I am interested in two things:
- How the world works
- How we can make it better
My mission is to develop a deep understanding of how our world works — economically, politically, historically — and write to make it common knowledge.
I write wanting to address the problems in the world that keep us trapped in cycles of suffering.
I want to write a better world.
I am a Vegan, Militant Atheist and a Socialist.
On Veganism
I think the most suffering in the world exists in our factory farms. We're lucky that hell isn't a real place, but in our idiocy we've gone and created facilities very much like a hell.
This is an excerpt from my 2019 piece: The Logic of Not Eating Meat
What is the likelihood that an operation that seeks to maximise profits will also maximise the well-being of the animals?
What is the likelihood that an operation that seeks to maximise profits will also maximise the well-being of the animals?
The fact of the matter is that we don’t even try to give them good lives. Most factory-farmed animals lead lives that we would not even deem tolerable. We just keep them alive until we can kill them for their flesh.
Hens are kept in battery cages with almost no room to move throughout their entire lives. There can be up to twenty chickens in a single square-metre, and their beaks are often trimmed to prevent them from pecking one another out of stress.
Male chicks are sent to a grinder alive as they will not grow up to be hens.
Pigs are kept in enclosed spaces, where they do not even have the space to move or even turn around for most of their lives. Piglets have their teeth clipped to prevent them from biting one another out of frustration at living so tightly packed together, amid their own waste. Their tails are often also cut off to prevent them from being bitten — a procedure almost certainly carried out without the use of painkillers.
Shortly after birth, calves are separated from their mothers, causing emotional distress for both. Cattle raised for dairy are often kept in a perpetual state of pregnancy to optimise milk yields, while those raised for beef are often branded, castrated and may even have their horns removed.
Within their first year, the cows are moved from the pasture to crowded feedlots where they are fattened for slaughter. The typical slaughter age for beef cattle is eighteen months, and for dairy cattle, it is four years. The natural lifespan of a cow is twenty years.
Arguably the most innocent beings on the planet are being tortured, mutilated and murdered on a regular basis.
Would you wish suffering of this magnitude upon your worst enemy? Is this really okay with you?
I believe that barring serious health issues everyone should be vegan, and if not vegan as close to vegan as they can.
On Militant Atheism
There is no god. There is no soul. There is no heaven or hell. There is no supernatural realm to our lives. The position of the stars at the moment we were born does not say anything deep or meaningful about our lives. I believe that the truth claims of all the world's major religions about how the world was created, our role in the universe and what happens to us after death as nonsense.
When I say Militant Atheism, what I mean is simply that, I don't simply view belief in a god and religion as a whole as untrue but actively harmful. It means I believe that a world in which we dropped it would be a better place.
Seeing the world as it actually is, is always better.
Karl Marx puts it beautifully:
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower."
I delve deeper into my atheism in my 2018 piece: Musings against god
I intend to write more on the matter.
On Socialism
I'll write more on this later, for the time being check out:
- This Video: Socialism for Absolute Beginners (~25 minutes) by Second Thought
- This Playlist: Socialism 101 by Marxism Today.
Want to use any of my work?
All my work is marked with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
Essentially, you may do as you like with anything on this site as long as you follow two rules:
- You give credit where it is due
- You share your work similarly to mine
If you would like to use anything I have written for a strictly commercial or otherwise closed-source project, please send me an email.
I'm in the process of changing what I'm about.
In the past, my primary interests have been moral philosophy, meditation, spirituality and epistemology.
I want to write more about politics, economics, history and how the world works.