Atheism and Rap

Some note I had written back in the day compiling all the religious references from some of my favourite rap songs.
 I'll go put a rhyme to reason,
Coz Nietzche said 'God is dead' & I believe him.
Sadistik - Playing God.

I searched for truth since my youth,
went to church since birth,
But it wasn't worth the loot that I was paying.
GZA - B.I.B.L.E

Fuck the Bible! Get on your knees & praise my rifle.
Dead Prez -Assassination,

No respect for the gods, I'll kill Allah;
 hang Christ on the spikes of the Sinner's cross.
DZK - Treachorous Abbott.

God's love is like a conjugal visit,
Coz u just get fucked while u locked in a prison.
Sadistik - Absolution.

I believe man made God out of ignorance  fear,
If God made man, then why the hell did he put us here,
I thought he was supposed to be the all-loving,
The same God who let Hitler put the Jews in the oven.
Dead Prez - Propaganda.

I'm the strong hold around your neck that never lets u breathe, Stronger than the fake image of God in which u believe in.
Immortal Technique.

Fuck your Crucifix, Your religion  its uselessness.
Jedi Mind Tricks.

Gotta lose my religion just to see the light,
Gotta lose my religion just to see what's right.
L-Universe - Losing my Religion.

Religion is like a prison for the seekers of wisdom.
Killah Priest - One Step.

Am tired of this shit,
Coz each every single day ,
I kneel down and I pray,
Then I wish,
To a false God that even forgot that I exist.
Helix C - Lunch Break.

A wise man once told me,
Nothing is holy.
Dead Prez - Too Smart.

I stay ready for combat,
While the ignorant praying and wondering where their God at.
JMT - Philosophy of Horror.

If your God loves you, hope you make him use a condom.
Greydon Square - Stockholm Syndrome.

Wè don't worship Christ, we worship the thieves crucified next to him.
China XL - Nunca.

Thou shall not believe in bullshit.
Greydon Square - Judge Me.

I'm a step above God my apostles cheer me.
AOTP - Dump The Clip.

Calling on his name and screaming hallelluia,
When he hardly knew ya, that's how the Devil fooled ya.
GZA - B.I.B.L.E.

I know I haven't been walking a humble path,
I know I cursed at your name and then laughed,
 though I found it inane to bend calf,
The servitude of grovelling framed as pained task.
El-P - Flyentology.

The devil exists only coz of your belief in him,
Same goes for the other guy.
Sage Francis - Sun v Moon.

Someday I'll form an opinion,
Either stand up to God or fall for religion.
Sadistik - Playing God.

Robert Pirsig - Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This book has been on my reading list since high school. Finally got around to reading it and these are the notes I took.
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- Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

- a thing that exists here because everything else does not and can be noticed because other things are absent.

- Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as education.

- The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.''

- Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached.

- And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all.

- Perhaps his aloneness was the result of his intelligence. Perhaps it was the cause. But the two were always together. An uncanny solitary intelligence.

- But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.

- The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple,

indeterminate, relative ones.

He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.

- ``I think maybe it's because every teacher tends to grade up students who resemble him the most. If your own writing shows neat penmanship you regard that more important in a student than if it doesn't. If you use big words you're going to like students who write with big words.''

- You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

- To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged.

- The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had  been built into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said, ``If you don't whip me, I won't work.''

- Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not.

- To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides.

- When you are trained to despise ``just what you like'' then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others...a good slave. When you learn not to do ``just what you like'' then the System loves you.

- technology is ... not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.

- The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.

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END

Pirsig goes on quite a philosophical bender but the book is still an amazing read.

Gleanings

I've decided to be posting notes that I make from any books that I've been reading. Don't know about the legality of it (the fact that I'm doing law is irrelevant here. Copyright law is incomprehensible) but I'll reference to the author. Again, none of these ideas are mine.
Will start by posting books I've read before.

Jeremiadus

"Finance is about money. Politics is about power. Neither can exist without the other. Together, they make a mockery of democracy. But democracy cannot exist without both."

"Taleb doesn’t say this, but I will. I propose that the fundamental problem with both finance and politics is that no one reads. And to put a finer point on the proposition, risk would not scale inappropriately if people did read. And to extend this argument even further, technology does a lot to explain this absence of reading. Not just technology viewed as the impact of computers and cell phones and now tablets in our work lives (and personal lives). But technology as a kind of ray gun that annihilates ideas and thought. So we should read and cherish books as physical objects, not as lifeless digital decompressors of meaning."

Interesting blog post.  Don't agree with his beliefs but I'm wowed by his analysis of the current economic system. Plus I'm an ardent fan of NNT and any comprehensible analysis and extrapolation of his ideas is definitely a good read. That and the LOTR references.
http://jeremiadus.com/2011/12/18/scaling-risk-and-political-decline-or-the-triumph-of-the-dark-lord-sauron/

Pull Ups

You know you're obsessed with fitness when you want to hang off everything in sight and do some pull ups on it.
Say whatever you will, I think the pull up is the best strength exercise for your upper body. But it can be a humbling experience for most gym rats who think just coz they can row a bar loaded with plates, then they should be able to kill it on the pull up bar. I just managed to get to a PB of 14 and I'm beaming. And maybe the last 2 don't count coz I barely got my head over the bar but who care? 12 is still impressive from where I'm coming from.
Trying to get to a muscle up and its the most frustrating thing ever. For those who don't know what a muscle up is, its when you complete the pull up motion by pushing your body above the bar and transitioning into a dip.
Not as easy as it sounds. After reading a million web tutorials and watching a bunch of videos, I'm still struggling to get above the bar. Still at the first step of my 4 step progression and progress ain't happening.
Sooner. Later. Whenever. For now, my pull ups will do. Maybe when I'm able to do 5 reps with a 20 kilo plate..... Maybe it gets easier.

Life Is About Shattering Illusions

Life  is about the dissipation(?) of illusions. You spend half your time here learning stuff and the other half realizing that most of it is wrong. Or just plain stupid. Anything that they teach to you at a young age is probably BS and they teach it to you when young coz they know you'd never believe the same stuff if they waited till your bullshit detector starts working.

Religion.... Really? Teach kids at a young age that there is a huge crock of shit in the sky and tell them that they should never question it existence and they'll believe you. After all orthodoxy is not thinking - not needing to think (1984 - George Orwell). If you've never changed your beliefs at least once in your life, then you've never started to think.

Health

Fat makes you fat....Not! Sugar and an excess of carbs makes you fat. After reading Men's Health for years, it took just one peek at Gary Taube's book for me to realize that I've been had. Real fucking bad! Now I make sure to eat lotsa avocados, nuts and fish. And never felt better.

Education

Get into a good national school and a good university and you're set for life. I actually believed that going to law school will make me some rich lawyer and stuff. Not so sure now. There's no possible way that the number of law students churned out each year are all going to make it. Not even close. 

You end up rich if you were born in a well off family. Period. 

Work

Spend half your life preparing for it and the other half doing it so that you can enjoy some rest when you're old and ugly. Plan on spending my life taking mini retirements every year. A month off the drudgery of life to do something that's actually enjoyable. Tim Ferriss style. Success should be measured by the amount of time that you have to spend on yourself every year. 

Marriage

Marriage is an institution for feminizing men - Nassim Taleb

Spend enough time with a woman and you're start to realize how annoying they can get. Doesn't matter how pretty or curvy a woman is - there's always someone out there who's tired of taking her shit.

Just realized I had a blog.... At 3 in the morning, feverish and with thoughts of death not so far away.
Wonder where the enthusiasm went. Guess I'm back to blogging though. More as a distraction than anything else. Though this time, it'll be more about stuff that I learn and stuff that I've learnt in the past 23years of my life.
Lets see how this goes!