Why we might as well be speaking different languages when communicating across political divides. This essay was written in response to an article in Quillette entitled The Social Science Monoculture Doubles Down, which details how a lack of viewpoint diversity prejudices research.
A while back I wrote an essay on my Substack entitled Mapping the Mechanisms of Meaning in which I attempted to delineate between reciprocity (healthy) and status seeking (mostly unhealthy) as socially orientated urges and suggested that both were crucial in terms of morality. More properly, I suppose I should clarify by stating that I believe that our early urge towards reciprocity is central to the development of our moral instincts, and status seeking is a ‘hack’ which can undermine our personal morality subverting it the dehumanising influence of the group.
But that wasn’t the really interesting thing. The really interesting thing was that one of my readers noted they had come across a similar idea before and providing a link to an essay about an obscure French philosopher Alexandre Kojève who claimed to have discovered the core motivation which drove all complex human societies- the desire for recognition. His contention was that ‘human beings were not fundamentally motivated by a desire for knowledge, power, happiness, pleasure, or resources. They were driven by a desire for recognition. Rousseau had identified our comparative impulse as the root of social life and bemoaned our quest to appear worthy in the eyes of others. But Kojève was the first to theorize a politics built entirely around the demand for recognition by those who believe their identities have historically been marginalized or denigrated. His genius was not simply to describe the human desire for status and the hidden conflicts it generated across history. It was to trace the evolution of the human cry for recognition—from the Christian faith that gave birth to it, to the secular tyranny that will complete it.’
In the autumn of 1933, Alexandre Kojève announced to his class that history was over. He did not . . . . (from the article)
Setting aside wars between societies, which can occur for all manner of interests and reasons: from over territory and resources to ethnicity and religion, from an affront to national or tribal dignity to wars over religion or ideology, I think it’s an astounding insight into how intra-societal dynamics emerge. And from where I’m sitting is seems to me that as our material needs are met more and more, and we have the time to ponder luxury beliefs more, and espouse them, this instinct grows only stronger with the cornucopia which modernity affords.
At least a part this urge is benign, borne of reciprocity. We all have the desire to be of value to others. To teach, to give them the benefit of our experience, of hard lessons learned and insights gained. What parent hasn’t wanted to help their child to avoid the mistakes that they themselves made? What man hasn’t sat across the table from his girlfriend or significant other and ruefully realised he has fallen into the familiar pattern of providing advice rather than the sympathy which was not only expected, but required?
And mentoring can be a powerful tool. For the young and inexperienced it can be the first key step in realising a massive improvement in their future prospects, as the voice of experience shows them how to gain optimal value from their talents and abilities. Even the urge to convert can occasionally be more benign, based upon the needful desire to expand one’s own intellectual tribe, to make a new friend by connecting at a more profound level of interest.
But this instinct for recognition can have its darker side as well, because just as the discovery of shared interests and beliefs can create bonds of affinity, its opposite can cause offense and sow discord at a deeply personal level. Years ago, in a 1st year class in Philosophy, a particularly smart fellow student raised the observation that people tend to attach a very personal relevance to the ideas which they reason out or choose to believe, and can be quite offended when someone else looks at exactly the same information and forms a different opinion. In many ways, it’s as though you are calling their reasoning powers into question, and oddly, people can often get even more offended and personally affronted when you call into question their ethos and most deeply held belief than they might over their interpretation of particular set of empirical evidence- most likely because our beliefs are more intimate and precious to us, fundamental to us as self-evident proof of our moral nature.
And the problem is that the more than the media, the internet and then social media increased our connectivity to the world the more it strengthens this double-sided blessing and curse of both increased affinity and antipathy. On the one hand it strengthens the bonds of tribal loyalty and solidarity which surround ideals and ideologies, but on the other it magnifies our sense of alienation, outrage and the sense of otherness we feel when we encounter those who hold ideals which differ from our own.
What makes matters worse is the ability to share images, articles and thoughts about the opposing ideological tribe- it allows us to construct insane caricatures of the very worst examples of their tribe, as though we were collecting evidence for a criminal prosecution. At best it is a flimsy ad hominem, used for the purposes of a very personal dismissal , for othering and reputation damage as though Douglas Murray or JK Rowling really were transphobes just because they simply happened to disagree with the nuances of gender ideology, whilst also showing the greatest sympathy and compassion.
It may seem odd that I might term this personal damage ‘at best’, given that individuals can and have experienced threats of death and rape at these unsuccessful attempts at cancel culture, slander and reputation damage. But this is before one considers the worst case scenario in this emergent zeitgeist- the world in which we are living, more and more, by day. Put simply, it’s tearing our societies apart, fracturing them, causing all manner of actual violence and societal disintegration.
The occasional violence on the part of BLM protestors as well as the far more pervasive property damage, the perennial violence and intimidation by Antifa including setting fire at a mayors private residence and a police station with officers barricaded inside are a symptom of this disease- as is the Capitol Riot and even the grim tragedy of the Kenosha shooting with its fatal errors and failures of judgement on both sides. The cold civil war of the Culture War is getting hotter by the day.
Why is this happening? Because in refusing to recognise the claimed morally superior position of the other side, we have committed to the ideologically motivated desire to demonise the other side. Somewhere along the way, simple disagreements and partisan bickering developed into something far, far worse. One the one hand, we have Democrats obsessing over the fact that 74 million Americans voted for Trump which this more than reasonable Washington Post article puts into context, seemingly experiencing cognitive dissonance to the American political axiom that almost no one actually votes for a candidate, but votes against the other side- and that a vote for him was a vote against conventional political establishment. On the other side, many Republicans are actively talking about secession.
One of the reasons why I decided to become active in this space was because I wanted to know exactly what the fuck was going wrong with our Western cultures. I have always been a fairly close follower of the news and current affairs, even though I’ve never been particularly politically interested or committed. I’ve never felt the need, for example, to espouse my political position out in public or try to win people over to my political position, but at the same time I was always the type of sad little geek that used to sit up and general elections here in the UK, or read about the more detailed summaries of the Chancellor’s budget each year.
Critically, although I was an early adopter of the internet, I never really became hypnotised by social media. I still steadfastly refuse to carry a mobile phone, which may present problems with the advent of the pandemic, as well as the increasing frequency with which I find that the channels to register for discounts, promotions, rewards systems (which, when one includes payment method and careful shopping, can often easily add up to 25% off retail prices on weekly expenditures). I only really started using YouTube because of Bill Maher’s Overtime.
The thing is even YouTube’s algorithm sucks. I started out by noticing that their was content available for Engineering programming available and, crucially, the subject of economics (one of the key things which emerged on YouTube a few years back, was that conservatives tended to self-sort by an interest in economics, liberals by an interest in social issues). Contrary to what you may have heard or read YouTube doesn’t radicalise or push people towards the alt Right, in its current incarnation the algorithm actually pushes people towards partisan corporate media, as this Medium article amply demonstrates- but the other thing it is extraordinarily good at is feeding us is the intellectual equivalent of fast food.
We may yearn for informed debate, high quality high brow content and intelligent discussion, but because these segments are usually lengthier and require more of our attention and time, we end up clicking on the fast food 9 times out of 10, and leaving the intellectual gourmet feast for another time. All social media algorithms learn from this, and the chances are that there is a whole world of intellectual discourse out there that you would love, but which you will never see because it doesn’t match the debates and conversations which you’ve already watched!
So before I knew it I had fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole and my channel kept offering me Feminist Owned compilations, and I like a sucker I kept on clicking play on my remote. It didn’t last long- I got bored with the content quite quickly, and went back to watching content on climate change engineering (which I would heartily recommend for the purposes of optimism and mental health- start with Ocean Cleanup- it made me cry like a girl at a wedding). The point is that because the format of the Feminist Owned was a phenomenon which was unfamiliar to me, I was quick to recognise it, but for most people the gradually encroaching perception warping influence of the American media landscape (which is far worse than in other countries) along with the rapid growth in the reach of social media, has been rather like the boiled frog scenario- they haven’t noticed the temperature rising because it has only been happening slowly.
But my point would be that our choices of content and friends across social media is not just about living in an echo chamber or a bubble. In a very real sense it makes us own worst enemies, appealing to our tribal instincts and pushing the urge for recognition of own moral superiority and worth, to the extent that we not only want to see our opposition beaten, but also see them concede that they were wrong all along. To someone who was inexperienced in social media, the Feminist Owned compilations were a deeply disturbing experience, at once fascinating and addictive, but also jarring in the sense that it invited me to experience a vicarious thrill in seeing those with whom I disagreed rhetorically punished, humiliated and defeated.
And a more dilute yet pervasive instinct pervades our media. With television news it’s less immediately noticeable, built into the deliberate selection bias, the framing, the erection and demolition of strawman arguments- as though conservatives really did care more about taxes than governments ability to exert control over lives more than any other entity, or most liberals really did want to wipe away everything good about Western culture instead of simply wanting to create a society which is more open, inclusive and diverse.
In print media it is more recognisable. It’s to be found in phrases like ‘without evidence’ when there clearly is. One sees it all the time with all the heavily partisan fact-checkers. One frequent trick is to add a premise that was never claimed in the statement they are fact-checking. By then disproving the premise, they can brand the claim as mostly false. Another thing to look out for is the length of fact-check. If someone has to write an essay to convince you something is wrong, there is fair chance it isn’t, or at the very least, that the subject is disputable.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on the journalists, or at least the best of them. In many ways they are more susceptible to the polarisation which divides and invites us to demonise. For a start, it is often the only way for them to make a living in an increasingly precarious profession, and they are after all, just giving their audience exactly want they want. But more importantly, full social media immersion has become an essential part of the job. With the value of most media content continuing to fall in economic terms, journalists are expected to churn out more and more product. The need to keep up to date with the latest development on Twitter is crucial in a fiercely competitive field, so they hardly have the option of logging out of the delusion machine.
And because almost everyone they communicate with online seems to hold views within a band which may be broad, but is in no way encompasses the whole range of mainstream acceptable views, concepts from outside the range of normal experience can be jarring and foreign, as though they were from a dystopian future, or a past which some had hoped was consigned to history. A prime example of this relates to views on illegal immigration (or undocumented workers depending upon your viewpoint). Many would argue that the motivating factor behind anti-immigration sentiment is racial animus. It may well be a factor at the extreme fringe, but in the West those with high ingroup tend to base their distinctions upon cultural differences rather than ethnic ones- as witnessed by the Brexit vote against a set of white Eastern European nations which the British people have always held in the highest regard.
In this sense, Brexit was more about preserving British culture, which the socially conservative are always going to want to protect, regardless of the country, than it was about being against anyone in particular. We even see this affinity bias across cultures through shared languages, irrespective of race- with a Black American in an airport is more likely to be treated warmly by a white Brit than an Eastern European with a strong accent and limited vocabulary.
A liberal journalist would tend to scoff at the notion that sentiment against illegal immigrants is primarily driven by economic interest. But the evidence is quite clear- Australia has one the highest rates of foreign-born citizens in the world- far higher than America, at just above 30%- but one will see far less of the anti-immigration sentiment popular on the continent of Europe or in America, for the simple reason that when the Australian system of ‘Populate or Perish’ was set-up, it was designed specifically to protect the labour interests of blue collar workers, whilst simultaneously opening the door to anyone with a skill, knowledge or experience that the country desperately needed.
Similarly, when rather disdainful-of-Trump conservative historian Niall Ferguson gave a talk for Google Zeitgeist shortly before the 2016 election, he was clear and emphatic that when the four preceding instances of populist movements in America occurred, the rate of foreign born citizens rising above 14% was a key factor, but crucially the other basic requirement was an economic downturn, generating fears over economic scarcity. It might not be a coincidence that the 2008 financial crash seemed to precede much of our current political divisiveness, and Barrack Obama’s stance on immigration as Deporter-in-Chief was probably based upon the recognition that in order to be a unifier, he had to adopt a tough stance on immigration. Besides, we know that these fears of labour displacement and wage dilution are entirely justified. Immigration of all sorts tends to good for GDP and great for big business, but it hardly in the interest of blue collar workers.
Research from the pro-immigration website Migration Observatory (affiliated with Oxford University) proves it. Now, granted at first glance these effects may seem quite minor, until we consider that they are net- opportunities for both the more credentialed further up the economic ladder and for women. Illegal immigration in particular is likely to stir feelings of economic anxiety, for the simple reason that it disproportionately consists of working age males seeking blue collar work.
The problem is that most of us have trained ourselves to look at any issue first through the lens of partisan politics, and then through our very personal cognitive biases. We like to imagine base motives for other people having drastically different worldviews, for the simple reason that it allows us to remain comfortable with our own cherished belief system, never challenging our priors or facing our assumptions. More importantly, it quickly becomes a key weapon to be deployed when the political becomes personal- if we are desperately trying to convince a friend or acquaintance to not go over to the dark side, it is always handy to have a shorthand available to cast the opposition in the worst possible light.
And conservatives are just as quick to believe the worst as liberals are: conservatives are just as likely to believe in the myth that Leftists want to stick them in re-education camps as Leftists are to be comfortable with the headline Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. For the Left anything other than full-throated support for CRT is racist (the notion that race is the primary fulcrum of inequality in the West), whilst for conservatives, fed on a steady diet of white liberals getting hysterical over whiteness, CRT represents a direct attempt to indoctrinate their kids. Both would probably be surprised to learn that both Independents and Latinos are strongly against CRT in schools.
Perhaps the most divisive issue one could mention on this topic is Donald Trump himself. Like Andrew Yang, I see him as symptom, rather than the cause of all our partisan woes. But rather than simply placing the burden on the legacy of bad trade deals, automation for the absolute economic devastation experienced by roughly half the country (which probably accounts for about half of the destruction to blue collar lives and communities, with the other culprit being the corporate exploitation of labour competition from undocumented workers), I think the media landscape and, social media in particular, have been teaching is us to hate.
So far, Trump is one of three main topics on which it is almost impossible to have a sane discussion with, from anyone outside of our very specific set of deeply held opinions. It’s because in rare instances we tend to operate on the basis of an extreme form of cumulative confirmation bias. The other two are climate change and the science on SARS-CoV-2. Simply put, we each use different data collection points to support our position- so in the case of the pandemic, some people focus on excess mortality, others on pure case numbers. As we entrench ourselves in our beliefs, we continue to gather evidence which support us beliefs, whilst rejecting or minimising anything which refutes it. Conservatives have been collecting evidence of the media lying, mis-framing and taking Trump out of context to ‘prove’ he is a racist, just as long as liberals have been gathering a tally for indictment. Crucially, profoundly different understandings of the motives which underlie anti-immigration sentiment, has created in schism right down the middle of American society.
Even as early as 2010 there was a marked increase in the percentage of Americans who would be upset if their children married outside of their party. And subsequent research has shown that Americans of both parties are consistently more concerned about a loved dating outside their party than their race. In some ways this should reassure us, and act as a rebuttal to growing fears about a resurgence of racism in America, but in other ways it should be deeply alarming. And in case you didn’t think that social media was the culprit for disdain becoming hate, here is a convenient graph giving us a timeline for its use.
So first we have the 2008 financial crash which is guaranteed to generate very real fears over economic scarcity, especially amongst blue collar males. Then we have social media, with the recognition that the attention economy is largely driven by negative engagement, anger economics and outrage porn. But what was the third key ingredient in the run-up current Culture War? Simple, the steady stream of Police Shooting videos which first began to go mainstream in 2013.
For the Left, this was proof positive of an underlying system of structural racism. Believe it or not, at the time the more esoteric aspects of structural racism and white privilege were mostly confined to a few rarefied and obscure set of academic studies subjects. But for the college liberal searching for an explanation of these awful and upsetting tragedies, these theories seemed tailor made to fit the narrative, and with social media as a tool to disseminate this message- the ideology quickly spread across domains and the college campus, especially in elite four year colleges in the Ivy League and West Coast.
But for conservatives the opposite reaction was almost automatic. Contrary to popular opinion this was not about defending power interests, it was about very real cognitive differences. Conservatives share the same Moral Foundations as almost everyone else on the world. Only cosmopolitan liberals possess the care/harm and fairness/equality Moral Foundations to the exclusion of the other Moral Foundations. It’s because they are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich (by comparison to the rest of the world) and Democratic).
Virtually everyone else in the world has Loyalty/Ingroup, Sanctity/Purity and crucially in this case, as far as conservatives are concerned, Authority/Respect. Their cognitive wiring makes them more disposed to respect those in authority, and conservative ethos is predisposed to value law and order more than liberals, who have an almost instinctive distrust of authority. The distinction even extends to brain differences. In particular, conservatives tend to have larger amydalae, the part of the brain which regulates fear. In a typical example of liberals doing the labelling, this has been represented as conservatives being more fearful, but from a conservative viewpoint this might mean being more threat aware. The other important distinction is openness to new experience, the Big 5 Personality Trait most associated with a liberal outlook- it makes liberals more open to new ideas and intellectual frameworks, whilst conservatives are naturally more sceptical. This is also reflected in brain differences.
Everything stems from those police shooting or brutality videos, these cognitive differences and the enabling tool of social media. Liberals and leftists are naturally inclined to distrust of police and quickly broaden their observation of perceptions of systemic racial bias in policing to include a belief that disparities in policing were largely responsible for mass incarceration, when a fairer analysis would recognise that the media, politicians, punitive sentencing and removing discretion from the hands of judges and placing it solely in the hands of prosecutors, all played a far greater role in mass incarceration.
In fact we can prove it, because as the revolution of COMPSTAT and proactive policing spread throughout the advanced economies of the world, leading to similar massive reduction in violent crime first seen in America, policing methods changed- but levels of incarceration, particularly in Europe, didn’t really increase that much. It was the media manufacturing demand for action from politicians and prosecutors which led to mass incarceration, not methods of policing. Blame the politicians and the news anchors, not the police- on this particular score.
Meanwhile, conservatives were busy collecting their own diametrically opposed set of data. They looked at the total number of police in America and saw that those involved in shootings or brutality represented a tiny fraction. They looked at prison data and saw that roughly half of those in prison were there for violent crime, with a further 20% relating to property crime and saw that the narrative of the War on Drugs being responsible for mass incarceration was largely a fiction, at least from the 00s onwards.
Increasingly the Left saw America as a land possessed of systems and structures which were endemic racist and rooted in history and which needed dismantling, whilst the Right saw social justice agitation as a fundamental attack on a country which , despite deep flaws and human failings in its history, was worth preserving. Both were kneejerk responses predicated on neurological and cognitive differences.
At the same time, ticking away in the background, were the very real disparities in educational outcomes by race which had fed into huge differences of attainment in almost every other aspect of American life, from employment to income levels. Contrary to media narratives, this is not a matter of funding- apart from at the margins- and can be laid directly at the feet of the educational branch of academia which is in no way driven by science or empiricism.
We now know exactly how the human brain learns, it’s called cognitive load theory and it shows that kids need to learn the building blocks of knowledge, committing them to long-term memory, if they are to stand any chance of performing cognitively complex tasks in the future- but you wouldn’t know it from the styles of pedagogy taught or the theories perpetrated by educational academia. At the same time, there is now a wealth of data which suggests that structured low-level discipline (such as detentions), giving parents clear guidelines as to what they need to do to support their child’s education (particularly in relation to bedtime reading) and amazing headteachers which can implement a system of continuous improvement, can lead to almost miraculous seeming increases in educational attainment for poor, multi-ethnic kids from high crime neighbourhoods.
It might seem unfair that I would blame the Democratic Party for this failure. But in trying to defend teachers and Teaching Unions, they have let down other core constituencies under their care. And it’s not the teachers, it’s really not. From my experience talking with American teachers they are just as much victims of a system of bureaucratic ineptitude as the children themselves. There needs to be a major revolution in American K-12 education and this time it needs to be led by cognitive scientists and a panel of high performing headteachers, rather than educational theorists and bureaucrats.
To the liberal, these disparities between races are yet more proof of structural racism, to the conservative they are the best argument for charter schools and free market thinking within education. And it all adds to the widening gulf in our foundational thinking and the reason why we can no longer talk to each other on the rare occasion we venture outside our social media bubbles. To each side, the ideas of the other seem alien, beset with claims which appear so ludicrous at face value that it beggars belief that anyone might hold them- and the only way to make any sense of them at all is to go very deep into the structure of thought which produced them, which almost no one is incentivised to do.
Social media provides us with a ready made distributed network of human talent, where the smartest amongst us can always find ways to knockdown the arguments of the other side, defeating them in detail. A more generous approach might be to concede the occasional point and provoke discussion, but that is not what we are incentivised to do by social media, where the ingroup love flows from outgroup hatred. The format of most social media simply doesn’t support it and neither do the human dynamics- most are designed for brevity by nature, which in turn is reductive in terms of nuance. Social media rewards people for going out and finding the worst examples of the other sides behaviour, and invites us all to see each other not as people with legitimate opposing viewpoints, but increasingly, the enemy.
There are real examples of provable systemic racism to be found in affinity bias in hiring or the statistical hegemony which emerges spontaneously out of big data in the world of finance, lending and credit scores, irrespective of the fact that race may has been removed as a criteria. Bias may be coded into AI, but it is tiny dwarf by comparison to the mighty giant of collectivised data which casts a self-fulfilling prophetic shadow over the futures of many African Americans.
There are ways to fix the system. The British have instituted pupil referral units for behavioural kids which are far better at breaking the school-to-prison pipeline than the American approach, with the added benefit that those kept in school under the current American educational mandate, would not completely compromise and ruin the education of their often predominantly African American classmates. The current system fails at saving one kid, whilst ruining the future prospects of 30.
It’s a broken system which neither side can fix because they are both committed to ideological warfare. Each side is simply waiting for the other side to fuck up, papering over their own flaws and sweeping embarrassments under the carpet. And both sides will continue to fuck up, they really will- because not addressing the flaws in one’s own ideology, policies and belief structure is just as bad as failing to shoplift the best ideas that the other side has to offer, making them your own.
In the intellectual terrain encouraged by the social media landscape one side of the country is convinced that the other side of the country is trying to tear down everything good and decent about America and institute a socialist dystopia in its place. . A better argument would be to argue for the free market capitalist societies of Scandinavia, with their larger social safety nets. Meanwhile those on the Left are beginning to see fairly mainstream conservative thought as racist, or even evil- so intent on preserving the power structure of an endemically corrupt past system that they are against all progress. They simply don’t understand that the modern cornucopia we all rely upon is a fragile house of cards, which, if disrupted too much, has the potential to unleash unimaginable and horrific suffering.
At the same time, conservatives should at least become involved in the process of how to find ways to improve the material and economic prospect of America’s most disadvantaged, because by leaving this field to the Left they are robbing the debate of the ability of conservative scepticism to naturally filter out the most terrible ideas and refine and improve the best ones. There are plenty of ways in which conservatives could make a contribution, whether it is promoting the type of earlier vocational education which the American economy desperately needs or arguing for a reformed immigration system which attracts talent whilst simultaneously protecting American blue collar workers.
The one thing I would recommend above all else is to please read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. It will explain in relatively simple terms, why people can reach radically different conclusions despite being given the exact same evidence. For the most part, this is governed by socio-economics and childhood home environment- most particularly parental educational background- and even genetic and epigenetic differences play a role. Crucially, education cannot change it and neither can experience. But understanding it will at least afford you a better chance to persuade those with which you disagree.
This is not to say that culture and education cannot shift society, because they obviously can. But it needs to conform to a model of society which treats people equally regardless of race, sex, gender or sexuality, for the simple reason that the majority of any society will always possess ingroup, it’s a feature of status as much as socio-economics. In this light, if we want to avoid conflict, friction and civil strife it is better to minimise difference rather than accentuating them- because in a multi-ethnic society emphasising ethnic differences will always lead to conflict. Any other aspirational way of ordering society will backfire, for the simple reason that it ignores the often quite profound cognitive differences which separate those from affluent backgrounds from those with ordinary ones. It’s the sociological equivalent of trying to fit a square peg in a round whole.
Recognition is indeed a factor but I suspect we need to find a more precise factor. One can recognise someone in such a way that indicates a total lack of any value placed on the recognition. 'It's not rocket science' is a recognatory phrase but no one would say that it is a positive. Rather the reverse.
The concept I think relevant here is that of affirmation. The assignation of value to a particular position even if that position is disagreed with. When we affirm we not only recognise but also accept the validity of the other side. This to my mind is more important - validity means value.
The example of Hilary Clinton branding Trump supporters as 'deplorables' illustrates the point nicely. To her supporters it was an accurate comment but significantly negated any value the other side might have. They weren't 'wrong' (a judgement which assigns value to the other side) but just not worthy of consideration.
In all human relationships on both the macro and micro scales there is a desire to be valued. It does not necessarily mean to be elevated above all others (though it can lead to that) but the affirmation is important particularly in the current social media environment.
On the deplorables thing, research from the UK is telling. Any use of the various "...ist" accusations immediately backfires on the candidate making the allegation. Rather than being warned off, independents and swing voters automatically take it as a criticism- because even if they were only thinking about voting for the opposition, this implies a direct personal insult of their judgement. The dynamics do seem to change though, when directed at party rather than a person.
The problem is that affirmation in the social media environment, often involves vilifying the opposition- at least where the affiliation is based along political lines.
Exactly - instead of a 'yes, but...' or even 'you're wrong because…' commentators play to the gallery. They garner likes or affirmation from their 'group' because that is how social media is structured. The consequence is that you alienate your opponent and create polarization. We may not necessarily expect agreement but we do want our arguments and points to be accepted as worth consideration (the affirmation).
When they aren't we feel rejected and rejection is the opposite side of the affirmation coin. In most cases the rejection is explicit and the way most people handle that is to reject back.
Rather than worry about right or wrong when it comes to a person's life, choices or beliefs, how about we actually live and let live? We reject the hubris that we have the truth, and that any policy someone claims is based on that truth must therefore be prudent for all.
How do either of You factor in meditation as a Way of knowing?
I read "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and a mathematician. It's an academic approach that's supposedly geared to the layman. I think they missed their mark a fair bit, but I learned a lot about how the social sciences are getting so efft up, by having certain "acceptable" views that are being enforced. They also described, pretty well, how feminism, queer, race Critical THeories have gone off the rails. All this sounds like an academic problem, but the authors saw how these things have actually TAKEN over in society we live in.
If either of You are interested, I can inform You on how corporations are basically a kind of organism, A LOTTA systems can be looked at that Way.
For various reasons, I never got involved in social media. So I would summarize them as propaganda distributers for the masses, like mainstream media is to its consumers, right?
For a WHILE now, at least here in the U.S., the country has come to favor minority opinions/rights over majority opinions/rights. I think it was Sir Spencer who "said" that? So, right now, the only APPROVED narrative is one that is pro-Black, pro-CRT, pro-1619 Project, pro-BLM. I've been reading a little from Black conservatives who are NOT pro-ANY-a that "stuff."
I don't have any data, but I'm fairly sure that the majority of Black Racists are Caucasian. For the influencers, I gather, it's a billion-dollar industry. Fame, fortune, prestige, POWER. What's not to like to these people. As long as they can stamp out ANY and ALL opposition, and they've got a pretty good record going for them, all is well for the Black Racists. For being so decentralized, they're VERY well organized around the principle that anything pro-Black is good, anything of "whiteness" is bad.
The goal is two-fold. 1) Reparations. They may have trouble with that one. 2) Overthrowing Democracy. They actually have a better chance of that, because they're putting pressure on in the courts and have come close, and they're training the next generation of lawyers to be woke.
There's really only one flaw I can see in the plan: As long as the snowball is rolling down the hill unimpeded, it will only get bigger. But if a "rock" of opposition SHOULD rise up outta nowhere, they could have a serious problem. I think You both alluded to the fact that all this is based on scientific UN-facts. But You'll never convince a person, these days, with science. As a PRACTICAL matter. Just won't fly.
But one never knows. Rock COULD come outta nowhere, to everybody's surprise. I think that's the "reset" that was referred to. If the majority WERE to draw a line in the sand, it could get REAL ugly. But MIGHT turn out pretty ugly for the Black Racists, pretty fast. Never know unless it's tried.
I just finished Chapter 2 of "The Master...," Sir Geary.
The last few paragraphs summed up the thesis fairly well. A few sentences:
"However, as I also emphasised at the outset, both hemispheres take part in virtually all ‘functions’ to some extent, and in reality both are always engaged.
"Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance (left hemisphere) – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole (right hemisphere). These gifts of the left hemisphere have helped us achieve nothing less than civilisation itself.
"But these contributions need to be made in the service of something else, that only the right hemisphere can bring. Alone they are destructive. And right now they may be bringing us close to forfeiting the civilisation they helped to create."
This would be a REAL reset WAY down the road, what he's "talking" about, but he isn't the man to get the job DONE. Or it would be a lot further ALONG than it is, being first published in 2009, right?
All that to say... Enjoyed reading You both. Thing about me is I never heard-a Stoic Religion until about a year ago. But mostly went by the philosophy of Epictetus, due to bizarre circumstances:
"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible."
"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."
The advantage of this approach is it leaves You two, or anybody ELSE the freedom to respond or not, as they see fit. Either Way, that has nothing to do with ME. So I CAN'T be bothered one Way or t'other. WHy would ANYone want their JOY to rely on what somebody ELSE does, or doesn't do?
It doesn't pay, right? Hard discipline, which is impossible to perfect. But as far as controlling Your reaction to what goes on around You? Just takes practice, that one.
TYTY, for the reading pleasure, You guys! On to Chapter 3.
Primarily, I see meditation as a means of enhancing brain performance rather than a way of knowing in itself, although personally it has given me cause to believe in certain intuitions (so not knowledge). Certain degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer's have been linked to disrupted sleep patterns over time. Apparently, there is means by which eight hours uninterrupted sleep and filter out certain toxins in the brain that build up over time.
The other thing to consider is stress and adrenal tension. Adrenalin helped keep us out danger when we were historically in imminent fear of death, but it's a short-term benefit which shreds our long-term health. It's why most Presidents look 20 years older by the time they leave office. Meditation can help free us from the constant low-level stress which besets our lives.
Given that even one pint of beer the night before an exam is proven to significantly decrease test scores, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that brains which are fully rested and unencumbered by systemic stress are likely to achieve higher levels of performance compared to those who simply trundle along without a care for their brains health.
Of course, I can't really talk because I'm a smoker, and improving cardiovascular health is the only known way of consistently improving IQ (more oxygenated blood gets to the brain).
Ah... Taking a brief break on Chapter 3, I would ask a few more questions, Sir Geary. How long since You read The Master and His Emissary? What do You do for a living, if I may ask.
I would PREFER to know these things before I give a more detailed reply, because i have NO intention to offend You in any way. But I might, by accident.
TY. Briefly then: Drawing from the first part of "The Master and His Emissary," it would seem You take a left hemisphere approach to meditation, Sir Geary. Where one could look at it as a direct conduit to the right. Just IMHO.
I've just found your reply JT so I apologise for my delayed response. How does one factor in meditation as a way of knowing?
I'd say that to get into the best state of say deep meditation is easiest achieved by those that are either culturally and spiritually inclined toward such an enlightened state (Buddhist nationals and especially Buddhist monks) or the very people who won't or don't need to try. The most difficult task being for those that see it as a way to fix and remedy a state of anxious consciousness.
When I first visited India some thirty years ago, I was surprised at how many times I was invited to join an Ashram, for a Hindu spirituality course. I looked at all those solemn deeply infected souls that had left their privileges in western countries and were now making pilgrimages to another religion within another culture that's own social contract accorded Hinduism and both accepted and encouraged its spiritual education. But I wondered at what great lesson these somewhat miserable looking people would learn from Hinduism that they could extrapolate and make use with within their own culture. If to gain this education as entry into migrating there permanently then I could understand. Of course I was only twenty and I'd come to India to travel, to seek adventure, meet people and climb mountains. I wanted to have fun, not find myself. If I was lost it was because others couldn't see me and that meant I could be selectively happy in just the company of likeminded spirits.
The irony is that I found the answer to the puzzle of Ashrams in Buddhism and Islam and even more so from my own connection to the world in surfing. Travel did this as my natural gregarious nature and search for excitement led me into the pathway of so many interesting and sometimes odd people; but I love people and outside oddities are no less strange than people that hide themselves within themselves and fear that somehow others will find out their great charade. Sometimes this would connect me to the most oddest and often the greatest of finds. I never judge another for obscure thought or for trekking less trod paths. Anybody and everybody will know a whole bunch of stuff that the very smartest do not. Consider the most ardent leftist who has a eureka moment and switches centre-right. It must be from some small snippet of information; some piece of the jigsaw that suddenly in a moment of reflective realisation turns a mans belief system into a totally different direction. A total about turn from only some small obscure thing that nonsenses what has previous been part of a person perhaps for years before.
I've actually considered that most people truly know very little. That is they accrue vast sums of knowledge that confuses and befuddles and merely add and connect biases that formulated in young childhood and merely connect further to the self. I've considered too that I don't truly believe in anything with full confidence and that within such a state of flux can be open to the best of what the left, right, religion, atheism allows me to take and make sense somehow of it all. That some ignorant hedonistic natural state is, as in youth, the most joyous playground. Before the downloads begin.
What I always liked about the Buddhist cultures and I've spent much time in numerous ones; other than that Buddhism is a religion of man and a pathway to peaceful cooperation and coexistence is that it truly works as a way of day to day human life. Your not looking for god, but instead taking and accounting for the actions of yourself and others through the life of the wisest of men. Buddha. So it's nothing in excess and that's from being sociably acceptant to so someone drinking 4 beers and not 10 and being a drunken idiot to not being too greedy, too corrupt, too much funny, sad, too judging or not caring enough to judge. It's balance, perspective and the recognition that we are all essentially the same beings in different bodies, both trapped and free by the hand of fate. For an entire culture to act perfectly on these principles would be asking too much, but Buddhism allows for the folly of man and for redemption too.
My wife is Buddhist. She often remarks that I'm the most Thai man that she's met. I am of course European, but she sees that I behave somewhat unlike many and calmly under pressure and in the way her father who is a Buddhist monk would favour. She often invites me to meditate and when I did I suddenly realized that I've been meditating all of my life.
As a child my restless soul fully exploding with mischief would find sleep a difficult task. I began imagining myself walking out of myself, out my room and then I was outside and I could feel the coldness of the night. Walking slowly in my imagination but still in the reality of the illusion I was being quiet and secretive, making sure not to be found out. Up the path and as I make distance from the house I am no longer careful to keep quiet. I am free to run. I open the gate and make my way to the stables where my horse awaits.......
Then I'd awake and it would be tomorrow. No nightmares to recall.
I've extended this to starting in many places and settings. Perhaps I'm surfing, or on my travels or interestingly a small child. I practiced this one for around a month. Taking my mind to a memory and walking in amongst it. It opened Pandora's box many years ago. Try picturing your schoolbook, your favourite T-shirt at 15 years old, what about walking your mind around your grandmothers kitchen. Your first car, a pair of football boots. You see the imagery is memory and I'd awaken with fresh memories elicited via the dreams that were entered by my imaginary walks. All this did was produce further memories despite this not being the intention but rather the consequence. What I was also doing was a form of meditation. Relaxation and an emptying of thoughts until in another place. One can imagine oneself raising off the floor and into the sky until within nothingness itself. It is limitless.
So no. I don't factor meditation into a factor of knowing in one sense or rather a direct sense, but for myself it indirectly creates a pathway to finding things deep within my mind. I doubt any of us truly forget anything. My grandmother was mnemonic. She could recall instantly anything. I wonder if her brain just had a more developed linkage to the subconscious than that which I've just described.
What about considering the religions as a controlling influence of the self. A self-correctional ideological pathway connected to the self that neutralises our more base and destructive tendencies and keeps us bonded together by a higher being that also punishes us for our sins. In this context one may wonder why Buddhism isn't the highest order of religion and of life. Perhaps even more scientifically acceptable and certainly more humanly so. But it fails in very specific regard. It doesn't construct a nirvana for a life after death. It doesn't wish you to bleed to death killing other human beings or possessing the kind of fortitude a soldier of religion possesses. A man that will live after his death is a far more willing killing machine and that suits the subversions of those few men that would live as gods. Societies that engage in war require a united people with a united aim. It may explain why Christianity is more prevalent in the US than in Europe or Laos. Naturally there are other factors here too.
Another aspect of ridding religion from society is what will fill that void? But what is religion other than an omnipresent powerful and emotive belief system that maintains hierarchical order. Is it creational by psychology? Can a society such as China with its social credit score system produce and maintain a social order with powerfully emotive allegiance to the state. What about Islam. That ones growing, though not in China. These are the sort of questions I ask myself as much as I wonder why the decadent west is imploding in "isms."
When nations abandon a common denominator that bonds all its citizens together no matter in what form then chaos engulfs and then other religions fill such voids. Which one is most supported, which structure will dominate? Is it an anomaly or are we in the middle stages of yet another transformation?
“So no. I don't factor meditation into a factor of knowing in one sense or rather a direct sense, but for myself it indirectly creates a pathway to finding things deep within my mind. I doubt any of us truly forget anything. My grandmother was mnemonic. She could recall instantly anything. I wonder if her brain just had a more developed linkage to the subconscious than that which I've just described.”
Like I told Sir Geary, I think meditation is a direct conduit to the right hemisphere. That from reading “The Master and His Emissary” which I worked and thought on for a long while. And I believe, based on a scientific experiment that was taken to mean that humans, in actual FACT, didn’t have any such-a thing as free will… Well, I’m not at ALL sure but that the subconscious MAY actually direct most everything we DO. Still thinking on that, but am in no particular hurry. That’s just a guess.
But I DO wonder if the subconscious records EVERYTHING we put our attention to. Dunno about that either.
“What about considering the religions as a controlling influence of the self. A self-correctional ideological pathway connected to the self that neutralises our more base and destructive tendencies and keeps us bonded together by a higher being that also punishes us for our sins. In this context one may wonder why Buddhism isn't the highest order of religion and of life. Perhaps even more scientifically acceptable and certainly more humanly so. But it fails in very specific regard. It doesn't construct a nirvana for a life after death. It doesn't wish you to bleed to death killing other human beings or possessing the kind of fortitude a soldier of religion possesses. A man that will live after his death is a far more willing killing machine and that suits the subversions of those few men that would live as gods. Societies that engage in war require a united people with a united aim. It may explain why Christianity is more prevalent in the US than in Europe or Laos. Naturally there are other factors here too.”
This is where I could very WELL be wrong. But doesn’t Buddhism espouse the Law of Karma? What You do in THIS life will determine what You will have in Your NEXT life? I thought that was commonality between Hinduism and Buddhism. I’ll just leave it at that, until You tell me more, anyone.
AFAIK, Christianity hasn’t been a cause of wars, at least in the U.S. WWII? That was just the practical consideration of what the world would look like if Nazi’s ruled the world. ICBW. My memory is a little vague about what’s going on in Myanmar, but I was thinking that Buddhist majority wasn’t being tolerant of a minority there. Again, ICBW. And Hindus? (Who I still associate with Buddhism as far as the Law of Karma.) Well I don’t think Karma is given any THOUGHT when it comes to Muslims in India, right? Islam?
And China? State religion of Atheism won’t stop them, AFAIK.
I guess I’d sum it up as the idea that Christianity is necessarily a source of evil doesn’t add up, to me. No more than any other. Hierarchical? Sure. A lotta the world IS hierarchical. MOSTLY, if You wanna look at things that Way. Seems a lotta people who like THEIR place in the hierarchy don’t much like the idea that there IS a hierarchy. It’s the NUMBERS of people.
“Another aspect of ridding religion from society is what will fill that void? But what is religion other than an omnipresent powerful and emotive belief system that maintains hierarchical order. Is it creational by psychology? Can a society such as China with its social credit score system produce and maintain a social order with powerfully emotive allegiance to the state. What about Islam. That ones growing, though not in China. These are the sort of questions I ask myself as much as I wonder why the decadent west is imploding in "isms."
When nations abandon a common denominator that bonds all its citizens together no matter in what form then chaos engulfs and then other religions fill such voids. Which one is most supported, which structure will dominate? Is it an anomaly or are we in the middle stages of yet another transformation?”
I wrote a term-paper in first semester in four-year college. Science AS a Religion. That seems Truth as much now as it did then. Actually, a lot MORESO.
I spoke on this a bit in my previous post here. And my GUESS is that, yeah, we’re in a state of fairly BIG transformation-S. NO guess on how things will turn out, of course.
WILL put out the notion that the common bonds exist, still, but the intelligentsia on both sides of the aisle have just DECIDED (to me, on a whim) that these bonds that DO exist won’t be of any notice to any-a them. Sign of the times, from what I know. Will that change?
“The irony is that I found the answer to the puzzle of Ashrams in Buddhism and Islam and even more so from my own connection to the world in surfing.”
For me it was computer programming and designing mundane business systems. In last job before I went freelancing in ’95, I had to use empathy a LOT because people don’t come right out and tell You what they want, except in vague ways. I needed to view myself as those people and how they would WANT to have their job made easier. Long story.
And “flow” doesn’t describe the state I got into sometimes coding the programs.
“Travel did this as my natural gregarious nature and search for excitement led me into the pathway of so many interesting and sometimes odd people; but I love people and outside oddities are no less strange than people that hide themselves within themselves and fear that somehow others will find out their great charade.”
That was me to a large extent, my whole life. I’d been hospitalized with emotional troubles three times in my life. Depression, manic, depression. The second time MAY have been due to having a Spiritual experience in a houseful of Fundamentalist Atheists. At any rate, that was when I was on leave for a week when I went back to programming school and, perversely, took an elective of Abnormal Psychology. The first week, don’t Ya know, someone FROM the hospital came out and talked to the class. She said it was harder for a mental patient to get a job than a felon.
And that became my life’s purpose. Don’t let anyone know I’d been hospitalized, and try to figure out how to be more like “normal people.” I’d actually started looking inward at my unsatisfactory self when I was in eight grade. A lot more in high school. Long stories.
Like coding, that was something like meditation. Looking inward a lot.
“Sometimes this would connect me to the most oddest and often the greatest of finds. I never judge another for obscure thought or for trekking less trod paths. Anybody and everybody will know a whole bunch of stuff that the very smartest do not.”
What Ram Dass “said” was my way of life. EVERYONE was my teacher. They ALL had something I could learn from, if I looked. Granted, a lotta the time I was heads-down just trying to survive.
“Consider the most ardent leftist who has a eureka moment and switches centre-right. It must be from some small snippet of information; some piece of the jigsaw that suddenly in a moment of reflective realisation turns a mans belief system into a totally different direction. A total about turn from only some small obscure thing that nonsenses what has previous been part of a person perhaps for years before.”
Funny You should “say” that, Sir Spencer. That’s what’s happened to me this past six months. I’d like to think I was dead-center, but I may be creeping center-right. For me, it was Critical Race Theory. Finding out that Biden was WOKE. Evidence supplied if needed.
“I've actually considered that most people truly know very little. That is they accrue vast sums of knowledge that confuses and befuddles and merely add and connect biases that formulated in young childhood and merely connect further to the self. I've considered too that I don't truly believe in anything with full confidence and that within such a state of flux can be open to the best of what the left, right, religion, atheism allows me to take and make sense somehow of it all. That some ignorant hedonistic natural state is, as in youth, the most joyous playground. Before the downloads begin.”
Weeel, Sir Spencer, me and hedonism have never met, so can’t say. But I wrote, yesterday I think it was, “I’m EXACTLY 50% Fundamentalist Atheist. That was how I was raised and I’m not ENTIRELY ready to give that up. But I’m EXACTLY 50% Religio-Spiritual, so there is that.”
Past six or seven months I’ve been pretty INTENT on studying a variety of things. Read more books in that time than I EVER have. Setting aside textbooks and programming manuals and magazines, I’m not but sure that I’ve read more in this time than the TOTAL I’d read in the past.
As You would expect, all that’s accomplished is showing me how IGNORANT I am. At least I’m smart enough to know, from years of experience, that this is the nature of human existence. The Truth of “The more You know, the more You know what You DON’T know.”
Can’t say when I’ve had this much fun. Well, I did when I was working and learning about life.
“What I always liked about the Buddhist cultures and I've spent much time in numerous ones; other than that Buddhism is a religion of man and a pathway to peaceful cooperation and coexistence is that it truly works as a way of day to day human life. Your not looking for god, but instead taking and accounting for the actions of yourself and others through the life of the wisest of men. Buddha. So it's nothing in excess and that's from being sociably acceptant to so someone drinking 4 beers and not 10 and being a drunken idiot to not being too greedy, too corrupt, too much funny, sad, too judging or not caring enough to judge. It's balance, perspective and the recognition that we are all essentially the same beings in different bodies, both trapped and free by the hand of fate. For an entire culture to act perfectly on these principles would be asking too much, but Buddhism allows for the folly of man and for redemption too.
My wife is Buddhist. She often remarks that I'm the most Thai man that she's met. I am of course European, but she sees that I behave somewhat unlike many and calmly under pressure and in the way her father who is a Buddhist monk would favour. She often invites me to meditate and when I did I suddenly realized that I've been meditating all of my life.”
Like I said, not muchuva Buddhist. Read some-a the sutras. Know they’re Truth. Read the Bible and the Koran. Know they’re Truth. But I think I’m like You in this, Sir Spencer: All that stuff is nothing to me, if it doesn’t have some practical utility in how to get along day-to-day.
As You might suspect, I’m more of an individualist than prolly most. HAD-ta be. But I’ve only met two people in my life I’ve hated. Wrote this too someplace: “Then I realized I didn’t hate them. Then I realized WHY they’d done what I didn’t much cotton to, personally. Then realized the only one who was harmed by ANY-a that was ME.” So I tend to get along with everybody. Closeness comes and goes, according to the whims of who I run into. I don’t have many people I “correspond” with, on a personal basis, so at this point my door is always open to whoever shows up. I guess tat IS cooperation, come to think of it.
“As a child my restless soul fully exploding with mischief would find sleep a difficult task.”
I’ll just say I’ve always needed a lotta sleep, unless I was manic, of course, and then I needed hardly any. Burnt out pretty quick tho, so there is that.
Not to gloss over all the wonderful experiences You shared, but I wanted to talk a wee bit about meditation.
I was no good for ANYTHING, so I wrote the following shite. I'm done for the day, as far as DOING much. One person to touch base with, then to bed reading until 6pm EDT. (Cain't hardly WAIT!) I interleaved my comments amongst Yours, Sir Spencer, just because that was easiest Way for me to think today.
===========================
[Part 1 of ?]
“Hi JT. Sir.”
I’m no “Sir” compared to other people. ;)
“I've just found your reply JT so I apologise for my delayed response. How does one factor in meditation as a way of knowing?
“I'd say that to get into the best state of say deep meditation is easiest achieved by those that are either culturally and spiritually inclined toward such an enlightened state (Buddhist nationals and especially Buddhist monks) or the very people who won't or don't need to try. The most difficult task being for those that see it as a way to fix and remedy a state of anxious consciousness.”
Well, I can’t say I’m muchuva Buddhist. I studied Zenism off and on over the years (66), which I consider different from but related to Buddhism. My own personal opinion, now, is that Zen showed how totally corrupted it had become during WWII. And that when meditation hit the West, it was perverted into, precisely, “fixing” and “remedying” various states as well as becoming a self-improvement project for people to feel anointed and be the “perfected human.”
Again, my own opinion is that having ANY kind-a goal, but ESPECIALLY trying to become superior in ANY way, shape, or form (Spiritually or otherwise)… Well, having goals is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of what meditation is about. Keep in mind I’ve never left the country nor gone on any Spiritual retreats or studied under a Master or ANY-a that. So what all I “say” is just based on my limited experience. And it’s EXCEEDINGLY limited by the fact that most-a my years were spent just trying to make a living. All told, I prolly meditated, in bits and spurts, mebbe five years? Absolutely nowhere near ten.
“When I first visited India some thirty years ago, I was surprised at how many times I was invited to join an Ashram, for a Hindu spirituality course. I looked at all those solemn deeply infected souls that had left their privileges in western countries and were now making pilgrimages to another religion within another culture that's own social contract accorded Hinduism and both accepted and encouraged its spiritual education. But I wondered at what great lesson these somewhat miserable looking people would learn from Hinduism that they could extrapolate and make use with within their own culture. If to gain this education as entry into migrating there permanently then I could understand. Of course I was only twenty and I'd come to India to travel, to seek adventure, meet people and climb mountains. I wanted to have fun, not find myself. If I was lost it was because others couldn't see me and that meant I could be selectively happy in just the company of likeminded spirits.”
I’ve not had much luck finding like-minded spirits. Being a loner, like I “said” didn’t help. Lotta friends I was grew up with, but didn’t know what like-minded spirits were then. Kept in touch with one of them in adulthood.
Moved away from them when I was 14, which was pivotal. I’ve had two brothers for friends for a number years. They were “the brothers I never had” (having two sisters, older and younger). And a couple I knew very closely for a few years. Eventually they all moved away.
Marriage for 12 years. When that fell apart and I quit my career, I went into what-i-call self-imposed solitary confinement for a number of years. COVID had zero effect on my lifestyle. Virtually never went out anyway. Spent too many years laying in bed 24 hours listening to the radio. Slowly started crawling outta the rock I was under, TOTALLY unbeknownst to me.
After that ended, I thought what I’d experienced was pretty close to a Monk in one-a those Silent Communities. Dunno.
I’ve never discussed my religio-Spiritual views except online. Again, for most part, they weren’t central to what I was doing at the time. Now they’re moreso than not. I quit meditating a year ago when I found I had goals, but am thinking on taking it up again, hopefully without.
I've read this a second time, Sir Spencer, and there's a LOT to take in. First I'll read over the rest You wrote, and what I wrote because I don't wanna repeat myself.
I only got six hours sleep last night, and I'm not worth much at all today. So it may not be today I get back here. But I'd say we are not that far apart, for having traveled on a path at the opposite ends of the Universe. Me, loner. Married at 37, divorced at 49. Ten or eleven years of 12-year marriage platonic, yet I look back at it, after a very long time, as one-a the greatest blessings I've had. Long story. All-in-all, I've had more than my share of Serendipity. Tho I'm not always aware of it as much as I should be.
One area we differ on is war. The religion that would step into a vacuum here in the U.S.? Political or social or religious vacuum? That'd be China. They may anyway in the next three decades. Likely before that the Chinese will first crush us economically, if things go as they are. Of course, ICBW. Would like to be, of course.
TYTY for Your astounding essay, Sir Spencer. Lot to take in. :)
Online services and applications extend the influencing opportunities of traditional word-of mouth (WOM). Unlike traditional word-of-mouth, the online environment allows for special features such as anonymity in user-generated content. The personality of online users affects their motivation when creating such content. Specific online activities, such as the feedback on product ratings and participation in discussions in online forums, collectivise certain personality traits.
“The findings, based on an online survey with more than 16,900 completed questionnaires, indicate that opinion leaders in the online environment cannot be compared with traditional opinion leaders in terms of their articulation and personality structure. In regard to online activities with a high influencing potential, the results of moderated regression analyses show that persons with an introverted personality are more active as online opinion leaders due to the lack of social recognition they experience. The results have implications for how marketers should present incentive structures to address and integrate potential online opinion leaders, and how scholars should understand the role of opinion leaders in the online environment.”
Here’s a quote from Elsevier- Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 29, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 997-1006
This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in 2010. Factor analysis results showed that content generation using social media was satisfying five socio-psychological needs: showing affection, venting negative feelings, gaining recognition, getting entertainment, and fulfilling cognitive needs. In particular, people who used social media to meet their social needs and their need for affection tended to use Facebook and blogs. In contrast, when users wanted to air out discontent, they often turned to forums. Results also showed that exhibitionists seemed to use social media to show affection, express their negative feelings, and achieve recognition. The study found no generational differences in using Facebook and blogs as a means to satisfy social needs or the need for affection. However, differences in patterns of social media usage were found among Baby Boomers with different narcissistic personalities. The paper includes a discussion of the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research.
In short. Social media are good platforms for narcissists to exert control over self-presentation. • Net Geners are more comfortable and enthusiastic with all forms of social media. • All generations agree forums the preferred social medium for gaining recognition. • Facebook and blogs are normally used for social needs and need for affection. • Forums are preferred to air out discontent and to release negative feelings.
Years ago, in a 1st year class in Philosophy, a particularly smart fellow student raised the observation that people tend to attach a very personal relevance to the ideas which they reason out or choose to believe, and can be quite offended when someone else looks at exactly the same information and forms a different opinion. In many ways, it’s as though you are calling their reasoning powers into question, and oddly, people can often get even more offended and personally affronted when you call into question their ethos and most deeply held belief than they might over their interpretation of particular set of empirical evidence- most likely because our beliefs are more intimate an precious to us, fundamental to us as self-evident proof of our moral nature.
I find this profoundly interesting and disturbing in what I and many must be observing in others. It is a very modern trend in its severity. We have managed to attach our very deepest individuality and personal value system and personalised it to numerous current events and subverted politics. There used to be the concept that politics and religion were not fine mealtime conversations. The idea of course being that these topics are by nature contentious. Intellectuals versed in theoretical objectivity may indeed revel and delight in going toe-to toe and sharpening their argument, but those without this mindset of enjoyable disagreement are best in practice to leave it off the table.
Formerly we took our education of deep issues from institutional scholars. We may have browsed articles and journals and gone on to devour further publications, but be that as it may; the intellectual knowledge was largely kept within the intellectual community with the skillset of containing it academically for digestion and contextualisation and certainly not one of dissemination. That is we trusted real experts.
Over the the past quarter century we are seeing the messenger system and particularly via the MSM and social media outlets, propagate the narrative into the social fabric of both the self and the condition of identity. That is we have introduced arguments into society that actually are especially hard to escape and incredibly difficult to avoid. To make matters worse they have become focal talking points and not surprisingly so either as they are infectious of our everyday lives. They are now attached to our politics and this is a dangerous development.
Politicising everyday life means that any and everybody attaches themselves to the greater self-serving narrative. We’ve introduced CRT, identity politics, ramped up special cause issues, immigrated theologically and culturally opposing religions, created wokism, policing free speech and we’ve done it in lockstep with a policy of victim culture and the focus of giving more than particular emphasis to the special causes and with applied emphasis on subverting policies toward minority interests over the majority interests; giving way to a feeling of frustrated disenfranchisement by the majority in favour of the few. This is a huge slap in the face for all those citizens that afforded charity to such minority causes and is now beginning to sow discord.
One of the aspects of jumbling and bagging all these modern maladies together is the rather peculiar effect of giving rise to personal expertise. The caveat is that it’s mostly second hand gossip via multi-misinformation narrative and it hijacks very successfully most everybody and in a kind of quasi-hierarchical credentialized way. Not only are people searching meaning from the mass-information conflict, but they are being indoctrinated via algorithms that are particularly enticing to their ingroup preferences and then projecting via different degrees of influence via their financial and personal success worth and further influencing their peers. It can create a form of submission. Imagine for one second the very individualistic identity attachments of so much misinformation taken as fact and how it becomes part of everyday conversation and add in the actual fact that we are all in a form of disagreement due to our individual lived experience identity perception over such a large expanse of propagated narrative and we can see how the value of our individual thoughts is chastised and submitted hierarchically from the highest power of influence. It perpetuates a credentialized society and thus the highest and brightest of minds are denigrated and the average Joe with no pedigree in academia is just an added confusion to the narrative. Everybody has become an expert on everything and heterodoxy is as rare as rocking horse shit.
The other thing to bear in mind is that distance dehumanises. It’s why people are generally happier working for small businesses rather than huge companies, because their is a tendency to feel like a small cog or just a number with the latter. It is also far easier to feel disgruntled and resentful of distant higher ups in large companies, because with a small company you can see your boss and know that he usually works a damn sight harder than you. This process also works both ways, it is far easier to play the hatchet man if the people you are getting rid of are simply numbers and names on a spreadsheet.
In many ways, social media is like an extension of the driver’s rage phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve known people who are perfectly nice and reasonable in most circumstances, yet as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car, and their personal space extends 60 feet in all directions, they begin to swear like a trooper and start to fume. Social media tricks us in the same way, everything which we say is of course perfectly reasonable (because we have our inner monologue to justify rudeness for imagined slights), but as soon as someone else acts in the same way, we are the first to call foul, accuse them of ad hominem and cry bad faith.
I agree with everything you say about experts and the history of epistemology, with one huge caveat. In the more demanding academic disciplines like the sciences people are trained to brutally destroy other people’s ideas. It is, after all, the only way that the scientific method functions. I would highly recommend watching the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity- which like many good films is based upon a true story. It shows exactly how rough and tumble scientific debate, rebuttal and disputation can be.
But the thing is it was never personal, or at least was never meant to be. People were able to understand that bad ideas don’t necessarily equate to bad people. In many ways, the internet has democratised knowledge, but unfortunately it didn’t come with an instruction manual as to how to show generosity and good grace in knocking down bad ideas.
everybody attaches themselves to the greater self-serving narrative. We’ve introduced CRT, identity politics, ramped up special cause issues, immigrated theologically and culturally opposing religions, created wokism, policing free speech and we’ve done it in lockstep with a policy of victim culture
A lot of this is due to discipline envy. Many people in the grievance studies and those other subjects which postmodernism now permeates (such as the humanities and education) were perfectly cognisant of the fact that the sciences have always been of greater utility and benefit to humanity. Many were simply not smart enough or not hardworking enough to participate in these fields.
The other thing is that they don’t like a lot of the conclusions that science reaches. Even psychology (which is on the boundary) has fallen afoul of this tendency. They don’t like the fact that women tend to be interested in people, with men interested in things, or that this means that in more egalitarian countries where people are less economically driven by necessity, even more men become engineers, even more women nurses. To them it’s all social construction, or patriarchy, and they really don’t like being proven emphatically wrong.
This is the reason for their insistence on the elevation of standpoint epistemology, or lived experience, over science and facts. Because they really don’t like the fact that many of their central narratives can easily be disproven with empirical data. They’ve even managed to influence some younger scientists with the viewpoint, with many keen to explore ‘other ways of knowing’ which is code, for non-scientific means of generating knowledge.
A lot of this is political and is major point of contention between liberal (or Leftist) conservative viewpoints. In the old configuration, it was socio-economics or class-based inequality that liberals claimed was at the root of all disparity and lack of social mobility. Today, this has been replaced with the Leftist notion that race is the primary driver of inequality. The truth is that conservatives were largely correct in their assertion that family structure was the most important thing, with the distinction that it is at a community level which fathers are most important: in terms of upward social mobility, crime and educational outcomes.
This presents a quandary, because the solution requires both conservative and liberal thought and areas or domains. The only way that I can see to artificially or externally stimulate the proportion of fathers in a community is through the provision of a higher percentage of responsible and stable income earners- because women sleep with and even get pregnant by attractive men who are popular amongst their peer group, but don’t have reliable earnings, but they will only settle with men who pay their share. It’s called hypergamy and it’s one of immutable laws of stable family formation.
The only way I can see to do this, is to pivot towards vocational training and technical skills in education, preferably at around 14, for kids who do not do well academically. Apart from anything else, most countries need blue collar workers far more than they do more university graduates working as baristas, and the jobs tend to pay a lot more, as well.
The other thing to consider is that by having an education system which values intellect and academic attainment over all else, we are setting up a considerable portion of our young people for failure, in terms of confidence, before their lives have even begun. The last thing any country needs is whole segments of their population believing they are failures or dumb at 16, because this will make boys in particular far more susceptible to gang grooming. One of great things about markets is that it is individual differences which often cause people to thrive- our education systems need to place far greater value and emphasis on caring and practical skills, because apart from anything else this is what the economy needs. We are still operating on a model designed to train young people to become clerical and office workers- these jobs are going the same way as the dodo.
I particularly liked the phrase
rare as rocking horse shit
It’s one I hadn’t come across. In the East of England we generally tend to use the words useful, chocolate and fireguard to construct a sentence which means something similar, but not quite the same.
Thanks for this. I truly go on the assumption that my contribution is minimal academically, but that I will find within the dialogue so many fresh reasons to ask more questions. It is yourself specifically that questions and probes and helps formulate ever increasing circles of ideas, theories and a thirst for more knowledge and sense. You wrote that one of the main reasons in engaging in these spaces was trying to make sense of what the fuck is happening in this world. Well it just so happens that you are especially brilliant at helping my selfish self in understanding it all. I shall continue to speak my bullshit anecdotal(s) and to push and to probe and to question and to formulate more ideas from the influence of yourself and the other great members that spend much time aiding and abetting in my education. I am not some lost soul in a quest to understand the universe. But instead a searcher of understanding of why it may be that with all available resources, that we at this point in time seem to be screwing up the best time in humanity when we could in fact adapt and nudge it to a semblance of perfection.
I particularly liked the phrase
rare as rocking horse shit
Have you heard " It’s as much use as a glass eye with a crack in it?"
What about " You can’t get shit out of a wooden horse?" Trojan of course.
Or for someone who’s always trying to get something for nothing. “You do more tapping than a blind mans stick.”
The other thing to bear in mind is that distance dehumanises.
Very much why I believe that village life is the most natural and normal of human existence and perhaps becoming the monetarily exclusive safe space. Strange that why we push progressivism all the normies run from the cities into the enclaves.
it is far easier to play the hatchet man if the people you are getting rid of are simply numbers and names on a spreadsheet.
Depersonalisation. Corporate ownership of everything destroys.
This is the reason for their insistence on the elevation of standpoint epistemology, or lived experience, over science and facts. Because they really don’t like the fact that many of their central narratives can easily be disproven with empirical data.
This forms a conundrum to my mind Geary. I’ll explain why. Anecdotal is supported by the “us” and the “all” - the collective. So harnessing the lived experience is very un-asymmetrical. If one thus collectivises the narrative and sells it with charm, then it is as equally if not much more powerful than the accepted scientific evidence. That is people will be much more pliable to what they’ve seen and done, than a dismissible proof. The thing is that if one can tap into the shared experience of many via the anecdotal then you have a powerful means of subversion. It would depend upon the intent and persuasion of the narrative. I accept that the science ought to be the status quo, but I also accept that people are stupid however intelligent and reasonable and logical they appear on other levels.
On one level the anecdotal supports the scientific as would be expected. Only recently do we see the contrast. The issue is in that those now sprouting the narrative are not supporting it with evidence, but rather by language and misdirection.
In many ways, social media is like an extension of the driver’s rage phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve known people who are perfectly nice and reasonable in most circumstances, yet as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car, and their personal space extends 60 feet in all directions, they begin to swear like a trooper and start to fume. Social media tricks us in the same way, everything which we say is of course perfectly reasonable (because we have our inner monologue to justify rudeness for imagined slights), but as soon as someone else acts in the same way, we are the first to call foul, accuse them of ad hominem and cry bad faith.
The best of analogies and it’s not lost on how there’s three choices and not two. If given two we take the best one that is closest to our belief system. Driving these forces apart connects us to the same. Sanity rests within taking the best policy or approach of the whole or of each opposite. The thing is and I’m damned sure left or right, that everybody actually wants the same overall outcome. What’s happened over the past generation has been a separation of certain core values amplified in such a way as to excommunicate normal avenues of discourse. It will undoubtedly force a reset in time.
Another amazing post man. I'm putting this up on my FB, assuming that's cool. Hopefully someone from my friends list finds their way to your stuff. I keep telling my conservative friends that they can watch you school me on some issues, assuming they'd be dying to see that happen in real time, but so far, no takers. I'm gonna have to edit your stuff down a bit to share in class, simply in terms of vocab and conceptual complexity, at times, but I'll let you know how to students reply to some of your more provocative ideas.
Cheers, mate. I would have thought it would be great intro to a discussion on the harms of social media. If it divides adults into two warring camps, how does it effect younger people, to make them feel excluded and/or bullied? Does it naturally favour smarter kids, who are able to use ideas more manipulatively?
Broaching the subject through adults I would have hoped would make them more willing to open up on what may be a sensitive subject.
Do you have an opinion on “critical media literacy”? i was looking for a quote from a media lit course I took in the early/mid 2000s and came across this conservative article - https://www.city-journal.org/critical-media-literacy-pulls-from-same-woke-playbook - but reading it, it occurs to me that this, unlike critical race theory, is something I actually studied back in the day. And I thought it was great stuff man, I really liked the prof, he was challenging, academically, and some Ed profs don't even try to be challenging. anyway, for some reason, I feel we should be talking about my Masters of Ed, which I completed in 2004 or so. I feel I may have been ground zero for some of this woke stuff, at OISE in the early 2000s. like, we were all optimistic about the material and the goals at the time. I've long called it the greatest educational experience of my life, but the more I think about it, that was woke ground zero right there
I wouldn’t mind the whole DEI industry of it achieved at least some of what it aimed to achieve, by helping talented but disadvantaged individuals reach their potential. But that’s not what it does. According to this Jonathan Haidt podcast "What does 40 years of DEI have to show?" - Featuring Prof. Jonathan Haidt - YouTube DEI now eats up 3% of all corporate budgets. Worse still, it has no metrics for success- and often some of the programs, such as implicit bias training end up having negative effects- creating less diversity or fewer promotions for people from minority groups. Meanwhile, approaches which do work, like voluntary mentoring programs, are left to gather dust on the shelves.
The main issue is though- does achieving equity violate the principal of procedural fairness. This is vital. Does the person who is most able and works hardest get the job? Surveys show everybody wants this- Whites, Latinos, African Americans, Asians- overwhelmingly. People don’t want equal outcomes, but more often than not, if asked, they often want access to the opportunity to prove themselves.
The real problem with woke capitalism is that the companies really don’t care that their DEI programs don’t achieve anything. The programs achieve exactly what they want- which is to provide a liability shield against getting sued and for PR purposes. The other issue is that you can always tell which side is wrong when they shoot their dissenters. And the DEI industry does shoot dissenters- they don’t like it when you point out that their programs don’t work, or try to suggest solutions which might work, minus the overarching narrative.
If I was to design a critical media literacy course, my main when question would be to what extent does media create the myth that we are society in which people from the bottom can rise to the top? The peer group you have growing up, the parental community which forms around the school and whether or not you school has a great headteacher who can create a system of structured, strict low-level discipline are all vital to your kid's future success. But the top 10% of society don't want the other 90% either knowing this or having it, for the simple reason that they don't want the competition for their kids.
It would, but the only issue with that is every teacher with a woke impulse has raised that conversation before. It's a great convo for the right teacher, but I don't even have a cell phone. Luddite, through and through, I don't have the right questions to ask. if you want the scoop on woke classrooms, I can give you that. Technology? Not so much. Hit me up with a few more questions for them, and I'll use this convo instead. they also generally find it hillarious when I own up to my ineptitude with modern shit, so this is perfect!
I don't have mobile phone either. I had one for a while, but people kept ringing me- so "I lost it" (sold it at a profit- it was a pay as you go, bought just before they started charging more for them).
I focus on individual liberty over group force and control to make individuals submit.
When liberty cannot be maintained, then it must be by a clear law that applies to all equally (and thus cannot target any group for "special" breaks or punishments).
These will give you the best economic results. These will give you the best social outcomes. Those who purport that they can force others to better outcomes are liars and tend to promote some gain in economics or social order while ignoring the harmful side effects.
Funny you should frame your comment this way- just a few minutes ago I was just finishing watching an UnHerd podcast with Richard Thaler, in which the interviewer asked the question had the use of Nudge Theory by governments gone too far- the word used was 'manipulation'...
Your last sentence reminds me of Thomas Sowell- there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Regarding, MSM, social media, Internet access to information and algorithymic indoctrination my focus would be on my child, it would be on those that have never known anything but a life inclusive of being wired to the network and take all comparisons from this.
We humans are crucially developed by our nurturing. Babies and small children learn bonding and connections to others by such close contact. It’s no surprise that women have higher perception in the perceptions of smell and the tiniest of facial expressions and will mimic the baby and the baby will reciprocate. It is an essential development activity and essentially instinctual. Hand your small baby or child to another woman and observe the same close and warm bonding patterns. Or wonder why your wife or partner seems to have some omnipresent mind reading ability to sense your mood with frustrating accuracy. Even though in reality it is a visual recognition she’s just taken from your eyes and small but not quite hidden facial twitches. Then of course we have the joyous interplay that seems to turn fathers into infancy and the evolutionary process of instinctual teaching kicks in. Fathers are teaching their sons the very fine boundaries of fight or flight; creative role play lessons in reacting to physical threat and confrontation. It is essential learning and it kick starts a boys masculinity. As Geary will attest, boys without father are statistically 8 times more likely to find themselves in prison. Personally I wish to extend this topic to include young girls in their development. Kids require both parents if just to imitate male to female interplay and learn developmental skills in personal relationships. Balance. My little girl loves to play fight and I enjoy the bonding. Though not the low blows.
Now let’s consider that important traditional interaction that up to 25 years ago was an essential part of growing up. Anybody not involved was some kind of geeky oddball. I’m talking of course about sport. We engaged in it as soon as we could toddle. When would you have kicked your first football? It may be the case that the more extrovert and socially adept of us tended toward team sport and that the more introverted tended toward individualism in sport. Nevertheless it was essential in our development. What about community and of the pub and club scene, of inter-relationships close and not quite so close? Which of your friends are still your lifetime friends from such early experiences and shared community? It all matters and it has been in and around us forever.
Unsociable media and online gaming creates a kind of addictive shortcut that seems to activate sole atomised individuality, yet giving strong indication that one is in a natural state of community interplay. It is not. It is missing the social aspects of normal human interplay. How do we learn ethics and morals and humanity connections by being transhumanised? Unfortunately this is a recent although transformative process and we don’t yet know fully any real comparative data to reflect upon. So far we’re being evidenced that such activity is strongly linked to suicide, depression and introversion. But what of indoctrination into a new type of humanism? What about that?
My child is seven next week and can type at least four times quicker than myself and I’m neither fast nor slow. I call her “hacker” and it’s amazing to observe her on a keyboard. You undoubtedly will of observed that I do as much as I can to instigate a wide-ranging inter-social environment for her as possible and luckily we live close to other families with children. I actively encourage the whole playing with other kids thing and so do the other parents nearby. Well not all. There are a few that choose to mollycoddle their offspring and as you can imagine they are social outcasts in the making par this group anyways. I’d encourage any parent who doesn’t have other kids nearby to do all they can to facilitate an environment of play for their child; be that sport or some regular home visits.
That in-person social part of growing up is vital, mate. I had an idyllic childhood- we used to play in the woods, climb trees and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. Sports are important for both boys and girls, but especially for boys- because when paired with the ethos of good sportsmanship it can help socialise the most aggressive 10% how to channel their aggression into socially productive uses.
That's what the feminists missed when they wanted to get rid of competitive sports to make children more cooperative (and more susceptible to socialism). To their shame they didn't realise that removing competitive sports would lead to more antisocial behaviour and uncontrolled aggression.
I understand your sentiments. Much seems pertinent to me. But I do wonder as complaining about the youth is as old as culture.
No doubt some kids have issues due to social media. Is it better/worse than child farming (without a choice), mining, being sold for profit, succumbing to diseases?
Some kids are abused by those who in personal contact. Some use this tech to learn and keep in contact with others and even build empathy. Social media didn't create zero tolerance, grade inflation, everyone gets a trophy, forced school attendance, forced school closures, mask mandates, an illegal drug trade that finds easy customers among wealthier suburban kids (and sellers who won't have to "do as much time" if caught), CRT/intersectionality, ADD/ADHD and the drugging of youthful giddiness and inattention to boring things, being driven to/from school, stranger danger/safetyism, pollution/climate change, mobility that leads families to split and move far away, easy divorce, abortion on demand, the change in faith in religion to faith in politics, etc.
My guess is we'll muddle through it all and the kids will mostly be all right.
It's true, M. DOK, that social mediaa didn't create those things You mentioned. But I don't see the connection between the harm social media does and "child farming (without a choice), mining, being sold for profit, succumbing to diseases?" Does this happen ANYWHERE in the Western world?
And the good from participating in sports isn't in fashion today, so much mebbe. I haven't noticed kids being better for using social media like they would be if they involved themselves in sports. ESPECIALLY team sports. Comraderie, sportsmanship, taking wins/losses in stride. Maybe THESE things aren't in fashion anymore either.
I'm no defender of social media, but all people of all ages and abilities can be on social media, across the world, including adults, as if the worse social media offenses come from children and not adults (all of cancel culture, fake news, conspiracy theories, pump and dump, left-right hatred).
And of course lots of social media content isn't harmful at all and allows for greater human communications in a time when we're not limited by our location or station in life or even country.
Far fewer people can participate in sports, which clearly has its own issues of physical injury/death and mental injury and even corruption in gambling.
Lastly, anything you blame on children, blame on the generation(s) that allowed their government to operate as it does, the schools as they do, the wars as they do, the environmental degradation as they do, the policing as they do, and of course the ones who raised them in fear, safetyism, zero tolerance, racism/anti-racism (so similar), groups over individuals, and victimhood, all while somehow all believing their children are above average.
Ah, M. Spencer. Now *I* must apologize for the delay. I read Your essays once, but didn't fully take them in. This one stands well. I emphasized my opinion in my reply to M. DOK.
Thing I have against the TWYGs ("Two Worthless Younger Generations")... Well, it's the Millennials and the Gen-Zers, AFAIK, who have had their brains tethered to the computer in their phones for so long... Well, always looking for the "NEXT GREAT THING" will prolly lead them to think that transhumanism is surely IT. Leastways, I haven't noticed looking at long-term ramifications being a strength. But if YOU'RE in the TWYGs, Yourself, M. Spencer, then I have a lot more hope. :)
P.S. Me an the next? The TW-Older-Gs? Culpable, if anyone was. IMHO.
Argh... ALWAYS mistakes. If You don't know ANYTHING about "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist, the quote below won't make ANY sense.
He's a brain scientist who's done 20 years research on left and right hemispheres of the brain. He's laying OUTSTANDING case that these two hemispheres are involved in just about EVERYTHING we think, say, or do. Perceive the world and ourselves.
But they have two ENTIRELY different WAYS of perceiving the world. That's what the research points to, as far as Sir Iain knows. Ten years of further research doesn't seem to have poked any holes in his theory. And, in a nutshell, his idea is that the right, holistic, empathic hemisphere, which is BIGGER along most of the length of the brain, should be relied on.
As opposed to how EVERYBODY's been trained how to think, almost exclusively by the left hemisphere. The last half of the book will point out how efft up the world's societies are, as a result of this. There's almost NOTHING in this book that I'll disagree with. I'd bet MONEY on it, and I'm NOT a bettin' man. (Chapter 3 looks to be interesting. On "Language, Truth and Music."
Great comment. My thoughts exactly when I came across Iain McGilchrist. In fact, I would posit that belief in unfounded superstitions occur when the logical side of the brain fixes upon a particular hypothesis without sufficient proof.
My own personal method is to focus on the ambient sound of very low, high pitched hum which ears generate, and then pair that with the mindfulness of breathing technique. Once you have this method 'fixed', with several seasons, it's especially useful to employ the technique when you are tired, in bed and it is late at night- and imagine a positive energetic force somewhere outside your window (I get more of a sense of it from larger, wide open spaces), and which also surrounds you, comforting you. Sometimes it can feel like an encapsulating duvet of air and energy.
I've felt the presence more strongly at moments of great upset in my life, and have also noticed that the positive lift-affirming source seems to exist on the same range as the more entropic destructive force- it is simply a matter of different frequencies. I suspect that certain religious practices and rituals, such as confession, naturally attune people to higher frequencies, but have no evidence for this suspicion.
Oh! SHOULD-a said a LOTTA things, but said too MUCH as it was.
I've meditated in spurts. Very little total. Have not meditated for past year, I thin'. But when I DID meditate, at least I was able to do deeply. MIxed results, tho that really defeats the purpose, right? TYTY AGAIN for recommendation of book. Or, actually, TYTY for first time, now second. ;) = 😉
I should apologize, Sir Geary, if I shared too much at once. Lately, I've had a tendency to do that. Should mention I don't have an artistic bone in my body, although I was told writing is artistic. I dunno.
All that to say... I'm just weird. Bizarre circumstances just made me weirder than I started out, is all. And in high school, I was pretty cotton-pickin' weird. Just finished reading the Introduction, is why I bothered You again, M. Johansen. At same time, don't ASSUME You've read any-a this, either.
This: "Understanding hemisphere difference offers a perspective on the structure of mind which is not available merely by introspection." In my 20s and 30s i was computer logic, personified. Programmer. Disgusting in a lotta respects, looking back. But I become more in tune with people as I moved into managing the dept. I purposefully married (and later divorced) a woman in my dept who was a GRAND people-person.
44 years ago I studied Eastern Ways and heard, "rational mind is perfect servant, but lousy master."
Now? I'd written that I write 100% by intuition, which I described as balanced-edge between logic and emotion, I think it was. Mebbe as edge between conscious and subconscious. No matter. I think this book will inform me GREATLY on details. NEVER would-a guessed that sustained attention was right-brain. Had that in my 20s and 30s. Was SURE is was left-brain.
As far as You wise words, I've heard similar. It's just not my Way. I'm not very connected to my body, unfortunately. Can't dance. NEVER! THinking mebbe Tai Chi would help? I'm lousy on visualizations. I just don't get a FEELING from it. Dunno.
Not saying I WON'T try what You suggested, Sir Geary. Just that it hasn't helped me in the past. And most-a my day, at present, signifies what Shunryu Suzuki (who was not ALL that enlightened) said:
“Everything IS perfect, but there is a LOT of room for IMPROVEMENT.” (emphasis added)
LOTTA work to do on THAT, and I'm 66, white, male, divorced, smoker. Dunno about time, but know at THIS time that on the totem pole of life, there's nobody lower. ;) = 😉
TYTY for Your reply. Just this moment finished the Preface to The Mastery and His Emmisarry. WHew! I could only find one thing that I disagreed with, and that's, wait, lemme find the quote.
Hi, Mr. Johansen. Although I don't always agree with you on everything, I like your topic selection and writing--I plan to put it on my "rounds", so to speak. Your work put me in mind of Dan Kahan (Cultural Cognition) and Jonathan Haidt. You may also find Aristotelian/Thomistic psychology interesting: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/74d658bt.
Recognition is indeed a factor but I suspect we need to find a more precise factor. One can recognise someone in such a way that indicates a total lack of any value placed on the recognition. 'It's not rocket science' is a recognatory phrase but no one would say that it is a positive. Rather the reverse.
The concept I think relevant here is that of affirmation. The assignation of value to a particular position even if that position is disagreed with. When we affirm we not only recognise but also accept the validity of the other side. This to my mind is more important - validity means value.
The example of Hilary Clinton branding Trump supporters as 'deplorables' illustrates the point nicely. To her supporters it was an accurate comment but significantly negated any value the other side might have. They weren't 'wrong' (a judgement which assigns value to the other side) but just not worthy of consideration.
In all human relationships on both the macro and micro scales there is a desire to be valued. It does not necessarily mean to be elevated above all others (though it can lead to that) but the affirmation is important particularly in the current social media environment.
On the deplorables thing, research from the UK is telling. Any use of the various "...ist" accusations immediately backfires on the candidate making the allegation. Rather than being warned off, independents and swing voters automatically take it as a criticism- because even if they were only thinking about voting for the opposition, this implies a direct personal insult of their judgement. The dynamics do seem to change though, when directed at party rather than a person.
The problem is that affirmation in the social media environment, often involves vilifying the opposition- at least where the affiliation is based along political lines.
Exactly - instead of a 'yes, but...' or even 'you're wrong because…' commentators play to the gallery. They garner likes or affirmation from their 'group' because that is how social media is structured. The consequence is that you alienate your opponent and create polarization. We may not necessarily expect agreement but we do want our arguments and points to be accepted as worth consideration (the affirmation).
When they aren't we feel rejected and rejection is the opposite side of the affirmation coin. In most cases the rejection is explicit and the way most people handle that is to reject back.
Rather than worry about right or wrong when it comes to a person's life, choices or beliefs, how about we actually live and let live? We reject the hubris that we have the truth, and that any policy someone claims is based on that truth must therefore be prudent for all.
This to Sir Spencer and Sir Geary:
How do either of You factor in meditation as a Way of knowing?
I read "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and a mathematician. It's an academic approach that's supposedly geared to the layman. I think they missed their mark a fair bit, but I learned a lot about how the social sciences are getting so efft up, by having certain "acceptable" views that are being enforced. They also described, pretty well, how feminism, queer, race Critical THeories have gone off the rails. All this sounds like an academic problem, but the authors saw how these things have actually TAKEN over in society we live in.
If either of You are interested, I can inform You on how corporations are basically a kind of organism, A LOTTA systems can be looked at that Way.
For various reasons, I never got involved in social media. So I would summarize them as propaganda distributers for the masses, like mainstream media is to its consumers, right?
For a WHILE now, at least here in the U.S., the country has come to favor minority opinions/rights over majority opinions/rights. I think it was Sir Spencer who "said" that? So, right now, the only APPROVED narrative is one that is pro-Black, pro-CRT, pro-1619 Project, pro-BLM. I've been reading a little from Black conservatives who are NOT pro-ANY-a that "stuff."
I don't have any data, but I'm fairly sure that the majority of Black Racists are Caucasian. For the influencers, I gather, it's a billion-dollar industry. Fame, fortune, prestige, POWER. What's not to like to these people. As long as they can stamp out ANY and ALL opposition, and they've got a pretty good record going for them, all is well for the Black Racists. For being so decentralized, they're VERY well organized around the principle that anything pro-Black is good, anything of "whiteness" is bad.
The goal is two-fold. 1) Reparations. They may have trouble with that one. 2) Overthrowing Democracy. They actually have a better chance of that, because they're putting pressure on in the courts and have come close, and they're training the next generation of lawyers to be woke.
There's really only one flaw I can see in the plan: As long as the snowball is rolling down the hill unimpeded, it will only get bigger. But if a "rock" of opposition SHOULD rise up outta nowhere, they could have a serious problem. I think You both alluded to the fact that all this is based on scientific UN-facts. But You'll never convince a person, these days, with science. As a PRACTICAL matter. Just won't fly.
But one never knows. Rock COULD come outta nowhere, to everybody's surprise. I think that's the "reset" that was referred to. If the majority WERE to draw a line in the sand, it could get REAL ugly. But MIGHT turn out pretty ugly for the Black Racists, pretty fast. Never know unless it's tried.
I just finished Chapter 2 of "The Master...," Sir Geary.
The last few paragraphs summed up the thesis fairly well. A few sentences:
"However, as I also emphasised at the outset, both hemispheres take part in virtually all ‘functions’ to some extent, and in reality both are always engaged.
"Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance (left hemisphere) – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole (right hemisphere). These gifts of the left hemisphere have helped us achieve nothing less than civilisation itself.
"But these contributions need to be made in the service of something else, that only the right hemisphere can bring. Alone they are destructive. And right now they may be bringing us close to forfeiting the civilisation they helped to create."
This would be a REAL reset WAY down the road, what he's "talking" about, but he isn't the man to get the job DONE. Or it would be a lot further ALONG than it is, being first published in 2009, right?
All that to say... Enjoyed reading You both. Thing about me is I never heard-a Stoic Religion until about a year ago. But mostly went by the philosophy of Epictetus, due to bizarre circumstances:
"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible."
"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."
The advantage of this approach is it leaves You two, or anybody ELSE the freedom to respond or not, as they see fit. Either Way, that has nothing to do with ME. So I CAN'T be bothered one Way or t'other. WHy would ANYone want their JOY to rely on what somebody ELSE does, or doesn't do?
It doesn't pay, right? Hard discipline, which is impossible to perfect. But as far as controlling Your reaction to what goes on around You? Just takes practice, that one.
TYTY, for the reading pleasure, You guys! On to Chapter 3.
Primarily, I see meditation as a means of enhancing brain performance rather than a way of knowing in itself, although personally it has given me cause to believe in certain intuitions (so not knowledge). Certain degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer's have been linked to disrupted sleep patterns over time. Apparently, there is means by which eight hours uninterrupted sleep and filter out certain toxins in the brain that build up over time.
The other thing to consider is stress and adrenal tension. Adrenalin helped keep us out danger when we were historically in imminent fear of death, but it's a short-term benefit which shreds our long-term health. It's why most Presidents look 20 years older by the time they leave office. Meditation can help free us from the constant low-level stress which besets our lives.
Given that even one pint of beer the night before an exam is proven to significantly decrease test scores, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that brains which are fully rested and unencumbered by systemic stress are likely to achieve higher levels of performance compared to those who simply trundle along without a care for their brains health.
Of course, I can't really talk because I'm a smoker, and improving cardiovascular health is the only known way of consistently improving IQ (more oxygenated blood gets to the brain).
Ah... Taking a brief break on Chapter 3, I would ask a few more questions, Sir Geary. How long since You read The Master and His Emissary? What do You do for a living, if I may ask.
I would PREFER to know these things before I give a more detailed reply, because i have NO intention to offend You in any way. But I might, by accident.
TY. Briefly then: Drawing from the first part of "The Master and His Emissary," it would seem You take a left hemisphere approach to meditation, Sir Geary. Where one could look at it as a direct conduit to the right. Just IMHO.
Hi JT. Sir.
I've just found your reply JT so I apologise for my delayed response. How does one factor in meditation as a way of knowing?
I'd say that to get into the best state of say deep meditation is easiest achieved by those that are either culturally and spiritually inclined toward such an enlightened state (Buddhist nationals and especially Buddhist monks) or the very people who won't or don't need to try. The most difficult task being for those that see it as a way to fix and remedy a state of anxious consciousness.
When I first visited India some thirty years ago, I was surprised at how many times I was invited to join an Ashram, for a Hindu spirituality course. I looked at all those solemn deeply infected souls that had left their privileges in western countries and were now making pilgrimages to another religion within another culture that's own social contract accorded Hinduism and both accepted and encouraged its spiritual education. But I wondered at what great lesson these somewhat miserable looking people would learn from Hinduism that they could extrapolate and make use with within their own culture. If to gain this education as entry into migrating there permanently then I could understand. Of course I was only twenty and I'd come to India to travel, to seek adventure, meet people and climb mountains. I wanted to have fun, not find myself. If I was lost it was because others couldn't see me and that meant I could be selectively happy in just the company of likeminded spirits.
The irony is that I found the answer to the puzzle of Ashrams in Buddhism and Islam and even more so from my own connection to the world in surfing. Travel did this as my natural gregarious nature and search for excitement led me into the pathway of so many interesting and sometimes odd people; but I love people and outside oddities are no less strange than people that hide themselves within themselves and fear that somehow others will find out their great charade. Sometimes this would connect me to the most oddest and often the greatest of finds. I never judge another for obscure thought or for trekking less trod paths. Anybody and everybody will know a whole bunch of stuff that the very smartest do not. Consider the most ardent leftist who has a eureka moment and switches centre-right. It must be from some small snippet of information; some piece of the jigsaw that suddenly in a moment of reflective realisation turns a mans belief system into a totally different direction. A total about turn from only some small obscure thing that nonsenses what has previous been part of a person perhaps for years before.
I've actually considered that most people truly know very little. That is they accrue vast sums of knowledge that confuses and befuddles and merely add and connect biases that formulated in young childhood and merely connect further to the self. I've considered too that I don't truly believe in anything with full confidence and that within such a state of flux can be open to the best of what the left, right, religion, atheism allows me to take and make sense somehow of it all. That some ignorant hedonistic natural state is, as in youth, the most joyous playground. Before the downloads begin.
What I always liked about the Buddhist cultures and I've spent much time in numerous ones; other than that Buddhism is a religion of man and a pathway to peaceful cooperation and coexistence is that it truly works as a way of day to day human life. Your not looking for god, but instead taking and accounting for the actions of yourself and others through the life of the wisest of men. Buddha. So it's nothing in excess and that's from being sociably acceptant to so someone drinking 4 beers and not 10 and being a drunken idiot to not being too greedy, too corrupt, too much funny, sad, too judging or not caring enough to judge. It's balance, perspective and the recognition that we are all essentially the same beings in different bodies, both trapped and free by the hand of fate. For an entire culture to act perfectly on these principles would be asking too much, but Buddhism allows for the folly of man and for redemption too.
My wife is Buddhist. She often remarks that I'm the most Thai man that she's met. I am of course European, but she sees that I behave somewhat unlike many and calmly under pressure and in the way her father who is a Buddhist monk would favour. She often invites me to meditate and when I did I suddenly realized that I've been meditating all of my life.
As a child my restless soul fully exploding with mischief would find sleep a difficult task. I began imagining myself walking out of myself, out my room and then I was outside and I could feel the coldness of the night. Walking slowly in my imagination but still in the reality of the illusion I was being quiet and secretive, making sure not to be found out. Up the path and as I make distance from the house I am no longer careful to keep quiet. I am free to run. I open the gate and make my way to the stables where my horse awaits.......
Then I'd awake and it would be tomorrow. No nightmares to recall.
I've extended this to starting in many places and settings. Perhaps I'm surfing, or on my travels or interestingly a small child. I practiced this one for around a month. Taking my mind to a memory and walking in amongst it. It opened Pandora's box many years ago. Try picturing your schoolbook, your favourite T-shirt at 15 years old, what about walking your mind around your grandmothers kitchen. Your first car, a pair of football boots. You see the imagery is memory and I'd awaken with fresh memories elicited via the dreams that were entered by my imaginary walks. All this did was produce further memories despite this not being the intention but rather the consequence. What I was also doing was a form of meditation. Relaxation and an emptying of thoughts until in another place. One can imagine oneself raising off the floor and into the sky until within nothingness itself. It is limitless.
So no. I don't factor meditation into a factor of knowing in one sense or rather a direct sense, but for myself it indirectly creates a pathway to finding things deep within my mind. I doubt any of us truly forget anything. My grandmother was mnemonic. She could recall instantly anything. I wonder if her brain just had a more developed linkage to the subconscious than that which I've just described.
What about considering the religions as a controlling influence of the self. A self-correctional ideological pathway connected to the self that neutralises our more base and destructive tendencies and keeps us bonded together by a higher being that also punishes us for our sins. In this context one may wonder why Buddhism isn't the highest order of religion and of life. Perhaps even more scientifically acceptable and certainly more humanly so. But it fails in very specific regard. It doesn't construct a nirvana for a life after death. It doesn't wish you to bleed to death killing other human beings or possessing the kind of fortitude a soldier of religion possesses. A man that will live after his death is a far more willing killing machine and that suits the subversions of those few men that would live as gods. Societies that engage in war require a united people with a united aim. It may explain why Christianity is more prevalent in the US than in Europe or Laos. Naturally there are other factors here too.
Another aspect of ridding religion from society is what will fill that void? But what is religion other than an omnipresent powerful and emotive belief system that maintains hierarchical order. Is it creational by psychology? Can a society such as China with its social credit score system produce and maintain a social order with powerfully emotive allegiance to the state. What about Islam. That ones growing, though not in China. These are the sort of questions I ask myself as much as I wonder why the decadent west is imploding in "isms."
When nations abandon a common denominator that bonds all its citizens together no matter in what form then chaos engulfs and then other religions fill such voids. Which one is most supported, which structure will dominate? Is it an anomaly or are we in the middle stages of yet another transformation?
https://www.persuasion.community/p/theres-no-unified-front-against-china
To me? Unfortunate. Because if China OWNS the euphemistically called "Free World," economically and/or technologically, what then?
[Part 3 of 3?]
“So no. I don't factor meditation into a factor of knowing in one sense or rather a direct sense, but for myself it indirectly creates a pathway to finding things deep within my mind. I doubt any of us truly forget anything. My grandmother was mnemonic. She could recall instantly anything. I wonder if her brain just had a more developed linkage to the subconscious than that which I've just described.”
Like I told Sir Geary, I think meditation is a direct conduit to the right hemisphere. That from reading “The Master and His Emissary” which I worked and thought on for a long while. And I believe, based on a scientific experiment that was taken to mean that humans, in actual FACT, didn’t have any such-a thing as free will… Well, I’m not at ALL sure but that the subconscious MAY actually direct most everything we DO. Still thinking on that, but am in no particular hurry. That’s just a guess.
But I DO wonder if the subconscious records EVERYTHING we put our attention to. Dunno about that either.
“What about considering the religions as a controlling influence of the self. A self-correctional ideological pathway connected to the self that neutralises our more base and destructive tendencies and keeps us bonded together by a higher being that also punishes us for our sins. In this context one may wonder why Buddhism isn't the highest order of religion and of life. Perhaps even more scientifically acceptable and certainly more humanly so. But it fails in very specific regard. It doesn't construct a nirvana for a life after death. It doesn't wish you to bleed to death killing other human beings or possessing the kind of fortitude a soldier of religion possesses. A man that will live after his death is a far more willing killing machine and that suits the subversions of those few men that would live as gods. Societies that engage in war require a united people with a united aim. It may explain why Christianity is more prevalent in the US than in Europe or Laos. Naturally there are other factors here too.”
This is where I could very WELL be wrong. But doesn’t Buddhism espouse the Law of Karma? What You do in THIS life will determine what You will have in Your NEXT life? I thought that was commonality between Hinduism and Buddhism. I’ll just leave it at that, until You tell me more, anyone.
AFAIK, Christianity hasn’t been a cause of wars, at least in the U.S. WWII? That was just the practical consideration of what the world would look like if Nazi’s ruled the world. ICBW. My memory is a little vague about what’s going on in Myanmar, but I was thinking that Buddhist majority wasn’t being tolerant of a minority there. Again, ICBW. And Hindus? (Who I still associate with Buddhism as far as the Law of Karma.) Well I don’t think Karma is given any THOUGHT when it comes to Muslims in India, right? Islam?
And China? State religion of Atheism won’t stop them, AFAIK.
I guess I’d sum it up as the idea that Christianity is necessarily a source of evil doesn’t add up, to me. No more than any other. Hierarchical? Sure. A lotta the world IS hierarchical. MOSTLY, if You wanna look at things that Way. Seems a lotta people who like THEIR place in the hierarchy don’t much like the idea that there IS a hierarchy. It’s the NUMBERS of people.
“Another aspect of ridding religion from society is what will fill that void? But what is religion other than an omnipresent powerful and emotive belief system that maintains hierarchical order. Is it creational by psychology? Can a society such as China with its social credit score system produce and maintain a social order with powerfully emotive allegiance to the state. What about Islam. That ones growing, though not in China. These are the sort of questions I ask myself as much as I wonder why the decadent west is imploding in "isms."
When nations abandon a common denominator that bonds all its citizens together no matter in what form then chaos engulfs and then other religions fill such voids. Which one is most supported, which structure will dominate? Is it an anomaly or are we in the middle stages of yet another transformation?”
I wrote a term-paper in first semester in four-year college. Science AS a Religion. That seems Truth as much now as it did then. Actually, a lot MORESO.
I spoke on this a bit in my previous post here. And my GUESS is that, yeah, we’re in a state of fairly BIG transformation-S. NO guess on how things will turn out, of course.
WILL put out the notion that the common bonds exist, still, but the intelligentsia on both sides of the aisle have just DECIDED (to me, on a whim) that these bonds that DO exist won’t be of any notice to any-a them. Sign of the times, from what I know. Will that change?
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*** 09/12/21 12:16pm Written.
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[Part 2 of 3?]
“The irony is that I found the answer to the puzzle of Ashrams in Buddhism and Islam and even more so from my own connection to the world in surfing.”
For me it was computer programming and designing mundane business systems. In last job before I went freelancing in ’95, I had to use empathy a LOT because people don’t come right out and tell You what they want, except in vague ways. I needed to view myself as those people and how they would WANT to have their job made easier. Long story.
And “flow” doesn’t describe the state I got into sometimes coding the programs.
“Travel did this as my natural gregarious nature and search for excitement led me into the pathway of so many interesting and sometimes odd people; but I love people and outside oddities are no less strange than people that hide themselves within themselves and fear that somehow others will find out their great charade.”
That was me to a large extent, my whole life. I’d been hospitalized with emotional troubles three times in my life. Depression, manic, depression. The second time MAY have been due to having a Spiritual experience in a houseful of Fundamentalist Atheists. At any rate, that was when I was on leave for a week when I went back to programming school and, perversely, took an elective of Abnormal Psychology. The first week, don’t Ya know, someone FROM the hospital came out and talked to the class. She said it was harder for a mental patient to get a job than a felon.
And that became my life’s purpose. Don’t let anyone know I’d been hospitalized, and try to figure out how to be more like “normal people.” I’d actually started looking inward at my unsatisfactory self when I was in eight grade. A lot more in high school. Long stories.
Like coding, that was something like meditation. Looking inward a lot.
“Sometimes this would connect me to the most oddest and often the greatest of finds. I never judge another for obscure thought or for trekking less trod paths. Anybody and everybody will know a whole bunch of stuff that the very smartest do not.”
What Ram Dass “said” was my way of life. EVERYONE was my teacher. They ALL had something I could learn from, if I looked. Granted, a lotta the time I was heads-down just trying to survive.
“Consider the most ardent leftist who has a eureka moment and switches centre-right. It must be from some small snippet of information; some piece of the jigsaw that suddenly in a moment of reflective realisation turns a mans belief system into a totally different direction. A total about turn from only some small obscure thing that nonsenses what has previous been part of a person perhaps for years before.”
Funny You should “say” that, Sir Spencer. That’s what’s happened to me this past six months. I’d like to think I was dead-center, but I may be creeping center-right. For me, it was Critical Race Theory. Finding out that Biden was WOKE. Evidence supplied if needed.
“I've actually considered that most people truly know very little. That is they accrue vast sums of knowledge that confuses and befuddles and merely add and connect biases that formulated in young childhood and merely connect further to the self. I've considered too that I don't truly believe in anything with full confidence and that within such a state of flux can be open to the best of what the left, right, religion, atheism allows me to take and make sense somehow of it all. That some ignorant hedonistic natural state is, as in youth, the most joyous playground. Before the downloads begin.”
Weeel, Sir Spencer, me and hedonism have never met, so can’t say. But I wrote, yesterday I think it was, “I’m EXACTLY 50% Fundamentalist Atheist. That was how I was raised and I’m not ENTIRELY ready to give that up. But I’m EXACTLY 50% Religio-Spiritual, so there is that.”
Past six or seven months I’ve been pretty INTENT on studying a variety of things. Read more books in that time than I EVER have. Setting aside textbooks and programming manuals and magazines, I’m not but sure that I’ve read more in this time than the TOTAL I’d read in the past.
As You would expect, all that’s accomplished is showing me how IGNORANT I am. At least I’m smart enough to know, from years of experience, that this is the nature of human existence. The Truth of “The more You know, the more You know what You DON’T know.”
Can’t say when I’ve had this much fun. Well, I did when I was working and learning about life.
“What I always liked about the Buddhist cultures and I've spent much time in numerous ones; other than that Buddhism is a religion of man and a pathway to peaceful cooperation and coexistence is that it truly works as a way of day to day human life. Your not looking for god, but instead taking and accounting for the actions of yourself and others through the life of the wisest of men. Buddha. So it's nothing in excess and that's from being sociably acceptant to so someone drinking 4 beers and not 10 and being a drunken idiot to not being too greedy, too corrupt, too much funny, sad, too judging or not caring enough to judge. It's balance, perspective and the recognition that we are all essentially the same beings in different bodies, both trapped and free by the hand of fate. For an entire culture to act perfectly on these principles would be asking too much, but Buddhism allows for the folly of man and for redemption too.
My wife is Buddhist. She often remarks that I'm the most Thai man that she's met. I am of course European, but she sees that I behave somewhat unlike many and calmly under pressure and in the way her father who is a Buddhist monk would favour. She often invites me to meditate and when I did I suddenly realized that I've been meditating all of my life.”
Like I said, not muchuva Buddhist. Read some-a the sutras. Know they’re Truth. Read the Bible and the Koran. Know they’re Truth. But I think I’m like You in this, Sir Spencer: All that stuff is nothing to me, if it doesn’t have some practical utility in how to get along day-to-day.
As You might suspect, I’m more of an individualist than prolly most. HAD-ta be. But I’ve only met two people in my life I’ve hated. Wrote this too someplace: “Then I realized I didn’t hate them. Then I realized WHY they’d done what I didn’t much cotton to, personally. Then realized the only one who was harmed by ANY-a that was ME.” So I tend to get along with everybody. Closeness comes and goes, according to the whims of who I run into. I don’t have many people I “correspond” with, on a personal basis, so at this point my door is always open to whoever shows up. I guess tat IS cooperation, come to think of it.
“As a child my restless soul fully exploding with mischief would find sleep a difficult task.”
I’ll just say I’ve always needed a lotta sleep, unless I was manic, of course, and then I needed hardly any. Burnt out pretty quick tho, so there is that.
Not to gloss over all the wonderful experiences You shared, but I wanted to talk a wee bit about meditation.
I was no good for ANYTHING, so I wrote the following shite. I'm done for the day, as far as DOING much. One person to touch base with, then to bed reading until 6pm EDT. (Cain't hardly WAIT!) I interleaved my comments amongst Yours, Sir Spencer, just because that was easiest Way for me to think today.
===========================
[Part 1 of ?]
“Hi JT. Sir.”
I’m no “Sir” compared to other people. ;)
“I've just found your reply JT so I apologise for my delayed response. How does one factor in meditation as a way of knowing?
“I'd say that to get into the best state of say deep meditation is easiest achieved by those that are either culturally and spiritually inclined toward such an enlightened state (Buddhist nationals and especially Buddhist monks) or the very people who won't or don't need to try. The most difficult task being for those that see it as a way to fix and remedy a state of anxious consciousness.”
Well, I can’t say I’m muchuva Buddhist. I studied Zenism off and on over the years (66), which I consider different from but related to Buddhism. My own personal opinion, now, is that Zen showed how totally corrupted it had become during WWII. And that when meditation hit the West, it was perverted into, precisely, “fixing” and “remedying” various states as well as becoming a self-improvement project for people to feel anointed and be the “perfected human.”
Again, my own opinion is that having ANY kind-a goal, but ESPECIALLY trying to become superior in ANY way, shape, or form (Spiritually or otherwise)… Well, having goals is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of what meditation is about. Keep in mind I’ve never left the country nor gone on any Spiritual retreats or studied under a Master or ANY-a that. So what all I “say” is just based on my limited experience. And it’s EXCEEDINGLY limited by the fact that most-a my years were spent just trying to make a living. All told, I prolly meditated, in bits and spurts, mebbe five years? Absolutely nowhere near ten.
“When I first visited India some thirty years ago, I was surprised at how many times I was invited to join an Ashram, for a Hindu spirituality course. I looked at all those solemn deeply infected souls that had left their privileges in western countries and were now making pilgrimages to another religion within another culture that's own social contract accorded Hinduism and both accepted and encouraged its spiritual education. But I wondered at what great lesson these somewhat miserable looking people would learn from Hinduism that they could extrapolate and make use with within their own culture. If to gain this education as entry into migrating there permanently then I could understand. Of course I was only twenty and I'd come to India to travel, to seek adventure, meet people and climb mountains. I wanted to have fun, not find myself. If I was lost it was because others couldn't see me and that meant I could be selectively happy in just the company of likeminded spirits.”
I’ve not had much luck finding like-minded spirits. Being a loner, like I “said” didn’t help. Lotta friends I was grew up with, but didn’t know what like-minded spirits were then. Kept in touch with one of them in adulthood.
Moved away from them when I was 14, which was pivotal. I’ve had two brothers for friends for a number years. They were “the brothers I never had” (having two sisters, older and younger). And a couple I knew very closely for a few years. Eventually they all moved away.
Marriage for 12 years. When that fell apart and I quit my career, I went into what-i-call self-imposed solitary confinement for a number of years. COVID had zero effect on my lifestyle. Virtually never went out anyway. Spent too many years laying in bed 24 hours listening to the radio. Slowly started crawling outta the rock I was under, TOTALLY unbeknownst to me.
After that ended, I thought what I’d experienced was pretty close to a Monk in one-a those Silent Communities. Dunno.
I’ve never discussed my religio-Spiritual views except online. Again, for most part, they weren’t central to what I was doing at the time. Now they’re moreso than not. I quit meditating a year ago when I found I had goals, but am thinking on taking it up again, hopefully without.
I've read this a second time, Sir Spencer, and there's a LOT to take in. First I'll read over the rest You wrote, and what I wrote because I don't wanna repeat myself.
I only got six hours sleep last night, and I'm not worth much at all today. So it may not be today I get back here. But I'd say we are not that far apart, for having traveled on a path at the opposite ends of the Universe. Me, loner. Married at 37, divorced at 49. Ten or eleven years of 12-year marriage platonic, yet I look back at it, after a very long time, as one-a the greatest blessings I've had. Long story. All-in-all, I've had more than my share of Serendipity. Tho I'm not always aware of it as much as I should be.
One area we differ on is war. The religion that would step into a vacuum here in the U.S.? Political or social or religious vacuum? That'd be China. They may anyway in the next three decades. Likely before that the Chinese will first crush us economically, if things go as they are. Of course, ICBW. Would like to be, of course.
TYTY for Your astounding essay, Sir Spencer. Lot to take in. :)
Ditto to you, JT :)
Wow, how could I have missed this one- quite profound, sir!
Online services and applications extend the influencing opportunities of traditional word-of mouth (WOM). Unlike traditional word-of-mouth, the online environment allows for special features such as anonymity in user-generated content. The personality of online users affects their motivation when creating such content. Specific online activities, such as the feedback on product ratings and participation in discussions in online forums, collectivise certain personality traits.
“The findings, based on an online survey with more than 16,900 completed questionnaires, indicate that opinion leaders in the online environment cannot be compared with traditional opinion leaders in terms of their articulation and personality structure. In regard to online activities with a high influencing potential, the results of moderated regression analyses show that persons with an introverted personality are more active as online opinion leaders due to the lack of social recognition they experience. The results have implications for how marketers should present incentive structures to address and integrate potential online opinion leaders, and how scholars should understand the role of opinion leaders in the online environment.”
Here’s a quote from Elsevier- Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 29, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 997-1006
This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in 2010. Factor analysis results showed that content generation using social media was satisfying five socio-psychological needs: showing affection, venting negative feelings, gaining recognition, getting entertainment, and fulfilling cognitive needs. In particular, people who used social media to meet their social needs and their need for affection tended to use Facebook and blogs. In contrast, when users wanted to air out discontent, they often turned to forums. Results also showed that exhibitionists seemed to use social media to show affection, express their negative feelings, and achieve recognition. The study found no generational differences in using Facebook and blogs as a means to satisfy social needs or the need for affection. However, differences in patterns of social media usage were found among Baby Boomers with different narcissistic personalities. The paper includes a discussion of the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research.
In short. Social media are good platforms for narcissists to exert control over self-presentation. • Net Geners are more comfortable and enthusiastic with all forms of social media. • All generations agree forums the preferred social medium for gaining recognition. • Facebook and blogs are normally used for social needs and need for affection. • Forums are preferred to air out discontent and to release negative feelings.
Years ago, in a 1st year class in Philosophy, a particularly smart fellow student raised the observation that people tend to attach a very personal relevance to the ideas which they reason out or choose to believe, and can be quite offended when someone else looks at exactly the same information and forms a different opinion. In many ways, it’s as though you are calling their reasoning powers into question, and oddly, people can often get even more offended and personally affronted when you call into question their ethos and most deeply held belief than they might over their interpretation of particular set of empirical evidence- most likely because our beliefs are more intimate an precious to us, fundamental to us as self-evident proof of our moral nature.
I find this profoundly interesting and disturbing in what I and many must be observing in others. It is a very modern trend in its severity. We have managed to attach our very deepest individuality and personal value system and personalised it to numerous current events and subverted politics. There used to be the concept that politics and religion were not fine mealtime conversations. The idea of course being that these topics are by nature contentious. Intellectuals versed in theoretical objectivity may indeed revel and delight in going toe-to toe and sharpening their argument, but those without this mindset of enjoyable disagreement are best in practice to leave it off the table.
Formerly we took our education of deep issues from institutional scholars. We may have browsed articles and journals and gone on to devour further publications, but be that as it may; the intellectual knowledge was largely kept within the intellectual community with the skillset of containing it academically for digestion and contextualisation and certainly not one of dissemination. That is we trusted real experts.
Over the the past quarter century we are seeing the messenger system and particularly via the MSM and social media outlets, propagate the narrative into the social fabric of both the self and the condition of identity. That is we have introduced arguments into society that actually are especially hard to escape and incredibly difficult to avoid. To make matters worse they have become focal talking points and not surprisingly so either as they are infectious of our everyday lives. They are now attached to our politics and this is a dangerous development.
Politicising everyday life means that any and everybody attaches themselves to the greater self-serving narrative. We’ve introduced CRT, identity politics, ramped up special cause issues, immigrated theologically and culturally opposing religions, created wokism, policing free speech and we’ve done it in lockstep with a policy of victim culture and the focus of giving more than particular emphasis to the special causes and with applied emphasis on subverting policies toward minority interests over the majority interests; giving way to a feeling of frustrated disenfranchisement by the majority in favour of the few. This is a huge slap in the face for all those citizens that afforded charity to such minority causes and is now beginning to sow discord.
One of the aspects of jumbling and bagging all these modern maladies together is the rather peculiar effect of giving rise to personal expertise. The caveat is that it’s mostly second hand gossip via multi-misinformation narrative and it hijacks very successfully most everybody and in a kind of quasi-hierarchical credentialized way. Not only are people searching meaning from the mass-information conflict, but they are being indoctrinated via algorithms that are particularly enticing to their ingroup preferences and then projecting via different degrees of influence via their financial and personal success worth and further influencing their peers. It can create a form of submission. Imagine for one second the very individualistic identity attachments of so much misinformation taken as fact and how it becomes part of everyday conversation and add in the actual fact that we are all in a form of disagreement due to our individual lived experience identity perception over such a large expanse of propagated narrative and we can see how the value of our individual thoughts is chastised and submitted hierarchically from the highest power of influence. It perpetuates a credentialized society and thus the highest and brightest of minds are denigrated and the average Joe with no pedigree in academia is just an added confusion to the narrative. Everybody has become an expert on everything and heterodoxy is as rare as rocking horse shit.
The other thing to bear in mind is that distance dehumanises. It’s why people are generally happier working for small businesses rather than huge companies, because their is a tendency to feel like a small cog or just a number with the latter. It is also far easier to feel disgruntled and resentful of distant higher ups in large companies, because with a small company you can see your boss and know that he usually works a damn sight harder than you. This process also works both ways, it is far easier to play the hatchet man if the people you are getting rid of are simply numbers and names on a spreadsheet.
In many ways, social media is like an extension of the driver’s rage phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve known people who are perfectly nice and reasonable in most circumstances, yet as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car, and their personal space extends 60 feet in all directions, they begin to swear like a trooper and start to fume. Social media tricks us in the same way, everything which we say is of course perfectly reasonable (because we have our inner monologue to justify rudeness for imagined slights), but as soon as someone else acts in the same way, we are the first to call foul, accuse them of ad hominem and cry bad faith.
I agree with everything you say about experts and the history of epistemology, with one huge caveat. In the more demanding academic disciplines like the sciences people are trained to brutally destroy other people’s ideas. It is, after all, the only way that the scientific method functions. I would highly recommend watching the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity- which like many good films is based upon a true story. It shows exactly how rough and tumble scientific debate, rebuttal and disputation can be.
But the thing is it was never personal, or at least was never meant to be. People were able to understand that bad ideas don’t necessarily equate to bad people. In many ways, the internet has democratised knowledge, but unfortunately it didn’t come with an instruction manual as to how to show generosity and good grace in knocking down bad ideas.
everybody attaches themselves to the greater self-serving narrative. We’ve introduced CRT, identity politics, ramped up special cause issues, immigrated theologically and culturally opposing religions, created wokism, policing free speech and we’ve done it in lockstep with a policy of victim culture
A lot of this is due to discipline envy. Many people in the grievance studies and those other subjects which postmodernism now permeates (such as the humanities and education) were perfectly cognisant of the fact that the sciences have always been of greater utility and benefit to humanity. Many were simply not smart enough or not hardworking enough to participate in these fields.
The other thing is that they don’t like a lot of the conclusions that science reaches. Even psychology (which is on the boundary) has fallen afoul of this tendency. They don’t like the fact that women tend to be interested in people, with men interested in things, or that this means that in more egalitarian countries where people are less economically driven by necessity, even more men become engineers, even more women nurses. To them it’s all social construction, or patriarchy, and they really don’t like being proven emphatically wrong.
This is the reason for their insistence on the elevation of standpoint epistemology, or lived experience, over science and facts. Because they really don’t like the fact that many of their central narratives can easily be disproven with empirical data. They’ve even managed to influence some younger scientists with the viewpoint, with many keen to explore ‘other ways of knowing’ which is code, for non-scientific means of generating knowledge.
A lot of this is political and is major point of contention between liberal (or Leftist) conservative viewpoints. In the old configuration, it was socio-economics or class-based inequality that liberals claimed was at the root of all disparity and lack of social mobility. Today, this has been replaced with the Leftist notion that race is the primary driver of inequality. The truth is that conservatives were largely correct in their assertion that family structure was the most important thing, with the distinction that it is at a community level which fathers are most important: in terms of upward social mobility, crime and educational outcomes.
This presents a quandary, because the solution requires both conservative and liberal thought and areas or domains. The only way that I can see to artificially or externally stimulate the proportion of fathers in a community is through the provision of a higher percentage of responsible and stable income earners- because women sleep with and even get pregnant by attractive men who are popular amongst their peer group, but don’t have reliable earnings, but they will only settle with men who pay their share. It’s called hypergamy and it’s one of immutable laws of stable family formation.
The only way I can see to do this, is to pivot towards vocational training and technical skills in education, preferably at around 14, for kids who do not do well academically. Apart from anything else, most countries need blue collar workers far more than they do more university graduates working as baristas, and the jobs tend to pay a lot more, as well.
The other thing to consider is that by having an education system which values intellect and academic attainment over all else, we are setting up a considerable portion of our young people for failure, in terms of confidence, before their lives have even begun. The last thing any country needs is whole segments of their population believing they are failures or dumb at 16, because this will make boys in particular far more susceptible to gang grooming. One of great things about markets is that it is individual differences which often cause people to thrive- our education systems need to place far greater value and emphasis on caring and practical skills, because apart from anything else this is what the economy needs. We are still operating on a model designed to train young people to become clerical and office workers- these jobs are going the same way as the dodo.
I particularly liked the phrase
rare as rocking horse shit
It’s one I hadn’t come across. In the East of England we generally tend to use the words useful, chocolate and fireguard to construct a sentence which means something similar, but not quite the same.
Great contribution, as usual.
Miya
Geary2020
36m
Great contribution, as usual.
Thanks for this. I truly go on the assumption that my contribution is minimal academically, but that I will find within the dialogue so many fresh reasons to ask more questions. It is yourself specifically that questions and probes and helps formulate ever increasing circles of ideas, theories and a thirst for more knowledge and sense. You wrote that one of the main reasons in engaging in these spaces was trying to make sense of what the fuck is happening in this world. Well it just so happens that you are especially brilliant at helping my selfish self in understanding it all. I shall continue to speak my bullshit anecdotal(s) and to push and to probe and to question and to formulate more ideas from the influence of yourself and the other great members that spend much time aiding and abetting in my education. I am not some lost soul in a quest to understand the universe. But instead a searcher of understanding of why it may be that with all available resources, that we at this point in time seem to be screwing up the best time in humanity when we could in fact adapt and nudge it to a semblance of perfection.
I particularly liked the phrase
rare as rocking horse shit
Have you heard " It’s as much use as a glass eye with a crack in it?"
What about " You can’t get shit out of a wooden horse?" Trojan of course.
Or for someone who’s always trying to get something for nothing. “You do more tapping than a blind mans stick.”
The other thing to bear in mind is that distance dehumanises.
Very much why I believe that village life is the most natural and normal of human existence and perhaps becoming the monetarily exclusive safe space. Strange that why we push progressivism all the normies run from the cities into the enclaves.
it is far easier to play the hatchet man if the people you are getting rid of are simply numbers and names on a spreadsheet.
Depersonalisation. Corporate ownership of everything destroys.
This is the reason for their insistence on the elevation of standpoint epistemology, or lived experience, over science and facts. Because they really don’t like the fact that many of their central narratives can easily be disproven with empirical data.
This forms a conundrum to my mind Geary. I’ll explain why. Anecdotal is supported by the “us” and the “all” - the collective. So harnessing the lived experience is very un-asymmetrical. If one thus collectivises the narrative and sells it with charm, then it is as equally if not much more powerful than the accepted scientific evidence. That is people will be much more pliable to what they’ve seen and done, than a dismissible proof. The thing is that if one can tap into the shared experience of many via the anecdotal then you have a powerful means of subversion. It would depend upon the intent and persuasion of the narrative. I accept that the science ought to be the status quo, but I also accept that people are stupid however intelligent and reasonable and logical they appear on other levels.
On one level the anecdotal supports the scientific as would be expected. Only recently do we see the contrast. The issue is in that those now sprouting the narrative are not supporting it with evidence, but rather by language and misdirection.
In many ways, social media is like an extension of the driver’s rage phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve known people who are perfectly nice and reasonable in most circumstances, yet as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car, and their personal space extends 60 feet in all directions, they begin to swear like a trooper and start to fume. Social media tricks us in the same way, everything which we say is of course perfectly reasonable (because we have our inner monologue to justify rudeness for imagined slights), but as soon as someone else acts in the same way, we are the first to call foul, accuse them of ad hominem and cry bad faith.
The best of analogies and it’s not lost on how there’s three choices and not two. If given two we take the best one that is closest to our belief system. Driving these forces apart connects us to the same. Sanity rests within taking the best policy or approach of the whole or of each opposite. The thing is and I’m damned sure left or right, that everybody actually wants the same overall outcome. What’s happened over the past generation has been a separation of certain core values amplified in such a way as to excommunicate normal avenues of discourse. It will undoubtedly force a reset in time.
Great comment, mate.
Another amazing post man. I'm putting this up on my FB, assuming that's cool. Hopefully someone from my friends list finds their way to your stuff. I keep telling my conservative friends that they can watch you school me on some issues, assuming they'd be dying to see that happen in real time, but so far, no takers. I'm gonna have to edit your stuff down a bit to share in class, simply in terms of vocab and conceptual complexity, at times, but I'll let you know how to students reply to some of your more provocative ideas.
Cheers, mate. I would have thought it would be great intro to a discussion on the harms of social media. If it divides adults into two warring camps, how does it effect younger people, to make them feel excluded and/or bullied? Does it naturally favour smarter kids, who are able to use ideas more manipulatively?
Broaching the subject through adults I would have hoped would make them more willing to open up on what may be a sensitive subject.
Do you have an opinion on “critical media literacy”? i was looking for a quote from a media lit course I took in the early/mid 2000s and came across this conservative article - https://www.city-journal.org/critical-media-literacy-pulls-from-same-woke-playbook - but reading it, it occurs to me that this, unlike critical race theory, is something I actually studied back in the day. And I thought it was great stuff man, I really liked the prof, he was challenging, academically, and some Ed profs don't even try to be challenging. anyway, for some reason, I feel we should be talking about my Masters of Ed, which I completed in 2004 or so. I feel I may have been ground zero for some of this woke stuff, at OISE in the early 2000s. like, we were all optimistic about the material and the goals at the time. I've long called it the greatest educational experience of my life, but the more I think about it, that was woke ground zero right there
I wouldn’t mind the whole DEI industry of it achieved at least some of what it aimed to achieve, by helping talented but disadvantaged individuals reach their potential. But that’s not what it does. According to this Jonathan Haidt podcast "What does 40 years of DEI have to show?" - Featuring Prof. Jonathan Haidt - YouTube DEI now eats up 3% of all corporate budgets. Worse still, it has no metrics for success- and often some of the programs, such as implicit bias training end up having negative effects- creating less diversity or fewer promotions for people from minority groups. Meanwhile, approaches which do work, like voluntary mentoring programs, are left to gather dust on the shelves.
The main issue is though- does achieving equity violate the principal of procedural fairness. This is vital. Does the person who is most able and works hardest get the job? Surveys show everybody wants this- Whites, Latinos, African Americans, Asians- overwhelmingly. People don’t want equal outcomes, but more often than not, if asked, they often want access to the opportunity to prove themselves.
The real problem with woke capitalism is that the companies really don’t care that their DEI programs don’t achieve anything. The programs achieve exactly what they want- which is to provide a liability shield against getting sued and for PR purposes. The other issue is that you can always tell which side is wrong when they shoot their dissenters. And the DEI industry does shoot dissenters- they don’t like it when you point out that their programs don’t work, or try to suggest solutions which might work, minus the overarching narrative.
If I was to design a critical media literacy course, my main when question would be to what extent does media create the myth that we are society in which people from the bottom can rise to the top? The peer group you have growing up, the parental community which forms around the school and whether or not you school has a great headteacher who can create a system of structured, strict low-level discipline are all vital to your kid's future success. But the top 10% of society don't want the other 90% either knowing this or having it, for the simple reason that they don't want the competition for their kids.
It would, but the only issue with that is every teacher with a woke impulse has raised that conversation before. It's a great convo for the right teacher, but I don't even have a cell phone. Luddite, through and through, I don't have the right questions to ask. if you want the scoop on woke classrooms, I can give you that. Technology? Not so much. Hit me up with a few more questions for them, and I'll use this convo instead. they also generally find it hillarious when I own up to my ineptitude with modern shit, so this is perfect!
I don't have mobile phone either. I had one for a while, but people kept ringing me- so "I lost it" (sold it at a profit- it was a pay as you go, bought just before they started charging more for them).
But people kept ringing me. Class.
Not good when you've got to work Monday morning and your mates are ringing you up on Sunday night, crazing you to come down the pub.
I focus on individual liberty over group force and control to make individuals submit.
When liberty cannot be maintained, then it must be by a clear law that applies to all equally (and thus cannot target any group for "special" breaks or punishments).
These will give you the best economic results. These will give you the best social outcomes. Those who purport that they can force others to better outcomes are liars and tend to promote some gain in economics or social order while ignoring the harmful side effects.
Funny you should frame your comment this way- just a few minutes ago I was just finishing watching an UnHerd podcast with Richard Thaler, in which the interviewer asked the question had the use of Nudge Theory by governments gone too far- the word used was 'manipulation'...
Your last sentence reminds me of Thomas Sowell- there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Regarding, MSM, social media, Internet access to information and algorithymic indoctrination my focus would be on my child, it would be on those that have never known anything but a life inclusive of being wired to the network and take all comparisons from this.
We humans are crucially developed by our nurturing. Babies and small children learn bonding and connections to others by such close contact. It’s no surprise that women have higher perception in the perceptions of smell and the tiniest of facial expressions and will mimic the baby and the baby will reciprocate. It is an essential development activity and essentially instinctual. Hand your small baby or child to another woman and observe the same close and warm bonding patterns. Or wonder why your wife or partner seems to have some omnipresent mind reading ability to sense your mood with frustrating accuracy. Even though in reality it is a visual recognition she’s just taken from your eyes and small but not quite hidden facial twitches. Then of course we have the joyous interplay that seems to turn fathers into infancy and the evolutionary process of instinctual teaching kicks in. Fathers are teaching their sons the very fine boundaries of fight or flight; creative role play lessons in reacting to physical threat and confrontation. It is essential learning and it kick starts a boys masculinity. As Geary will attest, boys without father are statistically 8 times more likely to find themselves in prison. Personally I wish to extend this topic to include young girls in their development. Kids require both parents if just to imitate male to female interplay and learn developmental skills in personal relationships. Balance. My little girl loves to play fight and I enjoy the bonding. Though not the low blows.
Now let’s consider that important traditional interaction that up to 25 years ago was an essential part of growing up. Anybody not involved was some kind of geeky oddball. I’m talking of course about sport. We engaged in it as soon as we could toddle. When would you have kicked your first football? It may be the case that the more extrovert and socially adept of us tended toward team sport and that the more introverted tended toward individualism in sport. Nevertheless it was essential in our development. What about community and of the pub and club scene, of inter-relationships close and not quite so close? Which of your friends are still your lifetime friends from such early experiences and shared community? It all matters and it has been in and around us forever.
Unsociable media and online gaming creates a kind of addictive shortcut that seems to activate sole atomised individuality, yet giving strong indication that one is in a natural state of community interplay. It is not. It is missing the social aspects of normal human interplay. How do we learn ethics and morals and humanity connections by being transhumanised? Unfortunately this is a recent although transformative process and we don’t yet know fully any real comparative data to reflect upon. So far we’re being evidenced that such activity is strongly linked to suicide, depression and introversion. But what of indoctrination into a new type of humanism? What about that?
My child is seven next week and can type at least four times quicker than myself and I’m neither fast nor slow. I call her “hacker” and it’s amazing to observe her on a keyboard. You undoubtedly will of observed that I do as much as I can to instigate a wide-ranging inter-social environment for her as possible and luckily we live close to other families with children. I actively encourage the whole playing with other kids thing and so do the other parents nearby. Well not all. There are a few that choose to mollycoddle their offspring and as you can imagine they are social outcasts in the making par this group anyways. I’d encourage any parent who doesn’t have other kids nearby to do all they can to facilitate an environment of play for their child; be that sport or some regular home visits.
That in-person social part of growing up is vital, mate. I had an idyllic childhood- we used to play in the woods, climb trees and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. Sports are important for both boys and girls, but especially for boys- because when paired with the ethos of good sportsmanship it can help socialise the most aggressive 10% how to channel their aggression into socially productive uses.
That's what the feminists missed when they wanted to get rid of competitive sports to make children more cooperative (and more susceptible to socialism). To their shame they didn't realise that removing competitive sports would lead to more antisocial behaviour and uncontrolled aggression.
I guess some sports don't always help with mental/social health: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/sports/tennis/us-open-naomi-osaka.html
I understand your sentiments. Much seems pertinent to me. But I do wonder as complaining about the youth is as old as culture.
No doubt some kids have issues due to social media. Is it better/worse than child farming (without a choice), mining, being sold for profit, succumbing to diseases?
Some kids are abused by those who in personal contact. Some use this tech to learn and keep in contact with others and even build empathy. Social media didn't create zero tolerance, grade inflation, everyone gets a trophy, forced school attendance, forced school closures, mask mandates, an illegal drug trade that finds easy customers among wealthier suburban kids (and sellers who won't have to "do as much time" if caught), CRT/intersectionality, ADD/ADHD and the drugging of youthful giddiness and inattention to boring things, being driven to/from school, stranger danger/safetyism, pollution/climate change, mobility that leads families to split and move far away, easy divorce, abortion on demand, the change in faith in religion to faith in politics, etc.
My guess is we'll muddle through it all and the kids will mostly be all right.
It's true, M. DOK, that social mediaa didn't create those things You mentioned. But I don't see the connection between the harm social media does and "child farming (without a choice), mining, being sold for profit, succumbing to diseases?" Does this happen ANYWHERE in the Western world?
And the good from participating in sports isn't in fashion today, so much mebbe. I haven't noticed kids being better for using social media like they would be if they involved themselves in sports. ESPECIALLY team sports. Comraderie, sportsmanship, taking wins/losses in stride. Maybe THESE things aren't in fashion anymore either.
I'm no defender of social media, but all people of all ages and abilities can be on social media, across the world, including adults, as if the worse social media offenses come from children and not adults (all of cancel culture, fake news, conspiracy theories, pump and dump, left-right hatred).
And of course lots of social media content isn't harmful at all and allows for greater human communications in a time when we're not limited by our location or station in life or even country.
Far fewer people can participate in sports, which clearly has its own issues of physical injury/death and mental injury and even corruption in gambling.
Lastly, anything you blame on children, blame on the generation(s) that allowed their government to operate as it does, the schools as they do, the wars as they do, the environmental degradation as they do, the policing as they do, and of course the ones who raised them in fear, safetyism, zero tolerance, racism/anti-racism (so similar), groups over individuals, and victimhood, all while somehow all believing their children are above average.
Ah, M. Spencer. Now *I* must apologize for the delay. I read Your essays once, but didn't fully take them in. This one stands well. I emphasized my opinion in my reply to M. DOK.
Thing I have against the TWYGs ("Two Worthless Younger Generations")... Well, it's the Millennials and the Gen-Zers, AFAIK, who have had their brains tethered to the computer in their phones for so long... Well, always looking for the "NEXT GREAT THING" will prolly lead them to think that transhumanism is surely IT. Leastways, I haven't noticed looking at long-term ramifications being a strength. But if YOU'RE in the TWYGs, Yourself, M. Spencer, then I have a lot more hope. :)
P.S. Me an the next? The TW-Older-Gs? Culpable, if anyone was. IMHO.
Argh... ALWAYS mistakes. If You don't know ANYTHING about "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist, the quote below won't make ANY sense.
He's a brain scientist who's done 20 years research on left and right hemispheres of the brain. He's laying OUTSTANDING case that these two hemispheres are involved in just about EVERYTHING we think, say, or do. Perceive the world and ourselves.
But they have two ENTIRELY different WAYS of perceiving the world. That's what the research points to, as far as Sir Iain knows. Ten years of further research doesn't seem to have poked any holes in his theory. And, in a nutshell, his idea is that the right, holistic, empathic hemisphere, which is BIGGER along most of the length of the brain, should be relied on.
As opposed to how EVERYBODY's been trained how to think, almost exclusively by the left hemisphere. The last half of the book will point out how efft up the world's societies are, as a result of this. There's almost NOTHING in this book that I'll disagree with. I'd bet MONEY on it, and I'm NOT a bettin' man. (Chapter 3 looks to be interesting. On "Language, Truth and Music."
Great comment. My thoughts exactly when I came across Iain McGilchrist. In fact, I would posit that belief in unfounded superstitions occur when the logical side of the brain fixes upon a particular hypothesis without sufficient proof.
Prolly so.
As I posted to Your Quillette reply to "Mrs. Dalloway:" TYS! (Long story. Means "thank You SIR!")
Enjoyed IMMENSELY! TYTY.
My own personal method is to focus on the ambient sound of very low, high pitched hum which ears generate, and then pair that with the mindfulness of breathing technique. Once you have this method 'fixed', with several seasons, it's especially useful to employ the technique when you are tired, in bed and it is late at night- and imagine a positive energetic force somewhere outside your window (I get more of a sense of it from larger, wide open spaces), and which also surrounds you, comforting you. Sometimes it can feel like an encapsulating duvet of air and energy.
I've felt the presence more strongly at moments of great upset in my life, and have also noticed that the positive lift-affirming source seems to exist on the same range as the more entropic destructive force- it is simply a matter of different frequencies. I suspect that certain religious practices and rituals, such as confession, naturally attune people to higher frequencies, but have no evidence for this suspicion.
Oh! SHOULD-a said a LOTTA things, but said too MUCH as it was.
I've meditated in spurts. Very little total. Have not meditated for past year, I thin'. But when I DID meditate, at least I was able to do deeply. MIxed results, tho that really defeats the purpose, right? TYTY AGAIN for recommendation of book. Or, actually, TYTY for first time, now second. ;) = 😉
I should apologize, Sir Geary, if I shared too much at once. Lately, I've had a tendency to do that. Should mention I don't have an artistic bone in my body, although I was told writing is artistic. I dunno.
All that to say... I'm just weird. Bizarre circumstances just made me weirder than I started out, is all. And in high school, I was pretty cotton-pickin' weird. Just finished reading the Introduction, is why I bothered You again, M. Johansen. At same time, don't ASSUME You've read any-a this, either.
This: "Understanding hemisphere difference offers a perspective on the structure of mind which is not available merely by introspection." In my 20s and 30s i was computer logic, personified. Programmer. Disgusting in a lotta respects, looking back. But I become more in tune with people as I moved into managing the dept. I purposefully married (and later divorced) a woman in my dept who was a GRAND people-person.
44 years ago I studied Eastern Ways and heard, "rational mind is perfect servant, but lousy master."
Now? I'd written that I write 100% by intuition, which I described as balanced-edge between logic and emotion, I think it was. Mebbe as edge between conscious and subconscious. No matter. I think this book will inform me GREATLY on details. NEVER would-a guessed that sustained attention was right-brain. Had that in my 20s and 30s. Was SURE is was left-brain.
As far as You wise words, I've heard similar. It's just not my Way. I'm not very connected to my body, unfortunately. Can't dance. NEVER! THinking mebbe Tai Chi would help? I'm lousy on visualizations. I just don't get a FEELING from it. Dunno.
Not saying I WON'T try what You suggested, Sir Geary. Just that it hasn't helped me in the past. And most-a my day, at present, signifies what Shunryu Suzuki (who was not ALL that enlightened) said:
“Everything IS perfect, but there is a LOT of room for IMPROVEMENT.” (emphasis added)
LOTTA work to do on THAT, and I'm 66, white, male, divorced, smoker. Dunno about time, but know at THIS time that on the totem pole of life, there's nobody lower. ;) = 😉
Back to reading!
TYTY for Your reply. Just this moment finished the Preface to The Mastery and His Emmisarry. WHew! I could only find one thing that I disagreed with, and that's, wait, lemme find the quote.
Hi, Mr. Johansen. Although I don't always agree with you on everything, I like your topic selection and writing--I plan to put it on my "rounds", so to speak. Your work put me in mind of Dan Kahan (Cultural Cognition) and Jonathan Haidt. You may also find Aristotelian/Thomistic psychology interesting: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/74d658bt.