic the color of wood-aging with caramel coloring. To the average binge drinker, the enjoyment of the beverage is not in the complexity of tastes that can be discerned by slow, deliberate consumption, but only how fast they can get intoxicated and how well the burn is easily masked with sugary sweet mixers, or alternately how fast it can be shot down and chased with a beer or soda.

But the moderate drinkers? These are they who like the taste of the quality, hand crafted beverages that can sometimes command a premium price - but good deals on quality hooch are certainly appreciated. These are they who enjoy the social aspects of conversation and camaraderie while having a few drinks with family and friends. And yes, that includes achieving a pleasant, moderate buzz. It seems as if the official guidelines for moderate drinking means even mild inebriation means you've overdone it. Nonesense, the mild buzz is part of the medicinal effect!

For the moderate alcohol consumer, a mild, pleasant buzz is only one part of the overall experience.

The binge drinker only learns to use alcohol as an escape, while the moderate drinker uses it an enhancement or condiment to life's experiences. I have almost zero truly good memories of debauched drunkeness. Nothing good ever came from getting utterly trashed and ending up saying prayers to the porcelain God with profuse offerings from the days earlier meals, or waking up from a blackout with a significant block of memory of the previous night erased and only having a vague sense that something bad had happened. Most of the bad experiences of  my life occurred from getting drunk and acting foolish and reckless.

But I've had plenty of memories of great times with mild intoxication from moderate indulgence.  It took years to recognize the difference and break out of the pattern of learned behavioral binging and purging, but I eventually got here.

It was either that, or I would've had to start attending meetings down at the local Y on Wednesday nights.

Moderate consumption is a recipe for relaxation and social bonding and improved health.

Binging into oblivion is a recipe for abuse and destructive addiction.

I believe I know which behavior THEY prefer we engage in...whether it's degenerate alcoholism or puritanical teetotalers, either case appears to brings down the average life span of the average sheeple in the Brave New World Order feedlot.

So cheers good readers! I shall drink to your health, and at the same time, contribute to my own!

Stay thirsty, my friends.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."- Apparently, NOT B. Franklin

Welcome to the 21st Century Panopticon

Originally Published in bad faith...

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. – George Orwell, 1984

Good ole George saw the future the social engineers of the Fabian Society had planned for us all, and his seminal book, 1984, has proven to be entirely too prescient for the freedom-minded individualist opposed to the current system of behavioral control. The only real inaccuracy was that he predicted it’s society wide implementation would be complete 20 years earlier than it has actually been realized.

Better late than never?*

The idea of a population’s behavior being controlled by the uncertainty of whether or not the authorities are watching at any given moment was not originated by the Fabian Socialists. That credit belongs to an Englishmen by the name of Jeremy Bentham, who came up with a design for a penitentiary system he called the Panopticon.

The Panopticon (“all-seeing”) functioned as a round-the-clock surveillance machine. Its design ensured that no prisoner could ever see the ‘inspector’ who conducted surveillance from the privileged central location within the radial configuration. The prisoner could never know when he was being surveilled — mental uncertainty that in itself would prove to be a crucial instrument of discipline.

Bentham’s concept was groundbreaking in penitentiary design for controlling prisoners behavior. Greater control of the inmates with less manpower spent surveying them. In short, the design worked because it utilized uncertainty within the inmates own mind.

The social engineers who have shaped our Brave New World Order have taken this principle and extrapolated it worldwide to create a surveillance state that now encompasses our entire society.
Unlike 1984, in which Big Brother’s authoritarian regime instituted it from the top down, the 21st century Panopticon of today was gradually built up through a combination of efforts in both the private and public sectors. This was done by the creation of data “fusion centers.”

From The 21st Century Panopticon?:

Fusion centers are an amalgamation of commercial and public sector data for the purpose of optimizing the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal information. The Department of Homeland Security’s $380 million in funding has created over 40 information fusion centers in the United States.

These fusion centers combine all the public sector data of we the sheeple – like our SSN, medical record numbers, library cards, driver’s license numbers, taxpayer numbers – and aggregate them with private sector data. With this fusion, is enough to create a detailed profile of nearly every aspect of our lives.
Where does this private sector data come from?

Blogger Mac Slavo points it out in his article, Americans, Everything You Do Is Monitored:

Everything you have ever bought with a credit card or membership club card is sent off for processing and aggregation to centralized data centers. While you may use a Visa card at one store, a Mastercard at another, and pay cash with a grocery membership card somewhere else, it’s as easy as finding your name and cross referencing that on your cards – and your entire shopping profile can be created. The purpose, we’re told, is to better improve our shopping experience and provide market data to companies so that they can improve their advertising. We can only guess at who else has access to this information, which happens to be very easily accessible and widely available for a small fee.

Than again, I don’t know why the Government has spent so much time, money and resources to create these fusion centers to keep an eye on us all….most sheeple upload their profiles voluntarily to social media networks.

Slavo alludes that US intelligence agencies recently invested 5 billion dollars into social media companies:

For many, it’s fun to spend every waking hour updating the rest of the world on what we’re doing. We publish our thoughts. We upload our pictures. We even click a like button at the end of articles like this one to let people know what we’re into and what they should be reading. As social networking becomes bigger, connecting hundreds of millions of people across the world, so to does the profiling of members of these networks. Have you agreed with what a certain person has said in a recent post? If they’re a person-of-interest for whatever reason, then guess what? You’ve just become one too. Did your friend recently take a picture of you at a party getting rowdy? Once that hits the social network, facial recognition technology will identify you and publish your name for all the world to see, including current or future employers. It’s a social network, and its purpose is to learn everything about you. Perhaps this is why key U.S. intelligence agencies made no effort to hide their $5 billion investment in the largest network in the world recently. Social networking is a critical tool in the struggle to categorize every person on earth.

Are you comfortable with this state of affairs?

It’s really difficult to resist. After all, instead of forcing us to accept a surveillance society, the conglomerate of government, and big business corporations have made the tools and means of the 21st century Panopticon by giving us goods and services that appeal to us and offer some very useful functions.

It’s great to have a cell phone that can tell you where the nearest liquor store is when you’re on a beer run while visiting a city you’ve never been to before…or to take pictures and video clips of your kids to upload to your social media page so grandma and grandpa who live on the other side of the country can stay connected…or having a membership card that gives you a good discount on your groceries. It is becoming increasingly difficult to work and live in today’s Brave New World Order without being plugged in to the worldwide network of personal information.

Is it worth it? Is the convenience, utility and benefits we enjoy worth empowering the very real manifestation of Orwell’s Big Brother surveillance state?

At this time, it may not feel like we live in the society-wide paranoia that Winston lived with in the Panopticon of 1984′s “fictional” dystopia…but based on the raft of Executive Orders and Homeland Security measures that have been enacted in the last several decades, it is simply a matter of the Government obtaining the right excuse or event to trigger martial law.

During the subjugation of Europe by the Nazi’s, they used gun registration information quite effectively to identify, suppress, arrest and execute any and all potential resisters.

That was one single data source they were able to use to identify and control the masses.

Today’s Governments have an almost infinite number of sources of information about each and every one of us to use as they see fit. If they wanted to, they could identify and round up every person who smokes Marlboro Reds and downloads Jenna Jameson porn clips to their smart phones while they drive through rush hour traffic in cities under the watchful eyes of the traffic cameras.

Or consider this: let’s say Obama pulls the trigger and declares martial law, and decides that any one associated with teh MAndrosphere should be rounded up...anyone blogging from their "smart" phones with GPS Apps enabled will be easily tracked down and sent on an all expenses paid camping trip.

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY PANOPTICON

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU



* When this piece was written for In Mala Fide a couple of years ago, I did not know why Orwell named it "1984" and assumed that he was predicting the date when the dystopian society he describes would have come to fruition. I've since read some interesting theories behind the naming of the novel.

The Longevity "Paradox"

Lorna Gobey celebrated her 100th birthday with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette.

It is inevitable. The system THEY have set up, is designed for long term failure...an economic and social system that is nothing more than a civilization wide, multi-generational, incremental implementation of a convoluted, and deceptive control grid - aka MATRIX - that appears too complicated to understand. But when you strip away all the extraneous deceptions and misdirections, it really is nothing more than the largest COMPANY STORE scheme ever instituted in the history of humanity. And what is the name of this COMPANY STORE?

Brave New World Order, Inc. Of course.

At the top of the executive board of this Zero Liability corporation (TOO BIG TO FAIL), we have Central Banking Cartels, and their monetary system based on fractional reserve lending and fiat currency; combined with a large, pervasive and invasive taxation system, and a multitude of centralized bureaucracies designed to create mass dependency.

In conjunction with the socially engineered population control measures of widely available birth control, abortion, and the normalization of feminism, promiscuity and homosexuality, you end up where we are today - large numbers of people dependent on Government entitlement spending to subsist, with less and less successive generations being born to grow into productive working classes to actually produce the tax receipts for funding of the re-distribution programs of entitlements to the dependent classes. This is the real root of "deficit spending."

This "forces" the Government to "Borrow" money from the Central Banking system to keep issuing those entitlement funds more and more citizenry are depending on for basic subsistence.

The more entitlement payments that have to made, the more has to be borrowed.

The more that is borrowed, the more the "National Debt" exponentially increases. The more Demographic decline, the less productive workers produce taxes for redistribution, the more has to be borrowed to keep the status quo of dependency expenditures going. This is not just what is happening in USA Inc., but in every country on the planet that has a Central Banking System.

Debt and dependency, the twin tools of the elite for the mass enslavement of humanity.

THEY know this. What THEY are doing, is trying to extend the scheme for as long as possible, to extract as much wealth and assets from the masses that they can, before the inevitable collapse occurs. Once that happens, then we get the naked and outright imposition of the Police State Orwell predicted. But until then, they've got one overriding objective: keep the gravy train rolling for as long as possible.

One of the primary tactics they are using to delay the inevitable, is to promote behaviors that kill off as many sheeple as possible before they hit the age for which the majority of entitlement benefits become due - aka Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

In other words, the more people who die before they reach the age to collect their "entitlements" the longer they can keep the COMPANY STORE running.

This is why it is official Government policy to promote diet and lifestyle behaviors that are health destroying.

This is in part, why THEY have instituted propaganda campaigns to instill fear in our minds. Unreasonable, false fears of the very things that would ensure we live long, happy and healthy lives of fulfillment and productivity. This is why they want us to fear eating saturated fats, red meat and natural sea salt. Why they want us to avoid the mid-day sun and to use sunscreen whenever we happen to be out in it. Why they have adulterated our water and  food supply with all sorts of poisonous and toxic substances. Why they want us all trapped in a health care system that is too expensive and gives us limited, false choices in dealing with health issues. THEY own the companies that both produce the FEED and produce the medications to treat the symptoms caused by eating their FEED. This is also why the only officially recognized treatment for cancer -- which develops after a lifetime of nutritional deficiencies based on following all the other proscriptions THEY dictate -- is radiation poisoning that kills more people than it saves.

So too does it explain why they want the normalization of gender androgyny, broken homes and the destruction of marriage as an institution. When both parents must work, they are far more likely to depend on the fast, convenient FEED of the processed food industries subsidized by Big Ag. A lifetime of eating the FEED, will drastically shorten the average lifespan - from the perspectives of THEY who have engineered it this way, hopefully short enough to kill the majority of us before we hit entitlement collection age. As most long time readers know, I've come to the conclusion that this is all being done quite deliberately.

Once you truly understand these motives, you can then begin to question other directives and assumptions of the conventional wisdom they promulgate through mass media influence. More specifically as I'm going to cover in the next few posts here, the social and institutional demonization of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol.

EVERYONE knows smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol are bad for your health, right?!?!!!!?

Of course. We are all familiar with the stories of those who've been killed by drunk drivers. Of alcoholic parents who were abusive and neglectful.Of lifetime chain smokers who died of emphysema and lung cancer.

What is not commonly recognized however, is the role that these substances play in extending the longevity of most folks, when used over a lifetime of sensible moderation. In the statistical long run, the moderate consumption of alcohol and usage of tobacco products actually extend the lives of those who are able to do so without crossing the line of use into heavy overuse and abuse.

Statistically speaking, if we were to live in a world in which Alcohol and Tobacco were completely unregulated and ONLY controlled by social mores, MOST would not cross over into the threshold of addictive abuse...which would lead to increased longevity of the populace on average. Like anything else, you will always have a certain sub-section of people with addictive personalities and self-destructive tendencies who will eschew moderation. But overall, I believe most people wouldn't. And it would be even less harmful and destructive on a larger scale, if the large corporations that have gained control of the production of these substances did not exist to produce their corrupted fare for mass consumption.


This, in my humble opinion, is the ultimate rationale behind why it is official Government policy to allow the adulteration of these substances with harmful additives, why it discourages the sensible and moderate use of these substances, and why it produces deceptive and dishonest propaganda to keep the masses from discovering the long term health benefits of sensible, moderate usage. 

To be continued...

Quiplinks VII - Shout Out Edition

YES MA'AM!!!

I am not doing this for fame or money. I am not using my real name, and I don't even try to make money from Google Adsense. I am doing this because I want men to get up off their asses and stand up for themselves. - Rob Fedders
.
Yet again, Mr. No Ma'am inspires me to get up off my ass and start hammering away at the keyboard after the longest blogging hiatus I've taken since I started this thing in 2007 (3 & 1/2 weeks).  I intended to make it a month, but what the hell, I'll just ride the muse when she sings.

It is apropos that Rob inspired me to resume blogging again, considering his blog is what inspired me to start this one in the first place. But enough about me.


One of the things I admire most about Rob is that he's never sought to promote himself as some Grand Poobah of all these great ideas. No, he's always been about paying it forward. Spreading the knowledge he gained and giving props to those he learned from (just like the many great Martial Artists I've met who exemplify humility and acknowledging their Instructors rather than focusing on their personal abilities and accomplishments).

He's turned his blog into a virtual repository for the works of the first generation of red pill dealers in the early days of teh Interwebz, guys many present day bloggers and commentariat of the MAndrosphere have never heard of. Check out these compilations of MAndrosphere knowledge before anyone ever thought to blog about THE RED PILL concept:

The Book of Bone Crker

Philalethes' Essays

The Eye of the Mind

The Wisdom of Zenpriest

The Book of Pook


Rob recently returned from his own extended hiatus with a two-part post that is a comprehnsive dissertation on "Activism"  and how it relates to Men's Rights. Before I comence with the quiplinks, I urge you to go and read the whole thing...especially those of you who are relative newcomers to these fringes of teh Interwebz.

MGTOW Activism Part 1 | MGTOW Activism Part 2

The section I'd like to most draw attention though is here:

There is no right way or wrong way to be a MGTOW Activist - it is one of the features of MGTOW, so I'm not going to try and shoehorn in what makes an MGTOW or not. However, there are certain things we have discovered that worked for us in the past. 

Start Your Own Blog or WebsiteA long time ago now, I used to regularly read William S. Lind's columns about Fourth Generation Warfare. Now, of course, I am not advocating doing anything violent, but rather taking the concept of decentralization found in Fourth Generation Warfare and adapting it to the internet. There is no "leader" of MGTOW to attack or discredit. We are all leaders of our own movement, and if one of us is removed, there are more nameless people to take his place.

For those who take up the challenge and decide to enter the fray and become a Fourth Generation Interwebz Warrior, Rob's got some great advice for those who feel the inspiration to start blogging:

If you do start your own blog, here is a quick tip: don't publish all of your articles all at once. What I mean is, lots of guys start up a blog, get really excited about it, and crank out one or two articles a day - every day, and then find that within two weeks they are burnt out. What you need to do is make a post every three days or so when you first start out (later, after you are established, an article a week will keep the hits rolling in).

So, when you have all that energy at the beginning, go ahead an write your articles, but schedule them accordingly by spacing them out. You will be glad you did, I promise. It will also give you the luxury of not being under the gun to write something simply to keep your blog running, and thus, you will find that if you are writing two weeks ahead of publication, your articles will be of much higher quality.

Also, keep in mind that when you first start your blog, your hits will be minimal, no matter how many articles you write. So don't blow your brains out over articles that hardly anyone will read. Your goal should be to provide something every few days so that people will know to keep checking in, and thus, you will begin to get exposure by others linking to you.

Good advice. As I noted in my last post, I had recently spent some time reading through my own archives. I have to laugh at some of my earliest posts that had only 12 hits. Don't worry if some post you labor over and you feel is a really good piece doesn't experience success right away. If you keep at it, eventually you'll get wider notice, and that's when your new readers will begin to look through your archives. I'm still somewhat surprised when I see people reading posts I wrote back several years ago getting linked to and commented on.

Linkage is Good for You
Be sure to link to others, especially those that link to you. I check my stat-counter almost every day, and if I see that a new blog has linked to me, it will automatically get linked in my blogroll. I want them to get exposure, and further, the more exposure they get, the more I will get in return! I also link to blogs that I have read which don't yet link to me, but I go through my blog list every few months and clean out the ones that have not provided a reciprocal link to my blog. Why? Because I want those who scratch my back to get the most amount of traffic I can provide them with, and clogging up my blog list with oodles of links to those who are unwilling or just don't care enough to link me back, lowers the exposure those who do support me will receive, and this in turn harms me.

More good advice, though I don't really follow it. From the very beginnings of this blog, I never even knew I was able to check my blog stats. Only within the last year or two did I bother to look into that and start checking up my stats and referring url's on a regular basis. But I don't do it to try and figure out how to get more blog hits or anything like that, it's more out of curiosity and disbelief. (I still can't believe how many hits I get nowadays, even with a 3 week hiatus, my hits barely dropped. I don't get it...). Rob also offers this perspective:

Another thing I tend to avoid is linking to big blogs. First of all, they don't link to me so I don't "owe" them anything. Now, I get it, if they linked to everyone who linked to them, they would have blogrolls that numbered in the thousands. But on the same token, if they are so large, then they certainly don't need me to link to them in order to get exposure. Everybody knows who the big blogs are already, whether I link to them or not. Also, it kind of negates the notion of "decentralization" to have big websites acting as a clearing house for all of our ideas. I prefer to send my traffic to the smaller guys so that they may get their legs under them and grow into big blogs themselves. I'd like to see dozens and dozens of really big blogs dealing with men's issues, but this will never happen if we ignore the little nuts who may grow into a mighty oak, in favour of only looking at the full grown oaks and simply wishing there were more of them around.

I like Rob's idea of trying to drive traffic to "the little nuts." Heh.

However, my approach to assembling my blogroll is a little more selfish. I primarily assembled it for me. It's my daily reading list with my morning cup of joe. My personal policy has always been to add anyone and everyone I've ever found who's posted something I found interestintg, thought provoking and relevant to this sector of teh Interwebz . Many folks I've added to my blog roll have reciprocated and added me to their blogrolls.

To all who have done so, thanks, I appreciate the courtesy even though I don't expect it. To those that don't, no biggie, that's not why I linked to you in the first place.Your still entertaining and thought provoking enough for me to always be curious as to the latest things you're writing about. To date, there is only two blogs I've ever purposely deleted from my blogroll, and those are for reasons I'd rather not go into anymore, as my focus in participating in these fringes of teh Webz is now largely aimed at avoiding DRAMA. Got enough real drama in real life to deal with as it is.

That all being said, I think Rob's advice for fledgling bloggers is good.

Back when MGTOW first debuted in 2006, we used to do something called "shout-outs." Basically, anyone who showed that they were flying the MGTOW flag and were committed to maintaining a blog, got a public shout-out to the other MGTOW bloggers so that he would be entered as a link on everyone's sidebar, and also to provide the newbie with some traffic to get his legs under him. It also had the benefit of providing the person who did the shout-out, to be able to take a few days off of blogging while directing all of his traffic to someone who needed it, while still providing one's readers with, well, something to read.

Here is a shout-out for someone you may recognize. {That guy was a kook!}

Marky Mark just did one the other day.

And here was mine.

When I got my shout-out, it was probably the most significant thing that happened to me in my entire blogging career. Before that I was only getting about 75 hits a day, but suddenly I was getting Eternal Bachelor's 2,000 hits a day all directed to my site and I was like "Holy Smokes! I'd better sit down and write some good stuff while I can!" After the shout-out disappeared into Eternal Bachelor's archives, my blog settled in to about 400 hits a day, and from there it steadily increased. In part it kept on increasing because of the exposure I had received, but even more so, once I had the exposure I was highly motivated to keep it by continuing to provide my readers with more content. And here I am, seven years later, still running my blog! So, don't forget to take care of the little nuts, for they will be the oaks of tomorrow if just given the chance to grow.

In that spirit, the following Quiplinks will be shout outs to all the "little nuts" of the MAndrosphere.


May those of you who stick with this effort over the long haul grow into mighty oaks as we seek to spread the philosophy of Going Your Own Way and continue to wage this fourth generation war...

...a war of AWARENESS.




In the spirit of giving Shout Outs, we're starting off this edition of Quiplinks with a pertinent quip from Francis Begbie:

"So you're a regular around here ken. Fair fucks to ye. You're reading all the shit, all these alpha fucks en beta bucks lozozozoz and whatnot. You're aware of your Roissys, your Rollos, your Rooshs. Ok. But, there are a number of underrated, underneath the surface bloggers that you should be reading, guys that are well worth your time." - The Soul is Not a Smithy

"And that, ladies and gentelman, is what 'effective activism' looks like.  Something so interesting, so compelling, you CAN'T look away.  A truth so revealing, it cannot be unseen.  A fundamental change in perspective." - Hunting for Archetypes

 "Bluntly, men are being punished for being good men." - The Phantom Toll Booth

"I want to tell you, my friends, of a sad occurrence in my life. These events transpired early last week, and I will never forget the disappointment." - Illusion of Sanity

"I don't find the lack of intellect among the average person all that disturbing." - Uncle Bob's Treehouse

"When people have problems, they search for answers.  They question their worldview." - Young Man Red Pill

"Waiting for the right time is a trap. It is a way of justifying your cowardice. Days of ‘it not being the right time now’ easily turn into years of lost opportunity." - Reflections of the Age

"As we all know, every good argument can either be summed up in small enough space to fit on a bumpersticker or a tweet. If you found a simple and witty phrase, you are obviously correct." - The Karamazov Idea

"That’s still how I operate: “Regardless of others’ feelings.” Not because I think they’re unimportant, but because there is nothing I can do about them, and no time even if I did." - Things That We Have Heard and Known

"Well, women, on some level, know that they have been lied to. You can see that in their fears." - Dark Brightness

"...Feminism is a religion that is as accepted now as mainstream values as Christianity was sixty years ago–it’s NORMAL. Because of this, people don’t even realize they’re supporting it." - Feminism is Empathological

"Back in the day I think some one called these kind of females Frog Farmers. Chicks who turn Princes into Frogs instead of the other way around." - Rex Patriarch

"When women complain about men wanting to marry a virgin, they need to keep in mind that we have a very good reason to do so. None of us want to become the next Neville." - Donal Graeme

"Exercise self-control in your speech, maintain a positive and healthy mental attitude, and edify others by your words.  Swearing should be used to fit in that. " - The Alpha Anomaly

"This shameful patriarchal oppression has to stop! We must take the patriarchal power away from men, and give it to women as compensation for past injuries." - Deansdale's Blog

"I’m pursuing myriad self improvement activities, but I always feel there is a bit more I can be doing." - You So Would...

"It's amazing how far we've come along this path." - Carnivore's Cave

"This is both an ancient and a modern story, and perspective might help us to come to grips with where we wish to go as the feminist dystopia collapses around us." - Patriactionary

"And there it is the truth raised up from a century of dead men’s sighs. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder. " - Society of Amateur Gentlemen

"If the Catholic Church actually looked like this, I think a lot more of us Manosphere Atheists would be calling ourselves Christian…" - Stares at the World

"This is basically a proof I’m doing pretty good with this parenting thing." - A Guide for a Young Patriarch

"Female Supremacy is the manifest purpose of Feminism." - Man, Woman & Myth

"'Porn is a legit sexual outlet...' No, it is not. Porn kills your dick's soul." - finndistan

"For libertarians, the issue of abortion is a very uncomfortable one, because it sits right smack bang in the middle of a massive dilemma for any conscientious libertarian." - Didact's Reach

"Sometimes, I don’t realize I’m doing it. That’s the real problem. Unrecognized flaws cannot be fixed." - Honest Introspection

"I should have known better, but my youthful naiveté made it hard for me to recognize." - the LIFESTYLE

"And perhaps this is why men don’t “put a ring on it”.  Women have instead sold their soul for another sort of Ring." - Unmasking Feminism

"Frame control is one of the most important things you can learn. You don’t need to assert your frame 100% of the time as long as you have a general understanding of the concept. If another person has a better idea, it is ok to back down. There is a difference between being strong and being unnecessarily stubborn." - welcome to the lifestyle

"...equalitarianism can never really be achieved, because people are fundamentally unequal in a huge number of ways, which means that it is an endless crusade, the perfection of which remains more or less elusive and equidistant regardless of how diligently it is pursued. " - Veritas Lounge

"Bitches, I’m, you know, fucking unique and shit!!!" - Grit Artisan

"We bark our talking points, they yelp back with theirs, no minds change, and we end just how we started." - Alpha is Assumed

"Our government is now tripping over dollars to pick up pennies." - MEN-FACTOR

"Who wouldn't want to watch the "Washington insert your ethnic minority heres"?" - Spootville

And, last but certainly not least (and with much appreciation for regular inclusion in the Lighting Rounds):

"If you’re looking for an LTR or a girlfriend. Just don’t; it’s stupid. If you want sex, get sex through an STR, FWB, or ONS. If you want companionship, get a male friend or a dog. If you want a family and life-partner, get a wife. Getting a girlfriend is the worst of all three worlds while minimizing the benefits of any of them." - Free Northerner





Now, to wrap this all up, there's one more piece of advice Rob Fedder's offers all these up and coming blogger of the MAndrosphere that I neglected to mention before the quiplinks:

Don't Delete Your Blogs

Of course, not all people will want to keep blogging forever. If you no longer feel the motivation, that's fine. It is a thankless job and the pay sucks. But please, oh please, don't delete your blog! Not only does it remove from the internet a significant body of work that others might find and read, whether old or not, but it also removes all of those links in the articles, in the comments, and on the sidebar, which support those of us who still are blogging.

Most guys who quit blogging have not lost the faith in the message, they simply are fed-up with blogging. There's nothing wrong with becoming a Man Going His Own Way (MGHOW) and moving on - in fact, it is one of the natural conclusions of MGTOW. But please, if you've found a path to enlightenment through MGTOW and the manosphere which resulted in you starting up a blog, leave your work up so that others may find it, and so that the links in your blog may direct others towards those who are still actively blogging about it.