Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: a leftist responds

DH couldn’t quite keep his response to Live by the Science within the Blogger comment character limits, so he emailed it to me.  It’s almost alarmingly reasonable and helps explain some of the appeal of the Left, particularly to the young, that is so inexplicable to we libertarian extremists.

Thank you for bringing this topic up.  It’s not a very often discussed topic within leftist circles for many reasons.  Within my close circle of elite, liberal friends we do get together to drink artisianally crafted authentic middle-ages mead we often discuss this topic, but only in hushed tones.  Between puffs on our organically grown, locally sourced, hand stretched tobacco, we speak quietly of the science itself, and the implications.

First, my initial point, if it was not clear, is that there exists legal equality before the law.  Sadly, at this point American law and history, this has been reduced to “Congress has the ability to regulate all people equally, but may or may not do so”.  I believe this is the basis for your comments regarding the “legal fiction” of equality.   My view on this is that this state has come about as a result of two forces:  1) a few holdouts of the anti-feminist line of thinking, who have managed to pass or hold onto, pre-feminist laws and customs; and 2) feminist and other activists who have decided to “work the refs” to obtain a favorable outcome, in contradiction to their claims about wanting only to be equal.  The point remains is that the leftist ideal is “equality before the law”, not “equality of outcomes”.  

This is a difficult topic to discuss in liberal circles because of racial hucksters.  With no exceptions the racial hucksters are all leftists and liberals.   It is often uncomfortable to own the sludge of your ideological party, but nonetheless, these buffoons are mine to own.  It is beyond question that you cannot discuss any of these matters with this cohort, under any preconditions.   I generally find solace in the fact that we share the revulsion towards the types who hiss “raciss” at every turn.

My objection was founded on the basis that leftists and liberals like myself recognize that most stereotypes are correct.

For example, I am a bleeding heart liberal.  If an unfortunate looking soul solicits me, I will do almost anything they ask.  My wife often remarks that I must have a glow that only grifters can see.  At the gas station, when I have parked my electric-only golf-cart sized car to run in and get some chai or tofu, I am often approached by someone with a hard luck story asking if they can have a dollar or two for gas so they can get home to their babies, or back to work, or whatever.  More often than not I fill their tank.  When the local church – not mine, I am not religious – had storm damage and needed donations for a new roof I split my emergency fund and donated timbers I had obtained for a DIY project. 

The same is true not only of this stereotype, but of most of them.  I won’t restate them, but you can imagine what they are.  Because they are rooted in observation and obtained over the ages they are more often accurate.  When I learned that the genetics of racial attributes are fairly well established I was not surprised.  As with many things, conventional wisdom tends to be accurate.  However, despite this, we on the left seek to carve race and race relations out of the realm of the biological sciences, and instead, keep them in the realm of social pseudo-science.  Frankly, we do not trust the masses with the information, nor even our own elite.  It is rope enough to hang oneself, or in this case, one’s neighbors.  But why deny our natural selves, and our natural desires?  We seek a compassionate compromise – that is based outside of science and history.  We seek a balance between our biological instincts that tell us to divide by race and attributes, and the rational knowledge that there is an at least equal value to be had people with attributes that are unlike our own.  We do not yield the ground that there is a clearly and universally superior sub-species group [although, logic dictates that one could develop, over long timescales].  This compromise is the “content of one’s character” test.  And really, except for a small number of hardcore bigots, that’s how I see most people, liberal, conservative or otherwise, operate their relations. 

This test and the collective result of individuals’ decisions to live by it are the reason why today a small slice of minorities have the opportunity to access the more affluent, more socially rewarding, and more culturally powerful anglo-American tradition.  As Derbyshire pointed out, there is a high-demand for minorities who are exemplars of their respective race.   At the top end of the societal power scale, people of all races mix well.  Within my circle of latte-sipping effette liberal friends, RGIII would fit in just fine, and he would be warmly welcomed.  That is because there is a very small difference between a successful black, and his white counterpart.  They both live in the same areas, kids both go to the same schools, etc.  The main difference is the statistical improbabilities involved.  For the white businessman, it is somewhat more likely that he ended up where he did.  For the black businessman, it was quite a bit more unlikely that he ended up where did.   Two racially divergent alpha’s share a lot more in common than one white alpha and what black delta.  At the bottom end of society – the low-class whites, the low-class blacks, the low-class hispanics – well, we never really expected them to mix well to begin with.  Our long-term preference would be for them to reduce numbers through birth control and abortions.   And again, this is where the “content of one’s character” test comes back into play.  I wouldn’t want my children significantly interacting with people in this cohort, because more often than not, their character matches their lot.  When that stereotype fails, I am happy to make exceptions. 

Many leftists and liberals will often say things like “racism is evil”, without realizing they are being irrational.  In many cases the MPAI-variety leftist will really mean they think racism is evil, but for those of who think about it more deeply, what we really mean are “the manifestations of racism are unpleasant” – those things are violent segregation, and racial hucksterisms, and the damage to human dignity that is done by systematic racism (i.e. ‘No blacks allowed’).  This was what I meant by the “what to do about it” department.   I recognize racism as an inherent element of the human condition, and as such, the desire itself is not “evil” to the extent that evil exists in the world.   This is also my point regarding malice and ill-will.  I would never fault a person for moving out of a declining neighborhood, being overrun with low-class minorities.   This is because it’s not built on ill-will or malice, it’s based on a desire to preserve what one’s already got.   It gets much more sticky when you ask, well why not prevent the minorities from moving into the place where you relocate?  That way, you won’t have to repeat the activity years down the road.  This is difficult because it prevents the “content of one’s character” test – which is the basis for equality of opportunity and thus the basis for the rational leftist preference for race relations.

The civil rights era is precipitated on violations of what many view as the God-given right of free association.  You have lost the legal basis, in many cases, to decide with whom you shall associate, do business with, and conduct your lives with.   Even though racial tensions were largely localized, the liberals of the 1960’s and 1970’s were successful in working the refs to get the Federal government to trade a good chunk of freedom of association on the altar of equality of opportunity.  This may have short-term benefits, but many leftists recognize that the intellectual  and legal footing for this is very weak.

Many of the most upsetting facets of liberalism in America are centered around the victimization of the majority, in the name of equality of opportunity.  This often comes at the expense of equality before the law, which is troubling.  These are things like quotas, affirmative action, and preferences built upon normalizing access to outcomes deemed favorable by favored minorities.  I have often argued that enforcing these mandates puts the entire concept of “equality before the law” in jeopardy, and it seems that with the growing documentation and understanding of the biological aspects of race, this is becoming more likely.   The  rational leftist has no choice but to acknowledge that these preferences must be dispatched.  As the understanding of sub-species race expand, so too will the demands of the minorities, until the point where equality of opportunity is worthless (a point which we may well have already passed).  The leftist solution is to refocus policies and society around equality of opportunity and to do so while preserving  and enhancing equality before the law.   In this way, we can balance the natural desire to separate unto ourselves with the compassionate compromise of the “content of one’s character” test.  Civilized people will be welcome to organize themselves according to their preference and to maximize productivity and commerce, and the low-classes will remain largely as they are today – defactor segregated.  Over the longer timescales, intermixing will average out the various attributes and produce generations of citizens with more average abilities, with fewer deviations from that average.

It is unfortunate that all cannot engage openly and honestly in this debate, and for that reason, I recognize the inherent weakness of the leftist liberal position.  VD is exactly right when he claims that honest and forthright discussion on this topic is not currently permissible, and that the blame for that lies largely on the side of the left.  MPAI is true, but especially so for many on “my side”.

What an eloquent elegy for his own side.  The fact is that discourse is rendered impossible when, as soon as one speaks one’s mind, the interlocutor points, shrieks, and rules not only the thought, but the speaker as well, out of bounds.  This is the intrinsic problem with the Latin proverb qui tacet consentire videtur and the idea that silence indicates consent; it creates an incentive for forcing silence and thereby creating the public impression of consent.  After all, if no one is speaking out against the iron-fisted rule of Stalin, everyone must be consenting to it, correct?

And the problem of the “content of one’s character” test is even more obvious.  One’s character by what moral standard?  The Left’s position sounds noble enough, at least as described by DH, but when practiced by those who reject the traditional Western moral standard, it becomes inescapably incoherent.

Mailvox: the charity war

Phoenician presents a fascinatingly ironic defense of McRapey:

Your attempt to smear him is a joke, and you’re a joke, you twerp – and what you don’t get is now you’re an even bigger joke known to many, many people who had no clue you existed.  Scalzi has pwned you. You might as well drop your pants, paint your ass red, and bend over.

So he can do what, gently massage my gluteal muscles?  Surely Phoenician doesn’t mean to suggest McRapey would, you know, sexually assault someone!  It appears that Mr. Scalzi’s fans share his public fascination with “cranial-rectal insertions”, “assbags”, and rape.  Now, perhaps I am a joke, an even bigger joke than before, and yet I can’t help but notice that the Dread Ilk appear to be the only ones laughing.  Phoenician, for one, appears to be a good deal more angry than amused.

Here is the question:  If l’affaire McRapey is going so fabulously well for the Gamma Rabbit, why is it only his fans who are urging me to stop?  My readers don’t appear to mind a daily update on the latest gamma antics and one would certainly hate to see the poor little gay black children shortchanged.  Does Phoenician simply hate little gay black girls?  I am absolutely committed to ensuring that they get every last penny of the $50,000$60,000 now pledged to them; I do wish there was an official counter or something to which I could link just to keep track.  In additional to the charitable imperative, I note that not only has Mr. Scalzi never once asked me to stop referring to him as McRapey, but has repeatedly professed his delight at all the attention he is receiving.

I, for one, would be devastated to see the anticipated recipients of such charitable largesse deprived of 95% of what they are expecting.  I expect that even if Mr. Scalzi no longer enjoys the attention, he would be loathe to make any request that would cause them to lose out on $57,000 in donations.  If he genuinely wished me to stop, then surely it would behoove him to simply ask me to do so rather than engage in all of these theatrics.

But what if Phoenician is correct and it is the Gamma Rabbit’s approach that is proving to be the more effective?  In that case, then logic clearly dictates we must follow the man’s charitable example.  Here’s what I’m going to do: From now until the end of 2013 (and
backdating to January 1st), each time John “I am a rapist” Scalzi forces himself on a woman “without their consent or desire and then batter(s) them sexually”, I’m going to put $5 into a pot. At the
end of the year, I’m going to tally it up.  All the money, up to $1,000,
will be donated to Victoria’s Secret, a stripper named Sunshine, a restaurant called The Black Cat, and the Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio.

Nothing is going to stop Gamma Rabbit from doing what rabbits do.  But at least the thought of all that money going to causes the Chief Rabbit of the Whatever warren hates will enrage him to much the same extent that the idea of FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS pledged to Emily, rain, Rainbow Pride, and the Colored People infuriates me.

Don’t look at me

I received this in my email today:

Urgent Notice: DDoS Attack 

Dear Members,
SFWA.org
has been experiencing a DDoS attack since approximately 10am EST this
morning. Our webstaff has been working to restore the site. Please be
patient while they continue their efforts. Members may have difficulty
accessing the main sfwa.org site and the content within. The forums at
sfwa.org/forum are also experiencing intermittent outages as well.

This event prompted an amount of speculation that the DDoS attack might possibly be related to certain differences of opinion between the current and future presidents of the SFWA.  As it happens, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it, (I was not even aware of it until after it had already been resolved), and neither did the Dread Ilk.  The reason, of course, is that it is the easiest thing in the world to determine if the Dread Ilk were involved in something within 24 hours of an event taking place.

  1. Were firearms involved? 
  2. Was the caliber larger than 9mm?
  3. Is the body count in excess of 20? 
  4. Are the fires still burning?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, you can be absolutely certain that the party responsible was not a regular reader of this blog.

Mailvox: an erroneous summary

Ed responds to my previous post on sexual inequality.  Unfortunately, he tries to leap past the specific issues raised and summarizes them incorrectly:

Your
arguments, gentlemen, all boil down to one essential realization: When
you open up the gates of universal suffrage, the results become more
unpredictable and difficult to manage.

This is
totally incorrect.  When the gates of universal suffrage are opened, the
results become entirely predictable and deleterious.  This is both
logically obvious and empirically demonstrable, since the consequences we are
currently experiencing were correctly anticipated by a wide variety of
men and women who opposed suffrage.

[H]ere
is a point I believe you overlook: We live in the twenty-first century.
Women are taxpayers, voters, and fully integrated into our educational,
corporate, and political institutions. A significant number of men
(myself included) believe that they have the right to equal
opportunities in our society. Even if it is possible to prove that women
are marginally less (or more, a la Tom Peters) capable than men, an
inexorable fact remains: Female participation in our society is firmly
established; and barring some cataclysmic counterrevolution, it is here
to stay.

Considering that I’m on record as expecting
the collapse of the USA in the 2033 timeframe, I don’t think I
can be reasonably said to have overlooked the point.  I understand that female
participation in our society is firmly established; that is precisely
why I expect our society to collapse and shatter.  This will not be the first
time this has happened, and human nature being what it is, I tend to
doubt that it will be the last.

Roissy’s observations on this score are reliably astute: “We are the front lines of a grand sociological experiment the fruits of which are just now beginning to ripen. There is no way to know the exact contours it will trace, because nothing of this precise nature on this gargantuan scale has befallen an entire civilization of our size, until now. But if past performance of similar civilizational devolutions is indicative of future returns, there is little cause for optimism. The omens are everywhere.”

 One,
even if it is possible to demonstrate that a particular group (men,
women, whites, blacks, Asians, etc.) is marginally more
intelligent/aggressive/etc. as compared to its counterpart(s), such
differences are statistically marginal, at best. Within my personal
circle of acquaintances, there are plenty of Asians who are poor at
math, and at least a dozen African-American engineers. The marginal
characteristics of a particular group (if they are provable and
demonstrable at all) do not enable you to make accurate predictions
about an individual member of that group.

Secondly, we
live in a pluralistic society. Fairness demands that we accept the equal
rights of all individuals (as opposed to the group rights advocated by
the extreme right and the politically correct left); and practicality
demands that we (I am speaking for conservatives here) construct a
message of small government and individual liberty that is free of
religious, ethnic, and gender biases.

In practice, arguments about race and/or and sex-based innate abilities do little more than offend people.

First, the inability to make accurate predictions about an individual member of that group are irrelevant since we’re not discussing the hypothetical disenfranchisement of individual voters, but rather the disenfranchisement of an entire class of voters.  And the marginal characteristics of a particular group most certainly allow one to make accurate predictions about their future collective behavior.

Second, fairness is irrelevant.  This is the expected retreat to metaphysics I anticipated and it is not applicable to the practical argument in which we are presently engaged.  Nor does practicality demand a message free of biases, indeed, the entire written history of Man demonstrates precisely the opposite.  Nor could it, given that my argument is a practical and empirical one.

Third, it is no concern of mine if people are offended or not.  The truth often offends people.  It is no surprise to me that women dislike the historical fact that their collective involvement in governance has historically led to the rapid loss of national sovereignty, to economic contraction, and other consequences generally deemed undesirable.  But history is as it is.  The facts are as they are.  Simply wishing things were otherwise is neither realistic nor a rational approach to the issue.

No one who is capable of grasping the concept that permitting children to choose their meals is not always and necessarily in their long-term best interest should have trouble understanding that permitting an increased influence in governance to any particular group is not always and necessarily in the best interest of that group or anyone else.  Nor is it necessary for a society to collapse entirely before the positive or negative effects of a specific group’s increased involvement in government to be ascertained.

Mailvox: errors of the equalitarians

Boris rejects my proposed liberty metric:

“So my question to Mr. Trimnell is if he accepts the number of laws and regulations in effect as a reasonable metric for measuring human liberty in this regard?”

This is a terrible metric. The content of the law is far more important wrt liberty than the actual number of laws. It can hardly be argued that American society is less free today than in 1919.  In any case, a more complex society will always have more laws, so your metric is not well thought out at all.

Boris’s objection is nonsensical on its face.  How can he reasonably compare the content of a single law to the total number of laws?  Alternatively, if by “the content of the law” he means “the cumulative content of all the laws”, how can he possibly ignore the fact that since all laws contain restrictions on human behavior, the larger the number of laws, the larger the number of restrictions on human behavior that they collectively contain?

It is true that the cumulative content of restrictions imposed by all the laws is a better metric than the mere number of them, but the latter is much easier to calculate, harder to dispute, and is demonstrably a reasonable and effective metric even if not the ideal one.

Furthermore, it can very easily be argued, indeed, it can very easily be proved, that American society is considerably less free today than in 1919.  I invite Boris to either attempt to prove that American society is considerably more as free today than in 1919 or retract his assertion.

Finally, what is “a complex society”?  Wikipedia defines it as: “the extent of a division of labour in which members of society are more or less permanently specialized in particular activities and depend on others for goods and services, within a system regulated by custom and laws.”  Since a complex society features a regulated system by definition, it should be clear that the complex society’s inevitable tendency to have more laws not only fails to disprove the metric, but instead underlines its effectiveness.

I also asked The Great Martini about his preference for democracy or limited democracy:

“Question for you: what better expresses the will of the people, direct
democracy or representative-limited democracy? And which do you favor?”

Direct
democracy would be preferable if a practical system could be devised to
implement it. There’s the question of whether it would even be
feasible to run a government by constantly consulting all the people
every time a decision had to be made. If everyone were versed in
everything and if everyone would actually agree to a process of constant
polling it would no doubt be a very effective expression of the will of
the people. The internet has made that more feasible, but still I
think impractical.

What does feasibility have to do with the more perfect expression of the will of the people?  Is direct democracy via the Internet truly LESS feasible or a less perfect expression than the system of limited representative democracy when it took weeks for information to travel from Washington DC to the various Congressional districts across the nation?  Is it even less perfect than the present system that involves gerrymandered representatives voting on giant bills consisting of thousands of pages that they have not even read?

The point I am making here is that even the most die-hard equalitarian favors strict limits on democracy.  They might appeal to feasibility, practicality, voter ignorance, or any number of other factors, but at the end of the day, every single one I have ever encountered favors concrete limits for the electorate.  Therefore, this is a purely practical debate and the metaphysical arguments upon which the pro-suffrage equalitarian rhetoric is based are irrelevant and inapplicable.

Mailvox: the metaphysical straddle

This discussion with Asher concerning the utility and legitimacy of utilizing both practical and metaphysical arguments was too long for Blogger’s comment system, so I’m giving it its own post.

I’m not sure what you mean by “that”. Are you saying you never do the metaphysical/practical straddle or that the way you do it isn’t a problem? IF you are offering both metaphysical and practical arguments THEN you are doing the straddle, and the straddle is the problem, in itself.

Earlier you noted that you effortlessly switched back and forth between metaphysical and practical considerations, which looks, to me, like an admission of a straddle. If so, then that is a problem and, if not, could you clarify that statement.

High IQ does not mean one is able to avoid the straddle problem by being smart, as the straddle IS the problem. Either one makes metaphysical arguments or one does not, and if one does than the entire argument is metaphysical.

No.  Your core assumption is wrong.  A metaphysical argument does not magically subsume a practical one.  They are two different arguments that happen to concern the same subject.  You are conflating “straddle” and “switch”; you’ve used the term “straddle” in two different ways.  What I do not do is what you correctly claimed many libertarians (and many others) do, switching back and forth between the practical and the metaphysical in order to avoid having their weakest arguments exposed and defeated.  I do not “switch” between the two for that reason.  I utilize both, following my opponent where he goes.

Where you are correct is that once one RETREATS to the metaphysical, one cannot legitimately return to the defeated practical argument.  But following another’s retreat to the metaphysical in no way invalidates what has already been shown to be a successful practical argument.

The average ability of the ilk is considerably better than that of the average Joe, but most of the ilk do not capable of following you, at least in the way you lead the conversation. It’s not that your reasoning is bad but that it’s too demanding for most of your blog readers, both those that agree and those that disagree.  The ilk are considerably more advanced than the average guy but less advanced than they fancy themselves.

On average?  Of course.  That’s precisely why I repeat myself over and over again.  That’s why I provide illustrative examples.  Those who can, learn, and eventually demonstrate that they can utilize the tactics themselves, often in long debates here in which I don’t involve myself.  Those who can’t follow are at least usually able to appreciate the tactical aspects in both the aesthetic and entertainment senses.  And given that I have repeatedly stepped in and informed people when they were using various tactics improperly, why would you think you are informing me of anything I don’t already know in this regard?

It’s not difficult to see when someone is attempting to utilize a dialectical device in a rhetorical manner or asserting a nonexistent logical fallacy.  Sometimes people have to experiment and try things out before they get the hang of it.  Sometimes, it is eminently clear they will never be able to do more than bluster and posture.  So be it.  I don’t always get things right myself, as readers like you are always, to your credit, pleased to point out.  However, the other day, I said this blog is not The Following, but it could be reasonably considered to be like that show in that I have helped develop a widespread collection of lethal serial killers in the intellectual sense.  When a member of the Dread Ilk eviscerates the arguments of a friend, or family member, or co-worker using the tactics he has learned here, I am with him in spirit.

I can use this metaphor. A trap is like a claymore mine. You are a parent and the ilk are your young children. You leave the mine lying around your house in the event of a home invasion and, instead, one of the ilk sets it off and it ruins his day. From where I’m sitting that is what we’d call an “own goal”.

It’s not an applicable metaphor.  The traps are, in almost all situations, triggered by the interlocutor.  It’s more like planting a minefield on a battlefield and I am the only soldier on the one side, outnumbered though not outgunned.  The civilians are safe.  The other side, well, one of them will probably step on a mine.  And even if a civilian decides to come onto the field and inadvertently sets one off, well, hopefully it will be a learning experience for him and everyone who witnessed it.  The traps are only set to catch those who are determined to be blindly critical at all costs.

The only way that setting traps is always a good thing is when there is no audience or where you know the audience is on your level of intellect. Most of the ilk are likely to misuse most of your traps most of the time.

Totally disagree and would go so far to assert that your perspective is solely tactical and fails to even begin to take the strategic aspects into account.  The traps are set, in part, for the benefit of the audience, who tend to find them more than a little entertaining in operation.  For example, I suspect Allyn was at least mildly amused when she commented: Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.  On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

Now I agree that most people, including the many of the Dread Ilk, don’t have the ability to effectively lay traps for critics.  The capacity for constructing them requires a psychological inclination as well as the ability to utilize a dialectical device with rhetorical ramifications.  That’s all right, it is only one of many techniques and is primarily useful for someone like me, who has hundreds, if not thousands, of critics eager to attack him at every sign of weakness or error.  By displaying false signs, I can take out most of them and demonstrate that their criticism is both superficial and baseless with very little effort.  Your average person who is not a critical target has considerably less need of any such device.  As Allyn observes, I can come right out and announce that I am doing this, just as I am doing here, and it won’t even slow down the speed with which the average rabbit will plunge his head into the shining wire.

Some may consider this to be sadistic, but my view is that if you are aware someone harbors a negative attitude towards you and is inclined to attack you at the earliest opportunity, they entirely merit whatever consequences result from their predictable behavior.

If they are harmonious then you only need to use one and the other is redundant. If anyone uses two the odds of them being harmonious is, to put it charitably, very thin. The entire reason that people do the straddle is that they use one set of arguments to cover for weaknesses in the other set and vice versa.

You’re incorrect; you’re again conflating straddle and switch.  I utilize both levels in order to expose that both levels of the critic’s arguments are wrong and thereby render the switch useless.  You’re completely failing to understand how the game is actually played in favor of some imaginary, metaphysical version of it.

Another metaphor I can use. If day after day an army takes the field, gets defeated and then retreats to higher ground then there is something wrong with the field officers. The obvious strategy would be to stick to where one can win and not continue sallying forth onto ground where one keeps being defeated.

Another bad metaphor.  First I defeat them on the lower ground.  They retreat.  Then I defeat them on the higher ground.  At which point they usually abandon the battlefield altogether.  You know perfectly well that is the usual pattern observed here.  With, of course, the exception of the anklebiters of the world, who sally forth to defeat again, and again, and again, much to the amusement of many.  I don’t mind them most of the time.  It take absolutely no effort to keep swatting down their arguments.

That just doesn’t make any sense. If one has already won on the field of battle then one doesn’t *need* to retreat.

You’re missing the point.  I’m not retreating.  I’m following up the successful defense with a counterattack.  Here is how it almost always works.  I post something.  My statements are attacked on factual grounds.  I defeat the factual argument.  The interlocutor retreats and attempts to justify his now-defeated practical argument with a metaphysical one.  I then launch an attack on his metaphysical argument.  That defeated, he runs away.  We’ve seen this process again, and again, and again, have we not?

I’m not switching anything.  I haven’t given up one iota of my practical argument or the ground I am defending.  I’m simply moving onto the other side’s ground and taking that away from him too.

If you find yourself doing the straddle that indicates that you are faced with an intractable foe, and many in the audience are also likely to be intractable foes.

Of course.  This is hardly news.  I’ve been getting death threats, having book contracts paid off, and seeing my job, my music, and my books attacked for 12 years now.  And yet, my audience keeps growing, the Dread Ilk continue to become more capable, and my abilities continue to develop.

There are two ways to take this observation. Either you already convinced a bunch of Bush Republicans to join Team Vox or you just admitted to an own goal. Chasing people away is likely to decrease the chances of their joining your team.

If you’ve been around here for as long as you said, you already know the answer to this question.  The people who are chased away tend to be the apparently intractable ones, and even some of them don’t stay chased away.  Will they ever join the team of truth, reason, and freedom?  I have known a few who have.  But it is not for me to say if my actions have changed anyone’s minds.  And it’s not Team Vox, it is Team Truth.  I don’t dictate anything, I simply follow the truth, and The Truth, as best I understand it and as well as my limitations will permit.

Homeschool and social awkwardness

LH asks a serious question about socialization and homeschool:

My observations are this. Academically, homeschoolers are just pure genius. But the world does not work based on your grade point average. In the business world, it all also depends on who you know and how well you get along with people. And I’ve noticed that homeschooled adults–people in their twenties and thirties–often seem to struggle with the rest of the working world.

Now, I am asking for opinions on these observations. I’m not drawing a line in the sand, making any declarations against homeschooling, or anything like that. I’m looking for other people’s observations and testimonies that might prove hopeful.

I think it is a genuine issue.  I have observed the phenomenon on numerous occasions myself.  For example, at my eldest son’s first soccer practice with a new team, all of the other players sat down and listened to the coach when he started addressing them.  My son continued to stand, bouncing a ball, and was observably paying no attention to the coach.

Now, obviously I explained that his behavior was unacceptable after the practice and likely to lead to a lack of playing time.  But the fact that I had to explain this to him, when he had been playing soccer for years, was indicative of what can either be seen as a feature or a bug.  That is to say, he simply does not appear to feel any peer pressure.  The fact that everyone else is doing X not only does not instill in him any need to do X, he doesn’t appear to assign any significance to it whatsoever.

This isn’t necessarily the result of homeschooling, of course.  I am a socio-sexual Sigma and a lone wolf.  Spacebunny is also, by female standards, a lone wolf.  Both of us were public-schooled.  So, it should not be at all surprising that our son would tend to be highly independent regardless of how he was schooled, and yet, there is still a material difference between his perception of the significance of the behavior of others to him, and ours.

On the other hand, once a parent is aware of this lack of awareness, it is quite easily dealt with.  The incident at practice was two years ago.  It has not happened since; once the team begins to line up in front of the coach, he recognizes the signal and not infrequently is among the first to sit down and pay attention.  However, it appears to remain a conscious behavior and not an unconscious one.  I happen to think this will serve him well in time, as unlike the others, he has the option to go along with the crowd or not, as he consciously chooses.  Independence and auto-conformity are mutually exclusive; the parent who fears the occasional social awkwardness later in life would do well to consider what sort of problems are more likely to occur with an auto-conforming child.

However, the most significant testimony I have ever heard concerning socialization and homeschool was from the children’s pediatrician, who is a doctor of no little international repute.  We were the only homeschooling family in his practice at the start and he initially harbored some reservations about it.  However, after ten years, he mentioned that he was now fully supportive of it, in part because he had observed that our children were not only advanced intellectually, they were also the happiest children in his practice.

I think one should step back and consider what the working world presently is before concluding that those who struggle with it are somehow deficient.  What is natural or normal about spending 8-10 hours per day in a small grey cubicle, living like a rat in a cage and shuffling virtual papers while attempting to avoid conflict with various unproductive individuals of varying degrees of medication and reflexive hostility?  Considering how much the average worker has to modify his normal behavior just to avoid getting in trouble with HR these days, can one reasonably conclude that it is the homeschooled individual and not the increasingly outdated working world that is the problem?

The experts tell us that to succeed in the working world of tomorrow, it will be increasingly necessary to be independent, free of reliance upon the corporate patterns of the past, flexible, and agile.  To me, it sounds as if much of the “awkwardness” of the homeschooled individual in the eyes of the more conventionally schooled is akin to the strangeness of the mammal when viewed from the perspective of the dinosaur.

My suspicion is that the socially awkward homeschooler primarily represents a failure of the homeschooling parent to address socio-sexual issues with the child, and is little different from the tendency of most conventionally schooled men to be sexually awkward due to the maleducations they receive on the topic.  The fact that the homeschooled child is likely to automatically receive less socio-sexual education than the crude mindless one received by the conventionally schooled child does not mean that he is necessarily uneducable in the subject.

Mailvox: in time for Christmas

Glad to hear from JB that Marcher Lord Hinterlands was able to keep its word concerning the hardcovers and deliver in time for Christmas:

Received my copy yesterday!  I gave it a quick once over and I have to say, the book looks great on the whole.  The cover is somewhat muted in color in comparison to web images, but that was/is to be expected electronic gamma being what it is.

I’m looking forward to seeing it myself, but I expect I’ll have to wait another week or so.  Thanks again to team OCD, whose speedy proofreading made this possible.

Mailvox: illumination and shadow

A physicist notes the way in which Tolkien explicated the distinction between the illuminating fairy tale and the dark deceit of the retrophobic modern fantasy:

I was intrigued by the discussion on retrophobia in fantasy literature, and it made me recall a relevant passage from Professor Wood’s The Gospel According to Tolkien:

The essence of fairy-stories is that they satisfy our heart’s deepest desire: to know a world other than our own, a world that has not been flattened and shrunk and emptied of mystery. To enter this other world, the fairy tale resorts to fantasy in the literal sense. It deals with phantasms or representations of things not generally believed to exist in our primary world: elves (the older word for faires), hobbits, wizards, dwarves, Ringwraiths, wargs, orcs, and the like. Far from being unreal or fantastic in the popular sense, these creatures embody the invisible qualities of the eternal world — love and death, courage and cowardice, terror and hope — that always impinge on our own visible universe. Fairy-stories “open as door on Other Time” Tolkien writes, “and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, perhaps.” Hence Tolkien’s insistence that all fantasy-creations must have the mythic character of the supernatural world as well as the historical consistency of the natural world. The question to be posed for fantasy as also for many of the biblical narratives is not, therefore, “Did these things literally happen?” but “Does their happening reveal the truth?”

This ties into your discussion of the modern Wormtongues, as well. Wood and Tolkien are essentially saying what you’re saying: modern fantasy fails, because important elements of the narrative do not reveal the truth, and readers know it.

The reason so much modern fantasy fails so spectacularly is not because it is soulless and derivative, although it is, but because it quite literally hates the heart.  It is written out of hatred, it is based on lies, and it is designed to obscure rather than reveal.  Take R. Scott Bakker’s series, The Prince of Nothing.  The events chronicled within it did not literally happen, but their happening, quite intentionally, obscures the truth, indeed, it claims that there is no such thing as truth.  The ugliness of the disgusting Face Dancers is an apt metaphor for the ugly incoherence at the core of the modernist vision for the series.

This is why GRR Martin will never be the American JRR Tolkien.  What are the truths revealed by A Song of Ice and Fire?  That people of good will are stupid?  That everyone is pointlessly sadistic? That no good deed goes unpunished?  That sex is either rape, incest, or prostitution?  The only truths to be found in Martin are negative; there is nothing beautiful or mythic about Westeros.  There is death, cowardice, and terror, but where is the love, courage, and hope?  When viewed from this perspective, it becomes apparent that decline of the series observed in the two most recent books are merely the flowering of a retrophobic seed that was planted at the start.

My point is not that those who write in the older tradition are better writers.  If anything, it is remarkable that those who handicap their narratives so severely with their moral blindness and ideological retrophobia manage to produce works that are still compelling in some way.  The problem is that, no matter how highly skilled they are, genuine greatness will always elude them and their works, despite their merits, will rapidly fade into the forgotten dust of history because they do not speak to the eternal truths at the heart of Man.

Mailvox: the utility of rhetoric

NorthernHamlet objects to the rhetoric inherent in the post Homeschool or Die.  He writes, in response to my explanation:

“Trying to talk about big pictures or summoning statistics is about
as relevant as reciting the Iliad. [Rhetoric] is not petty politics or point
scoring, it is the only possible form of dialogue.”

We both can run through this line of thinking easily.

Your
public audience, at least some of it, knows you could have it both ways
in a blog post, the rhetorical argument, the statistical reality,
and the meta-argument. You yourself admit that the situation has already
been politicized; suggesting that you are purposefully furthering that
politicization process for argumentative gain, and nothing more. You can
claim all day that the only audience you care about is your own (a
claim easily disputed) or however you choose to put it, but from an
outside perspective, the post comes off as extremely petty.

I’m
sure more of your public audience than you realize would appreciate both
the amusing rhetoric you are known for and which I’m sure sells books
and gains site traffic in addition to the insightful observations you
are equally known for peppered in to the post as opposed to the
comments; leaving room for even better conversation in the thread.

How the rhetoric in the relevant post comes off to conventionally-thinking conservatives who happen agree with me on the issue of the primacy of gun rights is totally irrelevant, not only to me, but to the argument.  I mean, I harbor very little concern for what most people think anyhow, as per MPAI, but the group whose opinion least concerns me is the most rhetorically impotent and argumentatively challenged group in American political discourse today.

It tends to remind me of those who used to insist that Ann Coulter would be more “effective” if she was only nicer and less strident.  Never mind that no one would have heard of her or that she didn’t really have a whole lot to say other than ruthlessly pointing out the hypocrisy and malicious intent of the American Left.

First, note that the post was linked to by Instapundit.  Why?  Because Instapundit recognizes an effective rhetorical argument when he sees one even though his primary public response was dialectic.  Does anyone think that his perfectly rational, perfectly correct argument about the false sense of security provided by gun-free zones will have any effect whatsoever on the minds of women who are posturing about how hard they are crying and how they are “hugging them close today”?

Of course not.  The dialectic cannot reach the rhetorically-minded.  Yes, it is logical nonsense to say “if you do not homeschool your children, they will die”, just as it is nonsense to say “because one crazy individual shot 27 people, we must forcibly seize 300 million privately owned firearms that prevent government tyranny.”  And yet, these logically nonsensical rhetorical arguments that shamelessly play upon the emotions of individuals are the only ones that the majority – the majority –  of the electorate find credible and convincing.  And so they must be made.

Is this rhetorical assertion a genuine surprise to NorthernHamlet or anyone else: “Standing up to the gun lobby is the best way to honour the innocent victims.”  If so, it shouldn’t be.  This is hardly our first shooting-inspired gun control rodeo.  In the past, the pro-control crowd reaped a rhetorical harvest in the early days while the pro-freedom crowd remained silent out of fear of politicizing the tragedy or limited itself to weakly protesting in a dialectical manner.  Those days are done.  We know the drill.

As I’ve already explained, any argument that focuses on the rhetorical aspect of “homeschool or die” can be easily turned against the rhetorical arguments made by the other side.  That is the power of the meta-argument that utilizes both rhetorical and dialectical arguments; the other side can either lose on rhetorical grounds, or, after attacking the rhetoric and stripping itself of its own rhetorical arguments, lose on the more substantial dialectic grounds.

There is nothing petty about it; to claim that it is petty is to fundamentally miss the point that the argument being won and lost on petty grounds because it is mostly being fought on ground that primarily consists of petty little minds.