Tag Archives: Society

Anti-anti-anti-vaxxer

I’m just going to say right out, I know little of the science of vaccines. It’s not something I ever cared or thought all that much about; unti recently I just accepted vaccines as normal and healthy. As with most kids, I got jabbed with the needle whenever the nurse came to school. It was usually a horrible experience because inevitably someone, a classmate or my brother, would always punch my newly poked arm and it would hurt like the dickens for the rest of the day, but I never questioned it.

I like vaccines; I like kids not getting polio or malaria. Up until about a year ago, I thought anti-vaxxers were nuts, I still think some of them are.

But this last year I have began to have my doubts, and it has nothing to do with any arguments anti-vaxxers have made. The only anti-vaxxer (although, he seemed more skeptical than outright opposed) I’ve read is Vox and none of what I’ve read of his has been a definitive argument for why not to vaccinate, he seemed argue more that parents should have a choice.

I’ve really been beginning to have doubts about vaccines because of those in favour of them. However nuts some of the anti-vaxxers are, the insanity of the pro-vaxxers dwarfs them as the sun does the moon.  Over the last month, I have bombarded with pro-vaccine propoganda from what little MSM I read, from websites, from FB, and without fail it sounds like a deranged religious crusade:

“Those ignorant, fearful anti-vaxxer heathens need to see the light of the vaccine and accept the salvation of the injection. If in their superstitious ignorance they fail reject the teachings of the divine Department of Health, then we, the noble, holy, chosen of SCIENCE! shall force the truth into them for their own good. To herd immunity be the glory, the honour, and the power, forever and ever. Amen!”

I exaggerate, but barely.

Anything being pushed with this much unhinged fervor automatically triggers my skepticism reflexes. When and why the hell did the pro-vaccine crowd become such raving fanatics?

The tyrannical nature of the pro-vaxxers is the first thing to get to me. If vaccines work then why the need to force others to get them? Just get your own kids vaccinated and they’ll be fine. Let other parents worry about their own kids. The only reason to try to force them on others seems to be that a doubt that vaccines work, but if you doubt vaccines work, why force them on others?

Now, herd immunity comes up whenever I see that bit of common sense mentioned. Sure, there may be a few kids with cancer who may not be able to get vaccinated, but these are 0.02% of the population. Statistically they hardly exist. For such rare cases, I’m sure a reasonable solution can be found that doesn’t require mandatory, non-consensual, government-forced injections. Maybe have a school wing or a few classrooms where the unvaccinated are not allowed, or a private tutor for the child with cancer, or whatever. However its done, I’m sure the one in 5,000 case can be accommodated on an individual basis.

As well, what happens to those cancer kids, if/when the government decides that having cancer is no excuse for not vaccinating? The precedent of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few will already have been set.

Second, what is with the simple labels of pro- or anti-vaccinations? You’re in either in favour of every vaccine under the sun or some anti-vaxxer nutjob. I don’t know much about the science of vaccines, but even I know there is no single vaccination, as the plural ‘s’ implies. There are many vaccines and each vaccination would carry a different cost-benefit analysis.

In my barely-considered opinion, the polio vaccine seems like an unarguable good. I can’t see me not giving it to my child. On the other hand the case for the HPV vaccine is much more suspect. The vaccine prevents a virus that is easy to avoid (ie. don’t be promiscuous) and very rarely (about 0.009% of the time by my quick calculation) causes cancer. So, I’d question if the HPV vaccine is worth the potential risks.

Yet when I’ve seen people question the costs and benefits of the HPV vaccine, or even just say parents should be allowed to choose whether to inject their teenage daughters with this, they are automatically lumped in as an insane anti-vaxxers who want to flood the streets with malaria-infected, polio-crippled children. This is even more insane when you realize that herd immunity is even more meaningless with respect to an STD.

Third, I keep seeing the argument that there is no risk to vaccines and they are entirely safe. That can simply not be true. There is no such thing as completely safe when injecting foreign chemicals into your body. Even good-ol-fashioned Tylenol can have some severe side effects, and a vaccination is literally injecting a benign form of a disease into yourself. The constant denial of risks makes me suspicious. To be fair, organizations like the CDC seem to be reasonable in this respect (“low-risk”, “negligible risk”, etc.) but almost every pro-vaxxer propagandist completely discounts any risk at all.

Finally, the types of people I see going all insanely pro-vax are also the types of people I see who are very pro-immigrant and pro-illegals. If vaccinations are so important to public health and herd immunity, why do these same pro-vax people support importing hordes of unvaccinated third-world children? There seems a strong disconnect there, which makes me question their reasoning and motives.

The manichean worldview of the pro-vaxxers combined with their messianic tones, lack of nuance, and logical contradictions makes me strongly wonder about the efficacy of vaccinations. Why the need for such insanity if the position is so supposedly self-evidently true?

None of this is to say anti-vaxxers are all paragons of reason. The science does not seem to support vaccines causing autism (although…). We probably have more autistic kids because parents are having children later in life. But even people like Jenny McCarthy seem calm and reasonable when compared to the ravings of the pro-vaxxers.

I can’t say I’m anti-vaccines, I’m still on the pro-reasonable vaccine side, but it would be accurate to say I’m anti-anti-anti-vaxxers.

If the pro-vaxxers sounded sane, I would never have even thought to question vaccines; if/when I had kids, I would have just done whatever the doctor said was best without a second thought. But given the unhinged rantings of the pro-vaxxers, I now have my doubts; if the truth is so obvious, why the need to hysterics? If/when it comes time, I’m going to be doing my research and may even decline some of those vaccines of lesser import.

Surely, I’m not the only one who’s been forced into questioning vaccines due to the unreasonableness of the pro-vaxxers. Why do people act in ways that are so destructive to their stated intention?

Teenagers Don’t Exist

Recently the topic of teenagers, and how awful they are, came up in a Twitter conversation I involved myself in. While I’ve mentioned the topic in the past, I thought I’d write a bit more on them here.

Adolescence is a modern invention/perversion. Until about the 1800s or so, a person of about the age 13 was considered an adult. Since about that time, better nutrition has led to puberty occurring earlier (in the 1800s it occurred at about 15-16, it now occurs at about 12-13), but at the same time independence has also decreased. A teenager is a biological adult. (Mentally, a person continues maturing until sometime in their mid-20s).

The problem of rebellious or destructive teenagers is not a fault of the teenagers, but rather a fault of society. A teenager is an adult being treated as a child. A 14-year-old should be learning independence and self-sufficiency by going out into the world on his own (on an apprenticeship, to college, to his own shack on the family farm, etc.) and should be looking for a wife shortly therefore after. Instead, in our modern world teenagers live under the dominion of their parents as a child.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24 ESV)

Of course teenagers rebel, any adult treated as child will rebel against being infantilized. They lash out because they know at some level that their parents having dominion over them is wrong, because an adult still under their parents is against the natural order. It is not teenagers that are the problem, it is the parents and the society.

Now of course, teenagers are not always going to make the best decisions because they are new at being adults and are learning the basics of adulthood, but in our current order, instead of learning about adulthood at age 15 so they are responsible adults by their 20s, people are now making the same failings in their early-20s and sometimes even their late-20s/early-30s, so your average person is not a responsible adult until their 30s.

Despite this, most modern teenagers would probably break is left on their own. This is, again, not the fault of the teenagers, but most children nowadays are so thoroughly over-protected and over-controlled by their parents and infantilized by the school system that they have never been learning the kinds of independence a healthy adult needs.

Children nowadays are being raised to learn a horrible combination of lack of freedom and lack of discipline. A child learning both will be the most self-actualized and most successful. A child with freedom but no discipline will generally pick up some level of discipline through trial and error, and a child of of discipline but no freedom will usually be able to survive although possibly not thrive, but one with neither will drown.

Ideally, we should start training our children to become adults when they should do so, in their mid-teens.

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This is not going to happen on a society wide scale because infantalized adults are useful for the long march.

Adolescence gives the public school system an extra 4-6 years (8-12 extra if he goes to university) to condition a person to the docility and obedience necessary to get a man to be willing to work in a cubicle or factory for 3-4 decades of his life. It conditions a man to accept schooling and academics as being the primary measures of worth, so that he is willing to feed his mind, time, and money into the progressive college system. It prevents early family formation and helps keep the squeeze on the family so the state can continue to interject itself. It conditions dependence and a slave mentality in a man so he is more likely to see dependence on the state as normal. Adolescence is just another case of how its all related; the long march continues.

Digging Deeper on Power

We come to a third edition of the topic of women and power. Both Donal and Chad have responded with criticisms, so I’ll respond.

Donal’s response is, as he admits, somewhat unordered and incoherent, but essentially he denies that men act as a class and states that modern weaponry has lowered the power differentials between men and women.

Chad’s response is wrapped in parable. I’ve never been too good with allegory and as of my writing this I don’t think he’s done yet, but from my understanding he’s likening men to land and women to water. The land shapes the environment and guides and controls the water, but the water flows where it flows within the framework the land has shaped and has the power to either destroy the land or make it bountiful.

From these, I don’t think we disagree as much as my critics think we do.

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First, on the nature of power:

The female, and indirect method, is to make the world desire to change and help it do so.

I think many of my critics are missing or misunderstanding a critical piece:

any power [women] may display is simply proxy power given them by men.

They can not, as a class, have power in the public sphere that is not given them by men.

So maybe I should restate a little: women as a class do not have any inherent public/political power.

Women do have political/public power but only that given them or supported by men. Indirect power, the power the make the world desire to change and to help change is only effective when men give them men’s power to effect that change.

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Second, we will go more into the nature of the public and private realms:

Oh, and another thing: the personal is the political, at least in the sense that political power is heavily influence by personal and private spheres of power. As anyone who has worked in the political field knows, politics is largely about managing personal connections and networks of like-minded people.

Donal seems to be misunderstanding what I meant, which is understandable as I didn’t explicitly state or link to some background assumptions:

In the public realm, where personal relationships are superseded by hierarchical and organizational ones, physical violence is power and power is physical violence,

The Way of Men has more on this, but men exist in a world of function-based, hierarchical organizations, ie. public organizations, while women exist in a world of one-on-one personal relationships. The former does not eliminate personal connections or friendships, but rather changes the nature of them: the personal relationships and networks exist in a framework where function, shared virtue, and ability towards a shared goal are the measures of judgment rather than emotional closeness, non-judgmentalism, and acceptance.

To explain what I mean, think of the playground. Boys generally self-organize into large group activities, such as soccer, where most other boys are allowed to join as they will (except maybe the occasional incompetent or nerd). Girls generally break up into pairs. This doesn’t mean the boys playing soccer don’t have personal relationships, but that the relationships exist in a public, hierarchical, function-based environment, the soccer team, and are superseded by a higher value, winning the game. Politics is playground soccer on a grand scale. The management of personal relationships and networks in such a public system is different than that in a private system, such as the family.

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Finally, on women and men as a class.

Speaking of unified displays of male strength, I think that it should be noted that men rarely act together as a “class.” It isn’t how we are wired. There isn’t really a Team Man counterpart to Team Woman. So any argument founded on a notion that men can overcome women “as a class” fails as a foundational matter.

This misses the entire point of my argument. There is no ‘overcoming women’. There is no war between men and women, to think there is a class war based on sex is to fully adopt the neo-marxist foundations of feminism. To think there is a power conflict between men and women is to lose the ideological war entirely before it even begins. If we accept a sexual class struggle exists, we might as well give up now and enjoy the decline because we’ve already accepted the enemy’s frame and joined him.

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Here we get to the main point I’m trying to make:

Men and women are not enemies and are not in competition, they are naturally made to complement each other. Women are naturally creatures of the private sphere, men are naturally creatures of the public sphere and the social arrangement of men and women, often referred to as patriarchy, of each tending to own their sphere works fantastically well for both men and women. Women have no inherent public political power because their inherent power rests in the private sphere, the sphere in which they are comfortable.

We do not have a competition between male power and female power, because the nature of their power is different. Rather we have a competition between one group of civilization-hating men and other groups of men, particularly white conservative males, in which women are but one group being used as weapons. Women are involved because the former group, using their control of cultural institutions, have managed to take the concerns of a small group of hurting, betrayed, broken, self-destructive, and/or high-testosterone women and elevate them to a class struggle in which most of the class does not share the small groups concerns and does not want to fight and most of those that do want to are primarily doing so because they have been lied to and the struggle is just the accepted environment in which they live.

The war is against that group of civilization-hating men. Feminists are the symptom of entropy not the disease. If we want to start winning we have to avoid mistaking the leaves for the roots.

Private and Public Spheres

Some have disagreed with my previous post, both in the comments and on their blogs. The jist of common objections are:

Women have the power of supplying willing, enthusiastic sex.

Only a Godly woman, submitted to a man with Godly masculinity, will be able to resist. His masculinity will appeal to her flesh, he will be put in authority by God, and hr will derive his direct power from God in the same way she will derive her indirect power from the same source. She will magnify everything in that household to be more as her husband and more as God, and the same in the community.

It overlooks the realm of indirect/private/influence power.

Now these are not wrong, a woman does have power in her private sphere: she has power to influence her husband, power to inculcate values in her children, and power to otherwise influence her local community and personal relationships.* I even briefly mentioned this in my original post: “Women do have a specific power: women are wonderful.” But this power is irrelevant to the discussion as women’s power lies in the realm of individual private relationships.

On the other hand, men’s power lies in the realm of hierarchical public organizations, although, they can bring their power to bear in the private sphere as well.

That is why I specified that women as a class are powerless. A class can only exist in the public realm and women’s power does not transfer into the public realm unless men allow it to and support it. (This does not mean that women’s power if meaningless or non-existent, only that it does not exist in the public realm).

In the private realm, emotions and personal relationships rule. Where harmonious relationships are paramount power can come in many forms as emotional and spiritual violence, the kinds of violence women excel at, are just as effective against individuals as physical violence and the use of physical violence is often destructive to harmonious personal relationships.

In the public realm, where personal relationships are superseded by hierarchical and organizational ones, physical violence is power and power is physical violence, however well-hidden the violence may be. Spiritual and emotional violence are useless as as they can only truly work against isolated individuals or family units, not tribes or thedes. In the public realm, even when public power may come from authority, legitimacy, expertise, tradition, at heart it still flows from physical violence or the implication thereof. Democracy is bloodless war, public policy is coercive confiscation, redistribution, and regulation, authority derives from implied violence, and legitimacy derives from being a part of a hierarchy backed by violence. In our modern society, violence is mostly implied and hidden behind many layers of bureaucracy, but the system still rests on it.**

And women, as a class, are not capable of violence. They can not, as a class, have power in the public sphere that is not given them by men.

In the public realm there is know balance of power between the patriarchy and the matriarchy, there is only a power balance between civilized men and uncivilized men, and the women belonging to either group.

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Why do you think feminists try to make the personal political?

If feminists could succeed at extending the personal realm into the public realm, to have it annex the public realm, women would be able to exert far more power over the public realm through their power in the private realm.

Of course, the personal can not be made political, you can not have individual private relationships with more than about 150 people, let alone millions. It is impossible for the private realm to conquer the public realm, but the public realm can conquer the private realm, so when trying to mix the two the public realm always comes out on top. This is why feminism always ends in bureaucracy. This is why leftism, however pro-anarchy it may be, always ends in bureaucracy.

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This separation of public and private power makes a case for extreme subsidiarity. If most political decision making is devolved to the Dunbar level, the private realm could conquer the public realm, and we could have a political structure that does not fundamentally rest on violence. This is called tribalism.

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As for sex explicitly, there is nothing women could do if men decided to take it forcefully. Thankfully, due to the Christian civilization feminists are intent on destroying, most men have been inculcated with values that are in opposition to rape. While women’s love might be a strong private force, I’m fairly sure that if civilized Christian values stopped being indoctrinated into children from a young age, most men would not be as adverse to rape as a few of the commenters think they are.

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As for female serial killers: as I said, “There is a .01% of women capable of physically matching the average man. This is not significant.” Some women are outside the norm, that doesn’t mean anything to women as a class.

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* I should mention that even here, those powers exist only because the stronger men in her life allow them to women. Men could easily take them away, making those powers dependent on men.

** This is not necessarily a moral judgment; morally legitimate violence is necessary for any polity. Also, for those wanting to get metaphysical on my use of morality here, God is good because God is powerful.

Women Have No Power

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” – Chairman Mao

Donal wrote a post on patriarchy where he mentioned my previous post. He included graphs on the healthy balance of power between the sexes.

The graph is nonsense though, as it is based on a mistaken presupposition. Donal, and almost everybody, get the same thing wrong:

Women have no power. None.

Women as a class have are powerless. Any ‘power’ they have is simply proxy power given them by a group of men. This is nature, this is reality.

All power is, at base, violence. The iron fist may be wrapped in any number of velvet gloves, but at base the iron fist rules. Violence is power, power is violence.

Men, as a class, are the apex predator, the greatest enactors of violence our planet has ever seen. Women, as a class, are incapable of effective violence,* as women simply do not have the strength capabilities to enact effective violence, and therefore are at the mercy of men. This is reality; any system that doesn’t take into account women’s powerlessness is a denial of such.

Because women are incapable of effective violence, they have no power in their own right**, any power they may display is simply proxy power given them by men.

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This is important to know, because feminists are not the real enemy. Feminists are not the disease, they’re a symptom that would not have changed society at all if men did not change it for them.

It’s not the female judge or female bureaucrat booting you from your home and kidnapping your children, it’s the male cop (as for female cops, would a 5’4″ really be able to remove you from your home if she didn’t have men to call on?). It wasn’t women who decided Roe vs. Wade or gave women the vote. It wasn’t women who passed the Title IX, the Equal Pay Act, or the VAWA. It’s not feminists who own Jezebel, Gawker, Slate, or Salon. These things only happen because men do them.

We can and should fight against feminists, but feminism is only one aspect of the modern leftist project and subservient to them. (See how readily they are being pushed aside for transexual activists). Feminists are pawns that have been given power by men to serve the long march and destroy the traditional family.

Women only have the power that is given to them by one class of men who are using modern, feminist women as weapons against the rest of society. If they were not being used as tools, feminists would be powerless. If it were not for the men trying to destroy our society by female ’empowerment’, the modern women would be powerless.

There is no power balance between men and women. There is only a power balance between men who desire civilization and men who hate civilization (or at least love the pleasures of the flesh and harems more), the women follow the lead of whichever group of men they choose to follow. Sadly, the men who hate civilization offer temporarily pleasing but ultimately self-destructive gibmedats, while civilization can only offer a life of duty and future for civilization.

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* If you don’t believe me, try a test: if you are a man, the next time you shake a woman’s hand don’t hold back, if you are a woman, ask a man you know to shake your hand as he would shake a man’s hand (this won’t work with a limp-wristed mangina). There is a .01% of women capable of physically matching the average man. This is not significant.

** Women do have a specific power: women are wonderful. Men like women and will got to great lengths to protect, provide for, and please women they see as being in their care.

The Simpsons and Cultural Decline

I’ve been watching the first two seasons of the Simpsons the last couple weeks. It’s been years since I’ve watched the show, but I still remember the first ten seasons or so as some of the best TV yet produced.

The first season came out in 1989-90, just 25 years ago, and I remember the show being controversial when it came out; I wasn’t allowed to watch it until some time in high school, about a decade after it first started showing. It was controversial enough that Bush actually used the Simpsons as a negative example of a family. Yet, re-watching now, it’s amazing how tame and traditional it is compared to media offerings today.

Obviously the ‘offensive’ humour in the Simpsons is nothing compared to stuff like Family Guy or South Park, but that’s not the whole of it or even the most important part. It’s not the stated messages, but the basic assumptions in the show.

The Simpsons family is intact and stable, if slightly dysfunctional, and hold to functional, almost traditional, family values. They all love each other, however much they might bicker. Homer is a flawed man, often selfish or stupid, but still loving and caring towards his family. Marge is shown to love and respect Homer, despite her occasional anger at his flaws. Bart disrespects Homer occasionally, but it is shown as a clear deviancy for laughs; it also clearly shown that he does look up to and admire Homer. The kids fight, but at heart care for each other.

Compare those family values that to the three highest-rated sitcoms of 2013: Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, and Modern Family. The first is about a bunch of (fornicating) nerds and their slut friend who spend the entire show snarking at each other. The second is about a cad, his divorced brother, and his nephew who regularly snark at each other; the cad is shown as cool, while the ‘family man’ is shown as a loser. According to Wiki, the third is about a blended family, a somewhat normal family, and a gay couple; the ‘modern family’ is so screwed up wiki needs a chart to keep family relations in order.

The Simpsons has a subtext of Homer as patriarch. A few times in the first couple of seasons Homer makes a family decision, whether it is selling the TV to attend counseling, buying a new TV, or choosing a camping spot, to name a few examples. The rest of the family complains or looks unhappy, yet it is not even questioned that, however flawed he or his decision may be, it is Homer’s place to decide these things. The show just assumes the father makes the major family decisions. Other than Duck Dynasty, would any modern show simply assume the father’s position as head of the home?

The episode Homer’s Night Out, centres around a picture of Homer dancing with a belly dancer at a bachelor party. The (non-nude) picture creates a town-wide scandal, brands Homer as a ‘swinger’, and is seen as something fundamentally deviant and abnormal. In any modern show would bachelor party antics, especially such comparatively tame ones, be shown as being so shockingly deviant?

The show assumes that normal people go to church on Sundays and say grace at mealtime. Prayer is a casually accepted part of the show, as is religion. Does any major show today, other than Duck Dynasty, so casually accept religion as a normal, unremarkable, everyday part of life?

Other, less remarkable, moral lessons are also included. The pro-family/loyalty message of Life on the Fast Lane. How Marge’s sisters constant denigration of Homer is shown as negative, destructive behaviour. In one episode, Marge is casually referred to as Mrs. Homer Simpson.

All this is not to say the Simpsons is a font of traditional values, it is a liberal show, it does have some fem-centrism, and is rather subversive, but it is a good example of just how fast our culture is collapsing. Just a couple decades ago, the Simpsons was a controversial show that was held up by the president as an example of family dysfunction. Yet compared to today’s cultural wasteland, where broken families are common, disrespect and degeneracy are the norm, and the husband as the head of the family is, at best, a joke, it is very tame, almost traditional.

25 years is all it took. In 20 years, will Two and a Half Men and Modern Family be relatively tame and traditional?

Profaning the Cathedral’s Gods

Something interesting pointed out by Nydwracu on Twitter that I think deserves a bit more of a mention than a retweet.

Buzzfeed (webcache) has a listicle (ie: an intellectually absent presentation of stolen images) of facts about swearing on Twitter. The second and third charts have a list of offensive words. Such words as fuck, pussy, shit, ass, retard, and bitch are simply stated in the graph, but nigga and cunt are spelt n***a and c**t.

To make it more interesting, if you look at the original report both nigga and cunt are spelt out normally, which means that Buzzfeed specifically and purposefully went out of its way to censor those specific words.

You can tell what our society holds profane and holy by what words are unspeakable.

I am interested in how cunt gained so much greater exosemantic negativity than pussy or bitch. I would guess it’s because cunt is generally used against women exhibiting negative masculine behaviours, while pussy is generally used against men exhibiting negative feminine behaviours and bitch is generally used for either the same purposes as pussy or against women exhibiting negative feminine behaviours.

I guess its acceptable to call out effiminate men and misbehaving women, but not masculine women.

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On a completely unrelated note, here’s something too big for tomorrow’s Lightning Round or Twitter, but not worth its own post. I ended up at the race realism page on something grossly mistitled RationalWiki (thanks, HBD Chick) and found this far too amusing not to point out

Adaptation to environments, including social environments, through natural and sexual selection is the linchpin of evolution. Remembering this means knowing why scientific racism is ridiculous. To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others. This at minimum requires an explanation, a specifically evolutionary explanation, beyond mere statistical assertion; without that it can be assumed to be cultural bias or noise. Since most human intelligence is in fact social intelligence — the main thing the human mind is built for is networking in human societies — this would require this social evolutionary arms race to have somehow stopped.

It isn’t often someone so thoroughly destroys their own argument within three sentences. Thank you RationalWiki, you amused me for a minute.

For those who don’t see it, intelligence (measured through IQ) /= social intelligence.

On Triggers and Bullies

Scott Alexander has a interesting post on triggers and safe spaces (h/t: Jim), in which he writes:

The rationalist community is a safe space for people who obsessively focus on reason and argument even when it is socially unacceptable to do so.
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If you are the sort of person with the relevant mental quirk, living in a society of people who don’t do this is a terrifying an alienating experience. Finding people who are like you is an amazing, liberating experience. It is, in every sense of the word, a safe space.

If you want a community that is respectful to the triggers of people who don’t want to talk about controversial ideas, the Internet is full of them. Although I know it’s not true, sometimes it seems to me that half the Internet is made up of social justice people talking about how little they will tolerate people who are not entirely on board with social justice ideas and norms. Certainly this has been my impression of Tumblr, and of many (very good) blogs I read (Alas, A Blog comes to mind, proving that my brain sorts in alphabetical order). There is no shortage of very high-IQ communities that will fulfill your needs.

But you say you’re interested in and attracted to the rationalist community, that it would provide something these other communities don’t. Maybe you are one of those people with that weird mental quirk of caring more about truth and evidence than about things it is socially acceptable to care about, and you feel like the rationalist community would be a good fit for that part of you. If so, we would love to have you!

But if you want to join communities specifically because they are based around dispassionate debate and ignoring social consequences, but your condition for joining is that they stop having dispassionate debate and take social consequences into account, well, then you’re one of those people – like Groucho Marx – who refuses to belong to any club that would accept you as a member.
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This would be a good time to admit that I am massively, massively triggered by social justice.

I know exactly why this started. There was an incident in college when I was editing my college newspaper, I tried to include a piece of anti-racist humor, and it got misinterpreted as a piece of pro-racist humor. The college’s various social-justice-related-clubs decided to make an example out of me. I handled it poorly (“BUT GUYS! THE EVIDENCE DOESN’T SUPPORT WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”) and as a result spent a couple of weeks having everyone in the college hold rallies against me followed by equally horrifying counter-rallies for me. I received a couple of death threats, a few people tried to have me expelled, and then everyone got bored and found some other target who was even more fun to harass. Meantime, I was seriously considering suicide.

But it wasn’t just that one incident. Ever since, I have been sensitive to how much a lot of social justice argumentation resembles exactly the bullying I want a safe space from – the “aspie”, the “nerd”, that kind of thing. Just when I thought I had reached an age where it was no longer cool to call people “nerds”, someone had the bright idea of calling them “nerdy white guys” instead, and so transforming themselves from schoolyard bully to brave social justice crusader. This was the criticism I remember most from my massive Consequentialism FAQ – he’s a nerdy white dude – and it’s one I have come to expect any time I do anything more intellectual than watch American Idol, and usually from a social justicer.

Scott hovers around a good point and gives it a light jab or two, but doesn’t go for the throat, so I will.

Bullying is not a regrettable by-product of social justice, social justice does not resemble bullying, rather:

Social justice is bullying.

The purpose of social justice is, was, and always will be bullying. Social justice warriors are bullies, nothing more, attempting to use social, economic, and, occasionally, physical force to enforce group conformity in favour of their ‘one true faith’ of ‘equality’.

SJ is the attempt of the weak and vile to force their abnormalities and disorders on the rest of us to make us as broken as they are. When we are all as pathetic as they are, we will all be equal.

To put it in social justice terms, the purpose of the non-normative discourse is to colonize and occupy white male space.

****

This is why you never give the SJW’s an inch. These are not simply well-meaning but broken people who need a bit of respect. These are not simply sensitive people who should be given a bit of compassion out of politeness. In normal life some minor accommodations to those naturally predisposed to sensitivity driven discourse is simple politeness, but SJW’s are not these types of people and they should not be given even the smallest of accommodations.

How can you tell that the SJW’s are bullies, rather than simply broken, but well-meaning people?

Simple, they seek to enter where they don’t belong. They purposefully seek out things to feel victimized.

A normal person who is sensitive to something (and might be worthy of some accommodation) generally seeks to avoid that something. As a trite personal example, I find emotional outbursts and certain forms of strong emotionalism uncomfortable; it could be fairly said, I am ‘sensitive’ to them. Because of this I tend to try to avoid situations where they occur and I avoid the type of people who are prone to them. It’s basic common sense.

The SJW, on the other hand, purposefully goes out of her way to intrude in other people’s spaces where she knows she will be uncomfortable and condemn them for making her uncomfortable.

We can see that in Scott’s example above: an SJW tries to enter a rationalist community devoted to a safe space for dispassionate discourse and demands that everybody stop with the dispassionate discourse.

You can see it in all the women offended by RoK or Matt Forney. They intrude on a male space dedicated to masculine discussion, where they know they will be offended and feel ‘victimized’.  We can see this with SRS on Reddit, who intrude into RPR and act offended.

In real life, the colonization of male space can be exemplified by the current concerns of the military; the SJW types demand women be allowed into the military, then whine when the military doesn’t bend over backwards to cater to their every whim.

It would be like me going to an Emotions Anonymous (I was only mildly surprised that existed) meeting and demanding they all stop being so weepy and emotional. It would be simply wrong. It’s not my place to be there and, if I am there as a newcomer or guest, it’s not my place to demand they change for me.

This is who you can know the SJW’s are bullies. They refuse to live and let live; they barge into other’s spaces and demand that these spaces change for them.

Never accommodate them.

****

I’ve outlined a number of ways they attempt to bully their allies (and others) into conformity, but of all these, the trigger warning is the most insidious attempt at colonization.

Not only does the SJW demand you kowtow to her will in her own spaces, she demands you kowtow to her will in your own space.

****

As an aside, Scott, if you end up following the backlink and reading this, I know I still haven’t got around to addressing your response to my response to the antireactionary FAQ. I still plan to. Hopefully, eventually.

Goldie Blox

Aaron linked to this ad for toys called Goldie Blox.

Unlike Aaron, I’m not quite so dismissive. I like the commercial, but I’ve always had a fondness for Rube Goldberg machines.

I also think the toys are a theoretically good idea. While most women don’t like math and won’t go into non-biology STEM, a few do and will. Why not make toys for those atypical girls?

My sisters had pastel-coloured Legos and they played war with them with my brother and me as we used our primary-coloured blocks. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with girl versions of boys’ toys.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with these toys.

THere is an interesting incongruity between the toys themselves and the purported feminist message. Whatever Goldie Blox’ intentions and advertisements and despite all the hype the toys are getting from the feminist-types, when you actually observe the toys you can’t help but notice the makers don’t really buy the message they’re selling.

Pastel Tinkertoys

These toys are essentially Tinkertoys and Tinkertoys have always been fairly gender-neutral, which makes them an odd target to feminize. Rather than being a leap forward for gender-neutral toys or equalism, these Goldie Blox are actually gendering toys and promoting inequality.

What idiot made Tinkertoys plastic and colourful?

The toy makers are banking on the fact that girls don’t want to play with gender-neutral Tinkertoys, but would instead prefer these gendered, feminine-themed Goldie Blox. That seems to be putting little girls even further into the gender box rather than moving them out of it.

Second, despite their anti-pink attitude, the colours of the toy are simply changed to other feminine colours, particularly a golden-yellow and a pastel purple. There’s not the primary colours of Legos and browns of (old, real) Tinkertoys. I don’t see how changing the gendered pink to gendered pastels is a particular “leap-forward” for getting girls out of the “pink ghetto”. Merely painting the ghetto a different colour is not going to change anything.

Third, look at the toys themselves. Tinkertoys are just Tinkertoys, they have no themes, while Lego’s are occasionally without theme but usually something boyishly cool like rockets, planes, or pirates. The Goldie Blox sets available are a parade float and a girly ribbon “spinning machine”.

Parade Floats – The Height of Imagination

The joy of Tinkertoys was simply building whatever came to your mind at the time. The imagination and the ability to build was the lure. Even with Legos sets, how many kids actually concentrated on the sets themselves, rather than tearing them apart as soon as they were built to build something else or play war?

These toys have been dumbed down. Look at how few pieces you get and how limited they are. And a parade float, really? You makes toys that can be used to build anything the imagination can conceive and a parade float is the best you can come up with? Is that the best you think young girls can aspire to?

I’ll see your parade float and raise you a rocket-ship.

How much of an “improvement” for gender neutrality in toys or for getting girls out of of the pink ghetto is it for little girls to simply be building girly things?

How much engineering/building skills and imagination will such simple, limited sets instill in young girls?

Finally, look at the sets, what do you see?

That bear has some swag.

Cute little animals. There’s a dolphin in a tutu, a bear in a pastel suit, and a cute little doggy with big floppy ears.

What do you see in Tinkertoys? Nothing but blocks and sticks (or plastic in the new and crappy form; that annoys more more than it should. At least I’m not the only one).

What do you see in Legos? Articulated figures capable of action (with guns and swords).

The girl-oriented engineering product is not enough of a draw in itself; it needs something cute, something personal to draw the little girls in. To increase the narrative and personalization, each even comes with it’s own storybook.

Every machine needs a back-story.

How much do you want to bet that most little girls who receive this toy will spend more time playing house or tea with the little animal figures rather than building, destroying, and re-building weird contraptions?

Here we can see the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the whole ‘girls and boys are equal meme’ displayed in one little children’s toy.

Even the equalists who specifically created a feminist-vaunted engineering toy to get girls into engineering know that most little girls don’t want to build and destroy for the sake of building and destroying like little boys do. They know full well they can’t just market Tinkertoys to girl straight-up; they know they can’t simply tell girls build this and make a profit.

So, to convince most girls to give an engineering toy a try they have to regender a gender-neutral toy, make the toys as girly as possible (while avoiding the dreaded pink), dumb the toy down while destroy the creativity of the toy, and introduce cute little animal figures in tutus simply to make them palatable to little girls.

I’m an evil supporter of the patriarchy and I would be hard-pressed to think up a toy that is more patronizing to little girls than this.

If you want pastels and dollies for your daughter buy some My Little Pony toys; there’s nothing wrong or inferior with young girls liking pink, pastels, and relationally-based toys.

But if you want an engineering toy by some Tinkertoys or Legos.

Uncountable hours of fun.

Avoid this drek; it’s insulting. “Hey little girl, you can’t handle 65 pieces of Tinkertoys ($16.40), so here’s 35 pieces to build a parade float ($20) because that’s all we expect you to be able to imagine and create. The boys will go over their and play with their underwater base.”

When even the gender-warriors implicitly state their cause is lost whenever it comes to something that actually effects reality, you know there’s something flawed with their ideology.

****

I must say though, I do admire the business acumen of the creator. What an idea:

I’ll take a classic toy, make it worse, colour it in pastels, attach some feminist ideology to it, and sell less of it at a higher price, then have the feminist press rave about my awesome new toy providing scads of free publicity.

That’s a pretty good business plan.

The Grand Inquisitor

From a story in the Brothers Karamazov in which the Grand Inquisitor speaks to a returned Jesus, captured and imprisoned:

“‘Is it Thou? Thou?’ but receiving no answer, he adds at once. ‘Don’t answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost thou know what will be to-morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have to-day kissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,’ he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner.”
…
‘Hast Thou the right to reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world from which Thou hast come?’ my old man asks Him, and answers the question for Him. ‘No, Thou hast not; that Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old, and mayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest anew will encroach on men’s freedom of faith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. Didst Thou not often say then, “I will make you free”? But now Thou hast seen these “free” men,’ the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, we’ve paid dearly for it,’ he goes on, looking sternly at Him, ‘but at last we have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it’s over for good? Thou lookest meekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst? Was this Thy freedom?'”
…
‘For now’ (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) ‘for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast warned,’ he says to Him. ‘Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men might be made happy. But, fortunately, departing Thou didst hand on the work to us. Thou hast promised, Thou hast established by Thy word, Thou hast given to us the right to bind and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou canst not think of taking it away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder us?'”
…
“‘The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence,’ the old man goes on, great spirit talked with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told in the books that he “tempted” Thee. Is that so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee in three questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in the books is called “the temptation”? And yet if there has ever been on earth a real stupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument that those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly from the books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them anew, and to do so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth- rulers, chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets- and had set them the task to invent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but express in three words, three human phrases, the whole future history of the world and of humanity- dost Thou believe that all the wisdom of the earth united could have invented anything in depth and force equal to the three questions which were actually put to Thee then by the wise and mighty spirit in the wilderness? From those questions alone, from the miracle of their statement, we can see that we have here to do not with the fleeting human intelligence, but with the absolute and eternal. For in those three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature. At the time it could not be so clear, since the future was unknown; but now that fifteen hundred years have passed, we see that everything in those three questions was so justly divined and foretold, and has been so truly fulfilled, that nothing can be added to them or taken from them.

“Judge Thyself who was right- Thou or he who questioned Thee then? Remember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this: “Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread- for nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.” But Thou wouldst not deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that man lives not by bread alone. But dost Thou know that for the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will strive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, “Who can compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!” Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? “Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!” that’s what they’ll write on the banner, which they will raise against Thee, and with which they will destroy Thy temple. Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building; the terrible tower of Babel will be built again, and though, like the one of old, it will not be finished, yet Thou mightest have prevented that new tower and have cut short the sufferings of men for a thousand years; for they will come back to us after a thousand years of agony with their tower. They will seek us again, hidden underground in the catacombs, for we shall be again persecuted and tortured. They will find us and cry to us, “Feed us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven’t given it!” And then we shall finish building their tower, for he finishes the building who feeds them. And we alone shall feed them in Thy name, declaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man? And if for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall follow Thee, what is to become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for the tens of thousands of the great and strong, while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee, must exist only for the sake of the great and strong? No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but in the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them- so awful it will seem to them to be free. But we shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name. We shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us again. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie.

“‘This is the significance of the first question in the wilderness, and this is what Thou hast rejected for the sake of that freedom which Thou hast exalted above everything. Yet in this question lies hid the great secret of this world. Choosing “bread,” Thou wouldst have satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity- to find someone to worship. So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, “Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!” And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not but have known, this fundamental secret of human nature, but Thou didst reject the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down to Thee alone- the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected it for the sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven. Behold what Thou didst further. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if someone else gains possession of his conscience- Oh! then he will cast away Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience. In that Thou wast right. For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance. That is true. But what happened? Instead of taking men’s freedom from them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. And behold, instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men, acting as though Thou didst not love them at all- Thou who didst come to give Thy life for them! Instead of taking possession of men’s freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man’s free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.

“‘So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what was offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness those forces are miracle, mystery and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing so. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Thee, “If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art the Son of God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father.” But Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course, Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak, unruly race of men, are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in making one movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have lost all Thy faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against that earth which Thou didst come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted Thee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And couldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonising spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, “Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art He.” Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed, look upon them. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou didst? By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him- Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter. He is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now rebelling against our power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride of a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring out the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will cost them dear. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organise a universal state. There have been many great nations with great histories, but the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union. The great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too were but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar’s purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course, with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written, “Mystery.” But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their free banner against Thee. Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: “Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!”

“‘Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle. They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while since they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to blame for their not knowing it?-speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it astray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will submit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient- and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and say: “Judge us if Thou canst and darest.” Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting “to make up the number.” But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.'”*

* I have spoken.

Prescient; yet it is not the Catholic church to which they bow for their bread, but unto the non-theistic ideological sons of the puritans.