Month: November 2012

From this article. My record of getting posts on–and keeping posts on–the Guardian is not good, as one would expect from a left wing rag.  I have not read Derrida, other than samplings of 5-10 paragraphs here and there.  He is incoherent, and smells of incense and Greek liturgy.  Whatever cognitively altered states he is able to induce in others do not interest me.

Derrida was an intellectual aesthete.  It is a common malady, particularly in France.  He was fashionable because different.  Fashion plays a large role in post-rational societies, because what else is there, but naked conformity–waves of this and that that sweep in and over everyone?  You cannot be alone too long: that is why the tides of style come and go, to keep you preoccupied, to help you remember to forget what must be forgotten.  But in the end what good did Derrida do?  No doubt he was very clever, but what life burden did he lighten?  What struggling soul did he free?

You, Terry Eagleton, are obviously a supporter for a simple reason: the habit Derrida helped build of rejecting logical analysis has made your own “Marxist” project easier.

Plainly things do not fit in boxes.  But if we grant that this is simply an HEURISTIC, and recognize the bounds, then logic remains not only a valuable tool, but the one that has generated the most human well being of any creed in human history.  We are only plummeting back into chaos as a result of its rejection.  And PLEASE, don’t try and argue that our choices are either/or’s or gobbledy gook.  That, itself, is symptom of the cognitive maladies that go with Marxist habits of creating false oppositions.

Things can be placed on continuums.  It is not necessary to indulge in post-rational idiocies to see this.  You want an actually useful thinker?  Try Edward de Bono.

I take the time to type the things, and they have a habit of disappearing on leftwing sites, although that is not an invariant result (other than the Daily Cause, since ideological nonconformity induces panic attacks in them, and that much hyperventilating would somehow be bad for the atmosphere), so I repost them, as here.  From this link, on people I won’t defend, other than to say political incorrectness is always in style for me:

Here is Emerson’s full quote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his
shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to
be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras
was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus,
and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took
flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 

I will admit to having that last line on my wall in my room.  I had thought Wilde said that, but apparently he was quoting Emerson.  I don’t know that I am great, but I am certainly misunderstood.  Without exaggeration, I can say not one person on Earth fully understands me.

Looking this up, though, I found some more excellent quotes:

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Alduous Huxley

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
Stephen Vizinczey

You see, THAT is why I don’t get up at 4:30 like I planned to!!!

Actually, I am so inconsistent, that I came up with “Consistency means that change is growth.” 

It would be illogical not to contradict myself on this post.

I read Christopher Lasch’s book several decades ago, but was thinking of it yesterday.  The narcissists he described in the 1970’s parented the children of today.  And this is significant when we see statistics like what I posted a week or two ago that the levels of empathy among young adults have dropped 40% in the last 30 years.  I will quote more extensively this time:

. . .in a survey that has so far tested 14,000 volunteers, Sara Konrath
and her team at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social
Research has found that college students’ self-reported empathy levels
(as measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a standardized
questionnaire containing such items as “I often have tender, concerned
feelings for people less fortunate than me” and “I try to look at
everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision”) have been
in steady decline over the past three decades—since the inauguration of
the scale, in fact, back in 1979. A particularly pronounced slump has
been observed over the past 10 years. “College kids today are about 40
percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago,”
Konrath reports.

More worrisome still, according to Jean Twenge, a professor of
psychology at San Diego State University, is that, during this same
period, students’ self-reported narcissism levels have shot through the
roof. “Many people see the current group of college students, sometimes
called ‘Generation Me,’ ” Konrath continues, “as one of the most
self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident, and individualistic
in recent history.

Now read this review.

What I will submit is that the essence of what we call Individualism is the capacity for individuals to make moral progress, to become, on the inside, better human beings. This stipulation is essential for the concept of personal responsibility to make any sense; it is essential for individuals to feel a sense of SELF that endures when they are alone.

Narcissism, paradoxically, is a fixation with self that arises from NOT feeling a sense of self.  You seek what you don’t have.  You think about yourself constantly because you have to reassure yourself that you have not in fact vanished.  You seek the admiration of others, but when they offer it there is no you to return it.  There is never a connection that is stable.  The world is always in flux.

I look at things like Twitter, and I see vanity.  What can you say worth saying in 100 characters, or whatever it is?  When it first came out, I was told by a younger friend that I couldn’t use it, since I would run out of characters before I got to my second comma, which no doubt was and is true.

But I have commented before on this obsessive need for today’s young people to be in CONSTANT contact with their friends, as if they would disappear if they had to go twenty minutes without a text or Facebook post.

I remember listening to a series of lectures on Existentialism, and when he got to Dostoevsky, a point he made about “Notes from an Underground Man” is that Dostoevsky, in that piece, was rejecting the notion of moral progress.  This was, to me, a profound notion: what happens when you no longer believe that personal growth is possible?  What is the meaning of life for such a person?  What CAN be the meaning of life?

I want to be clear: if there is no up or down, there is no way of labeling even sensations.  You cannot say pain is worse than pleasure, and if memory serves the narrator of that piece was in many respects a masochist.

A culture of narcissism is the inevitable product of moral pessimism, which itself is the result of both scientism–the curse of our age–and incompetent philosophizing.  In turn, as I posted a couple posts ago, radical politics can play the role of ersatz conscience for those otherwise lacking a coherent moral identity.

We are animals, in many respects.  This is indisputable.  But we are also spiritual beings, which is something that can be SCIENTIFICALLY investigated.  It simply hasn’t been by the mainstream.  What they do is spend enormous amounts of time criticizing the experiments of others, but ZERO in serious, sincere efforts at duplication.

In an actually scientific world, in an actually rational society, LARGE amounts of money would be spent on projects like that of Gary Schwarz and the Windbridge Institute (among many others).  We don’t live in a scientific, rational society.  We know this because our thought leaders relentlessly proclaim their rationality and dedication to science.  No one is fully rational.  Only rational people realize this, though, by adding their emotions to the mix consciously.

In a world characterized by competent philosophy, we would reject any and all need for a SINGLE answer, and accept that many correct answers are both possible and DESIRABLE.  That is what I intended with my own essay on Goodness.  I have absolute principles, but accept countless iterations of them, countless deployments, countless individual answers, all of which can be discussed and negotiated.

But we have little of this.  We have people who cling to traditions like Christianity that really cannot survive in this critical age; and we have people who reject the very notion of individual moral improvement and who, in so doing, condemn us to the pervasive mediocrity on display in front of us, a nation of selfish fools.

Obviously, there is a lot of anger out there right now.  Large numbers of people are asking to “secede” from the United States.  How would this work, though?  Do you not need a plot of land somewhere for your new nation?  This whole thing is silly.

What I would submit people could do, though, is spray paint “Obama was here” wherever they see a boarded up building, or a “For Rent” sign.  In October, we reached the best job numbers we are likely to see for AT LEAST the next four years.  Businesses will close due to high taxes, high regulations, and of course Obamacare.  And downturns, of course, feed downturns.

So expect to start seeing Main Street boarding up.  Make sure Obama gets the blame he clearly deserves.  Use red paint.  And understand that you may be arrested, like Martin Luther King.  Get used to the idea of handcuffs.  Maybe buy a pair and make sure you’re OK with the whole thing.  Make sure you know what the penalty is, and be sure you can pay it.  To be clear: getting arrested is not the GOAL, merely a possible outcome.

And I would submit that even long-closed plants would be eligible.  We need to be clear: Obama is the apotheosis of where the Left has been leading us, and even though he personally may not have closed a factory and moved it to Mexico, his supporters–particularly the Unions–did.

America, in my understanding, has the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  We have unions who demand their employees make the loaded equivalent of $100/hour, and who refuse to relent even when the cost is job losses; who, in other words, guarantee an antagonistic relationship between workers and management.

I read Trumka is going to see if he can get pro-union “laws” passed by executive fiat.  Good luck with that.  He may get it, but this is a time when people are going to be worried about having work, not about sticking it to management.

Labor has power when things are good.  They will not be good for a long time.  Obama’s economy will be one of increasing crime, increasing homelessness, urban rot, moral decay, and unemployment that my gut tells me will get well into the double digits.

Obama, in my view, is going to create another Depression, entirely artificially, entirely without cause or need.

Make sure he gets credit for it.  Get yourself some red spraypaint.  The property owners may in fact thank you, since they will be thinking the same thing.

Edit: I don’t know if I mean this or not.  I typed it, then realized that the empty souls on the Left could just as easily start painting “Bush was here”.  It would be wrong, since unemployment under Bush was less than 5% for virtually his entire time in office, but being wrong has never stopped these people.  Being wrong is what they do.  Perhaps this will be a better idea in two years. 

I will put it out there, though, for those who want to shoot somebody, as at least one potentially productive outlet for their anger short of violence.

I think the book “The Sociopath next door” is worth the read, at least the first few chapters.  The very existence of people without the capacity for empathy, who lack that sense of restraint that comes from what we call a conscience, falsifies the comfortable Sybaritic Leftist notion that we can all just get along if we understand one another.  The existence of sociopaths means some people will NEVER understand or relate to their fellow humans, even if they may learn to do a passable imitation of it when needed.  Joe Biden is a reasonably good actor.  That’s how he gets by.

In that book she notes that sociopaths do notice something is missing.  Being congenital narcissists–I would argue sociopathy is simply the end state on a continuum that includes narcissism, with the difference that narcissists care about what people think about them–sociopaths are very proud of themselves, but when they look at other people they sense some mysterious something, which is the capacity for connection on an emotional level.

They can’t do this.  They can’t feel REAL empathy.  But I would argue that Leftism–the creed which is dedicated rhetorically ENTIRELY to the rectification of all ills of the human race–creates for them an ersatz conscience, a workable substitute. They can now go about wearing, on the outside, a badge that says they are like everyone else.  But because they don’t actually feel compassion, there are no limits on their activity.

In most spheres of human activity, sincerity dictates that one admit failure when it occurs.   But Leftists need never admit failure.  This means that whatever the sociopath does in the name of their creed counts to the good.  That feeling of dread that would attend causing mass misery for most people does not occur to them.

And obviously, the sickest, most cynical human beings always have advantages when competing for power.  Not all Communists were psychotic.  There were, actually, many true Liberals in the ranks of the revolutionaries.  They simply got outmaneuvered by people who recognized no honor, no restraint, and no remorse.

Leftism–Cultural Sadeism–is the conscience of the Sociopath.

Oh, this life consists in us bumping into objects, and objects bumping in to us.  On some level, none of this matters.  There is a great joy somewhere: I can feel it.

I deal often with most horrific crimes.  I see things most people don’t see.  And there is a price for this.  It hurts.  But I can say I truly believe that pain is not real in a final sense, although it can clearly seem near total on this level of existence.

I ask you: is there a blog like this anywhere else on the internet?  If you are reading it you are ridiculous, because I am ridiculous.  And this is OK.

Right: work to do.

Here’s how naive I was: I thought that getting someone honest in the CIA like Petraeus might lead to an actual investigation of 9/11.  I refuse to believe that our own intelligence apparatus was involved.  If it was, we are well and truly fucked.  But I choose to believe it was an elite in New York and elsewhere, in tandem with a major intelligence service–or as far as that goes, maybe even just plain mercenaries, who could easily be found and bought for the money the power elite can easily pay–who pulled it off.

If you are new to my blog, I dealt with Tower 7 some time ago, in November of 2010, I believe. There is simply no way for a sound mind to believe the prevailing narrative with regard to 7, which in turn calls into question the whole thing.  Clearly, planes were hijacked and flown into Buildings 1 and 2, the Pentagon, and a field.  With regard to Tower 7, though, no plane hit it, and it still collapse in manner IDENTICAL to that which we would have seen had it gone through a controlled demolition, 8 hours after 1 and 2 went down.

There are likely agents within our own nation dedicated to the creation of a fascist oligarchy like they have in Cuba.  I remember reading years ago how excited David Rockefeller (and many New York silly people) were to meet Fidel Castro.  Read this article.

The simple fact is that there was no question in 1996 that Castro had created hell, and used demonic tactics to achieve it.  Yet he was feted by our media and power elite.  They KNOW that whatever world they create will not INCLUDE them.  They will always be able to watch the poor and miserable from the tinted window of a limousine, or from the window of a private aircraft.

Sometimes I wish that we could subpoena one of the Rockefellers–since Aaron Russo mentioned him specifically, Nicholas Rockefeller would be a good candidate”–and that we had something like the Veritas serum in the Harry Potter series, where we could just get the TRUTH, what is really happening, what really happened.  Who were the people? How was it done?  If you don’t know, who would?

This is such a large world.  It is filled with so much hatred, so much ignorance, so much greed.

Whatever the power elite have planned, it is to their own detriment. This world is just one of many worlds, and what you do here has effects for a long, long time.  If only everyone knew this.

I have visions sometimes of an actually rational culture, where we bring our children up to understand from personal experience the spiritual, where we take the survival of death for granted, where we work to build up the beautiful, the good, the magnificent.

We presently building hell.  There is no need for this.  But I feel strongly it is what the American people are asking for, because that is what they have been TAUGHT to ask for. They have been taught meaninglessness, moral incoherence, hedonism, and irresponsibility.

I feel part of my mission in this life has been to create options, alternatives to current failures.  I created an alternative to moral relativism, that permitted the inclusion of present moral variations.  I don’t study ethics, so I don’t know what has been done, but I am the first I know of to incorporate Chaos Theory into ethics.

I sent this essay, intended as a sort of book proposal, to the Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, after asking him if he had time to review it.  I never got a response.  Now, he COULD have sent it around, made some phone calls and the like, but at the time I was a very ardent opponent of Barack Obama, who had taught at the U of C, and was presumably someone was very excited about.  I don’t know if that is why I didn’t get a response, but my politics likely had something to do with it.  It may have just been too long.  That is certainly a possibility.

But if you look at the actual authors being studied in the Humanities, the theoretical models, they amount to sorting things into “old stuff” and “new stuff” that when combined generate radical politics.  That was my observation at any rate.  This applies to a great extent even to those who retain some semblance of a Christian or Jewish commitment.

Or take my financial proposal.  I have not fleshed it out into a book yet, but somebody somewhere could run with it.

I just feel that whatever that energy we call God really is, it creates options.  There are always options.  America has had a choice to wake up for some time.  I have done what little I could to facilitate that process–that of laying out in plain way where different paths open to us lead–and do not think I am being excessively vain in thinking that I have had some success.

But freedom presupposes the possibility of failure, doesn’t it? 

I’m sure I’ll keep myself wound up for a while longer, but my feeling is that these posts will gradually diminish in frequency over the next year.  What point in talking, when people need a kick in the gut?  That kick is coming.  We may not see a “strike”, but we will see large numbers of business owners getting fed up, and making things comfortable for themselves through layoffs and downsizing.

Obama predicted a schism within the Republican Party, and that it would grow if Romney won the Presidency.  Obama is not very smart, but he was quite right about this.  We already have a schism.  Elements within our own Party worked hard to keep Ron Paul from having a shot at the nomination.  And for what?  We lost.  LESS REPUBLICANS VOTED FOR ROMNEY THAN VOTED FOR MCCAIN.  That is what I read, at any rate.

If it is not true that Party leadership is under the more or less direct control of Wall Street, this really needs to be a WTF moment. I would ask them: how fucking stupid can you be?  Seriously?  How many times can you undertake the same jackassery and expect a different result?  We should be winning BIG.  We have the issues.  The future of our children and grandchildren is on the line–of YOUR children and grandchildren–is on the line and you give us candidates willing only to cuts tenths of pennies on the dollar, while making grand promises to “balance the budget”?  Ron Paul was the ONLY candidate credible on that.  I and everyone else KNEW that Romney was going to start hemming and hawing virtually from day one.

And I doubt Romney would have undone Obamacare, much as it needed to be done.  We deserve it now.  It will be an albatross wrapped around our necks that reads: “wanted something for nothing”.

Anyone with any capacity for memory will readily notice that most people do not possess this capacity.  News cycles run by the complicit media rely on this.  To some extent, they reinvent history constantly NOW, as in the Alberto Gonzalez episode I mentioned a couple posts ago.  Nobody remembers him, but if they needed him for some reason, he would be everywhere.

What is going on now is that the anger and energy that in my view should likely be directed at Hillary, and CERTAINLY Obama for his obstructionism, is being dissipated with a focus on Petraeus and the others.

I see little reason to doubt these sorts of things–affairs–happen all the time, and that they normally are simply ignored.  JFK had weeks where he screwed three or four women who were not his wife, and at that was on pain medicine half the time, which nobody reported.  Illicit sex is not the story.

If the concern is people being fed classified information who have not been granted clearance, why the fuck is it not an issue that Valerie Jarrett is apparently not just sitting in on National Security meetings, but negotiating with the Iranians?  She’s a fucking Communist, as far as I can tell, and an Iranian by birth, from what I hear on the radio.

What Obama wants is a three ring circus for a few weeks, then a short touchdown and takeoff by Hillary, who has judiciously put herself literally about as far from Washington (Australia) as is physically possible.  The energy, if the exercise is done properly, will be gone, and then he will stonewall Congress on Benghazi, or at least try to.

They want and need her for 2016.  Biden is an uncongenial asshole, who, when he combines this with an innate lack of talent and intelligence, makes about as pathetic a candidate as one could imagine.

My vote, though, is that Hillary gets crucified for a CRIME of which she is GUILTY, at least according to my best guess.  Dead bodies of men who lived for our country, and died for it, should matter.  The grief of their families should matter.  The honor of our nation should matter.

Our rulers, currently, are truly awful people, who need to be unmasked every chance we get, even though the complicit media will cut to commercial.  The truth is always worth it, whatever the cost.

As most will know, the theme of this book is that it is possible, and even morally necessary, for the creators of the world–the carriers of the world, in her chosen metaphor–to reject the impulses of the mediocre to appropriate for themselves the output of the creators simply because through coercive government they can.

They can go on strike.  Now, Rand in all her work used types which were oversimplified, and in his mountain hideaway Galt would have had not just the best of the best, but hordes of quite ordinary business owners, whose principle virtue was having had the courage to risk their energy and money, and been successful.  The numbers of those who carry the world are much larger than she supposed.

But they too can go on strike.  It occurred to me that small business owners can just shut their doors in protest.  They don’t have to go to some secret mountain hide-out, and they don’t need some mystery man.  Provided they have enough funds otherwise, they can sell off, say, the capital goods in a chain of Wendy’s Restaurants, and buy a villa somewhere in the Caribbean, and simply wait and see if the American people wake up in four years.

This would be particularly appropriate in those districts of Philadelphia and apparently Ohio where HUGE numbers of votes netted NO Romney votes.  Now, fraud may well have been in play–and conceivably decided the election.  This is for responsible people–if they CHOOSE to do their jobs, which is always a decision that can go two ways–to determine.  What is not in question is that the election was very close, which means that most people are complacent, and do not understand how business works.

I suspect much of our darkness might be countered by genuine misery, which most people in this country have never, ever encountered economically.  Even our poor assume HVAC, cell phones, and grocery stores with stocked shelves.  Yet, none of these things are inevitable. 

What would happen if in the next month 2,000 business owners said FUCK YOU Obama, closed their doors, and put signs in them saying “Closed in protest of the election of Obama”?

It would be interesting.