Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Universalism never is, and why I want YOU to defend your own interests

Ever notice how these days, almost every appeal comes wrapped in the language of universalism? It's for 'the common good' or it's immoral or selfish to take the other position. Frankly, it's my observation that when one person accuses another of selfishness in the political arena, the accuser is at least as guilty of selfishness as the accused. Granting any advantage or privilege to such arguments essentially amounts to promoting the glib and those lacking self-awareness over those actually vulnerable to a guilt trip. In the previous post I talked about moral standing. I propose that any speaker in the political arena that lacks moral standing for the argument that they're making be categorically ignored, and heckled and mocked if possible.

So what do I want from you, gentle reader? Simply put, I want you to recognize that it is at least as acceptable for you to defend your interests as it is for anyone else. If you're like most of my readers, everyone else (i.e. those from demographic and/or political groups other than your own) is already advancing their group interests through the political process, and guess what...YOU CAN'T STOP THEM FROM DOING SO OR WANTING TO DO SO. And, guess what else, you shouldn't want to. Forcing everyone or attempting to force everyone to make abstract appeals to universal morality in advancing their political arguments just gives a massive advantage to the party that controls the cultural battlespace. And it's funny, isn't it, how many SWPL positions just HAPPEN to advance their group status interest. If you're not like most of my readers (e.g., you're a non-Asian minority), congratulations, your group is already following my advice, and I will not attempt to level any moral condemnation on you and yours for your choice. I DO, however council you to consider carefully which side your bread is buttered on when considering such existential issues as demographic hegemony and who is to have it in the future.

There is no moral high ground in American politics as a whole at this time in history. There might never have been. There is only this:

If you do not defend your own interests as a group, you will lose in the group competition for status, demographic hegemony, and in extreme cases, survival. Demographic hegemony is an existential issue, there is no substitute for it, and it is a ball that is presently in play. Whether defending it is 'racist' (in practice, white Euros are the LEAST racist of any group on the planet) is irrelevant. Whether you and yours 'deserve' in some cosmic sense the hegemony you presently enjoy is also irrelevant. You ARE selfish, and pretty much everyone else on the planet is also, and in most cases a lot more so. So even if you're cursed with self-awareness, don't let such accusations get you down. The work 'Who Really Cares' demonstrates that statistically speaking, you probably are more generous than your accuser anyway.

Monday, October 18, 2010

A few words on moral standing

By moral standing, I'm speaking of the state of being wherein a person has the ability to make a moral argument that the listener feels obliged to take seriously, albeit not necessarily agree with in any way. An awful lot of moral arguments are tossed rather recklessly in our society today. Notice that the orthopraxis for most of these moral arguments is in general rather poor (do greenies, for instance, even actually have a lower resource footprint than the average American? Given that SWPLs are substantially richer than most of the population, I'm inclined to doubt it). I can't really speak to the orthodoxy here---the 'right speech' seems exponentially more important on most of these causes.

I'm hardly neurotypical, so I can't really use projection to figure out why people don't actually do what they say they believe (e.g., live in 'diverse' neighborhoods and send their kids to 'diverse' schools, refrain from divorce at a much better rate than the rest of society---although, in fairness, regular churchgoers do have a somewhat better track record if you adjust for the number of actual marriages, or donate their resources to the poor like they insist everyone should be forced to). The level of 'right speech' is very high, the level of orthodoxy is indeterminant (although I suspect it is low) and the level of orthopraxy is appalling. Why is this?
My take is that a large part of this is that the listener to said moral arguments doesn't take the speaker seriously. Yes, if the speaker is socially powerful, they'll mouth the platitudes, and they might even believe them at a surface level, but they won't actually do the orthopraxy---or, walk the walk. My theory is that a large part of the reason for this is that they do not perceive that the speaker and/or his movement to have the requisite moral standing for the amount of sacrifice that their beliefs being peddled would require.

Why is this? Certainly a statement is no less true or false regardless of who says it. Screwtape, for instance, or Roissy, can both give you some pretty insightful views into the human condition and its relationships. But they're hardly role models, and neither, interestingly enough ever attempts to build an argument on moral standing. In general, we don't have the time or the initiative to rigorously evaluate every claim every would be moral entrepreneur cares to attempt to sell us. We also have a strong underlying distrust of such individuals, for the well justified reason that they generally seek to manipulate us towards their own ends. This is especially true when they're calling for 'sacrifices'.

Our first cut is to determine---is it reasonable to believe that the saleman believes in the product that he's selling? Sure, he says he believes in it, but do his actions bear it out? To have any real standing here, the spokesman needs to be at least a couple of sigmas above the mean in the orthopraxis of what he's selling (ever wonder why the Early Quakers, Early Methodists, and in the modern era, Billy Graham were so successful in selling their product? A lot of it can be explained by the fact that they were perceived to be 'walking the walk'). In addition, that spokesman's core of followers have to be at least above average on said orthopraxis themselves. When they're not, people rightfully perceive that they're being played---that perhaps the speaker just wants THEM to make the sacrifices so that they can have a bigger share of the remaining pie. The neurotypical generally tends to just withhold any meaningful orthopraxis, opting for the merely symbolic. The non-neurotypical, like myself, tends to become a lot more hostile, and we're often blunt enough to tell you precisely what it is that you're doing wrong. If you actually want orthopraxis, and not just social power, you'd be prudent to listen.

Friday, October 15, 2010

A little encouragement for the non-neurotypical

On the various blogs I like to comment on, I often find myself speaking with distinctly non-neurotypical persons. By neurotypical, I mean a person whose brain (and particularly their emotions) work in a similar fashion to around 95% of the population or more. I am not using it in the fashion that the autism community uses it (i.e., people who are not autism-spectrum or Asperger's). Certainly there's a lot of overlap between my definition and said communities, but let's be clear, I'm not using this as in any way, shape, or form as a pejorative. Let's be blunt---if I mean to insult you, I will do so fairly openly---if I refer to you or another as not neurotypical, I'm not insulting but rather simply describing. Needless to say, I'm hardly neurotypical myself. My purpose in writing this little missive is to give aid and encouragement to my less neurotypical readers and those who find themselves dealing outside the neurotypical. A lot of what I've learned has come at a pretty steep price, and I'm willing to offer you a nearly 100% discount.

Probably the most common method we use as human beings for estimating what another person is thinking or feeling is the attempt to 'put ourselves in their shoes'. A programmer might say we try to instantiate a copy of ourselves inside their workspace and see what output it gives. A psychologist would say we use projection. Although the word 'projection' has a pretty seriously negative connotation (like a lot of other terrifically useful concepts, like generalization and stereotype), it is the neurotypical's most useful theory of 'other mind'. The closer you are in mindset to the person you attempt projection on, the better it works. For most guys, it works pretty well when dealing with other men, and poorly, but not so poorly as to be useless, when dealing with women. For the non-neurotypical, projection IS disastrous. It is bad, but usually a little better than useless with the same sex, and almost comically bad with the opposite sex. You can probably explain a large fraction of the relative lack of success of the average geek in romance right here. It doesn't necessarily have to be this way--remember, the purpose here is support and encouragement.

The second thing we reach for besides projection is a mental model of another person or group's behavior---how does it respond to the stimuli we generate? This SHOULD be the social salvation of the non-neurotypical, but in practice, it rarely is. The problem is, we, as a society, systematically lie about a terrific number of things as regards interpersonal relationships. Not being neurotypical myself, I'm not absolutely certain whether we lie intentionally or simply because we lack self-knowledge of our own motivations, or whether we simply do so for fear of social disapproval when we 'let the cat out of the bag', and speak too frankly. Here is the biggest one, in my experience. The only people who you'll meet in ordinary life who will be open on this one are salesmen, and only those speaking generally among themselves:

Doing someone a favor does NOT make them like you more. Getting them to do you a favor (particularly lots of small ones over a period of time) generally DOES.

To the non-neurotypical, or the neurotypical who's trying to use his mind's general processor (his social processor generally doesn't communicate directly with his conscious mind), this MAKES NO SENSE. Why in the hell would I dislike someone who did me lots of favors in the hopes of currying favor/improving their relationship with me? And why would I like a person more/be more willing to do them more favors if I'd donated to their cause in the past/helped them out of numerous jams/had them pester me for favors in the past?

Well, if you're not neurotypical, and I'm not, you wouldn't. However around 95% of the population would, AND THEY'RE NOT GOING TO CHANGE, even (perhaps especially), if you marry them. They're simply not wired that way. It's not a moral thing (although a lot of moral accusations are tossed in BOTH directions here, I'll talk about that a little more in a future post), it's just their nature. If you observe their behavior, both in your personal life and in macro examples in history, you'll find this to be true. Why it's true is something I don't really grok---I mean, I can advance possibilities---like maybe the neurotypical views you asking a favor as a status stroke and you doing him a favor as a status hit which his gut resents or maybe we mishandle it like we typically do sunk costs, but as I said, I don't really grok this one. In general, I counsel the non-neurotypical to do the following:
1) In the words of Dr Phil---ask yourself...how's that working out for you? I.E. is your mental model of others working for you? If it is, wonderful, if not
2) Suspend your existing model for a little while. Start actually observing what people DO...you should probably ignore what they say for the time being
3) Don't worry about explaining so much WHY people do what they do for now, just focus on general stimulus-response pairs...i.e. WHAT they do
Eventually you can work on refining your models into serviceable stereotypes and you'll find your success in this arena greatly enhanced.

If you meditate on this observation (I think Ben Franklin was one of the first to publish it in bald language), you'll find it helps to explain an awful lot of the stuff you see in your interpersonal life that just doesn't make any sense. Why do so many women keep going back to guys they know abuse them? Why do charities pester us incessantly once we've given them money? Why do fraternities, armies, navies, secret societies, and sororities have degrading hazing rituals?

Here are a few concrete suggestions:
If you're like me, you probably have a massively positive 'favor balance' (i.e, you do a lot more favors on the net than you ask for). Reduce that balance---don't explicitly say you're trying to 'call in a favor'---for some reason, being explicit like this REALLY rubs the neurotypical the wrong way because they absolutely HATE having interactions like that framed in transactional terms. Do, on the other hand, ASK for some favors---saying...can you do me a favor or, maybe you can help me or, I've got a problem, and I think you're the one with the (insert positive attribute here) that can help me are all good openers. Don't go hog wild here, but ask for them in cases where you don't necessarily 'need' them. Perversely, you'll find they'll improve and solidify your relationship with the person that does you a favor. If you study a bit of sales, you'll find this one is huge---but I'm not sure the catchy name they're calling it these days :-)

Friday, October 8, 2010

The reactionary plan for victory

Despair not, fellow reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries. Raise up your countenance, ye faint-hearted conservatives, standing athwart history shouting, 'slow down'. Victory is not impossible.

First off, let's define what we mean by victory. By victory I'm not talking about some utopian state where injustices cease, the lion lies down with the lamb and the lamb actually gets some sleep. God already has a victory plan for that, but He made it abundantly clear that no man knows the day or the hour. God has also shown no particular reluctance to let a nation destroy itself through its own wickedness. So while God might decide to bail us out of our predicament, He has lots of reasons not to. What I'm talking about in terms of victory is hegemony over the piece of real estate we call the US. If I've any foreign readers who face similar problems in their own nations, rest assured that my sympathies are with you, and you're free to steal whatever you like from my offerings. In fact, you can even claim them as your own original insights, if you think that'll raise your standing and make you more effective.

To define Hegemony, I find the wiki definition pretty adequate:
Hegemony (ἡγεμονία hēgemonía, English: [UK] , [US]: ; "leadership" or "hegemon" for "leader") is the political, economic, ideological or cultural power exerted by a dominant group over other groups, regardless of the explicit consent of the latter. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

Does this not describe what we, the reactionary, counter-revolutionary, and faint-hearted conservative desire? Is it not what we'd answer the great question---what do you want? with should it be asked and limited to matters temporal and not spiritual?

Why does one want hegemony for one's group? Well, from my perspective, the main reason is to prevent ANOTHER group from having it. The sort of hegemony I'm referring primarily to here is demographic. Demographic hegemony is an existential issue. If you have it, you are not at the mercy of the other groups within your society. They act contrary to your interests only at your sufferance. If you don't have it, very bad things tend to happen. Amy Chua's 'World on Fire' catalogs what has happened to a large number of members of market dominant minorities throughout recent history. The experiences of the Jews with pogroms also provides a great deal of insight here as well. It should not surprise anyone that the majority of affirmative action-type programs throughout the world in fact discriminate AGAINST the minority (especially if it is market dominant) in favor of the majority. The US is backwards here, but rest assured, if whites of Euro extraction lose their demographic hegemony, we'll get in step with the rest of the world on this issue. Some readers will no doubt have personal experiences of what happens when they lost demographic hegemony locally.

A look at election statistics shows that despite purported 'natural conservatism' of said groups that our elite has invited to displace us, they are moving us in precisely the opposite direction. This is so blindingly obvious one has to ask the Republican party---what in the Hell are you thinking? This is perhaps why they are the Stupid party.

If you are on the conservative/reactionary side of the cultural war, immigration and demographic hegemony is one battle that you MUST win. If you don't win that battle, the rest of this relatively nonviolent strategy will do you no good. If your enemies can import unlimited numbers of voters that they can buy off with your money, you have lost. Your only option at that point is recourse to arms. Please realize that any significant armed conflict inside the US will destroy the incredibly brittle infrastructure that we've built up via JIT (just in time) systems and a near total lack of civil defense. For a fictional depiction of what is likely to transpire there, I refer you to 'One Second After'. Simply the collapse of the power grid, inevitable if at least one side views the conflict as existential, gets you there. So if you're looking for a litmus issue, that is it. You need to aggressively support programs like Arizona's and as the resistance by your enemies infuriates more of your faint-hearted allies, to continuously ramp up your demands. Doing so will shift the window of acceptable discourse, and thereby, the window of action that people will be willing to countenance. Ultimately you need something even more profound than 'Operation Wetback'. You're going to be called all kinds of names for this, so you need to start with things that are patently reasonable and build the levels of outrage against your opponents, who will feel compelled to repeatedly play their race cards. The good news is that fundamentally, most of the population is in favor of your position. They just lack the self-awareness and willingness to suffer social disapproval to state it boldly. You don't really have to argue with your enemies. Demographic hegemony is an existential issue is not an argument, it is a mailed fist. It is a statement that no appeal to universalist utilitarianism will sway you. Even if we, the white Americans of Euro extraction, ARE devils spawned by Satan in the pits of hell whose grandfathers stole everything they had from Non-Asian minorities, the answer remains the same. You must and will fight to retain your demographic hegemony. The near total lack of such slander against Japan and China, and in fact most other nations also tends to undermine the claim that the reason that we should cheerfully surrender said hegemony over the US is about universalist utilitarianism in favor of the alternate reason that the speaker is simply anti-white. But his hypocrisy or lack thereof really isn't important. Even if he is totally sincere, and donates 80% of his income every year, living only a lifestyle roughly equivalent to the average human on Earth (fat chance, even Peter Singer the high priest of utilitarianism doesn't do that), it DOES NOT matter. He is your enemy, just as much as the hypocrite who is simply anti-white or the useful idiot who just parrots what he mistakenly thinks will make women find him attractive.
You also need to consider this: Charges of Hypocrisy generally only really stick (i.e., give you a useful lever to pry off more people onto your side from the other side) when you control the cultural battlespace. If you're reading this, you don't control it. Notice how the myriad examples of gross hypocrisy on the left fail to mortally wound even it's most egregious offenders? Only if you control a media that aggressively hounds such miscreants does this tactic actually work. It's a useful approach to stoke the anger and commitment levels of your allies, but it's not really all that useful in getting folks on our side. Sad but true.

What we do have going for us is this:
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/05/conservatives-have-more-children-than.html

Simply put, our side of the culture war is reproducing itself, and theirs is not. With a few enhancements (celebrating large families, supporting those among our friends that choose to have them, and having more children ourselves), this is the core of our plan for victory. Notice that this is not a tactic, nor a grand strategy in the Napoleonic sense. No, this is something far scarier to anyone who has studied history, particularly military history. This is logistics. Logistical superiority is decisive over protracted conflicts when the side possessing it has the will.
In His great wisdom, he has made many of the great sins self-limiting.

The next big component is to prevent the other side from stealing our children for use against us as virtual jannisaries. The major weapon in the arsenal here is homeschooling. Homeschool families, in addition to having a much better TFR (total fertility ratio averaging 3.5, which may be an underestimate given that not all of the families surveyed are likely to be done having children--link follows) are much more likely to pass their world view on to their children. http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/Academic_Achievement_and_Demographic_Traits_of_Homeschool_Students_A_Nationwide_Study.shtml

The reason for this shouldn't be surprising. The average kid spends around 6-8 hours a day for an average of 180 days a year in school. If you count other para-school activities where they're under the auspices of the school, it gets even worse. This has most parents and churches MASSIVELY outgunned. Most people's world views aren't formed by careful contemplation but rather by rote repetition. Here's another secret. It is practically impossible to teach without also teaching a world view. I found this out directly when teaching engineering, which is one of the LEAST ideological subjects I can think of. So since controlling the public schools isn't feasible UNTIL we have hegemony, and schools are inherently agencies of indoctrination, it follows that we should work to withdraw our children from them and undermine their public support, with an eye towards destroying them or coopting them (in the off chance that we start to succeed on a faster time scale than I had hoped). Fortunately, they really are quite wretched at their stated goals, which is really quite surprising when you think about it. Here they are, with massive staffs and tons of educated people available to them, and massive budgets and resources available to them as well. And they STILL can't produce results better than homeschool moms with a high school education or less. This must infuriate them, as it would me, if your average DIY'er could do better engineering than me with my vaunted PhD and years of industry experience.
Here are some excerpts: (http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp)

The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.
Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile
Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.
Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile

This is really amusing when you think about it, considering that being 'certified' requires a college degree, which has an association with a higher percentile, but non-certified parents still did better (although probably not statistically significantly better). But enough of mocking the prowess of our hard working teachers. Frankly I'm glad they suck, for they did not, making my case to non-ideological potential allies would be far harder. There is no reason in principle that leftist suicidal indoctrination can not be combined with a perfectly adequate academic education. Let us thank God that it is not.

The next part of the strategy, having secured our own children, is to steal theirs. How would we do this? The answer is, the stupid, or perhaps blessed bastards will give them to us. All we have to do is to take them by offering them what they claim they want---i.e., a better education for less money. Getting their young sons is particularly easy. You see, the leftist indoctrination is so anti-male, and especially anti-young boy, that all you have to do to make loyal allies of them is one simple thing. DON'T HATE THEM. A mere lack of animus is really all it takes. There is a generation of young boys that is literally dying for affirmation, particularly from adult males. A nickname for this lack I've seen on a number of blogs is 'Daddy Deprivation'. This lack probably contributes to rates of homosexuality and other social dysfunction. I've seen this effect in my church, which has picked up more than a few such lads sans their heathen parents, who are happy to have free babysitting and group activities from us. Befriend them, form them, and recruit them as soldiers in the fight for their own best interests.

One proposal I'd make for our Catholic brothers of reactionary temperament is to establish schools for the gifted single children of the SWPLs in our large cities. Make them entry-exam schools, like Stuyvesant in New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School
Provide a top quality education with hard core reactionary Catholic indoctrination, like you did in the days where the Jesuits really were the Society of Jesus (think Counter Reformation days). Provide it for very little money in a school surrounded by people that look like them and are from similar social background (the dirty secret of why most SWPLs go for private education or 'good schools' :-). Jesus said to love your enemies, here's your chance. Their parents are mostly your enemies, but when you love their children, you love them. Almost any mother and many fathers get this. These kids will become very influential in 20 years or so, and their parents will SELL them to you. If you've got the cash and the time, I've got your victory, and I'll even let you claim it is your own original insight. No cite necessary, plagiarize at will. Make sure to amplify the correlates of persuasion for your young charges that you are forming as much as possible as well. This means taking physical education seriously. If they come out of your schools noticeably healthier and in better shape than the average population that they are competing with, their words will be taken more seriously and considered more persuasive by default. It's just the way humans work, exploit it without mercy. If the hottest girls in college are demanding chastity prior to marriage and pushing a reactionary Catholic worldview, the boys will be bent in that direction. Similarly, if the best looking, most eligible men are doing likewise, it will majorly influence the opposite sex as well. For a nearly absurd corner case of this, I invite you to consider my Korean friend's explanation of why they view rioting as a really cool sport over there. He basically told me, because the chicks dig it, and a great wave of cross-cultural understanding swept over me :-) Also, sending them into cultural battle in pairs and groups is exponentially more effective. It is not by accident that Jesus sent the disciples out in twos and groups or that Christianity has always been a faith based around community. It is a lot easier to suppress your opposition in debate when you know you're not alone...particularly when you're much better organized. This is a war friends, make no mistake. Start treating it with the seriousness that requires.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Asynchronous Blowback

This thread is open for any blowback, comments, etc from any musings I've posted on other blogs or forums.