Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: improving dialectic

JB asks how he can improve his ability to debate:

Do you have any recommendations on reading material for improving one’s debate skills? I am aware of the most basic premise being the ability to reason, followed by a willingness to suffer defeat in repeated efforts. I am good at debating, but studying what you have posted, as well as other’s responses shows me that there is room for considerable improvement on my part. I am passably familiar with Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Aristotle; the last of whom is cited considerably often on Vox Populi but I am interested in learning more. What do you feel are the best books to study on this? Can it even be learned through books or does one have to simply fight it out personally and learn by doing?

Given Scalzi’s inept appeals to his degree in alleged rhetoric; possibly this cannot be learned other than by doing. However if there are recommendations that you have for books on rhetoric and debate, I would be interested to hear them. After all, my default setting whenever I am interested in learning more about a subject is to buy multiple books on it; so I am hopeful that you might have some suggestions for reading material.

It’s important to distinguish between learning about something and actually doing it. Although not a basketball fan, I know a fair amount about basketball courtesy of Bill Simmons, a lifelong basketball fanatic. But nothing that I have ever read about basketball has improved my three-point shot.

As Michael Jordan once said after one of his returns from retirement, the best way to get in shape for playing basketball is to play basketball. I run twice per week in the soccer offseason in order to stay in shape, but no matter how good I am about my off-season routine, the first practice of the season is always the most painful.

Reading Cicero and Plato may provide you with some rhetorical and dialectical tools, but having those tools is not the same thing as knowing how and when to use them effectively. Indeed, reading about them while not putting them into actual practice may actually be detrimental to one’s ability to debate; as JB has seen with Mr. Scalzi, it can even contribute to a powerful sense of self-delusion in that regard.

I am a little concerned by JB’s assertion of being “passably familiar” with the four classic figures mentioned. One of the great intellectual diseases of our time is the idea that having heard of something, or knowing a little bit about it, is practically akin to having mastered the subject. So, my first suggestion is that JB actually read the Socratic dialogues, read Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s De Inventione. Then read something more modern; here is a nice online guide to The Five Canons of Rhetoric.

This leads to one important guideline: don’t ever claim to know something that you do not, in fact, know better than your opponent expects. A skilled opponent will unmask you faster than you think possible; read my exchange with the atheist Luke for a particularly brutal example of that. On the flip side, I was amused when an online conversation between two evolutionists was brought to my attention, as one was warning the other not to be fooled by my claim to be relatively ignorant about TENS. But I wasn’t playing dumb, the simple fact is that I don’t know biology the way I know economics or the history of video games, so I have to approach the subjects differently.

In my opinion, the best way one can develop one’s debating skills is to practice by regularly taking on the most knowledgeable opponents one can find. Consider, for example, the qualitative difference between my exchanges with Nate, with Dominic, and even with Delavagus with my various run-ins with PZ Myers, McRapey, and Luke. I still disagree with all six of them on the subjects we discussed, but the former three knew what they were talking about while the latter three manifestly did not.

Here is my response to being asked a similar question about 18 months ago, which led to the “Dissecting the Sceptics” series of posts. If JB hasn’t read through it, I would recommend doing so.

“The first question I always ask myself is if the argument is primarily
factual, logical, or rhetorical in nature. The second question I ask
myself is if the author is likely to have any idea what he’s talking
about or not. And the third question is if I regard the author as being
trustworthy or not, or rather, if I believe him to be fundamentally
intellectually honest or not. These three questions determine how
carefully I read through an argument and whether I presume the author is
more likely to make a simple mistake or whether any apparent mistakes
are actually intentional attempts to sneak something past the
insufficiently careful reader in order to make a flawed argument look
convincing.

“The fourth question is what is the author trying to prove? This
question often can’t be answered initially, but I keep it in the back of
my mind for future reference. Once I identify the specific point that
the author is trying to prove, I can track back from it to see if a) his
logic is correct, and b) if that logic is soundly supported. It’s
important to keep in mind that the actual point that the author is
trying to prove is not necessarily the one that he appears to be trying
to prove in the title or introduction.”  

And for those who find McRapey’s argument by appeal to BA in Philosophy of Language from the University of Chicago convincing, it might be educational to read through “Dissecting the Sceptics” andsee what I do to “a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Chicago”.

Mailvox: so the slope was slippery after all

MP is a little bit excited about the new court ruling that declared polygamy bans to be unconstitutional:

Having severed marriage from any cultural traditions and values over the last fifty years, I thought it would be at least five more years before the Feds took marriage to the next step: polygamy. Marry whoever and whatever you like. Marry as many as you want. 

As of now it is not “cheating” to fuck other women when you are already married.  You are merely looking for your next wife.  The courts will have to work out some of the kinks, such as not needing the permission of your existing wife to get married again.

After all, I can contract to buy a car from one car dealer and contract to buy another car from another car dealer without asking permission of the first car dealer, right? 

And since marriage is nothing more than a voluntary contract between two people, the wife should have no say-so in preventing me from getting Wife #2 … or #3, … or even #4!

What business is it of my old wife to oppress me and prevent me from marrying the (new) one you love?  After all, she has the right to control her body and abort my child, why should I not have the right to marry who I want?

And don’t you Evil Religious Freaks start quoting the Bible or the Koran. We got rid of the old oppressive Christian monogamous “’til death do us part” junk many, many years ago.

At this rate we will have pure marriage-by-contract within 10 years: “Marriage” will be divorced from those Evil Religious Freaks and we will be able to construct our marriage contracts however we see fit!

What a Brave New World we are entering!

Do you know, I can remember when all those homogamy advocates were assuring everyone that the only reason anyone opposed altering the equation Marriage = One Man + One Woman was bigotry and that there was no possible way that changing Woman to Man could lead to changing One to One or More.

“In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents’ “slippery slope” arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional.”

American society is rapidly slip-sliding away, to the extent that it can even be said to exist at all anymore. One may not be able to legislate morality, but it is becoming eminently clear that one can legislate civilization. And barbarism, for that matter. But we may be past the point where civilization can be legislated; it may have to be imposed.

Mailvox: on evidence for gods

Shagrat’s Friend explains his perspective on the distinction between atheism and agnosticism:

[A]theism and agnosticism answer two different questions. Regarding the religions that inhabit the earth (or have done so), X -1 must be false, since they’re mutually exclusive (to the extent that there’s any substance to their claims). If at least X -1 must be false, it’s really not too hard to imagine that X -1 +1 are false. (I’m not going to get into any sort of veridical arguments about the “truthiness” of any given belief system. You want to believe that the New Testament tells a cohesive story that’s internally logical, go right ahead. Just don’t bother me with all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money.)

As for the broader picture, yes, it is impossible to disprove the existence of some hypothetical deity. Yeah, maybe that is who started the Big Bang (if it really happened) or makes the earth spin on its axis and revolve happily around the sun day in and day out or who winds up the clockwork that makes all that stuff happen. Sure, maybe there are some Epicurean entities who spend their existence in solitary blessedness beyond the travails of this mortal coil and outside the ken of us mere humans. So to that extent, I am an agnostic.

But if that’s all “God” boils down to, who cares? I see no rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of any deity in the regular affairs on earth. You want to believe that the sun stopped shining and an earthquake dumped the dead out of their tombs and they milled around for a while when Jesus died on the cross? Be my guest. Or that God held his nose or averted his eyes at Treblinka or Kolyma? Talk it over with Augustine and Orosius. But leave me out of that argument with all its a priori-isms that are invalid in my eyes.

A few corrections:

(1) It is not true to say that X-1 must be false or that most religions are mutually exclusive. For example, Judaism and Christianity part company on a single claim: that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Most religions make no grand universal claims and both Christianity and Islam, the two great universal religions, comfortably encompass many, if not most, other religions by virtue of their distinction between a sovereign Creator God and the panoply of lesser gods subject to His Will.

(2) There is a considerable quantity of rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of a deity in regular Earthly affairs. Indeed, this is the core basis for my own Christian faith. The Bible posits that the world is ruled by an arrogant, evil, intelligent, and malicious deity and we have no shortage of documentary, testimonial, and experiential evidence of his existence.

(3) There is no reason to assume that the supernatural is any less complicated, or any less full of detailed variety, than the natural. To repeatedly attempt to boil down a concept as a god, let alone The God, to a simple binary question is so intellectually vacuous as to appear either uninterested or intellectually stunted.

That being said, I can only agree that there is little point in engaging in “all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when
Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money”. One might as profitably attempt to determine Martha Washington’s juggling ability or describe the loss of Alexander the Great’s virginity.

Mailvox: you talking to ME?

Serge Tomiko is a rather strange anklebiter who enjoys informing me that I know absolutely nothing about economics, which statement is inevitably followed by an economics-related assertion that indicates he has read the appropriate material, but he hasn’t understood it. He’s very much like Kevin Cline in A Fish Called Wanda; the last time he showed up, he failed to understand that the graph he was citing to dispute my contention was charting the data from the very same Federal Reserve report I had cited in the first place.

This time he felt the need to “correct” my factual statement that deposits are unsecured loans from the depositor to the bank:

Once again, Vox shows he is absolutely clueless about how banking functions. Deposits are NOT loans to the bank. Banks do not in any way require deposits. It is a service they provide.

Banks create money by the authority of the government, which is given to entities in exchange for interest payments. They do not lend money. In this case, the banks are being perfectly honest. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not they have deposits. In fact, this kind of policy is intended to discourage deposits. 

Because beating up on Serge feels rather like kicking a toddler in the head, I thought I should give him the opportunity to retract his foolish “correction”.  I wrote: “Serge_Tomiko, I humiliated you the last time you tried to correct me.
Fair warning: I’m going to prison-rape you on this one, brutally, if you
don’t retract this. You have until tomorrow to think this over.”

Not being the brightest bulb on the planet, Serge proceeded to double-down.

What more can one say? It should be blatantly obvious. How could banks charge negative interest rates if their lending was at all dependent upon deposits?

This is a complicated issue, but Vox has it completely wrong.

This would a good, recent work that not only demolishes Vox’s common, yet ill informed idea of banking, it explains the origin of his error. Will he read it? I doubt it. 

As it happens, I did read it. I could have written it. And not only do I completely agree with it, but I note that it has precisely NOTHING to do with my original contention. The article deals with what bankers do with the money they are loaned by their depositors and says absolutely nothing about the nature of that money or the nature of the legal relationship between the depositor and the bank. Regardless of what Serge thinks, the central message of Buddhism is not every man for himself.

On the other hand, the 1848 Foley-Hill case in the English House of Lords said everything that one needs to know about both.

Edward Thomas Foley,–Appellant; Thomas Hill and Others,-Respondents

(1848) 2 HLC 28
English Reports Citation: 9 E.R. 1002
July 31, August 1, 1848.

Mews’ Dig. i. 42, 1007; ix. 76; xi. 988. S.C. In 8 Jur., 347; 1 Ph. 399; 13 L.J. Ch. 182. On point as to relation between banker and customer, considered in St. Aubyn v. Smart, 1867, L.R. 5 Eq. 189; A.-G. v. Edmunds, 1868, L.R. 6 Eq. 390; Moxon v. Bright, 1869, L.R. 4 Ch. 294; Summers v. City Bank, 1874, L.R. 9 C.P. 587; Marten v. Rocke, 1885, 53 L.T., 1948. Distinguished on point as to limitation (1 Ph. 399; cf. 2 H.L.C. pp. 41, 42) in In re Tidd (1893), 3 Ch. 156, and in Atkinson v. Bradford Third Equitable, etc., Society, 1890, 25 Q.B.D. 381.

EDWARD THOMAS & FOLEY, – Appellant; THOMAS HILL and Others,–, Respondents [July 31, August 1, 1848].

Banker and Customer–Accounts not complicated, subject for action, and not for bill.

The relation between a Banker and Customer, who pays money into the Bank, is the ordinary relation of debtor and creditor, with a superadded obligation arising out of the custom of bankers to honour the customer’s drafts; and that relation is not altered by an agreement by the banker to allow the interest on the balances in the Bank.

The relation of Banker and Customer does not partake of a fiduciary character, nor bear analogy to the relation between Principal and Factor or Agent, who is quasi trustee for the principal in respect of the particular matter for which. he is appointed factor or agent.

Is that sufficiently clear? The relationship between the depositor and the bank is the normal one between a creditor and a debtor. Because it is a loan from the former to the latter. In case the Old English legalese is too complicated for you, we can go from 1848 to 2013 and make it even simpler. Last week, the investor Jim Sinclair explained the same thing on Market Sanity:

I think that our listeners need to understand that when they make a deposit in a bank, they don’t have an asset. They become an unsecured lender to the banking institution, that goes back to British law in the 1850s and present law in North America and elsewhere. In fact, it’s universally accepted that once you make a deposit in a bank you’re lending the money to the bank. When you hear that the bondholders and lenders will have to undertake the rescue of any banking institution that faces difficulty to the listener, you are the lender. You are a lender without collateral. You are in a very junior financial position.

And if you’re still in doubt, it is right there in US law, specifically 12 USC § 1813 – Definitions

The term “deposit” means—
(1) the unpaid balance of money or its equivalent received or held by a bank or savings association in the usual course of business and for which it has given or is obligated to give credit, either conditionally or unconditionally, to a commercial, checking, savings, time, or thrift account, or which is evidenced by its certificate of deposit, thrift certificate, investment certificate, certificate of indebtedness, or other similar name, or a check or draft drawn against a deposit account and certified by the bank or savings association, or a letter of credit or a traveler’s check on which the bank or savings association is primarily liable:

What is an “unpaid balance of money received?” It is a loan. As it happens, it is an unsecured loan, albeit one that is nominally guaranteed by the FDIC, at the FDIC’s sole discretion. Which is exactly what I stated in the first place. Banks are nothing but middlemen, which is why they require loans from their “depositors” in order to make new loans and profit from the difference between the interest they pay and the interest paid to them. The real service they provide is collecting all of the many smaller deposit-loans into a single large credit pool that can then be borrowed from more efficiently in larger loan packages. This is a legitimate function, perhaps even a necessary one, but hardly one that rationally justifies nearly 30 percent of all the operating profit in the country being devoted to it.

As it happens, the ability of the banks to create money is not completely dependent upon receiving loans from the general public. They can also receive loans directly from the Federal Reserve. And, as per the previous post, that $2.5 trillion injection of credit from the Fed is what has produced the $2.1 trillion nominal increase in bank assets since 2008.

The amusing thing about this particular failure to grasp the obvious is that Serge is a self-avowed fascist who flatters himself with the idea that he understands the English Common Law. It appears he is still stuck on the Magna Carta and hasn’t reached the 19th century yet.

Mailvox: an evolutionist response to Fred

An anonymous response to Fred’s long piece concerning his skeptical perspective on evolution by natural selection:

First let me say that while I do believe life on earth has evolved over a large period of time, I am not a militant supporter of TENS. Thus, I read the piece you linked to about evolution written by the gentleman Fred.

In summary, he appears to believe humans and other creatures are too complex to have – and here he repeats a sentiment that I can only assume stems from true ignorance or willful ignorance – “arisen by accident.”

Furthermore, he states something like “it would be easier for me to believe that a 747 assembled itself.” Again, a statement like that implies ignorance at best and use of a strawman at worst.

I’ll assume he is making the common mistake of confusing machines and organisms (life). While life and machines appear to be very similar, they are very different.

Organisms are complex systems which independently adapt and change over time. On the other hand, machines are systems designed and assembled by an intelligent being to accomplish a task. They (currently) lack the ability to independently adapt and change over time. (Is it possible that DNA and RNA were machines that were designed by an intelligence and loosed on Earth? Perhaps.)

So while both possess complexity, a human and a 747 are categorically different. A better comparison might be between a human and a city such as London or New York.

Like a human, a city is a mindbogglingly complex system (made up of millions of smaller, complex systems) capable of adapting and changing independently over time. And like a human, a city didn’t just pop into being one day. One can ascertain this by studying the city and discovering that buildings are built on top of roads that were built on top of canals that were dug through ancient farm land that was cleared from forests by farmers. Farmers that were merely being farmers and had no intention of building a city.

No one person (unit) did or could have conceived of and built the current cities of London or New York, as is, from scratch. More importantly, the “evidence” indicates they weren’t built as is from scratch, but rather “assembled themselves” gradually, and in many ways messily, over time. Furthermore, it would be absurd to claim that New York arose and evolved into its current form “by accident.”

Likewise, a human appears to be a complex system made up of billions of smaller, complex units, each of which is quietly going about its business with no awareness of the bigger – or future – picture of which it is apart, much like the New York farmers.

Could a theoretical super intelligence have built a human, as is, from scratch? Sure, just as one could have built New York or London, as is, from scratch. The evidence, in my opinion, indicates otherwise.

This is an unusual defense of TENS. It is also ineffective because it utilizes an example that is undeniably the product of intelligent design in an attempt to refute the concept of intelligent design. As it happens, one need only read a little about Christopher Wren to understand that the current city of London was, in fact, the result of not only intelligent design, but purposeful design.

The emailer makes two mistakes here. The first is his confusion of two distinct concepts, intelligent design and purposeful design. While there was never a single complete master design for London, and the current city is the unpredictable result of millions of different decisions, there was still intelligence behind every single decision. While the overall result was not designed, every element that comprises it was. I recognize that the emailer was only intending this as an analogical example of the concept of emergent design, not as a literal counterexample, but it is still misleading.

The second, and more important mistake is the claim that Fred is ignorant in pointing out that evolutionary theory requires the assembly of living beings by accident. While Richard Dawkins has convinced many superficial science fetishists that “natural selection is the exact opposite of random”, this is obviously and entirely false because the vast quantity of mutations upon which natural selection repeatedly relies are, insofar as anyone can tell, random.

Many people, both those who subscribe to the theory evolution and those who reject it, appear to be under the false impression that evolution happens in response to environmental pressure. But this is not the case; the famous Leiderberg experiment demonstrated that the mutations precede the exposure to the environment that causes the selection process to take place.

From “Understanding Evolution” at UC-Berkeley: “Mutations are random. Mutations can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful for the organism, but
mutations do not “try” to supply what the organism “needs.” Factors in
the environment may influence the rate of mutation but are not generally
thought to influence the direction of mutation. For example, exposure
to harmful chemicals may increase the mutation rate, but will not cause
more mutations that make the organism resistant to those chemicals. In
this respect, mutations are random — whether a particular mutation happens or not is unrelated to how useful that mutation would be.”

So, given that the causal factor is random, Fred is entirely correct to say the subsequent process is accidental. It cannot be anything else.

Mailvox: a more reasonable vaccine schedule

CM asks what is a more reasonable vaccine schedule than the current US one:

I have followed your blog for quite some time now and have come to really value your opinion on a wide variety of topics. I recently had my first child and my wife and I have already resolved to home school (largely because we looked into a lot of the information that you discussed on your blog). I want to know what in your opinion would be the ideal alternative vaccine schedule.

The first thing is to understand that many European and Asian doctors think the US schedule is insane. Don’t be moved by the rhetorical appeals to the US medical industry; remember the same people are also telling you to fill up on carbohydrates and fructose to lose weight. The second thing is to realize that your primary responsibility is to your children, not to the collective. If something is better for your child than for the community, then you put your child first.

That’s called being a good parent.

Of course, if you are genuinely more concerned about the community, then go ahead and get yourself sterilized. Because global warming or whatever.

Anyhow, in my opinion, no vaccinations need be given until the child is walking. Then the tetanus vaccine is a good idea since tetanus can’t be treated. Polio is probably the next concern, given its seriousness, and should be addressed some time before the child is likely to come into regular contact with large quantities of people.  If you’re homeschooling, this probably means sometime between the ages of three and five.

Due to the potential risk of blindness and the way immigrants and travelers have been spreading it around so freely, measles is probably a good idea around the age of school, so sometime between five and seven. I would recommend a measles-specific vaccine and not MMR; mumps and rubella are much less serious diseases and the rubella vaccine is, as far as I can tell, completely worthless.

Not only is the disease less serious, but I know of several women who have been repeatedly vaccinated for it and still show no evidence of antibodies, hence the repeated vaccinations. If you don’t have pregnant women or infants around, whooping cough is probably not an issue, although it is a real bitch if your children get it. But if you can’t keep your kids home for two to three weeks straight without a problem, then you should probably seriously consider the vaccination around the age of seven.

Vaccines for chicken pox and other non-fatal diseases are a joke. Forget potential reactions, merely driving to the doctor’s office puts your children more at risk than the disease does.  The point is not to avoid all vaccinations entirely, but rather, avoid overloading the very young child’s system. I know vets who refuse to give dogs more than one vaccine at a time due to the negative effects they have observed over the years, so the idea that the current US vaccine schedule can’t possibly be harming children is ludicrous on its face.

As for the inevitable appeals to science, I will merely point out that no science – ZERO – has been done concerning the safety of the current US vaccine schedule. If anyone wishes to dispute that, I invite them to provide everyone here with a link to the published paper. And as for the appeals to the greater good of the collective, I first note that I’ve never been much moved by Leninist arguments, and second, observe that one could just as easily justify murderously culling the immigrant population on that basis.

Mailvox: studying Christianity

LC asks for reading recommendations to learn more about Christianity:
I read your book, The Irrational Atheist, and I have been reading
your blog for a few months now because I find most of what you say
interesting and some of it comforting. I was raised by Christian
parents. I am young, 21, and have recently gone through a questioning of
my faith.  I have re-committed myself to my beliefs and living in a way
that has resulted in a good life. I have realized that I still have the
faith of my childhood and my understanding of Christianity and the
world in general is very limited. I always have respect for your
arguments because you know what you’re talking about and back up your
assertions. Can you please give me some direction on texts to study
other than the Bible to increase my understanding of Christianity and
religion in general? 
First of all, remember not to get too caught up in the theological extrapolations. No matter what you end up reading, it is always worthwhile to periodically circle back to the original source. Don’t neglect reading the Bible in favor of various men’s interpretations of what the Bible says. In the end, theology is nothing more than philosophy derived from the Bible and it is no more intrinsically reliable than any other logical derivation.

I would start at the beginning. If your understanding is limited, begin with The Chronicles of Narnia. As we saw in the debate with Luke of Common Sense Atheism, the average grasp of Christian concepts don’t even rise to the level of Narnia. Then read The Tower of Geburah by John White. Once you’ve read the children’s fiction, move onto simple theology like Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton. As a general rule, it’s hard to go too far afield on a foundation of Lewis and Chesterton. I would also recommend the very short, very simple, but intriguing A Defense of the Revelation by Leonhard Euler, who happens to be one of the most legendary mathematicians in history. And my friend Greg Boyd’s Letters to a Skeptic is also recommended.

Once you have a grasp of the theological basics, you may be ready to read up on the actual history of Christianity and some of its leading thinkers. The first volume of the Cambridge Medieval History series, The Christian Empire, is tremendously informative and the epub is freely available for download online. St. Augustine’s Confessions are worth reading for their influence on Western thinking and a good summary of Thomas Aquinas is a necessity as well. I haven’t read it yet, but I have heard very good things about Edward Feser’s Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide and I intend to review it as soon as I finish the Cantillon.

Any other reasonable recommendations would be welcome. Please note that this is not the right sort of post to either indulge your particular theological peculiarities or exhibit how esoteric your reading happens to have been. We’re talking Christianity 101, not 503.

Mailvox: SF/F’s transideological malaise

It appears it is not only right-wing conservatives, libertarian extremists and Bible-thumping god-botherers who are thoroughly sick of the meatless, mindless, scalzified SF/F that is being pushed on them by the genre publishers:

I am on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you. I am a Marxist and an atheist, but I didn’t come here to debate politics or religion. Anyway, last year I started writing seriously and I thought I should get out there on the web and see what the “scene” is about right now, sci/fi and fantasy writers and markets and new fiction, especially short fiction. I constantly read sci/fi and fanstasy, but mostly from my collection of old paperbacks, Vance, Herbert, Howard, etc… I read just as much non-fiction from my local library. So I put my finger on the pulse. The experience was disheartening. New short fiction seems to place innovation over all other qualities possible in a particular piece, which means my desire to read a good story is likely to go unsatisfied. Also, the “scene” is completely preoccupied with identity.

And of course, I happened upon the Scalzi/Vox feud. I checked out both blogs. The verdict: Scalzi – rather dull and typical upper middle class views, Vox – incendiary but rigorous, consistent, and most importantly, often funny. As a Marxist I can’t resist good polemic, even from the other side.  I lurk about once a month.

Let me backtrack with a little explanation. Some people out there, perhaps not you, may confuse my radical leftism with the stuff going on out there. They would be wrong. As a Marxist, for me it is class, class, class. Class trumps race, gender, everything. Its all about wealth. The fact that “old white men” are holding alot of it is due to historical forces, not from their “whiteness”. In the 60’s and 70’s, the leftist preoccupation with class was replaced with race and gender issues, to the detriment of all concerned.  Old news, just spelling it out here for clarity’s sake.

So we get to now, and race and gender obsessed “liberal progressives” are such a harmful force in society that I, an actual socialist revolutionary, can enjoy you tormenting them on your blog, even though your political perspective is rooted in basic assumptions that are opposite my own. Strange days indeed. For liberal progressives, this would indicate I am a sexist racist, but as a white male I am already on their shitlist so whatever. I am a Marxist. I believe I am fighting the good fight. I am not going to get on my knees and lick boot, hoping for “ally” status. Eff that. The whole thing is a bizarre repackaging of original sin.

So when you put The Last Witchking out there for free, I thought why not and downloaded it. When it came up in the queue I dived in and I was floored. The stories were excellent. They entertained me. What else can I say? Opera Vita was incredible. There was a poignancy there I was not expecting. Suffused throughout is a certain ephemeral beauty, stately and linked with mortality. The subtlety belies tropes about limitations of the “male perspective” that are bandied about when the writing community weighs in on gender.  I haven’t seen religion done so convincingly and movingly in the genre since Herbert. I went ahead and read Magic Broken and enjoyed it thoroughly and then pulled the trigger on Throne for five bucks and now I am enjoying that.

It is really remarkable that your apparent congenital disorder, the inability to shut up or even tone it down, has disbarred you from the typical path to success as a writer.  I guess there is hope. I found your work via your soapbox. Despite my predilections toward the radical, I never let politics get in the way of personal relationships and now I have to add that it can’t dissuade me from enjoying fiction I like. Thanks for the books. I am hooked on Selenoth now, the antidote for my genre malaise. Please make it your goal to churn out volumes of the stuff for readers like me trying to survive this long winter.

That an avowed Marxist would enjoy my fiction is less surprising than it might sound. I am, after all, a radical, merely one with very different assumptions and objectives. And I’ve always gotten along much better with the hard left than with the soft, squishy, bourgeois progressive left; one of my independent studies was done under a hardcore Canadian socialist who regarded McDonalds as the capitalist devil incarnate.

Of course, this may be because the hard left is about the only group that hates the progressive left more than I do. One of the great satisfactions about being on the right-wing is the knowledge that even if we lose and the revolution finally arrives in its fullness, the useful idiots are going to be the first ones lined up against the wall and shot. And who can look at the way Wall Street has been raping the country and not feel the urge to raise a revolutionary flag; if that is capitalism, then I don’t want any part of it and I’m a libertarian!

But besides our obvious ideological and religious differences, I have to take some issue with the writer’s idea that it is my unwillingness to cower before the PC gods of publishing that have prevented me from following the conventional path. While my notoriety would presumably have made it easier for them to decline to publish me – which is theoretical anyhow because I do not have an agent and I have never submitted my work for publication to any of the various genre publishing houses – this actually has the situation backwards.

One reason that I have been so uncompromising and so unwilling to play along with the progressives is because I have known from the start that the substance of my fiction would prevent the mainstream publishers from publishing it. And I also knew I had no interest in writing the sort of tedious political crap they wanted to publish. So, there was no reason to muzzle myself because I knew there was no chance that they would publish books like The Chronicles of King David or Summa Elvetica no matter what I did or did not say. I can’t pose as either a hero or a victim because I never had anything to lose in that regard.

In fact, I consider myself incredibly lucky to not only have such strong support from intelligent readers across religious and ideological lines, but to be writing at a time when the gatekeepers are so impotent. All of us who write should be deeply grateful, whether it is to God or to History and the class struggle, to be alive at such a fascinating time! To be able to write exactly what one wants and be able to make it readily available to those who are potentially interested in it is all that any writer can really ask for. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.

Mailvox: don’t struggle

TS writes of his difficulties in attempting to find belief in the existence of God:

Vox, I’ve read your blog for quite some time now and have enjoyed it immensely. Right now I am a struggling theist. More and more I am doubting the existence of God and it’s plaguing my thoughts and causing some serious depression.

My biggest hurdle in my mind right now is the fact that you can’t see God. You come across as very intelligent so I ask you personally: what helped you get past the fact that you can’t see God or hear from him. My mind continues to tell me I am being irrational for believing in a life form I can’t see. Am I missing something?  Is this truly a matter of “blind faith” as an atheist would mockingly say? Your thoughts are much appreciated. I genuinely want rational reasons that can help me get past this mental hurdle

It has become apparent to me that there are three primary causes for atheism. One is a simple neural anomaly where the atheist lacks something in the brain that is necessary for some forms of belief. This doesn’t merely relate to belief in God, but also in the ability to connect with other beings, hence the strong correlation between atheism and higher levels on the autism spectrum.

The second cause produces the most common and irritating variety, the intellectual perma-adolescent. This is the Religion Minus variety, which is nothing more than a parasitic Do What Thou Wilt Society. Combine it with the first cause and one has the typical New Atheist: smug, juvenile, and socially autistic.

The third cause is what I would describe as a failure of understanding. It is, I submit, a category error at its core. To me, it seems quite literally crazy to refuse to believe in ANYTHING simply because one has not seen it or heard it. We live in an age of virtual reality, where what we see and hear are entirely false. We live in an age of quantum physics, where what happens on one side of a galaxy has chaotic and unknown, but theoretically observable effects on the other side of it.

So, to think that because one has never personally seen nor heard something is any sort of indication that it doesn’t exist strikes me as solipsism of the first order. As for me, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever in believing in God’s existence. There is nothing to get past. Perhaps this paragraph explaining why I am a Christian, taken from my exchange of letters with Luke of Common Sense Atheism, will help you understand my perspective on the readily observable fact of God’s existence.

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in
objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single
one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I
am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific,
testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no
individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards
described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus
Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God
may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has
never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could
ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that
evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of
Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live
in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of
God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is
described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find
that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the
shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

My advice to TS is to stop struggling to understand how God functions or why God hasn’t submitted to a personal belief audit and start simply experiencing the effects of God in this fallen world.

Stand outside in the cold autum breeze, close your eyes, spread your arms, and feel the unseen wind on your face. Read the Book of Proverbs, read the latest professional manual on child-rearing, written with the benefit of more than two thousand years of collective human experience, then go to a park and observe the children interacting with their parents. Go drop one rock on top of another 500 times and do your best to convince yourself that all the life you see around you began as a result of a singular accidental collision. Go to a funeral of a stranger, observe the grief of the friends and family, and tell yourself that the rearrangement of atoms involved in the transition of the deceased from life to death was of no more material import or significance than the shattering of a rock into dust.

Speak to a murderer and ask him to tell you why he committed his horrific crimes. Look at the pictures of the aftermath. Then look deep into his eyes and try to tell yourself that neither good nor evil exist.

Immerse yourself in the atheist arguments with your eyes and your mind open. Not until you fully understand them, not until you reconstruct them from their foundational assumptions, can you grasp how superficial and foolish they are from a purely rational perspective.

Empirical mysticism isn’t a path I would recommend for everyone, but the excessively logical often struggle with the reality of the mystery. They simply cannot accept that Man is not capable of formulating the questions, let alone finding the answers. That is why allowing themselves to experience and accept the manifold mysteries of life, the universe, and everything can be necessary for them to permit themselves to be convicted of things not seen.

In the end, one is advised to make The Castrate’s Choice: It is so or it is not so. Because the life lived seated on a fence makes for a poorly lived one. Choose, and then live accordingly.

Mailvox: A European perspective

A Spanish reader weighs in concerning my comments on the different challenges faced by Western civilization in Europe and North America:

I have been following your posts for several years and, although I never had an interest in fantasy, I just started reading The Wardog’s Coin. (I figured that since I enjoy so much your thoughts on economics, politics, and gender issues, I should also check the fiction.)

After reading you post titled “Why there is hope for Europe” I would like to share some thoughts with you about the differences between the situations on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps I should begin this by mentioning that I am European, Spanish to be precise.

In your article, you enumerate these three differences:

1.    Parliamentary systems
2.    Trans-ideological nationalism
3.    No popular pro-immigrant mythology

I agree with the first, not so much with the other two. But, most importantly, I would add two that I consider crucial.

1.    America’s immigration problem is with Spanish-speaking (mostly) Christians, whereas Europe’s is with (mostly) Muslims. I am really surprised that you did not include this one among your three differences.

The Americans’ memory of the Mexican War or the Spanish-American War is nothing compared to the Europeans’ memory of centuries fighting against Islam (almost 800 years in the case of Spain). Not to sound patronizing, but can an American wrap his head around the idea of a national identity forged in a conflict that triples the age of the United States of America (711 A.D. to 1492 vs. 1776 to 2013)? Some things are so big that they are routinely overlooked.

An American notices a South American moving into his neighborhood and he may have some very valid concerns, if nothing else, as a taxpayer. But he never really fears that Juan Garcia is going to show up one day in a subway station and blow himself up killing dozens of innocents. Our American John Doe has never witnessed Juan Garcia peeing in broad daylight on the façade of an American church. John might fear that his baby girl will marry Juan and then he’d have to attend a Catholic wedding, he does not fear that his baby girl will spend the rest of her life in a burka. He may fear that his grandchildren will play soccer rather than American football, he does not fear that they will learn how to behead infidels (like John himself).

In Europe, you find croissants, which were created in the image of a crescent to be eaten in defiance of the Muslim invaders centuries ago. You find Spanish families named Matamoros, literally ‘Moor-slayer’. And so on. In Europe, a nationalist party has plenty of symbolism to use against immigrants. There is absolutely nothing in the American culture against South Americans even remotely resembling that deeply rooted pathos. The closest thing being what? The ballad of El Álamo?

Plus, a South American is not going to tell our John Doe to stop eating burgers, but a Muslim cannot tolerate jamón, and to a Spaniard jamón is several orders of magnitude more important than the national flag, the national anthem, and the King, combined.

Worse still, after two devastating world wars and a traumatic cold war dividing the continent, Europeans happily (hippily?) embraced this kumbayah idea that if you don’t annoy others then they will leave you in peace. This was not meant only between France and Germany or between the metropolis and the former colonies, but in a vaguely general universal sense. So it is now particularly vexing to receive so much animosity from some immigrants (while the official politically correct tune goes on unaltered). America has not at all gone through such an emotional roller-coaster; you see, it happened over there.

So John Doe is not that concerned; certainly not as concerned as his European counterparts.

2.    If I am not very mistaken, immigration in the US is very concentrated in the Sunbelt. Whereas In Europe, immigration in Scandinavia, Britain, and Germany is as much an issue as it is in Spain and Italy. This would be equivalent to Alaska, the Dakotas, and Vermont having as much an issue with immigrants as Texas and California. Clearly, they don’t. (Again, this is not to overlook the federal fiscal implications.)

Plus, European towns are typically much more densely populated and geographically contiguous, so much so that you can actually walk from one neighborhood to another, so when a neighborhood suffers it is much more evident to all and so it is easier to genuinely worry, to empathize (even if the media tries to ignore it). But urban sprawl in the US, I suspect, has had a detrimental effect on what Ibn Khaldun called Asabiyyah, the nation’s social cohesion, by creating some sort of watertight compartments. An American neighborhood goes to hell and the people over the county border do not even notice because, to begin with, they’d need to drive there to notice but they never go (and the media dutifully ignores it). By the way, I think this phenomenon also helps explain why American Conservatives in the last presidential election where so mistaken about their real chances, they have lost sight of the nation by living inside a monochromatic bubble (Dems too, but their aggregated Blue State bubbles are demographically larger, it seems).

I think these two points are much more powerful than the pro-immigrant mythology. Indeed, it was, in part, because of the strength of this mythology all across Europe that so many nations made it so easy for immigrants to move in.

Finally, all this relates to perceptions, not necessarily actual threats, and to how easily and how much political parties can gain from that fear and what they do with that. Almost every Muslim I have personally met in Europe is too busy making a living to spoil it by going radical. And since they often live in several European countries before they settle down it is quite normal for many of them to speak several European languages. And let’s not forget that it was not them who drafted or even voted for all the idiotic legislation that’s gotten us into this mess (ditto for South Americans in the US). Obviously if it was all bad news then all the continent would be soaked in blood once again. But the really amusing twist (and isn’t History rich in amusing twists?) is that these growing nationalist parties have much more in common with what most adult Muslims have seen in their own homelands than with the political parties that have dominated Europe since 1945. Perhaps they will feel more at home? It’s not a cruel cheap joke. After all, General Franco, won the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) with the help of the African volunteers, his beloved Moorish Guards. Perhaps the key to real multicultural understanding was not to be found in kumbayah Social-democracy but in something better time-tested.

He’s entirely correct to call me to account on my failure to mention the demographic differences concerning the two invasions, especially since I’ve written about them in the past. Most Americans are astonished to learn that Muslims make up less than 5 percent of the European population, whereas Hispanics make up around 20 percent of the U.S. population.

As one American friend was surprised to observe, she saw more Muslims on her last visit to Minneapolis than she did in Rome.  Londonistan and Amstarabia no more indicate the Muslim occupation of Europe than New York City proves that most Americans are Jews.

That being said, our Spanish friend is incorrect about the invasion of the U.S. being primarily concentrated in the Sunbelt. It is certainly most severe in the four Sand States, but when Somalis are being elected in St. Paul and entire neighborhoods are being renamed to reflect who is now controlling them, the idea that the problem is localized is clearly incorrect. To put it in the proper perspective, there are only about 4x more Muslims in Europe per capita than there are Somalis in Minnesota.