Something to make you think...

[mnischalke 0]

Totally off subject and all, but I love folks who need to belittle others to somehow offset their own deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy. Maybe they think their penis is too small and someone might see it if they were in the military. Maybe through the realization of having a weak mind of their own, they feel the need to bring others down to their levels through richly worded, yet unfounded comments. Maybe they tried to fit into an organization and failed because they lacked some sort of fortitude or aptitude. Oh to never fully comprehend esprit de corps while maintaining your own person. I guess things like Skydive U and other courses like that out there are detrimental to one's personality since you increase your skills while learning to act as part of a team.

Then again, what do I know? I have no original thots of my own, nor do i have a personality.

Your borg friend,

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[wmw999 2,123]

Quote

but I love folks who need to belittle others to somehow offset their own deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy

Well, personally, I have researched and found all possible answers and decisions. Therefore, if someone disagrees with me, or comes to a different conclusion on something than I would have, they must be wrong.

The fact that they might weigh considerations differently, or be aware of stuff I don't know about, or just have different needs in the first place, or assign a different priority to how complete the answer is to a question -- well that just doesn't matter. I know what's important. Everyone agrees on what's important. If they don't, they're weird.

See, I'm just trying to take the thread back the shit-slinging we were doing yesterday. That was fun.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[mnischalke 0]

You are just plain wrong, Wendy!

That was fun tho, wasn't it?

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[Zenister 0]

yeah..i hate it when someone takes a perfectly good game of "fireball" thinks it wimbledon....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[Andie787 0]

Some thoughts:

1. Don't confuse honor and duty. They are not the same. What is honorable about just doing what you're told even if it's wrong?

2. Wars commanded by God?! If you beleive in Him how can you presume to know His will? And do you think confusing His will with your own interests will get you to heaven? Do you think obeying orders will get you there?

3. If you must believe that God is "Forever and unchanging" than how do you account for the New Testatment at all? Why must you oversimplify one thing and totally ignore others? If the Bible is the undisputed word of God, then you should believe everything in it. You're either with God or you're against Him, right?

4. The President of the United States, the one who has somehow made you believe that Iraq did or will attack you, believes in the Bible and discounts evolutionary theory and therefore a large portion of modern science and discoveries. How scary is that?!

5. Where do you get the idea that the dead deserve respect? I have never seen much evidence that you respect the dead you have produced all over the world. Do all dead deserve respect? Or just dead Americans?

Maybe jraf is sacrificing his heart so that you may someday break free of fear and ignorance. It will take people like him to make us find a MIDDLE GROUND where real respect exists, not just manufactured honor and TV glory!!

Andie

JJ - I caught your tone from the first post! You made me smile!
Mike - "Maybe they think their penis is too small and someone might see it if they were in the military" Uhhh yeah, I'm sure that's their issue and not yours at all...

[JJohnson 0]

The more I hear you, the more I don't like to listen to you.......

Is it easy to warp a weak mind?? Yes. Is it easy to convince a strong mind?? Yes, if they agree with your point of view. What the fuck is your point? That every person in the Military is weak? And we use your fine example as a comparison? BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

What the Military does indoctrinate into anyone is discipline, a will to win, self control, attention to detail. It teaches honor and loyalty, and the essential need to follow orders, even if you might not agree with them.....just because it puts you in harms way.

Where you logic is wrong is that you use crowd AND organization to describe the Military. That contradiction does not fit. Cowards need crowds to hide in. Warriors band together to form teams. To be able to attack in an organized fashion. But are these same people mindless? Incapable of independent thought? No they are not. They constantly think of ways to better themselves, both physically and mentally. Are these bad qualities? According to you they are..which would explain why you seem to lack them in such great amounts.. I could be wrong.

I was just down in Z-Hills a few weeks ago, I don't recall seeing you there. A shame. I would have enjoyed letting you into my mind, so you could point out all my weakness, lack of personality and shortcomings. Next time I get down your way I'll let you know when. After a few jumps, I'll buy you a beer and we can get to know one another.

If you take the message of what yiou said, and apply it to some religious cult, praying on drug addled teenagers......I can see your point. however.....

If you insult one more military person, by saying they are weak minded, if you belittle the job they do that you are unwilling and uncapable of doing for yourself..then you are scum.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[misterhand 0]

we are the military.
you will lower your shields and surrender your ships.
we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
your culture will adapt to service....us.
resistance is futile.

obviously not all military personnel wind up dehumanized like my coastie acquaintance. hell, half the people on my home dz seem to be ex-military. but the glazed eyes and fanatic expressions on the plastic faces of the people in the recruitment spots on tv put me off the idea permanently. you see the same look on the faces of crack addicts and rabid religious fundamentallists being mindfucked by jesus and billy graham.
the guy i knew in the navy damn near got court martialed once, for causing damage to government property. his crime? he fell asleep in the sun and got a bad sunburn.
sorry folks, can not will not think of myself as "property". of anyone or anything. if thats what i'd have to do to experience this esprit de corps of yours i want no part of it. i derive plenty satisfaction from being a skilled corporate mercenary selling my tech skills to the highest bidder in the private sector. if the company i work for gets all personal on me, i take a hike. i worked at a place once where they instituted a new corporate philosophy. you must wholeheartedly spout the rant fed to you by the teamthink consultant or you're not welcome to work here anymore. you are not an employee anymore you are to consider yourself a "team member". you don't have a shift supervisor anymore, you are to refer to him as your "team leader". our once-a-month voluntary shift meeting to discuss production issues is now to be referred to as the "team meeting". although attending it is still voluntary, we will be instituting "accountability" for those who choose not to attend. if we do not see the 98% participation we expect, non-volunteers will be held accountable.
after deliberately blowing off the mandatory volunteering right to the point of "accountability" i finally went to my only "team meeting" where i pointed out some facts.
1: it is not "the team" fixing this robot. it is ME.
2: it is not "the team" driving this forklift. it is ME.
3: you are renting my time by the hour. this does not include the right to edit my work ethic and mental state as you see fit. i don't see a "team" here i see a shift of employees getting mindfucked by their employer. mandatory volunteering of my own time? sorry, my newspeak doublethink skills are a little rusty. pardon me while i tell you to go fuck yourself. i quit.
i then got another job paying far more for the same skills at a much smaller company where they don't tell me what im supposed to think of myself as or otherwise try to tamper with my thinking. they consider themselves lucky to find someone with the specialized skills ive acquired, they didnt even try to force me to jump through the same hoops they make all other employees jump through before hiring. (work for them through a temp agency for at least a year at far less pay...if they like you theyll hire you AFTER working you for a year on starvation wages).... when i signed on their front desk secretary said we only hire through the temp agency, you may go through them first.
i said and i may not. i can fix your sidels. i know what those skills are worth to you and i know you need sidel techs and are losing thousands of dollars for every day you try to operate without one. i have what you need and i expect you to pay for it....no free samples. either hire me at full pay with no hoop jumping or i take my skills and sell them elsewhere.
2 weeks later i started as a sidel tech there at the top of the pay scale right off the bat. and they don't fuck with my mind. they leave me the fuck alone because i work the magic they need.....i show up and suddenly the machines run for me. they showed me some fucking respect and i repay that by making damn sure their plant stays running. im quite proud of this relationship. if i joined the military so far as i know i can't manage it that way. if it means im to consider myself the property of my government, forget about it. i do it MY way or i hit the highway.
if it means i'd have to live and believe slogans like "there is no "I" in team" and
"army of one"
and
"be all you can be"
and if it means i'd have to be able to mouth those slogans with heartfelt enthusiasm, again, no can do. organizations, if they have any use for me at all, need me a hell of a lot more than i need THEM. this means _I_ dictate the conditions.
so far as i know, in the military i don't dictate anything. i obey or else. if im wrong, someone please tell me. i understand these days the military is a lot more relaxed than they used to be and have even vaguely considered it as a possible career path a couple times recently....at 26 im a bit old to be joining up but if they could use an automation mechanics and software freak pay decent and not fuck with me we might be able to work something out....i understand they DO offer lots of ways to get into fields otherwise closed to me. if the reward was worth it, hell, i'd join. but not if it includes posession of me or my mind. i'm selling services, im not selling ME.

[JJohnson 0]

If this person you know was fresh out of boot camp....don't worry that will wear off. Then they will calm down and take some of that shit with the grain of salt it came with.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[JJohnson 0]

>Don't confuse Honor and Duty. They are not the same<
No they are not, but they are brothers in arms. Honor dictates duty......In spite of orders given to you.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[JJohnson 0]

By your same rational, why be a cop or a fireman? The benefits don't outweigh the risks, do they? Sometimes..believe it or not people do things because they want to, because they believe in ideals. Not fior what was in it for them.
I joined for no ulterior motives. They pay sucked, I never used the college benefits, I slept in tents and lived out of a seabag......I did it because I needed to know if I could live up to the ideal I expected others to live up to.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[wmw999 2,123]

Sounds like the military probably isn't the job for you. Possibly not a lot of jobs where you're part of a pretty large system -- your individuality is second to a system a lot of the time.

That's just the way it is. It doesn't make the system right, or you wrong. But understand that some projects are too big for a single person to do, and the interdependencies are such that you can't just have someone working on their own little piece and trust them to do it.

I'm not in the military. Never have been. But I work for a software program with a very tightly-controlled development process. A lot of programming leeway is taken away from us.

Is that good or bad? Well, if you're absolutely brilliant, it's probably bad. A really strong process or system will tend to hamper some really really strong individualistic performers. But it does mean that you have fewer interface problems, fewer downstream problems, and it allows your less-than-Einsteinian performers to perform a piece of a massive project without having to understand every part of it. There are a lot more good, average, and mediocre programmers who have their performance improved by standards and processes, than there are brilliant ones who are hampered by it.

I see too much cutting down of others based on their choices. Even if their choices suck, that's their problem. Not mine. So what exactly is gained by my telling them how stupid I think they are.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[sistaluv 0]

WOW I can't believe you have enough time on your hands to diss everyone else, and their own personal situations when you have no ****in idea about anything in that topic!!! Rather than adding more negative vibes to yourself why don't you chat on another topic. I never had the privledge to meet my grandfather due to the war and personally think you should turn the page

Blue Skies and Terminal Memories 4 Life

[mnischalke 0]

Sistaluv in the hizzouse puttin da smackdown on Jraf!

Way to keep them in line!

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[jraf 0]

Well I must admit I never ran for the Mr. Popularity contest. Listening to me might be painful. However:

Self discipline, loyalty, honor attention to detail are all things I found out on my own. No guidance needed there.

As to constant self betterment of body and mind - once again I don't need to feel bad, probably only better than most. One thing nobody is able to teach me is obeying orders. I live in my own world, I do what I want.

What I do is see the world as it is. Not all military are bad, not all are good. It is an interesting social group where some of societies problems can be seen in a very bright light. In a lot of circumstances the regulations of the armed forces are a travesty of reality. If you wish to accept that - to each his own.

As to my willingness to do that job - no way Jose, not me I have people to meet, places to go.

As to my ability? Well I can't perform open heart surgery, nor fly a jumbo jet. I am a professional logistics manager - it does have a military equivallent. I also can operate heavy machinery and do other fine things you fine military people can do. There are other military services that would be happy to have me, no need to mention them.

My real point is you all fine military folk are convinced that you are something special. Hate to break the news, but you are not. You are just people like all the rest, white, black, asian or other, brave, scared or just indifferent, stupid, wise or sometimes brilliant but you are nothing special.

You can call me scum. The point is you are not capable of insulting me. I just don't care.

jraf

Me Jungleman! Me have large Babalui.
Muff #3275

[misterhand 0]

oof. well said. i guess i have no ideals, at least none i expect anyone but myself to live up to. i expect nothing of anyone which is why when i see real solid people standing for whats right/what they believe in i can at least respect it and leave it be....
i can't do military service. not only does the idea of "serving" anyone or anything rankle on my selfish arrogant feral soul, but i'm just too damn off-the-charts individualistic to be inserted into anything like rank-and-file, always have been. back in school i was often right off the top of their testing charts leaving them wondering what the hell to do with me....he's in 4th grade and already feeding himself college-level material? this doesnt fit into the lesson plan. i was inventing my own electronic weaponry, stunners and such improvised out of reworked wall adapter transformers and, more lethally, banks of flash camera strobe capacitors, when everyone else in science class was happily learning the light bulb goes here, the battery goes there, the wire goes here, this is plus and this is minus and they both need to touch for the light to go on.....
this sort of thing does NOT teach you much respect for others. i taught that to myself out of empathy and my own sense of decency. so
when you're this far ahead of the curve you can't rejoin it even if you know where the curve is and want to downgrade yourself that far. you feel like a modified alien hybrid utterly out of place among the other kids whose biggest mental stretch is writing a paper without spelling mistakes. my biggest mental stretch at the time was reading and utterly enjoying steven hawking's "a brief history of time". now THERES a vast mind makes me look like forrest gump.... read orson scott card's "enders game" someday. its about bright kids, one in particular. i was the real thing. all i ever heard about as a kid in school was how i was the next doogie howser and would be graduating from yale by the age of 16 at this rate. i sucked at math, always have, but came with freak talents for understanding and applying things 15 years beyond my current level. after years of misery in nursery/sorry, high school i dropped out and decided to self-educate by way of school of hard knocks where nobody's trying to make me march in step with the others because my uniqueness breaks the nice orderly symmetry of the classroom and we cant have that..... its been fun instructive and rewarding. it brought me to a drop zone. i was amazed to discover going through aff that im not limited to their schedule, they'll advance me as fast as i can do it? hell yeah! money and time issues dictated how fast i got my a-license, but i had it within a few weeks and have been jumping my ass off and glutting myself on terabytes of info about skydiving ever since. i plan to earn a living in the sport, with time. believe it or not i still sometimes wish i was capable of having the military experience and being a part of it. i can't. but i have the highest respect for those who can. its the institution itself that makes me paranoid as all hell.

[Zenister 0]

Quote

My real point is you all fine military folk are convinced that you are something special. Hate to break the news, but you are not. You are just people like all the rest, white, black, asian or other, brave, scared or just indifferent, stupid, wise or sometimes brilliant but you are nothing special.

well here you are completely and utterly wrong i am something special..bouncy pouncy and full of fun but best of all...i'm the only one..
the rest of yous i'm not so sure about...

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[wmw999 2,123]

Quote

self-educate by way of school of hard knocks where nobody's trying to make me march in step with the others because my uniqueness breaks the nice orderly symmetry of the classroom and we cant have that

A couple of things to think about.

Everyone is special.
No one is special.

You seem to have found the wrong classroom, and are building your own. Just as a strong process can dampen the most talented workers, remember it does enhance the vast majority of the others, and most talented folks can figure out how to use the process. Building your own is harder, but you'll learn an incredible amount from it.

It's harder to work entirely outside the system, but you only get new viewpoints sometimes from the outside -- so don't divorce yourself entirely from the world. The ability to communicate to folks that there are problems with their system, without saying the fact that they have one sucks, is extremely valuable. It's the only way to truly change systems.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[jraf 0]

Quote

WOW I can't believe you have enough time on your hands to diss everyone else, and their own personal situations when you have no ****in idea about anything in that topic!!! Rather than adding more negative vibes to yourself why don't you chat on another topic. I never had the privledge to meet my grandfather due to the war and personally think you should turn the page

Fine lady I am sure it was a bunch of mad German civilians who came and killed your grandpapa in a drive by shooting. I would like to make a point however that if there were no military, we would be back to the level of tribal wars. Now I must say that there is something appealing in tribal wars - they are pretty contained.

jraf

Me Jungleman! Me have large Babalui.
Muff #3275

[Zenister 0]

[booming oz voice]all bow before the munificent prodigy..[/booming oz voice]

[chants] we're not worthy..were not worthy:rollseyes:[/chants]

pay no attention to the man behind the machine..all is as it seems

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[misterhand 0]

bwahahaha rotflmao
rule #1 for me is never take myself too seriously. there are people out there to whom i look like an idiot. myself among them.
just for that post zenister, i will buy you beer someday if ever we walk the same dz.

[misterhand 0]

The ability to communicate to folks that there are problems with their system, without saying the fact that they have one sucks, is extremely valuable. It's the only way to truly change systems.


i think what you just said probably makes more sense than anything else anyone's said on this long and convoluted thread. only catch: i cant recall ever hearing about a system actually changing for the better based on constructive criticism. they usually change for the worse to satisfy screaming idiots claims of entitlement and threats to sue. this is why so much of my paycheck is going to feed some crack whore and her 19 illegitimate children and the system encourages her to keep breeding on my dime cause the more she breeds the more she gets paid. (note: ive actually overheard welfare mother next door instructing daughter how best to get more money by breeding more and hiding existence of boyfriend so it looks like you're even poorer. ) this is why im disgusted with systems.

[misterhand 0]

You seem to have found the wrong classroom, and are building your own. Just as a strong process can dampen the most talented workers, remember it does enhance the vast majority of the others, and most talented folks can figure out how to use the process. Building your own is harder, but you'll learn an incredible amount from it.

you know you're not the first person to tell me that. for awhile i was hanging out with another similar freak to myself but 10 years older, said the same damn thing. he was mostly disgusted with me for wasting myself in the menial work i was doing at the time and couldnt understand why i hadnt picked an organization, company, college, whatever, gone to the top and made it mine already. he did tell me that the rough path ive chosen will however make me a much richer man for the experience.
i think the coolest thing anyone ever said to me was a friend looking at my latest junk-drawer digital creation 3 years ago. (homebuilt portable mp3 player built out of junk pc parts, a boom box, some duct tape, hot glue and plastic scraps complete with 5 gig drive and stripped down build of win98, running winamp on an old sega game gear screen hot glued to the case.....)....shook his head and said jesus dude if you had a direction you'd be fucking dangerous.
some time later a customer leaving the office at the sheet metal shop where i worked as a laborer saw my toy sitting there on my Bridgeport turret doing its thing, examined it, and asked me what it was. i told him. he said "what are you DOING here?"
i didnt have an answer, so, after awhile, i left. i still don't know where im expected to be, so i wound up on a dz. i still dont have anything more than a vague life plan im just sort of winging it and paying my way as i go.
suggestions are welcome.

[JJohnson 0]

Oh yes, you have hit upon the divine paradox: Everything is important and nothing is important......I love that. It allows me to focus on something intently and forget it tomorrow.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[wmw999 2,123]

In rereading that, it sure sounds pompous. I'm not really that pompous in real life -- honest I'm not!!!

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[misterhand 0]

come on, how do you think i feel rereading some of the shit i say here? several times lately ive redefined my own idea of the concept of asshole. the only reason i even say some of this shit is im trying to follow through on that whole live here now thing and saying what i think when i think it with relatively little reconsideration. something i normally don't do when face to face. sometimes articulating an unquestioned asshole opinion i hold makes me reconsider it, think about why i have that attitude, and, sometimes, slink away embarrassed. sometimes i get pissed off, rant, want to unsay it, and leave it standing just to see how badly i just made an ass out of myself. and i DO love being provocative.....
no you don't sound pompous
generally you sound like somebody's mom.
people who write in all about apocalyptic hate of god and rant about military they know nothing about?
now THATS pompous.