Tax Evasion is Not a Crime. Simply a Refusal to Share Wealth

Tax Evasion is Not a Crime. Simply a Refusal to Share Wealth

If aliens from outer space were to visit us today, there would be a lot of frenzy. It would be expected as such because it is an extraordinary event. But then if such alien visit has to happen regularly and supposing they're here to stay, what happens next is that people will get used to aliens. The alien event will no longer be as extraordinary as the first time.

When something is already going on for a long time, humans will tend become at ease with it. The thing will be treated just as normal and typical.

Same with taxation. At the early times of civilizations, the idea of taxation as imposed unto the members of a society must have been an alien idea to all people. That is why even a minuscule rate imposed could result into a revolt. But then as the society rolls on, taxation became one of the typical stuffs in daily social life. People contend that such system is necessary and that paying taxes is an absolute duty of every individual.  

Taxation begun as a repugnant idea. But it did not remain as such through times. People got used to taxation already for a long time and they now thought it is already normal. People, over time, got used to it. 

I Own a Part of Your Income and Property

I Own a Part of Your Income and Property

What would be MY justification that I own a part of my neighbor's property or income? 

What is the difference between a man who refuses to pay taxes and a man who demands it? It is said that the former, the tax evader, is an evil person. The latter, the tax collector, is considered a public servant. 

The tax evader smuggles goods to get around tax regulations. The tax evader refuses to disclose his actual earnings to minimize taxes. He is called evil. On the other hand, the tax collector demands taxes with a justification that such collection is to fund legislated compassion programs like reproductive health, and subsidized education, and food for the poor. The fund is for the needy. He is called saint. 

As long as society espouses the above idea, everybody must give-up ownership of a portion of his or her income and property to an internal revenue employee. No one must worry a bit because that internal revenue employee is a public servant who can be trusted. 

Anyway, I despise that kind of society. Taxation is a repulsive idea to me. I do not have the smallest belief that anyone has a right to somebody else's income and properties. 

Find Joy in Mocking Your Own Self

Find Joy in Mocking Your Own Self

The only person I can have all the fun while mocking on how horrible he is is me. This way I can have no pretensions. Honesty is assured. Guilt has no place. Fun is guaranteed. 

People forgot that the most enjoyable things one does are the things he does to himself. With this, there is a little room to lie on facts, to cheat on feelings, to deceive the impression and to make a fake laugh or cry. It is the dwelling with subconsciousness is the juice itself. 

Talking about other people's shortcomings might bring enjoyment but only in a fleeting moment. It doesn't last long. And worst, it only mirrors the worse side of our own self which we continue to be guilty about. It is superficial and it demeans worst not on other people but only unto own self.

The purest expression is the expression to one's own self. Spend the day looking inside and begin loving own self. Only then that it will render anyone the less ability to mock others.

Or maybe, instead of thinking about horrible things, think of all good things. Praise the courage of fellow human beings. Feel every spirit whose will to live is always palpable no matter what. 

I No-Mind

I No-Mind

Not most people join elections. But most of those who join elections have this idea in them that there must be a politician out there that could finally deliver them from misery. So in a diligent manner they choose men to lead them. But constantly fucked-up; hope always derailed. I usually get annoyed by this. 

But now there something that changed in me. For me, people are free to do what they want. They are free to choose or not to choose their man for office. I am no longer disturbed.

No use to blame anyone. Not these people. Not even the politicians. Watching them is somehow a relaxing entertainment for myself. It is not a surrender. It is called contentment. I feel glad of being free of the struggle to change anything. 

Change comes and it will. It is the course of life, a life with a magnitude of force I have nothing to fight against. The only thing I can do is to have the opportunity to recognize that it is just the way it is no matter what extent of opinions I might have about it.

So, people will continue choose to form or dis-form a government, a society, a connection among each other. But no longer my concern how they do it. But this does not mean I remain dead. In my own terms I still move, breath, eat, enjoy sex and money. But I do what I do just for the sake of doing it. Again, it is just the way things happen. And when the time comes I became itchy again at throwing stones to people, I will do it. But not with a mind that I should do it. I will do it for the sake of just doing it. 

It is not an attitude of not caring about people. It is not "I don't care". It is "I no-mind."

BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE. In short, I will still be found  being annoyed by what most people do, specially this mockery about joining elections! (I just no-mind being annoyed)

As God to the Mind, so as Soda to a Cave Dweller

As God to the Mind, so as Soda to a Cave Dweller

Isolated tribe

The question about the existence of God is not really a problem. It is just a subject of curiosity

If a city dweller will asks an isolated Amazon tribesman how a Cocacola tastes like, the former would look stupider than the latter. But what really happens is that the dweller's curiosity will be aroused. Haven't heard of that shit. Haven't aware of it in his whole life. The city dweller must have brought one for that man. And his curiosity will be satisfied.

The question about the existence of God fires-up curiosity too in a larger scale. It may take a whole life to live with that curiosity and that curiosity becoming a burden and struggle in itself in finding the answer. Because there would be no one bringing an answer like that city dweller. And then suddenly you stumble upon the hint of the answer that you shouldn't have come across that question at the first place. Aha!

And then you surrender that you just can't do anything about it. And there you go, you already found the answer.

An Atheist, a Christian and a Monk

An Atheist, a Christian and a Monk

An atheist, a Christian and a monk were heard conversing with each other.

The atheist insisted to the two that there is no God in which the Christian had to protest against everytime. But the monk did not speak much and he let the two as they did most of the talking.

Everytime the Christian uttered the word God, he pointed up is finger up to the sky in which the atheist would chuckle everytime because he really believes there is no God up there and that the Christian was acting irrational. He said to the Christian, "how can you be so sure that God is up there where in fact this planet is oblate spheroid! It is not flat."

The monk couldn't help himself and he chuckled too. The atheist had a point. A man in the north pole and another in the south pole would point their fingers in opposite directions. This very fact, the atheist thought, the Christian had a hard time getting. On the other hand the Christian had a point too. The only plausible answer to the question of existence is to insist that there must be someone who started everything. Big bang must not have been a cause-less fart.

As the debate goes on, all the monk could do was to chuckle and laugh. He had a zero intellectual contribution to the subject the other two were so sweating about. Finally, the other two were annoyed. And they asked the monk about God. The atheist, "hey, skinhead, will you side with me?" And the Christian asked, "what is God to you?"

The monk pointed his fingers on them. And when a dog was just passing by, he pointed his finger on the dog too. The other two continued on their debate instead. They both thought that the monk is much more irrational than them. 

The E Question

The E Question

Too many questions. Countless. But there is only one which says it all: The E Question. Yes, the Existence Question. It only morphed into a multitude of forms, appeal and relevance. But they have the same root of itch. 

What am I doing here? 

Who am I?

Who are you? 

Where did I come from?

How did all things begin?

...and a lot more....

The question about existence comes in various ways. These questions basically ask the same thing, or express the same problem and expect to get the same answer. The answer being sought is hoped to finally end all questions. There is no bug as great as that elusive answer.

The Nature of Sacrifice along the Path to Happiness

The Nature of Sacrifice along the Path to Happiness

Fact: each man wants to be happy. No man has ever planned to be sadder each moment.  No one ever walks towards being a lesser happy each day. No one ever prepare for tomorrow with bitter tears as the goal. All actions are for the intent to be happy.

How about those men who take the bullet for others; those who make sacrifices? How would that qualify as an action towards happiness? Does that not contradict the idea that each man intend to be happy?

There is a simple answer to that. The question presupposes a false dilemma.

1.       Sacrifice is not unhappiness. It is not misery. Sacrifice is not synonymous with sadness.

2.       Happiness is an end. While sacrifice is a means. It is just one of the means to the end.

Sacrifice is not something that takes away happiness. Rather it is a way with hope to attain or reinforce happiness. Much like when a merchant who needs to give-up something he owns in an anticipation that at the other side of the bargain is a package of more happiness. Sacrifice is an important undertaking towards happiness.   Sacrifice, though implying burden on the one making a sacrifice, simply doesn’t contradict a man’s want to be happy.  

MonkeySocietyblog: What is MonkeySociety?

MonkeySocietyblog: What is MonkeySociety?

MonkeySocietyblog is an attempt to spread the message of individual liberty using the kind of spirituality the Buddha had taught people in ages.

MonkeySociety is a metaphor for a backward-thinking society. The term "backward thinking society" is a vague idea. There is no clear calibration from where the "backward" thing can be seen to begin. But there is an unwritten rule for it I think. A rule that can't be well described and expected not to be agreed upon by all men. It means only one thing and that is it uniquely depends on the person making such evaluation. In my case, it is I who holds the idea how backward my society is. In my viewpoint shall reside the basis of judgment when to call my society a backward society or in this blog's theme, a MonkeySociety.

Much of what's to be said in this blog is just an image of me and not of anyone else. Though it may appear  MonkeySociety is a group of people I wish myself not to be associated with, the paradox would be it is myself that is being described in all of its subtlety.

Why Socialism Naturally Appeals to Humans

Why Socialism Naturally Appeals to Humans

The common thing between Socialism and Anarchism is that they are both Utopian. These two ideologies talk about societies that are hypothetical, a form of society that can be attained only in theory. And along with these two social theories are the means by which men tried to utilize to attain what these ideologies represent. Unfortunately, what is happening is that every time men would try to push for it, the means to attain it collapses in chaos and the goal is always left far from reach. 

However, though the two share the same characteristic (both are unattainable), they differ on the means by which they are tried to be achieved. Socialism has this notion that a concentration of power to a few individuals or groups would bring the goal. On the other hand, Anarchism says that the goal can only be attained if the concentration of power is dissolved.

Destiny or Choice. Fuck It.

Destiny or Choice. Fuck It.

Much talk had been done about which is which. Destiny or Choice. I am no longer inclined to regurgitate the already expended thoughts of many dead intellectuals only to satisfy no one, even myself.  What I am more interested in is to make a way to arrest further commentaries about which of the two does really matter. Kicking the can down the road is no longer an option. If I would delay the matter, I am only engaging my valuable neural signals to already non-profitable, non-spiritually enriching nonsense of the mind. Yeah, I must accept that in order to do it, I am still using the mind yet paradoxically I am not.

So which is which? My answer is neither of the two. I have one word to describe the seemingly uncombinable thinly thick repulsive membranes of the two concepts. The two are like cousins allergic to each other but  I will smack them together tightly. I would turn those illusory rigid and discrete boundaries  of the two pesky concepts into a colloidal mixture until there is no more telling which one belong to either. As I said there is one word that can do that. When made to take side, I say fuck it. I simply call it STYLE.

But Who Will Build The Roads?

But Who Will Build The Roads?

A popular socialist contention against people who want a lesser government (eg libertarians) and anarchists is: "Who will build the roads?" implying mainly that it is ONLY government that can build roads and thus government is necessary. The question seems comical yet holds a philosophical essence as to the nature and role of government in society.

A simple answer to this is: "Who built the first foot tracks during the early times?". Certainly not government but people out of the natural necessity to do so. 

But why early people did not build roads during those times? The answer is that there is no reason for them to build something that is not yet required by the need to have it. Technology and roads go together. When technology advances, the roads gets wider because it is necessary to be so. The invention of wheels made foot tracks to be widened. The invention of cars need widened foot tracks to be paved.

So who will build roads? The answer is those who feel there is a need for it.

What Came First? Chicken or Egg

What Came First? Chicken or Egg

There is no doubt. The problem about existence or the problem of origin of everything can be clamped down into one of the simplest questions of all time: which one came first, chicken or egg? 

Stalemate is the current status of the matter . The unyielding egg camp is yet to yield to the equally unyielding chicken camp. And with the rate by which the intellectual battle goes on, it is sad to say that the future of the discourse is a dead end. The fate of the case in hand will be sealed without satisfaction.

But there is a way out: Question the question. Doubt the question. Away from the usual expectation that an answer can be found to satisfy every question, or every question is expected to yield an answer, a new approach must be introduced if men are that sincere to find the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of existence. The E-question, or existence question, must be dealt with not in a manner like when one needs trivial answers to trivial questions.

Why Safety Through Gun Registration is Absurd

Why Safety Through Gun Registration is Absurd

As a believer of Austrian free-market economics, it is my belief that the main purpose of registration [of any property] is to address the inherent problem brought by economic scarcity of goods. It is to establish who owns what. Registration is an issue related to private property. May it be real estate, cars, business or guns.

Gun registration is never been peculiar with any other property in society. The registration of it must only be a matter of economic principle. And matters concerning safety is of secondary concern, or better yet not relevant at all.

Registered or not, gun can always be used as a means to harm others. So as cars, registered or not; driver with or without license, can cause harm to others if one intends to do so [or when an accident occurs]. Registration never change the intent to harm if such intent exists and pursued.

When people use guns to kill or harm anyone, they did not actually chose guns. What they did was have the easiest means available for them carry out their intent. At early times when metallurgy doesn't yet exist, the easiest means to kill anyone is rope, a hard piece of wood, stones etc. and not guns (obviously because gun was yet to exist).

When safety is the issue, gun registration hardly matters. If safety is the main concern, why not push for a system that maximizes every citizen's chance to have defense for himself or his family?.

Only a stupid robber would rob a bus full of citizens with guns. But since the robber is intelligent, he would then look for victims who are less armed and away from the police, who at most cases always late to arrive at crime scenes.

Who Am I?

Who Am I?

I am not the  thing Seen; the Object
Neither the Seer; the Subject
I am the Seeing itself; the Action; the Happening.

Yet, it doesn't end there. Doesn't start there.
I am the Consciousness by which no other way can;
Happening be possible. 
I am beyond. (yet this is still a lie)
Haha. The Truth of who am I is not on the answer.
It's on who ask the question!

My Most Potent Cannabis Recipe So Far

My Most Potent Cannabis Recipe So Far

I have been smoking weed for over a year. I decided to stop it when I discovered the most potent recipe of it. I am sure not few share the same experience as mine but are reluctant to share it on wider audience so as not to draw unwanted attention from police or police-loving neighbors.

Fact: The only Animals on this Planet are Humans

Fact: The only Animals on this Planet are Humans

How many times did you hear people in silent pride claiming that "human specie is the highest form of animals"? And how many times did you agree; or have you ever disagreed? To me I automatically disagree with a laugh. Poor humans indeed to ever come-up with such ridiculous self-serving  idea about themselves. 

I disagree that humans are the prima donnas not that humans might be negotiated to another level lower than what was originally claimed. Contrary to the egotistic claim of humans that their specie is the highest form of animal, I categorically say they are not. In fact, people are the ONLY animals on this planet. With this I don't negotiate. Humans belong to the only level it has for itself: the animal level. Humans monopolizes this level. There should be no imposition that all other species belong to this class.

Why Government Services are a Fake Compassion?

Why Government Services are a Fake Compassion?

One does compassion not to make himself happy. He does compassion because he is happy. That is why taxes and government socialist services are fake forms of compassion. They arise not of the genuine feeling to extend help to others but rest on the idea that such action MIGHT make other people better or surely make the giver happy about himself. 

Why Central Bankers Don't like Gold Standard?

Why Central Bankers Don't like Gold Standard?

Gold as money. Why not?

Central bankers recognize the harm of counterfeiting. So they make bills/monies with security features with a hope that no rogue parties can counterfeit it.

Gold cannot be counterfeited but central bankers refuse to use it. Instead they use paper bills. They justify it by reasoning that market liquidity can't be provided by scarce supply of gold. Gold is, for them, cumbersome to economic growth . Only bills can. Sounds logical is it not?

But wait. If the reason of security features in bills is to thwart counterfeiters, how exactly they suppose to sustain market liquidity using the same bills? The only answer is to make more of those bills! What? Sounds like a counterfeiting, doesn't it? A legalized counterfeiting.

The real reason bankers don't want gold is not actually liquidity problems but gold is impossible to counterfeit. Scumbags, aren't they?

What Atheist and Creationist Have in Common?

What Atheist and Creationist Have in Common?

How did it begin?

Evolution is logical. Creation is logical too as to the idea that an "uncaused cause" must be necessary to answer the problem of who started everything.

However, though creationism and evolution is not compatible with each other, the former relying on a deity to solve the puzzle, the latter encounters the same problem of how everything really started. In fact they share the same absurd focal problem; the BEGINNING of the START.

I only Live for Myself

I only Live for Myself

I don't live for others.
I only live for myself.
Without me living first with myself;
How the hell could I give to others;
Without me first destroying myself?

And if I refuse to give to others,
And you tell it is wrong for me to keep things for myself,
Then how in hell you ever came to thinking;
That others have the right to keep my things for themselves
Without them destroying me first?

I don't act to be happy.
But I act accordingly;
Or perhaps accordingly is acting on me;
But by accordingly I simply mean;
That I have no choice but to act to be happy.

I blame Me

I blame Me

I blame no one. I only blame me.
But I found out, there is no I.
Just a grand idea.
So there is no me either.

So, where is the blame part?
Only blame blaming itself.
Itself backfiring to itself.
Aha. Just a play.
I am. Always be. I am.

 

Existence is an Axiom

Existence is an Axiom

Axiom is a premise of reasoning solidly backed only by itself as sanctioned by experience. It is a self-evident statement; a proposition assumed to be true without the burden of proving it. And at times it is tried to be disproved, the attempt only presupposes its validity.

"I, this whole me, exist" is a classic example of a non-disprovable statement. It relies on the felt experience that it is so. And no other proof is necessary to assert that it is so. The attempt to disprove it, ie. the words "I don't exist", contradicts the very experience or feeling of being existent.

Perhaps existence is the grandest axiom forgotten as such. Everyone have this inherent feeling that he or she exists. This the deeply-rooted but supposed to be the most obvious feeling of presence, of being here, of being alive. But most are consumed in outward things like clothes, foods, friends, status, families, cosmetics, feelings, experiences. and worries that they forgot the very thing that makes everything possible - the fact of being here and now. 

Men have forgotten that their true identity is the wholeness of everything at every moment. The cosmic amnesia has brought all sorts of suffering to humans. They strongly embrace the identity which they call "I" or "me". And with the act of keeping their identities intact comes the suffering brought by the struggle to keep it. And with this, everyday there goes the ego olympics where everyone is trying to outrun everybody else hoping that by doing such would make them fulfilled, loved by everybody, sought by everybody thus making the identity more solid and more self-fulfilling and leaving the fear of being left out at bay. Even worse is when one tries to outrun himself.

Existence is an axiom because it is as it is. The suffering felt can only be brought by the mistaken identity that we are discrete individual apart from everybody else. Apart from people around, apart from trees, from insects and animals, apart from falling leaves, from clouds, from dust and mud, from soil and rocks, from seas and river, from crimes and corruptions, from crooked politicians, from pious fellows, from gurus and students, from concrete blocks, from air, from oxygen and pollution, and literally apart from everything. However, if one comes to realization that everything at this moment is the perfect conspiracy of the wholeness itself, no more there will be a suffering brought by continuous struggle to keep the idea of "myself".

Even the idea that there is a Creator or God or gods that created the universe is no longer relevant if one understands the wholeness of everything. The concept of creator is not important except as a worthwhile alternative for men to keep in their heads while the axiomatic nature of existence is yet to be recognized. Once life is understood, that it is void of beginning and end, the idea about a God that is discretely apart from creation will vanish. What remains is the recognition that life is itself the very God we are trying to seek.

Struggle may bring something until you feel it is already boring struggling.

Seek the Fun in Gloomy Doom

Seek the Fun in Gloomy Doom

The thought of hitting the end of the road struck me lately. Sooner or later I am dead. There is a taste of loneliness prevailing the feeling that someday everything will be gone. In a blink of an eye, like a puff of smoke, everything that I possess will cease to be mine. The passion of living will come to an end. The ultimate endgame would soon swallow me whole.

Mr. Death never needs my permission. He comes when he comes. My time is up when my time is up. But I hope he comes to me swiftly.  I am not really afraid of death. Dying is what makes me hesitant to give-in even in my imagination. That is why I really hope death comes to me quick. 

Carl Jung on his pioneering works in psychology had emphasized the importance of understanding the Shadow. He said that one can never understand the Substance as long as one denies the counterpart of it which he called the Shadow. These two opposites go together all the time, so as life and death. One embraces life, one embraces death also.

Most would feel Death as a foe, an uncompromising foe. No one can give excuses like when one wants to postpone an appointment with a peer. Death keeps his schedule rigid and unalterable. When time is up, time is up.

Dissolution is what one is afraid of. No one wants to be separated from what they've conditioned to enjoy. Family, daughters and sons, wife, lovers, friends, job, social status, power, riches, beauty, sex, and orgasm. Everyone fears to cease existing, afraid of halting the palpable human existence. Death is to be avoided at all cost. Obviously, it is impossible.

Running away from death is futile. Humans knew it. But they develop the culture of trying to stop death from coming. But there is a lifetime of opportunity to understand what death is. If one comes to an understanding that death is no more than just like the moment before one is born, the fear would dissolve slowly. What remains is the joy of living the current moment and a relaxing feeling going on with the flow.

Death is never been a problem. The way people deal with it is.

Reality and the Schroedinger's Cat

Reality and the Schroedinger's Cat

In his criticism against the Copenhagen interpretation of the quatum nature of matter, Einstein said that, "Do you really think the moon isn't there if you aren't looking at it?"

The Schroedinger's Cat attempted to show the paradox that reality occupies multiple states, i.e parallel universes, until you decide to observe it like when one opens the cat box and finds out that the cat in a certain state, either dead or still alive. Reality is in more than one state but would collapse into a single observable arrangement when one decides to observe it. By then everything moves to a unified state and all uncertainties  collapses into one definitive setup which a person, the observer, is aware of. This, as Einstein imply, is ridiculous. That is why he famously said that God doesn't play dices.

The paradox of reality can be simply re-stated in numerous but lighter manners. Like when I am in a deep sleep and the singularity of reality is suspended until I wake up. Or when I am uncertain what happens at my back until I look at it. The act of observing overrides the probabilities, the superposition, and simultaneously reduce everything to a singular observable arrangement.

But one thing, which is so simple, is overlooked on the struggle to find what reality is. It is to be noted that all inquires are outwardly bound like when one tries to look for truth using telescopes to look for the boundaries of the universe; or when uses a microscope to try to decipher reality in infinitely small particles or whatever one calls them. One must veer back and seriously ask who or what is that which makes the asking?

Reality is not a separate thing from that which makes the inquiry of it. The mind. Mind, which is in its own mental box struggles to find what it imagines to be reality. But the curse is not avoided. Mind can only come-up for things available in the mental box including the stuff call reality. Mind can't go out from its own confine. Reality, as all other concepts, can only serve up to a point at trying to grasp the substance it talks about. As all other concepts, reality is up to nothing but a pointer to that which can not be put to words. The paradox of reality renders language not capable of bringing in the ultimate understanding of what reality really is.

Reality is a mind stuff. Mind creates stuffs and tries to figure these stuffs out. One just needs to figure out that which makes the stuffs. The mind.But not in dismissive manner, 'reality' can only be grasp the moment one stops struggling to figure it out. Reality is not an object.  Reality is no more than just the awareness where object appear or seem to appear. There will be no way to know what; to tell how is what; why is what without first being aware.