Post-pandemic, I’ve been thinking long and hard about how the fear generated by COVID-19 pushed our partisan tribal instincts to breaking point and seemed to cause huge levels of irrationality on both sides of the political spectrum. I’ve known about parasite stress for some time, since near to the beginning of the pandemic. Basically, it’s the proven observation that when a new pathogen is introduced into a society it awakens nascent authoritarianism. The research shows that it is problem which is particularly associated with larger societies.
What causes parasite stress? Fear. What exacerbates fear? People who differ from the in-group, be it politically, ethnically (in the non-West) or culturally. This would tend to suggest that multicultural societies, with high levels of foreign-born citizens, tend to be more vulnerable to parasite stress with its urge towards authoritarianism. Countries which possess a high degree of political partisanship, where each side views the other as an existential threat are going to be particularly high in parasite stress. It’s also highly likely that parasite stress is going to be higher in multicultural societies, with high rates of foreign-born citizens- there is an established literature which shows that as societies become more multicultural, a lack of cultural homogeneity causes social trust to breakdown, jeopardising long established Rawlsian redistribution.
At the outset, I simply wanted to use to concept to illustrate how the irrational and misguided impulses on both sides of the political aisle could inform us about how we might react to future parasite stress events, and in particular show how this subconscious fear-based default setting may be leading humanity to favour solutions which elevate the primitive desire to apply force and coercion over far smarter policies based upon persuasion, technological innovation and fine-tuned policies designed to make it easier to innovate and change. With transport for example, one particular informative piece of research shows that people only really stop driving when cheaper, more reliable and convenient options like short-range rail are offered. In particular, I think parasite stress can explain why many of the climate solutions being deployed are irrational and unlikely to generate the iterative, technology-driven approach, which is the only solution which countries like India, China and the rest of the developing world are likely to accept.
Here’s the thing, going into this I was pretty sure that going into this that many were going to be highly sceptical that certain types of policies are necessarily bad simply because they are driven by fear and the urge to deploy force and coercion on large segments of the population. Some fears are justified, after all. As I began to apply parasite stress to other areas of political decision-making I was astonished to find that it could probably explain a huge number of maladaptive policy approaches in recent history. In many ways it re-establishes my faith in my own heterodox attitudes, because for every bad policy by driven the parasite stress of Left-leaning liberals, it’s possible to find examples of equivalent parasite stresses driving conservative concerns and the policy which arises.
Parasite stress can be applied to a huge range of policy decisions from mass incarceration to immigration, from climate policy to foreign relations. We can see its mark in most poorly informed recent historical decisions. How else are we to explain how America changed so rapidly from the ‘Good Guy’ of history, deploying one of the most benignly long-sighted soft power exercises in human history, the Marshall Plan, to a country ready to stoop to cooperating with mass murderers, willing to derail and disempower legitimately elected democratic governments in the space of little more than a decade- an approach which still exists to this day?
Some may disagree with this characterisation, and legitimately hold the view that any means where justified during the Cold War, given the existential threat the Soviets posed. And this was an argument which might well have carried a significant amount of weight, until just recently. The problem is that China’s recent use of gifts and cheap incredibly favourable loans in Africa, has proven that the soft power approach is, in almost every way, superior to the approach taken by America in the Cold War era. Indeed, for many who have been following developments in Africa, it’s worth noting that there have been a slew of Western journalists and politicians from Kamala Harris to the BBC, who have found themselves chided by African leaders over the relative differences between the attitudes and material approaches taken by West and China in relation to Africa.
Interestingly, as I began to formulate my final thoughts as a preface to writing this, my first draft, I found to some alarm that there was already an academic paper entitled The parasite-stress theory may be a general theory of culture and socialityAlthough it can be edifying to find one’s thoughts are generally echoed by the academic research, for a writer who thinks they’ve come up with an original concept for politics, society and culture, the revelation of unoriginality can be devastating. Thankfully, the paper confines itself to in-group sorting and cross-nationality, and the impacts this may have on wealth resources, wealth inequality and freedom. Although it provides a strong foundation for my theory that parasite stress and the fear it causes will necessarily lead to bad political decision-making, it doesn’t go as far as linking parasite stress to poor group political judgements.
In many ways, the theory I postulate points to the fact that we haven’t really shed our superstitions at all. Sure, we’ve got rid of many of our external superstitious beliefs- we no longer believe in faeries at the bottom of the garden. But parasite stress shows that we haven’t shed our cognitive superstitions. Our primitive and atavistic brains can still seize control from our more reasoned and articulate selves- all it takes is the presence of some amorphous generalised fear which we can’t fight directly, to make us revert to the primitive needs to make ourselves feel safe by applying force and coercion to others. It doesn’t really help- but it does make us feel better.
I even have a mechanism for how parasite stress manifests to pervert the normal rational functioning of government and institutions. It’s about social incentives. As parasite stress or fear grows, the moderate voices of reason are marginalised and sidelined, the voices of hardliners elevated and celebrated, becoming the prevailing organisational narrative. As the fear grows and feeds off the panic it causes eminent scientists and experts who dissent from the group objectives increasingly find themselves treated as heretics, rather than the informed and rational sceptics they so clearly are.
There are a number of subjects I want to touch on in relation to parasite stress and the authoritarianism it causes. My first will be Mass Incarceration- what we got wrong because of fear, and what ultimately proved a far more successful and humane approach.
Interesting thesis. I’ll be following your development. I can see where sheep get very fearful, even irrational, in response to stress. That was certainly observable in the covid fiasco, as you note. What is concerning is that the shepherds, who should be expected to be calming influences on the sheep while simultaneously responding to the source of stress, instead fed the fear and panic.
Reasons and rationale should be studied and understood. If the anticipated benefit was achieved the behavior will be repeated.
Not sure I’m following the connection with the China-Africa issue. Not disagreeing with your general critique of US handling though it should be noted that both China and Soviet/Russia have been involved in ways they may not acknowledge in the turmoil that is Africa. Also, the soft influence of China is young and where it may end is not yet seen. Africa is a dysfunctional family and the Powers have little interest in allowing peace to bloom should that even be a possibility. To your earlier point, multiculturalism is the enemy of peace as we are seeing clearly in this country. Your thesis may shed light on why.
My point what was that America could have chosen the soft power route. China's current actions and their effects in terms of direct influence shows that this would not only have been the more moral course for America from the sixties onwards, but also far, far more effective at achieving America's interests. Instead, parasite stress caused America to choose a path far from the glory days of the Marshall Plan.
No argument with the judgement, just not following the parasitic stress conclusion as fear of Africa seems tenuous. Hubris, military gain, Cold war competition, reactionist response to earlier missionary efforts. US has had a poor understanding of cultural differences, even recently believing representative democracy was a best fit for Islamic cultures.
A British parliamentary system is probably a better fit for Islamic Cultures. Simply substitute House of Islam for House of Lords. In this model the representative lower house would be elected and necessarily more secular. The House of Islam wouldn't have legislative power, but it would act to revise bills which weren't in the tradition of Islam and in some instances, even outright reject them.
Strong democracies are usually paid for with the blood of patriots. Germany is probably the only exception of a country which had a functional democracy imposed externally- and it was powered by the force of an enduring national shame.
I think one of the lessons of the Late Twentieth has to be that strong and stable is preferable to democratic. What is that most allows Western citizens to function and thrive? I would say the full protections of the law acting in the interests of the citizen. Of course, this is a far cry from the reality- but one has to admit that, if one looks around the world, in many countries draconian laws seem preferable to no enforced laws at all.
Also agree on rule of law being key to a stable society. As we are seeing here, democracy is no guarantor once compromised by ambition for power and stripped of integrity. A benevolent strong man is most efficient though they are difficult to procure these days.
Wasn’t Japan also forced to accept a democracy? Of course, the Emperor imposed it at gun point but it seems to have been stable. Germany was already a Western and Christian society; arguably a more suitable substrate for successful democracy. They had been traumatized by a brutal excursus into pagan totalitarianism, and had a gun at their head.
Wer bombardierten Orthodoxen-christlich Serben für die Muslimen??? Nördlich Atlantik Terrorist Organisation.
Kein Land führt bei dieser Invasion sein eigenes Rennen, weil es alles eine politische Agenda ist, die von den Vereinten Nationen geführt und von den Juden und ihren Marionetten (Politikern) vorangetrieben wird. Die meisten Menschen wollen einfach nicht wissen oder verstehen, dass dies eine politische Agenda ist. Einige schaffen es jedoch zu verstehen, dass Politiker absichtlich daran arbeiten, Muslime zu importieren und die Menschen zu ersetzen, aber das war's auch schon, sie sind wie ein Computer, der nicht weitermachen kann, weil das Programm es nicht zulässt.
Der Juden-Messianismus verbreitet seit fast zweitausend Jahren seine giftige Botschaft unter uns. Demokratische und kommunistische Universalismen sind neu, aber sie gekommen, um das alte jüdisch Narrativ zu verstärken. Das sind der dieselben Ideale . . . Die transnationalen, transrassischen, transkulturellen Ideale, die diese Ideologien uns predigen (jenseits von Völkern, Rassen, Kulturen) und die tägliche Nahrung in unseren Schulen, in unseren Medien, in unserer Popkultur, bei unseren Universitäten und auf unseren Straßen sind, haben unser biosymbolische Identität und unser ethnischer Stolz auf ihren minimalen Ausdruck reduziert.
Eine Sturm kommt . . . Aus der Asche der alten Welt, entzündet sich eine neue Flamme . . . Unsere Welt wird brennen, die Angst und Zweifel werden im Feuer untergehen.
Sie Leute dummerweise denken, dass die Germanen nur in Deutschland zu finden sind . . . Ich habe Neuigkeiten für Sie . . . Sobald die NATO Besatzer vertrieben werden, werden wir eine weitere Nacht der langen Messer haben . . . Meine Ehre heißt Treue.
Funding Both Sides: How Jewish Money Controls British Politics . . .
“During the previous Labour government, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were ardent Zionists because they accepted the justice of Israel’s cause, not because Labour’s chief fund-raisers were first the Jew Michael Levy and then the Jew Jonathan Mendelsohn (both are now members of the House of Lords). And during the current Conservative government, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have been ardent Zionists because they too accept the justice of Israel’s cause, not because the Conservatives’ chief fund-raisers have been first the Jew Sir Mick Davis and then the Jew Sir Ehud Sheleg.”
"Here’s the thing, going into this I was pretty sure that going into this that many were going"
Edit?
Yeah stress. No question that it corrodes trust and rationality. Fear > stress > hate > irrationality > mayhem. But as you say, sometimes fear is necessary. Yet you seem to presuppose that the stresses we feel today are not justified. I think they are justified but would still much prefer they were calmed than see them blow up.
It might be splitting hairs but let me draw an analogy: in aerodynamics they distinguish between parasitic drag and induced drag -- the latter being unavoidable. It seems to me that much of the stress in society today is likewise 'induced', not parasitic. Seeing one's heritage replaced, one's standard of living slowly eroded, one's institutions breaking down, one's culture attacked, one is rather naturally stressed, no? Induced stress. Now, demagogues will no doubt whip that up and one might reasonably call that added stress 'parasitic'.
I agree with you, Ray. I probably should have made a distinction between parasite stress, which can be, but is not often, justified. And the authoritarianism which follows, which is almost invariably not justified- if for no better reason than it is a terribly sup-par strategy.
I generally don't criticise China. In general, there are far too many Westerners ready to criticise when they should be looking at the inhumane and brutal actions of their own governments. That being said, China probably had one of the most robustly authoritarian responses to COVID-19 in the world, with the possible exception of Peru. They claimed it worked, but this is highly unlikely- the cremations continued at an unprecedented pace for several months. The western press were simply willing to go along with the fiction because it suited their preferred narrative and course of action- lockdowns. In all likelihood the Chinese first wave probably behaved like virtually everywhere else- it burned through available material in the population and only then did the peak begin to recede.
That was the really useful thing about the local granularity of the data in the UK- it unequivocally proved that the second wave was the virus spreading into regions it hadn't managed to penetrate in the first wave.
"And the authoritarianism which follows, which is almost invariably not justified"
It seems to be downright instinctive to look for The Conspiracy -- the 'reason' for all this shit. I do it too, but also tend to laugh at myself for it -- the problem is when you take it all too seriously. So: if one wanted to overturn democracy and set up a dictatorship, why attack the democracy, when you can get the people themselves to reject it and demand salvation from your loving authoritarian hands?
It flows together with my other conspiracy theory that the woke are the Useful Idiots of the globalist plutocrats -- the plebian woke don't realize that they are carrying water for the Davos People. Why fight the Left when you can take it over, use it to baffle, bewilder, bother and bugger the working class, reduce them to helpless tribalists and then take over? Divide and rule.
"China probably had one of the most robustly authoritarian responses to COVID-19"
Sure, it's just not in She's nature to find anything other than an authoritarian response. Sorta the way the Russians always do everything in the stupidest and most brutal way cuz that's what they're like. Or America's love of the doctrine that you can bomb a country into democracy. Silly monkeys!
The globalists are far more cynical than that- there was a reason, after all, that Nick Hanauer's TED Talk was originally banned- they really did believe him when he said the pitchforks were coming. Originally woke was a good thing, but it's modern incarnation is an inversion of the original commandment- the imperative plea to give people access to equal opportunity.
The reason why the plutocrats were so keen to adopt woke capitalism was because they knew that a little more access to elite opportunities for Black and Brown people who were probably going to get there anyway would placate the Left. Meanwhile, the other 90% of the populations, regardless of whether they are Black, Brown or White, have their interests permanently put on hold by their supposed betters.
That's the real anti-Democratic movement- people are allowed to vote for anyone they like so long as they choose the candidate the highly educated want them to choose, regardless of the fact that their interests aren't best served by regulatory capture, crony capitalism or the mass migration which protects corporate bottom lines.
Here is the original Nick Hanauer TED talk from 8 years ago. It's epic. To my knowledge, at that time the only other person they banned was Rupert Sheldrake.
"but it's modern incarnation is an inversion of the original commandment- the imperative plea to give people access to equal opportunity."
Sure, I'd not postulate that the globalists invented it as we now have it. It is rather a very fine impulse gotten out of control and the globalists perhaps spotted an opportunity to divide and rule. As you say there could also be an element of simple appeasement, but it seems to me to be a little too zealous for that to be the only driver. No coincidence that home base for wokeism is the ivies -- the elite *love it*.
The pressing question is how to resurrect the center. Just finished watching Chris C's 'town hall' on CNN -- the guy seems sane. Pulls no punches as to Trump, that's HUGE -- not attempting to have it both ways like most ass-licking politicians. Disgusting bunch those Republicans. I want Ross Perot back.
I take it China’s “soft power” approach would include sinking Vietnamese fishing vessels, making incursions into Indian territory and killing Indian soldiers, building islands in the South China Sea to host military bases, and playing games of chicken with US fighter jets? I used to work with a guy from Bangladesh. He didn’t think there was anything soft about the way the Chinese basically ran everything in his country.
It's a good argument, and not without justification. It's why I stated that some fears are justified...
But come on, mate- compared to what, exactly? The juvenile actions of our early technological superabundance were far worse. The thing to remember about China is that there are two separate thought streams involved in their culture. The first is that of the technocratic and autocratic dynast operating for the long-term benefit of its citizens. The other is recidivist Marrxist which only gets activated if China is threatened.
Look at it this way, mate. Was America right to be kind to Britain after the Second World war? They didn't have the strength to qualify for the Thucydides Treaty, not really. The thing with China is, if we act as friends, we allow the civilizational benign autocrats to prevail- aggression only leads to the recidivist Marxists gaining power. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a bucket load of hard power to deploy, simply that we should only use it if the threat is existential.
India has already proven equal to the task. They are a rising power. Believe it or not, they've already developed a necklace of diamonds approach to counter the string of pearls, and this in turn has caused Beijing to use friendship as a weapon, rather than aggression.
Yeah I agree that India has done a good job of managing the situation. My only point was that China’s approach isn’t really “soft.” I get what you’re saying about Africa, but just wanted to air some contradictory evidence to make the picture a little more nuanced.
You and I strongly disagree on American foreign policy, but we can agree to disagree.
Nice article. It addresses fundementals without the side issues and ideological irrelevancies a lot of other theories labour under. I think that there may be some refinement possible though. This relates to closed and open systems. I wonder if parasite stress is more likely to occur in a closed system rather than an open system. Thus a multi-cultural society paradoxically may be better positioned to resist the effects because it by its nature is more flexible and more able to cope with differences.
Your example of America seems to bear this out. There are 2 closed systems at play, the Trumpian/populist Republican system and the Leftist/'Progressive' system neither of which allow or can allow the other space. Whilst the Republican is the more open and wiser it's been hijacked by fanatics and voices of reason are struggling to make themselves heard.
Thoughts on this interpretation would be most welcome.
I think you're partially correct. Although neoliberalism was an unalloyed good for the developing world, ultimately raising over a billion people out of poverty, certain basic misconceptions on the part of the cosmopolitans who acted as its stewards caused the hollowing out of Western societies in labour terms.
The first issue was blank slateism. It simply wasn't possible to educate people into the highly cognitive work that education for more people promised. Doctor, scientist (as opposed to technician), engineer, computer programmer- all of these fields require the person to be in the top 8% of the cognitive spectrum (or higher) and no amount of education is going to help.
The second issue is labour switching. It was a big mistake to switch out medium to high value production labour for service sector jobs. Production jobs tend to have amazing scope for productivity increases whilst the service sector (until very recently) does not. It's why countries with a high degree of service sector in their economy tend to lag behind other countries in terms of productivity- the UK for example, with a very high service sector composition, loses a day in productivity per week compared to much of Europe.
This doesn't mean that the neoliberal project was entirely doomed. If Western countries had simply offshored their lower value production labour, offshoring parts and supply, whilst retaining assembly, there is ample evidence to suggest that the West could have had the best of both worlds- fundamentally better and cheaper products, without compromising labour security or good pay for the blue collar class. How do I know this? Because China has learned from the lessons of the West. Now that they are in the process of making Africa China's China, they are merrily offshoring all their low value labour in areas like textiles whilst keeping all of the medium and high value labour for themselves.
China also acts as an ample demonstration of this labour value principle in another way. With 6% profit margins, barely enough to cover taxes, inflation and risk, there is no evidence to support the contention that direct capital growth through manufacturing was what powered China's Economic Miracle. Instead, it was the secondary and tertiary industries generated by the newly established purchasing power of China's labour which caused China's Economic Miracle.
So, when I state that your argument was partially correct I mean this. Both Left and Right populism had ample cause for complaint. Both were right to want a radically transformative form of radical politics. However, in both instances the prescriptions they chose were pure demagoguery. A narcissistic former reality TV star is about as likely to fix the problem as eradicating all billionaire wealth through tax, so that it can pay for American federal government for a grand total of six months.
Here's the fundamental failure in diagnosis that neoliberalism failed to the grasp. Around 50% of the male population is completely unsuitable for education beyond K-12 unless we are talking about technical vocational training in a trade. Of these, because of socioeconomic origins, no more than 20% are suitable for reallocation to customer facing service work. That means that 40% of the male population is competing for work which has been fundamentally depleted at the same time that this type of work also remains the work of choice for non-selective migration. There was always going to be 10% of the male population which didn't work- even in the era of full employment economics this was the case. Neoliberalism doubled this stat- and unfortunately because many of those who found themselves in this predicament weren't the low initiative, low IQ types of the past, this also meant an unprecedented growth in crime in countries like America and the UK, the latter of which consistently tops the European charts for crime levels.
There is way to fix it. Libertarian land reforms leading to a construction boom. There is certainly enough pent up demand in the UK and well as within selected parts of America. A partial switch to selective migration is also a key requirement. I don't think this requires going as far Australia with its Priority Migration Skilled Occupations List (at least when it still worked to maintain blue collar trade professional labour value). Instead, all it would require would be to run tighter labour markets in specific areas like construction, making certain occupations like construction the exclusive purview of the native born.
One of my main reasons for suggesting this is that its also part of my plan to reform American Law and Order. The answer to America current woes in terms of policing and lawlessness is Scottish Public Health Policing. Unfortunately, although this approach will halve violent crime within ten years without significantly increasing prison populations it also requires a significant number of medium to high quality blue collar jobs to shift youthful offenders who get caught up in the drug trade into- and construction work is probably the best prospect to fill the labour requirement for the youth reform element to work.
Open borders has destroyed job opportunities for Americans. Construction, landscaping, assembly, agriculture and more were once the honorable domain of mot above average. The Left told this population that labor was exploitation and that college was the answer, all the while ensuring that the education system was incapable of preparing them for any useful pursuit. Now what?
Stop new foreign-born labour in selected areas. The main reason why blue collar workers enjoyed a 3.8% pay rise in real terms, for the first time since 1979, was because Trump held up 600K green cards. It's about tighter labour markets. Joe Biden has been trying to accomplish the same- the only problem is that his default is to support the NLRB, rather than the far more effective use of moderating labour supply- a fundamentally sound market-based solution.
On education, America needs to switch to a Graduate Contributions Scheme. Part of this would be using actuarial tables of future earnings to establish thresholds for repayment. Oil Engineer? Start repaying at $40K. History of Medicine grad? You start repaying at $5K. Also, hold institutions accountable financially for shortfalls in future earnings. The sector needs to shrink and I can't think of a better day to do it than by penalising those who seduce young people with false promises into taking on significant amounts of debt.
First, get government out of secondary education. Problem solves itself in relatively short order. Oh, and explain cost/benefit analysis to HS Juniors.
I do agree with you on this one, but there is a deeper issue which is more important than market or public provision. Choice. Simply put, the ability of parents to select the school of their choice from within their catchment area is more important than who provides the service.
Back in the days of the QC forum their was a commenter who went by the alias of Gogamba (or something like that). He did an individualised analysis of schools in one major American democratic stronghold. He found two schools barely separated. They had the same constituency. The same SEC of students. Everything was the same, apart from the results and the amount of money spent on the two public schools. The academically failing school was getting twice as much per student and the one which was succeeding.
Hence choice. Personally, I think that politicians and educators need to get a lot more honest with parents about what makes the difference between success and failure. 80% of all enrichment activity can be achieved with two simple rules. 30 mins spent with kids each night on reading activities in the early years, and 30 minutes spent later on making sure they do their consolidation homework. Everything else is frills, with little value.
The only thing is that every other parent in the school that you choose has to do the same thing- otherwise the teachers spend most of their time trying to catch up the four or five kids who, through no fault of their own are stuck behind the curve. Money does matter- but only insofar as it allows parents to buy their kids into peer groups where the parents have done the work.
Here's my point. More honesty with parents automatically improves the results- when they know what matters, a higher percentage will do it. We should also make getting the best choices contingent upon doing the due dlligence- this also would improve results. The other thing that matters is training in classroom practice. It's why London schools are killing it to the extent that it throws the whole subject of racial IQ gaps into serious doubts.
Choice, aka competition, is a wonderful antidote to mediocrity. The argument is that it will leave those who don’t care in the dust. The counter argument is that they are already in the dust and why should others get dragged down with them? Some left behind may even be inspired to catch up.
As you note, this is not a money issue and never has been. By localizing education there is an opportunity to drastically reduce the overhead of Big Government and better use less funds to greater effect.
One thing the Victorians were very good at (and one thing we've lost) was supporting and lionising engineers. People like Brunel and Telford were literally heros.They didn't have the prejudice against physical skills that seems to pertain nowadays. You mention doctors but for certain medical areas both AI and dogs are better. Scientists are heavily constrained by ideology and always have been. In brief it is not neo-libralism that is the issue but the failure to eliminate elite attitudes.
I'm not sure these can even be fully eliminated but the denegration of craft skills is more likely to be significant. This does not mean the leftist/communist drivel but a an appreciation and valuation of the skills displayed by engineers and technicians.
I re-watched The Dam Busters last night. Talk about quirky little jury rigs to get the job done! The West lost something vital when it stopped worshipping the likes of Barnes Wallis and Frank Whittle.
There's a paradox as you say. I'm not certain what we mean by 'closed' vs. 'open', and 'multi-cultural societies.' Think about Central and Eastern Europe before and between the World Wars. An ethnic patchwork of Slavs, Germans and Jews, some Romani here and there, and in the Balkans various Muslims as well. As long as the various imperial governments -- in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Istanbul were strong, the cultural balances underneath them were stable, and the seams which held the patchworks together held, and there was peace within open systems. But if for whatever reason the stitches start to come apart, then fear and panic quickly set into each of the herds, and the 'sheep' stampede.
Modern liberalism assumes that 'open cultures' are good, because they allow each individual to choose among many options. .But how free are we really to 'choose', and how much are we still creatures of our own local culture? In time of threat -- especially a novel, unstudied parasitic threat -- does the panic make us want to circle our wagons and defend? (Apologies for mixed metaphors).
Great examples! Another would be the Middle East. The historically illiterate would place all the blame on the colonial powers, and there can be little doubt that they exacerbated the preceding problem- the Ottoman Caliphate transferred disparate and culturally incompatible peoples into villages next door to each other for centuries. The removal of the centralising power meant that sectarianism was sure to follow.
I think we can afford to somewhat more optimistic about the West- with certain provisos. The melting pot philosophy was extraordinarily successful at forging a unifying bond of national identity across in-groups. The problem is that modern multiculturalism- with its penchant for cultural relativism and the belief that assimilation is an affront against supposedly immutable characteristics of culture (which quite rightly should be the most mutable thing in the world, given how much 'cultural appropriation' has contributed to human progress)- picks at the very fabric of this incredibly valuable quilt of human experience. In other words, they destroy the power of the culturally centralising force.
Plus, it's worth noting that the populism only awakens during period of excessive migration and is only activated by economic downturns. If the neoliberals hadn't sold out the American blue collar class, and Congress hadn't bailed out finance at American taxpayers expense, with most politicians of the Left abandoning their traditional responsibility of defending labour from the depredations of unrestricted labour competition, then its highly likely that the forces of populism would have never reawakened in America.
Niall Ferguson gave a fascinating talk on the subject of populism and its history in America:
My daughter had a classmate, elementary school thru high school, whose surname was Busa. An uncommon name of no obvious national origin, perhaps. In fact her immigrant ancestors had been Polish, and whatever their name was, unspellable in English, when they landed in America, they decided they would be USA. As you say, the melting pot works based on a positive decision to accept a new primary national identity.
As for 'cultural appropriation' -- there's no paradox in it. It's a cpmtradiction of the meaning of 'culture' to believe that it shouldn't be approproated.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are newer, but they have only come to reinforce the old Jewish narrative. They are the same ideals.
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond races, peoples, cultures) and that are the daily sustenance of our schools, in the media, in our pop culture, at our universities, and on our streets, have reduced our biosymbolic identity and our ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
The Imperial societies are a very good example. I'm assuming that an 'open' society is willing to let outsiders in and benefit from their contribution whilst a closed society will resist or prevent that process. It's a massive over generalization of course because it assumes a measure of stasis and societies are, if anything, dynamic entities.
Satan is largely a Christian misinterpretation. Seraphim are better understood as forces which are only occasionally embodied for specific purposes. Satan can also be used to refer to a person's evil intentions.
Satan was also used as a conversion mechanism, used to besmirch local elemental spirits and sprites, which were often worshipped animistic religions. This is also why churches are often built upon geometric nodes, because intersections of telluric energy used to give rise to such phenomenon.
The cryptic and archaic emoting of the “anarcho-capitalist” liber-tard-ians, with their badly camouflaged epistemology is a mix of Russian Jew Ayn Rand and pedophile devil worshipper Aleister Crowley, who's Thelemite cult is really the brainchild of pedophile Jew Israel Regardie . . . their transexual Baphomet goat god is a creation of devil worshipping Jew Eliphas Levi . . .
From the Zodiac killer, to the Nightstalker, to Jonestown, to San Francisco . . . it’s the same cult of bloodthirsty, psychotic devil worshipping nutjobs . . . . . . Ukrainian Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Marina Abramović, Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell, and the former mayors of San Francisco, including Gavin Newsome, are all devil worshipping sex weirdos . . .
Elon Musk gives gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky free Starlink satellite services that you'll eventually pay for, like the nearly $200 billion to Ukraine, laundered by FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (another devil worshipping Jew). It will surely be used for DNC campaign cash; the Democratic National Committee is just a huge terror cell masquerading as a political party.
Crowley was a sad little wanker who managed to gatecrash access to the Golden Dawn, an imposter cult who had somehow managed to gain access to a few genuine lesser arcane works and mingled it with Satanism and Baal worship. There is no such thing as a publicly known Hermetic organisation. Even the grand masons and knights templar borrow heavily from scraps and conjecture. What true knowledge they possess usually stems from half-awakened latents, often half-mad from glimpsing fragments from the Akashic.
Crowley ate his own child's foetus in the mistaken belief it would bring him power. All he succeeded in doing was irrevocably polluting what others refer to as the ti bon ange.
Have you been watching too many weird YouTube videos with robovoices? You seem like a really smart guy whose brain works on overdrive. Most of the patterns you see are a sign of high functioning pattern recognition occurring at a pace which doesn't allow the other side of the brain to evaluate the hypothesis. I'm not saying that some of people you mention aren't incredibly harmful but they either fall into the category of seeing other people as little more than objects or pursue hollow temporal power at the expense of everything that makes a single human being sublime.
The Ukrainian things is a result of group goal fixation. The Cold War Warriors wanted to refight the conflict aiming for a victory, rather than a draw. Group dynamics are pretty shitty to begin with- add fear to the equation and the group dynamic shifts to trying to eliminate the enemy by any means necessary- including leaving a supposed Ally's country in complete fucking ruins. There would have people arguing against this course of action, but they would have been drowned out by the cynic hawks masquerading as pragmatists, when such people usually act as self-fulfilling prophetics for the very scenario they claim to want to avoid. Aggressive stances aimed at deterrence always result in a higher chance of conflict- through the simple mechanic of giving license and volume to the cynic war hawks on the other sides team. The best deterrence is to be strong and do nothing to provoke.
Also, never underestimate a politicians facility to double down and fail to acknowledge their mistake, in the hopes that the status quo power will back them. Of such stuff tragedies are made. You should really watch or read some of Dave Smith's content on Ukraine and other wars. The last time he went on Joe Rogan it was all about Israel, but he's also provided some highly knowledgeable content on Ukraine.
You need to find your inner stillness. Fire meditation is good, as is getting a dog and taking them for long walks
The cryptic and archaic emoting of the “anarcho-capitalist” liber-tard-ians, with their badly camouflaged epistemology is a mix of Russian Jew Ayn Rand and pedophile devil worshipper Aleister Crowley, who's Thelemite cult is really the brainchild of pedophile Jew Israel Regardie . . . their transexual Baphomet goat god is a creation of devil worshipping Jew Eliphas Levi . . .
From the Zodiac killer, to the Nightstalker, to Jonestown, to San Francisco . . . it’s the same cult of bloodthirsty, psychotic devil worshipping nutjobs . . . . . . Ukrainian Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Marina Abramović, Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell, and the former mayors of San Francisco, including Gavin Newsome, are all devil worshipping sex weirdos . . .
Elon Musk gives gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky free Starlink satellite services that you'll eventually pay for, like the nearly $200 billion to Ukraine, laundered by FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (another devil worshipping Jew). It will surely be used for DNC campaign cash; the Democratic National Committee is just a huge terror cell masquerading as a political party.
Interesting thesis. I’ll be following your development. I can see where sheep get very fearful, even irrational, in response to stress. That was certainly observable in the covid fiasco, as you note. What is concerning is that the shepherds, who should be expected to be calming influences on the sheep while simultaneously responding to the source of stress, instead fed the fear and panic.
Reasons and rationale should be studied and understood. If the anticipated benefit was achieved the behavior will be repeated.
Not sure I’m following the connection with the China-Africa issue. Not disagreeing with your general critique of US handling though it should be noted that both China and Soviet/Russia have been involved in ways they may not acknowledge in the turmoil that is Africa. Also, the soft influence of China is young and where it may end is not yet seen. Africa is a dysfunctional family and the Powers have little interest in allowing peace to bloom should that even be a possibility. To your earlier point, multiculturalism is the enemy of peace as we are seeing clearly in this country. Your thesis may shed light on why.
My point what was that America could have chosen the soft power route. China's current actions and their effects in terms of direct influence shows that this would not only have been the more moral course for America from the sixties onwards, but also far, far more effective at achieving America's interests. Instead, parasite stress caused America to choose a path far from the glory days of the Marshall Plan.
No argument with the judgement, just not following the parasitic stress conclusion as fear of Africa seems tenuous. Hubris, military gain, Cold war competition, reactionist response to earlier missionary efforts. US has had a poor understanding of cultural differences, even recently believing representative democracy was a best fit for Islamic cultures.
A British parliamentary system is probably a better fit for Islamic Cultures. Simply substitute House of Islam for House of Lords. In this model the representative lower house would be elected and necessarily more secular. The House of Islam wouldn't have legislative power, but it would act to revise bills which weren't in the tradition of Islam and in some instances, even outright reject them.
Overall, a far better fit for Islam.
They seem to prefer dictatorships, benevolent or otherwise.
Interesting option, you present. It might fly. Iran would be an interesting test bed. And preferably not imposed from outside.
Strong democracies are usually paid for with the blood of patriots. Germany is probably the only exception of a country which had a functional democracy imposed externally- and it was powered by the force of an enduring national shame.
I think one of the lessons of the Late Twentieth has to be that strong and stable is preferable to democratic. What is that most allows Western citizens to function and thrive? I would say the full protections of the law acting in the interests of the citizen. Of course, this is a far cry from the reality- but one has to admit that, if one looks around the world, in many countries draconian laws seem preferable to no enforced laws at all.
Also agree on rule of law being key to a stable society. As we are seeing here, democracy is no guarantor once compromised by ambition for power and stripped of integrity. A benevolent strong man is most efficient though they are difficult to procure these days.
Wasn’t Japan also forced to accept a democracy? Of course, the Emperor imposed it at gun point but it seems to have been stable. Germany was already a Western and Christian society; arguably a more suitable substrate for successful democracy. They had been traumatized by a brutal excursus into pagan totalitarianism, and had a gun at their head.
Mehr gefälschte nachrichten . . .
Wer bombardierten Orthodoxen-christlich Serben für die Muslimen??? Nördlich Atlantik Terrorist Organisation.
Kein Land führt bei dieser Invasion sein eigenes Rennen, weil es alles eine politische Agenda ist, die von den Vereinten Nationen geführt und von den Juden und ihren Marionetten (Politikern) vorangetrieben wird. Die meisten Menschen wollen einfach nicht wissen oder verstehen, dass dies eine politische Agenda ist. Einige schaffen es jedoch zu verstehen, dass Politiker absichtlich daran arbeiten, Muslime zu importieren und die Menschen zu ersetzen, aber das war's auch schon, sie sind wie ein Computer, der nicht weitermachen kann, weil das Programm es nicht zulässt.
Der Juden-Messianismus verbreitet seit fast zweitausend Jahren seine giftige Botschaft unter uns. Demokratische und kommunistische Universalismen sind neu, aber sie gekommen, um das alte jüdisch Narrativ zu verstärken. Das sind der dieselben Ideale . . . Die transnationalen, transrassischen, transkulturellen Ideale, die diese Ideologien uns predigen (jenseits von Völkern, Rassen, Kulturen) und die tägliche Nahrung in unseren Schulen, in unseren Medien, in unserer Popkultur, bei unseren Universitäten und auf unseren Straßen sind, haben unser biosymbolische Identität und unser ethnischer Stolz auf ihren minimalen Ausdruck reduziert.
Eine Sturm kommt . . . Aus der Asche der alten Welt, entzündet sich eine neue Flamme . . . Unsere Welt wird brennen, die Angst und Zweifel werden im Feuer untergehen.
Sie Leute dummerweise denken, dass die Germanen nur in Deutschland zu finden sind . . . Ich habe Neuigkeiten für Sie . . . Sobald die NATO Besatzer vertrieben werden, werden wir eine weitere Nacht der langen Messer haben . . . Meine Ehre heißt Treue.
Funding Both Sides: How Jewish Money Controls British Politics . . .
“During the previous Labour government, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were ardent Zionists because they accepted the justice of Israel’s cause, not because Labour’s chief fund-raisers were first the Jew Michael Levy and then the Jew Jonathan Mendelsohn (both are now members of the House of Lords). And during the current Conservative government, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have been ardent Zionists because they too accept the justice of Israel’s cause, not because the Conservatives’ chief fund-raisers have been first the Jew Sir Mick Davis and then the Jew Sir Ehud Sheleg.”
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/10/04/funding-both-sides-how-jewish-money-controls-british-politics/
"Here’s the thing, going into this I was pretty sure that going into this that many were going"
Edit?
Yeah stress. No question that it corrodes trust and rationality. Fear > stress > hate > irrationality > mayhem. But as you say, sometimes fear is necessary. Yet you seem to presuppose that the stresses we feel today are not justified. I think they are justified but would still much prefer they were calmed than see them blow up.
It might be splitting hairs but let me draw an analogy: in aerodynamics they distinguish between parasitic drag and induced drag -- the latter being unavoidable. It seems to me that much of the stress in society today is likewise 'induced', not parasitic. Seeing one's heritage replaced, one's standard of living slowly eroded, one's institutions breaking down, one's culture attacked, one is rather naturally stressed, no? Induced stress. Now, demagogues will no doubt whip that up and one might reasonably call that added stress 'parasitic'.
I agree with you, Ray. I probably should have made a distinction between parasite stress, which can be, but is not often, justified. And the authoritarianism which follows, which is almost invariably not justified- if for no better reason than it is a terribly sup-par strategy.
I generally don't criticise China. In general, there are far too many Westerners ready to criticise when they should be looking at the inhumane and brutal actions of their own governments. That being said, China probably had one of the most robustly authoritarian responses to COVID-19 in the world, with the possible exception of Peru. They claimed it worked, but this is highly unlikely- the cremations continued at an unprecedented pace for several months. The western press were simply willing to go along with the fiction because it suited their preferred narrative and course of action- lockdowns. In all likelihood the Chinese first wave probably behaved like virtually everywhere else- it burned through available material in the population and only then did the peak begin to recede.
That was the really useful thing about the local granularity of the data in the UK- it unequivocally proved that the second wave was the virus spreading into regions it hadn't managed to penetrate in the first wave.
"And the authoritarianism which follows, which is almost invariably not justified"
It seems to be downright instinctive to look for The Conspiracy -- the 'reason' for all this shit. I do it too, but also tend to laugh at myself for it -- the problem is when you take it all too seriously. So: if one wanted to overturn democracy and set up a dictatorship, why attack the democracy, when you can get the people themselves to reject it and demand salvation from your loving authoritarian hands?
It flows together with my other conspiracy theory that the woke are the Useful Idiots of the globalist plutocrats -- the plebian woke don't realize that they are carrying water for the Davos People. Why fight the Left when you can take it over, use it to baffle, bewilder, bother and bugger the working class, reduce them to helpless tribalists and then take over? Divide and rule.
"China probably had one of the most robustly authoritarian responses to COVID-19"
Sure, it's just not in She's nature to find anything other than an authoritarian response. Sorta the way the Russians always do everything in the stupidest and most brutal way cuz that's what they're like. Or America's love of the doctrine that you can bomb a country into democracy. Silly monkeys!
The globalists are far more cynical than that- there was a reason, after all, that Nick Hanauer's TED Talk was originally banned- they really did believe him when he said the pitchforks were coming. Originally woke was a good thing, but it's modern incarnation is an inversion of the original commandment- the imperative plea to give people access to equal opportunity.
The reason why the plutocrats were so keen to adopt woke capitalism was because they knew that a little more access to elite opportunities for Black and Brown people who were probably going to get there anyway would placate the Left. Meanwhile, the other 90% of the populations, regardless of whether they are Black, Brown or White, have their interests permanently put on hold by their supposed betters.
That's the real anti-Democratic movement- people are allowed to vote for anyone they like so long as they choose the candidate the highly educated want them to choose, regardless of the fact that their interests aren't best served by regulatory capture, crony capitalism or the mass migration which protects corporate bottom lines.
Here is the original Nick Hanauer TED talk from 8 years ago. It's epic. To my knowledge, at that time the only other person they banned was Rupert Sheldrake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8&t=1s
"but it's modern incarnation is an inversion of the original commandment- the imperative plea to give people access to equal opportunity."
Sure, I'd not postulate that the globalists invented it as we now have it. It is rather a very fine impulse gotten out of control and the globalists perhaps spotted an opportunity to divide and rule. As you say there could also be an element of simple appeasement, but it seems to me to be a little too zealous for that to be the only driver. No coincidence that home base for wokeism is the ivies -- the elite *love it*.
Tx. for video, will watch tonight.
The pressing question is how to resurrect the center. Just finished watching Chris C's 'town hall' on CNN -- the guy seems sane. Pulls no punches as to Trump, that's HUGE -- not attempting to have it both ways like most ass-licking politicians. Disgusting bunch those Republicans. I want Ross Perot back.
Ross Perot = Penis Rot
Trudeau = Turdeau
TYVM for another interesting article, Geary.
'm still 🤔 about your points .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1148580
I take it China’s “soft power” approach would include sinking Vietnamese fishing vessels, making incursions into Indian territory and killing Indian soldiers, building islands in the South China Sea to host military bases, and playing games of chicken with US fighter jets? I used to work with a guy from Bangladesh. He didn’t think there was anything soft about the way the Chinese basically ran everything in his country.
It's a good argument, and not without justification. It's why I stated that some fears are justified...
But come on, mate- compared to what, exactly? The juvenile actions of our early technological superabundance were far worse. The thing to remember about China is that there are two separate thought streams involved in their culture. The first is that of the technocratic and autocratic dynast operating for the long-term benefit of its citizens. The other is recidivist Marrxist which only gets activated if China is threatened.
Look at it this way, mate. Was America right to be kind to Britain after the Second World war? They didn't have the strength to qualify for the Thucydides Treaty, not really. The thing with China is, if we act as friends, we allow the civilizational benign autocrats to prevail- aggression only leads to the recidivist Marxists gaining power. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a bucket load of hard power to deploy, simply that we should only use it if the threat is existential.
India has already proven equal to the task. They are a rising power. Believe it or not, they've already developed a necklace of diamonds approach to counter the string of pearls, and this in turn has caused Beijing to use friendship as a weapon, rather than aggression.
If only we had been so wise...
Yeah I agree that India has done a good job of managing the situation. My only point was that China’s approach isn’t really “soft.” I get what you’re saying about Africa, but just wanted to air some contradictory evidence to make the picture a little more nuanced.
You and I strongly disagree on American foreign policy, but we can agree to disagree.
You should have helped Japan and Germany in WW2.
Russia and China would not be an issue today.
Nice article. It addresses fundementals without the side issues and ideological irrelevancies a lot of other theories labour under. I think that there may be some refinement possible though. This relates to closed and open systems. I wonder if parasite stress is more likely to occur in a closed system rather than an open system. Thus a multi-cultural society paradoxically may be better positioned to resist the effects because it by its nature is more flexible and more able to cope with differences.
Your example of America seems to bear this out. There are 2 closed systems at play, the Trumpian/populist Republican system and the Leftist/'Progressive' system neither of which allow or can allow the other space. Whilst the Republican is the more open and wiser it's been hijacked by fanatics and voices of reason are struggling to make themselves heard.
Thoughts on this interpretation would be most welcome.
I think you're partially correct. Although neoliberalism was an unalloyed good for the developing world, ultimately raising over a billion people out of poverty, certain basic misconceptions on the part of the cosmopolitans who acted as its stewards caused the hollowing out of Western societies in labour terms.
The first issue was blank slateism. It simply wasn't possible to educate people into the highly cognitive work that education for more people promised. Doctor, scientist (as opposed to technician), engineer, computer programmer- all of these fields require the person to be in the top 8% of the cognitive spectrum (or higher) and no amount of education is going to help.
The second issue is labour switching. It was a big mistake to switch out medium to high value production labour for service sector jobs. Production jobs tend to have amazing scope for productivity increases whilst the service sector (until very recently) does not. It's why countries with a high degree of service sector in their economy tend to lag behind other countries in terms of productivity- the UK for example, with a very high service sector composition, loses a day in productivity per week compared to much of Europe.
This doesn't mean that the neoliberal project was entirely doomed. If Western countries had simply offshored their lower value production labour, offshoring parts and supply, whilst retaining assembly, there is ample evidence to suggest that the West could have had the best of both worlds- fundamentally better and cheaper products, without compromising labour security or good pay for the blue collar class. How do I know this? Because China has learned from the lessons of the West. Now that they are in the process of making Africa China's China, they are merrily offshoring all their low value labour in areas like textiles whilst keeping all of the medium and high value labour for themselves.
China also acts as an ample demonstration of this labour value principle in another way. With 6% profit margins, barely enough to cover taxes, inflation and risk, there is no evidence to support the contention that direct capital growth through manufacturing was what powered China's Economic Miracle. Instead, it was the secondary and tertiary industries generated by the newly established purchasing power of China's labour which caused China's Economic Miracle.
So, when I state that your argument was partially correct I mean this. Both Left and Right populism had ample cause for complaint. Both were right to want a radically transformative form of radical politics. However, in both instances the prescriptions they chose were pure demagoguery. A narcissistic former reality TV star is about as likely to fix the problem as eradicating all billionaire wealth through tax, so that it can pay for American federal government for a grand total of six months.
Here's the fundamental failure in diagnosis that neoliberalism failed to the grasp. Around 50% of the male population is completely unsuitable for education beyond K-12 unless we are talking about technical vocational training in a trade. Of these, because of socioeconomic origins, no more than 20% are suitable for reallocation to customer facing service work. That means that 40% of the male population is competing for work which has been fundamentally depleted at the same time that this type of work also remains the work of choice for non-selective migration. There was always going to be 10% of the male population which didn't work- even in the era of full employment economics this was the case. Neoliberalism doubled this stat- and unfortunately because many of those who found themselves in this predicament weren't the low initiative, low IQ types of the past, this also meant an unprecedented growth in crime in countries like America and the UK, the latter of which consistently tops the European charts for crime levels.
There is way to fix it. Libertarian land reforms leading to a construction boom. There is certainly enough pent up demand in the UK and well as within selected parts of America. A partial switch to selective migration is also a key requirement. I don't think this requires going as far Australia with its Priority Migration Skilled Occupations List (at least when it still worked to maintain blue collar trade professional labour value). Instead, all it would require would be to run tighter labour markets in specific areas like construction, making certain occupations like construction the exclusive purview of the native born.
One of my main reasons for suggesting this is that its also part of my plan to reform American Law and Order. The answer to America current woes in terms of policing and lawlessness is Scottish Public Health Policing. Unfortunately, although this approach will halve violent crime within ten years without significantly increasing prison populations it also requires a significant number of medium to high quality blue collar jobs to shift youthful offenders who get caught up in the drug trade into- and construction work is probably the best prospect to fill the labour requirement for the youth reform element to work.
Open borders has destroyed job opportunities for Americans. Construction, landscaping, assembly, agriculture and more were once the honorable domain of mot above average. The Left told this population that labor was exploitation and that college was the answer, all the while ensuring that the education system was incapable of preparing them for any useful pursuit. Now what?
Stop new foreign-born labour in selected areas. The main reason why blue collar workers enjoyed a 3.8% pay rise in real terms, for the first time since 1979, was because Trump held up 600K green cards. It's about tighter labour markets. Joe Biden has been trying to accomplish the same- the only problem is that his default is to support the NLRB, rather than the far more effective use of moderating labour supply- a fundamentally sound market-based solution.
On education, America needs to switch to a Graduate Contributions Scheme. Part of this would be using actuarial tables of future earnings to establish thresholds for repayment. Oil Engineer? Start repaying at $40K. History of Medicine grad? You start repaying at $5K. Also, hold institutions accountable financially for shortfalls in future earnings. The sector needs to shrink and I can't think of a better day to do it than by penalising those who seduce young people with false promises into taking on significant amounts of debt.
First, get government out of secondary education. Problem solves itself in relatively short order. Oh, and explain cost/benefit analysis to HS Juniors.
I do agree with you on this one, but there is a deeper issue which is more important than market or public provision. Choice. Simply put, the ability of parents to select the school of their choice from within their catchment area is more important than who provides the service.
Back in the days of the QC forum their was a commenter who went by the alias of Gogamba (or something like that). He did an individualised analysis of schools in one major American democratic stronghold. He found two schools barely separated. They had the same constituency. The same SEC of students. Everything was the same, apart from the results and the amount of money spent on the two public schools. The academically failing school was getting twice as much per student and the one which was succeeding.
Hence choice. Personally, I think that politicians and educators need to get a lot more honest with parents about what makes the difference between success and failure. 80% of all enrichment activity can be achieved with two simple rules. 30 mins spent with kids each night on reading activities in the early years, and 30 minutes spent later on making sure they do their consolidation homework. Everything else is frills, with little value.
The only thing is that every other parent in the school that you choose has to do the same thing- otherwise the teachers spend most of their time trying to catch up the four or five kids who, through no fault of their own are stuck behind the curve. Money does matter- but only insofar as it allows parents to buy their kids into peer groups where the parents have done the work.
Here's my point. More honesty with parents automatically improves the results- when they know what matters, a higher percentage will do it. We should also make getting the best choices contingent upon doing the due dlligence- this also would improve results. The other thing that matters is training in classroom practice. It's why London schools are killing it to the extent that it throws the whole subject of racial IQ gaps into serious doubts.
https://www.the74million.org/article/pondiscio-i-just-wrote-a-book-about-success-academy-charter-schools-it-does-not-support-your-preferred-narrative-i-hope-you-hate-it/
Choice, aka competition, is a wonderful antidote to mediocrity. The argument is that it will leave those who don’t care in the dust. The counter argument is that they are already in the dust and why should others get dragged down with them? Some left behind may even be inspired to catch up.
As you note, this is not a money issue and never has been. By localizing education there is an opportunity to drastically reduce the overhead of Big Government and better use less funds to greater effect.
Government and unions are strongly opposed.
One thing the Victorians were very good at (and one thing we've lost) was supporting and lionising engineers. People like Brunel and Telford were literally heros.They didn't have the prejudice against physical skills that seems to pertain nowadays. You mention doctors but for certain medical areas both AI and dogs are better. Scientists are heavily constrained by ideology and always have been. In brief it is not neo-libralism that is the issue but the failure to eliminate elite attitudes.
I'm not sure these can even be fully eliminated but the denegration of craft skills is more likely to be significant. This does not mean the leftist/communist drivel but a an appreciation and valuation of the skills displayed by engineers and technicians.
I re-watched The Dam Busters last night. Talk about quirky little jury rigs to get the job done! The West lost something vital when it stopped worshipping the likes of Barnes Wallis and Frank Whittle.
There's a paradox as you say. I'm not certain what we mean by 'closed' vs. 'open', and 'multi-cultural societies.' Think about Central and Eastern Europe before and between the World Wars. An ethnic patchwork of Slavs, Germans and Jews, some Romani here and there, and in the Balkans various Muslims as well. As long as the various imperial governments -- in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Istanbul were strong, the cultural balances underneath them were stable, and the seams which held the patchworks together held, and there was peace within open systems. But if for whatever reason the stitches start to come apart, then fear and panic quickly set into each of the herds, and the 'sheep' stampede.
Modern liberalism assumes that 'open cultures' are good, because they allow each individual to choose among many options. .But how free are we really to 'choose', and how much are we still creatures of our own local culture? In time of threat -- especially a novel, unstudied parasitic threat -- does the panic make us want to circle our wagons and defend? (Apologies for mixed metaphors).
Great examples! Another would be the Middle East. The historically illiterate would place all the blame on the colonial powers, and there can be little doubt that they exacerbated the preceding problem- the Ottoman Caliphate transferred disparate and culturally incompatible peoples into villages next door to each other for centuries. The removal of the centralising power meant that sectarianism was sure to follow.
I think we can afford to somewhat more optimistic about the West- with certain provisos. The melting pot philosophy was extraordinarily successful at forging a unifying bond of national identity across in-groups. The problem is that modern multiculturalism- with its penchant for cultural relativism and the belief that assimilation is an affront against supposedly immutable characteristics of culture (which quite rightly should be the most mutable thing in the world, given how much 'cultural appropriation' has contributed to human progress)- picks at the very fabric of this incredibly valuable quilt of human experience. In other words, they destroy the power of the culturally centralising force.
Plus, it's worth noting that the populism only awakens during period of excessive migration and is only activated by economic downturns. If the neoliberals hadn't sold out the American blue collar class, and Congress hadn't bailed out finance at American taxpayers expense, with most politicians of the Left abandoning their traditional responsibility of defending labour from the depredations of unrestricted labour competition, then its highly likely that the forces of populism would have never reawakened in America.
Niall Ferguson gave a fascinating talk on the subject of populism and its history in America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLEGafuEd4&t=9s
My daughter had a classmate, elementary school thru high school, whose surname was Busa. An uncommon name of no obvious national origin, perhaps. In fact her immigrant ancestors had been Polish, and whatever their name was, unspellable in English, when they landed in America, they decided they would be USA. As you say, the melting pot works based on a positive decision to accept a new primary national identity.
As for 'cultural appropriation' -- there's no paradox in it. It's a cpmtradiction of the meaning of 'culture' to believe that it shouldn't be approproated.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are newer, but they have only come to reinforce the old Jewish narrative. They are the same ideals.
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond races, peoples, cultures) and that are the daily sustenance of our schools, in the media, in our pop culture, at our universities, and on our streets, have reduced our biosymbolic identity and our ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
The Imperial societies are a very good example. I'm assuming that an 'open' society is willing to let outsiders in and benefit from their contribution whilst a closed society will resist or prevent that process. It's a massive over generalization of course because it assumes a measure of stasis and societies are, if anything, dynamic entities.
SATANISM IS A JEWISH CULT . . . SATAN IS A HEBREW GOD.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
Satan is largely a Christian misinterpretation. Seraphim are better understood as forces which are only occasionally embodied for specific purposes. Satan can also be used to refer to a person's evil intentions.
Satan was also used as a conversion mechanism, used to besmirch local elemental spirits and sprites, which were often worshipped animistic religions. This is also why churches are often built upon geometric nodes, because intersections of telluric energy used to give rise to such phenomenon.
SATAN IS A HEBREW GOD.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
“So, remember, every picture tells a story, don't it…” ― Rod Stewart
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/so-remember-every-picture-tells-a-story-dont-it-rod-stewart
_______________________________________________________________________________
The cryptic and archaic emoting of the “anarcho-capitalist” liber-tard-ians, with their badly camouflaged epistemology is a mix of Russian Jew Ayn Rand and pedophile devil worshipper Aleister Crowley, who's Thelemite cult is really the brainchild of pedophile Jew Israel Regardie . . . their transexual Baphomet goat god is a creation of devil worshipping Jew Eliphas Levi . . .
From the Zodiac killer, to the Nightstalker, to Jonestown, to San Francisco . . . it’s the same cult of bloodthirsty, psychotic devil worshipping nutjobs . . . . . . Ukrainian Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Marina Abramović, Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell, and the former mayors of San Francisco, including Gavin Newsome, are all devil worshipping sex weirdos . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/and-joining-the-ranks-of-this-satanic-dead-jew-society-san-franciscos-dianne-fiendstein
_______________________________________________________________________________
Elon Musk gives gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky free Starlink satellite services that you'll eventually pay for, like the nearly $200 billion to Ukraine, laundered by FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (another devil worshipping Jew). It will surely be used for DNC campaign cash; the Democratic National Committee is just a huge terror cell masquerading as a political party.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/zelensky-biden-satanism-war-greed
Crowley was a sad little wanker who managed to gatecrash access to the Golden Dawn, an imposter cult who had somehow managed to gain access to a few genuine lesser arcane works and mingled it with Satanism and Baal worship. There is no such thing as a publicly known Hermetic organisation. Even the grand masons and knights templar borrow heavily from scraps and conjecture. What true knowledge they possess usually stems from half-awakened latents, often half-mad from glimpsing fragments from the Akashic.
Crowley ate his own child's foetus in the mistaken belief it would bring him power. All he succeeded in doing was irrevocably polluting what others refer to as the ti bon ange.
Have you been watching too many weird YouTube videos with robovoices? You seem like a really smart guy whose brain works on overdrive. Most of the patterns you see are a sign of high functioning pattern recognition occurring at a pace which doesn't allow the other side of the brain to evaluate the hypothesis. I'm not saying that some of people you mention aren't incredibly harmful but they either fall into the category of seeing other people as little more than objects or pursue hollow temporal power at the expense of everything that makes a single human being sublime.
The Ukrainian things is a result of group goal fixation. The Cold War Warriors wanted to refight the conflict aiming for a victory, rather than a draw. Group dynamics are pretty shitty to begin with- add fear to the equation and the group dynamic shifts to trying to eliminate the enemy by any means necessary- including leaving a supposed Ally's country in complete fucking ruins. There would have people arguing against this course of action, but they would have been drowned out by the cynic hawks masquerading as pragmatists, when such people usually act as self-fulfilling prophetics for the very scenario they claim to want to avoid. Aggressive stances aimed at deterrence always result in a higher chance of conflict- through the simple mechanic of giving license and volume to the cynic war hawks on the other sides team. The best deterrence is to be strong and do nothing to provoke.
Also, never underestimate a politicians facility to double down and fail to acknowledge their mistake, in the hopes that the status quo power will back them. Of such stuff tragedies are made. You should really watch or read some of Dave Smith's content on Ukraine and other wars. The last time he went on Joe Rogan it was all about Israel, but he's also provided some highly knowledgeable content on Ukraine.
You need to find your inner stillness. Fire meditation is good, as is getting a dog and taking them for long walks
“So, remember, every picture tells a story, don't it…” ― Rod Stewart
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/so-remember-every-picture-tells-a-story-dont-it-rod-stewart
_______________________________________________________________________________
SATANISM IS A JEWISH CULT . . . SATAN IS A HEBREW GOD.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
_______________________________________________________________________________
The cryptic and archaic emoting of the “anarcho-capitalist” liber-tard-ians, with their badly camouflaged epistemology is a mix of Russian Jew Ayn Rand and pedophile devil worshipper Aleister Crowley, who's Thelemite cult is really the brainchild of pedophile Jew Israel Regardie . . . their transexual Baphomet goat god is a creation of devil worshipping Jew Eliphas Levi . . .
From the Zodiac killer, to the Nightstalker, to Jonestown, to San Francisco . . . it’s the same cult of bloodthirsty, psychotic devil worshipping nutjobs . . . . . . Ukrainian Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Marina Abramović, Jewish devil worshipping pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell, and the former mayors of San Francisco, including Gavin Newsome, are all devil worshipping sex weirdos . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/and-joining-the-ranks-of-this-satanic-dead-jew-society-san-franciscos-dianne-fiendstein
_______________________________________________________________________________
Elon Musk gives gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky free Starlink satellite services that you'll eventually pay for, like the nearly $200 billion to Ukraine, laundered by FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (another devil worshipping Jew). It will surely be used for DNC campaign cash; the Democratic National Committee is just a huge terror cell masquerading as a political party.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/zelensky-biden-satanism-war-greed
The ultimate and now all-powerful manifestation of the politics of fear is of course the military-industrial(Pentagon Death Machine)-complex.