The “no place for X” crowd and the deplatformers don’t seem to have grasped where their logic leads. It is inevitable that eventually, we will build a society with neither space nor platform for them.
Build Your Own
Tag: philosophy
A Backhanded Compliment
There is no question that Chris Langan is smarter than I am. Nor is there any question that he’s genuinely as intelligent as he claims to be. And while we’re all familiar with being damned by faint praise, this may be one unusual example of being praised by faint damns:
As far as Germany is concerned, everyone is forever knocking the so-called “nazi stud farms” of the 1930’s and 40’s. But before one can even dream of doing this in any meaningful way, one must consider the alternatives available in the present reproductively degenerate environment … and we’re not just talking about genocidally replacing indigenous Europeans with maladaptive foreigners. As I say, the situation here is nearly as bad. As one of the premier bouncers in New York, if not the best-known of all, I was nothing if not accessible to women. That I didn’t get any reproductive play on Eastern LI, where rich and pampered women abound, and that I simultaneously watched these decadent party girls having out-of-wedlock children by a succession of dunces, creeps, and minority players, is really quite informative when you come right down to it. Truly, the Caucasian genome is in freefall.
That smart people do suffer is simply true, and I do not envy anyone except the great men of the past; I feel like an alien in this world and wish I had never been born or at least in a century with refined manners. Call Oswald Spengler a gamma all you want: he was a genius superior to the Vox Days and van Crevelds.
To quote Nils M. Holm from this unfinished book “Bridging the Gap” (t3x.org):
“Having a job that pays the bills helps to find your way in this world, and having a jobs that allows for some extras, like a new car, vacations in foreign countries, or maybe an own appartment, is seen as the ultimate goal by many. However, this can be a stale experience when you are always on your own. You may find a partner, but never feel any connection to them, because they do not share your interests, your values, your empathy, your sensitivity, etc. Many relationships of high-IQ people are uneasy compromises at best. The alienation they first felt at home and then at school and in later life extends also to their closest connections.”
I don’t think that it’s just intelligence that is to blame here, although it’s obviously harder for Langan, who has essentially no intellectual peers outside of books, than it is for me. This is where I think the SSH really comes into play; Langan strikes me as a Delta, which would explain why his sense of alienation and inability to fit neatly into the various hierarchies of his life plague him in a way that it simply doesn’t bother a Sigma like me.
Langan’s historical failure to score with decadent party girls has nothing to do with his intelligence, in my opinion. I suspect that his problem was that he was looking for a unicorn in a cattle ranch; if he’d simply accepted what the urban cattle had to offer and been content with that, he probably would have cleaned up. I’ve had perfectly happy relationships with girls who couldn’t add 2 + 2 and come within an order of magnitude of 4; the difference between a woman with an IQ of 75 and an IQ of 120 is almost entirely irrelevant once you’re beyond the 2SD communications gap.
I think it would behoove smart men to understand that conflating a romantic relationship with an intellectual relationship is a fundamental category error. Once a woman has a child, her children are going to be her primary, secondary, and tertiary interests anyhow, so looking to her to fulfill your desire for intellectual discourse is very likely to prove disappointing even if she’s smarter than you are and shares your interests.
- Every man thinks alone.
- Philosophy is not a team sport.
- Learn to enjoy the solitude.
This is why you should never envy your intellectual superiors. Because, at the end of the day, you have no idea what their gifts have cost them.
Sociopaths Play Nice Guys
My wife and I visited a winery this week where the owner gave a tour—good looking young dude, charismatic, great speaker and storyteller. Everyone in the group seemed to be fawning over him. But something in his story, and something about him, felt very off to me.
Sure enough, when I got home some quick online searching (oddly, his last name is scrubbed from any mention on on winery website) and some texting with a few friends—we are usually only 2-3 degrees of separation, it’s a small world—turned up that a number of years ago he had cheated on his wife in a different state and been involved in a massive fraud scheme in education, misappropriating public funds (he was a ”public school teacher”, he told us). He had fled the state and turned up in a new one, now running a multi-million dollar winery and presenting himself as morally superior to every other wine maker in the region.
Did you notice the tell? Con men of every stripe always present themselves as nice people. This is why I roll my eyes when obvious creeps like Neil Gaiman are unmasked and everyone somehow manages to be surprised; of course he acted super nice to everyone in public, unless you’re a rock star, you don’t get young women fawning over you if you don’t present a warm and welcoming mask to everyone. But the comparison between the art and the artist was incongruous, ergo there was a problem lurking underneath.
But there are lots of nice people and sociopaths work very hard to imitate them. The dead giveaway is the posturing at being morally superior. Normal people don’t do that; if anything, they tend to exaggerate their flaws. Always be very leery of any man or woman who is conspicuously nice, and then tells you why they are better than the average individual. And definitely keep one hand on your wallet.
Indeed
Even if Vox Day rather than Rachel Johnson had 1st reported the accusations against Neil Gaiman, I hope I would have believed K and Scarlett once I read/heard their testimony & the damning statements from whomever communicated Neil‘s response. I say that as someone who owes a lot to Neil.
You know it’s getting serious when SJWs are getting to the point that they would, even hypothetically, consider believing your favorite Dark Lord rather than the self-appointed social justice saint and LGBTQFP+ ally Neal Gaiman. The ironic thing is that I’m very far from the only one on the Right who knew that he was an overrrated creep all along. Consider what I wrote publicly back in 2018 when I first got into writing comics.
- If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman. When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road.
- It’s pretty simple. I am a better novelist than Neil Gaiman by almost every reasonable measure. Anyone who has read a sufficient variety of both our novels will recognize that pretty easily. Gaiman writes a variant of the same book with the same sort of characters almost every time. Even his Sandman is a Gary Stu of sorts. I have much wider literary range and can write everything from haunting shorts that could almost pass for modern Maupassant to murder mysteries to epic military fantasy. I don’t write myself into my books and I can even successfully pull off the “you genuinely think he’s dead but actually he isn’t” trick without cheating or magic or medical science or anything but pure literary sleight of hand. George Martin can’t do that despite repeated attempts. Gaiman can’t do it either. And as for Murakami, I have been writing a literary novel inspired by his style for years, although since I am not Japanese, it is more likely to feature a wedding than a suicide. I have no idea when it will be finished, if ever, but I think I might be able to pull it off. And if I can’t get even reasonably close, then I won’t publish it. I admire Tanith Lee. I admire JRR Tolkien. I admire John C. Wright. I admire China Mieville. I admire Alan Moore. I admire Umberto Eco. The only thing I admire about Gaiman’s writing is his ability to give everything the flavor of a fairy tale. That’s not nothing, it’s actually pretty cool, but it’s very far from the most significant thing. Sure, he sells a lot more books, but then, Dan Brown and Katie Price sell even more and I don’t have any respect for their literary abilities either.
The reason so many people on the Right knew Gaiman was a creep while no one on the Left did is very simple. We believe the art reflects the artist. They reject the connection between the art and the artist.
And, obviously, they are wrong.
It is, however, mildly amusing to observe that the way SJWs ritually disavow a formerly beloved author is to repeat “F— Neal Gaiman” as if it is a formal anathema.
Right From Day One
Someone on Twitter declares that it might have been a good idea to take my criticism of Jordan Peterson seriously six years ago:
Watching Jordan Peterson – it’s hard not to conclude that Vox Day had it right from day one. Mentally unwell people can provide the stray insight that is unique, worth hearing. But they are not role models or gurus. It’s always a mistake to take a strange person and create a cult around him. This is basically also the problem of feminism – a handful of angry lesbians convincing healthy young women to live against their instincts.
The thing that was so frustrating for me about the general enthusiasm for Peterson was that it was based upon virtually nothing, and all of the contrary evidence was right out there on display. Literally all you had to do to know he was an evil, vainglorious nutbag was read either of his two books.
Stop looking for heroes. Stop looking for people to give you answers. Stop reading the Cliff’s Notes or paying any attention at all to the Next Great Conservative Hope. Because he will be a gatekeeper, and at best, a grifter. At worst, he’ll be a Federal honey trap, like good ol’ Ray Epps.
I don’t believe in taking advice from anyone who hasn’t been dead for at least 100 years. If their advice still holds up a century after their demise, then it’s probably worthwhile.
Mad, Bad, and Dead
Gammas don’t take it well when their favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, is criticized. Or when it is suggested that perhaps a man would be well-advised to avoid adopting his philosophy, given how he wound up living out his days
The last eleven years of his life, Nietzsche spent in an incoherent madness, crouching in corners and drinking his urine.
Now, I’m still of an instinctively libertarian bent, so far be it from me to deny any Gamma his right to live as a superman should. But crouching in corners and drinking your own urine while looking down on the rest of humanity for their slave resentment of your self-professed superiority does not strike me as one of the more desirable ways to live one’s life.
The crazy thing about Nietzsche is that a lot of people actually took him seriously, when in truth he was never anything more than a talented scribbler of navel-gazing fantasy fiction about himself. His entire ouevre is one gargantuan delusion bubble, or, as Cioran correctly describes it, “an unspeakable megalomania”.
This observation offended a number of Gammas who, for God only knows what reason, hold Nietzsche in high regard. This was one response.
Just because you call him a lunatic doesn’t make it so. you think and behave as if we are in the Middle Ages and you Catholics are top dog and have a continent-spanning secret police behind you but you don’t. All you have is a little internet echo chamber and a religion that is built on the flimsiest foundation that cannot stand up to any criticisms. So you arrogantly dismiss them. but the vast majority of people aren’t convinced by your bluster anymore and haven’t been for centuries. You come off as weak and ignorant now more than ever.
I have to admit, I have a fairly low opinion of the intellectual capabilities of the average Gamma, but I did not expect any of them to genuinely attempt to deny Nietzsche’s well-chronicled lunacy, considering that he not only had a mental breakdown in 1889, but suffered “a complete loss of his mental faculties” before he died in 1900.
And it’s ironic that considering it was something that he erroneously asserted was a symbol of powerlessness, Nietzsche certainly devoted a considerable percentage of his seemingly-lucid years to raging against the Cross.
My philosophy, such as it is, includes this precept: never take advice from a man who died in a state of raving dementia after drinking his own urine for 11 years.
The Intellectual Father of Clown World II
Another round of Kant v Day. While people speak frequently about Enlightenment values, they very seldom reference, or presumably, even know, what Enlightenment actually means. Kant, one of the widely recognized central figures of the Enlightenment, and certainly the most respected, defined it as follows:
Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [dare to be wise] Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.
The first thing to note here is that Kant is clearly speaking in rhetoric here. This is not dialectic. Except for being directly cribbed from Aristotle’s objective distinction of the master and the natural slave, there is no genuine information content in this subjective distinction. This is exhortational manipulation designed to appeal to the reader’s emotions, as is the next section.
It is because of laziness and cowardice that so great a part of humankind, after nature has long since emancipated them from other people’s direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remains minors for life, and that it becomes so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book that understands for me, a spiritual advisor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides upon a regimen for me, and so forth, I need not trouble myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake the irksome business for me. That by far the greatest part of humankind (including the entire fair sex) should hold the step toward majority to be not only troublesome but also highly dangerous will soon be seen to by those guardians who have kindly taken it upon themselves to supervise them; after they have made their domesticated animals dumb and carefully prevented these placid creatures from daring to take a single step without the walking cart in which they have confined them, they then show them the danger that threatens them if they try to walk alone. Now this danger is not in fact so great, for by a few falls they would eventually learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes them timid and usually frightens them away from any further attempt.
Kant has barely, and unsatisfactorily, addressed the What before immediately pivoting to the Why. This is characteristic of a sophistical deceiver, or at least someone who wants to avoid discussing the substance of a matter. Again, the entire paragraph is mere rhetoric devoid of any substantive information. You don’t want to be a coward, do you, anon? You don’t want people to think you are lazy, or a child, right, anon? So grow up! Think for yourself! Be enlightened! Definitely don’t pay any attention to those old books, those old priests, or any of the knowledge painstakingly acknowledged by your predecessors over the millennia!
Surely your massive Smart Boy brain will more than suffice to provide you with anything you actually need to know! Be brave enough to emerge from the childhood in which all those stupid jocks and pretty girls who rejected you dwell, and make use of your own understanding, whatever that may happen to be, without direction from anyone or anything else!
We’ve heard this before. This is Zero History combined with Thelema. This is literally the philosophical foundation for both the Khmer Rouge and the French Revolution justified on the basis of “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
The more one reads Kant, the more readily one grasps how his midwit philosophy is little more than the delusions of an angry Gamma seeking to justify his subjective sense of personal superiority in a world that objectively views him as inferior.
The Intellectual Father of Clown World
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant’s comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the “father of modern ethics”, the “father of modern aesthetics”, and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of “father of modern philosophy”.
In last night’s Darkstream, I examined what is described as one of Kant’s “major works”, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” And, as I think everyone who watched it will confirm, I very easily exposed this highly-regarded historical intellectual as a verbose charlatan who substitutes rhetoric for dialectic, dubious enthymemes for valid logical syllogisms, makes wildly improbable assumptions, and gets basic observations about human nature completely and verifiably wrong.
One particularly cruel viewer even commented that Kant’s arguments sound a bit like Petersonian bafflegarble, which frankly I think is going much too far and is unfair to the Enlightenment philosopher, but while I don’t condone the observation, I can understand it.
It’s also worth noting that Kant cribbed from Aristotle without correctly attributing the concept, while changing the terms he utilized in order to make his justification of elite despotism appear to be more palatable to the public that will be enslaved, not because they are “natural slaves” per Aristotle, but cowards in a state of “self-incurred minority”. Below is just one of the several obvious flaws in what is nothing more than a rhetorical argument:
I have put the main point of enlightenment, of people’s emergence from their self-incurred minority, chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing guardian over their subjects with respect to the arts and sciences and also because that minority being the most harmful, is also the most disgraceful of all.
This assertion is not only false, but downright risible, particularly in light of the way in which the rulers of Clown World are deeply and observably interested in “playing guardian over their subjects with respect to the arts and sciences” and have done so for decades in a considerably more aggressive, totalitarian, and harmful manner than any religious authority has for centuries.
Kant asserts the inevitability of the impossible, while simultaneously denying the indisputable. As with so many other intellectuals revered by Clown World, a critical reading of Kant quickly reveals him to be more of a useful fraud than a legitimately great thinker.
Kant’s Enlightenment philosophy, like free trade, evolution by natural selection, and free speech, simply has not withstood the test of time. As with those similarly outdated concepts, the more one digs into his work, the more flaws, both in theory and in practice, reveal themselves to the conscientious reader.
There’s More Than One Way
You already know not to take any tickets offered. But also, apparently, don’t put on the medallion:
And note, that was before his recent arrest on drug and gun charges. Your weaknesses will be exploited, which is why I am always on my guard against slender, pretty, blonde Norwegian women who are inexplicably interested in economics, epic fantasy, and the intrinsic flaws in the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Obviously, Nick isn’t a Douglas Adams reader. It’s a hot potato… don’t pick it up!
Three Simple Steps to Sigma
It’s really quite easy if you know what to do. From Sigma Game:
I’ll be honest. Given my talent for unorthodox thinking and my ability to write more or less coherently, I assumed from a fairly young age that I would leave some intellectual legacy behind. Nothing particularly major on the scale of an Aristotle, a Thomas Aquinas, or an Adam Smith, but something more on the level of a Hermann Hesse, a Samuel Huntington, or a John Bagot Glubb.
Umberto Eco, I felt, probably represented my potential ceiling, although my inability to execute Summa Elvetica as I’d envisioned it made it pretty clear that even the Eco strata was beyond me. C’est la vie. It’s better to aim high and fall short than content oneself with mediocrity.
And while my small contributions to gaming, literature, science, and theology are likely to survive in some anonymous capacity to be expanded upon by future intellectuals, it’s been a real surprise to discover that the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, and the concept of the Sigma Male in particular, have gone viral to the point that they are being adopted and applied, however erroneously, to a wide variety of cultural applications. Well and good, even if Sigma is literally the least important of the various behavioral profiles to understand for practical purposes.
But it’s more than a little bizarre to see the way AI systems have ingested and processed the concept, to the point that it has now even incorporated my personal clothing preferences…
My intellectual ambition circa 2005 to 2015 was to one day write the Summa Economica, doing for economics what Thomas Aquinas did for theology. Now my ambitions are considerably more curtailed, as I’m just hoping to be able to publish Steve Keen’s magnum opus, finish Arts of Dark and Light, and wrap up the definitive work on the SSH before my ability to string words together goes the way of Mr. Martin and other washed-up writers.