Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: writing sociosexuality

Stan Hai isn’t sure how to go about doing it:

How can I write blue-shirt SF if I’m barely a Delta myself? Writing Alpha characters always turns out unrealistic for me, because I don’t know what I’m talking about. I finally quit writing Gamma & Omega characters, but when it comes to a hero, I’ve got three choices: Superman/James Bond/Neo (i.e. Alpha Mary Sues who never lose), Beta who’s competent in one thing (which I can’t write about because that’s not me) and Gamma Special (whom everyone is sick of.) The thing I’m working now is about a Gamma who becomes a Delta. He’s offered Special Power, and rejects it. Thoughts?

Stan has already taken the first step, which is to understand that sociosexuality exists and that it affects how people think, act, and react. Rather like the process of learning a language, he finally is beginning to understand how much he doesn’t know. This is true for EVERY man, of every rank.  Women, unsurprisingly, tend to do a better job of writing two very different types of male characters, Alpha and Delta. They even occasionally delve into a very extreme form of smothering Gamma when they want to creep their female readers out.

It is harder for men to differentiate between the different male classes as we tend to gravitate towards writing our own perspective large on all the male characters. The one thing Louis L’Amour and Neal Stephenson have in common is that they both base all the male protagonists on their own sociosexuality. They are both significant authors, but L’Amour’s protagonists are all Alphas, brimming with self-confidence, laconic, proactive, and utterly certain of female interest in them, which is not at all surprising if you know his life story. Stephenson’s are all Gammas, insecure, diffident, reactive, and forever bewildered as to why the woman with whom they are involved has any interest in them at all.

In this, Stephenson is all-too-typical of modern male SF writers. And as Hai implies, when the average Pink SF writer tries to address sociosexuality, even unconsciously, he makes a hash of it. Patrick Rothfuss’s Kvothe is probably the best example, as it is hard to imagine a better, or more hilariously mistaken, Alpha-through-a-Gamma’s eyes ever being written.

The way to do it is to first understand your own social rank and grasp that you should use it for characters of that social rank. Second, seek to understand the perspective of the others. The recent series on Gamma, which features current and ex-Gammas talking about their feelings and thought processes, has been INVALUABLE to me as a writer. I now have a much better understanding of what makes them tick; had I tried to write a Gamma protagonist before this I would have likely failed almost as spectacularly as Rothfuss fails with his Alpha. I had no idea, none, that the key to writing Gamma is a man at the bottom of the totem pole who knows he should, by rights, be at the top because Special.

However, keep in mind that you may, instead, wish to flatter various socio-sexual ranks rather than describe them. Gammas like Stephenson and Scalzi do a good job of appealing to Gammas because what appeals to them naturally appeals to other Gammas. But if a sociosexual-aware writer were to focus on flattering the various social ranks, he might have even more success.

  • Alpha. The protagonist is in charge. He seeks out, takes on, and conquers various challenges, many of whom are other Alphas. He also defeats the occasional Gamma who tries to stab him in the back. Deltas follow him gladly. Hmmm, sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Mr. Howard?
  • Beta. The good lieutenant is given great responsibility by his Alpha. Loyally serves the Alpha and accompanies him through thick and thin. At times, his loyalty is tested, the enemy even tries to tempt him into betraying his Alpha by offering him a crown of his own, but he resists, he perseveres, and his Alpha is triumphant in the end, at which point he publicly credits the Beta and tells everyone how he could never have done it without the Beta.
  • Delta. He’s just a guy, like any other guy. Larger events swirl around him, but the Delta gradually finds his place in the team, which comes to respect each other and learns how to work together as a unit. His side wins after much turmoil and suffering, although he doesn’t have much to do with that. But he knows he did his part and has the satisfaction of knowing he has the respect and approval of the others. His captain tells him that he was the glue who held it all together. He gets a medal and wins the love of a good woman in the end. They have nice healthy children and make a nice modest home together.
  • Gamma. No one knows how special he is. The Alphas unfairly rule and keep him down by trickery. Even the girl he loves in a way no woman has ever been loved before doesn’t realize how special he is or how happy he would make her if only she would let him. Bad people treat him badly and unfairly. But through his clever wit, the Gamma makes fools of everyone through always having the perfect thing to say, culminating when he totally humiliates the Alpha and reveals him to be an unworthy paper tiger in a brilliant verbal exchange front of everyone, including the girl. The Gamma is finally recognized as the true First Man in Rome by everyone as the girl shyly confesses that she has always seen and admired his specialness. He calls her “milady” and roguishly offers her his arm as everyone looks on enviously and applauds the smoothness of his style.
  • Omega. REVENGE.
  • Sigma. He is dragged from his solitary sanctuary by the desperate need of friends he hasn’t seen in years, but whom he can hardly deny. Conflict abounds, mostly between posturing idiots concerning nonsensical trivialities that no one with more than half a brain could ever possibly care about. The Sigma contemptuously dispatches three foes in succession, one by utilizing superior logic, one by seducing her, and one by physical combat, before finally ending all the conflict with a brilliant masterstroke that convinces the blithering idiots to knock it off once and for all. Everyone agrees that the ultimate solution is for the Sigma to marry the beautiful princess and be crowned king. On the day of the wedding, it is discovered that the Sigma has vanished, as have two of the prettiest and most morally flexible ladies-in-waiting. A note is found rejecting both princess and crown, and inviting everyone in the realm to either fuck off or die, as they please.
  • Lambda. He always knew he was different. He exchanging longing looks with another boy once, but nothing happened. Mean boys called him names and beat him up for being too sensitive. Then he went to the big city. There he discovered discos and bathhouses and true love. Then his true love died of AIDS/was gay-bashed to death. So he went back to the discos and bathhouses and did too many drugs until meeting a rich, successful, and previously straight Alpha who is won over by his sob story of his tragic true love and helps him kick his drug habit. He and the formerly straight Alpha travel to Mexico where they pick up a pair of hot Latin twins at a gay strip club.

Which of those seven stories deeply appeals to you? Which of these fit the plots, protagonists and perspectives of books you know? See if you can identify a popular book or series that fits each of these sociosexual themes. Understand where you fit, then work to apply these basic filters in the way you describe your characters, and you will produce works that are more psychologically real to your readers, because you are reflecting the real psychological world back to them.

Mailvox: Marxism and the Shoe Event Horizon

DB asks about a past SmartPop essay:

I am an Italian university student, and at the moment I am writing my thesis, which is about Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While gathering some material to work on, I found The Rough Guide to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Marcus O’Dair, in which he maintains that you stated that “the Shoe Event Horizon [is] a dig not at capitalism, but rather at the Marxist notion of capitalist crisis, which is pretty much its antithesis” (page 71).

I have been trying to find the original source of this idea, but I am not sure whether it is this one:

With this letter, I would ask you if you could briefly explain how the “Shoe Event Horizon theory” is to be considered a critique to Marxism rather than to capitalism itself (I am not an expert in the fields of philosophy and economics).

My essay in THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE was indeed the original source of the idea,  which I mentioned in a one-off line without explaining it. Neglecting to explain things is a time-honored personal tradition. I’m not usually doing it to be difficult, it’s just that I tend to have a very hard time grasping what is, and is not, obvious to other people.

Adams manages to mine this unlikely field, economics, for some of his most scathing barbs. The dismal science does not often figure into fictional plot lines and still less is it played for laughs, but nevertheless, it has an integral role in both the overall story and Adams’ underlying theme. Indeed, Adams betrays a remarkably sophisticated understanding of economics when he pokes fun at the Marxian concept of capitalist crisis in the Shoe Event Horizon that ruins the world of Frogstar World B.

Before I can explain why the Shoe Event Horizon is poking fun at the idea of a crisis in capitalism, I should probably cite the relevant event as recounted by Pizpot Gargravarr.

From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet—people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result—collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds—you’ve seen one of them—who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that none should walk on it again.

There is no singular coherent theory of capitalist crisis, there are, in fact, several, but they are summarized more or less accurately on Wikipedia.

In Marxist terms, the economic crises are crises of overproduction and immiseration of the workers who, were it not for the capitalist control of the society, would be the determiners of both demand and production in the first place.

These systemic factors include:

  • Full employment profit squeeze. Capital accumulation can pull up the demand for labor power, raising wages. If wages rise “too high,” it hurts the rate of profit, causing a recession.
  • The tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The accumulation of capital, the general advancement of techniques and scale of production, and the inexorable trend to oligopoly by the victors of capitalist market competition, all involve a general tendency for the degree of capital intensity, i.e., the “organic composition of capital” of production to rise. All else constant, this is claimed to lead to a fall in the rate of profit, which would slow down accumulation.
  • Overproduction. If the capitalists win the class struggle to push wages down and labor effort up, raising the rate of surplus value, then a capitalist economy faces regular problems of excess producer supply and thus inadequate aggregate demand.

All such factors resolve to the synthetic viewpoint that all such crises are crises of over and/or misappropriated production relative to the ability and/or willingness of the workers who generate the bulk of demand to consume.

As he later does with the concept of Keynesian monetary policy still being pushed by the likes of Krugman and Abe today, Adams takes the concept of capitalist crisis stemming from overproduction to absurd and hilarious extremes. In the tragic case of the world of Frogstar B, the people actually reduced their aggregate demand by evolving into flying beings in order to escape the terrible results of the crisis caused by the overproduction of shoes.

The connection between the Shoe Event Horizon and capitalist crisis struck me as so obvious as to need no explanation, but then, it belatedly occurs to me that perhaps not everyone recognizes the implicit connection between capitalist crisis, overproduction, and inadequate aggregate demand, which in the case of Frogstar B, eventually plummeted all the way to zero.

Mailvox: dealing with anklebiters

BT was wondering how one best deals with them:

After conversing with a certain individual at length, and realizing only belatedly that they are most likely just another anklebiter, I’ve come to some hypotheses:

Anklebiters are:

  • 0 to +1 SD intellect
  • Mildly autistic at the least, which leads them to overestimate their own intellect.
  • Far more hurt by a mix of dialectic and rhetoric rather than pure rhetoric (they innately believe themselves above it) or pure dialectic (they’ll just retreat to appeals of authority).

For efficacy in pain, the mix of dialectic and rhetoric will probably depend on the level of autism in particular.

The only thing I haven’t figured out in this theory is the best way to handle said anklebiters.  Ignoring them certainly works, as they’re just self-styled intellectual tough-guys walking around with a chip on their shoulders.  It certainly seems to serve to frustrate their efforts on that end.  But anklebiters can look like an expert to the average stranger, and indeed seems to spend their time trying to convince everyone around them that they are an expert, so it may serve in everyone’s best interest to nip that problem in the bud.  How, I do not know.  Domestication training, using dialectic/rhetoric mixes as the stick?

Anklebiters are a brain-damaged form of midwit. They are almost always atheist, further pointing towards the atypical neurological profile required for that, they are usually male, and they tend to be unexpectedly poorly educated and badly read despite their observable intelligence. Most importantly, they lack the normal ability to admit failure, back up, and start over that normal individuals possess. And lacking it, they therefore lack any ability to improve their arguments or even to question any of their adopted beliefs.

That’s why anklebiters are always disappearing when trounced, only to reappear again and make the exact same arguments that have already been dismissed. The problem, as BT notes, is that this renders them immune to dialectic, and they tend to ignore pure rhetoric because they are not emotionally invested in their nonsense arguments. The more virulent form, the trolls, are sociopathic and have no meaningful human emotions to which one can appeal.

In effect, anklebiters are little more than genetically human bots, which is why there is no point in arguing with them or insulting them. They are not capable of adding anything to the discourse, so as soon as an anklebiter is identified, they are best ignored by the commenters and spammed by the moderators. There is no reason to concern oneself with how they look to the average stranger, because a) it’s not your problem, b) MPAI, and c) their own bizarre behavior will expose them sooner or later.

A guest blogger at Alpha Game has a timely post that addresses some of the issues raised here as part of his Graduating Gamma series. The most relevant quote:

This flows directly from the Gamma’s ever-present and crippling fear of being wrong somewhere and somehow. The Gamma does not understand the deep matters behind what is going on in his own beliefs, which is ironic since most Gammas vastly overestimate their knowledge and ability in most everything.

Mailvox: the anti-Puritans

SJ emails and makes what I consider to be an all-too-common mistake among Christians with regards to the rating system I created upon request yesterday:

Read your post on a Christian Ratings System. As the father of two young boys, there is a lot I like about this. And I laugh at how similar my experiences are with other Christian fathers. But I think it is important to think through one aspect of this sort of effort: Christians have self-selected towards being at the bottom of the food chain, often the victims, in our modern society.

That isn’t necessarily meant as a defense of modern society, other than being a reminder of the reality we live in. Regardless, I am sick and tired of Christians coming up on the short end, and I am concerned that the lesson that our churches and families are teaching our young men. With my own boys, I have taken the tack of raising Christian men in a Fallen and potentially violent world. I see no disparity between Christianity, being strong, and being realistic. In, not of.

Thus, I don’t necessarily argue with the idea of scores per se, but of the thresholds. For example, I am not sure that I wouldn’t let my boys read something more than a 15, and I balk at saying that a book that contains openly atheist characters scores a +3. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters? What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?

My point is really not to pick nits, or to argue line items, but to try to argue for:

a) a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
b) in support of (a) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
c) somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity

It’s really this latter point that makes me write this email because by making such a scoring system seems likely to help the self-same self-selecting Christians to self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories. I think this is especially true if the system is more or less linear and additive, as you have suggested. Ultimately, you are on to a great idea here, but it shouldn’t abide by the standards and metrics that a Fallen world has seen fit to place on Christianity. For example, some Christians swear, dammit, and the Song of Solomon is ostensibly about Sex. Perhaps with a little more granularity and possibly with some helpful Categories, this becomes a tool to teach rather than a grading system for my 4th grade Sunday School teacher.

I think we may need a word to describe the modern Christian anti-Puritan, the sort of Christian who fears that somewhere, somehow, there might be another Christian out there who is insufficiently exposed to the world. But is there truly a Christian in the world of 2015 who is insufficiently exposed to the material existence of godlessness, obscenity, sex, and sin? And what shall we call these advocates of being sufficiently engulfed by the world, though not of it? Soilitans? Filthians? Those Who Wallow? Edified Mudrollers?

My more literate response is to quote Aslan: “Child…I am telling your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

It is no more SJ’s business to concern himself with how these self-selecting Christians self-select into ever more naive, victim-filled categories than it is for them to determine the precise threshold that will determine what books his young boys are permitted to read. And notice that all of his concerns are about influence and interpretation; he is bothered by the idea of simply permitting other Christians to acquire accurate information about the books and make their own judgments concerning them. In answer to his questions and points:

  1. What about the atheist characters being contrasted with Christian characters?
  2. What about setting up an atheist for a religious awakening?
  3. a more granular system that allows for more insight into the “Christians” of the book
  4. in support of (3) but more tangentially, possibly having categories of scores
  5. somehow trying to allow for books and material that encourages a realistic approach to Christianity 

1. What about them? Whether they are contrasted with Christian characters or not, the either exist in the book or they don’t. Why should parents who don’t want their children to be prematurely exposed to atheism be intentionally kept in the dark from knowing that there is a godless character in a book?

2. What about it? I’d rather like a system that would warn me: LAME AND UTTERLY CONVENTIONAL CONVERSION STORY AHEAD so I could avoid ever reading the book. “And then he became a Christian and lived happily ever after” is not the sort of thing I’m interested in supporting even if that was within the scope of the rating system. Which it isn’t. Regardless of what happens to the atheist over the course of the book, he is still there. How can any Christian rationally oppose parents simply being informed of godlessness in their children’s books?

I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on this. Does anyone seriously think I am even remotely afraid of exposing my children to atheist arguments, let alone fictional atheist characters presenting dumbed-down versions of those arguments? I throw Plato and Cicero and William S. Lind at my kids, does anyone seriously doubt that they can chew up arguments presented by the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins without even blinking? At the same time, I’d still like to know that they are being tested in this way when it is taking place.

3. No. That goes well beyond the purpose of the rating system, which is to simply inform parents what is in the book. It doesn’t involve insight into anyone, for any reason. It describes, it doesn’t interpret.

4. The more complicated the system, the less useful it is and the less anyone will use it. Again, this is an attempt to sneak interpretation and influence in through the back door.

5. And who is to define “a realistic approach to Christianity”? I doubt anyone wants me doing that. Here the attempt to influence is overt, which is in absolute contradiction to the intention of the ratings system, which is simply to inform parents of what specific elements are present within works of fiction.

The rating system is a tool for people to use, not a tool for using people. Try to keep that in mind if you’re looking to improve it.

Mailvox: Christian book ratings

CM asks if we can put together a rating system for Christian books. I think this is a good idea, although I think it bears some discussion on the best way to do that.

We are an ultra-conservative homeschool family with 8 children. Two of my older sons and I love SF books, table top games, and movies. My 12 year old is reading through the Monster Hunter series of books now. I do not mind the occasional curse word or sexual innuendo here and there. But if it gets any racier than Correia’s works I will not let them read it until they are a little older. We’ve enjoyed some of your novellas, too. Keep up the good work.

Anyway, I do not have time to keep up and read new SF works to screen them for my sons (12 year old blasted through the first Monster Hunter in one day). Is there a possibility in the future that your blog and/or Castalia House could have a sort of SF book rating or review site that would inform Christian families like mine? Just FYI, the Hollywood movie rating would be inadequate. Many PG-13 rated movies are considered nearly XXX to us.

My thought is something similar to the SJW review of games system might be useful, with zero being the perfect score of containing nothing that would be objectionable to the Christian AND containing genuine and explicit Christian elements. There is a difference, after all, as Misty of Chincoteague is entirely unobjectionable, but it has no Christian content per se.

Let’s consider some possible point factors, beginning with those that would likely be more or less acceptable to most Christian parents, but are potentially indicative of religious or ideological problems:

  • contains no genuine and explicit Christian element +1
  • exhibits unconventional Christian theology +1
  • characters demonstrate disrespect for peers or parents +1
  • an animal or major character dies +1
  • contains suggestions of physical violence +1
  • features strong independent female +1
  • contains squishy Disney-style “moral” messages +1
  • Features fairies, unicorns, or creatures from classical mythology +1
  • Features the open use of magic by the characters +1

Then there are the elements that will be objectionable to the more conservative families:

  • contains direct descriptions of physical violence +2
  • features indirect sexual themes +2
  • contains egregious or saintly minority characters +2
  • features aggressively “pro-science” themes +2
  • contains euphemistic swearing +2

Followed by those elements to which most parents will not want to expose their children:

  • contains openly atheist characters +3
  • contains detailed portrayals of physical violence +3
  • features PG-13 sex scenes +3
  • advocates left-liberal political or ideological positions +3
  • contains light and occasional swearing +3
  • Features emotionally devastating scene +3
  • Features demonic aliens or magic-based societies +3

And then the completely unacceptable:

  • contains openly atheist or anti-theist messages +5
  • mocks Christianity +5
  • sadistic horror and physical violence +5
  • features pornographic sex scenes or romanticizes adultery +5
  • features homosexual and other sexually deviant characters +5
  • contains a considerable quantity of vulgarities and obscenities +5 
  • contains openly occultic elements indicative of actual practices +5

Now, it is important to keep in mind that a novel can contain absolutely every element here and still be a Christian novel. What makes a novel Christian or not depends upon its intrinsic recognition that Jesus Christ (or some fictional facsimile therein), is the Lord and Savior of Mankind.

A Throne of Bones scores a lot of points, Book Two will score even more. But they are not books for children; I haven’t let my own children read them. Every parent has to draw their own line, but it would certainly be useful to have a large database at Castalia House where books could be rated. For example, The Lord of the Rings would rate about a 8 of 75. A Throne of Bones would rate 40. A Game of Thrones would rate 65. I think anything over 15 should be considered unacceptable to most parents.

There is considerable room for improving the system, and I would welcome suggestions as well as the rating of various books.

Mailvox: atheist theology or the ignorance therein

The self-aware  Trimegistus seems to share my incredulity:

I ‘m an unbeliever (I stopped using the term “atheist” when it became a
synonym for “self-righteous asshole”) and the staggering ignorance of
other unbelievers always shocks me. I know I’m not an expert on
theology; I know history, I’ve read Lewis and Sayers and St. Augustine
but that’s about it — and yet I’m like the frickin’ Vatican Curia
compared to the general run of atheists.

One thing I’ve noticed about many atheists of the general run variety is that they cannot follow simple if/then statements. Consider these facepalm-inspiring tweets inspired by this morning’s post:

Milo Yiannopoulos ‏@Nero
Perhaps the neatest skewering of @stephenfry ever, from @voxday

#OttawaStrong ‏@Canadastani
Summary: God is real because the bible says god is real! LALALALLALAKALALALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!! #bacon

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Your summary is false. I merely pointed out the God-concept he is attacking is not the Christian God.

Dan Sereduick ‏@Globalizer360
Your summary of the Christian god is one that exists in advanced theology, not in ordinary religion.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings are NOT advanced Christian theology.

#OttawaStrong ‏@Canadastani
Your imagination is not a real place either, but that doesn’t stop your imaginary friend Yahweh.

Vox Day ‏@voxday now
Look, you can’t criticize fiction for things that are not there. Sauron is not in Narnia.

It’s not that hard. My critique of Fry holds whether God exists or not. Christian theology is very well-defined. It is explained on multiple levels, from Tertullian and Thomas Aquinas all the way down to children’s novels like the Chronicles of Narnia. And yet, Stephen Fry quite clearly doesn’t know ANY of it.

You don’t have to believe in something to know what it is. I don’t believe in the Labor Theory of Value, but I can explain it to you. I don’t believe in Keynesian Economics, but I can explain multiple variants of it to you. I am skeptical of the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, but I can explain how it is supposed to work.

The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are the core of the Christian faith. And that core is absolutely and utterly predicated on the EVIL OF A FALLEN WORLD. So for Fry to claim that the observable existence of evil somehow condemns the Creator God requires either a) perverted quasi-Calvinism or b) stupendous ignorance.

Mailvox: thought of the day

A Nameless Reader has an observation:

Random thought: The fact that people who are skeptical of one “consensus” tend to be skeptical of other consensuses suggests there’s a correlation in mental capacity – since one has to have a very high level of intellectual self-confidence and an ability to do independent research and thinking in order to sustain an argument against, e.g., evolution, global warming, Austrian investing, or vaccination, when there is enormous “consensus” pressure to adopt the other opinion, it would make sense that such iconoclastic beliefs would bundle.

I don’t think there is any question about this. I have zero regard for consensus on the grounds of MPAI. In fact, if someone who I otherwise consider to be intelligent falls for an observably incorrect consensus position, I tend to keep a skeptical eye on his future assertions and conclusions.

Everyone makes mistakes, but falling for the appeal to authority, or worse, the appeal to popularity, simply is not indicative of an functioning and intelligent mind. Consensus is another word for “lowest common denominator”.

But keep in mind I’m not talking about skepticism and iconoclasm for their own sake, I’m talking about maintaining an open mind when there are obvious holes, if not outright flaws, in the consensus position.

Mailvox: of rabbits and communism

AD sees the connection:

I read these quotes and can’t help comparing to your Rabbitology posts.

“What I had failed to understand was that the security I felt in the Party was that of a group and that affection in that strange communist world is never a personal emotion. You were loved or hated on the basis of group acceptance, and emotions were stirred or dulled by propaganda. That propaganda was made by the powerful people at the top. That is why ordinary Communists get along well with their groups: they think and feel together and work toward a common goal.”
– School of Darkness, Chapter 16 (1954), Dr. Bella Dodd, head of the New York State Teachers Union , member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and 1940s, later a vocal anti-communist

“The process of completely freeing oneself emotionally from being a Communist is a thing no outsider can understand. The group thinking and group planning and the group life of the Party had been a part of me for so long that it was desperately difficult for me to be a person again. … But I had begun the process of “unbecoming” a Communist. It was a long and painful process, much like that of a polio victim who has to learn to walk all over again. I had to learn to think. I had to learn to love. I had to drain the hate and frenzy from my system. I had to dislodge the self and the pride that had made me arrogant, made me feel that I knew all the answers. I had to learn that I knew nothing. There were many stumbling blocks in this process.”

It is hard for rabbits to break out of the warren, and even harder for them to become a not-rabbit. Don’t expect much in the way of reason from the pinkshirts, for as it is said, it is difficult to reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into. This is why they switch fluidly between contradictory positions as easily as a school of fish changes direction; they’re not paying any attention to the direction of the school, they’re completely focused on the actions of the rabbits around them.

Mailvox: deportation is not war

Asked asked about the abandonment of multiculturalism:

Vox, your position seems to abandon multi-culturalism.. how do you envision this practically? France has 4-5 million Muslims, it’s not possible to deport them without a MAJOR war. The other alternative would be forceful conversions to Christianity/atheism… yeah.. be ready to strike France out of the map.

This is a false dichotomy. Of course it is possible to deport 5 million people. It’s neither difficult to accomplish nor likely to inspire war, let alone a MAJOR war. The oft-heard insistence that mass deportation is either a) impossible or b) necessarily violent is intrinsically ignorant. One has to literally know nothing about 20th century history in order to make the assertion, as one’s knowledge of the subject does not even rise to the level of Wikipedia.

  1. Eastern Europe, 1945: German Reichsdeutsche and citizens of other European states who claimed German ethnicity were forced out of many Eastern Europe countries to Germany and Austria, and to Australia or the United States from there for many, during the later stages of World War II and the post-war period. The areas of expulsion included former eastern territories of Germany, which were transferred to Poland and the Soviet Union after the war, as well as areas annexed or occupied by Nazi Germany in pre-war Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, northern Yugoslavia and other states of Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into the areas which would become post-war Germany and Allied-occupied Austria. Some sources put the total at 14 million, including migrants to Germany after 1950 and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from territories ultimately ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million).
  2. Soviet Union, 1932: Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of “anti-Soviet” categories of population, often classified as “enemies of workers,” deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories. In most cases their destinations were underpopulated remote areas (see Forced settlements in the Soviet Union). This includes deportations to the Soviet Union of non-Soviet citizens from countries outside the USSR. It has been estimated that, in their entirety, internal forced migrations affected some 6 million people.
  3. USA, 2011: Nearly 400,000 people were deported from the United States in the past
    fiscal year, the largest number in the history of the U.S. Immigration
    and Customs Enforcement agency, the government announced Tuesday. Overall in fiscal year 2011, immigration officials said, 396,906 individuals were removed.
  4. USA, 1954: Overall, there were 1,078,168 apprehensions made in the first year of
    Operation Wetback, with 170,000 being captured from May to July 1954.

It is simply false to claim that it is impossible to deport 5 million people from any country without a war. It can certainly be argued whether a mass repatriation policy is desirable or not, and it can be debated precisely how such a policy would be best and most civilly enacted, but it’s utterly ridiculous to claim that such a policy would necessarily lead to war when it has never before done so in all of military history. In general, mass deportations tend to be a postcursor to war rather than a precursor. Note that an immigration regime no stricter than that presently practiced by the current US ICE agency could send every Muslim in France back to the Dar al-Islam by 2025. That’s hardly a blueprint for Armageddon.

Of course, the first step in abandoning multiculturalism is to stop the bleeding. Which is to say, shut down all immigration immediately. Shut down all income redistribution from the native population to the non-native population. That alone will address one-third to one-half of the problem. Then the question of repatriation can be reasonably debated.

The alternative is not much of an option, as it should be abundantly clear by now that going further down the multiculturalism and diversity path will lead to civil war followed by vicious and violent ethnic cleansing. If you genuinely wish to avoid violence across the West, an approach that involves closing the borders, ending the income subsidies, and repatriation is the only civilized answer.

Mailvox: Did Charlie Hebdo have it coming?

MB asks a pertinent question:

Although it may appear to be like pouring salt on a wound, it occurs to me (and also from your POV) that the people at Charlie Hebdo were quite a bit involved in their own demise (which I do not celebrate or condone).

Just as the nations of the West can’t help but reap what they have sown, so too, the satirists at CH never seemed to accept the consequences of their actions and weren’t prepared to defend themselves very well. They attacked religions in the most vulgar terms (from what I’ve read) and thought it rather a lark. Although their offices were firebombed, they promised to continue to poke jihadis in the eye. But it appears they blithely thought giving offense to seriously nasty people should be inconsequential given their own finely ordered sense of c’est la vie and “can’t you take a joke?”

Back in 1981, I once attended a show in a small comedy club in San Francisco near the Haight. A very small young comedian who I thought was quite funny did some sort of riff that an older man in the audience was offended by and made it known. The comic tried to play it for a joke, but in this tiny venue (30- 40 people at best), the offended gentleman stood up and made it known he was going to kick the punk comic’s ass. He was a large man who looked like he could do it. All of a sudden, things, the comic, didn’t seem so funny as he tried to find a way to defuse the situation humorously, and it didn’t work.

The comedian feigned mock fear, for example, but the angry man was not impressed or deflected and made to approach the small, low stage. The fear in the comedian’s eye’s was not simulated. Members of the audience prevailed upon the the angry man to relinquish his complaints and let it pass, but the damage had been done. The event was no longer any fun.

Like Bill Maher et al, Charlie Hebdo felt it could attack other people’s most cherished beliefs with impunity, and their targets should simply take it in the spirit of ‘damn you if what we say offends your pathetically stupid sensibility’. It is horrific what happened in Paris, but should we wonder about those who sow literary contempt and reap violent physical contempt?

Charlie Hebdo was a self-conscious standard-bearer for secular France. Unlike most secular standard-bearers, unlike today’s SJWs, the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo actually stood by their professed principles of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and disrespect for the sanctity of sacred cows. They were true Voltaireans; I don’t know enough about them to know if they were consistent or not (we know they attacked Christian symbols as well as Muslim symbols, but did they refrain from attacking Jewish and secular ones?) but they were certainly more consistent and catholic in their satires than the average Western secularist who heaps contempt on Christianity and Western tradition while remaining dead silent about Islam, Judaism, and the various shibboleths of political correctness.

Amused by him or not, the jester who enjoys immunity from the king has long been a feature of Western civilization. Charlie Hebdo was one such jester. I didn’t find their cartoons to be amusing, or of any artistic value, but then, I am not French. More importantly, they were acting under the long-respected Western principle of jester’s immunity, and by doing so in the expectation of continued immunity, they were upholding Western civilization in their own way.

Now, I had begun writing this post with the intention of saying that Charlie Hebdo should have taken more responsibility for its actions, and taken better defensive precautions, and therefore it was negligent in that regard, but in the course of thinking through that argument, I find that it is fundamentally flawed. The jester is neither knight nor king. It is not his job to defend himself, but rather, it is the responsibility of the warriors of the society whose hypocrisies and inconsistencies he criticizes to defend him.

So, my answer is no, Charlie Hebdo did not have it coming. It is the responsibility of the king and his knights to defend their jester, even though they are the primary target of his jests. (Of course, it also behooves the jester to listen to his king when he is warned that he has gone too far in offending the king; at the end of the day, he serves at the king’s pleasure. His immunity is not total.) And moreover, any party that insists it possesses a king’s veto over the king’s jester is a usurping party that presents a direct challenge to the king’s lawful authority and therefore must be expelled from the kingdom.

In fact, through their deaths, the men of Charlie Hebdo have fulfilled their traditional jester’s role of warning the king that his policies are false and harmful. Had they focused instead on defending themselves, they would not have been able to do so. Now it is time for the king and his knights to fulfill their traditional roles and address the active threat to the kingdom.

UPDATE: at least two people killed after shooting at kosher grocery in eastern Paris in which at least five were taken hostage