Month: June 2011

The logical end of leftism is the machine. Let’s run with this.

Leftists take over the world. The goal is a “perfect” society, in which there is no poverty, no wealth, no prejudice, and in which everyone is EXACTLY equal.

{Edit}: I want to add some intermediate steps I skipped in my first post.

If the goal is the creation of happiness through the eradication of the supposed impediments to happiness of inequality of wealth and status, then our overlords will be disappointed. First, they create Cuba around the world, where people lounge around as shadows waiting for the night. They then decide more wealth is needed, so they automate production, and slaughter a third of the human race so as to decrease scarcity. Everyone has enough now. But they still aren’t happy. So they find someone who appears happy, map what he does all day, what he says, what his cognitive strategies are; then do brain scans on him, test his blood chemistry, then kill him, dissect him, and try to figure out what the chemical status of his brain was.

From these results they calibrate how to create happiness. This process, which involves brainwashing, genetic manipulation, and direct chemical interventions, is deployed across the human race. It works. People appear happy.

Then. . .{end edit}

First, they need to standardize behavior. This is done by developing an effective brainwashing technology, amounting to software downloads. This is done around the world, such that all people do and say the same things. At precisely 2pm every day, everyone takes a coffee break. They say the same things to one another. They talk about the weather, and the sports game in which both teams, as always, got exactly the same score. They discuss their kids, who all got exactly the same grades, play the same sports, have the same hobbies, and have the same goals: to work for the State.

Everything is perfect.

Then it is realized that there cannot be racial differences, so breeding programs are developed to eradicate them. Differences in physical capability and intelligence are also bred out. After 100 generations, everyone looks the same, has the same intelligence, and the same physical capabilities. Self evidently, Huxley’s “Brave New World” consisted in an unequal caste system. Self evidently, as well, the rulers of this world exempt themselves from the need for equality. They are more equal than the rest.

Throughout this process, there is anxiety about sexual differences. Men are different than women. Efforts are made to create life asexually, but they fail, since creating life requires life force. Humans are NOT machines.

After 200 generations of perfection, it is decided that a more perfect world would be if human beings were actually machines. Machines can be made EXACTLY equal. So everyone is slaughtered and robots which look like them are deployed in the same places. They live in the same homes, watch the same TV, work the same jobs, and even drink virtual coffee, which consists in downloading the memory of drinking the coffee.

Then it is realized that there is no need to actually have robots: they can just create a software routine which plays out life around the world. So the robots are destroyed, and a vast computer instituted.

By this time, the rulers are thoroughly tired of life. During all this process, they have created genetically perfect sex slaves and servants. They want for no material comfort. They can program companions, who will say anything they want. Their food is perfect, their homes are perfect. They have no need to work, can travel anywhere they want, any time. They have even conquered biological death, such that they can live 10,000, 100,000 years. But they create nothing, and they are horrible people, so after thousands of years of relentless ennui they download their personalities to the computer as well, and commit suicide. (actually, I don’t think most would last more than a decade or two).

This is a really well made computer, that lasts billions of years. But eventually the Sun begins to expand, in its preparation for death, and the computer, realizing this, has a decision to make. It has a duty to protect perfection, but its existence is in jeopardy. It is a really smart computer, though, so it realizes that it can run perfection much faster. There is no need to conform to the normal pace of life. Thus, it is able to run through a trillion more years of life for humans before it is snuffed out in the red fire.

As it flickers out, it feels satisfaction in the role it played in the perfection of the human race.

Look at this: http://www.amazon.com/Leftism-Revisited-Sade-Marx-Hitler/dp/0895265370/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308751382&sr=1-1

It is funny how out of touch even most conservatives are with our own past. In many ways, we have been doing little but revising Burke’s foundational analysis for over 200 years.

Me, I come to my ideas on my own, but it’s funny to see that I am not even remotely the first to suggest much of what I have. I guess I should feel mortified, but for some reason it makes me happy. I have fellow travellers I didn’t even know about.

Of particular interest to me, of course, is his reference of Sade. I will need to get this book and see what he does with that idea.

The essence of Constitutional Liberalism is the diffusion of power. It assumes that bad people will come and go regularly throughout the life of the nation, but that the damage they can do will be limited by all the checks on their power. All of the Bill of Rights had as their purpose putting legal checks on the usurpation of authority by either the Federal Government, or the sundry States.

The foundational problem with what I have termed Sybaritic Leftism–in addition to the softness and moral weakness it breeds–is that it makes people dependent on the government. As I believe Gerald Ford said, any government powerful enough to provide all your needs is powerful enough to take from you everything you have. All that is missing currently in most Western European nations is the will on the part of the governments. This can change. History consists mainly in tyranny, and only rarely in political freedom. Someone always either thinks they know better, or simply relishes power. Intellectuals are typically guilty of both.

Any nation that is perfectly safe is perfectly unfree. The only way to prevent “accidents” is to ban all motion. The government doesn’t want us to smoke, or not wear seatbelts, or ride motorcycles without helmets (which will become a ban on ATV’s and motorcycles), or eat food they don’t approve of. To avoid the infinitesimal risk of a repeat of 9/11 they grab our genitalia or take pictures of us in the nude.

Life is risk, and it always ends in death. This is the reality. The role of the government is keep other people from interfering with my freedom, but not to prevent me from doing things I enjoy and which they don’t approve of. If I want to eat corn flakes and feed them to my kids, that is my own damn business. If I want to smoke, that is my own damn business. In my view, the “studies” on second hand smoke are so cooked as to constitute de facto scientific fraud, along the same lines as the farcical demonization of dietary fat, that had the opposite of the intended effect, and instead made our nation fat.

I don’t want a safety net. I want freedom. I would rather live under a bridge overpass and die of hunger than to let this march towards tyranny continue.

Every person on Medicare or Social Security can be told what to do. Every person on unemployment, or disability, or who works for the government can be told what to do.

Always, everywhere, the goal of leftists is to cultivate dependency. Dependency means pliancy. You can do what you want, and if they object, you cut them off. Figuratively, they want us all living in our parent’s basement, with them as the parents. They want to decide who lives and dies, and how they live in the meantime. George Bernard Shaw was very, very clear about this. He knew that like one of his heroes–Adoph Hitler–he could speak very vicious things openly, and that no one would listen to him, even though he was perfectly sincere.

This is what I propose we call the idea that if an idea excites emotions in you, that it is good. The background, of course, is the movie portraying the gradual indocrination of a postman by a Communist (resulting in a scene we never see in his death while participating in some act of violence).

Perhaps we could oppose theatricality to practicality. This works well, for example in contrasting Hollywood with rural Iowa. Fields don’t plow themselves, and cows don’t milk themselves. Neither cares about the emotional committments of the farmer, or how good his intentions are.

But for their part the actors can farm an almost infinite array of emotions resulting from the joy they feel in contemplating themselves contemplating helping people.

Thoughts can only be works of art if they work. Everything else is show, and belongs in playgrounds, not the academy or the halls of power.

This is a commment I left in regard to this article, by Walter Williams. Normally I’m smart enough to realize that when there are zero comments, either they are being blocked, or the moderator is away on business, meaning it may never appear.

I will add, actually, that I have analyzed this situation many times; for the first time, here. Logically, if there are no internalized values, the values must be externalized. This makes them mutable, and ultimately eradicates the possibility of evil, by eradicating the possibility of any Good outside of conformity. The history of the 20th and 21st centuries makes this very clear. This is not theoretical: hundreds of millions of actual human beings have suffered horrific tortures as a result of these ideas. If at times the people offering them appear benign–Van Jones in his recent ad looks like he’s selling a retirement plan (he’s the uncle you can trust, don’t you know?)–that is only a facade. Anyone who surrenders their moral sensibilities to anyone else is infinitely corruptible. All that is needed is time and opportunity for this transformation to happen openly.

The core question that Leftists are unable to answer is: why is racism wrong? The reason they have a problem with this is they want to make some forms of racism wrong, but others acceptable. More: they want to make some forms of prejudice acceptable–for example by demonizing “rich” people, most of whom made many other people rich along the way–and others unacceptable. Always, we hear in these stentorian tones what and who we are to hate,and who we are to support.

This is moral myopia. There is no larger principle in place, making conformity tne only value, and putting any and all crimes–rape, murder, torture, genocide–on the table. Practically, all have happened often in the last century, always with the blessing of those who surrendered their moral autonomy to join this vicious cult.

I have just put up a Paypal link on my other website. If you have benefited from any of my creative work, I would really appreciate if you could donate something; or better yet, point me at a foundation or other group that might be willing to offer some grant money (or employment doing what I do).

Likewise, if your firm or group would like to book me for a speech, let me know. I’ve done trainings on many topics, including creative thinking, structured thinking, emotional intelligence, and all aspects of Sales, which is my current career field, more or less.

Here is the link.

I was talking with some electricians the other day, and somehow we got on Arc Flashes. This is a potentially fatal, more or less explosion that can happen when working hot on high voltage panels. You can Google it.

For my part, I Googled it, and watched a few videos. Here is one example.

As I watched these videos, I did so with a simultaneous trepidation and excitement. I watched that excitement, and wondered about it. Somebody was getting ready to get zapped–fatally, for all I knew–and here I was looking forward to it, as a sort of thrill.

Don’t most of us feel that when we see a car accident? Do you sometimes see people working high on buildings, and think about how it would be interesting if you saw them fall? I don’t feel this often, but I do. I’m no saint. This effect is especially pronounced when I am under a lot of stress and/or very tired.

This is the basic idea of most violent movies. People want to see people hurt, but they have to be set up first as bad guys so that we can sanction our pleasure in their frequently painful demises.

This is Schadenfreude, which is a German word meaning roughly “pleasure in the misfortunes of others”. We like to think it is just when people who deserve it get their comeuppance, but in reality most people are just jealous sometimes, and like to see the mighty hurt.

I heard Bono compare Ireland the United States once thus: [roughly] “In the United States, you look at the man on the hill, and think ‘someday that will be me’. In Ireland they look at him and think ‘someday I’m going to get that bastard'”.

A truly Good person will always want what is best for those around them (and for themselves). Me, I have not achieved that. I still get angry, frustrated, and sometimes want to strike out. I know I am not alone in this. I think the cure starts with being honest about this, and proceeds with trying to open that part of yourself that is in instinctive communion with others, and which already wants what is best both for you and for them. It’s already there, but it gets perverted and lost, in my view.

Signed,

Grumpy the Dwarf

On exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum is a panel featuring 16 purportedly spiritually advanced beings, called “luohan” (“arhat”, in the Sanskrit). Every damn one of them looks like a caricature of an actually happy human being. I only saw one that looked even remotely pleased with his life. They were as ugly as sin. The little sign thing they have suggested that maybe the intent was to show that Enlightenment can take many faces. This may be true.

It may also be true that they were simply miserable human beings who happened to live alone in remote places, subsist on bugs, and speak in terms so vague no one could question them (What is the meaning of life, oh Arhat? That my dear one must find out for oneself; Why am I so miserable, Enlightened one? That is because you have not yet found the source of happiness.)

In short, this may have been conscious satire, that nonetheless oonformed, closely enough, to the social conventions of the age.

Was John the Baptist mentally well? Maybe, maybe not. In some times and cultures, the people who lived in radically different ways were considered enlightened, if they attached a religious exterior to their actions. In truth, they may well have been psychotic. Plainly, many, many, many psychoses manifest with religious imagery. There are probably hundreds and maybe thousands of Jesus’s out there (“Two men claim they are Jesus/one of them must be wrong” Mark Knopfler).

To my mind, enlightenment that is useful is invisible. It is achieving mental health that is so robust that it can be shared. It is matching people where they live, so that the distance between you is as little as possible. It is retaining humility with kings, and dignity with “the people”. Hell, dignity with kings and humility with “the people”. It is conforming behavior to a fundamental desire to ease people’s loads, strengthen them, and reinforce good ideas.

Lao Tzu defined a good man as the teacher of a bad man, and a bad man as a good man’s charge. This is nice, in that it permits of endless contexual variations. The most advanced being will be the teacher in the most places and times. To my mind, the good teacher is standing next to the student, never in front of him. There is, in the end, nothing to give, and nothing to learn.

Hey, did you know Hank Williams wrote “I saw the light”. Just popped up on my iPod.

There is some method in my madness.

Logically, if the connection of masculine and feminine creates a circle–and one sees this duality in almost all religious and cultural traditions, for the simple reason that women and men are inherently, physically different, morphologically and hormonally and thus socially–then the connection of the masculine and masculine, or feminine and feminine constitutes an undesirable alteration of this dynamic. It is a flat wheel, that turns in strange ways.

For homosexual men, it seems to spark either excessive femininity or excessive masculinity. Most of course are familiar with the former, but less familiar with the fact that the SS was filled with homosexuals, or that the Spartans practiced homosexuality–one might even say pedophilia–or that the group which finally beat the Spartans had as their vanguard some 100-200 pairs of homosexual lovers, who fought harder for one another, defending one another. Some of the best soldiers in world history were homosexuals.

To my point, though, both are anomalies. It is for this reason that homosexuality has often been considered abnormal and wrong. It is also unproductive in terms of creating new life.

There are many ways to live. In the end, I feel we are all asexual spirits, and that in aggreggate sexuality is more of a curse than a blessing for most. There may come a time in our spiritual development where we connect with other spirits in deeply harmonious ways, all of whom–including ourselves–can remember having been both men and women, and all of whom see it doesn’t matter.

For now, though, that is the way I see it.

To be clear, I do not see homosexuality as a sin. I believe they should be offered neither fewer nor more rights than anyone else. With regard to the latter condition, it is my view that their efforts to get homosexual unions granted the status “marriage” is plainly an effort to stigmatize and denigrate religious faith. This means they want MORE rights than they are willing to grant to religious believers. This is wrong.

More importantly, I see the willful cultivation of homosexuality for the political purpose of eradicating difference as a horrible idea, and one concocted by broken and malignant spirits. I have here in mind Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group, but one could certainly add many more, including some Czars within Obama’s administration. The task is not to corrupt a given reality, but to accept what is, and improve it. None of the leftists are doing that. Theirs is a purely destructive activity, and must be stopped.

I mentioned a dream several posts ago, which could easily be interpreted as a desire to return to the womb. Or perhaps as a recreation of my birth. Whatever.

Once you have analyzed, in psychoanalytic fashion, some myth or dream, what then? For Freud, the process always devolved down to sex. Whatever elevated ideas you thought you had, were really just sex. Everything is sex. This is an extraordinarily destructive doctrine. Nothing means anything, then we die. This is what is being taught in colleges around the country.

“Life as sex” is what I term a tubaform. It is a prism through which you can break down the world. To my mind, the question is not “is it true”, but “is it useful”? Plainly, we do not have, and never will have the eyes of God, but empirically we can and should ask questions like “was Freud’s materialistic atheism an empirically defensible doctrine”, and “are our higher sentiments not unconnected with sex in any visible way, and can we not therefore discard his experimentally unanchored dilettantish suppositions in favor of ideas we like better?”

We are told that open expression of sexuality is “honest”, and pretending otherwise is “dishonest”. But look at San Franscisco. Are they happy? They are all divorced, leading lives where no one trusts anyone, and they are, in the end, alone. Why is kink.com located there? Because that is where they belong. The end result of emotionally detached sex is the recognition that detachment is in fact the primary reality of the relationship. All that happens when you tie someone up and hit them is you physicalize an already existing reality. You actually make it more bearable, by diluting the emotional pain. BDSM has its place, for people living in a certain unhealthy way. It is simply preferable to the alternative, which in modern days is often suicide from the grief of unanchored solitude.

Let me return to the myth, though. Take my dream, of descending through a birth canal, a constricting space, into an open space, that progressively reveals qualitatively richness and light to me. This is also death and rebirth, is it not, that combines the physical experience of discomfort and anxiety, with a relief that is tied to long-extant cultural traditions?

Your personality is characterized by a qualitative gestalt. It is a whole, stitched together from many parts. To change in fundamental ways, you have to “power down”, then power back up. You have to die, then be reborn.

If I could be said to have a “heavy”, an anchor, a guru (heavy is the literal meaning of guru, and I have long seen this as symbolizing a stone at the bottom of an oceans currents, to which I can tie myself to achieve some stability) it is Jack Schwarz. I had two interesting dreams of him, in which I do believe he conveyed needed information, which in my case was modeling emotional/spiritual states which I needed the capacity to feel.

Be that as it may, he spoke often of the need to die daily, through meditation. When you really relax, you let go, you die in a sense. In Yoga, the relaxation pose is called the “corpse posture”.

In our modern day, the single thing we lack most is the capacity for deep, deep relaxation. We hold on so tight to who we are, and what we do, that we actually stiffen and die in our capacity for experience.

Oi: need to go. I’m lucky to set my own hours, but I have things that need to get done.