Author: White Whale

Could we not call school shootings “the visible face of social alienation”?  It may be that AR-15’s and their cousins are being used increasingly, but handguns are nearly as good.  Banning effective weapons will accomplish little.

And I would STRONGLY encourage you to listen to at least the first ten minutes or so of this podcast, where Tony Blauer interviews David Grossman:  http://knowfear.libsyn.com/lt-col-dave-grossman-ret

Grossman, who you should know from the book On Killing, has written a book specifically on first person shooters, called Assassination Generation, where he argues that we are making our children sick in the head: https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Generation-Aggression-Psychology-Killing/dp/0316265934/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Grossman points out that murder rates are artificially lowered by the fact that improved medical technology allows people to live who would have died in the 1970’s.

He further points out that rates of violent crime are SKYROCKETING in Europe, which is supposed to be much safer due to how hard the governments there make it for citizens to compete with them.  The increase is so bad Interpol has classified the data.  And of course they don’t have a Freedom of Information Act over there, because they are not us. Only America is America.  Never forget that. 

I will note, as many have, that it was common for kids, particularly in rural areas, to bring guns to school every day.  Nobody said anything, and nobody cared.  The guns were used for hunting after school, and for target practice, with or without JROTC.  The nature of guns has not changed.  What has changed is how alienated people–particularly teenagers–have become from their feelings and from any meaningful sense of social connection and bonding.  The video games BOTH separate people, AND teach them the effective use of violence.  This is a witch’s brew, and if someone wants to assume the mantle of HONEST leadership, we need to seriously consider things like labels on violent video games similar to those on cigarettes, saying something like “this game may permanently fuck your brain up, and make you lonely, anxious, friendless, and constantly angry”.

The more I wake up, the more I realize most people are sleepwalking.  Very few people want to do the WORK of independent thinking, of stating ideas which have not been in the mix for the course of their entire lifetime.  Calling for “gun control” is not revolutionary.  It does not take courage.

Stating the nature of real problems clearly, and in such a way that many people will take offense takes courage. I can’t begin to imagine the screaming we will hear if we start putting labels on video games, if we start teaching parents how damaging they seem to be.  But can it be worse than the screaming following a shooting, which flows nearly linearly from the playing of the game, through minds made unstable for whatever reason, and out the barrels of actual guns?

If I might paraphrase Madison, we would have no need of guns if we had a perfectly angelic, perfectly competent, and perfectly reliable government.  And if we ourselves were all uniformly angels, we would likewise need no guns.

But neither case applies.  The FBI and other law enforcement clearly dropped the ball on Cruz (multiple somebodies saw something and said something, which is the way the system is supposed to work on the “people’s” side), and overall our world seems to be getting more violent.

Every attack on our common culture–to the extent we have one–is inherently a call for mass violence.  I see no other way to view it.  The Left truly wants a civil war.  They don’t know why, but I will say I think it is because they have nothing left of their souls, and emptiness begets violence.

It seems that all of us deposit layers of experience, like so much sand, at the bottom of the oceans of our selves.  It floats down there, unnoticed, and creates a layer.  “Experience” has stages–although often many stages can be happening at once, as often happens in youth–and this creates many layers, a sort of sandstone which creates a continual, but background, sense of self that is present forever after.

This rock influences everything which happens.  It is never fully past.  It is never truly gone until we experience it fully and integrate it into the present.  I have not fully figured out how to do this for myself, but I have in the Kum Nye method of contacting, paying attention to, merging with the breath, amplifying, and expanding.

But I feel there is a certain ruthlessness needed for the spiritual path.  It is not all easiness, light, and effortless kindness.  I think we all feel this. I think it is why many of us, despite our temptation to be attracted to it, find much of the “New Age” movement almost comical.  They don’t mean to be comical or corny, but so much of what they say and do is based on ideas which are demonstrably untrue, such as that the world is becoming more spiritual.  The opposite seems to be true, to me.  We are becoming more isolated, mechanical, rigid, emotionally stupid, superficial, and conformist.

This is why I cannot yet bring myself to become a vegetarian.  It is perhaps cruel to eat animals, but I do not want, yet, to reject cruelty.  The world is cruel.  The wild is filled with animals eating one another, enduring harsh conditions, and dying where they stand.

An honest life is negotiated between Yes and No.  A life of purely one sort or the other is a life of  either relentless compulsion or relentless spiritual torpor.  I would actually roughly conflate the two.  We are intended to use our freedom thoughtfully.

Hillary seems to have taken over $100 million–$200 is the approximate number if we believe reports–from Saudi Arabia. This money would have been put to many uses, including hiring bloggers, but most importantly it would have bought campaign ads. If we are going to whine about 13 bloggers funded to the tune of a million or two, can we not ask about an amount 100x as large, particularly when Hillary was publicly threatening to take the United States to war with Russia on behalf, solely, of Saudi interests?

And can someone with a brain please point out that the Russisn intent was BOTH to help, in a very small way, elect the candidate who did not want a pointless war with them, AND to simply support the relentlessly divisive and violent character of our public discourse?

Their work was done, and continues to be done, by the complicit media with far more enthusiasm and effectiveness than they ever could have dreamed of.

Those who continue to call for Trumps impeachment might thus very reasonably be accused of “supporting the Russians”. They just want hate everywhere, and far too many are happy to provide it.

I was dreaming about Kevin Spacey last night.  It seems to me he is wandering the world as a ghost.  Those who knew him now shun him.  This is happening to someone who lived for that sort of attention.

I understand being a ghost.  It will be interesting to see who and how he is five years from now.  Perhaps we will never hear him spoken of again, except as a cautionary tale.  Certainly, he did terrible things.  Terrible things were done to him, if not physically, then emotionally.  But so many of us wander, lost and lonely, unseen and rudderless.  I have been this way for many years, but the fog is slowly lifting, wind is entering my sails, and I am remembering my steering wheel and map.

Religion should be s technology of sanity, of mental health. It should be a means of balancing ones own internal emotional environment, managing interpersonal relationships harmoniously, and remembering and respecting the sacred without fetishizing it. We need air to breath, but it is useless trying to remember this continually. In a healthy world, what needs to be done, will be done.

Very few crime dramas survive any more unless they have spectacular crimes.

When I was growing up, the grotesque was rare and generally remarked upon.  An alien emerging from someones stomach was horrifying back then, even if by today’s standards the SE were almost laughable.

Very few people rooted for the criminals, or so I suppose. But rooting for the criminal is the essence of most horror franchises any more, and they are very popular.  Hannibal Lector, the cannibal psychistrist (there is some symbology), became a hero.

Is it really asking too much to see connections between all this and, not the rate of violence, but the QUALITY of it, in our modern world?  

My question is: what happens if the government–or de facto government–comes to control our every last action?  If we allow this, are we “protecting our children”?  Not if we believe, as I do, that freedom is necessary for a fulfilling life.

And where are we drifting?  Is it really an improvement if we are all wandering around by ourselves, lost in some VR contained in high tech glasses, consuming vicious scenes of torture, murder, and wanton cruelty, and completely emotionally separated from one another?  Would this be better, if all guns of any sort had been confiscated, and everyone had to content themselves to shooting or watching being shot, hundreds of people every day? Is this peace?  Is this freedom?

Think.  Look.  See.

The Left likes to style itself as nuanced, as the side which avoids simplistic differentiations into good and bad, right and wrong.

But if you look more carefully, it is the conservatives who are willing to, as an example, admit honestly where America has fallen short of its ideals, but who are still fully engaged by the ideals embodied in our founding spirit and expressed concretely in our Constitution.  It is the political Left which wants to make of its enemies simplistic caricatures who are inherently evil.  There is no conversation wanted or needed.

Everything in their world is simple.  You want to end poverty?  Give poor people money.  You want to end gun violence?  Ban guns.  You want peace?  Get rid of all your weapons.

None of these political platforms are ever discussed honestly.  They are simply stipulated.  Being the intellectual equivalents of sugar cookies, they are tasty, simple, and easily washed down with a bit of cold milk.

But reality is complex.  It does not take much education or much experience to see this.  Conservatives are the only ones TRYING to solve real problems.  That is my honest view.  No one can claim to be trying to solve problems who is unwilling to engage with and understand alternative viewpoints. 

And as I have pointed out often, it is quite impossible to reach the age of 18 in this or any other industrialized nation without having had the simplistic propaganda of the Left fed to you daily for many years.  We GET what they are saying.  That is not the problem.  And speaking louder is no solution to the problem of intellectual incoherence and dishonesty.

I am a proud conservative.  I am proud to be INTELLECTUALLY superior to those who would want to argue with what I believe.

I got cable a month or two ago, after largely passing on TV for some 15 years.  It has long been a bit absurd for people to accuse me of being brainwashed by Fox, when I literally had no means of watching it.

I will tender an observation or two.

First, it is difficult to watch TV on nearly any channel for more than ten minutes without seeing someone shot, and/or handcuffed to a chair in some form, and interrogated.  You see it in ads for TV, with this show “The Alienist” making plain appeals to those fascinated by the horrific.  You see violence during the day, on substantially all networks, and with no honest or serious concern for viewers under 18, 15, 10, or even 5.

And of course most parents don’t care.  Family friends of ours were letting their kids watch “300” when they were under age 10.

There is a part of our brains which is unable to fully and completely separate fantasy rendered realistically from reality.  It is in fact our emotional involvement with the actors portraying fantastic scenes which makes watching TV, watching movies, an emotional experience, which pulls us out of mundane homes, while sitting on large couches, eating fatty highly processed food, drinking alcohol, and makes us feel–SOMETHING.

And this violence, of course, is interspersed with clever ads telling us that things and experiences will complete our lives, that everyone else is happy, and we alone something else, but that buying and buying and buying, sooner or later, will fulfill us.

Most Americans are being indoctrinated/acculturated by this medium up to 10 hours a day.  Many wake up to TV, eat to TV, and go to sleep to TV.

Now, obviously many commentators have pointed out how ludicrous, stupid, and complacent this feature of our culture makes us.  It makes us afraid, manifestly, as well.  But is it not worth asking how we can change this again? TV is not satisfying.  It can’t be.

And one particular recurring theme I would mention that I think is directly relevant to mass shootings, is that of the Man Wounded Seeking Revenge. I can’t recall the first movie which used this theme.  Some innocent guy–who just happens to be a total badass–is hurt by some group.  They kill his family.  They betray him.  They hijack his ship.  And from this flows the rationalization of an hour or two of violence, of people being killed in as many creative ways as the writers can concoct.  Pencil through the eyeball?  Fantastic.

This pattern, of reacting to wrong with massive violence, is in fact the logic of the mass shooting.  Some group called on Leftists to shoot Republicans in the wake of the shooting in Florida.  Same logic.

Always your enemies are somehow different in kind from you.  They lose their humanity. 

I can’t emphasize enough how much I think the REPEATED, continual reinforcement of this theme must be affecting our collective psyche.

Ponder, just for a moment, how our nation would change IMMEDIATELY, if all TV programming on all channels ended today.  Or even if we only broadcast actual history (rather than “Ancient Alien theorists believe the use of the circle in antiquity must imply alien visitation”), nature channels, and socially and emotionally complex dramas where most of the violence was psychological.

Small wonder, now that I think about it, that we are a nation of morons.

But what do we do about it?  This is the question, is it not?  How do we turn away from making things worse by making an already damaging system exponentially more harmful by making it fully immersive, via VR?

Who is still talking about this?  The Left talked about violence in the 1960’s (perhaps), 1970’s, and I’m pretty sure 1980’s, as I recall.  The Alan Alda’s and Sally Struthers condemned it, because politically much of it was unabashedly patriotic, and unabashedly in the service of black and white moral causes.

But all that has stopped.  We have famous actors like Alec Baldwin and directors like Martin Scorsese calling for the movie based on Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” to be made readily available because of its “artistic value”.  This is where we live.  More or less pure cruelty and violence counts as art, because violence is somehow seen as profound.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Violence is only profound to the walking dead.

I ask again, though: how can or could we start talking about this again?  How could we put a mirror to ourselves, and try to learn something?  This would have been the job of intellectuals and academics and political activists, but it seems that, across the spectrum, EVERYONE seems to like the status quo?  Why?  Can I ask that question?

I’m beginning to get the rudiments of honest self regulation starting up in me.  I have always gotten things done more or less by whipping myself into compliance.  It is very unpleasant, and it sets up conflicts within me which over time make me vastly less efficient.  I can’t enjoy work under those conditions; I can’t open up to it, and let it open up to me.

And I am realizing that, while you can’t undo the past, and what is done is done, it is equally true that the past is present to our understanding.  We can inspect it and learn from it.  By understanding the past, we can engineer better futures.

And in the same sense that an apology cannot be sincere if the behavior does not change, likewise regret–as the inner form of an apology, that from which an apology flows–cannot be sincere if no effort is made to learn from past mistakes. 

People, all of us, are pattern forming organisms.  We repeat ourselves.  The power of habit has enormous survival advantages, but only if those habits are adaptive.  Sometimes we enter life with good habits.  Sometimes we have to earn them.  Such of course is my own case.