I heard [identity redacted for shame and despair] having a political discussion the other day. It was via telephone, so I only caught the one side of the conversation, but I'm reasonably sure I got the gist of it. Just so as to not seem partisan, I won't even state which side of the aisle this person is on. Basically, I got this statement: "They won't do anything unless its actually destroying the United States." In other words, this person believes (and I'm not making this up, they've said as much before) that the side they're not on actively 'wants' to destroy the US. Not that their designs are cynical and happen to be destroying the US, nor that they are well meaning and she just thinks they will destroy the US, but that they actually want to destroy the US, that that is their goal.
Ya know how during the Civil War, all these soldiers were writing letters to home. Almost none of them talk about fighting to preserve slavery. If they mention the cause of the war, and why they're fighting, it is about Northern Aggression and States Rights. But of course, the war was fought for slavery, regardless of what the rank and file thought they were fighting for; the Declarations of Intransigence, I mean Declarations of Independence from the seceding states all mention the need to preserve slavery, and no historian ever thinks the war would have been fought if not for slavery. If we want to put a caveat on it on it, we can say the war was actually fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery (from the North's perspective), but the south had seceded to preserve slavery. Despite that people will deny this, they are doing so because of their delusion, just as the soldiery, if they really believed they were fighting merely for states' rights, thought so because of their delusion.
I have some questions: How much do they know they're deluded? Do they recognize that their real beliefs are immoral and therefore lie to themselves? Do they self delude and create a wall to protect their sense of righteousness? Are they actually trying to destroy the United States, as they presume the 'other side' is?
And because I'm "woke" about human fallibility and my place in it, how much do I commit the same thing? Is my analysis off? How much have I been duped by propaganda without realizing? I have no qualms admitting I am left of center, but I hardly toe any party line. Obama, as talented a statesman as I think he was, still committed the US to more endless warring and filled cabinet positions with corporate powers. Some in his administration already have been accused of war crimes, and as time passes I have no doubt that Obama himself will be found guilty of war crimes as well and need to avoid the Hague, despite his Nobel prize.
But on the other hand, so as not to sound as though I'm trying to equivocate unnecessarily and come down too hard on myself or like minded folks, I'm not the one who naively thinks "the other side" is out to destroy America (or the world). Even if I think we are headed toward a multi-front ecological cataclysm that the "other side" refuses to recognize and act on, despite ample evidence, I don't think they are actively trying to destroy the world. I just think that certain truths are too painful for them to accept, or that they conflict too much with their world view, and therefore they cannot wrap their heads around it.
This is definitely an evil thing, but I don't think the people themselves are evil...or at least I don't think they are intentionally evil. Even Trump and his cronies, who I'm convinced actually are ushering in one of the greatest existentially threatening eras of all time, I don't think "they're trying to destroy America," even though I'm sure they are actually destroying America. I don't think Trump supporters are all trying to destroy America; hell I don't even toe the common line that they are all racist. I don't believe that for a second.
And those Civil War soldiers who said they were fighting for states' rights, not the preservation of slavery? I really believe they meant that! I really think they thought they were fighting for a righteous cause. They were certainly indifferent to the slaves and no matter what, guilty of not trying to end the evil institution themselves, but I honestly don't think they thought they were "fighting to preserve slavery", just as the soldiers fighting today think they are fighting for American Freedom when obviously all our wars are about American Hegemony, not Freedom (unless you believe that to maintain our freedom we must maintain our Hegemony...one might wonder then how we were free before our ascent to world dominance, and also whether we think any other nations deserve to be free, since they don't have hegemonies...don't hurt your head).
What's the real question I'm asking? I'm not really going anywhere unfortunately, this is a kind of thrashing and question rather than analysis. How does one work on somebody who has an obviously ill formed belief? How would I ever have convinced a Civil War soldier that his side was actually fighting for the preservation of slavery, rather than States' Rights? I can't even convince modern 'Confederates' of the same thing? Is our intransigence only about preserving our precious egos? And is that a human failing that we should understand and sympathize with, or is it an evil worth killing over? And how can we ever know if we are not demonstrating the exact same quality while trying to change it in the other?
Monday, January 21, 2019
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
The Burnout Generation
There's this here article HERE. Go ahead and read it. It's an article about the perpetual state of burnout Millennials find themselves in.
I can see a lot of myself in it for sure. There's the undo anxiety about small stuff: errands, paperwork, opening mail. There's the lack of feeling accomplishment even when finishing an important or large task. There's the guilt surrounding the already existing feelings of helplessness for feeling so helpless.
There's not much by way of solutions presented here, only commiseration. The author seems to conclude that there is no real solution, that awareness and commiseration are the closest things to a solution there are, which only highlights the depth of the trap. Burnout is an oubliette. One can't even make enough contact with the prison to understand it.
She touches on its beginnings in childhood, how this is an old feeling, not something that started in adulthood. And she sees this as being part of the culture of aggressive helicopter parenting that predominates, itself perversely enforced by shame and guilt. I've seen friend's raise children in much the same 'understanding' way as I was, where from an early age conscientiousness is heaped upon the child, burdening them with thought. Every decision they make must be a conscientious one. If they try to escape conscientiousness through drugs, which for awhile has taken the form of screen time for the young, then it abates the immediacy of the conscientiousness but ultimately only makes things worse, just like the drunkard who drinks to forget he's a drunkard. We are so overburdened with thinking that simply being and doing are almost impossible. Thoughts intrude at every turn.
More research about spanking has come out, always in the negative, showing that spanking leads kids to express themselves through violence more often. But is the alternative really to internalize all spanking as metaphor and become mind crippling self-flagellants? And not only self-crippling, but particularly susceptible to being victimized by others. How does one come safely out of that training in adulthood? How do we train our children to be both conscientious without becoming prisoner to it, to such extent they become paralyzed?
I'm inclined to (perhaps tritely) say that the cure for this as children is freedom. Freedom to roam more, to associate more as we choose, the freedom to solve problems and dangers and scary situations on our own. There are movements like this arising--free range children-- but they are slow and often resisted, both from without and from within. Because what if your kid is the one who's kidnapped? What if letting kids roam more does lead to more disappearing children, more child predators? Maybe to save the sanity of the young it is worth it, but is it worth it if your kid is the one taken? Not only will you have to deal with the loss, but the community will not let you forget your failure. They, afterall, kept their kids safe and sound in their panopticon.
The author also brings up academics, and more could be said there. The structure of our schooling has been awry for awhile, but with the increasing emphasis on constant testing it is becoming more and more its perverse self. Math is maybe the best example here. Give a child--a smart child--a problem with just a bit of novelty and they'll throw up their hands. Despite all the time devoted toward math, these kids have no idea how to manipulate it to solve novel problems nor the belief that this is something they can even do! There's the crux. All these kids grow up, grow up, try to "adult" and find that nobody told them the whole thing was improvised, and nobody ever taught them how to improvise! If anything they had it crammed into their head that improvising, that deciding for themselves their goals, discerning for themselves what is important, was always not so subtly suppressed by their culture. And we are so clueless about this ourselves that we do not realize that implicit indoctrination can be every bit as oppressive as the explicit kind.
I can see a lot of myself in it for sure. There's the undo anxiety about small stuff: errands, paperwork, opening mail. There's the lack of feeling accomplishment even when finishing an important or large task. There's the guilt surrounding the already existing feelings of helplessness for feeling so helpless.
There's not much by way of solutions presented here, only commiseration. The author seems to conclude that there is no real solution, that awareness and commiseration are the closest things to a solution there are, which only highlights the depth of the trap. Burnout is an oubliette. One can't even make enough contact with the prison to understand it.
She touches on its beginnings in childhood, how this is an old feeling, not something that started in adulthood. And she sees this as being part of the culture of aggressive helicopter parenting that predominates, itself perversely enforced by shame and guilt. I've seen friend's raise children in much the same 'understanding' way as I was, where from an early age conscientiousness is heaped upon the child, burdening them with thought. Every decision they make must be a conscientious one. If they try to escape conscientiousness through drugs, which for awhile has taken the form of screen time for the young, then it abates the immediacy of the conscientiousness but ultimately only makes things worse, just like the drunkard who drinks to forget he's a drunkard. We are so overburdened with thinking that simply being and doing are almost impossible. Thoughts intrude at every turn.
More research about spanking has come out, always in the negative, showing that spanking leads kids to express themselves through violence more often. But is the alternative really to internalize all spanking as metaphor and become mind crippling self-flagellants? And not only self-crippling, but particularly susceptible to being victimized by others. How does one come safely out of that training in adulthood? How do we train our children to be both conscientious without becoming prisoner to it, to such extent they become paralyzed?
I'm inclined to (perhaps tritely) say that the cure for this as children is freedom. Freedom to roam more, to associate more as we choose, the freedom to solve problems and dangers and scary situations on our own. There are movements like this arising--free range children-- but they are slow and often resisted, both from without and from within. Because what if your kid is the one who's kidnapped? What if letting kids roam more does lead to more disappearing children, more child predators? Maybe to save the sanity of the young it is worth it, but is it worth it if your kid is the one taken? Not only will you have to deal with the loss, but the community will not let you forget your failure. They, afterall, kept their kids safe and sound in their panopticon.
The author also brings up academics, and more could be said there. The structure of our schooling has been awry for awhile, but with the increasing emphasis on constant testing it is becoming more and more its perverse self. Math is maybe the best example here. Give a child--a smart child--a problem with just a bit of novelty and they'll throw up their hands. Despite all the time devoted toward math, these kids have no idea how to manipulate it to solve novel problems nor the belief that this is something they can even do! There's the crux. All these kids grow up, grow up, try to "adult" and find that nobody told them the whole thing was improvised, and nobody ever taught them how to improvise! If anything they had it crammed into their head that improvising, that deciding for themselves their goals, discerning for themselves what is important, was always not so subtly suppressed by their culture. And we are so clueless about this ourselves that we do not realize that implicit indoctrination can be every bit as oppressive as the explicit kind.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
No no NOOOOO!
Why am I so bad at updating this? I'm worse at updating my blog than I even am at not being too scared of my own writing to write! Who reads anymore anyway? Whatever, I'm working on Celia 2, also on the old old Bang! Boom! Boomie!, which is the piece I work on while only listening to Die Antwoord. Also that werewolf erotica is off the back burner and sitting on the cabinet...also, still waiting for cover art for Drakenschloss...something needs to happen there, because that's ready for the publishment. Public Publishment.
Anyway, I'm still alive, and sometimes writing...
Anyway, I'm still alive, and sometimes writing...
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Random Post on SJW hating Asians
Okay, so youtube suggested this one to me (how and why, no idea), and they honestly don't say anything that interesting or challenging or new. In fact, its pretty standard lo-fi libertarian views except that...they're Asian, and they very much identify as Asian. This is important to them, AND they view their particular political beliefs as rooted in their Asian upbringing.
Honestly, I'm not even sure who I'm posting this for. I guess my "SJW" friends (that's not meant as an insult, but its a handy identifier), and what I'm trying to get across I'm not sure, except that, just like the "Chinese Families for Trump", this is a part of the plurality of opinions that exist. Oh, I suppose one thing that did catch my attention was their statements on how they think successful Asians are next on the chopping block of the SJWs. Interpret that as you may.
So, yeah, I don't have much opinion on this one, it just struck me as somewhat unique, if not very well articulated.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Dumb Tummy
I could wake up thinking about stories, but instead my brain wants to think about dumb people's ideas of argumentation.
This morning its more dumb free market fundamentalism, the kind that calls anything not sufficiently laissez faire 'socialism' and likes to spout of pointless aphorisms like "all governments fail their people 100% of the time" and "governments are wrong because they use force". Of course, its okay for them to use force when its something the free market fundamentalist approves of.
Anyway, so my brain decides to take a new route, and here's where it eventually got (though this is the tl;dr formulation): Big business spends a lot of money on government, on buying politicians, buying access to politicians, buying lobbyists, etc. so we should view it as free market activity, ie. the government is part of the market. Since the market can't do any wrong, the government can't either. So a free market fundamentalist either needs to deny that business spends money on politics (impossible) or that some market activity is bad.
They'd make protests, which is why my brain iterated through dozens of more complex formulations, but that's basically where it ends up. Free market fundamentalism is stupid.
This morning its more dumb free market fundamentalism, the kind that calls anything not sufficiently laissez faire 'socialism' and likes to spout of pointless aphorisms like "all governments fail their people 100% of the time" and "governments are wrong because they use force". Of course, its okay for them to use force when its something the free market fundamentalist approves of.
Anyway, so my brain decides to take a new route, and here's where it eventually got (though this is the tl;dr formulation): Big business spends a lot of money on government, on buying politicians, buying access to politicians, buying lobbyists, etc. so we should view it as free market activity, ie. the government is part of the market. Since the market can't do any wrong, the government can't either. So a free market fundamentalist either needs to deny that business spends money on politics (impossible) or that some market activity is bad.
They'd make protests, which is why my brain iterated through dozens of more complex formulations, but that's basically where it ends up. Free market fundamentalism is stupid.
Friday, May 4, 2018
High Performance Logic
Cops kill black people in higher numbers than they kill white people, but black people kill the majority of other killed black people.
Immigrants are dangerous because they kill Americans, but killed Americans are mostly killed by other Americans.
This can mean only one thing:
We should emigrate the white Americans and immigrate all the immigrants into America where, because of emigration, there would be no white Americans to kill in America, and the immigrants would only kill other immigrants and black people, and the black people could kill the immigrants too, but mostly other black people. The white Americans could just kill all the people wherever they emigrated because they have the most guns.
Except Israel.
Immigrants are dangerous because they kill Americans, but killed Americans are mostly killed by other Americans.
This can mean only one thing:
We should emigrate the white Americans and immigrate all the immigrants into America where, because of emigration, there would be no white Americans to kill in America, and the immigrants would only kill other immigrants and black people, and the black people could kill the immigrants too, but mostly other black people. The white Americans could just kill all the people wherever they emigrated because they have the most guns.
Except Israel.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Not really a title...
I had to write down an incomplete thought and this was the most convenient place. It makes sense to protect a culture that is actually successful from change. Growing up in a privileged community, this was a kind of theme. If through hard work and good management of resources, a group of people build for themselves something blessed, it only makes sense that they must protect the core of their culture from both the desperate and the opportunistic. But there should be a clear distinction between a successful culture and an exploitative one, though it may be that in the modern world, such a distinction does not exist. We all get our affordable dry goods, etc. from impoverished nations, where the workers are paid next to nothing for their toil. What looks like 'success' may merely be the advantageous positioning of oneself in nearer the top of the economic food chain, not necessarily more work or better management. To think otherwise is akin to the Gospel of Wealth: your riches show you're beloved of God, and nothing can disprove that, as has been for practical purposes shown.
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