If you know or fear that your ideas will not survive debate, and you believe your ideas are exclusively correct and moral, then debate is just a way to destroy the truth.
Remember that progressives always, ALWAYS begin with the first principle that their position is exclusively correct and moral, and that scientific principle begins with precisely the opposite first principle- that we don't know and can only know through inquiry.
This is why interactions between the woke and sane people look so strange. They're completely different realities arguing past each other, like an Aztec priest and a Jesuit missionary.
Excellent essay; sage advice. We really must speak out about the evil enveloping the western world now. We need to break the spell. I used to roll my eyes when I would read someone banging on about the CIA's MKULTRA mind control plans. No more. When authorities demanded that people roll up their sleeves to be injected with poison, they did. When authorities announced that it was acceptable for citizens to hate and discriminate against the unvaxxed, some did. Here's an interesting 2 part article on it:https://im1776.com/the-mkultra-ecology/
The American founders are indeed under relentless attack. In 2007 and again in 2014 I visited Jefferson's Monticello and Mt. Vernon, Washington's home. The difference in the tours was stark, with slavery taking up a good amount of the official tours, the second time around. At Mt. Vernon, as I recall, construction was underway for a monument/garden dedicated to the slaves who worked the plantation. But it was the smug guides at Monticello whose barely concealed disdain and contempt for Jefferson who made the deepest impression. They took great delight, it seems, in tarnishing the great man's legacy.
Discredit the founders, discredit their works. Evil.
Well, people aren't always just 2-D cartoons... Both Washington and Jefferson had slaves, and both felt guilty about it, but both wanted to be wealthy more than they wanted to be without the means of being able to manage their vast amount of land. It was the times, and it was also I guess greed, or rationalization... That doesn't mean they didn't have good things about them as well. We seem lately (probably always) to have lost our ability to see nuance oftentimes. And there is so much Divide and Conquer going on right now, and I suspect similar back in those days, though no way it could have been as insane as right now!
Also I very much agree with the first part of your comment.
"As long as the debate around public health policy takes for granted the assumption that its goal is to minimize illness and death, then inevitably, other values will be sacrificed at the altar of safety."
As for Substack coming under attack, I am prepared. I write all of my worthless sarcastic content on a laptop, use Nanoc to format it and rsync it to my web site, then copy-and-paste it into Substack. But the loss of Substack would be a disaster for those writers (including you) who actually write decent, informative material.
Here's another thought on the whys of the whos and the wheretofores of all things woke and pomo. You and me and most everyone else not a True Believer, we've all asked uourselves if the are stupid or evil or naice idealists or utopians, and how all these intersect and overlap and mix and match and how the observer paradox fits into it. All good debate, which I really wish we could have brought about on the net some 20-25 years ago already since all the woke and other stuff is really just the 1960s/1970s radicals rehashed but co-opted into the existent hegemony instead of in opposition to it as it was then (largely due to those being oppositional then being the gatekeepers to said hegemony in the 1990s).
But what if it's like in Satyricon, at Trimalchio's feast? All surface, all a desperate play-acting for equally void and vapid co-actors, all trying to find that elusive sense of Real-ness or True-osity that is made non-existent by the very search for it?
As they said in earlier times: you can't buy class.
And thus they instead destroy what they cannot attain to alleviate the sense of othering, alienation, that they create within by their search for outwards perfection. Like a tightrope-walker insisting on having a right to succeed in walking a slack line in a high wind, they demand by being ostentatious in claims and said demands, and by projecting righteous indignation against make-believe foes consisting of nothing but their own shadows, in an almost Peter pan-esque ego-trip.
Trimalchio makes himself a fool again and again, but he is a fool with money and therefore power, and no-one wants to cut themselves off from money and power, and when the party is over?
Pfaugh. Cleaning and such is for the slaves.
Right? Wrong? The above popped into my noggin' as a fully formed idea, like Athena being birthed by Zeus, while having luncheon with a psychologist I'm acquainted with, the topic of conversation being the obvious overlap between certain ideas and certain forms of mental illness and how to define what's what.
'Digital authoritarianism' is the danger now, regardless of the reasons - Covid or carbon - given. Amazed at how readily Britons are accepting more and more surveillance in supermarkets. And that there's so little discussion or awareness of the EU's plans. The film by the tech company (Thales) they've commissioned to create a Digital ID wallet makes it absolutely clear the direction this is going: first up, mandatory vaccination. Watch the film. It's three minutes.
I can’t believe that’s the first “feature” on the advertisement. I can see the convenience of most of the features, but “wake up and get your vaccine!” is jarring.
I bet convenience will trap the younger generation. The old surrender freedom for safety. Maybe the middle aged will wake up and resist?
I remember telling a friend that the media in the United States is very much like North Korea. We also have a state-sponsored, corporate sponsored media with only specific information that people get. Except in the US this is coming through many different media sites, so it's harder for people to recognize that it's state and corporate sponsored. And if they do recognize it, they don't have the imagination to think themselves outside the Overton window of ideas that has been crafted for them.
Our thoughts, especially having to do with social issues, need reflection (I think). Our government -corporate media makes sure that wrong ideas don't last long in the town square. Ideas and speakers that don't fundamentally threaten their power are allowed to stay. These speakers, no matter how nonsensical, help to muddy the field of understanding, and additionally make it seem like there's no constricting Overton window.
I don't think she (or he, or they, or zis or zat?) included enough woke buzzwords in that word salad. WTF does "cis heteropatriarchal" even mean? I think the jib jab juice is rotting these these people's brains.
If you want to radicalize the right-- and I sense the woke left does-- if you dearly wish to stoke that thing you call "white nationalism" (which anybody sensible can see is only tangentially, geographically related to whiteness and has nothing to do with phenotype)-- keep calling logic and reason "white" as Prof. Singh does. Let's put it this way: she is no Gargi Vachaknavi.
That is indeed what the American left is doing. They are trying to provoke an incident by someone(s) outraged over the anti-white racism and the two-tiered society they are establishing. This way they can point to their prescient warnings about "white supremacist/nationalist violence that poses a great threat to the homeland" and clamp down very hard on the only people capable of resisting their evil plan.
That so many white people go along with this, lest they be branded "far right bigots" is astonishing to me.
It's a travesty they care so much about what labels are slapped on them. Imagine if everyone stopped caring. All this nonsense would be over in an instant.
I don't understand how most of the minorities aren't screaming about this nonsense because it basically says that the only people capable of acting and thinking like rational and decently behaved human beings are white people. It's like the voter ID BS--black people and other minorities can't manage to obtain an ID for a bunch of ridiculous reasons which all boil down to--they're too stupid and inept to figure it out--insulting! On the other hand--maybe they are screaming and I just don't know it because who's going to tell us?
They are not screaming, because they benefit tremendously from the system. Those who don't seek employment and are content with simply existing are provided with food, housing, healthcare, etc. Those who seek employment/education are granted positions they do not deserve, based solely on their skin color, not ability. Plus, we live in a shameless society. Obtaining wealth (the only thing that matters) is Job #1...no matter how one goes about it.
(Doc Holliday was a gunfighter in the Wild West. I am not him...)
The problem is, eventually we're going to have no choice. It won't be simply resisting an emotional response, it will be resisting our home being confiscated, our families being herded onto trains, and our kids starving.
This is all about Divide and Conquer... There's not supposed to be any sense about it. It's a Psy Op, so it's just the OPposite of anything PSYchologically sound.
I mean, there are a LOT of people willing to act stupid for a small amount of money...
You're right. My mother always said you can't rationalize irrational behavior and you'll go crazy trying. I still find myself trying desperately to make things make sense so my head doesn't spin off.
There is no way, absolutely no effing way, that a serious academic believes debate is white supremacist. Please. Make it stop!
Don't be silly. It's a serious BRIBED academic.
If you know or fear that your ideas will not survive debate, and you believe your ideas are exclusively correct and moral, then debate is just a way to destroy the truth.
Remember that progressives always, ALWAYS begin with the first principle that their position is exclusively correct and moral, and that scientific principle begins with precisely the opposite first principle- that we don't know and can only know through inquiry.
This is why interactions between the woke and sane people look so strange. They're completely different realities arguing past each other, like an Aztec priest and a Jesuit missionary.
Even the most well-meaning people cannot agree:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/why-people-cannot-agree
A fair discussion must follow principles that both sides agree on:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/steve-kirsch-is-challenging-again
There are no unquestionable criteria for being correct/wrong, even "science" cannot provide one:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/freaks-of-science
I'm not sure I'm convinced enough to abandon my position on scientific objectivity.
I feel like at least three, but no more than four, more links to your own substack might do it.
Looking forward to your pointing out where I am wrong! Especially, if you can do it "scientifically"! :D
Sorry, I've got a thing.
I'm sure, you do. :)
Excellent essay; sage advice. We really must speak out about the evil enveloping the western world now. We need to break the spell. I used to roll my eyes when I would read someone banging on about the CIA's MKULTRA mind control plans. No more. When authorities demanded that people roll up their sleeves to be injected with poison, they did. When authorities announced that it was acceptable for citizens to hate and discriminate against the unvaxxed, some did. Here's an interesting 2 part article on it:https://im1776.com/the-mkultra-ecology/
The American founders are indeed under relentless attack. In 2007 and again in 2014 I visited Jefferson's Monticello and Mt. Vernon, Washington's home. The difference in the tours was stark, with slavery taking up a good amount of the official tours, the second time around. At Mt. Vernon, as I recall, construction was underway for a monument/garden dedicated to the slaves who worked the plantation. But it was the smug guides at Monticello whose barely concealed disdain and contempt for Jefferson who made the deepest impression. They took great delight, it seems, in tarnishing the great man's legacy.
Discredit the founders, discredit their works. Evil.
Well, people aren't always just 2-D cartoons... Both Washington and Jefferson had slaves, and both felt guilty about it, but both wanted to be wealthy more than they wanted to be without the means of being able to manage their vast amount of land. It was the times, and it was also I guess greed, or rationalization... That doesn't mean they didn't have good things about them as well. We seem lately (probably always) to have lost our ability to see nuance oftentimes. And there is so much Divide and Conquer going on right now, and I suspect similar back in those days, though no way it could have been as insane as right now!
Also I very much agree with the first part of your comment.
Hey, are you a practicing dentist? If so, do you mind sharing your town? I live in Christiansburg and wonder if you're in my neck of the woods.
"I want more rules to be introduced so that I am kept safe." Otherwise known as "safetyism". Charles Eisenstein wrote about that here:
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/pandemania-part-5
"As long as the debate around public health policy takes for granted the assumption that its goal is to minimize illness and death, then inevitably, other values will be sacrificed at the altar of safety."
As for Substack coming under attack, I am prepared. I write all of my worthless sarcastic content on a laptop, use Nanoc to format it and rsync it to my web site, then copy-and-paste it into Substack. But the loss of Substack would be a disaster for those writers (including you) who actually write decent, informative material.
ooh i must follow sunny singh, shes clearly a genius
Here's another thought on the whys of the whos and the wheretofores of all things woke and pomo. You and me and most everyone else not a True Believer, we've all asked uourselves if the are stupid or evil or naice idealists or utopians, and how all these intersect and overlap and mix and match and how the observer paradox fits into it. All good debate, which I really wish we could have brought about on the net some 20-25 years ago already since all the woke and other stuff is really just the 1960s/1970s radicals rehashed but co-opted into the existent hegemony instead of in opposition to it as it was then (largely due to those being oppositional then being the gatekeepers to said hegemony in the 1990s).
But what if it's like in Satyricon, at Trimalchio's feast? All surface, all a desperate play-acting for equally void and vapid co-actors, all trying to find that elusive sense of Real-ness or True-osity that is made non-existent by the very search for it?
As they said in earlier times: you can't buy class.
And thus they instead destroy what they cannot attain to alleviate the sense of othering, alienation, that they create within by their search for outwards perfection. Like a tightrope-walker insisting on having a right to succeed in walking a slack line in a high wind, they demand by being ostentatious in claims and said demands, and by projecting righteous indignation against make-believe foes consisting of nothing but their own shadows, in an almost Peter pan-esque ego-trip.
Trimalchio makes himself a fool again and again, but he is a fool with money and therefore power, and no-one wants to cut themselves off from money and power, and when the party is over?
Pfaugh. Cleaning and such is for the slaves.
Right? Wrong? The above popped into my noggin' as a fully formed idea, like Athena being birthed by Zeus, while having luncheon with a psychologist I'm acquainted with, the topic of conversation being the obvious overlap between certain ideas and certain forms of mental illness and how to define what's what.
OMG, I can't believe you said cleaning is for the slaves, I am TRIGGERED.
Non-voluntary domestic unsalaried labour is of course the proper term. :)
Careful, now, you might out herd the Word Herder! ;)
lol
'Digital authoritarianism' is the danger now, regardless of the reasons - Covid or carbon - given. Amazed at how readily Britons are accepting more and more surveillance in supermarkets. And that there's so little discussion or awareness of the EU's plans. The film by the tech company (Thales) they've commissioned to create a Digital ID wallet makes it absolutely clear the direction this is going: first up, mandatory vaccination. Watch the film. It's three minutes.
I can’t believe that’s the first “feature” on the advertisement. I can see the convenience of most of the features, but “wake up and get your vaccine!” is jarring.
I bet convenience will trap the younger generation. The old surrender freedom for safety. Maybe the middle aged will wake up and resist?
Close but no cigar! The correct spelling is I believe Fon der Lie-ing.
Why do I start thinking about Ethelred the Unready when reading this?
1905 was also the year that Debussy's first book of Images for piano was published, perhaps as influential in music as Einstein was in physics.
I remember telling a friend that the media in the United States is very much like North Korea. We also have a state-sponsored, corporate sponsored media with only specific information that people get. Except in the US this is coming through many different media sites, so it's harder for people to recognize that it's state and corporate sponsored. And if they do recognize it, they don't have the imagination to think themselves outside the Overton window of ideas that has been crafted for them.
Our thoughts, especially having to do with social issues, need reflection (I think). Our government -corporate media makes sure that wrong ideas don't last long in the town square. Ideas and speakers that don't fundamentally threaten their power are allowed to stay. These speakers, no matter how nonsensical, help to muddy the field of understanding, and additionally make it seem like there's no constricting Overton window.
I don't think she (or he, or they, or zis or zat?) included enough woke buzzwords in that word salad. WTF does "cis heteropatriarchal" even mean? I think the jib jab juice is rotting these these people's brains.
Rudolph, you are running a great site!
Please, also insert links in my comment sections to your excellent articles, whenever applicable!
I am trying to contribute, too. Links can save space and respect those, who don't care to read my stuff! :)
Attacks are coming from all sides:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/what-can-be-done
Sometimes it's difficult to discern:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-fake-world-neo
Or nearly impossible to notice:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/one-article-one-title-a-dozen-lies
Just love your Chesterton quote!
As Einstein said it, "I'm not sure about the Universe!" :)
If you want to radicalize the right-- and I sense the woke left does-- if you dearly wish to stoke that thing you call "white nationalism" (which anybody sensible can see is only tangentially, geographically related to whiteness and has nothing to do with phenotype)-- keep calling logic and reason "white" as Prof. Singh does. Let's put it this way: she is no Gargi Vachaknavi.
"If you want to radicalize the right..."
That is indeed what the American left is doing. They are trying to provoke an incident by someone(s) outraged over the anti-white racism and the two-tiered society they are establishing. This way they can point to their prescient warnings about "white supremacist/nationalist violence that poses a great threat to the homeland" and clamp down very hard on the only people capable of resisting their evil plan.
That so many white people go along with this, lest they be branded "far right bigots" is astonishing to me.
It's a travesty they care so much about what labels are slapped on them. Imagine if everyone stopped caring. All this nonsense would be over in an instant.
I don't understand how most of the minorities aren't screaming about this nonsense because it basically says that the only people capable of acting and thinking like rational and decently behaved human beings are white people. It's like the voter ID BS--black people and other minorities can't manage to obtain an ID for a bunch of ridiculous reasons which all boil down to--they're too stupid and inept to figure it out--insulting! On the other hand--maybe they are screaming and I just don't know it because who's going to tell us?
They are not screaming, because they benefit tremendously from the system. Those who don't seek employment and are content with simply existing are provided with food, housing, healthcare, etc. Those who seek employment/education are granted positions they do not deserve, based solely on their skin color, not ability. Plus, we live in a shameless society. Obtaining wealth (the only thing that matters) is Job #1...no matter how one goes about it.
(Doc Holliday was a gunfighter in the Wild West. I am not him...)
The problem is, eventually we're going to have no choice. It won't be simply resisting an emotional response, it will be resisting our home being confiscated, our families being herded onto trains, and our kids starving.
And they'll still say "see, we told you so."
I think that's where it's headed, too, Guttermouth.
This is all about Divide and Conquer... There's not supposed to be any sense about it. It's a Psy Op, so it's just the OPposite of anything PSYchologically sound.
I mean, there are a LOT of people willing to act stupid for a small amount of money...
You're right. My mother always said you can't rationalize irrational behavior and you'll go crazy trying. I still find myself trying desperately to make things make sense so my head doesn't spin off.
Oh. My. Dog. I go out under the full moon and hooooowwwl for being stuck in a world of complete INSANITY.
We have to find those among us who will twist our heads back the other way now and then...
This is why Dog invented Substack. ;) xo