History tells of how the ancient Romans began to offer their people entertainment, as a way to gain popularity and thereby buy their votes in elections.

The Roman poet Juvenal called this phenomenon "bread and circuses," meaning that as long as the senators provided the mass with the essentials (bread) for human survival and gave them entertainment (circuses) to distract them from more important things in life, the clever leaders in power could manipulate and use the people for their own selfish ends, without no one ever noticing it.

Even though modern democracy says we're all capable of making decisions for a country, reality tells us a different story. As long as people have a work and a family, are able to pay their bills and watch TV, the rest of the outside world matters little. Their concerns are always primarily those that relate to their own immediate existence, and that is also how they vote in elections.

When the Romans manipulated people with "bread and circuses," they tried to pacify the people with things they knew would satisfy their basic urges...

Read the Rest Here: Bread and Circuses

Literate people need something to read, and it pays, so we get a series of books like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel to try to summarize history into a simple thesis. This enables us to look at it, find a nifty mental container for the horror and struggle, and then go back to some "progressive" sense of denying the obvious. Diamond isn't new; for thousands of years, people like Buddha and Jesus Christ and Robespierre have been trying to ultra-simplify the obvious.

Disturbingly, these histories don't make us happier. They tell us to keep plodding ahead along a moral path, using symbolic containers and easy explanations buried in tens of thousands of words of "proof," even though that path correlates closely to the path toward a more violent (frustrated), corrupt (truth-avoidant), commercialized (leaderless), vapid (polite lowest common denominator) and cheesy (pandering) way of life. It's a pathology that shows up in some extremist groups as well, but with the assent of the mainstream, it is considered sane.

Read More: A History of Greatness

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During the two years that these items were on our site, we received no complaints from anyone who stopped by to take a look. In fact, visitors asked if there might be a poster available of our parody (we answered in the negative) and some even expressed to us that they thought it a pity that Apple Computer itself had not had the testicular fortitude to have used the image of American religious pioneer Anton Szandor LaVey in their actual campaign.

We did receive one note of complaint, not from a visitor to our site but from a law firm representing Apple computer, claiming trademark infringement. We replied in detail, explaining the above, and we did not hear back from them for over a year. We recently received an e-mail, a more complete fax transmission, as well as a hard copy via snail-mail from the law firm Arent Fox with a new complaint, not quite identical to the earlier mail received from a different law firm. We have below reproduced our reply that was sent as a faxed document and it quotes the pertinent text from their complaint.

http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Apple.html

2600/HAQR Meeting: Friday, July 6 in Houston, Texas

Friday, July 6, 2007 from 6 PM - 9PM
Ninfa's Express Takeout/Galleria IV, Houston, TX

Directions: Take 610 S and exit Westheimer. Take Westheimer to Post Oak and turn left. Take Post Oak to your second light, which is Hidalgo, and turn right. Take Hidalgo past the light to your first right; immediately take your first left turn into the parking garage. Go to the second level and enter in the door by the elevators. Ninfa's is on your immediate right after you enter.

mall map

About 2600

An organization for hobbyists, security professionals, hackers and unorthodox power users, 2600 brings together those who use computers without fear of The Rules.

2600
2600 Houston

About HAQR

The Houston Area Quorum for Recidivism (HAQR) devotes itself to deontological, postmoral thinking in preparation for the world after modern society fails.

HAQR

Conservatism is the political ideology that claims we need to preserve ("conserve") traditional values within culture and society at large. For many people, especially among the elderly, it has become popular to "resist" the problems with modern society, by calling themselves conservatives. The ideology can therefore in many ways be seen as a reaction against modern liberalism: it's not against modernity itself, but critical of modern values and modern ways of seeing things.

Many people buy into conservatism because it seems like a "safe" way to both defend the traditional, while at the same time working for a modern development in society. Herein lies the problem: it lacks a fundamental political platform outside of "resisting" anything new. It's a reactionary confrontation with modern society, which criticizes but has nothing to neither uphold nor fight for. Its value system is derived from a system of opposites to what is being perceived as "modern."

Why Conservatism is Failing

I'm someone who believes society has become corrupt, and that we can fix it with an enlightened spirit, a better attitude toward politics, a green outlook and freedom. In my spare time, I listen to heavy metal music and hack on LINUX boxes for EXTREME POLITICS.