What is Minority Report?

My name is Jeffrey Peoples. I chose the name Minority Report for particular reasons. None of those reasons have anything to do with the movie with Tom Cruise.

Rather, I chose it because of the peculiar political atmosphere we currently live in. “Minorities” are often put on a pedestal when it comes to discussing specific topics, such as race or sexuality. For example, there is often the assumption that people who aren’t “black” do not have the authority or experience necessary to discuss the topic of racism, and especially the topic of racism toward black people. This leads many people feeling they ought to accept the opinions and “lived experiences” of any “minority” as if it is divine revelation. One major problem is that such an approach assumes that people who belong to demographic minorities have a single voice and a single experience. That is false. And ironically, it is an example of racial prejudice—and if static and unyielding to reason: racism. Tragicomically, people in an attempt to be “anti-racist” simply become more racist than they were before they heeded the call to awaken their racial consciousness by “listening to black voices.”

I am black and white. More specifically, my dad is a descendant of American slaves and my mom is a descendant of Europeans. I grew up “middle class” economically — my dad worked as an HR manager on the Navy base in my home town and my mom worked as a elementary school teacher and then later a professor of psychology at the local community college. Both of my parents grew up in relative poverty and instability and it was their ideal to raise their children in a better environment than what they grew up in — and they succeeded admirably.

I am bisexual. That is — I can be sexually attracted to both men and women; and I have had sexual experiences with both men and women. Furthermore, I can be sexually attracted to transgender people(men and women) and have had sexual experiences with transgender people too.

I am non-binary. And what I mean by that — because terms like “non-binary” exist in a state of postmodern hypostasis — is that even though I do recognize and affirm that I am a man, and male, I am not loyal to any cultural genderized norms surrounding how a man or a woman should behave because they are a man or a woman. I also don’t have any particular attachment to my biological sex. I would be delighted to have the experience of having a female body, albeit I also appreciate my own male body. Ideally, I’d experience having a female body without periods, because those mostly just sound unpleasant and not particularly enlightening, like indigestion.

I grew up in a small — around 25000 people — city in the Mojave desert of California. It’s attached to a military base and has a community college. The closest point of Civilization, Los Angeles, is about a 3 hour drive. The racial demographics of the city was 80% white, 4% black, and the other 16% was hispanic, asian, etc. There are more Republicans than Democrats. Christian churches line the streets. A person in the Post-Modern Church of the Awoken would probably expect that I lived a life of brutal racial oppression growing up there. Contrary to that expectation, I imagine relatively I had quite the idyllic childhood, and while I had some experiences of racism, overall it was not a relatively significant source of pain or an obstacle to my development, growth, or achievement. I am very grateful for my parents love, support. I intend to go into more detail about the pains and joys of my childhood in later posts, and most had nothing to do with race.

So, here I am. A “minority” when it comes to my race, my sexuality, my conception of gender, my religion; I am an exemplary token of what the Post-Modern Church of the Awoken considers a worthwhile voice to hear. To their vexation, to their contradiction, to their irrationality, though I am a pariah. And that is because, ironically, I am a minority among the minorities in my philosophy and politics. My individuality is blasphemy. I am Jeffrey; I am not a walking avatar of a black, gay, nonbinary, cis-apathetic, atheist, male.

So that is why I am calling this Minority Report. This is a dispatch from the wilderness regarding topics and ideas that often won’t be supported by those who frequently suggest that their own culture and politics and philosophy are legitimized and authorized by the fact that a majority of a minority thinks or feels the way they do (setting aside whether there actually is a majority on their side). And it is also just a dispatch from an ultimate minority—an individual, just me. I think it is valuable that people are exposed to un-stereotypical thoughts from “minorities” so that perhaps they can see the error of assuming that democracy is a reliable way of determining what is true or virtuous even though it may be, in particular circumstances, in the right dosage, the right way to balance political power. Ultimately, any argument I make, or claim I put forth on politics or ethics, should be judged by the merits of its reasoning and the data I provide and not by an abstract demographical category that I belong to. Likewise, the same standard should be applied to other “minorities” — and for everyone.

So what is Jeffrey Peoples’ career?

I am a software engineer. But I don’t intend to discuss the differences between functional and object orientated programing paradigms in this newsletter. I actually graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from UCLA about 15 years ago (tragically a school that is slowly being devoured by the Post-Modern Church of the Awoken). I had considered graduate school and becoming a professor as I did very well at UCLA (magna cum laude; and I can show you my transcripts, unlike Biden or Trump), but then actually chose not to go that route because I began to see the dogmatic transformation of the academy by dark forces that would later form the Post-Modern Church of the Awoken in the Platonic Realms.1

I wandered the occupational desert for a decade and among other things worked as a substitute teacher, an English teacher in South Korea, and high school librarian. Eventually, while teaching web development to high school students for free after school, and dreaming of purchasing a Water Rower, my economic consciousness blossomed and I realized it would be much wiser for me to start a career in software engineering, so I buckled down, with the support of my family, to learn what else I needed to find work as a software engineer, did my learning on the internet and through Hack Reactor, and poof, became a software engineer in 7 months. And now I have a Water Rower and I’ve even built a simulation to row in VR while connected to it. I can shoot a laser cannon with a rowing machine in VR. America. There is a lot of beauty in this land.

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I am extraordinarily tolerant of dissenting opinions and even hostile expressions. As long as a comment doesn’t descend into egregious cold-blooded ridicule or hatred(which is up to my nuanced sensibility to judge), expresses a threat of physical violence, is marketing or troll spam, or is doxxing, it won’t be removed.3

Rest assured, I am certainly not like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Dorsey, Pichai, Gates and others who I suspect have fantasies about a Ministry of Truth directed by USA Today.