About Me

This page is about me, Enigma. Long time readers know what to expect from me; those who have been on boards that I comment on know a bit about me. If you just happened to stumble upon this blog, though, you probably don't know much about me. So here's where I tell you exactly what you can expect out of this blog.

I am an extreme liberal secular humanist technoprogressive technosocialist abolitionist post-genderist. That's a lot of 'ists', but in the simplest terms, they mean the following:

Liberal: I rarely define myself as a liberal. To me, a liberal seems to be an individual who doesn't have what it takes to stand up to loud and noisy conservatives, who gets wrapped up in cultural relativism and overlooks that human rights are universal for a reason. A liberal is someone who gets caught up in guilt over racism and white/male/ablist/cis-gendered privilege and rather than doing something about it - even if it is just blogging - will sit and feel bad. A liberal is a person who has very good ideas (usually) about the way the world should work, but lacks the floor to implement them. Most importantly, "liberal" means "conservative" in ... everywhere else but America. That last one is why you will rarely see me define myself as liberal. I am left-leaning when I need that label, but I think calling myself everything else helps further define who I am. It should be stated as a liberal I am intolerant of very few things, but one of them is intolerance. To be tolerant of intolerance is to be a moral coward, afraid to take a stand against evil. In short, I rarely call myself a liberal because libs are too moderate.

Secular Humanist: I am an atheist, but I don't like defining myself with that term. I adopted humanism as my belief system shortly after I became an atheist; the 'secular' element is there because, while I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-religion in government, and believe that the dividing line between church and state should be very clear, very loud, and anyone stupid enough to doubt there is one should be laughed off the planet. A "state church" is an abomination, I don't care what form it takes. Using "Jesus" as a means to win support should be illegal - even mentioning God in the context of trying to garner votes should get you disqualified from any kind of political office. I have no problem with people worshiping a god or whatever they want to worship, just like I have no problem with people defining their gender. My problem is when society tries to define it, or when the privileged in society try to use society as a tool to define it according to their definitions. To this I say "no," and will oppose at every turn - this includes any form of 'ceremonial deism,' which is a joke and should offend everyone from believers to atheists and back again.

Technoprogressive: Being a technoprogressive means that I'm progressive about new technologies. I encourage and am encouraged by new technological developments. I view death as a disease that can be treated and stopped, just like cancer. I advocate open-source technologies, and believe that the government needs to do more research in the realms of genetic engineering and genetic manipulations. These technologies should be open to the people, for them to manipulate and them to design. Accusations of "playing God" and "being arrogant" will be taken as compliments.

Technosocialism: I am a dyed-in-the-wool socialist. I believe that the free markets should have the shit regulated out of them, that insurance companies and banks do not need to be private, for-profit industries, that there should be a progressive tax according to income, that people should have a firm safety net to fall into should they need it, and that income equality directly relates to upward social mobility. Government planning is necessary to regulate the meritocracy and keep doors open. The technological element of that is similar to being a technoprogressive, but is the use of technology to ensure open transparency of the government and of large private institutions through sousviellance and open freedom of information. Corporate personhood is a lie, and the government should have the power to dismantle corporations should they step out of line, form trusts, or otherwise break the law. I am very anti-corporation, and would love to see large corporations busted down to small and local businesses, and a network of small, independent businesses managed through a public information infrastructure that can trade information and buy and purchase goods from one another. I tend to be very hostile towards forms of libertarianism and towards capitalism in general because of this and my other beliefs.

Abolitionism is the transhumanist current that advocates a reduction in the net-pain in society. Some abolitionists will advocate the total eradication of pain; I am not one of them. I do believe that human life could be a lot better, and that's the approach that I take. To this end, I am a firm believer in things like animal uplifting, which takes animals that are close to sapience, and "bumping them up" the rest of the way, through the application of genetics, nootropics, medical surgery, and pharming technologies. I believe women should utterly and completely control their own fertility; birth control and plan b are not enough. I advocate technologies that allows the woman to decide when she wants to have a child and not before; no pill, no need to worry about whether or not she'll get pregnant, none of it. It's at her command, and nobody else's. I believe in the eradication of diseases; removing everything from cancer to the common cold in the same way that we destroyed Smallpox. I believe in universal healthcare - total universal healthcare, which includes dental insurance and eye insurance as well, and covers all elective surgeries - so everyone has access to these technologies, not just the wealthy.

Post-genderism: Gender is one one hand a societal construct, and on the other hand, there's likely a biological component to it. Humans have four or five genders; male, female, both, neither, and fluid are the ones that spring to my mind. I'm genderfluid, which means I identify as either male or female depending upon how I feel at the time. I will answer to either male or female pronouns, but not neuter. Please, that frustrates the hell out of me. Post-genderism is not about removing the biological component of gender. It's about removing the societal component of it. As is, society dictates your gender. It tells you want you can and can't do, and you fit neatly in one of two categories. If you don't, tough shit. To this extent, I am anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia. I believe in getting the society out of gender definition, so gender definition, and how you define yourself, become purely up to you. It's your life, it's your choice. I also advocate technologies that make sex reassignment surgery easier to undertake.

There are things you can expect from me and positions I will take. I usually do not define myself as a patriot because I couldn't give a rat's ass about nationalism. I do suffer from culture cringe and while I live in the United States, I live in the rust belt, so it's sorta like living in a developing nation. I can be mean and rude, and I use both, along with irony, impunity, and the truth as weapons against liars. I will not tackle a problem without first having a solution to it, first and I don't complain without having a way to fix it. My ideology as outlined above is libel to change; hell, it took me 26 years to get to this point, who knows where I'll be in another 26 years (hopefully immortal and in a body that I'm more comfortable with)? However, this is where I stand now. And this is the lens through which I approach my posts.