Ralph Lauren black bathrobe it is!

Should've included this in the OP: "6:00pm to 6:45pm – Beer, wine, and appetizers served" right next to "It's totally free to attend"

See you there!  

BTW, dress code?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Actually, that's mostly down to genetic factors, and the income of your parents.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influence-your-iq-they-determine-how-well-you-do-school
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111
http://www.businessinsider.com/sat-chart-score-vs-income-2014-3

Surprise, capitalism is super unfair! The fact that you couldn't google this shit yourself actually dovetails nicely into my next point...

Why am I not surprised? The fact that you're foolish enough to think you would thrive is a strong indication that you would probably fail and die horribly.



Anyway, social darwinism is top-notch bullshit-insanity.

Fascism, you mean like the corporate oligarch neo-fascism that capitalist society is rapidly (d)evolving into as we speak?

Myth and falsehood are only worms, burrowing inside the great tree of truth. They are mortal things, while the tree is eternal, and so they are doomed to lose the war for the consciousness of humanity.

"Despite the mounting research evidence that humans are wired for empathy and often express their empathic regard by engaging in altruistic activity, the naysayers cling to the defense that people act that way because they have learned, through past experience and conditioning, that helping another person mutes their own empathic distress and provides them a sense of relief and, on occasion, even pleasure, because they have been morally accountable. Hoffman points out that just because one feels better because he or she was able to help another in distress doesn't mean that it is the sole or even a major reason for being altruistic. The pleasure might be an unexpected by-product, but not a prime motivating factor, for engaging in altrustic behavior in the first place." [refer to study 4 for elaboration]
-Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization

Here's 5 studies and a TED talk for you. Four of the studies are for Homo Sapiens, one is for Capuchin monkeys.

Study 1:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11641621/ns/health-childrens_health/t/roots-altruism-show-babies-helping-hands/
Psychology researcher Felix Warneken, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Enthropology, published the results of a study of toddlers exhibiting altruistic behavior far earlier than previously expected, demonstrating the biological nature of human altruism. The following video will illustrate what happened:

Study 2:
http://news.yale.edu/2007/11/21/babies-prefer-good-samaritans

Study 3:
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/28/science/researchers-trace-empathy-s-roots-to-infancy.html

Study 4:
http://onthehuman.org/2009/10/empathic-concern-and-altruism-in-humans/

Study 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0

TED Talk - Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJxRqTs5nk

Not so! ISIS members do have empathy, but only for a very limited sphere of family/comrades. For the rest of humanity, they show little to no empathy. This of course is illogical, incestuous madness, like something transported from the dark ages. Thanks religion, for dragging shitty bronze-age ethics into the 21st century!

If you trace back through history, there has always been empathy for tribe-mates, or family / blood-kin. Through social evolution, reason compels us to expand our sphere of empathy wider and wider. Today, empathy is commonly extended to all fellow citizens of one's nation. Not so long ago this would've been a radical idea.
The logical conclusion of this trend is that eventually, all human beings will see themselves as citizens not of a nation, but of the world. We will begin to see all our fellow humans beings as kin, who deserve our love and compassion just as much as our own sons and daughters.

Yes, exactly, of course we should. Well said my friend.

“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity.
Patriotism is its cult... Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love,
love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”
-Erich Fromm, The Sane Society


Yours in compassion and solidarity,

World Citizen Beliathon



Your move, capitalists and sociopaths (insofar as there is any meaningful practical difference).

Not even close. Capitalism without government to rein it in would quickly lead to a nightmarish dystopia where corporations rule hordes of slaves with an iron fist. There would be mass sex-slavery, rampant and never-ending war & murder for profit, and starvation wouldn't even be considered a problem. In a word, fascism.

Basically, this:

Your "ability to support yourself" is an illusion. Unless you own a farm, grow your own food, AND supply your own electricity, there are thousands of human beings supporting your survival. Without their servitude, you would die of exposure and/or starvation.

Many of those humans work for shit pay in places like Mexico, China, and Bangladesh. This is because they're lower on the socio-economic hierarchy than you, which is mostly because they were unfortunately born and live in the wrong nation.
The existence and functioning of this hierarchy depends wholly on continuous systematic violence. Without that violence, they stop sending you the food, electricity, or clothes you consume. You might still be able to acquire those goods and services without the hegemony, but it would cost you 5-10x what you are paying now.

This system of carefully organized hierarchy-based violence, we call "capitalism".

Err... yeah...  those books are great if you're a teenager first learning about philosophy. Might I suggest you branch out from reading only Rand's work like holy texts? Here are some humble reading recommendations:

There is only one traditional way of resolving international debt...

What difference does it make? It ends the same regardless of any temporary setbacks or manipulation. The laws of the universe remain the same as they were on day 1, mathematics does not bend to the wills of men.

translation: "i violated the rules of reddit by paying a shill to advertise my donation-soliciting web site, and I got burned"

They realized finally what they are dealing with here... well not truly, because they are dealing with inevitability, but they must see bitcoin's potential to rob nations of their monopoly over money creations and give back power to the people in a world-changing, irreversible way.

Bitcoin is a truly frightening prospect for any tyrant or oligarch that is paying attention.

Easy peasy. You're one of the 99% of human beings on this planet who doesn't know about bitcoin and/or has no idea how to use it.

Now I don't need to "sell you" on anything, do I? Bitcoin is an infant technology, wait some months/years and there won't even be any argument, Western Union will simply cease to exist.

Please alert me when this FascismCoin hits the market, I'd sure love to divest my savings from bitcoin and dump them there. I'm sure I'm not the only one, either!

 

Do yourself and the internet a favor: read more, learn more, think more, and talk less.

Let's all take a moment to learn about Ayn Rand, the author/philosopher behind modern "market libertarianism".

They are waking up, just like everyone else from Hong Kong to Mexico to USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twSCvbTdYTc

Well, it's advanced some. Violence-based slavery has evolved into indoctrination/deception/coercion based wage-slavery. But the fundamentals of society remain the same: legitimized violence governs all from the top down.

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice."
-Derrick Jensen

I believe this is going to change within our lifetimes, though. I believe the information age we have just entered is the exit from a world governed primarily by violence and secondarily by reason.

Hopefully we'll survive long enough to see a society governed solely by reason, with violence becoming universally repugnant instead of hyper-fetishized as it is now.

network effect