The Status Quo as Moral Compass

If what we’re claiming is correct, changes in how people explain what’s typical should change how they think about right and wrong. When people have access to more information about how the world works, it might be easier for them to imagine the world being different. In particular, if people are given explanations they may not have considered initially, they may be less likely to assume “what is” equals “what ought to be.”

Amor fati

The Rape Culture of Lower Expectations

Left Party politician Barbro Sorman from Stockholm believes that not all rapes are created equal.  Rapes committed by foreigners are a lesser offense.  Immigrants should not be held to the same humane standard, because they don't have moral agency.

According to the tweet from her deleted Twitter account, "The Swedish men who rape do it despite the growing gender equality. They make an active choice. It's worse, imo."  She later clarified for Sweden's Free Times, "I’m not saying it’s worse, of course not!"

Terrorist Was Kind Of A Jerk

Omar Mateen was toxic, unhinged, unstable, racist, homophobic, prone to talking about killing people, and employed, prior to killing or injuring over a hundred people in Orlando.  A former co-worker left his job to get away from Mateen, and isn't at all surprised at what happened.  Their employer tolerated the man's offenses because he was Muslim, but don't you dare suggest he took up arms for the same reason.

Dalai Lama Defends The West

Tenzin Gyatso, the present incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, the 14th Dalai Lama, and one of the most popular personages in the world, thinks there are too many refugees in Germany.  He thinks "Germany is Germany," it "cannot become an Arab country," and the moral thing to do would be to admit refugees temporarily, with the ultimate goal of sending them back to rebuild.  This perspective is not in line with the pronouncements of Western political and religious leaders.

Unethical Amnesia

Because of the brain's preference for virtuous memories, unethical actions have a tendency to be poorly remembered, and therefore repeated.  The ego's defense mechanisms encourage dishonesty to discourage psychological distress.  The petty blind spots of individuals thus accumulate, weaving a lying web of dissimulation and deception we like to call society.

Soft and Hard Targets of Scepticism

When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.

Russian Firefighting Offer Called "Snide"

In a startlingly vivid expression of slave morality, allegations are being made that Russia's offer to help put out Canada's fires are an attempt to belittle Canada.  While the government deliberates over whether to accept the help, the fire rages on.

Muslims Prize Canadian Freedoms

Canadian Muslims are more proud of being Canadian than non-Muslim Canadians--but young Muslims are more attached to their religious identity than their parents, more likely to value Canada for its multiculturalism and diversity rather than its freedom and democracy, more likely to be pessimistic about discrimination, and more likely to say their faith is more important to them than their nationality.

More female Muslims are wearing the niqab than ten years ago, with the largest growth among young people who have been to university.  In general, Muslims with less education are more likely to wear the niqab, but not in Canada.

Almost twice as many Muslims as non-Muslims think that the father should be the master of the house, and less than half as many think homosexuality should be accepted by society.  89% of Muslims report being satisfied with the direction Canada is going, compared with 56% of non-Muslims.

"Muslim Canadians," itself a discrimination, say they have experienced discrimination more than that reported by the "general population," an apparently undifferentiated mass.  How it could be logically otherwise is unclear.

British Judge Enforces Islam on Nine-Year-Old

A father born in the UK to Pakistani parents has been denied the right to take his son to church picnics, because his ex-wife does not want her son to be confused.  The court order decrees that the father is to provide halal food, and reassure the boy that he is "an ordinary Muslim boy following Muslim rules."

Wholesale lies and deception from Obama in his televised speech to America on terrorism

By diabolical design through its divide and conquer strategy the ruling elite has set up its Trojan horse now being unleashed throughout both Europe and North America to purposely foment civil unrest, violence including terrorism as well as class, racial and religious warfare. That's why when Obama and other Western politicians piously preach their pie in the sky ideals of tolerance and acceptance under the benign guise of multiculturalism, the elite's puppets are actually fulfilling their demonic, treasonous role to destroy America and Europe from within by willfully betraying the very oaths they took to protect their citizens from both foreign and domestic enemies.

First worldwide survey of religion and science

The study's results challenge longstanding assumptions about the science-faith interface. While it is commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists, the global perspective resulting from the study shows that this is simply not the case.

Betrayals of trust helped the rapid spread of human species around the world

Active colonisations of and through hazardous terrain are difficult to explain through immediate pragmatic choices. But they become easier to explain through the rise of the strong motivations to harm others even at one's own expense which widespread emotional commitments bring.

Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet to Death for “Renouncing Islam”

Isn’t it cute that one of the U.S. government’s closest allies has a “morality police.” Where are the Hollywood celebs when it comes to the Saudis? Crickets, as usual.

A letter to friends

Learned and freethinking gentlemen,

Sorry I haven't been in touch.  I took some time away from Maddingcrowdbook in order to hear myself think.  The herd found me anyway.  Even in the mountains I can hear them move.

Here's something of where I've uncomfortably been for the last few months.  I promise I'm not coming from a place of racism, sexism, or (worst of all) conservatism, but--

~~~

I read Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique.  He suggests that evolutionary psychology can clarify the unconscious motivations of certain ideologues, with a certain persistent tribal identification, who assert that healthy Western cultural norms are secretly pathological.

There are good historical reasons for Jews to have led the argument in favour of multiculturalism, and against European ethnic hegemony. 

This means that there actually is an internal coherence and logic to my education in the denigration of Western civilisation (post-structuralism, deconstruction, critical theory, et cetera).  It's not just that it was frustratingly mystical and pretentious; it was wrong, and it was wrong for reasons.

A little psychology and history applied to my lessons makes them appear less like a misanthropic shit test.  This recasts my failure to engage in the bad faith performance necessary for my final papers.  Of course I couldn't get my Honours!  The field of cultural studies wasn't honourable! 

The reasons for that are understandable, and not at all a conscious conspiracy by scheming Jews to undermine our culture, but the whole tenor of my studies is rendered suddenly comprehensible by this transgressive observation--that a significant portion of the people I read in university were Jewish atheists who believed in the moral exceptionalism of the Jewish people.

~~~

So I've just read in MacDonald's book--about academic theory--that immigration policies in the West were changed in the 60s and 70s against popular sentiment, and not by elected politicians, but by government officials responding to lobby groups.  Canada quietly abandoned a policy of favouring immigration from the cultures that constituted it because that's what it had to do to play ball with the UN.  It was not a democratic decision.

All of this is swirling around my head, when the biggest migration since the last world war breaks into the news, and browbeaten Swedes and Germans scramble to welcome refugees who have crossed half a dozen safe countries to get there.  What am I to make of this?

~~~

More conscious of the origins of intersectional grievance politics, I take a closer look at the works of people who got degrees like mine, but actually believed them.  Gamergate, Shirtgate, Elevatorgate; each time the media just repeated what professional victims said about the oppressive patriarchy.  That kind of talk is grounded in opaque poetical political philosophising, not any kind of science.

They have not one, but two Jewish prophets: Marx and Freud.  It's inevitable that the oppressed female proletariat will throw off the shackles of those bourgeois boys with all their unfair power.  It's clear that white people repress how hateful and unbalanced they really are (just like all men want to fuck their mothers) and your vehement denials really just prove how deeply true it is.

This is old stuff, adapted and polished for a new age, but people live and breathe it as gospel truth -- and they know the god they don't believe in is on their side.

~~~

Where have I heard this before?  But of course!

This is the "ressentiment" of slave morality.  Nietzsche was talking about Judaism by way of Christianity, but the psychological calculus tracks perfectly.

Resentment of the powerful leads to a reversal of values whereby the weak and powerless turn their lack of power into a virtue.  Where the nobles before called the things that were not great "bad," the slaves now call the things that are great "evil."  Where "goodness" before was a sense of strength and health and the power to effect one's will in the world, "goodness" in slave morality glorifies being a victim.

Nietzsche was writing about Social Justice Warriors in the fucking 1880s!

~~~

In the service of this narrative of oppression, regressive progressives have abandoned any pretense of classically liberal values.  The academy and the wider public discourse have become actively hostile to the free expression of ideas, to say nothing of facts and reason.  What passes for moral and rational is frequently a barrage of ad hominem, ab absurdo, straw man, and reductio ad Hitlerum arguments.

People think that repeating the received dogma is what constitutes thinking.  How can I be surprised?  Other than the philosophy courses I took, that was the measure of success in my seminars.

Universities are not about reading widely and learning how to assess information, the media is not about objectively reporting the facts and showing all sides, politics is not about defending the interests of the people and the land, and the agora, the marketplace of ideas, has been reduced to the exchange of instinctive feelings, recycled reasons, and decadent distractions.  2500 years of intellectual, political, scientific, and moral development have earned us the privilege of not simply neglecting those gifts, but denying their value. 

Franz Boas said that cultures are relative and can't be compared, which our radicals have taken to mean that only our culture can be criticised, and certainly not praised.  And why bother cultivating an elevated sense of possibility, if nothing we could ever accomplish would be any better than savagery?

Maybe the epidemics of mental illness and addiction and suicide in our society have something to do with the consequences of not honouring our ancestors (something codified as a religious rite by some cultures, but perhaps developing from a naïve psychological instinct for health).  We're the culture that chose to end institutional sexism, to end the most obvious forms of colonialism, to end legal slavery, and instead of pride for our self-overcoming, we accept the blame for inventing these injustices, reversing our accomplishments into a listless and demented ethnomasochism.

~~~

And then...

Those people didn't choose to bomb Syria.  They didn't colonise Algeria.  They didn't deserve it.  So why are some people--my father, for one--seemingly more interested in understanding and defending the motivations of jihadists than in deploring a dangerous ideology?

No amount of cultural relativism makes it not wrong.  Of course we shouldn't meddle with other regions.  Of course our nations have done terrible things in our name.  It's still wrong.  There's no moral equivalency that can absolve terrorism.  It's wrong without the need for a song and dance to lend context and nuance.  That's my culture.

If the people who value liberty, equality and fraternity can be gunned down for peacefully enjoying their way of life, and they shrug and say they probably deserved it, what competition can we hope to muster against a theocratic religion still in its petulant teenage years?

~~~

In Missouri, where the president of the state university was forced to resign after someone made a swastika out of poo, activists began using the hashtag #FuckParis, because those Parisians don't understand the institutional oppression of a townie driving by and shouting the n-word.

In Peterborough, the city where I got my schooling in what turned out to be cultural Marxism, someone set fire to the only mosque. 

Information is Everywhere and Everywhere We are Ignorant

All the resources of this societal form — from primary schooling to telecommunications — are marshaled in this great learning project: to undermine our self-reliance and know-how. Everything is to be provided for us; everything is to be thought for us; everything is decided for us; everything is packaged to amuse us to death. We are being returned to the pre-enlightenment state of Kant’s “self-incurred immaturity.”

Study links narcissism and psychopathy to career success

Earlier studies of the Dark Triad qualities suggest these negative traits often overlap with positive traits associated with career climbing, like extraversion, curiosity, and self-esteem, while other research links Machiavellian tendencies with the ability to seduce and captivate bosses, as well as intimidate co-workers

Armistice Day 97 Years On

There was a moral case made that expected the best of people. War wasn’t opposed merely on economic grounds or because it might kill people from our own country. It was opposed as mass murder, as no less barbaric than dueling as a means of settling individuals’ disputes.

Does religion make kids less generous?

"A common-sense notion is that religiosity has a positive association with self-control and moral behaviors," Decety said. "This view is unfortunately so deeply embedded that individuals who are not religious can be considered morally suspect. In the United States, for instance, non-religious individuals have little chance to be elected to a high political office, and those who identify as agnostic and atheist are considered to be less trustworthy and more likely to be amoral or even immoral. Thus, it is generally admitted that religion shapes people's moral judgments and prosocial behavior, but the relation between religiosity and morality is actually a contentious one, and not always positive."