Liberty's Torch: social justice

Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Topical And Terribly UnFunny

Presented without comment:

How certain are you that this isn’t going on in your kids’ schools?

Friday, May 17, 2019

"Wokeness" And The Great Labeling

Imagine this, if you will: A human society is getting along tolerably well. It’s not a utopia, mind you. There are still persons who struggle to make ends meet. There are still persons who are excluded from various things for bad reasons. There are still persons who suffer wounds to their dignity from the speech or conduct of others. But it’s getting along, owing to the universal recognition of individuals’ rights, and the willingness of the many to help the less fortunate few when the need arises.

But soft! What’s this? There is a human characteristic, found in everyone who’s ever lived, that’s suddenly become a target for a gaggle of would-be tyrants. (C. S. Lewis called them “Conditioners.”) These persons have decided to label this characteristic, to denounce it roundly and continuously, and to mount a public campaign against it that involves shaming everyone who demonstrates it – or whom they can claim, however implausibly, to have demonstrated it!

Excuse me! Did I imply that this labeling / public crusade involves only one universal human characteristic? My mistake; it embraces a great many of them, all of which are ineradicable.

The campaigners against these things don’t merely afflict small pockets of society. They often seem to own the streets. They are making it impossible to have any sort of public discourse. They attack innocent persons on the basis of…well, you name it, but especially for their choices of words.

These are “The Woke.” They are the scourge of America. Moreover, they’re fully aware of their own odiousness. They flaunt it like a badge of merit.

Just as a plague of thieves would make property impossible, The Woke are making social intercourse impossible. And they’re proud of it.

Yet their principal weapons, which ordinary Americans would never have dreamed could be made into a lethal bludgeon, are verbal: the labels they apply to ordinary human characteristics and inclinations. And to this point, almost no one has adopted the proper countermeasure against them.

Bo Winegard’s essay on The Woke deserves to be cited explicitly at several points. First, Professor Winegard addresses why they do it:

Because it allows a person priority access to crucial and coveted resources such as money and mates, the desire for status is probably a fundamental human motivation. And because that desire is primitive and powerful, many social practices and activities function at least partially to delineate status relationships. These can be analyzed as status systems and operate in predictable ways because, whatever its diverse manifestations, status has some invariant features. Most importantly, it is inexpansible. That is to say, its supply does not grow. Unlike the economic pie, the status pie remains roughly the same across time. Therefore, players in the status game inevitably inhabit a zero-sum world. If one person’s status goes up, then another’s must go down, which explains why people are exquisitely sensitive not only to gains in their own status, but also to gains in other people’s status. Another’s triumph inevitably rearranges the distribution of a finite and precious resource.
Among other things, Wokeness appears to operate as just such a status system. This doesn’t mean that its only function is to adjudicate status competitions; but it does mean that one of its crucial functions is to do so. And it does this primarily by offering a signaling vocabulary which can distinguish educated elites from hoi polloi. The elites who thus benefit offer status to those who defend and legitimize the Woke narrative (the preachers); and they strip status from those who dissent.

Note how closely this analysis of status in Wokeness compares to the Marxist conception of the economic pie. That which is greatly desired but fixed in supply tends to elicit destructive behavior. The Woke certainly produce enough of that.

To sustain the eternal competition for status in Wokeness, the array of verbal cudgels must be constantly expanded and ramified, even if it means a descent into gibberish:

Wokeness provides this kind of sophisticated argot for signalers. Those who preach its gospel often use bizarre concepts imported from postmodern theorists, infamous for their impenetrable prose. Terms such as “hegemonic,” “intersectional,” “phallocentric,” and “queerphobe” are regularly deployed, intimidating the uninitiated and impressing those who wish, in the future, to signal their erudition to fawning fans. Even Woke language for popular consumption is complicated by a quickly changing list of taboo epithets. Is it wrong to say homosexual relationship? Is it all right to say African-American? Will I be berated if I say Mexican-American? These changing prohibitions function well to distinguish elites from hoi polloi because they require devotion, erudition, and the right social acquaintances to understand.

But even gibberish will serve the purposes of The Woke if the gibberish can be made to sound elevated – and threatening. It advances the progress of self-censorship, by which only the certifiably Woke are allowed to speak in an unencumbered fashion.

However, the inevitable consequence of an inexpansible status system is the emergence of a hierarchy: Inner and Outer Parties, with a small circle of Anointed at the summit of the Inner Party and perhaps a Big Brother figure at the absolute apex. Not all who aspire to membership in the more rarefied circles will be permitted to enter them. This will cause resentment in the excluded, and a measure of guilt in some of the accepted:

Status disparities cause resentment. And they often also cause guilt. Those on the bottom of the hierarchy become bitter, disdaining those on the top. And this resentment is a constant source of rancor and instability. Those on the top, of course, are generally happier; however, they often experience discord as well, especially perhaps if they are liberal: Why do I deserve this blessed life? Am I really better than those below me? Both problems—the bitterness of those on the bottom and the guilt of those on the top—can be ameliorated by a powerful legitimizing narrative, a narrative that explains why those on the top deserve their status while those on the bottom deserve their rather less charmed lives and, in fact, should be pleased simply to defer to their superiors. Those who provide such a narrative offer a valuable service; therefore, they are recompensed with approval and applause.

Are these mechanisms eternally stable? Of course not; nothing is. But they might last long enough to destabilize the most successful human society in the history of Man.

Professor Winegard’s analysis concludes with an opinion about the sincerity of The Woke – in my opinion, an excessively generous assessment:

Before concluding, it is important to re-emphasize that many of the people in the Woke status system sincerely believe in social justice. And many of their moral concerns are entirely legitimate….The danger is that the status desires of these preachers will eclipse their moral concerns. (Some, of course, would claim that this has already happened.)

The suggestion that The Woke are sincere about the phantasm of “social justice” runs counter to the available evidence. If there are any in that community who genuinely do care about the persons they supposedly champion – and who are they, specifically? — what are they actually doing about it, other than preening about their superiority to the rest of us? What real-world results, measurable enough to register on some scale of acknowledged significance, can they show us?

The answer is unpleasant: They can show us nothing of the kind. The devolution of Wokeness from a putatively sincere concern with racial and ethnic exclusion, poverty, or other varieties of imagined “oppression,” into a competition for status has made objective gains of the sort others would admire, or at least respect as indications of sincerity, impossible. Today’s Woke are concerned solely with the status their methods can attain for them.

It is a mistake to attribute to The Woke any degree of sincerity or integrity, especially as the “causes” they champion are mere fantasies, without exception.

Of course, the principal concern of anyone who finds The Woke a nuisance, a blight upon civil society, an impediment to constructive discourse and an occasional temptation to murder, must be whether We the Normal and Sensible can do anything about them. The news here is mixed.

I opened this diatribe with the assertion that at the heart of the matter stand certain universal human characteristics, and that The Woke’s crusades are essentially a practice of applying pejorative labels to these things, denouncing them, and castigating anyone who might exhibit a trace of them:

Racism.
Sexism.
A degree of xenophobia.
A belief in biological reality.
A preference for those of similar backgrounds and creeds.
The belief in personal responsibility; i.e., that “fate” doesn’t control one’s destiny.

The implication is that these characteristics can be expelled from our species – that a new and better human being can be produced if we just work at it. It’s the purest nonsense. Yet The Woke demonize these things relentlessly, ironically without admitting to their own possession and exhibition of them.

It’s not quite New Socialist Man stuff, as The Woke lack the power to enforce their wills by law. But verbal beatdowns sufficiently prolonged can affect a man, though the effect is more likely to be negative than positive.

With the exception of the most elevated of their kind – those who know exactly what they’re about and make no pretense of sincerity even to one another – The Woke suffer a defect in the rational faculty: a mental disease. They have made their pursuit of a phantasm – the quest for moral superiority based on a mere difference of opinion – the core of their existence. And no known therapy is effective against it.

They cannot be cured. They can only be detoxified. And as their weapons are verbal, so also are the appropriate countermeasures.

     Dismiss the labels. (“So what?”)
     Ignore the castigations. (“Yeah, sure.”)
     Laugh at the humorless scolds who seek to flail you with them.
     Deny them your respect.
     Smirk, flip a hand, and walk on.

Short of confinement in an institution whose suites have padded walls, it’s all one can do for anyone afflicted with the disease of Wokeness.

No, there is no cure. But there is hope.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Social Justice, Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism...?

It’s been said, and truly, that to insert the word or particle social into a phrase negates its prior meaning. Now that averred socialists are a conspicuous element of our political fracas, it’s time to examine the contention closely. When you start to unpack a political nostrum, you can never be perfectly sure what you’re going to find.

1. “Social Justice”

This au courant phrase has been applied to innumerable political and quasi-political causes. Every such case alleges that one group has violated the rights of another. But how could such a claim accord with objective reality?

Groups do not possess rights. That’s an American fundamental. Neither, it can easily be observed, does a group ever do anything; all actual deeds are done by individuals. So we must begin by asking how the concepts of rights and justice could ever apply to “group rights” or “group action.”

The essence of the “social justice warrior’s” allegation is always statistical. Some demographic exhibits a statistical characteristic the SJW uses to claim “systematized injustice.” Here’s a ludicrous example: Dwarves are under-represented in American legislatures! Going entirely by the statistics, by now several dwarves should have been elected to federal or state legislative positions. Therefore there has been a systematic exclusion of dwarves from legislative office. We must act at once to redress this injustice; there’s no time to lose!

The non sequitur here is the notion that a particular cohort “should” be statistically represented in some other cohort, regardless of any other facts of the matter. In the case above, the question that would put paid to the idiocy is “How many times has a dwarf run for a legislative office?” Similarly dispositive questions can be asked of virtually any other assertion made in the name of “social justice.”

2. “Social Democracy”

The term social democracy is often used to describe various European nations. The underlying intent is to feature such a nation’s welfare-state / “social insurance” provisions as a key part of its political arrangements. While this term is less dishonest than “social justice,” it nevertheless conceals certain important aspects of the situations it purports to characterize.

To call a polity a “social democracy” is to distort the meaning of democracy in a tendentious fashion. Many such nations are notable for how resistant their arrangements are to alteration by popular vote. The recent case of the “Brexit,” Britons’ referendum against the European Union is especially revealing. The heavy majority in favor of leaving the EU has displeased the United Kingdom’s political class. Were the politicians to get their way, the referendum would either be ignored or repeated until it produced a “remain” result – after which no further popular voting on the subject would be allowed.

In a “social democracy,” “democracy,” whether in the pure or modified sense, is not allowed to interfere with the “social” agenda of the political class. “Social” in this application denotes a rationale for an agenda, rather than a reified actuality. That agenda may have originated with the general public, but once the political elite have found a way to exploit it, the public had better not change its mind! The parallels with the American political class’s dislike of and resistance to the Trump Administration’s agenda deserve reflection.

3. “Democratic Socialism.”

Whereas in a “social democracy” the political class must exercise cleverness and evasive maneuvers to avert changes demanded by the general public, the political elite of a democratic socialism need do far less. In such an order, the political class is in irrevocable control of all the levers of power. “Democracy” has been tamed, with the franchise limited, the ballot restricted, and the focus of “elections” narrowed so that a popular mandate sufficiently vigorous to effectuate alterations can never occur. Populist candidates willing to make significant changes to the political order are prevented from running, or marginalized so that they cannot prevail. An effective initiative or referendum cannot occur. The will of the political class is beyond challenge.

No “social democracy” has long resisted the descent into recognizable oligarchy. For the public to vote the “social democrats” into power is to surrender, de facto, all further voice in the nation’s political order. In Thomas Sowell’s formulation, it amounts to “One man, one vote – one time.”

Socialist candidates use the term “social democracy” as an aid to the concealment of their actual intentions. That alone should disqualify it from use by the wise and honest.

4. Summation

The following cartoon from Crozier and Seldon’s Socialism: The Grand Delusion summarizes the points above rather neatly:

Do not doubt that this is the goal of the “social justice,” “social democracy,” and “democratic socialism” hucksters. The process is always characterized as undertaken with impeccable motives and “for the good of society.” It always eventuates in totalitarian control of the nation and the suppression of dissident views. The many historical examples of this are enough to convince anyone...except, of course, those to whom power is everything and “social” is merely decoration intended to deflect public attention from their true motives.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

A Standard Of Non-Standards

The non-standard – a completely subjective, define-it-as-we-go rationale for punishing members of some disfavored groups – is being institutionalized:

     Oregon State University is developing an online course centered on “social justice” that new students will soon be required to take....
     Oregon State’s course, as proposed, would consist of five online modules that include a primer on “social justice efforts in Oregon and at OSU,” instruction on how campus diversity advocates define “an inclusive and equitable university community,” details on how students can “incorporate the pursuit of social justice within their university experiences,” and information on how to “explore opportunities for engagement in ongoing social justice learning.”
     Oregon State is no stranger to social justice training. Last year, the public university spent $11,500 on three racially segregated social justice retreats for students that examined topics such as white privilege, racism and oppression, according to financial records obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request.

Today, a decent American who hears the term social justice should immediately go for his guns. The contrapositive notion of discrimination, which is deliberately kept nebulous and accuser-defined, has become the principal stick with which the Left seeks to beat us into submission. Moreover, there’s no forgiving the “social justice warriors” for this outrageous abuse of justice, for they know exactly what they do:

     As for OSU’s new online course, the modules will remain under development through the fall, an effort led by a committee of students and faculty who have worked throughout the spring and summer to gather feedback on content from campus community members to finalize the finished product, according to Angela Batista, Oregon State University’s interim Chief Diversity Officer, in an email to The College Fix.
     Asked to expand on the “expectations for an inclusive and equitable university community,” Batista said the committee is still finalizing these guidelines, but that in general, “we feel that every student has a role to play in creating and sustaining an equitable and inclusive university community – one that is defined by shared respect for diverse backgrounds, perspectives, ideas and the ways that individuals live.”
     Asked how Oregon State defines social justice, Batista said that is also a work in progress.

I’ve said this before: To define is to limit. A defined offense is one that’s been specified adequately that anyone of adult mental capacity can know whether he’s violated it or is on the verge of doing so. An offense whose occurrences exist solely in the opinions of others is undefined; one cannot know when one is in violation, and so one can be indicted and tried for it to one’s complete surprise.

But wait; there’s more! OSU isn’t interested in educating its incoming students about “social justice;” it seeks to train them, the way one might train a puppy. It wants them to react with unthinking horror and opposition whenever one of their masters points and says “Bad!” This, of course, is a vital necessity for the enforcement of a non-standard: the cannon fodder must not think or reflect; it must charge whenever the vanguard commands it. To achieve this end, the Left seeks to suppress any critical examination of the core concepts under discussion. Therefore, it cannot allow discussion in the Socratic pattern; it must instill reflexes that the reason cannot countervail. Robby Soave at Reason thrusts for the heart:

A student has no method of dissenting during an online training session on the necessity of complying with the university's diversity dictates. Indeed, students might reasonably fear that agreeing with the ideology of the trainers is a precondition of coming to campus.
Students are no longer merely required to grapple with leftist ideas in the classroom—they increasingly must live, sweat, and breathe "oppression studies." It is no wonder that so many of them have developed a healthy disrespect for the principles of the First Amendment. They are being trained—not taught, but trained—to think everything that offends them is a bias incident.

Touché! But even this, as piercing as it is, is incomplete.

I’ve written several essays on the importance of discrimination as a legal right and social corrective. Here’s what I consider the key element of my position:

     There is only one countermeasure to the Left’s steady elimination of every right except the rights to sodomy and abortion. It’s a costly one, one that most persons – even most persons reading this screed – will recoil from, on the grounds of self-preservation.
     We must rehabilitate and reinvigorate discrimination.
     To discriminate is to apply a standard and make a consequent choice. It’s to say “That isn’t acceptable,” and to act on one’s verdict. It’s the ultimate expression of individuality, for no one can set your standards for you but you.

It’s vital that men of good will recognize the magnitude of the threat. If discrimination is assumed to be inherently wrong, then individuality has been criminalized. For individuality consists of nothing more than the possession of individual capacities, tastes, and standards. A society in which discrimination is forbidden, whether by law (as in the case of the odious Civil Rights Acts that effectively abolish private property in industry and commerce) or by social pressure (as the Left seeks to do whenever it accuses someone of “racism,” “sexism,” “lookism,” “ableism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” or any of its other shibboleths) is a completely collectivized society in which the “law” is whatever suits those at the levers of power.

Men of good will determined to remain at all free must not kowtow to such dictates any longer. That’s why I so frequently say, plainly and openly, to the snarling minions of the Left:

I am a racist.
I am a sexist.
I am a lookist.
I am an ableist.
I am a homophobe.
I am an Islamophobe.

     I’ll own all of that cheerfully.
     Try finding someone I’ve actually harmed.
     Come back when you’ve got something new.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Feminizations And Productivity

If you’ve ever had to deal with a significantly large company’s Human Resources department, you’re well acquainted with frustration and pain. HR types – nearly always women – are rule makers and authoritarians, determined to make rules for everything and to get their way despite any and all objections. Their emphasis on “social justice” garbage has become widely known. Jeb Kinnison has some of the explanations in this article:

Information on the staffing of Human Resources (HR) departments themselves is not easy to come by. HR-focused writings tend toward academic Social Justice gobbledygook, and commonly-observed dominance of HR staffing by women and “soft” degree majors is hard to confirm with hard data from individual companies, though there are some statistics collected at the national level in the US. Historically, Personnel departments were staffed by the same type of people one would find in accounting or finance — clerks and paperwork handlers — but the managers tended to be male (as they were for other corporate functions.) As Personnel became HR and HR-specific degree programs began to appear, hiring shifted to people who had studied HR as a field — with simple organizational psychology, benefits law, and concepts of social equity and diversity baked in to new graduates. What did not get studied so thoroughly was economics, technology, specific types of business knowledge, or statistics. HR graduates today are trained in a party line Social Justice ideology which sets them up as enforcers of government edicts on diversity, with less emphasis on ideals of merit and productivity that would promote the competitiveness of the business they are supposedly helping to direct.

Part of my reason for coming to prefer defense engineering to private-sector work was that defense companies tend to be outliers in this regard, as they are in many others. Yes, defense companies must comply with federal regulations – and you wouldn’t believe some of the special ones that apply to defense work – but there’s no substitute for competence in engineering when you’re making weapons (and associated technology) for the people who’ll use them. “Social justice” BS gets very short shrift.

However, I did spend approximately half my career in the private sector, more than half of that as a front-line manager with hiring and firing authority, and I have my (mostly) private collection of horror stories from having to deal with HR. Indeed, two of them made their way into my novels, in fictional form. (If you’re curious, bored, or just need something to read on the Porcelain Throne, the novels are this one and this one.)

Kinnison has a special interest in “feminized” occupations, of which human-resources work is one. His other articles on that enveloping subject are worth your time, as is the one cited here. He makes a particularly strong point about how such occupations tend to feature lower pay and lower demands on their employees: natural repellents for men and natural magnets for women . It’s a subject the great Robert C. Townsend has commented on, as well:

I’ve long held the conviction that it’s much less expensive to recruit from the top of the barrel by paying top wages. Yet many big personnel departments in insurance companies, banks, and the like consciously recruit from the lower half of the barrel to “save money.” If they only realized what they were doing to themselves.

And of course women, by far the more status-conscious of the sexes – of which there are only two; never forget that, Gentle Reader – will seldom hire other women who might plausibly compete with them in salary, authority, and prestige at some later time.

But there’s a phenomenon of particular interest I’d like to see explored, to the extent that it can be examined without, in true Heisenbergian fashion, altering the way it operates: the very one I mentioned in a paragraph above.

When there’s no way to do the company’s work without employees with actual competence, an HR department’s preferences and decrees to the contrary will be ignored, whether overtly or covertly. When a clash arises that has nothing to do with law or regulation, the rebellion can be overt, albeit at the cost of open inter-departmental conflict that can have long-term consequences. When law or regulation, or HR’s interpretation thereof, manage to intrude, the rebellion must be covert and clever...sometimes to the point of a well concealed act of fraud specifically designed to get around the offending rule.

I’d like to collect my Gentle Readers’ anecdotes about such rebellions and what followed from them. Those of you still in the workaday world (and those who, like myself, have retired but retain vivid memories thereof) should submit them, whether as comments to this piece or in email to my Yahoo address (fran -dot- porretto, as if you needed to be reminded). Such a collection, if extensive enough and dramatic enough, could serve as a manifesto for a revolution against HR departments and their "progressive" strangulation of corporate employment in these United States.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Wrapper And Product

Everything in the universe is either packaging, big toys, or meat – From a lapel button

The above might seem mildly disputable – how does one play with a star? – but all the same it expresses an important truth: we “meat folks” are forever unwrapping layers of packaging from the products within them. Sometimes the process is simple and painless; at other times, there are contusions, abrasions, lacerations, and much profanity.

Packaging and its significance are as evident in the field of ideas as in consumer items. It is a truth too obvious for words – nevertheless, words will be used – that you cannot express an idea without some sort of “wrapper.” The most successful polemicists known to history have also been skillful “packagers.” The very best of them learned to make the “package” as valuable as the “product,” such that it was possible to enjoy the “package” – typically, a story or other form of entertainment – even for those who reject the “product” – the ideas enclosed within it.

Consider, among the great fabulists of the century behind us, the late Robert A. Heinlein. Virtually everyone who’s read his stuff agrees on his skill as a storyteller and entertainer. Yet not all of those who admire his gifts agree with his libertarian-conservative sociopolitical outlook, which was evident in virtually everything he wrote. He was so good a storyteller that it was possible to spurn the “product” and “play with the box” instead.

By contrast, many contemporary writers, in every genre, have adopted the stance that all that matters is the “product:” the specific ideas they mean to promote. Some pay a modicum of attention to the “packaging;” others, more heavy-handed, give it comparatively short shrift. Their readers had better get full value out of the “product,” because the “wrapper” is little or no fun.

It is noteworthy that those “product is all” writers are almost uniformly on the political left – mostly the extreme left. Equally noteworthy, they’ve striven to dominate publishing in its entirety – to exclude from the field anyone who differs with their opinions – as well as the various awards given out for works of fiction. And they’ve largely achieved that aim.

In one field at least, the “speculative” genres of science fiction and fantasy, there’s been a reaction against them. They don’t like it. And they’re determined that we shall not pass.

Any longtime Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will already be familiar with the “Sad Puppies” controversy. For those who are unfamiliar: This whimsical name was adopted by a small group of SF and fantasy writers, notable among them Larry Correia and Brad Torgerson, as a label for a counter-movement to the blatant politicization of their field at the expense of good storytelling. Their counter-movement consisted of an attempt to open the venerable Hugo Awards process to a wider range of nominees: nothing more, nothing less. They, and those who have succeeded them as Sad Puppies organizers, merely requested that readers interested in the awards process pay the registration fee that empowers one to nominate for a Hugo, and to submit the titles, writers, and editors they deem worthy: again, no more, no less. For four consecutive years, this has resulted in a list of suggested nominees, which the organizers urged interested parties to read, evaluate, and thereafter consider for nomination: for the third time, no more and no less.

Last year, works aggregated by the Sad Puppies 3 campaign were heavily represented among Hugo Awards nominees. This year, they and the allied but distinct “Rabid Puppies” campaign run by Theodore “Vox Day” Beale, have run the table:

Of the sixteen categories of awards, ten sets of nominees consist entirely of SP or RP suggestions.
Of the other six, only one – “Best Editor, Short Form” – is not composed of a majority of SP and RP suggestions. Even in that category, two of the five nominees are SP and RP suggestions.
The nominees that were suggested by the SP and RP campaigns constitute a broad spectrum of the sexes, races, and political orientations.

Of course, the “social justice warriors” who have previously contrived to dominate the awards process are apoplectic over it. Last year, they managed by “bloc voting” to exclude SP and RP nominees from the awards, giving “No Award” in the five categories that consisted entirely of SP and RP suggestions. What they’ll do this year, we shall soon see.

I write fiction as well as these endless op-eds. I have a “product” – freedom and Christian values and ethics – that’s “wrapped” in every story or novel I write. That’s the outcome of my personal sensibility. I can’t not embed those things in what I write. They inevitably animate my heroes and heroines. But I put entertainment value above all other things; I insist that the story be a good one by my standards: important, absorbing, and capable of surprising the reader. Needless to say, a “social justice warrior” who deems the ideas emphasized to be the one and only point of a story would spurn my “product” regardless of its “wrapper.” A few have written to tell me so.

That’s part and parcel of their sensibility. To an SJW, entertainment as such is valueless; its sole function is to promulgate ideas – and they must be the sort of ideas the SJWs approve. I wrote about this last year:

Fun – that which we strive to attain through the “play impulse” – is one of the keys to a successful life. C. S. Lewis noted its importance in The Screwtape Letters:
I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven—a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.
Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

We play – i.e., we engage in activities that have no deliberate gain in view – specifically because it’s fun. It comes naturally to us to do so, especially when in the company of those we love. One of the great quantitative differences between America and other nations is the fraction of our resources we have available for play. It could justly be said that Americans are the world’s foremost players – no pejorative intended.
Americans are so fun-oriented that we devote whole industries to it, most emphatically including the video gaming industry. We even seek to make our work lives fun, to the extent that might be possible. My favorite source of business advice, Robert C. Townsend, put it this way:
If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

Note the contrast this makes with the SJW attitude:

In this connection, ponder well this essay on the Sturm und Drang besetting the video gaming community. Take particular note of the following highly revealing snippet:
[W]hile watching a video about GamerGate, I clicked on a link to an archive of one of the original articles, “A Guide To Ending Gamers” by Devin Wilson at Gamasutra....
I was scrolling down through the article’s list of strategies for eliminating gamers, trying to keep an open mind, and actually thinking there were one or two somewhat valid points. Then I got to item #11:
We stop upholding “fun” as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game’s relevance. It’s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are “fun”. Let’s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let’s aspire to qualities like “edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even “enlightening”. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to “fun” in games (while avoiding terms like “cool” and “awesome” and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

Clearly, never the twain shall meet.

The message from this year's Hugo nominations could hardly be clearer: the “wrapper” matters. No matter what “product” you’re trying to “sell,” it must be packaged attractively. Thousands of readers of SF and fantasy have poured into the nominations process to state their opinions, and in so doing have made the awards meaningful as awards for fiction for the first time in many a year.

To sum up: You write, and you’re politically to the Left? That’s your business. Please try to entertain us. Otherwise, your idea won’t get any traction. It’s really quite simple. If you insist that your ideas are all that matter, and slough the work of entertaining us while you vend them, you won’t close the sale. That you should turn from that to castigate us for preferring entertainment, whatever ideas it’s wrapped around, to your naked polemics only reinforces the pity we feel for you...which will, doubt it not, be reflected in your sales.

Other articles relevant to this subject:

All are excellent food for thought.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Quickies: The Most Poignant Sentence To Appear On The Web Today

...can be found here:

It's exhausting work, being offended all the time. But is activism actually ruining college kids' mental health? A report on the emotional state of Brown University student-protesters—who suffer from suicidal thoughts, sleeplessness, panic attacks, and failing grades as a result of their advocacy—paints a weirdly alarming picture.

Well, yes. But let’s ask the next question: Are the instructors and professors who encourage this perpetually exhausting condition – usually called “social justice activism” – doing so specifically to produce fatigue and neurosis in their students, or is that merely an unintended side effect? More, do the students seek out these undertakings out of a desire to be exhausted, or do they not know what they do – an easily defended proposition when one surveys the behavior of the young, immature, and coddled?

For my part, I try to avoid situations and phenomena that would exhaust, offend, or otherwise upset me. Perhaps my aversion is a logical consequence of being sixty-four years old, a Certified Galactic Intellect, and the Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web. Or it might be a defensive tactic, to preserve what remains of my sanity. Either way, it puzzles quite a number of my acquaintances, who appear to take pleasure in becoming exercised over the inanities and lunacies of others.

Well, each to his own. (Chacun a son gout, as the French would say.) Now if you’ll excuse me, the voices have just told me it’s once again time to clean and oil all the guns.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Quickies: Writing My Mind

Via Chateau Heartiste comes a remarkable piece I’d not have expected to find in the pages of Psychology Today:

     There are many different ways to test for the accuracy of stereotypes, because there are many different types or aspects of accuracy. However, one type is quite simple — the correspondence of stereotype beliefs with criteria. If I believe 60% of adult women are over 5′ 4″ tall, and 56% voted for the Democrat in the last Presidential election, and that 35% of all adult women have college degrees, how well do my beliefs correspond to the actual probabilities? One can do this sort of thing for many different types of groups.
     And lots of scientists have. And you know what they found? That stereotype accuracy — the correspondence of stereotype beliefs with criteria — is one of the largest relationships in all of social psychology. The correlations of stereotypes with criteria range from .4 to over .9, and average almost .8 for cultural stereotypes (the correlation of beliefs that are widely shared with criteria) and.5 for personal stereotypes (the correlation of one individual’s stereotypes with criteria, averaged over lots of individuals). The average effect in social psychology is about .20. Stereotypes are more valid than most social psychological hypotheses.
     Which raises a question: Why do so many psychologists emphasize stereotype inaccuracy when the evidence so clearly provides evidence of such high accuracy? Why is there this Extraordinary Scientific Delusion?
     There may be many explanations, but one that fits well is the leftward lean of most psychologists....And when something happens where they can’t avoid looking at, they have denigrated its importance. Which is, in some ways, very amusing — if, after 100 years of proclaiming the inaccuracy of stereotypes to the world, can we really just say “Never mind, it’s not that important” after the evidence comes in showing that stereotype accuracy is one of the largest relationships in all of social psychology?
     [Emphasis added by FWP.]

The author of the above has said exactly what I would have said from the evidence he has amassed. He hasn’t just “read my mind;” he’s written it.

This underscores the reason the Left has been so determined to conquer our institutions of supposedly higher learning. It is only from such perches that it can promulgate the exact reverse of important truths whose widespread dissemination, recognition, and acceptance would harm the Leftist cause.

When Antonio Gramsci exhorted his Marxist fellow travelers to embark upon “a long march through the institutions,” he might well have had exactly this in mind.

A dear departed friend once said, offhandedly, that “stereotypes exist because large numbers of people fit them.” To this we can add that left-leaning social psychologists decry stereotypes for exactly the same reason.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Quickies: A Supremely Important Caution

The following comes from Theodore “Vox Day” Beale’s recent book SJWs Always Lie:

     The third thing to remember when undergoing an SJW attack is to never apologize for anything you have done. Do not say you were sorry if anyone’s feelings were hurt, do not express remorse, regret, or contrition, and do not say anything that can be taken as an apology in any way. Just in case I am not being sufficiently clear, do not apologize!...
     [SJWs] don’t care how you feel, they don’t care about your future behavior, they don’t expect to have a future relationship with you, and there is absolutely no chance they are going to forgive you for anything. You are, after all, a thought criminal. When they push you for an apology after pointing and shrieking at you, what they are seeking is a confession to bolster their indictment. They are like the police down at the station with a suspect in the interrogation room, badgering him to confess to the crime. And like all too many police these days, the SJWs don’t really care if you did it or not. They’re just looking for a confession that they can take to the prosecutor.
     This means that every apology, every compromise, and every attempt to find common ground will be viewed as a display of weakness, a lack of confidence, and damning evidence in the case concerning which they intend to prosecute you.
     Therefore, the correct answer to a demand for an apology is always no.
     “Wouldn’t it only make sense if...” No.
     “Can’t we just...” No.
     “Wouldn’t it be fair to...” No.
     “You have to admit...” No.
     “If you would just apologize...” No.
     “Don’t you realize you hurt...” No.

Bravo! This is well supported by the public record. There is no “playing defense” against the social-justice warriors. Their agenda does not include forgiveness, making up, or making nice. Either ignore them entirely or go on an immediate, all-out counterattack. I tend to prefer the latter, but your available time and energy may vary.

Never Apologize.
Never Explain.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The Roots Of Antifamilism

Yes, yes, there I go again, making up words – we pretentious types call them neologisms -- so I can decorate one of my relentlessly boring, hyperintellectual screeds with stuff that will, as Gerard Van Der Leun puts it, “go Boing! in the brain.” Well, Gentle Reader, if you’re a regular, you’re already aware of that little proclivity of mine and have resolved to endure it for the sake of an off-chance at some low-grade humor. If you’re new here...are you sure you’re feeling quite all right? What on Earth brought you here, anyway?

Anyway, a nice fluffy neologism now and then will sometimes allow me to avert a fit of screaming, mug-crushing, soul-curdling rage, such as the one that began to creep over me when I encountered this article:

So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families.

There are your first warning signs: “inequality” and “fairness.” If you weren’t yet aware that you’re about to read a Leftist tract, you’re surely on notice of it by now.

     The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment.
     Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.
     ‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.
     ‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’

So far, not too ominous, though we should remember that when a “philosopher” takes interest in a natural institution – i.e., one that arose before the State and needs nothing from the State to sustain itself – he’s highly unlikely to approach it from a non-interventionist point of view. But we haven’t gotten to the good part yet:

According to Swift, from a purely instrumental position the answer is straightforward.
‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’

There’s that “social justice” chimera again! It appears in many places these days, but it’s indispensable in a tirade about “inequality.” (I did warn you.) But wait: there’s more!

     It seems that from both the child’s and adult’s point of view there is something to be said about living in a family way. This doesn’t exactly parry the criticism that families exacerbate social inequality. For this, Swift and Brighouse needed to sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don't.
     ‘What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.
     The test they devised was based on what they term ‘familial relationship goods’; those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members.
     For Swift, there’s one particular choice that fails the test.
     ‘Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.’

And these...persons are not finished with the family. Everything that occurs within the family is to be evaluated and potentially banned or restricted:

‘The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says.... ‘You have to allow parents to engage in bedtime stories activities, in fact we encourage them because those are the kinds of interactions between parents and children that do indeed foster and produce these [desired] familial relationship goods....We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life....We should accept that lots of stuff that goes on in healthy families—and that our theory defends—will confer unfair advantage,’ he says.

I added the italics in the above.

Take a moment to shudder while I fetch more coffee...no, I think I’ll make it decaf this time.

In Screwtape Proposes A Toast, the incomparable C. S. Lewis mentions an aspect of tyranny that has a long and venerable lineage:

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

(Remember that one of the other traits of the Greek Tyrants was their penchant for enlisting philosophers as advisors. Concerning notable philosophers of that period, Plato believed that infants should be taken from their parents shortly after birth to be reared and educated exclusively by the State. Aristotle was of the opinion that the great majority of men are unfit for freedom – that they are natural slaves.)

The insertion of the State into the family unit to prevent the emergence of “inequality” is a central feature of Marxism. Here’s the brilliant Dystopic on the subject:

     Some time ago, I suggested that Socialism’s greatest flaw is in its inability to scale. Two people who get married share resources, money, and expertise. This operates along principles not terribly different from Socialism. Extend this further. Many families are composes of several generations, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc… and there is a degree of sharing among them. There was a time where one’s retirement plan was the family.
     Indeed, my wife’s grandparents moved in with her parents. They watched the children during the day, contributing what they could (and saving child care costs), in exchange for room and board. But since this was a family unit, it wasn’t accounted like that. It was expected that each contributed what they were able, and took what they needed. Anyone who contributed less than their ability, or took more than their share, would face the wrath of the rest of the family. No matter how Marxist this sounds in theory, it worked well, because the scale was small. Everyone knew everyone else. If someone was slacking or becoming a glutton, it was obvious to all.
     Now, the reason I point this is out is not to sing the praises of Marxism, but rather to point out something many on the Right fail to understand: Marxism regards the Family unit as competition. Indeed, Marxists are jealous of the family, because it operates more efficiently and less tyrannically than Socialism does. Good families stick together and support one another in ways Socialist Revolutionaries could only dream about. We might call families Communal instead of Socialist, because families actually have some chance of working in the long term.

Families, by and large, function well – not because political Marxism is actually a practicable, scaled-up version of family life, but because the bonds of affection, interdependence, and mutual responsibility that join family members are clear, strong, and well internalized. But Marxists will hear no such objection to their schemes. Instead, they jump directly to their endgame: Man must be remade. The New Man will be a natural socialist, incapable of prioritizing his own needs and desires, or those of a loved one, above those of a faceless stranger...or those of the State. If the family stands in the way, then so much for the family! It must go...for the greater good, of course. A commenter to Sara Noble’s Independent Sentinel notes the following:

And this comes at the same time that some Statist flunkies in Buffalo, NY are advocating for public boarding schools. It’s not a conspiracy theory if they really are out to take your children.

What’s that? You’re shuddering again? Well, I do need more decaf.

I wrote some time ago:

What's that you say? You want very intelligent people in government? You, sir, are a hazard to the body politic. What on Earth are you doing at Eternity Road? Don't you know what sort of mischief smart people get up to when entrusted with power? Didn't we get enough of a demonstration from the Clintons? Do you really want a reprise of that disaster?
No. No smart people in office. Please! Smart people are too good at reinterpreting their marching orders and rationalizing their way around moral or Constitutional constraints on their authority. If any of the Founding Fathers was a genius, Thomas Jefferson was -- yet he, most libertarian of them all, violated the Constitution's constraints on federal power several times in his first term of office. He rationalized his transgressions as "necessary" and "practical." So highly did Congress, and the people generally, think of him that he always carried the day.
High intelligence is almost always accompanied by a high opinion of oneself. He who thinks that well of himself is all too easily led to see himself as above the rules that bind others. If you were looking for a capsule summary of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, you have it now.
What Americans should seek in their public officials is men who can understand the duties and limitations of their offices, and will cleave to them unswervingly. This demands a routinier, an "organization man," a dullard. It's not the right billet for a genius. Very bright people chafe at taking orders, even from brighter, more knowledgeable people; they're always looking for an angle, a way to finesse their way out of doing what they've been told.
The duties of an elected official are spelled out in either the Constitution of the United States, or some similar charter subordinate to it. The powers that attach to whatever government his office pertains to are spelled out in a similar fashion, albeit not always with the degree of specificity a libertarian-conservative would like. If those rules and constraints are seriously meant, then we don't want our officeholders looking for ways to chisel around the edges. We want good, solid dullards, schooled from the Bible and the handle of a broom, who'll do as they're told, without the slightest trace of creativity.
We don't often get such men, these days.

Men who style themselves “philosophers” are the most arrogant of all pseudointellectuals. Plato – he who proposed that form precedes substance, that “horseness” is prior and superior to the horse! – is their standard-bearer. But worse by far than their arrogance about their intellects is their lust for power – their ardor for the wherewithal to impose their dictates upon others willy-nilly. The advocates of freedom – the Socrateses, Ciceros, and Ayn Rands among them – are rare and precious.

Of course, no self-nominated “philosopher” would take more than sneering notice of my contempt. He’d meet it with a single, scornfully raised eyebrow and a slight curl of the lip. Never mind that I could easily demolish any of his ideas, original or derivative, that aren’t rooted in the teachings of either Socrates or Christ. He’s a “philosopher,” I’m not, and that’s what really matters.

Now about your children...hm. Those shudders have persisted quite some time, haven’t they? Perhaps you should see your doctor...or your local guns-and-ammo salesman. Present trends continuing, you’re guaranteed to need one or the other soon enough.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

“Microaggressions” and “Triggers”

Ace is on fire:

     We used to call "microaggressions" our personal peeves, but the Social Justice Warriors want to make it sound important (and give it the false sheen of academic rigor), so they called it "microaggressions." Note this word also shifts the party responsible -- it used to be understood that if you had a pet peeve, it was your pet peeve.
     Now comes the word "microaggression" to make it sound like the guy who activated your pet peeve did so voluntarily and, well, aggressively -- instead of it just being you getting annoyed, because you're sensitive.
     For a long time, I've heard Asians, in particular, talking about the particular "microaggression" of asking "Where are you from?" When they say "Fort Lee, New Jersey," the other person says, "No really, but where are you from?"
     Several things here. One, I can see how this would be annoying.
     Two, I don't think many people actually ask the question this way. I think the question is here being deliberately made to sound more stupid than it was actually posed. Like, I'd ask, "I mean, where does your family originate from?"
     But I wouldn't ask that, because now I know it's the Worst Thing Ever to try to find out if the person you're speaking to is of Korean or Chinese, or Korean or Japanese, extraction, because like You Should Just Know Or Something.

This put me in mind of the scene in Clint Eastwood’s movie Gran Torino where Eastwood’s character introduces his young Hmong protégé to one of his friends, an Irish barber. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t, for the love of God, get a copy and see it! It’s one of the best movies of the last few years.

I’m also reminded of a scene in Frank Herbert’s neglected novel The Santaroga Barrier:

     “I’m going to tell you something, sir,” Burdeaux said. “Maybe you can understand if I tell you about something happened to me here. It’s a thing that would have hurt me pretty bad one time, but here...We were at a Jaspers party, sir. It was right after Willa, my girl, announced her engagement to Cal Nis. And George, Cal’s daddy, came over and put his arm across my shoulder. “Well there, Win, you old nigger bastard,” he said, “we better have us a good drink and a talk together because our kids are going to make us related.” That was it, Mr. Dasein. He didn’t mean a thing calling me nigger. It was just like...like the way we call a pale blond fellow here Whitey. It was like saying my skin’s black for identification, the way you might come into a room and ask for Al Marden and I’d say “He’s that red-headed fellow over there playing cards.” As he was saying it, I knew that’s all he meant. It Just came over me. It was being accepted for what I am. It was the friendliest thing George could do, and that’s why he did it.”
     Dasein scowled trying to follow the train of Burdeaux’s meaning. Friendly to call him nigger?
     “I don’t think you understand it,” Burdeaux said. “Maybe you’d have to be black to understand. But...well, perhaps this’ll make you see it. A few minutes later, George said to me, “Hey, Win, I wonder what kind of grandchildren we’re going to have—light, dark, or in-between?” It was just a kind of wonderment to him, that he might have black grandchildren. He didn’t care, really. He was curious. He found it interesting. You know, when I told Annie about that afterward, I cried. I was so happy I cried.”

A place – a community – where you don’t have to pre-censor every word you think to utter, because your neighbors are men of good will and know you to be one too. Wouldn’t you love to live in a society like that?

The Social Justice Warriors are utterly opposed to freedom of speech and thought. In case you’re wondering, you can’t have the second without the first. For reasons beyond the scope of this tirade, our thinking is tied indissolubly to our speaking.

Time was, showing a friendly interest in a new acquaintance’s heritage was considered mildly complimentary. Now that it’s been deemed a “microaggression,” a form of “othering,” there appears to be a general license to take offense at any such inquiry. Granted that there are still many persons who don’t take offense, to avoid unpleasant public confrontations one must pre-classify all one’s acquaintances as “man of good will” or “touchy bastard looking for a reason to take offense” before daring to speak.

That reality is a large part of why I limit my public exposure so sharply. When another person takes umbrage at my innocent remark, I rear up on my hind legs and bellow a war cry. The sequel is often quite unpleasant.

This, too, is part of the SJWs’ agenda: the atomization of American society into discrete, mutually suspicious or hostile groups. Persons who believe themselves surrounded by enemies will naturally look for protectors...and the State is ever ready to step into that role.

Before I close, a few words about “triggers.” This concept is exculpatory: an argument for excusing violence or other forms of disruption on the part of some Leftist mascot-group. The principal ones are, of course, Negroes, women, and homosexuals.

The “trigger” concept is tightly tied to “microaggression,” in that it is almost entirely verbal. The “wrong” word is now deemed adequate justification for an abusive or violent response. It’s not that long ago that the notion would have been laughed out of court: “Incitement to riot is not a justification for riot.” But things have changed rather dramatically, and not for the better.

Present trends continuing, this combination of SJW tactics will drive a redistribution of the American population. There will soon be regions where only one category of persons is accepted: Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, Amerind, conservative, liberal, what-have-you. Subtle but effective techniques will be applied to exclude those “not of our kind.” Those regions will be enduringly on guard against their “different” neighbors. Such a Balkanization will spell the end of the United States as a functioning national society.

This effect is already observable in Britain, France, and several smaller European countries. It’s not making them more peaceful or more politically coherent.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Off The Mishnory Road: Fun And Games

I’ve subjected my Gentle Readers to three “Politically Insoluble” essays. The themes in those essays have kept me going back to the core concept behind them all:

“They say here ‘all roads lead to Mishnory.’ To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.” [Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness]

If we’re going to get “off the Mishnory road” – i.e., if we’re to stop looking to political processes for the restoration of freedom – we must do so deliberately, fully conscious of what we intend.

I gave a few examples of what I have in mind in the last of those three essays. They addressed problems that are normally left in the political sphere as if that sphere did not exist. Were the approaches perfect? Assuredly not. But the driving force – turning away from political processes in the vain hope of solutions from those processes – is the important thing.

One of the keys to an improved future is the conservation of what remains good and worthy today. Once again: don’t think ‘politics’ as you read this. Think rather of what you, the Twenty-First Century’s Robinson Crusoe, would carry away from the slowly submerging wreck of contemporary American civilization before the chance is lost.

For today, I’d like to focus on the critical distinction between the psychologies of Right and Left. It’s one that the media have attempted to efface:

Leftists regard all of life as fodder for political processes and State intervention. No subjects, no activities, and no attitudes are regarded as intrinsically private.
Rightists believe in a private sphere in which politics and the State have no place. (Some Rightists disbelieve in any sphere for State action, but that’s a separate subject.)

In this connection, ponder well this essay on the Sturm und Drang besetting the video gaming community. Take particular note of the following highly revealing snippet:

[W]hile watching a video about GamerGate, I clicked on a link to an archive of one of the original articles, “A Guide To Ending Gamers” by Devin Wilson at Gamasutra....
I was scrolling down through the article’s list of strategies for eliminating gamers, trying to keep an open mind, and actually thinking there were one or two somewhat valid points. Then I got to item #11:
We stop upholding “fun” as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game’s relevance. It’s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are “fun”. Let’s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let’s aspire to qualities like “edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even “enlightening”. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to “fun” in games (while avoiding terms like “cool” and “awesome” and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

That paragraph represents everything that is wrong with social justice thinking in less than 100 words.

Indeed it does...but be sure to isolate the central concept rather than merely turning away in disgust:

The Left abhors fun because it’s inherently apolitical.

It’s worth a moment or two of your time to reflect on why that is so.

Fun – that which we strive to attain through the “play impulse” – is one of the keys to a successful life. C. S. Lewis noted its importance in The Screwtape Letters:

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven—a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.
Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

We play – i.e., we engage in activities that have no deliberate gain in view – specifically because it’s fun. It comes naturally to us to do so, especially when in the company of those we love. One of the great quantitative differences between America and other nations is the fraction of our resources we have available for play. It could justly be said that Americans are the world’s foremost players – no pejorative intended.

Americans are so fun-oriented that we devote whole industries to it, most emphatically including the video gaming industry. We even seek to make our work lives fun, to the extent that might be possible. My favorite source of business advice, Robert C. Townsend, put it this way:

If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

(Granted that not much can be done for coal mining or grave digging. But note how such jobs are the ones most swiftly put to automated techniques.)

The entire point of video gaming is fun, delivered through virtualized adventures in which a gamer can face all sorts of challenges and trials without actually risking life, limb, or loot. The gamer can imagine himself to be an intrepid explorer, a mighty warrior, a brilliant detective, a pioneering spaceman, or whatever. For a few hours he can experience challenges and take risks that his mundane life doesn’t offer. Afterward, he can pop out the DVD, turn off the console, and return to that mundane existence nicely refreshed.

But while we’re having fun, we’re not focused on some Cause. We’re not straining under some heavy load of moral obligation. We’re not engaged in some humorless, self-righteous attempt to remake others according to our priorities and preferences. To whatever extent we ever indulge such considerations, the play impulse shoves all of them to the back of the stove.

Fun and the Left are mortal enemies.

The following tangent should give any thinking American pause for thought:

"There is no room for play in Islam. Islam is deadly serious...about everything." [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]

Islam, like Leftist politics, attempts to absorb all of life into a single, all-encompassing set of prescriptions and proscriptions. Both mindsets demand that nothing be allowed to exist independent of their dictates. Their hostility toward fun is probably the best indictment one could lay against either. Note also that though many, perhaps most Leftists denigrate and deride Christianity, the very same folks never have a word to say against Islam. Cowardice? Perhaps. But the sub rosa recognition among Leftists that Islam is “the enemy of my enemy” should not be overlooked.

Play – the quest for fun — is a bastion of freedom. It’s inherently invulnerable to the attacks of the “social justice warriors.” They know it, which is why they’re so anxious to anathematize it.

The “social justice warriors” would simply love to take over the gaming industries and put them to use in their preferred directions. However, it’s impossible by the very nature of gaming. As they awaken to this immutable aspect of gaming, they will shift to an all-out assault on gaming. If they cannot conquer it, they must destroy it.

Developments such as “GamerGate” point in that direction. They also point to the best countermeasure available to us: laughter.

Laugh at the “social justice warriors.” Exclude them from your gatherings. Ostracize them so completely that they have no one to rant and rave to but one another. Conserve and propagate the fun in gaming. Make it profitable to produce highly involving, fun-filled games utterly devoid of any political, economic, or sociological message. Then play them, independently or in groups, and hold them out to the unaware as among the under-appreciated fruits of freedom and capitalism. Just because they hate fun doesn’t mean we have to put down our toys.

I’ll leave it to others to draw the parallel between gaming and the independent-writers movement.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Decline And Fall

There’s a lot of talk these days about the decline of America, both domestically and on the world stage. I shan’t disagree too stridently, as the indicators have trended downward ever since the late 2008 mortgage crisis and the Bush the Younger Administration’s wholly incorrect response to it (compelled in part, I will allow, by hostile control of Congress.) Yet there are some hopeful signs. My colleague Dystopic highlights one in a recent essay:

Most of the time I prefer to mock Social Justice Warriors. Yes, I know, it’s probably petty, but they aren’t exactly welcoming of debate (you racist!), and so satire is the only real vehicle left to those of us who oppose them. Today, however, I will endeavor to rationally deconstruct their notion of privilege for the benefit of others.
If you read this little gem, Dear White, Straight, Cisgender, Man People: You Are Privileged, you will see the lunacy in all its obscene glory. This is a site that deliberately invokes a sort of childish air, with its hand-scrabble cartoons, preschool fonts and overall nursery-rhyme appearance appropriate for the infantile generation of coddled Social Justice advocates.
To the headline, I can only say: duh. Of course you are privileged. Anyone who is reading this is privileged. You have a computer or mobile device, you probably live in a First World country and there is a high probability you are in the upper 10% of income-earners worldwide. Your skin color and your sex are both irrelevant to that point.

Please read the whole thing. It’s a jewel of its kind.

The sign, of course, is that Dystopic’s reaction to the cited tirade has become the norm. A hefty majority of Americans have simply had it with the “social justice warriors,” their constant whining, their envy-driven demands, their inability to accept themselves as privileged, and above all their insistence on their moral superiority – a state of grace that entitles them to disrupt the lives and affairs of peaceable Americans in the name of whatever Holy Cause animates them this week.

We can’t know what the backbreaker was. It might have been the Occupy “protests.” Or the riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Maybe the crass behavior of the crowd at the first Obama inauguration had something to do with it. Perhaps there have been a few too many public celebrations of homosexuality and demands that it be viewed as “normal.” Perhaps the new trend of Y-chromosome bearers donning women’s clothes, proclaiming themselves to be women, and demanding to be treated as such – never mind the mutilations some of them accept upon their bodies – has finally opened a sufficient number of eyes. Maybe the horde marching down city streets chanting “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” was simply too much for the longsuffering public and its badly tried patience. It might never become clear.

Whatever the causal tale, it appears ever more likely that the “social justice warriors” have embarked upon their final voyage: the decline and fall of their Insanity Movement. Please, God, let it be so.

Revulsion is a powerful social force. When a people finds itself appalled by some practice, it will move against it. If the practitioners are themselves peaceable and orderly, they might merely be marginalized or ostracized. If they practice their habits “in your face,” the treatment they receive from the decent public will be proportionately less gentle. If they go to the extent of disrupting the affairs of others, they’ll be lucky to escape with their lives.

The contemporary Left has composed a strategy out of inverting those responses by the invocation of two words to which it has no proper claim: “rights” and “justice.” The more repellent are some group’s actions or demands, the more likely it is that the Left will adopt them as mascots and embrace their “cause.” The next step is the claim that the group’s members are “oppressed,” with a demand for compensatory action by “society.” Once the group’s status as victims, now the most priced of all political currencies, has been accepted by a sufficient fraction of the Main Stream Media, all that remains is the shouting for insane “rights” and social “justice”...and anyone not deafened by previous episodes of this sort surely hears a lot of it.

However, the artificially inculcated guilt upon which this relies has a finite lifetime. The more frequently the “victim” button is pressed, the less powerful and less prompt is the response. In addition, significant events such as the persecutions of George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson can lower the public’s susceptibility to the stimulus in a “step function” fashion.

My estimate of current public receptivity to the Social Justice Warriors’ demands and tactics is that it won’t take more than one more provocation from them to topple them into the abyss of overwhelming popular contempt... possibly with much worse consequences for their various causes and mascot-groups.

It’s highly significant that the Social Justice Warriors, sociologically, come mainly from the most privileged stratum of American society. Their economic standing is in the top 5% to 10% of the nation. A high percentage of them have college educations. Those that work are almost unanimously in white-collar trades. They are predominantly without a care for their general well-being...even the ones who’ve never earned their own livings.

Ludwig von Mises would classify them as among “the cousins:” they whose living standards and security stem from their clever, industrious older relatives. The more common term for them today would be “limousine liberals.” However, that term also subsumes many of the “idle rich:” the millionaire stars and moguls of the entertainment class. When they make themselves conspicuous, whether in the guise of an “Occupy”-style riot or a gathering of private jets as in Davos, they elicit contempt from the alert and knowledgeable, incredulity from the undecided...and unease from fellow-travelers who sense the hazards to their Cause.

That sense of unease is quite rational, especially given the already low reputations many of the more prominent individuals among them have earned in their several ways.

Let’s publicize such events to the hilt. It’s the best service we can do for freedom in these United States. Besides, shouldn’t the public be made aware of how deplorable are the conditions black transgender lesbian Marxist enviro-nazis must endure, to say nothing of the execrable accommodations at their semi-annual conferences? Some of them have only one iPad to their name – and no private jet! The horror! I mean, what if that were you?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have snow to shovel. (Yes, already.)