Category: Uncategorized

Bit rambling, but a bit rambling. No alcohol involved, just a lot of thinking out loud.

It is quite obvious to me that many people are made uncomfortable discussing violence in music, or media more generally. Many remember with fondness, for example, the ending to “Play Misty for me”: “do you feel lucky, punk?” After all the trauma of that movie, the injustice, the failings of our system made manifest, Clint Eastwood shooting that guy is cathartic. Somehow it represents the triumph of true decency over the hand wringing moral mediocrity that somehow descended, like a veil of darkness, over our moral landscape in the 1970’s.

Heavy metal, angry metal, recalls to mind a time of membership in the metal tribe. All your friends listened to the same music, and you all waited in collective anticipation for the release of the new album by whoever you were then most enthusiastic about. What an observer who was astute would have paid the most attention to was not the content of the music, but the quality of the relationships between you that shared passion made possible.

It has often been remarked that group challenges–with war being both the most extreme and obvious example–cause cohesion among individuals that is stronger in some cases than family itself.

I have thought in the past that sometimes what connnects us is shared pain. By this I mean a sort of qualitative gestalt: not all pain is equal. The “pain” of a rich kid is different than that of a middle class kid, which is different than that of a poor kid. It is different for a Mexican and white kid and black kid. Yet much of it is also the same.

I think to a comment made by a boss I had who was in a fraternity, that the brotherhood was just never the same “after they stopped using the paddle”. Everyone who underwent that ordeal had that pain–that very specific, secret pain–in common with everyone else, and knew it.

It has often seemed to me that suburban white kids who seem to wish they were “ghetto thugs”–you know, the kid in the car wash next to you listening to some profanity laced rant at 4x what would be a coureous volume–are actually wishing they could relate to that type of pain, that of the “hood”.

It’s unclear to me how many people feel genuine, deep happiness and fulfullment. I don’t think it is very many. I get moments of joy, and am not sure what to do with it. It’s not my ambient sound. To be clear, I have very good days, and look back with them with satisfaction, and wonder why I don’t feel like this more than I do.

Inverted, one often sees reference in song lyrics to people wanting to feel pain, so they know they are alive. In one Lady Antebellum song the lyric is, I believe: “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all”. Nine Inch Nails:

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real

There are many examples of this. What are they really asking for? What is the goal? Is it not a remediation of confusion and loneliness?

If we relate through our pains, then masochism becomes a means of reaching out to others, on a primitive emotional level (that might actually be a good substitution word for both subconscious and unconscious). If we hurt one another, then we bond, somehow.

It is a short step from this to evil, though, which is hurting OTHERS, so YOU can feel.

Returning to my original point, ask yourself how long it takes when you meet someone new for you to start comparing notes with respect to the media you consume: what movies you like, what music you listen to. Media is so much a part of who we are. Most kids from 12 or so on nowadays have access to it 24/7, except when in school. They can watch movies, listen to radio, listen to their iPod, download YouTube videos, etc.

I’ve commented on this often, but in a plastic world, where so much is new, where ideas are new (science as paradigmatic but mutable Truth system), social trends evolve constantly, where obedience to Truth Authority but not critical thinking is taught in schools, where people move from State to State–what do you hold on to?

This is the route to “subculture”. This is how and why tribes form, of for example Nine Inch Nails (NiN) fans. Now, Reznor’s music is clearly emotionally disturbed. But it would not be fair to extrapolate from that that the culture of those who admire is NECESSARILY entirely negative. Some of these kids probably do experience genuine feelings of belonging, warmth, and, yes, happiness. There are other, better paths to this outcome, but all social systems have to be evaluated both in terms of negatives and positives.

For such a group, if for some reason they no longer had NiN to bind them together (I have said this often, but the root “religio” means “to bind”), they would fall into despondancy. Many of them cut themselves anyway, and wind up on anti-depressants, but this does not mean that in some ways the music is not positive for them.

Thus in evaluating our common culture, what makes the most sense, where I see the most strategic promise, is in trying to build and support a different set of foundational premises upon which our worldview rests. The countless little tribes out there MEAN something to the people who belong to them. They are the result of self organizing social systems, themselves the results of worldviews based on foundational premises. To achieve a better result, the path is not banning this that or the other thing, as horrible as it might seem. The path is, in my view, encouraging scientists to do actual science. To be honest, and reputable. To do their jobs properly.

As things stand, the assumptions of our Truth Elite are Materialism, Meaninglessness, and Egalitarianism-as-moral-philosophy. None of these aspects of the dominant worldview are consistent with the best empirical data we have. Yet alternatives are suppressed ruthlessly, despite the manifest shortcomings of the dominant view. This needs to change.

People of goodwill in universities need to assert themselves, and stop working for patent evil.

If it’s after 10pm, and a post is rambling, not infrequently I’m indulging my fondness for Kentucky bourbon. I’m fully equal to the task of rationalizing it, but the simple net reality is that I enjoy it, so I do it.

I will add that at one time in my life I thought alcohol or drugs made you creative. They don’t.

Creation is risk taking. It is having the courage to follow a path whose end you can’t see, well into the darkness, and over the proverbial ridge. I think the most creative people can see how they could go mad, but most don’t. There is a line of balance you learn to walk, between the formed and the formless.

For me, alcohol serves to remedy the emotional pain I feel sometimes in walking out into the darkness alone. I’m not immune to fear, or self pity, or loneliness, or confusion. Yet I ignore all those things when it’s time to explore, and pay the price. Booze brings the account back into balance, for me.

I prefer to avoid autobiography, but I felt this point worth making.

I argue often that human social systems are best understood as formally Chaotic. They are the end results, approximately, of the interactions of actual principles with reality as it is lived.

When considering violent media, I have to, in principle, accept that some violent media may be actually beneficial. Maybe for some viewers Hostel is, on balance, something that improves their lives. It’s hard to see how this would happen, but it is not formally impossible.

In this view, violent movies in some cases support intrapersonal integration, social harmony, and benevolent outcomes. This is theoretical, but not beyond the realm of the possible.

This perspective is added in the pursuit of due diligence. I want to rest calmly in the contemplation of having done the thing right.

I was driving along tonight, and the thought hit me that time is motion against God. Logically, then, inclusion within God would be timelessness. It would be extent without motion, where what we have on Earth is motion with very little extent (mine occupies perhaps a cubic yard, and I can reach to about 8′).

It is little remarked upon, but Einstein never did away with the need for something like the ether. Light is both particle and wave, and waves have to have something to “wave” in.

Perhaps there are two universes, that of fields, within which light can only go the speed of light–which is the same thing as saying that the potential speed of matter is fixed by the characteristics of the universe; and that of the Zero Point Field, which is an endless light that feeds into the visible universe, without really being a part of it. It is not an order, per se, but the root of the possibility of order, or what I have called the memory of the universe, I think. Maybe somebody else did. I don’t recall.

As stated on the sidebar, this is my space for public musings that I think could at least potentially be of interest to someone else. I’m not entirely sure what I am saying here, but figured I’d post it anyway. It was a vivid sensation I had, and I wanted to capture it.

There is a percentage of the population that drowned in collectivist sentiment years ago, and will never ever miss its cue to bemoan, be angry about, find amusing, or advocate whatever issue the propaganda leaders on the Left find currently most important tactically or strategically. In this case, the effort is to write speeches Obama can read that make him sound like he is an ordinary human being, with ordinary emotions. He isn’t. He sees the world through an ideological prism that does not include the capacity for genuine empathy. Everything is political to him.

I was upset when I read about the shootings. Then I got even more upset when I realized the Left was trying to USE it for propaganda. It is beyond disgusting. It is vile and morally reprehensible.

Why would it be any more likely he was a rightist than leftist? The Daily Cause, also, “targeted” Giffords for her CONSERVATISM. The Democrats said, in 2004, that Arizona was “behind enemy lines”.

Since I have never had the experience of believing in Santa Claus, or understanding how leftists rationalize their views, it’s hard for me to predict how this will all play out, but I suspect that the steady trickle of defections from the leftist camp will continue, once ordinary, well-meaning people realize that none of those affecting outrage at the Right care in the least about the people who were shot. This is simply one more of a long series of opportunities to be exploited for political gain. That trait, alone, will tell anyone with any common sense all they need know about why such people should not be running our country.

My apologies for posting this. It is horrible. But I want to show what some of our kids are listening to. We need national leadership on this topic.

I am going to warn you: this song is very obviously intended to elicit a feeling of revulsion and outrage. It references sadistic murder, and necrophilia. I decided to give you the option of whether or not to actually read the lyrics. The link is here: I cum blood.

Ask yourself: what psychologically normal person listens to things like this? Answer: none. These people are not psychologically healthy. My suspicion is that most of them are atheists, like Loughner, and have deduced nihilism from it. This makes destruction a virtue, and the bright light of frenetic self immolation their only consolation.

Now, this band does not have a lot of fans, I assume. And historically there have always been sick people, many of whom got their jollies in the wars which have happened everywhere in human history.

Nor am I advocating banning them. What I want people to realize is that there exist scientifically sound reasons to believe in something like God, that philosophically sound remedies to moral pessimism exist, and that misery is not endemic to human existence. Happiness is possible, in spite of everything.

When you truly look the Devil in the eye, he always blinks. I know this. I have done it. Never quit: this is my creed, and it works. There are ample reasons for genuine hope.

When I was growing up, we were taught is church that Ozzy Osbourne was satanic. I was taught that KISS meant “Kings in Satan’s Service”, and Rush “Rulers under Satan’s Hand”. They missed, of course, some more obvious examples, not being fans of rock music. A good example would be the Stones “In her Majesties Satanic Service”.

Yet we have grown far past the suggestive, into the explicit “selling” of evil and hatred. We have grown into what can only be called a death cult. Death metal is a type of music, and it is filled with anger, hate, viciousness, and violence.

This music is mentally sick, and it inspires mental illness in those who consume it. We keep seeing how “right wingers” might inspire some frail mind to violence. This is, as usual, the opposite of the truth.

We saw, quite recently, death threats issued against Sarah Palin by left wingers, after she was falsely accused of somehow inspiring Loughner. Leftists are people who NEED someone to hate, and the only way they can manage it is by pretending someone else is a hater, then venting all their pent up aggression on them. Keith Olberman is vicious. Glenn Beck very explicitly rejects ad hominem, and builds his cases with care and diligence.

What we need to be worried about, is the nihilism advocated in this sort of song, of which there are thousands of example. Some of our youth listen exclusively to this sort of crap, and in my considered view it will very literally warp the foundations of how they view the world. Virtually none of them will grow to practice literal violence, but all of them will be less open and giving than they would have been, less committed to participatory democracy and community involvement, less able as parents, and less charitable generally.

These are the sorts of results that take decades to manifest, but which are very hard to undo once they are present. My hope and my optimism is based on the fact that the people who listen to this sort of thing have certain operative assumptions about the nature of the world. This would include pessimism about the future, atheism, and a tendency to indulge in self pity and resentment. If a movement can be created which counters these tendencies, the effects can be reversed.

Can you feel that?
Ah, shit

Drowning deep in my sea of loathing
Broken your servant I kneel
(Will you give in to me?)
It seems what’s left of my human side
Is slowly changing in me
(Will you give in to me?)

Looking at my own reflection
When suddenly it changes
Violently it changes (oh no)
There is no turning back now
You’ve woken up the demon in me

[Chorus:]
Get up, come on get down with the sickness [x3]
Open up your hate, and let it flow into me
Get up, come on get down with the sickness
You mother get up come on get down with the sickness
You fucker get up come on get down with the sickness
Madness is the gift, that has been given to me

I can see inside you, the sickness is rising
Don’t try to deny what you feel
(Will you give in to me?)
It seems that all that was good has died
And is decaying in me
(Will you give in to me?)

It seems you’re having some trouble
In dealing with these changes
Living with these changes (oh no)
The world is a scary place
Now that you’ve woken up the demon in me

[Chorus]

(And when I dream) [x4]
No mommy, don’t do it again
Don’t do it again
I’ll be a good boy
I’ll be a good boy, I promise
No mommy don’t hit me
Why did you have to hit me like that, mommy?
Don’t do it, you’re hurting me
Why did you have to be such a bitch
Why don’t you,
Why don’t you just fuck off and die
Why can’t you just fuck off and die
Why can’t you just leave here and die
Never stick your hand in my face again bitch
FUCK YOU
I don’t need this shit
You stupid sadistic abusive fucking whore
How would you like to see how it feels mommy
Here it comes, get ready to die

[Chorus (last line changed to “Madness has now come over me”)]

Loughner included this on a video. I’m curious what was on his iPod, which he apparently listened to everywhere.

Just ponder for a moment how this music could possibly contribute to positive outcomes. It may be useful for soldiers getting ready to engage in combat, but even there I tend to think it would foster an excessive desire to kill.

I included the lyrics in full just to show the obsessiveness of them, the lack of creativity, the mechanistic quality.

More than a thousand years ago–it’s like closer to 2,000 or more–the author of the Wen Tzu pointed out that a culture can best be understood through its music. You look at the words, the topics chosen, and the method of delivery.

Ponder what this song says about us, or at least about those many of us who listen to this song and the many others like it. If you are not familiar with the actual sound of it, find it somewhere and listen to it. I’m sure there’s a YouTube video.

“Bodies”

Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floooooor
Beaten why for (why for)
Can’t take much more
Here we go!
Here we go!
Here we go!
One – Nothing wrong with me
Two – Nothing wrong with me
Three – Nothing wrong with me
Four – Nothing wrong with me

One – Something’s got to give
Two – Something’s got to give
Three – Something’s got to give
Now
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the flooooor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the flooooor
Now!
Push me again
This is the end
Here we go!
Here we go!
Here we go!
One – Nothing wrong with me
Two – Nothing wrong with me
Three – Nothing wrong with me
Four – Nothing wrong with me
One – Something’s got to give
Two – Something’s got to give
Three – Something’s got to give
Now
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the flooooor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Skin against skin blood and bone
You’re all by yourself but you’re not alone
You wanted in now you’re here
Driven by hate
consumed by fear
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floooooooor
One – Nothing wrong with me
Two – Nothing wrong with me
Three – Nothing wrong with me
Four – Nothing wrong with me
One – Something’s got to give
Two – Something’s got to give
Three – Something’s got to give
Now
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the flooooor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor

Look at these lyrics, then think of Jared Loughner. What you see is incoherence, rambling, a sense of moral and mental decay, and sexual frustration. Presumably the reference is that he needs someone to sit on his “flagpole”.

This song is undoubtedly in part autobiographical. This is our culture, or at least a significant part of it. These are the tatted-out, pierced, black wearing people with purple hair. It is not just a momentary ideosyncracy. It is a failure to adopt a formal meaning system, which is the say the mantle of our shared, traditional culture.

This is a subterranean river, but this is in my view the rough sentiment that is causing Europe to slowly dissipate through the failure to maintain its population. Environmentalism is just the ideological cloak. As I understand it, some Muslims in Sweden are already wearing T-Shirts that say “2030: then we take over”.

Flagpole Sitta

I had visions, I was in them,
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
The rottenness and evil in me

Fingertips have memories,
Mine can’t forget the curves of your body
So when I feel a bit naughty
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes
(But no one ever does)

I’m not sick, but I’m not well
and I’m so hot ’cause I’m in hell

Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don’t even own a TV

Put me in the hospital for nerves
And then they had to commit me
You told them all I was crazy
They cut off my legs now I’m an amputee, Goddamn you

I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And I’m so hot cause I’m in hell
I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And it’s a sin, to live so well

I wanna publish ‘zines
And rage against machines
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn’t hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I’d like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind
Mind…

Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody’s comin’ to get me
Just say you never met me
I’m runnin’ underground with the moles
Diggin’ holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring
But if you’re bored then you’re boring
The agony and the irony, they’re killing me, whoa!

I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And I’m so hot cause I’m in hell
I’m not sick, but I’m not well
And it’s a sin to live this well

The discussion I want to see, following the shooting in Tucson, is one about the mental health of our youth generally. I have cited the effects of media, but even taking a step back from that, I would like us to start thinking about the future of our culture, of our American and Western civilization generally.

If you wander the halls of most universities, what you will see is pessimism. You will see exhausted minds whose big idea is socialism in some form, as if solving the material problems of life would solve the philosophical and spiritual ones. They are closed minded when it comes to philosophical progress. They have decided that language cannot be used to solve abstract moral problems, since no moral absolutes exist. Obviously, one can study ethics, but does anyone really know or care what ethicists do? I am speaking in general terms.

Since it is politically advantageous for them–teachers unions being huge contributors to the Democrat Party–our professional left likes to talk often about the state of our educational system. Yet, we spend as much as Norway, per capita, on education, and get results worse than countries that spend a third less. Why? Because we do not place the same value on education, culturally, and because we do not teach our children self discipline.

The huge gap I see is one of emotional balance, of psychological well being. When I grew up “cutting” was unknown. Now, children know about it in the fourth grade. A well known Disney actress took it up recently.

As I see it, there is this void in the social/emotional lives of millions in this country, that is the same void that led to Fascism in the last century. What would be totalitarians lack is a charismatic personality. They thought they had it in Obama, but didn’t. He has no character or charm–just the ability to read speeches as if he meant them.

And as I ponder this, I think about how Fascism is always labelled as “rightism”. In one sense, and one sense only, this is accurate: where Communists try to invent a new world, Fascists seek to reinvent the past, to hew to the past, and to radicalize and reify cultural traits that were assumed to exist then, and which are to be praised in the present. Traits such as courage, nobility, honor. This is what Mussollini did, in invoked the “Fasces”, symbol of the Roman Consul, and symbol of the Roman Empire in its youth. This is what Hitler did, in invoking the people–the Aryans, which is a Sanskrit word–from whom all the Indo-European peoples evolved, such as the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Indians.

In important respects, Fascism should be seen, I think, as anti-Communism. It uses the same authoritarianism, the same appeal to conform to the dictates of a ruling elite, as Communism. Yet it does not require the relinquishing of the past. It rather glorifies and flatters ordinary people with a new found nobility of character, that is best expressed through warfare and the glory of battle, and success, as envisioned and led by a powerful Leader.

But both doctrines start from alienation, from holes in the souls of the people to whom they appeal. They presume emotional problems, most of which are concealed in the motion of normal life. They assume people breaking from within from an abundance of energy they cannot figure out how to express creatively, and with which they are slowly being poisoned. The leader who figures out how to harness that–always through some greater or lesser extent of deception, for totalitarians–can conquer the nation.

What we need is moral reform. We need to recognize that Socialism has no ideas for cultural reform. Comfort is not a creed. It is not a code you can live by. It is the doctrine of the old and tired–the Europeans–who simply want to quietly fade away. I do not see this as the path for Americans. We are much younger, and still much more energetic.

In important respects, I have been wrestling with these ideas since my youth, roughly 16, when I started confronting them. And to be perfectly honest, the ability to reject atheism formally, from a scientific perspective, was important for me. I suppose I would make do as an atheist, but I would not be as resilient, and not as happy.

The older I get, the more I realize worldview is everything. Hitler–who was a rhetorical and psychological genius of the first order–invoked it constantly. He said all the time that the German Weltanschauung was unique, as I understand the matter. He told people they were special, that they had a historical destiny. That science was on their side. That morality was on their side.

And this worked, because people were longing to be told who they were. He met a deep seated need to fit in, to belong, to be CERTAIN of something, in an unsure world.

I think to finally achieve world peace–which I continue to view as a valid and viable goal over the next century, in conditions of freedom–we will have to learn to accept some degree of ambiguity in life. We can agree on general principles, but need to realize that there are some parts of this universe we will never really understand. We need to alter our focus from purported Divine Laws, to rules that clearly work in the here and now to foster happiness, including sincerity, honesty, generosity, wisdom, and love.

Here below, as above, these patterns bring fulfillment. Things, per se, do not. As miserable as many of our poor are, they live like kings of old. Why are they not content with this? Culture. Culture is everything.

And Socialism destroys culture. If we are to survive, we will have to abolish this pernicious doctrine. This is not to say we should not take care of our old, sick, and poor. It means that we should not make the sole value that of egalitarianism. To pretend all people are equal in quality in principle is to eradicate the very possibility of moral progress. Having eradicated the ideal of progress, you get the REGRESSION which currently defines our current cultural decline.

This is a bit meandering, but I think there are some important points here.