In the philosophical and political arenas, I've always considered intellectual compromise a cowardly position espoused by those afraid to take a definitive stand. Religious agnostics and political moderates are the prime examples of these intellectual fence-sitters. Their position is defined by the complete absence of any value system besides inconsistent doublethink.
In the past week, I've countenanced the idea that moral good may arise from noble lies and purposeful dissimulation based on romantic ideology. Perhaps I haven't expressed this idea explicitly, though a few commenters have interpreted my arguments as such. Nonetheless, let's go with it. To moderates and liberals, the pursuit of ultimate justice is subservient to appeasing all sides and avoiding "extremism" (read: an actual position). I can't tell you how many times someone has told me "to have an open mind" or "look at both sides". Ironically, I have considered both sides and this circumspection underlies my passion.
Related to this, Barry Goldwater said the following in a 1964 speech:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
The current mainstream doctrine, one based on the "anything goes" mentality, has defined "extremism" as any position with steadfast loyalty to a set of principles. An "extremist" is now someone who refuses to capitulate and surrender his values, even if said values represent some ultimate good. As Goldwater states, one must sometimes engage in hidebound pursuit of justice and avoid the easy out of moderation if chasing a worthwhile objective.
Back to my earlier posts, the criticism expressed by some commenters pulls together the two ideas above - that moderation and the satisfaction of all values is the ultimate moral good and that "extremism" in the pursuit of justice is a moral wrong. The second follows from the first and in the end, nothing practical gets done.
I've yet to discuss the widespread belief that Obama is a Muslim. For the record, I don't believe he is a practicing Muslim. However, considering his incessant prostrating to the Islamic world, his "unique" childhood background, and his statements wavering on the divinity of Jesus Christ, I find such skepticism warranted. In my opinion, Obama has made statements consistent with the spiritual agnosticism of his mother, grandparents, elite academia, and current liberal doctrine that belie his supposedly devout Christian faith (from Dreams):
I was unable to answer my daughter about heaven; I wondered if I should have told her the truth – that I was not sure what happens when we die; anymore than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the big bang.
But of course, only intractable racists don't believe everything a poltician says. Jonathan Alter, writing in Newsweek, takes these "liars" to task in an article entitled How Obama Can Fight the Lies:
The problem is that some of the lies about Obama are gathering strength. In 2008, 13 percent of Americans were under the misimpression that he was a Muslim. Now the figure is 24 percent.
But the deeper problem is a growing number of people who think the president is not just disappointing or wrongheaded but dangerous.
Beyond validation by politicians and the right-wing media, the best explanation for why growing numbers of Americans think the president is a Muslim is that more and more voters don’t like him personally, and so are increasingly ready to believe anything critical (and to them, being Muslim is a negative) about someone they are already inclined to resent.
Recently, I discussed politics with a mostly politically apathetic friend. I'd characterize him as a moderate, though many of his views match those of conservatives. Midway through the conversation, I found myself in a fluid diatribe against leftists, yet at the end of my rant, I paused. I had originally intended to use the general term "liberals" or "people who hate America", but instead I hesitated and used "Obama" as a proxy term.
Why did I do this? Let's return to Mr. Alter's portrayal of Obama's critics:
His enemies—and even some of his ostensible allies—have been busy for three years painting Obama as some kind of alien threat. His name, race, exotic upbringing, and determination to reach out to moderate Muslims have given those who would delegitimize him a fresh palette of dark colors. The caricatures are almost comical, as the president himself recognizes.
When the youth saw Barack Obama, they actually did see "Change and Hope." They saw their unique opportunity to be a Rosa Parks, a Union soldier, or a Harriet Tubman. The media deluged them with the monumental possibility of the "first Black President". This could be their "first Black ____" and they were going to make it happen!
In an ironic turn of events, Obama has come to personify not our post-racial society, but the foreign, alien means by which the left seeks to reconstruct America. He hasn't spurred a nascent Progressive movement, but instead enlivened conservatives from their collective slumber, as in this past weekend's "Restoring Honor" rally. Obama is a symbol to rally against, a figure that encompasses all the suicidal leftist ideals.
To my politically ignorant friend, the notion that the white elite, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Harry Reid, seek the same anti-American and anti-white policies as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson is simply untenable. The masses, removed from elite academia and largely unaware of Keith Olbermann's latest scornful prattling, can't fathom what the leftist zeitgeist has done to American politics. But when the valiant political Messiah won the Presidency amid an unparalleled fervor, these dormant conservatives couldn't help but notice.
And when he hastily excoriated an upstanding local police officer, discussed the need to "redistribute wealth", shoved health care reparations down America's throat, attended the Goddamn America church for 20 years, criticized Arizona's illegal immigration law, and supported the Ground Zero mosque, only the most brainwashed could sustain their ardor. Conservatives needed the ultimate symbol of where America is headed - and Obama has provided it. Leftist initiatives intended to undermine our most productive citizens (and then tar them as selfish racists) no longer constitute surreptitious dealings in the halls of Congress or the backdoor of corporate sweatshops. We have the most powerful man in the world openly admitting to such subversive policies, with his acolytes on MSNBC and the NYT editorial pages repeating these sentiments.
Conservatives needed a stark representation of leftist thought, the strain that smears all whites as racist, believes America has no national sovereignty, views this country as a historically amoral entity, and seeks uniformity in all aspects of life. And that's why Obama is so important. He typifies it all.
You're at a café with the woman in your life when your eyes move inexorably toward another woman walking by. In one-fifth of a second, before the conscious mind has had a chance to react, the male brain has rendered judgment on whether the oncoming stranger is sexually hot.
Pupils dilate, heart rate spikes, testosterone surges and the eyes assume a vacant stare — sure signs that the “man trance” has set in. For genetically preprogrammed men, the offence is as involuntary and natural as breathing, says brain researcher, neuropsychiatrist and author Louann Brizendine, whose book, The Male Brain, mounts a unique defence for such male indiscretions. The sexual pursuit area in the male brain is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain “consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts,” she concludes.
The author, an uncommon purveyor of truth in today's politically tinged academia, defends this male impulse:
“It's a reflex that's built into the brain circuits,” she said in an interview. “At its core biological basis, it's unfair to criticize men for that initial unconscious circuitry.” In light of this, male ogling must henceforth be considered genetic destiny rather than anti-social creepiness.
The article alludes to the "creepiness" factor associated with ogling. Once again, the prevailing zeitgeist seeks to undermine typically male behavior derived from our natural state. The author relays some female responses to the study - summed up with this classic "shaming tactic":
“You're pathetic.”
The astute female neuroscientist expounds upon the motivation for such ire:
“Women feel competitive about their looks with other women. It's a very core, basic biology that our female brains are very threatened by other women that might out-compete us.”
And the author sums up much of our current feminized culture:
The peace-seeking male, then, has only one option: To deny his hard-wired humanity and keep eyes focused at the ground at all times.
In an unconscious attempt to outdo female rivals, ovulating women buy sexier clothing, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. The authors' research provides some of the first evidence of the influence of hormonal factors on consumer behavior. "We found that, when ovulating, women choose sexier fashion products when thinking about other attractive, local—but not distant—women," the authors write.
Now how can the liberal creationists explain away this one. I don't recall our supposedly omnipotent cultural edifices containing explicit or implicit dictates for acting in this manner. And the participants were completely ignorant as to the rationale:
The authors found that women were not conscious of their choices and the researchers did not find the same effect in non-ovulating women.
It is thought the phenomenon helps women sniff out alpha males, in the belief they will provide them with healthy children. The scented signal may also provide wimps with a subtle warning that there is a superior male nearby who is not to be messed with.
German psychologists behind the findings studied the link between a man’s sweat and his level of aggression, which is critical to the survival of a species. However sophisticated tests on the womens’ skin found they were more aroused by the badminton players’ sweat, with anxious women the most sensitive.
All these studies evince the same supposition: modern man is a vestige of his evolutionary history, his inherent aptitudes, desires, and wants forged by sexual and physical competition. Any honest individual can discern the fallaciousness of man as infinitely pliable with culture, money, rote training in childhood, and Ivy League "Teach(ers) for America" making all the difference. We can try to escape these truths through willfull ignorance or cultural indoctrination, but nature always wins. I applaud these scholars for not capitulating to modern academia's PC culture. I imagine this "blasphemous" research was met with opposition from the keepers of our noblest lies. Unfortunately, decades of failure haven't stopped the seemingly indomitable forces of anti-reality liberalism.
Drug war - good or bad? Legalize weed - is it really any worse than alcohol (NO)? Trade-off between freedoms and discouraging/outlawing personal behavior with potential far-reaching destructive consequences? Which should take precedence in constructing a societal value hierarchy? Chicken or the egg concerning drug war and violence?
Does convicting individual citizens for drug possession often act as a means for catching people who are engaging in other, worse criminal acts? Would the individuals involved in drug trafficking engage in parallel criminal behavior if drug use was legalized? Is drug use a motivator of bad behavior or merely a symptom for those who would behave badly regardless? Would drug use be less of a problem if traditional social deterrents, now absent in our "everything goes" culture, were still potent?
In yesterday's post, I argued that a religious or pseudo-religious (e.g. Manifest Destiny) doctrine does well to motivate nationalistic tendencies or, in more palatable terms, ardent patriotism. While most commenters focused on the military example, I was primarily concerned with presumed moral superiority as a means of promoting national loyalty. In essence, a decidedly conservative, Christian-based ethic often disavows the Howard Zinn, leftist construction of America as a rapacious force of evil. One notes the parallel impasse between Israeli nationalists, including secular Zionists who buy into the pseudo-religious Promised Land myth, and their universalist foils.
The goal isn't to justify immorality, but to erect a social edifice that supports conservative American ideals. When objectives are based in divine authorship and extant in a society still anathema to explicit atheism, the rhetoric often carries more weight. Further, as elucidated by Nicholas Wade in The Faith Instinct, people are inherently drawn to superstition and not solely of the traditionally religious kind.
Take this example where HuffPo includes End Times prophesy or "believing the world will end in their lifetime", as one of the "craziest beliefs" shared by Americans. Now don't get me wrong - such superstitious beliefs are generally accepted by loonies. But what of the religion of modern leftism and its parallel beliefs in the END OF THE WORLD? In 1968, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlrich wrote The Population Bomb, in which he confidently states:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.
Smog disasters in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles.
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.
For such accurate soothsaying, Ehrlich has won just about every award possible, including the MacArthur Fellow Genius grant. Additionally, I needn't rehash the histrionics concerning global warming and 1970's global cooling, amongst other beliefs like nuclear winter (feel free to add more in the comments). Basically, liberals love apocalyptic predictions just as much as those unrefined Bible thumpers.
It's a common aphorism that a society not sufficiently conservative will become liberal. Well perhaps I'll add a corollary:
A society lacking a traditionally religious construct will adopt pseudo-religious ideas inexorably linked to the current liberal zeitgeist.
We're already seeing mainstream acceptance of Gaiaism, New Age, "spiritual but not religious", vegetarianism, and animal rights. Read any atheist website if you need convincing that repudiation of traditional religion leads to the modern leftist Church and associated doctrine like the saturated fat myth and global warming.
The choice isn't that attractive, but it might be the only one we've got.
For the past several years, two U.S. Army posts in Virginia, Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, have been putting on a series of what are called Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concerts. As I've written in a number of other posts, "spiritual fitness" is just the military's new term for promoting religion, particularly evangelical Christianity. And this concert series is no different.
Soldiers who refused to attend the concert were harshly punished:
Those of us that chose not to attend (about 80, or a little less that half) were marched back to the company area. At that point the NCO issued us a punishment. We were to be on lock-down in the company (not released from duty), could not go anywhere on post (no PX, no library, etc). We were to go to strictly to the barracks and contact maintenance. If we were caught sitting in our rooms, in our beds, or having/handling electronics (cell phones, laptops, games) and doing anything other than maintenance, we would further have our weekend passes revoked and continue barracks maintenance for the entirety of the weekend.
With the extant culture war bubbling, one wonders about the importance of nationalism in maintaining American predominance. From a logical standpoint, nationalism represents an admittedly vapid ideology often embraced by those eager to coopt others' achievements. But the pragmatic needn't always conform to the logical and in this instance, one could argue cogently that nationalistic memes sustain civilization.
In general, palpable narratives consumed by the masses must involve the concept of divine providence. It is this moral supremacy that foments loyalty and dispels skepticism amongst potential dissenters. Fittingly, the military has been at the forefront of these transparent displays of religiosity. If we send these men to die, we better inculcate them with the idea that their sacrifice is worthwhile, that they're fighting on the side of good, that they hold the moral high ground. By punishing these concert absentees, the military protects a groupthink mentality that substantiates presumed American virtuousness.
"We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle -- one is going to have to win," Fleming said.
We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we're going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we're going to have to win that battle.
Of course, the left eagerly repudiates American morality. Their opposition to this transparent military display of Christianity derives from the idea that America rarely takes the position of moral good. To deconstruct a national narrative, one starts by destroying the mythic folklore of that nation. We're not recipients of a Manifest Destiny or the singular arbiters of good; we're merely a base and selfish brand name unworthy of its exalted status. Based on this mendacious premise, the left argues for extirpating our supposedly morally empty nation.
So do we yield on the religious issue, trading a decidedly Christian ethic for greater national solidarity? Or do we relinquish the romance of American moral preeminence and welcome a proxy ethics based on limitless social justice? I'll go with the former, but only if we get rid of anything like this.
A few years back Bill Simmons, one of my all-time favorite writers, unveiled a concept called the Vice President of Common Sense:
I'm becoming more and more convinced that every professional sports team needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense, someone who cracks the inner circle of the decision-making process along with the GM, assistant GM, head scout, head coach, owner and whomever else. One catch: the VP of CS doesn't attend meetings, scout prospects, watch any film or listen to any inside information or opinions; he lives the life of a common fan. They just bring him in when they're ready to make a big decision, lay everything out and wait for his unbiased reaction.
Simmons, ironically enough, originated this when the Houston Texans selected Mario Williams, a little known defensive end out of NC State, over USC Heisman winner and college football god Reggie Bush in the 2006 NFL Draft. In hindsight, the Texans undoubtedly made the right move as Williams wreaks havoc as a dominant defensive force and Bush wallows in relative football anonymity behind an undrafted player from his same draft class, the spotlight shining on him primarily due to his tumultuous affair with Kim Kardashian. But I digress: Simmons puts forth the notion that supposedly well informed people somehow come to absurdly inane conclusions.
Unfortunately, I can't find any other instances where he uses the phrase, but I recall him alluding to it quite often in his columns. It happens when the Coach makes some inexplicable move that simply has no viable strategy behind it. Of course, this stupidity pervades almost all aspects of society, a concept so ingrained that Bruce G. Charlton, former(?) editor of academic journal Medical Hypotheses, christened it "clever sillies":
In suggesting that the most intelligent people tend to use IQ to over-ride common sense I am unsure of the extent to which this is due to a deficit in the social reasoning ability, perhaps due to a trade-off between cognitive abilities. Or alternatively it could be more of an habitual tendency to over-use abstract analysis, that might (in principle) be overcome by effort or with training. Observing the apparent universality of ‘Silly Clevers’ in modernizing societies, I suspect that a higher IQ bias towards over-utilizing abstract reasoning would probably turn-out to be innate and relatively stable.
The biggest problem with Wave, though, was that nobody seemed to know why it existed. What kind of users would benefit from Wave? Which online tool was it designed to replace? After poking into Wave semi-frequently during its early months, I never found a compelling reason to go back. I wasn't alone.
The company spent thousands of man-hours building the site—a team of five (and eventually more) employees based in the company's Sydney office has been working on Wave since 2007. To be sure, the team displayed a great deal of tech wizardry. The company, though, seemed completely unsure about the end goal of that wizardry, as well as how to describe and sell it to users. As far as I can tell, none of Wave's support documents answer the most basic question about Wave: What's it for?
How exactly does such a woefully unsuccessful product, one passed through a number of checkpoints, manifest into an actual product? If the public so uniformly dismissed it, why did not one VP of Commonsense voice such displeasure? I imagine its a confluence of groupthink, intellectual hubris, blithe excitement, and somewhat admirable brazenness. We can at least respect these individuals for going against the grain; sometimes, we all need to fail in pursuit of worthy goals. But look on the bright side Google, a whole bunch of people thought The Adventures of Pluto Nash was worth 100 million dollars.
Randall Parker sent me this interesting story from The Washington Post - Brawl on the Metro: Where was the coverage?. In it, the Post's Ombudsman defends the magazine for its delayed and then purposefully dissimulating coverage of a recent 70-person brawl on the Metro system.
The fracas occurred near midnight on Aug. 6, and authorities said it involved as many as 70 people. It started at the Gallery Place Station and continued to the L'Enfant Plaza Station. There were arrests, and several people landed in the hospital. On deadline, The Post gathered enough information for a news brief in Saturday's paper, and a short story was quickly posted online.
Reader interest facilitated an unsatisfying followup story with minimal details:
When a story for Sunday's paper finally did appear, it offered little new. Promoted on the front page and tucked at the bottom of Sunday's Metro section, it didn't answer key questions: What caused the fighting? Were the people who were injured participants or bystanders? Was Metro beefing up security? Why such thin coverage? Much of the explanation is that The Post responded with too little, too late.
The Ombudsman offers more excuses and then finally gets to the real issue:
Pierre [the weekend editor] also worried about hyping a story that involved race. Although The Post's coverage on and after Sunday did not specify the racial makeup of those involved, many readers assumed they were black and offered racially insensitive online comments. "So ghetto," read one. Another urged ending "all welfare benefits for parents whose little animals cause this type of mayhem."
Unsurprisingly, we witness the mainstream media consciously withholding relevant facts to maintain their "we're all the same" narrative. Note that the DC commentariat, requisitely cognizant of racial truths, aren't so easily misled. But such mendacious reporting shouldn't surprise anyone. What makes this interesting is the bolded phrase above along with this supporting statement:
The Post should always be sensitive to overplaying stories, especially if race is involved.
I ask then what if the 70 offending youths were white? Would "race be involved" in this hypothetical situation? The classification of this incident as "racial" merely because the fight involved black youths reflects a sinister element of our culture. Now comparing this brawl to the hypothetical white brawl, the exclusion of racial details would be of no consequence. I doubt the Post would include racial demographics if the brawlers were white. Instead, my point involves the more general concept evinced by the "racial" classification of this particular incident.
So ignore the collusive effort of our media to suppress black crime statistics and focus on use of the term "race". Accepting the implied assumption that a "racial" characterization would be absent for a white brawl, one notes how "race" only exists for blacks and other minorities. An incident, group, statistic, or hate crime becomes "racial" or "involves race" only if it applies to non-white cohorts. Of course, given the double standards that pervade media coverage, only examples where whites look bad or minorities/women suffer is this "racial" classification noted. In essence, this tacit and largely overlooked aspect of media coverage entails whites no longer exist.
Whites have become the default nothingness, the bland, the mundane, the cohort lacking a collective identity. Popular culture has fashioned white men as dolts, American history as ethnic genocide, and political positions held primarily by whites as unacceptable. Popular conception encourages identity politics and collective loyalty solely for minority groups and lambastes whites who even mention the efficacy of parallel political strategies (I'm linked in that article!). In the sociological realm, academics even propose the idea that "whites" don't actually exist; that the notion of disparate racial groups was fabricated by insidious 19th century racial scholars and persisted by their anachronistic peers today. Further, the achievements of Europeans, both in antiquity and today, are defamed as resulting from the plundering of indigenous groups and the continued oppression of their progeny. Even common nomenclature, at least from personal anecdote, reflects this - those uncomfortable with racial discussions instead use "Caucasian" or "American".
The left uses race as a weapon, both in creating loyal communities amongst non-whites and implicitly defining whites as the absence of "racial". But alas, even the sharpest swords eventually blunt.
[For the record: I subscribe to Sailer's "Citizenism" and not white identity politics.]
Newsweek recently ranked the "World's Best Countries" using the following criteria: education, health, quality of life, economic dynamism, and political environment. The study is mostly bereft of a liberal bent (only gender gap and environmental health constitute mild bias) and thus provides an illuminating picture of our world. Please try to contain your shock upon viewing the Top 30 below:
Looking again at the NEWSWEEK list, the “best” countries tend to be small, homogenous, and fairly harmless: Finland (No. 1), Switzerland, Sweden.
Nothing else to see here folks. Of course, only a xenophobe would extrapolate these aspects ("homogeneous", "small", monolithic) in providing solutions for sustaining American prominence. Instead, the elite inundate with the idea of assimilated Mexicans and America as a beacon of liberal tolerance whereby our borders exist only to unrefined nativists. Arne Duncan engages in predictable bashing of our "failing" educational system:
“We’ve flatlined while other countries have passed us by,” Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, said in early August, referring to another grim milestone: a report by the College Board that showed an “alarming” decline in young American adults who have completed college; once a global leader, the United States now ranks 12th in the world by that measure. “The country that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow."
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Yet, to question our burgeoning "diversity" experiment is to blaspheme this most sacrosanct of values.
Currently, we are importing a permanent underclass, funding reckless behavior via the welfare state, fomenting social unrest, and rejecting meritocracy (and its commensurate benedictions) for uniformity. All these problems will grow as illustrated by the above chart. But besides the practical consequences of our current political idiocy, the diversity paradigm further undermines our intangible nationhood.
As I stated in last Friday's post, America is now considered a globalist entity lacking a substantial history besides a bunch of malevolent, dead, white males. To the left, this nation I luckily call my home, exists merely as a vestige of an embarrassing past. Fittingly, it has no redeemable attributes that would warrant its further existence. Instead, the left seeks to remake this country, displacing the majority demographic and replacing cultural edifices with more "colorful" ones. No matter that most of these proposed changes will depress the aforementioned indicators of preeminence and motivate further cultural decay.
At The Spearhead, Welmer rips into Eat, Pray, Love, a film that epitomizes feminist-backed solipsism, New Age Eastern mysticism, and the notion that women must unfetter themselves from Western patriarchy and boring beta males. Welmer rightly admonishes the selfish nature of this woman's journey, a type of genre now deemed "priv(ilege)-lit". A person embarking on this trip holds her own, presumably dormant spiritual gifts in high esteem. And female critics, eager to live her adventure vicariously, praise her as a paragon of spiritual bravery.
But Welmer doesn't stop at these criticisms; instead, he offers heartfelt sympathy for the husband left behind:
However, the men are avoiding the one issue that sticks out the most to me: this woman victimized an innocent man who loved her. Not only that, she apparently has no real remorse, and celebrates this very nasty thing she did with a trip around the world and multiple lovers.
As I've not read the book and unfortunately missed Oprah's two episodes exalting it, I can't comment on the circumstances of her leaving. Most importantly, I don't believe she had any children, though I'm unclear as to how she planned this trip. Nonetheless, Welmer actually uses the word "victimized" in describing Ms. Gilbert's actions. He continues by decrying her actions as "morally wrong":
Shame must be so deeply ingrained in American men that they can’t even admit there’s anything seriously wrong with what Ms. Gilbert did.
Morally speaking, the story is atrocious.
The men and women criticizing Eat Pray Love know that the most offensive thing about the film is its morally repugnant message.
In general, I see morality as a restriction on individual's actions in order to maintain societal order. I'm uncomfortable with transcendent notions of morality, so I stick to the practical in delineating between the morally repugnant and the morally acceptable. If Welmer had confined his diatribe to the poor example proffered by this film, the idea that frivolous globe-trotting supersedes stable marriage, then I'd agree. But in a rather self-righteous tone, Welmer excoriates Ms. Gilbert's actions due to how they affected her husband.
In doing so, Welmer illustrates an unfortunate parallelism between feminism and Men's Rights: the entitlement paradigm. In both philosophies, the other gender exists as merely a foil for the preferred one, lacking autonomy to make their own decisions and act in accord with their own interests. Welmer's "victim" carping assumes this man had a right to be loved, that he was actually worthy of anyone's ardor. He knows nothing of this man's venerable or disreputable attributes, yet Welmer presumes Ms. Gilbert's wronged him in some manner:
like being abandoned by a spouse
If Ms. Gilbert felt as despondent as the novel claims, then she's justified in ending the marriage. Do I advocate divorce and the attendant idea that marriage is a whimsical decision? Of course not, but sometimes, things don't work out. Ms. Gilbert did not victimize Mr. Gilbert by not reciprocating his affections; one's personal emotions (from men and women) are offered as a gift, bestowed upon those we deem worthy. If one parsimoniously refuses to extend such warmth, then too bad. A victim exists if unjustifiably imposed upon by some immoral act or actor, i.e. Madoff. You're not a victim simply because your wife no longer loves you.
Anonymous commentary is a push and pull between privacy and trust, and the implications extend beyond news sites to include Web reviews for everything from books to technology to hotel rooms. Online postings can sway political opinion and heavily influence whether products or businesses thrive or fail. They can make or break reputations and livelihoods. On one side, anonymous comments give users the freedom to be completely candid in a public forum. On the other, that freedom can be abused and manipulated to spread lies or mask hidden agendas.
It's common knowledge that the Internet reflects our inherent baseness. I imagine it would take only about 7-10 clicks to go from The Thinking Housewife to Family Guy incest cartoons (please, do not investigate that). To put it succinctly - the Internet is a fucked up place.
One inexorable aspect of most sites is the anarchistic comment sections. YouTube comment threads are notorious for pithy observations such as, "your hot," "shut up and show your tits", "your ugly", "FAT", "GAY", "FAG", and "why are you such a gay fag". And that's just on cat videos. With such no-holds barred commentary, what motivates online commenters, both those of the uncouth tilt and those pursuing more erudite, but equally excitable, discussion.
So today's questions: Why do you post comments online? If you have a blog, why do you blog? Do you enjoy engaging those that disagree with you or do you stick primarily to venues of a similar bent as yours? Do you ever get emotional, excited, happy, angry, or frustrated in the midst of online debate? Do you ever think about online convos when you're not online, i.e. mentally preparing a response? Have you ever been outright mean to someone online (over-the-top mean, not merely an acerbic insult)? Do you write reviews, engage in political discussions, or troll just for laughs?
As the Ground Zero mosque continues to illustrate our culture war, let me briefly clarify my position. In Sunday's comment thread, 'Dave', a sanctimonious liberal interlocutor, pointed out a contradiction in my post; namely, that I accept the notion of fundamental religious freedoms, yet somehow foresee banning the mosque via state intervention. If I wasn't clear in my original discussion, let me reiterate the idea that fundamental religious freedoms exist for all. This represents an unwavering freedom of our society and concordantly, the state can not stop the mosque by appealing to their particular brand of religious worship. If we enacted such an amorphous precedent, one based upon a majority emotional response, state power would be subject to personal judgment. Ostensibly, this event evokes unparalleled emotions amongst the American people, but nonetheless, I hesitate to imbue government with such ambiguously defined guidelines.
I had intended to merely to defend, on moral grounds, the now fully born opposition to the Ground Zero mosque. The Left frames any forthright censure of the project as xenophobic and unjustified; I was primarily concerned with offering a counter argument based on the practical effectiveness of nationalism and patriotic symbolism:
This debate isn't necessarily about Ground Zero, but rather about the national capitulation we must endure if diversity and tolerance, instead of national vigor, become the highest values. Too much of a great thing, constitutional republicanism, can ultimately cause a nation's downfall.
Further, leftists purvey the specious claim that any opposition tacitly castigates all Muslims. This romantic statement neglects the inherent ethos of Islam, a religion premised on military conquest and a Holy book rife with diktats to that end and lacking in allegorical sentiments that now underpin Christian liberalism. But ignoring the sickening argument of America's culpability in the attacks, Muslims undeniably did it. Opposition to the mosque doesn't impugn all Muslims, but simply notes the correspondence between the attacks and the religion that supported their actions.
Basically, mosque opponents view this as an unnecessary symbolic gesture. Perhaps the mosque's backers repudiate this extreme ideology, but nonetheless, you can't fault people for making the trivial jump given such an emotion charged situation. Is it logical? Maybe not. But again, reductionist and naively philosophical thinking ignores the primacy of emotion in our personal and national lives.
A nation must maintain a cohesive narrative and spirit to prosper. It must inculcate its citizens with an unshakable patriotism and a collective loyalty, pragmatic values that admittedly don't always vibe with rigid logic. Allowing a foreign entity to erect such a structure implies we no longer have that backbone. It showcases the complete enervation of our national solidarity. It illustrates how we've lost the ability to differentiate between ourselves and our nation and that of another peoples.
The mosque fits squarely in with this gradual decay of American sovereignty, commenced with the degradation of private rights and now continuing with the stigmatization of any conservative view as well as the political and popular glorification of foreign peoples. The elite have perverted the American narrative, once a celebration of our singular success, morality, and daring, into a globalist doctrine that consciously denigrates the Republic's creators and fully lacks a cultural tradition. This paradigm demands we ignore our own emotional desires because a foreign entity intends to insensitively trample on them. And a nation that sees itself merely as a vehicle for others, a nation that has no loyalty to its own peoples or traditional institutions, is doomed to fail due to its own divisiveness and delusional Marxism.
The solution is rather simple. Protest this until they can't handle it and then outlaw Muslim immigration. Funny though that the White House initially eschewed comment on this local matter and continues to dodge an actual judgment, yet last year, Obama "stupidly" and hastily discussed a local disorderly conduct arrest.
I needn't expound upon the evident differences. It's sufficient to note the existence of ostensible physical indicators defining each man and his position within the sexual-social hierarchy. Men and women, unconsciously motivated by years of evolutionary history, exhibit these types of behavior in daily life. To the discerning, a trait more common amongst women who avoid entering heedlessly into romantic affairs (with betas), these clues can be quite profound.
Fittingly, men should try to avoid the more obvious beta indicators. A weak handshake is probably the most well known. And because Jim Rome had a great riff on it, avoid being the "handshake guy" as well. More recondite metrics of beta-tude are apparent in the picture, width of legs, curve of the back, angle of lean, and relative position to others.
But the most full-proof beta indicator is the door-hold. Now there's ample discussion of the door-hold in the context of first dates. Most men go the safe route, naively believing chivalry and not aloofness pique a girl's sexual interest. Instead, I'm referring to door holding in general situations and amongst strangers, including both men and women. A typifying example occurred to me today: A beta enters a building but notices at least one person, man or woman, trails him by at least two seconds. The beta will actually wait just outside the door, hold it wide open, allow the trailing person or persons to enter before him, usually offer a prostrating head nod, then enter behind the previously trailing individual(s). He will do this regardless of the other person's gender, leading to the conclusion that his intentions aren't merely sexual.
For a minor social exchange, there exists no more elucidating marker of a man's lower status than this act of subservience. Door holding men cower at the most innocuous display of social power, a display that they rigorously avoid despite almost no repercussions arising from it.
[Related note - How to "door hold": A gentle nudge is appropriate, nothing more, no full stopping, or backing out of the doorway. A single, stern "Thank You" is appropriate if receiving a door nudge or hold.]
"Shocked my system with a vegan diet, special Pu-erh tea from China, and cupping since friday! Who am I right now? This might be too clean!"
"Has anyone ever tried cupping? When u know you are doing something good for ur body the meditation creates intense visions. Love it!". Jessica added that she is working with a healer named Master Wang.
Let me briefly clarify my take on meditation and yoga. I actually think these are fantastic for one's overall mental health and the physical problems associated with stress. However, these pseudo-religious fads have been lauded as proxies for physically demanding activity and obliquely stigmatized high protein, high fat diets.
So you've been working out regularly for a number of years. At the beginning, you felt energized, excited, and the amount of muscle and strength gained reflected that enthusiasm. But after awhile, the gains started gradually decreasing. A few alterations followed in your workout regime, perhaps some trendy lifting concept, new exercises, and oscillating between free weights and machines. You added supersets, burnout sets, less cardio, more cardio, less reps, cycling heavy and low weight lifting weeks. Then you drank protein shakes after workouts and carb-loaded after workout drinks named something like "CarboFeul X-Treme".
Yet nothing has worked. You've been at the same weight, give or take a pound, for two years or so. You keep lifting but only to maintain the disappointing (though decent) amount of muscle mass you obtained previously. You feel like quitting, believing some people will never attain their desired weight gain.
First off, you're an ectomorph or in more colloquial nomenclature: skinny. This classification, one of three (the other two being mesomorph and endomorph) characterizes the natural body weight and fat proportions of the human population. Anyone in this category will have trouble attaining large muscle mass growth, absent some artificial means such as steroids or HGH. Mesomorphs, the most envied class, easily pack on muscle as a result of their better genetics. So, yes, you have a natural predilection towards being skinny.
This means you can't rely on the often glib advice offered by gym meatheads. Ignoring the loads of conflicting information available, routines tailored towards these individuals will likely affect you differently or won't work at all. But in actuality, the key to gaining muscle mass, especially for an ectomorph, isn't in the gym, it's in the kitchen. Gym workouts are but a mere supplement, a conduit guiding food to the correct places, to the hard work put in at the stove and the dining room table.
Anyone who reads this site understands my affinityfor thepaleo diet. Unsurprisingly, this represents the most efficacious means for ectomorphs to gain muscle mass. While you don't have to kill yourself in the gym, eating will likely become an even more arduous challenge, one requiring dedication and abject consistency. For gym workouts, three times a week with heavy weights and low reps will suffice. Focus on free weights, proper form, and exercises that target large muscle groups such as dips, bench press, squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, bent over rows, and shoulder press. Seriously, that's it.
For nutrition, you must eat 6 high protein, high fat, low carb meals every single day. It is likely three of those "meals" will consist of a protein shake with a fruit, fat supplements, or some other healthy snack. Total, you must consume at least as many grams of protein equal to your weight (160 lbs = 160 grams of protein) on a daily basis. Restrict carbs to about 30 grams per day, a difficult task considering a bowl of cereal will cost about 25 grams. You must eat every three hours and each meal should consist of a protein heavy main dish with a healthy side like vegetables or fruit. Almost every meal will have a main dish from one of these categories: meat (red meat is good!), fish, or eggs.
Believe me, eating becomes a full time job and those without patience or persistence (me) ultimately fail. But it's not a complex formula: muscles are made in the kitchen, not the gym. You must eat a ton of calories and a ton of protein, but if done correctly and without cheating, the gains will come. Here's some basic gym tips as well.
About 40 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are black, Hispanic or Asian, and the sport is seen as a leading example of diversity, yet a curious disparity has emerged in a corner of the game. Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.
Thankfully, the fastidious researchers over at the NYT provide us with a chart to illustrate this "problem". What's to blame: pervasive, yet unconscious "institutional racism", a phenomenon only perceptible to discerning individuals like African studies profs and AlterNet writers.
It is more than a mysterious quirk: the third-base coaching position carries greater prestige, the pay is better and the position is often a steppingstone to a managerial job. Instead, some of the former coaches, along with diversity experts, questioned whether race may be playing a more subtle role, with minorities routinely funneled into a job at first base that is less demanding than the one at third.
Now where's the grousing about mysteriously absent white running backs and cornerbacks? I've seen only one article ever broaching this subject without a dismissive tone, an article unsurprisingly penned by a black SI writer as surely none of the uber-PC white sportswriters would touch that story. I surmise the coaching disparity arises, in part, from the intransigent racial intellectual gap, a marked advantage in football where coaches devise increasingly intricate game plans and practice schedules. Perhaps even more important is the behavioral differences, as a coach must ingratiate himself to the city, avoid emotional tirades, and often check his pride in delineating responsibilities or listening to alternative opinions. Guys like Steelers' coach Mike Tomlin, the Colts' Tony Dungy, and the NBA's Lenny Wilkins adroitly handled their coaching positions. I have a feeling Allen Iverson, Antoine Walker, Travis Henry, hell any former NBA and NFL players wouldn't fare so well.
And one final note on the baseball article. The elite have become so removed from the people, and I'm not even talking about just "flyover country" whites, that such risible content is actually a serious matter to them. We see this same disconnect in the Ground Zero mosque controversy, where the elites have absolutely no understanding of national symbolism or maintaining a nation's traditional construct. Maybe Sarah Palin won't propose revolutionary economic policy, but her rise and the commensurate Tea Party movement has informed the elite that many people don't hold their opinions. Now, many elites will reject them as nativist xenophobes, but when this majority of opinionexists, only the most fervent liberal zealots can stay brainwashed.
A few days ago, Professor Mark Taylor of Columbia's religion department, wrote an editorial discussing the unsustainable higher education bubble. Given his academic area of interest, a subject that ultimately amounts to intellectual masturbation, Dr. Taylor glibly misdiagnoses the underlying problem.
With the academic year about to begin, colleges and universities, as well as students and their parents, are facing an unprecedented financial crisis. What we’ve seen with California’s distinguished state university system — huge cutbacks in spending and a 32 percent rise in tuition — is likely to become the norm at public and private colleges. Government support is being slashed, endowments and charitable giving are down, debts are piling up, expenses are rising and some schools are selling their product for two-thirds of what it costs to produce it.
I've explained the unstable feedback cycle that caused California's cutbacks and will eventually spur a national educational bubble. Before rehashing those arguments, let see what Dr. Taylor proposes. Notice the juxtaposition between the following two statements:
With unemployment soaring, higher education has never been more important to society or more widely desired. But the collapse of our public education system and the skyrocketing cost of private education threaten to make college unaffordable for millions of young people.
Just as investors borrowed more and increased their leverage in volatile markets, many colleges and universities are borrowing more and betting on an expanding market in higher education at the precise moment their product is becoming affordable for fewer people.
Now why would colleges and universities foresee an ever expanding market? Perhaps because sentiments such as "higher education has never been more important to society" remain the de facto position of politicians and other cognitive romantics. Colleges are being inundated with potential students due to the prevailing wisdom, extant in the middle class job market and amongst cognitive Marxist policy makers, that views college as a birthright and not the domain of our intellectually gifted. In fact, colleges have responded in a wholly rational manner to these potent market forces, especially given the seeming price inelastic product they offer. Actually, some colleges artificially increase costs to signal prestige and reap the benefits from social posturing consumers.
But given the reality of high dropout rates and a middle class job market unable to employ all these students, ineluctable consequences of the "everyone goes to college" mindset, government lenders (especially) and colleges often don't recoup their loans. Easy solution: stop encouraging everyone to go to college, demand drops considerably, colleges must capitulate on their insane tuition hikes to maintain enrollment. Dr. Taylor disagrees:
Universities should be looking for new ways to provide high-quality education to more students at a lower price. In today’s world, it no longer makes sense for every school to cover every subject. [I've got some bad news for Dr. Taylor. In an era of austere pragmatism, I wonder what subjects will go first.]
Instead, they could cooperate by forming a joint graduate and undergraduate program, which would reduce costs by requiring fewer faculty members and a more modest physical presence, while at the same time increasing course choices for students. And in our wired world, universities on opposite sides of the globe could find similar ways to collaborate.
American higher education has long been the envy of the world, but today our institutions are eroding from within and are facing growing competition from countries like China and India
So according to Professor Taylor, it's up to the institutions to change by scaling back on programs, engaging in globalist initiatives, and, of course, lower costs so even more students can attend. To individuals like Dr. Taylor, the notion that not everyone should go to college and that change should originate by dispelling this social pressure is completely outside the realm of possibility. Instead of affecting change on an individual level, it is the responsibility of large institutions to provide a solution. And it's not getting any better:
If recent trends continue, four years at a top-tier school will cost $330,000 in 2020, $525,000 in 2028 and $785,000 in 2035.
Elite colleges can charge these amounts because people will pay it (see above). And people will pay it because common sentiment holds colleges as the primary creators of our intellectual class. The collegiate Ponzi scheme persists by convincing students that advanced education offers knowledge unattainable in practical settings and that they posses a singular ability to mold future workers. Of course, one's innate ability primarily defines his work trajectory, outside of the most exclusive jobs obtained via membership in Yale's St. A's or on Harvard's crew team.
We need to devalue the college degree both as a job requirement and as an indicator of life success. I imagine this deleterious borrowing cycle will soon burst and will that finally wake everyone up?
"As a citizen, and as president, I believe Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."
“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Mr. Obama said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”
Obama holds the "rights" of foreign peoples over the palpable anguish of the vast majority of American citizens. One shouldn't be surprised at this loyalty, obscured under the guise of "founding principles", as native born Americans have little cultural and political say besides total capitulation.
The left frames this as an issue of fundamental rights and I admittedly can not offer an opposing argument in this regard. Freedom of religion applies to all in every circumstance. But is a nation defined solely by its laws and legal principles or do the people occasionally supersede these guidelines? Do widespread cultural and social desires allow us to occasionally circumvent these principles? And what circumstances warrant subverting our laws?
The conservative opposition to the mosque is primarily concerned with our collective "sensitivity". They take the position that emotional consensus concerning this event justifies opposition. I agree with them, yet the left does persuasively counter by noting the universality of religious freedom and the nebulous precedent advocated in this instance. Mainly, I disagree with the specificity of the conservative opposition, an inexorable aspect of the debate caused by the prevailing mainstream discourse.
Instead of focusing on this particular mosque, an important issue for sure, the Right needs to take a more general approach about the fabric of this nation and what constitutes "American principles". The "proposition nation" fails due to its inherent globalism; the Mosque supporters use this embedded concept, one ignored by pusillanimous conservatives, as justification for their project and their triumphalist edifice. This debate isn't necessarily about Ground Zero, but rather about the national capitulation we must endure if diversity and tolerance, instead of national vigor, become the highest values. Too much of a great thing, constitutional republicanism, can ultimately cause a nation's downfall.
Allowing this mosque represents a vile insult against the American people. Surely we cherish the founding concepts of this nation and owe our predominance to these freedoms. But a nation exists independent of its laws; it's an amalgamation of cultural mores, traditions, social bonds, collective pride, national folklore, and, yes, an incorporeal spirit. A nation is founded upon laws, but a nation is defined by its people, a concept illustrated by the most basic thoughtexperiments. (Walk from your local Bodega to Little Italy.) This mosque abides by our laws, but it enervates our nationhood. It's an ostentatious display implying that America must willfully acquiesce, even welcome, that which disturbs their solidarity and upsets them greatly. Only to the liberal reductionist, obstinately beholden to "diversity" and "tolerance", would the emotional spirit of a people and the death of a cohesive civilization matter so little.
Update: Here's Youtube atheist personality, Pat Condell, correctly diagnosing the issue. This isn't really an issue of rights; it's about nationhood and the collective spirit of our country:
America is a soft country — a decadent country crippled by political correctness; confused and guilt ridden, with no backbone and no pride.
Carl Sagan spoke romantically about the cosmos, believing that our smallness could both humble and inspire us. But is such an impersonal entity as the limitless universe sufficient for affecting our emotional lives on Earth. Can one derive emotional sanguinity simply from being a minute part of something larger than himself. And what if our lives resonate for but a brief moment in time and space, leaving little impression upon the world as we gradually coalesce into the mass of faceless humanity. Today's question: What inspires you? Is it personal edifices or larger values? Do loved ones and friends excite you or do you find personal achievement the strongest motivation and satisfaction? Should we just ignore these "big" questions and shirk the despondency of nihilistic conclusions?
We've all heard the statistics: how one in three children in this country are either overweight or obese, with even higher rates among African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. [Am I supposed to care more because of this?] ..."Let's Move!" is helping parents get the tools they need to keep their families healthy and fit. It's helping grocery stores serve communities that don't have access to fresh foods.
I will applaud her for focusing on an important issue. But as I explained in this post, fatness has a strong correlation with future time orientation and poor people, a cohort comprised primarily of less intelligent individuals, lack both this aptitude and knowledge concerning nutritional basics, i.e. don't eat processed carbs. First Lady Obama foresees government schools pushing forth this progress:
To start, the bill will make it easier for the tens of millions of children who participate in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program -- and many others who are eligible but not enrolled -- to get the nutritious meals they need to do their best. [Wonder who this will benefit?] It will set higher nutritional standards for school meals by requiring more fruits, vegetables and whole grains while reducing fat and salt.
Of course, she relays the saturated fat myth that has spurred our health crisis, a lie embedded by reformed hippie academics disseminating fallacious data, misandric feminists, and social posturing SWPL vegetarians. I took a quick gander at the forthcoming Dietary guidelines (H/T Shrinkwrapped) promoting this lipid hypothesis tripe. Here's the very first comment I randomly picked out:
Please spend time looking over the benefits of a diet based on the starchy foods that have caused billions of people to be trim, active, young and healthy. For example the Asians on rice, people from rural Mexico on beans and corn, the Peruvians on potatoes, the people from New Guinea on sweet potatoes. Americans are sick because the focus of their diet is not on starch, but instead on meat and dairy products and refined foods.
So let's see: Asians, rural Mexicans, Peruvians, and New Guineans. Wonder what they have in common? A few important qualifications. The author fails to parse out paleo-diet foods like meat and eggs from the starch that always accompanies them (bread, soda, pasta, beans, cereals) and offers not an ounce of evidence supporting the veracity of his claims. Additionally, these all constitute relatively isolated groups with strong selection pressure for grains, especially the limited selection of grains available in these regions. Further, the author completely ignores the other foods consumed amongst these groups and, more importantly, the processes these grains undergo to avoid the noxious health effects of neolithic diets. Here's a germane link expounding upon the primary difference between foods of indigenous peoples and those of the modern West. If you'd like to test this, I predict your 100% Whole Grain bread has high fructose syrup and can almost guarantee it was not prepared in the manner explained below:
Our ancestors, and virtually all pre-industrialized peoples, soaked or fermented their grains before making them into porridge, breads, cakes and casseroles. In India, rice and lentils are fermented for at least two days before they are prepared as idli and dosas; in Africa the natives soak coarsely ground corn overnight before adding it to soups and stews and they ferment corn or millet for several days to produce a sour porridge called ogi; a similar dish made from oats was traditional among the Welsh; in some Oriental and Latin American countries rice receives a long fermentation before it is prepared; Ethiopians make their distinctive injera bread by fermenting a grain called teff for several days; Mexican corn cakes, called pozol, are fermented for several days and for as long as two weeks in banana leaves.
Today’s quick-rise breads and extruded cereals and all of those other “healthy” whole grain products do not neutralize the antinutrients. But a real soaked or sprouted bread does cut down on these components. Grains should also be consumed with fat-containing foods such as cream, butter, or raw cheese to help your body absorb the vitamins and minerals that are available.
I can also point to a multitude ofindigenous populations that eat nothing but fat and meat with essentially zero cases of modern disease like diabetes, cancer, etc. Following introduction of Western starches, the incidents of disease amongst these groups skyrocketed (see Native American rates of diabetes and alcoholism). To hammer home the point, here's an article from the HuffingtonPost explaining the saturated fat and cholesterol myths:
Cholesterol could easily be described as the smoking gun of the last two decades. It's been responsible for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years. There is a major misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease. The nutrition community of that time completely accepted the hypothesis, and encouraged the public to cut out butter, red meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy and other "artery clogging" fats from their diets -- a radical change at that time.
A survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese. Anda Medical Research Council surveyshowed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.
Read the comprehensive article for more information. Once again, humanity can not escape its evolutionary ancestry. The strength of man's wisdom is no match for that of nature. Sorry for the link heavy post, but this information further corroborates the "paleo" worldview, evinces the rampant leftist tilt of mainstream science, and provides gravely important information for health purposes. In future posts, information on why carbs cause modern disease and a study illustrating the connection between gum disease and Alzheimer's.
Roissy is slipping through heretical ideas about heredity into the minds of young, college educated white guys by linking sociobiology with Game. And anyone who has tried Game in the real world knows it works, so Roissy is giving young, smart, white guys a double bones: You learn how to pick up hot girls on campus and the forbidden secrets of sociobiology. Roissy has clearly done more to mainstream sociobiology than anyone else simply because he is marketing his product in an effective way.
I think the whole PUA movement is leading more people (and not just men) into greater realism about human nature. You can also watch Mystery getting both men and women to agree with a really biological view of humans and they do it because they get understanding from it.
Forget arguing statistics with brainwashed liberals. That's strictly for losers and chumps. If there's a better recruiting tool than "Embace HBD and get laid," I can't think of what it might be.
In this part of the conservative blogosphere (dubbed "bioconservatism" by Prime), a primarily biological view of man motivates analysis of race, gender, sexual relations, and nutrition. The coherency of racial intelligence differences, Game, and the paleo diet derives from man's evolutionary past and the minimal progression from his hunter-gatherer roots. Here Mystery, the foremost luminary of Game, offers an explanation of approach anxiety that mirrors the truisms of sociobiology:
No wonder you have a fear of the approach. Obviously, forty thousand years ago there was a reason to fear the approach or it wouldn't be hard-wired into your brain...If you approached the wrong girl in a 50 person society and you're not a part of tribal leaders' friends and that girl is taken..they will fucking kill you.
Undoubtedly, Roissy's gender blasphemy attracts young men to heretical ideas, offering a priceless reward for accepting these truths. And as 'kudzu bob' notes, the extrapolation to other aspects of sociobiology, primarily racial intelligence differences and cognitive realism, is a small step traversed by some intellectually curious individuals. Game offers the sexually repressed an avenue to social and sexual desirability; and for most, such astounding success often leads to investigating the system's foundational principles. The edicts of Game apply to such a wide swath of the female population primarily because our cultural edifices are impotent in dampening their carnal desires. Only sociobiology adequately explains the efficacy of Game and thereby undermines the idealistic fantasy promulgated by America's liberal zeitgeist.
But should Game become the beacon for attracting attention to evolutionary psychology and its attendant political suggestions? Basically, who's more important: Steve Sailer or Roissy? While Roissy relays sordid tales of his sexual escapades with a purposefully triumphant tone, Steve Sailer continues to offer erudite discussion on the ever-important topic of race and how it affects society. TUJ adamantly believes Roissy's message will prove more successful in attracting and motivating future HBDers:
That's wonderful but nobody is going to give a crap what you think about race or conservatism in general unless you can explain to them what your comment above MEANS TO THEM AND THEIR EVERY DAY LIFE. You need to translate your ideas into the language of INDIVIDUAL self interest like Roissy and Geert Wilders do, not insular nerd jargon as the paleocons and WNs do.
As someone who came to HBD via Sailer and found his material on race quite palatable given the inundation of daily, anecdotal evidence, I believe racial discourse is still more important for affecting political change. A few thoughts:
Race trumps gender: As Sailer has noted for the OJ Simpson trial, race always trumps gender in delineating collectivist loyalty.
Too Large and Impersonal:As TUJ correctly notes, political movements need to pique the egoistic urges of man. But there's little evidence (for men anyway) to suggest something as huge as half the population could motivate any personal attachment amongst its members or, somewhat paradoxically, move together as a monolithic group. No Traditional Edifices: All movements need a traditional narrative, preferably one alluding to a divinely inspired destiny or birthright, ala Israel. Cultural and national pride based on revisionist or quixotic histories of luminaries and seminal events enliven passion. What gender-based institutions can act as a proxy for landing on the Moon, defeating Communism, or signing the Declaration of Independence? I'm thinking a tale about "fuck closing" an "HB8" after an outing of "Day Game" doesn't suffice.
They Won't Continue After Getting Laid: The Roissy argument rests on the premise that these individuals will actually continue into the intellectual and biological foundations of Game. Many don't. As I stated in The Beta Revolution Will Fail, once man sates his sexual appetite, he often becomes apathetic in regards to subsequent goals. Will these men, so invigorated by their burgeoning social power, be willing to invest time and cognitive energy in advancing sociobiology? Doubtful.
Finally and most importantly, Race Matters for Behavior and Societal Hierarchies: As Cornel West said, Race Matters. It's the most salient feature of group behavior. It explains almost the entirety of relative success amongst disparate groups, societies, and nations. Race is a wonderfully prescient means for predicting individual and collective outcomes and in hindsight, offers the best explicative tool for understanding society. Further, especially in countries deluged with NAMs, race represents the only argument to oppose low-IQ immigration and the commensurate egalitarianism underpinning almost all of government largess. Liberal media outlets obsess over race because its implications arise in every aspect of life. As for connecting this to individuals, the palpable frustration expressed by un-PC conservativesover perceived racial bias suggests this is a rather facile task. And quite frankly, I find TUJ's framing of this as a daunting undertaking quite surprising given his familiarity with the Steveosphere.
Let me qualify this briefly: Sailer spurred my initial interest into race and its political implications, even though I had come up with a modest version of sociobiology by myself. Yet, Roissy has perhaps opened by eyes more than any other person, primarily because sexual truths aren't as evident as racial ones. In the end, both provide indispensable insight into our current cultural and political tempest.
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
If the American education system explicitly stated such an objective, most would find this defeatist attitude quite deplorable. And it seems that Menken's musings on the subject skew towards admonishment, not passive acceptance. But even if expressed in the starkly cynical terms above, is this objective not a reasonable one?
A society full of John Galts and Nietzschean ubermen would fall under its members' own hubris, creating an untenable conglomerate of prideful individuals unable to accept their own mediocrity. Society needs the mediocre, the beta males, the opium imbibing masses to sustain itself; because without them, or with an unjustifiably self-important cohort of social climbers, the thankless work underpinning societal stability doesn't get done.
So perhaps Menken's educational system is our best hope, as it would dampen the masses' apostasy and allow the most intrepid to shirk its despondency. That way, we arrive at a "natural aristocracy" of the most capable individuals. And instead of viewing this system as a hindrance to our youth's intellectual development, we can view it as a pragmatic creation of a viable society. And let's be honest, what percentage of the population gets intellectually stimulated from such esoterica?
President Barack Obama on Monday set a goal of having the federal government help 8 million more students graduate from college by 2020 as part of an effort to retrain the American work force.
BTW: I've convinced two originally hesitant friends of cognitive realism, with one of them sending me the link above and adding: "Is anyone but Charles Murray arguing against this crap? And even if this horrible idea is implemented, I have a feeling the kids who should get the money, i.e. smart ones who will actually build this country, won't be getting it."
Their relationship stalled initially because, as Julianne recently admitted, she had assumed that Ryan was gay. 'He totally wasn't my type,' she said about hard working host. 'I thought he was gay.'
Seacrest epitomizes the metrosexual beta-male, an explicit contrast to bad boy alphas like Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr. And while Roissy and similar bloggers advise beta males to appropriate alpha male characteristics, this micro-approach to Game often obscures the macro-status-driven strategy at work here. For anyone not familiar with Ms. Hough, this is what she looks like (a LSFW one and another for your viewing pleasure):
For some reason, keyboard jockeys revel in denigrating attractive women for their "asymmetrical kneecaps" and "stumpy thumbs". If anyone does this to Ms. Hough, either you're deluded or a closet homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
The conservative media dreamland, for instance, ensconces its audience in an impregnable bubble -- you eat breakfast with the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you drive to the office with right-wing radio, you flit between Breitbart and Drudge at work, you come home to Fox News. The ideas bouncing around in this world -- say, ideas about the Obama administration allegedly favoring blacks -- don't seem like propaganda to those inside the bubble.
Mr. Sirota forgot Glenn Beck. Obviously, these pundits and media sources offer a particular narrative on the political landscape. I surely won't deny the coherency of the worldview presented, but does this ostensible "bubble" even exist? And in the free market of ideas, can fallacious ideas persist without intellectual sustenance provided by real world experience and the depressing trend of our civilization?
That last question surely runs both ways, with the potential to undermine both conservative and liberal ideals. Let's start with liberals. The main premise of liberalism is the rejection of "original sin" and not in merely a religious context, but the notion that our evolutionary construction is fatally weakened by man's institutions. In essence, it's a struggle for man's soul, an edifice either bestowed upon him by an outside force or one nurtured and forged by his life's experiences. By accepting the latter, liberals champion an idealistic view of man as an ultimately amorphous creature incipient in both cognition and behavior. The only requirement is money, and more money, and better schools, and teachers, yes more teachers, and another 50 years, OK 75, then you'll see, you'll see!
So while I spend loads of time bashing liberals, I do sympathize with their limitless idealism. Liberalism feels good because anyone can succeed. And this underpins its success; realist ideologies advocate fatalism and no one likes that. Paralleling liberal idealism, what phenomenon maintains these purported conservative falsehoods? Conservatism persists not due to xenophobia or misogyny, but rather because most people go to public school, avoid the "bad neighborhoods", and log onto Youtube for these illustrativeexamples.
But I would be remiss to ignore the potency of ensconced ideas. Conservatives may spend most of their times digesting "propaganda" (polls actually say otherwise), but they live in a country dominated by the liberal zeitgeist and its restrictions on acceptable ideas. So while Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity disseminate apparent lunacy, the liberal mindset pervades the rest of society, so much so that many "conservatives" have adopted the nomenclature. I can't count how many times some right-wing politician added a disclaimer prior to making some un-PC remark.
There's been a tremendous uproar in the social media world since AlterNet published a story accusing a group of influential social media users of actively engaging in political "censorship" on Digg.com, the popular social news network." ABC News' article, by Ki Mae Heussner summarizes Olson's story: "A group of conservative members of the popular link-sharing website Digg may be deliberately suppressing liberal stories submitted to the site.
