Narcissism, Hierarchy and the Machine State

"The Terrible Father is a mythological figure that represents any system of knowing that willfully discards new information when it does not fit with its world view, and obliterates that knowledge from its gaze." - Vagrants Among Us

"Is the machine going to control humanity, or is the machine going to serve humanity? Darth Vader is a man taken over by a machine, he becomes a machine, and the state itself is a machine. There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life." - Joseph Campbell

There is a lot of silliness in the Manosphere - wannabe-"Alphas" (aka scrawny midgets, terrified of girls, lifting weights and practicing martial arts while living in their parents' basements and jerking off to internet porn) who babble about "the Dark Triad" and the "social-sexual hierarchy." All of it boils down to three things: narcissism, hierarchies and the Machine State.

The commonly-accepted definition of an "Alpha" is an almost clinical definition of a narcissist - and he is an authority on nothing except pretending to be one on everything. The Dark Triad is about narcissism and psychopathy. The strict hierarchy of Alpha to Omega is also narcissistic - Alpha on top (supposedly idealized and admired) while the Omega is on bottom (devalued, despised, scapegoated).

Not surprisingly, mythologically (and therefore historically) narcissism, hierarchies and the Machine State belong to the Terrible Father.

I'll use the modern example of Darth Vader, who is these days the best-known Terrible Father. Vader was pretty much a psychopath - he murdered billions, and sometimes for insignificant reasons. He was into very strict hierarchies - the Emperor on top, him right underneath, and everyone else in the galaxy beneath him and worthy of torture and death if they annoyed him. He was also more machine than man.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell referred to Vader, quite correctly, as a "bureaucrat." He wrote this about him: "Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it?"

Notice he said that Vader was a bureaucrat, a machine, a robot - far less than a man. In literature this theme is called the Machine State. In the Machine State people are cogs and do not have to think. They have memorized other people's ideas and try to imitate them, just as those in the Manosphere memorize ideas and try to imitate others.

The opposite of the Machine State is the Natural State. That's when you start to see patriarchs such as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda and societies such as that of the Ewoks. They are societies that try to free themselves from narcissism, from strict hierarchies, from people being unthinking cogs in the Machine.

Those who believe in the Machine do so because it gives them purpose, importance and community in their lives, even if ultimately all of them are houses built on sand and will ultimately collapse. They most probably have never known the qualities of the Natural State: patriarchs/mentors, liberty, justice, bravery, prudence, self-control. (These are the Four Cardinal Virtues, about which Campbell wrote: "The first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage.")

When the ideas they cling to are criticized they respond with the four defenses: projection, denial, devaluation, rationalization.

So we have three things here: narcissism, hierarchy and the Machine State. When people truly believe in Alphas to Omegas the Dark Triad and the social-sexual hierarchies, they are looking to become a cog in the machine. Because once those concepts get in you head, and you truly believe in them, you'll find it hard to get away from them. Ultimately believers will start to lose their humanity: "What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his True Self?"

Narcissism, hierarchies and the Machine State are not about love. They're about power, and the intoxication that can come from it. They're about power, domination and control. As Carl Jung noticed, "You can have power, or love. You can't have both."

What I am seeing in these Manosphere concepts are initiation rites, ones that come far too late. Initiation rites are supposed to turn boys into men. But is initiating them into the concepts of the Terrible Father - all women are stupid whores, a real man is a narcissist/psychopath - really growing up?

Ideas are supposed to serve us and we are not supposed to become slaves to them, seeing them as the absolute truth. That is pure fanaticism.

Campbell had some things to say about that, too.

"Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?...[H]umanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine."

"Saruman, the evil wizard that enforces a machine-like order in his kingdom that eats all surrounding life, is another Terrible Father...[he] represents all those systems of knowledge that have become so rigid that they refuse to accept any deviance from the norm." - Vagrants Among Us

The Laws of Stupidity

The First Law of Stupidity is to blame all of your problems on someone else. This relieves you of any responsibility whatsoever for your life, and also makes the people you blame your problems on into permanent enemies. This is not a smart thing to do.

The Second Law of Stupidity is to never learn from your mistakes. The smartest people learn from other people’s mistakes, the second smartest learn from their own, and the dumbest don’t even learn from their own mistakes.

The Third Law of Stupidity is to talk or act without thinking. That is, be impulsive. It’s the same thing as being ruled by your more childish, indeed infantile, feelings.

The Fourth Law of Stupidity is to think that what you feel is what is right. One of the things it’s based on is arrogance, or what the Greeks called Hubris. It is followed by Nemesis.

The Fifth Law of Stupidity is not to know you are impulsive and instead believe you are rational and logical, even though you don’t know even one logical fallacy.

The Sixth Law of Stupidity is to not listen to good advice. This is related to the Second, Third and Fourth Laws of Stupidity. In fact, all the Laws of Stupidity are related to each other, and it’s probable that all Stupid People show all of them in one degree or another, even if they cannot articulate them.

The Seventh Law of Stupidity: you don’t know you’re stupid. In fact, you think you’re smart. Aristotle noticed this one when he wrote about ignorant people who didn’t know they were ignorant. That was perhaps 2500 years ago.

The Eighth Law of Stupidity: you can’t tell when someone is smarter than you and almost always think you’re smarter than they are. This is related to Scott’s Law: “The smart understand the stupid a lot better than the stupid understand the smart.”

The Ninth Law of Stupidity is that you can have a high IQ and still be stupid. These people have been referred to as “high-IQ idiots.”

The Tenth Law of Stupidity is: “The stupid are always really surprised when they end up in prison or when someone kills them.”

It’s a bit frightening to realize there are Ten Laws of Stupidity, just as there are Ten Commandments (although “Commandments” is the wrong word – Utterances, or Words, is correct).

Let's put all of this together into one sentence. Stupid people blame their problems on other people, they never learn from their mistakes, they think and act impulsively, they always think they’re right, they think they are logical and rational, they don’t know they’re stupid, they think they’re smarter than other people, they don’t listen to good advice, and they’re amazed when they get caught.

The Laws of Smartness, of course, are the exact opposite of the Laws of Stupidity

I am the Sorcerer, or, Every Picture Tells a Story

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” - Rudyard Kipling

"The purpose of art is to inform and delight." - Milton Glaser

I'm sure that when I was little I had looked at playing cards many times, but there came a day when I realized on those cards were pictures of a King, a Queen and a Jack. I remember thinking these cards must be very old to show such things. If the Jack represented the Prince, where was the Princess? And what was the Joker doing there?

Years later I found playing cards evolved from Tarot cards, which themselves were game cards, although they were (and are) used as a supposed oracle. (Personally, I see them more along the lines of psychological tests, such as the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test: how you interpret them tells you about yourself.)

Then I found that both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, those of such importance in mythological studies, had both been intrigued by Tarot cards and studied them. That puzzled me even further.

Then I found out why. What mattered to them were the pictures on the cards, which are archetypes. The cards are art that tell stories - as all art does. (In fact, when I first saw the cards, I thought, "These are archetypes," although only a few made sense to me. The Magician did not.)

For those who claim the cards have certain exact meanings, I remind them the root word of "education" is to "bring out." The art on the cards was originally meant to educate. The meaning of art on the cards is what I bring out of it.

Here is the Magician:

The articles on his table represent the social classes of that time: the Swords signify the nobility; the Cups, suggesting the chalice of the Catholic Mass, are for the clergy; the Coins, for the merchants, or "third estate", the townsmen, the burghers; while the Staves, Clubs, or Batons, stand for the "churls," the peasantry and servants.

These classes have been noticed in other cultures. In Indian philosophy there are the Priests/Intellectuals, the Warriors, the Merchants, and what you might call the Churls. Paul Fussell once wrote a book called Class, in which he analyzed the classes in America.

The Batons later turned into wands, which for those who wield them in fiction can be used for good or bad.

The Baton the Magician holds in his hand represents the stupid "churls," the lower-class violent ones who today become police officers or go into the military. That picture is telling us Magicians use the force of the police or military to subjugate the other classes.

To be specific about it, there are the Good Magicians and the Sorcerers. The Sorcerers are the one who use the "churls" to enforce their slavery on the other classes.

These days Sorcerers are called politicians.

They also use "spells," which essentially means to talk, or, today, to use propaganda. Those two things are the extent of the Sorcerer's power: the threat of violence from the police/military, and propaganda. Force and Fraud. That's it.

Dante, in his Inferno, well understood the concepts of Force and Fraud. He reserved the lower depths of Hell for those who perpetrated Fraud, which he thought was far worse than Force, because Fraud almost always came before Force.

Today, Fraud and Force are called the Political Means, the persuasion and liberty are called the Economic Means. Slavery versus Freedom.

We are today ruled by Sorcerers, who use Fraud and Force (propaganda and the police/military) in their attempts to enslave us.

Unfortunately, there are many people today who actually see the Fraud and Force of Sorcerers as a good thing, mostly because they don't think it will be applied to them. But it will.

Why are Sorcerers like this? Why else? The intoxication of power. Power, domination, control. Power intoxicates - and immunity corrupts. As Dostoevsky put it in The House of the Dead, "Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible." Like the Emperor in Star Wars and Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter.

The media is the propaganda arm of the Sorcerers, which is why I don't read newspaper or watch TV and listen to the news on the radio. It's best to stay away from those trying to cast spells on you.

How did these problems today come about? Mostly because of democracy. Under it, the churls, the lower classes, can vote themselves other people's money. And they are the ones the Sorcerers use to enforce violence.

As for the other classes, shame on them for their complacency and falling for propaganda.

People in the past were as smart as we are and in some cases smarter, because their brains weren't stuffed with college nonsense. They probably knew more about human nature than we do. The idea we have discovered something "new" about people is the depth of ignorance and arrogance.

Of course, the end result of the Sorcerer's Fraud and Force is some sort of collapse. How can it be any other way? Those who lust for political power always destroy. It's always happened in the past, without exception.

There is, of course, a card signifying Chaos and Destruction. It is related to the Devil, or mythologically the Terrible Father, such as Darth Vader.

"You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness." -C.S. Lewis

How to Deal with All Politicians

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a large, peaceful, free, very prosperous village. One day, a horde of quite brutal and even smellier barbarians rode into the village, stole some of the girls and gold, and otherwise made merry by murdering and pillaging and generally tearing down everything they could, then rode away.

The villagers fought back, only not that well, and did kill some of the barbarians, but lost more than they slew.

After the attack, battered and bruised and bleeding and wondering how to meet this new menace, the villagers held a meeting and asked for suggestions.

The Wise Old Man of the village, who was pretty smart, and had traveled far and wide, and thought a lot and learned much, made one suggestion: “We have to kill every one of them.”

A murmur ran though the villagers. “Many of us will die!” one cried.

“Indeed,” said the Wise Old Man. “But I will tell you what will happen if we don’t rub out all of them. Sooner or later, these barbarians will get tired of raiding us and losing their body parts. So what they will do is conquer us.”

The villagers fell silent, waiting.

“They’ll enslave everyone,” the Wise Old Man continued. “We’ll spend our lives working for them until we drop dead. They’ll rape our daughters, sometimes our sons, occasionally our dogs, and they’ll build castles with prisons and torture chambers. We’ll spend our lives being tortured and raped and impoverished.”

“How can you be so sure this will happen?” one villager asked.

“If you’ve been around as much as I have,” the Wise Old Man said ominously, “and seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t ask that question.”

“What will happen next?” another villager wondered.

“These thugs will set themselves up as royalty,” the Wise Old Man explained, “and we’ll be their slaves. They’ll tell us they are our protectors, as tyrants always do (as Plato and Aesop and Jesus noticed), but in reality they’re just cruel, blood-thirsty, power-mad tyrants. They’ll even tell us God put them in power.”

“Blasphemers!” blurted a villager.

“You got that right,” said the Wise Old Man wryly.

“It sounds just awful,” a villager said. “How long will it last?”

“Until we rise up,” said the Wise Old Man, “and vlad them on sharpened poles. If we don’t do that, our enslavement will last forever.”

“This is terrible!” chorused the villagers.

“It’s even worse than it sounds,” explained the Wise Old Man. “Someday, people will even rationalize their slavery as a good thing. The naïve ones will call it ‘patriotism’ and the big mouths that support our enslavers will be called ‘court intellectuals.’”

“You sure do know a lot,” said a villager admiringly.

“Someday,” the Wise Old Man said, “I’ll tell you about the difference between the Economic Means and the Political Means, or why the growth of ‘government’ always destroys the culture and the country and always leads to collapse. But what really works best is telling stories like what I’m doing now. Show, don’t tell, I always say.”

“What did you say these people call themselves?” a villager asked. “Royalty?”

“At first,” said the Wise Old Man, “but in the long run they’ll call themselves politicians.”

“What an awful name!” the villagers gasped in horror, some clapping their hands over their ears. Even some children started crying.

“The worst name there is,” the Wise Old Man said. “Mass murderers, warmongers, torturers, liars, thieves, counterfeiters, cowards, traitors, sex perverts – and they always claim they’re doing good things for us. What can possibly be worse than a politician?”

“Uh…” said the villagers. “Well, if you put it that way…nothing.”

So the villagers armed themselves, and practiced and practiced, and next time the barbarians rode into the village the villagers slew every one of them, losing many of their own in the fight. But they won.

So the village continued on, large and peaceful and prosperous, and every time a barbarian horde got it into their heads to raid the village, the people of the village, armed to the teeth, killed every one of them and put their heads on poles as a warning to other politicians.

And so the villagers lived peaceful and free and happy and rich forever after.

Immigrants Should Pay to Live Here

Two thousand years ago Roman citizenship was a prized thing. St. Paul once escaped a flogging because he was born with it. The official troubling St. Paul (who had put him in chains and was horrified to learn he had done it to a Roman citizen) said he had to buy his Roman citizenship – and it cost “a large sum.”

The United States should follow the lead of Rome and make immigrants purchase their citizenship. Because currently it’s free for immigrants to live here, getting citizenship means nothing to many of them.

When we let immigrants into this country for free they’re not going to appreciate the favor we’re doing them. Often they respond not with thankfulness but instead with ingratitude – witness that one particular march a few years ago in which millions of Mexicans paraded in the U.S. while waving Mexican flags.

One way around such problems is to reduce the number of immigrants and raise their quality by making them purchase American citizenship.

It’s been noticed for ages that when benefactors do favors for “disadvantaged” people they’re often met with ingratitude. It happens because when the more fortunate do favors for the less fortunate (and “fortunate” and “unfortunate” are not objective definitions but matters of opinion), they become the shocked targets of envy and hate.

Unfortunately, many immigrants don’t admire the U.S. and instead envy and hate it, so doing them favors by letting them in without paying any price and instead giving them gifts – welfare – isn’t going to eliminate that envy. These people, many of whom want to destroy this country, have to be kept out or else removed.

One reason they’re allowed in is out of guilt because they’re supposed to be Third Worlders “exploited” by the West. They envy us, so we feel guilty about it and try to expiate that guilt by letting them migrate into this country. Instead of the expected “thank you” from them the response instead is ingratitude.

“It is astounding that countless benefactors allow themselves to be persuaded over and over that ingratitude with the resulting hatred is a rare and special case,” writes Helmet Schoeck in his magisterial book, Envy.

The feds have done an awful job containing that envy. As far as I can tell, most bureaucrats and politicians don’t have the slightest clue what is happening. Their incompetence only illustrates Friedrich Hayek’s observation that in politics (and this includes bureaucracies), the worst get on top.

A lot of immigrants today resent the United States because they think they have been abused and exploited by the West – and therefore feel sorry for themselves – and are convinced we owe them debts that can never be repaid. It’s not a stretch at all to say they immensely enjoy their resentment and hate.

Nietzsche understood that ressentiment. In A Genealogy of Morals he wrote, “…the fundamental notion of moral ‘guilt’ has its origin in the material idea of ‘debt’…whose origins [are] thoroughly saturated with blood. The act of making another suffer by way of compensation for a debt unpaid seems to have produced the highest kind of pleasure, as if it were a kind of festival and to have ended in a kind of disinterested malignity.”

The more fortunate and successful are envied, on some level feel guilty about it, think they owe a debt, and so try to do favors for the less fortunate to cancel that debt, which backfires and often creates violence. You need look no further than the French Revolution, in which the envious mutilated and murdered (in that order) the upper classes.

We can fix the problem by making immigrants buy their American citizenship. If they want to move here they should have to pay us to obtain U.S. citizenship.

Immigrants should be required to have certain valuable skills to get into the U.S., pay a hefty fee to move here, learn the language and culture, and give up their own. That automatically reduces the pool of unqualified immigrants and makes sure only the most valuable get in.

If every country was to sell its citizenship, supply-and-demand would rapidly establish which countries were really worth emigrating into. Ideally, this is predicated on each country being free-market (and I cannot stress this enough) with no welfare for immigrants.

There is an additional benefit to making immigrants pay for their citizenship. Some American companies – and shame on them for their treason – are replacing highly-paid American workers with cheaper foreign workers, say, replacing American software developers with those from India.

Now, if those Indians (or their companies) had to pay $1,000,000 for those Indians to become citizens (or even work in America), the economics of importing those workers would change in an instant.

And who should the money be paid to? How about splitting it among the people of the community? The money shouldn't go to governments but the people, just as oil money in Alaska is split among the citizens (I know a woman there who gets a $2000 check every year).

Who does this country belong to? The people or the federal government and what I call Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations? Wouldn't it be a much better country if power was devolved to as local a level as possible?

As for open immigration being "economically efficient," how does flooding the U.S. with 85-IQ Africans (at best) and 87-IQ Mexicans contribute to economic efficiency? Without welfare they'd turn to crime...which a lot of them do anyway.

Multiculturalism – letting immigrant groups maintain separate identities and not assimilating – is cultural suicide. There has never been a case in the past in which it worked. It doesn’t work in the U.S. currently, and it’s not going to work, ever.

Kierkegaard regarded envy and stupidity as the two greatest forces in society. He looks to be right to me. I have found operating on his two observations makes it a lot easier to understand just how asinine government policy is in dealing with ethnic groups – or, as I call them, tribes.

Make American citizenship a prized, valuable thing again, and the immigrants chosen to live here will admire us and be thankful for it. These days, because of our open borders, the envious and hate-filled flooding into this country hold it in contempt and spurn American citizenship as worthless.

As for the "libertarians" who think everything should be open borders, they are clueless. If everything was private property, there would be no immigration at all, because no one is going to allow millions of people to walk across their property.

As for immigrants paying to cross, I want $50,000 per person. I can imagine some "libertarian" rationalizer saying someone is really going to stand outside all night with a flashlight and charge $5 when they find people crossing their property.

There is no way around it: if everything was private property there would be no immigration.

Why do libertarians stick to such irrational and unrealistic beliefs? Because they are ideologues in the Russell Kirk sense: they have found a simple-minded philosophy they think can be applied to everything, and so cannot give up their delusions because of the feeling of security it gives them.

The reason we do have so much illegal immigration is because the federal government tries to overrule the states, the counties, the cities, neighborhoods and people. The feds do it for corporations so they can have cheap labor.

In other words, clueless "libertarians" and "anarchists" in their delusions are supporting the federal government and big corporations!

Many times you can find the answer to modern problems by looking to the past.

"Alphas" Who Murder Children

I have pointed out before the Manosphere concept of "Alpha" makes very little sense. There are those who think it does, but they are the kind who memorize and imitate because they don't have the ability to analyze. This unfortunately includes almost everyone is the world.

Those who don't think as the True Believers do are invariably attacked as heretics and blasphemers poking holes into the True Believers' groovy little fantasy worlds. Their butthurt is immense, as always happens when people suffer the cognitive dissonance that comes when their religion is attacked. And religion is what give meaning, importance and community in their lives, even it is a house built on sand and will ultimately collapse.

For one thing, the concepts in our head are not reality; the merely "point to" reality. Philosophically, this is known as the problem of Concepts and their Referents. The map is not the terrain - and the better the maps are they better they work. Bad maps can lead you straight to Hell.

In other words, what does the concept "Alpha" refer to in reality?

The Manosphere concept of Alpha points to an almost clinical description of a narcissist, which is in no way a good thing. Mythologically, it points to the archetype of the Bad/Terrible Father.

I'll use the Star Wars films as an example.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell was the mentor of George Lucas, and many of Campbell's archetypes are used in the movies. Campbell was influenced by Carl Jung (I am oversimplifying here, because there are other mythologists that influenced both of them).

Darth Vader is the archetype of the Terrible Father. And what is one of the things he did (even as Anakin Skywalker)? He murdered children. This is one of the things the Terrible Father does, even if he pretends to be the Good Father. He murders children and is an oppressive and cruel man who denigrates and abuses men and women.

Think of George Bush, think of Barak Obama, think of any serial killer that wanders to and fro and up and down the world...all of them murderers of children, all of the politicians pretending to be Good Fathers and Patriarchs.

Another name for the Terrible Father is the Ogre. Many in the Manosphere delude themselves the Ogre is an Alpha, and they use the psychological defenses of projection, denial and rationalize to prove this to themselves. (I have been told - and I kid you not - the two brothers who murdered people, including children, in the Boston bombing were "Alphas." I have been told such things more than once.)

Standing in opposition to the Ogre is the Good Father - the Patriarch. This would be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Mythologically they generally are Kings.

For every good in the world, there is a bad. The "Good Father" wouldn't be called "good" if there wasn't the Terrible Father standing in opposition to him.

The Good Father is the authority figure representing law and order. He is masculine and confident, a teacher and mentor of the young, a provider and a protector. And is not "provider and protector" a two-word description of a Patriarch?

Speaking of authority, a follower (let's say a disciple) has to willingly submit. If they are forced to submit, that is the force and fraud of the Terrible Father.

Luke Skywalker is the archetype of the Prince. The Prince is the youth and the seeker. He is the Hero on a Quest. Campbell wrote this about the Quest: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

The Prince is the budding patriarch and king, unless he gets distracted and lost.

If he gets distracted and lost, he turns into the Wanderer.

The Wanderer is different from the Prince because he could be him but is not. He shuns the commitment and responsibility of the journey; therefore, he does not realize his full potential and cannot become the prince until he does so. He is often the semi-evil but sometimes good-looking and charming villain.

In Star Wars Han Solo was the Wanderer - charming, good-looking, a killer and a smuggler. But when he got involved with a Princess, he changed, and got back on track. Logically, he would have become the King and Leia the Queen, and Luke would have become the new Patriarch of the Jedis.

The Wanderer, in the Manosphere, can be split into two aspects. One is the Cad, and the other is the "Men Going Their Own Way" types. Both are irresponsible and the Cad is certainly a liar and a villain, no matter how charming and charismatic he may be.

The more naive in the Manosphere confuse the true confidence of the Patriarch/Protector with the superficial charm and superficial confidence of the Coward/Cad, which is easily crushed in adversity.

Neither the Cad nor the MGTOW have grown up. The Cad, no matter how old he gets, is still immature and a Cad. One of the things he wanders to and from is women - from one to the other. The "Men Going Their Own Way" reject being a Patriarch (I understand why, considering what many women have turned into. More on that in a minute.)

We also have the archetype of the Warrior.

The Warrior is bold and daring. He is successful, ambitious, strong, brave, and relentless. Often the prince and the warrior are one and the same.

The bad aspect of the Warrior is the Dictator. That is what Darth Vader turned into. The Dictator is aggressive and blinded by his own ambition and ego. His emotions are severely repressed and neglected - which is why Vader said the good in him was gone, even though it wasn't. The Dictator is bureaucratic and and machine-like, which is why Vader is more machine than man.

There is also the archetype of the Priest. The Priest is wise and knowledgeable and able to commune with the gods and spirits. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda fit that archetype, along with those of the Warrior and the Patriarch. This is why they had such a profound effect on people.

The opposite of the Priest is the Black Magician. This one fits the Emperor. The Black Magician at first appears to use his power for good, but is revealed to be evil and a trickster. Which is exactly what the Emperor was - an Evil Trickster.

Now we move to the Mother archetypes.

There is the Terrible Mother archetype. This one did not exist in Star Wars, but the Terrible Mother exists today as feminism. The Terrible Mother wants to possess and smother, devour and destroy. She is angry, jealous and envious, enslaving her husband, lovers, and children.

The Good Mother is protective and maternal, and loves and nurtures her children. This is what many men today look for, but often cannot find. Why?

Because many woman have turned into...

.... Huntresses.

The Huntress may be successful in her career but this is due to the fact that she hounds and despises men. Sound familiar?

The opposite of the Huntress is the Amazon, who is the successful career woman who is perfectly able to compete with men.

We also have the Princess, which is what Princess Leia was (she was also the archetype of the Damsel in Distress). The Princess is an eternally youthful child-woman and a flirt. She has the power to attract people - and people are attracted to her. She is the one who turns into the Good Mother, or the Queen.

The opposite of the Princess is The Fatal Siren. The Siren is the bad girl. She is not at all interested in marriage, home, or family. She has quite another agenda; she is a home wrecker and is many men's erotic fantasy. Her mission is to steal the Prince away from the Princess.

Then we have the Priestess, which unfortunately does not exist in Star Wars. The Priestess is filled with intuition and instinct. She can speak to and interpret the will of the gods and spirits. She interprets signs and omens and is at peace within herself.

The opposite of the Priestess is the Witch. The Witch (or Sorceress) is in touch with the gods or spirits, but she is trapped in her own world using her power for evil. She symbolizes the negative aspects of womanhood.

The problem with feminism is that it creates women who are Huntresses, Witches, Sirens and Terrible Mothers, ones who hound and despise men, who are not interested in marriage, home and family, and who want to possess and smother, devour and destroy, because she is angry and jealous/envious and want to enslave her husband, lovers, and children.

Very few are the Princess turning into the Good Mothers.

There is nothing in the Manosphere that hasn't been noticed in the past, by far better thinkers than the ones today. Better than that, there has been has hundreds if not thousands of years of experience to determine what works and what does not. This is why all these archetypes have survived, which the concepts of Alpha to Omega and the Dark Triad will not. Those are the concepts of the rigid hierarchies and bureaucracies of the machine-like Dictator.

With those incipient hierarchies of the Manosphere, this means there will be leaders who pretend to be pro-liberty (as the Emperor pretended to be) but ultimately are only interested in power and domination and control - this why they support the narcissistic concepts of the Alpha and the Dark Triad, without understanding in the slightest what these concepts are in reality as opposed to their masturbatory fantasies.

Only the case of the leaders - who pretend to be Priest-Kings but are the opposite - they try to use propaganda, because they cannot use force. But they can use fraud and lies, even though they don't know they are fraud and lies. They think it's the truth.

Some in the Manosphere, in their ignorance and arrogance (a short definition of Hubris) think the non-existent "Alpha" defines both the Good Father and the Bad Father. It doesn't, because those concepts oppose each other. You can't be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader at the same time. That's why the word "Alpha" is worthless, just as the words "sexism" and "racism" are worthless.

When people have a private language and bizarre concepts, that is a sign of a religious cult. And a cult, by definition, is not about freedom. It's about telling you what to think.

How to Prevent Youself from Being Brainwashed

Since it is the nature of people to understand stories more easily than most anything else, I will tell one. Let's call it a fairytale.

Once upon a time, not so long ago and not so far away, there was a large, prosperous village than unfortunately had an idiot for a king. Unfortunately, his advisors were idiots, too.

Down the road a bit was another village, one that was tiny and poor and not a threat at all to our large, prosperous village. Somehow, the Idiot King, along with his idiot advisors, got it in their heads the poor, tiny village had a insane homicidal maniac for a king. Along with that, many of the people in the village were also supposed to be insane homicidal maniacs.

"They are evil and are going to attack us for our goodness," exclaimed the Idiot King. "We have to attack them first in self-defense. How do we get the public to march off to war?"

"We will use propaganda," said one of his idiot advisors. "The techniques have been around for a long time and even an idiot could use them."

"Really?" asked the Idiot King, who was generally quite incurious about most everything. "Then it should be easy for us."

"There are four main techniques for successful propaganda," his advisor explained. "First, we have to stress emotion over logic, but convince people they are being logical."

"Works for me," said the Idiot King.

"Then," the advisor continued, "we have to demonize the enemy, but convince people the enemy really is evil."

"That's because they are!" frowned the Idiot King.

"Third," said the advisor, "tell people that by destroying the enemy the world will be safer, and will lead to a better world for us and them."

"It certainly will!" exclaimed the Idiot King joyfully.

"Fourth," the advisor continued, "idealize yourself, your country, your government, your military. By idealizing yourself and devaluing the enemy they can be transformed into evil monsters attacking us for our goodness."

"The things you can learn just by listening," the Idiot King said admiringly.

So the Idiot King and his idiot advisors told the people of the village (many of whom were idiots themselves) that the tiny poor village down the road was inhabited by monsters!! Evil, insane homicidal monsters who would go to any extreme to attack our large prosperous village and destroy it.

So of course many of the people of our large prosperous village grabbed their pitchforks and clubs and axes and marched down the road, attacked the poor tiny village, killed the King and many of the inhabitants.

Many of the inhabitants of the poor tiny village fled into woods, and when they caught one of the invaders of their village they killed him.

"This is really surprising," commented the Idiot King, puzzled. "I thought they would welcome us as liberators, throwing flowers at us and maybe even the women showing us their boobs."

"You'd think so," said his advisors, just as puzzled.

One of the inhabitants of our large prosperous village was a four-year-child who had no home so he slept with the village dogs to keep warm. Though this child was poor and homeless, an idiot this child was not.

"If the Idiot King has asked me," the child told his dogs, who listened attentively, "I could have told him his attack wouldn't work. For one thing, you can conquer a country on horseback, but you have to dismount to rule."

His dogs nodded their approval.

"If people weren't sleep-walkers," the child said to the dogs, who looked impressed, "they'd never believe anything their government says."

"Uh huh," chorused the dogs.

The child thought for a while, then said, "If people want to prevent being brainwashed and falling for propaganda, perhaps they should use logic over hysterical emotion. Perhaps knowing some logical fallacies might help."

"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc," said one of the dogs.

"'Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one.'" said the child. "You must analyze the situation and discover what the true causes are."

"Yep," commented a dog.

"Perhaps," the child said pensively, "we should never allow ourselves to demonize anyone. There is no one in the world who is pure good or pure evil. Unfortunately, in politics, everything is with good or evil, with no shades of grey."

The dogs smirked, knowing they were better than humans in that way.

"And never believe in Utopia," the child said thoughtfully. "It's always based on the belief in getting rid of those evil people. 'The butcher is held in great esteem in Harmony,' I read somewhere."

The dogs listened in awe.

"Never idealize your government, your country, or your military," pondered the child. "All such idealizations are hubris, and hubris is always followed by nemesis—destruction."

"Pride goes before destruction," one of the dogs added. "And a haughty spirit before a fall. That's in the Bible somewhere."

"Someday people will smirk at people who in the past believed in witches, monsters, dragons, and so on," the child finished. "But they'll be no different than we are, because, if brainwashing and propaganda can be defined in one sentence, it's convincing people monsters are attacking our village, so we have to kill them."

"You're pretty smart for a human," one dog said.

"Like anyone's going to listen to a four-year-old child," the child observed.

"Or a dog, for that matter," said one of the dogs sadly.

Hubris and Obscenity - "Your King and Your God!"

""In ancient Greece, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser. The term had a strong sexual connotation, and the shame reflected on the perpetrator as well." - Wikipedia

Richard Weaver once pointed out the original sense of the word “obscenity” meant something that “should be enacted off-strange, because it is unfit for public exhibition.” He wrote, “they included intense suffering and humiliation, which the Greeks, with habitual perspicacity and humanity, banned from the theater."

The Greeks definition of obscenity also fits in with their definition of Hubris. For all practical purposes, they are the same thing. Hubris is the goddess of “arrogance, moral blindness, insolence, wanton violence.” It’s followed by Nemesis, the goddess of fate and retribution.

The original meaning of Hubris was to humiliate or shame someone. The worst way to do it was in public. It was considered so offensive it was deemed obscene, which is why it was banned from the stage True obscenity, then, is degrading, humiliating or shaming someone in public.

Shaming, humiliating and degrading someone, especially in public, is followed by revenge -- which, in a word, is Nemesis.

The psychiatrist James Gilligan, who spent some 35 years interviewing inmates imprisoned for murder and brutal assaults, when he asked them why they committed their crimes, always heard the same answer: “He dissed me” or the prisoner’s wife, girlfriend, children, parents, friends.

One day he realized what he was hearing over and over was the story of Cain and Abel: feelings of humiliation followed by revenge. The shortest and most accurate definition of revenge I’ve heard is the attempt to replace shame with pride.

The Greeks not only considered Hubris the worst crime; they considered it the only crime, since it is the basis of all other crimes. At one crime Christianity understood this: scholars placed Pride (another name for Hubris) ahead of all other sins and made it the only true crime, the mother and father of all others.

When it comes to those who run the State - corporations, “government” and banks -- they can never seem to figure out that shaming, humiliating, abusing and exploiting other countries leads to blowback against the United States. That was what 9-11 was – revenge against the U.S. because of its 60 years of supporting oppressive regimes in the Middle East. It wasn’t, as the terminally confused George Bush believed, because they were the Evil Ones attacking us for our goodness.

When it comes to history there is only one story, always repeated: the attempt of the State to expand its power until it absorbs everything -- and the people who have captured the State mostly do it because of their lust for money, but always operate under the guise of humanitarianism. This expansion invariably means people suffering and being humiliated in public. Then, always, comes revenge.

In other words, the expansion of government always results in the expansion of obscenity – shaming, humiliating, abusing and exploiting people, both abroad and at home. Unfortunately, the “modern” minds of many do not understand common-sense concepts noticed thousands of years ago, in more cultures than one.

The expansion of the government of the U.S. has also included imposing by law the leftist tenets of feminism on men. It had overwhelmingly included attempts to shame, degrade and humiliate men. Feminism, is based on hubris, and is obscene in its current form. And what is the blowback?

The Manosphere. Much of it is the attempt to achieve justice, but some of it is pure revenge, such as degrading women as gold-digging loveless, rationalizing whores only interested in "hypergamy" and "Alpha Fux and Beta Bux." This is pure revenge on women created by shamed and humiliated men.

The narcissistic attempts at grandiosity with such deluded concepts as "Alpha" also create more problems. The concepts of Alpha to Omega create a rigid, cult-like hierarchy, and for those who perceive the problems with these concepts there will be attempts to shame and humiliate them by called them Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Omegas. It's human nature to do this, but it does not mean it is a good thing. On the contrary, it is a childish thing.

Those who claim they are Alphas and Sigmas are doing so out of our archaic grandiosity, which means it is a primitive attempt to cover up their shamed and humiliated selves with grandiosity. This grandiosity has always been called Hubris/Pride, and is always unstable and easily destroyed.

I am reminded of the scene is 300 where Xerxes calls himself "your king and your god" and who wants to be worshiped, but when his face is cut by a spear, there is a stunned look on his face - "I am not a god!" (Notice Xerxes does not move as the spear heads toward him: he believes he is immune.)

An Omega seeks to become an Alpha by worshiping and imitating said self-claimed Alpha.

Be an Alpha and you will be a king and a god, wealthy and worshiped by men and women. That's what the accepted definition tells you.

But then you have this:

The Alpha realizes Alphas don't exist when he confronts a man who would never use such silly concepts.

These scenes are extreme but can be applied to everyone in a lesser form.

Rodrigo Santoro, who played Xerxes, said this is say about him: "He's rich, he's arrogant, he's a very unstable megalomaniac. He just wants to conquer the world. His ambition is unlimited. He wants glory; he wants victory; he wants eternal fame. Underneath all that wanting, though, he's ultimately weak and very insecure."

It's why I point out there is a world of difference between a true man - a patriarch who applies the Four Cardinal Virtues of Courage, Prudence, Justice and Self-Control (Leonidis) and the weakness and braggadocio of the "Alpha" Xerxes.

Those scenes show a chasm of difference between the true confidence and bravery of King Leonidis and the narcissistic and easily-demolished, superficial charm and "bravery" of Xerxes.

That, too, is an eternal story.

"... all men make mistakes. But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride." - Sophocles

The Purpose of the State is to Turn You into a Machine

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere,

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity." - William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming."

A few months before I turned 12, I read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. I was never the same. Since at that age I was very susceptible to science-fiction, the novel had a profound effect on my 11-year-old sensibilities (you should have seen what Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Fighting Man of Mars did to me – I read it at least 20 times within two years).

It wasn’t until college that I was taught about one of the main themes in the novel – the Machine State versus the Natural State. The Morlocks represented the Machine State and the Eloi the Natural State. You can see the same theme in Star Wars, where Darth Vader (who is half machine) and the Storm Troopers (who are identical interchangeable cogs) represent the Machine State and the Ewoks represent the Natural State.

The Machine State is supposed to represent evil and got its start during the Industrial Revolution, mostly because of the horrid conditions imposed on factory workers in England by law by the owners (the government even took the workers’ land from them in the Clearances, to force them into the cities to work in the factories). The ghastly conditions in these places are why William Blake referred to them as “dark Satanic mills.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with machines. They’re amoral, neither good nor bad, and can be used for both. All they do is amplify our natural abilities, which is why there exists Cooper’s Law: “All machines are amplifiers.”

However, since machines can be used for horrendous evil – depleted uranium, cluster bombs – writers often concentrate on the bad instead of the good. These days, writers have gone beyond seeing the use of machines as bad things and are now concentrating on people being turned into machines, i.e., Darth Vader and the Borg.

It wasn’t until that particular English class in college that I was also taught the Wells portrayed the Morlocks as what the English working classes would evolve into, and the Eloi, what the English upper classes would turn into.In other words, what the poor and the rich would evolve into.

If you apply some free market political and economic theory to Wells’ contention, you’ll find the Morlocks and the Eloi are what happens to those who use what Albert Jay Nock in Our Enemy the State called the Political Means of force and fraud instead of the Economic Means of persuasion and political and economic liberty.

The Political Means are what produces the Morlocks and the Eloi. Or, to use some of the terms of the more Machiavellian of political scientists, the Masses and the Elites. Or, to use some older definitions, the Sheep and the Wolves. Only now, you might call them, paraphrasing James Burnham, the Machines and the Managers (as he wrote about his influential book, The Managerial Revolution, "I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitative society - which I call 'managerial society' - is not only possible but is a more probable outcome of the present than socialism....").

The evolution Wells wrote about will never happen, but I certainly understand his point, and like all good artists he was, as Ezra Pound wrote, an antenna of the human race. He looked at what he saw in his time and extrapolated into the future. For that matter, if you want to understand the future, look to the past. The farther you can see into the past, the farther you can see into the future.

History is in fact the same old tired story over and over – the Machine keeps growing and growing, just like the Borg, until it takes over everything. Why? “Why do you resist us?” complains the Borg Queen. “We only want to improve the quality of your lives.”

As both Aesop and Jesus noticed, all tyrants call themselves benefactors.

Since Wells’ time, the idea of the Machine State has evolved. The most famous archetype of the Machine State is Darth Vader. Later it was the Borg from Star Trek. Vader was a fun villain at first (the first time I saw Star Wars, everyone hissed at him) but the Borg were never fun. And they were far more frightening than Vader or anything else in Star Wars.

In all the cases above, what we’re dealing with is the idea of the State trying to turn everyone into a machine. It’s not as outlandish as it sounds.

“G.I.” means “government issue” and soldiers are expendable cogs. The military tries to turn them into – what else? – “killing machines.” They even use drugs to achieve this goal. The perfect soldier would be what the Greeks called Myrmidons – ant-soldiers.

Soldiers aren’t even supposed to be conscious. Smedley Butler, author of War Is a Racket, said that when he was a Marine, he never had a thought in his head.

And, not surprisingly, the members of the Borg (all of whom were kidnapped) have little self-consciousness – it’s why they make such good warrior-ants.

Parenthetically, in the movie Starship Troopers, I couldn’t figure out whose side I was on. The Bugs represented a very regimented Machine State, but then, so did the humans with their “soft fascism” (some of the people in the theater were yelling, “Kill Doogie Howser!”). It was the same as wondering if you should support the Nazis or Communists in World War II.

Leftists of whatever kind see the public merely as checkers to be moved around as they see fit. The public isn’t exactly human to them, and if you’re not human then you can certainly be considered a machine.

And isn’t the purpose of public schools to turn graduates into working and consuming machines? John Taylor Gatto has documented that extensively in his book, The Underground History of American Education.

Under political and economic liberty, people fall into their natural roles. Under the heel of the State, they are things, cogs in a machine, and are expendable. This is why in the 20th Century up to 200 million people died in State-created wars.

One of the things leftism is dedicated to – indeed one of its main characteristics – is to make people exactly equal. Of course, if people are exactly equal – an impossibility – then they are as interchangeable as parts in a machine.

The human race has only two alternatives: the State, or liberty. The Political Means or the Economic Means. Force and fraud or persuasion. Checkers or people.

As Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his book, Adventures of Ideas, about the difference between persuasion and force: "The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force . . . . Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals . . . .

"Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of these two forms: force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign offorce."

As things stand now in the United States, one percent of the people own 40% of the wealth. This did not happen through the free market. It happened by that one percent using the power of the State to appropriate the wealth of the other 99 percent.

You might consider that one percent to be the Eloi and the other 99 percent to be the Morlocks. At least that’s the way things are headed. If the Elites (I use that term neutrally) had their way, the Masses would be working ten to twelve hours a day and be living in North Korean cinderblock apartments and living on oatmeal and potatoes.

In Wells’ novel, the Morlocks turned the tables and used the Eloi as food, just as hundreds of thousands of years before the English upper classes had used the power of the State to feed off of the working classes.

Poetic justice, you might say.

States never last. They self-destruct. As I write this, local and state governments are going bankrupt. No wonder, either.

When things start to collapse, I expect to see some revenge from the proto-Morlocks against their oppressors. Wells certainly predicted that.

Revenge against oppressors is, after all, a natural thing.

Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis

“The fear of humiliation appears to be one of the most powerful motivators in individual and collective human behavior.” ~ Donald Klein

There is no light on human nature more pitiless and perceptive and accurate than mythology. Through hundreds if not thousands of years all the dross was burned away, leaving some very acute observations about human nature.

Unfortunately mythology is not taught in schools or the churches or by parents. Too bad, since there is wisdom in the stories, wisdom that doesn’t exist at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, places that produce “the Best and Brightest” now busy destroying the United States.

The ancient Greeks outlined this sequence: Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis. They argued about what exactly each word meant. Scholars still argue today.

I’ve heard Koros described as a kind of greed -- and had those ancient Greeks been Christian, they would have called it one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I’ve also heard Koros described as what happens to people of unsound character when they gain great wealth and power (meaning, more than anything else, political power, which ultimately is the power to “legally” kill people).

Examples (which are another name for stories) work best. I consider George Bush, who started two unnecessary wars, to have an unsound character. An ex-alcoholic who was never treated for it (which makes him a dry drunk), who is apparently brain-damaged by that alcoholism, with rumors of past heavy cocaine use, who never had a legitimate private-sector job in his life, who was (is?) on psychiatric medication, who believes he is a Christian who is “saved”…and he became President.

I think the same about Barak Obama, a Communist who is busy trying to impose his catastrophic vision on the United States. I consider him a half-breed continuation of Bush, only worse.

To use just our last three Presidents (Obama, Bush and Clinton) as examples, they are portraits of what Friedrich Hayek meant when he wrote his famous article, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” It’s also why the Founding Fathers were opposed to the leftist delusion of “democracy” – again, the worst get on top.

A man or woman, a weakling of unstable character, who gains great wealth and political power, then next suffers from Hubris -- another name for the towering, grandiose Pride that afflicted Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Hubris is arrogance, moral blindness, wanton violence, which creates in the afflicted the ability to cruelly and brutally humiliate people without any qualms – the way Herod and Caligula did. They always rationalize as a necessary thing how even the innocent suffer terribly, which is why there exists the ironic observation (which both Jesus and Aesop noticed) that all tyrants call themselves benefactors.

The Greeks, with their usual intelligence and perspicacity, banned representations of brutal public humiliation from their theater as obscene – and the original definition of obscene meant something that should not be shown in public.

Not so surprisingly, the root words of “obscene” and “humiliation” both mean “dirt” – to treat someone as dirt. Humiliation also means “to mortify,” which means to “make dead,” not necessarily physically dead, but worse, dead in psyche, as in the walking dead – zombie or vampire, which is how those whose souls have been murdered by vicious humiliations describe themselves.

I am reminded of the sociologist C. Wright Mills when he wrote about what he called “crackpot realists” -- fools who are convinced they know what they are doing but don’t, and instead destroy in their attempts to save. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and currently Van Jones) are fine specimens of that.

Seeing wrong as right is Ate -- madness. When a politician starts unnecessary wars in which they become even richer (again, the greed of Koros), in which tens of thousands of innocent people are killed and many more impoverished, and the instigators claim they had the “time of their lives” (as both Bush and Clinton said), that is Ate.

Bush was far more arrogant than Clinton or Obama (he was, after all, referred to as Smirk). The more arrogance one shows, the more it is covering up feelings of humiliation. As the psychiatrist James Gilligan so perceptively wrote, “The most dangerous men in the world are the ones who are afraid they are wimps.”

It has been noticed for many years by many people that bullies cover up their cowardice with braggadocio – arrogance on top hiding their feelings of humiliation. When such people gain political power millions can die because of their attempts to replace shame with pride (Hitler had one testicle, Stalin had badly pocked skin, fused toes on one foot and a withered arm, and LBJ escalated in Vietnam because he was afraid his critics would consider him “chicken” if he didn’t).

Now we come to Nemesis. Nemesis is the goddess of fate and retribution. You can use many other names: revenge, vengeance and retaliation, payback…perhaps even justice. (As an aside, the Greeks called justice Dike, and it exists because of the criminal acts created by Hubris.)

I find it significant that Nemesis means “fate.” That means cause-and-effect, although I believe it is more accurate to define it as a cybernetic system, specifically a positive feedback system: humiliation leads to revenge, then those who are the objects of revenge seek revenge in turn, and so in, an escalating spiral of death and destruction.

Humiliation doesn’t always have to lead to revenge, if the object of humiliation can maintain his or her innocence, as in such stories as “Cinderella” and the first Harry Potter novel (in both cases they are stories that illustrate the saying, “Living well is the best revenge”).

But when it comes to groups of people – ethnic groups, religions, nations – immunity to feelings of humiliation can never be maintained and revenge will always happen. Mobs cannot think, only feel; they never follow principles, only leaders, and they always fall for propaganda that portrays them as innocent victims and their attackers as evil, subhuman monsters bent on death and destruction.

Osama bin Laden said the Islamic countries in the Middle East had been humiliated by the U.S. for 80 years, and that the revenge of 9-11 was “a copy” of what the U.S. had done. Then the U.S. sought revenge for the humiliation of 9-11, and now those the American government is killing in Iraq and Afghanistan are getting their revenge by killing our soldiers in return. Those who are blinded by political fanaticism cannot see this (because they perceive all political problems as Good versus Evil), and as long as they are deluded, they never will be able to see the truth of things.

In a nutshell, when you brutally humiliate people and make them suffer cruelly, and don’t even know you’re doing it, and instead of relieving their suffering you see it as something good and necessary, you’re going to be pretty damned surprised when the people you are oppressing and exploiting and killing rise up and kill you back. You’ll be outraged and consider it ingratitude; they’ll consider it justice.

When unsound people (meaning about 98% of all politicians) get political power, they always seek to expand it. This is why the State throughout history has always expanded its power, always at the expense of people and society.

There have been quite a few people throughout history (Marcus Aurelius for one) who have been able to handle political power. Unfortunately, Clinton, Bush and now Obama don’t belong to that admirable group. Those who consciously seek political power are avaricious, self-deluded weaklings and can never handle it properly. As Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I prefer the sayings, “Power intoxicates and immunity corrupts,” and “Power is the horse that evil rides.”

As Dostoevsky put it in The House of the Dead, "Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible."

The opposite of Hubris is humility, or what the Greeks called Sophrosyne. It can be described as “Nothing in excess” and “Know thyself,” meaning having a clear understanding of your character, your strengths and limitations. It means treating people with respect, not brutalizing and humiliating them, and when it comes to relations with other countries, to, as our Founding Fathers advised, trade with them but otherwise leave them alone.

Unfortunately, if you flunk history (which so far has always happened), you have to go through the whole mess again. The U.S., which has the whole of history before it, is ignoring all its successful lessons and is instead repeating all its failures.

I Was Wrong, and Boy Was It Big Time

I am not a professional statistician, but an amateur one. I had estimated that if GDP (and therefore wages) had gone up as they should have from the middle 1950's, the average salary would be in-between $90,000 and $100,000 a year. Economists, professional and amateur, have estimated the same thing.

However, two economists, John Dawson of Appalachian State University and John Seater of North Carolina State, went back to the 1940's and extrapolated from that time, and estimated that without the government interference we have suffered from since then, the average yearly income would be $330,000 a year.

Yes. $330,000 a year. Hard to believe, isn't it? Almost sounds like someone made a very bad mistake. There was a mistake, all right: it's called the State.

Specifically, Dawson and Seater went back to 1949, removed all the ridiculous and indeed crushing federal regulations, and took it from there.

They noted federal regulations have increased six-fold since 1949. They estimated that annual output in 2005 (almost eight years ago), "is 28 percent of what it would have been had regulation remained at its 1949 level."

"If regulation had remained at the same level as in 1949, current GDP would have been $53.9 trillion instead of $15.1 in 2011. In other words, current U.S. GDP in 2011 was $38.8 trillion less than it might have been," writes Reason magazine.

"An average household income of $330,000 per year would buy a lot in the way of health care, schooling, art, housing, environmental protection, and other amenities," the article concludes.

How did this catastrophe happen?

Personally, I agree with philosopher Sheldon Wolin's theory of Inverted Totalitarianism.

From the article at Wikipedia:

"According to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism.

1. "Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered 'normal' rather than corruption.

2. "While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.

3. "While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world. Wolin writes,

'Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.'"

Looks like St. Paul was onto something: "The lust [not love] for money is the root of all evil."

In a sentence, rule by a combination of State and Corporations. Mussolini wrote something very enlightening about that unholy marriage: he called it Fascism, which he said should really be called Corporatism.

What we have now in the United States could be considered a soft fascist/socialist state.

Perhaps none of this would have happened if the South had been able to pull away and the U.S. had not turned into a Superpower - the only one in the world. (By the way, it doesn't mean I am a supporter of the South; it just means we wouldn't have the Leviathan we have today.)

Corporations are creations of the State (I call them Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations). They have the legal status of persons, and that is not a good thing.

The Founding Fathers understood what corporations are, and looked at them with a jaundiced eye. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

He also wrote, "I swear upon the altar of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

"Tyranny over the mind of man" is today called propaganda, the worst purveyors of it being the media (which for all practical purposes is an arm of the government.) Being that is it, I do not read newspapers, very few magazines - and I do not watch the news.

It was in fact a corporation that caused the Revolutionary War. The war was not started by by taxes; it came about because the biggest Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporation of that time - the East India Company - was given a tax rebate of millions of pounds by the Crown to drive out of business its small American competitors. That's what brought about the Boston Tea Party.

It'd be the same thing today if Wal-Mart or McDonald's started WWIII to make a few more dollars.

The fault ultimately lies with democracy, which the Founding Fathers despised. We're the ones who voted these narcissists/psychopaths into office because to their ability to charm and manipulate the stupid, ignorant masses. These manipulative, lying people are only interested in power, domination and control.

There were a few in the past wanted what he have today. Alexander Hamilton, for one (it's why we should celebrate Aaron Burr Day). Abraham Lincoln, for another (it's why we should also have a John Wilkes Booth Day). Both were corporate fascists who wanted impose exactly what we have.

Our current system is unstable. Unlike those who think it's purposely designed to drive us mad, I don't. But unwittingly, that's what it's now doing to some people. So they drop out to keep their sanity - and their freedom.

Of course, as has happened every time in the past, none of this will last. The U.S. will collapse economically. The country will survive; the government will not.

I don't see that, in the long run, as a bad thing. I see it as a very good thing, considering that most people are pretty much indentured servants. I hope when things sort themselves out, and economic and political freedom are established, we can look forward to that over $300,000 a year for workers.

Early American Coins Were Stamped "Mind Your Business"

Early American coins had "Mind You Business" stamped on them. I'd like to see it stamped on them again.

Starting when I was about 12 years old I noticed that people who stuck their noses into other people's business were always self-righteous about it, that is, they always thought they were right. I also found that if you stood up to them they always backed down.

That realization came about, at the age, because of some fights I saw in middle school. Some cocky, grinning (and stupid) kid would pick on and attempt to beat up what he thought was a weak, defenseless kid. I saw twice where the bullies were savagely beaten and the fight ended in about five seconds - once by a kid who appeared to be a mutant, with thick glasses that made his eyes fuzzy looking, with grey skin, open mouth, hunched over, with mousy hair. And I saw him try to rip the kid's face off.

In each case the bully collapsed and started begging for mercy - in five seconds. At the beginning they had been self-righteous and held their opponent in contempt. The tables were turned within seconds.

All bullies, underneath, are cowards. I took that lesson to heart, and have applied it ever since.

I am not the kind to bother anyone unless they bother me. Now if they do bother me, they are shocked at my response.

Some years ago I lived in an apartment complex that, although pretty nice, had some people (who tended to move out rapidly) who were always asking for money, cigarettes or rides. The first time they asked I politely told them I never gave any of those things to people.

They never listened. The second time I told them, "We're not going to play this game. I told you once already I don't give anybody anything, and if you ever ask me for anything ever again there will be big trouble." In every case they looked stunned, backed down and never asked me again.

In each case they tried to be a bit of a bully ("Hey, you got a cigarette? You got two dollahs?") and because I knew that I also knew they'd immediately back down if confronted.

Why are some people like this? It's because of our inborn narcissism. Everybody - and I do mean everybody - has both a grandiose and devalued self. Healthy people can combine them. Not-so-healthy people cannot: to them it's either grandiosity ("Gimme a cigarette. Gimme two dollahs") or devaluation ("I'm sorry! I won't ask you anymore!")

In that same complex there was a woman who used to peek out her drapes to see what was going on. Once my dog was pottying about 50 feet from her door, when she opened the door, came out and asked me if I was going to clean it up, and also said, "You haven't cleaned it up before." What was she doing? Secretly following me around and being the Dog Poop Police?

It doesn't matter to me if they are a man or woman, if they stick their nose into my business. I informed her she was a scrawny dried-spinster and if she ever came out of her apartment and stuck her nose into my business again she was going to regret it.

She looked stunned, was speechless, went inside, and never did that to me again. In fact, she never looked at me again, although she complained to some other men in the complex, who did nothing because they understood what she was.

They were no more White Knights than I was.

She had probably never had a man speak like that to her before. However, if she wanted to be self-righteous and stick her nose into what was none of her business, she should have understand that someday it would backfire on her.

When people stick their noses into other peoples' business they always think they are making things betters. It doesn't work. And if they gain political power - uh oh. It's why there exists that old observation, "All tyrants call themselves benefactors."

It's also why there exists the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Their "good" is not to make your life better. It's to make them feel better, no matter what the effect on you.

The Average Wage Should be $90,000 a Year

Wages stopped going up in 1973. Yes, that's right - '73. If you want to know what month, it was January, which means they almost stopped going up in '72. Had they continued to go up as they should have, the average wage would be about $90,000 a year.

So what happened?

First, immigration policies were liberalized in 1965, allowing tens of millions of 85 IQ immigrants into the U.S. This did not add productive capacity to the country; it damaged it. Severely. Many of these immigrants went straight onto welfare. They still do. In fact, the government encourages them to do so.

Contrary to the delusions of pseudo-libertarians, open borders are not free market. The only reason our borders are so porous is because large corporations (which I call Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations) want cheap labor. The behemoth known as the federal government is trying to overrule the desires of the states, counties, cities, neighborhoods and people.

Second, Richard Nixon went off of the gold standard in 1971, allowing the thoroughly unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank to inflate without any brakes, since the paper dollar was completely unhooked from gold. Since the creation of that bank, the dollar has lost about 98% of its value.

The Federal Reserve Bank is not federal, had no reserves, and is not a bank. It is a legal counterfeiter that has seized control of our money supply, allowing it to print money to its heart's content.

The Constitution clearly states only gold and silver can be money. For that matter, it forbids "Bills of Credit" (another name for "paper money").

Contrary to the delusions of the half-educated and quarter-witted, the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.

Things didn't get all that bad with inflation until Alan Greenspan (whom I've heard described as the "biggest asshole in the universe") became head of the Fed and spent 20 years destroying the dollar. Bernanke, another high-IQ idiot, is completing the task.

One of the things inflation does is transfer money from everyone to the wealthy, since the wealthy get the inflated money first and can buy everything first. Those who get the money last can't buy much of anything, except maybe potatoes and rice.

I've heard the super-rich referred to as the "extractive elites" and that's exactly what they are. Today they are commonly referred to as the 1% that exploits the 99%. It's an oversimplification, but not that much.

When these extractive elites are not punished, as they are not being punished today, that is a sign the country is on its way to collapse.

Another thing that happened about 1974 is the oil crisis, caused by the oil nations in the Mideast conspiring against us for supporting Israel.

Unbelievable. We cut our throats supporting a country that slaughtered our sailors during its attack on the Liberty, then refused to admit it, although they paid a pittance to their victims.

As an aside, the traitor father of the traitor John McCain helped to cover up that attack.

Since those days, we have sent trillions of dollars to our enemies in the Mideast for their oil. That money should have stayed here and added to our productive capacity, resulting in higher wages.

There is also a huge problem with Affirmative Action, which means "White Men Need Not Apply." To give on example (out of, say, millions) I knew a guy who loved the law and wanted to teach it. The dean told him not to bother since he was white and stood no chance of ever teaching the law in a university. I can, of course, tell other personal stories about the same phenomena.

I've personally seen several incompetent women promoted into positions for which they were unqualified. So have my friends.

Back in the '50s the annual growth rate was about 4% a year. Now we are down to an anemic 2.25%, and possibly even less than that, since the government lies about everything. This loss of productivity is due to government crushing the economy with inflation, regulations, destructive laws, etc.

When men aren't making the money they deserve, families will suffer.

Marriage rates, which obviously are a indicator of the formation of families, has fallen to an all-time low. The U.S. leads the world in divorce, and about a third of all children live in a home without a father. Many people who would like to get married and have children are not able to get the kinds of jobs that they need to support a family.

Had we maintained a '50s growth rate of 4% that alone would have made the average salary about $90,000 year. Take away the rest of the crushing burdens, and I've seen some economists estimate it would be about $100,000 a year.

We've also sent trillions of dollars to our enemies in China, hollowing out our industry. Those who think this is a good thing do not understand basic economics.

What all of this means is that if someone cannot make a decent living these days, it is not their fault, no matter what the chattering classes say. Certainly many intelligent people can make a good living -- those with IQs of about 120, which is less than ten percent of the population.

The average IQ is 100. People with such IQs aren't even going to be high school graduates. They are going to be janitors with welfare benefits.

I've known intelligent, educated men who have said, "The hell with this." They see no reason to work their butts off and get very little for it. I know some who have become security guards so they can go to work, come home, do what they want, and not have to worry about working 50 hours a week.

I've know others who made good money, worked ten hours a day, with a two-hour round trip - and said the hell with that, too. So they got lower-paying jobs with no stress.

I believe some sort of collapse is not all that far away. All you have to do is look what is happening with those in this country who have reverted to barbarism.

This is not the same country it used to be. Not even close.

Bill Bryson has written a book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, about his growing up in Des Moines, Iowa during the '50s. I didn't recognize the country he wrote about. It didn't merely sound wonderful -- it was wonderful. And, again, this was when the growth rate was 4%.

Bryson ended the book with these lines: "What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid."

For that matter, think about what California was during the early '60s. Annette and Frankie and and beach parties, followed by the Beach Boys and their hot rods. The state used to be the American Dream.

Now it's the American nightmare, swollen with Third World immigrants. Everyone who can afford it is leaving the state. And we've got Paris Hilton and Britney Spears instead of Frankie and Annette.

This downhill slide cannot continue. There will be an economic collapse, as has always happened in the past. The only question is when.

As economist Joseph E. Stiglitz explained:

"The top one percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top one percent eventually do learn. Too late."

"My Name is Legion" And It's a Great Thing If You Can Get Over That

I've always had a semi-fascination with words since I was four years old. One of my earliest and most-vivid memories is being slightly less than five years old (I do know I was not in kindergarten) and writing in a little notebook with a pencil my parents had given me.

The problem is that I did not know how to write, so I just scribbled. Later, I asked my father if any of those scribbles looked like words. He said one looked like "deer," or perhaps "dear." Either way, I was in awe. I had made a word!

Later, I became interested in the roots of words, and how one word was related to another.

So imagine how impressed I was when I found that the words "holy," "whole," "healthy," and "hale" all came from the same root word.

It means that when you are healthy, you are whole and happy.

At the opposite end you have words made from the root "di," such as "divide," "disease" (dis-ease), "diabolical," and "devil."

When you're healthy you're happy and whole, and when you are not you are diseased (lack of ease), and divided within yourself. If this lack of wholeness becomes profound, then you can become diabolical...devilish.

This dis-ease that can become diabolical has been noticed for a long time. I like to use this: "Then Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' 'My name is Legion,' he replied, 'for we are many.'"

A Roman legion at that time was 6000 men (sometimes "Mob" is used instead of "Legion." I prefer "Mob" myself).

Either way, it points out that when you have splits within your personality, then you have problems. The more split you are inside, the worse the problems.

And that brings me, at long last, to the concept of narcissism.

A narcissist is someone who is split inside. The best researchers can describe it is that the self of a narcissist is like a bunch of islands in a sea: none are connected, and each self does not know about the other.

This is why someone at the outer limits of splitting, say a psychopath, can murder someone, mutilate them, have sex with the corpse (which is what many serial killers do), then sit down to eat dinner with their family as if nothing happened. The self that committed the horrors is not connected to the self eating dinner.

Scary, huh? You bet.

The least split are narcissists. The more split are borderlines, and the worst are the psychopaths. The worst of psychopaths are so shattered and lacking in "selves" that researchers have often described as them a mask with nothing behind it.

All of this is why I smile and shake my head when someone deludes themselves when they defend the Dark Triad as a good thing. They have no idea what they are doing.

I'll quote from Wikipedia (which actually got it right):

"The Dark Triad is a group of three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, all of which are interpersonally aversive.

"The narcissistic personality (in the clinical sense) is characterized by a grandiose self-view, a sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, and egotism. Some theories, such as those of Heinz Kohut, associate it with the protection of a radically weak, shamed, or damaged self.

"The Machiavellian personality is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, with a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and deception.

"The psychopathic personality is characterized by impulsive thrill-seeking, and in its 'primary' form by selfishness, callousness, lack of personal affect, superficial charm, and remorselessness."

Let's shorten that s a bit: when someone defends the Dark Triad they are saying splitting and being diseased and unhappy is really the same thing as being whole, healthy and happy.

This is right out of Orwell: Sickness is Health and Happiness.

What Kohut said about "the protection of a radically weak, shamed,or damaged self"? The narcissist covers up that self with arrogance and braggadocio - a "grandiose self." It's why there exists the old observation that bullies are cowards - their fragile grandiose self is easily destroyed, exposing their weak, damaged self.

The opposite of that narcissistic fragmentation is being whole, i.e. all your selves are connected and aware of each other. Then you can be on your way to be whole, healthy and happy.

The two men who studied narcissism most extensively in the 20th Century were Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. Kohut spoke of a "positive" [healthy] narcissism"; however, it has its critics.

Again, from Wikipedia (and again, they got it right):

"Neville Symington challenged Kohut's belief in positive narcissism, arguing that 'we do not get positive narcissism without self-hatred.' He concluded that 'Kohut does not seem to be aware of this because he defines narcissism without this inner negative critic. I think this is why in some recent literature a distinction is made between negative narcissism and positive narcissism. As I said earlier, I do not think they ever exist dissociated from one another.'

"However he conceded that it 'may be just a semantic issue, in that someone talking of positive narcissism, for instance, may be talking about self-esteem or self-confidence....it makes some sort of sense to talk of 'healthy selfishness'. On the other hand, it is meaningless to talk about healthy self-centeredness...a tremendous confusion of tongues.'"

You can look at it as a continuum from wholeness to complete fragmentation - health and happiness as opposed to the worst disease ever. Every religion, in its good aspects, has completely opposed this narcissism and fragmentation, knowing what leads to - death and destruction for the narcissist and the innocent who are his victims. That's why the Greeks called it Hubris followed by Nemesis and in the Bible it reads, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

Another Biblical saying I like to use is this one: "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" The correct translation of "soul" is "true self."

My opinion is that when one speaks of a "healthy narcissism" they are just adding to the confusion. In the past it has always been called "self-esteem" or most especially confidence. You can call it your True Self.

The word confidence is why I believe the Four Cardinal Virtues (at least 2200 years old) are the best way to get "self-esteem." Confidence (bravery, fortitude or perseverance), Prudence (choosing the best path out of many), Self-Control (not being impulsive) and Justice (giving everyone their just due) is the way to true self-esteem or true self-regard.

The narcissists and the psychopaths are lacking in Bravery, Justice, Self-Control and Prudence. The worst of psychopaths have none at all.

The worst thing you can be is fragmented in your self - a narcissist, a borderline, a psychopath. That's when your name is Legion...or Mob.

In a Nutshell

"...for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” - (I John 4:1)

Here are my conclusions, presented in as a short a form as I as I find possible.

The accepted definition of an Alpha is an almost clinical description of a narcissist/psychopath. Whoever came up with it is projecting his own desires to be worshiped - and be god-like.

The word "alpha" came from the study of wolves and means the parent couple that bred. The pack usually consisted of that couple and their offspring. Transfer that to humans and you get a patriarch and his family.

The commonly-accepted definition of an Alpha (narcissist/psychopath) has traditionally been known as a cad (I like the word "knave" myself), who is a man who lies to woman and tries to manipulate them so he can have sex with as many as possible.

The most well-known bloggers who truly believe in Alphas to Omegas and in the "social-sexual hierarchy" do not have children and families. One well-known blogger is married (or so he says), has no children, has left the United States for Italy, but seems to think he is qualified to speak on relationships in the U.S.

The reason this definition arose is because feminism is about abusing and degrading men and little else. This definition allows men to get away from women, become immune to their abuse, and degrade them so they can no longer be a threat to a man's self-esteem.

Those who are patriarchal try to live their lives according to the Four Cardinal Virtues of Courage (perseverance, fortitude), Justice (giving each his due), Prudence (choosing the best path among many) and Self-Control (not being impulsive). To be more precise, they try to follow all Seven Virtues, with the last three being, Faith, Hope, and Charity (or Love).

To achieve a patriarchal culture it is necessary to women to go along with it. It is in their best interest to do so, because women destroy everything in which they are involved, if too many women are involved.

Alphas/Cads/Narcissists lead their lives the opposite of the patriarchal: they exhibit the Seven Cardinal Sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. They lack courage, justice, prudence and self-control.

The Alpha/Narcissist/Cad fears he is cowardly and wimpy, is extraordinary sensitive to criticism (because it damages his weak, fragile self) and fears terribly being humiliated, so he disguises it with braggadocio. (I'll quote James Gilligan, who made the comment, "The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps.”)

It is patriarchy that advances society and gives men and women the best possible life.

It is the Alpha/Narcissist/Cad who destroys and makes society go backward.

There are those who confuse true confidence in yourself (fortitude and perseverance) with the superficial, manipulative, false charm and false confidence of the conscienceless, loveless Alpha/Narcissist/Cad.

The Greeks believed you achieved eudaimonia (flourishing/well-being) in life through arete, or excellence. You get that excellence through the application of the Seven Cardinal Virtues ("virtue" means "the powers of man"). You do not get it through living a life based on the Seven Cardinal Sins (and "sin" means "missing the mark").

Of course it not either a Cad or a Patriarch. It is a continuum. The more toward the Dark Side, the more everything goes backward. The more toward the Light Side, the better everything gets.