Author: White Whale

I was in what I will call a transgressive museum yesterday, one well funded by the State and Local governments, and no doubt a few spent dissolute rich people.

Wandering around in this morass of meaninglessness–can I stipulate that when someone wants to “contextualize” something they are admitting being lost?–it occurred to me what a RELIEF anger is in such an environment.  It was welling up in me.  I was getting images of being a KKK Night Rider, as a vastly preferable alternative to living in that horrible world.

We need to recall that the artistic climate leading up to Bolshevism was Futurism, which extolled meaninglessness.

We need to recall that the artistic climate of Berlin in the period leading up to National Socialism was one of Dada and horror.  “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920 )might be viewed as one of the first–perhaps the first–Horror film.  Or M, perhaps the first film about a serial killer.

Or Bauhaus, which was a de facto rejection of historical culture, where “culture” within my terms is “that which facilitates meaning.”  It rejected historical means of generating meaning, while offering nothing new other than a purported “rationality”.

The artistic world was out of creative ideas for benevolent, desirable social and personal growth and transformation.  It rejected the old, without having understood what functions it performed, without grasping what actually matters in a social order.   I have argued that art should be INTEGRATIVE.  I have offered specifical moral values it should foster: the rejection of self pity, perseverance, and enhanced capacity to see, in all the possible sense of that word.

I am willing to countenance any and all events in art, if they lead to growth of these virtues.  “The Cabinet” might–I have not seen it–but I see no credible reason to suppose most modern horror does.  How do you want away more generous, more open, more loving?  You don’t.  You want away traumatized, but addicted to that feeling.

Berlin saw constant street battles between Moscow-supporting Communists, and National Socialists, who believed no in the primacy of the worker, but of the GERMAN.  This was their only difference: Fascists are in general more honest.  Hitler did in fact advance the cause of most ordinary Germans, whereas Lenin and Stalin helped virtually no one outside a power elite.

But the point I want to make is that nihilism, a sense of helplessness in the fact of the task of meaning formation, leads to violence. 

The KKK thought it was defending a way of life, and the virtue of its women.  They were no more wrong in this than are Communists in claiming they defend the rights of the worker in the face of oppressors.  Communists tyrannize, with very few exception, EVERYONE in a society, including Party members who forget their special standing, and need to conform publicly in all cases to even the most idiotic Party lines.

I would actually go so far as to say that the violence of the KKK was more RATIONAL than the violence of the Communists.  The KKK killed perhaps 4,000 people over a span of a century.  There were WEEKSs when Communists killed that many people.  The KKK was trying to resurrect a social order that had been destroyed in war.  The Communists had nothing to point to, no creative activity.  No net positive for virtually anyone, but rather countless trails of tears, including the countless millions displaced by their policies, in an analogous fashion to our displacement of Indians, but multipled by a 100.

The KKK terrorized a small part of society–and to be clear, what they did was clearly evil; I am in no respect defending them, other than to say their terrorism was much more defensible than that of the  Communists–but Communists terrorized EVERYONE.  There was no reliable “us”.  There was no reliable group, no family, no place where trust was warranted.

As I say from time to time, my view of Communism is that it is as close to a purely evil creed as can be imagined.  One could say that literal Satanism would be worse, but if it were called by that name, it would still be more honest, and could scarcely be more sanguinary.

And this evil–this justification of a violence made psychologically necessary by artistic and intellectual failures–is facilitated by meaninglessness of the sort on display in hundreds of museums the world over.

Contemplate the state of a happy baby: it feels safe, surrounded, warm, and loved.  It’s physiological state is one of deep relaxation.  It does not have stress hormones in it, and if there are “feel good” hormones–like seratonin, if memory serves, or perhaps the much-touted endorphins you get with exercise, then it is filled with those.

What I would submit is that this reaction, being in large measure physiological, is potentially under our conscious control.  You can learn to secrete the hormones, to feel the feelings, to relax the muscles, that are similar to the feeling of a happy baby.

Consider the Buddhist practice of loving kindness (karuna, if memory serves).  It is a flow outward.  But to do it properly, it must first be directs INWARDLY, correct?  You cannot hate yourself and love others, truly.  That is not how it works.

In my own case, my mother may as well have been schizoid.  I have struggled with the term, but by all accounts I cried a lot, and got hit a lot when I was 2 and 3.  Like many, I missed that early experience with bonding.  According to traditional theory, I’m screwed.  But I don’t accept traditional theory.  Fuck limitations set by others, especially so-called “experts”.

Despite not having been nurtured myself, by my mother or wife, I was very loving with my children.  One of my kids once told me “you look like my father, but you’re really my mother” (I’m “practically a breast”: name the movie).

Where did that come from?  I don’t know.  But I can say that the practice of loving is comforting for the one doing it.  Empirically, in my own experience, love does not have to come first to you for you to offer it to others.

This means we control our own experience.

This is very important, because what I see, looking at our cultural landscape, is a lack of love.  See that kid with the “love” t-shirt on?  His mother is probably a clinical narcissist.  That is why he smokes pot and listens to escapist, vapid music.  Many if not most hippies were and remain functional narcissists.  As I once heard it put, “There was a lot of loving back then, but not much love.”

Consider these young women who go down to Florida on spring break and fuck 3 guys, probably in what most would consider undignified circumstances.  Do they become good mothers?  Some, yes.  Many, no.  Where did they get the love, and/or how did they decide to love anyway?  I think they marry some good looking rich kid, who cheats on them.  These are gross generalizations of course, but I think have some truth in them.

The essence of spirituality–and I think I’ve said this–is first and foremost the ability to comfort yourself in difficult circumstances, and thus to have emotional reserves for others even in the most trying of circumstances.  It is not about mystical experiences, except to the extent they are USEFUL in this task.  What was miraculous about early Christians was the equinimity with which they met often very horrible fates.

Have to run.  Hopefully this is useful for someone.

Alexander Hamilton, if memory serves, proposed that Presidents be elected for life.  This proposal was thrown out, of course, but until he proposed it all iterations of the role of President were very weak.  The four year Presidency was, in my understanding, made possible in some measure by his throwing out a radical, benchmark destroying proposal.

Likewise, I would suggest that a proposal being thrown around to mint trillion dollar coins is radical.  It is stupid.  It does not address the underlying SYSTEMIC problems.  But the fact that such an idea is being discussed in public hints at a willingness to go farther in our thinking than we have hitherto.

As this article notes, “there have been 250 sovereign defaults since 1800″.  In all cases of which I am aware, what happened was a government spent more than it could raise in taxes, borrowed heavily, and eventually was unable to make its payments.  It said to the creditors some version of SORRY, then reset its ledgers.  Obviously, there are many ways in which this happens, many ways in which creditors get some of their money back (invasion was at one time considered an acceptable option, if memory serves), but the fact remains: you can at some point just say: you aren’t getting your money back.j

There were 1.3 million private and business Chapter 7–total liquidation–filings last year.  This means people and companies–like Solyndra–reached points where they could not hope to pay their bills, and simply walked away from their debts. 

My proposal (click on the first picture, with the mechanic, here) is a default that is utterly unique, unlike anything I’ve seen tried, and unlike almost all proposals I’ve seen.  It is most like the Chicago Plan, which called for 100% reserve banking.


The simple and ineluctable fact is that increasing productivity should be leading to increasing income per hour worked, and corresponding opportunity for leisure.  John Keynes 15 hour work week would have come into being, had he not lived to teach us to borrow and spend.


There is nothing wrong with the value of our money increasing steadily–as it would were new money and new claims on our new wealth constantly being created–IF there is no public or private debt, as there would not be, if we had true Capitalism and free markets in the banking sector.

My proposal will work.  I am convinced of it.  I am not an economist, but I have thought it through carefully, and often, and see no foundational flaws.  Defaults are common.  Mine is simply a democratic default, which erases the debt of EVERYONE, not just the government.

From here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/debt-ceiling-2013_n_2410622.html#slide=1476686


I will add, that it is persistently interesting to me how the Left systematically takes the truths–the documentable, factual, empirical truths–of conservatives, and simply appropriates the RHETORIC directly, without making even rudimentary efforts to show how it applies; how, for example, it is somehow “lunacy” to want to discontinue the road to national bankruptcy.

I just have one question: do you invert the truth 180 degrees intentionally, or simply out of the long standing delusion that your side is inherently and always rational, and can thus lay claim to the actual truth without delay or hesitation, regardless of the facts?

The simple reality is that spending was $2 trillion under Clinton.  It will be (we think: no budget has been passed or even seriously proposed under Obama, so it’s hard to be sure) roughly $3.2 trillion under Obama IN 2012, and trending sharply up.  That increase in SPENDING has nothing to do with ANYTHING except increases in the SIZE OF GOVERNMENT.

We are on a path to insolvency.  What merit, I ask, is there in pretending that if we postpone rational discussion for another day that some concrete good will have been done?  To be irresponsible is not the same as being responsible.  They are, in fact, the reverse of each other.  In the real, actual world. some ideas are better than others.  Some PEOPLE are better than others.  You, here, are betraying a mediocrity of spirit and intelligence that, if you could see it clearly, would give you ample cause to consider long bouts of silence.

The 86 trillion dollars in unfunded–UNFUNDABLE, to be clear, in any conceivable scenario–liabilities would give any rational person pause.  It does not give you pause.  Ergo. . .

In our current environmen–at least as most people process our current environment–it seems impossible to imagine that anyone would be so UNCIVIL as to attempt to impose tyranny on us, but the fact of the matter is that that is EXACTLY what has been proposed by mainstream professors, publicly, with seemingly no backlash.  Imagine what their discussions look like in private.

Please read this link, which I have posted from time to time: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp

The business of government is producing more government.  This process will continue until blocked by the will of the people.  The law will slow it down, but not stop it.

Yesterday, I thought I had screwed up, and that my mistake was going to cost me 4 hours of work.  I paused to consider.  In the process I wound up wandering around a huge construction site, that was to me in any event quite interesting.  If it’s not obvious, I like exploring.  I don’t need to do anything dramatic, just change scenery enough to SEE something new, think something new, create for myself a new experience.

Anyway, wandering around it occurred to me that even in failure you can find things that are interesting. Curiosity is a type of excitement that goes on and on and on.  It’s not quite a purpose in life–although I think it could serve as one, and a better one than many I see–but it certainly adds energy to life.

And it hit me that even in zero sum games, that you lose, there are things you can find that are interesting.  And it occurred to me that that fact can take all the sting of loss out of the thing.  You get the excitement of victory, ideally, and the consolation of learning something in the worst case.  Put another way, no excitable, curious person, can ever lose, finally.

That’s a good thought, I think.

My next bumper sticker–to cover up the last Republican who didn’t win–will say “Be Relentlessly Curious”.  There is so much value in it. Imagine if all Americans were genuinely curious, genuinely interested in asking questions and hearing answers.  It would change the landscape of our nation quickly.

Oh, and I solved my problem.  I just needed a bit of space to think it through.   To the point here, actually, solving it meant thinking a new thought, and discovering something I did not know.

What if you grew up without a mother, or anyone else to comfort and mother you?  You would have to learn self comforting.  It may seem counterintuitive, but I think people really can learn to say the things to themselves, and do the things for themselves that mothers normally do.

I think of the Buddhist monks wandering India–or the Sannyasin, or any other itinerant monk:  they get cold.  They get hungry, tired.  They must sometimes despair.  What comforts them?  Their creed and practice.  Their creed and practice serve the role of companion and mother, or wife.

Many mystics have spoken of God as a lover.  Lovers comfort, do they not?  They ease pain.

I would submit that the ESSENCE of spirituality is the facilitation of emotional growth which enables people to live happily alone and in difficulty because they have learned how to comfort themselves, or to take it in non-ordinary ways.

Stanislov Grof has talked about how he feels, based on very long term experience dealing with people in altered states of consciousness, that the birth experience is very important in influencing later life.  It remains with people until they process it.  Difficult births lead to certain personality impairments that can only be healed with what I tend to term ecstatic states, states in which the inner healer is enabled to function properly, in terms of qualitative reorganization of the personality gestalt.

This led me to wonder: in cultures where ecstatic states are rare or absent, do people unconsciously blame the mothers?  Is the inability to process these states a source of misogyny?

I think of Islam, where virtually everything is banned.  They don’t like singing, dancing, painting people, drinking.  They prize sobriety over all else.  Given a percentage of the population that will have undergone traumatic births, how can they ever process them?  They can’t.

Conversely, it would seem to me that cultures which value femininity would tend to have many more ways of processing feelings, deep experiences, of releasing deep down pent up tensions in some way OTHER than violence.

First off, errata:  I’m not a huge Bocephus fan–I like his father a lot more–but even I know it is whiskey bent and hell bound.  Also, I did not address the putative topic in my last post.  I’ll get to it eventually, but not tonight.  I’ve managed to tire myself again.

The other day I was in a Half Price Books store, and looked at the wall of movies and music, and thought “that is a wall of sensations, of vicarious experiences”.  That is what we buy, isn’t it? Experiences?

But following up on the point I made yesterday, it is SOMEONE ELSE’S experience.  You are watching.  They are doing. They are out there, and you are in there with them.  Some part of you, I feel, never leaves.

This is habit forming.  It is a way of interacting with the world that you don’t see, that is hidden.  After all, you swerve to avoid obstacles in the road, laugh with your friends, smell the grass when you are mowing the lawn.

But something is missing.  You are being carried.  You are not taking turns in your interactions with the universe.  In a room filled with light and life, you only see scenes from another room, far, far away.

Over the last day or so I’ve been swiveling around this seeming dichotomy of reason and emotion, of abstraction and concrete experience.

I have said from time to time that thoughts are machines.  Reason is the systematic use of thought.  It is, we might say, the MECHANICAL use of thought.  It is the building of structures that in theory, in the abstract, in their ideal forms, DO NOT CHANGE.  A squared plus B squared always equals C squared.

Plainly, reason machines are useful in building material things, objects for use, like tractors, and test tubes.

But reason cannot be made an end in itself.  It is a transitional device, a bridge from an A worth visiting to a B worth visiting.  Making it an end in itself is living on the bridge.  You live nowhere.  You are not alive to the real world. to the many forms of “weather” surrounding you.

The very first act of abstraction is to eliminate emotion.  You must be clinical, detached.  That’s fine, but then what?  The process becomes habit.  The emotional energy grows undetected. The disrupting passions erode sanity in the dark, unseen, because the perceptual filter of such people screens them out.  They are in their self estimation dispassionate, scientific, objective, and in reality horror stricken by the core lack of meaning in their lives, which they feel to the extent they put all their eggs in the basket of reason.

We can talk to the universe, and it answers.  That is where God is.  God is not an abstraction, or a logical puzzle, but a reality that is ONLY open to those who can process the world as other than detached observers.

Life interacts with life.  Machines do not interact with anything.  They are built for a purpose, exist for a purpose, and are not open to influence, only reconstruction by another agency.

Socialism is the logical end of logic.  It is society as machine, with all the gears well manufactured to fit with all the other gears.  It is abstraction brought into reality, dispassion expressed through an explosion of rage masquerading as something else.