I know you believe that buying fair trade is self-righteous and doesn’t really make a difference because we’re all still buying from the same system and I agree with you. So what is your overall opinion of the damage humans are doing to the earth’s ecosystems? What changes, if any, would you make if you had the power?

I never said buying fair trade is self-righteous. It’s a consumer preference just like any other. Whether it’s a fair trade logo, a recycle symbol, or a “Made in the USA” sticker, you’re only self-righteous if you think your consumer identity somehow makes you a better person.

As for your larger question about the planet, people tend to ignore the rather obvious fact that the earth as an ecosystem is self-regulating and self-sustaining. It doesn’t give a fuck whether we’re here or not, and on a geological time scale, human influence on the earth’s ecology is a fucking burp. It’s nothing.

When people talk about damage to the earth’s ecosystem, what they really mean is damage to the extent that humans aren’t able to continue living in it, either comfortably or in such numbers. Sure, we also care about a short list of our favorite species, but ultimately it’s all quite self-serving. Of course, that’s perfectly fine by me. I’d prefer that we all thrive, because we’ve got some serious evolving yet to do.

The best way to ensure that our ecosystem stays habitable is to make a dramatic shift in our primary energy source in the coming decades. The world economy is petroleum based. That simply has got to end. It’s dangerous, dirty, and quite frankly, it’s not like we really have a choice. At our current rate, we’re probably gonna run out of oil in our lifetimes anyway.

As a species of seven billion strong and growing, it’s inevitable that we’ll reach a tipping point where the necessity for clean, renewable energy will outweigh the moneyed entrenchment of petroleum based energy. I just hope that tipping point doesn’t come in the form of World War III or global economic collapse.

If it were up to me, I would have gotten ahead of the curve already. Instead of dumping three trillion dollars into the Iraq war, I would have made a concerted, multinational push for the major scientific breakthroughs that are needed in solar power and inertial confinement fusion technologies to revolutionize our global supply chain with clean, renewable energy.

That shit would have made the race to the moon look like fireworks, and honestly, that’s what it’s gonna take if we want to keep upwards of ten billion people alive after the oil is gone.

So, on behalf of the earth’s ecosystem, what changes would I make if I had the power? Short answer, I’d move humanity into a post-petroleum world as soon as possible and on our own terms by throwing a bazillion dollar party for solar and fusion technology.

How do you know when to give up your virginity? People talk about how it’s a special gift to have but I don’t really see what’s so special about it or who to give it up to. I’m probably not ready to have sex if I’m still asking these questions right?

Virginity isn’t a special gift, because your vagina isn’t a commodity. Whether you’re gifting it or selling it, only prostitutes treat pussy as an article of exchange.

The irony here is that the same sanctimonious pricks who condemn prostitution are the very ones to tell you that your virginity is something that you should hand over to a man under select circumstances. Those people are full of shit, and you should stop listening to what they have to say about your vagina.

The truth of the matter is that your body is nobody’s business but your own. Your virginity is yours to keep, lose, or shrug your shoulders at for as long as you like. You’re ready when you’re ready. If you’re not, just hang tight until it feels right. Despite all you’ve learned from popular culture, there is no rush to start fucking.

As for virginity itself, it may not be a gift, but that doesn’t mean it’s not special. You only get to lose it once, and if you bring your heart and mind into the decision, you’re much more likely to be prepared for any emotional or physical consequences.

Sex can get sticky. Literally. Sure, there’s the obvious stuff you learned in health class. Don’t get pregnant, make him wear a condom, and all that. It’s important, but really, those are just the instructions printed on the side of the box.

What they don’t ever really tell you is that once you start having sex, you’re dealing with a sudden increase in the potential depth and breadth of the level of intimacy in your interpersonal relationships. It can be both wonderful and terrible, and it really depends on everyone’s level of emotional maturity.

The most important thing for you to have as you make this decision is self respect. After that, I’d suggest you focus less on how or when to lose your virginity, and more on why.

If you know why you’re doing it, and you respect yourself, whatever else you decide will be fine.

It’s ironic how you brand every Christian as close-minded by virtue of them being Christian.

I must ask, though. If being Christian requires a person to give up rational thinking, why have many of the greatest thinkers of history, those who are undoubtedly some of the most intelligent people who have ever lived, chosen Christianity? From Nicolaus Copernicus to Johannes Kepler, Galileo to Descartes, Blaise Pascal to Karol Wojtyla – all have greatly affected the world with contributions that require immense amounts of rational thinking, but all devoutly Christian. Why do you think this is so if Christianity is as you accuse it to be – devoid of any semblance of rationality?

Is it absolutely impossible then that for some people, Christianity is what is reasonable? That their answers to life’s mysteries aren’t canned, but are answers they have arrived at by means of their independent reason which simply coincide with the tenets of Christianity? That rationality is not surrendered to Christianity, but to Christianity is where rationality points?

Just because you couldn’t fathom the possibility doesn’t mean it does not exist, right? Like you said, you don’t know any more about the nature of the universe than I do, so why are you so sure that whatever Christianity teaches is absolutely false? Aren’t you missing the point of being open-minded then?

Really? You’re gonna cherry pick a few scientists and philosophers from the church’s bloodiest era and use them as evidence of its reason? Not for nothing, but it’s pretty easy to be a devout Christian when the alternative is being burned at the stake for heresy.

Great minds have always labored under the limitations of their time period. The faulty paradigms and corrupt institutions under which those thinkers were forced to bring light into the world deserve neither credit nor credence for their individual genius.

And Karol Wojtyla? What the fuck? Are we playing “one of these things is not like the others?” The dude was Pope. Sure, he was the cute and cuddly one, but that doesn’t make the catholic church any less evil. You wanna talk about affecting the world with contributions? Okay. On his watch, how about contributions like homophobia, misogyny, disease-spreading ignorance, and institutionalized child rape.

If after all the critical thinking of which your mind is capable, you still insist that Christianity is where rationality points, I’m not going to argue with you. It’s not my job to teach you how to grasp the concepts of either Christianity or rationality.

I will say this, though. Do your best not to throw around words like “ironic” when you have no fucking clue what they mean. Unless I turn out to be a nun, nothing I’ve said about Christianity qualifies as irony.

For the record, irony is when an idiot like you has the gall to invoke Galileo in an argument that rationality is not surrendered to Christianity.

Quite frankly, until you understand both the literary and historical implications of that level of egregious stupidity, you should just go sit in the corner while the earth keeps spinning around the sun.

HELP. I’m talking to an Ayn Rand bot. He’s an intelligent human being for the most part, just one of the many that have been sucked up into her selfish little vaccuum of self important motives. What is your opinion of Ayn Rand? What would you say to someone drinking her kool-aid? Much Appreciated.

I’ve said it before. I consider Rand and her philosophy to be the epistemological equivalent of methadone. A controlled dose of objectivism is a hell of a lot better than the dirty street junk most people shoot into their arms, but it’s still no way to live.

No doubt your friend is an intelligent person. Most people who bother to pick up a book these days are above average, and nobody goes hot tubbing with Ayn Rand without first peeling off their Sunday School clothes.

Still, she’s an easy trap. Her philosophy is very simple to grasp, and it’s incredibly satisfying to the ego. It’s candy being sold as health food, so naturally people gobble it up.

At its best, objectivism is a gateway philosophy. It’s epistemology with training wheels, the stuff teenagers read before moving on to the real thing.

At its worst, selfish assholes latch on to her value system of ethical egoism and rational self interest, and they get absolutely giddy with what they perceive to be her rejection of altruism. Their surface interpretation of her moral code gives them every excuse to be narcissistic pricks who pride themselves on taking without giving.

What they fundamentally misunderstand, and to an extent what Rand herself misunderstood, is that an ethical system based on living for the sake of one’s self as opposed to living for the sake of others is completely missing the point. There is no self. There is no other.

Obviously, if you start talking to a selfish asshole about egoless notions of one love or one universal consciousness, he’s just gonna shake his head and think you’re a new-age fruitcake. It’s a total fucking waste of time. After all, using mind-based arguments to try and rationally convince an ego that it doesn’t exist is impossible. This is why you’re gonna have trouble sobering up someone who’s been drinking kool-aid from the Fountainhead.

Still, the fundamental flaw in Rand’s thinking is that she was never able to separate ego from consciousness. She confused and combined those two inherently different philosophical constructs. I’ll spare you her metaphysical hoop-jumping, but her entire world view is based on the faulty ego-biased premise of our isolated individuality.

Sure, we’re each individuals. We’re born, we live, and we die as discrete units of self, but her philosophy places such primacy on egoism that the whole exercise becomes childish. She presents an “every man for himself” mentality, heroizes the individual, and then narratively extends the positive benefits of her philosophy to its illogical yet idealized conclusion.

I’ll happily concede that on a primal level, operating from a position of rational self-interest is perfectly acceptable. The law of the jungle never really ceases to apply, and there is no doubt a certain kind of virtue in selfishness, but none of it will get you higher than the first couple of rungs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

They say man cannot live on bread alone. Well, man cannot find happiness, much less enlightenment, on rational self interest alone, regardless of how ethical. This isn’t about proving Rand wrong. It’s about showing your friend that objectivism is an incomplete philosophy.

Quite simply, there is more.

How do you learn to love yourself? How do you “realize” that in your deepest of hearts you are worthy? I’ve been trying for years and after every new strategy or life-changing decision I always reach the same conclusion: I’m not. I could give you a list of reasons why I’m right to think that and I could give you a list of reasons why I’m stupid and wrong to think that. My reasoning tells me that the second list is me trying to lie to myself. How do you love the skin you’re in? How do you love your personality? How do you, coketalk, do it?

Stop all this “trying to learn to realize” bullshit. You’re tripping all over yourself with lists and strategy and reasoning. This isn’t a process for your ego or your rational mind. You’re not going to think your way into loving yourself.

Sorry to get all Yoda up in this bitch, but love or love not. There is no try.

The simple truth is that you are worthy of love. That goes for every last motherfucker on the planet. Whether you realize it or not is purely a matter of getting out of your own way.

Seriously, don’t you get how amazing it is to be alive? One day you won’t be. In the meantime, the skin you’re in will wither and age, your personality will ebb and flow, and everything around you will be in a constant state of flux. Ultimately, none of it really matters, except for those moments of joy you carve out for yourself, and you can only experience joy when you forget all the bullshit and remember that you really do love yourself after all.

This isn’t about self-confidence. It’s not even about self-acceptance really. That’s the fucking irony here. Loving yourself isn’t about the “self.” It’s a difficult concept to communicate. I’ve hinted at it before, but once you’ve had the experience of truly letting go of your ego, you’ll understand what I mean. There’s a freedom that comes in accepting in its totality both the extraordinary nature and fleeting insignificance of the human condition. For some reason, afterward, it’s really fucking easy to love yourself.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna start singing Kumbaya or some shit. You wanted to know how I did it, and that’s pretty much it. I guess all I’m trying to say is, it’s not that you ever really learn to love yourself. In the end, if you’re lucky, you just forget not to.

i’m going through a lot of shit right now, and i just need to tell someone who is a complete third party who doesn’t know me who isn’t my dad just trying to give advice or my friends who don’t actually give a shit. but i’m trying not to make any definitive statements, because that’s a serious flaw i have.

anyway, i’m not happy, basically. the cure seems pretty fucking simple. be happy in the present moment, don’t take anything for granted, be grateful for your lucky ass life (i mean, i really am lucky to have everything i have. it’s not like i’m poor on the streets), be kind and blah blah.

but i’m going through a serious dilemma of having friends. one of my tumblr friends just said, “fuck ‘em. if people wanna be your friend they will be, you just have to be content living with yourself.” which i agree with but i don’t know. i don’t HAVE to be completely alone just because. it seems when i do make efforts to hang out with the people i’ve met (i’m in college away from home, by the way. third year) they seem to have an excuse. i don’t think i’m trying hard enough but if they make an excuse but never ask me back to hang out later, shouldn’t i take the hint?

You need to separate the idea of loneliness from the idea of being alone.

Loneliness is the negative emotion you feel when you are disconnected from others. Being alone is merely not being in the physical presence of others.

You can be lonely in a room full of people you call friends. You can also feel connected to every other living soul while still being completely by yourself.

Once you separate loneliness from being alone, you can better analyze the true nature of your underlying emotions. Are you reacting to genuine loneliness, or are you reacting to the social stigma attached to the experience of being alone? They are two totally different problems.

Once you understand the difference, instead of trying to remedy loneliness by not being alone, you’ll start to remedy loneliness by connecting with others.

The difference may seem subtle, but it’s everything.

Sometimes, in the midst of a brand-new relationship, I’m plagued by the sound of my mother’s voice, coupled with my screaming ovaries and the emotional stability of a 13-year old inner child, I get confused. I forget what’s important. I forget myself. And what/who could be enchanting/enchanted for the next 5-10-50 years. So can you help me quiet the anxious voices? Just long enough to be enchanting?

First of all, your inner child is the most emotionally stable part about you. Your inner child is that little girl who can still find utter joy in the present moment. She’s the always smiling kid who isn’t worried about yesterday’s bullshit or what’s gonna happen tomorrow. The whole fucking world is her candy store.

Your inner child is not that confused, angst-ridden thirteen year old you have in your head. That version of yourself is just a projection of your anxiety. So is the voice of your mother. So are your screaming ovaries. None of them are real. They are just manifestations of negativity, complete figments of your imagination.

But your inner child is very real, and you can always count on that kooky little bitch to save the day. Find her. Listen to her. I promise, if it’s enchantment you seek, she will show it to you wherever you are. If you want to be enchanting, she’s the one that will make you glow from the inside out, and all will notice.

When you find yourself plagued by confusion and anxiety, take a step back in your mind and invite your inner child out to play instead.

Take a deep breath, and let her make fun of you for a quick second for being worried about something as ridiculous as the next fifty years or as useless as your mother’s nagging voice.

Shake it off, and then let her play or laugh or sing or dance. Hell, let her do whatever spontaneous happy thing she wants, because I guarantee, the kid knows how to have fun no matter where she is.

do you actually believe that there is a stage in every relationship where you get bored of being with your partner? you don’t think that there is someone out there that could entertain your fancies, keep you laughing, and keep you orgasming year after year? i only ask because i have witnessed people with this relationship (namely my parents, i know.. gross, but it’s true. and actually pretty endearing now), and i wonder if it’s absolutely naive of me to believe that i have any hope of achieving this with someone i’m with ..or if it actually is a feasible possibility.

It never ceases to amaze me how some of you can turn this into an exercise in missing the motherfucking point. Is there someone out there that could entertain my fancies, keep me laughing, and keep me orgasming year after year? Fuck, what an infantile question.

Of course there is. Even if such a person were one in a million, there are literally thousands upon thousands of people out there who could do that shit standing on their heads. Don’t you get it?

There is no one magical person out there with the other half of my golden amulet. Instead, there’s a metric fuck-ton of beautiful and fascinating boys and girls to play with. Sometimes I even fall in love.

I surround myself with brilliant and witty people. I am responsible for my own orgasm. I am the empress of my own goddamn happiness whether I’m in a relationship with zero, one, or several people at any given moment.

Your parents didn’t achieve relationship bliss because they found soulmate perfection in one another. They did it because they’re a damn good match and shit happened to work out for them. That’s commendable, but these days, it’s not the norm.

Also, don’t kid yourself. Boredom will eventually set in to every relationship. It doesn’t have to be a killer, though. Boredom doesn’t mean you stop laughing and fucking. Hell, most folks end up taking comfort in consistency. All I was saying is that fireworks always end.

Your naivete doesn’t stem from your desire to be like your parents. That’s sweet, actually. Your naivete stems from an underlying assumption that there is someone — a prince charming — who is somehow more perfect for you than all your other potential mates. That shit is ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you won’t eventually find someone who you think is perfect and settle down to a marriage very similar to the way your parents did it. Odds are, you will. After all, you were raised in a loving environment, and so the likelihood of scoring a similar situation is that much better.

That’s the point really. It’s all just a numbers game.

Good luck.

I assume you are a beautiful girl, and obviously confident and full of spunk (spunk?).  Are you flattered, interested, or just pissed and annoyed if a guy in a coffee shop / restaurant / bar asks you out?  Should I say something when I see a girl I’m attracted to in these situations, or just keep my fucking mouth shut?

Dude. You should be able to tell whether I’m flattered, interested, or just pissed off and annoyed within a fucking microsecond of approaching me.

Women are walking symphonies of non verbal cues. Eye contact. Body language. Facial expressions and gestures. Are you fucking kidding me? It’s not even something we can consciously control. We drop a million hints a minute whether we like it or not, but most of the time you idiots are too blunted by alcohol or blind lust to notice.

If you walk up to me in a public setting, you’ll get a flood of information about what I think of you long before we exchange a greeting. Just pay attention, man.

Was that an extra half second of eye contact or did I just think your hair looked ridiculous? Am I wondering if you’re going to talk to me, or am I wondering if the guy next to you went to high school with me?

These aren’t difficult questions. You should instantly know the answer to them. I know conventional wisdom says otherwise, but come on, we aren’t that fucking mysterious.

Now, if your larger question is whether you have the balls to approach me in the first place, that’s entirely up to you. Just do us both a favor and have your exit planned in advance. Trust me, you want me wondering where you went, not wondering why you’re still talking to me.