Month: September 2012

I take things for granted sometimes that perhaps I shouldn’t.  If it was not obvious, I was building a continuum starting with Tragedy–which was the dominant form of theater in what we might call the Golden Age of Greece, which arguably is the form of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, and which modern Opera in part tried to revive–and leading to what we might term the theatrical elements of clinical sadism, with comedy and horror as stops in the middle.

In tragedy, the protagonists, with whom we are clearly meant to identify, struggle and fail due to flaws–hamartias–in their characters.  They are excessive proud, in most cases, but the flaw can be something else.  What the audience is meant to do is sympathize with the main character, and feel the horror they feel when their world collapses, and to SEE what they might not, which is WHY their world fell apart, and to learn from it.  “Pride precedes a fall” might be a lesson taken to heart, and emphasized through negative emotive operant conditioning.

Further, by teaching people that they can feel deep sorrow and recover, you teach mourning.  Hank Williams wrote a lot of sad songs, but he was not a sad person, on balance: he loved life.  He drank too much, of course, but his short life was filled with a lot of good emotions, and even now his songs make me happy.

And for the Greeks, tragedy was a sort of ritual, something to be gone through periodically, but not something to LIVE in.  The great tragic playwrights were not likely morose men; nor were the Greeks who went to see the plays. On the  contrary, I suspect they were vivacious and fun.  They laughed a lot, playfully, simply.  They just understood that sadness, failure, and futility have a PLACE in life: they must be acknowledged and accepted. Once you do that, you can live more fully, more joyfully.  It is perhaps counterintuitive, but that is my view too.  You get stronger through catharsis, which amounts to a type of emotional exercise.

There have been times Hank Williams songs made me cry: that is OK too.

What is NOT OK is being unable to experience what might be termed primary emotions any more.  Our society tells us that pain is aberrational, so we don’t, as a culture, know how to MANAGE it; we don’t practice it; we don’t have good, effective rituals for it.  Part of the reason we are so infantile as a nation is that we don’t have a means of processing the necessity of adulthood, the pain of adulthood, which is to say the capacity to live a rational life as chosen. So we pretend that our decisions have no consequences, when of course they do.

In tragedy you feel the horror and fear of the protagonist, and know why it happened.  It is intended both to teach moral virtues, and to teach people to process complex emotions, which include the ability to accept the pain and suffering in this world.

In comedy you feel much more muted discomfort at the unexpected and the socially “deviant” (I intend simply deviations from social norms), for which the cathartic response is laughter.  It is still useful because it teaches a means of dealing with the chaos, the ebb and flow, of ordinary human life.  It has a place in my taxonomy of tasks.

In horror, you feel the fear of the protagonists, but there is no meaning, no escape, and no catharsis.  What there is, in my view, is a homeopathic release of tension. I think most people in this and many other countries are chronically anxious, chronically afraid, and I think by INCREASING that anxiety, it can actually be made to fade, for a time.  However, the medicine is the poison, in that watching violence clearly also increases anxiety, not least by implanting images in your head that are prone to pop out whenever dealing with any other human, and which pop out in those few unguarded moments when you spontaneously relax deeply.  It leaves a question in your mind as to “who is this person REALLY?”  Horror movies are filled to overflowing with apparently benign people who slip something in the drink of their victims, who wake up in a terrible place, and die painful deaths.

Imagine clear, relaxing water.  Imagine a deep relaxation forming in you, and connecting with that water.  How long before some terrible image pops out?  Not long, for me, and I don’t even watch violent movies in general. 

Faith: that is the root of hope, and the Horror genre damages faith.

The final stage is when you sympathize not with the victims, but the attackers, when Jigsaw is your hero, or Jason, or the Elite Hunting Club.  This is the point when you no longer feel your own feelings at all.  You feel nothing but excitement when someone is hurt, tortured or killed.  You have outsourced your capacity to process the real terrors of this world to a sacrificial victim.  This, in my view, is the sociological basis of ritual sacrifice of all sorts.

Catharsis has become a thing which is experienced as pain in the victim.  You need to inflict pain to release that terrible burden of anxiety and meaninglessness.

I could say more, but will leave that be for now.

I posted in the last week or so that both Tragedy and Comedy depend upon character flaws/weaknesses.  What makes you laugh is an incongruity between what you expect to happen and what actually happens.  As an example, this video, “how to piss off a frog” makes me laugh.  If you have not seen it, watch it before reading the next paragraph.  Actually, watch this one, too: it’s a baby that is first terrified then amused by his mother sneezing.

I think all of us interact with the world with a mixture of fear and avarice.  There are things we hope for and things we fear.  The frog video is funny because first we feel superior to the frog, who has been tricked.  It appeals to your sense of superiority.  Then you realize that is kind of mean to the frog, then the person doing the trick gets attacked, which is poetic justice which is completely unexpected.  Surprise is a key element in humor; it disrupts a pattern. If we posit that the information content of a message is an inverse of its predictability–the more predictable, the less information–then humor almost by definition contains information, which is to say new pattern arrangements.

Now tragedy, too, involves the descent into murder and chaos from existing orders.  It alters the big picture.  Someone dies, or takes their eyes out.  Comedy happens within an intact field.  Cheers would not have been funny if Sam had been murdered by a cuckolded husband, or Norm died of cirrhosis.

You CAN  use humor to form new patterns.  This is true.  Cops and ER doctors and paramedics are notorious for gallows humor.  I remember one case where a motorcyclist lost his leg in an accident.  The cops I knew cleared the scene, then fifteen minutes were wondering how “Pegleg Pete” was doing.  That’s how you cope: you take what is in some respects an actually tragic image and convert it to one amenable to humor.  In my view, this is healthy, even necessary, even if the public would be scandalized to hear what goes on behind the scenes.

But contemplating this morning, it occurred to me that the Horror genre is tragedy without redemption–without the possibility of learning, where even when the “protagonist” (were Freddy Krueger’s victims really protagonists?  Hannibal Lector? Jigsaw?) somehow through great courage survives, it means nothing, the violence happened for nothing; and overt sadism is comedy without pattern formation.  Sadists laugh at their victims, or at least they can.  What are they laughing at?  Nothing.

Power creates one thing: a relationship without other content between oppressor and oppressed.  All meaning inheres in this relationship, and for the oppressor at least, life is empty without that relationship, although they often enough find masochistic counterparts.

Why the laughter though?  Examples come easily to mind, but simply imagine the evil cackle that Mike Myers made fun of with the Dr. Evil character.

Logically, I suppose, and I am thinking as I type, if the point of humor is altered patterns within the mind of the perceiver, then a power relation is “funny” to the extent that it represents a fall from “sobriety” on the part of the victim, of a stable world with social norms which are about to be broken.  This break is a quantitative one, in that it represents not an alteration in a cognitive gestalt, but an outright break in conditions of life.

I think the foregoing is correct.  I will say in concluding here simply that I cannot see in the Horror genre anything but a de facto giving up on finding a deeper meaning in life than living a dull life punctuated by the occasional excitement of the sort watching other people suffer occasions. Add to that regular pornography, the possibility of good sex, and maybe a lottery win, and that’s it.

Our culture, presently, is a very weak one.  And to make a final final point, walking backwards is not a possibility.  We cannot return to anything.  We must move forward to something new.  That is the underlying thesis of the Goodness Movement website.  One day soon I am going to try to form a “church”, but one not quite like anything I’ve ever heard of.  I need to get my own shit straight first, and am making progress on that score.

Posted in response to this article, which is somehow hawking the fantastic notion that the disaster in the Middle East is anything other than an obvious result of idiotic foreign policy decisions on the part of the Obama Administration. It is ASTONISHING to me on an on-going basis how indifferent leftists are to issues of basic principle, human dignity, and human suffering.  They just don’t care, and they cloak this fact by accusing conservatives of it.  It is anti-enlightenment, anti-human rights, and anti-rationalism.  They will be accusing the right of this tomorrow, with no capacity to back it up, since I am RIGHT.

It is astonishing the extent to which partisan hacks will TWIST the truth.  Libya was “freed” from Gaddafi in part by conscious policy of the Obama administration.  So were Tunisia, Egypt, and other places where we are under attack.  The salient question is: “how can ANY human being rationalize this outcome as other than a foreign policy disaster?”

The Muslim Brotherhood and kindred organizations are taking over these countries, who previously were more or less allies, and will be in a position soon to wage these types of attacks consistently.  This does not have ANYTHING to do with Romney, and EVERYTHING to do with horrifically misguided and AMATEUR foreign policy decision by BARACK OBAMA.  Crisis?  This could be worth 5-10 points for ROMNEY.

As I often do, I will repeat that all you have to do to read leftist minds is see what they accuse others of and apply it to them.  There is no “out there” in the leftist mind, so they have to project realities.

It seems to me the root of narcissism is self loathing, which exists like a bubble–or abcess–in an ocean of water and apparent freedom, and which colors everything.

Obama is a narcissist who was abandoned relatively early by his mother, and by at least his Kenyan father (we are not sure if Frank Marshall Davis was not the actual father; a credible case for it can be made).  This must have made him angry, particularly at his mother, who seems to have been herself very self absorbed.

Mother hatred makes for self loathing, as I don’t think you can hate your mother and not somehow redirect that at yourself, in ways not immediately apparent to your surface consciousness.  This anger would not but be intensified if she was a frivolous woman who allowed pornographic pictures to be taken of herself.  That home would not have been happy.  That woman would not have been interested in being a good mother.

And self loathing leads easily, through projection, to Other loathing, which has been the principle project of our President since before he entered his teens, in my view.

Leftism is the perfect philosophy for narcissists: its lust for power leads, over time, to never needing to apologize, and in the interim to a fully “justified” outlet for your grief/anger.

The question is not what Mitt Romney is going to do to “create” jobs, but rather what latent creative talents of the American people he is not going to stop from expression, what taxes he will not impose, what regulations he will not yoke upon us.

Obamacare, if implemented–which it will be if Obama wins–will devastate the small businesses that create 90% of American jobs.  What we have now will get MUCH MUCH worse.

The reality is simple: all pay increases of public sector employees are paid for by tax-payers.  Period.  There is no other way to look at it, although that money may in the short term be borrowed or the result of inflation.

Public sector unions consist in one part of the government–the union members, and the leaders paid for by the dues they pay that come out of their checks which are paid by the taxpayers–negotiating with another part of the government, usually politicians who benefit from contributions from these unions.  Both sides have every interest in inflating the wages of the union members, and virtually no accountability other than public outrage at constantly increasing benefits and wages at far greater than the rate of inflation, which has been the consistent outcome over the last several decades.

Public sector unions suck money out of the private sector, with NO compensating increase in performance or benefit to the people at large.  This is a necessary conclusion, given both that the money is taken in taxes, and that NO part of the negotiations involves any promise to perform. On the contrary: quite often unions work to protect the lazy, incompetent, and the dishonest.

Other than that it is convenient as an issue for Democrat politicians who benefit from this process, there is NO BENEFIT to public sector unions for the people at large.  It helps 10% of the population, and hurts 90%, which is about par for most Democrat policies.

To be clear, PRIVATE sector unions at least negotiate with people who are not on the same side as them, and who are spending THEIR OWN money.  I will reiterate my views on private sector unions, which follow Barry Goldwater’s ideas in “Conscience of a Conservative”:

1) They must exist in relation to one company only, and as a general rule should only be formed when there are actual grievances.  Given the extent of government regulation, such as OSHA, very few reasons exist to form unions any more other than to facilitate extortion, which backfires over time, as Detroit–and the northeast generally–will readily attest in a mute way if you drive though it.

2) Membership must be voluntary.  Most people would rather work for less than be paid nothing, which is the result of layoffs that attend overly aggressive union representatives emboldened by the fact that THEY can’t be fired.  Most uninsured people live in Closed Shop/No Choice States, where unions are allowed BY LAW to require union membership.  Even if members hate their unions, and would gladly work for 25% less, they are not ALLOWED to.  Such States bow to the Unions by requiring a linkage between EITHER an employer or a Union and the ability to buy health insurance.  Everyone in every State should be able to buy health insurance directly from the insurer.  The Unions can be relied on to oppose this, since it reduces the advantages they offer their members.

3) Unions should not be able to make political contributions.  As things stand, as I understand it, both public and private sector unions are tax exempt, yet they can make political contributions.  The way things were, corporations–which make ALL the money that unions and government rely on–were not allowed to form PAC’S, and yet had to surrender 25% or more of their profits to the government, AFTER they paid the unions, where applicable. It is small wonder that the left screamed bloody murder about that decision, since corporations are now more or less on an open playing field with the unions.

I would change the law, though.  I think anyone who pays taxes should be unlimited in their ability to make contributions, but I think that it is unfair both that unions and corporations spend money on candidates their employees/members may not agree with.  It dilutes the power of democracy.  Therefore, I think BOTH unions and corporations should be banned from making political contributions, but that corporations should be TAX EXEMPT too.  All taxes should be income, excise, and sales taxes.  Obviously, income taxes will go up, but so will incomes, since all that money now being paid to the government can be either reinvested, or used to increase incomes.

When a dollar of profit hits a corporation, it is double taxes.  It is taxed when it is accrued as a profit, then it is taxed again when it is paid out in a salary or wage. Most people don’t know the basics of how things work, and fail to even want to try and learn.

The “ideal type”, in a Weberian sense, of a poor person in this country is a single woman with multiple kids trying to survive on low wages brought about by her sudden departure from the school system. Such people are enormously sensitive to economic conditions.  When times are good, they more or less make it. When times are bad, as now, life gets very, very hard.

And to pretend that social programs do much to alleviate such suffering is ridiculous, and to pretend that we have the money to expand such programs is also ridiculous.  What the poor need are well paying jobs.  Anything that moves the national economy away from well paying jobs hurts them.

Obama’s policies plainly benefit a few at the expense of the many.  They help Democrats running for office in States where his pork barrel policies helped them temporarily appear to be able pay their bills.

They help highway contractors who are paid to fix non-existent problems.

They help government bureaucrats, such as the 16,000 agents they plan to hire to suck every last penny they can out of the American private sector.

They help Wall Street, not least because he has no intention of ever allowing the Fed to be audited, and the root cause of our economic problems–theft through inflation–to be addressed. He also has no intention of ever abolishing Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, both of whom were big campaign contributors, and the former director of one of which is now part of his anti-rationalist team.

We are suffering through the worst economic recovery since WW2, and you know who is likely hurting most of all?  Single mothers.


Single mothers are hurt worst by Obama’s policies, which are systematically undermining the private sector, the middle class in particular, and WOMEN.  

All you need to do to understand leftist objectives is figure out what they are accusing their ideological enemies of and apply it to them.

The latest announcement by Bernanke, that the Fed will buy roughly $40 billion a month in mortgage backed securities indefinitely, has several implications in my view.

First, it seems to me that this method will put far more money into active circulation that the previous two rounds of Quantitative Easing, and is thus FAR more likely to lead to short and medium term price inflation.  I did not predict it before, but I predict it now.  We will see price increases starting in 3 to 6 months, if this continues. Not hyperinflation, hopefully, but steady decreases in our buying power, which are the result of give-aways to trillion dollar banks.

Previously, Bernanke took government bonds off the hands of major investment banks.  Whether they invested it or not was up to them, and given our lack of inflation, they either put that money somewhere else, or are sitting on it.

Now, they will be effectively doing what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did, which is buy up mortgage backed securities, many of which are likely unvalue-able–whose true value is impossible to determine–and which for that reason are not otherwise moving.  Basically, the Fed is likely just using its power to create money to fluff up the balance sheets of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and others.  This will however create an immediate incentive to create MORE mortgage backed securities, and in effect amounts to a guarantee that all such securities created in the next few months will be purchased, particularly if the bank in question is plugged in politically to the core elite making the buying decisions.

Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly–less obviously–I think this amounts to a decision by the Fed to do what it can over the next two months to improve the economy, and thus is a tacit endorsement of Obama.  The action is being taken now because any capable mind can readily see how easily it will be to blame the murder of Christopher Stevens and the three others on Obama’s foreign policy.  After all, we helped topple Gaddafi’s regime, in an undeclared war, without the support of Congress, and more or less under the command of the UN.  At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, that attack would have not have happened under Gaddafi’s regime.  He decided to stay home and play dress-up after Reagan made him crap his pants back in the 1980’s, in a paradigmatically effective use of power projection.

It is a reliable article of Democrat propaganda that they stand up to the power elite, in the name of the “common man”.  If it was ever true, it no longer is.  Obama took a LOT of money from Wall Street, which more or less wrote his Wall Street “Reform” act.  That act will HELP Wall Street; it will not hinder its excesses in the slightest, and in fact guarantees government bailouts, as I understand it.

Romney is a politician, which means he goes whichever way the wind blows.  Right now, the wind is blowing in the direction of auditing the Fed.  The main opponent right now is Harry Reid, and the Democrat majority.  Behind them stands Obama, who can be counted on also to veto the bill since he depends on Fed member banks for his campaign cash.

Romney is not as reliable an ally as Obama.  He is a Republican, and as such has to respond to the Republican base, which is drifting steadily rightward (might I coin the term “reasonward”).

Bernanke had been sitting on his hands.  One to two days after the attacks, he announced a policy very much to the liking of those who stand to benefit from the largesse of the power elite.

I will remind people that the Federal Reserve Act was sponsored by a Democrat, and signed into law by a Democrat, after having failed as a Republican sponsored law.  When the Republicans called for it, they were seen, accurately, as standing for the interests of the big banks alone, and against the interests of ordinary Americans.  So these people just bought a Democrat, passed virtually an identical law, and achieved propagandistic superiority.  For this reason, it is easily argued that the more favorable party for the very people that rank and file Democrats think they are opposing have their interests served BEST by Democrats.

These are the sorts of outcomes that happen when you don’t read the fine print, when you don’t retain the habit of critical examination and rational house-cleaning (sweeping up the errors, mopping up the fallacies), and instead rely on assumptions and propaganda designed to lull you to sleep.

I was watching an old Cheers episode today, and I realized that both comedy and tragedy revolve around the character flaws of the participants, and got to thinking about the difference. 

The difference is CONSEQUENCE.  In a comedy, things turn out more or less alright, despite the vanity, stupidity, cupidity, and shortsightedness of the protagonists.  In a tragedy, it all goes to shit.

We live in a comedic age, which in having forgotten history, has forgotten how quickly comfortable lives can become miserable.

The point of science is to establish connections between objects.  The point of philosophy is to establish connections between affect and affect, and subject and subject.  The error of scientism is precisely in trying to treat subjects as objects.

In philosophy, broadly understood (which here could easily also mean both psychology and sociology), introspection can yield useful information, since the subject of action–the human affective domain–is coterminous with the subject doing the introspecting, with the salient question being the extent of congruence between that person’s affective environment, and that of others.