Note: If you are familiar with Moldbug, who now calls himself Curtis Yarvin, I did a review of and comment upon his work behind the green door. Here is the SubscribeStar link and here is the Substack link.
At first blush, logic says that deception should have been bred out of humans long before humans settled down. Deceiving the tribe would be bad for the deceiver, resulting in exile or even death. That would significantly lower the reproductive success of the deceiver. On the other hand, tribes with deceivers would be less cooperative which would lower their overall success. Given enough time, it seems like deception should have disappeared from humanity.
Clearly that is not the case. We have lots of liars. That means deception has some useful role in human society. At the minimum, deception is not so negative that it would significantly lower the reproductive success of the deceiver. In fact, deception has probably always been an asset on the mating market. Even in the narrow world of the tribe, sweettalking Pebbles into a roll in the cave has obvious benefits. Perhaps lying for sex is enough to make deception a feature of man.
On the other hand, every society has prohibitions against deception. In European cultures, reputation is tied to honesty and trustworthiness. Someone who gains a reputation for deception loses status. In more clannish societies, deceiving outsiders is not so bad, especially if it helps the in-group, but lying to people in the clan can have severe consequences. Someone who deceives his own people can be exiled from the group or possibly worse.
This apparent contradiction has been known for a long time. It is not just humans who display the willingness to deceive others in the group. In many animal societies, like bees and ants, cooperation is rewarded and deception is punished. As with humans, deception should have been selected out a long time ago, but that is clearly not the case which suggest deception has some value. The deceiver gets enough benefit over time to make deception useful in some way.
A new study suggests that cooperation is what makes deception possible, as cooperation involved complex rules. An individual can exploit those rules to gain benefit without having to contribute. The more cooperative a society, the more opportunities there are for free riders to game those rules through deception in order to prosper from the cooperation of others in the group. The less cooperative a society, the fewer opportunities to exploit the rules through deception.
Given that we live in an age of universal deceit, at least by those in positions of authority, the evolution of lying suddenly matters a great deal. Part of it is that we are better able to see the lying of the people in charge. Before the mass media age, it was hard for people to get information on official lies. Of course, it was also much harder to promote official lies. Mass media results in a sense of mass cooperation, which means the communications revolution has revolutionized mass lying.
Even adjusting for our natural recency bias, institutional lying has exploded over the last thirty years in America. Every day someone from the government stands in front of cameras and blatantly lies about things. They know they are lying. The people in the press room know they are lying. Everyone in the room knows that the people watching it know everyone involved is lying. There is the sense that the people in these positions look at lying as a game where the biggest liar wins the day.
This is not a new thing. For twenty years the drug companies have said that serotonin levels are responsible for depression. It turns out to be wrong and the studies they relied upon were obviously wrong. In other words, they should have known their claims were false, but they had a billion reasons to lie, so they lied. This sort of deception has become the norm. Here is a story about a prominent cancer research facility caught faking their research.
Of course, we are still living through one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on human society, which is the Covid pandemic. The virus is real, but the claims around it have been nonsense since the start. Mask wearing and social distancing never had any basis in science or reason. Important people not only insisted it was science but forced people to play along. Now we are learning that the vaccines are not what was claimed and may have made things worse.
Many people have noticed the scale and degree of lying from official quarters, but the assumption is always that the cause is degeneracy. That is the people slithering into positions of authority are responsible for the rise in deception. The solution is to round them up, put them on boats and send them out to sea. Put honest people back into positions of authority and we return to the normal levels of deception. That may be just as wrong as the things coming from our leaders.
It may be that we have reached a point where the people in the ruling class of society, this includes the managerial and administrative classes, no longer feel any connection to the rest of us. They lie and willingly repeat lies, because it causes no harm to them and solves immediate concerns. Like people in clannish societies, deceiving outsiders brings no penalty as outsiders simply do not count. The ruling class is now an alien clan that is indifferent to the rest of us.
Alternatively, this evolving class awareness may bring with it a sense that the people over whom they rule are a constant threat. Like the Alawites in Syria, the new class at the top of the social hierarchy now sees their position dependent on keeping the masses confused and disorganized. Israel has always done this with her Arab neighbors, preventing them from uniting against her. Perhaps the explosion of lying is due to fear and hostility by the ruling class.
Another possibility, suggested by that British study linked above, is that deception tracks with cooperation. The more cooperative a society, or at least the more it appears to cooperate, the more deception in the society. This seems counter intuitive as cooperation is about trust and deception undermines trust. On the other hand, the more people experience deception, the more they are willing to cooperate with those who display trustworthiness. Trust and deception rise and fall together.
An underappreciated aspect of the communications revolution is how unity has become the standard of politics. Fifty years ago, people understood that politics was the art of the possible, which meant compromise. You give a little to get a little, but often there was no deal to be had and you just accepted it. Today, politics is all about uniting everyone behind a narrow cause. Every day our rulers demand we put aside our interest for something. Mass cooperation is the norm.
These demands for mass cooperation track with the growth of mass media and they track with the rise in anathematizing of dissent. As communications have increased, the demand for cooperation have increased. As cooperation increases, the deception increases with it. Some of the lying is in an effort to trick people into putting their interest aside for the good of the cause. Much of the lying is just opportunism. The greater cooperation has led to an explosion in deception.
The prisoner’s dilemma game is a classic example of how even simple human interactions can become quite complex. Rational self-interest can lead someone into a trap depending upon the rules in which they are forced to operate. This may be what we are seeing with the explosion of lying. The communications revolution has altered the ancient rules of human cooperation within large scale society. The ability to enhance mass cooperation has resulted in mass deception.
Like that prisoner’s dilemma game, the people doing the lying think they are acting in their self-interest but they are actually undermining their collective interests. The more they lie in defense of “our democracy” the less valuable the system that makes it possible for them to be a ruling class. Their efforts to enhance the value of their position in society is undermining their position. Taken to its logical conclusion, the collapse in trust will bring about a collapse in the ruling class.
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If humans were incapable of lying, honesty would have no particular value.
All cretins are liars, but not all liars are cretins.
This is a true statement.
All the lying makes sense when you realize there is no downside but a lot of upside to lying.
Scientists and the managerial class who lie, if it is the approved lie, get rewarded. No pundit or scientist will ever lose a job or grant for lying.
The ruling class of course is not going to be punished because they make the rules.
Telling the truth, however, if it goes against what the ruling class wants carries significant downside.
Women have no problem lying because if it feels true it is the same a being true.
In the countries where the ruling class openly see the masses as useless eaters, they feel no compunction to tell the truth. After all, people are a burden they don’t want
“That means deception has some useful role in human society. …’
It could also mean that sociobiology is so much crap.
On the contrary, it is a useful lens.
If deceiving your tribe means you have 20% more offspring than the others, but decreases the overall success of the tribe by only 10%, then it’s a viable evolutionary strategy. If there are too many liars then the negatives add up and the liars get hurt by other liars more than they benefit from their own lies. Then another more functional group will come and wipe them out when cohesion suffers.
To prevent this failure mode, it is essential that liars cannot get a foodhold, and any who try this are shamed/flogged/executed as appropriate, so that the expected costs exceed the expected benefits.
Us anglos have become too legalistic, and ostracism doesn’t work any more as liars can easily move, and won’t starve if they make enemies. It’s not practical to take people to court for lying unless it’s clear cut business fraud, so we have almost zero ways to punish liars.
I would say the unique thing about our age is the phenomenon of mass cooperation in obvious deceptions.
The shining example are the men pretending to be women. In any other age a person doing this would treated with at best benign contempt and ridicule, and more often abuse and persecution. Today however, virtually the entire ruling class goes along with this nonsense, and those who dissent are the ones who are ostracized, punished economically and even punished by the law. It is the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but in today’s telling, the boy who speaks out is sent to foster care or juvie, and his parents are prosecuted for child endangerment.
There are some true believers in this nonsense, but for the vast majority of the elite, such charades serve to tear down traditional values and to humiliate those forced to go along.
The linked article makes the remarkable claim that “ Although how these mechanisms select for cooperation has been explored extensively, their potential to select simultaneously for complex cheating strategies has been largely overlooked.” The authors seem to be unaware of the work of John Maynard Smith and the hawk/dove model. Just goes to show that modern academics have no memory; they live in the now.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1645
Not one reference to Smith’s seminal work in the paper.
Yeah I thought the Selfish Gene had laid this stuff out pretty well. With that model in human terms you’d start with a group of empaths, then a sociopath pops up and is able to prey on the credulous empaths with ease having lots of little sociopath children. Unchecked, if the group becomes all sociopaths they fight each other and can’t cooperate on anything. It turns out the solution is to have a societal immune system in the form of sociopath hunters. These are those conservative military folk who seem to take a little too much pleasure in killing “bad guys”, but are perfectly law abiding otherwise. If you watch those videos where the guy confronts people who don’t put their shopping carts back in the cart pen, and think “this would be better if he brutally executed the transgressor for their sin against order” then you’re of that mindset.
The problem we face now is that the environment has shifted with modern technology, the sociopaths have adapted and guarded themselves by convincing the pussy empaths that punishing criminals and liars is “mean”, and that we need to just hug the psychos harder to turn them into good little empaths again. All the order-maintaining anti-psycho psychos have been thrown into disarray by a sick society that paints them as the problem, so the liars are flourishing. We have a trial of the century for Kyle Rittenhouse shooting a diddler, while at the same time they decriminalized porch monkeys shoplifting in all the big cities.
If we don’t correct this and return to a stable equilibrium, our fate will be that of every other mal-adapted organism on Earth.
I learned of Smith’s work by reading The Selfish Gene. Societies of all hawks or all doves are unstable.
It seems clear that the outsider/insider distinction is crucial in all human groups…except for Northern europeans whose heredity is based west of the Hajnal line, where manorial feudalism reigned..We don’t know exactly why, but those of us with that heredity tend to trust strangers and treat them as equals, which unfortunately makes us likely victims for the more clannish peoples…Hbd ‘Chick and many other researchers have written about this…
I am having a hard time believing a society of empathy is worth building. It just seems too easy to infiltrate and destroy. Maybe the pussy empath should be hardened and a lot more tribal? Normies whore out their daughters while castrating their sons. Or maybe we should become just a tribe of sheepdogs rather than sheep or wolves.
You overestimate them. They’re just dumb.
Current_year PhD IQ isn’t significantly above average. Last number I saw in the news was 109.
99 is more plausible.
So is 89.
Deception is common throughout nature. Many creatures display defense mechanisms like color and puffery to make themselves look dangerous by mimicking poisonous creatures or predators. In my experience, lying is directly proportional to the combination of opportunity and risk tolerance. The greater the opportunity a lie presents, the greater the lie. The greater the risk tolerance (of getting caught), the greater the lie. Big Opportunity + Low Perceived Risk = Big Lie.
The lies have increased exponentially because the money and power involved have increased exponentially. Covid as a lie worked because the profit motive was very high (both politically and economically), and the people doing the lying enjoy a very low risk profile because they can scream “SCIENCE!” and 150,000,000 suckers will believe them no matter what. No sane person believes there is a government agency or individual with authority who would actually investigate and prosecute these liars for fraud.
We just saw that two FBI agents can lie to investigators about that USA Gymnastics rape case, then falsify their 302 forms to cover up the lies (and get caught doing so), and absolutely NOTHING happens to them. They retire with full benefits after allowing those little girls to be raped for over a year while they did nothing. The profit motive is high and the risks are low. They know nothing will happen to them.
We also camouflage lying (camouflage is another kind of lying) in our games. Chess involves deception which is a form of lying designed to gain a strategic advantage. Move the Queen here to distract from the fact that doing so hides an attack by a Rook two moves later, checkmate. A bluff in poker is a deception.
Lying is normal and it comes down to opportunity and risk.
The lies get bigger because the opportunity is going up and the risks are going down. The problem with lying – and I would argue that the Ruling Class in this country has already collapsed – is that short term leverage often does not produce long-term success. Liars often have to increasingly construct more and more complex lies to cover for past sins and inevitably they collapse under the weight of too many contradictions. That’s where our Ruling Class is at right now. Nobody believes them. The only people going along with them are the people willing to lie to themselves (and to us) because of the short term advantage they think they gain.
Well, how is that working out with double-digit inflation, $5 gas, and quite possibly food shortages this fall? What do those same people claiming Biden is the greatest President in history do when the economy goes into a recession and they lose their jobs? Eventually, the lies accumulate and can no longer be sustained.
That’s why the Space Shuttle blew up in 1986. NASA had to try and perpetuate an increasingly complex system of lies (to each other and to the public) until eventually, they lied their way right into a huge explosion on live TV.
Eventually, reality catches up with the liars.
Some times it’s too late. Weyker, since she was part of a federal task force, was given complete immunity and remains a St. Paul cop.
Yeah, but she got ‘scolded’ by the district court judges…
Z mention’s the “prisoner’s dilemma.” This is an exercise in the field of game theory. Many articles on that, or a sub-topic, “iterated prisoner’s dilemma,” are available. Many simple strategies are easily simulated on computer to ascertain which is the most successful strategy. At least of simple strategies, the “tit for tat” is often best. Turns out that is often how humans comport themselves: We tend to treat others as we’d like to be treated. Similarly, if another deals with us (dis-)honorably, we are likely to return the favor.
Alas, in much of our world, many entities have discovered that the highest (short-term) reward is to deceive. This likely has high reward at first (in a high trust society) but with time the returns diminish, as other players adopt tit for tat.
So everyone will have a bias for deception in short-term ambits.
Then everyone whose mental complexion cannot see beyond short-term will have such behaviour in any ambit.
That may explain the atavistic mistrust of others from a stranger land (or city), alien passers by: having not to fear social penalties, these ones are expected to surely deceive.
I agree that coof was one of histories greatest hoaxes. git seems to me that to pull off a lie on great scale some planning and coordination must be involved , otherwise the truth would get out and , supported by evidence and experience, would win out , but that really hasn’t happened . normie stills loves jabs and face diapers.
Another big lie is that Russia is losing the Ukraine war , sinking into economic collapse. both provably completely opposite of the truth. Yet it’s everywhere in the media. and from official GAE sources. I wonder what they have in mind?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/nyc-city-urging-people-get-go-bag-ready-issuing-first-nuclear-attack-psa-since-1960s/
I know false flags don’t exsist, but it’s pretty wierd.
If a politician is making a speech, first, you have to know to whom he is speaking. If he isn’t speaking to you(the public); then, can you accuse him of lying?
The big problem for the elite isn’t that everyone knows that they’re lying; it’s that they can’t acknowledge the truth. Whatever that is.
Re: antidepressants
After well over 4 decades living on this earth, it is my strong belief that it should always be the very LAST resort to take medications that “correct” most health problems, especially when you are young. Of course I’m not taking about life or death situations. I’m talking about issues that could be improved with a little effort in other areas, such as a balanced natural diet, exercise, weight control, spiritual self reflection, good rest and sleep, being active, staying away from drugs, pornography, cigarettes, and alcohol, setting normal, healthy life goals (having a family, steady career etc) and engaging in healthy social habits.
Medications almost always target natural functions that get “turned off” or stop functioning normally when the medication is introduced. You literally become dependent on the mediation and your normal body functions atrophy. (Which is why the industry is so lucrative).
Getting dependent on meds at a young age sometimes stunts the healthy development of these natural functions. My son is ADHD, and while I did eventually settle on a medication to help him, I DID NOT allow the doctor to put him on stimulants. I pay a lot extra money for a non-stimulant med, but I feel that the mechanisms behind this medication are less intrusive, and it is less dependence forming.
My advice to anyone who is depressed is to get up off your ass and do things that improve your life. Make yourself too busy to have time to be depressed. All the meds and counseling in the world are useless if you can’t learn to self motivate and find contentment in life.
Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Lying Game
Anyone else driven to distraction by the automated phone voices that say: “We are experiencing exceptionally high call volume, and wait times are excessive …..”
It’s a common lie foisted on millions of Americans daily, developed by communications consultants and packaged for sale to corporate and government managers to cover for the fact that they have almost no-one providing real customer service anymore.
It’s a small lie, but ever present and offensive. And I think it speaks volumes about the corruption of our culture and decline of character and truthfulness.
Another, slightly newer one, is their asking for your phone number: “…. in case we get disconnected.” Now, I don’t think we can pin this on the poor, overworked soul working in the bowels of some corporate or governmental sweat shop; they’re just reading an eerily similar script, probably ginned up by the same vile message massagers who created the first one mentioned above.
I think this one, though, has a perhaps more insidious intent. It’s asked everywhere. Even the govt offices use the exact same words. I think some (beyond merely mercantile-minded orgs) are changing to using phone numbers as ID, data tracking and personal locating mechanism. Much more for their money than SSN ….
OOPS …
Why is the first a lie…? Because they ALWAYS say that; there are no non-over-tasked periods to validate the claim of intermittent overload.
OT
I haven’t watched Scott Adams in a while, but for some unknown reason, it appeared on my feed today.
If you have the opportunity, watch today’s episode.
It is unusually satisfying.
Scott Adams has a pleasant tone and is often amusing in his musings. 😉 However, his podcasts are always geared for a hour—possible due to remuneration concerns. I do not have an hour to spend on anybody’s musings and it is annoying to listen to one of his podcasts and then think, “Geez, I could have stated that in 5 minutes.” My time has value (to me) and no one pays me for it, so I give it away sparingly. Stopped listening to Adams years ago. From your pointer to today’s ramblings, I see no change.
can you give us some more info? is he suffering in some way? he never admits when he is wrong, so i doubt he was eating crow.
He was barking up trees that would be of interest to many who comment here.
As I said, it was as a good one. And I listen in the car, so I’m doing something, typically when I listen to you tube videos.
“In fact, deception has probably always been an asset on the mating market.”
I could tell by her blood-stained hand.
Peacticed in the art, she was…
“The virus is real, but the claims around it have been nonsense since the start.”
How do you know the virus is real? Any new symptoms? NONE. Any additional deaths in 2020? NOPE! New England journal of medicine was even forced to withdraw an article that stated this.
I in no way shape or form know that what’s called covid-19 is any different from the flu/cold viruses that have always existed and mutated every year.
I DO know that the vax is poison and at best does nothing.
In addition, all the testing for covid is totally bogus as well according to the INVENTOR of pcr tests.
So if even the testing is bullshit, how can you KNOW there that covid-19 is real and/or any different from a cold or flu?
YOU CAN’T
Then you simply do not pay attention or understand the published literature. The genome is published (39000 snp’s) for all to see. If you have any information—aside from your own intuition, please present some citations. You have been challenged before in your assertions.
Some of the most virulent, anti-Covid hysteria, authorities in the business accept that there is such a thing as Covid—which is a variety of Corona virus. 50 years ago as a student I remember reading about corona viruses being studied and their effects—then known as the common cold (rino viruses too). At that time there were three known. In the last 20 years or so we’ve have more virulent variants discovered, like MERS. These were not very contagious and were dealt with quickly. Now we have more variants.
Why these variants have come about and now are occurring repeatedly is the subject of debate. I personally believe it is directly due to our vexxination program and government-pharmaceutical collusion. But that there are variants properly called corona viruses is not debated. That some folks experience mild symptoms, i.e., cold like symptoms, has never been denied. I, myself, am one of those people.
Prior to 2020, elderly people died every year from flu and most often colds. It sucks when your immune system ages and declines. Today’s Corona variants may be little different from yesterday’s, but that is of little solace to an 80 yo sufferer. Whether anything reasonable can be done with “vaccines” looks doubtful. Therapeutics look promising however.
All cause death rates are up all over the Western world, but there is great conflation because of the societal lockdowns—which are argued to have contributed to deaths, outside of Covid—and perhaps even greater in total than anything caused by Covid. There are also hints that initial deaths involving Covid included many oldsters in the last few months of life who would have passed on anyway. This would lead to a more stable year to year all cause death rate—even with Covid as a primary cause finding.
Ecclesiastes 6:11
11 The more the words, the less the meaning
You left out the engineered gain of function bit, an artificially increased infectiousness coupled with enhanced transmissibility.
This lent credibility to the panic to get vexxed; a twofer resulted, large scale vexxination with an increasingly apparent toxic vexx with still not fully known pernicious effects, and a grab for deprivation of individual integrity, both bodily and in terms of privacy and civil rights. This all looks way too fortuitous for the varied agendas of “Our Elites” to be mere happenstance.
In other words, this was not your father’s coronavirus by design, and the knock-on consequences have been monumental.
“Then you simply do not pay attention or understand the published literature.”
Appeal to authority, got it.
Deception has a useful role for the individual in pursuit of theft and power. Most people are pretty much brainless sheep and are shaped by incentives. Since the 60s, the government has subsidized through endless welfare the natural liars, criminals, and incompetent. Instead of receiving the logical punishment that would result from their bad actions, these people were rewarded; thus the good are punished.
In a sane world, single mothers would suffer in poverty for their choice of being whores for some piece of shit guy. It would be a great example for everyone of what path to not take. But big daddy government steps in and gives them more money per bastard. And the media makes them heroes!
Take this example of evil behavior and apply it to everything. We’re living in a nearly perfectly inverted world of satanism.
I think it is easier than that. We are changing religion. From Christianity to liberalism (specifically to its last version, political correctness)
Christianity is a guilt culture so the emphasis is in trying to be good. And being good means a set of values of the moral law shared with all cultures (including being honest with your neighbor) plus some specific Christian things (pray to Jesus, read the Bible, etc).
Virtue signaling is discouraged in Christianity. Jesus spoke more against virtue signaling than about any other topic. And since Christianity says that the most virtuous people are the ones that admit they are sinners, this makes difficult to do virtue signaling: “Look what a sinner I am. I have a lot of sins!” But some Christian sects have found a workaround to make virtual signaling possible.
The new religion is a shame culture. The emphasis is not in doing good, but in appearing good, in saving face. In this, it is more similar to Islam. You can do everything in private while you deffend the True Faith in public and you don’t get caught. So lying is allowed if you are not caught. In addition, the notion of the good has change. Now it does not focus on the moral law (being honest, treating well others, etc). It focus in opposing inequality (being anti-sexist, anti-racist, pro-lgtb). So there is not the emphasis in lying that existed before.
People don’t feel guilty when lying. Firstly, guilt is disappearing in our society. Second, they know they are a good person because they are against sexism, racism, etc. Third, they don’t have to do anything against racism, sexism, etc (let alone trying to be a good person like yesteryear) because the important thing is to appear anti-racist, etc. si virtue signaling is enough. Being part of the progressive team is enough.
In short, they can be despicable human beings and they won’t have any problem with themselves or the society. So why should they behave well? They behave folliwing self-interest in any situation, disregarding morality. This includes lying, when it is convenient.
The emphasis on being good is Western / Christian. God is good.
The emphasis on shame is strongly Eastern or Asian, for whatever reasons. I am not studied in this, and this is mainly my experience telling me this. One of many examples: I worked in downtown LA in a skyscraper for a few years and across the street in an opposing skyscraper, this Korean man had shamed his dad so he took a heavy object and broke a window and jumped like 30 stories onto the sidewalk. Me and my colleagues were looking at each other in total bewilderment as to the motivations.
Perhaps this makes sense because we are in fact becoming more eastern as a society. Started in my lifetime with white people adopting into eastern philosophies and religions, hippies mainly.
Is that the connection? The hippie / eastern connection? Could be. But I can’t say definitively.
I’m just guessing here, but maybe shame is about conformity. To be guilty is to transgress objectively— to fall short in God’s eyes, or something like that. To be shameful is to fall short in the eyes of others.
Yes, Asian cultures are shame cultures, also known as honor cultures. This is not a personal opinion: it has been well studied.
I think the connection comes from the secularization of Calvinism. This is a personal opinion. When Luther said that salvation was only by faith, he did the first step towards virtue signaling. Today the important thing is not to do things to help immigrants or women but to BELIEVE in feminism or multiculturalism. Faith not works.
The second step was done in Calvinism. The world was divided between the saved and the damned. The saved could not lose their salvation. The damned could not earn their salvation. This introduced a Manichean element in Christianity (whixh is anti-Manichean: good and evil coexist in every man). Today, the woke and their mascots are good and can do no wrong. The traditional American people is evil and can do no good. If some immigrant is a serial killer, the fault is in the US people, because they opress immigranrs or allow weapons. This is the origin of today’s “Who? Whom?”
So, so far, you have to believe to be one of the saved. This ressembles today’s political corectness but it is stll a guilt culture. The emphasis is in the internal, not the external.
The American cultual mattrix was founded on Puritanosm, which is a form of Calvinism. Calvinism had one problem from the beginning. How to know if one is saved? Initially, it was “I am saved bacause I go to the right church”, but this became untenable with the proliferation of churches produced by Protestantism. So the evidence of salvation ended up being earthly success. This is why Americans are so obsessed with working and money. They want to be considered as good, as saved, as winners. They don’t want to be seen as damned, as losers. In Catholic countries, poors well seen and rich are mistrusted, following the New Testament. This produces socialism. In America. it is the opposite.
So the criteria of salvation has become external and the culture evolves to a shame culture. It is not important to be good but appear good. It is not important to be a winner but look as a winnee. So you must have a good car and a McMansion evenif you are a slave or wuth debt for life. This is richness signaling.
So when the new religion comes, it has all the psychological nexhanisms in place. A Manichean worldview, which divides people between good and bad (because Calvinism). Faith and not works (because Luther). So to be part of the good people you only have to have the right doctrines. Antieacism, etc. And external criteria for salvation (because evolution of Calvinism). So you don’t have to really believe this only look like you believe this. Virtue signalling, shame culture.
I am typing this on a cell while my bus travels between two Central American cointries with a road full of holes, in a language different than mine without seeing well the letters because eye problems. Boy, it has been hard.
Interesting stuff. I was raised United Methodist, don’t know where that fits, or even if my beliefs are UM, although I think they are.
Justified by faith— yes, but saved by Grace alone. Good works come from perfect faith, so practicing and perfecting faith is the most important. Know a tree by its fruit, etc.
All the rest about work ethic and prosperity, idk. To me it’s always been about not being a burden on others, being a net positive for your community, or simply staying grounded in labor.
As far as the elect, how can we know? It’s silly to concern yourself with things that are up to God imo.
Of course, things are always more complex that what can be included in a combox.
I was not talking about current Christian religion in America but about the secular ideas produced by past Christian religion in America. Western people hava been surrounded by Christianity for millennia. This has impregnated all Western thought and culture.
Even Western atheists are deeply Christians in culture. I am talking about culture not about theology.
Talking about salvation in Christianity would take many pages. So excuse me if I am not so subtle. But, in any way, when Christian ideas are secularized they get simified and lose subtleness.
My knowledge of Methodism is (I have on good authority) that it officially recommends a married couple to have coitus thrice weekly 🙂
Right on. I’m interested in the genealogy of my beliefs (and culture). Always looking for those answers.
Ben: somebody’s always got to make it about sex 🙂
“Taken to its logical conclusion, the collapse in trust will bring about a collapse in the ruling class.”
I only hope I live long enough to see it. But, being that I’m the same age as our esteemed host, I have my doubts.
That will depend on the length of time between the collapse of trust and the collapse of the Ruling Class. You are living through the former. I’m a few years older than you and for the first time I think I may live to see the Ruling Class collapse. The erosion of trust is accelerating.
Science always hides behind the premise that you state a hypothesis, then try to to prove it false. So when we get a new study or research stating a finding we assume that the necessary rigorous research has been done so we can believe in the new data. We bought hook, line, and sinker the fat correlation to heart disease, look where that got us! I could go on and on with these little health factoids, covid anyone? Now we just swallow anything that anyone says if it promises to keep us safe. The word SAFE is all they ever say. You can create a lot of misinformation, disinformation, deception, lies, if it is the name of keeping us safe, which by the way is an impossibility.
Interesting topic.
Here is another possible explanation for the mendacity pandemic. The Power Structure, through its near monopoly on the control of information has–to use Noam Chomsky’s terminology–manufactured a consensus. The vast majority of Westerners have been conditioned to believe that diversity, egalitarianism and democracy are supreme and unalloyed goods. Almost everybody is onboard with this program. And the rare dissenters are monsters who must be punished, and if possible, destroyed.
The patently false nature of the DED consensus and the fact that is is nonetheless swallowed hook, line and sinker, suggest that sloe-eyed gullibity is a primary trait of the age. And those who are gullible can, in a word, be gulled, which is precisely what the archons of the Power Structure do. They generated a consensus composed of errant nonsense, which demonstrated gullibity that the archons have taken advantage of.
“Mask wearing and social distancing never had any basis in science or reason. Important people not only insisted it was science but forced people to play along. Now we are learning that the vaccines are not what was claimed and may have made things worse.”
Never!
I actually managed to contract the Shamdemic Sniffle a couple of weeks back. Apparently. My wife tested herself to reveal that, by the miracles of ropey testing and ‘Science!’ she had – and by extension – I had The China Virus.
I was feeling a bit rough, mind. The first night I had an intense headache which subsided the next day. Then I had a painful throat for a further five; succeeding this came a very dry cough that lingered on for a couple of weeks after the initial symptoms.
But I wouldn’t shut down the world for it, that’d be Evil… oh, wait.
What you are describing, and what fits nearly everyone else’s experience, are symptoms of the “common cold”. Can’t remember all of society being shut down for it before…
“Mask wearing and social distancing never had any basis in science or reason.”
100 feet you may breathe in say, one germ?
50 feet, maybe 2?
25 feet, maybe 3?
10 feet, maybe 100?
3 feet, maybe 5,000?
The question is, how many germs does it take to make you sick?
The question is answered by that Antarctic research station that had a Covid outbreak despite PERFECT quarantine methods. It doesn’t matter how many germs… it’s gonna happen.
If you truly believe that an old sock taped over your air holes will make the difference between life and death, then how did you survive until 2020 in the first place?
“It doesn’t matter how many germs… it’s gonna happen.”
Come now. There is a thing called the germ theory of disease. No germ, no disease. Enough germs, you get sick.
The name Edward Jenner ring a bell?
Humans relating to each other with visible faces, handshakes and hugs will be far more healthy than avoiding any number of germs.
Do you even care, how many children lost their childhoods to this farce? How many elderly withered in forced solitary confinement? You are not trying to promote healthy living. You are trying to promote fear and isolation and conformity to the literal New World Order!
Jeesh Gunner. Are you intentionally being obtuse? What i said is obviously true. At the same time i agree with you regarding the consequences of excessive germophobia. Why is that so hard to understand?
A young athlete and a geriatric cancer patient undergoing chemo treatments fear germs with different intensity.
In some ways, elites do tell the truth. They do not really talk about how their stupid and misguided policies supposedly help us anymore. I noticed that they do not really talk about “diversity is our strength” anymore. They dropped that line a few years ago, probably because it was self-evidently nonsense and has absolutely no basis in fact. Now they just say we need to accept it because we are evil if we don’t.They don’t really talk about “fighting for our freedoms” the way they did as recently as Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they just say we need to support this futile proxy war in Russia because you are either on their side or the side of their old tribal enemy. They don’t really talk about abortion as “legal, safe, and rare” like they used to, they openly gloat about how healthy young women murdering their healthy unborn children is a good thing because she is better off making $40K a year working for Globohomo than raising a family. WEF and the Great Reset crowd is very open. They see no problem demanding we eat the bugs while they serve filet mignon at their conferences. They say we shouldnt be allowed to go on vacation while they fly around in massive private jets.
In other words, when they tell the truth, it revolves around how much they hate us, how they think we are the worst people to ever exist, how much they despite pandering to us, how much they hate our children, and how they want us miserable, replaced, and death, in that order. We should listen to them.
“In other words, when they tell the truth, it revolves around how much they hate us, how they think we are the worst people to ever exist, how much they despite pandering to us, how much they hate our children, and how they want us miserable, replaced, and death, in that order. We should listen to them.”
Excellent point. They still have to lie to force people to do harmful things to themselves–join the military and take experimental vaccines springs to mind–but the day will come when they just order that as well.
I want to expand on a reply to Dinodoxy, who, correctly I think, wrote that it is a category error to equate veracity to cooperation, and suggested some lying absolutely is necessary to attain cooperation.
I would add that in addition to a degree of deception being necessary, a suspension of belief also is required. As an example, an inventor hawks a very improbable concept as a way to sell a product, and the promoter/buyer/marketer has to pretend they can create a demand for it. Neither the inventor nor marketer knows that as a fact, so they have to lie to one another to give it a go. This is a commercial example of Plato’s concept of a noble lie necessary to maintain harmony and the social compact.
What we see now is gratuitous lying for selfish and venal motives. In fact, cooperation is not really the point at all. As you point out, the Ruling Class is alien and hostile to its subjects and demands their compliance rather than cooperation.
Exactly because cooperation is not the point, this is unsustainable. The assumption that the Ruling Class is lying only to promote itself, which is the case, will undermine the rulers when a time comes that requires cooperation rather than subservience. We see that somewhat now with people refusing to join the military, refusing to take the vaccine, and refusing accept the legitimacy of the Ruling Class as a whole. It is mostly a minority that is uncooperative, but it is far more likely to grow than diminish, as you note.
People will accept deception, or at least a degree of it, as long as their cooperation leads to some common good or at least is not harmful to them. When those results no longer are available and the deception is viewed as counter-productive to their lives, a portion will peel off. That is happening now.
Deceit has some value — but for the individual or conspiring minority and at the expense of the collective. If enough individuals or conspiring minorities engage in deception, nothing collective works anymore as the collective trust that’s required isn’t there. The virtue of Northwest European societies (and by implication and before the surge in non-European immigration, in North America) was there was enough collective and mutual trust for there to be public projects. But if enough people are throwing trash in the parks or pissing in the subway, then these collective projects cease to exist. If people are cheating on welfare payments, then the welfare system breaks down, and there is no impetus to revive it. If the military-industrial complex siphons off untold amounts of resources, there’s no national pride and no-one with any options is willing to serve in the US army.
“If the military-industrial complex siphons off untold amounts of resources, there’s no national pride and no-one with any options is willing to serve in the US army.”
Lying about the nobility of service will not cause people to refuse to join, but lying about wanting someone to die for graft and corruption most certainly will. Venality will not cut is as a Noble Lie.
Jerk Off – Lyrics by Maynard James Keenan
“Someone told me once that there’s a right and wrong
Punishment was cure for those who dared to cross the line
But, it must not be true
For jerk offs just like you and
Maybe it, takes longer to catch a total a**hole
I’m tired of waiting
(Repeat)
Maybe it’s just bull****
I should play God and
Shoot you myself
I’m tired of waiting
If consequences dictate my course of action and
It doesn’t matter what’s right
It’s only wrong if you get caught
If consequences dictate my course of action
I should play God and
Shoot you myself
I’m tired of waiting
Die now!
Shoot it!
Kick it!
F*** it!
Shoot you in your f****** head!!”
As always, Keenan, until he got TDS and adopted leftism and PC to avoid becoming irrevelent with the public, nailed it.
If consequences dictate. The animals are backing the cooperative into a corner. At some point the consequences of being cooperative are more grave than the alternatives.
That first EP was the best stuff Tool ever did. Too bad they never managed to get back to that good, fast stuff again.
Honesty as a universal virtue is a residual feature of Christianity. It will fade away in our post Christian world.
Throughout history, deception has been an admirable tool to be used against adversaries – the out group. It was only with the Christian paradigm of all humanity belonging to one group that deception came to be viewed as universally evil.
The ancient Persians punished lying with death. “Treat me as a liar” was an oath of commitment.
Even They lied to their opponents in their wars.
Agreed. In Islam, deception is good in several cases: when you use it to advance Islam, seduce a woman or protect yourself. Allah is the best of deceivers, according to the Qur’an. He deceived humanity by making them believe that the man of the cross was Jesus while he was Judas.
The emphasis of being moral is only characteristic of guilt cultures, that is, Christianity. In.shame cultures, like Islam or Asia, the emphasis is in appearing moral, so an undiscovered lie is good. In fear cultures, the emphasis is in getting away with it, so lying is good if you can pull it off. All of these types of cultures can be tribal or non-tribal. In tribal societies, lying to the outgroup is allowed
I have to disagree
Maybe it is a regional thing, or whatever the case may be, but deception I have always seen as a sometimes good thing, occasionally a bad thing. It depends. It lends itself to a variety of circumstances. Maybe because I associate deception more with playing sports where you always wanted to deceive the opponent. I grew up being told and coached to deceive the opponent. But no one ever told or even coached me to lie, and if I did I would get paddled at school or have my dad scream down my face at home.
I’d say deception is bad maybe 3 or 4 times out of 10. And that is when it is used in some kind of dishonest way. Like parking your car at the mall so your wife thinks you’re there but instead you are across the street in an apartment with a mistress.
Lying is bad 9.5 times out of 10. It screams negative connotations.
“The solution is to round them up, put them on boats and send them out to sea. Put honest people back into positions of authority and we return to the normal levels of deception. That may be just as wrong as the things coming from our leaders.”
Let me stop you right there. There is nothing wrong with trying. Let’s throw the “elites” into the sea and see what happens. Let’s do that a few times, just to see if the results can be replicated.
“ Let’s throw the “elites” into the sea and see what happens.”
Stop right there Fed poster
Haven’t you heard my story about how I tried to oppose these elites. I got thrown into prison for two years and got my rear end pounded day and night.
Watch yourself and become a good little docile worker bee like me.
I haven’t heard that story. It sounds interesting to say the least…..
At first blush, I’m inclined to say that the sexual element is important, and undervalued today. I say this because I was a young guy just starting out in the Clinton Years, so I witnessed firsthand how seemingly insane the “grownups” in my world went. I really was apolitical in those years — my interests being almost entirely centered on girls and drinking — so I had no dog in that fight, but it always baffled me how enthusiastic the older folks were for Bill Clinton.
He was just so obviously a snake… if I walked onto the sales floor at the car dealership and Bill Clinton slithered up to me, I’d immediately turn around and walk out. He obviously thinks I’m a sucker, because he obviously thinks everybody’s a sucker. I’d trust a carny barker before I’d trust Bill Clinton…
…and that should’ve been everybody’s reaction. I mean, c’mon man. If a young dude who does 99.9% of his thinking with the wrong head (and pickles the right head in nonstop tallboys of Miller Lite) can see it, then surely you responsible adults can…? But they didn’t. Indeed, the women, especially, couldn’t get enough of Bill Clinton. They very obviously had prurient fantasies about his pudgy, chicken-fried fingers.
It’s as bizarre to me now as it was then, but there it is. Something about the way Bill Clinton lied moistened their panties, and the bigger the lie, the wetter it got. There’s obviously some sexual dimension to it. Was there a massive uptick in the number of women on The Pill starting about 1990? What’s the relationship between Prozac and estrogen?
I was and adult insuring the ‘92 election and there’s a number of elements that people have forgotten.
First – Bush the elder had just committed the largest election lie in American history and deserved to be punished for do so. He “rad my lips no new taxes” was a sophomoric line. But the sentiment was the key to his 88 campaign. Those crazy libs love taxes and criminals. So a lot of people that voted for him had a serious eff you feeling.
Second. Clinton won with like 40% of the pv so it’s not like even a slim majority wanted him as pres. Had there been a run-off he would have lost
Clinton didn’t hit 50% in either election, but his approval rating cleared 50% several times during his eight years in office. I read speculation that part of the reason it went up after the Lewinsky scandal was older divorced men were impressed he got his wife to stay with him after he brazenly cheated on her. Apparently the power dynamics of the Clinton marriage was completely lost on them.
Were the older divorced men impressed he got his wife to stay with him, or were they sympathetic that he was married to a such an awful woman? The joke at the time was that Hillary reminded every divorced man of his ex-wife.
It’s the Clintons. Do you really think Hillary is attracted to men? Not hard to stay with your husband if he’s just a tool for your ambition.
Mr. House, I have gone back and forth on that one. I believe it would have given her much more credibility and power to dump him. Did she really need him to carpetbag the NY senate seat and run for president?
Women love warriors. They flow because they like power and status above all. There may be some evolutionary reward for the sociopathic liar because he can deceive to get power, status and advantage without confrontation and thus risk of injury and death. The corrupt female prizes, power, status and riches for her and her offspring above all.
Maybe as we’ve de-emphasized masculinity and the nobility of the warrior as user of violence to protect, (and loot for riches and status), we’ve tilted the balance toward incentivizing lying. The risks are diminished as well, since who even knows their town council or school board much less has access to a Federal government official?
In the old days, kings and nobles were hung when they went too far, and all in the society were a few bad days and some bad weather away from reality getting very harsh very quickly.
Interesting things to ponder. The bottom line is, we face an existential threat, with the Great Replacement and a ruling class that dares to treat the entire planet like a cow in a stall.
Another point on cooperation vs. lying I believe relates to the feminization of society. Men cooperate because our work and warring required cooperation. Moreover, the threat of violence keeps everyone in the hierarchy in line. Women use manipulation and subterfuge amongst themselves in their competition for mates and in expressing their resentments and jealousies.
Studies have shown that women prefer a male boss because they know where they stand with a man whereas the pettiness of females in competition is not desired when a mission is paramount over social interaction.
Between the over feminization and the rise of cultures that have historically been more feminine (less manual work, less proclivity toward being warriors), we’ve got another major ingredient for dishonesty, subterfuge and manipulation in the stew.
I think there was a second component to the Protokaren Americanus in her 1990s stage, besides the “Bill Clinton gets me hot” aspect, and that was the oh so obvious fact that you weren’t just getting Bill, but Hil too. They were the first political power couple to occupy the Presidency since Wheels and Elinor in 1945, and that was a big thing, as they were the first co-Presidents post feminism.
It’s a category error to equate veracity with cooperation. People can be honest and uncooperative. Or deceptive and cooperative. In fact, the case can be made that cooperation requires some level of deception as the interests of multiple people never align perfectly.
Agreed. It takes some deception and suspension of belief even to be able to cooperate. I think the gratuitous lying we now see is what differentiates the present day.
Cooperation requires trust, which can be described as a leap of faith rather than an overt deception.
If I must say, I think this piece makes a mistake in conflating deception with lying.
Deception is fundamental to nature and existence. It’s how an animal can take on the color of his surroundings to camouflage himself so he isn’t eaten. On a human level, it implies some level of trickery and cleverness and that it is not always a bad thing, especially if it means you deceive a person for your own betterment, say do a head fake to evade an opponent on the football field.
Lying may be a tool of deception, but it means something different because it’s a form of dishonesty. It’s a flaw in character.
I just think the piece would make much more sense if it stuck to one or the other. Because when I’m reading it I keep thinking that on one hand deception is sometimes a good thing while lying is never a good thing, so it’s confusing. I think I get the point, but maybe not entirely.
I do not see how I could have been more clear that deceit must have some value. Splitting hairs about lying versus deception is more of a you problem here than a me problem. You are loading up lying with negative connotation, while giving deception a free pass. Remove the your moral weighting of the words and the problem is solved.
But lying negative does have a negative connotation. And giving deception a free pass? Hardly did I do that. I recognize it can be used in a bad way and that lying is a form of deception.
And to say something has “value” is meaningless when it isn’t assigned a moral “weighting”. Anything can have value. Murder has value. But is it good or bad? Neutral?
So me being lied to by elites and deceived is just how we evolved so it must have some evolutionary value, so deal with it. But — saving grace — their doing so will disrupt the mechanics of democracy so it will collapse on them. But isn’t the implication that this collapse onto them serves them right? And doesn’t that have some moral component? That it’s good that this happens?
I love ya Z, but I think here you are trying to be too dispassionate and more of a scientist looking at a species and not a person living in the world where these things have negative consequences for us that should at least generate some emotion. Taking the mile high view of humanity in cases like this, that’s your prerogative and now I see it is part of your overall critique of the studies noted, but I cannot do that. I can’t separate out the moral aspects of any of this. So, yeah, that is a “me problem”.
Regarding the antidepressant item, it’s one of those examples of ridiculous lies that spread for decades based on nothing but authoritative sounding people grandstanding over people too mentally beaten down to question doing what they are told. Big money in it too.
Imagine how insane it is to believe some guy in a chair can assess your serotonin and dopamine levels in 15 minutes based on only your verbal and physical cues. Not even tribal shamans went that far.
Yet, somehow, it’s no less insane than believing all races are intrinsically the same, women are as strong as men, of Washington D.C. cares about your interests. And most of the elites of our society believes that too. The problem with the population believing poisonous lies is not that the people will get wise and revolt, which really rarely happens until food gets low, but people will take all of society off a cliff, including the sober minded people.
Many people still think you can be talked out of being crazy. Talk therapy was the most ridiculous thing in human history. At least with human sacrifice, the gods seemed to respond on occasion. Talk therapy never accomplished anything other than employing a legion of busy bodies and weirdos.
I don’t know.
It seams to me that a lot of talk therapy was just substituting a paid stranger for the role previously played by extended family, priests and mentors.
I think Z is correct here. Psychotherapy usually is about as useful as leeches. The loss of familial and community support indeed was devastating, and the demand for a substitute illustrates the point.
There is some efficacy in counseling younger people because of that, but just some.
Absolutely. The atomized society has destroyed all community and social capital.
Forces people to pay a fake friend who is just in it for the money and gives bad advice per the psychology racket.
I agree, Dinodoxy. Talk therapy got out way over its skis, but some people can can get in a negative thought spiral in the bubble of their own brain, and talking to someone can help them see their irrational thoughts a bit more objectively. Whether this does any long-term good is a fair question. It’s also fair to say this could be done by talking to a friend, rather than spending thousands on a therapist.
Yes but anonymity has its value. Imagine telling your friend that a voice in your head is telling you to kill cats. And imagine your friend trying to talk you out of that with a few beers.
I have a friend who’s a behaviorist. Lots of enjoyable arguments. While I’m not a fan of psychology on the whole, we do agree that it comes down to altering behavior.
I think will is enough, which is to say no justification needed (re: one’s behavior, consequences aside). If talking can convince people to change their ways, that’s great, but yeah, simply becoming aware of your feelings and what might have caused them does nothing.
Talk therapy just makes the patient stew in his own juices and get trapped in his own misery vortex. Good for the shrink, who can keep him coming in for years at 200 bucks a pop.
A real friend will give the patient constructive advice: exercise, pray to God, learn how to prime and paint, no fap, go to school for a trade, read some pick-up books and ask girls on dates.
Similarly, a real friend will tell a female patient to not be a slut, get married, have kids, get off your damn smart phone.
There is definitely a difference between men and women. Generally, for a man to talk about his problems just makes him relive it, whereas for a woman, talking helps release some of the built up emotions. As society became more feminized, the latter approach gained currency.
People needed to tell someone what they did wrong, or just generally how miserable wretch they are, and be understood and accepted all the same —-> back into society, fulfill your duties, delimited as they might now be.
Jung said patients fell into the Rule of 3: 1/3 got better, 1/3 stayed the same, and 1/3 got worse.
it’s an assumption built in, that the “talk therapy” is an agent of change, in their progress. And that’s begging the question, perhaps.
It would seem that Western Europe hit some sort of sweet spot of trust, cooperation, IQ, culture, economics and innovation ~1500.
We had enough trust and cooperation to operate on a much larger scale than more tribal societies. We had the brains and culture of competition due to continuous fighting among small kingdoms (unlike, say, China) to aggressively explore the world. And we had the technological innovations and economic incentive to conquer the world and exploit it.
The Dutch, English, French, Americans, etc., from 1500 to early 1900s were amazing.
Alas, like all systems and peoples, they had inherent weaknesses and also degraded. The trust and cooperation were always vulnerable to more tribal peoples – if we allowed them into our societies. We did, and now we pay the price.
The future will be more tribal as a result.
Some development economist have been theorizing that Europe’s moderate levels of genetic diversity contributed to optimal levels of social trust and internal competition.
According to that hypothesis, South America and Africa is maligned by high levels of genetic diversity that disrupts inter-tribal trust generation. Populations too homogeneous on the other hand have little internal competition that stimulates development.
They simply cannot accept that as a collective, blacks cannot develop nor maintain the societies whites created. They cannot really even function that well in them.
There was something special in white history, a point where we had enough cooperation, genius, wealth and vision to build amazing things. That, and a lack of staggering bureaucracy – it is unlikely that Newton was ever asked “Where’s your risk assessment for that?”.
Never happened in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Indians seemed to have well developed cultures, with a large body of learned literature; but what of their technological developments? England industrialized the world – for better or for worse – and that stride, in addition to European scientific and technological developments since the 1600s, truly separated Europe from the rest.
“They simply cannot accept that as a collective, blacks cannot develop nor maintain the societies whites created. They cannot really even function that well in them.”
The fantasies of the Blank Slate Theory and White Privilege are inadvertent acknowledgements of this.
I take white privilege at face value, although I guess I read into what’s meant by ‘white’. Yes, my people built this society, yes that gives me greater ownership over it.
If I traveled to Korea I’d defer to Koreans because it’s their country, not cry about it.
Making it about race is deceptive because racism bad Evil Moustache.
Fact is, anybody decrying ‘white privilege’ is declaring xerself an outsider or a traitor.
“That means deception has some useful role in human society.”
Nope. All the degeneracy, the greatest evils all start with the lie. It’s a function of original sin, not a beneficial adaptation.
Without deception, humanity would have died out a long ago. Mating is simply not possible without deception.
That’s what she said.
Always the romantic.
“Mating is simply not possible without deception.”
Is that an original quote from Mr. Z or apocrypha from Heartiste?
I believe the first to say that was God to Adam.
The first lie was Adam to God
Men get married thinking she’ll never change, women get married thinking she can change him.
The sexes feed deceptions like this with lies to get what they want, even if ultimately it leads to some disappointment. It was always thus. Biology is served, life goes on.
The way I heard it:
Women get married hoping he’ll change. Men get married hoping she won’t. Both are disappointed.
Each year, nearly half a trillion dollars are spent on cosmetics and discretionary plastic surgery worldwide.
I’m still sucking in my stomach after 15 years married.
Agree, Prince of Lies and all.
I agree with Whitney. Lost in this discussion is the concept of free will, which I believe humans have and animals do not. It makes sense that free will was given to us around the time we developed language, in the last 10K years or so. That made deception possible. There was simply not enough time for evolution to deal with it one way or the other.
Evolution has more than enough time to incorporate or wash out a trait/gene—iff the trait involved is highly beneficial or negative. The more in either direction, the faster evolution fixates or extinguishes. Look at our animal breeding history, say with dogs. Albeit, we took a hand in the selection process, it doesn’t take long with such external pressure.
The cure is simple and as hardwired into us at the genetic level: punishment. I think Ann Coulter said that if you tolerate something you’ll get more of it. If you punish behaviours you’ll get less of it.
I had to laugh the other day when Creepy Joe gave a stern lecture about neoliberal morality: “Ya can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop!!! I just cracked right up as the stupid old bastard tried to look tough for the cameras. It’s like you say, Z. He was full of it and everyone knew it. The ancient Romans lived in the time of Stoics. We live in the age of the Cynic.
I’m serious. I’m gonna do this. I am going to light a bag of dog shite on the White House porch, ring the doorbell and then run away and hide in the bushes.
😂👍
Errrrr… I am NOT a fed, fellow dissidents…
Connecting dots.
We’ve been too affluent for too long. The Comfort First Imperative keeps normie on the couch because action means risk means potential loss of comfort. Nothing will change until hardship returns and the loss of comfort finally motivates action.
Epidemic lying is a byproduct of the above. No one likes being lied to, but confronting the deceiver risks a fight on the spot if face-to-face or indirect assault (persecution or cancel culture) if the government does it. A fat-ass normie is not going to fight anyone and the jackboots will kick your ass if so ordered by a bureaucrat. Consequently, there is no feedback mechanism to suppress lying.
So what to do? Well, the deceiver is clearly known and that is a weakness. And when the deceiver gets his comeuppance, that is a corrective feedback. And sometimes that remedy must originate from the shadows. Those are are wages of killing off all trust in a society.
Lying and deception have been part and parcel of the government and media for several decades at least. However, when Trump won in ‘16, it all went into major overdrive, and has amazingly gotten worse. How seemingly most people couldn’t/can’t see it is unbelievable. Everything about him – what he said, didn’t say – what he did, didn’t do, was cast in a negative light – everything. How could anyone consider that as neutral, objective reporting? But most did I guess.
Then along comes (conveniently) covid and subsequently, the magical “vaccine”. I just marveled at how most everyone bought in again hook, line and sinker – existential threat – safe & effective. It’s either stupidity (which I’m not sure about in many personal cases), intellectual laziness or unthinking obeisance to official proclamations. I have a hard time realizing so many people can be so utterly compliant. The degree of deception these days is like stage four pancreatic cancer. Is there any hope for remission?
The ruling class is now an alien clan that is indifferent to the rest of us.
“Indifferent” there looks tinted with optimism…
Ruling always demanded deception on some level. There is a famous quote from Bismarck about sausage-making and politics. People don’t like the reality of power so they easily give ear to flatterers. Machiavelli’s “Prince” knows not only how to deceive his enemies, but also his own subjects in certain matters.
Pathological levels of lying are also a likely result of “transparency” principle in politics that rules liberal democracy. Since the Authority can no longer enjoy the old privilege of secrecy (outside security matters), it resorts to lying and obfuscation in order to hide the truths people could live without. Related is the increased politicization of demos in liberal democracy that doesn’t allow any decrease for political activity in society. The system promotes liars who navigate better around the troublesome principles and make the managerial elite feel good.
Similar thing happened in the Eastern Block’s party elites that had been slowly getting rid of idealistic communists. Toward the end, skilled liars as government spokesmen were highly sought-after. On other levels liars who manipulated economic statistics, could get higher in the hierarchy Only security chiefs were expected to be truly honest with their own, but as we saw with Andropov, Ustinov and Brezhnev, even that didn’t really work
Ha ! Unforgetable Jerzy Urbach/Urban.
Czy mnie jeszcze pamietasz …
Do you remember him ? I believe he is still alive …
Old coot is still alive and kicking.
Licho swego nie bierze….
Can I be the one, please?
Orwell: in times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
It’s damn near universal and not just your average bullshitting politician.
Not that I watch but everyday the lugenpresse releases the official lie of the day and reinforces it. To start with, democracy, insurrection, vaccine and gender have lost any original meaning with these rotten deceivers. They have achieved much.
“It may be that we have reached a point where the people in the ruling class of society, this includes the managerial and administrative classes, no longer feel any connection to the rest of us… Like people in clannish societies, deceiving outsiders brings no penalty as outsiders simply do not count. The ruling class is now an alien clan that is indifferent to the rest of us.”
Gee, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that an actual culturally-and-religiously distinct clan which has its own country in the Middle East whose Talmud explicitly advocates deceiving the goyim for their own advantage happens to control the American Federal Reserve, Treasury, DHS, DOJ, Hollywood, the big newspapers, the network news and the universities… could it?
Naw… impossible.
Can’t quite put your finger on it, can you….
You forgot woke sports. The last two NBA commissioners are named Stern and Silver, and the NHL’s Bettman is also of the tribe, as was MLB’s Bud Selig, and many of the current owners across the leagues.
That so many commissioners and owners of the major sports leagues come from the least athletic people on earth is quite a statistical anomaly.
> Someone who gains a reputation for deception loses status. In more clannish societies, deceiving outsiders is not so bad, especially if it helps the in-group, but lying to people in the clan can have severe consequences.
One of the most ancient examples of deception was the brutal tale told in Genesis Chapter 34, where a neighboring tribe gave an insane level of restitution for one of the clan members raping an one of Jacob’s daughters, involving getting the town circumcised and offering opening up trade with the Israelites. While the town was still in pain from the circumcision, Jacob’s men went attacked and slaughtered every male.
that’s a great story, thx for sharing
They do the exact same thing with Americans, and everyone else they sucker [heh] into their extended phenotpye: while their victims’ neurophysiology is permanently altered to be more susceptible and compliant to manipulation and control? they do their thing, of manipulate and control.
Ie: now u r damaged and vulnerable, and now we rule you
“the collapse in trust will bring about a collapse in the ruling class.”
thanks, that will buoy me for the day.
And here is the Alzheimer research fraud
https://wallstreetpro.com/2022/07/23/two-decades-of-alzheimers-research-was-based-on-deliberate-fraud-by-2-scientists-that-has-cost-billions-of-dollars-and-millions-of-lives/
That is another good example. It is a great example oft he de Maistre line about false opinions. They coined by the guilty and spread by the innocent.
“Trust the Science!” crowd will damage the trust in scientific research probably to the biggest extent in ages. We already have creeping suspicions whenever those gormless lumpenintelectuals start to fancy a particular research.
Long before covid, I told myself I wouldn’t go to the doctor unless I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Post-covid, I’m going to try to clamp that bad boy myself. These days I’d trust a Santeria shaman over an MD with my carcass. All the brujo wants to do is wave smoke in my face and sacrifice a chicken, and that at least won’t do any further harm (except to the chicken). The MD wants to shoot me up with mystery goop while he lectures me about my privilege. It’s amazing, watching an entire industry destroy itself just for a temporary virtue hit, but… there it is.
Wow. And instead of the fraudsters going to the gallows they get…another research grant.
That’s what galls me the most and has eroded my Christian faith-that the evil and corrupted ones mostly seem to flourish like the green bay tree without any punishment at all, vengeance is mine saith the Lord but he’s sure taking His own sweet time–
Well, remember Sodom and Gomorrah – before the destruction. Abraham bargained God down to sparing them for 10 righteous folks. Of course, couldn’t find 10. So maybe there are still a handful of good folks around – 10 out of 6 billion is pretty generous on the Lord’s part.
This scene from God is Not Dead explains it really well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQY3sUgsYds
Perhaps His notion of vengeance differs from yours.