Straight Thinking on Gay Reality

Andrew Atkin:

Let's first be clear. No one chooses to be gay. If people want to have same-sex relationships then that is who they are, and what we feel sexually is not a choice. How we act is a choice - but not how we feel. Hence I have no contempt for homosexuals and in no way do I believe that their behaviour should be suppressed, so long as it is safe and mutual at least.

However, our culture does seem to be in the business of creating a modern fairytale when it comes to gays. We've gone from accepting it for what it is, to promoting it as what it isn't. We seem to have an agenda to promote homosexuality as some kind of new normal, as though it's as inherently normal to be gay over straight as it is to be born with either blond or black hair. And that is absurd.

Homosexuality is still something that happens when things don't happen the way they're supposed to happen. It's still one of natures mistakes. If it were not then the sexual apparatus of gay men would not be explicitly designed to fertilise a female egg. The honest truth is that homosexuality is broken sexuality.

Of course I expect some people to resent me for stating the biological obvious, but I would argue that I am the one who has a true acceptance of homosexuality, because I'm the one who wishes to accept homosexuality for what it is - not what it isn't. 

The next question, is what are the implications of promoting homosexuality as a new normal? 

Well on an instinctive level I do not like seeing young children receiving this strange message that suggests it's normal to be gay, though it would probably be harmless enough in the long run. However, where I do have a problem with it is that it's leading to the idea that it's okay for gays to adopt children. To me, this is risky. Depriving children of a mother-father context unnecessarily, to satisfy a homosexual union, is I believe to take a risk with a child that is not fair. This is where we need to remind ourselves that homosexuality is not biologically normal, as it involves an innocent third party.

And finally, the problem of seeing homosexuality as inherently normal is we might fail to try and understand what causes it. In turn the sexual disorder may not be prevented when it otherwise could have been.

Note: My ambition going forward is to get involved with politics directly. I will eventually be asked for my opinion on gays, so I thought it would be a good idea to present it here, early. 

Jacinda Ardern and our Hunger for Change

Andrew Atkin

We hunger for change because we are not happy. But why not? 

My claim: On an instinctual level there is a part of us that knows that New Zealand is no place to have children. In spite of modern material wealth we are in fact strangely poor.

Well the New Zealand Prime Minster, Jacinda Ardern, believes that capitalism has failed. Her belief is to be expected as she was once the leader of a young communist group. Understandably, it will be almost impossible for her to develop her economic understanding as her ideology will run deep. Anything pro-capitalism will seem intrinsically wrong to her.

Regardless, the better question to ask, is where did Jacinda Ardern's belief first come from? In my view, it comes from being partly right - kind of. When she was young she probably sensed that something was not at all right with the society she lived in, and I would say that feeling in itself was right. But unfortunately right feelings need to be married with right thinking, and intellectually speaking Jacinda is immature. She is stuck in a youthful ambition that is terribly mistaken. 

One striking signal that suggests Jacinda is at least part right in her contempt for capitalism is with fertility. Capitalist western society, as we know it, has failed in that our fertility rates are collapsing. As dramatic as it might sound, we are in fact on a path to biological extinction.

People--and in particular Caucasians--tend to not want to have children anymore, and if they do have children they do so late in life and often for abstract reasons. 

So often they don't have children because they just love kids, and feel the authentic prosperity that makes them want to bring them into their lives. But instead have children to bring meaning to a meaningless life, to create someone who might love them unconditionally (because their parents never could), or to conform to social expectations because they're afraid of feeling like a loser, etc.

From an evolutionary perspective western society can be seen as a failure. And because our society is seen as capitalist, it becomes an easy (though crude) stretch to say capitalism has failed because the fertile western family is dying.

So why exactly aren't people having kids like they used to? Or more specifically, why don't they even have the desire to have kids?

We in the west have made some serious mistakes which have hurt us, and we have yet to see and accept those mistakes for what they are. But those mistakes are not capitalism. Let me suggest what I believe are some of the real problems.

1. Institutional schooling that suppresses a real feeling of community. 

The problem with schooling (other than it being cruelly boring) relates to over-crowding and forced-associations, in particular forced-associations with emotionally disturbed children.

Note. There has never been any need to institutionalise a child to have them learn. Especially not today, where almost any educational material can be streamed from a cellphone at virtually no cost.

2. The destruction of religion without respecting its social role, and its importance in keeping the 'petty' parts of life in perspective. 

-Note, the author is not religious. 

3. Social pressures driving people to prioritise careers over the world of the family, leading to the fragmentation and finally estrangement of immediate family, extended family, and real friends leading to a typically shallow social life. 

4. The empty promise of extra wealth being able to achieve what it simply cannot. Inducing people to chase rainbows rather develop a "real life".

5. Outsourcing childcare to strangers at very young ages, badly damaging children's socialisation.

6. Artificial urban land restrictions that force high-tension high-density living for all but the wealthy (this is not at all conducive to making families).

7. Artificially increasing the cost of having children (severely).

8. Anti-discrimination laws that stop people from creating their private townships in their own idealised image. (It's very important to isolate toxic people when creating a family environment).

9. A work life that is high-tension due to forced-associations. Respect that exists only in relation to your ability to serve the bottomline, and interpersonal degradation as professional relationships must too often be fake relationships. This is draining on people, and stress directly contradicts the instinctive impulse to bring children into your life. Especially as it induces a fundamental feeling of resource insecurity (You no longer make commercial sense? Find another job - if you can).

The result, I believe, is a society more split from the world of the family than we realise. And when people are split from the world of the family they see little point in creating an additional family for themselves. How can we expect people to want children when all they can see is latent parasites in their lives? 

Not only does the cost of abandoning the family (psychologically and socially) result in reduced fertility, but I believe it also robs people of their ability to be happy, because being without a family--or only having an empty family--is not how humans are supposed to be. I believe we cannot be happy without a good family base or at least a good "tribal" base. Money cannot replace this kind of basic human need, though we live our lives as though we think it can.

But again, knowing that something is wrong should not lead to an overthrow of the erroneously demonised capitalism, which in truth has given us so much. Everything that I have previously highlighted has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with intrusive ideological government, going right back from about 200 years. And that is a toxin that Jacinda Ardern, in her best of intentions, will only aggravate because she is an under-educated ideologist - not a social scientist or an economist.

The revolution we need is not the one Jacinda is thinking of. Her ideas--formed in her teenage years--have failed catastrophically wherever they have been tried, and will only turn New Zealand into another Venezuela. No thank you Jacinda - we can do better!
What we really need is a cultural revolution that marries the opportunities of modern technologies and new understandings provided by modern research, with a respect for the importance and functionality of older traditions. 

We also need to give government back to the people. But that, I believe, will only happen if we radically decentralise our big (giant, actually) government into small and highly autonomous units. Until then, your politicians will continue to be bought-and-paid-for nobodies parroting whatever line will keep them and their backers in business. Not a government by the people, for the people, but a government that manipulates rather than authentically representing people.

Here is my outline for Decentralised government.

Note: I don't want to create the impression that we should all try to create families because it's the path to happiness. That would be putting the cart before the horse. I think having kids can be a very bad idea of you don't truly want them. Once the damage is done, it's done. We need to look closer at the foundations that create our suppressed will in the first place - and start from there. 

CHAINSAW MONKEY - An Economic Love Story.

Andrew Atkin:

This story is the cure for socialism. Feel free to forward it to your young socialist friends.

Written by me, and produced and narrated by my brother, Richard.

In short:

The mistake in socialist thinking is the idea that rich people are mostly takers, not makers, of wealth.

The result is often that the nation excessively takes wealth from the wealth creators, via aggressive taxation on profits and even outright confiscation of property. In turn, the wealth creators reinvest their capital and expertise elsewhere, destroying and even reversing economic development in the nation that over-taxed them.

Fighting Domestic Violence - With An App

Andrew Atkin:

You pull out your cellphone, click the main button four times, and the bad guys know that whatever it is they're doing, at that moment, they're effectively doing it in front of the police - and being recorded in real time, online. That's a powerful deterrent.

So how do you police people in their private homes? You can't. Not directly anyway. But we can empower people to police each other, with a cellphone app built for self defense.

Let me model the system.

You touch an icon on your cellphone three times [an app called Civil Defense New Zealand, CDNZ] and it instantly turns on your location (GPS) and web data, and both front and back cameras with sound. The instant the app is running it streams low-quality video at 5 frames per-second to a database, with the video held on your personal account.

Every second the front camera uploads a picture of the user, included with the main video. Location, date, time, who, what, is all recorded as evidence. Because the video is being streamed, even if your camera is taken from you, by force, the video stream up to that point in time will already be uploaded, used as hard evidence of an incident as required.

All of this is done with just three pushes of a single icon. No need to think in a panic situation.

There should be three other functions included with the app. Another icon inside the app, pressed once, streams the video feed to the police directly and engages you with the police (video calling). This of course would only be used for when the threat is most serious. Otherwise the app is just a function for evidence collection.

Further, there should be icons that call an ambulance and fire service with the same functionality as that for the police.

Ideally this application should be built into all cellphones and be compulsory to have. People would have a private civil defense account to hold their evidential video and photo material.

The effect of having this app.

The overwhelming effect of this app is that it will enhance deterrence. If someone holds up a phone, tells a criminal that they're being recorded with real-time streaming (they will know), then the criminal will typically be very careful with their conduct from there on in - crudely, just like holding a gun to someone's head.

The criminal will know that grabbing the phone and throwing it away won't work, and they will also know that all you have to do is touch the police icon, and a policeman could be travelling to the scene immediately. In fact, if the technology is integrated with driverless car systems, the nearest police car can be activated to the GPS-triggered location in the instant, without any human moderation at all. 

Of course, with the video-stream, police could help to diffuse a situation at the moment it develops, remotely, through direct communications. Needless to say prevention is better than cleaning up a tragic mess, in any circumstance.

Put a "loaded cellphone" in everyone's hand and you've drastically expanded the police force, and for the trivial cost of the development of an app. We already have the hardware.

Domestic violence and serious child abuse.

Video material recorded from domestic violence incidents would probably be enormous in terms of quantity. The uncomfortable truth is that domestic violence and child abuse is a chronic and pervasive problem in New Zealand.

Regardless of how effective the app may prove to be as a deterrent, the police may have no choice but to limit their investigations and prosecutions to the most serious domestic abuse cases as resources will be limited. But this is a good thing. It would throw the reality of domestic violence out there for New Zealand society to see (or more specifically, to know about) at its true scale. The result may be a long overdue conversation on prevention that goes well beyond political grandstanding. But that's another story.

-Note, the app is also good for casual contracts and creating back-up evidence for all manner of things. It's extremely convenient as a general tool which should help us achieve public buy-in. People would have free access to their personal accounts for any use of this sort. However, people should not be allowed to publicly distribute personal video material without police authority or mutual agreement with the people who were recorded. Obviously there needs to be privacy controls.

Another advantage of the app--and having everyone except very young children owning a supporting account--is we can contact people instantly in case of a civil emergency, as this functionality would be integrated with the app (it would be wasteful not to do this). 

In fact, we can streamline it to the point where we can give a few seconds warning in even an earthquake event, using remote sensors on various geographical sights that can then instantly trigger an alert. Only a streamlined app can do this. If your GPS function is on, it can even alert people to any given threat based on exactly where they are. 

Conclusion:

The concept is cheap. The idea should be popular, especially for women, because it's simple and effective as a self-defense tool. A cellphone is with most people nearly all of the time. 

The app will not stop domestic violence altogether, but again the key value of this app is that it can function as a powerful deterrent. It could have a real impact on significantly reducing crime. Note also that young children can use it as well - it only takes a touch of an icon (+ three). We could actively train children to use the app at school.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Post notes:

1. China is putting everyone's face scan on a national database. This is good for facial recognition so the police can quickly identify  who they are dealing with in an emergency. The same goes for medical emergencies. New Zealand could consider developing a database like this as well.

2. Spotlight compression will heavily compress all video information except for the face, for efficient evidence collection and data storage. This can be easily integrated with the app. Most of the videos and photos can be recorded efficiently in black and white, as colour is irrelevant for security information.

3. The app can also be integrated with remote cameras for defense against theft. A remote camera can immediately feed to your phone, via WiFi then the internet, and then you can call the police via a theft Icon and record all information. Same seamless system.

4. Observe the included link to show how technology can further reduce all kinds of crime.

Zero Crime Cities:

5. Over time, the option of direct defense can be adapted to new cellphones. 

Some cellphone lights can be almost blinding on their own, if they're close enough and powerful. A bank of 10 powerful LED lights on a cellphone, all specifically focused narrowly for the face, could easily blind a threat for 10 seconds or more. That is a long period of time to get out of harms way in an emergency. It could prove to be a very effective debilitator.

However it might be a good idea to engineer the light so that it can only be activated once the police-alert has been activated within the app, to ensure that the light is not maliciously or foolishly abused.

6. Monitoring convicts:

Another thing we can do is monitor criminals with their cellphones. For example, if a rape is reported, then a text-alert can be automatically sent to all convicted rapists in New Zealand, who can then snapshot their location as a selfie through the app. This is a great way to shrink a suspect list and protect convicts from false accusations, and create more deterrence and trust.

In fact we can use this app to systematically monitor all serious offenders, forever on. 

I myself would go further to this end. I believe violent offenders should have a chip surgically implanted in their thigh, linking their cellphone to their body, to maintain a permanent streaming location record. If that sounds inhumane to you (yes, we do this with animals too) then think of how the convict might like it. It means an early release and the ability to then find gainful employment, because the app would help to do what their employer would otherwise have to do (keep a constant eye on the questionable staff member). Installing the chip is a harmless operation under a local anaesthetic.

Locking someone in a concrete box for years is incomparably more inhumane, in my view.

7. Once a video or pic is captured and uploaded, the user can give authority for the specific recorded media to be accessed by the police, via a police search. So rather than actively reporting a potential problem, the individual can simply choose to create a record, automatically accessible to the police's search function. This would be much more efficient for police, and save the user the fuss of contacting the police for a mere potential problem. 

Organising a civilian army:

We can organise the app so that users can list their potential contributions for volunteer work, for an emergency situation.

Just like when you list yourself as 'donor' on your drivers licence, you could also list other things, like your skills or assets that may be available in any given class of emergency. If a disaster of sorts happens, and you are available in the area, then you may be requested to assist.

For example, if a person has a nasty accident close to where you are (GPS will tell the system) and they need immediate help, and you are listed as a nurse, then you could get an instant alert via the app requesting your assistance. (You would probably receive a government reward for your help in this example).

A more dramatic example, if the nation had a great-depression level economic collapse, and the food supply was under threat, then you might be called on to transport food in your van to where it's needed, or help out on a farm, etc. A voluntary workforce that's easily organised can get around the devastating effects of an economic/monetary collapse, where distorted price-signals can lead to an essential production collapse.

Or, if a close-by town gets flooded-out you could supply immediate relief shelter, etc.