Every political philosophy starts with a set of beliefs about the human condition that are claimed to be universal and timeless. Based on these assumptions, there is a critique of the present state of affairs and the political organization responsible for it. What comes after that is an alternative. The claim is that the alternative will more closely correspond to man’s natural condition. Usually, there is a list of principles put forward that are intended to increase the good and diminish the bad.
Communists, for example, assumed that human beings are naturally cooperative, but that private property creates conflict. The greed of a few, exploiting the many, results in conflict between the classes. Eliminate private property and you eliminate that social conflict. They argued that the move to industrial societies meant scarcity could be eliminated through collective ownership of capital. The elimination of private property would lead to the equitable distribution of production.
Libertarians see cooperation as the result of the diversity of talents among humans and their rational self-interest. Once two people figured out that they could increase their output by combining their efforts, the foundation of society was set. People soon figured out that combining diverse talents increases collective productivity and material prosperity. Because humans are motivated by self-interest, they naturally cooperate with one another to increase their material prosperity.
The people who currently rule over us, start from the assumption that all humans possess the same natural raw material. The differences we see in people are the result of racism, poverty, inequality and the legacy of white supremacy. Otherwise, people come into the world as amorphous blobs that can be shaped into whatever society makes of them. Whether the rulers truly believe this is not important. Public policy is based on the blank slate and extreme egalitarianism.
If the starting point for a political philosophy is a set of universal truths about the human condition, then it is necessary that those truths be based in reality. Marxism has been a bloody disaster, because it assumes things about man that are contrary to the reality of the human condition. Marxists tried to remedy this by killing off the inconvenient, but it turned out that you just can’t kill enough people to make it work. Transforming society into an abattoir lowers productivity, rather than producing plenty.
Similarly, but without the bloodshed, libertarianism has been a complete failure as a political movement, because homo economicus is not real. Material self-interest is certainly part of the puzzle, but humans are motivated by all sorts of things. More important, the assumption that people will deal with one another in good faith, once the monopoly of the state is removed, is false. Every society has some portion motivated to rule over the rest. Someone will always be in charge.
Much of what vexes the modern West is that the people in charge have embraced a political philosophy based on invalid assumptions about human nature. People are not born as amorphous blobs that can be molded into model citizens. Instead, they are the genetic result of thousands of mating decisions that came before them. Further, nature does not distribute her gifts equally between individuals or groups. The diversity of man extends to all aspects of the human animal, not just the superficial traits.
The main reason the West is struggling to square what it believes about humanity with what is happening in the world, is that the core assumptions of the West were formed in the Enlightenment. The great debates about the nature of man were between Europeans, who were primarily concerned with how Europeans would organize themselves, manage relations between groups of Europeans and conduct commerce between and within groups of Europeans.
Another issue is that Western style liberal democracy is a creation of an age when smart people knew very little about the human sciences. Their speculation about the evolution of settled society was a work of imagination. They may have had some sense that humanity progressed from savagery to civilization, but they had no understanding of genetics, evolution or the interplay between culture and biology. They had no knowledge about what we inherited from our simian ancestors.
The big flaw is the assumption that there is some reason, beyond the material, for why humans are the only intelligent species on the planet. We’re special. As such, there must be some reason for it. The very notion of human progress assumes there must be a reason for our existence. After all, to what are we progressing if there is no purpose to our existence? What is the point of the arc of history if it does not have a beginning, middle and end? There must be some reason for it.
Current events are a good lesson in the reality of the human condition. Humans are not relentlessly pursuing their self-interest or naturally cooperative. The engine that drives humanity is the need for safety. We see that all around us as people meekly hide in their closets because they are told the bogeyman is outside. The great panic would not be possible if people were driven by self-interest. Why would the overwhelming majority sacrifice for the one or two percent vulnerable to the virus?
The fact is, people have gone along with this because down deep, in the store of man’s oldest desires, is the urge to huddle in the cave with the rest of the tribe, as the storm rages outside. That is man’s oldest desire as a social animal. To bind together in a shared fear of the natural world is what makes us human. The great motivator of mankind is the desire for safety. If there is a point to our existence, it is to shelter with our cave mates trembling in fear at the great danger outside.
For sure, people do more than just shelter from the danger, but it is the desire for safety that drives our actions. We will cooperate with one another to defeat some threat and will profit greatly from saving people from a threat. Safety and its traveling companion comfort are the great drivers of human progress. A great way to get rich is to eliminate a danger from life. The most popular way, however, is to make the sheltering from the dangers of life as comfortable as possible.
If there is to be a new moral philosophy for the post-Enlightenment age, it will have to be based, at least in part, on man’s nature desire for safety. In fact, the neo-liberal order may very well be the moral philosophy to first root itself in safety. The legion of schoolmarms and harpies monitoring our speech and making sure we have no unclean thoughts are all here for our collective good. They even say their role is to create safe spaces for every conceivable type of person.
The Enlightenment was as much about observing what was happening on its own as crafting blueprints for future societies. Marx, for example, had plenty of examples to draw from to form his ideas. Maybe that is what we are seeing today. As the custodial state forms up, what we call the neo-liberal order will become more formal and get a new name that captures its essence. Perhaps we are living at the dawn of Custodialism, the politics of keeping everyone safe from any possible danger.
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Treat everyone like a kindergartener. What could go wrong?
On normie social media, the Custodialists complain that those of us not in the Corona Cult are like the kid who gets the whole class in trouble….
Never do they bother to question if the teacher is abusing their authority in the first place.
Simple.
Run out of eggs.
Read up. ^
🥚🥚Revolution 🥚🥚
The harpies and schoolmarms aren’t doing it for “us,” though – they’re doing it for them. This is the first time in their entire lives that cat ladies and bugmen have felt truly effective, truly important. They’re literally saving the human race through nagging!! Y’all, they really, truly believe this, with all their hearts and souls. They’ve gotten religion — if you watch their reactions to the Wuhan Flu, it exactly mirrors a religious conversion. The only effective counter-propaganda will give them a way to channel that conversion experience into something productive. They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be… Read more »
All correct except that last one, S. Women will deliberately destroy themselves and their families too. They are doing it right before our eyes. One of the classic female power plays is emotional blackmail. How many times have you seen low women try it? Where they bring about a situation where they can say, “Do, say, and think what I tell you to do!!! Or I’ll hurt myself!!!!” It worked like a hot damn on me for years until one day… it wasn’t worth it any more. I told the women in my family to “go ahead, make my day…”… Read more »
That’s why it’s important to divert them early. As you say, they’re going to martyr themselves for “safety.” It’s unavoidable. All we can do — all we MUST do — is change the definition of “safety.” Right now it’s “stay at home.” Change it to #CancelChina. Post pictures of yourself in a medical mask throwing some “Made in China” crap in the trash can, and shriek that you’re doing it “for the children.” Direct the purity spiral towards “buy American.” Do it right, and she’ll happily sit in an American-made yurt, on a dirt floor, wearing sackcloth and ashes… an… Read more »
I like the idea, but – forgive me for being obtuse – I just can’t see that working. The current panic, in its present form, allows unlimited drama. Women can pose as heroes and brave, noble victims with the scenario as it now stands. #CancelChina would be an excellent tactic to use with men because you can make a case for it. With most women, all you’ll do is ruin their fun. At the very least… that is going to be a very tough sell. When you add in the fact that women are socialists and fascists by nature, and… Read more »
Ok, maybe, but it’s something. DO SOMETHING. The reason the alt-right, “Our Thing,” whatever never gets anywhere is because we just sit around pulling our puds in blog comments. Either actually DO SOMETHING, or just sit back with a drink in your hand and watch the magnificent spectacle of human folly that is Current Year America. Either one is an honorable choice. But crying “won’t somebody do something!!!” while refusing to even think about trying to do anything is classic chick behavior. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears! You lead; I’ll follow. I don’t care who gets… Read more »
Sorry, S! No disrespect meant. I am an old Yesterday Man, and the gynocracy dispensed with me 7 years ago. But I fought and died on this hill so I do know a bit about it.
I think you are on the right track. If we could offer a scenario to them that allows them to put their histrionics and drama to good use… it would be done like dinner…
Gentlemen….I was once a brainwashed fringe of the early gynocracy and offer an insight. Or incite as the case may be. I believe that womens’ biggest moral challenge is our emotionalism. We think with our emotions. The ability to self-discipline, to temper our emotions and step back and view them and the world from 30,000 feet is our greatest challenge. There is no facing this. We live in an age where the fires of drama and emotionalism are fed and fanned. Whatever solutions you come up with will be trampled for the addictive stimulus of high drama and buckets of… Read more »
In my experience, women with a level-headed man in their lives are themselves pretty level-headed.
Weak or non-existent men make for the situation we see now.
Yeah, and women do better when there are clear power discrepancies between themselves and their husbands. It reassures a woman to know she’s married a man whose status is greater than her own. Divorce rates corroborate this.
That dynamic is getting harder to achieve, though. More and more (mostly nonessential) companies, eager to augment their social image, are hiring women for cushy, high-status but low-function positions.
Being a chauvanist 🙂 I tend to agree that women in general should not run things. Fatherless homes don’t seem to turn out very good children. Perhaps man-less administrations turn out poor governance?
Yes…But…how many of you men went ass over teacup for a Pretty only to find the mask slip and a harridan emerge. Than came the divorce. We live life, experience and learn. Finding a level headed man with a level headed woman is, if learning took place and a bit of luck, is the end stage and rare as hen’s teeth.
Post pictures of yourself in a medical mask [made in China] throwing some “Made in China” crap in the trash can [made in China]
It’s ironic. Or should I say ubiquitous?
Not my term – but, “Branch Covidians, ” is an apt description for these folks.
You win the Internet today.
Seconded. I’m “liberating” that one, in the name of The People.
Thank you both, but I did not originate, “Branch Covidian.”
I think I first ran across it on iSteve in a post by one of the few doing a yeoman’s work fighting back against the hysterical cultists entrenched there.
I like Steve, but he’s sounding more and more like a foggy old man every day, and tiresome to read as a result. Sorry, bud, you’re stuck as the originator in my mind for this one.
In any case, most asuredly that will win the award for “Most Stolen Meme’ – at least for the week.
Now we’re waiting for the ATF to show up with their automatics.
Hahahahaha…sorry, I’m stealing that one.
while the term “Branch Covidians” is absolutely brilliant just by acknowledging the fact that I find it so I am showing my age 🙁
Agreed × 10. I do not agree with the broad brush of the post today, that it is “man’s” need for safety. IMO it is WOMAN’S NEED – and if you add in effeminate men (or perhaps more accurately, “effeminated males by birth”) you are still speaking of the same cohort. So the grand social experiment is long underway. We handed over the culture to women and, ahem, these “men” and now are seeing how that goes. Sure, we have “tough guys” out there like the serpent, er, Cuomo brothers – but they are just singing the song of the… Read more »
The other thing that really bothers me is Fauci and other Establishment wags being absolutely certain that a vaccine is the only possible treatment.
How did they arrive at this conclusion? Why the absolute certitude that a vaccine is the best path forward?
If this situation really is such a crisis, shouldn’t they be saying things like, “…the CDC is already working to coordinate studies on multiple promising anti-viral medications.”
Please, all propaganda. Our local tabloid rag, the New Yawk Compost is running a mix of fear porn and porn. If they ran a grid of deaths from all causes …. yeah right. Their lead photo story, that ugly slut Chelsea Handles-it, main page. Not allowed to not see if you look at that rag, one of the “free” papers in NY that has not gone behind a paywall like our local paper. Agitprop, porn for the incels, and a $12 dollar check from Steve Munchkin, another goofy fucking nerd. The Gynocracy is certainly assisted by their footsoldiers, nerd-o-crats. The… Read more »
I’ve been watching the Cuomo updates on the TV the past few days; each day he reported the number of deaths in NYC …. 750 on Thurs, 760 on Fri, 770 on Sat, 650 on Sun.. yet he did not tell us the daily death number for Mon or Tues.
WHY NOT? DID IT GO DOWN TOO MUCH??
Just reported to the Occupied Territories of New York (look it up, 65 out of 72 Counties did not vote for Cuomo in the last Gubernatorial election): “Emperor Cuomo orders all New Yorkers to become masked men and women. Minorities expected to agree without complaint” Ok, that is NOT the headline. But this is: “Cuomo Orders All Residents To Wear Face Masks Or Covering In Public” >>> yet their story says: “If you are going to be in a situation, in public, where you come into contact with other people in a situation that is not socially distanced you must… Read more »
Why do you think that? They are just saying things that they know will never be true. Stop interpreting their words as honest. They might as well say we can all go out when they discover the last unicorn and we could organize a special expedition and follow televised as the noble scientists search for the Covid cure of the unicorn horn to the ends of the earth. Its like a macguffin in films. They did it with ventilators for this current phase, they do it with systemic racism all the time and lots of other plot devices. Its all… Read more »
Howard; Many have noticed that flu vaccines only sorta work some of time. But Faucci et al plug vaccines because they are high level practitioners of The Art of The Swamp. IOW, vaccines are a deliverable that Faucci et al don’t have to deliver themselves. Rather they can critique how well others (Big Pharma) delivers one. The Iron Rule of the Swamp is to arrange things so that the justification for your budget line becomes the responsibility of someone else so that you may then critique how well they do your job. There is no better example than the IRS.
There is also the issue that, barring a 100% effective vaccine (like those could even exist), breaking the lockdown involves weighing the trade-offs between the number and circumstances of incremental deaths versus some sort of base line or level of acceptance of such a thing, of which many people view as “> 0 as unacceptable”. People such as Gates and Fauci are trying to avoid the trade-off rather than coming to terms with it. The sad thing is that they are buying into a nonexistent unicorn (a 100% effective vaccine) as some sort of army that can magically appear on… Read more »
[whistle blows] Foul! Your argument is generally correct. This is normal organizational behavior. Look up “passive agressive personality disorder.” The IRS isn’t doing anything not imposed upon it by the U.S. Congress. Come to think of it, that also supports your assertion! 😀
it’s a version of the classic dynamic that men use money to get sex, women use sex to get money. With money being a proxy for safety.
But Severian, they’re unaware that they’re doing it for themselves. Schoolmarms reflexively attribute their obtrusiveness to social altruism; for them, their self-image is paramount. You can call me defeatist, but trying to discourage them from their grandstanding is futile and probably counterproductive. Gay as it sounds, maybe what these people need is some indication that they’re valued as more than just a mechanism for social justice. It’s like doing something nice for the cranky neighborhood crone. In what other way can we help people who are so chronically insecure? It doesn’t always work, but when you give people a little… Read more »
Depends on the person. The hive-minded feminine person is not interested in facts and ideas. They instead look for signals as to which way the murmurations of the herd are going. Reassurance simply gives confidence in going in that direction. Programmed people do not respond to cues as ordinary people do.
Trying to convert those on the other side reminds me of the final scene of the 80s thriller “The Day After.” After the nuclear attack, one of the protagonists has finally found the burnt-out shell of his home. A vagrant is inside. “Get out of my house!” the hero uselessly cries. The vagabond silently puts his arm around the not-quite-disillusioned hero to comfort him.
“The big flaw [of Western Civilization] is the assumption that there is some reason, beyond the material, for why humans are the only intelligent species on the planet.”
Wow. Z Man the atheist. Let the ‘discussion’ begin….
He’s right, though. The history of Western Civ is the history of the quest for transcendent meaning. The Enlightened were quite correct to point out that we always come up short. Where the Enlightened went wrong, though, is that they assumed this — the need for meaning — was a correctable error, rather than a fundamental part of the human condition. And since they, the Enlightened, were also humans, they didn’t see that the need for transcendental meaning applied equally to themselves. So they committed the opposite error — they assumed that there’s NO reason other than material that humans… Read more »
Modern Pop Culture sums it all up:
“Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven love comes first
We’ll make heaven a place on earth”
Sorry to keep disagreeing, S… but point of order: the Vatican reached the height of its powers as a moral and ethical authority. It made sense: the clergy spoke for God, and who else was better for the job? One of the truths of the human condition is that wherever you have money and power… you will find corruption, greed, and all the other sins. I think it might have been our esteemed blog host that said it, but… our current problem as nations is not necessarily right vs left. We have a people problem. If you change their rules,… Read more »
We’re not disagreeing. It’s a matter of emphasis. We’re always searching for transcendent meaning, but we’re always coming up short. The struggle — the “always coming up short” — simply IS the meaning of life. It’s that agon stuff the Greeks (and Nietzsche) kept going on about. Organized religions don’t fail because there’s no God. They fail because organizations are made of people. Politics works the same way. Marxism is 100% true, given its premises. But the premises are false. Both politics and religion are the “giant, organized forms of self-righteousness” historians were warning us about back in the 1930s.… Read more »
Speaking of agon, have you had a chance to read DeGroot’s journal?
I haven’t. But I clicked over there, and the title of the first essay I saw was “Zionism and the Power Elite.” I need another one of those like I need a hole in the head. We may have pissed away our last opportunity to actually do something out in the real world, but at least we put a lot of (((parentheses))) around (((things))). Good conduct medals for all!!
To be fair, it’s not all ((())). Take Bauerlein’s essay on America needing a national literature. And most of the folks writing there are academics and artists. Agreed that we need more real action, but we need art too.
We have Jack London and Christianity. Thank God the government didn’t tell old Jack to “quarantine” for his self-diagnosed ‘anal cancer’ … turned out to be hemorrhoids.
Isn’t it hard for dissident art to see the light of day? Typically, it’s assumed that anyone with artistic merit is associated with the left.
In the 1400’s one could escape to the New World. Where the strong could survive via their physical and spiritual strength.
In our Lame New World, that escape is closed off. This world has been structured FOR the WEAK. The chinless. The feminine. But think of the honorable rat. The most dangerous rat is a …..
But neutered men do not have the strength, nor the cunning of rats.
“ Where the Enlightened went wrong, though, is that they assumed this — the need for meaning — was a correctable error, rather than a fundamental part of the human condition.”
They were materialists. Reducing God’s will to natural law, for instance. The romantics understood that and rejected it. So did the hippies, in their confused way. They were bad for business, though.
Old themes, old rivalries. The pendulum keeps swinging…
Perhaps, but I’m not sure how even the most sheltered fool will continue to believe in the Custodial State if statists keep doing such a crap job at it.
Recall the previous post on When Prophecy Fails.
A shit prison it seems is still a welcome prison for most.
“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
Leo Tolstoy
For every one of those guys, there’s 1,000 more who want a calm course of existence and a chance to sacrifice $15 to order B-dubs and watch Tiger King
The current system incentivizes the lazy and weak and punishes the Tolstoys.
The Tolstoys should be punished. It’s the quiet men who advance civilization, the noisy who tear it down.
Example?
The Kool Aid guy.
Chicago’s most famous community organizer.
Tiger King – everything that’s wrong with ‘Murica in seven episodes.
The story of a poor white man railroaded by the justice system, and of a woman whose female privilege allows her to get away with murder?
There’s plenty of opportunity for us to reach Joe Normie there.
Tiger King–predatory people, Carole, Joe and Doc. Each in his own way. All fascinated with big cats, who are also unadulterated predators. I feel quite pervy watching it (Lovely Daughter insisted). All three are surrounded by people who live in their three hives, complete with beta hive-mindedness. It’s actually fascinating to watch this, with all of the things we talk about here in mind, about human nature and relationships, in super-exaggerated form.
To be fair, Joe was on a lot of meth and had a messed up…well…everything. Baskin’s just a bitch.
Tolstoy’s epigram is an insight into what drives men to do more than simply sit around chewing on a piece of meat while staring into a camp fire. We are driven to movement by a noble love for family and community to see it do more than live a hand to mouth existence passively subjected to all the elements of nature. The Western male mind aspires to an idealized state of being. Almost all of our art puts this characteristic on display. Movement adds risk, risk adds danger…But to make that sacrifice in service to an ideal greater than one’s… Read more »
But the Tolstoys make history; the Branch Covidians squelch it.
You’re nuts if you think Carol Baskin didn’t kill her husband. And holy crap, did you see that tiger rip that lesbian’s arm off?
Apparently, the missing arm girl now identifies as a guy
Yes well Z – on my TL this morning is (very Intelligent, nice, non- political) Woman asking “Does anyone have eggs for sale”? This is a competent (most women in America aren’t) at her technically demanding job, has worked in Eastern Europe, is of course American. She’s quite “Intelligent”, despite all that time in Eastern Europe and being a kind person fell for Kavanaugh rape farce hook, line, sinker….apparently didn’t connect Soviet policies with food shortages… “Does anyone have eggs for sale?” Comrades; The Wahman are noticing Eggs not on shelves. Lenin asks; Wat iz 2 bee dun? Comrades; In… Read more »
Until 2 weeks ago, eggs in NYC were $1.50 – $2.50;
for the past week they’ve been $6.50 – $7.50.
The better quality brand “Eggland’s Best” isn’t available, only the cheaper brand “Sunshine Farms”.
Our local Tractor Supply is getting in the chicks … just sayin’
And yet here in upstate, farmers are dumping milk and eggs. Makes sense.
I stopped by the store to attempt to buy butter today – shelf totally bare at 10:15 AM. Stocker confirmed that they got plenty in, but all the seniors (of various ethnicities) bought it all out. He said the ‘seniors’ clear the shelves every morning. If I want to buy anything without running into bare shelves I’ll have to do the senior run at 6-7:30 AM, but I’m weighing whether I want/need anything badly enough to risk that environment where the possibility I get arrested for hate speech is extremely high.
“Does anyone have eggs for sale?” Yup. HEB (a regional grocery chain here in south Texas) does and in plenty. Last evening on the 6 o’clock news it was announced that HEB is no longer rationing eggs, bread and a couple of other items. They’re still rationing toilet paper and a few other things, though. They also have plenty of bottled water on hand. (Never understood what the motivation for that was.) I hope our political masters see fit to release us from house arrest soon. I also hope that ZMan is wrong about the rise of the custodial state.… Read more »
Logistically this is interesting. Premise 1: Eggs keep well, but not forever — you can only hoard so many eggs for so long. Premise 2: Presumably all the many factory chicken farms are still running and still cranking out eggs at the pace they usually do. There was no mass COVID-19 chicken die-off. Premise 3: Peoples’ egg consumption hasn’t been markedly affected. They haven’t been compelled to suddenly eat enormous amounts of eggs. What can we take from that? Either 1. The shortage is fake — $6.50-$7.50 eggs are a pretty good motivation, and the egg producers are going to… Read more »
4.?? the delivery drivers are out sick ??
I cant get Tostitos corn chips at any of the stores around here because the driver has the virus.
Breyer’s ice cream is only $3.00 for the 48ounce box. Kudos to them for helping out.
There are simply not enough sick people of working age to actually dent the labor pool, and agriculture is designated as an essential industry in every state, as far as I know,
A driver or two would cause spot shortages like yours, but not large ones. The factory (Tostitos or eggs) would simply assign another one under normal conditions.
Eggs at the Walmart in my neighborhood are a little pricier than usual at $ 1.50 a dozen, no limit. Not sure what New York is doing.
Aren’t eggs used in the manufacture of flu vaccine? Perhaps the scientific arm of the Branch Covidians has diverted the supply to hasten the arrival of Fauci’s all-holy vaccine. The Chinese can’t eat bats and we cannot eat eggs. Damn you Wuflu, damn you!
Vizzini – Both 2 and 3 are correct, plus a further suggestion. Although eggs are perishable, for all the non perishables that are or have been unavailable (paper goods,canned goods, etc.) I’ve read that Dominicans routinely buy excess food on their EBT card, pack it in those big blue barrels, and ship it home. Just like that Han woman in Florida who bought up all the masks and tittered she left none for the ‘Americans.’ So typical ethnic aggression + hoarding + greedy globalists = shortages for consumers and profits for producers. Win-win, as far as our rulers are concerned.
Toxic, I want to know exactly what kind of revolution you’re talking about. How would you even expect it to effectively pan out? Realistically, trying to intimidate the government just means we go squish.
I would push back against the notion that Enlightenment era thinkers didn’t have an understanding of “genetics, evolution or the interplay between culture and biology.” It is certainly true that our science books now are filled with much more information than similar science books in 1750, for example. But as a culture, or societal thought, goes I think they would look at us now and see our denial of obvious truths as quite backwards and ignorant of basic science. The Enlightenment era thinkers would have through their readings and basic observation known about animal husbandry and how such things relate… Read more »
It’s called “empiracle observation.” That’s how stereotypes begin – they’re based on observation and experience. Like any educated person at the time, the Framers knew their history, as well.
I was thinking the same thing. In many ways, we know less than we knew then. We have come to the exact opposite conclusion that the science would lead the rational person to believe.
As someone said, the problem is that now we know more and more, about less and less; referring in particular to the over-specialization in the science, the academy, etc.
I enjoyed this essay a lot. I finally realized why so many here hate people like me who would call themselves “libertarian”, even though I go with Rothbardian style anarcho-capitalist as a description. Z describes the fussy little soy boys of the Libertarian Party or of Reason. It reminds me of those who worship the NAP. I believe in it, but if you fuck with me I’ll try to really fuck you up. So, how do i define you messing with me first? Subjectively of course. I often get the feeling that very few people on the right have ever… Read more »
I subscribed to the Rothbard-Rockwell Report in the 1990s but never read any of Murray Rothbard’s books.
Just yesterday a libertarian YT channel put out a video extolling the virtues of legalizing opiates. I got into a back and forth with a particularly stupid libertarian who thinks without prohibition we wouldn’t have fentanyl killing 10s of thousands of our people.
It makes you just want to punch them right in their smug little faces.
Prohibition is one of the things I agree with libertarians on, but only because you can look back a century and see the possibilities. You used to be able to go to the town apothecary and get cocaine! That tells me addiction is a spiritual problem, not one of supply and demand.
Maybe prohibition is a necessary evil today, but it needn’t and shouldn’t be the endgame
I agree generally and am against most of the prohibition for things like Marijuana. But Fentanyl specifically is not really applicable if the Chinese were to enforce the law. Unlike Opium, fentanyl is extremely difficult to produce from scratch and requires millions of dollars in plant and equipment and highly trained chemists. Drug dealers simply cannot raise that kind of capital because it would be seized as soon as it was discovered. But without prohibition, lots of these dangerous drugs could be manufactured with relative ease with the right equipment and god knows what evil drugs would exist without prohibition.… Read more »
It’s the drug pushers in suits and the dealers in lab coats imo. And in a larger sense a society that dehumanizes. Treating people like human resources, regular people acting like it. Take this pill so you can keep going.
Anyway that’s enough talking like a hippie 🙂
Some other additions: I hear no mention of the enormous illness and death that tobacco and alcohol cause. Or junk food, for that matter. If people wish to risk their health with legal drugs, why should it be any different for (currently) prohibited ones? If we lived in a more libertarian world, one often-overlooked option would be the right to associate, specifically here, to shun or banish people who used drugs. In an similar way, of course you should be free to try and “rescue” or “prevent” people from this bad behavior, but in no case should you be free… Read more »
Perhaps, in general, we’re better off without those people around anyway.
If they don’t hit bottom and change, yeah, it’s hard to argue against letting them go.
Mark, my disagreement with reasonable guys who call themselves libertarians is that they assume that most people in the world can apprehend and respect the NAP, that is, behave like an average white person. That assumption is false and therefore libertarianism is only possible in a predominately white country. Theoretically, the Asians could adopt libertarianism but they seem to disposed towards collectivism.
My dear line in the sand, I strongly believe that an anarcho capitalist society can exist as history records one. But I also believe that it would have to be one nation. (the real definition of nation) And there would be governance and private security and so forth. Will it ever happen? I won’t live to see it. I am not even going to live to see the US as free as it was in … say … 1850. Right wing populism is the only way forward as far as I can see. Democracies are evil and they are really… Read more »
Mark – rather than debate the definition of political terms, all I need to know is someone’s priorities. Mine is ensuring a future for White children. All else is negotiable after that.
Z – before you start counting Chickens make sure there’s eggs to hatch…
AMERIKAN WAHMAN; V shaped Collectivization Blue Screen of Death;
“Does anyone have any eggs for sale?”
Shortest communism relationship ever
America too much
“Its complicated” anyhow
Still, a mere month?
Hell – 3 weeks.
MUST COLLECTIVIZE CHICKENS.
If anyone needs me I’ll be in the Chicken coop reading Das Kapital to the hens…
Some other guy gave me some good advice the other day. He told me to make sure I’m getting exercise. Are you? You seem tense — I know I am.
I think I found the flaw in V shaped Collectivization Program; Consumerism.
Let’s remember – Nixon knew what he was doing when he challenged Khrushchev to a duel of washing machines and consumer appliances.
There is an interesting observation by Goethe made during his travels in Italy which refer to man’s propensity for self-improvement. I quote:
“Speaking for myself, I too believe that humanity will win in the long run; I am only afraid that at the same time the world will have turned into one huge hospital where everyone is everybody else’s humane nurse.”
Nietzsche took this another step:
“Christianity is drawn to disease. In its attempt to help mankind it will eventually turn into a tyranny of compassion.”
I think we’ve arrived.
What Christianity?
Here’s a good example:
That’s a Mormon – not a Christian
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Says it all.
Perhaps Mormans have by far retained more Chrisian principles that Christians have managed to because they are not Christians. They have begun circling the drain recently also and for the same reasons, but they held out longer.
you have one too many ‘m’-s, should have written moron, and I say as somebody who voted for him at least 4 times or more, embarrassing I know.
Mormons have only been around for 200 years. They spent most of that time isolated in the desert. Not sure they’ve held out all that well just saying.
Lol. The Book of Mormon, like the Koran, is an early example of fan fiction. They’re not Christians.
Boys, the Christians are not abandoning their faith. They are abandoning their churches – big difference.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” — so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
Ironically, it’s been the enemies of Christianity that have done this.
Seems to me Calvin and Luther did this all by themselves.
Laughs in Johann Tetzel
“Seems to me Calvin and Luther did this all by themselves.”
Like I said…
This is a post for the ages. Great insights explained with simplicity and clarity. Now go one level deeper. What persists is what “works.” Huddling in the cave waiting out the raging storm is a behavior encoded in our genes because the survivors of the storm lived to reproduce. The idiots that stayed outside likely died young before they could reproduce. We are descended from the people who lived to fuck another day.
Yeah smart people today think changing your mind is a evolution. My theory is that cavemen are the most conservative but from the cave to the pinnacle of civilization we are always moving leftward until we reach some steep unstable peak built on a foundation of air and lies that will come tumbling down depositing the ones that survived the fall closer to the cave were reality will once again have a role…. and then the march leftward starts again. This really only applies to our nation. Other people’s will do it differently. I mean, heck, Africa is the home… Read more »
Oh no, socialism returns in it’s guises time and again no matter our deadly experience with, and why? Because it is in fact our original code. The cavman was a fighting lefty, the original socialist. Even the Neander fellow was that, only more so, a small communitarian society. A solitary man was a dead man, always. The world could be, had to be, understood entirely within his own experience, always guided by his evolved instinct. After a couple hundred thousand years the human world became more complicated but his instincts never caught up. Civilization is anything but natural. It exists… Read more »
Bottom-up local socialism, like bottom-up capitalism (and likely even local, bottom-up libertarianism) can work just fine in a small, cohesive community. Scaling it up and making it top-down wrecks all of these things, especially in a polyglot culture, with all the pulling and tugging at things.
James; Scale is another way to look at the innate attractions of communalism. Most of human existence, so far as we know, was in smaller scale groups, no larger than tribes of no more than a few hundreds of people. In the bad old days there was selection pressure from other human groups as well as from nature. A group’s culture was the mediating ‘shell’ between the individual and extinction. As you say, a lone man was a dead man. So the culture had to balance the interests of individuals and the rest of the group to assure survival against… Read more »
A system that requires you to transcend your “original code” requires a qualified re-coder. Lifestyles that integrate the original coding are time-tested. Nothing else has ever worked for long.
Defining civilization as something entirely at odds with and transcendent from your previous monkey-self is a form of “human exceptionalism.” I see no evidence that these exceptional humans exist in numbers large enough to make such civilizations sustainable.
Yeah, I’ve always just though that civilizations were just byproducts of sentient, biological collectives over long periods of time. I don’t see that any of it is “at odds.” And you can re-code yourself like you can pick yourself up by your own collar. It’s why true “self improvement” is so hard to achieve. We have a thousand yesterdays to content with.
The really funny thing is that in a tight, well defined nation, you can actually get libertarianism and some form of communism co-existing with little effort, more or less. Meaning they aren’t quite the opposites assumed.
Those two governing forms can only exist within a people group that cares about one another and is invested in the group’s overall success… like a family is!
Z, this is one I REALLY hope you’re wrong about, because we men will be vestigial if things turn out this way.
Contrarily, I think the desire for safety is what has created the present mess. Fight fire with water.
Desire for safety vs. desire for meaning. I guess seeking truth takes guts. Makes sense because the truth is some things don’t seem knowable.
VDH would quickly point out the bloody history of mankind as a counter-point to your theory for “safety”. Almost as importantly, the betterment of anyone’s condition will require a lot of struggle and sacrifice. It is what defines us.
The kind of safety and comfort you espouse is probably more akin to the sluggard and the coward. Of which America is sadly filled with too much of.
My counter argument to VDH (whom I greatly respect, while not always agreeing with) would be that gynocracy is a new phenomenon on the world stage.
Gynocracy is a prehistoric phenomenon, if the myths about how men threw it off and finally began establishing civilization are to be trusted. Even Herodotus has some fascinating stories about different towns that have succumbed to that form of tyranny and how it is solved.
I’m not sure to what extent those ancient Gynocratic societies actually existed; your typical Female leader of the ancient world is someone like Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, who was hardly an Elizabeth Warren.
Awesome story about her putting Cyrus the Great’s head in a bag of blood, though…
>If there is to be a new moral philosophy for the post-Enlightenment age, it will have to be based, at least in part, on man’s nature desire for safety.
Careful with that. Hobbes essentially founded Enlightenment political philosophy at this exact spot 400 years ago, and yet here we are.
Stepping back from that, I wonder if maybe we need to break the Western habit of trying to concoct and impose ideals in an inorganic manner on finite beings in a natural world.
🥚🥚Revolution 🥚🥚
Maybe. I keep reading that the Neo-liberal theory is more or less a dualist anthropology – that the purpose of your life is to achieve your individually-defined highest good, however you define it. The reason you might not be able to get there is the Patriarchy or whatever, and so the purpose of the State is to remove those barriers to your spirit being free. In that reading, the role the harpies are playing is less that of attempting to make everyone safe so much as it is to identify those patriarchs, racists, religionists, or anyone who stands in the… Read more »
The desire for safety is indeed a strong and deep one, but an equally strong one (especially in the young) is to do something stupid and dangerous to risk one’s life, thus giving it more meaning (if one comes through the ordeal). This is usually channeled correctly into rites of passage (ten boys jump off a cliff into a pool of water surrounded by rocks in some remote tribe; the nine who live become men and the one who shatters on the rock failed the test and was harshly but fairly weeded out). Even Eastern Bloc countries had young knuckleheads… Read more »
Have to disagree with you, Nancy. There are lots of things that are “dangerous”, that are not “stupid”. And those very things, from getting past Smith’s Reef to go bluefishing in the dead of night, handling a crosswind in your Bellanca Viking, coming in hot to a corner, straightening up, applying brakes evenly, then leaning over again … change the chemistry of your brain. Handling extra innings at your position and WANTING the ball hit to you. Free falling as long as you can. I could go on and haven’t even touched soldiering – really not needed to get all… Read more »
You’re not responding to my comment. You’re flexing in the mirror. And you’re trying too hard.
I was a custodian once. My job was the cleaning of shitters and cleaning of messes left behind by others. I know that is a different kind of custodian but the age of the custodian may be coming into it’s own but there will be societal messes left behind. When we are always protected the few who may be brave enough to wander out of that protection may gain real power simply by having the courage to do it. A small example is that I can see a time coming where a handshake between normal men will be like a… Read more »
In my limited experience at work recently the people to step up and shake my hand since virus 19 appeared are people who immigrated from the Soviet block twenty to forty years ago. They are not easily impressed with bullshit.
Wow, this doc has quite a take on the whole pandemic farce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjybyJ59Lw#action=share
This was sent to me yesterday by daughter #2 who asked me what I thought. She of course knows I am right wing but her social circle is anything but. This clearly had impressed her and I was shocked it could have appeared in her orbit of friends.
Hi Zman, now that the great corona panic of 2020 looks like it’s running out of steam, do you have any thoughts on how that other computer model generated panic, global warming will be affected.
The alarmists will always be with us. If there was a way to bet this, I’d bet that the warmists will claim the great lock down lower the earth temperature, thus proving their models correct! They actually have said this in a different context. They claim the Little Ice Age, which is a huge problem for them, was the result of the Black Death. Fewer people in Europe meant colder temperatures. No kidding.
There is also the classic cow farts and raising global temperatures. Not even regarding its veracity, just farts.
I hadn’t heard the one about the black death, I had heard that the Little Ice Age was caused by Whitey taking smallpox to the New World and wiping out 99% of the Rocket Scientists. Probably the best we can hope for is a new adage, “Beware of experts bearing forcasts”.
Remember Al Gore’s book? “Global Warming” was such a disastrous thing we needed to react NOW without waiting for facts. Then came the skewered facts, hockey stick charts etc. from the “experts”.
We had to shut down the economy before the facts were in to combat kung flu. Same game.
After 9/11 and the complete shutdown of all air traffic for three days, I saw a graph/plot of atmospheric temp’s. Almost 2 degrees centigrade *higher*. This was said to be due to the lack of high atmospheric sulphur pollution spewed by jet flights across the world. (Sulphur particulates reflecting sun light back out into space.) The implication was two-fold; global warming was real, but suppressed due to such action, and that man could ameliorate such warming effects through programs such as this atmospheric “seeding” (another is to salt the ocean with iron). In light of the current slow down of… Read more »
I tend to agree that the evidence suggests that the planet is warming due to human activity. It’s so obvious though that the “solutions” offered will either not work at all or are naked Leftist power grabs that I oppose all of them. The problem is already being solved technologically anyway. I wonder if the Covid panic is partly due to the fact that the warming narrative had topped out at a relatively low level of panic and willingness to sacrifice rights and pleasures. If so, I don’t think it’s that some smoke filled room full of media moguls and… Read more »
I don’t claim in prior posting that global warming is “man made”. It is entirely possible that this is mostly a natural phenomena—outside of human causation. We are after all, in between historical glacial periods. For the record: —Global warming is probably real, but not man made. —Global warming might be ameliorated via some reasonable actions to sequester CO2 gases, or reflect sunlight, albeit that seems to contradict first point. —Global warming is not going to be nearly as bad as the scare mongers say. —No climate agreement so far discussed or signed has caused as much fundamental change as… Read more »
“If there is a point to our existence, it is to shelter with our cave mates trembling in fear at the great danger outside.”
That’s essentially what this American expat in China concluded during their quarantine. It’s a fascinating read!
https://kunstler.com/other-stuff/speeches-guest-articles/guest-post-lockdown-an-american-in-china-caught-in-the-corona-virus-emergency-by-evan-villarrubia/
The Chinese have the equivalent of our schoolmarms and harpies too, and this section of the post has some wisdom on why they are what they are and how to deal with them: “Although I knew this before, the adage that my friend Louis heard from his dad has been cast into sharp relief: “never try to separate a functionary from his function.” Village government officials are tasked with very menial jobs and not paid well, and so only bossy people without prospects for real advancement in the world (or otherwise people who plan to profit from the office, like… Read more »
If you look at the struggle sessions during Mao’s revolution, they are almost universally the most fanatical parts of the crowd.
Thanks for the link. I’d completely forgotten about Kunstler, hopefully this has cheered him up somewhat after his disappointment over the failure of Peak Oil to show up on cue and put an end to Western Civilization.
Probably not, because the collapse in demand has ensured the world will be awash in oil for the near term.
The collapse in tax revenues ensures that there won’t be many improvements or rearrangements in our infrastructure in the near term.
Another verity of our existence is the physical imperative of food, which is difficult to obtain while huddled in a cave.
Great essay touching on a number of philosophical issues. A few random thoughts; As for the communist / liberal dogmas and their ardent practitioners – seems they need reminding that whilst they may deny reality – reality will not deny them. Maslow Hierarchy of Needs comes to mind as it relates to safety. Z Man asks:: “…to what are we progressing if there is no purpose to our existence? What is the point of the arc of history if it does not have a beginning, middle and end? There must be some reason for it…” Well, if the reason is… Read more »
If men were angels, the custodial State would be fine. But if men were angels, we’d not need it would we.
We’re in the custodial state, which is very very expensive to operate, and only could have come about from the generations of surpluses, including massive surpluses in social capital to allow for such organization to begin with. So if you have a business that involves standing on ladders some bureaucrat will come in to count the rivets on your ladders and write a nice letter with fine attached about the missing rivet that was found, and the potential danger to employees (not making this up, I have a friend who was visited by Cal/Osha). The fine is a formula involving… Read more »
It’s a weapon the State can dictate on businesses it finds distasteful while looking the other way for ones who give the correct financial contributions.
“Transforming society into an abattoir lowers productivity, rather than producing plenty.” Gee, you’d think they’d notice that at some point. But they don’t. What a puzzle. But wait: What if communist rulers have hidden, unspoken motivations? What if, at the very foundational rock bottom, they’re motivated by a desire for safety instead of the provision of equality and plenty for everyone? Certainly killing millions of people who might otherwise pose a threat could be seen to enhance safety, right?
I’ll ask again for a definition of a word that many people use but few define: neo-liberalism. At the risk of offending the sensibilities of our host, the only definition that I can find for “neo-liberalism” that fits all the ways in which I see it used is: removing barriers for the wealthy to extend their wealth, the elevation of women and racial and sexual minorities, and the protection of Israel.
What does “neo-liberalism” mean?
Line to me it means the convergence of libertarian capitalism and kumbaya liberal White Man’s Burden and their rejection of overt socialism and communism. Fuikyama’s End of History is their manifesto. Neo-conservatism is just a sub-flavor and cadet-branch of the larger concept of neo-liberalism.
Fast forward a few hundred years and the 1400-2000+ era will be know simply as the Age of Liberalism.
This is another terrifically discerning essay. “The engine that drives humanity is the need for safety.” This is true. It is based on biology—just like everything else once you burn away the extraneous. Another way of saying it is, “The engine that drives humanity is the desire to continue as a biological entity and not die.” The problem is, human needs and desires are mediated by choices. And choices are driven by reason, right? BZZZZZZT—wrong, get the hook. Next.
Perhaps we are living at the dawn of Custodialism, the politics of keeping everyone safe from any possible danger.
If so, count me out.
“Marxists tried to remedy this by killing off the inconvenient, but it turned out that you just can’t kill enough people to make it work.” Great line! I’m definitely borrowing that.
“We see that all around us as people meekly hide in their closets because they are told the bogeyman is outside. The great panic would not be possible if people were driven by self-interest.” Z, I think you underestimate the extent to which irrational paranoia has taken hold in society, and especially among the womenfolk. These people are not hiding in their closets so much because they relish being part of the Cowardly Collective, but because they really do see it as being in their self interest. These fools, knaves and dunderheads actually believe Coronageddon is real. Should they set… Read more »
Z Man; Outstanding essay_! You are right-on re. fear as a motivating element in human behavior. Well known to the ancients. Can’t get much more basic than Thucydides (required reading in War College) who attributed politico-military behavior to Fear, Honor (reputation/prestige) and Interest (i.e. $$$). IOW, man *is* acquisitive by nature but that’s far from being all of it. The weights one can attach to the three various factors are the subject of endless debate, but there can be no doubt that fear features prominently. For anyone with too much ‘Branch Covidian’ (love it) imposed time on their hands, here’s… Read more »
Z, I hesitate to draw sweeping conclusions of a historical nature based upon current society, which, for me begins roughly in 1965. In my opinion, postmodern society is ideographic rather than nomothetic. It is a bizarre historical oxbow rather than a part of any rational historical progression. Our age is an outlier. A curiosity. And it will collapse in less than 100 years, quite possibly less than 30. Thus, just as the relatively brief Soviet period is quite inconsequential in the context of Russian history, so too postmodernity will prove little more than an odd blip in the grand sweep… Read more »
No. Its roots go back at least to the Enlightenment, of which the French Revolution was one of the more perfect reifications.
I disagree. The shrieking relativism which is the sine qua non our present age only began manifesting itself powerfully in the mid-60s. But, it you wish to find the antecendents, you can go back to the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.
pdates: • Veteran Testing: o We received 5 COVID-19 test results today; 5 negative and 2 positive. (the 2 positive were retesting of a current known COVID-19 positive patients) Total tests sent: 205 Positive: 9 (+3 repeat test) Negative: 193 Pending: 3 • 6 COVID-19 cases to date; 2 in inpatient/ED, 2 recovering at home, 2 deceased • Employee Testing: o We received 0 COVID-19 test results today; 0 negative and 0 positive. Total tests sent: 15* Positive: 0 Negative: 15 Pending: 0 It seems kind of confusing but I think what they are saying is that there are now… Read more »
Roberto, given your direct experience, where do you fall in the continuum of “it’s just the flu bro” to “lockdown for the next year?”
I’m firmly in the “it’s just the flu bro” camp. Statistically it’s barely a blip.
I’m starting to hear that more and more from the doctors I work with as well, who almost without exception were in lockdown camp initially.
Yes, but I think that safety is mainly a girl thing. The girls huddle in the cave while the men go out to fight the foe and thereby make the girls safe.
It was not an accident that Shakespeare’s chappie boasted that he “boldly did outdare the dangers of the time.”
Give us a couple of weeks and all the men will be outside the cave.
Chris – First they’ll all have to take off their masks. I tried to glare at all the masked p8%4sies today but they wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
The Colorado Department of Health is only reporting cumulative death data to the press, and appears to be aggressively reviewing and reclassifying deaths over the course of the last month to drive a grossly overstated Coronavirus death count that fits the desired bell-shaped curve. There were 3 reported deaths on Monday; they reported an increase of 21. There were 9 reported deaths on Sunday; they reported an increase of 14. And so it goes back through time. Their data appears to be so bad that we’ll never know the truth. It’s a complete farce. Governor (((Polis))) justified a lockdown of… Read more »
In the same way the left has been constantly redefining the second amendment in our “living constitution,” I would LOVE it if we started redefining the “freedom of the press” part of the first amendment to destroy the conventional media. The left’s battle tactics work and we should use them! I fantasize about a world in which “freedom of the press” was gradually redefined by the right in a way such that individual expression on all forms of media/technology was strengthened, but corporate/state/nonprofit expression could be undermined in a way in which we could shut down newspapers, seize and destroy… Read more »
On the issue of safety, I am reminded of something that Jeff Cooper once wrote, which I am paraphrasing from memory. “I am convinced that crying ‘safety first’ is more than a little obtuse. Life is not safe and if one were truly to hold safety first in regards to firearms, one would never pick up a gun, which would put him in more danger from adversaries willing to do so, than he would otherwise experience. This is exactly the course of action that some people have chosen, which is their privilege, as long as they do not seek to… Read more »
“Humans are not relentlessly pursuing their self-interest or naturally cooperative. The engine that drives humanity is the need for safety… If there is to be a new moral philosophy for the post-Enlightenment age, it will have to be based, at least in part, on man’s nature desire for safety… Perhaps we are living at the dawn of Custodialism, the politics of keeping everyone safe from any possible danger.” Self-interest, collective action and safety are all basic needs and “social technologies” that government has to account for if not expressly provide. Every tribe and sub-group has its own preferred degree of… Read more »
In regard to Marxism and human nature, it sorta sounds like you are repeating Prager U and NRO talking points. The Soviets had very competitive Olympic teams ,for example,so you cannot say that communism and competitiveness are mutually exclusive. I don’t think there is a single ‘human nature’ or ‘human condition’ that can be generalized to everyone.or explain why some counties or economies are more successful at certain things than others. Everyone wants to come up with their pithy armchair expansion for why communism doesn’t work. But it’s not that it didn’t or does not work, but that it does… Read more »
Communism can’t work, because those at the top are empowered to make decisions on behalf of others, who don’t have the agency to make their own decisions. Human nature being what it is (a combination of greed and selfishness, aligned with the opportunity to take extra for oneself, without being called out on it) dooms communism on any large scale. When those without agency figure it out, the tools get put down, and the sand gets thrown into the gears.
I want to amplify your suspicion of a single human nature. Certainly there are some feelings or inclinations that are common to all humans, maybe a predisposition to love your mother or to feel sympathy to those in your in-group, but not much more.
You don’t have to climb the tree of evolution very high to see that many of the finer feelings that we posit to be part of general human nature, for example the longing for liberty or the valuing of truth for its own sake, are not imprinted in most human hearts.
Any system can work if the constituency is both willing and able. Chinese Communism works to the extent it does because it’s Chinese enough. The system is shaped to the people more than vice-versa. I don’t think you could ever make Communism work at any appreciable scale in a White/Euro society (I do not count the 70-year troubled imperial history of the USSR as a success). We’re not wired for that level of collective scale. We’ll see the limits of what Chinese collectivism vs. relative Western individualism are in our ongoing competition throughout this century. I think we need some… Read more »
Is it me, or are Mike Pence’s eyebrows choreographed?
Dear ZMAN,
The thought I keep having is that the people in charge aren’t afraid of this bogeyman. This whole COVID reaction is simply an instinct (uncommunicated) among the elite to burn it to the ground because the anti-globalists are winning or at least not losing e.g. Trump will probably beat the dementia patient in November. Thoughts?
Incidentally, the wife and I enjoy your podcast every Friday.
The people who run the ghost train are not afraid of the ride.
OT. Someone who is not me has a telecon ongoing with a large company board. The telecon concerns how to restructure company compensation in the wake of covid 19. For majority of the conference a reedy-voiced queer has been lecturing “pay equity” – how to compensate women and minorities more for performance versus straight white males. They are going to implement a new regression analysis model so that past injustice and inequity will be retroactively addressed by paying employees more money from now on for a given level of performance if the employee identifies as LGBT, female, minority, non-Christian religion… Read more »
parasites just never let up.You have to force them to let go.
For leeches, cigarettes applied to the body seems to be a good way to remove them.
As proverbs points out:
“The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry.”
Not quite Z’s topic today, but the term “Custodial State” appears in the (in)famous book “The Bell Curve.” Here, it is still a nanny state to take care of the underclass. Of course any country that has a sizeable population of ne’er-do-wells and gives them any type of support is custodial. More chilling is that their numbers seem to be ever-increasing. Will our custodial state of the future resemble the dark humor seen in thriller movies like “Robocop” or “Escape from New York?” Much more appealing to me, and no doubt to readers here, is the vision of the ethnostate.… Read more »
Genuinely curious if you can point to a black country (or even majority black area of any size) that is the second case?