Titania McGrath is a well-known parody character created by Andrew Doyle. Andrew is a smart guy with a great sense of humour who has poked fun at a lot of the ‘woke’ nonsense. It’s worth catching up with some of his interviews. He has sometimes expressed the view that it’s getting harder and harder to write parody because it’s difficult, these days, to come up with something ridiculous enough that hasn’t already been said (in all seriousness) by one of the wokerati.
Sir Roger Scruton (in "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands") on Lacan:
"After a few pages of that, convinced that the erectile penis (the primary object of meaning) under bourgeois conditions is no more potent than the square root of minus one (or maybe minus ego, if the ego is less than one, which it probably is), the reader is ready to accept that the distance between the object = a and the ex-sistent = e is no greater than that between Freud and Fraud."
If a politician uses probability in his argument, the probability that he’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes is large. But I might accept that if the politican really understood the math, instead of just exploiting the fact that his counterpart doesn't.
I usually like Scruton's writing and speaking, or at least what I've seen of it, although, sadly, we'll have no more. I haven't always agreed with him, but what on earth was he trying to convey here?
It is a kind of ironic conclusion to the whole section on Lacan, which starts like this:
"The frame of the nonsense machine was assembled by Jacques Lacan, the cranky psychiatrist whose writings, published in 1966, had an extraordinary impact on the student revolutionaries, with whose cause he publicly aligned himself. Lacan has been described by Raymond Tallis as ‘the shrink from Hell’, words that aptly characterize the practice of a psychoanalyst who would see ten clients in an hour, sometimes while attended to by his barber, tailor or pedicurist, and whose idea of cure was to teach the patients to speak, think and feel in the same paranoid language as their doctor."
What really burns these people up from the inside is the demonstrable fact that white peoples' nations works better without non-white peoples present.
Compare Britain, France, Germany, Sweden of 1965 with today for proof.
What further infuriates them is that they know, instinctually, that the sole reason for any industrial progress in the Middle East and Africa is due to those areas having been under western colonial rule. The pre-colonial societies never managed to do much with their resource advantage over Europe, not to mention having a head-start of half a millennia thanks to the enormous cultural heritage of egyptians, greeks, phoenicians, romans and so on.
While the white races overtook them in a few centuries, despite being resource-constrained and despite constant infighting.
And the cherry-bomb on top of the "anti-racist" cake: 99% of all post year 1500 technology, civilisational progress, humane ideals and humanitarian concerns as well as the ideas of equality before the law and one law for all, democracy, freedoms of thought, expression, art, speech and so on?
Purely due to the euopean peoples (or white races to use american terminology).
The only thing stopping non-white races from achieving anything are themselves - which is why they always try to invade Europe, something which has been a constant since the 7th century. Thankfully, today's rulers in many of the African and Midle Eastern nations are more and more concerned with nation-craft than treating the nation as their personal playground, the way their ancestral tribal chiefs did. More power to them if they succeed - and our loss if we don't shape up and accept that some races cannot co-exist on the same land without what would in essence be a modern version of roman-style military dictatorship, in order to keep the peace between them. Look at Israel and Palestine.
I'm quite certain 90%+ of both israeli jews, israeli palestinian arabs, palestinians and so on want peace and would accept co-existence in the same state under the same laws and rights. Yet, arabs (or their forebears) and jews have never managed it on their own. Only when occupied by other conquereors have they - barely - been able to co-exist. From Ancient Egypt to today. Compare to Sweden and Denmark.
700 years of on-and-off war, and that's just recorded history after the nations proper started forming under the Kalmar Union. Norway was essentially a swedish colony until 1905, and was then dirt poor, not industrialised in the slightest and look at them now! Yet other, non-european nations with the same premises and resources continue to flounder.
Demography is the key. What the woke can't accept is that if you could transfer (let's say by magic make-believe) the populations of Norway and Venezuela, the norwegians would have today's Venezuela up in the top 10 among nations inside 5-10 years, while the venezuelans would have sent Norway plummeting towards rank 200 or so.
Replace swedes and danes with israeli jews and palestinian arabs: apart from destroying the environment and burning all non-jewish/moslem historical artifacts, remains et c, they'd then immediately go to war with eachother. While the danes and swedes, transposed to Israel/Palestine would co-operate to make the mos of it together.
This is what the woke hate: races, ehtnicities, people as individuals and groups are different and they hate that, because then the onus of the hows and whats and whys are upon them, each and every individual of each and every group, not their made-up bgey man they can blame for not getting it right.
I respect the palestinian moslem's (or any other race/culture/ehtnicity/pick you poison) will to live according to his or hers tradition, cultural norms and mores, and religion - in their own nation. Not here, not among my people. Because I demand that my people are extended the same courtesy and respect. When among strangers, defer to their ways and show respect - conversely, strangers who refuse to do so when in your land are to be put out or put to death depending on their crime.
That's the opposite of racism. Accepting and respcting that we are different, and letting different people develop in their own way, in their own place.
Good, fearless comment, Rikard. That many cultures did not have a written language or hadn't gotten around to even inventing the wheel is very telling, too. You might be interested in reading Steve Sailer's blog at Unz Review. He explores some of the topics you've written about here and was canceled for it. Sailer is famous for quipping that political correctness is a "war on noticing things."
Inventing the wheel is a strange one indeed, seeing as it seems so obvious - on the level of hand held tools or fire.
On the other hand, even greeks, egyptians and romans failed to realise the importance of Hero of Alexandria. Imagine if his inventions had picked up steam.
I admit I skimmed a lot of the middle because I'm familiar with most of the concepts, but did you ever explain anywhere what, exactly, the notion of "probability hacking," whatever the fuck that is, has to do with systemic racism?
Is he simply making the not-very-clever assertion that society is a set of biased dice where racial opportunity is concerned?
If so, that's fucking lame, boring, and doesn't actually prove anything. It's just a statement of a postulation. You aren't actually DEMONSTRATING the bias, just DESCRIBING what bias is in principle.
It's like a teenager who just discovered some philosophy cliche like "religion is the opiate of the masses" and swings it around in public like an expensive wristwatch trying to get some woke tail.
I'll try it. "There's this thing called the Hindenburg Uncertainty Principle. You can't see aliens, but you can't prove they didn't make sure you were turned down for a loan. Therefore it is at least as likely that they did as that they didn't until you can prove to me that aliens aren't racist."
Dear Riggery Pokery....I gave you a heart, but honestly, you sound just like my statistics teacher. I failed the course..twice. I got a headache at the second paragraph and by the end it became a full blown migraine.
I think I am allergic to probability......and I don't think I am the only one. Much love, heading for the aspirin bottle now.
in short: be wary
haha - love it :-)
Sir Roger Scruton (in "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands") on Lacan:
"After a few pages of that, convinced that the erectile penis (the primary object of meaning) under bourgeois conditions is no more potent than the square root of minus one (or maybe minus ego, if the ego is less than one, which it probably is), the reader is ready to accept that the distance between the object = a and the ex-sistent = e is no greater than that between Freud and Fraud."
If a politician uses probability in his argument, the probability that he’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes is large. But I might accept that if the politican really understood the math, instead of just exploiting the fact that his counterpart doesn't.
I usually like Scruton's writing and speaking, or at least what I've seen of it, although, sadly, we'll have no more. I haven't always agreed with him, but what on earth was he trying to convey here?
It is a kind of ironic conclusion to the whole section on Lacan, which starts like this:
"The frame of the nonsense machine was assembled by Jacques Lacan, the cranky psychiatrist whose writings, published in 1966, had an extraordinary impact on the student revolutionaries, with whose cause he publicly aligned himself. Lacan has been described by Raymond Tallis as ‘the shrink from Hell’, words that aptly characterize the practice of a psychoanalyst who would see ten clients in an hour, sometimes while attended to by his barber, tailor or pedicurist, and whose idea of cure was to teach the patients to speak, think and feel in the same paranoid language as their doctor."
What really burns these people up from the inside is the demonstrable fact that white peoples' nations works better without non-white peoples present.
Compare Britain, France, Germany, Sweden of 1965 with today for proof.
What further infuriates them is that they know, instinctually, that the sole reason for any industrial progress in the Middle East and Africa is due to those areas having been under western colonial rule. The pre-colonial societies never managed to do much with their resource advantage over Europe, not to mention having a head-start of half a millennia thanks to the enormous cultural heritage of egyptians, greeks, phoenicians, romans and so on.
While the white races overtook them in a few centuries, despite being resource-constrained and despite constant infighting.
And the cherry-bomb on top of the "anti-racist" cake: 99% of all post year 1500 technology, civilisational progress, humane ideals and humanitarian concerns as well as the ideas of equality before the law and one law for all, democracy, freedoms of thought, expression, art, speech and so on?
Purely due to the euopean peoples (or white races to use american terminology).
The only thing stopping non-white races from achieving anything are themselves - which is why they always try to invade Europe, something which has been a constant since the 7th century. Thankfully, today's rulers in many of the African and Midle Eastern nations are more and more concerned with nation-craft than treating the nation as their personal playground, the way their ancestral tribal chiefs did. More power to them if they succeed - and our loss if we don't shape up and accept that some races cannot co-exist on the same land without what would in essence be a modern version of roman-style military dictatorship, in order to keep the peace between them. Look at Israel and Palestine.
I'm quite certain 90%+ of both israeli jews, israeli palestinian arabs, palestinians and so on want peace and would accept co-existence in the same state under the same laws and rights. Yet, arabs (or their forebears) and jews have never managed it on their own. Only when occupied by other conquereors have they - barely - been able to co-exist. From Ancient Egypt to today. Compare to Sweden and Denmark.
700 years of on-and-off war, and that's just recorded history after the nations proper started forming under the Kalmar Union. Norway was essentially a swedish colony until 1905, and was then dirt poor, not industrialised in the slightest and look at them now! Yet other, non-european nations with the same premises and resources continue to flounder.
Demography is the key. What the woke can't accept is that if you could transfer (let's say by magic make-believe) the populations of Norway and Venezuela, the norwegians would have today's Venezuela up in the top 10 among nations inside 5-10 years, while the venezuelans would have sent Norway plummeting towards rank 200 or so.
Replace swedes and danes with israeli jews and palestinian arabs: apart from destroying the environment and burning all non-jewish/moslem historical artifacts, remains et c, they'd then immediately go to war with eachother. While the danes and swedes, transposed to Israel/Palestine would co-operate to make the mos of it together.
This is what the woke hate: races, ehtnicities, people as individuals and groups are different and they hate that, because then the onus of the hows and whats and whys are upon them, each and every individual of each and every group, not their made-up bgey man they can blame for not getting it right.
I respect the palestinian moslem's (or any other race/culture/ehtnicity/pick you poison) will to live according to his or hers tradition, cultural norms and mores, and religion - in their own nation. Not here, not among my people. Because I demand that my people are extended the same courtesy and respect. When among strangers, defer to their ways and show respect - conversely, strangers who refuse to do so when in your land are to be put out or put to death depending on their crime.
That's the opposite of racism. Accepting and respcting that we are different, and letting different people develop in their own way, in their own place.
Good, fearless comment, Rikard. That many cultures did not have a written language or hadn't gotten around to even inventing the wheel is very telling, too. You might be interested in reading Steve Sailer's blog at Unz Review. He explores some of the topics you've written about here and was canceled for it. Sailer is famous for quipping that political correctness is a "war on noticing things."
Thanking you both.
Inventing the wheel is a strange one indeed, seeing as it seems so obvious - on the level of hand held tools or fire.
On the other hand, even greeks, egyptians and romans failed to realise the importance of Hero of Alexandria. Imagine if his inventions had picked up steam.
Additional hearts because socialist Substack only allocates everyone one.
<3 <3 <3
I admit I skimmed a lot of the middle because I'm familiar with most of the concepts, but did you ever explain anywhere what, exactly, the notion of "probability hacking," whatever the fuck that is, has to do with systemic racism?
Is he simply making the not-very-clever assertion that society is a set of biased dice where racial opportunity is concerned?
If so, that's fucking lame, boring, and doesn't actually prove anything. It's just a statement of a postulation. You aren't actually DEMONSTRATING the bias, just DESCRIBING what bias is in principle.
It's like a teenager who just discovered some philosophy cliche like "religion is the opiate of the masses" and swings it around in public like an expensive wristwatch trying to get some woke tail.
I'll try it. "There's this thing called the Hindenburg Uncertainty Principle. You can't see aliens, but you can't prove they didn't make sure you were turned down for a loan. Therefore it is at least as likely that they did as that they didn't until you can prove to me that aliens aren't racist."
Dear Riggery Pokery....I gave you a heart, but honestly, you sound just like my statistics teacher. I failed the course..twice. I got a headache at the second paragraph and by the end it became a full blown migraine.
I think I am allergic to probability......and I don't think I am the only one. Much love, heading for the aspirin bottle now.
I'm going straight out to buy a lottery ticket.
A nod to Briggs—I'm impressed.
I think stochastic terrorism is what Schrödinger was planning for that cat.
Another awesome article. That’s a triple A investment grade. Probably. Thanks Dr Rigger.