Why Dowries Have Never Existed in the West but Probably Should - Now

Culturally the West has evolved to ideally be monogamous. I find that more than a little interesting, because romantic love only exists under monogamy. Can a man with 10 or 50 wives love any of them? I don't think he can. Can a women who is one of 20 wives love her husband? Again, I don't think so.

Actually polygamy has never been needed in the West. The West also evolved to be free market, which means wealth for everyone who wants it. And the free market is why polygamy has never been legal.

Here's an example: America, compared to the rest of the world, was enormously wealthy. Why? It was founded on political and economic freedom, which the rest of the world wasn't.

We are no longer so much free market. Wages stopped going up in 1973, due to various reasons, but all of them involve government interference in the economy. Had wages continued to go up as they should have, the average yearly wage would be about $100,000.

Everyone who has crunched the numbers has come up with that figure: $100,000 a year.

When a man makes $100,000 a year, there is no need for a dowry. I think that's why they have never existed in the West. The closest was a woman's Hope Chest, which generally contained such things as linen.

Recently men's wages and women's have passed each other going in the opposite direction. Women's up, men's down. There are various reasons for this, but again all of them involve government interference in the economy. Look at Affirmative Action, for example, which means "White Men Need Not Apply."

For that matter, the jobs of most "educated" women (they're not educated, just schooled) are make-work.

Because men in the past made so much money (so much one man could support a wife and several kids on one salary), it also evolved that men asked the woman out, paid her way, supported her after they got married.

Those days are long gone, again, because of government interference.

Let's apply some basic supply and demand to all of this.

Since men did the asking out, the paying and the supporting, women were considered to be of high value. The men were also demonstrating they were of high value. So, many people had high self-respect because they considered themselves of high value, assigned high value to others, and others assigned high value to them. Mostly, it was a win-win situation.

That is no longer the case for both men and women.

Women who make a lot of money (many of whom have unpleasant personalities but delude themselves they are "strong" and "independent") are now considered low value by men. Yet they consider themselves high-value - in their minds. Since they cannot find men who make more money than they do, they consider most men low-value.

Let's return to dowries. When there is a shortage of men (perceived shortage, that is) dowries exist. When there is a perceived shortage of women, there are bride prices. It is evolved in the West that men paid bride prices - asking them out, paying their way, supporting them.

Bride prices can no longer be paid, although women still think they should be.

Since there is now a perceived shortage of men ("Where have all the good men gone?") it should now evolve that women pay dowries to men. Especially since educated women are now making much more than men.

This dowry should legally be non-refundable and whatever the man spends it on belongs to him under all circumstances, including divorce. If the house is in his name, it's his house. In a divorce, the children should go to him and she should have to pay "palimony."

Since women won't pay dowries they end up spinsters with cats, denying their responsibility for their predicament and blaming all their problems on men.

As outrageous as this sounds, look at what would happen. Since the average educated women would have to pay a man tens of thousands of dollars to get married, she would be a lot more careful who she married.

If she knew she'd lose kids and money to him, and had to give him money until the kids were grown, she'd be a lot more prudent (one of the Four Cardinal Virtues) in picking a man to marry.

Of course, women would be outraged at this idea, because many of them have been raised with the notion they are supposed to have all the advantages of a man and woman and none of the responsibilities.

Now we can avoid all of this by getting the government out of the economy, allowing society to repair itself.

Dowries, best of all, would force immature women to grow up.

I find all of it rather amusing. I wonder how things will evolve in the ten years? Well, maybe not evolve. "Mutate" might be a better word.

Conspiracists are Ghouls and Vampires

"You are not to say, 'It is a conspiracy!' in regard to all that this people call a conspiracy, And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it." -Isaiah 8:12

"The art of magic is the art of tricking the human brain into constructing a false narrative of reality." -Mencius Moldbug

I've always dismissed conspiracists as narcissistic fools who divide everyone into "Me good; you bad." I was more amused by their delusions than anything else.

When I say "conspiracists" I don't mean three people getting together to kill Jimmy Hoffa. I mean the nuts who think everything is a conspiracy. They are the kinds of people who cherry-pick the "facts," make some up, then put them together into a mangled story that no one with any analytical ability - or even common sense - could accept.

However, I now think these people are ghouls and vampires. Why? Because they feed on death and destruction and misery. Without it, they couldn't conjure their lunatic beliefs. What would they do with themselves without catastrophes to give meaning to their tedious lives?

Here's take this picture as an example of just how sick are the souls of conspiracists.

This is the runner in the Boston Marathon who had his legs blown off.

The conspiracists think this is a fake picture. They claim that the leg bone sticking out of the guy is fake and that it fell off while he was being taken away in a wheelchair. A woman who claimed this in a video was laughing the entire time.

They think the entire picture is staged. In other words, everyone in this picture is an actor. When the bomb went off, everyone lay down, threw fake blood around, and moaned and groaned and put on their act.

Imagine if that man without his legs is your son, or the woman is your daughter. Now imagine some conspiracist walking up to you and saying, "Admit it. Your son lost his legs a long time ago and is being paid to put on this act. How much was he paid? Did you get paid, too?"

How would you feel almost losing your son and knowing his legs are gone? And some demented, morally blind conspiracist accuses you and him of faking the whole thing?

And if you're a conspiracist wouldn't you suddenly cease to be a conspiracist? At least when it happens to you and your own? Think of the cognitive dissonance you'd suffer! It'd hurt, wouldn't it?

The only thing conspiracists can do is impose already-manufactured beliefs on reality. They don't have the imagination and empathy to put themselves in the place of those they abuse and insult. After all, those they attack are evil people who've done awful things, so they deserve whatever happens to them, right?

Conspiracists' brains are playing tricks on them. They see the Truth, refuse to believe it, then create Lies which they find more emotionally satisfying. It's right out of Orwell: Lies are Truth.

I used to wonder why Isaiah condemned believers in conspiracies over 2000 years ago. I now think believing in impossible conspiracies is a sickness of the soul, one that revels in death and destruction and takes sadistic pleasure in mocking the dead and wounded. It's a pathetic condition to be stuck in, and I'm grateful that I'm not.

"Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm." - Berlet and Lyons

Smart & Lazy vs. Stupid & Active

A dozen or so years ago I ran across the old military classification of Smart vs. Stupid and Lazy vs. Active.

The top posts were to go to Smart & Lazy, because they figured out the most efficient ways to do things. Never to be allowed in the military were Stupid & Active, because they got everyone killed.

The bulk of soldiers were Stupid & Lazy, because they did the bare minimum to get by but didn't cause any trouble. Smart & Active made good officers, but again, the top promotions went to Smart & Lazy.

I found that simple classification to be very accurate on judging people.

There are more advanced tests, such as the MBTI and the Enneagram, but they are more for self-knowledge and in order to use them to understand someone else, they have to take the test and you have to know the results. That is a problem.

However, what I found to be more accurate is to refine Smart/Lazy/Stupid/Active to Smart & Stupid and Introverted & Extroverted.

The dumbest people in the world are the Stupid & Extroverted. They are the ones who fill the prisons and commit almost all crime. They are impulsive, i.e,. they act before they think. That's one of the big reasons they get into such trouble. They're too stupid to see cause and effect in their own lives. They're the kind of people who can't even learn from their own mistakes.

Next up are the Smart & Extroverted. Remember I mentioned they were never to be given the top positions? There is a good reason for that. They can't handle them.

Many politicians are Smart & Extroverted, and they are the ones who are always trying to do Good Things ("The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"). They start wars and screw up the economy. They're why democracy doesn't work and always fails. By the way, some politicians are Stupid & Extroverted, such as one who thought islands could tip over and another who thought when "assault weapons" were out of bullets they couldn't be fired anymore - ever.

The we have Stupid and Introverted. They're the ones who do just enough to get by. I've never seen much of a problem with them. I don't think anybody really has.

I am the Smart & Introverted, and we are, again, the ones who should rule. Mostly because we don't want to, and power has no allure for us.

There will always be problems between the Extroverted and Introverted. The smarter Introverts understand the Extroverts a lot better than Extroverts understand the Introverts. No Extrovert is ever going to understand an intelligent, imaginative Introvert wandering in the evening figuring things out (and getting so absorbed they fall into ditches, as the famous Scottish economist Adam Smith did).

A good movie about the conflict between Introverts and Extroverts is The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carrey plays an Introvert (although his schizoid portrayal is more what people think an introvert is, rather than what they really are) and Kate Winslet plays a ditzy scattered Extrovert. They ultimately don't get along, because they don't know what they are. The words Introvert and Extrovert are never used in the movie. If they knew what they were they would have gotten along a lot better.

You can also see the difference between Smart Introverts and Stupid Extroverts in the movie, Idiocracy.

As for the conflicts between men and women, there are far more smart men than women (there are twice as many men with IQs above 120 than women). There are far more many extroverted women than men.

The inevitable conclusion? There are an awful of Stupid Extroverted women out there! That's what causes a lot of the problems are between men and women. (I've heard these Stupid Extroverted women referred to as Manic Pixie Dream Girls.)

Since these women often turn into catastrophes in their personal lives, they have to be ruled by men, because when they gain any kind of power they get busy trying to improve things but instead screw them up. They're not smart enough to realize what they are doing and instead rationalize it.

I have found most of the complaints against women in the Manosphere are against Stupid Extroverted Women. Unfortunately, many of the men don't know what the problem is. They think all women are like that, which is why they come up with inaccurate concepts such as "rationalization hamsters." Which, again, applies to Stupid Extroverted Women. Not Smart Introverted Ones.

If You Don't Have One You Don't Have Any of Them

The Four Cardinal Virtues, that is.

People think the Four Cardinal Virtues are religious, but they're not. Plato first listed them in his Republic, and that was well over 2000 years ago, long before Christianity.

All four are interrelated, so if you don't have one you don't have any.

They are: Bravery, Prudence, Justice, and Self-Control.

Not only the Greeks but the Romans thought about these things. Cicero wrote this: "Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance."

They're also in the Bible. The deuterocanonical book "Wisdom of Solomon" reads, "She [Wisdom] teaches temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life."

I repeat this: "nothing more profitable in life."

To illustrate the Four Cardinal Virtues, look at the opposites.

I know two women who will say anything that pops into their heads to both men and women. It's not bravery. It's recklessness.

Both are impulsive, which isn't surprising. That's why there exists the saying, "reckless and impulsive." What's the opposite of reckless and impulsive? Prudence and self-control.

You can make the argument that bravery is not quite the opposite of recklessness, but just a degree of it. The Greeks made the argument that too much bravery is recklessness. This is why all the virtues are interrelated.

One of the women I know is a coward. If she decides she is not interested in a guy, she'll just dump him without a word to him. Reckless, impulsive, and cowardly - the opposite of self-control, prudence and bravery. Not surprisingly, her life is a catastrophe. Not surprisingly, the lives of both women are a catastrophe.

One of them had her business go under because she wouldn't give the people what they ordered. That's what Justice is - giving people their due.

Of course, I've seen the same thing among men. One I know quite well is what the more ignorant in the Manosphere call an "Alpha" - wealthy, good-looking, lots of women.

He's not an "Alpha." He's a cad. He has spent his life laying women. He lied to them, cheated on them, manipulated them.

I found him to be cowardly, reckless and impulsive. So has his best friend. He has little self-control. In other words, he lacked all four of the Four Cardinal Virtues. And he has ruined his life. He once told me if he had to do it over, he would have been a high-school coach instead of a doctor.

The Four Cardinal Virtues are about having a happy, successful life, based on confidence and competence. They are good practical wisdom, which is the only kind of "wisdom" worth anything.

Incidentally, "virtue" means "the powers of Man" and "cardinal" means "hinge," because it's the hinge for a life of well-being.

Unfortunately the Four Cardinal Virtues aren't taught anymore, not in school, not in the home, not in the churches. It's almost as if none of them want people to develop critical thinking skills.

Clearing up Some of the Worst Confusions in the Manosphere

One of the more amusing - and actually pathetic - things I have read in the Manosphere is that mass murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev was "an Alpha."

As I have pointed out before, there are no Alphas. The term applies to canines, and refers to the Alpha couple, which was the only ones that bred, to limit the number of puppies born.

You can of course apply the concept to people, but words - and concepts - are not reality. To say that human Alphas exist does not mean they do. Words and concepts have to have clear, specific definitions. Otherwise they can mean anything, which means they mean nothing. The concept of "Alpha" has so many definitions it means nothing.

The map is not the terrain. The same applies to the concepts in our heads. They're models of reality. The closer they conform to reality the better they work. Since the concept of "Alpha" is a poor model it doesn't work very well. If fact, it's such a poor model no one can agree on what it means!

Philosophically, this is a problem known as "concepts and their referents." What exactly do mental concepts refer to? Is an Alpha a good-looking, confident, wealthy guy who gets a lot of women? Tameran was good-looking but that was it.

As for devoting your life to fucking women, I know guys who count is about 100 women. Every one of them has ruined his life. Every one of them wishes he could do his life over. Every one of them is a liar and a coward. The old term "cad" applies to them. Not "Alpha." (One of these men told me, "I finally got a taste of my own medicine.")

As for Tamerlan, he was on welfare, and was supported by his American wife while he took care of their child at home. He was unemployed. (Both brothers were dubbed "losers" by their own uncle.)

Some "Alpha."

He also was a mass murderer who killed innocent people, including women and children.

Some "Alpha."

Instead of believing in delusions about non-existent Alphas, let's apply some age-old wisdom. The Four Cardinal Virtues.

I'll first point out all four of them are interrelated; if you don't have one you don't have any of them.

Bravery is one of the Four Cardinal Virtues. Any man who sets off bombs in a crowd and mass-murders innocent men and women is not a brave man.

Prudence is another one of the Four Cardinal Virtues. Tamerlan lived on welfare and off of his wife. Not very prudent, I said.

The Third: Justice. Murder of innocent people and mooching off the government and his wife. That's justice?

The fourth cardinal virtue is Self-Control. How much self-control does a man have when he quits everything he tries? Boxing and school, for two examples.

I see nothing admirable whatsoever in Tamerlan's character. The more confused in the Manosphere think he's an "Alpha" because he married a ditzy insecure American woman who converted to Islam. That's scant evidence to support claims of Alphadom.

Thinkers in the past have covered these concerns in detail. That's how they discovered the Four Cardinal Virtues, which are not religion but good practical wisdom on how to lead a successful and happy life.

Obviously Tamerlan did not lead a successful and happy life. He was a weakling, a poseur and a loser who used bluster in place of confidence and competence. Otherwise he would not have done what he did.

The Eyes of Predator and Prey

Ask yourself this: of those two pictures below, which one looks like predator and which one looks like prey?

I do pay some attention to people's looks. Not in the sense of being attractive or unattractive, but other traits.

For example, predators have their eyes on the front of their heads. Prey have eyes on the sides.

Human babies have eyes very far apart. For predators, their eyes are so far apart they could be almost be considered prey. I conclude for humans, eyes far apart means "helpless" and "innocent." Here is a woman whose eyes are very far apart.

"Innocent" can mean "doesn't know the difference between right and wrong." The woman in the picture is a porn star. I watched a few of her films; after seeing what she did it's clear she doesn't know the difference between right and wrong.

It would depend other traits, I'd guess. George Bush has narrow predator eyes, and he clearly doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. In his case, squinty, shifty little eyes.

In the picture of the girl, she has big eyes set too far apart.

So there are little eyes set too close together, and big eyes set too far apart. The big eyes apparently mean "nice" and "eager to please" (like a baby is) and the beady little eyes mean "meaner."

So I'd conclude that "average" eyes, i.e., of normal size and spacing, is the best trait to have.

There is a young woman at a coffee shop I frequent. She has wide-spaced eyes. She is way too friendly, like a baby, and that means "can be taken advantage of because she's too innocent."

So, then, it's hard to take advantage of someone with little eyes set too close together, and easy to take advantage of someone with big eyes set too far apart.

Extroverts Lack Empathy, Not Women

I read an occasional article claiming women lack empathy. My experience has been that a fair number of women do lack empathy, although they don't know it (Aristotle called this "double ignorance" - you're ignorant and don't know you're ignorant). However, I don't believe it's because they are women. I think it's because there are a lot more female extroverts than male extroverts.

It's extroverts who overwhelmingly lack empathy, not introverts. Do you really think destructive, murderous extroverts such as George Bush and Rahm Emmanuel are empathic?

Extroverts only appear to be empathic because they are more "social" than introverts. Superficially social, that is. Since they gain energy from being around people, they have to be around people. It doesn't matter who those people are.

The most empathic people are high-IQ, imaginative introverts. In fact, introversion and imagination go together. Without imagination, you cannot put yourself into someone else's place. If you cannot put yourself in someone else's place, you cannot empathize with them.

I'll use myself as an example. I am a high-IQ imaginative introvert. Specifically, using the MBTI, I am an INTJ, with a 60% introversion rating. I am an intuitive introvert. I knew this early, although I never articulated it.

Right before I turned 12, I ran across science fiction and was hooked. One of the first novels I read was H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and I remember vividly, even now, the great pity I felt for Weena, the female Eloi the Time Traveler encountered.

She wasn't even real.

I empathized with her because of my vivid imagination. I was so imaginative that the novels I read were more real than real life. And it was because I daydreamed my way through school that I was able to get through it.

Since men generally have higher IQs than men (there are twice as many men with IQs above 120 than women) and since there are more male introverts than women, there are going to be far more empathic men than women.

It doesn't mean women aren't empathic. You find an imaginative, high-IQ woman, and you'll find an empathic woman.

Let's take Stephen King for another example of a male introvert. How can he create such vivid characters? Because he imagines them, empathizes with them, and then creates them. I know exactly how he does it, although his talent is a quantum leap above mine. But I guarantee you he is an imaginative, high-IQ introvert.

It is the imaginative, high-IQ introverts who discover the universal principles. I can again guarantee you that Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, John Locke and David Hume were introverts. For that matter, Jesus and Buddha were introverts, which is why Jesus called his followers dullards because they were literal-minded men without understanding and imagination.

Introverts are the kind of people who study for fun. They're the ones who think the Deep Thoughts. (I sometimes suspect extroverts can't really think because they can't concentrate and can't bear to be alone for long, which is why they watch TV so much. Anything to fill the void.)

From an introvert's point of view it is the extroverts who are disturbing. They're the political mass murderers, the serial killers, the ones who commit almost all crimes and fill the prisons.

So it's not just low-to-moderate IQ extroverted women who lack empathy. The same lack of empathy applies to low-to-moderate IQ men. Even, unfortunately, even high-IQ men. George Bush's IQ is 126, yet he appears to be stupid because he has no imagination, which allows him to commit mass murder. He can't quite see those murdered people as human.

As far as I'm concerned, introverts should rule. It'd be a far saner, more peaceful world.

An Accusation of Sexual Harassment

Some years ago, at another job, my boss told me one of the women there claimed I was sexually harassing her. He told me who she was. I was surprised, because she was the only woman there I was friends with.

The claim didn't make any sense to me. The first thing that occurred to me is that she thought we were romantically involved and that I had rejected her. We had eaten lunch a few times and attended a few public relation events. But I had never asked her out.

My first impressions tend to be true but I still had a hard time believing what occurred to me.

Another a year later I had another job. My boss there told me one day a women he had worked with in another department claimed he had sexually harassed her. Specifically she claimed he had offered her five dollars for sex.

My friend's boss, who told him about the accusation, just laughed it off. The woman was clearly a joke.

It turned out, not surprisingly, my friend had dated this girl one time.

I told my boss what had happened to me and that I thought this girl had a crush on me. I told him I thought this girl had a crush on him. "That's what my father told me," he said, surprised.

Maybe that old saying, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" is true. Many have the bizarre belief it is okay for them to reject a guy but cannot believe it when a guy rejects them.

I'm also reminded of something I read years ago: "There are some women who think a walk on the beach is a marriage proposal."

Later my ex-boss moved to another job, after which I lost track of him. A few years later I ran across a woman we both knew, and she told me he had been fired by his female boss....because he did not want to get involved with her.

The problem with taking sexual harassment charges seriously is that most of them are not. I suppose some guys get these claims because the women may not like him, such as in this skit.

But others may be because the women do like him, as what happened to my friend. So the best thing to do is not talk to any women you work with, except in a completely professional manner. And even then that may not work...as what happened to my friend when he did not want to get involved with his boss.

Men are starting to realize women don't work out all that much in the workplace. A tipping point for this might have been when Adria Richards(and let's remember she's a dog, which probably has something to do with it) claimed two guys behind her were talking about "forking" and "dongles." She had no proof whatsoever except her word.

One guy got fired, but so did Richards. And thank God for it.

If every woman is fired who makes a false sexual harassment claim, the problem would resolve itself fast.

As it stands now, it's better just to not hire women at all, or talk to as few as possible.

"Alpha" as Mentor, Model, Mirror

"The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." - Vince Lombardi

When I was 17 years old a friend and I hitchhiked about 100 miles to a plot of land his parents owned in the woods. There was one of those pop-up trailers there, so we stayed in it a week or so.

Sometimes we went our separate ways. One time I was shooting baskets when a boy, about nine maybe, came over and wanted to shoot with me. After about half an hour I got bored enough to want to leave, but he protested - and he protested a lot - so I stayed another 20 minutes.

I was always stuck how vehemently he protested my attempt to leave. A little lonely, I suppose (we were in the middle of nowhere in the Ozarks), but I think there was more.

Why would a nine-year-old be so adamant about playing with a guy almost twice his age?

Years later I ran across three important ideas: mentor, model, mirror.

A mentor is a man who shows younger guys the ropes. A model is someone you model yourself after. And a mirror is someone in whom you can see yourself.

A mentor is self-explanatory and I don't have to say anything else about it. A model can be someone you consider a hero: a sports figure, or an actor, or a musician, or a writer. It's some who try you model yourself after so you can pick up their good traits.

Most people know what a mirror is, but they don't articulate it. A mirror is someone in whom you see yourself. If a person treats you with contempt and disdain, you see that. They are a distorted mirror in which you see yourself.

I have a large extended family. I was clearly the favorite of some of my relatives, and when I was a kid I picked up on how they treated me. For one thing, they thought I was hysterical. They were a mirror in which I saw myself as a funny kid who could make everyone laugh.

So what was I to that little boy?

I was all of them.

One thing I noticed about the Manosphere is that there is little talk about children. Except not to have any. And I've never heard any talk about models, mentors, and mirrors, although it's clear the "celebrities" of the Manosphere have set themselves up as models and sometimes mentors, and the Lost Boys look to them for advice. Unfortunately they give bad advice.

Let's take the concept of "Alpha." There are no Alphas. To be precise, there are two kinds, and they are the exact opposite of each other.

The first kind has always been known as a cad: womanizer, narcissist, insecure inside which he covers up with bluster (I always think of what Sam Spade said to Wilmer the Gunsel in The Maltese Falcon,: "The cheaper the hood the gaudier the patter"). I know this kind very well. Unless they change, they ruin their lives. They end up alone, with little to show for their lives. I have seen this several times, and history shows it to be true.

Yet some guys see people like Roissy and Roosh as models. I'll tell you this: both of them will sell out in a instant, and unless they change, both will end up lonely old men with nothing to show for it. They're cads.

Yet some consider them "Alphas." They're not, except for being the cad variety.

For that matter the concept of the Dark Triad is nonsense. Those who support it don't know what it is. Machiavellianism is a political philosophy. Some scholars, such as James Burnham in his book, The Machiavellians, claims it is a description of how politics works. Which is why politics is a cesspool.

Politics draws to it narcissists and sometimes psychopaths, which are the other two parts of the Dark Triad. There is nothing admirable about either of them. Both are interested only in power and incapable of love. The psychopaths are the worst: they have no conscience whatsoever, and the worst ones are the serial killers. The worst of the serial killers are necrophiliacs and cannibals. The notorious Ted Bundy, for one gruesome example, would torture women to death, dismember them and have sex with their body parts. Jeff Dahmer did the same thing.

Putting both narcissists and psychopaths in the Dark Triad again makes no sense. A narcissist and a psychopath are the same thing, except the psychopath is just an extreme form of a narcissist. All psychopaths are narcissists, but not all narcissists are psychopaths. You can't be both at the same time, unless you are a psychopath.

I will repeat that narcissists and psychopaths are incapable of love. They are only intoxicated by power - power and domination and control. As Carl Jung pointed out, you can have love or power, but you can't have both.

The second kind of Alpha is a chivalrous man. I don't mean "chivalrous" in the demeaning sense assigned to it by the more ignorant in the Mansosphere (they don't know what it is) but in the original sense of an armed man willing to do violence to defend what is right,i,e., willing to do violence to bad people. (Do you really think guys like Roissy and Roosh are brave men or do you think they would run at the first sign of trouble?)

A patriarch could be considered an Alpha. A man who takes care of and defends his family, who is brave and confident and competent. A man who is a model, a mirror and a mentor to the young, no matter who are they.

What would you rather be? A cad and a coward (all cads are cowards, just as all sluts are cowards) who lies to and tries to manipulate women so he can get laid with lots of different women. so they can bolster his fragile sense of self-esteem? Who shows a cluster of the Seven Deadly Sin of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony?

Or a brave man who defends what is right? Who believes in and show the Four Cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, Self-Control and Bravery? (By the way, the Four Cardinal virtues are related; you can't have one without having them all.) Who believes that he should unabashedly be a patriarch? That he should be competent and confident and not degrade himself altering his character and behavior to lay a lot of women (which is exactly what these PUA types are doing)?

I don't think it's a hard choice.

"I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline." - Vince Lombardi

Feminism Leads to Spinsterdom

"The cycle of societies past their prime degenerating into leftist decadence and general weakness and experiencing a population decline will inevitably give way to new rightist ideologies of strength emerging from the ashes. One standpoint is associated with the decline, the other with ascension." - Peter Wiggin

To the Dark Side feminism leads! Screw all of us over it will! (And when the Dark Side takes over, some people just give up and play video games in their basement all day long because they have no hope of jobs and women - what Freud described as essential: Love and Work.)

I see a fair number of spinsters these days: never married, no children, no home (apartment instead), a cat or two. They're hostile and blame all their problems on men. Usually they're on a combination of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant "medication."

Spinsters have always existed but there are many more today. How did this happen?

A few reasons, I believe.

One: women have gained, though the force of law, what might be considered men's "formal" power. Economic and political power. At the same time men, again through the force of law, are losing these things. So, as women ("educated" women, I'll add) move up, men move down.

At the same time, women still want their "informal" power: you ask me out, you pay my way, you ask me to marry you. Also, informally, women want a man who is at least as good-looking and makes as much money they do. Usually, more money.

So, as men are moving down, women are moving up, but still looking to "marry up." Fewer and fewer men meet these criteria. Hence, hostile spinsters wondering where "all the good men have gone." (My stock answer is: "Right where you left them; back in your 20's.")

Incidentally, the delusion of women "trying to have it all" is one of the biggest red flags that exists signaling the decline of society. These women want all the advantages of being a man and a woman and none of the responsibilities.

Additionally, since men are moving down, and losing their "formal" power, there is no reason to get married. It's got to the point there is no benefit for men to get married. This is one of the reasons close to 50% of all people are unmarried.

There is especially no reason for any guy who is good-looking and who makes a lot of money to get married. He can, for all practical purposes, have a harem. I first noticed that when I was 19, when I realized at that age, if polygamy was legal, I could have had half a dozen wives.

Now the problem with harems is that while a few guys will get most of women (at least the attractive ones) the vast majority of men will end up with no one except the unattractive and crazy women no one wants.

Polygamy (one man, many women) has been consistently ruled illegal in the U.S., and good thing, too. There was a case a few years ago of a polygamous Mormon community in the U.S. When the boys turned 16 they were simply cast adrift in the world since they would be competition for the young women, who were generally married to older men.

There have been some truly creepy polygamous societies in the world. In the polygamous Islamic world the unmarried men go crazy, commit a great deal of crime, and get their heads cut off. Here, in the U.S. they go to prison.

China is a more interesting case. In the past, one very wealthy man (as an aside, looks have nothing to do with this) might have a thousand wives.

It is only in the West that the concepts of monogamy and romantic love exist. I don't find that surprising. I do not believe love exists in a polygamous society. How can a man love half a dozen or a thousand women? How can any woman love a man when she is just one of many wives?

Jung had some wisdom here when he wrote you can have love or power, but not both. You can have love or the intoxication of power. There can be the intoxication of power when you have a harem of a dozen or a hundred or a thousand women, but I do not believe love factors into this at all.

But let's get back to China.

Now here's where things get very interesting in the place. How did these men get all this wealth? One reason is that the wife had to offer a dowry, gotten from their families. Dowries have usually been considered a leg up to get the the family started. If a man has to support a thousand women, he must be very wealthy indeed. (Also, if a man has a thousand wives, some of them - possibly most of them - will end up, for all practical purposes, as semi-spinsters. No man could pay anything but the most minimal attention to all of them except his favorites.)

Dowries (or groom prices) exist when there is a storage of men. Bride prices exist where there is a shortage of brides. Technically these days in the U.S. women should be paying groom prices for men, but of course even the suggestion would outrage them them and make them froth at the mouth.

In China, since it cost a lot of money to marry a daughter, there was a lot of female infanticide. There still is.

Poor families couldn't pay dowries but could be paid a bride-price if their daughter was attractive enough and became a concubine. Not a wife, but a concubine.

The whole thing gets very complicated, but can be read in detail here

How does this apply here? Again, since women think there is a shortage of men, they should pay a groom-price. They will not do this. Since they think there is a shortage of acceptable men, many will end up as spinsters. Those who do not, since they cannot marry up, will end up a being a member of a "soft" harem.

Since the law now benefits women at the expense of men, many families will invest more resources in daughters than men. Women will move up economically through the force of law (usually with worthless degrees in Human Resources, Management, etc.) while men will move down unless they can get degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). Few men can do that.

Since marriage no longer benefits men, there will be less of it. There will be more single mothers. There is nothing good about children without fathers; the problems they have are well-documented.

The economy will get worse and worse as more boys "fail to launch" because of missing fathers (men create society and science and technology). There will be more crime and more people on welfare. There will be more single mothers (supported by taxpayers) with screwed-up kids.

All of these bad things have come about through the government interfering in society and benefiting "educated" women at the expense of all men. Those men who are wealthy and good-looking will do okay, although many will ruin their lives later on (the more stupid in the Manosphere refer to these guys as "Alphas"; in reality the old term applies: cads).

Overall, I can't see any good coming out of all this. Ultimately it won't benefit anyone. Of course, none of this will stand. It'll collapse, as it always does, and then we'll pick up the pieces, as we always do, dust ourselves off, and keep going.

Three-Quarters Puppy and One-Quarter Cat

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

This have been noticed for thousands of years: people have two impulses (instincts?). One is to be a slave; the other is to be free.

I like to use the metaphors of people being three-quarters dog and one-quarter cat. Dogs are social herd animals and they are only happy in a structured environment where they know their place and what they should do (I think this is why the human race is so prone to fascism and socialism). I saw the Dog Whisperer on TV once, where he claimed it's in a dog's DNA: "Tell me what to do!"

Cats, on the other hand, are independent and usually solitary creatures that notoriously won't listen to anything they're told by people.

The metaphor of "People are dogs" has been around for thousands of years. Usually it's comparing rulers to wolves and people to sheep, because when it comes to following, sheep will follow their leader right off a cliff to their deaths. People, obviously and unfortunately, will do the same: follow their leaders to their deaths. (Parenthetically, I've always been amused by Jesus referring to Herod as a vixen - a female fox.)

Yet, in reality, the masses are closer to dogs, in that they will sacrifice themselves when they think the Herd has been threatened, which is what dogs will do. I read an article in which a researcher watched a pack of wild dogs get into a fight with a lion.

The lion killed 18 of the 30 dogs but the 12 left finished off the lion and ate him.

People are the same way: when they think their Herd has been threatened, they go hysterical and march off to war. Even if the Herd hasn't been threatened. It only matters if they think it is. After all, to the not-very-bright, Perception is Reality.

Unfortunately, the Herd only marches off to war when the leaders convince them they should. This is why Vifredo Pareto (among others before him) said there are two kinds of rulers: the Wolves who use force, and the Foxes who use fraud. Not surprisingly, Pareto defined the masses as Sheep.

Hermann Goering noticed the same thing about people, which is why he said: "Why, of course, the people don't want war...[b]ut, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

The pack leaders start wars, use propaganda on the little dogs, the little dogs fall for it, march off to war and die. The only time the big dogs die if they are lose the war. If Lincoln had lost the war he would have gone down in history as a war criminal, and if Hitler had won history would proclaimed him one of the greatest leaders ever.

So it is true that people in many ways are like dogs.

On the other hand they are like cats, although our acting like cats is pretty rare. But there people out there who do want to be free and independent. They're often called traitors and cowards, although in reality it's the self-deluded puppies who are the traitors and cowards...because they don't have the guts to stand up what is right (because they don't know what is right).

One of the things that has most intrigued me about the founding of the U.S. is that it was set up to force people to be free, independent and responsible. The governments were supposed to be tiny, with clearly defined and limited powers.

Unfortunately the government has grown and grown (as it always does), and many people can't even be considered adult dogs anymore. They're more like puppies. Take care of me! I don't want to work, just play! You work and feed me!

Societies have always evolved so that people are forced to grow up. Then the societies always change, because the Wolves and Foxes gain the use the State to claim all the money and power, and then many people turn back into feral puppies, which is what always happens when government gets out of control.

People need both security and freedom. The security can only come from a limited government that protects Life, Liberty and Property. People can then have all they freedom they can handle.

Ultimately the problem lies with the people, with their contradictory desires to be slaves and to be free. You can have one or the other, but you can't have both. Trying to have both is what has always collapsed governments and societies.

"I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." - Benjamin Franklin.

Warrior, Worker, Entertainer, Whore – and Corporations as God

The nature of the State is that it wants to enslave you and make you live in fear. Worse, it believes you are a sacrifice to what the rulers believe you should be sacrificed to.

I read a lot of science fiction in-between ages 12 and 14. When your mind is stretched like mine was by science fiction, it never goes back to its original shape. That happens to everyone who is susceptible to it. Terence McKenna called it a psychedelic drug, and he was right.

I don’t read that much sf anymore, but I still do read some. I watch an occasional movie, too.

One movie I do watch repeatedly is Blade Runner, which is one of my favorite films. Like all science fiction – literature, movies, TV – it very rarely gets the specifics right, but in general, it’s very often right on the money.

One of the things that stuck me about Blade Runner is that there isn’t any portrayal of what kind of government runs the world. There are cops, but they don’t run society.

What appears to run society are corporations, specifically the Tyrell Corporation. It’s housed in a pyramid-shaped building with a flat top, hundreds of stories tall. The portrayal of society in the movie is that it is one both ancient and modern, both advanced and degraded – and the flat-topped Aztec pyramids, used for human sacrifice, were a symbol of the degradation of an advanced society. Perhaps it was meant to portray that humans should be sacrificed to corporations? And the State? Makes sense to me.

The movie is telling us that corporations are more powerful than governments, and when they get too big and powerful, it’s a sign of the degradation of society. And that is the case today.

I call modern corporations “Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations.” In the world of Blade Runner, they are Cosmodemonic Interstellar Megacorporations.

Mussolini defined fascism as “corporatism,” so I’d guess the world of Blade Runner is a fascist world.

Corporations don’t care about human life, only profit. That’s the way they always have been. For example, contrary to the myth, the American War for Independence was not about taxation.

It was about the largest corporation in the world – the East India Company (aka John Company) being given a tax rebate of millions of pounds to run its small American competitors out of the tea business.

The war was caused by a corporation, one that put money ahead of life. But then, don’t they always?

In the world of Blade Runner the Tyrell Corporation has learned to grow genetically-engineered people. I assume it’s in artificial wombs, which has been a staple of science fiction.

If test-tube babies aren’t bad enough, the replicants are genetically-engineered to fulfill certain roles.

Roy Batty, who appears to have wolf DNA inserted into him, is engineered to be a Warrior. Leon, who looks like a turtle (and who gets very upset when asked questions about turtles) is mentally slow and engineered to be a Worker in dangerous environments.

Kris, playful as a raccoon (in one scene she sprays a black mask across her face) is engineered to be a “comfort girl” – a Whore. Zhora, who is an Entertainer, performs with a snake (and tries to strangle her pursuer).

When corporations get the power to engineer people, including inserting animal DNA into them, they will do it. And at that time, corporations will be playing God. Not, I’ll add, that they aren’t trying to do it already.

There has been at least one movie that I am familiar with that is somewhat of a spin-off of Blade Runner - Soldier, with Kurt Russell.

It’s set a few hundred years in Blade Runner’s future, and Russell is also a genetically-engineered soldier. At the end he shows himself to be human, just as at the end of Blade Runner Roy Batty shows himself to be human, just as all the replicants showed themselves to be human and not just non-human “skinjobs,” as one police officer referred to them.

The purpose of Corporations (which are creations of the State) and our "educational system" is to turn you into a Working/Consuming Machine. The purpose of the State is to turn you into a Killing Machine.

I can't say I learned much in college but one thing I did learn in a literature class is the difference between the Machine State versus the Natural State. You can see this theme in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, in which the Morlock's represent the Machine State and the Elio the Natural State. You also see it in the Star Wars movies, in which Darth Vader is more machine than man (and therefore represent the Machine State) and the Ewoks represent the Natural State.

And what do the Morlocks and Darth Vader do? They murder. The Morlocks are worse - they're cannibals. Both, of course, are monsters.

Since art imitates life, there is a Machine State and a Natural State in reality. In my opinion the State is a machine that wants to turn us into a machine, and society when free from the depredations of the State, is an organic growth that should be the best we can find in this life. We won't find any of that from the State.

Workers and Warriors – that’s all the fascist marriage of State and Corporations wants from people. To turn them into machines – organic machines, like the Borg. And all they supposed is need to cheap sex and cheap entertainment. Whores and bread and circuses.

Organic machines sometimes engineered through genetics, sometimes through drugs, and always though propaganda.

In fact, if the State and Corporations had their way, we’d be engineered to look like the Moties in The Mote in God’s Eye - Warriors all blades and Workers with two arms on one side and one on the other.

Empathy for the Oddballs

"What is now proved was once only imagined." - William Blake

"Without Contraries there is no progression." - William Blake

"There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."― Arthur C. Clarke

I have those four quotes memorized. I consider them Law. Not law in the sense of words on paper (although they should be) but laws of human nature.

There is always the Establishment, and it doesn't want to change because of the perverseness and folly of the people who control it. They don't want to share their power ("Power intoxicates and immunity corrupts"). Is it not true that ultimately the Establishment does no good whatsoever, since they want to gather all power to themselves and exploit everyone?

Then there is the Movement, which seeks to change the Establishment. Sometimes this can be for good and sometimes for bad. Still, it's why Blake wrote what he did - unless there is some rebellion, things will not change.

The reason I am for political and economic freedom, and small government, is that they allow rapid change. Joseph Schumpeter called this "creative destruction." It scares some people.

Sometimes - perhaps almost all the time - those who want to change things - even for the better - end up ostracized and even killed. Think of the myth of Prometheus, who gave humanity fire (among other things) and ended up chained to a rock with a eagle eating his liver.

Another saying I've memorized is that "the only difference between a genius and a crackpot is that the genius happens to be right." That, along with, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." (It reminds me of one of Arthur C. Clarke's many quotes: "New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!")

Because of these things, I am quite sympathetic to oddballs. They are the ones who, when right, advance society. They can be wrong, and damage things, but since there is no perfection you have to take the good with the bad.

Let's consider the late Stan Gooch, who gave up a lucrative career because of his obsession that modern people were part Neanderthal and had picked up most of their good traits from them. He was considered a crackpot and died poor in a trailer park.

Yet it has recently been proved, through genetic analysis, that non-African populations have, on the average, 2.5% Neanderthal DNA, and in the case of the outliers, closer to 5%. So Gooch was right.

Now as to what characteristics we picked up from Neanderthals, that remains to be seen. But some claim without that Neanderthal DNA, we wouldn't be what we are, that we'd still be stuck unchanging, still stuck 50,000 years ago.

But unless people keep open minds about these thing, there will be no advancement. To again quote Clarke: "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

I've always been more sympathetic to the oddballs. "Normal" people pretty much bore me.

If I could set up my ideal society the public (i.e. Establishment) schools wouldn't exist, and the private (i.e. Movement) ones would seek out the creative, visionary oddballs and put them with their own kind. After all, society wants to ostracize them anyway.

This would be a good way to make these people happier and to make society just a little bit better.

"Alll that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

"...there are two types of people in this society: first, those who are obedient to the order, and do what it says. Second, those who are not obedient, and who do not depend on it." - Brett Stevens

Paranoid Voodoo Killers

"Being the herd animals they are, haters’ weapons against you all boil down to trying to psychologically out-group you." - Matt Forney

Some years ago a woman I know got divorced from her husband when he developed late-onset paranoid schizophrenia. She thought he might hurt her, so they divorced. To her surprise many women ostracized her and were mean to her. She did not understand why.

I told her they considered her bad luck and if they didn't ostracize and treat her cruelly they thought her "bad luck" might rub off on them. Stupid, primitive and paranoid, yes, but it does happen. It's like they treated her as if she was a witch.

I had forgotten about my friend's problems until I read about Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17 year old Canadian girl who was sexually assaulted by some boys while she was blind drunk. They filmed it and put it on the Internet.

If that wasn't bad enough, her female "friends," some of whom had known her for years, went from being her "friends" to viciously attacking her as a slut, even though she was the victim. Her attackers thought her "bad luck" might rub off on them. What they did is the modern equivalent of making a voodoo doll of her and sticking pins in it, except that with modern technology their attack did work.

Shamed and humiliated beyond endurance, Rehtaeh killed herself. Not because of the attack by these boys, but the attack by her female "friends."

If I had ended up blind drunk in college or high school, stripped naked by girls who then filmed it, I would have been annoyed but not humiliated. The guys would have razzed me, because that is what guys do. It isn't even personal.

If anything, I'd go after the girls who did it to me. But then, maybe not, since I would be the idiot who got blind stinking drunk - which I have never done. But I would not be ostracized by the guys. I would, however, expect the girls to snigger. I'd probably just grin at them, grab my crotch and shake my junk at them. That's the way you handle these kinds of girls: you laugh at them and don't take them seriously.

Some years ago I read an article that said in wartime women were not allowed to torture the enemy to gain information. They enjoyed it too much. I wasn't surprised.

Something else: this was a gang of girls who attacked Rehtaeh. Not one girl, but a gang.

Carl Jung pointed out, quite correctly, that women's greatest flaw is that they think they are always right. Unless they overcome that flaw, they can never be happy.

Even a gang of girls is going to think they are always right, as is clearly shown in the above video. These girls have no understanding whatsoever they are in the wrong.

Crowds are bad enough because the don't have any brains (only individuals have brains) but a gang of girls not only doesn't have any brains, they can be downright evil. And not even know it. Worse than that, the think what they are doing is right.

When you get a mob, the people in it are never going to accept responsibility for their actions and always find someone to scapegoat and sacrifice. To do this, the sacrifice has to be considered bad ("bad luck) first ostracized, then killed.

Conclusion: any society in which women gain too much political power will be a society is which gangs of women stick pins into whomever they define as their enemy, in order to destroy them because they consider them bad luck. What they will do, however, is destroy themselves.

Sound familiar? Sure it does. I don't even have to explain, do I?

The Extrovert Cycle of Destruction

As the political scientist Kevin Phillips has pointed out, all societies go through three phases before they collapse: agricultural, industrial, financial...then they collapse. The U.S. is deep into its financial/empire phase, so deep it will collapse. That is, the government will collapse, but society will not. It will be damaged, of course, but it will survive and revive, as it always has in the past.

There are a few explanations for the denseness of the financial elites who can't see what it coming. You can call it Hubris, as the Greeks did: believing you can get away with exploiting and humiliating people and nothing to happen to you. It's always followed by Nemesis, which is revenge. I call it Humiliation followed by Revenge.

Another explanation I use - and it fits in with the Humiliation/Revenge Cycle - is that of Introvert/Extrovert.

Introverts tend to be far more imaginative than extroverts, and without imagination you can't feel empathy and put yourself into someone else's place. So introverts can see what is coming.

It's extroverts who lack empathy and who are far more afflicted with Hubris than introverts. They can't see what is coming because of their Hubris and lack of empathy - which are the same thing. This is the main reason 90% of those incarcerated are extroverts. As for politicians, try about 95%.

I had one introverted wit tell me that he found the best way to deal with extroverts is to consider them the human equivalent of a TV set that cannot be turned off. He also called them, not surprisingly, "insensitive."

Additionally, those who desire political power and gain it almost always misuse it. When you put all those together - the Hubris, the extroversion, the misuse of political power - then you invariably get a collapse of society.

There are only a few psychological tests that I consider halfway accurate. One is the Enneagram. One of the most destructive is the Achiever, the Type 3 - "the success-oriented, pragmatic type: adaptable, excelling, driver, and image-conscious."

The Type 3 is the kind that often becomes politicians. That type is of course an extrovert, and at their worst they are the narcissists and psychopaths, i.e, the ones most prone to Hubris.

I know a woman who is a Type 3 quite well. She became a lawyer.

The Challenger, the Type 8, is described as "the powerful, dominating type: self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational." They too are extroverts, and at their worst they develop Anti-Social Personality Disorder, i.e., they become psychopaths. They, too, are prone to Hubris. They often claw their way to the top of the business world, where they busily destroy everything for money and power.

The most extroverted is the Enthusiast, the Type 7: "the busy, variety-seeking type: spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered." At their worst they develop Bi-Polar Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder.

I knew a woman like this is college; she became bi-polar and histrionic.

I am the the Investigator, the Type 5: "the intense, cerebral type: perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated." These are the introverts, the ones not prone to Hubris and wanting power over others, and it includes such people as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Georgia O'Keefe, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Gary Larson, James Joyce, Björk, Susan Sontag, Emily Dickinson, Agatha Christie, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jane Goodall, Glenn Gould, John Cage, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Jodie Foster, and "Fox Mulder" (X Files).

At our worst we are the Schizoids, and when under stress we disintegrate to the Type 7, which why I have to maintain control over myself when it comes to tobacco and alcohol. - I'm either nothing or 100 mph.

As I and many others have said before, the introverts are the scientists, the artists, the musicians and the creators. We're the ones who advance society, as compared to many extroverts, who unwittingly destroy it.

When society starts to go under, it's the introverts who gather together and pool their knowledge to restart society. They're the monks who lived in monasteries in the Dark Ages and saved the collected wisdom of the human race. The extroverts didn't do it.

The same thing is going to happen in the future, when the cities go under and become jungles and they introverts move into the country and take their knowledge with them.

Seeing the Past in the Present

"...this plague of extroverts — the showoffs, risk-takers, salesmen, charmers, charlatans and politicians. They may not be responsible for all the evil in the world, but they did give us such pernicious results as Enron, Hollywood, the financial crisis, Washington, infomercials and Harvard Business School." - Kyle Smith.

It is sometimes possible to discern the history of something from the present. It is possible to see the past from the present. Not always, of course, but often.

Take dogs, for example. Even before genetics became so advanced it was determined all dogs are descended from wolves, I thought they were. German Shepherds look almost exactly like wolves, so I thought they were evolved from wolves. Even pugs and French bulldogs, which are my favorite dogs, would have to be bred from wolves, since they're dogs just like German Shepherds.

Now as for pugs and the other lapdogs, they were clearly bred to look like babies, with their smallness, big eyes and pushed-in faces. So you can assume people like babies. These dogs are also bred to be funny, so it's obvious people like funny babies - which most babies are.

Why do I think about these things? Because I'm an introvert - intellectually curious, imaginative, disciplined, brighter-than-normal.

I've also wondered why introverts and extroverts exist. This is an overgeneralization, but not much of one: introverts create and extroverts destroy.

Extroverts are impulsive and don't think. Low-IQ ones end up in prison and higher-IQ ones become politicians. The most murder-loving of soldiers and bullying of cops are low-IQ extroverts. Either way, they destroy. They make society go backwards.

Introverts, on the other hand, are the creators. Without introverts we'd have few scientists, musicians, writers, painters, artists and just creative intellectuals in general. They are the ones who preserve and advance society. As Winifred Gallagher wrote: "The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither "E=mc2" nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal."

I use the example of the extroverted King George III, who wouldn't let the Colonies go and started a war. His advisors, who were clearly introverts, advised him to let them separate, but he didn't listen and started a war than England lost.

When extroverts destroy, introverts gather into monasteries and preserve the knowledge. This has happened over and over throughout history. Albert Jay Nock called these people the Remnant and estimated they were ten percent of the population (introverts are 20 percent and extroverts are 80 percent, so Pareto was right and we're clearly outgunned by the Stupid).

Even among animals there are the sitters and watchers (introverts) and the impulsive let's charge-in-and-get-wounded-or-killed extroverts.

I also noticed, starting in middle school, that whatever bullies that existed were always extroverts. They tended to go after the introverts. From that I concluded that extroverts (and extroverted society in general) is set up to kill introverts.

I find that bizarre. The only people who defend, preserve and advance society are the ones society tries to destroy. How this evolved I do not know. That is as far as I can go with seeing the past from the present.

I also conclude the Cycle of Destruction is always caused by extroverts. If you want to read The Mote in God's Eye sometime, you find the cycle of the Moties has gone on for at least 100,000 years, and when society collapsed, knowledge was always preserved in museums.

I also conclude democracy will always fail. The eighty percents of non-thinking, impulsive, childish extroverts will always destroy society, despite the best efforts of the ten percent or so of smart, knowledgeable introverts who want to preserve it.

I also conclude that anarcho-capitalism will cannot even get off the ground, because it is an invention of the more naive of introverts and doesn't apply to extroverts at all.

Introverts should be the ones who rule and extroverts the ones ruled. Extroverts should not be allowed political power at all. I guarantee you that Satan, as portrayed in the Bible, is an extrovert. I also guarantee you that Jesus and the Buddha were introverts.

Introverts gain their self-esteem from within. Extroverts gain it from without, from other people. They go with the flow, whether it's good or bad. They are the Sheeple/Borg who don't want to think, who want to lose their consciousness so they don't have to make choices, and who seek security above liberty.

This is why introverts must learn to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.

I sometimes think introverts and extroverts are different species.

"Have You Really Read All Those Books?"

"Without contraries there is no progression" - William Blake

By the time I was 13 I had a library of about 100 books. Most were science fiction but some weren't - for a long time Thomas Berger's Little Big Man was my favorite novel and I was also fond of James Michener's The Drifters.

One memory that stands out vividly was when some adult women were visiting my parents for some reason I don't remember. They ended up in my room. One woman, who I remember as being a bleached-blonde, looked at my library (most of which were paperbacks) and asked in wonder:

"Have you really read all those books?"

I had about 20 albums stacked next to the books. She didn't ask me, "Have you listened to all those albums?" No one would ask something like that.

When I was in college I never met anyone who had a library in their room. Only I did. No, I did meet one woman, but she went to another college. When I walked into her room and saw her library of about 100 books, I said to her, "Have you really..." and she finished, "...read all those books?" We both laughed.

I know that people do read, but every time I go into a used-book store I find the biggest section to be romance novels, which are women's pornography. There is a fair amount of action/mystery/western and an even bigger section of science fiction (which is overwhelmingly adolescent, as I well know) but anything of any true intellectual value could be placed on one shelf.

I don't find the lack of intellect among the average person all that disturbing. They are what they are. They have always been that way.

What is disturbing is that the people who advance society are only a handful, and they always have been. Generally speaking, they tend to be Outsiders. Not just that, they are often considered Nuts. That is, until they are proved right.

They are the Contraries, and I am very sympathetic to them, be they Charles Fort or Stan Gooch or Colin Wilson.

I ran across a saying years ago: the difference between a genius and a crackpot is that the genius happens to be right. If 2000 years ago someone had said if you could turn the mass of a coin into energy it would destroy an entire city, they would have been laughed at as insane.

If a person does not read - meaning there is no intellectual curiosity and imagination - then all the history and knowledge of the world cannot be accessed.

If I had to divide people into two kinds, I'd make the distinction between introverts and extroverts. Introverts tend be be intellectually curious and imaginative. Think of Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith and Einstein.

As for extroverts...think of George "Shrub" Bush.

If the school system had any sense (and it doesn't) it would identify bookish, intellectually curious, imaginative, introverted children and stick them all together. There is an easy way to identify them even if they hide: they have libraries. And if anyone asks them, "Have you really read all those books" try to catch that micro-expression of contempt and disgust.

Incidentally, there is a very famous science fiction story called "In Hiding," (by Wilmar Shiras aka Jane Howes) about extraordinarily gifted children trying to find their place in the world.

I wonder what these kids could create if they were caught young and put together. Perhaps in the long run they could make the world a better, more peaceful, more prosperous place. And, contrary to the myth, a lot more fun.

Just like in The Drifters.

The Not-So-Fictional Universal Assembly Machine

I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was in my early teens. One of the concepts I ran across is what is often referred to a Universal Assembly Machine, i.e., a machine that can produce any other machine. They don't exist and have never existed. They have been a dream of men for a long time.

Until now, with the advent of 3-D printers. I have never heard of them until a few months ago, when these printers were used to create firearms.

I think this is a great idea. I don't trust the government at all. It has now become the enemy of real Americans, trying to take away every freedom we have. Not only that, but also trying to impose on us onerous regulations about what we eat and drink.

What these printers can create is endless. Print your own car, or at least most of it? Make you make things out of cheap, strong hemp, the way Henry Ford made cars out of hemp?

One modern novel that discussed the social ramifications of a General Assembly Machine is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. What he essentially pointed out is that a society would have to be very disciplined so that people would not sink to the bottom and became degraded welfare recipients.

I predict these printers are the wave of the future, because you can have one in your garage. And if they destroy corporations - evil creations of the State - the more I am for them.

The Brainwashed as Cannon Fodder

"Those who control language, control the perception of reality."

The United States was...were...originally referred to as "are," as in, "The United States are a good place to live." Each state was free and independent. The federal government was a small, fetid backwater in the swamps of D.C.

Sometime after the War Between the States, it became, "The United States is a good place to live," meaning the federal government was paramount, and the states were no longer free and independent.

Were the Founding Fathers alive today, they would be appalled. Were the average citizens of the late 1700's alive, they too would be appalled. The federal government is about 50 times bigger than they ever imagined it should be. They never imagined an enormous military, crashing around the world, or a Federal Reserve Bank (which is not federal, has no reserves, and is not a bank), or a President who could start decades-long wars without a declaration of war.

Ask yourself this: what good has the federal government ever done? Very little, perhaps nothing. When you compare the bad it has done to the good (however you define "good") it's not even close. Especially when you take into account the number of people killed by the feds.

The "federal government," in a sense, does not exist. It's a group of people -- a very small group, merely a handful, who have captured it and use it to serve their own interests. The media and the public schools have taught people that the federal government represents the interests of the entire nation. It doesn't.

This is known as the Fallacy of Reification, "when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it represented a concrete, real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a 'real thing' something which is not one. When people describe nonbiological events (like a geyser) or social institutions (like government) as alive, they are committing a reification fallacy."

In short, a mere handful of people have conned millions of people that they, that small handful, are the nation. And mass man, brainwashed sheeple that they are, have marched off to war, become cannon-fodder, and died by the hundreds of thousands. Not for their families, not for their friends, not for their nation....for a handful of people who have grabbed control of the federal apparatus.

As the twig is bent, so the tree grows. That saying applies to children, who become adults.

Vifredo Pareto, who should be taught in kindergarten, claimed the mass of men are Sheep. The rulers are either Lions, who use force, and Foxes, who use fraud. In a nutshell, nearly everyone is one of the Sheep, eaten (literally) by Lions and Foxes. And most of the time, the Sheep stick their heads into the mouths of the Lions and Foxes! Unbelievable!

Here's what we're taught: Things should be top-down, federal government on top, down to the individual at bottom. The Lions and Foxes are the ones who count: the Sheep are expendable.

The reality, the way things should be: things should be bottom-up, individuals and families first, then neighborhoods, counties, states, nation. The federal government, the Lions and Foxes, should be absolutely last, never to be trusted. They should know they can easily be hung by their heels, like Mussolini.

The federal govenment has now become a behemoth, a Blob, a Black Thing that interferes in the intimate life of everyone.

You can no longer trust the public schools or the mainstream media. How many times have any of them told people their very worst enemy is the federal government?

Here's what else we are taught: we are good and our "enemies" are evil. Here is good, on our side; there is evil, over there, with our enemies.

The reality: good and evil are a continuum. When we see things as good and evil, we will always see ourselves as good, and those who are not-us as evil. That allows us to scapegoat them, to project all our problems on them, allows us to maintain the fiction of our innocence and goodness, and therefore to dehumanize and murder those Others, thereby getting rid of our problems -- even though it never happens that way. What happens instead is war, destruction, catastrophe.

Suzette Haden Elgin, a linguist and science-fiction writer, wrote this about good and evil: "The standard 'Western' way of looking at good and evil is to divide up all behavior into two parts, calling one part good and the other part evil. But there's another way of looking at it, in which good and evil are on a continuum from goodness to evilness and there are places where they run together."

David Frum and Richard Perle some years ago wrote a propaganda book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. In that book, the United States is good; those who disagree with it are evil. That is exactly how simplistically the authors see things.

Both writers see things as top-down, federal government first, as representing the entire nation. They also see good and evil as separate categories, instead of the continuum it is.

The egregious Frum, who is not American but a Canadian, once wrote an article, "Unpatriotic Conservatives," in which is tried to define true Americans as unpatriotic. In reality, Frum is not only unpatriotic, but a traitor. And he's trying to control the language in order to control the perception of reality.

Edward Bernays, one of the founders of PR and advertising, had this to say about mass man: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

Of course, Perle and Frum, who are cowards and traitors (they're Foxes who use fraud, not Lions) have no intention of fighting. That's for the brainwashed sheeple. Their job is to tell people what they are supposed to die for -- not family, not friends...for the handful of people who have captured the federal government. And Frum and Perle, and others like them, see themselves as part of the federal government. To them, your job is to die for their beliefs.

Both would have agreed with Hitler: "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

The astonishing thing is the number of people who think they are defending their country when instead they are fighting for the federal government. And I repeat, the federal government consists of a handful of people. Those hundreds of thousands of people are fighting and dying for a handful of people, whose interests are the exact opposite of the citizens.

If nothing else, remember these things:

Things should be bottom-up, not top-down.

Good and evil are a continuum.

The federal government does not exist and is instead a handful of people whose interests are opposed to the citizens.

When people become aware of what is being done to them, it cannot be done to them anymore. It's easy to manipulate people who are unconscious. In fact, it's one of the easiest things there is.

Judging a Person by Their Head

Some years ago I ran across a guy who was swarthy, hairy and had a forehead about two inches high. At first I thought the hair just grew that low on his forehead, but when I looked more closely he literally had no forehead.

He was an okay guy but dumber than a rock. He had zero intellectual interests.

It was because he literally had no frontal lobes. The more I thought about it the more I realized you can judge a book by its cover - people by their head and face.

A person with a very high forehead has traditionally been called an egghead. I use Richard Feynman as an example.

Low forehead - dumb. High forehead -smart. It's more complicated than that, though.

Some people have foreheads that slope backwards. To me that means "incapable of abstract thought." The first time I saw that was on Lynndie England, the chinless, sloping-forehead soldier who went to prison for her idiotic poses and tormenting of Afghan detainees.

This female was clearly unable to tell the difference between right and wrong.

I have also seen this sloping forehead on most black people, who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. I've also seen it on a lot of MMA fighters.

Then we have beady little eyes, which has always meant untrustworthy and backstabbing. Who is a well-known politician who has those? George "Shrub" Bush. He also has a little bit of a sloping forehead. Not that much, but it's there.

Clearly the man has problems - and he showed what he is by starting two unnecessary wars, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, devastating America's economy, and taking away some of American's freedoms.

I also knew a conniving, backstabber who had shifty eyes - his eyes would shift back and forth as he was thinking of way to screw you.

Then there is the back of the head. A few days ago I was standing in a coffee shop when I saw a young man, married, whose wife was pushing their kid in a stroller. Not only did he have a sloping forehead, the back of his head was completely flat. He looked like a nice guy but not all that smart.

The back of the head is where your occipital lobes are, which deal with vision. I don't know what a flat back of the head means as compared to having a round skull in back (which I do) but I intuitively suspect a Flat Head is not all that good of a thing.

Many years ago I was at a gun show where one of Hitler's tailor-made uniforms was on sale for $20,000. I was shocked at Hitler's build - short and frail with a very thin chest. I've heard him - and Nietzsche, for that matter - referred to as "pencil-necked," i.e., the head was too big to be supported by a frail body and too-thin neck.

The Greek ideal was the neck, biceps and calves being the same circumference. Why? Maybe their experience showed that a proportional body showed a healthy mind.

My head is actually quite large - one girlfriend said it was the size of a computer monitor. But I am not frail - my neck and biceps and calves are same size.

I can't say the same for a professor one of my friends told me about. He said he looked like an ant - enormous head, pencil neck. He also said the guy didn't have much sense - lived in an intellectual fantasy world pretty much divorced from reality. He's the kind I refer to as "high-IQ idiots."

I suspect an intelligent, imaginative person would have a high forehead and a round back of the head. Their body would be in proportion to the head. I also suspect they wouldn't be swarthy and excessively hairy, either. And definitely not have beady little eyes.

How to Find Out if ADHD is a Real Disorder

It's very simple.

Close down the public schools.

If ADHD goes away, it's not a real "disease." It's the schools that are the disease.

Another way is to get rid of almost all female teachers. They're the ones hallucinating boys have ADHD because they don't act like little girls.

ADHD didn't exist when I was a kid, because we had male teachers who let us for outside for recess - which kids should have at least once, maybe twice a day.

Were I student today, I would be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder without Hyperactivity (aka "daydreaming"). I was bored with school, which is a combination of prison/daycare/military school.

I learned a lot more on my own, wandering around on weekends looking at toads and wild bamboo and snakes swimming in the local lake. And checking out books on history in the library. Oddly (I being ironic here) I didn't have ADD outside of school.

I've also found I can concentrate better after a lot of physical activity. It calms me down and I feel more peaceful and focused.

The Interdependence of Selves

I have no idea who first noticed it, but psychologists, philosophers and theologians have written about it: the interdependence of selves, the fact that to seek our own well-being we must seek the well-being of others.

One of the earlier philosophers who did notice this was Spinoza. I’ll quote at length:

"Men, I repeat, can wish for nothing more excellent for preserving their own being than that they should all be in such harmony in all respects that their minds and bodies should compose, as it were, one mind and one body, and that all together should endeavor as best they can to preserve their own being, and that all together should aim at the common advantage of all. From this it follows that men who are governed by reason, seek nothing for themselves that they should not desire for the rest of mankind…"

I’ve heard that passage described as “one of the most remarkable remarks in all [Spinoza’s] writings.

In other words, to seek well-being for ourselves, we have to seek it for others. As such, the difference between “self-centeredness” and “benevolence” doesn’t really exist, because all of us are interdependent on others.

This doesn’t mean we should “live for others.” It means, as a famous saying tells us, “to do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” That Golden Rule exists in some form in all religions.

It is a fact, this is, the nature of reality, that our selves don’t exist independently. They only exist in relation to other selves. You can’t have a husband or wife self without a spouse, or a mother or father self without a child, and so on.

The example I often use about this interdependence concerns the prevention of violence and murder. Nearly all violent assaults and murders, as psychiatrist James Gilligan (and many others) has written, is essentially caused by people feeling humiliated (Gilligan once wrote, “The most dangerous man is the one who thinks he is a wimp”). Then they seek revenge, which is an attempt to replace feelings of humiliation with pride.

Gilligan noted, after interviewing many prisoners, that what he was hearing over and over was the story of Cain and Abel: I feel humiliated, so I’ll get revenge by killing you and so restore my self-respect.

If you want to damage or destroy your own well-being, then mock, ridicule, insult, humiliate and disrespect other people. Then, sooner or later, they will get revenge on you.

The ancient Greeks described this process in detail. Hubris originally meant to humiliate someone in public, and they considered it so obscene it was banned from the theater. Hubris was always followed by Nemesis, the goddess of fate and retribution.

Humiliate people, especially in public, and you are fated, sooner or later, to be the object of revenge. To avoid this, treating people with respect (what the Greeks called aidôs) avoids revenge. So, by seeking to preserve their well-being you preserve your own.

For that matter, by humiliating other people, you’re automatically not seeking your own well-being regardless of the effect it has on others. Those who seek to humiliate others have problems with the effects of Hubris on themselves, or what the Bible calls Pride. Both the Greeks and Hebrews considered it a type of insanity, and if you’ll read the Old Testament many of the stories and sayings in it are about the destructive effects of an excessive, grandiose pride.

William Blake once wrote, “Shame is pride’s cloak.” You can just as easily say, “Pride is shame’s cloak,” although I think “humiliation” is more correct, since shame is when you think you deserve it and humiliation when you do not.

Blake’s comment has been observed many times by other people: pride on top, masking feelings of humiliation underneath, although the definition of that kind of pride is more grandiosity, or excessive pride. It’s the kind of excessive pride that seeks to humiliate others: Hubris followed by Nemesis, or pride going before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Jane Middelton-Moz, who writes on shame and guilt, believes an excessive amount of both are the cause of almost all dysfunction in families (humiliating people, especially children, can just as easily make them feel guilty as humiliated, although with guilt they seek to hurt themselves, and with humiliation, others).

There are people who do attempt to live as if they are independent of others. They only think they are, and the havoc they wreak in their lives and on the lives of others is incalculable.

They’re called “character disorders” and what all have in common are certain characteristics: it’s your fault, never mine; they believe people exist to serve them, and they try to do this by domination, manipulation and control. All of them are afflicted, in varying degrees, with Hubris, or Pride.

Whether it’s humiliation or undeserved guilt, seeking to impose it on others almost always comes back on you. What goes around comes around, to use a very perceptive American saying.

Feminism as a Self-Destructive Parasitic Disease

There are two well-known mating strategies: "r" and "K". "r" is low-to-moderate IQ, promiscuous, "liberal," produces a lot of kids but doesn't take very good care of them. "K" is high IQ, "conservative," monogamous, doesn't have many kids but takes good care of them.

You can see this split illustrated in the movie Idiocracy, in which the high-IQ couple ends up not having any kids because they wait too long, while the low-IQ white trash has dozens of kids by different women and doesn't take much care of them at all.

What counts as modern-day feminism is mostly "r" (to be more precise, a lot of young, deluded women want to start out "r" and then turn into "K"). Can anyone honestly say that any feminist is truly intelligent? That they are anything but low to moderate IQ? They certainly are liberal and promiscuous, and kids mean nothing to them. If children did mean anything to them, they wouldn't be for abortion, including partial-birth ones. Or want to give them to day-care and poorly-paid brown-skinned workers.

The "r" reproductive strategy is inherently self-destructive. This means liberalism and feminism are fated to destroy themselves. For that matter, can you think of any leftist society that didn't collapse?

Even a high-IQ "r" society would collapse. The only thing that would keep it going is advanced technology - abortion, birth control and treatments for venereal diseases. And psychologically, the lack of commitment and sexual promiscuity would have devastating emotional effects on people.

The only fictional high-IQ "r" society I know of is in the science-fiction novel, The Mote in God's Eye. The aliens, know as Moties, are essentially high-IQ high-breeders. What happens? Their society always totally destroys itself, and has to begin anew. This has happened to them over and over for hundreds of thousands of years.

There is a short story, "The Marching Morons" (which Idiocracy might have been based on) in which the world is inundated with dumbasses. The ending is unpleasant: all the morons are shot into space to die, along with the man who planned their demise.

There are a few other problems that seal feminism's fate.

There is a long-running Broadway play called "Defending the Caveman." I was listening to the man who performed it on the radio. He said that while men consider women mysterious, women consider men always wrong. He commented that during a performance a woman in the audience stood up and screamed, "They ARE wrong."

Carl Jung had noticed this same destructive flaw in women, and in fact said it was their greatest and most destructive flaw, and that in order to attain well-being women must give it up. When you add "r" to thinking-they-are-always-right, I shouldn't have to explain where that leads.

What I will explain is that when you think you are always right, you must find someone to blame all your problems on. For feminists it has to be men. Thus, you have heard (as have I): "Men are responsible for all the problems in the world."

This blaming others for your problems is called scapegoating or projection. It is our first and most primitive defense, and all very young children engage in it. It explains why liberals always blame their problems on other people, and why liberals (and feminists) are about four years old emotionally.

Scapegoating is the basis of human sacrifice: we must sacrifice these people to our sacred god and things will get better. This is what the most rabid of feminists (and some of the not so rabid) are trying to do to men.

A perfect example of this projection, thinking you are always right, and human sacrifice is the Adria Richards' kerfluffle, in which a feminist (and let's face facts: she's a dog) saw nothing wrong with claiming she was unbearably offended by two men supposedly - I repeat supposedly - making some very mild and silly jokes about "forking" and "dongles." One of the innocent men got fired, as did Richards. And I guarantee you Richards thinks the man should have been fired but not her. After all, in her your-year-old's mind, she was right and he was wrong.

Feminists lack any ability to reflect on their beliefs and behavior. Any society which gives women too much power (as our has) is a society doomed to destruction. Ultimately women destroy everything they get involved in - education, single parents, voting. It has happened without fail in the past, it is happening now, and it will happen in the future.

You can see what women are in mythology - they are always portrayed as both nurturer and destroyer - nurturers because they give life through birth, and destroyers when they get involved in things for which they are not suited.

Feminism is in fact a parasite. Men created civilization, science and technology. Women didn't. It's not because of oppression or "patriarchy." It's because men and women have different brains.

It is logical that the more men withdraw from society and education and marriage - because none of them are no longer worth it because of the destructive influence of feminism - the more society will go backward.

Sooner or later feminism will destroy itself. Thinking you are always right doesn't mean you are right. Ignoring the fact feminism in a parasite on men's accomplishments doesn't go away just because of ideology. And thinking a "r" reproductive strategy is one that will support society is just bizarre. The whole of history is against it.

The whole human race goes in cycles of accomplishment followed by destruction. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to break that cycle.