About the Spinoza Ray Prozak page

When the ancestor of this page started in 1992, it was as a means of promoting the radio show I hosted and the ideas behind it. Already I was somewhat queasy about the transition of the internet from a research resource to a social and political entity, but it has only gotten worse: now, the internet is like television, a place to play inconsequentially and pass the time before one must return to obligation (work, school, dysfunctional family). As a result, I see no point in maintaining an ego page. I am my ideas, and the person behind them is not only none of your business but prefers to live in the real world.

Most people on the internet, like those in coffeehouses and city parties, want to spout off about some big plan for changing the world in order to make themselves feel better. "I am the Savior," said the externalized Ego, "Because I have the truth, and I bring it to you so you know what a good guy I am, even if I have both personal and external failings that are glaringly obvious." We're all words on the internet. We can project whatever illusion we want. So most people have big political opinions and rant freely, but then do nothing, and go back to their jobs with no intention of changing anything but making themselves feel better. The internet is television, a beer after work, a shot of morphine... the internet is palliative treatment, not action. And the individual? Motivated by its own pleasure and externalized ego, it is the force that makes the internet thus. You are your slavery. If you don't do anything about it, clearly you deserve to be a slave.

Put forth on the anus.com pages are a series of ideas designed to liberate earth from the grips of human delusion. I am not anti-human, nor anti-America, nor anti-you; in fact, I'm fond of all three, and I've never met a person I didn't like, in that there's good in all of you. But it's not enough to find approval for your ego or "your" ideas and then to go home to entertainment and ignorance. We as a society are on a path toward a slow but certain destruction, whether of lapsing into a chimpanzee-like degraded society of money-grubbers and cultural absence, or of actual destruction at the hands of climate change, pollution, warfare, disease, sodomy, etc. It doesn't matter: either way, we are not a civilization ascendant, producing great personalities and heroes and amazing art and spiritual strength. We're a bunch of worms feeling about in the mud for our next meal. In that state of mind, we're not transcendent, but slightly depressed, because we know we're worthless... at that point, we are only function, and not very graceful function at that.

I was editor of this site for many years. During that time I went from being a liberal fearful of conservatism to a philosopher who sees conservatism and liberalism as the same disease, and recognizes that only a change in the basic structure of our society -- its philosophical DNA -- can stop a slow and steady decline. I am accustomed to saying something and having it seen as truth five or ten years later. It might take centuries for these predictions to come true. But as the history of similar ideas in practice demonstrates, they will come true. So instead of wasting time caring about who "I" am, think deeply into what you believe... and work to make a change. There are infinite excuses, infinite cop-outs, and only a few hundred thousand ways you can make a difference. Hint: it's often best to work with others instead of being a lone keyboard/coffeehouse activist, or occasional donator to feelgood organizations that spend 60% of your money on staff salaries, paperclips, and "investigative travel."