Jan 272022
 

This post is snippets of an informal conversation with Mr K, which I’m posting while on vacation. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks.

 

The whole problem is people like Trump
look, Trump is simply a major piece in a large grassroots movement
or a large fascist movement if you will
Trump may be a farcical pseudofascist, but the next person like him will not be a farce
that is what we need to avoid
and that is the trajectory we’re currently headed towards, because like it or not, the woke oligarchy is on its last legs
the thing about fascism is that it essentially consists of mass movements, with the fascist dictators needing the continual support of this mass movement
 and in order to have this support base, they must also have a political counterpole
and outgroup which is the enemy of the fascist regime

a mass movement does not even need elections to be successful
elections, in their current form, are basically a way of rendering mass movements less effective.
the raid on the capitol is not part of the electoral process, for example
but it is clearly part of a mass movement
if you have a genuinely highly energised mass movement that also constitutes the majority population
then, if they want, they can just sorta declare an election whenever they want

mass movements run basically on mob mentality, whether these mass movements are revolutions, civil wars, mob justice, boycotts, or something else

you need to protect private property because people need to be able to set up means of production, which requires them to have a reasonable expectation that it will pay off
if you have a complex economy, it is necessary for each productive good to have an unambiguous owner
because otherwise the constant power struggles will completely cripple the ability to use the productive goods
this is the case whether the owner is a private person or whether it is the government
you cannot really decentralise long term planning. You can delegate some aspects of it, but the delegation itself will need to be centralised
literally any organisation that functions works like this
if you drive a car, your car was made by a monarchy. If you go to a good restaurant, the restaurant is a monarchy.
the New York Times is a fifth generation hereditary absolute monarchy
you cannot get rid of this power structure, no matter how hard you try
it’s gonna keep popping up basically everywhere
I think we’re headed towards a dictatorship that will either have the character of fascism or the character of monarchy. I hope for the latter, in no small part because I kinda wanna avoid fascism actually
I know a lot of people don’t have this model of neoreactionaries but actually I would very much like to avoid a fascist dictatorship
I think this regime is already unravelling, and I think that when it deteriorates sufficiently, a dictatorship of some kind is basically inevitable.
Jan 242022
 

This post is snippets of an informal conversation with Mr K, which I’m posting while on vacation. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks.

 

the choice of whether or not to engage in the trade will itself influence the conditions of the trade. Maybe not for any given trade in isolation, but long term it is the case.

this mistake was in fact the central point of classical liberal economics. The whole purpose of this theory was to serve as a rationalisation to oppose the trade privileges of the landed gentry such as for example the corn laws.
Basically, this mistake largely blinds economists to concerns about how various forms of trade lead to long term appreciation or depreciation of the productivity and mental health of the people affected by the trade. They consider the impact on economic output and satisfied preferences, but not on human capital.
They judge labour by its productivity but not by how it contributes to building up or breaking down the labourer’s character. They typically (albeit not universally) consider helicopter money / income guarantees superior to artificial job creation because they have basically the outlook of nobles who have no shortage of passions and hobbies to attend to.
Anybody with any experience administering a group will understand the importance of making people feel useful, which is getting increasingly difficult since real productivity is Pareto distributed in the population, and technological advancements are causing the alpha of that distribution to increase.
Also, in terms of political reality, you simply cannot get around the labour question. If political economists will not address it, you can be damn sure others will, often with much worse results, such as the artificial creation of jobs that actually break down people’s moral character and sense of usefulness rather than building it up.
The labour problem [or labour question] is the problem of providing meaningful employment to your population; employment which develops their character and virtues.
Right now, a substantial portion of the population is tied up in unproductive jobs that they themselves consider useless and find demotivating. These people would be better off as artisans – let us say tailors just as an example – and a clever political economist would be able to make it happen by placing calculated restrictions on trade of mass produced clothing while removing the useless jobs that were created to fill the vacuum.
Since these same people were previously working in unproductive jobs, the overall economic output is not lowered, but now people are wearing bespoke clothing and people who were previously feeling useless now feel like they’re contributing real value.
Jan 212022
 

This post is snippets of an informal conversation with Mr K, which I’m posting while on vacation. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks.

Puritanism was like the cutting edge of wokeism in its day
one of the mutations that happened to Puritanism was that it dropped the God meme
modern wokeism is just Protestantism without the God meme
this idea that everyone needs to be enlightened and think for themselves is the literal descendant of the Protestant doctrine of a personal god. Modern egalitarianism comes from the idea that we are all made equal as children of God. The Whig theory of history, including its modern forms such as economic progress, technological progress, and social progress, is the literal descendent of divine providence. Academia in its modern usage derives by direct descent from referring to a kind of Protestant seminary. Harvard itself was such seminary when it was founded
etc.
This is not just an analogy. You can trace all these modern concepts backwards through history, and you will see they’re continuous descendants from the English dissenters. There was no discontinuous change like when the English dissenters originally overthrew the Catholics. The English dissenters are still in power, though they’ve changed a bit – but not essentially – over time.
In reponse to: I don’t associate “everyone needs to think for themselves” with wokeism. More like “everyone needs to recognize/believe this thing, and act this way”, which seems like the opposite of a “think for yourself” approach
  everyone needs to think for themselves and arrive at the One True Faith
Now, see if you can identify the descendent of the doctrine of “salvation by faith alone”, and ask yourself if modern day progressives are any less devout than the Puritans who wanted to cancel Catholicism for being behind the times.
if you look at the woke opposition to basically cult-like living
and if you look at those aspects of individualism that still exist in wokeism
and you trace them back through history
you will find that they descend from the doctrine of a personal god
Jan 182022
 

This post is snippets of an informal conversation with Mr K, which I’m posting while on vacation. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks.

 

I actually advocate a formalised caste system btw. We already have an informal one, and I’m not very optimistic that it can be abolished, so I think it is better to recognise it officially so that we can all agree it exists and discuss how to improve it
it looks like formally dividing people into nobility and commoners with different privileges and obligations and social expectations, and hopefully finding some way of making it possible and easy to switch to a different caste than the one you were born in, if it is not a fit
the point is it should do the same thing as our informal class system but just be formally recognised
That and being less twisty for people who are trying to plan their life and need to know how the world works
[the US has an informal constitution] and that there’s a pretty large difference at this point between the informal and the formal constitutions
this is a problem
Curtis Yarvin enumerates three different ways of living: The traditional yeomen, the cosmopolitan armigers, and the deracinated lazzari. You’re a cosmopolitan armiger, which basically means you belong to the culture Scott Alexander described as “universal culture”. You value creative and/or intellectual fulfilment, and you need basically no instruction to know how to pursue it, though you might find instructors that appeal to you.
Traditional yeomen are very different from this. While you may not be an individualist in politics, you’re an individualist in personality in the sense that you live your own life, and your life is basically about you. A traditional yeoman is not an individualist, and their life stories are not best understood on the individual level. Yeomen live in groups, and care a lot about the local community, and fitting in and doing well by the church. If you try to get them to decide their own career, they will almost inevitably find some way of delegating the choice to some guide in their local community. They live basically in cults, and they want to live in cults, and they will live in cults even if you try to make them stop. You might not like this – sorry, but you’re a cosmopolitan armiger.
(what does caste confer?) which people can hold what type of office, for example.
There may be a case for making this independent of your caste, but currently it is not independent from your caste, and the law should reflect this in order to be an empirically accurate law.
In fact, most people are very averse to giving up the informal caste system, which is academic credentialism
there’s no need for a new aristocracy. We just need to improve the aristocrats – in particular by curing their addiction to power and relevance.
The poor state of the aristocrats is a result of the political system’s structure, and it is not only the aristocrats who are in a poor state as a result of this.
The whole point is that an academic aristocracy is basically a clerisy, and that having a clerisy in power violates the principle of separation between church and state. Of course, this would already be problematic alone by the fact that it involves the state in enforcing a state religion and ruling by deceit, but actually, the bigger problem with having a union of church and state is not that the church corrupts the state; the bigger problem is that the state corrupts the church.
An aristocracy is valuable because it provides us with scientific progress, technological advancements, and innovations, not to mention incredible, aristocrat art. A civilisation does not thrive without having a thriving aristocracy.
But they should not be in power.
Basically, it’s not this blue vs red tribe culture war thing. Neoreactionaries do not wish to suppress the current members of the Cathedral, or to punish them, or to marginalise them in the next regime. Not only will they be treated with decency, they will still be aristocrats, they will still be able to live woke or hippie lifestyles or whatever they prefer, and, if all goes well, they should be doing better in every way except in political power. 
The neoreactionary view isn’t that clerical oligarchs are an evil outgroup to be crushed mercilessly; it’s that they’re our beautiful and literally noble friends and family who unfortunately have developed an addiction to power and relevance, sorta like the kind of temporary insanity described in “Politics is the Mind-Killer” by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It’s not an “us vs them” kinda thing; it’s a “let’s fix this crazy mess” kinda thing.

 

Jan 142022
 

This post is snippets of an informal conversation with Mr K, which I’m posting while on vacation. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks.

 

The queer counterculture that manifested for example as the house ballroom culture of 90s New York or as the disco movement in the 70s barely exists anymore, with LGBT spaces having been filled largely by young trans women, most of whom are headed towards university degrees, often in STEM, which is an enormously unrealistic path in life for most people of the original gay counterculture.

As for gay men, what we have instead looks a lot more like assimilation to a normative way of living than it looks like genuine acceptance. Consider for example how flamboyance and to an extent male femininity continues being stigmatised.

I’m just pointing out that the history of the gay counterculture does not look at all like a great victory for the counterculture

it looks more like a crushing defeat, largely from the AIDS epidemic, and then the establishment turning out to be somewhat merciful and allowing us to assimilate if we can. Not all of us can, and then the situation really does look rather damning.

Gay people can assimilate to be accepted, adopting a mainstream lifestyle only differing with regards to the sex of their long term partner, whom they may marry and, in USA probably even adopt children with

pursuing some white collar job like accounting or journalism or another of the jobs mentioned in Scott Alexander’s blogpost there

I would say they ([most aspects of gay counterculture]) have become more stigmatised over the past few decades

the modern concept of homosexuality as being just sexual attraction isolated from any other aspects of personality is a recent invention and has no basis in fact

expecting a gay man to act as a straight man except for dating is pretty darn repressive

it perpetuates a pressure of conformity, because the fervent denial of stereotypes beyond all reason serves to perpetuate a stigma on stereotypical behaviour

so like I was, lots of gay men are desperate to disprove the stereotypes by being very much just regular guys. It’s a burdensome performance in the long run

this kind of stigma is widely recognised in the gay community, sometimes discussed as a kind of internalised homophobia. What’s less openly discussed is how the opportunity and pressure to assimilate has resulted in fewer “inner victories” against societal pressure, removing the counterculture that built confidence and toughness through hardship and substituting it for having gay people repress themselves into conformity.

fiery support provided a counterpoint to the societal pressure, but the current form that LGBT advocacy takes is predominantly not a fiery support for countercultural living, but a fiery support for the right to assimilate into normality. It does not have the same effect at bolstering people’s conviction in their right to live as they want.

I guess the post-AIDS gay movement could be said to have won, but that is an entirely different movement from the one we think of when we think of historical gay movement (eg. stonewall riots, harvey milk, gay liberation front, first pride parades, etc). The gay counterculture died to AIDS in the 80s.

Jan 122022
 

A few quick updates:

I missed our book club meeting in December (we only have one each in Nov & Dec, due to holidays). And I’m about to miss both the January meetings due to a Hawaiian vacation that manages to juuuuuust barely overlap both of them. This is why there’s been no Book Club Review in so long.

I don’t want to completely abandon the blog while I’m gone. I’ve participated (or observed) some informal conversations with someone who has some very unusual views on quite a few things. I disagree with him in some major way in most of his views, but I find them absolutely fascinating, and they give me a lot to think about. I may be engaging some of them in the near-ish future. In the meantime, he’s said it’s OK to paste some of the things I’ve clipped for further consideration onto this blog. So over the next couple weeks, there’ll be several posts by one “Mr K” on topics of interest.  Please keep in mind that A. I don’t necessarily endorse any of these views, and may oppose some of them in key ways, and B. I won’t be around to respond to comments for a couple weeks. These are just interesting.

 

Dec 132021
 

Any answer to the original question that goes much beyond “because that’s the aesthetic” is really doing it wrong.

I mean, one could talk about WHY that’s the aesthetic of cyberpunk. Why everything is sexy, super-focused on style and appearance, and what that says about how cyberpunk views a future that’s been shaped by relentless capitalism and the comercialization of all aspects of human life.

But any answer that doesn’t start with “Because that’s a basic aspect of the whole Cyberpunk aesthetic, and the more an artist moves away from sexy-everything, the more they are in danger of drifting out of the Cyberpunk genre entirely” is building on a foundation of vaporware.

After all, a cyberpunk gutted of sex is just Warhammer 40,000 without space magic.

Nov 122021
 

In discussion with a close friend of mine, she mentioned that she thinks of herself as non-binary. She is cis, sexual, beautiful, and obviously female. I was curious what she meant by non-binary.*

I.

I may have missed some aspects of it, but the primary thrust was such:  She never fit in with other girls/women. The things they were interested in bored her. The things she was interested in made them look askance at her. She doesn’t care to talk about make-up and girly stuff. She’s not a barbie doll. She hated their social dynamics. She felt far more comfortable in groups of boys, and would seek those out. She basically always felt like an outcast, and hated when other people pushed her to go play with girls, or denied her things because she was a girl. The female world didn’t fit her. And she was denied access to the male world. To this day she gets anxiety when thinking about joining any groups marketed as “for women,” and strongly avoids them.

I was a bit taken aback, not by the experience, but by that idea that this means she’s not a woman. In my view, thinking that this makes you not a woman is really sexist (and by extention, NB’s now seem even more sexist to me). We don’t need to make this about sex! We’ve had a word for this type of person for decades. It’s “Nerd.” (Or “Geek,” depending on your dialect.) The first thing I wanted to say was “That’s it? Try being a nerd growing up.” I didn’t, because I’m not an asshole. And also because I already know she was ALSO nerd growing up, and still is. It’s one of the things that binds us together. :)

The thing she described is, IMO, the experience of being a social outcast because you’re weird and different. That… can be looked at in a gendered way, I guess, if you want to force it. Especially if that’s how the people around you are pushing you to see it. But it’s not about gender, directly, is it? It’s not about feeling disgusted by your body. Not about feeling horrified when you look at yourself in a mirror. Not about feeling like something went terribly wrong and you’ve been forced into the wrong skin and can’t get it off, and no one can see that, and if only they could see that things would be better. It’s not gender dysphoria. It’s a more basic not-fitting-in with society, or the world at large. It’s existence dysphoria.

Existence dysphoria is feeling aliented from the world around you. Something went terribly wrong, and you’re living the wrong existence. The world doesn’t fit. It doesn’t have room for you, you don’t interface well with it. All your instincts and feelings are wrong, either subtely or blatently, and you are constantly being reminded of it. And no one else realizes how wrong everything is. No one can see this. If only they could see it, things would be better.

Sex and gender roles are a part of that, sure. But they aren’t the cause. Implementing gender dysphoria treatments won’t fix existential dysphoria.

II.

I don’t dislike any given non-binary person, but I find the movement as a whole to be a bit obnoxious. First, because it does seem rather sexist, as commented on above. But also, because it appropriates the extistential dysphoria experience and tries to make it about gender.

If you swap the genders in the first paragraph of Section I, you’d have a perfect description of me (and my nerd friends, of both sexes.) I was bored to death of sports and “masculine” stuff. I’m not manly. I hated the social dynamics of all the normal kids. I felt (and feel) far more comfortable around girls/women. I was always an outcast from the regular people. I will never join anything marketed as “for men” and even thinking about the type of people who would join such a group gives me the willies.

But that doesn’t make me not a man. Anyone who tries to belittle me or impy otherwise can kiss my ass. This was one of the pillars of the gender-equality movement. It was one of the reasons we fought for gender equality. It doesn’t matter what’s between your legs. You are allowed to dress how you want, talk how you want, wear make-up or not as you want. You can be interested in whatever interests you, and stereotypes be damned. It will never, ever make you less of a man/woman to have different interests. Those trying to control you like that are barbarians living in benighted intellectual squalor.

To cede that ground now seems like giving up after we’ve already won. It is saying that not only were the sexist assholes right, they were so right that we can’t even consider ourselves sexual humans any more. We aren’t men or women. We are a non-gendered other.

To make matters worse, it strengthens the stereotypes of those who don’t alienate themselves from their sex. It buys into and reinforces the idea that to be a real man you have to like sports and beer. To be a real woman you have to love make-up and gossip. In both cases, you have to dress a certain way, and talk a certain way.

And what for? The existential dysphoria mostly remains.

The best outcome is that geeks suffering from existential dysphoria find each other through these non-binary channels, connect with each other, and form their own social support networks. This is certainly a benefit. But it does not need to come at the expense of surrendering to the claims that we aren’t really men/women. Geeks have been finding each other long before non-binaryism was created.

The worst outcome is that those suffering from existential dysphoria will expect the implementation of gender dysphoria relief measures to help them, and when they don’t, sinking further into x-dysphoria. One of the major negative impacts of homeopathy is displacing actual real medicine that would have otherwise helped a patient. Non-binaryism has the same problem. Telling people to they/them you doesn’t make the world not broken. It addresses literally nothing.

III

I also find it distasteful the way non-binaryism appropriates the experience of trans people, and tries to legitimize itself off of their suffering and struggles. But I’m not trans myself, so I have very little to say about this other than what I just did.

IV

In summary, non-binaryism is yet another way for people to try to take the lives and experiences of neuro-divergents (“nerds/geeks”) and redirect them to their pet political causes (“wokeism”) while giving the neuro-divergents little of value, and harming a great many of them in the process. Same as it ever was.


*if you’re reading this, hi! I hope you don’t mind me using this as a jumping-off point for my public thoughts.

Oct 262021
 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that people care about what others actually think of them, rather than just what they say.

First, yes, body-positivity is a good thing. It sucks to hate the meatsuit you’re stuck in. It’s good to know our friends and family love us for ourselves, and our bodies are a tertiary consideration at best. But most people want to actually be admired or attractive, rather than to be humored. It can feel nice to hear your friends say your story or novel or fantastic, or that you have a beautiful singing voice. Than you go on American Idol and discover that they were lying to you to spare your feelings the whole time, and you are disappointed.

Body-positivity campaigns like Dove’s Self-Esteem Project, and Victoria’s Secret Plus-Sized model, have their heart in the right place. They’re not bad things to have. But ultimately they feel patronizing, and it’s no secret they’re in it for the market share. They won’t change how you think other people view you.

Sir Mix-A-Lot, on the other hand, REALLY likes big butts. So much so that he cannot lie about it. His like of them is visceral and honest. And, very importantly, his public proclamation was extremely well received. Everyone knows the song, and enjoys it. No one reacted with “Wow, this weirdo is singing about his freaky fetish, let’s laugh at how cringe this is.” They reacted with “YES!! OMG BIG BUTTS ARE THE BEST!”

At a time when skinny blondes were considered the top-tier body, Sir Mix-A-Lot exposed the preference falsification that had been going on for ages. At last it became acceptable for large sections of the population to admit their true preference for fuller figures and dangerous curves.

This, in turn, resulted in untold millions of women realizing that their body-type was actually very attractive to a lot of potential mates. This wasn’t some pretty words said to spare someone’s feelings or to sell soap and underwear. It was a real desire that was made manifest in people’s actions. You don’t need to worry that someone is just being polite when they’re in front of you with desire in their eyes.

And thus, with a single extraordinary song, Sir Mix-A-Lot’s honest admission did more for women’s self-esteem than any amount of multi-million-dollar body-positivity campaigns.