Dglgmut

The article Michael posted is interesting. The writer got a lot wrong, but I do think basketball as a rising cultural force is notable. There is definitely something there.

I don't think it's so much about the sport itself as it is about the makeup of the athletes that makes it such a phenomenon. It's the leftist approved representation of the black male. And even if you see something that's unapproved, the commentators can tell you what you really saw.

I just had a thought about how opposite two of the forces at play in the whole racial movement are; I'll use the case of Ahmaud Arbery as an example. On one end of the spectrum you have black people with a heavy in group preference stating publicly that Ahmaud was just jogging and that he was just looking around that house to... uh... appreciate the construction work. Then on the same side you have white people that are so white they actually believe the bullshit. Now anyone with any connection to reality can see what was happening.... he was staking out the house. But white-hating blacks and the naive ultra-white liberals are on the same side, even though they're diametrically opposite, and they both support the same narrative.

I think this has something to do with the rise in popularity of basketball, too. It's partly to do with having a facade of black America that the white liberal can be comfortable with, like Lebron saying of Trump's "locker room" comment, "We don't talk like that in the locker room." How white do you have to be to actually believe that? And I don't mean to use "white" pejoratively, only that the type of people I mean to degrade are those who would take offense to that.

3 hours ago, merjet said:

About 80% of NBA players are black. When they went to college, it was mostly to improve their basketball skills, not intellectual ones with a STEM major or philosophy major. How much do they really know about Marxism? I suspect very, very little.

The difference between leftist ideologies is like the difference between different sects of a religion. They still worship the god of Equality (non-competition). and there is major overlap in the history of their ideas. Sticking with this analogy, there are many self-identified Catholics who have not studied their religion on an academic level.

Quote

If you asked LeBron James – who did no college – about changing player salaries to be far more equal based upon their need – Marx’s slogan “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” – I’m very confident he would emphatically reject the idea.

This is true about all kinds of Marxists, though... if it wasn't, communism would have worked.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

From what little I saw of the video, the killer of Danielson was emotionally imbalanced and in a huge state of rationalization, one that felt to me like it had been engineered. I bet he had a handler who knew how to push his buttons to get him to act.

Both to kill Danielson and to commit suicide by cop in a blaze of glory.

When listening to him talk to Vice, he sounded like what I imagine a suicide bomber would sound like (with adjustments for culture).

I'm glad he's dead, it would be wrong for tax payers to have to pay for this terrorist's imprisonment. The left-wing terrorists seem to have a type:

Willem Van Spronsen

Willem Van Spronsen was an anarchist and anti-fascist who was shot and killed by Tacoma Police officers while trying to set fire to a propane tank with incendiary devices during an attack at an ICE detention center in Tacoma on Saturday, July 13. 2019 Van Spronsen was previously arrested in 2018 at the Tacoma detention facility when he was accused of lunging at a police officer who was detaining another protester. (Courtesy of Twitter)

It's amazing how some people compare Bishop's murder to the targets of Rittenhouse. Their brains are not functional... Everything is justified in approaching equality; that's the only way to make sense of their evil.

I saw a new mural on the front of a women's shelter yesterday: "Until We've All Made It, None of Us Have Made It." Anyone who disagrees with this must be bigoted towards those groups who are typically seen as having not "made it."

They are riling themselves up. They are stoking their own craziness because they think the chaos today is their opportunity to finally do something good with their lives.

2 hours ago, Peter said:

Whenever all four criteria are met, the State would have no alternative but to allow (starvation), facilitate (cup of hemlock), or execute (lethal injection) the death of the criminal. If at that time any debt is still owed to the victim(s),  the State would be required to effect the death of the criminal in a way to  maximize the value of his remains (particularly the viable organs), which would become part of the criminal's estate and thence the property of the victim(s).

This would be absolutely fitting, unfortunately it looks like this guy's organs won't be worth much.

After the "We got a Trumper, right here!" you hear, "Right here?" immediately before the gunshot.

Those quotes all sound facetious to me.

1 hour ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

It's not that they don't want police, it's that they want to be the police.

I don't know. Like I said above, I think narcissism has a lot to do with this. These kids feel like they are lacking an identity, and this is something they can do to form one. They probably think they could come up with some pretty good rules for society, but I think a lot of them are, as other people have said, LARPing. They are saving the princess from the dragon... the princess being black criminals and the dragon being the police. The only videos of real poverty line black Americans speaking their minds, that I have seen, have been completely counter to the leftist narrative: the police are far from their biggest problem.

If you don't already, check out "Last Week In Culture" on Fleccas Talks' YouTube channel, which is basically a rip off of I,Hypocrite's "You Can't Stop Progress," which is much longer and is released less regularly. Either one is much better than watching the News.

Here's something I recently found that offers some perspective also:

1 hour ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Soon there will be an army of them.  How organized and intelligent do they need be?

I think this is a huge leap. The people willing to actually put skin in this game are a tiny minority, and mostly unskilled/unintelligent. They can learn some useful skills, but their ideology runs contrary to the whole notion of self improvement--the ones that become independent minded will be more likely to leave. You also have to recognize the abundance of information available to even the poorest people in this day and age: the chance of them uncovering their own contradictions is much higher than it would have been in past revolutions.

I just don't see this "becoming an army" thing. These kids are not fighting for a cause, they are fighting out of narcissism. As long as there are adults with basements for these kids to comfortably live in they will not have the motivation necessary to take any real risk/put in real effort.

11 minutes ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Face it.  Get ready.  The war I have seen come true for all of my life is here.  There was a time when I thought Americans would never in a million years let anything like this happen.  I laughed at the future I saw coming and thought, 'There's no way!'  I was wrong, much to my disappointment.  The reality is there's no way around it.  We have failed and we have failed our children.  It's that simple.  We, the drug-addled, fat plebs of America are not mature enough, tough enough, intelligent enough, adept enough anymore to do anything about it.

How organized and intelligent do you think your opposition is?? The people at the top seem mostly be a bunch of creeps just trying to hold on to their access to kidnapped children (or some other sexual deviancy), while the people on the ground are largely unskilled and inexperienced in any useful way.

14 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

Well looks like his raping days are done.  That’s actually a pretty good cure for perps of sexual assault.  Paralyzed from the waist down and never a boner again!

I wonder how many of the lefties protesting this police shooting have worn apparel like this:

No idea about that, sorry.

8 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

read The Global Brain by him.

Ok. I don't know the ins and outs of human evolution, just some popular theories.

I still think we are in uncharted territory, and civilizations of their current scales have not had time to make any significant changes to our nature; especially when you consider the reduction in factors contributing to natural selection.

By tribe I mean the total society that a prehistoric human lived in. Like I said before, 150-250 people (the estimate I've always seen). So there would be no evolutionary roots in terms of hierarchies of tribes. Tribes would go to war with each other, but they wouldn't coexist within hierarchies, as far as I understand.

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

And then it occurs to you that hierarchy at a nation level is not hierarchy of individuals within a specific number of levels like a caste system. It is true that there are hierarchies of individuals in a nation--after all, there is only one president or fearless leader (and the video was about how to become and stay top dog). There are also other fundamental individuals who exist within a hierarchy to each other within a nation. But a nation is mostly a hierarchy of groups (each with a top dog), and each group has its own hierarchies of groups and individuals, and those groups have their own hierarchies of groups and individuals, and so on.

This is an organizing fractal that is embedded in human nature.

Ok, I think agree with this. Are you saying that the natural social dynamics of tribe-sized groups persist even within an unnatural societal framework, in that even though the actual "tribe" is now unmanageably large, the tribe member roles are still assigned subconsciously?

Even if you're not, the idea that we naturally form groups about the size of prehistoric tribes sounds reasonable... and that those groups compete for status in a hierarchy. The idea of hierarchies of groups is interesting because it wouldn't have any evolutionary roots. If this is something we naturally do it would probably be coincidental. I don't know. Maybe there's some research on this.

On 8/15/2020 at 6:01 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I first saw this video on power ages ago and it is still one of my favorites.

The thing that's interesting about the key supporters is that basically they are just the rank below on the social hierarchy, and to be above them is to represent them, while at the same time the standard for achieving rank is variable depending on the rank, and the ranks in between hold the structure together.

Meaning this: if you took only the bottom and top ranks of the hierarchy, the people at the top would not remain on top. Whatever it took for them to rise above the rank 2nd to the top is not the same thing required to raise to the 2nd from the bottom. By achieving representative status, or partial domination, of any rank in the hierarchy, you also derive from them the representation of the lower ranks.

This says something about the social experiments referenced above, as the disconnect between these nonadjacent ranks evokes a sense of arbitrariness in the conception of social hierarchies in a way that cannot be natural. From the family to the tribe, is more or less what is naturally accepted by us in terms of human authority. In the Western world, we have the authority of the family, which is challenged by the teachings of the public school, which is supported by the inherently violent state. There is no rationality in the hierarchy, and so the idea of "power" is disconnected from the idea of "responsibility" or "duty." Responsibility and duty are then delegated to those with less power.

On 8/7/2020 at 7:51 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Since you are looking at power from a human nature standpoint, I suggest looking at the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

Finally got around to reading about these. I recently read a couple lines from a book that touched on this subject as well:

Quote

It has become clear, not only that sufficient torture will break down almost any man's fortitude, but also that morphia or cocaine can reduce a man to docility. The will, in fact, is only independent of the tyrant so long as the tyrant is unscientific.

Bertrand Russel, The History of Western Philosophy p 267

This also connects to how I think of free will, and compatibilism. I think our actions are bound to the rules of causality, but the causes at play are partly external and partly internal. We are, in part, our own cause. However, the proportions of internal to external causation are not fixed.

The domination of a person is to become a disproportionate external cause of their actions. That doesn't mean you can directly control them, in that you can't make them do whatever you want--you are limited to their natural responses. If fear locks them up, for example, you determined that behavior, but it may not have been what you intended.

From the individual's perspective, filtered through rational self-interest (integrated and non-contradicting), the goal is to maximize internal causation in proportion to external. In Randian terms this is man's "spirit." We could also call it will power. This is the opposition to social power, or circumstantial determinism in general. It may be called ego, but ego can mean different things to different people. However, the egoless are tools, by any definition. They are tools either to those that control their circumstances, or to their own idea of "the greater good."

11 hours ago, Peter said:

Even the lower levels of humanity have a purpose. From the junkie to the street thief and thug their purpose is for instant gratification. The purpose of the bully is to diminish others to raise themselves within a perceived hierarchy. The sadist gains gratification through the pain of others. All these lowlifes want ‘power.”   

This accords with what I said here: "So it's not that some men have a purpose and some don't, it's that men derive their purpose from concepts of ranging scopes."

The narrower the scope, the less non-contradiction/integration is possible. The sadist lives in a bubble, insulated from the past and future. Power can be experienced in different ways; egotism can be applied in different ways. Power over another person (status), power over reality (creativity), or power over oneself (independence)--something like that--are all different expressions of egotism.

What about the anti-egotist: the man who lives for pleasure or the man who lives for society? These would be the men without a purpose, I think. Technically, they do have a purpose, but by Rand's standards they do not. They are guided either by their body or other people. Maybe these are worse than the people with corrupted minds? They are the necessary tools for these people to effect their destruction.

1 hour ago, ThatGuy said:

That's like saying "I don't know that having 'no career' is really the worst quality a person can have. The worst people in history have all had a career." Or children. Or money. Or oxygen.

The standard of quality can't be whether or not other people have used those things for nefarious purposes.

But Rand assigned quality to the quality. Having a career, in this sense, = good. So is the converse of your last statement also true: that just because something can be used for good does not necessarily make it good?

Here's my latest take on purpose:

Purpose is a function of our abstracted circumstances. "Life" is the highest level of abstraction. If we are not able to conceive of our life as a whole, we will focus on some subset of the whole, and our purpose will be derived from this abstraction. So it's not that some men have a purpose and some don't, it's that men derive their purpose from concepts of ranging scopes. Some men may consider their life as a whole, or close to it, while others may only think about the short term (perhaps due to mental limitations or emotional inhibition).

This is how I think the "integration" works. The broader the scope of the abstraction, the more contextualized everything in your life becomes. Things become good and bad that would otherwise be irrelevant. However, I don't know that having "no purpose" is really the worst quality a person can have. The worst people in history have all had a purpose. We're seeing a lot of shitty stuff right now coming from people who certainly have a purpose. I'm not sure exactly how this works, as in a way I feel like they've gone into the negatives in their level of abstracting their own circumstances, and have come out the other side, viewing everything through the lens of society. But I also think they are quite selfish, in the orthodox sense, and seeking low order pleasure/happiness while at the same time championing high order social values.

2 hours ago, Peter said:

I went back and looked at the Charlize Theron article. The movie that “changed her life” was “Aliens” with Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver. Before that she only knew male, action show heroes from shows like “MacGyver” and “Knight Rider” . . . “just all these dudes.” But the character Ripley in “Aliens” knocked her socks off. Here is an interesting fact. The original “Alien” was directed by Ridley Scott and “Aliens” was directed by James Cameron, age 65, who was once married to Linda Hamilton, who with her twin sister, is from a place near me. I always wondered about those like sounding names, Ridley and Ripley.  Peter

Notes with Wikipedia. In total, Cameron's films have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide. Avatar and Titanic are the second and third highest-grossing films of all time, earning $2.78 billion and $2.19 billion, respectively. As of 2020, Cameron holds the achievement of having directed the first two of the five films in history to gross over $2 billion worldwide. In 2010, Time magazine named Cameron as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cameron is also an environmentalist and runs several sustainable businesses.

Hey, that quote is not of mine!

edit: Sorry! I see you were quoting me quoting

"that movement [BLM] was orchestrated and funded in advance behind the scenes and did not arise from a grass roots movement"

Let's play WHO SAID IT? So an ideological movement can be explained in black and white terms, but not a music video?

Also: "So, if I were a typical music industry person, I would thing that if somebody does Satan, maybe they will make boatloads of money." Seems you are implying that the Satanic angle was the idea of a music industry person.

Here's an article from 3 years ago: Wait a Minute, is Satanism Actually Really Great?

16 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

D,

I don't know what you mean by "real culture," but suppose I did.

I don't think in the "either-or" way your question framed it.

Black and white thinking, for me, is for issues that are relevant to black and white identifications. (Such as: are you pregnant or are you not?)

"The culture," real or not real, does not have a nature that comports such black-and-white identifications.

Michael

My question was do you think the values and behaviors featured in pop culture, such as that video, are manufactured or discovered by the creators?

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I think it's evil to put the entire media entertainment and publicity machine behind using this on young teenage black girls. Their teenage years are confusing enough without them being bombarded with calls to join in Satanic fads and porn as the good life, with peer pressure being ginned up for this by gobs of money and entertainment industry insider influence.

Do you think this is a creation of the media and not a sample of real culture?

12 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

A two hour video?

Look, I suspect if white women were socially reduced to black women you could say the same thing, out of many things, about them.

Up from slavery meant a different kind of slavery post 1865. This was shucked off in the 1960s only to be reimposed by "The Great Society" of Lyndon Johnson turning blacks into dependent welfare recipients along with poor whites destroying the natural family structure out of human biology. The man was functionally reduced to making babies, not supporting and raising his family. Now compare fucking time to working time when the man doesn't have to work. What's left? More time for fucking all over the place. And the girl-woman? What man is she saving herself for? Here today, gone today? Or, practically speaking, the man has more time not just for fucking but drug consumption and dealing. Prison time is just a change of venue. And knowing, at least subconsciously, your life is cheap and almost worthless killing anyone who gets in your way is relatively easy.

--Brant

welcome to the South Side of Chicago and a man named LeRoy Brown

I don't disagree with any of this except I would add that a lack of police presence and priority is a big factor in the "killing anyone who gets in your way" part. I think a difference in the amount and type of violence in a child's environment probably has tentacles reaching all of the places in their life that are markers for black underachievement/oppression, and so there is also a partial feedback loop that can easily get, and has gotten, out of control. This also affects how status is attained and what qualities are signifies of status from the female perspective, as well as the purpose a woman serves, from the man's perspective.

What I said originally was not really about black women. It was about women, noting that black women are in a different situation and so their womanness is expressed differently. Also, that 2 hour radio show was one of 13, and there's also some more radio appearances from him dealing with callers and their relationship issues. I only linked that one because it's the first in a series that has some very good insight from a man with no significant formal education.

He actually stumbles into some Randian ideas, and some psychological theories that parallel things that Jordan Peterson says: "men test ideas; women test men," for example.

Here's a clip of just the insight, without as much shooting of shit:

For my actual evidence, from listening to and observing young people including black people. If you aren't aware of how sexualized young black women are, in particular, it's pretty extreme. For the theory on the "why" I've gotten most of it from this man:

Women copy men in some ways and men copy women in some ways. Men are creative sexually, while women are creative in terms of showing love.