I really liked this one, H/T mindyourbusiness:
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
April 2
“Drama, combat, terror, numbness, and subservience—every day these things wipe out your sacred principles, whenever your mind entertains them uncritically or lets them slip in.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 10.9
I try to stay focused. Everyday in the office I am subjected to the <em>Steve Harvey Morning Show</em>. It has something called a Strawberry Letter, someone writes to the show about a situation they’re in. Most of these are self inflicted and my co-workers love to comment and discuss these things. Sometimes I get drug in, and I always feel dumber as a result. It is fun to make fun of the idiocy on display, but it’s not good for my character.
April 3rd
“Circumstances are what deceive us—you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 45.6
This is another variation on the ‘I have 2 wolves fighting inside of me” story. I want to get in shape after my surgery, but keep having setbacks. My foot’s bruise is fading and I should start running next week. I am pissed that I can’t run, yet I didn’t even go walking. I claim to want to get in shape, why do I do nothing? I need to bring my actions in line with my desires. As I am typing this, I ate some Snyder Pretzel sticks and drank a Cherry Coke. I am not helping myself right now.
April 4th
“Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and
strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.30
I am not an important person, Marcus Aurelius was. We both try to follow our philosophies and be good people. I am succeeding in this, but I cannot let my guard down and assume that because I have a reputation for honesty, that I can lie when it suits me. I will fight to be the man my wife believes I am and that will keep me doing the things I should do.
April 5th
“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from—let me put you to the test’ . . .”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.24
I am bad at this, i have a bad habit of making snap judgments when I meet people. Sometimes they are correct, but not always.
April 6
“When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me . . . and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.1
I really struggle with this one. My mother is a proud democrat, and I used to think she was a thinking person. I need to remember she started as housekeeping for a hotel and eventually became the manager. She also started as a cashier at a fried chicken/beer store and once again ended up running the place. I think I could deal with it better if I knew she lacked the intelligence. But it is my choice to get angry when she spouts her approval for the current thing, so I need to work on not choosing that. Same goes for other people I have to deal with. I am working on controlling my “angry face”.
April 7
“There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings—arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.14.8
I heard a John McAfee interview where he said “What makes you so sure that out of all the people in the world, your opinion is the correct one?”(not an exact quote) I think I do pretty well at this, I try to leave the possibility I could be wrong. I still have a bias towards freedom and a healthy cynicism about our ruling class. I am very arrogant in my opinions about them, and definitely mistrust them. My mother has some of the most arrogant opinions of anyone I deal with, makes following the advice from April 6th difficult, and she would say the same about me, that’s why anger on my end is unhelpful.
April 8
“When it comes to money, where we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth . . . just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly. But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearance that flashes by without counting the cost.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.20.8; 11
I think of this as another warning that just because you believe it, doesn’t make it correct. My opinion is not necessarily correct. I try to remember this and scrutinize the things I believe and be able to reason my way into them.
Today I bring you Metal Church, most of their stuff is average, but the good ones are really good:
Also, Mike Howe had a unique voice – Badlands
He left for 14 years and came back sounding the same:
Found out last week he killed himself in July. Damn shame.
Sounded good as ever, not fancy, just solid Metal:
Having thought it over, I would rather rage against the tempest than surrender my claims to agency.
Speaking of The Tempest, if you wanted to use a literary reference and were unafraid of being called unoriginal, you could go with a chest of tennis balls.
I am confused.
As tribute:
https://youtu.be/NHAAH8PCnMo?t=57
Damn, that’s a good take.
But it is my choice to get angry when she spouts her approval for the current thing
Give the man a prize. Its hard, but I spend a lot of time at work with Current Thing people. I don’t get angry; I mostly feel kind of sorry for them, locked as they are into the Narrative bubble and going through their days at its beck and call. At Thanksgiving a few years ago, my sister-in-law (who works for a national media corporation) and I were talking about COVID. Mrs. Dean said it was fascinating to watch, because SIL obviously wanted to get into an argument about it, and I just wouldn’t engage. I get a lot of practice at that at work, so it was just second nature to me. At work, I mostly don’t say anything; with her, I would just say what I thought was going on and move on.
I’ve been working on that, but not having much success. I still get a bit agitated when I’m watching something mindless before bed and there’s a commercial for the Samantha Bee show on and she’s spouting her nonsense.
Every time I talk to my mother she wants to talk about the latest outrage, which lately has been COVID.
I snapped the last time she brought it up and called her a COVID parakeet.
A couple weeks after that, she was diagnosed with returning cancer and went through chemo.
She hasn’t tried to talk about anything other than her cancer since.
Damn, dude, I’m sorry to hear that. I remember yelling at my Mom once about something relatively inconsequential during a time between bouts of her cance and it’s one of the worst memories I have. Try not to let what the world says define your relationship with her. just be there for her and be the best son you can. I know that can be difficult when the people you love are so fixed in annoying thought patterns–and sometimes they bear at least as much fault–but do your best to be understanding, I guess.
Thanks, it’s all good now.
I lost it on her when she said my wife wasn’t welcome because she didn’t get the vax, but apparently that’s not a big deal anymore.
I think of this as another warning that just because you believe it, doesn’t make it correct.
If you are honest with yourself, when you look back at what you have believed in the past, you will see that much of it was, well, less than on point. Why should that change?
My boss told me once she couldn’t figure out if I was one of the more humble people she had working for her, or one of the most arrogant. I told her I was probably quite arrogant about my abilities as a lawyer (I am one of the best hospital lawyers in the country, after all*), and it wasn’t hard to be pretty humble about the rest.
*Its a pretty small club, so . . . .
I used to think cops were trustworthy. I actually told my kids if they had marijuana in my house I would call the cops.
I also believed the Patriot Act was necessary and Glenn Beck arguing against it was one of my turning points.
hospital lawyers
No need to chase ambulances since you are already there?
Did you ever finish Arcane?
Not yet. I have some airline travel over the next week, and its downloaded to my tablet. I expect to finish it by tomorrow evening.
Just read one of the recent giants of geology talking about the people he learned under, and one of the best was once asked “Dr. Granger are you sure you’re right?”; and the reply was “young man, I will consider myself a great success in life if I prove to be right fifty percent of the time.”
“In the bowels of Christ I beseech you; consider that you may be wrong…”
If you are honest with yourself, when you look back at what you have believed in the past, you will see that much of it was, well, less than on point. Why should that change?
I’ll push back on this just a little bit. Not that you’re wrong (you aren’t), but our culture takes this wayyyyy too far while simultaneously not taking it far enough.
When truth is difficult to know or requires a foundation to understand, it is all too easy to write it off as unimportant. Especially when people’s worldviews and beliefs and reason for being are built around these hard truths. What once was “we’ll agree to disagree and continue being amicable” has evolved into “you have your truth and I have mine”, which has evolved into “truth is relative and your attempts to assert your truth on my lived experience are violence.” What started as an act of humility, one that admits the difficulty of some issues and the need for community and friendship over doctrinal lockstep transformed into a complete lack of moral fiber, and now into some puritanical enforcement of tokenized pluralism.
Not to go all Winston on this, but this isnt some unforeseen consequence. Liberty without cultural restraint doesn’t beget more liberty. The vacuum gets filled with some form of nihilistic ethos. Flushing the toilet doesn’t fix the fact that somebody shat in the tank.
Liberty without
cultural restraintpersonal responsibility doesn’t beget more liberty.This I will buy into.
I am not religious and not conservative. I think “cultural restraint” is just more “do as I/We say” which is not liberty minded in any way.
Personal responsibility is and has become a meaningless term tossed about to categorize behaviors that were favorable in a different context and culture. It’s more fashion than fundament. Just because you (generic “you”, not you personally) can pay your own rent and feed yourself without suckling on government’s teat doesn’t mean that your actions, behaviors, beliefs, and voting patterns don’t contribute to a culture that falls prey to dependency and oppression.
Perhaps this is my dislike for radical individualism (or my softness for tribalism) coming out, but I’m just as much at odds with the libertarian who lives and thinks like a prog-fascist excepting the love for the state as I am with the prog-fascists themselves. Shared values matter. culture matters. Expecting a warped, cynical culture to appreciate principles of governance that were built from clearer, more optimistic times is folly.
This is why I appreciate some of Winston’s links. They’re full of libertarians who don’t have the slightest clue why they’re losing. They don’t realize they came from a packet of seeds tossed on a sidewalk and that they were one of the lucky few that fell into a crack.
Personal responsibility is more than paying your bills.
Right, but when it gets built out into more than just not being a liability to others, it starts turning into one of those nihilistic ethoses(?) (what is the plural of ethos??).
The point that I’m meandering towards is that, even if we could nail down an acceptable definition for personal responsibility, we wouldn’t even have a start on articulating a reason why it is important to have personal responsibility. The best our culture has had for a century was the prosperity gospel explanation, the American Dream. If you do the personal responsibility thing, you get these results in return. Of course, the American Dream is horseshit, so the motivation is flimsy, at best. Any other utilitarian reasoning I’ve heard has been purely feelings based.
I’m pretty much with Trashy here.
One example that comes to mind is the drug war. There’s no doubt in my mind that the war on drugs is bad, but the more I learn about the toll drug use has taken on hundreds of thousands in our country the less I believe that up and legalizing all of it would end the problem. Drug use really has become a crushing issue and the ills of dependency is not something that is talked about much amongst libertarians.
Drugs:
If you want to commit slow-motion suicide by consuming drugs, I don’t care. Don’t expect me to help you. Don’t expect government to help you. Personal responsibility is coping with all the consequence of your own decisions. If you hurt other people in the process, you will be punished for that harm.
Using the government to stop people from hurting themselves is tyranny that hurts all people. The overall damage of government intervention is far worse than letting hundreds of thousands of people hurt themselves through their own actions.
I agree that it’s relative. My ex-FIL and I were discussing the drug war, as Mustang brings up below. His reply to my asking him why drugs should be illegal was simply, personal responsibility, that if you do drugs you should suffer the consequences of going to jail. I don’t know what particular logical fallacy his “reasoning” would be called, but it wouldn’t have mattered; personal responsibility to him meant his punishing people for doing things he didn’t like.
I would say that it simply doesn’t follow.
Non sequitur?
If you want to commit slow-motion suicide by consuming drugs, I don’t care. Don’t expect me to help you.
There’s the difference. I do care. I do want to help. In fact, I want there to be cultural friction before you even start down that road. Not only because I don’t enjoy the thought of people wasting their lives and killing themselves via addiction, but also because I don’t want the addicts fucking up my community and harming my family.
Where we are in agreement is on the government side of things. Government has no business keeping people from harming themselves. It has no business putting up barriers for vices. However, with free association, I would expect my (voluntary) community to be allowed to tell the addicts to take a hike when they start shitting things up.
Circular reasoning Plisade – drugs are bad and that’s why they’re illegal, drugs are illegal because they’re bad.
I am all in for people in voluntary relationships caring and nurturing each other and setting standards for acceptable behavior.
As for strangers, not my circus, not my monkeys.
And yes, when self-destructive behavior of strangers does harm in my life, then self-defense is acceptable. If it rises to the level of crime, then government should properly administer justice.
To me, “personal responsibility” comes down to accepting the consequences for actions or inactions. Unlike Plisade’s ex-FIL, I consider the natural consequences to be acceptable. For some reason, some people consider them not to be, and therefore they must be imposed by a human or institutional force.
I wonder how much of that is driven by some people needing to know that the punishment has been recorded in some mystical (or literal, on-paper) ledger of The Good and The Bad. Or is it that people really would prefer that others not kill themselves through their own excesses, and deserve to be punished with less severe consequences than would “naturally” occur?
Thanks, JI.
not my circus, not my monkeys
I think this is a very different reason from “I don’t care”. Recognizing (self-imposed or natural) restraints on your control of the situation (it’s “not your circus” ) is quite distinct from not having any care or belief or opinion about the situation.
Ukraine is not my circus. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people dying, only that I recognize that all the caring I could possibly muster isn’t going to change even one person’s outcome over there.
I believe that it is impossible to “care” about seven and a half billion people.
I care about family, friends, coworkers, neighbors — those people within my monkey sphere.
Could you expound? I can think of some potential examples, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.
Personal responsibility has been pushed aside so systemic/identity collective responsibility can bear the burden. That is the current cultural restraint – so just because it isn’t individual doesn’t make it better.
so just because it isn’t individual doesn’t make it better
The point I’m making isn’t cultural v. individual per se. It’s that everything we’re seeing today is a natural consequence of tossing out the prior cultural restraint, baby, bathwater, and basin. The prior cultural restraint wasn’t perfect, but after it was finally shed, we got maybe (at most favorable interpretation) a generation and a half of happy nothingness before the new, more insidious culture creeped in and took over. Chesterton’s fence. There were some things in place for a reason, and when we demolished them, the result wasn’t some ability to frolic through the plains, it birthed a festering counterculture that has now erupted into power.
I think the road from shedding, rather than modifying, cultural “restraints” to narcissism is pretty short and direct.
The prior cultural restraint was individualistic, in my view at least. Personal responsibility was the core, not some in-between of some other older group thing and the crap we have now (where the individual is only glorified as a victim). Community is built upon what we all individually contribute to it, not what we take out. The problem is, people don’t want to live up to that now – they want to be catered to.
Shared values matter. culture matters.
Yup. Radical individualism too often regards everything as transactional, which I think is unhealthy on all levels. I’ve been mulling a post on this, but it hasn’t gelled.
This is why I appreciate some of Winston’s links.
I do, too. I think Winston is probably pretty smart, but has this odd monomania. If he could break out of that, I think he could make some real contributions here.
I’m not sure I understand where individualism turns into radical (and presumptively destructive) individualism.
I’m not sure I can point to an exact definition, but I would say the following are traits of the radical individualist: ignoring the individual and social value of family and community, overfocus on rights without any focus on the connected moral responsibilities, conflation of moral imperative with legal imperative, inability to critique any cultural or social rot that isn’t directly connected to the state.
I think that’s mostly strawmen–not unique to you at all, but frequently cited by many in arguments against individualism. I think that more individualistic one becomes, the more aware he is of the interactions with others and effects.
At the heart of libertarianism for me is individualism tempered by the “tip of my neighbor’s nose.” As soon as we start creating and normalizing inhibitions and infringements on liberty that exceed the “do no harm” idea, we head down a slippery slope toward oppression of many kinds.
In other words, it’s a matter of conscience. If I do something with the knowledge that it will harm someone else, it’s wrong. If I do something with the knowledge that it’s going to annoy someone else, is it wrong? At what point does another’s annoyance justify an infringement of my liberty? That’s a hard sell for me. At what point am I willing to constrain my behavior to live in peace and cooperation with my neighbor? I often do so, out of empathy.
“If I do something with the knowledge that it’s going to annoy someone else, is it wrong?”
I’ve intentionally annoyed people so that it created more peace in my life. When I first started with my current employer, a corporate tool called to emphatically *tell* me not to contact him via email, only via voice calls, cuz he hated email. So I began refusing his calls, letting them go to voice mail, and would reply via email, making sure to include as many relevant embedded pics as possible (our email system then would take forever to load embedded pics). He got the message and was much more civil following.
I see these two:
ignoring the individual and social value of family and community, overfocus on rights without any focus on the connected moral responsibilities,
as being very different than these two:
conflation of moral imperative with legal imperative, inability to critique any cultural or social rot that isn’t directly connected to the state.
This term “rights connected with responsibilities” is a very slippery slope to go down. Rights have no conditional responsibilities. Rights are innate in every human being. I certainly have responsibilities, but my rights do not rely on these. I don’t see anywhere to go on this position, either to the left to the right, without regression towards tyranny and dominion over others.
I can agree on the latter two as issues, but don’t see that these necessarily need to be tied to individualism.
I have the right to own a gun; what moral responsibilities are attached to that?
See, what you are describing to me is a broken moral compass. You can have one of those whether you are an individualist to the bone, or a collectivist of whatever stripe.
I think that’s mostly strawmen–not unique to you at all, but frequently cited by many in arguments against individualism.
I would say that Objectivism is a big target of the “radical individualist” smear. They’re not the only target, but they’re a real life subset of libertarians who seem to have a strong bias towards being self-serving assholes.
Well you should have just said you wanted to rag on Objectivists – I have no objection to that.
Rights have no conditional responsibilities
Strongly disagreed, and that’s why the “conflating moral and legal imperatives” part was in the list.
Well you should have just said you wanted to rag on Objectivists
If only you knew how close I came to writing “I’m just ragging on Objectivists, leave me alone!” ??
If rights are conditional and not inherent, then they are nothing more than privileges that can be granted or revoked at the pleasure of others.
I have the right to own a gun; what moral responsibilities are attached to that?
Merely owning an inert piece of metal? I can’t think of any.
Actually using it? I can think of a few.
What is the NAP if not a moral responsibility that attaches to the exercise of your rights?
If rights are conditional and not inherent
I don’t think inherent and conditional are necessarily mutually exclusive. I think we are probably in general agreement that some rights can be forfeited if abused, IOW, they are conditional as well as inherent.
I have the inherent right to own and use a gun. If I use it to shoot someone (who doesn’t need shooting), shouldn’t I forfeit that right, at least temporarily? Do we really want to say that every inmate in a prison can carry a heater if he wants?
I don’t think inherent and conditional are necessarily mutually exclusive. I think we are probably in general agreement that some rights can be forfeited if abused, IOW, they are conditional as well as inherent.
I have the inherent right to own and use a gun. If I use it to shoot someone (who doesn’t need shooting), shouldn’t I forfeit that right, at least temporarily? Do we really want to say that every inmate in a prison can carry a heater if he wants?
I see them as completely separate. You are not temporarily relieving the prisoner of their ability to own firearms because they did not use a firearm responsibly, you are doing so because they infringed the rights of others. The prisoner would be stripped of the ability to possess a firearm in prison even if they hadn’t used a firearm in their crime (could have been a knife, vehicular homocide, theft, etc) … the two are unconnected.
You are not temporarily relieving the prisoner of their ability to own firearms because they did not use a firearm responsibly, you are doing so because they infringed the rights of others.
I think we are into the hairsplitting part of our discussion. If you are relieving the prisoner of their right (not ability, right*) to own firearms because they infringed the rights of others, does that not mean rights are conditional on not violating the rights of others?
*Since we’re splitting hairs, the prisoner still has the ability to own a gun, since the only reason he doesn’t own one is because he is not allowed to. Not allowing him to do so is denying his right to own a gun.
I think we are into the hairsplitting part of our discussion. If you are relieving the prisoner of their right (not ability, right*) to own firearms because they infringed the rights of others, does that not mean rights are conditional on not violating the rights of others?
I’m going to have to think my way through this formulating a clear response. Off the top of my head, if you are asking if being a free person in a society is conditional on not harming others, then I would agree that this is, or at least should, be the case. I don’t see this connection being made at the level of individual rights being conditional. Punishment against those who harm others is necessary societal construct for communities.
*If we’re going to get this deep into hairsplitting, I would argue that prisons deprive inmates of both the right and ability to own a firearm. A released felon in states where firearm ownership is banned for felons would \be deprived of his right but not ability to own a firearm.
A prisoner is still capable of owning a firearm. Its just that, as a practical matter, they are simply very, very hard to obtain in prison. We say he doesn’t have the right to own a firearm because he is not allowed to own one if he somehow obtains one.
I think we may be circling back to a previous discussion from awhile back about whether rights exist at all outside of a society of some kind. If you are a completely isolated individual, with no contact with other people, sure, your actions are limited only by your capabilities. A person in society is also limited by their capabilities, but there are also limits imposed by the mere presence of other people. The description of what you can (and can’t) do, because of the way it affects other people, is a description of your rights. I don’t think its possible to describe rights, as opposed to capabilities, without reference to other people.
Take the NAP – it means nothing to an isolated individual, since there is nobody to aggress against. The (admittedly circular) description of your rights as whatever you want to do that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others is meaningless if there aren’t others.
Rights are not capabilities. I have the capability to kill every one of my co-workers. I do not have the right to do so.
I don’t think its possible to describe rights, as opposed to capabilities, without reference to other people.
Correct. I’m fond of seeing rights as being based in authority relationships. That’s why I can spank my children, but I can’t spank you or your children.
I’ve never understood the use of “radical individualism” as a pejorative. It’s either individualism, or it isn’t.
So that’s kinda my take – that “radical” isn’t really used to distinguish between individualisms, but to attack individualism in general.
It’s another way of slicing the cosmos and yokels up. It’s an easy way to bucketize the Objectivists, libertines, and other anti-social libertarians to make the broader movement more palatable to conservatives. I say that as somebody who uses the term as a pejorative, but want to be transparent about what I think it really means.
Just doesn’t compute for me. I understand that there are assholes and people who claim to be libertarians because it makes their assholery sound official and principled. But to me libertarianism inherently “gets” that interactions between people are necessary, and often extremely favorable to all parties. Libertarianism encompasses the idea that you live with your neighbor peacefully and in cooperation. Narcissistic assholes, as stated above, pull down libertarianism by their self-association with it.
As to the discussion of rights, I think there are two ways to think about them in the context of negative liberty:
1. Rights are inherent to the individual because of his or her status as a sentient being, and are immutable from person to person.
2. Rights are granted to the individual by the Creator, and are immutable from person to person.
In 1. above, limits to rights may only legitimately be accepted by the individual waiving them, not imposed from outside.
In 2. above, limits to rights may only legitimately be imposed by the Creator or an authority of similar/greater stature.
If you accept 2, and wish to suggest limitations on rights, then I’d say you have to go by what Scripture says about that, assuming the Createor has addressed the subject at all. If I believed in 2., I would not accept any restrictions on my rights beyond what the Creator tells me.
Since I believe in 1., I believe only I have the authority to waive rights inherent to myself, and indeed, might not have that authority at all in some cases–and certainly not to suggest or coerce others to waive their rights.
Just doesn’t compute for me.
This is a really interesting conversation to me because I’m coming from the exact opposite. It doesn’t compute for me that libertarians wouldn’t constantly struggle with narcissists, assholes, and all shades of self-serving people at all times. Libertarianism is a very limited set of ideas, and you can get to those ideas from a number of different and even mutually exclusive paths. It doesn’t surprise me at all that we have whale fuckers and boot headed lunatics and naked dancing fat guys and Ayn Rand and Tom Woods and Milton Friedman and Jo Jorgensen and Nick Sarwark and Nikki and John and a zillion others under the umbrella.
Hey! We’re not anti-social. Good debauchery requires company.
I think [Name goes here] is probably pretty smart, but has this odd [quirk]. If he could break out of that, I think he could make some real contributions here.
FIFY – now it cover almost all of the glibertariat.
I suppose I could go with ‘he/she’ but c’mon, we know there are no libertarian women.
*golf claps*
Not he/she. she + he + it = shit
For me, I believe a healthy life depends crucially on living in a healthy society. As with much, there is a balance to be sought between seeking your own benefit regardless (which might perhaps be radical individualism) and subsuming your identity into a group. When you evaluate everything against your personal benefit, there is an odor of narcissism, and also a tendency toward transactionalism, rather than a relationship that has value in and of itself. None of this is black and white in my mind, its tendencies and patterns.
You can, of course, as an individualist choose to contribute to and participate in a community, so this balance isn’t alien to individualism. But it also isn’t required or perhaps even particularly valued by a dogmatic “radical” individualism.
Personal autonomy has value, but taken to an extreme it is narcissistic sociopathy. Community has value, but taken to an extreme it is totalitarian tyranny.
a healthy society
Part of the reason my storyline in CNO foundered, seriously. Who in our society truly would go out and kill people because of corruption? Those hurt by it – sure; but the rest of our society? Would they really weigh up the deaths and count them as an acceptable cost of purging the corruption that we have up to now shrugged our collective shoulders at?
Now imagine living in a society like Mexico or the former USSR – where corruption is simply part of life, not even something you would really get worked up about.
As often happens, Dean wrote it better than I could have.
Personal autonomy is absolute.
And you can choose to live a very lonely life all by your self.
Or you can choose to cooperate and make compromises. But choosing to compromise is not a limit on your autonomy.
Being coerced into cooperation and/or compromise is absolutely a limit on your autonomy.
Ted Kaczynski was right…
Personal autonomy is absolute.
I think I’m going to agree with that, in the sense of personal autonomy as moral agency. And its true whether people realize or agree with it or not. In this sense, personal autonomy is pretty much value-free; it simply exists, and what matters is what you do with it.
Probably not the right term for what I was trying to get at. I’m going to have think about what i was really trying to express.
If you are not a slave, then you have autonomy.
And you can choose to live with other people and accept limitations on your freedom. Or you can live as a hermit some where outside of social settings.
A government that forces you into engaging with other people is stripping away your autonomy.
Thus we have another avenue into the discussion on fractional slavery.
If you are not a slave, then you have autonomy.
I wouldn’t say that Frederick Douglass had no autonomy when he was a slave. It was severely restricted, and he was brutally punished for trying to exceed those restrictions, but he had it (which is why he was punished). He ultimately exercised it by attempting to, and utlimately succeeding in, escaping slavery.
I wouldn’t say that Frederick Douglass had no autonomy when he was a slave.
I will give you that one.
I’ll go back to my original personal autonomy is absolute.
Slavery is the ultimate infringement on personal autonomy.
I will give you that one.
That’s not how this works. We’re supposed to stake out more and more extreme positions until one of us calls the other a Nazi.
That’s not how this works
Fascist!
So you’ve been to Gilligan’s?
Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain.
Yeah how’d that work out for you Marcus? Did he write that before or during his reign?
I think that was before, and he was not actively seeking it out, but don’t know for sure.
April 6 is a good one. It’s so difficult to generate empathy for stupid people, but it’s so important for your own well-being.
Thanks, Ron!
I can have empathy for someone stupid, if they are humble. If they are stupid and arrogant – I’m never moving off of contempt.
It’s easier for me, when I consider that empathizing with someone (being able to understand what drives them) is the only way to effectively manipulate them into doing what I want.
It’s not about warm fuzzies…
That’s why you were nice to me at lunch!
I knew something was screwy.
Yes, I was trying to manipulate you into drinking some beer and having a nice conversation. As you can see, my plan worked perfectly…
I was trying to explain the difference between empathy and sympathy to someone a while ago. I argued that con artists had great empathy for their victims, because you can’t con someone without understanding the way they think.
Thus, empathy without sympathy ==> Con Artist.
Sympathy without empathy == Social Justice Warrior.
It’s easy for me, considering everyone is stupid compared to me.
/sarcasm
https://m.theepochtimes.com/imf-warns-that-sanctions-against-russia-threaten-to-weaken-the-dominance-of-the-dollar_4374650.html
A bit late, and the hubristic idiots will ignore it.
OT Just the person I needed to share this with. It is cringeworthy on so many levels.
https://youtu.be/gS0VFNLh1UI
Best / worst part is they use the western title. Maybe because that’s what the muppets know?
That is awesome! I’m busting a gut laughing now.
I was watching a movie the other day and realized a technique to take number practice to a new level- CPR!
https://youtu.be/7dnBv84F9is
Of course reciting numbers while doing chest compressions and alternating rescue breathing is one thing, making sure you do it the Japanese way is another. Modesty is far more important than adequate depth of compression so be sure to use a high loft coat to dampen the blows.
https://youtu.be/mbPLfqA6SZY
Bonus points for getting a mannequin that records your performance.
https://youtu.be/5F0i_w5LLuc
In the decades ago when I got my certification it ran a tape. I’m not surprised they run data to a an application of some kind.
I’m a bit surprised for electrical shock the AED also use the katakana ショック. I would have thought would have used the Japanese.
Not that I knew it as I’ve never needed it.
電撃 でんげ°き
electric shock
Wow, there are still leaders that put their own country first instead of buying into the progressive dream of a one-world government. Who woulda thunk it.
April 7 is definitely something I’m working on. I claim to use logic as much as possible, but the simple fact is I’m only human. Logic dictates certain things, but like coding, my logic is only as good as the inputs. It’s tough to recognize that my emotions fill in the holes quite frequently. When dealing with others, I try to recognize that as well. Emotion has more impact on others, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect me, and if it really affects everyone, it makes me more sympathetic to the choices people make, even if they defy my logic.
Or something. Not sure. Need more tea.
Good insight. I think most people think that they are coldly analytical and make rational decisions accordingly.
Which is patently absurd – particularly if you read any history at all. We are emotional animals.
We are very good at providing rational reasons as to why we made a decision after the fact, even if it was an emotional decision at the time.
This. My wife has asked me “why did you make that decision” to try and understand my thought process and there’s been more times then I can count where I have to think really hard and say “I don’t know.” I could rationalize them but frankly, I’d just be making shit up.
Sort of an aside, had an interesting discussion with the men’s group and the leader brought up an interesting take that has helped me communicate with the wife. It’s easy to believe that questions mean my authority is being challenged, but the truth is that she’s just trying to understand so we can work together. Whereas most of my decisionmaking is going on in my head pretty rapidly, hers requires more in-depth discussion of the emotional side. I guess it’s sort of stoic to think about it that way before getting hot and bothered that my head of household status is being questioned.
My dad could never say “I don’t know.” Surprisingly, that kind of messed me up. Now my kids hear me say “I don’t know” and think I’m just plain stupid.
My father was similar- he was never wrong.
To be fair, I can only remember a few occasions where he was. Once he called a hornet a bumble bee, and we haven’t let him live that down. It’s been 20 years. 😀
My dad was often wrong, but it didn’t manifest until years later, after I’d been operating on the assumption that he was right, and failing.
It never occurred to me I was failing because I was taking bad advice. He was not a very wise man, and by the time he was becoming more wise, he died.
Yikes. I don’t know is fundamentally honest. It is where we all start on anything, and it isn’t often that we ever get to a point where we know without a doubt.
Yes, and being fundamentally honest is very important to me.
Most often the wife and I have these discussions when there’s a difference of opinion and we want to make sure we can present a united front. Doesn’t always work out, but it’s worth the effort.
It’s not always applicable to bad decisions. It happens with good ones too. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know, but I guess it worked out.”
Then I spend the next hour in silence doing some introspection about my decisionmaking process and promptly forget all of it when I slip into the nothing box.
I’m reading through the New Testament and there’s a lot of overlap between stoicism and Jesus’ teachings. Almost like there are universal truths that are best captured by spirituality and religion. Wild, I know.
I read and listen to a lot of Buddhist stuff, and there’s a lot of overlap there too.
also Shizmar and Mickey Mouse
Slightly relevant, I was watching the Snowpiercer finale and there was a point where I thought the show was going shit all over spirituality, faith and religion and they didn’t. I was pleasantly surprised.
It’s sad that has become surprising in mass media.
I like to think that I make decisions logically. I also like to spout off my opinions on a subject. I will admit when I’m wrong, but emotions make that process more difficult that it should be. Ask Mrs. Time about that if you ever meet her in person.
The same blinders of emotion and ownership happen when you are going down the wrong path or continue to dig a hole during a project at work, pursuing a deal, or maintaining a relationship.
Being honest with yourself when you have a lot of time, money, and or personal capital invested in something is very hard some times. Ego it the big one to overcome for me.
I had to admit that my dislike of a person was preventing me from getting what I wanted and I had to let the other person win for me to win. My battle with him was about the battle not about my goal.
That last line is a big one for me. It’s pretty easy to get caught up thinking about personal issues to the detriment of the overall goal. I’m struggling with this a lot at work right now because there’s a lot of mistrust and just plain shitty people to deal with.
Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me . . . and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.1
Not sure I agree here with this one. It used to be that people could disagree and still go about our individual lives without interference. After witnessing the lockdowns, threats, curfews, etc. over the past two years, it strikes me as extremely naïve to think that those “stricken with evil” can do us no harm.
If we’re talking about stoicism, feeling the need to cooperate with relatives is just as biased as feeling anger. I’m no longer voluntarily associating with those who are trying to destroy everything that I value. Blood relation or not. No anger, no feelings, just working towards withdrawal and focusing my energy on what will benefit my life and that of my family.
“it strikes me as extremely naïve to think that those “stricken with evil” can do us no harm.”
I think you need to read in the stoic concept of harm here for it to make sense. He means they can’t force you to do evil or to lose your morals. They didn’t consider harm happening to your body or your job evil, but rather that your perceptions of events make things harmful to you.
I would say this is the hardest stoic concept to accept. Really? I shouldn’t grieve if my child dies? It isn’t evil?
Okay, that makes more sense. I guess my notions of stoicism are rather simplistic. Mainly that a person evaluates decisions and takes actions with a clear head, and that this process is independent from our own feelings and influence from others.
I think it means don’t let your grief knock you off the path. I was reading some passages from Fr. Seraphim Rose this morning and this one stuck with me:
It’s all about your impressions, right?
Wallowing in sadness doesn’t actually improve anything. It just adds an evil to what already happened.
By the way, this series has been great. We all need some philosophy in our lives to keep the brain working and to counter our day to day grind.
Thanks Ron!
Glad you like it.
I recently realized what a nice variety we have here. News, politics, art, literature, fitness, how-to, religion/philosophy, movies, humor. We even have boobs. It’s like a really good magazine.
The price is right too!
I again wonder what our lurker rate is.
How many people absorb the content quietly?
My guess is 2 to 1. I personally know of 5.
Definitely got my money’s worth on the Hillary/Psaki Joemala.
Strawberry pop tart is supposedly in talks to walk and join MSNBC as a talking head.
I hate myself for finding her marginally attractive (way below my weight class, duh). Im with Fourscore in his defense of her- she’s a performer that cant possibly believe the BS she’s handed to read daily. Hence the burnout.
My $0.00 royalty checks don’t seem to be market rate. 😛
Your bill is in the mail.
But put us all in a room, add alcohol, and I imagine we’ll argue about everything.
LP party FTW!
/coffee for Mojeaux
Um… I don’t drink coffee.
Water, thanks.
I was guessing that was the LDS equivalent of alcohol.
Verboten.
A possible US/Ukraine world cup draw. That’s a little awkward.
All Biden Team
Yeah, overall pretty good group draw for U.S. – with England and Iran and either Wales/Scotland (now that gets interesting for the English) or Ukraine.
I’m figuring E or F as the Group of Death.
take a dive or Putin wins
Relevant
LOL!
Dunking on Disney never gets old.
Solid.
Excellent.
Think of them as cautionary tales.
Okay, I know what the whole quote is saying: Don’t sacrifice what you really want for what you want right now. However…
Be careful what you wish for.
I too am not an important person, but I wanted to be at least remembered as an author.
Um, well, yes, they can. I dread going back into an office environment. I traditionally haven’t done well with office politics.
I don’t necessarily think I’m wrong, but I’m willing to consider more sides than the ones I have experience with. I try to be understanding of people’s situations and cut them slack. For example, if someone can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps (which is a ridiculous saying, by the way, since it’s impossible), I have to ask: Do they have seed money? What circumstances are taking up their resources? Have they had help? If they had help, would/could they make better choices? After all, there is such a thing as a bad choice, worse choice, and worst choice.
I just had a Nutty Buddy, which reminded me of this.
Tonio is adamant that you take the goddamned jello
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/toxmq4/stranger_offers_jello_fanatically/
That’s beautiful!
“Orange! Tangerine!”
Wait, what?
Oh, I see. They’ll be destroyed at the Court of Appeals, but are gambling that it takes too long to either draw a compliant map or for the appeal to get to a ruling.
Given that they ignored the lawfully-mandated redistricting process that the voters approved a few years ago, this should be a slam-dunk case but of course, you’re right – judges don’t rule by law anymore. Particularly in New York.
I thought they used a loophole of the redistricting commission not being able to come up with a plan, as the Republican and Democratic sides each came up with separate plans, punting it back to the legislature.
I didn’t hear it described that the process allowed for that. Maybe it does. That would be stupid AF so makes sense.
Aww yea, right there. Don’t stop!
https://www.reddit.com/r/FunnyAnimals/comments/tqpztj/the_pleasure_that_two_qtips_can_provide/
SFW
Legit LOL.
Was afraid that was going to be an earwax removal video.
That’s great!
Ex-wife dragged home a stray cat that one day started making noises and acting weird. We took it to the vet only to learn she was in heat. The vet said to calm her down, I could simulate sex with her using a cotton swab.
I looked so ridiculous with a q-tip sticking out of the zipper of my jeans.
THAT got a solid guffaw out of me. Good job, Tres.
The left really intends to die on this hill.
‘I Look On With Great Horror’: Lightfoot Decries ‘Southern States’ For ‘Villainizing’ LGBTQ Children
“Villainizing”, “protecting from grooming”. “Potayto”, “potahto”.
Arizona Senate Democrats
.@HRCaz press conference today declaring that #TransRightsAreHumanRights after Gov @DougDucey signed two bills attacking Transgender youth yesterday. All Transgender people deserve to be loved, protected and safe from the bullying of politicians #TransDayOfVisibility
Leave the kids alone, ffs.
I just read that most people prefer at least 3 coverings on their bed.
Pretty sure thats a blanket statement tho.
Don’t trust that kind of sheet.
Dammit!
Oh great. Puns. I’m so done with this sheet.
It’s all a sham.
It the corduroy pillows that are really making headlines.
Tres Cool wins the internet.
Are you as turned on as I am ?
No.
In my head Im always hearing it like this.
/tries to think of a good name for a libertarian dating site, only comes up with Lovertarian…
Idk about that. I’ll have to sleep on it.
But duvet really?
Nice…
You would take cold comforter in that.
We’d better quilt while we’re ahead.
Well, since you frame it that way…
When does a joke become a dad joke?
When it becomes apparent.
Stoics tell the best dad jokes. Because they can keep a straight face.
If you want to see a criminal look in the mirror.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about why he calls people who spread vaccine misinformation ‘criminals.’
What a disgusting, unrepentantly evil dick bag.
Because of projection?
The guilty mind finds sinners all around.
In my book, “the vaccine is safe and effective” is misinformation.
In his book, anything that might impede his cashing of the blank check the government wrote him for his little experimental gene therapy is misinformation. Everything about this dude seems like he was written to have been the villain in a Robocop movie. I want to believe its satire.
It is today?
No shame at all.
Ron. Love Metal Church. My introduction to them was The Dark. Still love that album.
David Wayne and Mike Howe both passing was upsetting, to say the least.
What world government dystopia?
Pippa Malmgren, Economist At The World Government Summit 2022
She states her belief that the world financial system is about to switch accounting systems & digital money. Not decentralized cryptos, but centralized CBDCs (central bank digital currency)
I assume we’re all going to vote on the change, right? I keep hearing about how important our democracy is, so naturally the elites will want our input and consent on this matter. I’d hate for democracy to die in darkness because our elected officials (obviously everyone making these calls is elected) forgot to ask us our thoughts on this one little matter.
the world financial system is about to switch accounting systems & digital money. Not decentralized cryptos, but centralized CBDCs (central bank digital currency)
Look on the bright side. You won’t have to file a tax return ever again. They’ll just deduct your fair share from your wallet.
And maybe a little more. Maybe a lot more. The important thing is that you remember it was never yours to begin with. Everything you’ll have, you’ll have it because they let you have it. Until they don’t. Welcome to true socialism fully realized.
I think I’ll go to McCammon and eyeball a piece of property. I’s not what I have been looking for, but it’s in the right location, and it looks like there is room to build a shop.
Adapt adapt adapt!
Also- considering the price of gasoline has pretty much doubled since last summer, I think the appeal of “living out in the country” has faded significantly for people looking at a daily round trip commute of 40-50 miles. I like it down there. It’s not so goddam flat.
Radical Individualism: A guy living in a backwoods cabin completely off the grid.
Narcissistic asshole: A guy that believes he is free to do whatever the fuck he wants without regard to the crowd around him.
(substitute gal/she/her as needed).
The world is full of narcissistic assholes that claim to be libertarians because it justifies their complete disregard for other people. These people make it nearly impossible to discussion libertarian concepts and the subjects of personal freedom and personal responsibility with people in general and even other libertarians on occaision.
“Radical individualism” works well for about some very small percentage of the people. With the right incentive structure, you can sometimes build a functional country around selective liberalism (the more high-functioning you are, the more you free you are; lots of penalties/subsidies enforce the boundaries).
The problem remains that “radical individualism” is unsuited to at least 95% of the population. It is just fundamentally orthogonal to their entire lives. The mere concept “make all of your life decisions for yourself” is anathema, alien, like an eldritch horror unearthed by accident. I say this as someone who probably falls somewhat in the boundary: neither fully high-functioning nor completely dependent on external order. There’s a gradient here, to be sure.
Many apologists for liberalism posit that civil society and external institutions will provide order for the people who need it, but they fail to confront the magnitude of this problem, and their apologetics often seem like cope or cover for the permanent revolutionary character of liberalism. Traditional religion filled this role until a new crop of radicals came along and overthrew it, often with ostensibly liberal reasoning (e.g. the total collapse of religious authority in Quebec, with the preceding period of order termed “Grande Noirceur” by the sackers).
I don’t see any easy way around this, and any way of addressing it involves giving some measure of “purity” away.
Purity is for fanatics and ideologues, a look at their track record should disabuse anyone of the idea that a society built on “purity” is the way to go.
Life requires endless compromise.
“Life requires endless compromise.”
I often lose sight of that, but it really needs to be the basis of all ideologies. If anyone is completely getting their way all the time, it means almost everyone else is completely miserable. The truth is there is no size fits all religion, political ideology or life philosophy. As kbolino says above, to everything there are gradients where some people are perfectly happy with something while some can tolerate it and make it work and for others it maybe an unlivable hell. This includes the sorts of things that people like us believe in.
Everyone understanding the need to compromise is the key to peaceful existence. I feel like we used to live in a society that was remarkably good at it (at least for what one could expect from our species) until the last ten years or so.
The compromises that are necessary go well beyond those that are acceptable in the liberal order.
People are not equal. Even equality before the law is at best an illusion. It has never been achieved, never will be achieved, and the striving for it has more often than not led to the worst excesses of modernity. Hierarchy is natural, ancient, and generally self-preserving, if not foolishly tampered with.
Capitalism is an immense and powerful force. Its results are at times wonderous and at times demonic (sometimes both at once). It can be argued up and down whether we have “real” capitalism or not, but a market economy with no guard rails will be driven by ever baser desires and will tend to reward depravity over discipline.
Most children should not be “educated” in the sense we conventionally understand the term. Public school, private school, home-school, it doesn’t matter. For tens of thousands of years the vast majority of children were farmers and apprentices not scholars. School is at best a false hope for many, a fact which sinks in to at least some extent, and leaves them more broken than had they never been forced to attend it all.
The American Revolution was a mistake, albeit not an unfixable one. The founders were far greater men than perhaps any living in America today, and this greatness of their persons made things work for a while, but they are long dead and their original system full of necessary “hypocrisies” gone with them. We must be led by such “hypocrites” again, and they must cover their tracks better this time. We probably can’t return to ancient monarchy but we can “hollow out” democracy as the liberal sees it, and “freedom of religion” and other concepts besides, as once was the case.
Explain please?
I’m rather tempted to replace mistake with fluke.
It is a fluke in many ways, as France showed about a decade later, but it was also a mistake (albeit a continuation of an earlier mistake, the Glorious Revolution and Cromwell’s Protectorate). Consider:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These are beautiful lies, the devil’s finest handiwork. Jefferson, a man of many ironies, heralded the end of ancient truth and the beginning of the “modern world”. With it came the demystification of gods and temples and the emergent mysticism of equality and democracy.
I have thought of all those things as beautiful and extremely useful lies for some time, but the way you frame it there gives it a really interesting new context. At first glance I think you’re right. That could be seen as the declaration of the birth of modernity. Perhaps our species is simply unable to do away with mysticism. We don’t need our gods to be real, we just need to imagine they’re there – to comfort us.
An historian might chastise me for listing the Glorious Revolution and Cromwell’s Protectorate in the wrong order. I apologize for the error.
We don’t need our gods to be real, we just need to imagine they’re there – to comfort us.
I think it goes well beyond comfort, but this seems an inescapable realization to me as well. We are reaching levels of absurdity, akin to the “Cult of Reason”, not seen since Robespierre walked the Earth. What took the French only a few years to discover has taken us more like 250. Maybe this wasn’t totally inevitable but it has come to pass nonetheless (probability is hard to judge after the event has already happened).
Democracy cannot save us from a reality it led us into. Freedom cannot deliver us from the fruit of its own excess (though we can perhaps escape the consequences, thanks to some of that freedom, for a while). The Gods of the Copybook Headings are right now standing at the periphery of our reality, tearing at the fabric, and we have begun to glimpse their return.
I’m curious kbolino, do you believe there is some sort of system that is objectively good(ish), that people could compromise enough to live under? I’m with you that reason is not a good in and of itself but it’s dependent on how it’s used as a tool and I’m well beyond believing that democracy in nearly any form is going to be able to deliver optimum outcomes. I don’t want to descend into total nihilism. I keep paring back what I believe in since everything seems to really ugly downsides to the point where I think that individual freedom and decentralization of power and resources are about the only guiding lights. As you pointed out, even freedom comes with it’s own risks.
I know doing nothing for fear of doing something wrong can be a very dangerous game as well. You seem like you have put thought into what might actually work, so I’m curious to hear it.
It’s impossible to live backward, and the ancient world really did have lots of faults, but I think the fact that monarchy was the most stable order in human history speaks to the path forward. Not every monarchy is Louis XIV (and even he had his reasons), not every aristocracy is The Portrait of Dorian Gray, etc. If we can reconstruct some semblance of hierarchy within our current system, and that hierarchy serves beauty and truth, even if only grudgingly, we have a path out. I’m not optimistic in the short term but I am hopeful in the longer run. It will take, I think, many iterations before something good starts to emerge. But the possibility is definitely there.
My upcoming article will touch on this, with a quote (well two actually) from Franklin.
Looking forward to it. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the usefulness of the purity in my world view. Both how it can help and how it can impede the goals to make society more like the place I want it to be. If doing things the right way always seems to result in backsliding or our ideological opposites gaining the upper hand, what good is it? My favorite line from one of my favorite movies is in No Country for Old Men right before Chigurh pops Carson.
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
I know it’s said by a villian, but its such a powerful moment and the more time I spend thinking about it, the more I think he might be right.
Reminds me of how much I like Heath Ledger’s Joker line “no one panics when things are going according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying”. The truth in that is scary.
The depiction of Joker in that movie spoke a lot of truth. More than the film is willing to admit. There’s no doubt in my mind how that boat scenario he sets up at the end would go down in real life.
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
The words of a sociopathic narcissist. Nothing is of value except to the extent I benefit from it (for a narcissist’s understanding of benefit).
The use of the rule could be the benefit to other people of having the rule. It could also be the kind of personal benefit that a narcissist would not recognize – honor, dignity, self-worth.
I largely agree with you. However, you have to look at the full context of the situation he’s saying it in. Similar to the Joker mentioned above, the gunman realizes how to exploit a world where everyone else must follow a code and uses it to his advantage. In this case, the man following the code gets himself gunned down and it lets the psychopath continue his killing spree. If doing the right thing results in victory for evil, is it the right thing? Kant would say yes. I would say that Kant is an asshole.
The line is meant to be pondered, not responded to.
The world is full of narcissistic assholes that claim to be libertarians
Why did the name “Sarwark” just pop into my head?
I think he’s dropped the mask and stopped calling himself libertarian. Makes sense seeing as how he’s was about to very hostilely be shown the door if he didn’t do it voluntarily.
Or Ken White for that matter.
Much ballyhoo is made of the “libertarian to alt-right pipeline” but less attention is given to the “libertarian to deep state shitlib” pipeline.
Also see Penn Jillette.
Penn actually makes me sad. He was once so clear headed. Bullshit came along at exactly the time I was starting to question everything. Too bad that’s no longer a part of his philosophy. He’s just another boomer that’s too far blue-pilled to come back. They’d rather defend the fort with no concern whatsoever about whether the monsters are really the ones on the outside or on the inside standing beside them.
The original Matrix is so remarkably self-contained that it seem staggering in hindsight (“suspension of disbelief” around the backstory notwithstanding). Sometimes people stumble into genius and, having no external constraints forcing a particular outcome, fully explore the consequences.
Jillette and the others of his generation are just like Cipher: the steak is fake, they know deep down it’s fake, but pretending it’s real lets you enjoy it, blissfully. If the machines can sustain the fantasy forever, why not stay in it? The boomers are probably not going to live long enough to see the collapse. Hell, it’s probably not even going to be a collapse so much as a slow slide to the third world, like India post-colonization. License Raj, here we come!
Yet those of us who glimpsed what came before will still feel sad, and will still have to watch the widening suffering, and wonder whether it was avoidable.
You really nailed the heart of all of this. I know from arguing with my blue-pilled boomer dad. He doesn’t care about the end results. He really just wants the simulation to last just long enough that he gets to die in it.
I get it. He worked hard his whole life and thought he’d get to live out the rest of it peacefully with the wealth that he carefully and thoughtfully accumulated and put aside. He has no response for when I ask about how it’s going to make life for his grandchildren. The sunken cost fallacy is strong with these people.
They’d rather defend the fort with no concern whatsoever about whether the monsters are really the ones on the outside or on the inside standing beside them.
The Keep.
The premise sounds great and it’s early Michael Mann yet I’ve never heard of it. Is it actually worth watching???
Penn is such a huge disappointment that it’s actually kind of hard to believe.
The only conclusion I can come to is that he was always full of shit.
If I recall, I think he has a daughter who’s gay and is super woke and she convinced him that everyone on the right of Mao is out to burn her at the stake or some such nonsense. I’m pretty sure I saw him interviewed saying something to the effect a few years ago. I can’t find it by Googling it, so it’s possible that I’m making it up.
hahahahahahhahahahaha!
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/infiltrating-america-the-type-93-chinese-assault-rifle/
🙂
Thanks to everyone for the invigorating conversation. I needed it today.
+1
+1 I’ll go along with that!
Id buy that for a dollar!
Yeah, this is good shit.
Sorry to have missed it, work got a little crazy on me.
Concur. The way this crew can go from Dad jokes and sexual euphemisms to a damn fine discussion of stoicism and the nature of rights is wonderful.
Overtime money well spent! Task force to operate moving OVI checkpoint in Montgomery County Friday night.
Ive posted the results of the last couple of checkpoints our local constabulary has set up- 0 intoxicated, but a host of other BS charges (no seat belt, expired license, etc). I’m guessing they’re going with “moving checkpoint” to try and cast with a wider net.
53
47
Hitler. This time its totes Hitler.
Rationalist who wants to believe writing logic-based philosophical fiction. I liked it.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words?s=r
Keeper and Seeker sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g …
Got today’s Wordle in 4 and worldle in 1.
Nice job!
For you.
Oooh, thank you! Few bars in I knew it wasn’t the original, though. It’s more polished. Not sure if I don’t like it because it’s different from what I’m used to hearing, or like it because it’s more polished.
Whoa, flashback.
I didn’t know who did that song, though it seem obvious in retrospect.
#metoo
I’m technically at work so maybe I’ll try the other(s) later.
Quick, somebody ask them what a gallon of milk costs.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meanwhile-the-feds-golf-gaffe
“It’s one banana Michael, what could it cost, ten dollars?”
OFFS LOL