Transcript: http://bit.ly/HnLtCp

'...feminism will eventually help bring about an economic and social collapse. Many people are simply unable to wrap their heads around that idea, because we've all been told, ad nauseum, that feminism is a cause of prosperity, when in reality, it is largely--perhaps entirely – a consequence of it.

And I'm going to borrow a bit from another blogger, Rob of the blog No Ma'am, and read a portion of his description of patriarchy and lifelong monogamous marriage, because he explained it EXTREMELY effectively.

"When one stands back and observes the whole lot, we see that both males and females have a surplus and a shortage:

"Males have a surplus of labour but a shortage of reproductive ability.

"Females have a surplus of reproductive ability but a shortage of labour.

"Now, perhaps, you can see why marriage is an economic contract.

"The male “sells” his surplus labour to the female in exchange for her reproductive ability.

"The female “sells” her reproductive ability to the male in exchange for his surplus labour.

"In order to “sell” something, you first must “own it” yourself, and upon “selling it,” you are agreeing to transfer ownership of it to the buyer. This is the basis of economics, and as you can see, it is based on property rights.

"In the economic contract of marriage, the female agrees to transfer the ownership of her sexual reproductive ability to the male, and she takes ownership of his surplus labour as payment for it.

"So, yes, while the feminists harp on and on that women were once “owned” as chattel, there is truth to this because in a very real sense, a woman’s sexuality became the property of the husband. He very much was considered to “own” her sexuality and the products of her sexuality (children). The children of a marriage became his property, because he paid for them.

"(Note that while the children of a marriage are supposed to belong to the husband, children born out of wedlock are the property of the woman. A woman who is not married owns her own sexuality and the products/children of that sexuality are also her property).

"This is also why, in the past, women were so much more harshly condemned for adultery than men. The wife's sexuality was no longer hers to give away.

"This is why, in the past, when a woman was raped it was considered an act of theft against the husband. Someone “stole” the sexuality which was his property.

"This is why, in the past, it was considered impossible for a husband to be found guilty of spousal rape. How can you possibly steal your own property?

"So, feminists are somewhat truthful when they claim that women were “owned” as chattel. A wife’s sexuality (NOT her person), was very much “owned” by her husband and it was in fact used as a means of production: The production of the husband’s own children.

"But, as always, feminists are only capable of speaking in half-truths. The part of the “women were owned as chattel” song leaves out the second verse, which is “and men were owned as beasts of burden.”

Patriarchy worked very well for society overall, because it provided women with the surplus labor they required in order to raise their children in the best possible circumstances AT NO COST to anyone but husbands and fathers. And men's ownership of their children motivated the vast majority of men to do more than just subsist – to essentially labor at more than minimum capacity. That meant that a lot of work got done, and the economic surplus men generated was handed directly to the women who needed it. Of course this arrangement benefitted some women more than others (the ones who married rich), and some men more than others (the ones whose wives didn't turn out to be barren), and could easily benefit one party in a particular marriage more than the other. But for the most part, in its function as the smallest building block of society, it worked like whoa and like damn.

Feminists fought and still fight for women's reproductive freedom, but they don't seem to worry too much about the lack of responsibility demonstrated by women's growing penchant for getting pregnant and having children out of wedlock at rates of up to 60%, at a time when they have almost total control over their fertility. And despite women having 100% power of decision over reproduction (no matter what the man does or doesn't do), very few feminists believe those women should be held 100% financially responsible for those decisions. Not only should abortions be free, but child support automatic. Despite having no say in any of these decisions, men are still held partly responsible, and we ALL are as well, through the increased social spending required to make all reproductive choices on the part of women as burden-free as possible.

Reproduction may be women's burden, but it's their power as well, and feminism seems happy to not only indulge any irresponsible exercising of that power, but has suggested and implemented measures designed to ensure every decision a woman might make wrt her reproductive capacity, whether wise or foolish, comes with as little cost to the woman making it as possible.

Now that the transfer of surplus labor from men to women must go through a middle-man, who takes a slice of that pie only to get fatter and hungrier, you actually need more and more productivity on the ground to both provide for women and children, and feed the beast of government. In western countries, that beast has grown to 100x the size it was before women's suffrage, and has begun pulling out the visa card willy nilly – pledging the labor of our children to foreign governments to finance the largesse of today.

But what have we done? We've removed all the motivation men have to be economic generators by removing all the benefit to them of marriage and children, so more and more are refusing to do the 50 hour a week thing and are opting for part time jobs, beer and x-box instead. Others are simply so damaged and handicapped by the system we've created that they are incapable of being productive at all. So we actually have LESS productivity on the ground. And those children we're relying on to get us out of hock when foreign governments start calling in the debts, are only going to become less able to save our asses with every generation of them raised in single mother households.

Men paying a greater share of the taxes is what's been funding all of this. But because of our decision to prioritize women's educations over men's, this generation of men are now more likely to drop out at all levels of education, less likely to attend post-secondary, and already earn 8% less than women do under 30. We are actually handicapping the earning power of the people who fund the system women need, and prioritizing training and education for the people who are least likely to exploit it to its full economic potential. We are allowing women to banish fathers from their children's lives at no cost to themselves – in fact, the rewards to women for doing so are myriad and tangible – when we KNOW this disadvantages children and generates current and future costs to society. And we are disincentivizing men's productivity by offering them no realistic opportunity for children that are actually theirs, or marriages that will last longer than a few years, after which all benefit to them is gone, while all the costs and obligations remain.'

'Most of the feminists I've come across have concluded that this penalization of "girlie men" originates in the relative positions of men and women, and societal views of "maleness" as intrinsically superior or preferable to "femaleness".

That women have always been considered "less than" men. But you know what? I actually believe it's the exact opposite.

I mean, let's look at society as an employer. The employer wants all its employees to be useful and valuable, otherwise, there's no point in paying them. And what does our employer need in order to perpetuate itself and grow? It needs strong backs to do the work of making things happen, and it needs people whose job it is to provide more strong backs to replace the ones that wear out or retire.

Women provide those strong backs by bearing children. This is their primary role, because it's an important one and who the hell else is going to do it? Because this role is so important, and because women's ability to effectively do this job requires safety, support and assistance, women are often pigeonholed into a position where those needs can be efficiently and consistently met. They are "warehoused" in safe little cubicles, and not permitted to engage in work that could put them at serious risk of not being able to perform their primary function. Instead, they are relegated to safe, relatively easy tasks in between their periodic larger, more important projects.

The attributes that are most valuable in a female employee are a willingness to take direction, an ability to make their individual needs known so they can be met, and the physical characteristics considered most helpful in performing that primary function many times over.

What role does that leave for men? It leaves them the job of being the strong backs. They do the heavy lifting, they tinker with the high voltage wiring that services the office complex, they go out into the dangerous world and return with provisions and office supplies.

While men are necessary as project contributors to assist in the primary function of the female employees, when it comes to this particular contribution, one man can do the work of many, if need be. Since there are always going to be men employed by the company, those men vary in their capacity to be useful to the company, and men pass on their attributes to the new strong backs they help to provide, it is in the company's best interest that only the most valuable men perform this particular function. It is of no value to the company if a man who is a slacker or otherwise unfit is allowed to contribute in this way, since the new backs he helps provide will not be as strong as others. And it is in the women's best interest, to be selective in choosing their project partners, since women's value to the company improves if the new strong backs they provide are exceptionally strong.

Can women fill those primary "male" jobs? Of course they can. And they have, at points all through history, where and when it's been necessary. While performing these tasks may put them at risk (which is to be avoided, if possible), and often puts a double burden on them in that they may be expected to do the work of two people, it's entirely possible for them to do it and still be of value to the company.

A woman can provide more strong backs while doing some of the heavy lifting and some of the more risky jobs, when that is required. And a woman can also fill her primary female job just by lying around doing not much at all. Even if she does next to nothing else, if she is performing, or potentially can perform, that function for her employer, she has value. She likely won't be paid that much if she's not being productive in other ways, but she's still entitled to a salary if she does her primary duty, or a retainer if she has the potential to do so. If she can't perform this primary duty, there are other tasks she can perform that have value, either in the male department or in the female one, and there's still the off chance of her managing to provide at least one future strong back. That primary function is SO important, that the company has policies in place to provide pensions for its female hirees, even if they've been unproductive in any way.

Can a man fill that single, primarily "female" job? Well, no. No he can't. Like not at all. His entire value to the company is in his ability to perform the more difficult, risky, strenuous jobs so that women can enjoy light duty while they contribute in more important ways. To perform these jobs, he requires certain attributes – physical strength, sanguinity in the face of danger, a willingness to take risks, a sense of putting others before himself, and a drive to perform. The more of these attributes he has, the more valuable he is to the company. The fewer he has, the more likely he is to get fired. He won't be placed on retainer or earn a pension if it looks like the company can't use him for anything, because if the company does that, he'll only be a burden on their payroll.

Men have to earn their value to the company. They can't earn their value through being good at secondary female tasks – there are tons of females in the company, and they can perform those secondary tasks while also performing their primary one. He's not going to get hired to do half a job, and he's not qualified to do the entire thing. The only role he can fill, while retaining enough individual value to the company to remain on the payroll, is the male role.

So in my opinion, men suffer more strict enforcement of their gender roles not because they are considered more valuable than, or preferable to, women, or because women are considered less than men. It is because women are and always have been more valuable, on an individual and inherent basis, to the company than men are. A woman retained that inherent value no matter how useful she was, because women as a group were considered so valuable that it was in the company's interest to keep the entire group on the payroll. A woman who could step outside her assigned duties and perform other ones when need be – that is, a woman who sometimes behaved like a man – was, to a point, more valuable to the company for her ability to do so. She was Woman Plus. She could do her job that only she could do, and then some. Conversely, she was Man Plus. She could do a man's job, and then some. She can be the strong back and the provider of strong backs, the most versatile and valuable employee there is. Men, on the other hand, had to provide value in order to maintain their employment. Their value to the company lay in performing specific tasks so that females wouldn't have to, and in being valued project contributors who had to earn their entitlement to work with females in this way. Men who did not act "like men" were Less Than Men. Likewise, they were Less Than Women. They were incapable of doing a complete job either way, so there was no added value in them demonstrating female characteristics without having a womb to go along with it.

And at that point, the company, for the sake of its own solvency, would either vigorously "retrain" them, or give them their pink slips. It is not that maleness is "better than" femaleness. It is that maleness has always been extremely limited in its useful and productive permutations, while femaleness is simply less so. The essential feminine can only be added to and gain value, while the essential masculine can only be subtracted from and lose it.

Many women have been able to completely abandon their essential feminine – their primary function – and still retain status as whole human beings with value to society, but men simply cannot do the same. When they abandon masculinity, they throw away all that makes their lives worthwhile to anyone but themselves.'

'...the four player types abstracted, we get: achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember these is to consider suits in a conventional pack of cards: achievers are Diamonds (they're always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them). Naturally, these areas cross over, and players will often drift between all four, depending on their mood or current playing style. However, my experience having observed players in the light of this research suggests that many (if not most) players do have a primary style, and will only switch to other styles as a (deliberate or subconscious) means to advance their main interest. -- ...a sharp reduction in the number of explorers for whatever reason could mean a gradual reduction in achievers, who get bored if they're not occasionally told of different hoops they can jump through for points; this could affect the number of socialisers (the fewer players there are, the less there is to talk about), and it would certainly lower the killer population (due to a general lack of suitable victims).'

'Conformity is the attaining of societal goals by socially accepted means, while innovation is the attaining of those goals in unaccepted ways. Innovators find and create their own way to go about obtaining what they want, and a majority of the time, these new ways are considered to be socially unaccepted and deviant. Ritualism is the acceptance of the means but the forfeit of the goals. Ritualists continue to subscribe to the means, but they have rejected the overall goal; they are not viewed as deviant. Retreatism is the rejection of both the means and the goals. Retreaters want to find a way to escape from everything and therefore reject the goals and the means and are seen as deviant. Rebellion is a combination of rejection of societal goals and means and a substitution of other goals and means. Innovation and ritualism are the pure cases of anomie as Merton defined it because in both cases there is a discontinuity between goals and means.'

Human Action vs Repetition Compulsion @ 47:47: "The truth is, players change the rules [of a game or society or community] as they go. So there's this reflexive action... And the kinds of problems that players attempt to solve are, frankly, intractable and impossible to solve. The brain loves intractable and impossible-to-solve problems; these then become [*laughs*] high-retention devices." -- Monkey doh!

'The definition of the situation is a fundamental concept in symbolic interactionism advanced by the American sociologist W. I. Thomas. It is a kind of collective agreement between people on the characteristics of a situation, and from there, how to appropriately react and fit into it. "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective. Actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations. Whether there even is an objectively correct interpretation is not important for the purposes of helping guide individuals' behavior. "The situations that men define as true, become true for them."'

"Attachment is impossible under such circumstances."

'...the attention that we receive as babies impacts on our brain structures. Babies rely on their carers to soothe distress and restore equilibrium. -- ...children who lived with a depressed parent in infancy are more reactive to stress later in life; children who lived with a depressed parent later in childhood showed no such effect. This makes sense if we remember that the stress response is probably being "set" like a thermostat very early in life. It also makes sense in evolutionary terms to have newborn brains which are unfinished, because they can be adapted to fit the needs of the social group. In effect, they can be programmed to behave in ways that suit their community. However, it is a risky strategy. In a harsh environment, a baby's cries may be ignored, or he may be punished for being distressed. This is likely to produce an individual who becomes, in his turn, relatively insensitive and prone to aggression – and this could be useful in a tense, hostile community.'

"What I do think we should be thinking is, at our loss and at our peril do we just perceive this situation as simply large numbers of kids simply being morally flawed. I think that explanation falls short. If there is such a thing called childhood then surely adults should be taking responsibility for it. -- It’s not just about poverty, actually. I completely agree and there are lots of people out there that will tell you that they’ve been to Oxford and Cambridge and university and succeeded, and they came from poor backgrounds. I’m not talking about material poverty alone. You can just about survive material poverty if you have some kind of an emotional care around you. But these children have a double-whammy damage. Their carers are disturbed and dysfunctional, addicted to substances often – and they live in the ghettos of Britain where civil society doesn’t offer them a way out." -- Interview MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/?bdgmdceo1dtdxvz

'...looting makes "powerless people suddenly feel powerful" and that is "very intoxicating". The world has been turned upside down. The youngsters are used to adults in authority telling them they cannot do this or this will happen. Then they do it and nothing happens." Numbers are all important in a riot... "You cannot riot on your own. A one-man riot is a tantrum. At some point the bigger crowds confronting the police realise that they are in control." They are swept away by the crowd... they take on the values of the group. [Their] own internal values and norms become less salient. ...it suggests it's normal. "Humans are the best on the planet at imitating. And we tend to imitate what is successful." "It boils down to the buzz. It's an excitement. You can't take away that thrill – the roar of the crowd. That sense of a group of men, something's happening." ...most of the rioters are from poor estates who have no "stake in conformity", who have nothing to lose. "They are not 'us'."'

'Are opportunities available to everyone in today's society?' -- "...is that an individual who simply made a bad choice?"

'Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped. The border police arrive at the neighbour's door to grab an "over-stayer" and his kids are screaming. British children with no legal papers have mothers surviving through prostitution and still there's not enough food on the table. It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.' -- London. No Future.

Molyneux: "Intelligent human beings don't breed well in captivity."

"What is it that goes on in somebody's life that would lend them to be more susceptible to Marxism? There is a strangely stale and dead relationship that is always depicted in Marxism where there is a factory owner, a bunch of workers – and nobody else throughout the entire economic landscape. There is also within the Marxist class analysis not much room for [the idea of social mobility amongst the classes]. The capitalists can't fall and the workers can't rise. It's all frozen in time. Why [would Marxists] accept that there's no competition for workers between capitalists unless they are [unconsciously] mistaking the employer/employee relationship for the parent/child relationship? [There is no social mobility within a family.] Children are children and parents are parents. The family is communism; the family is socialistic. From each according to their ability to each according to their needs... That is the definition of the parent/child relationship."

Gisted/Quoted -- The problem with the idea that men are defective and that women are just better is the basic issue that nobody talks about: that men are raised by women. Women give birth to men; women raise men; and then if men turn out bad, all you get from feminists as an explanation is propaganda about "the patriarchy". There is no greater power disparity – there is no greater victimization – than that which is possible between a mother and a child. Power disparities in society are no more prevalent than the relationship between the mother and the child. That is something which is absolutely unspoken of in society. There is no possibility for society as a whole to look at female violence directly and straight on in the face. Men are raised by women and it's not just women in the home, it's women in the daycares, women in the primary schools. If you want to get to the root of violence and corruption in society, you've got to look at the mothers.'

"The cycle of life is that children are inconvenient when they're very young, and parents are inconvenient when they're very old."

'The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. The wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well. It is not surprising, therefore, that distribution of goods and rewards via a centrally organized distributional mechanism later strikes intellectuals as more appropriate than the "anarchy and chaos" of the marketplace. For distribution in a centrally planned socialist society stands to distribution in a capitalist society as distribution by the teacher stands to distribution by the schoolyard and hallway.'

'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Richman, Poorman, Beggarman, Thief. Why did little 17th century girls enjoy guessing who their future husbands might be? Was their choice of archetypes mere alliterative randomness? Relate them to the Dull Dirty Dangerous – Sexy Lucrative Powerful spectrum, and you begin to see a pattern. Richman enjoys the ultimate privilege: buying his own social identity at the SLP end of the spectrum. Poorman is stuck in the DDD end. Beggarman and Thief have fallen off the edge of society. Sailor and Tinker are successful exodus archetypes. The former is effectively a free agent [a privateer]. The latter, the Tinker, was a neo-nomad, substituting tin-smithing for pastoralism in pre-industrial Britain. -- Today, the remaining modern women who look to men, rather than to themselves, to define their lives, might sing a different song: Blogger, Coder, Soldier, Consultant, Rockstar, Burger-flipper, Welfareman, Spammer. Everything changes. Everything remains the same.'

'It’s only in the last half dozen decades that the home has become nothing more than a center of consumption; before then, it was a place where real wealth was produced. ...all of the value produced by labor in the household market remains with the family and is used directly, without being mediated through the money economy. A nation in which a very large fraction of the workforce produces a diverse array of goods and services at home for local consumption using relatively simple tools, is a nation that’s much better prepared to face the economic turmoil of the end of the age of cheap oil... So when can we expect the return of the single-income family to become an element of constructive plans for the post-peak future? Let's just say I’m not going to hold my breath. ...if you don’t think in terms of whole systems, the fact that the system costs of that second job might just outweigh the benefits will be as incomprehensible to you as a computer would have been to a medieval peasant.'

'In a stateless society, the only person who is "King" is the consumer. -- Medieval Iceland illustrates a well-documented historical example of how a stateless legal order can work and it provides insights as to how we might create a more just and efficient society today. Because of Iceland's geographical location there was no threat of foreign invasion, so the demand for a national military force was absent. Icelandic settlers held similar philosophical ideas toward the state and the law as where held by the founding fathers of the United States, including distrust of a strong central government. Instead of a judicial branch of government there were private courts that were the responsibility of the godar. There was no public property during the era of the Vikings in Iceland, all property was privately owned. The lack of competition and the monopolistic qualities that eventually came about when five families cornered the chieftaincy market was one reason [for Iceland's collapse].'

'"Unaffordable housing" The term still keeps cropping up. Which part of a house is not affordable? The roof? The bricks? The drains? The roofing tiles? The plumbing system? The amount builders have to be paid to put it all together? -- Too many have stood aside, not watched what is going on in the world and failed to try and make sense of it. Hence the talk about "unaffordable house prices" Anyone who uses the phrase "unaffordable house prices" without further explanation is guilty of extreme mental laziness. Which is most of us, and now we are living with the consequences of our neglect. This of course includes the Nationwide Building Society, which would do everyone a good turn if they scrapped their so-called House Price Index and replaced it with a housing Land Price Index.'

'#Fear of Change. #Fear it will be just another tax on top of all existing ones. #Ignorance on the part of those in positions of influence. #Failure to understand economic laws. #Failure to understand LVT by economists. #Non-comprehension of incidence of taxation. #Belief that land and buildings are not separate. #Embedded self interest namely the great land owners, the church, universities. #The House of Lords. #Pension schemes. #Effective lobbying by those who currently benefit. #Common people's liking for the notion of 'property owning democracy'. #Desire for house price windfall. #Living on unearned income. #Calling it Land Tax. The name we give it. #Belief that economics should be separate from morality. #Cultural resistance - attachment to 'My Land'. #Lack of real public debate. #Hereditary monarchy. #Requires a paradigm shift in understanding. #Not a vote winner. #Disliked - seen as unfair (like rates) or last straw. #Belief of the fairness of Income tax.'

'"...its depiction of [the] systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including my own." For Wilson, the unique power of the show comes from the way it takes fiction's ability to create fully realized inner lives for its characters and combines with an acuity about the structural conditions that constrain human choices (whether it's bureaucratic inertia, institutional racism, or economic decay) and an unparalleled scrupulousness about accurately portraying them. Wilson describes the show's characters almost as a set of case studies, remarkable for the vividness with which they embody a set of arguments about the American inner city. -- Simon has said that the show is meant to be Greek tragedy but with institutions like the police department or the school system taking the place of the gods: the immortal forces that toy with and blithely destroy the mortals below. '

"All democratic governments maintain a tax system that milks the poor to keep the rich, rich. 'Progressive' taxes are a cover for a cruel hoax on people with low incomes. This is how the scam works..." -- Chart: 'UK Taxation History: The Shift From Land (Rent) To Labour (Wages)' http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4446366350

On that 'The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better' book that's doing the rounds -- 'Wilkinson has numerous solutions, previously discussed at Starbucks, of varying levels of efficacy or insanity, depending: #progressive income and property taxes [Land Tax? or shall we continue to punish everyone who actually works for a living?] #good labour law, protection of union rights [Got savings? Got capital? Got businesses? Got investment? Got jobs? Take a look around.] #more generous pensions [Yes, that'll keep the Baby Boomers happy until we Solyent Green their greedy asses and feed them to our compost heaps.] #higher minimum wages [Have we learnt nothing? Go right ahead and make it even harder for small businesses to get their start.] #ceiling/maximum wage [Oh that's right, because wealth is a fixed pie and anyone who dares to expand it should be shackled for the 'capitalist' crime of causing a little bit of envy (aka inspiration)]' -- OBVIOUS MARX IS OBVIOUS

'Like everyone else who goes into it, I became a social worker because I wanted to help people. Very soon, I realised that's not why you do it at all. You can't. As a rule, people can't change – at least, adults can't. I've worked in child protection in an inner city for five years. Your left­wing views go out of the window. You get a skewed view of the world in which everyone is on drugs, ­psychotic, violent. ­Especially men. In my mind, they're all wife-beaters. I pretty much always blame the parents, and some days I just wish I could take all the children into care. But I know that isn't the answer.' -- Here's what you do: You go get yourself a real job, one that contributes to wealth creation rather than parasites off its absence, then have some children, but don't beat them or yell at them, and then perhaps in twenty years time you'll have actually contributed to the betterment of society and helped people. Good day.

'The Monkeysphere is the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people. If the monkey scientists are right, it's physically impossible for this to be a number much larger than 150. [This is] the one single reason society doesn't work. The problem is that eventually, the needs of you or those within your Monkeysphere will require screwing someone outside it. -- [S]ome people in the distant past naively thought they could sit all of the millions of monkeys down and say, "Okay, everybody go pick the bananas, then bring them here, and we'll distribute them with a complex formula determining banana need! Now go gather bananas for the good of society!" Later, a far more realistic man sat the monkeys down and said, "You want bananas? Each of you go get your own..." As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive.'

#Achievers (Diamonds) [Generals], #Explorers (Spades) [Spies], #Socializers (Hearts) [Diplomats], #Killers (Clubs) [Grunts] -- Multi-player appeal to the... #Achiever: Has the opportunity to show off their skill and hold elite status to others. They value (or despise) the competition from other Achievers, and look to the Socializers to give them praise. #Explorer: They are surrounded by people who will benefit from their wisdom. They often meet other Explorers and can swap experiences, and most often, Socializers do not mind listening either. Interaction with Killers is usually (though not always) negative, as hostile Killers would interfere with exploration. #Socializer: The more dramatic Socializers thrive symbiotically on the chaos created by some Killers. #Killer: Market control appeals strongly to Killers, many of whom have a natural talent for reading markets (likely an extension of their common aptitude for sizing up strengths and weaknesses, vital to their play style).'

Gisted -- Young children have no power, but as they start to get into their teens, things change. As the teenager's independence and power grows they begin to suspect the worst. As a young child they had asked themselves the question: are my parent's exercising power over me because of their morality or is it just because they like to exercise power over me? And young children mostly go along with the idea that their parents and teachers are exercising power over them for their own good. But in the teenage years, as their parents continue their petty attempts to exercise power of them they realise that it has nothing to do with virtue or about what's good for them because their parents don't know them, they never had any curiosity about them. They begin to understand that the only reason their actions were controlled was to appease the vanity and sadism of their parents. At this point it almost becomes a point of pride for the teenager to make a show of their resistance.

Gisted -- You have to be curious about your children. You can't get mad at your children for not trusting you. Children are for the most part a product of their environment and the primary ingredient in that environment is you as a parent. Children almost never know why they do what they do. To be curious about why teenagers are doing what they're doing is a great challenge and an even greater challenge has there been no curiosity about them hitherto. -- We live in a world where lies are the foundation of moral hypocrisy and where moral hypocrisy rules the world. This is not an easy world to grow up in. You can't overestimate the amount of rhetorical guns that are pointed at children wherein if they don't conform they face a life of social ostracism and economic problems. Even if you can accept the fact that the world is crazy, your children still have to grow up in that world and you'll probably have to tell them a lot more about corruption than you'd ever want to.

Gisted -- Leftists won't talk about the true nature of power disparity in society which is first of all parenting, second teaching, third universities, and way down the list after the government agencies, the taxation, the military, the police, and all of the vast apparatus of State power, is the "evil" capitalist who survives only by the grace of people's voluntary interactions and so has no 'power' and can't fight back—which is precisely why cowardly leftists like to pick on them. -- But the power disparity that exists within the classroom where you can't argue, can't question, and where you absolutely can't think for yourself... By the time the child hits puberty the true self is so buried under accumulated years of neglect, indifference, humiliation, punishment, scorn, and boredom, that the personality is left completely undeveloped and all you have in its place is this vain, useless, petty false self that has been grown like an evil weed in an untended garden.

Gisted -- "It's essential to understand that all politics arises from a disparity of power: the State has the police, the guns, the military, the courts and the prison system – and we don't. You can't understand politics without understanding the family which is the most extreme form of power disparity that exists in the world. Most people's perceptions of the State arise directly from their own perceptions of their parents or their authority figures. -- We are not going to successfully spread the ideal of freedom to "the wider sphere until we learn deeply about our own histories and can face the problem of violence without prejudice, without excuses, without irrational aggression, without the constant confusion that comes from covering up early crimes IN OUR OWN HISTORIES. IN OUR OWN HISTORIES! YOU CAN'T FIGHT THE STATE UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN FAMILY. You can't fight against the corruption in others unless you have fully examined the corruption in yourself."

Gisted -- All "these morally insipid and pathetic justifications with these ridiculously complicated, convoluted, and self-contradictory principles; this is where it comes from: the imaginary rules we create to justify parental abuse. This is why people think this way; this is why they create entirely separate rules for the State; this is why they can't apply any kind of moral absolutes to people in power—because they can't do it to their parents! Because their parents have abused the argument from morality and used the ultimate club of moral absolutism to beat their children physically, or verbally, or psychologically into mute, broken submission. This is why nobody can apply any moral reasoning to the State. It has nothing to do with the State. The State just cashes in on the brutality of parenting. -- This is the cost we pay for failing to deal with our pasts: a cycle of continual slavery, of continual surrender to ever increasing, ever aggressive, expanding power."

Gisted -- The 'Terrible Twos' is when the child first starts to say "No!" to authority. The child has a large number of resentments built up since birth, so when they feel direct attempts to control them, they resist mightily. The important thing to remember about young children is that they come into this world fully ready to be entirely rational and don't know about the 'adult' irrational prejudices like sexism, religion, and nationalism. So "initially we simply obey our parents because they are powerful, but we do have a strong sense of, and need for, reciprocity. We know that if a rule is put in place by our parents that they themselves don't follow, then something is very wrong." Almost without thinking we begin the process of "transposing these hypocritical bullyings" into some kind of 'consistent' moral law because the alternative is to "face the realization that we're ruled by petty, vindictive sadists – and that's not only terrifying but also humiliating."

Gisted -- People think they're a bad parent if they can't stop their baby from crying. The baby is constantly looking to model the behaviour of the parent in order to learn how to manage its own emotions. So if the parent gets stressed about the crying it only makes the baby even more 'upset' as it responds with further stress. Ignoring a baby stunts the development of empathy. If a parent had/has learned to process their own negative emotions then they would respond with neither stress nor contempt for the negative feelings of others. -- Children don't experience much reciprocity. You want to mirror and interact directly with the child one-on-one to build empathy by doing what they do so that they learn 'what I can do to others they can do to me'. Parents are seldom curious about their child's feelings, particularly negative ones. First offering your own response then asking how the child feels helps them to process and share their feelings rather than dismissing and repressing them.

Gisted -- Politics is just an extension of the family. Once we've understood the affect parenting had on our own political beliefs, then we can start to have a real empathy with and sympathy for the affect parenting had on the beliefs of others. -- One of the reasons why people resist the idea of freedom and morality is because they harbor within themselves a terrible guilt about how they've handled their own children as well as a rage for how they were handled as children. "Negative feelings don't go away until you deal with them; they're like repetitive dreams." It's difficult to get into this with parents because they can't easily see the crime when they're complicit with that crime. -- The State likes two types of parents/children: #1. Those who propose State authority to 'solve' every problem because they can't manage their own negative feelings about any problem. #2. Those who don't/can't care about any problem but will blindly follow every order given to 'solve' it.

'Dr Hibbing feels it may help explain why it is so hard to change someone's mind in a political debate. Different people, he said, started from a different psychological point. "You have people who are experiencing the world, who are experiencing threat, differently. "It's just that we have these very different physiological orientations. We're not sure where they came from, they may be genetic, they may be something from ***childhood***; we do know, though, that they run deep because it's a reflex, it's not something you can change tomorrow, the depth of that may be something of an asset in figuring out why people are so stubborn in their political beliefs."'

'...the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.' -- (See tagged: 'nearfar' comment: "3 types of politics (conservatism [very near/reactionary], libertarianism [near/rational], socialism [far/blinkered/stockholm-syndromed/numb])")

'Another outside factor not often remembered these days was the impact of the political prosecutions that broke out at intervals in 20th century America. Belonging to a group that was, or was merely accused of being, a front for a proscribed political movement too often had serious social, economic, and legal consequences during those outbreaks, and the gyrations of American cultural politics made it impossible to define much of any ground as safe. [Socialist, communist, fascist witchhunts and accusations.] -- That’s one of the factors that helped drive the anxious conformity and social detachment of the 1950s; the perceived risks of belonging to anything outside of work, and maybe a recreational association or two, were simply too high for many people.'

'I examine some of the "elements" now spiraling in the process of Breakdown Crisis. The process of the Great Reset. Ayn Rand was very astute in identifying the process of compounding distortions in an economic and political system. Personal tragedy spread out to the greater society. The suspension of law, financial, banking, money crisis, resource constraints and requirements. We cannot look to a "single" idea because we have to address every Element at the same time.'

'Seligman argues that there is a fundamental difference between *trust in people* (interpersonal relationships) and *confidence in institutions*. (The same would apply to technological systems, though this is not Seligman’s focus.) -- This goes to the heart of what trust actually is: a relationship that is not based upon reciprocal calculation, but is open-ended. Trust is therefore a very rare thing indeed. And because it is based on free will, trust cannot be demanded, only offered and accepted. -- Our relationships with state institutions are based upon confidence rather than trust: roles are ascribed while outcomes are intended and expected. There is neither unconditionality nor active engagement, but a passive relationship based on prescribed roles that are not subject to change or control. -- The defence of privacy as a political right needs to be re-established... Individuated conformity is not the basis upon which a robust defence of privacy can be mounted.'

'A colorful and provocative survey of anarchism in America, the film attempts to dispel popular misconceptions and trace the historical development of the movement. The film explores the movement both as a native American philosophy stemming from 19th century American traditions of individualism, and as a foreign ideology brought to America by immigrants.' -- #What is Anarchism? A rational philosophy explaining how both individuals and society can progress and prosper without resorting to the use of violence (i.e., the use of a State or any other irrational form of authority). In short, Anarchism is a generalised freedom from force. #What isn't Anarchism? "Chaos"/"Disorder" (As opposed to an 'order' held together only by violence??) Violence (Force), Criminality (Force), Socialism (Force), Collectivism (by Force), Communism (by Force), Primitivism (Insufferable), Egoism (Insufferable), or Punk (Insufferable). #Who should fear Anarchism? The irrational, the immoral, and the corrupt.

'The fall of the Tower of Babel is where the [2+2=5] first made their appearance.' -- 'When all the old control methods the [2+2=5] have used against the people no longer work and there are too many people that have woken up and will no longer do as they are told, that means that people will stop giving the [2+2=5] their energy and faith. When people stop giving the [2+2=5] their energy and direct their energy towards themselves and others, then it will be inevitable that the [2+2=5] will start losing everything, they will lose their money, they will lose their claims over all the land they have taken over the centuries and they wil lose their power over the people. The [2+2=5] doesn't have any power, they just have the power that their subjects give to them, when the people stop giving their energy and power to the [2+2=5], then that means that the [2+2=5] has no power. It's that simple. The [2+2=5] know their game is almost up, and they are going for broke.'

'In place of a traditional struggle for power between the two major classes, we have the petty, narrow-minded, fearful prejudices of the liberal middle classes dominating all aspects of political culture today. ...complaints about ordinary people’s consumerism—often dressed up in the language of ethical living and environmentalism—are at the cutting edge of anti-working class prejudices today. [The anti-capitalists', environmentalists' and anti-globalisationists'] apparent hatred for the market is often based on how capitalism creates both a working class, which undermines their own position in the world, and a modern, urban society that they are utterly repelled by. Far from championing a social system that is superior to capitalism, these often privileged greens fantasise about everyone scratching a living off the land... Make no mistake, environmentalists are charlatans, and are potentially dangerous to ordinary people, in the West and especially in the developing world.'

'Today, the calls for cutting back are not linked to any positive human objective; they are simply about making a virtue out of necessity. It’s not about developing the human, but punishing the human in the name of some nonsense external force: usually Gaia. Today’s debate about the recession speaks to a view of people as unrestrained, destructive, and morally incapable; as toxic creatures with no inner moral life that needs to be developed or satisfied. The idea that everyone is now complicit in decadently bringing down society, and the idea that we should lower our living standards without any promise of transcendence, springs from today’s very degraded view of people. It springs from a view of people as simply consumers, exploiters, the users of resources, the destroyers of things, rather than as creators, producers, the makers of things and of history.' -- How very convenient.

'A bitter generational war is now a certainty. -- Your reputation will be crucial during the Crisis. -- #Prepare values: Forge the consensus and uplift the culture, but don’t expect near-term results. #Prepare institutions: Clear the debris and find out what works, but don’t try building anything big. #Prepare politics: Define challenges bluntly and stress duties over rights, but don’t attempt reforms that can’t now be accomplished. #Prepare society: Require community teamwork to solve local problems, but don’t try this on a national scale. #Prepare youth: Treat children as the nation’s highest priority, but don’t do their work for them. #Prepare elders: Tell future elders they will need to be more self-sufficient, but don’t attempt deep cuts in benefits to current elders. #Prepare the economy: Correct fundamentals, but don’t try to fine tune current performance. #Prepare the defense: Expect the worst and prepare to mobilize, but don’t pre-commit to any one response.'

#Governance: FREEDOM <------> TYRANNY

Houser: “The game is set in a world that is like the world would be if it were the way the media says it is.”

'Parasitic competition within a specific host generally increases the fitness of the parasites involved in the competition. Here's three examples of parasitic competition. All three methods use an indirect approach that leverages control of environmental variables to limit competitors: #Exploitation: The ability of the parasite to control host behavior. For example, the control of host hormones (sex, metabolism, etc.) to accelerate their own fitness at the expense of competition.

'The reasons for witnesses’ reluctance appear to be changing and becoming more complex, with the police confronting a new cultural phenomenon: the spread of the gangland code of silence, or omerta, from organized crime to the population at large. Those who cooperate with the police are labeled “snitches” or “rats”—terms once applied only to jailhouse informants or criminals who turned state’s evidence, but now used for “civilian” witnesses as well. This is particularly true in the inner cities, where gangsta culture has been romanticized through rap music and other forms of entertainment, and where the motto “Stop snitching,” expounded in hip-hop lyrics and emblazoned on caps and T-shirts, has become a creed. The metastasis of this culture of silence in minority communities has been facilitated by a gradual breakdown of trust in the police and the government.'

Comment: Dan G: "There is more room for happiness and satisfaction in being a believer (’clueless’) than a player (’sociopath’). Life for those who find value in what they are doing and get satisfaction out of it can be happy, fulfilled and peaceful. All they need to do is find their true interest and vocation — their true belief, not a delusion. The life of the player-sociopath is bound to be a constant war; and because it is a competition, satisfaction and success are not under their own self-control. It is contingent on the failure of the other player-sociopaths with whom they need to compete. It is ultimately foolish to make your own hapiness contingent on the payoff of a zero-sum game. -- From the point of view of society as a whole, praising sociopathy is a disaster. A society of believers will always thrive and progress; it will be the Utopia. A society of players will stagnate and self-distruct; it will be a Mad-Max style, pre-Hobbesian Dystopia." -- *nodding*

'People are not aware that there exist a category of people, people we sometimes call 'almost human', who look like us, who work with us, who are found in every race, every culture, speaking every language, but who are lacking conscience... -- What separates us from the psychopath is our conscience, and our conscience must become the voice of truth. We need to learn how to say no to the manipulations. That means we need to learn the ways we are manipulated and refuse to do the dance. ...the psychopathic manipulations are designed to make psychopaths of us all. ...true empathy, true ethics, true conscience, dictates using prophylactic therapy against psychopaths. ...identifying the psychopath, ceasing our interaction with them, cutting them off from our society, making ourselves unavailable to them as "food" or objects to be conned and used, is the single most effective strategy that we can play.'

'Mankind has a natural predator, the psychopath, and this predator is invisible because there are no easily discernible markings that set him apart. Moreover, throughout history we have been divided into groups on the basis of physical, cultural, religious, or whatever other easily recognizable distinctions psychopaths can point out to us, while our real enemy has remained masked. There are deviants who become psychologists or psychiatrists and who try to rewrite psychology from the viewpoint of the pathological! -- As long as there is some idea of compromise, the people of conscience will always lose. These psychological deviants have to be removed from any position of power over people of conscience, period. People must be made aware that such individuals exist and must learn how to spot them and their manipulations. The hard part is that one must also struggle against those tendencies to mercy and kindness in oneself in order not to become prey.'

'Once the system is in place, those who are morally weak will rally to defend it in exchange for personal privileges. Their self-interest makes them open to contagion. Therefore it is not necessary for every individual to be one of the many types listed by Łobaczewski. There are thousands of morally corrupt and weak individuals willing to do the bidding of those in power if it means fame and fortune or even just a decent living and being left alone. -- ...it takes someone with a strong character to stand for what he or she knows is right in the face of widespread social opposition. We also have the tendency to give others the benefit of the doubt because we project our own ways of thinking and behaving on them. Only when those who are psychologically normal come to understand that we have a natural predator, a group of people who view us as 'a para-specific variety', will they be open to learning about this human-like race.'

'If every single normal person simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, en masse, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt. But that can only happen if the masses of people KNOW about psychopathy in all its horrible details. Only if they know that they are dealing with creatures that really aren't human can they have the understanding of what they must do. And only when they get miserable enough that the misery that the psychopath will inflict on them in the beginning of their resistance pales in comparison, will they have the will to do this. That, or the understanding of the world the psychopaths are creating for their children in which case love for the future of humanity will motivate them to resist.'

'The psychopath with his/her infantile internal structure cannot comprehend that anything else exists on its own separate from them. It is only their acknowledgement that makes it real, and they only acknowledge what is significant to them in terms of what they want, what will make them feel good. When a normal human demands that the declarations of the psychopath should be evaluated, the psychopath will declare that the one making such a demand has no integrity which really means that their position - the psychopath's declaration - is not being supported! From the psychopathic point of view, the world is like a holodeck. They "declare" things into being. Everything is a hologram. They program the holograms. They interact with them in any way they choose. They have them under total control. When they decide to cancel a hologram, it vanishes. A hologram is not supposed to think for itself. Most importantly, a hologram is not supposed to critique its master.'

'Psychopathic lying is not mere deception, it is "creating reality" so that it conforms to the psychopath's wants. Psychopaths demonstrate an extremely distorted understanding of what we call facts. Normal humans really have difficulty conceiving of this because to us, facts are a basic part of our lives. We live by them, base our assessments and decisions on them. We establish facts, and then test things and establish more facts. When we debate, we start with facts and show how we derive our conclusions from those facts. When we perform such operations, we place value on those "facts" being true. Psychopaths do not do that. Being devoid of real emotional depth, they have no attachment to the idea of "truth". But, because people project their own internal structure onto the psychopath, most do not understand this. -- A psychopath becomes an expert at creating "facts" that cause normal people to form beliefs that benefit the psychopath.'

'Lying is a very successful strategy because very few people think that there are hardcore liars in society who lie as a matter of course. Think of a divorce or some other case before a judge and jury. Most of us will go into the proceedings with the idea that the truth is somewhere in the middle. But what happens when one of the people is a liar and the other is a person telling the truth? The liar is at an advantage because the judge or jury will still expect that the truth is somewhere in the middle. So someone who is the victim of a liar and manipulator cannot come out ahead. Telling the truth cannot get that person 100% of the justice he or she deserves, while lying will always get the perpetrator something. Daily life is like that trial. We are always going to give others the benefit of the doubt, if you are a moral person. The liar and manipulator will never do that and will use the good will of the person of conscience against him.

'...in a ponerized society, many people become infected with the disease. They see what others are doing, and not being strong enough themselves to follow their own moral code, if that code differs from that of their neighbours, they follow the herd. These people are the support base for the status quo. They may not be psychopaths themselves, but they support and defend it. -- Also keep in mind the 12% of individuals who are susceptible to the influence and thinking style of the psychopaths. In the end, you have a total of 18% or more of any given population that seeks to subdue and control the rest. If you then consider that remainder, the 82%, and keep in mind the bell curve, at least 80% of the remainder will follow whoever is in charge. And since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.

'Recognizing their fundamental difference from the rest of humanity, their allegiance would be to others of their kind, that is, to other psychopaths. ... in any society in this world, psychopathic individuals often create an active network of common collusion, estranged from the community of normal people to some extent. They are aware of being different. Their world is forever divided into "us and them"; their world with its own laws and customs and that other "foreign world" of normal people that they consider to be full of presumptuous ideas and customs about truth and honor and decency in light of which they know they are condemned morally. Their own twisted sense of honor compels them to cheat and revile non-psychopaths and their values. Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others...'

'In the world today where information is controlled by a small number of media outlets, and those media outlets have much in common with the pathological governments, greater numbers of people can be influenced and infected with pathological thinking. An example of this is the famous remark made by Madeleine Albright back in 1996 when she was asked about the 500,000 deaths in Iraq, mostly of children, due to the embargo. She responded that she thought 'It was worth it', that is, those deaths were the necessary price to pay to bring down Saddam. That is unquestionably pathological logic, and yet how many Americans would have heard that response and thought nothing of it? Anyone who, on hearing that statement, was not outraged has been infected with pathological thinking, they have been ponerized. Their thinking has become distorted by the pathological infection. -- When the rules are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone. '

'One cannot really designate the issues that confront us today as "political", using the ordinary names of political ideologies because pathological deviants operate behind a complete mask, by deception and other psychological tricks which they practice with great cunning. If we think or believe that any political group that has such and such a name is heterogeneous with regard to its true nature, we will not be able to identify the causes and properties of the disease. Any ideology will be used to cloak the pathological qualities from the minds of both experts and ordinary people. So, trying to refer to this or that as "left" or "right" or "center" or "socialist", "democratic," "communist," "democrat" or "republican," and so on, will never help us to understand the pathological self-reproduction and its expansionist external influences. No movement will ever succeed that does not factor psychopathy and ponerology into its considerations'

'...approximately 18% of any given population is active in the creation and imposition of a Pathocracy. The 6% group constitute the Pathocratic nobility and the 12% group forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous. -- Once set up, the elitist psychopathic system corrodes the entire social organism, wasting its skills and power. Once a Pathocracy has been established, it follows a certain course and has certain "attractive" powers. In a Pathocracy, the socioeconomic system arises from the social structure which is created by the system of political power, which is a product of the particular elitist world view of pathological deviants. Thus it is that a Pathocracy is more a macrosocial disease process created by human pathogens, and it can come to affect an entire nation... It is impossible to comprehend such a pathological phenomenon using the methods of "normal" people which do not take into account the deviant thought processes of human pathogens.'

'When psychopaths are the policy makers in government and the CEOs of big business, the way they think and reason - their 'morality' - becomes the common culture and 'morality' of the population over which they preside. When this happens, the mind of the population is infected in the way a pathogen infects a physical body. The only way to protect ourselves against this pathological thinking is to inoculate ourselves against it, and that is done by learning as much as possible about the nature of psychopathy and its influence on us. Essentially, this particular 'disease' thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied, and this denial is planned and deliberate. -- The system that is in place is a pathological system that is at odds in a very profound way with the being or nature of most people. People of conscience are being ruled by people with no conscience. This fact is the primary injustice and is the basis for the other ills of society.'

'...the influence of psychopaths and other deviants isn't just one of many influences working on society, but, under the appropriate circumstances, can be the primary influence that shapes the way we live, what we think, and how we judge what is going on around us. When you understand the true nature of that influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience. -- When you come to understand that the reins of political and economic power are in the hands of people who have no conscience, who have no capacity for empathy, it opens up a completely new way of looking at what we call "evil". Evil is no longer only a moral issue; it can now be analyzed and understood scientifically.'

'The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals. Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being—a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish... We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.'

'Being cross with your parents is hardly new. But the anger welling up across an entire generation towards another one is. You may not have liked the sight of your clever mother cooking and producing children with no hope of a career; you may have felt anger at going to school when being hit with a stick in the name of “discipline” was legal; you may even have felt irritated that your hippie parents lay around not being at all parent-like. But nowhere did you feel that your parents’ generation, along with that of your older siblings, had destroyed your chances of a halfway decent life — a nice house, a good job, clean air and so on — through greed and irresponsibility.'

'Attitudes to risk: Each worldview directs attention to certain risks, which present particular threats to their way of organizing society. #Individualists fear risks that would limit the market and constrain their ability to trade freely. For example, war. #Egalitarians use the threat of catastrophic risks to generate solidarity. For example, global warming. #Hierarchists fear risks that would upset the ranking of people. For example, crime and social deviance #Fatalists don't see the point in fearing any risks - it's not like they can do anything about them. -- Cultural Theory may help us understand a risk controversy, but it does not give clear guidance on how to resolve it. The most we can say is that all four worldviews should have input, because each of them sees a piece of the puzzle.' -- (See 2x2 matrix)

'...we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call "the economy". Let me start with the institution of slavery, whose role, I think, is key. In most times and places, slavery is seen as a consequence of war. Sometimes most slaves actually are war captives, sometimes they are not, but almost invariably, war is seen as the foundation and justification of the institution. If you surrender in war, what you surrender is your life; your conqueror has the right to kill you, and often will. If he chooses not to, you literally owe your life to him; a debt conceived as absolute, infinite, irredeemable. He can in principle extract anything he wants, and all debts – obligations – you may owe to others (your friends, family, former political allegiances), or that others owe you, are seen as being absolutely negated. Your debt to your owner is all that now exists.'

'Japan remains in many ways infantilized. -- A well-behaved child is a manageable child, one who is quiet, mild, obedient and passive. The Japanese word for such attributes, otonashii, is the adjective form of the noun adult. Passivity is understood to be the distinguishing mark of adulthood and maturity. -- Passivity is the defense against certain humiliation and misery. This passivity is not withdrawal but its opposite. It demands active participation in society simply to remain an ordinary member-to be seen to show consideration even if not really concerned. It requires sophisticated communication skills in order to cover up conflict. To question general consent, to ask why, is the sign of a child.'

More on the stockholm syndrome, social mobility and the selfishness of debt-slaved middleclass speculators.

Adam Curtis: "What we have is a cacophony of individual narratives, everyone wants to be the author of their own lives, no one wants to be relegated to a part in a bigger story; everyone wants to give their opinion, no one wants to listen. It's enchanting, it's liberating, but ultimately it's disempowering because you need a collective, not individual, narrative to achieve change." -- 'Curtis argues that we are still enchanted by the possibilities of our personal narratives although they leave us isolated, disconnected, and at their worst, they are simply solipsistic performances desperate for an audience. But we are in a bizarre hiatus because the economic systems that sustained and amplified this model of individualism have collapsed. It was cheap credit and a housing boom that made possible the private pursuit of experience, self-expression and self-gratification as the content of a good life. As this disintegrates and youth unemployment soars, this good life will be a cruel myth.'

'The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested—to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. ...to be reticent—to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. ...to be dispassionate—to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm. -- ...the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated. We can all list the causes of its demise. First, there is capitalism. We are all encouraged to become managers of our own brand, to do self-promoting end zone dances to broadcast our own talents. Second, there is the cult of naturalism. We are all encouraged to discard artifice and repression and to instead liberate our own feelings. Third, there is charismatic evangelism with its penchant for public confession. Fourth, there is radical egalitarianism and its hostility to aristocratic manners. -- ...one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.'

'...the housing bubble is just the latest in a long string of efforts to prop up macho, the most powerful of which was the New Deal, as historian Gwendolyn Mink has argued. At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, 15 million Americans were unemployed out of a workforce that was roughly 75 percent male. This undermined the male breadwinner model of the family, and there was tremendous pressure to bring it back. The New Deal did just that by focusing on job creation for men. -- ...make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.'

"Plastic surgery and procedures have increased fivefold in just 10 years; even invasive surgeries like breast augmentations quadrupled between 1997 and 2007. The square footage of U.S. homes nearly doubled in 30 years, and levels of debt rose from 16% of disposible income in 1978 to 19% in 2007. The circulation of celebrity gossip magazines has surged even as other types of magazines have faltered. High school students are markedly overconfident about their future educational and career prospects. These changes are so large and pervasive that they suggest the change in individual-level narcissism is a pale reflection of the much bigger sea change in the culture. As I document in Generation Me, parents began to tell children they could be anything they wanted to be. Popular songs declared that loving yourself was the greatest love of all. Schools began programs to raise children’s self-esteem. Pop psychology taught that you have to love yourself first before you can love someone else."

"As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." — The Wealth of Nations

"...the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships... This "follower split" suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. ...an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. ...an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.). -- Tits or GTFO! -- Looks like it's all gone a bit 'turkish sauna'.

'"You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper," says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. "But you need the Internet." -- One recent morning, Mr. Livingston sat in a cafe that sometimes lets customers tap its wireless connection, and shows off his personal home page, featuring links for Chinese-language lessons. Mr. Livingston says his computer helps him feel more connected and human. "It's frightening to be homeless," he says. "When I'm on here, I'm equal to everybody else." -- Mr. Schreiber shows the contents of his laptop, including the complete California legal code and files on thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to the psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Mr. Schreiber says writings about human behavior and motivation help make sense of what has happened to him. "No one creates themselves as a homeless person," he says. "We make the choices we can with what we're offered."'

'Poor Joe Dinkin was put in charge of the seating arrangement -- the minute he stepped off the bus, the reporters nearly tore him limb from limb. He dragged himself away from the bus door and down the street; the reporters clung to him like lions pulling down a struggling wildebeest. Joe tried to impose order as the reporters yelled out their organizations and why they had to be on the bus -- New York Times, CNN, New York Post, NBC. Poor Joe... He quickly lost control, as the reporters turned back to the bus and tried storming it again. Chaos ensued, and eventually the organizers realized that it was between the protesters being on the bus, or the media being on the bus. So one by one, they started pulling protesters off the bus to make room for the media. Eventually we—media types—all got our seats. As we pulled out, one of the reporters shouted, “Where are the protesters on this bus?” The bus erupted in cynical snickering.' -- On power and those who dared to take it.