I am conservative, with a small c; I do not support any particular political party or religious movement. None of them inspire me, and I suspect that any party or religion that happened to do so would never come to power, or the reality of that party in power would horrify me. I believe that it is sensible to worship the Sun, because it is the source of all life on earth, and it will never answer back or complain, and it will always be there. If you want evidence of God's existence you won't find it. If you want evidence of the Sun's existence, it is there, in the sky. If you stare at the Sun it will blind you, even if you don't believe that it exists.
I believe that the government doesn't care whether you live or die; only that it remains in power. The government will lie, and cheat, and steal, and do everything in its power to ensure that it remains in power. It will send you to your death rather than lose face. I believe that, although the government may not actively try to kill certain people or groups of people, it would quite like it if they were to die. I believe that revolution, over time, becomes as stagnant as the thing it replaces; and that a continual series of violent revolutions would cause enormous suffering. In certain parts of the world it is unusual for human beings to die before old age. In this respect we are better off than animals, who do not live long enough to experience physical decay.
All forms of government, of organisation, they eventually fall apart. The good ones and the bad ones equally. The only way to protect an organisational system from corruption is for its members to adhere strictly to a set of instructions, such as a constitution or a holy book. But no matter how clear or well-written the instructions, people will interpret them in different ways, because everyone has a different point of view, everyone sees things differently. If total stasis was achieved, the organisation would become adrift from time. The rest of the world would carry on, and become more advanced, and it would overwhelm and destroy the static organisation. This was the fate of primitive peoples in the 20th century. They achieved a kind of balance, and they were destroyed. It is impossible to preserve an idea or set of ideas for the future, unless that idea could somehow achieve global domination, but it would still fall apart from within. The only way to survive is to adapt and change - but that is not really survival, because over time the mutations will become unrecognisable from their ancestors.
I believe that we eventually tend to become the things we hate, if we spend too long hating, if we hate too hard. I believe that quite a lot of people enjoy causing pain, of having and abusing power over others. I believe that there is no universal justice, and that the wicked are not punished in the afterlife. If there is to be justice, it must be created here on Earth by you and I. I do not believe in good and evil. Different cultures have different moral standards, and who is right? The most mighty is right, but the giants of today will not be giants forever. They were not giants in the past, and everything changes.
I believe that discussion, whether on the internet or in real life, tends to revolve around an idealistic view of the word. I believe it is better to discuss the world as it is, in a practical sense, and I believe that it is better to act than to talk. In a practical sense, might makes right. The only thing that matters is the mightiest viewpoint, and the only way to be mighty is with force. Much more can be achieved with physical force, or the credible threat of physical force, than with words.
I have no time for ignorant fools, liars, con-men, poseurs, or bastards. I respect people who are good and sincere. I respect people who believe what they say, even though I might disagree with what they say. I can respect someone and wish them and their point of view dead at the same time.
I believe that you should not enter an argument with a closed mind; but there is a difference between having an open mind and being a gullible fool. Be proud of your opinions and back them up, but do so from a position of righteousness, rather than simply being a bully. If you apologise or back down or act defensive, people will not respect you, but they will respect you less if you continue to defend nonsense. People respect strength, whether it is the physical strength of a strong man or the moral strength of a courageous man; but people will only respect that strength if there is wisdom behind it, or the illusion of depth and substance.
I do not believe that people should have to live in fear and misery. I believe that it is as bad to be oppressed by criminals as it is by the government. There is nothing noble in being poor or stupid. There is nothing noble about the poor and the stupid. There is nothing noble in prostrating oneself before criminals. But there is no sense in upholding an insane or unpopular law. The law must come from the people, otherwise it is an alien virus from outer space.
I believe in the right to defend oneself, one's home, and one's family. My greatest wish is to die peacefully of old age in my own bed in my own house after having at least enjoyed myself. I do not want to die on a hospital trolley in a corridor with strangers. I do not believe it is noble to suffer; I believe it is stupid. I believe that some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth fighting against.
I believe you should question people, question the people doing the questioning, question yourself. Question your questions.
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I came upon Everything2 almost five years ago now; it had moved from Everything1 some months previously. I was initially unimpressed, because I assumed the project was trying to build a proper encyclopaedia, along the lines of Wikipedia, which was in a formative stage at the time. Wikipedia seems to have brain-drained most of Everything2's casual writers, leaving an odd hardcore of two dozen or so people who are presumably writing for each other or who have not yet discovered Progess Quest. And I am one of them. It pleases me that I have outlasted some of the early stars of Everything2. One day I will outlast you all, and I will be the evil red robot from Disney's The Black Hole, standing alone as ruler of hell on a burning landscape of skulls. And my dream will be a reality.
Dot dot dot. In this respect Everything2 has been a tremendous failure, compounded by the fact that - unlike Wikipedia - it is not mirrored, it is not copyright-free, and it is not easily commercialised. When I look at the number of Everything2 users online at any given moment it seems to be a quarter of what it was when I joined Everything2. Perhaps Everything2 is a huge success in America, which operates on a different time zone to me.
Nonetheless I believe that the best factual articles on Everything2 are better than Wikipedia's equivalents - I didn't say that Wikipedia was any good, only that it was more successful - and furthermore Wikipedia doesn't have worthwhile stuff such as Japanese puns that are not funny but at least are puns. And I am not being sarcastic when I praise that page. It is funny and sweet. I much prefer it to the nightmarish, childist, trivial, humourless shit that is Wikipedia's coverage of Japanese animation or Ashlee Fucking Simpson.
I have made very few friends on Everything2. I am used to this by now. If you have read all of the above screed - well done! - you probably understand why. I am driven by a mixture of ingratitude, superiority, hatefulness and pure blind hatred. I am an only child. I was born to poor parents and I grew up poor and I remain poor, but paradoxially I can read, and I do read. I have even read proper books, complicated ones with long words, by authors whose entries on Wikipedia are minuscule compared to the nightmarish, childist, trivial, humourless shit that is Wikipedia's coverage of Japanese animation or Ashlee Fucking Simpson. And yes, I can spell "minuscule" without having to look it up. You thought I was going to look it up. I did not. Minuscule. Miniscule. I can tell the difference.
I have met and worked for a lot of patronising arseholes in my time. Smiling patronising arseholes and ignorant fuck-heads and I would dearly love to watch them die. It irritates me that I am not more successful than I am. At the same time I realise that I am not nearly as clever or competent as I imagine myself to be, and that I am probably as successful as I deserve. And this irritates me even more. I want to break the chain. I would like to wipe the smiles off people's faces, but I am lazy. That is my weakness, and it will kill me. I do not have a driving force.
There is a great gulf between you and I. I do not envy your expensive clothes. You do not think of them as expensive but they are. I do however envy the financial security that allows you to buy expensive clothes, and show them to your friends, and strangers on the internet who read your blog. And I hate you for being more successful than me. I would like to cut you open and demonstrate to passers-by that, underneath the clothes, we are all equal. I know that the newspapers would spin me as the villain and you would become the blameless victim, and eventually you would be buried in an expensive grave whereas I would be cremated and dumped in a bin. And that makes me hate you more.
I love it when there are disasters on the news, because it means that people like yourself have died. I find disasters exciting. I am disappointed when the death toll is low. When I read about famous people dying of cancer, that makes me happy. When I read about old people being murdered in their homes, it also makes me happy, because the old people of today were the bastards of yesterday, and the people I hate today will one day be old. They will spend their final days in bed, begging people to help them. Perhaps this is how I rationalise and deal with the inevitability of my own death. I like it when people suffer, and feel pain; they probably deserved it.