We only use 10% of our Brains

We've all heard this ridiculous statement. Sometimes it is 30% sometimes it is 15%--the number varies. The premise, however, is the same. We only use a very small capacity of our brain. This statement has been circulating for a while now. Every time it has something different to offer. Sometimes they say that Einstein only used about 50% of the capacity of his brain, so just imagine how much you use! It seems obvious that this will surprise a lot of people and gasp in awe of the amazing potential of the human brain. --If we only used our brains to their full capacities...

People that repeat this statement are obviously not cognizant of the way the human brain works. But if they were able to question twice what they hear on the internet, they'd be able to figure out that it is incorrect.

The first question that any skeptic should ask his or herself is:

-- How do they know what 100% capacity really is?

In order to say that you only use 30% or 15% or whatever percentage of your brain, you first need to know the full capacity of the brain. If Einstein, who is one of the smartest people we've ever had, is not even close, how do we know what 100% is? What method was used to reach this number, and also, how are you measuring these cognition skills? IQ numbers seem to be the obvious answer, but it is not the case. The fact of the matter is that IQ tests are also capped, and there is a maximum score you can get. Furthermore, plenty of people have scored the highest score possible on tests like the Weschler IQ test. Apparently, even scoring the top score possible on IQ tests would leave you somehow using only a small percentage of it.

-- What kind of intelligence are we referring to?

Through most of the twentieth century, the term "intelligence" referred to two things: numerical abilities, and verbal abilities. Even to this day, people think of intelligence in these terms. Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligence. This theory makes absolute sense to me. I am quite gifted when it comes to numbers and verbal skills, but you should see me dancing or trying to play golf. There's people who can compose the most amazing songs, and yet have a really hard time doing a two digit subtraction. If we are going to compare the best mathematicians, linguists and writers, dancers, artists, etc to our own petty skills, we can say that not only we don't use 100%, but not even close to first tenth.

-- Is there a difference between capacity and potential?

The simple answer is yes. There is an amount of data that we can currently hold, and there is a potential amount of data we could hold. When it comes to the abilities of the brain, there are so many things we could be talking about that it is really hard to say what our capacity really is. Each of us has a different mnemonic capacity (ie ability to retain in memory). There are people that have amazing mnemonic skills, and people who can barely remember their own birthday. Most researchers suggest that the potential of your brain, depends on its ability to create new connections between the neurons--and not according to the amount the neurons we have, or the size of the brain itself. If this was the case, we could make the statement that men have more mental capacity, simply because the brain of a male is on average bigger than that of a woman. We cannot really study the potential of the brain, because we don't know exactly what the potential is. People can exercise a certain ability and become good at it, and there are people who seem to have the ability coded into their genes. In any case, the term "we don't even use 10% of the potential our brains have", sounds less irrational than "we don't even use 10% of the capacity our brains have". Have it your way, they're both utterly wrong.

-- Limits to our capacity

Even though the brain is a fascinating organ, and neuroscientists are left in awe every time there is a new discovery--the brain still has limits to what it can do. According to the latest understanding of cognitive psychology, the brain has a set of buffers and filters that help obtain the important information, and to discard the information that is not useful. The brain usually messes up and we end up remembering insignificant details, and forgetting the main point. Research suggests that these filters are implemented so that the brain can process less information, but more important information. As I am sitting typing this, I am not aware of every sound that I can hear. It is information that gets filtered out as I am trying to concentrate.

George Miller published in 1956 "The Magical Number". The magical number refers to SEVEN plus minus TWO. This means that the magic number includes 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The reason they call it 'magical' is because we seem to find it in a lot of places. For example, when given a long list of words and the subjects are asked to memorize such words and later on asked to recall them, the great majority of people will be able to recall between five and nine items. (This is, of course, without the aid of repetition). Human working memory can hold on average, seven items. There are strategies to make this number bigger, but in essence that is the idea. Why do we have this limit? No one knows for certain, but everything seems to point to having to refresh the working memory buffer in order to make room for new information.

So, do we really use 10% of the capacity of our brain?
No. We use all the capacity of our brains. When it comes to the potential of our brain and how far we can go by training it, the honest answer is that we don't know. We don't know just how much our brains can hold or do. And to be perfectly honest--we might never know.

Leader of the Free World

You know what seriously pisses me off? When americans refer to their president as "the leader of the free world". This is something I've heard from all kinds of people; republican, democrat, libertarian. However, they all have something in common--they are Americans. Only Americans refer to their president as the leader of the free world. I haven't heard anyone else, anywhere else on the planet use this term. So, what is the free world anyways? Countries that hold elections every 'n' number of years? Countries that have freedom of speech? Of course, Americans consider themselves to be "free", but according to my definition of "free world", I'd also add most of Latin America, most of Europe, some parts of Africa, and a big chunk of Asia. Who voted America as "our leader"? No one did. This is just a title that Americans like to place on themselves. If you analize it, Americans calling themselves the "leaders of the free world" shows an arrogant attitude towards the rest of the democratic countries. I bet most Americans even think that the idea of freedom and liberty originated in America. They're probably clueless as to what the enlightenment was. So, since I live in a country that is obviously part of this "free world", I take offense when Americans assume that their president is our leader. Why not my president? Or the prime minister of Canada? Or the president of France, Spain or Russia?

Americans, get off your high horse. The world does not revolve around you.

Hoarding and Keeping Useless Objects (Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior)

People often know that a common trait of obsessive-compulsive (OC) behavior is the difficulty of getting rid of useless objects. People like this will often safeguard old useless property even if it has absolutely no sentimental or pragmatic value. In the OC mind, the object might be useful or have purpose in the future. Even if that use is not so obvious. In many instances, this person will retain the object even though it has no rational purpose, but "just in case". For example, I still have in one of my drawers an AC charger for a StarTac phone that has not been produced since the late 90's. But hey... I'm keeping it "just in case". The OC mind is very good at rationalizing its inability to get rid of these objects. Usually I find myself figuring that if I throw an object out, I will find a need for it "soon". On a related note, the OC mind also has a tendency of hoarding. In many cases it is money, but it can also apply to objects. Someone with OC will develop a fear of impending doom, and riddles him or herself with "what ifs". Someone like this will very unlikely 'run out' of something. They always have a spare to take place of anything that is consumed. Just so you imagine, try to picture someone getting ready for a natural disaster and stocking up on goods. However, this is not your normal spare of vegetable oil--It really does mean HOARDING. Allow me to provide myself as an example. Even though I live on my own, I have 5 bars of soap, 3 bottles of liquid soap, 3 bottles of shampoo, more than 25 rolls of toilet paper, 6 tubes of toothpaste, and a lifetime supply of aspirine and pepto bysmol. Of course, if I ever were not able to obtain a new bottle of shampoo due to the economy or another catastrophe, shampooing my hair should be the last of my concerns. This is why it is so hard for a non-OC to understand the OC mind. "Always play it safe" is our motto, and we get ill ridden with anxiety when we lose control.

Anesthesia

Every time that I have a medical procedure which involved anesthesia, it is hard for me to try to ignore the fact that I should be hurting when I am not. Even if I am not able to feel a thing, there is a sense of wrong due to the cutting, severing or otherwise surgical procedure underway. Feeling numb is one of the most interesting experiences ever, and if you can tolerate it, I would suggest that you look at what is being done to your body while under the magical effect of anesthesia. However, not every person is able to handle this. To some, just the sight of blood can be reason enough to faint. Others, like myself, can stomach the situation without even blinking.

Is it the same with emotions? I draw an interesting analogy between the medical anesthesia and emotional anesthesia. This can be produced by drugs or even by the cognitive thoughts of the individual. In a way, psychiatric drugs are an emotion anesthesia. In some cases, the patient will not understand how is it that something that used to bother him or her does not have an effect anymore. Yet, like in medical anesthesia, the patient will now that there is cutting involved and there should be pain, but there is none. Interesting, no?

So it's come to this

So it's come to this...

As I am writing this, my Youtube account unver the name "Voicesinthehead" has been suspended for good. Youtube has a three strike you're out policy. The first two videos that were pulled were the "Fuck you Inmendham (NY style)" and the "Fuck you Inmendham (Mendham style)". Apparently, Youtube does not look kindly at people who go around telling people "FUCK YOU". This is so different to when I first started doing Youtube. If the Amazing Atheist did the videos he used to do nowadays, he would have been suspended ipso-facto. The third video that did it was a video called "Patience", in which I basically said that a video was coming up. Ironically, I can see how Youtube would be pussy enough to remove the first two. But my video "patience" had absolutely nothing wrong in it. I guess Youtube grows less and less sympathetic as your strikes increase. So that's it for now. The account has been PERMA-banned. I still have two more accounts. Voicesinthehead2 and YeOldeSupex. The truth of the matter is that I care little about having my account suspended. Most people will think that I am only claiming "SOUR GRAPES"! But, to be perfectly honest, Youtube had started eating into my life. I started living for Youtube and ignoring the important things in my life--including my job. Now that Youtube is gone, I can do more work, less youtube and perhaps start doing more interesting and important things. In any case, Youtube has become pretty stale and I think I have obtained all the juice I could from it. It almost seems as if everything that could be said, has been said.

My friends. After the whole Gary and Mendham fiasco a lot of videos were made by supposed "friends" saying that what I did was wrong. Videos from Rozeboosje and this jackass:

Now, the interesting thing is how these people have come to show me their true colors. They think that being a friend is making videos trying to ridicule me and Naomi. They're not being friends. They are being jackasses who claim that they are doing "the right thing". In reality they are only being pretentious assholes who want to appear as having more "moral" ground. To all you people I will say this. I will not contest wether you think if what we did was right or wrong. A real friend would send me a private message expressing their concern about the issue and disapproving. A real friend would have tried to contact me before making it public. These are not friends. These are hyenas who are only making fire out of the dried up tree. Especially those who are making videos JUST NOW, seeing that I am gone and not willing to respond. And to think that these are people that I actually defended and was loyal too. At least I know that if they did something I disapproved of, I would not just come out and make videos trying to ridicule them. (But that's just me). Maybe I DO have a higher moral ground.

DMCA hypocrisy

Of the two things that have happened this month, there is one that shocks me the way people have reacted to. This is, the DMCA that Naomi filed against a video that was uploaded using bits and pieces of her own footage. People are OUTRAGED!! How can an atheist do this!? How can someone that calls themselves a freethinker file a DMCA against a Muslim?! The video that was taken down has been re-uploaded several times, usually by atheists, who claim that freedom of speech should be defended at all costs. That's all nice and good, but when I asked them if they thought that giving a platform to something that went against their principles was ok, even if it was in defense of freedom of speech, they all just ignored my question and went to make videos about how freedom of speech is awesome. Sometimes I feel like I am talking to complete morons. I even stated that I was not challenging the idea of freedom of speech, but rather challenging the method to fight "DMCA Censorship". Of course, they completely ignored what I had to say and just kept making videos attacking me because I was "against freedom of speech". I guess sometimes human emotion is so strong that when someone is asking something different, we choose to ignore it, and just attack what is easy to attack and was never said. So to state it clearly

I AM NOT AGAINST FREEDOM OF SPEECH. I THINK FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS A BASIC RIGHT AND WE SHOULD ALL HAVE IT. HOWEVER, I BELIEVE THAT IF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS TAKEN AWAY FROM MY ENEMY, I WILL FIGHT FOR HIS OR HER RIGHT TO HAVE THAT FREEDOM, BUT I WILL NOT ENDORSE OR PROVIDE A PLATFORM FOR HIS OR HER IDEALS.

Most people will not get the above. They are so set in the "freedom of speech" is great rhetoric that it will just slip their minds what I am actually saying.

As for the hypocrisy--like I stated above, many people complained about the video being removed and have made an immense amount of videos explaining why the DMCA is frivolous (that is, without merit). The term "false DMCA" isn't really adequate because the DMCA did occur and had all the inclosuins necessary. I will not argue whether the DMCA is frivolous or not, or if it holds in a court of law. I will however say the following:

When Inmendham filed DMCA's against my video and those of JonesR and BCJ and theyoutoobpolice and all those other people who were included in his "slander" lawsuit, nobody--I repeat NOBODY reuploaded my video or any of the above. The circumstances were pretty much the same. In fact, the video DMCA'd by Gary contained about 2 seconds of a still image of his face. Where is the outrage in the community? Why wasn't my video re-uploaded a hundred times? Inmendham is also an atheist, and a "free thinker". So what is different? Nothing really, just the fact that we are all hypocrites in this game. Naomi filed a DMCA and that rendered a storm of shit. Gary has filed DOZENS of DMCA's (DMCA's that have no merit), and there is no outcry from the community.

Here's my plead to the community: If you really do think that DMCA's are wrong... will you re-upload that video that Gary DMCA'd? Or are you just complete and utter hypocrites? Yeah, that's what I thought...

Invasion of Privacy

LEGAL STUFF

Some people have called us stalkers, and have said we are bullies. I can understand that the idea of going to someone else's town is edgy and can make people a little nervous. However, they use charged words to get their points accross. Let's take a look at some facts:

March the 1st I rented a car in La Guardia airport with the intent of going to a town called Mendham, NJ

I drove with Naomi from New York City to Mendham, New Jersey. The road trip was a little over an hour.

The primary reason of our trip was to get out of New York City. Since I come from a very large city that is very similar to New York, I wanted to do something different outside of the city.

I will not deny that part of the reason I chose to go to Mendham, was just so that I could make a video against Gary.

We never stepped on private property.

We never knocked on anyone's door.

It is perfectly legal to show a house on the internet. There is no way around this. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, if you can see it from Public Property, you can film it, and you can upload it. (This does not apply to showing people's faces).

The first amendment of the constution of the United States protects the right to peaceble assemble. This means that I have the right to go to Mendham or any other town in NJ if I wish to do so. Regardless of whether someone I know lived in that town or not.

If Gary could prove that I am in any way a threat to him or his privacy, he could file a restraining order. No such order has been filed. Nor will it be, because there are no grounds for it.

That is it. What we did was 100% legal.

TASTELESS

Apart from being said that what we did was "illegal" which I already disproved, it is being said that what we did was immature, tasteless, classless, retarded, stupid, moronic, obsessive. Apart from that, people say that we have no lives, that we are lame, and that we "should not procreate". You know what? You are absolutely right. It was dumb, stupid, childish, immature, tasteless, etc. And it was also fun. We had a great time doing it and I don't regret it. If people don't care for what I do in my spare time, that is their problem and not mine. However, the funniest part is watching all these trolls critizising. Especially those who have become obsessed with Naomi and I. They are spending so much of their time attacking us, and yet they're spending their own lives saying that we have no lives. So, if we in fact have no lives... what does that say about the troll who spends hours and hours attacking those who have no lives? I will soon start worrying about those who worry and getting angry at those who get angry. To those faceless pathetic losers who are obsessed with Naomi and I, all I can say is: Matthew 7:3-5

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

I hate quoting from the bible, which is a book full of garbage. But this tract actually fits perfectly those who have become obsessed with us.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

There is a very good reason as to why Naomi closed her accounts, and I am keeping mine private for a while. I do not wish to discuss these reasons at the moment. I'll just say that what is being done to her is much much worse than what we could have ever done. It has nothing to do with the DMCA or Gary. For now, it will stay this way and I cannot assert if I will make more videos or not. If you want to contact me you can do so at supexcellency@gmail.com

Zeitgeist

In a recent video response to Naomi, I made the claim that we cannot really judge the people of our past when they did something that was morally sanctioned by their society. This, of course, does not mean that because they were ignorant about it; it was the right thing to do. For example, Slavery is considered morally wrong by today's standards, and the vast majority of people living today find it objectionable. However, less than three hundred years ago, slavery was perfectly legal and morally sanctioned. I made the case that, if I had been born in the seventeen hundreds, I might have owned slaves, and thought it was perfectly moral. It is only when we look at it from our standards of 2009, that we see just how horrible it was. For more on this, watch this video:

The interesting part, is that I know that my ideas are not original, and that I was simply paraphrasing something I had heard or read somewhere. Then, it finally dawned on me. This was a chapter on the God Delusion by the one and only Richard Dawkins. So, I went ahead and pulled out my PDF version. So, here it is, Dawkins' version on the Moral Zeitgeist.

*****WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE WORK OF PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS ON HIS BOOK "THE GOD DELUSION"*******

In any society there exists a somewhat mysterious consensus, which changes over the decades, and for which it is not pretentious to use the German loan-word Zeitgeist (spirit of the times). I said that female suffrage was now universal in the world's democracies, but this reform is in fact astonishingly recent. Here are some dates at which women were granted the vote:

New Zealand	1893
Australia	1902
Finland	1906
Norway	1913
United States	1920
Britain	1928
France	1945
Belgium	1946
Switzerland	1971
Kuwait	2006

This spread of dates through the twentieth century is a gauge of the shifting Zeitgeist. Another is our attitude to race. In the early part of the twentieth century, almost everybody in Britain (and many other countries too) would be judged racist by today's standards. Most white people believed that black people (in which category they would have lumped the very diverse Africans with unrelated groups from India, Australia and Melanesia) were inferior to white people in almost all respects except - patronizingly – sense of rhythm. The 1920s equivalent of James Bond was that cheerfully debonair boyhood hero, Bulldog Drummond. In one novel, The Black Gang, Drummond refers to 'Jews, foreigners, and other unwashed folk'. In the climax scene of The Female of the Species, Drummond is cleverly disguised as Pedro, black servant of the archvillain. For his dramatic disclosure, to the reader as well as to the villain, that 'Pedro' is really Drummond himself, he could have said: 'You think I am Pedro. Little do you realize, I am your archenemy Drummond, blacked up.' Instead, he chose these words: 'Every beard is not false, but every nigger smells. That beard ain't false, dearie, and dis nigger don't smell. So I'm thinking, there's something wrong somewhere.' I read it in the 1950s, three decades after it was written, and it was (just) still possible for a boy to thrill to the drama and not notice the racism. Nowadays, it would be inconceivable.

Thomas Henry Huxley, by the standards of his times, was an enlightened and liberal progressive. But his times were not ours, and in 1871 he wrote the following:

No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the
average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of
the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible
that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our
prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well
as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully
with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a
contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by
bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilization
will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky
cousins.

It is a commonplace that good historians don't judge statements from past times by the standards of their own. Abraham Lincoln, like Huxley, was ahead of his time, yet his views on matters of race also sound backwardly racist in ours. Here he is in a debate in 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas:

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Had Huxley and Lincoln been born and educated in our time, they would have been the first to cringe with the rest of us at their own Victorian sentiments and unctuous tone. I quote them only to illustrate how the Zeitgeist moves on. If even Huxley, one of the great liberal minds of his age, and even Lincoln, who freed the slaves, could say such things, just think what the average Victorian must have thought. Going back to the eighteenth century it is, of course, well known that Washington, Jefferson and other men of the Enlightenment held slaves. The Zeitgeist moves on, so inexorably that we sometimes take it for granted and forget that the change is a real phenomenon in its own right. There are numerous other examples. When the sailors first landed in Mauritius and saw the gentle dodos, it never occurred to them to do anything other than club them to death. They didn't even want to eat them (they were described as unpalatable).

Presumably, hitting defenceless, tame, flightless birds over the head with a club was just something to do. Nowadays such behavior would be unthinkable, and the extinction of a modern equivalent of the dodo, even by accident, let alone by deliberate human killing, is regarded as a tragedy. Just such a tragedy, by the standards of today's cultural climate, was the more recent extinction of Thylacinus, the Tasmanian wolf. These now iconically lamented creatures had a bounty on their heads until as recently as 1909. In Victorian novels of Africa, 'elephant', 'lion' and 'antelope' (note the revealing singular) are 'game' and what you do to game, without a second thought, is shoot it. Not for food. Not for self-defence. For 'sport'. But now the Zeitgeist has changed. Admittedly, rich, sedentary 'sportsmen' may shoot wild African animals from the safety of a Land-Rover and take the stuffed heads back home. But they have to pay through the nose to do so, and are widely despised for it. Wildlife conservation and the conservation of the environment have become accepted values with the same moral status as was once accorded to keeping the sabbath and shunning graven images. The swinging sixties are legendary for their liberal modernity. But at the beginning of that decade a prosecuting barrister, in the trial for obscenity of Lady Cbatterley's Lover, could still ask the jury: 'Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters - because girls can read as well as boys [can you believe he said that?] - reading this book? Is it a book you would have lying round in your own house? Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?' This last rhetorical question is a particularly stunning illustration of the speed with which the Zeitgeist changes.

The American invasion of Iraq is widely condemned for its civilian casualties, yet these casualty figures are orders of magnitude lower than comparable numbers for the Second World War. There seems to be a steadily shifting standard of what is morally acceptable. Donald Rumsfeld, who sounds so callous and odious today, would have sounded like a bleeding-heart liberal if he had said the same things during the Second World War. Something has shifted in the intervening decades. It has shifted in all of us, and the shift has no connection with religion. If anything, it happens in spite of religion, not because of it. The shift is in a recognizably consistent direction, which most of us would judge as improvement. Even Adolf Hitler, widely regarded as pushing the envelope of evil into uncharted territory, would not have stood out in the time of Caligula or of Genghis Khan. Hitler no doubt killed more people than Genghis, but he had twentiethcentury technology at his disposal. And did even Hitler gain his greatest pleasure, as Genghis avowedly did, from seeing his victims' 'near and dear bathed in tears'? We judge Hitler's degree of evil by the standards of today, and the moral Zeitgeist has moved on since Caligula's time, just as the technology has. Hitler seems especially evil only by the more benign standards of our time. Within my lifetime, large numbers of people thoughtlessly bandied derogatory nicknames and national stereotypes: Frog, Wop, Dago, Hun, Yid, Coon, Nip, Wog. I won't claim that such words have disappeared, but they are now widely deplored in polite circles. The word 'negro', even though not intended to be insulting, can be used to date a piece of English prose. Prejudices are indeed revealing giveaways of the date of a piece of writing. In his own time, a respected Cambridge theologian, A. C. Bouquet, was able to begin the chapter on Islam of his Comparative Religion with these words: 'The Semite is not a natural monotheist, as was supposed about the middle of the nineteenth century. He is an animist.' The obsession with race (as opposed to culture) and the revealing use of the singular ('The Semite . . . He is an animist') to reduce an entire plurality of people to one 'type' are not heinous by any standards. But they are another tiny indicator of the changing Zeitgeist. No Cambridge professor of theology or any other subject would today use those words. Such subtle hints of changing mores tell us that Bouquet was writing no later than the middle of the twentieth century. It was in fact 1941. Go back another four decades, and the changing standards become unmistakeable. In a previous book I quoted H. G. Wells's Utopian New Republic, and I shall do so again because it is such a shocking illustration of the point I am making. And how will the New Republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black? . . . the yellow man? . . . the Jew? . . . those swarms of black, and brown, and dirtywhite, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world is a world, and not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go . . . And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity - beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds . . . And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness . . . is death . . . The men of the New Republic . . . will have an ideal that will make the killing worth the while. That was written in 1902, and Wells was regarded as a progressive in his own time. In 1902 such sentiments, while not widely agreed, would have made for an acceptable dinner-party argument. Modern readers, by contrast, literally gasp with horror when they see the words. We are forced to realize that Hitler, appalling though he was, was not quite as far outside the Zeitgeist of his time as he seems from our vantage-point today. How swiftly the Zeitgeist changes - and it moves in parallel, on a broad front, throughout the educated world.

Where, then, have these concerted and steady changes in social consciousness come from? The onus is not on me to answer. For my purposes it is sufficient that they certainly have not come from religion. If forced to advance a theory, I would approach it along the following lines. We need to explain why the changing moral Zeitgeist is so widely synchronized across large numbers of people; and we need to explain its relatively consistent direction. First, how is it synchronized across so many people? It spreads itself from mind to mind through conversations in bars and at dinner parties, through books and book reviews, through newspapers and broadcasting, and nowadays through the Internet. Changes in the moral climate are signalled in editorials, on radio talk shows, in political speeches, in the patter of stand-up comedians and the scripts of soap operas, in the votes of parliaments making laws and the decisions of judges interpreting them. One way to put it would be in terms of changing meme frequencies in the meme pool, but I shall not pursue that. Some of us lag behind the advancing wave of the changing moral Zeitgeist and some of us are slightly ahead. But most of us in the twenty-first century are bunched together and way ahead of our counterparts in the Middle Ages, or in the time of Abraham, or even as recently as the 1920s. The whole wave keeps moving, and even the vanguard of an earlier century (T. H. Huxley is the obvious example) would find itself way behind the laggers of a later century. Of course, the advance is not a smooth incline but a meandering sawtooth. There are local and temporary setbacks such as the United States is suffering from its government in the early 2000s. But over the longer timescale, the progressive trend is unmistakeable and it will continue.

What impels it in its consistent direction? We mustn't neglect the driving role of individual leaders who, ahead of their time, stand up and persuade the rest of us to move on with them. In America, the ideals of racial equality were fostered by political leaders of the calibre of Martin Luther King, and entertainers, sportsmen and other public figures and role models such as Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson. The emancipations of slaves and of women owed much to charismatic leaders. Some of these leaders were religious; some were not. Some who were religious did their good deeds because they were religious. In other cases their religion was incidental. Although Martin Luther King was a Christian, he derived his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience directly from Gandhi, who was not. Then, too, there is improved education and, in particular, the increased understanding that each of us shares a common humanity with members of other races and with the other sex - both deeply unbiblical ideas that come from biological science, especially evolution. One reason black people and women and, in Nazi Germany, Jews and gypsies have been treated badly is that they were not perceived as fully human. The philosopher Peter Singer, in Animal Liberation, is the most eloquent advocate of the view that we should move to a post-speciesist condition in which humane treatment is meted out to all species that have the brain power to appreciate it. Perhaps this hints at the direction in which the moral Zeitgeist might move in future centuries. It would be a natural extrapolation of earlier reforms like the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women.

It is beyond my amateur psychology and sociology to go any further in explaining why the moral Zeitgeist moves in its broadly concerted way. For my purposes it is enough that, as a matter of observed fact, it does move, and it is not driven by religion - and certainly not by scripture. It is probably not a single force like gravity, but a complex interplay of disparate forces like the one that propels Moore's Law, describing the exponential increase in computer power. Whatever its cause, the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claim that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good.

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Libertarianism

If you go to my facebook profile, and look under Political preference, you might notice that I have stated I am a libertarian. Many people do not know what a libertarian is, so I will try to explain briefly why I have labeled myself in this way.

As a libertarian, I think that the most important aspect of human life is individual liberty. Liberty is an anchor point to the whole philosophy of libertarianism. I consider that the French enlightenment was the single greatest achievement in our history.

I believe that human beings should be free to do whatever they wish with their lives and their bodies. However, I also believe that this liberty is unrestricted to the extent of harming or interfering with other people's liberties. For example, if you wish to use heroin on your body, it is your choice. There should not be an organism that tells you that you should or shouldn't do a certain behavior. But, if you decide to steal, cheat, hurt or damage, then you are obviously interfering with other people and their liberties.

Some people associate libertarianism with anarchism. Although many libertarians are anarchists, I do not consider myself one. I think that anarchism does not work because many human beings will not own up to their responsability. However, I do think that the size of the government should be reduced to the minimum possible.

A libertarian like myself, will usually believe that freedom (both economic and personal) is the one and most important thing to safeguards. Some people wrongfully think that libertarians harbor populist and marxist beliefs. This is utterly and completely false. Libertarianism is the exact opposite of communism and socialism. While these philosophies seek for a state that will adminstrate the economic and personal freedom of it's individuals, libertarianism seeks the exact opposite.

As a libertarian, I believe that a woman has the right to choose whether she has an abortion or not. Drugs should be legalized (all of them), and many other laws that infringe on people's rights to choose what they do or don't. This does not mean that I am in favor of abortion or that I wish to do drugs. It only means that I think each person should have the right to choose. (It is not everyday you will encounter someone like me who is for the legalization of all drugs and has never used any illegal substance).

To have the freedom to do something that may harm you does not mean that you will necessarily do it. It means that you value freedom more than "safety". And to me, that is the single most important part of being human.