Star Wars and Youth Counter-Culture

The youth of my generation grew up on Star Wars. We all wanted to be Luke Skywalker. Luke was a middle class kid from a farm whose family was wealthy enough to own property, and buy droids. Luke even had his own land speeder. His aunt and uncle were not rich enough however to pay for Luke’s education. So they wanted him to stay working and go to the academy the next year. Luke was desperate to escape the confines of his home town, especially since all of his cool friends went off to join “the rebellion”. He meets a wise old man who tries to convince Luke to find his own destiny, which Luke takes to mean jump right into the fight. Luke has some fun for awhile being chased by Tie fighters through the canyons of major cities, and finally feels victorious when he manages to throw his molotov cocktail into the window of a Death Star coffee shop.

In spite of all the things they have set to blaze, the rebellion has done little to actually stop the empire. Trying to wait the empire out, the rebellion takes to camping out on Hoth. Luke starts to learn that while the rebellion seemed glamorous back when he was on the farm, the day to day life of a solder involves freezing your ass off and getting attacked by wampas. Sooner or later, the empire shows up in riot gear with tear gas to clear the hippies off their property.

Luke finds a mentor to help him realize his own potential, but Luke cannot get his mind off all his friends still fighting the rebellion. The drug dealer he has become friends with and the girl that he has a crush on are being threatened by the empire. With the cardonite freeze of a dead end job for one, and exploitation and degradation for the other. Luke, thinking he knows everything after a week, rushes out to fight and gets his ass handed to him.

As it turns out, the slaves of the universe are too busy being slaves to join the rebellion, and so white kids of privilege took it upon themselves to fight in their stead. Furthermore, it is Luke’s own father that is the servant of the empire, which is the only reason Luke even exists and could be a middle class white guy taking on the empire to begin with.

Luke becomes dark. And when he is seen again after his defeat, he has gone from the all-white of his youth to all black. He deals with his enemies by choking them and making demands. When they resist, he destroys them without mercy. He hovers somewhere between Jedi and Sith.

When he rejoins the rebellion, he is not a hot shot pilot running from the police, but an activist trying to knock down the satellite dish protecting the new death star. For once, the rebellion is willing to put everything on the line instead of taking pot shots. Luke realizes that his dad knows he is on the mission, and turning himself in is the only way to distract Vader long enough to give the mission a chance to succeed. Luke is brought before the disgusting old man holding the reigns of the empire. Luke’s father tells him to get a real job and a hair cut and to join the empire/military/corporate world like he did. Luke finally convinces his father that the empire kinda sucks because it fucks so many people over, and in his dying moments, his father is redeemed.

The rebellion, for its part, paid a heavy cost for finally putting its fleet on the line but they did take out the new death star, the flag ship and several other ships. A new republic is born. doubtlessly some centuries later a new empire arises, and the cycle repeats.

Viva revolution. Hail caesar. Viva revolution. Thanks George Lucas for ruining my generation.

I take life completely seriously and as a complete joke at the same time. Maybe because i dont want to be the butt of the joke...

Subject of a Future Blog/Video

Life Offline

Since I seem to get comments and e-mails constantly about my absence, I figured I should write a blog, as I still don’t have internet in my apartment, which makes it too difficult to upload a video.
Long story short, a shuffling of roommates has left me without internet where I live for the past few months. In all honestly, this doesn’t bother me all that much. If I really need to get online, the means are freely available to me, albeit slow wi-fi at school, a friend’s house or a coffee shop. I also don’t care to have my name on the bill and I have been too busy working and doing other things to even bother with the issue. It will be resolved soon enough, and not only will I be back to doing things in the online world in the near future, I plan to improve and deliver more elaborate and polished productions in the future.
I have been doing a lot in photography and video in the past year. I have shot several videos of shows for local bands (involving multi camera editing), made a feature length documentary, and made a music video, aside from my own personal projects. I also have numerous other projects lined up.
Now that I am nearly completed school, I am aiming to get into something like technical writing, and so I would like to learn more about multimedia and film production, as that (can be) a part of technical writing. Aside from the fact that knowing a slew of programs and being able to utilize them to create high end presentations would give me an edge in the tech writing field, I could also use those skills for my own purposes, of which I have many.
The other side to that is that I have ideas for creating original content for Youtube. Not only would this give me incentive to learn new programs and sharpen my knowledge of the programs I know, but given the amount of money some people make off the site, I may reach a point where I say “get a day job? Why bother?” (although I would like to run a store with my friends).
Right now, I am aiming to make more polished, multi-media presentations. Do less extemporaneous speaking and also go back to my roots and do more off the wall shit like Lego movies, shows with action figures, cartoons, and music videos, etc. All original content. (Don’t worry. I am not giving up talking philosophical bullshit)
I am also taking with friends that have ideas they would like to produce, as well as doing more documentaries and music video work.
Given the fact that music recording, video, photography, software, etc is what I have in the last 8 years poured more effort to than even college, it all seems to make sense. I am tired of dabbling in these things, and want to master them, and that seems perfectly in line with my other opportunities and paths.
- Peter
PS. Given that I am now trying to sharpen my writing skills, I plan to write more in this blog and promote it more, which in turn will give me incentive to write in it more. Some things are simple better written (although they may become, or be based on videos as well)

Mosh pit at my cousin's wedding!

Putting Philosophy To Good Use

The idea that God is uncaused is a Lynchpin of Theism. It is the basis for arguing God as the uncaused cause and unmoved mover of many philosophical argument for God, and is a view almost universally held in Theistic definitions of God.

Theist explanation of God’s being uncaused:
God exists because he is necessary (being necessary, in part, means being uncaused)
God’s is necessary because of his nature
Nature -> Necessity -> Existence

Now I know that to a lay-person (or even someone actually trained in philosophy) this may look like a chain of causation. And that's because it is, and one that can be undone quite easily.

The Following argument assumes three views on God and one view on metaphysics: 1) that God is a necessary being 2) God’s nature makes him necessary 3) God is outside of time (relevant to a hypothetical rebuttal) 4) self causation is impossible (because it is absurd)

P1. If God is not necessary, then he must either be contingent or not exist
P2. God is not contingent (this is because God is here defined as necessary)
SC 1: If God is not necessary, then he does not exist (This is the trichotomy of P1 reduced to a dichotomy by P2)

P1a. God’s nature is either self-caused, caused, or non-existent
P2a. God’s nature cannot be caused (Again, this is because God is here defined as necessary)
P3a. God’s nature cannot be self-caused (because self-causation is here regarded as impossible)
SC2: God’s nature does not exist (last option left in the trichotomy of P1a)

P1b. If god’s nature does not exist, then he his not necessary (necessity would be part of God’s nature the way having 4 sides is part of the nature of a square)
P2b. God’s nature does not exist (SC2)
SC3. God is not necessary

P1c. If God is not necessary, then he does not exist (SC1)
P2c. God is not necessary (SC3)
C: God does not exist.

This argument is a bit redundant, because SC2 is enough to show the conclusion provided we assume the premise P: all things which exist have a nature. But I wanted to be through.

For P1a, some might try to argue for a “not-caused and not self-caused” option. While that may be conceivable, the Theist explanation of God’s being uncaused I outlined above IS the explanation of a forth option for P1a. To say God’s nature is exempt from causation because God is necessary would be a circular argument. A second option would be to say that God’s nature is outside of time, and only things which being to exist need a cause. However, being outside of time is part of God’s nature. We have reached another circular argument. We could run the entire above argument again replacing necessary with eternal, and a few other relevant swaps and reach the same conclusion. A final option is to simply assert that God’s nature is exempt from all causality (without appeal to necessity or eternality). To do such is to abandon reason altogether and just start making shit up.

In short, there is no good way to argue that God is uncaused, and what sort of God is a caused God? No God. That's what sort of God.

People who argue that God is necessary because of his nature fail to realize the circularity of this position. “God is uncaused because he is a necessary being, and he is a necessary being because of his nature, and his nature exists because he is a necessary being”. No God, then no God’s nature. God’s nature must be caused or self-caused. If self-causation is impossible, then god’s nature is impossible, and therefor he does not exist. The alternative is circular argument or bare assertion.

S= Necessary. T=Contingent. ~E= Does not exist. N= Nature. L= Self-caused. C= Caused.

~S > (T ^ ~E)
~T
C: ~S > ~E

N(L^C^~E)
~C
~L
C: N(~E)

~N > ~S
~N
C: ~S

~S > ~E
~S
C: ~E

There is a drunk townie talking to the great chernesky about his pet racoon. This needs to be on the internet.

Chillin out at my sisters.