Moderates and the Truth

Often enough one hears from moderates and those who think they are wise, that the truth is always somewhere in between.

Bullshit.

It's an attempt to sound clever, to sound like maybe they don't have everything right, but you certainly don't either.

The simple answer: the truth is.

Now.

The truth is often far more complex than we can process with many facets, value judgements, and factors that interact in many ways. The truth of poverty is that there are those who, due to advances in technology and changes in manufacturing, or sickness, or something, are screwed, and will need, through no fault of their own, charity of some form. There are also those who are lazy, who given the opportunity to work, will not. One example is asking a street corner beggar if he's willing to work for a meal instead of begging for change. The ones scamming you, getting a few bucks for booze or doing far better than they present themselves, will tell you to fuck off. The ones in need who are willing to do their share will say yes, and will be grateful because you let them do something to earn the charity.

This is much like the arguments of post-modernism that there are an infinite number of ways to look at something, so they then further conflate it with the claim that none of them are privileged, or better than the others.

Bullshit.

I've discussed elsewhere that categories for things, like "music", "fantasy", or "science fiction" can be fuzzy, such that two things can legitimately claim that label and share few if any common points.

Yet, a book is not an ocean liner. The things we call "books", unless we arbitrarily label anything and everything a "book" because we do not care to communicate ideas to people without developing a new vocabulary, share a set of features readily and quickly discernable from those shared by boats, ships, or ocean liners.

Thus with truth. Sometimes, both parties are completely wrong. But if you drew a Venn diagram, the truth won't necessarily be between the two circles. It may be, much like the left-right definition used by the political left where Nazis - creatures of the left -  are on the right, and libertarians are outside the bounds of their political scale. Or it may be completely tangental.

Or it may be that one side is, within a reasonable approximation, correct.

Moderates like to say this bullshit a lot, and like to believe that by being in between, at neither extreme, that they are more correct (and smarter than everyone else).

The world doesn't care. A book is not a ship. Or an airplane.

A Reminder - SJW's Lie

A bit on Cobert caught my attention for so egregiously slamming Trump, and Mika and Joe being on, and the level of "but I was only just", "but they were only just", and recasting what has happened - say, regarding judge Curiel, was astounding.

I could go on and on, but I won't.

But a reminder - they lie.

A smaller example. This is less for the "oh boy they lie, grr....." but to show you how totally and brazenly they'd lie, and because the videos by Peterson, like damn near everything of his, are well worth watching.

A week or two back I stupidly got stuck in a small flame back and forth over something that was a total tangent to the main point of the article. I'd mentioned that Jordan Peterson had illustrated why the philosophy of the left inevitably lead to the kind of violence the OP posted about, and a commenter started going on "enough about Peterson", "He's a troll", "he never read the law", "it doesn't mean what he says it means," and so forth.

While I allowed myself to get sucked into the tangent argument, compleat with the bullshit line that just because supporters misinterpret the law doesn't mean the law will be enforced like that, I figured he was lying. Even simply based on his later, shorter statements, having looked at the bill C-16 myself, and the law it modified, it was obvious he was spot on.

Having only seen Peterson's later, shorter, statements, I simply had no idea how completely this person had lied, though.

Here's the video that got Peterson in trouble. There's one immediately following it chronologically that goes into the re-education camp, er, "sensitivity training" that part of the campus administration was being mandated to take, as well, that I'm skipping over.

You have to wait a bit before he gets started, but he reads through and parses not only the law in detail, but then applies it to the existing law it modifies and reads that, and then applies it in accordance to how similar laws have already been applied. He spends nearly an hour going over the law and it's impact bit by little bit.

The social justice contingent among the students reply accordingly.

And then, as predicted, the University responds:

So.

He has read the law despite blatant lies that he "obviously has done no such thing", and parsed it in detail.

He applied the law in accordance with current cultural trends, and predicted the reply he actually got. It's worth noting that, as even Peterson remarks, the reaction by the university and students is possibly the strongest affirmation of how utterly correct he was that you could get.

The reply he got wasn't simply by some "ignorant supporters" but by the college administration, almost assuredly after consulting with their legal department.

The proof is there for anyone to see, but they won't see it, and if they can see it, they will not admit it.

In the end, here was his reply.

Virtue From the Barrel of a Gun

I've almost certainly been guilty of overly, exhuberantly, promoting Eric S Raymond's "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun." As a discussion of how daily carrying creates an awareness of consequences and ingrained awareness and caution/responsibility, it's core three tenets are broadly applicable, and available, to a lesser or greater degree, in any environment where awareness of life - or - death decisions are the norm.

The first and most important of these lessons is this: it all comes down to you. 

No one's finger is on the trigger but your own. All the talk-talk in your head, all the emotions in your heart, all the experiences of your past — these things may inform your choice, but they can't move your finger. All the socialization and rationalization and justification in the world, all the approval or disapproval of your neighbors — none of these things can pull the trigger either. They can change how you feel about the choice, but only you can actually make the choice. Only you. Only here. Only now. Fire, or not? 

A second is this: never count on being able to undo your choices. 

If you shoot someone through the heart, dead is dead. You can't take it back. There are no do-overs. Real choice is like that; you make it, you live with it — or die with it. 

A third lesson is this: the universe doesn't care about motives. 

If your gun has an accidental discharge while pointed an unsafe direction, the bullet will kill just as dead as if you had been aiming the shot. I didn't mean to may persuade others that you are less likely to repeat a behavior, but it won't bring a corpse back to life. 

These are hard lessons, but necessary ones. Stated, in print, they may seem trivial or obvious. But ethical maturity consists, in significant part, of knowing these things — not merely at the level of intellect but at the level of emotion, experience and reflex. And nothing teaches these things like repeated confrontation with life-or-death choices in grave knowledge of the consequences of failure.

So I was getting caught up on Jordan Peterson podcasts - having started with Maps of Meaning and some of the later ones I was going back to the beginning - and in the third podcast, the Necessity of Virtue, around 21 minutes, he dropped this little gem, while discussing whether people are inherently nice, or could be Nazi prison guards.

You have no idea what you're like before you know how terrible you can be, and not only that, you won't take yourself sufficiently serious... seriously.

If you know you're a loaded weapon, and an unstable loaded weapon, then you're much more likely to pay attention to what you do.

 I've said elsewhere on this blog you know you're approaching the truth when people are coming to the same or very similar conclusions from different perspectives, filters, and methodologies.

Give it a listen.

The Patience of a Saint

Dr Jordan Peterson at Harvard.

Yeah, the title of the vid is melodramatic, and if you've listened to his (highly recommended) podcast little of this is new. Pay attention to the questions being asked. Straw men and weasel words.

For an institution that supposedly concerns itself with "truth", rigor, logic, philosophy, etc. seem sadly lacking. The questions come across as an attempt to pin him down to badthink rather than an attempt to have him elabroate his position.

I expect no different of an institution who's chipper students gush about "all the activities" during campus tours, like going to anti-war protests, while standing in a hall commemmorating the Harvard civil war dead.

Why I Support Maher and Not Griffin

I had recently went into a few differences I'd seen between what Maher was raked over the coals for, and what Kathy Griffin was taken to task for.

I didn't clarify why I'm actually OK with campaigning against Kathy Griffin, or similar outrage against Aslan at CNN.

It comes down to this saying:

When I am weak I am for free speech because that is your principle. When I am strong I am against free speech because it is my principle.

I had discussed the golden rule of late, and the deeper I dig in, the deeper it applies. Maher has consistently been an obnoxious man who pisses people off and occasionally says something insightful or funny. While I haven't regularly watched his show in a while, I don't recall him holding a guest to a standard he hasn't applied to himself. Ms Griffin on the other hand had repeatedly declared what her standard of behavior was, notably with her vitriol directed at Sarah Palin after the Arizon shooting of Giffords, for using "target icons". For her, it's perfectly OK to rail against and smear people she's politically opposed to.

The "right" - especially traditional conservatives, have for a long time treated the left as they claim they themselves wish to be treated, in the simpler version of the golden rule that is treated as "don't be mean beacause you don't want people to do things that hurt you."

As I've pointed out, opening that way corresponds to the opening move of the iterated prisoners dilemma - play "nice" and see if the guy takes advantage of you or not.

The problem is that in the minds of bullies, bowing to their wishes is seen as weakness, as permission to go further. In their minds, you are accepting their dominance over them. And no matter how much you dress it up as taking the moral high road, unless you counter them, you are. So when they screw you over, and over, and over, and you continue to play "nice" - you are declaring to them that you accept that behavior. You are declaring this to the bullies, and by example, to the observers, that you are willing to be a victim. They won't change until something makes taking advantage of you impractical.

So yes, fighting back, using their tactics and standards against them - Alinsky style - is perfectly OK because they have openly declared by their own behavior that they consider it acceptable to treat others that way if they can get away with it. When they scream bloody murder at the right finally punching back, they acknowledge they know they are doing wrong, and are taking advantage of their enemies and the right because they can, because we have let them.

It's time to teach them the consequences of treating people that way.

Digging into the Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

Simple enough. Those of us in the west have heard it before, and likely have heard one of the common versions from other cultures.

From Buddhism: Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.

From the Talmud: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow men.  That is
         the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.

It is important to note though: the majority of other versions are negative, proscriptive, whereas the commonly stated Christian version is positive - it tells you how to act, what to target.

There are several key things that that brings about.

First of all - what you focus on is going to shape your behavior and thoughts toward that. If you focus on avoiding a problem, you're not looking for a path to a solution. For that matter, focusing on that negative may very well cause you to self-sabotage. 

When athletes visualize how they'll sprint, lift weights, or throw a ball, they focus on how they'll successfully do it, not on how not to screw up. Among other things, the set of workable solutions is much smaller and easier to focus on.

More importantly to me right now though, is the relationship this has to game theory, the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and what Stefan Molyneux refers to as universally preferable preferences. This is important because there are several common criticisms of the golden rule that boil down to, among other arguments,  about "but a prisoner", and "I don't know what he would want."

You see - if your actions are not avoidant, but instead, you're treating others as you expect to be treated in turn in a reciprocal moral framework, then how you treat others is a map for what you consider acceptable behavior.

But what if they don't think it's reciprocal? What if they're borderlines, or malignant narcissists, or convinced they're god?

So?

A man willing to abuse those he has power over is advertising that he cannot be trusted until you establish that you won't accept that behavior. A man who proves he's not willing to work under rules you can both agree to is taking himself outside of the requirement to be treated well under those rules. This is where the prisoner's dilemma comes in. 

The winning strategy is to open with the co-operative choice - treating the other party as you would wish to be treated in turn, and establishing what your standards are for dealing with each other. If the other party screws you over, they've just advertised that they're perfectly willing to take advantage of you. At that point, you hammer them until they start playing fair. At the extreme end, well, rabid dogs won't get any better. It doesn't matter if they understand why they're trying to bite you.

This isn't just tit for tat - they're establishing what they consider their standard for conduct even if they cannot or will not articulate it, speak it. All you're doing is applying their own standards to them.

Col. Kratman has noted before in his blog posts, and commentary on his Carrerra books, that for the laws of war to work, there has to be a mechanism for reprisals. In short, if the enemy won't wear a uniform of sorts, uses hospitals, ambulances, and schools as defensive positions, etc., if they demonstrate that they're not willing to "play fair," - there is no reason to play fair in turn.

But, I wouldn't want people hurting me!

Let me ask you this then.

A bully advertises they're willing to use force to get what they want. They're not likely to stop just because someone asks nicely. Is it any more moral to proclaim through your actions and choices that you're willing to be beaten and be stolen from because you won't hurt those who clearly are fine with doing you harm?

Are you willing to demonstrate that you accept the strong and abusive taking advantage of those they deem weaker?

But what about hierarchies of authority, or a judge condemning a prisoner?

OK. So?

No, the prisoner is not being treated how he'd "like" to be treated at that moment - but that didn't stop him from robbing someone, or killing someone, or beating someone earlier, did it? By his choices he demonstrated that he is willing to take life, time, or property from other people against their will. 

I'll leave aside honest human error, but if a judge is abusing justice, sentencing a man in a kangaroo court, then he declares that justice is not his priority either. A commander who abuses his troops advertises that it's perfectly OK for his superiors to abuse him.

Take a look at the parable of the unforgiving servant. 

Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?"

Jesus said to him, "I don't tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven. Therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king, who wanted to reconcile accounts with his servants. When he had begun to reconcile, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But because he couldn't pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and knelt before him, saying, 'Lord, have patience with me, and I will repay you all!' The lord of that servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.

"But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, who owed him one hundred denarii, and he grabbed him, and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!'

"So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will repay you!' He would not, but went and cast him into prison, until he should pay back that which was due. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were exceedingly sorry, and came and told to their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him in, and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?' His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you don't each forgive your brother from your hearts for his misdeeds."

Does this sound like "don't imprison the guy who owes you no matter what because you wouldn't want to be imprisoned?"

No.

The master forgave the servant. Yet, when the servant showed that not only had he no mercy himself, but was willing to abuse others over petty things, the master rescinded his mercy. The wicked servant displayed what his moral standards were, and so the master - though he first gave the guy a chance - treated him according to the standards he displayed.

Vox complains, rightly, that many who quote scripture do so incompletely or without the context of the rest of the bible. If turning the other cheek was meant to act like a welcome mat, if the golden rule was meant to prevent you from ever doing something someone else would find painful, you wouldn't have the parable of the servants, Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the temple with a whip, or ordering his disciples to sell their cloaks for swords.

Update: It just occurred to me that this also ties into "SJW's always project"

Myth and Meaning

I was first introduced to Jordan Peterson on Stefan Molyneux's show. 

Jordan Peterson is an atheist. Regardless, unlike many, even if only on a mythological level, he has a far more understanding view of religion and the role it, or something like it, needs to play than many who are not believers, and a far deeper understanding of the symbology than many who are.

It's hours and hours of listening, but episodes 9, 10, 12, and 13 of his podcast, "Maps of Meaning" are well worth every minute. Casting further out, you'll also find him tearing apart modern social justice and postmodern thought - in fact, what brought him to the attention of the screeching SJW horde was his argument against personal pronouns.

Episode 9 – Maps of Meaning 1 – 3 

Episode 10 – Maps of Meaning 4 – 6 

Episode 12 – Maps of Meaning 7 – 9 

Episode 13 – Maps of Meaning 10 – 13

Utopia

An interesting post on the impossibility of utopias at Empire Must Fall.

Every utopia fails. They fail because the consequences of their contradictions finally hollow them out and cause them to collapse, which is exactly how empires falls, and often by the same ultimate event: insiders turn traitors and throw open the gates to hostile outsiders. 

And yes, I do mean every utopia. The excuse is irrelevant; the results are the same: oppression, poverty, misery, and death- lots and lots of easily preventable, avoidable, and often deliberately-inflicted death. Its psychology is that of a willful child, insisting that it has to work despite how many times it previously failed. The politics that demand that Big Daddy handle it all, and make the meanies go away, stems from every last damned utopian scheme and scam ever attempted- and the solution is also the same: Let. It. Fall.

It's been said that Communism would work if all men were angels. The same has been justly said of Libertarianism (though at least that acknowledges individual choice and the limits of scope of knowledge). The obvious corralary has been "and if all men were angels, we would not need government."

I'm not sure that's true.

Even angels can war amongst each other.

A Very Personal And Gut Wrenching Exploration of Evil

I sat a while on this post from Searching For Dragons called "Evil: is Not a Thing?"

I can't even excerpt it. It is at times vulgar - because it looks at something very ugly. It is gut wrenching, because it turns our attention to the truly vile, and dares us to refuse to believe it exists.

In an excellent recent podcast, Jordan B. Peterson, who has also been on Stefan Molyneux show, mentions something Solzhenitsyn said about the Nuremburg trials. The point he brought up was that some things are done are so awful that everyone who is not a monster knows they are wrong, regardless of culture. Eric Raymond once noted - I cannot find the article - that a trading methodology involving piles of goods, splitting them, moving them, requiring no language, implied at least some degree of universal moral standards, even if the exact details of what constitutes, say, murder, or theft, may vary.

That post? Evil exists.

Just go read the thing.

I will add one observation. One consequence of the postmodern nihilism, of dragging everything into the muck, is that not only do we tear down the good, the virtuous, the capacity for divinity and light, but we provide cover for evil as well.

A Bit of Catching Up

Finished Watching: “Castle in the Sky”, Directed by Hiyao Miyazaki

What an incredible film. Truly incredible. 

If anybody hasn’t seen it, and has the remotest interest in adventure films – I mean, like, if you thought “Indiana Jones” was “sort of okay” – watch this movie right now.

To me it suffers a bit - mostly because Mark Hamill's voice in the english dub throws me out of it for some odd reason. He's also as close to an "evil" character as I remember in Miyazaki's films that I've seen, but like the emperor from Larry's Grimnoir books, has a motivation other than "be evil." The pacing is also a bit slow. 

That said, it is fantastic. The characters are great. The environment mind-blowing, the look and feel utterly unique.

I got it in a three-pack with Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away, and cannot recommend either strongly enough. Princes Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, and Nausicaa are also well worth watching. I haven't seen Ponyo, Totoro, or The Wind Rises.

Speaking of Totoro: 

“My Neighbor Totoro” is a movie so utterly different from both “Spirited Away” and “Castle in the Sky” it almost feels like a work from a different director.

“My Neighbor Totoro” is more or less in the vein of his film “Kiki’s Delivery Service” as a sort of supernatural slice of life, but for little girls. Miyazaki’s work can be categorized in a few ways. One way to look at it is that he has his adventure films (examples being “Castle in the Sky”, “Porco Rosso”, and “Howl’s Moving Castle”), his epics (“Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind”, “Princess Mononoke”), and his children’s films (“My Neighbor Totoro”, “Ponyo”, and “Spirited Away”).

This classification isn’t perfect (it becomes very hard to fit in “The Wind Rises”, for one thing, and while “Spirited Away” is most definitely a children’s film it also feels like something much more than that), but using it we can successfully classify “My Neighbor Totoro” in the children’s category.

This is a movie that western animation simply cannot make. I don’t think anybody has even TRIED to. It’s a movie directed at TODDLERS, but instead of being frenetic and didactic it’s a very graceful film, with a slow build, little real conflict for the majority of it, and an idyllic setting. It doesn’t talk down to its viewers at all; everybody and everything that happens feels very natural and real, even the supernatural parts.

The Castalia House piece on why cultural criticism is indefensible is well worth the read.

I also leaned about a ship and battle I'd never heard of before, despite growing up in the south, where we're taught from day one how awesome we are, how the yankees suck, and we didn't lose that war of northern aggression, and never get told anything different.

It was this chase that quickly led the Arkansas to Vicksburg… and legend.  The Union had been laying siege to Vicksburg and had assembled what was, at the time, the largest naval force in the history of the Western Hemisphere. There were 40 ships. A forest of sails and smokestacks.  In one of the great “Holy Craps” of our history, Captain Brown simply looked at that big bow gun and decided to blast right through. Hell, there was only 40 of ’em. Suffice it to say this was exactly what the Yankees did not expect.  In fact, by the time most of the Yankee sailors even realized what was going on, the Arkansas was already blasting away on them. It was like Pearl Harbor, except it was just one boat attacking.

We may have, in the foreseeable future, lighter, more powerful, and more importantly, safer batteries. 

Del Arroz nails it: 

We don’t have lovable heroes we can root for anymore. We don’t have protagonists with real morals or real honor. It’s been a concerted effort by Hollywood to bring down our culture into its level of hedonism over decades, and it’s gone so far full tilt a normal person can’t relate at all anymore. But Hollywood is just a reflection of the literary world, as they steal their concepts, buy the rights to what they like, in order to make blueprints for their shows and movies.

It’s no wonder the only films that go anywhere are caricatures of the old Stan Lee stuff from the 60s, where it was heroes who start as ordinary, become extraordinary through their powers, and through their own exploration of self and sense of wonder, save the world time and time again. Those characters preach responsibility and loyalty, words that rarely are used anymore. That resonates with our basic human nature and desire to be better. That resonates with fun.

The sad part is that these readers and viewers are still out there, but they aren’t even looking for content anymore because they’ve been let down time and time again. They’ve been told, through the stories that are produced, that they’re basically not wanted and should buzz off. It’s been a systematic destruction of a customer base by big publishing, the comic book industry and Hollywood. Since the 90s, those groups have lived off of trying to create a shock value that is more horrific, more morally degrading and with bigger explosions than the last one in order to compensate for this.People do turn their head to watch a train wreck every time, we know that much to be true. The problem is, they won’t come back and watch that train wreck over and over because they feel disgusting if they do, and rightfully so. It’s short-sighted and lazy, and that’s what’s caused this downward spiral.

And finally, Quintus Curtius on the wisdom of mercy.

In Search of Truth

I said in a recent posting: "I care more about arriving at the truth than already having it when I started a conversation." My blog header also states: "This blog is a redoubt in search of truth in a world darkened by lies," and I have argued that when we want to throttle petty, tyrant bureaucrats that it is not just simple honesty we crave, but that "We want honest answers because we're given bullshit, obfuscation, and lies."

Vox of course recently posted on having an affinity for those in search of truth.

The individuals I appreciate most are those who seek after the truth, even when they find it uncomfortable or personally distasteful. I am far more comfortable with the seekers than with those who are convinced that they have arrived at the final one true understanding of God, Man, the universe, and everything, whether it is the Catholic Church, the Bible, or Science that provides them with the basis for their baseless confidence.

Note the difference - between those who think they know the truth and are not willing to change when experience and the world show them otherwise, and those who constantly seek it, willing to discard what they knew, if sometimes slowly and painfully, when they realize they are wrong.

In my own life, despite an upbringing that included a lot of truth about communism, I rejected the self-assurance of the explicitly religious, and wandered through liberal circles for a while. It took a few years but not only did I realize that, despite their pretensions, that they had no monopoly on truth, but that they were, ultimately, not interested in truth.

It was that desire to learn, possess, and be in alignment in truth that led me back out of that den of snakes, and also the greatest single factor in most of my changes in attitude and belief.

Vox says to look at not only where a person is, but where they are, and what that says about where they will be.

Scott Adams talks about not having so much goals as systems that will lead to improvement and good outcomes. Good habits, if you will. 

Being dedicated to truth is a system that cuts down on false rationalizations, self-delusion, and lying to oneself and others.

I Know What I Know

I know what I know
I'll sing what I said
We come and we go
That's a thing that I keep
In the back of my head
   -Paul Simon, "I Know What I Know", Graceland

I was digging around some odds and ends over at the Didacts site, chasing rabbits down holes, and "INTJ" caught my eye. He has posted several times on introverts, and, I am one, so seeing a site in the sidebar about INTJ's didn't surprise me. The site wasn't bad - think of it as more of a very personal set of insights rather than a general overview - but still a lot of good introspection and self-analysis. One article headline jumped out. "INTJ – I Know What I Know & What I Don’t Know". A couple excerpts are relevant. First:

...if we know something or don’t know something then we will just tell you.

Thinking back, even when I was more insecurely wrapped in being the smart kid who "knew everything" - I wasn't sorely tempted to claim knowledge of something I did not know. If anything, I found it difficult to bullshit together a response to "short essay" questions to which I did not know the answer clearly. I was perfectly willing to say "I don't know." Yes, in my youth, when I was more wrapped up in "I'm awesome because I'm smart" it hurt to have to admit it, but these days, after years of meeting far too many people who were experts at things I would never have time to study, I don't care. I've even had bystanders laugh at the look of puzzlement on my face when accused of "you can't admit you don't know something."

 Of course:

HOWEVER, the thing is though, we, as INTJs, when interested in something, we research the hell out of that topic – 

The key phrase here is actually not "research the hell out of the topic", but "when interested in something." If not interested, I may learn something anyway because I'm "interested" - the teacher was badgering me, it is a tedious detail I need to know it for work even if I don't want to otherwise.

This doesn't just extend to what I learn, but also to why I rarely tell people I don't know. If I'm not interested, I rarely talk about it, if I am interested, anyone short of a professional with experience in the field or a dedicated and experienced hobbyist is unlikely to be better informed. Yes, I've been known to be wrong on my supposed level of knowledge. When shown wrong, I stand corrected and update "what I know."

I care more about arriving at the truth than already having it when I started a conversation.

Furthermore, we instantly say, “I know”, because we have already jumped to the conclusion whereby your conversation was built upon. We already got your point, so when people vomits excessive information before getting to the “moral of the story”, we already look like a stubborn idiot whereby we either have a certain irritated expression of exasperation on our face or our hands are motioning for that person to hurry up (personally, I use the phrase “fast forward”, a lot).

I'm very guilty of this kind of thing. Someone starts making a statement. They're either repeating themselves after I've acknowledged them, or I'm damn aware of whatever issue they think they're bringing to my attention, and say "I know" as a shorthand for "and I know what I'm doing/you already informed me, please shut up and stop wasting my time."

Worse - "we already got to your point," I'm extremely guilty of cutting people off when something they say shows their fundamental principles and assumptions are off so I don't want to hear anything else, or I recognize a talking point/train of logic that inevitably goes somewhere, even if they hadn't specifically said it before. My success rate isn't perfect - about one in ten times it turns out that I hadn't anticipated what was to be said correctly, and yes, I've been known to admit that.

I try to work on listening more.

On the other hand, as for when we do not know some things, we will either tell you or just stay quiet – some topics do not pique our interest nor do we feel that we are comfortable enough to have an opinion on it. We sometimes do not feel ‘qualified’ to speak about the topic at hand – yes, we are VERY aware of what we do not know and we acknowledge this. The problem is whether the topic makes us interested enough to commence a research afterwards.

Like I said - if I  don't know, I may be interested enough in the people to pay attention, but, I need to be interested in learning more in order to speak up for more than polite "uh huh" noises. Even if I am interested, I often wait to see where it goes instead of hijacking the conversation.  

The annoying thing about being certain about our knowledge is that, we are seen as not open-minded – this is such a misconstrued assumption. Open minded people acknowledge their faults and questions everything and themselves. Even if we know what we know, that does not mean that we do not plan on expanding our knowledge; it just so happens that the topic may not have piqued our interest yet and so it is not our priorities at the moment.

This goes back to accusations that - because I argue what I believe is true, that I'm close-minded and "have to be right." While some of the things I believed were wrong, I also constantly reality-check, and have changed my mind on a number of things. That said - I doubt anyone is going to convince me that socialism and communism are good, even if I have long had issues with big "L" libertarians that led me into the alt-west wing of the alt-right.

Of course, there are also "unknown unknowns", which, like the universe, are limitless. 

Tradition!

I'd made clear at one point the intense dislike I've acquired for the play "Fiddler on the Roof". Mostly because it takes the trouble to show how important tradition is to Tevye and the community, yet at the end tears them all down, without really replacing them. A point can be made that many of the traditions would not survive the the journey to the new world, but that is actually irrelevant. They didn't have to be. Something that fit the same purposes could have been brought in that fit the new world about them, instead of them all being torn down while feeding us Communist propaganda. The story could have been about how they faced weddings, progroms, and everything else without just tearing down the traditions, and fooling people into accepting the changes.

It hadn't occurred to me to look at this in the light of Chesterton's fence before, though.

Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton’s 1929 book The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, in the chapter entitled "The Drift from Domesticity": "In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."[79]

Which makes it interesting that recently, this came to my awareness at an article called "Reprint: John W. Campbell, Traditional Values" at the Jesse Lucas Saga:

Now herein lies the importance of traditions and traditional values. Like the 2,000-year-old star maps that allowed Halley to see that Arcturus and Aldebaran had moved, traditions represent postulates that have been tested-in-action over long periods of time.

They may not be completely and precisely correct - but only a fool would hold that they were valueless. They represent the results obtained by experiments performed on millions of human beings, over centuries of time.

They are, in fact, the basic data on which a sound sociology, or sound psychology, must be based; they're the experimental results that the modern "authorities" in those fields say we can't get because we can't perform experiments with human beings.

Traditions are valuable not because they're traditional, but because they're rule-of-thumb engineering results from ages of experiments performed on/by millions of human beings under widely varying conditions. [emphasis mine]

The old Roman engineers were very weak on theory; unlike the Greek theoreticians, the Romans didn't do much arguing about philosophy - they built things, and sought only to find practical working rules of how-to-do-it. They didn't understand force-vectors, Young's Modulus, or the chemistry of mortar, but they built magnificent arch bridges, and great domes that have stood for two thousand years. Some of their works are still in practical operation. They were lousy theorists - but their rule of thumb traditions of how to build a bridge that wouldn't fall down worked.

The fact that you cannot understand, or explain, something has nothing whatever to do with its validity.

It would behoove any would-be engineer stumbling across such a structure to study and appreciate it. And any would-be theoretician would be wise to understand that for his field of study, such a bridge is an Event; it's true, and he'd better try to understand why, instead of trying to explain it away as useless - old-fashioned - a mere tribal mores - things have changed.

Sure they have - but the basic laws haven't. We use steel reinforced concrete rather than mortared stone, but we also use the principle of the arch.

The importance of traditions is not that they're traditional and we ought to worship antiques - but that they are old, and have grown old in service.

They worked.

Like Roman aqueducts and bridges, they're still functioning usefully after millennia of use. They must have great basic laws underlying them or they'd have crumbled before this.

Yes, this also echoes Chesterton's fence, but the insight here is not just "why is it here", but why it's important to ask that question. because traditions come from somewhere, and that somewhere is an aggregate set of decisions that, in whatever circumstances pertained, worked, more often than not. You don't have to understand the theory of why. Suddenly, looking at this explanation of tradition I bridged not only the fence, but tied it to traditions and things outside of law.

I'd stated recently that one knows one is approaching a truth when different people, seeking the truth via different paths, all begin to lead in the same direction. In relation to Fiddler on the roof, the traditions are cleared away much in the spirit of Chesterton's reformer. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away." The writers of the play, much like many liberals I've met, don't think the traditions and values we hold have any use, they don't see, perhaps cannot see, or understand it, and so think it's just dross to be cleared away. Campbell in this case shows us why this is simply foolish blindness. This also echoes Haidt's work on moral axes, how liberals use fewer of them, and how conservatives can predict a liberal's reaction, but not vice versa.

The Power of Taking Responsibility

Among the many things discussed in the recent, fantastic video on the Architecture of Belief I mentioned yesterday with Stefan Molyneux and the psychologist Jordan Peterson, were issues of mindset, finding purpose, and the power of taking responsibility.

Now, I'd listened to Colin Flaherty's podcast "White Girl Bleed a Lot" for quite some time and highly recommend it, though I've cut down a lot. No, not because it's false - he bangs the drum ceaselessly over things people need to hear - it's just that, barring major newsworthy events, the story is, names and specific details varying, basically, depressingly, the same. Nevertheless, one of his regular guests worked as a prison psychologist, and he would make exactly that point as well. Taking responsibility for your choices and consequences is not only something those in prison avoid like the plague, but it is one of the most freeing things you can do. That the one's he has seen a change for the better in, it has been because they accepted responsibility.

So my ears perked up when the subject came up, and Stefan pointed out that "once you accept that something, your situation, is your fault, you now have the ability to do something about it."

On the same topic, Jordan discusses an experiment that he would do with his students, challenging them to take some time each day, and to look around. To find one thing that was not the way that they liked, that they could change for the better. The degree to which this small thing changed the students conception of themselves and their contentment with their own lives was phenomenal, and I can attest to the truth of this as well in my own.

I've mentioned before, a dirty secret of this blog is that I am really doing it to spend time every day, working on something, to develop a habit, what Scott Adams would refer to as a system, that I can point to every day and say "I successfully did this." Crossing over into what Peterson discusses though, the project I chose was one of trying to write things that may help, inform, or entertain people, and not simply to better inform myself or organize my thoughts and beliefs as I commit them to screen. Doing that one, achievable thing, every day, to help fix the problems that I see.

And once you make a habit of one such thing, you can then add the next, small, achievable step, of gradual, kaizen improvement, until one day, you look back, and realize that what you are now and what you believe is very different from what you were.

One other note - a reason I'm in the alt-right is because I have watched people who seek the truth from different walks of life, different conceptual frames, come to similar conclusions. Yes, there are disagreements, but when people as varied as Flaherty, Stefan, Vox, Hoyt, and Eric Raymond, despite their disagreements, also begin to fundamentally agree on a number of things despite the paths taken to get there, and having changed their minds when confronted with reality and evidence, I take notice.

So too here. Taking responsibility, habits and systems, mindset - I've seen these in places and approaches as varied as Molyneux, Flaherty, Cernovich, and Adams, and they all begin to overlap, fit in with each other like puzzle pieces.

That is one way to recognize we are likely approaching a truth.

Stefan and Jordan Peterson

I've made no secret that I'm a huge fan of Stefan Molyneux and his philosophy podcasts / videocasts. The various "truth about" series have been thoroughly documented, especially the ones about Trump, and his interviews have been fantastic. An athiest, he has nevertheless, as Vox Day put it, given some of the best Christian sermons one can hear.

This is a long conversation - and well worth every single minute. It delves into myth, mindset, self talk, the need for the ineffable and the subjective, and that's just getting started.

The Path to Tyranny

I was looking at a G+ conversation initiated by Eric Raymond when someone of libertarian, nevertrump bent started utterly going off the rails about Trump being a fascist bent on taking over the USA, and his moves just being preparation for a coup.

A bit of background. Eric is a libertarian who* explicitly changed his registration to Republican to vote for someone other than Trump in the primaries, but since the election, has found himself defending Trump more and more as the left has become increasingly more unhinged. This has resulted in a contentious series of G+ postings.

An interesting question came up though - what were the warning signs of a tyrant? Eric's answer:

What's your personal canary in the coal mine?

That's finally a constructive question.

I have several: attempts at prior censorship, attempts to restrict the possession of weapons by political opponents, attempts to coerce the legislature, attempts to amend the constitution to vest more power in El Maximum Lider.

I didn't pick these out of a hat. I've studied the history of fascism and totalitarian revolutions in detail. This was formative of my politics.

We'e not even seeing state-centralist rhetoric from Trump, let alone any of these moves.

Here's one to watch for that generally precedes all of them: the formation of a Sturmabteilung- or baseej-like paramilitary that answers only to the leader.

Let's take a look at these in light of the two major US parties.

Attempts at prior censorship: 

None. Nada. Threatening to sue after something untrue gets published doesn't count. If calling the news fake counts - see Obama - but I disagree that it's censorship, or necessarily a bad thing. Even under Obama, I considered it to be an example of who he considered his enemies, and found it more of a concern when he'd work to block certain outlets from having the same access as the rest of the press, whereas Trump is reducing access to the White House grounds by the press in general, yet, despite mocking outlets that have admitted to carrying water for the Democrats, gives them the same access to press conferences.

Given that even the very uniformly liberal press that carried water for Hillary ended up complaining about how far more secretive the "most transparent administration ever" was, my sympathies for "less access to white house grounds" without having to set appointments, etc. is limited.

Hell, Trump wants them to step on their dick. It's easier to do that when he gives them the rope to hang themselves.

Attempts to restrict the possession of weapons by political opponents:

I would tell my daughter that those who want to control you do not want you to be able to resist.

One side wants all of the citizens to be disarmed - and thus, no longer free citizens. The other is pushing for concealed carry reciprocity, and appears friendly to constitutional carry.

Attempts to coerce the legislature:

Define "coerce". Everything is a negotiation. The entire point of our governmental structure is that they are supposed to be at odds with each other, and through the means built into the constitution, and by appealing to the voters, convince each other it's in their own, and the country's, best interest, to help promote a certain policy.

I have to take coerce to mean not just threatening a politicians re-electability with the public, but 9mm (or higher caliber) lobotomies, threats to murder or kidnap family, etc.

In that context, neither party has crossed the line. That said, the de facto cover provided by the media and leftist politicians for black lives matter, radical muslims, and protestors as they loot, break, and burn, and assault people is troubling. Nice shopping district you've got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.

Attempts to amend the constitution to vest more power in El Maximum Lider:

All sides have pushed the boundaries of executive authority in the last few decades, but one has informed us that he won, he has a pen and a phone.

It seems that Trump is far more affective at using them.

I'll gladly push for reductions in executive power - once previous EO's are repealed -  but I'm not going to cry that Trump is playing the game by the same de-facto rules that the left have been.

That said, nothing in the Trump campaign promises or actions now show that he is attempting to get the constitution changed to give the government in general, much less him more power.

Sturmabteilung:

No, keeping a private security firm doesn't count, as they're not being sent out to crack heads, but, given that various SS people have publicly proclaimed they wouldn't do their jobs, necessary extra precautions.

Even under Obama the closest we came was the massive up-arming of various agencies that, frankly, don't need all the weapons, much less armored riot vehicles. Is this a full blown guard of the true believers? No - but it certainly is out of place with the needs of the respective agencies, and leads to why are we providing more deadly force to the state, in the hands of bureaucracies who's baseline assumptions are more liberal and socialist/progressive?

State Centralist Rhetoric: 

There is a difference between nationalist rhetoric and state-centralist rhetoric. The nation and its people are not the government. One deals with preserving a shared set of assumptions and population groups, the other with gathering power to the state.

Trump is trying to destroy or hamstring agencies, and massively cut regulations. This is the diametric opposite of "state centralist".

The Democrats, on the other hand.....


Update: * I added this in to make clearer that Eric's politics were not Democrat/Republican aligned.

Universal Rights

An ardent feminist was trying to waste my time and attention, spouting about how the God Emperor was taking away abortion rights.

I asked, how is he doing so, and got the expected screed on the recent EO denying federal funding to organizations that perform abortions, culminating in "and it's my right."

I answered: no, it isn't. No-one has a right to demand that I pay for your choices

The simple reason is that there can be no universal right that requires anyone else to act to provide it to you. There is no right to an abortion, there is no right to health care, there is no right to food, there is not even a right to be given weapons - though there is a right own weapons, and to carry weapons that you own upon your person as a free citizen, if you so choose.

There are rights that are not universal, by mutual contractual or voluntarily taken obligations - an officer has the right to order his troops into near certain death because that is the oath those troops swore upon enlisting, and even those orders have limits as to what constitutes a legitimate order. A man may not be allowed to enter a private club unless he is a member, and his status and seniority in it may give him the right to demand access to particular rooms, tables, or priority of service. In the past nobles had rights that others didn't, by law or custom - but again it was limited to said nobility, not available to all people.

All of those rights to demand performance or access from others were codified by law due to power, contract, or status, and limited to a relative few. Any universal right must be a negative right - one that can be obtained by people around you - and the government - doing nothing.

How can there be a "right" to health care if there are no doctors or nurses available to provide it? If they are available, but are already booked up, you do not have a "right" to their time before everyone else. If a doctor decides to quit his practice and become a carpenter, you do not have a right to demand he drop his work to attend to you.

Yes, yes, I know, emergencies, first aid, etc. - but the point stands. If two people are bleeding out, and there's only one doctor, or person to provide aid, who does he attend? It's his judgement on how to best save one or both, and what is possible with the time and resources at hand, not yours.

In the end, regardless of whether or not one agrees with or disagrees with abortion, birth control pills, or gasoline, I can choose to allocate time and money to obtain those which I find moral, but no one has the right to demand that others pay for me to obtain them.

Treat Barbarians Like Barbarians

Ace of Spades is, as Vox Day noted, coming around, as evidenced by a recent post on how "How Losing My Political Values Helped Me Gain My Freedom":

Donald Trump isn't the bully; he only insults and abuses people in power who have attacked him. They're the fucking bullies. The left, with their smears, their witch hunts, their slanders, their insults, their riots, their violence, and their weaponizing of the federal bureaucracy.

There aren't any rules anymore because the left only applies them one way. And in doing so, they've left what once was a civil compact between the two parties in smoldering ruins.

I have no personal investment in Donald Trump. He is a tool to punish the left and roll back their ill-gotten gains, no more and no less. If he succeeds even partially in those two things, then I'll consider his election a win.

Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I'll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because fuck these people.

Civilized behavior is for civilized people. When people violate those standards, we must push back. And as noted in a Campbell essay Pournelle included in his Imperial Stars anthology for Baen, the barbarians are just as likely to come from within.

I noted in a very late comment there:

Civilized behavior is something we owe civilized people.

People who demonstrate they don't care about that - those who put themselves outside the law, also, morally, put themselves outside the limits.

Some, as in the prisoners dilemma, will, once you punch back, back off and say "sorry" and straighten out and act right.

Others will double down. Worse, even if you don't punch back, they'll take it as weakness and double down, triple down, and then cry if you ever even say "no."

It may only be a "minority" of the left, but it's a LOUD one. Many of the offenders are in positions of power, status, adn influence. And those in positions of status who do not engage in this behavior nevertheless cover for it.

I dare any leftist to find me a case of protests similar to Friday's after Obamas inauguration. Even if they manage, or go "muh abortion clinic bombers", you won't find the behavior of those violent scum excused.

The left does it. The left doesn't care. The die hard among the left refuses to believe when you show them.

They wanted to break heads, scream nazi, and put people out of jobs? They wanted to put themselves outside the law and that behavior on the table?

They should have been careful what they wished for.

Responsibility and Authority

To demand that others suffer responsibility for the consequences of your choices and actions, is the heart of tyranny.

A favorite tagline I see over on Pournelle's site, is "Free men are not equal, equal men are not free." It is catchy, and encapsulates very nicely a central theme of the book "Equality: The Impossible Quest" that equality is a myth, that any attempt to establish equality on one axis inevitably results in inequality on others. Worse, not all inequalities are equally harmful when one attempts to overcome them - as some result in far more bloodshed than others.

Even in Christian equality before god, it is a type of equality of opportunity. We are not all born of the same station, with the same resources, or the same abilities. It's more that God is so much greater that the differences we see in this mortal coil matter not to him, so much as what we choose to do.

Yet we are still judged by our choices - or shaped by them. Some are raised to heaven, others suffer. Wherever we end up we put ourselves there by how we chose.

And we do not make the same choices.

So there is another expression that ties into the concept of freedom, one I no longer remember where it originally came from, or the original wording. It centers around the concept of balancing responsibility and authority. I usually point out that "Authority without responsibility is tyranny, responsibility without authority is slavery."

This one statement covers "power corrupts" - for is not authority to act without suffering the consequences the ultimate form of power? And how can one be free when one is held responsible for the consequences of decisions one is not allowed to make? A woman who wants to sleep with dozens of men, and have her poor choices subsidized by someone else is a tyrant, for she is making others work to cover the responsibility of her choices. A man forced to pay taxes to subsidize the poor choices of others is a slave, for he is responsible for decisions others make, without a say in the matter, or over his own time, his own sweat, his own blood and pain and work. They are taken from him and he will be imprisoned, or killed, if he puts up enough of a fuss.

As one gains in authority in business, in a military organization, one also gains responsibility. A captain of a ship will lose his command if it runs aground, even if he wasn't on the bridge. Ultimately, it was his job to know his OOD's could stand the watch on the bridge, could cross check the navigators, that departmental heads were on top of their chiefs, who ensured that lookouts knew their duties, and so forth. It doesn't matter if he had any ability to affect the outcome directly, he has the power to order them to their deaths, and he's responsible for ensuring the crew can do their job.

The two are never in perfect balance - no system is static - but despite the occasional saint, the temptation of lack of consequence can undermine any soul.  The tyrants, petty or great, are no longer told that they too are human, that they can fail, that their decisions can turn around and kill them. And those made to pick up the pieces at gunpoint, literal or figurative, become angry and bitter, lash out.

If you're thinking there's any parallel between this, and liberals/the uniparty vs. the tea party/alt-right/alt-lite....

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sum of the Parts...

In question 4 of episode 3542 of Stefan Molyneux's podcast at free domain radio, Stefan is debating determinism, and though a typically excellent podcast, I think had problems getting through to the caller what was meant by "The whole is greater than the sum of his parts."

OK. The caller may or may not have been teachable in the moment, but I do want to suggest another metaphor. First, let me digress to Johnny Cash - yes, it's relevant.

Soooo... the whole is greater than the parts.

Halfway through the song, our intrepid factory worker ends up with a load of parts. Tires, motor, transmission, driveshaft, headlights, seats, etc. - they're all in the garage.

Is it a car?

No. it's a random assortment of parts. And unless it's put together in a very specific manner, with parts in a specific relation to each other, it won't move as one unit, under its own power.

A car, properly assembled, can do things that all of its component parts, in a random pile, or even improperly assembled, simply cannot.

A team, working together, can do what the same number of better players, doing their own thing, cannot.

The whole - a single entity created of multiple parts working together - is thus more than the sum of its parts.