About Our Societal Death Spiral . . .

Gad Saad writes:

A fundamental question that I ask people when I'm gauging their intellectual honesty is to describe for me what the evidence would need to look like in order for them to alter a given position that they hold. With that in mind, is there any reality that would cause the West to snap out of its parasitic ideological rapture and implement the necessary cataclysmic auto-corrective measures? If yes, we must still have some hope to hold on to. If not, it is going to be a painful death spiral.

Let's start by trying to convince people to use basic induction to convince them that A = A. That would be a good start. It's the basis for the Rule of Law.

Continue ReadingAbout Our Societal Death Spiral . . .

The Lies that Destroy Institutions

Do you ever wonder what is keeping you from saying the simple, good-hearted and obvious statement: "All Lives Matter"? It's the modern version of woke totalitarianism. Through the use of lies and cancel culture, it is destroying most of America's institutions.

Michael Shellenberger, author of "Totalitarian Manipulation Of Language Behind Woke Destruction Of Harvard, New York Times, And Other Elite Institutions. It's time for counter-Wokeism."

Investigative reporters have exposed a pattern of plagiarism by Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, that directly violates the university’s policy. . . .

The first salient feature of the above episodes is the willingness of institutional leaders to lie about what they are doing. The first response from Harvard’s Board of Directors was to deny that President Gay had committed any instance plagiarism and to threaten the New York Post with a lawsuit if it reported the opposite of that. The New York Times similarly lied about the op-ed piece it had published and effectively asked the oped page editor to lie about his departure. And similarly, the AAA falsely claimed that the anthropologists who wanted to discuss biological sex on a conference panel had not accurately represented their topic.

In each case, the institutional leaders lied in order to cover up unethical behavior. Harvard was covering up both the plagiarism of its president and the unwillingness of Harvard to do anything about it. The New York Times misrepresented the substance of the op-ed in order to disavow it and, perhaps, to justify forcing out the op-ed page editor. And the AAA lied about what the dissident anthropologists did in order to justify its blatant censorship.

And those lies and unethical behaviors all rest upon a set of underlying lies. Harvard lied when it claimed that it had selected its president on the basis of her qualifications, even calling Gay a “scholar’s scholar” despite her having a below-average scholarly record. The New York Times and the Harvard president, when she was still the Dean of Arts and Sciences, had been misrepresenting Black Lives Matter protests as peaceful and driven by a genuine epidemic of police killings. And AAA’s cancelation of the panel was based on the organization’s claim that biological sex is a spectrum rather than dimorphic. All of this lying is characteristic of totalitarian regimes...

Woke totalitarianism advances values that are contrary to the ones it espouses. It claims to be opposed to racism and sexism and yet promotes them through perpetuating the idea that people, by dint of their race or sex, are either victims or oppressors. It claims to be liberatory and empowering of those individuals designated victims while promoting the idea that they cannot escape their victim identity. And Woke totalitarianism promotes the notion that it is wise and truthful despite promoting such monstrous lies."

What is the solution? It's not going to be pleasant or easy, but we need to confront those who are tearing down our institution with their corrupted language.

Once we understand Woke activists and leaders in elite institutions as being in the grip of an anti-social and dehumanizing dogma which uses dishonest esoteric language to manipulate emotions and people, we can know to take them seriously, but not literally. At an interpersonal level, the best way to deal with narcissists is to ignore them, thereby depriving them of the attention they seek; at an institutional level, they must be confronted in a public way.

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About Sasha Stone’s Podcast

This week, a friend introduced me to one of his favorite podcasts: "Sasha Stone's Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning."

I jumped right into Sasha' most current podcast, "The Mugshot Heard Round the World: Did the Democrats finally make a Trump voter?"" Sasha is intensely and creatively thoughtful and her non-partisan ideas will emotionally move for those of us who are not completely enraptured with one political tribe. Hence, the "Free Thinking" part of the title to her podcast.

Despite the paltry and insulting offerings to American voters year after year, the challenge is still to vote for the lesser of two evils, right? What is the lesser of two evils in 2024, at the point where the Democrats have repeatedly shat upon the rule of law, desperately embraced censorship and become louder cheerleaders for endless war than even the Republicans?

And will this be the year when black voters thoroughly reject the political party that has repeatedly taken them for granted, often in insulting ways? I'm speaking of the Democrats. I'm basing this question on several conversations I've recently had over the past month, but Sasha also sees a wider trend based on her own research.  And I don't think that most loyal democrats have the faintest inkling that these tectonic plates are dramatically shifting.

In this single episode, Sasha repeatedly challenged me, forcing me to reframe some of my long-held ideas. I immediately became a subscriber. I invite you to listen if you are looking to be challenged.

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Ressentiment Redux

Nietzsche, painted a vivid image of ressentiment that is applicable in modern times:

They monopolize virtue, these weak, hopelessly sick people, there is no doubt of it: "We alone are the good and just," they say, "we alone are homines bonae voluntatis.*" They walk among us as embodied reproaches, as warnings to us--as if health, well-constitutedness, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in themselves necessarily vicious things for which one must pay some day, and pay bitterly: how ready they themselves are at bottom to make one pay; how they crave to be hangmen. There is among them an abundance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly bear the word "justice" in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their way in good spirits. Nor is there lacking among them that most disgusting species of the vain, the mendacious failures whose aim is to appear as " beautiful souls" and who bring to market their deformed sensuality, wrapped up in verses and other swaddling clothes, as "purity of heart": the species of moral masturbators and "self-gratifiers." The will of the weak to represent some form of superiority, their instinct for devious paths to tyranny over the healthy--where can it not be discovered, this will to power of the weakest!

--Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 15 (1887)

Translation by Walter Kaufmann (1967)

*Men of good will

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“What is Your Gender Identity?”

"What is Your Gender Identity?"

How would you respond to this question if you were put on the spot? Here's one approach . . .

If I were asked today, I would say something like this: "Unlike sex, "gender identity" is an incoherent and thus meaningless term."

Why do I think "gender identity" is an incoherent term? Here is one reason:

In other words, gender ideologists claim that one's genitals are both A) completely irrelevant to one's gender and B) highly relevant to one's gender. To make both of these claims is incoherent. Here's another thing I might add:

Another idea . . .

Perhaps you could point out that "gender ideology" embraces the regressive sex stereotypes most of us (not only feminists) have been trying to downplay for decades:

A comment to the above tweet:

It really sucks to know that we worked so hard to erase gender stereotypes. Let girls and boys dress how they want, play with whatever toys they wanted, play whatever sports, have whatever interests...boys can dance, girls can be mechanics. We fought so hard. Then this crap.

Or you could invite them to listen to this podcast where Bari Weiss interviews Andrew Sullivan, a pioneer in gay rights.  Sullivan doesn't support gender ideology because it is functionally homophobic. Most children claiming to be confused about their sex will, if left alone (not surgically butchered and rendered sterile by cross-sex hormones) grow up to accept their bodies, the great majority of them growing up to be gay (and see here).  For this reason, Sullivan characterizes gender ideology to be homophobic.

If things heat up too much, you might want to inject some humor:

Continue Reading“What is Your Gender Identity?”