The monthly reading list for Sep 06

Only two books finished this month, far less than last month. I blame the start back up of school and actually, you know, having to work again. It doesn't help I'm about 3/4 of the way through about 4 other books, which means I either am an impressive multi-tasker, or plainly need to learn to focus.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick.
Not my favorite book from Dick, that's probably VALIS or The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, but an entertaining read. A little light on plot, but really intriguing characterization. It's pretty fascinating watching a man slowly devolve into drug induced schizophrenia, and it's made all the more interesting knowing that Dick spent his own fair share of time experiencing drug induced schizophrenia.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin.
Entertaining book from one of the comedic masters. On the downside, if you've seen his last, say 3, HBO specials, you've heard a lot of the material in the book. And an entire book of Carlin's unrelenting "don't things suck and aren't they getting worse?" can be a little tough on the soul.

But it's worth it just to see the ways in which Carlin plays with, uses, and points out the absurdities of language. And this has his outstanding Ten Commandments routine, one of my favorites of all time.

Carlin on the 10 Commandments

Here is my problem with the ten commandments- why exactly are there 10?

You simply do not need ten. The list of ten commandments was artificially and deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:

About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.

...It is clearly a bullshit list. It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a little boy.

Let's start with the first three:
I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN
THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH
Right off the bat the first three are pure bullshit. Sabbath day? Lord's name? strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century. So now we're down to 7. Next:
HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER
Obedience, respect for authority. Just another name for controlling people. The truth is that obedience and respect shouldn't be automatic. They should be earned and based on the parent's performance. Some parents deserve respect, but most of them don't, period. You're down to six.

Now in the interest of logic, something religion is very uncomfortable with, we're going to jump around the list a little bit.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
Stealing and lying. Well actually, these two both prohibit the same kind of behavior- dishonesty. So you don't really need two you combine them and call the commandment "thou shalt not be dishonest". And suddenly you're down to 5.

And as long as we're combining I have two others that belong together:
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE
Once again, these two prohibit the same type of behavior. In this case it is marital infidelity. The difference is- coveting takes place in the mind. But I don't think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else's wife because what is a guy gonna think about when he's waxing his carrot? But, marital infidelity is a good idea so we're gonna keep this one and call it "thou shalt not be unfaithful". And suddenly we're down to four.

But when you think about it, honesty and infidelity are really part of the same overall value so, in truth, you could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments and give them simpler language, positive language instead of negative language and call the whole thing "thou shalt always be honest and faithful" and we're down to 3.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S GOODS
This one is just plain fuckin' stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "o come o ye faithful", and you want one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it alone. You throw out coveting and you're down to 2 now- the big honesty and fidelity commandment and the one we haven't talked about yet:
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed. So, with all of this in mind, I give you my revised list of the two commandments:
Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie.
and
Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you.

Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fuckin' pocket. I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment: Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

Evolving political ideas.

I've been, probably for a bit of time now, a left-leaning libertarian type.

[When I'm not entirely in the mind frame of anarchism, or the apathetic/enlightened frame of dismissing the whole, increasingly seemingly corrupt, ball of wax. That's, in many cases, probably the dissillusionment of youth falling by the wayside... But I digress.]

Government's increased intrusion into every aspect of our lives, lead by the culture of fear perpetuated by the current administration, fills me with a sense of loathing for the political process I don't think I've ever had before. Its increasing departure from actual constitutional democracy and its seemingly absolute disregard of the Bill of Rights pushes me further and further to disregarding the whole thing.

But in my more practical moments, when thinking about the type of government I could actually support, instead of simply bear, a limited government of the libertarian type seems optimal.

But I've always struggled with two aspects of the libertarian philosophy. First, it always seemed to me that government works as a fairly effective check on the abuses of the sociopathic corporate culture that prizes profit over everything else.

And secondly, the one aspect of some European types of socialism that tends to appeal, is that despite the incredible intrusive and bureacratic aspect of it, it seems to stem from a place where the genesis of it is giving a damn about other people.

The libertarian ideal is frequently dismissed with the retort that it's nothing more than the politics of selfishness, and if you don't make caring about other people required by government, soon you have old people eating Alpo and suffering all about.

But when you think about it, that presupposes the idea that people naturally suck. Or are negative and evil. But people have both profound capacities for charity and kindness [as well as evil, of course] and to say that leaving people the hell alone and not mandating "kindness" returns to a Darwinian dog-eat-dog scenario where the strong gobble the weak, is short sighted, and imho, results from years of Western thought corrupted by the insanity that is Chrisianity. Original sin, the concepts that people are born corrupt and require Salvation, the hatred of the "flesh" for the spiritual, etc, etc.

And it also disregards that from a Darwinian perspective, cooperation is as biologically evolutionarily advantageous as competition.

When people are free to do whatever they want, they are equally free to help others. The are free to assist the disadvantaged and protect the weak. The idea that freedom results only in selfishness isn't one that I'm willing to submit my psyche to anymore. [An ongoing process, of course. Seventeen years of brainwashing is tough to kick.]

It seems most of the damage done to others throughout history has been done by those who want to impart the "help" of the "one right way to live" on others.

Like C.S. Lewis says -

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

As for government as a corporate check on power... that stems, I think from an idealistic sense of what the role of government should be, as opposed to what it is. I read this this AM and had a sense of illumination, for lack of a better word.

Markos Moulitsas Is Not a Libertarian

Government is the source of corporations’ power. Corporations have gotten very good at getting government to empower them to do whatever they want. Without government, corporations could not exist. And the less power government wields over the people, the less power the corporation can leverage to its own.

...and Markos Moulitsas is still not a libertarian

...corporations gain their undue power from government. Government is the enabler, empowering corporations to step on individuals and small businesses through both regulations and subsidies. It’s only by restraining government that corporations can be held in check.

This makes a lot of sense to me right now. And whether that's logic or rationalisation [yes, the same thing, I know], who's to say?

People are pretty good. As individuals. Get a bunch of them together, not so much.

It's probably a combination of being The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. [Both great books, btw.]

Like Groucho Marx said,

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."

And yes the irony of trying to find a political label to "join" doesn't escape me, but in the process of working all this out in your head, you have to use some kind of words and labels.

Unless Zen somehow becomes a political party. Which would be kind of cool, now that I think about it.

Save me from "normality", please.

Normal is entirely overrated.

Normal, of course, being an illusory matter of perspective.

Though save me from the espoused, "consensus", "mainstream" normality, I'd say.

Defining normal is rarely anything other than an opinion poll.

Normal as the the majority opinion quickly devolves into "Well, millions of German Nazis defined normal as something else entirely, didn't they?" And thus self referentially invoking Godwin's Law, we proceed.

"Act Normal"

Who is it that gets together in mobs and hunts down, tortures and kills people who are different from them? Who is it that teaches modesty, courtesy, and generosity but lives in depravity, rudeness, and greed? Who is it that can gather together the time, energy and money to murder millions and destroy cities, for the sake of a flag, deity or economic system? Not weirdos, not kooks or cranks or nuts. It's the "Normal" people who do those things.

It's the "Normal" people who believe there's only one "real world" and it's the one THEY'RE living in. It's the "Normal" people who kill each other over differences in that reality, and if someone can't trick themselves into ignoring the millions of inconsistencies or can't gloss over the gaping flaws in that reality-construct, or can't even pretend convincingly that they believe that flimsy and self-contradictory world is ALL TRUE, rather than have their own illusory stability undermined or accept that other ways of thinking and seeing might be valid, the "Normal" people imprison those "mentally ill," and experimentally destroy their personalities by use of drugs, electroconvulsion, and brain surgery.

I only spent 5 years as a Marine officer...

...but yeah, this sounds about right.

Fred Reed "Not Today, Sir."

...Recently I talked by email about the war with Jim Coyne, an airborne-infantry friend who served two tours as a gunship door-gunner in Viet Nam and then made a career in journalism. I asked, “Do they [I meant the officer corps, the official military] actually believe the optimistic twaddle this time around? Do they really not know what is happening?”

Jim’s response: “In my opinion, they really don't know; they may not even want to know on some level. You know as well as I, these are mission-oriented folks; can do folks; failure and its introspective handmaidens are not options to them. And in a tactical mission-oriented world our military doesn't really fail very often; in a strategic military/political world such as the Mideast and Iraq, however, we simply cannot win.

”Again, as in Viet Nam, the career officer corps salutes and marches toward the sound of battle. Eventually however (and it won't be long now) it's the grunts who will begin to revolt, first in small ways (as in the 101st in late 1968, "No sir. We are not going up that hill again.) and then, quickly thereafter (As in 1973, "Fuck you, asshole.") By that time the media may get wind of things and spin it exponentially out of control. That’s what I think.”

...The pattern is so common in recent wars as to be routine. The enlisted men know that the US is losing. The officers do not know it, or refuse to know it. This will eventually have consequences.

When men die pointlessly in a war they know cannot be won and that means nothing to them, when they realize that they are dying for the egos of draft-dodging politicians safe in Washington—they will revolt. It happened before. It will happen again. But when? Next year, I'd guess.

It is important to understand that officers and enlisted men are very different animals. For example, enlisted men do things (drive the tank, repair the helicopter) whereas officers are chiefly administrators. But the important difference is psychological. Enlisted men are blue-collar guys or technicians. They carry little ideological overburden. They want to fix the tank or finish the field exercise and then go drink beer and get laid.

Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.

...officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?

There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.

Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.

Note the heavy emphasis of the military, meaning the officer corps, on ritual and pageantry. It is adult kid-stuff. Three thousand men building a skyscraper just show up, do their jobs, and go home. The military wants its men standing in squares, precisely at attention, thumbs along the seams, with brass perfectly polished. It wants stirring music, snappy salutes, and the haunting tones of taps, “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir.” This is justified as necessary for discipline. It isn’t. A gunny sergeant has no difficulty maintaining his authority without the hoop-la.

Board of Education Barbecue

Shiraishi-san, superintendent of the Board of Education, invited everybody over to his home on Saturday for a bbq. Good times...


Aotani-san is what we call an "affectionate" drunk, god help us all.

Sandy's visit to a Buddhist Temple

"Stick Magnetic Ribbons on your SUV"

Satire is lovely.

"...there is neither judgement nor reward beyond that which we make for ourselves."

Born in Time (Part Two)

I'm totally going to hell.

If, you know, I still believed in that kind of thing. Sinfest.

Congress gives Bush the right to torture and detain people forever.

On this day in American history... it was shown that the politics of fear wins out over higher ideals, real morality and plain fucking decency.

How incredibly depressing.

But it's okay, because somewhere, somehow, swarthy brown people "hate our freedom", so that makes it all worth it.

Congress gives Bush the right to torture and detain people forever

Following in the footsteps of the House, the Senate this afternoon approved the bill which vests in the President the power of indefinite, unreviewable detention (even of U.S. citizens) and which also legalizes various torture techniques.

...Nonetheless, it is simply a fact that virtually every Republican in the House and the Senate (with one sole exception in the Senate and only 7 in the House) voted in favor of this tyrannical bill, while Democrats overwhelmingly opposed it (in the House, 160 Democrats voted "no," while 34 voted "yes"). With those facts assembled, it is fair to say that the Republicans are the party of torture, indefinite and unreviewable detention powers, and limitless presidential power, even over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

...and don't forget this most important part of the urgency and haste in passing the bill before the next election cycle, when Republicans may lose one of the houses of Congress -

Veterans, legal experts hit deal on torture

He pointed out that the McCain-Warner-Graham bill does not expressly forbid any of the brutal practices such as “water-boarding” in which detainees are made to feel they are drowning. “But it does retroactively absolve administration officials of legal responsibility for past war crimes.”

Because you've got to know what's important, right?

Some of the best Mixed Martial Arts highlight films I've ever seen.

Not quite what you'd expect, but they're things of beauty.

Seriously.

Furious Angels


The 3rd Man

Ninjaaaaaaa!!!!!!

I Clung to the Ceiling Until the Board of Regents Granted Me Tenure

Japanese professor: The peroxides are very volatile. If you drop them, we have to be out of the building before they hit the floor.
Grad student: I won't drop them.
Japanese professor: And only Japanese ninja can move that fast.
Grad student: OK.
Japanese professor: I am well trained in the art of the ninja.

10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio

via Overheard in the Office, Sep 26, 2006

Overheard in NY

Ah, Buffy, we miss you so...

Not-So-Christian Scientists

Son: Is there anything we can do to get Buffy back?
Mom: Well, we could join together in prayer.
Son: Uh huh. Is there anything useful we can do?
Mom: No.

--3 train

Overheard by: Jason

via Overheard in New York, Sep 21, 2006

The cover of Newsweek

This week...

On the sidebar of the page

Europe edition- "Losing Afghanistan"

Asia edition- "Losing Afghanistan"

Latin America edition - "Losing Afghanistan"

U.S. edition - [...wait for it...] - "My Life in Pictures"

Explaining America

More at the link. Some astute, some crazy, all worth reading.

Fred on Everything:

“Fred, explain America today. Say something tendentious and irritating about what is going on in this curious country. Why do we do what we do? Sock it to us.”

All right.

The United States is an uneasy, frightened country, yet aggressive, truculent, and looking for trouble—which it finds. Fear: Terrorists are everywhere, like cockroaches and governmental cameras. Citizens should watch each other on the subway and rat out suspicious behavior, such as speaking a language other than English. People need to go through metal detectors in county courthouses, because the government is scared of them, and get spied on by the government to protect them against the ever-present danger of…of, well, the unspeakable and unspoken angst of existence. And so, in the customary manner of large scared bullies, the country lashes out, at Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela, wherever.

A friend says, “Fred, gringos want to be controlled. They love this police-state stuff. It gives them meaning. They lead miserable lives in boring suburbs. The husband is a mouth-breathing oaf with his retinas sewed to the football machine. His wife is a pucker-faced shrew with cellulite like the dark side of the Moon and his kids are whining dopers who gawp at the box and gurgle over stupid video games. The guy has no control over anything in his life. He’s scared of the boss and the pissed-off middle-aged man-hating divorcee with thick ankles in Human Resources who would love to outsource his job to Mumbai. He knows he’ll get raped if he splits from the wife. So he wants to kill something. He doesn’t care what, and anyway finding out might require reading a book, which god knows he isn’t going to do.”

This may be harsh. It also may be true of more people than one would like.

Like all things, make of it what you will.

So... Robert Anton Wilson was having an ebay auction for a card randomly selected from a tarot deck. For $5, and an autograph from one of my favorite authors, why not?

So I got this card. One of the Major Arcana.

The Devil.

[Cue spooky "woo-woo" music, if so inclined.]

Make of that what you will.

[Or read some standard interpretations below.]


Wikipedia

The Devil is the card of self bondage to an idea or belief which is preventing us from growing... On the other hand, however, it can also be a warning to someone who is too restrained and/or dispassionate and never allows him or herself to be rash or wild or ambitious, which is yet another form of enslavement.

The Devil is the 15th card of the Major Arcana, and is associated with earth and Capricornus. Though many decks portray a stereotypical Satan figure for this card, it more accurately represents our bondage to material things rather than any evil persona. It also indicates an obsession or addiction to fulfilling our own earthly base desires. Should the Devil represent a person, it will most likely be one of money and power, one who is persuasive, aggressive, and controlling. In any case, it is most important that the Querent understands that the ties that bind are freely worn, and you are only enslaved if you allow the abuse to go on.

In Jungian terms, he is The Shadow. All the repressed, unmentioned or unmentionable desires that lurk beneath.

Aeclectic.net

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. With Capricorn as its ruling sign, this is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remind the Querent that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

...This card explores some very frightening things, things we are taught to view as evil or shameful. Like earthy materialism, sexual desire, valuables, food, drugs. Lack of control, excess, obsession and raw ambition. At its absolute worst, this is either the addict or the stalker, totally obsessed, enslaved. At its best, this is a card about giving into impulse, cutting lose, going for the gold, climbing every mountain. Among all the cards, this is one of the most complex. Interestingly because no other card is so one-sided. Most cards urge balance, unity, restraint, yin-yang. Not this card. Completely tilted toward the masculine, it is a card that revels in extremity. There is a convincing argument that this is the most powerful and dangerous card in the deck. Magically speaking, it is the one card in the deck that holds the secret of how to escape the material and temporal bonds of Earth. It is a very potent and fascinating card.

Sports Day at Katsuura Elementary School

The Japanese love them some synchronized dancing.


Bread Fishing. Pulling pastries from strings using only your teeth.
And they said I didn't learn anything useful in college.






Playing with kids always requires the rear-naked choke.

Hey, I didn't make the rules.

More pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/Rob.G.Pugh/20060924

Think about it.

"The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but ‘the people’ then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves."

- Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist political philosopher, abolitionist, and legal theorist of the 19th century. He is best known for his role in the abolitionist movement, competing with the U.S. Post Office, and for his contributions to American individualist anarchism.

“A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid.” “We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way."

Words fail.

Except for "insane religious brainwashing apocalyptical batshit craziness."

Those words actually roll right off the tip of the tongue.

Vacation Bible School Has Changed A Lot

...But it seems that VBS [Vacation Bible School] has changed. I found this article at ABC News online about a documentary, “Jesus Camp” and am more than a little concerned.

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the activities at Pastor Becky Fischer’s Bible camp in North Dakota, “Kids on Fire,” subject of the provocative new documentary, “Jesus Camp.” “I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” Fisher said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”

Wow. If Ms. Fischer’s comments aren’t enough to make you scratch your head, maybe the comments of the little ones are.

“A lot of people die for God,” one camper said, “and they’re not afraid.” “We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way.”

Nope, this is not the VBS I remember. I am certain that there are still camps where paper plate art is the norm, but camps like “Kids on Fire” in North Dakota have little ones taping their mouths against abortion and speaking out on political issues like gay marriage.

As a libertarian, I generally support parental choice on everything. Watching the video makes me cringe though. Between the clips of kids praying in front of a Bush photograph, Ms. Fischer openly screaming, “this is war” and boys in battle fatigues, I see a generation of kids being trained for a holy war. I have to wonder how well this would go over if the kids were calling on Allah.

I do think people of every political and spiritual inclination need to pay attention to this trend. This is our future and they know it.

Worthy Religious Questions.

Thank god I'm agnostic. I'm too cowardly to take a stance and have to deal with questions like these.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/09/what_would_trum.html

Things get trickier when you base your religion on a nice fellow who wants you to give most of your money to the poor. How do you justify buying a third television set when people in New Orleans are living in rolled-up carpets? That’s not a rhetorical question. I actually wonder about the answer. Here are some of my best guesses about your rationalization:

1. Jesus likes me better than poor people. He’d approve of my second iPod.
2. If I give a poor person a fish, he’d only eat for a day anyway. What’s one day?
3. I give 10% of my money to charity. God says that’s exactly the right amount. 11% would anger God.
4. Poor people are lazy or crazy. My money won’t fix that.
5. There’s a loophole in the Bible that says I can keep my money. Woo-hoo!
6. I am bad at economics and I am convinced that keeping my money stimulates the economy and helps poor people indirectly.

Am I missing any reasons? I am actually curious.