Apologies Lorenzo and I haven't been around as much as usual, we're both preoccupied with Christmas stuff at the moment. As usual, loads of good comments, but also a bit of obsession & hobby-horsing. Please keep it civil.
Dec 21, 2023·edited Dec 21, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
"The politics of the transformational future is both informationally and emotionally pathological. Emotionally pathological in generating angry, intolerant, self-righteous moral entitlement; informationally pathological in treating past and present as realms of sin. The combination of emotional and informational pathology means that anything that transformational progressivism gets hold of turns to various levels of crap."
I was thinking this over and trying to come up with an exception, in an effort to be fair-minded. Is there some institution (culture, govt, etc) where this metastatic crapification hasn't occurred? Even one?
I hope you assemble these essays into a book for sale to your subscribers (if you ever finish, that is). I am going through 39 and counting essays compiling a bibliography for my 2024-202? reading. Thanks much. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Amazing how attuned we are to recognizing facial features, and especially smiling as an indication of positive feelings and affection towards the viewer, that even just a cardboard smiley face initially elicited a positive tinge from me when I first viewed that photo.
It also led me to wonder if the Islamic women wearing burqas with face coverings were to put a smiley face image on them (with or without lipstick on the lips??!!), how the male Islamists would react. Well, we know how they would react, as they are not big on artistic renditions of people, except conquering males. But fun to hold that image anyway.
[Now I will go back and actually read the full essay :-) ]
"However, perfectionist standards devalue human achievement, because all achievement is imperfect. Any failing can readily be construed as a de-legitimising failure."
And yet Marxism is recognized in some circles as one of the least perfect ideas ever promulgated, but remains fully legitimising for some reason.
[You know, if a word has a "zee" sound in it, we really ought to use a "Z" when spelling that word to represent that sound! :-) Or is that just America's illegitimate view of a transitional future??? Or perhaps the result of a dyslexic scribe somewhere? Or is that syllable pronounced more like "sing" rather than a "mis" preceding an "ing"? I.e., "my-sing" or "miz - ing".]
Please stop acting like there is an equivalency between the two. There is none. It's not both sides. Men are the problem.
Male-domination is politics, religion, military, until recently education (they suck so bad at school that they've removed themselves from it)--they are the problem. Afghanistan is what you get when you let men run wild. Women don't marry, rape, and abuse 8 year old boys in countries where they've achieved the most basic human rights, like Iceland or Finland.
Stop making excuses for them.
I'm sick of this. Men are the problem. Their violence is the problem. Stop catering to their egos.
" To deny one’s racism, for example, demonstrates complicity in racism." So 80 to 300 years from now, when interracial marriages have been operative for a while, everyone will have a tan-olive complexion (or maybe a little darker* than that) and some other criteria of "otherness" will have to be developed, right?
*It was interesting to see one of those TV episodes on the history of early mankind, showing a black man/actor portraying the Cro-Magnon equivalent exploring European realms, rather than the usual more brutish looking ragged long-haired white man. Has it been definitively established as to when Europeans actually evolved light colored skin?
"If constraint is defined as oppression1—in line with underlying perfectionism..."
As an engineer, one of my few contributions to civilization was to recognize that GOOD design requirements are really statements of a constrained activity. E.g., "the IT system shall restrict access [i.e., the activity] to authenticated users" [i.e., the constraint.] In turn, daughter requirement statements would have to address the nature of authentication and how it is accomplished, etc. But the clarity of such syntax helps keep things on track. Requirements are derived from desires and needs, but such desires and needs cannot be used for design until they are constrained to an achievable reality. The requirements also thus become the criteria for testing the result before deploying it more widely: does it really meet ALL of the requirements within their respective constraint values?
So wisely applied constraints are useful, but the "perfect design" can never be expected, often because of competing requirements or constraints.
The same syntax could be applied to documenting the requirements for other domains, such as art, politics, social programs, entertainment, etc.
Dec 21, 2023·edited Dec 22, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
Yes another superb analysis. My take is that it endlessly frustrates me how many opponents of the Progressive mindset - of campus-student-brats, of ludicrous academic 'professors' of nonsense et al - still tend to credit it all with more intellectual substance than it deserves. Yes this disease is extremely serious - even civilisation destroyingly so - but it is not really about anything like a new 'vision', a new 'morality', certainly not a coherent 'philosophy', nor even 'ideology'. It is about a degenerate PSYCHOLOGY.......a shallow, vacuous, up-itself narcissism and self-absorption that has taken hold primarily amongst a well-healed middle class that gets-off on telling itself that it is on the side of 'the oppressed'. Taken hold because Western economic dynamism has freed them from having to grow up and get real. I find myself (as an elderly 'boomer') half hoping for the day when holding these shallow feel-good poses actually start to have painful consequences for the wokeys themselves. Then we'll see. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
But thinking about this command/commerce comment, I started to wonder if multi-step commerce essentially required a "government" to establish trust that the chain of transactions and its desired end point would be achieved. If A and C want to trade, but are separated by time or distance, so they use B as a broker/intermediary, how do they come to trust that B will fulfill his "transfer/transport" role (besides recognizing that he will take his cut as part of his justifiable function "in the middle").
Similar to the concern a producer might have if the wholesaler is not active enough to move product to the retail level for final sale? Each party presumably has their own interests and incentives, but if one falls down (thereby reducing the potential for gain by all three), can the others recover their potential loss without a government on the side to help do so?
Going the other direction, the producer is also a consumer of the outputs from his component suppliers. He can't produce if they don't fulfill their obligations first.
Are we now so used to this complex process working so smoothly we almost don't recognize a need for government?
"If you elevate success as sin and failure as virtue, you’ll generate a lot of failure."
So here we see the admonition by (some) blacks to their children not to "act white" by studying and pursuing the other success factors documented by George Will and others.
[You are firing on all 8 cylinders, even though you are only driving a 4 cylinder car!! :-) Today's essay is a lot of fun! Thanks.]
> Cancel culture—where people lose jobs and have careers destroyed by falling afoul of the no-bad-feels discourse taboos—is the extreme end of this threat of shunning and isolation.
In addition to people losing jobs, there are orders of magnitude more who simply self-censor to avoid the same fate. That’s the true power of cancel culture. We simply don’t dare discuss or question statements like “gender and race are social constructs.” This allows fringe theories to appear mainstream. My favorite is how most legacy media write about “pregnant people” and we just go along with it.
We will not win the battle against wokery through logic and reason because the woke reject logic and reason. Nor will we win by becoming Trumpian caricatures of what they claim we are. It may be that in this case, as in many others, laughter is the best medicine. What logic cannot refute, ridicule can. And the task of ridiculing the woke is made infinitely easier because the woke routinely make themselves ridiculous.
For example, here is a sample of what passes for woke “thought”:
• The absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.
• No culture is better than another. Western Civilization is bad.
• Gender is a social construct; there are no differences between the sexes. All men are bad.
• Race is a social construct; there are no differences between the races. All white people are bad.
• Stereotyping people is wrong. All white people are racist oppressors.
• White people are racist by virtue of their skin color and can never be not racist. At best, they can only endlessly atone for their whiteness and racism.
• Minorities cannot improve their lives or those of their loved ones until white people stop being racist. White people can never be not racist.
• We will continue to attack white people for being racist until they stop being racist. White people can never be not racist.
• White silence is violence. White speech is violence.
• Believing that all Muslims are guilty of terrorism is bad. Believing that all white people are guilty of slavery is good.
• Segregation is bad. Separate black college dorms and black graduation ceremonies are good.
• “White flight” from inner cities is racist. White migration to inner cities (aka “gentrification”) is racist.
• The “bourgeois virtues” of self-reliance, persistence, reliability, thrift, diligence, honesty, creativity, tolerance, and civility are white traits, and promoting them is racist. The fact that people who reject those traits are more likely to be poor is proof that America is systemically racist.
• Diversity strengthens us by exposure to different viewpoints. Adopting diverse viewpoints is “cultural appropriation.”
• Race is a social construct that has no biological basis. Pharmaceutical companies are racist because they don’t include enough biologically diverse minority subjects in their drug trials.
• Diversity of skin color is good. Diversity of thought is bad.
• Religion leads to conflict and war. Islam is the religion of peace.
• The Left’s violence is free speech. The Right’s free speech is violence.
• Sending police officers to minority areas is racist. Pulling police protection out of minority areas is racist.
• Only racists believe FBI statistics indicating that some minorities disproportionately commit crimes. Enforcing criminal law is racist because laws disproportionately impact minorities who commit more crimes.
• We need more gun laws. Gun laws are racist, so we must stop enforcing the ones we already have.
• We will continue releasing thieves, rapists, and murderers onto the streets until crime is eliminated.
• Noting cultural and racial differences is racist. Not acknowledging the different strengths and contributions of other cultures and races is racist.
• Your thoughts and beliefs are nothing but excuses for dismissing the beliefs of others and subjugating them. We therefore dismiss your beliefs and demand the right to subjugate you.
• Societies are nothing more than endless struggles between oppressors and oppressed. It’s time for a new set of oppressors: Us.
• Merited success condemns merited failure therefore no success is merited.
• We’re leaving blue states because of the mess leftist politicians have made of them, and we’re moving to red states where we’ll vote for the same sort of leftist politicians who made us miserable in the blue states.
• The West is a racist, capitalistic hellscape. We must encourage mass immigration so that we can turn the West into the same sort of statist utopias from which the refugees are fleeing.
• We must focus on the West’s history of slavery and conquest that cannot be changed, while ignoring slavery and conquest currently practiced by non-western nations that can be changed.
• Government must be directed by the will of the people. Government must be directed by a technocracy that is shielded from politics.
• To ensure human flourishing, we must create incentives for people to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need by distributing goods according to the dictum: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• Raising the cost of cigarettes will discourage people from smoking. Raising the cost of employing workers will not discourage businesses from hiring nor will rent controls cause housing shortages.
• Slavery – an economic system in which people can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is bad. Social Justice – a philosophy that holds that “the oppressed” can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is good.
• Monopoly by corporations – which must satisfy their customers to survive – is bad. Monopoly by government – which can use deadly force to survive – is good.
• We must take decisions out of the hands of individuals who understand local conditions, who can quickly respond to feedback, and who will pay a price if they choose poorly and place them in the hands of central planners who have limited knowledge and imperfect feedback mechanisms, and who pay no price for being wrong.
• We care so much about the plight of others that we will gladly give them the shirt off your back.
• The ATF, CFTC, CPSC, DEA, EEOC, EPA, FAA, FCA, FDA, FCC, FDIC, FERC, FHA, FRA, FTC, NLRB, NRC, OSHA, SEC, and Federal Reserve regulatory agencies must be strengthened because unfettered capitalism is failing.
• We are wisely teaching our children that two plus two equals whatever they want. Our bridges are collapsing, proving that capitalism is failing.
• We are banning nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, and natural gas power plants throughout the country. Free enterprise is failing to keep the lights on.
• Our ideas are contradictory only in the light of Western logic - a patriarchal and racist tool of oppression.
Apologies Lorenzo and I haven't been around as much as usual, we're both preoccupied with Christmas stuff at the moment. As usual, loads of good comments, but also a bit of obsession & hobby-horsing. Please keep it civil.
"The politics of the transformational future is both informationally and emotionally pathological. Emotionally pathological in generating angry, intolerant, self-righteous moral entitlement; informationally pathological in treating past and present as realms of sin. The combination of emotional and informational pathology means that anything that transformational progressivism gets hold of turns to various levels of crap."
I was thinking this over and trying to come up with an exception, in an effort to be fair-minded. Is there some institution (culture, govt, etc) where this metastatic crapification hasn't occurred? Even one?
I hope you assemble these essays into a book for sale to your subscribers (if you ever finish, that is). I am going through 39 and counting essays compiling a bibliography for my 2024-202? reading. Thanks much. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Amazing how attuned we are to recognizing facial features, and especially smiling as an indication of positive feelings and affection towards the viewer, that even just a cardboard smiley face initially elicited a positive tinge from me when I first viewed that photo.
It also led me to wonder if the Islamic women wearing burqas with face coverings were to put a smiley face image on them (with or without lipstick on the lips??!!), how the male Islamists would react. Well, we know how they would react, as they are not big on artistic renditions of people, except conquering males. But fun to hold that image anyway.
[Now I will go back and actually read the full essay :-) ]
"However, perfectionist standards devalue human achievement, because all achievement is imperfect. Any failing can readily be construed as a de-legitimising failure."
And yet Marxism is recognized in some circles as one of the least perfect ideas ever promulgated, but remains fully legitimising for some reason.
[You know, if a word has a "zee" sound in it, we really ought to use a "Z" when spelling that word to represent that sound! :-) Or is that just America's illegitimate view of a transitional future??? Or perhaps the result of a dyslexic scribe somewhere? Or is that syllable pronounced more like "sing" rather than a "mis" preceding an "ing"? I.e., "my-sing" or "miz - ing".]
Fantastic essay (again). It seems to me that these imagined futures almost always are utopian and such dreams ignore human fallibility.
Men rape, beat, and murder women.
Women can laugh at or gossip about men.
Please stop acting like there is an equivalency between the two. There is none. It's not both sides. Men are the problem.
Male-domination is politics, religion, military, until recently education (they suck so bad at school that they've removed themselves from it)--they are the problem. Afghanistan is what you get when you let men run wild. Women don't marry, rape, and abuse 8 year old boys in countries where they've achieved the most basic human rights, like Iceland or Finland.
Stop making excuses for them.
I'm sick of this. Men are the problem. Their violence is the problem. Stop catering to their egos.
" To deny one’s racism, for example, demonstrates complicity in racism." So 80 to 300 years from now, when interracial marriages have been operative for a while, everyone will have a tan-olive complexion (or maybe a little darker* than that) and some other criteria of "otherness" will have to be developed, right?
*It was interesting to see one of those TV episodes on the history of early mankind, showing a black man/actor portraying the Cro-Magnon equivalent exploring European realms, rather than the usual more brutish looking ragged long-haired white man. Has it been definitively established as to when Europeans actually evolved light colored skin?
"If constraint is defined as oppression1—in line with underlying perfectionism..."
As an engineer, one of my few contributions to civilization was to recognize that GOOD design requirements are really statements of a constrained activity. E.g., "the IT system shall restrict access [i.e., the activity] to authenticated users" [i.e., the constraint.] In turn, daughter requirement statements would have to address the nature of authentication and how it is accomplished, etc. But the clarity of such syntax helps keep things on track. Requirements are derived from desires and needs, but such desires and needs cannot be used for design until they are constrained to an achievable reality. The requirements also thus become the criteria for testing the result before deploying it more widely: does it really meet ALL of the requirements within their respective constraint values?
So wisely applied constraints are useful, but the "perfect design" can never be expected, often because of competing requirements or constraints.
The same syntax could be applied to documenting the requirements for other domains, such as art, politics, social programs, entertainment, etc.
Yes another superb analysis. My take is that it endlessly frustrates me how many opponents of the Progressive mindset - of campus-student-brats, of ludicrous academic 'professors' of nonsense et al - still tend to credit it all with more intellectual substance than it deserves. Yes this disease is extremely serious - even civilisation destroyingly so - but it is not really about anything like a new 'vision', a new 'morality', certainly not a coherent 'philosophy', nor even 'ideology'. It is about a degenerate PSYCHOLOGY.......a shallow, vacuous, up-itself narcissism and self-absorption that has taken hold primarily amongst a well-healed middle class that gets-off on telling itself that it is on the side of 'the oppressed'. Taken hold because Western economic dynamism has freed them from having to grow up and get real. I find myself (as an elderly 'boomer') half hoping for the day when holding these shallow feel-good poses actually start to have painful consequences for the wokeys themselves. Then we'll see. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
Footnote 3: minor typo on last phrase?
But thinking about this command/commerce comment, I started to wonder if multi-step commerce essentially required a "government" to establish trust that the chain of transactions and its desired end point would be achieved. If A and C want to trade, but are separated by time or distance, so they use B as a broker/intermediary, how do they come to trust that B will fulfill his "transfer/transport" role (besides recognizing that he will take his cut as part of his justifiable function "in the middle").
Similar to the concern a producer might have if the wholesaler is not active enough to move product to the retail level for final sale? Each party presumably has their own interests and incentives, but if one falls down (thereby reducing the potential for gain by all three), can the others recover their potential loss without a government on the side to help do so?
Going the other direction, the producer is also a consumer of the outputs from his component suppliers. He can't produce if they don't fulfill their obligations first.
Are we now so used to this complex process working so smoothly we almost don't recognize a need for government?
"If you elevate success as sin and failure as virtue, you’ll generate a lot of failure."
So here we see the admonition by (some) blacks to their children not to "act white" by studying and pursuing the other success factors documented by George Will and others.
[You are firing on all 8 cylinders, even though you are only driving a 4 cylinder car!! :-) Today's essay is a lot of fun! Thanks.]
"... which means people interact with online slivers of each other."
I like most of the slivers I find here.
> Cancel culture—where people lose jobs and have careers destroyed by falling afoul of the no-bad-feels discourse taboos—is the extreme end of this threat of shunning and isolation.
In addition to people losing jobs, there are orders of magnitude more who simply self-censor to avoid the same fate. That’s the true power of cancel culture. We simply don’t dare discuss or question statements like “gender and race are social constructs.” This allows fringe theories to appear mainstream. My favorite is how most legacy media write about “pregnant people” and we just go along with it.
Another great essay, with too many powerful well phrased statements to highlight them all.
We will not win the battle against wokery through logic and reason because the woke reject logic and reason. Nor will we win by becoming Trumpian caricatures of what they claim we are. It may be that in this case, as in many others, laughter is the best medicine. What logic cannot refute, ridicule can. And the task of ridiculing the woke is made infinitely easier because the woke routinely make themselves ridiculous.
For example, here is a sample of what passes for woke “thought”:
• The absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.
• No culture is better than another. Western Civilization is bad.
• Gender is a social construct; there are no differences between the sexes. All men are bad.
• Race is a social construct; there are no differences between the races. All white people are bad.
• Stereotyping people is wrong. All white people are racist oppressors.
• White people are racist by virtue of their skin color and can never be not racist. At best, they can only endlessly atone for their whiteness and racism.
• Minorities cannot improve their lives or those of their loved ones until white people stop being racist. White people can never be not racist.
• We will continue to attack white people for being racist until they stop being racist. White people can never be not racist.
• White silence is violence. White speech is violence.
• Believing that all Muslims are guilty of terrorism is bad. Believing that all white people are guilty of slavery is good.
• Segregation is bad. Separate black college dorms and black graduation ceremonies are good.
• “White flight” from inner cities is racist. White migration to inner cities (aka “gentrification”) is racist.
• The “bourgeois virtues” of self-reliance, persistence, reliability, thrift, diligence, honesty, creativity, tolerance, and civility are white traits, and promoting them is racist. The fact that people who reject those traits are more likely to be poor is proof that America is systemically racist.
• Diversity strengthens us by exposure to different viewpoints. Adopting diverse viewpoints is “cultural appropriation.”
• Race is a social construct that has no biological basis. Pharmaceutical companies are racist because they don’t include enough biologically diverse minority subjects in their drug trials.
• Diversity of skin color is good. Diversity of thought is bad.
• Religion leads to conflict and war. Islam is the religion of peace.
• The Left’s violence is free speech. The Right’s free speech is violence.
• Sending police officers to minority areas is racist. Pulling police protection out of minority areas is racist.
• Only racists believe FBI statistics indicating that some minorities disproportionately commit crimes. Enforcing criminal law is racist because laws disproportionately impact minorities who commit more crimes.
• We need more gun laws. Gun laws are racist, so we must stop enforcing the ones we already have.
• We will continue releasing thieves, rapists, and murderers onto the streets until crime is eliminated.
• Noting cultural and racial differences is racist. Not acknowledging the different strengths and contributions of other cultures and races is racist.
• Your thoughts and beliefs are nothing but excuses for dismissing the beliefs of others and subjugating them. We therefore dismiss your beliefs and demand the right to subjugate you.
• Societies are nothing more than endless struggles between oppressors and oppressed. It’s time for a new set of oppressors: Us.
• Merited success condemns merited failure therefore no success is merited.
• We’re leaving blue states because of the mess leftist politicians have made of them, and we’re moving to red states where we’ll vote for the same sort of leftist politicians who made us miserable in the blue states.
• The West is a racist, capitalistic hellscape. We must encourage mass immigration so that we can turn the West into the same sort of statist utopias from which the refugees are fleeing.
• We must focus on the West’s history of slavery and conquest that cannot be changed, while ignoring slavery and conquest currently practiced by non-western nations that can be changed.
• Government must be directed by the will of the people. Government must be directed by a technocracy that is shielded from politics.
• To ensure human flourishing, we must create incentives for people to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need by distributing goods according to the dictum: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• Raising the cost of cigarettes will discourage people from smoking. Raising the cost of employing workers will not discourage businesses from hiring nor will rent controls cause housing shortages.
• Slavery – an economic system in which people can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is bad. Social Justice – a philosophy that holds that “the oppressed” can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is good.
• Monopoly by corporations – which must satisfy their customers to survive – is bad. Monopoly by government – which can use deadly force to survive – is good.
• We must take decisions out of the hands of individuals who understand local conditions, who can quickly respond to feedback, and who will pay a price if they choose poorly and place them in the hands of central planners who have limited knowledge and imperfect feedback mechanisms, and who pay no price for being wrong.
• We care so much about the plight of others that we will gladly give them the shirt off your back.
• The ATF, CFTC, CPSC, DEA, EEOC, EPA, FAA, FCA, FDA, FCC, FDIC, FERC, FHA, FRA, FTC, NLRB, NRC, OSHA, SEC, and Federal Reserve regulatory agencies must be strengthened because unfettered capitalism is failing.
• We are wisely teaching our children that two plus two equals whatever they want. Our bridges are collapsing, proving that capitalism is failing.
• We are banning nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, and natural gas power plants throughout the country. Free enterprise is failing to keep the lights on.
• Our ideas are contradictory only in the light of Western logic - a patriarchal and racist tool of oppression.