The other day, I was chatting with a business acquaintance in San Francisco. He was unburdening himself about a project that had lingered on for too long. Apparently the contractor he was using gave him what he asked for, but not what he wanted. He was going around and around with them, but they are located in Asia so it was a big hassle for him. He had to stay up late to talk with them because of the time difference and, of course, he had to go through the endless haggling that comes with using Asian firms.
He did not say it, but I suspected he had a cultural issue as well. I helpfully pointed out that Asian solutions are not American solutions. Anyone who has done business with the Chinese or Indians knows they have a very different way of looking at things. For South Asians, a solution is whatever meets the letter of the request or whatever gets you off the phone. The Chinese will tell you whatever you want to hear. It’s not lying as they don’t have enough respect for you to tell a lie. It’s dismissal through deception.
Anyway, I pointed out the cultural issue and the guy literally gasped. If he had pearls, he would have clutched them. He started sputtering about how he had “the same problem with” and then he would sputter again. He could not say the word “white” or “American” so I volunteered “white” just for kicks.The way he was carrying on, you would have thought I said “Hitler was right! Gas the Jews!” It was crazy to see someone having a physical reaction to my noticing diversity.
We have come full circle in the last 30 years. In my youth, the Boomer Progs preached tolerance to us. My first class in college, on the first day, I was harangued by a little French girl, telling all of us about how America was a racist and sexist society. Americans were intolerant! The Boomer Prog teacher nodded along until I foolishly pointed out that the word tolerance means to put up with something you don’t like. Therefore, the little French girl was telling me she did not like black people, but was willing to put up with them.
In my first adult job, I was sent off to what they called sensitivity training. Tolerance was now a bad-think word and sensitivity was the good-think word. My hunch was everyone figured out what I found to be obvious in college, with regards to tolerance. Even so, the implications of all the sensitivity talk was that anyone not a white male was prone to weird behavior and opinions. We had to be sensitive to this fact. It also meant treading lightly around them as they were easily offended and traumatized.
Eventually, of course, the Progs figured out that this was a loser so they moved onto celebrating diversity. Unlike tolerance or sensitivity, diversity has the benefit of putting everyone on the same level. One race is as good as another. Men and women can do all the same things. All cultures are the same. Modern life was going to be a celebration of the beauty and variety of life! Well, except the white parts. White people suck and they better keep their heads down, especially you, honky-man.
I suppose it is no surprise that the Progs are now freaking out about anyone noticing diversity. After all, the next stop on the train from celebrating differences is noticing differences, like the fact that South Asian engineers tend to have a strange narrowness that causes them to miss the big picture. Indian engineers will literally build a road off a cliff if that’s what the spec says to do. That’s why my acquaintance nearly had a stroke when I admitted to noticing this. Noticing is the gateway drug that leads to judging.
The internal incoherence of multiculturalism means that they will forever have to be dashing about in an effort to keep the plates spinning. One day we’re celebrating diversity and the next day we’re stoning a heretic for noting that people are different. The reason is there’s no getting around the fact that humans are just as susceptible to evolutionary pressure as every other creature. Human evolution was copious, recent and local, which means people in different places have different physical and cognitive traits.
It’s hard to know where they go from here. In Europe, even the most unhinged nutters in the ruling class have stopped celebrating diversity. In the US, a few crackpots like that dunce Elizabeth Warren will babble in public about the glories of diversity. All the signs point to them dropping this as their signature issue. At the same time, the new catchphrase “scientific racism” to describe the human sciences is ominous. It’s not hard to imagine mobs of Birkenstock-clad lunatics smashing up biology labs.
It would be ironic if Progressives meet their demise at the hand of science. After all, Progs have been using science as a weapon against Christianity and local customs for as long as anyone has been alive. It has been their go-to move in the culture war. Smug idiots on late night TV still smirk about how they are on the side of science, despite the fact they cannot count their balls twice and come up with the same number. It would be poetic if Progressivism crumpled and collapsed as it ran into the reality of biological science.
” Noticing is the gateway drug that leads to judging.”
Perfect, I will remember this line.
Sounds like a variation on the Steve Sailer line: “Political correctness is a war on noticing.”
Does sound similar to Sailer. The more the better.
Pretty much. I don’t think Sailer was the first guy to mention that PC was all about limiting the field of vision, but he gets credit for the pithy way of stating it. Guys like Joe Sobran and Sam Francis did yoeman’s work describing the PC ethos.
Let us not forget that Joe Sobran became a paleolibertarian and cited none other than Mr. Libertarian himself, Murray Rothbard, as well as Hoppe, as inspirations for his philosophical conversion.
Some of Sobran’s writings can be viewed at LewRockwell.com.
I think a lot of paleo and alt-right guys came via classical libertarian stuff. As a critique of central planning and the welfare state, it is useful stuff. It’s just not a coherent political philosophy for the real world. I thinks that’s why some portion of libertarians move to the Right and others go insane over free weed and electric cars.
To repeat, there are some of us who are inspired by the likes of Sobran, Rothbard, Hoppe, Tom Woods et al, and not by the likes of Gillespie.
We understand that not all cultures, people, and races are the same.
Put another way, do not conflate me with Cytotoxic.
Later in life, Sobran like a lot of us started to feel moorless and started looking to define our conservatism different from the degraded one.
I like the Lew Rockwell types and still read there, just can sign on to the ideology. Doesn’t work, doesn’t value community.
Rockwell re-posts me a lot. I’ve always got along with that brand of libertarian. Something went horribly wrong with the Reason/Cato people.
With that about libertarians, Mr. Z-Man, it seems you haven’t met the very coherent economists and advocates of libertarian principles with a very coherent set of ideas. Some libertarians who may talk too much or too fast conflate some contradictory positions. Reason Magazine has boatloads of them. Libertarian principles emanate from the Non-Aggression Principle, the right to one’s own body and property, free of aggression or coercion against body or property. What’s incoherent about that? These include positions demanding not only so-called “marriage equality”, but forcing business owners to perform services or make products on demand for the purpose of… Read more »
I wish I had a nickel for every libertarian who has told me about the NAP, assuming I had never heard of the NAP. I’d have a lot of nickels. It’s become an abracadabra phrase among many libertarians. Here’s the problem though. Guys like me know the full history of the concept, not just the pleasing parts. When Locke wrote, “Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” we know he understood that things are never “equal and independent” and “ought” is not the same as “will” anywhere on earth.… Read more »
“Libertarians generally believe in and abide by the non-aggression principal, which renders the philosophy itself impotent in the cause of implementing its own principals.”
– James LaFond
I do not think the libertarian principal is about “non-aggression”. I have always understood the principal to be “non-initiation” of force. The true libertarian idea on the use of force is, or at least should be, live and let live, but if I catch you monkeying around with my stuff, I will blow your damn brains out. And if you live across the ocean and make a credible threat against me I will blow you out of the water as soon as you stick your canoe in the water.
Whenever I hear some open borders, NAP spouting, beta trying to sell me their shtick, I fantasize about setting their clothes on fire. With them in them, of course. I am a lady, after all.
But you must have it, as much as possible, within the nation. Thus the moralist’s civil war soon devolves into all against all.
You can’t have it outside the nation: that’s why globalism is monstrous.
If you’ve got any libertarians with time on their hands and piss off money, I can put them on the front line of my battle with DNR. Seriously, you have no idea what it’s like dealing with state and local bureaucrats. I have court documents showing themselves tied in a knot trying to do what the state wanted.
“Thou shalt not murder, steal, or covet?” Unthinkably old-fashioned. As if somebody thought punishing violators would build a high trust society. Might be frum some fusty old document- one even older than that silly rag with “consent of the governed” or “shall not be infringed” in it. Those dopes even used to think that their bladder was still private property! That proper law was redress of damage! Redress, private property- so unworkable in this bright new age. Piracy, my hardies! ‘Ordered Liberty!’ Eating the seed corn of others is the new way to growth, growth, abundant growth! Now we know… Read more »
Piracy? I do own the pirate ship. 50′ Aqua Home that was happily docked at my dock. The state AG told me I could move it to a marina, which is nice since DNR is shutting down the marina. It was stashed in Oregon for a few months. Had to bring it in as it was tagged there. Just got it home and we were buzzed by the county sheriff this weekend. Now it’s stashed up north for awhile. Needs to be sold of course, if I can ever get it in to clean it up and put it on… Read more »
I’m rather a fan of “can’t count their balls twice…”
Huh. Didn’t know any of ’em HAD balls.
Check the nearest harridan’s purse. That’s the most likely spot to find their testes.
Double-think allows leftists to escape the bind of realizing the internal inconsistencies in their logic. Tim Wise is still making $5,000 an hour, for saying his white privilege means he doesn’t have to worry about being stopped by the cops while driving, because his white skin makes it obvious that he’s a white man to the racist white police riding in their cruiser, and also race is a social construct and isn’t real. The inconsistencies pile up so quickly that they become obvious within the span of a single sentence. It’s the same with feminists who believe every white guy… Read more »
I’ve noticed more and more people in the business world who are unapologetically against “outsourcing”. Most of those efforts (all I’ve been involved in) yield little to no actual savings – while all seem to annoy customers and drive the remaining few in IT and Operations absolutely nuts.
They don’t mention the cultural differences (other than accent / language barriers). But you can read between the lines.
My husband and I own an import business & I finally asked my hubby why a certain Chinese businessman refused to speak with me. “Is it because I’m a woman? Is it my strong opinions? Is it my thick accent?” “No,” my husband said, “he just thinks you’re stupid.”
Oh. Well, that settles that conundrum.
Thanks for posting so frequently Zman. You’re my favorite read of the day.
I can’t wait to start the day with his latest outrage. I skim or ignore most others now. Truly rewarding, I so grateful.
Me love you long time!
Thank you, this is perfect timing. I have to answer a “Diversity” question on a job application to a notoriously liberal University; a question specifically designed to weed out conservative applicants. I’ve really been struggling between flat-out telling the truth and my NEED for a job. This article will help with that.
Lying is always recommended in these situations. Just never forget that you will be in among lunatics always on the prowl for crime-think. If you can live with it, then lie. If not, then answer with “Praise Kek” and walk out.
Lie your ass off, get in there, and start subtly sowing dissension and chaos until the place implodes. Godspeed.
“It’s hard to know where they go from here. In Europe, even the most unhinged nutters in the ruling class have stopped celebrating diversity.”
That’s not really true. I present you the First Vice-President of the European Commission, one modestly named Mr. Franciscus Cornelis Gerardus Maria “Frans” Timmermans:
The future o/t world is diversity. To fight diversity is like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs 🍳 It makes a mess. Let’s embrace diversity
That tweet is less than a month old. They’re as all-in as they ever were.
People say things when they initially believe them, and then they keep saying them long after they’ve stopped believing. It’s possible this guy still believes, but it’s also possible for an individual to go from full-throated Leninist belief to Brezhnev stagnation in the span of a lifetime. Hell, I was a progressive on race (with both parents Baby Booming hippies) and after a year in public schools in the ghetto, David Duke looked like Woody Guthrie to me. But I could still pen a platitudinous essay about how wonderful Maya Angelou’s poetry was, if I needed an A in English… Read more »
Although I was a child when those decisions were made, I always feel like I have to apologize to victims of forced busing. The survivors always told me their stories one on one, never in a group, always with a sense that it was just between us guys. If I had a media megaphone like Breitbart, I would run a month-long series, Tales of Forced Busing with a new account every day. Just after we moved to the suburbs, around ’74, stories started to pop up in the local papers and the TV news about “activists” who were trying to… Read more »
Frack me I remember those riots.
At night a white boy stands out like a signal flare. Running and hiding, and taking it so the others could get away.
In his own mind, like many, diversity is simply code for non-white so the future demographic collapse of whites will add to diversity by subtraction. Either don’t reproduce or brown up, comrade.
Ever notice how progressives celebrate multiculturalism but freeze when asked what the differences between two cultures are?
You ask a question that is not enumerated in the playbook. Independent thinking is not encouraged. The subject must be changed.
The diversity thing will continue at the upper reaches of society as a shibboleth that must be uttered in order to pass as acceptable, but it will be taken less and less seriously. It has passed from being a policy to being a god that libations must be poured out to on certain public occasions, so people will continue to go through the ritual and mouth the prayers. This is the opposite of what usually happens with religion, as it is usually the poor, middle class and rural folk who cling to the old religions with the most tenacity. But… Read more »
The elites at the universities, at this point, just want to keep their very cushy and well paying jobs. The crazies on campus are destroying the institutions very quickly now, and the profs and admin types don’t know what to do. They will try to read the tea leaves on the fly, and will flail about with whatever arguments and positions that they think will save their fat careers. I must be some sort of evil person, because I enjoy watching them suffer from the circumstances that they helped create and encourage.
Everyone knows that the vast majority of the degrees are worthless now. They keep playing the game and pretending otherwise because they don’t know what else to to, and at least the degree indicates a little tenacity and work ethic (but progressively less so), and the secondary schools have cooperated by getting more and more useless, so kids learn to count their balls in college now.
It really is shocking. It feels like this is something that has accelerated in my time, but it has been going on for a long time: http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2017/04/coming-collegiate-collapse.html The wake up for me was about 10-15 years ago. We had a database that was in need of tending and some reports that needed creating against it. I hired a black girl from the local college who was a computer science major. It was a nice summer job for her and I would feel good about hiring a local kid. She was a year from graduation and knew hardly anything about relational… Read more »
Working side by side for months–or better yet, years–with diversity may cure a person of his early miseducation. For me, the key to making sense of it was in understanding that a white person with an IQ of 80 is as retarded as we think he is while a Mestizo or Aferican is in fact not retarded at all. The cognitive differences which separate people are as irrelevant in some ways as they are crucial to others. Why man, any of them, evolved to perform calculus forty thousand years ago is a brilliant mystery.
So, just as the rural Italians of the ancient world went through the motions of Olympianism without caring about it, the Sicilians of Brooklyn and Staten Island go through the motions of Progressivism without caring about it … but why would the Roman elite have bothered pushing Olympianism on the rural Italians in the first place? why does the present Postmodern elite bother pushing Progressivism on Brooklyn Sicilians? The elite propagates its self-justifying religion beyond the point of political necessity because this is psychologically necessary for them (for the elite)? They’re thinking, “if this doctrine that justifies my rule is… Read more »
I read a science fiction story once that described a world gone crazy. In a list of crazy news bits was a mention of a town in Connecticut where the town council had “repealed the law of gravity”. It never occurred to me that somebody might “repeal the laws of biology”, but that’s exactly what they’ve done with judicial commands to stop believing that the Y chromosome presence determines the sex of the human. Netflix actually got an edited version of a 1990s program of Bill Nye the Science Guy where the mention that you’re a boy if you have… Read more »
The Jacobins liked to rearrange and redefine everything they could, too.
Once upon a time, our ancient ancestors fought daily to eat and remain alive. Then civilization happened and these burdens lessened dramatically. Now we are affluent and being pissed off constitutes an existential threat.
We are descended from the survivors of real existential threat and hardship, and all of those gains are now being squandered by a society that selects for maximum whining talent.
It’s an odd combo of fun and irony when you have “your Indians” (the second gen Indian-American guys in IT) railing about these exact traits of “those Indians”–the outsourced app dev and QA guys we’ve hired in India. “They are all thieves” is one of my standing favorite observations.
There was a second gen Chinese guy in grad school with me, who would go on and on about the wholesale cheating taking place among the Chicom students. I also remember during my business days, the great lengths we would go to to keep our Taiwanese customers from gray marketing our stuff. It was really all about relationships. Once you had one, their cultural ethics kicked in, they got promoted to “first tier,” and we generally could put them on probation. We still had to check on them from time to time. And no sense of intellectual property. The joke… Read more »
And even worse on the mainland. Had to do a bunch of work in China in the years after the WTO accession, trying to get an insurance operation up and running. Pretty much a clusterfuck trying to get our erstwhile partners to do anything except steal our IP and renege on investment and revenue obligations under the JV agreements. But always kept asking for more money and mysterious payments to “consultants” (these were the bribes to Party members). Finally had to go to Beijing to deal with one of these greasy palmed turds. Over dinner one night the guy went… Read more »
I bailed before I had to venture beyond the First Island Chain. I never hear happy stories coming from the mainland. My friends tell me that the Koreans and Taiwanese have a new-found love of IP protection now that companies like Samsung and Realtek actually have some of their own to protect from the Chicoms.
“Anyway, I pointed out the cultural issue and the guy literally gasped. If he had pearls, he would have clutched them. He started sputtering about how he had “the same problem with” and then he would sputter again. ” His reaction isn’t that strange when you think about the whole thing as a religion. You denied his religion and he was flabbergasted by your lack of belief. Its like declaring yourself an atheist in the 18th century. “All the signs point to them dropping this as their signature issue.” I think that the problem with dropping diversity for them now… Read more »
I don’t know. Look how quickly they went from making sport of gay marriage to assaulting anyone who was not embracing gay marriage. The Progs have such a complete control of mass media, they can sweep just about anything down the memory hole. What has worked well for the Progs is they keep their eye on the ball. They own mass media and they own the high ground in the culture. Anything that threatens that will be destroyed. The rest can be shouted down, as long as the Progs own all the megaphones so they don’t worry too much about… Read more »
“I helpfully pointed out that Asian solutions are not American solutions. Anyone who has done business with the Chinese or Indians knows they have a very different way of looking at things. For South Asians, a solution is whatever meets the letter of the request or whatever gets you off the phone. The Chinese will tell you whatever you want to hear. It’s not lying as they don’t have enough respect for you to tell a lie. It’s dismissal through deception.”
This means the Comcast and Verizon are both Asian/Chinese companies. It describes every experience I’ve had with both.
Z: You may enjoy the China Law Blog, especially the the how to not get kidnapped series, yes it’s a whole series or posts!
The Groupthink is very strong now. The actual political or social positions don’t matter much any more. They just want the playbook and they will follow directions. But the ground is shifting, and people are getting nervous. Especially so in higher education, the media, and in the mainline churches. The French election is a good example. How many voted for Macron because of his political positions? The cast ballot is simply a checkmark in the playbook. “France” itself is now just a brand, like Disney or McDonald’s. Sure, vote “for” the brand, why not? That is what the playbook tells… Read more »
Dutch, in a comment on the previous post you suggested that Qatar and Abu Dhabi might be models that the Macron/Soros-type Globalists would like to implement in Europe. Do you envision the ruling elite in this future society becoming formally (although not in their hearts) Islamic then, for reasons of political prudence?
I hadn’t thought about that angle. I see instead a society where the uber-wealthy are spatially and socially isolated from the grubby masses. The wealth and status assumed by the wealthy are just treated as facts of life, and represent the reality on the ground. The belief systems and expressions of the wealthy are incidental, but visible manifestations are calibrated by the wealthy to mesh with those of the underclass. So nominally visibly slightly Christian with subtle exhibitions of Muslim “respect” in the West. They can be Baha’i behind closed doors, for all it matters. Two important elements of the… Read more »
” Do you envision the ruling elite in this future society becoming formally (although not in their hearts) Islamic then, for reasons of political prudence?” Why wouldn’t they? And who is to say it hasn’t already happened? Judging by their strongly pro-islamic behavior towards muslim immigration and “refugees” in every western country, one has to seriously consider the possibility that many of them have already converted. It only takes 30 seconds to convert to Islam, and there really aren’t any religious requirements at all. You just have to act against the infidel. Given that western leaders demonstrably hate their own… Read more »
It’s possible, but not necessary. The elites hate the lower classes anyway, do they need to formalize some sort of religious commitment?
I would put Monaco, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and parts of Switzerland and The Vatican into that same Qatar/Abu Dhabi model. The religious tendencies, in 4 out of 5 anyway, are indeterminate. In the fifth case, who knows? Lots of public religious posturing, but those old guys strike me as the religious version of the university administrations these days.
“do they need to formalize some sort of religious commitment?”
What if the Saudis decided they would pay you, say, $30 million in a swiss bank account, to convert to Islam? If you are a western elitist politician, why wouldn’t you? You don’t give a shit about your own people, and you don’t care about religion one way or the other. Why not just take the money? Islam is fundamentally nihilist and all about material and political power, and the spiritual element is a joke– in other words, it fits perfectly with the western elitist ethos.
Or they don’t give you $30 million, they don’t give you a thing, but only promise that when the Muslim SHTF, you might be spared. For the elites, possibly a more valuable thing than another $30 million on the pile. For the Saudis, easy-peasy, no money changes hands, and they have demonstrated the upper hand going forward. Everyone exits the transaction with something they like.
Incoherent, you say?
“He’s vulgar,” Anton sniffed, as xe fingered xir scrotal piercing. “Cock holsters are always so crude.”
I predict the Cloud people will eagerly attribute the failures of bad whites to genetics while vigorously denying any genetic factor in the failures (or successes) of any other group.
Of course that assumes the relevant research actually happens. We may be in a world where everything we know about human biodiversity is based on Chinese academic research that was probably plagiarized.
“Science says what we tell you it says, brother”.
As Dr. Leo Spacemen so sagely observed, “Science is whatever we want it to be.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_yilOh4COQ
Could be the story of my life, brother. Saw the face of intolerance while debating a miliitant butch lesbian in university. Then in the workforce, heard about ‘no whites need apply.’ Then gay ‘marriage’ drove a deeper wedge.
Today, thousands (seriously) shitposts in a multitude of blogs and websites later and I can sense a change. Either chaos or order approaches, better than the constant boot on the neck of Political Correctnesss.
I can’t believe you dont write for Taki’s Magazine
Mandolyna Theodoracopulos hates me with the intensity of a thousand suns.
http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/05/08/authority-national-sanity/
Somalia as libertarian paradise.
I lept with joy at this article for making the EXACT same observation I have about Indian engineers. They only do EXACTLY what they are asked and never look at the big picture. One has to only look at their society to see the major and catastrophic flaw in their culture and thinking. Despite having brilliant scientists and engineers, their country is a Third World wreck.