"The Dunning-Kruger Effect"

I've met several people who suffered from the Dunning-Kruger effect. When that person has some authority over others, the problems can be catastrophic. I knew one guy who had it, as did his boss. So the boss could not see how awful this guy was. It took seven years to get rid of him. In the meantime people were suing the place, sabotaging things and walking off, and quitting and taking business with them.

This is from the site The Rawness. (If you want to watch the videos, click on the link.)

"There is a human nature phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect that is discussed and written about quite often these days. To summarize it crudely, it says that incompetent and unqualified people are too incompetent and unqualified to realize just how incompetent and unqualified they are.

"The cognitive defects that keep the incompetent from being competent and skilled also work to keep them from recognizing their incompetence and lack of skill. Additionally, it also keeps them from properly assessing the competence and skills of their parties.

"The blog 'You Are Not So Smart' gave a pretty good summary of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Some highlights:

“‘In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.' - Bertrand Russell

"…The less you know about a subject, the less you believe there is to know in total. Only once you have some experience do you start to recognize the breadth and depth you have yet to plunder…

"Justin Kruger and David Dunning pinpointed the effect in experiments at Cornell around 1999. They had students take grammar and logic tests and then report how well they thought they had scored.

"It’s important to note here, not all people couldn’t predict their skill level. Some people knew they sucked at humor, and they were right.

"The results of the study show all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes people who are really good at something are well aware and can accurately predict their scores, but not always.

"Overall, the study showed people are not very good at estimating their own competence…

"It breaks down like this:

"The more skilled you are, the more practice you’ve put in, the more experience you have, the better you can compare yourself to others. As you strive to improve, you begin to better understand where you need work. You start to see the complexity and nuance; you discover masters of your craft and compare yourself to them and see where you are lacking.

"On the other hand, the less skilled you are, the less practice you’ve put in and the fewer experiences you have, the worse you are at comparing yourself to others on certain tasks. Your peers don’t call you out because they know as much as you do, or they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Your narrow advantage over novices leads you to think you are the shit.

“'Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.' - Charles Darwin

"Whether it’s playing guitar or writing short stories or telling jokes or taking photos (or writing blog posts) – whatever – amateurs are far more likely to think they are experts than actual experts are.

"Education is as much about learning what you don’t know as it is about adding to what you do.

"The blog elaborates further:

"As someone moves from novice to amateur to expert to master, the lines between each stage are difficult to recognize. The farther ahead you get, the longer it takes to progress.

"Yet, the time it takes to go from novice to amateur feels rapid, and that’s where the Dunning-Kruger Effect strikes. You think the same amount of practice will move you from amateur to expert, but it won’t.

"Anyone who has played a role-playing game is familiar with this sort of progression. If there are 100 possible levels of advancement, the first 20 will fly by – but the time to go from levels 50 and 51 may be longer than all the time spent so far.

"The Wikipedia entry on Dunning-Kruger Effect says:

"Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

"tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
"fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
"fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
"recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

"This blog also discusses D-K Effect:

"Effectively, this is a strange behaviour where the incompetent do not realize their own incompetence, due to their incompetence. They never recognize they’re doing anything wrong, indeed they outright lack the ability to even reach such a conclusion. Thus, they think they’re doing fine, nay, fantastic, and as such develop a hugely inflated opinion of themselves.

"To put it more crudely, people who are dumb are often too dumb to realize they’re dumb.

"But also important is what the D-K Effect says about competent people:

"The inverse of this is also true.

"The competent do not realize their own competence, because they are competent. They see greater skill in others, recognize their own failures and mistakes, and thus try to improve. Inevitably they do improve, becoming much, much better than where they used to be.

"But the competent (usually) never realize it. They get better, yes, but they still think themselves the abject incompetent failure they used to be. They still make mistakes, they still see others better than they.

"The incompetent unskilled develop massively inflated opinions of their own ability, whereas the competent skilled vastly and consistently underestimate themselves.

"The 'seeing great skill in others' part is an important factor here. As the original study by Dunning and Kruger states:

"[Competent] participants appear to have fallen prey to a false-consensus effect…Simply put, these participants assumed that because they performed so well, their peers must have performed well likewise…

"It thus appears that extremely competent individuals suffer a burden as well. Although they perform competently, they fail to realize their proficiency is not necessarily shared by their peers.

"So while the smart people were guilty to some degree of underestimating their own competency, they were significantly more guilty of overestimating their competition. Because they found the challenges to be easy, they mistakenly assumed everyone else did to a degree as well. They projected their competency levels onto others.

"Incompetent people seem more guilty of overestimating their skill level, while competent people seem more guilty of overestimating the skill level of others.

"There was a so-called 'refutation' of Dunning-Kruger by some scientists named Burson, Larrick and Klayman. On the blog 'Overcoming Bias', Robin Hanson made a post dedicated to the refutation and quoted a passage from the Burson paper as evidence that the Dunning-Kruger Effect was in fact invalid.

"The Burson study that challenged Dunning-Kruger found that on easy tasks, the most competent performers were also the most accurate at assessing their own performance. However, with difficult tasks, the worst, least competent performers were the most accurate as assessing their own performance.

"After Hanson made his post at 'Overcoming Bias", whenever a blog or online article discussed Dunning-Kruger, someone would pop up in the comments saying 'Nuh UHHHHH!! Dunning-Kruger is WRONG WRONG WRONG!' And link to Hanson’s post. If you read the comments to the You Are Not So Smart link above for example, you’ll see the same thing happen there.

"However I don’t think this is necessarily a refutation of Dunning-Kruger if you stop and think about it and try to reconcile both findings instead of just trying to side with a winner. Rather, it’s more of a clarification or fine-tuning than an outright refutation. If you think about it, both studies can very well be right, which I believe is the case.

"When a task is very, very easy, smart people are less likely to have self-doubt about their performance. For example, if you were given a test with simple arithmetic problems like 10+10, even the most humble smart person is going to assume he rocked the test. Because the test is so easy, everyone taking it will rate themselves as performing positively, and the smart people are more likely to be the ones who turn out to be correct about their own performance.

"On the other hand, if you give a test in advanced nuclear physics, even the most delusional dumb person is going to have to admit to himself that he knew absolutely nothing. Because this test is so difficult, everyone will rate themselves as performing negatively, and the incompetent people are more likely to be correct about their own performance.

"All the Burson study shows is that the area of expertise has to be one that is easy enough to grasp that the dumb person thinks he has a chance of excelling at it, but complex enough that a smart person believes he may still have more to learn about it.

"The Burson paper really just shows that when extremes in difficulty are involved, like extremely easy challenges and extremely difficult challenges, the Dunning-Kruger effect doesn’t hold up so well. It has to be an area of expertise easy enough for the simpleton to think he has a shot but complex enough for the smart person to still have room for self-doubt. We’ll call these areas of expertise 'grey areas.' Using this criteria, I think the grey areas where the D-K effect still apply make up 80-90% of challenges we come across in our daily lives, including social dynamics, emotional maturity, psychology and human nature, things this blog specializes in. So expect to see a lot of D-K effect being discussed here soon.

"More observations about Dunning-Kruger: even in the aforementioned 'grey areas,' there are exceptions. Although the incompetent tend to overrate how good they are, if they are unskilled to a shockingly extreme degree, they may end up reaching a level of incompetence where even they can’t deny how unskilled they are. Like the person who goes out multiple times a week to bars and clubs for decades but has never gotten a phone number or a makeout and is still a 40 year old virgin. With such an objectively rockbottom track record in the dating field, even he can’t fall victim to delusions caused by the D-K effect, even though dating is one of those 'grey areas' where reasonable people can differ about how good they are. Take into account also the guy who for decades gets a one night stand almost every single time he goes out, by 9s and 10s to boot. No matter how humble or open-minded to improvement he is, it’s impossible for him to not realize that he is among the best of the best.

"Dunning, Kruger, and others responded to their critics in a follow-up study, which shed even more light on the phenomenon. There were some interesting findings in the follow up study.

"First, the follow-up study suggests an additional reason for the D-K effect in incompetent people:

"One could argue that a goal to preserve a positive, if not accurate, view of the self may be particularly strong among those who have performed poorly precisely because these are the individuals who might suffer the most from admitting the reality of their poor performance. Those who score very well, in contrast, would have considerably less motivation to glorify the quality of their performance. Indeed, they may be motivated instead to be overly modest about their achievement.

"If this is the case, what appears to be an inability to assess the quality of one’s performance on the part of the unskilled might actually be an unwillingness to do so accurately, in that the unskilled prefer to report a rosy view of their performance.

"This touches on something we’ve discussed on the blog previously. Because the incompetent may have deep, underlying fears of being inferior, this need to desperately believe they are actually far better than average is created and manifests itself in what Alfred Adler called the superiority complex, which I discuss in the post 'Theaters of Operation.' So the obnoxious overcompensation arising from superiority complexes may be partially responsible for the D-K effect.

"The follow-up paper also notes that while the incompetent and competent both are guilty of initially misjudging their own competence in comparison to others, there’s a big difference: when smart people get feedback about how they actually did in comparison to others, they become more accurate in future self-assessments. Incompetent people on the other hand, even when getting consistent, repeated feedback about how badly they’re doing, still fail to recognize their incompetence and remain overly confident in predicting future performance:

"Part of why the dramatic overestimation demonstrated by poor performers is so fascinating is precisely because they show dramatic overconfidence on tasks about which they have likely received substantial feedback in the past…It seems that poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve. Hacker, Bol, Horgan, and Rakow (2000) provided direct evidence for this failure to learn from feedback when they tracked students during a semester-long class. As time went on, good students became more accurate in predicting how they would do on future exams. The poorest performers did not—showing no recognition, despite clear and repeated feedback, that they were doing badly. As a consequence, they continued to provide overly optimistic predictions about how well they would do in future tests.

"I feel this is a variation of the Sunk Cost Trap. The more heavily invested you are in something, even if it’s something intangible like a belief in one’s own superiority, the harder it is to cut your losses and let it go, even if its doing you more harm than good. Since these people have invested so much of their self-image into this delusional superiority, they will stick to their guns no matter how much contradicting feedback they get. They’ve reached the point where relinquishing those longtime delusions and facing the truth about themselves would be too crushing to their ego to bear.

"I think this is why so many people have to hit rockbottom before they can come to terms with their shortcomings and admit to themselves that the way they’ve done things their whole lives isn’t actually working. Only such extreme, undeniable feedback can shock them to their senses."

Oh, This is Funny

This is from Stefan Molyneux:

"Young women milking their sexual appeal don’t like to see functional or happy nuclear families, because it reminds them that they are using their sexuality in the wrong way. A young woman’s sexuality is designed to evoke a commitment from a quality man, not just feed her own vanity. Also, seeing a functional family reminds her that time is always running out, and that every day that she spends using her sexuality for vanity, rather than commitment, it fades and falls and loses value. This creates deep anxiety in the young woman, which would be enormously healthy, because it would provoke a change towards maturity and responsibility, but what is sometimes called “cultural Marxism” in society is little more than a bunch of predatory artists and academics being paid by women to avoid provoking rational anxiety about squandering their sexual value on alpha orgasms, man candy estrogen status, and narcissistic selfie vanity."

I'm not even going to make any comments on this.

"Being Ignored Is Worse Than Being Bullied: Ostracism Is More Psychologically Damaging"

I have found that women prefer working for men instead of women. I have found that out myself, when women have protested to other women they'd rather be trained by me.

I've also found several attractive women in their 50s tell me they were the objects of dislike and envy from less attractive women, even if younger.

As always, folk tales and mythology popped to mind. The Evil Queen in "Sleeping Beauty," who is eaten alive by envy of a young, more attractive women. The abuse that Cinderella had to suffer at the hands of the envious, hateful, greedy women in the house.

I have found women are in general far more envious than men, and that it usually has to do with being younger/more attractive. That's one of the reasons women don't mentor each other but men do.

I have also found women are overwhelmingly incompetent in management. Some of the jobs to which they are assigned, such as HR, are worthless.

This article if from the Mail Online and was written by Victoria Woollaston

Researchers found feeling excluded leads to greater job dissatisfaction Being ostracised can lead to health problems and cause people to quit This dissatisfaction is higher than in people who are harassed or bullied The results comes from a series of surveys by a Canadian university

"The famous quote claims the only thing in life worse than being talked about, is not being talked about - and a new study may have proved this to be the case.

"Being ignored at work has been found to be worse for a person’s health than people who are harassed or bullied.

"Researchers found that while most consider ostracism less harmful than bullying, feeling excluded is significantly more likely to lead job dissatisfaction, quitting and health problems.

"Researchers from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business found feeling excluded in the workplace leads to greater job dissatisfaction, health problems and causes more people to quit their job, compared to those who are harassed and bullied.

"‘We've been taught that ignoring someone is socially preferable - if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all,’ said University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business Professor Sandra Robinson, who co-authored the study.

"The researchers used a series of surveys into bullying, as well as employment studies, to make their findings.

"‘But ostracism actually leads people to feel more helpless, like they're not worthy of any attention at all.’

"The researchers used a series of surveys for their study.

"Firstly, they determined that people consistently rate workplace ostracism as less socially inappropriate, less psychologically harmful and less likely to be prohibited than workplace harassment.

"Additional surveys revealed people who claimed to have experienced ostracism were significantly more likely to report a degraded sense of workplace belonging and commitment, a stronger intention to quit their job, and a larger proportion of health problems.

"The researchers also took an employment survey, taken by a Canadian university, which included feedback on feelings of workplace isolation and harassment and compared it to turnover rates three years after the survey was conducted.

"This found that people who reported feeling ostracized were significantly more likely to have quit.

"‘There is a tremendous effort underway to counter bullying in workplaces and schools, which is definitely important. But abuse is not always obvious,’ continued Robinson.

"‘There are many people who feel quietly victimised in their daily lives, and most of our current strategies for dealing with workplace injustice don't give them a voice.’

MORE THAN HALF OF WOMEN ARE BULLIED AT WORK, CLAIMS STUDY

"More than half of women are bullied or harassed at work – often by members of their own sex, a major poll has revealed.

"Based on interviews with nearly 23,000 women and more than 2,000 men, the survey is the largest of its kind in the UK.

"It revealed that the biggest enemy facing women in the office or other workplace is often other women, rather than their male colleagues.

Women who had been bullied by a member of their own sex said they felt they may have been targeted because their senior colleague felt threatened by their abilities."

"The World After the West"

This article is from The American Thinker and was written by Nicholaas de Jong.

I am not PC. The West was founded because of three main things - whites, Christianity and freedom - and when those things go, the West is gone. The rest of the world will collapse to the state where it belongs.

"These days, there seems to exist a fairly large consensus among intellectuals of all persuasions and fields of interest concerning the economic future of the world. The West will further decline in economic weight, and its political and military leverage will decline accordingly. The future belongs to the emerging markets, the BRICS, or, in short, to the 'rest' that was left behind when the industrial revolution took off in Europe and the United States. This vision of the future fits in perfectly with a growing body of historical literature pointing out that the rise of the West was largely accidental, and was mainly due to the convenient location of natural resources which were discovered at the right time, and other economic coincidences of the sort. The twenty-first century, so it seems, will witness the reestablishment of traditional economic relationships in the world, namely, the return of the hegemony of the great Asian powers, China and India.

"In fact, such analyses and the predictions that follow from them are deeply flawed. They are one of the many products of the grave lack of any sense of history or culture among many Westerners, intellectuals and the educated middle class alike.

"To be sure, it is very probable -- indeed, almost inevitable -- that the West is in economic decline, and that our civilization will be dealing with serious social and cultural disruptions in the coming century. The West is collapsing under its own contradictions, under a lack of any moral vision or self-confidence, and the steady growth of government power accompanying this moral default. The truth in the common prediction is that the West will recede economically to the position it occupied in the world before the nineteenth century; but that is about all. This does not tell us anything about the condition of and further developments in the non-West; indeed, too often analysts assume without further investigation that the non-West will be able to carry on the economic, scientific and technological development that characterized the West in the past two centuries. However, all the historical and cultural indicators at our disposal suggest otherwise.

"Very common in the fashionable view of the rise of the West is the assumption that this phenomenon was largely coincidental, and that other cultures can achieve the same results if only they benefit from the right stimulants. This view reflects the traditional uncertainty about the reasons for their own success that has often bothered Westerners, and this uncertainty is not a unique attribute of the postmodern age. For instance, in the imperial era, Western success was explained in terms of unclear concepts such as respect for tradition and authority, cultural pride, and the work ethic -- and among the most desperate segments of public opinion, by stating that the white race was inherently superior to all others. All these explanations, including the modern one, miss the crucial point. The main reason for Western success was the Western philosophical paradigm, namely the combination of individualism and rationalism (meaning the application of the law of causality to the outside world). The basis of the value-adding capitalist economic system is the unhindered use by the individual of his own mind, and no other foundations will carry this system. If the West can be expected to decline drastically in the coming centuries, this decline will be due to the forces that are working against the mentality that made it great.

"From this misunderstanding of the reasons for Western success and decline follows an exaggerated confidence in the potential of other cultures. We believe that all that is needed to achieve economic success is hard work and discipline like the Chinese are capable of, and that it is just a matter of time before the emerging economies overtake us, since all they have to do is basically to copy Western methods and technology -- in short, the useful parts of Western modernity that suit their immediate purposes. The success of emerging economies until now seems to validate this view. The paradox here is that, having lived in a Western-dominated world for so long, we no longer understand how fundamentally other cultures differ from ours, and assume without questioning that people in different cultures basically share our set of mind.

"There is no doubt that the impact of Western modernism has been deeply felt all over the world, and has led to the disruption of traditional ways of life, to destabilization and cultural anxiety. But this does not necessarily mean that the world has learned the vital cultural lessons from the West. Mostly, modernism poses a question to these cultures that they cannot answer, and they remain caught in a state of limbo between the futility of returning to traditional cultural modes and resentment of Western influence. In most non-Western countries, modernity and its attributes, like the free market and application of technology, are merely a superstructure, and the Western mentality -- individualism and rationalism -- is wholly absent. The attributes of Western culture that most visibly contributed to its success are merely adapted by these cultures in order to catch up with the West, not because they understand the inherent virtues or principles underlying them. Of course, the most familiar example of this adaptation of the attributes of Western culture without taking over its essence, lies in the intellectual sphere: in all the anti-Western ideological movements, from anti-colonialism to the current multiculturalism in all its varieties. All these movements have only one goal: to promote the interests of the non-West against the West, and in the case of multiculturalism, to carve out a sphere of power and influence for the ethnic minorities in European countries. This goal does not come as a surprise to the historian, because it the goal all peoples and cultures have tried a achieve throughout history; but these movements cloak their ultimate objectives in Western language of human rights and freedom of self-determination. The problem is not so much that these groups behave the way they do, but that Westerners do not understand how history and culture work, and consequently are totally fooled by the verbiage with which anti-Western movements surround their craving for power -- and in many cases, for the destruction of the West itself.

"It is also useful to note that the decline of the West -- especially Europe -- after the Second World War has often been misrepresented in the common historical narrative. In fact, this process did not so much constitute decline as voluntary abdication of power (as the West also did in relations with the Soviet Union). For a long time, the West reigned supreme in the economic sphere, and if it had wished to do so, could have asserted its dominance over the rest of the world politically as it had done in the past; the only thing lacking was moral self-confidence. Such events in postwar history as decolonization, the defeat of the Western powers in Egypt and Algeria, and the oil crisis of 1973 gave the impression that the West was in decline and that the future indisputably belonged to the non-West. In a way, this was an illusion: the West had just retreated out of moral weakness, but not because much constructive work was actually going on in the non-West. Nonetheless, this evolution engendered a kind of unmerited euphoria and even arrogance in other cultures, which is bound to meet with disappointment in the future.

"So the question is: what will remain of the legacy of the West, when the West has collapsed and is no longer a rival for other cultures? Will economic growth and innovation be sustained, or will the rest of the world simply relapse in its old homeostatic condition, lacking the mentality that must underlie the capitalist economy? Of course, it is not wholly unimaginable that the struggle of some non-Western cultures with modernity will give birth to a new civilization that integrates vital components of the Western mentality, but the birth of a new civilization is a process that takes centuries, not some decades of cultural exchange, as many analysts nonchalantly assume. But there is no reason at all to take it for granted that the accomplishments of the West will live on in any recognizable form. If we want to catch a glimpse of what the future will look like, we should look at the condition of the world before the Western ascendancy. And this return of history will be a lot more serious and unsettling than most Westerners can foresee, stuck as they are in the sociological and cultural categories of postwar democracy and the postmodern consumer society."

"The Most Dangerous Idea In The World: Women Have Agency"

"Women are...childish, foolish, and short-sighted—in a word, are big children all their lives." - Schopenhauer

I've pointed out before that I had two women, in the same year, tell that men were responsible for all the problems in the world. Both were making about $40,000 a year and one had a make-work job given to her by a man.

In other words, both were claiming they were victims. Many women have a tendency to blame their problems on men. What are they - children or adults?

Men throughout history have claimed women are essentially children. I wonder. Perhaps, as a group, they are. Individuals can be adult, but as a group...I have my doubts.

This article in from The Black Pill and was on November 9, 2013.

"While liberals, conservatives, and many other groups have different ideas, one thing they will agree on is that women have no agency. Here is a sampling of answers you would get if you asked members of various groups if women have agency (and they answered honestly).

"Liberals: No, anything bad a woman does is the fault of the patriarchy and sexism. The world is ruled by misogynistic conservative men, and women have no power. Anything good that happens to women is the result of 'benevolent sexism' which women have no control over. Women are forced into becoming housewives and mothers they do not want to be.

"Conservatives: No, anything bad a woman does is the fault of liberals and feminists tricking them. Women don’t even have agency when it comes to abortions which are the result of trickery by men. Women are forced into jobs and careers they do not want.

"White (Vagina Worshiping) Nationalists: No, anything bad a woman does is the result of the Jews and minorities tricking them into feminism and multiculturalism. The Jews have been so successful in tricking women that they can convinced (white) women to act against their own race. Everything bad a woman does is caused by the Jews so women aren’t responsible for the bad acts they do.

"Conspiracy Theorists: No, anything bad a woman does is the result of the Rockefellers, the Jews, and other rich people conspiring to trick women into feminism. The real enemy is the Rockefellers, the Jews, etc. (and minorities) who are conspiring to depopulate the world so women aren’t responsible for their behavior.

"Roissyite Gamers: No, women’s bad acts are the correct biological response to men who have no game. Women can’t be held responsible for their own biology.

"I could list many other groups, but its always the same. They all believe women have no agency. In fact the only groups that believe women have agency are MRAs and MGTOW.

"Women having agency is the most dangerous idea in the world right now, dangerous to women and manginas at any rate. If a person has agency, then that person is responsible for their own actions. If a person doesn’t have agency then that person is not responsible for their actions. If you want to avoid being held responsible or accountable for your actions, then you need to convince the world that you have no agency. And that is what women did (except for MRAs and MGTOW). The idea of women having agency is dangerous because if enough men start believing it, those men will hold women responsible for their actions. Women will be forced to deal with the same standards of accountability as men. This would be an outright disaster for women because they would be exposed for the frauds, feral children, and in some cases criminals that they are."

A Short Post About Weak Fathers and Cruel Stepmothers

I've pointed out before that any educated person should know about folk tales, aka "fairy tales." They are the distilled wisdom of the human race.

What you find in some of them is a weak father and a cruel stepmother. Think "Hansel and Gretel," for one. There are others.

You know- how Elliot Rodger was raised.

"Hubris Is The Only Crime"

So many get it wrong. It's lack of gun control. It's misogyny. It's rape culture. It's lack of Game. It's this, it's that. No, it's Pride - what the Greeks called Hubris. It's the basis of all crimes.

I don't know who wrote this but I read it several years ago. It's from this site.

Hubris in the Protagonists of Catcher in the Rye, Scarlet Letter, and Great Gatsby

"Aristotle praised Sophocles' King Oedipus as the definitive Greek tragedy; however, he could not have surmised the influence of Oedipus' tragic pride on modern day literature and philosophy. Hubris, the only true crime, has had a threefold influence: it is a reason for downfall as well as a characteristic of criminal motivation; it is manifested in the diverse protagonists of Salinger, Fitzgerald, and Hawthorne; and it is forgiven only by repentance for wrongdoing and the complete surrender of pride.

"The erroneous idea that pride is only a predominant characteristic of crime, rather than a crime itself, would put tragic hero Oedipus on the same level as serial killer Charles Manson: while both are guilty of committing heinous acts, Oedipus relinquishes his pride and, ironically suffering under his own proclamation of exile, does penance for his crimes, whereas Manson shows no remorse for his vile and disturbing bloodletting. Oedipus' ultimate repentance is proof that he realizes his hubris and understands his mistakes, as irreparable as they may be.

All human filthiness in one crime compounded!
Unspeakable acts-I speak no more of them.
Hide me at once, for God's love, hide me away...
Touch me, and have no fear. On no man else
But on me alone is the scourge of my punishment. (64)

"Had Oedipus sought to blame another for his crimes, or denied his own responsibility for his actions, he would have been no nobler than a common criminal; Oedipus is redeemed by his strength of character.

"The hamartia of hubris lives on 2500 years after Aristotle lauded King Oedipus as the quintessential Greek tragedy; pride has evolved into an integral characteristic of the majority of literary characters from J.D. Salinger's angry, disillusioned Holden Caulfield to F. Scott Fitzgerald's idealistic Jay Gatsby to Nathaniel Hawthorne's tortured Reverend Dimmesdale.

"Holden's pride in his sarcastic perception of the world around him perpetuates his cynicism and frustration with life, making him unrealistic and incapable of finding happiness. He believes himself omniscient, and that other 'people never notice anything' (Salinger 9). Oedipus' belief in his own infallibility makes him equally unrealistic; soon after Oedipus' sins are revealed, the chorus of Elders conveys a Holden-esque message of discontent:

All generations of mortal man add up to nothing!
Show me the man whose happiness was anything more than illusion
Followed by disillusion.

"Both Holden and Oedipus are self-absorbed, and each is isolated by his own erroneous perception of the situation around him. Until their respective situations force Holden and Oedipus to overcome their pride and accept reality, they are incapable of realizing the errors of their perceptions.

"Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's impractical and self-absorbed millionaire, is unrealistic and foolishly proud because he believes his affluence will easily buy him the love of Daisy Buchanan. His entire 'Jay Gatsby' persona is built upon the assumption that he can maintain the playboy facade without consequences. His frequent bouts of fear and insecurity derive from his pride, and his persona and wealth are useless once his affair with Daisy ends.

"'...He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was....' (Fitzgerald 111)

"Gatsby is incapable of relinquishing his belief that Daisy's love will cure all of the problems that have plagued him; his pride prevents him from realizing that his dream, seemingly 'so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it', cannot be accomplished.

"Nathaniel Hawthorne's Reverend Dimmesdale is an entirely different manifestation of hubris: he takes pride in torturing and loathing himself. Dimmesdale believes that the only way he will truly be forgiven is through public castigation and exile, just as Oedipus believes that the only punishment suitable for himself is a self-inflicted blinding and a life which Òage, nor sickness, nor any common accident can end. Dimmesdale cannot abandon his self-flagellating behavior because his hubris keeps him from coming to terms with his guilt; until his death, he is incapable of repentance because he believes, with dark pride, that his sin is unforgivable.

"Teiresias' statement 'all men fall into sin. But sinning, he is not for ever lost... who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance' is further proof that the truest form of any crime is the criminal's prideful belief in his own infallibility. A predecessor of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness via penitence, Teiresias' sage advice is pivotal to Creon, although the king of Thebes does not realize it. Ironically, Creon learns of his errors from the same prophet who foresaw Oedipus' downfall, and he has the same reaction to the seer as Oedipus: disbelief and scorn. Only when the chorus of elders reinforces the prophesy does Creon realize that he has committed a grave transgression against Antigone: 'My mind is made; 'twas I that imprisoned her, and I will set her free. Now I believe it is by the laws of heaven that man must live'. Although he loses his wife, son and niece because of his pride and lust for power, Creon's chorus-aided epiphany and his ensuing attempt to right his wrong against Antigone serve as his repentance.

"'He is not for ever lost, hapless and helpless, who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance.' Teiresias' judicious advice throughout Oedipus and Antigone is more than just prophesy, it is an astute analysis of the driving force behind the crimes of Oedipus and Creon: pride. Both works illustrate hubris and repentance, concepts inherent to Greek tragedy, and further prove that pride is more that just a simple character trait: it is a complex crime essential to both downfall and redemption."

"The Shit Test Fallacy"

I'm actually amused that some men really think shit tests exist. I've never been shit tested in my life, and none of my friends have. If a woman likes you, she's not going to insult you and perhaps drive you away.

I'd had women insult me. None of them were attractive and some of them were grotesque. They were all hostile and had some pretty significant issues.

As I've mentioned before, believing in shit tests is a way for losers to pretend they're "alphas." If they see shit tests everywhere, it's just a way to raise their self-esteem. "She's insulting me! I must be an Alpha!" Whatever.

This article is from Lifestyle Journey for Men and I have no idea who wrote it.

"In the seduction community men are taught that women give men 'shit tests' in order to weed out the non-dominant, wimpy men. The premise is that if you pass these so-called tests, you stay in the game, and if you fail these tests a woman will lose interest in you.

"I used to be a strong believer in this but eventually I came to the conclusion that women who are genuinely interested in a man don't test him. Instead, they go along with him and make things easy for him. In other words, when a woman likes you and wants to get with you she doesn't try to throw up obstacles, such as 'tests'. So what's going on? Why is the 'shit test' concept so ingrained in the PUA mindset?

"One reason is because its description is so vague. A shit test can be described as anything a woman does which can be interpreted as a 'negative'. If she asks you a strange question, it's a shit test. If she challenges you on your behaviour, it's a shit test. If she asks you if you're gay, it's a shit test.

"Many practicing PUAs get so-called shit tests for the simple reason that they act so damn weird, and when women bring attention to this behaviour or react negatively to it, voila... it's a shit test.

"'Why are you wearing dorky clothes?'

"The PUA interpretation: It's a shit test.

"'We've heard that line before.'

"The PUA interpretation: It's a shit test.

"'Are you gay?'

"The PUA interpretation: It's a shit test.

"If you are a guy who is using PUA material, consider that your behaviour might come across as a little strange, to say the least. So not surprising, some women may call you out on that behaviour. And to you that will seem like a shit test.

"Shit tests also appear to occur when you act confrontational and cocky, and when a woman gives you a taste of your own medicine (i.e. she does the same to you), you interpret that as a shit test.

"In the seduction community, the half-assed evolutionary explanation for shit tests is that women (especially attractive women) need some way to quickly judge men's 'worthiness'. So they 'throw up' seemingly crazy questions without purpose in order to achieve that goal. But regardless, you have to pass the tests or you are out!

"If she asks you why you are wearing dorky clothes you have to say something like, 'What is it you like about dorky clothes?'

"If she says she heard that line before you have to say something like, 'I only used that line 300 times today'.

"If she asks if you are gay you have to say something like, 'You're almost as good looking as my last boyfriend'.

"These might diffuse the situation and even get a laugh out of her, and in some ways they are good responses, but they are no more than fast remedies to a situation that you created. The truth is that you would not have to learn to pass shit tests such as these if you don't use PUA material, which is what triggers these type of negative reactions to begin with.

"If you act normal and a girl wants to get with you, she will never 'shit test' you.

"The other point to make is that, from an evolutionary standpoint, women can't really test men for 'alpha' traits because alpha men don't care to pass tests, women's or otherwise. In addition, it doesn't make sense for women to test men for manliness because manly men would never even entertain the thought that women are testing them, and would not feel that they need to pass their tests if they do. In a real man's mind, either she likes me or she doesn't. So the whole idea of women testing would never show up on a real man's radar, therefore it would be an unnecessary screening mechanism for women to have. And since evolution takes the most economical path, testing would never become an active part of women's psyche.

"But PUA's argument is that women test men unconsciously, which is why women are unaware that they do it. This is just a clever way of hiding the improbability of something under the veil of 'unconscious action'. If someone denies that they do something you just say they do it unconsciously, and for some that would shut down debate. But for the more intelligent there is another plausible explanation. It just doesn't exist, period.

"In defense of the shit test, some PUAs say that they only ended up having sex with women because they passed tests. To that I would refer them to the above argument. They probably said or did some weird things, directly from the PUA guide book, and the women reacted negatively to it. But they managed to deflect it and still ended up getting the girl. In this case it would then seem that passing shit tests is important. But it's a circular type of argument. A causes B. C fixes B. Therefore B and C are valid.

"An extension of this is the PUA belief that women shit test you because they are attracted to you, and they just need to make sure you are the real deal. This is nonsense because women who are attracted don't generally want to fuck up their chances with you by giving you a hard time. However, if you act weird or confrontational then she might respond in kind by giving you what appears to be a shit test. This illustrates the following faulty logic: A woman is attracted to you. You act weird or confrontational. Result, she tests you. Therefore, women who are attracted shit test you.

"PUAs say that if a woman isn't shit testing you then she isn't into you. Let's look at this one more closely. Let's say I'm a PUA and a girl is not testing me or giving me a hard time. I then conclude that she isn't interested in me (yet). So what I do is reach into my PUA bag of tricks and start doing cocky-funny, teasing or whatever. As a result she starts giving me a hard time (shit test), but not because she's becoming attracted, but because I'm acting weird and she's reacting negatively to that. But I just figure she's becoming attracted, so I keep at it. Eventually she just walks away. And from that I conclude that I failed her shit tests. I then go back to the drawing board feeling that I made some progress because I did manage to attract her after all, and I just need to polish my shit-test-passing competency skills. But what really happened was that she saw me as a weirdo and I alienated her with my behaviour. The truth is that she might have liked me and that's why she wasn't testing me or giving me a hard time to begin with. But I interpreted that as a lack of attraction and started doing things which I thought would attract her. But it just drove her away.

"Consider that PUAs often say that the best reaction to a shit test is to ignore it. In other words, pretend it doesn't exist, and then the situation will right itself. There is in fact an important clue in this statement. If the best reaction to something is to act like it doesn't exist, then maybe the reason for that is because it doesn't exist to begin with. Why test someone who is seemingly unaware they are being tested, and then reward them for their ignorance? Remember, evolution takes the most economical path, and such testing could never exist.

"If a woman likes you and wants to get with you, and assuming you act normal, she will never "test" you. That's all there is to it.

"But if it happens that a woman is genuinely testing a man, then she is screening not for alpha men, but for approval seekers, since only an approval seeker would care about passing tests. But this is hardly normal female behaviour. It is the behaviour of an abnormal woman who is likely just trying to push a man's buttons in order to get the (possibly angry) reaction she is seeking, because that excites her. This type of behaviour tends to screen for abusive men who have little or no control over their emotions.

"The other possibility is that some women give men a hard time because they themselves have issues, possibly stemming from their inability to enjoy intimacy. And if you do manage to push through their resistance you will find the sex to be very lacking, and your time together filled with drama and bullshit. This further proves that shit testing is not real because there is no real 'reward' for passing. The best sex and company is with women who don't test or give a hard time.

"Also keep in mind that the shit test concept has the potential to boost women's ego. Women who already think highly of themselves will tend to embrace the idea that men have to pass their tests. This fits well with their world view that they are the prize and that they are above criticism for their actions. In their mind, 'I'm not being a bitch. I'm just testing to see how much of a man he is'.

"The shit test concept is the result of looking too closely at the little details without regard for the big picture. It's the kind of faulty left-brained type logic that involves lots of analysis, but not much thinking."

"The Twisted World of Elliot Rodger"

Okay, this really is the last one about Rodger. I do know what his problem was - broken home, cruel stepmother, indifferent parents, no friends, ostracized, raised in an irresponsible environment which placed looks, status and money above all. No home, no community, no meaning and importance, no faith.

This article was written by Jack Cashill and is from The American Thinker.

"Where I to update my 2007 book, What’s the Matter with California, I would dedicate a chapter to Elliot Rodger, the sexually jealous young man who stabbed, shot, and ran over a score of victims, seven of them fatally, in his hate-filled Santa Barbara rampage.

"Unlike many recent mass killers -- Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook), Jared Lee Loughner (Tucson), and James Holmes (Aurora) -- Rodger was sane enough to tell the world what ailed him, and this he did in a lucid, well written, 140-page memoir/ manifesto titled 'My Twisted World.' better title might have been 'Our Twisted World.'

"Although talk of 'white privilege' runs wild through Twitterdom, Rodger’s mother was an ethnic Chinese from Malaysia. His father Peter Rodger was an aspiring British film director who uprooted Elliot from his native England when the boy was five and moved the family to Southern California.

"This move was disruptive enough, but the real disruption occurred two years later. Like so many Californians, Rodger’s mother and father divorced. Not surprisingly, it was California that initiated the nation’s first and most progressive no-fault divorce law. The state did so in September 1969, just weeks after the Manson murders.

"Those murders should have caused state officials to think twice. The common thread among the otherwise attractive, well-educated 'Manson girls' was that they came from broken homes. Once their own families fell apart, they proceeded to look for love in all the wrong places.

'So too would Elliot Rodger. 'I was absolutely shocked, outraged, and above all, overwhelmed,' wrote Rodger of his parents’ divorce. 'This was a huge life-changing event.' Rodgers does not blame his parents or their divorce for his subsequent failures, but he could have.

"Before the divorce, Rodger 'thought a man and a woman had to be married before living together in such a manner,' but when his father promptly found a new girlfriend, Elliot 'was completely taken aback.' Through his father’s adventures, he began to see sex as a commodity, something one purchased through money, good looks, and 'cool,' an intangible that eluded Rodger as much as it obsessed him.

"One Twitter post in defense of the parents sheds unwitting light on the world Rodger inhabited. 'Elliot Rodger's parents gave & gave & gave,' reads the tweet.'Money. Housing. Resources. Therapy. Life Coaches. They got the police involved. Nothing happened.'

"Here is what their parents did not give their son: a home, a neighborhood, a community, a church, a faith, a God, their time, their attention. For the fifteen miserable years of his life post-divorce, Rodger shuttled between the constantly shifting homes of his two financially unstable parents and their significant others.

"Often alone and friendless, Rodger retreated into the ersatz life of the video gamer. The one game in particular that attracted him was World of Warcraft, a world into which he would descend for as many as fourteen hours a day.

"'I became very addicted to the game and my character in it. It was all I cared about,' wrote Rodger. There he would fight monsters and complete quests only to emerge at the end of day as the little, unloved loner he was at the day’s beginning.

"As Rodger reached puberty, he found a new outlet, masturbation. He would masturbate regularly 'looking at pictures of girls online while . . . fantasizing about doing sexual things with them.' Given the experience of his parents and so many of their friends, he had a hard time putting sex into any other kind of context.

"Height obsessed Rodger. He saw it as an essential asset in his pursuit of sex. When I watched his video rant before Google pulled it, I wondered how a good-looking kid in a BMW could be so singularly unsuccessful in attracting women. I speculated that he must be small. That he was and had always been. 'I felt very small, weak, and above all, worthless,' he wrote and wrote again in one variant or another. More than once, he described himself as an 'unworthy little mouse.'

"The kind of women that Rodger liked did not like mice. 'All of the hot, beautiful girls walked around with obnoxious, tough jock-type men who partied all the time and acted crazy,' Rodger observed. 'Women are sexually attracted to the wrong type of man. This is a major flaw in the very foundation of humanity.'

"Whether or not this is a flaw in humanity, the phenomenon Rodger described is real. As Dr. Seth Meyers and Katie Gilbert argue in a recent Psychology Today article, 'The literature has widely established that women prefer tall men to short men.'

"Meyers and Gilbert cite a University of British Columbia study that goes a step further in its claim that women do, in fact, prefer the mythic 'bad boy' type. 'Women just don’t believe short men can be bad boys,' write the authors.'It’s as if the ability to win a physical fight -- to overpower another man -- is part and parcel of who the bad boy is.'

"Several of the feminists who have written about this incident insist on seeing women only as the victims of what Jessica Valenti in the Guardian calls 'our cultural sickness -- a sickness that refuses to see misogyny as anything other than inevitable.'

Valenti and others on the left fail to see, however, that this sickness set in when they and their ideological allies began to dismantle protective institutions of lasting value like family, community, nation, faith, and married love.

"This was a sickness that infected men and women equally. A generation or so ago a woman might have looked for a man who was kind, loving, pious, generous, faithful, hard working. The women in Rodger’s circle, as he saw it, looked for men who were hot, hunky and/or rich, none of which he was.

"Yes, there is a sickness afoot in the land, but feminists have no more hope of curing it with sexual harassment laws or enforced sensitivity training than Rodger did with his 'day of retribution.'

Shame, Pride, Hate, Envy and Revenge

Sorry, but I'm still amused at how the invincibly ignorant still think Elliot Rodger just needed "Game." No, he needed a father, a mother, and a stepmother who didn't fail him at every step, and to not be raised as a spoiled kid raised in a hedonistic culture where only sex, status and fame mattered. He needed meaning, importance and community. A family, not just being a disconnected atom on his own. Not to be an outsider, alone. Not to be abused and bullied. Not to be at the bottom, when he thought he should be at the top. And why he did went on a murderous rampage was explained thousands of years ago.

Let's say he learned "Game"...and it didn't work (yeah, it'll fix some demonic kid raised in the Babylon of Hollywood). It's trying to put a band-aid on a huge suppurating wound. Perhaps in his rage and frustration...he might have murdered more people. We'll never know.

Years ago I lived in Santa Barbara and worked in Isla Vista. I was 18, and even then thought there was something not quite right about the area.

I've written several articles about what feelings of humiliation due to the susceptible. This is one of them, written a few years ago.

“The infernal serpent; it was he whose guile/Stirred up with envy and revenge/Deceived the mother of mankind…” – Paradise Lost

I consider the myth of the Garden of Eden – in which I include Cain and Abel – the most important story in Western culture. Adam and Eve, and their sons Cain and Abel, explain the relationships between self-consciousness, pride, shame, impotence, humiliation, envy, hate, revenge, violence, murder and evil.

Adam and Eve become self-conscious after eating of the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil. With self-consciousness comes shame because they are naked, demonstrating that without self-consciousness – and therefore consciousness of the opinions of others – there can be no shame.

In fact, excruciating self-consciousness, among other things, is what murderers have in common.

There is, tellingly, no guilt, illustrating the fact that in very young children shame comes before guilt. It wasn’t until Christianity that the myth of the Garden of Eden was interpreted as Adam and Even being guilty before God.

When Adam and Eve are confronted by God, Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. Each denies responsibility for their actions and blames it on someone else. This is what gets them kicked out of the Garden and brings evil into the world.

The word for what Adam and Eve did is “scapegoating,” and as the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck pointed out, “Scapegoating is the genesis of human evil.” He’s correct. Blaming your problems on other people – projection – is what leads to murder, including the mass murder known as war.

The serpent is a symbol of envy, which means he is also a symbol of hate. He wants to bring down Adam and Eve because they are the most favored of God and he is not. He felt impotent, powerless and humiliated. He wanted revenge.

Humiliated people, because of their envy and hate, want to drag others down, so they will feel as they do. The serpent blamed his problems on Adam and Eve, just as Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.

The serpent, which is not necessarily a snake, is known as a “nachash,” which means to hiss or whisper like a snake. I am reminded of Kaa the snake in the movie version of The Jungle Books, who sings to his victims, “Trust in me…”

The envious never admit their envy, it being too painful. So they are subtle in their attempts to bring others down, as the serpent was “the most subtle.” The movie Amadeus is a perfect example of this subtlety, as is Iago in Othello.

Most of our understanding of the serpent probably comes from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which he identified the serpent as Satan and said his main problem was Pride, or what the ancient Greeks called Hubris.

When a person’s pride is severely damaged, they feel humiliated, and so want revenge, which is a misguided attempted to replace feelings of humiliation with feelings of pride, by making their “oppressors” feel what they felt. As the psychiatrist James Gilligan has noticed, all violence is an attempt to achieve justice, no matter how misguided the attempt.

When people are humiliated by having violence done to them, they want revenge by doing violence to their oppressors: I will make you feel as I feel; I will drag you down to my level.

An example of this humiliation – and how it led to war – is the aftermath of World War I. Germany was no more guilty than England or France or the United States. They just happened to lose the war.

Instead of being forgiven, the Treaty of Versailles crushed and humiliated Germany. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote consistently about Germany’s “shame” and “humiliation” because of the treaty, and whom he blamed it on and what he was going to do about the problem. No one listened.

He came to power, which led to World War II. This is what the Greeks called Hubris followed by Nemesis: arrogance, moral blindness and violence fated to be followed by retribution and revenge.

Hubris originally meant to brutally humiliate someone in public, and the Greeks banned it from the theater as obscene. So then, those afflicted with the arrogance, moral blindness and wanton violence of hubris always brutally humiliate people and so bring revenge onto their selves. To use a modern term: “blowback.” Or to use a common expression: “What goes around comes around.”

The arrogance and moral blindness of the Allies led the to brutal humiliation of Germany, so Hitler restored Germany’s dignity and self-respect…and tens of millions died in World War II. “Pride goes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.”

I believe the story of Adam and Eve makes more sense if you consider them to be about four years old. Young children have no shame, which is why they will run around naked. And when they do show shame, it comes long before guilt.

The “good” and “evil” that Adam and Eve know is a narcissistic, all-good or all-bad, infantile kind of evil: I am good; you are bad. No one is purely good or purely evil; there are always shades of gray.

I call this belief in all-good and all-bad the Fairy Tale of Pure Good and Pure Evil. It is the basis of all propaganda and also of all war. In it you project all your problems onto those you scapegoat and believe if you eradicate them your problems will depart this earth.

While individuals can be intelligent, groups never are. Groups have no brains and operate strictly on infantile emotion. I believe this is illustrated by the fact that the word “Adam” means “man” and while it does refer to any individual man, it also refers to the human race in general, i.e., groups of people.

While there is no murder in the story of Adam and Eve, murder is introduced with their sons, Cain and Abel. Cain is humiliated, angry, envious, and reduced to impotence because God rejected his sacrifice and accepted Abel’s. “Unto Abel the Lord had respect…unto Cain he had not respect.”

Thus murder was brought into the world, because of the attempt to achieve “justice,” because of scapegoating, because of envy and hate and humiliation and impotence.

The Greeks advised, “Nothing in excess.” I believe they are right. Normal pride (which is mostly a feeling of competence) is a good thing. Excessive pride is hubris. The ability to feel normal shame (and guilt) is a good thing. Too much shame and it turns into humiliation. Too much guilt is also pathological, as is demonstrated in the novel, The Scarlet Letter.

To correctly assess your strengths and weaknesses is what the Greeks called “sophrosyne.” The modern word “humility” comes close but doesn’t catch the whole favor. Sometimes being “humble” is just a front for being arrogant.

Those who are truly humble are well aware of what hubris and nemesis are, and how even they can be prone to it. They understand the truth of the saying, “Power is the horse that evil rides,” and “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and “Power intoxicates and immunity corrupts.”

The problem with the human race is not only that it’s flawed, but many people are nearly asleep: they believe their hubris is a good thing (all tyrants call themselves benefactors) but are astonished when it’s followed by nemesis.

Can Narcissists Really Love? Nope.

Ancient Wisdom versus Modern Nonsense

I will say one more thing about Elliot Rodger: you're not going to find out what was wrong with him, and what the cure is, through nonsense about "Alpha" and "Gamma" and "Omega" and other nonsense such as the "socio-sexual hierarchy."

I'll bet that the vast majority of the nitwits who babble about "Game" and "shit tests" and the rest of that silliness couldn't name the Seven Deadly Sins if their souls depended on it. Now how pathetic is that?

Clearly men in the past weren't eager to stuff life into silly little boxes. You might want to look at what the more thoughtful and intelligent discovered.

From Wikipedia:

"The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a classification of vices (part of Christian ethics) that has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin. In the currently recognized version, the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Each is a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the objective.

"The Catholic Church divides sin into two categories: venial sins, in which guilt is relatively minor, and the more severe mortal sins. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a mortal or deadly sin is believed to destroy the life of grace and charity within a person and thus creates the threat of eternal damnation. 'Mortal sin' by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation.'

"According to Catholic moral thought, the seven deadly sins are not discrete from other sins, but are instead the origin ('capital' comes from the Latin caput, head) of the others. Vices can be either venial or mortal, depending on the situation, but 'are called 'capital' because they engender other sins, other vices'.

"Beginning in the early 14th century, the popularity of the seven deadly sins as a theme among European artists of the time eventually helped to ingrain them in many areas of Catholic culture and Catholic consciousness in general throughout the world. One means of such ingraining was the creation of the mnemonic acronym 'SALIGIA' based on the first letters in Latin of the seven deadly sins: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, acedia.

"In the Book of Proverbs 6:16-19, among the verses traditionally associated with King Solomon, it states that the Lord specifically regards 'six things the Lord hateth, and seven that are an abomination unto Him', namely:

A proud look
A lying tongue
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that devises wicked plots
Feet that are swift to run into mischief
A deceitful witness that uttereth lies
Him that soweth discord among brethren

"Another list, given this time by the Epistle to the Galatians (Galatians 5:19-21), includes more of the traditional seven sins, although the list is substantially longer: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 'and such like'. Since Saint Paul goes on to say that the persons who practice these sins 'shall not inherit the Kingdom of God', they are usually listed as (possible) mortal sins rather than capital vices.

"The modern Catholic Catechism lists the sins in Latin as "superbia, avaritia, invidia, ira, luxuria, gula, pigritia seu acedia", with an English translation of 'pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth/acedia'. Each of the seven deadly sins now also has an opposite among corresponding seven holy virtues (sometimes also referred to as the contrary virtues). In parallel order to the sins they oppose, the seven holy virtues are humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence.

"Lust, or lechery (carnal 'luxuria') is an intense desire. It is a general term for desire. Therefore lust could involve the intense desire of money, food, fame, power or sex.

"Gluttony/Excess

"Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony (Latin, gula) is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste.

"In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy.

"Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own interests above the well-being or interests of others.

"Greed

"Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, 'Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.' In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.

"Sloth

"Sloth (Latin, acedia) can entail different vices. While sloth is sometimes defined as physical laziness, spiritual laziness is emphasized. Failing to develop spiritually is key to becoming guilty of sloth. In the Christian faith, sloth rejects grace and God.

"Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do. By this definition, evil exists when good men fail to act.

"Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote in Present Discontents (II. 78) 'No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.'

"Over time, the 'acedia' in Pope Gregory's order has come to be closer in meaning to sloth. The focus came to be on the consequences of acedia rather than the cause, and so, by the 17th century, the exact deadly sin referred to was believed to be the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts. Even in Dante's time there were signs of this change; in his Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.

"Wrath

"Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as 'rage', may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. Wrath, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of anger can manifest in different ways, including impatience, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.

"Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest, although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy (closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as 'love of justice perverted to revenge and spite'. In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally as well as externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of hatred directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.

"Envy

"Like greed and lust, Envy (Latin, invidia) is characterized by an insatiable desire. Envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. The difference is the envious also desire the entity and covet it.

"Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, 'Neither shall you desire... anything that belongs to your neighbour.' Dante defined this as 'a desire to deprive other men of theirs'. In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as 'sorrow for another's good'.

"Pride

"In almost every list, pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris (Greek), is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as believing that one is essentially better than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was 'love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour'. In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their necks which force them to keep their heads bowed.

"Acedia

"Acedia (Latin, acedia) (from Greek ἀκηδία) is the neglect to take care of something that one should do. It is translated to apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is related to melancholy: acedia describes the behaviour and melancholy suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a willful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created; by contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in time of need.

"When Thomas Aquinas described acedia in his interpretation of the list, he described it as an uneasiness of the mind, being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. Some scholars have said that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.

"Vainglory

"Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his listing of sins.

"The Latin term gloria roughly means boasting, although its English cognate - glory - has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, vain roughly meant futile, but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, of irrelevant accuracy, that it retains today. As a result of these semantic changes, vainglory has become a rarely used word in itself, and is now commonly interpreted as referring to vanity (in its modern narcissistic sense).

"Final Summary Of Elliot Rodger’s Autobiography"

This will be the last article I post about Elliot Rodger. It was written by the Lion of the Blogosphere.

I will say one thing: it doesn't help at all to call such disturbed men "Betas" or "Omegas." That kind of nonsense is for rank amateurs, ones who have pretty significant psychological problems of their own.

"I label his document as an autobiography, not a memoir and not a 'manifesto' as people keep wrongly calling it. The two-page epilogue, where he describes the ideal society without women (which of course seems extremely weird to most people) might be described as a very brief manifesto, but the first 135 pages are purely an autobiography. The intent is to explain how his life led him to be the way he turned out.

"The key factor in understanding Elliot’s personality is that he was very high on the 'neuroticism' scale. People, including 'professional' psychiatrists who should have known better, seem to think that he had all sorts of other mental 'illnesses' such as Asperger’s Syndrome, or later in his life schizophrenia. Elliot knew that he didn’t have schizophrenia, because he was quite introspective about why he was messed up, and that’s why he refused to take the Risperidone that was prescribed for him. I think that Elliot really wanted help, but he had too much social anxiety to ask for it properly, or maybe the people who were supposed to be helping him were just too clueless.

"The Wikipedia article on Neuroticism describes it thusly:

"'Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology characterized by anxiety, moodiness, worry, envy, and jealousy. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, envy, guilt, and depressed mood. They respond more poorly to stressors, are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification. Neuroticism is a risk factor for the 'internalizing' mental disorders such as phobia, depression, panic disorder, and other anxiety disorders, all of which are traditionally called neuroses.'

"Neuroticism is not a very trendy psychological diagnosis. Every kid is being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but kids who simply have very high Neuroticism are ignored and don’t get the help that they need. Yet anyone who bothers to read all of Elliot’s autobiography will see that the Wikipedia explanation of high Neuroticism perfectly matches what Elliot experienced.

"Elliot’s second strike against him is that he was small and physically weak. Boys who have high neuroticism and are also small and physically weak wind up having bad interactions with their peers that lead to social anxiety and bullying, and that’s exactly what happened with Elliot as well.

"Strangely, he didn’t talk about being bullied in elementary school. I attribute that to the fact that he attended an elementary school where all of the children came from affluent families and thus they were much better behaved than children at regular working-class schools. Elliot had friends in elementary school, but at the same time his shyness prevented him from being as popular as he wanted to be, and he was never good at making friends on his own without his mother setting 'playdates' for him.

"Pinecrest Middle School was worse for him than elementary school because his shyness prevented him from making friends at the new school, and his friends from elementary school apparently went to other middle schools.

"'For the first few days, I withdrew into a defensive shell and didn’t really talk to anyone. I did observe, however. I observed how everyone acted, who the “cool kids” were, what they were like… and it was all so intimidating. The social challenges that I faced in Fifth Grade were intensified tenfold.'

"Middle school was also when he became aware of girls, but he was too shy to talk to them. Middle school is also when he became aware that girls like certain other boys a lot more than they liked him.

"'I also observed the girls. I was still very short for my age, and most of the girls were taller than me. I hadn’t reached puberty yet, but I was starting to admire female prettiness. There was one group of pretty, popular girls, and they all seemed to like hanging out with that boy Robert Morgan. I didn’t yet desire girls sexually, but I still felt envy towards Robert for being able to attract the attention of all the popular girls. What was so special about Robert Morgan? I constantly asked myself.'

"A particularly bad social experience for Elliot happened at summer camp between the 6th and 7th grades.

"'At this camp, an incident happened that would scar me for life. The first time that I was treated badly by a girl occurred at this camp. I was innocently playing with the friends I made, and they were tickling me, something people always did because I was very ticklish. I accidentally bumped into a pretty girl the same age as me, and she got very angry. She cursed at me and pushed me, embarrassing me in front of my friends. I didn’t know who this girl was… She was only at Pinecrest for summer camp… But she was very pretty, and she was taller than me. I immediately froze up and went into a state of shock. One of my friends asked me if I was ok, and I didn’t answer. I remained very quiet for the rest of the day.

"'I couldn’t believe what had happened. Cruel treatment from women is ten times worse than from men. It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable. I couldn’t believe that this girl was so horrible to me, and I thought that it was because she viewed me as a loser. That was the first experience of female cruelty I endured, and it traumatized me to no end. It made me even more nervous around girls, and I would be extremely weary and cautious of them from that point on.'

"He describes another bad experience with girls in the 8th grade:

"'I became known as the 'weird kid' at Pinecrest, and people started to make fun of me, but I didn’t care. I had my online games to distract me from the harsh realities of life that I was too scared to face. The only time I did care was when a group of popular Seventh Grade girls started teasing me, which hurt a lot. One of these girls was Monette Moio, a pretty blonde girl who was Ashton’s younger sister. She must have thought I was an ultimate loser. I hated her so much, and I will never forget her. I started to hate all girls because of this. I saw them as mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering.

"Ashton Moio is a somewhat successful young actor. His sister Monette has not had as successful an acting career, but a search of Google shows that she is indeed a very pretty blonde girl. She seems to have taken down her twitter feed, perhaps in shame that her cruel treatment of Elliot in the 8th grade contributed to Elliot becoming a mass murderer.

"For 9th grade, he attended a boys Catholic high school, Crespi. He had asked his parents to send him there because of his bad experiences with and fear of girls, but this didn’t turn out to be a very good school for him.

"'My life at Crespi got even worse. Alfred and Brice apparently told everyone how weird I was at Pinecrest, and people in my own grade started to tease me. They found out that I didn’t like being called a skateboarder, and it was true. Because I failed to become good at skateboarding, I developed a hatred for the sport, and whenever someone called me a skateboarder, it reminded me of my failure and I got very angry. The whole school started calling me it just to anger me, along with other insulting names. They teased me because I was scared of girls, calling me names like 'faggot'. People also liked to steal my belongings and run away in an attempt to get me to chase after them. And I did chase after them in a furious rage, but I was so little and weak that they thought it was comical. I hated everyone at that school so much.'

"'It got to a point where I had to wait in a quiet corner for the hallways to clear before I could walk to class. I also took long routes around the school to avoid bullies. My parents began to consider not letting me continue there after Ninth Grade.'

"After the 9th grade, his parents sent him to a public high school, Taft. This was much worse for Elliot than Crespi.

"'The first week of Taft was living hell. I was bullied several times, even though I didn’t know anyone there. After being so used to wearing a polo shirt with khaki pants as a school uniform at private schools, I continued to dress like that even after leaving Crespi. I didn’t give any thought to how nerdy I looked. I was too withdrawn, like a turtle tucked into his shell. I was still in the process of going through puberty at the time, so I still looked and sounded like a ten-year-old. Such a persona attracted zero attention from girls, of course, but it did attract bullies like moths to a flame.'

"'I was completely and utterly alone. No one knew me or extended a hand to help me. I was an innocent, scared little boy trapped in a jungle full of malicious predators, and I was shown no mercy. Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall. One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a 'loser', right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls. And they didn’t seem to mind that he was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it. This is how girls are, and I was starting to realize it. This was what truly opened my eyes to how brutal the world is. The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men are laughed at. It is sick, twisted, and wrong in every way. I hated the girls even more than the bullies because of this. The sheer cruelty of the world around me was so intense that I will never recover from the mental scars. Any experience I ever had before never traumatized me as much as this."

"'I couldn’t do it anymore. On the morning before the second week of Taft started, I broke down and cried in front of my mother, begging her not to make me go to that horrible place. I was so scared that I felt physically sick. I continued crying in the car on the way there, and my mother gave in. Instead of taking me to school, we went to the café at Gelson’s in Calabasas where we had a big talk. I tried to explain how much I was suffering there. She just could not take me to school after that. When we were finished with Gelsons’s, she drove me to my father’s house and told him about what happened. They agreed to take me out of Taft.'

"'I didn’t go to school for a month while my parents decided what to do with me. I took advantage of the time to rest and recover at home, playing my online games. The pain and suffering I had to endure at Taft was all over, but the scars would remain. I tried to forget about it as much as I could. I took a deep breath and relaxed.'

"After his bad week at Taft, his parents sent him to 'Independence Continuation High School.' This appears to be a public high school for children who for some reason or other can’t handle regular high school. Apparently the children who went there was so weird or had so many other issues that Elliot no longer stood out as a target for bullies, because he didn’t write about any more bullying. But neither did he have any friends there at all, and the schoolwork was not academically challenging, so he spent most of his time playing World of Warcraft.

"Elliot doesn’t give much of an explanation of why his parents made this schooling decision. My guess is that they may have received a psychiatric diagnosis that Elliot had Asperger’s Syndrome (which I do not agree with at all), and they sort of gave up on him as being academic material. His father had also suffered heavy economic losses from his investment in the documentary movie Oh My God so perhaps he cheapened out and sent him to free public high school rather than find a private school that might have been a better fit for him. Nevertheless, his parents seem to have absolutely no aspirations at all for Elliot to have any sort of academic success, because they allow him to attend the continuation school, and then take just a single class at a community college. It’s not clear to me if this is because they just don’t care about education, or because they view Elliot has having Asperger’s Syndrome and therefore is not capable of succeeding academically. Elliot himself views school strictly as a social (or anti-social) experience and not as a place where one learns things and prepares for a career.

"I haven’t written much about Elliot’s parents yet. Elliot’s mother, Li Chin, is Malaysian Chinese, and his father, Peter Rodger, is Scottish. They moved to the United States from England when he was five, and two years later they got divorced.

"Peter soon remarried to Soumaya Akaaboune, an actress from a wealthy Moroccan family. The way that Elliot described her, she appeared to view Elliot as annoying baggage from Peter’s first marriage that she didn’t want to have around. In fact, the joint custody arrangement that Peter and Li had doesn’t make any sense to me. Elliot spent half his time at his father’s house, but his father was away most of the time because of his career in movies, so a great deal of time at his father’s house was spent just with Soumaya there, and Soumaya didn’t like him very much. It seems to me that he would have been much better off with his mother. Was the joint custody arrangement a spiteful divorce settlement used as leverage by Peter to avoid paying higher alimony to his ex-wife, or was it that despite Elliot’s fondness for his mother, his mother didn’t actually want him around full-time and was glad that she only had to care for him every other week?

"In the later part of Elliot’s life, he’s a much less sympathetic protagonist. In response to his severe social anxiety, he develops an intense hatred for girls, especially the pretty blonde girls he is most obsessed with, and the socially successful men who get to have sex with them. He keeps dropping out of his community college classes, because every class that he’s in there’s at least one couple in which the guy is a good-looking jock type and the girl is a hot blonde, and this enrages him too much and he can’t stand attending the class because of that. He also begins plotting for his 'Day of Retribution' at this time of his life. As part of the retribution he planned to kill his stepmother, Soumaya and his little half-brother Jazz. Reading about his desire to kill his little brother was sad because Jazz didn’t do anything wrong besides be born better looking, more athletic, and with less neuroticism than Elliott.

"'I had an argument with Soumaya while I was visiting father’s house. It started when she began to boast that my brother Jazz was recently signed by an agent to act in T.V. commercials. She said that by the time he is my age, he will be a successful actor. I talked about how Jazz was already so socially savvy for his age, and how I’ve always envied him for it. She told me he will never have any problems with girls, and will lose his virginity while he’s young. I had to sit there and listen to the bitch tell me that my little brother will grow up enjoying the life I’ve always craved for, but missed out on. It is very unfair how some boys are able to live such pleasurable lives while I never had any taste of it, and now it has been confirmed to me that my little brother will become one of them. He will become a popular kid who gets all the girls. Girls will love him. He will become one of my enemies.'

"Of the entire autobiography, the part about how he planned to kill his little brother was the most disturbing. Luckily, he wasn’t as successful in his 'Day of Retribution' as he had planned in the autobiography.

"And that’s the summary of Elliot’s life. A consistent theme in the comment thread is that Elliot must have been gay, but the people who say that are just too lazy to read the autobiography and would rather jump to conclusions that a guy who is scrawny and doesn’t have a girlfriend most be gay. In fact, it’s exactly those kind of societal attitudes that I suspect contributed to Elliot’s self-loathing and low self-esteem which led to his unfortunate Day of Retribution. (Also, living in Hell’s Kitchen, the gayest neighborhood in Manhattan, I see gay men every time I leave my apartment, and none of them remind me of Elliot in any way.)

"Elliot describes in many places his sexual attraction for girls, although especially (perhaps only) for blonde girls. He describes masturbating while thinking about them, and his erections upon seeing beautiful girls with blonde hair, so no, he’s not gay. The definition of gay is that one is sexually attracted to people of the same sex, while Elliot is clearly sexually attracted to girls, the opposite sex. The reason he was unable to obtain a girlfriend is because he suffered from severe shyness and social anxiety, so he was afraid to talk to them, and his social anxiety also caused him to lack any male friends as well, and without a social network he didn’t have the opportunity to meet any girls. He also probably came off as sort of weird by the time he was college-aged. There was a vicious circle at work in which his social anxiety caused him to have no friends which means he didn’t develop social skills in high school which means he came off as weird which then made it even harder from him to make friends and served to increase his social anxiety.

"It’s my feeling, after reading the autobiography, that Elliot’s life didn’t have to turn out the way it did. I don’t see any evidence that he had Asperger’s Syndrome or schizophrenia or other severe mental illness. If his parents had been more attentive when he was younger, I think they could have been able to help coax him out of shyness, and get him proper psychiatric treatment or therapy for his anxiety and neuroticism."

Men Create; Women Support or Destroy

When you look at history and philosophy, whether East or West, men create, discover, invent, repair, innovate, fix, lead - they represent reason and strength. Patriarchs.

Women represent the nurturing and supporting. They're emotional, passive and receptive. You can also see these things in folk tales.

In one sentence you can say men represent the Head and women the Heart.

Now what happens when they go bad? Men use their use their strength for evil, or else they become weak. They withdraw. These days, since they're attempts at discovering and everything else is being thwarted, they're withdrawing and becoming weak - bros hanging together or playing video games in their basement. Or Men Going Their Own Way. Or Pick-Up Artists. Or Manginas.

These things happen when women don't support men, that is, nurture. And if they don't nurture and support, then they destroy. And when I say they're passive and receptive, that means they're herd creatures, and if they don't listen to men in their passivity and receptivity, they'll listen to stupid female leaders and suck up their nonsense. They can become far more evil than men.

I don't think it's all that hard to understand the differences between men and women.

Everyone Wants To Be White

This article is from The New Observer and was written by the staff.

Since nearly everyone wants to be white, and they can't be, their envy and obsession leads them to want to tear whites down.

This includes Elliot Rodger, who was half-Chinese, which he why he ended up short and scrawny with a weak chin.

Envy (which is always associated with hate) is the most dangerous thing in the world. And the first sign of it is to denigrate the innocent.

My hair is no longer blond but I still have blue eyes, and many times I've had non-whites comment on both. And the big smiles from Asian and black girls...and I've had two black women tell me, "Having a kid by a black man is nothing but if I have one by a white man, the kid will be light-skinned and might have light hair and eyes." Even Asian women are obsessed by blonds.

Since Rodger couldn't be a tall blond-haired white man...

Elliot Rodger’s Race-Hatred against White People: Killer’s Manifesto Mentions Hatred of 'Blondes' 62 Times and Describes White People as 'Enemies'

"Fair-haired white people—and blonde white girls in particular—are 'the enemy' and all should be killed—this is the core message of half-Chinese mass murderer Elliot Rodger’s online manifesto which is being deliberately suppressed by the controlled media—in stark contrast to their coverage of other incidents which involve white perpetrators.

"Rodger killed three people at his apartment residence with a knife, and then shot dead or killed by running over with his vehicle, another four people, as well as injuring another thirteen before his own death, in the college town of Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, California on May 24.

"Just hours before his murder spree, Rodger sent a 140-page 'manifesto,' titled 'My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger' to a few dozen people, including his parents and one of his therapists, in which he provided his life story and his reasons for going on the knifing and shooting spree.

"In the document, the theme of his obsession with, and ultimately hatred of, white people, and blonde girls in particular, is a dominating theme. The word 'blonde' appears no less than 62 times in the 142 pages.

"In addition, his obsession with blonde girls, their unobtainability for himself, and his subsequent hatred of all white males and females, is the single most dominating theme of his 'manifesto.'

"There is, therefore, no reason for the media to ignore it—except for their obvious desire to disguise the vicious anti-white racism which is the true motivation for the mass murder spree.

"Instead, the media has deliberately focussed on his sexual obsession and his failure to interact with women generally—and has completely suppressed any mention of his overt racism and hatred of whites.

"However, in his manifesto, Rodger—whose mother is a Malaysian Chinese woman—makes plain his obsession with white people from the very beginning.

Envied White People

"After discussing the fact that he is so much shorter than all the other white kids with whom he grew up, Rodger states:

"'When I became aware of this common social structure at my school, I also started to examine myself and compare myself to these ‘cool kids.’

“'I realized, with some horror, that I wasn’t ‘cool’ at all. I had a dorky hairstyle, I wore plain and uncool clothing, and I was shy and unpopular. On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with.

“'I envied the cool kids, and I wanted to be one of them. I had to make every effort to rectify this. I had to adapt. My first act was to ask my parents to allow me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful.”

Dyed His Hair Blonde at Age of Eight

"As a result, Rodger dyed his hair blond before he was ten years old.

“'My parents agreed to let me do it, and father took me to a hair salon on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills. Choosing that hair salon was a bad decision, for they only bleached the top of my head blonde. When I indignantly questioned why they didn’t make all of my hair blonde, they said that I was too young for a full bleaching. I was furious. I thought I looked so silly with blonde hair at the top of my head and black hair at the sides and back. I dreaded going to school the next day with this weird new hair.”

"He goes onto describe the time, when, a short while later, when he managed to get all his hair dyed blond, at the age of ten years old:

“'I was eager to re-bleach my hair to a fully blonde color, after the disastrous failure of my previous attempt. This time, Soumaya took me to the right salon, and they gave me a short haircut and bleached all of my hair blonde. When I looked at myself in the mirrior[sic], I felt an intense level of satisfaction.”

"By the time of his late teens, he had however given up dying his hair, because, in his own words:

“'The black hair always grew out anyway, so the full-blonde look only lasted for a couple of weeks.'

Describes Obsession with Blondes

"His manifesto is littered with references to blond men and blonde women, revealing an obsession with them which ultimately led on to his hate-filled murder rampage.

"This vital part of the story is, as the reader will see below, is the part which is being deliberately left out of the media coverage:

"For example, when talking about his first friend in America (as a very young child), a girl named Maddy, he notes:

“'While walking around, I ran into Maddy, who was there with her boyfriend. For some strange reason, I have never had any sexual attraction towards Maddy, despite the fact that she’s a blonde girl and I’m obsessed with blondes.'

"In discussing his early school years, he specifically points out that it was a blond-haired boy who called him a 'loser':

“'One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a 'loser', right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls.'

"He then goes on to describe German friends of his family, who he hated because they were fair-haired:

“'Soon enough, my jealousy of Leo began to manifest. He had just moved to the U.S. from Germany, and yet he was already able to make lots of friends and had a great social life. He was tall, good looking, blonde-haired, and a skateboarder; the type of person I’ve always envied and wanted to be.'

Describes Explicit Sexual Obsession with Blondes

"Rodger then goes on to describe in graphic detail his sexual obsession with white blond-girls, down to detailing that he would masturbate every day while fantasizing about blonde girl:

“'My sex drive was at its peak at this age. Whenever I got back from school, I had to masturbate. The urge was too strong. During my masturbation sessions I often built elaborate fantasies in my mind that I had a hot, blonde-haired girlfriend to have passionate sex with; almost like having an imaginary girlfriend.'

"In another part, he continues with his descriptions of his masturbatory fantasies:

“'The sociology class flew by like a breeze, and my next class was math. In this class, I saw one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen in my life. She was the only pretty girl in the class, and she was absolutely stunning. Of course, she didn’t even notice me as I walked in. Her beauty was so intimidating that I couldn’t bring myself to sit near her, out of fear of her judgment.

“'As the lecture proceeded, I couldn’t help myself from constantly glancing at her, admiring every inch of her enticing body, from her silky blonde hair to her smooth, skinny, lightly tanned legs. The most beautiful thing about her was her face. It was a face that broke my heart the second I laid eyes on it. I wanted her with so much intensity, and I constantly fantasized about her during my masturbation sessions.

“'This was the kind of girl who was always meant to be my girlfriend. This was the girl that I was meant to go through college in Santa Barbara with. My life would only have meaning if I could go through college with a girlfriend like her.'

Describes Obsession with Obtaining a Blonde Girlfriend—and How Failure Led to his “Hate-fueled Worldview” "Rodger then describes how he hoped to meet and get a blonde girlfriend—this is a theme which is repeated throughout his 'manifesto.' Another repetitive theme is that if only one of these white blonde girls had agreed to be his girlfriend, then he never would have carried out the massacre. He even used the worlds 'hate-fueled' to describe his world-view.

“'In the days leading up to my first day at Moorpark, I felt a renewed sense of hope. A new college provided a new start, and this college looked perfect in every way. I had the hope that I could make it there; that I could make friends, meet some girls, and eventually find a pretty girl to be my girlfriend. I pictured her in my mind all the time; her cascading blonde hair, her beautiful face, her sensual body… Everything. I imagined us walking hand in hand through the college, looking at the magnificent view of the mountains in the distance as the sun sets behind them. That would be heaven. That was what I wanted in life. Every single hate-fueled ideal, world-view, and philosophy I created in the past was a result of not being able to do that.'

"In another section, he adds:

“'To have a beautiful blonde girl by my side, to feel her hand clasping my own as we walk everywhere together, to feel her love! That is what I want in life.'

"He talks endlessly about always seeing 'hot blonde girls' everywhere, and how their unobtainability enraged him to hatred:

“'I was registered to take three classes for the Spring semester at Moorpark. The first was an early morning history class, followed by sociology and then psychology. They were all just as disastrous as I expected them to be. I had to drop the sociology class right on the first day, because there was this extremely hot blonde girl who took the class with her brute of a boyfriend. I couldn’t stand looking at them sitting together. I left the class mid-session because I couldn’t take it anymore.

“'My two remaining classes were not much better. In my history class, I had a crush on a really pretty girl, only to find out that she had a boyfriend, and in my psychology class there was this group of popular kids who acted obnoxious the whole time. One of them was a very pretty blonde girl, and she actually enjoyed associating with the obnoxious boys in her clique. The injustice!'

'After enrolling at College, Rodger writes of his continuing obsession with blonde girls:

“'I was astounded when we toured through Isla Vista. It was a whole town of college students living together, right next to UCSB, and right next to the beach. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When I read about it online I thought it was too good to be true, but there it was. It was exactly as I expected it to be. There were hot blonde girls walking around everywhere.

“'One of them was named Artem, a quiet Russian student who went to UCSB; and the other, whose name I don’t remember, was a tall blonde surfer-type boy who went to SBCC. I was annoyed at how tall and attractive he was, though I didn’t show it.'

Describes Hatred of Other Non-whites Who Had White Girlfriends: 1. The “Ugly Black Filth”

"Rodger’s racism was also directed against other non-whites who showed any signs of success with the blonde girls he do desired. For example:

“'My first week turned out to be very unpleasant, leaving a horrific first impression of my new life in Santa Barbara. My two housemates were nice, but they kept inviting over this friend of theirs named Chance. He was black boy who came over all the time, and I hated his cocksure attitude. Inevitably, a vile incident occurred between me and him. I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls.

“'I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice.

“'I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind.

“'If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!”

Describes Hatred of Other Non-whites Who Had White Girlfriends: The “Inferior Mexican Guy”

"In another section, he describes his anger at seeing a Mexican male with a blonde female:

“'My father drove up to Santa Barbara to meet me a few days later. The two of us went to have lunch at a restaurant in the Camino Real Marketplace, an area that I often frequented. When we sat down at our table, I saw a young couple sitting a few tables down the row. The sight of them enraged me to no end, especially because it was a dark-skinned Mexican guy dating a hot blonde white girl.

“'I regarded it as a great insult to my dignity. How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads. I probably would have, if father wasn’t there.

“'I was seething with envious rage, and my father was there to watch it all. It was so humiliating. I wasn’t the son I wanted to present to my father. I should be the one with the hot blonde girl, making my father proud.”

Describes Hatred of Other Non-whites Who Had White Girlfriends: The “Ugly Asian”

"He goes on to describe his rage at seeing an Asian talking to a white girl:

“'As my frustration grew, so did my anger. I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a white girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian.

“'I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes.

“'How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them?

“'I thought with rage. I glared at them for a bit, and then decided I had been insulted enough. I angrily walked toward them and bumped the Asian guy aside, trying to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl.'

Describes Attempts to Win White Girls by “Getting Money”

"Rodger then describes his pathetic attempts to attract white blonde girls by getting lots of money. His attempts to get money were however restricted to buying hundreds of dollars of lottery tickets:

“'Earlier in that day, as I drove through Isla Vista, I saw this one particular young couple that stood out from the rest only because the girl looked absolutely perfect. She was tall, blonde, and sexy. She would have towered over me in height, and her boyfriend of course towered over her.

“'They were both wearing beach gear, and the girl was in her bikini, showing off to everyone her sensual, erection-causing body. Her blonde hair was wet from swimming in the ocean, and it only made her look more arousing. The two of them were holding hands, and it was clear that they were in love. I saw the boyfriend place his hand on the girl’s ass, and when he did this the girl looked at him and smiled with delight. That guy was in heaven.

“' can only imagine how amazing it must be to have sex with a girl like that. I had to witness everything I wanted but could not have. It made me feel dizzy with anguish. I immediately thought about that couple, and how impossible it was for me to have the same experience as that guy. Impossible, as I was at that point.

“But it would be possible for me to get a tall, blonde, sexy girlfriend if I was a multi-millionaire!'

"He then describes the motivation for his lottery-ticket buying expedition to Arizona, where there was a particularly large 'Powerball' payout at the time:

“'At the end of March, when I checked my last set of tickets that I had bought from my last trip to Arizona, and saw that I didn’t win, any hope I had of becoming wealthy at a young age was finally and indefinitely shattered. It fully dawned on me that the life I had envisioned for myself would never come to pass. The children I would have in the future with a beautiful blonde girlfriend ceased to exist, as if they were murdered. There won’t be any beautiful blonde girlfriend for me now.'

"He then goes on to describe his hopelessness at ever getting a white blonde girl:

“'No one invited me to any parties, and in all the times I went out by myself to Isla Vista, none of the beautiful blonde girls showed any interest in having sex with me. Not one girl.'

"He adds a short while later:

“'Isla Vista was at its wildest state at that time, and I saw lots of guys walking around with hot blonde girls on their arm. It fueled me with rage, as it always had. I should be one of those guys, but no blonde girls gave me that chance.'

Describes Turn to Hatred of White People

His inability to attract a white blonde girl quickly turned into outright race-hatred, as Rodger then describes:

“'On one of my very last days as a teenager, as I was sitting at my usual place at the food court outside Domino’s, I saw a sight that shattered my heart to pieces. A tall, blonde, jock-type guy walked into one of the restaurants, and at his side was one of the sexiest girls I had ever seen. She too was tall and blonde. They were both taller than me, and they kissed each other passionately. They made me feel so inferior and worthless and small. I glared at them with intense hatred as I sat by myself in my lonely misery. I could never have a girl like that.'

"His hatred of whites was not, as can be seen, reserved for females, but also for white males:

“'I went back to Santa Barbara for a couple of weeks to finish off my two classes. In my history class, I kept feeling weak with inferiority as I watched this tall, handsome blonde jock constantly sit and talk with two beautiful girls.'

"And

“'I had a particular burning hatred for the actor Alexander Ludwig, who I saw sitting arrogantly on a couch as people crowded around him in adoration. I hated everything about him; his golden blonde hair; his tall, muscular frame; his cocky, masculine face.'

"And

“'On one of the days in July, when I was roaming around Girsh Park, a group of popular college kids arrived to play kickball in the fields. They all looked like typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular. The kind of guys I’ve hated and envied all my life. With them came a flock of beautiful blonde girls, and they looked like they were having so much fun playing together.'

Describes First Violence against Whites

"This hatred of whites, and white blondes in particular, soon boiled over, and Rodger describes his first incident this way:

“'As I made my way back from school one day during the first week, I was stopped at a stoplight in Isla Vista when I saw two hot blonde girls waiting at the bus stop. I was dressed in one of my nice shirts, so I looked at them and smiled. They looked at me, but they didn’t even deign to smile back. They just looked away as if I was a fool.

“'As I drove away I became very infuriated. It was such an insult. This was the way all girls treated me, and I was sick and tired of it. In a rage, I made a U-turn, pulled up to their bus stop and splashed my Starbucks latte all over them. I felt a feeling a spiteful satisfaction as I saw it stain their jeans. I then quickly speeded away before they could catch my license plate number.

“'How dare those girls snub me in such a fashion! How dare they insult me so! I raged to myself repeatedly. They deserved the punishment I gave them. It was such a pity that my latte wasn’t hot enough to burn them. Those girls deserved to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I so rightfully deserve!'

Describes Hatred of White Counselors

"Even the counselors his parents hired to try and teach him social skills only aroused further hatred, as Rodger describes:

“'Gavin was the only young person I really interacted with at the time, besides the occasional meetings with Philip and Addison. He was a good-looking guy, with a chiseled jaw and bright blonde hair. Whenever we went out to a restaurant, or anywhere that had girls, I got extremely jealous when I saw that girls were checking him out instead of me. This one girl at a restaurant in Santa Monica was staring at him the whole time we were sitting there. No girl had ever done that to me. This only made me more aware that girls did not consider me physically attractive.'

"And

> “'The second counselor that was assigned to help me was a girl named Sasha. She was only a year older than me. Sasha was the first young girl I had interacted with in the entire time I stayed in Santa Barbara, and she was only hired to talk to me. How pathetic is that?

“'At first, I didn’t want to have a female counselor, but when I was introduced to her, I saw that she was quite a pretty looking blonde. I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to hang out with a blonde girl, despite the fact that she was a hired friend. It was the only time in my life that I had the experience of spending time with a girl my age, and even though it was all fake, I really enjoyed it. I felt so much better about life after each time we met.

“'But then, I thought about how unfair it was that I could only get a fake little taste of such an experience, while other men get to do such a thing every single day with their girlfriends.'

First Description of White People as “Enemies”

"Rodger then describes an incident in which his mother invited his childhood friend, Maddy, and her boyfriend, over to her house for dinner. In this part, he first describes white people as 'enemies.'

“'Before Maddy came, I stalked her Facebook for a bit, and I saw that she was the exact image of everything I hated in women. She was a popular, spoiled USC girl who partied with her hot, beautiful blonde-haired clique of friends.

“'All of them looked like absolute cunts, and my hatred for them all grew from each picture I saw on her profile. They were the kind of beautiful, popular people who lived pleasurable lives and would look down on me as inferior scum, never accepting me as one of them. They were my enemies. They represented everything that was wrong with this world. >p> “'Maddy was my first friend in America. As a child, I played with her as an equal. Now she was my enemy.'

Shooting victim Katie Cooper: According to Rodger's manifesto, she was the "enemy."

"Describes Majority White Sorority Alpha Phi as Target because it is 'Full of Hot, Beautiful Blonde Girls'

"One of the targets of his attack on May 24th was the sorority Alpha Phi, which Rodgers had carefully staked out and decided upon precisely because it had a large number of white blonde girls:

“'I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB. After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their house is, and I’ve sat outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot, beautiful blonde girls; the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me.'

"Media Ignore the Anti-White Nature of the Elliot Rodger Murder Spree

"It is obvious from these extracts that the Isla Vista shooting was a racially-motivated, anti-white, deliberately planned terrorist attack.

"Yet, in the coverage so far in the controlled media, not a word has been mentioned of Rodger’s obsessive anti-white racism.

"Contrast this coverage—or rather lack thereof—with the blanket coverage given to even the tiniest incident which involves any white person attacking non-whites on even the most improbable racial grounds.

"Put another way: what would the media coverage be if a white kid had deliberately gone out his way to murder as many blacks as possible, and put up an online manifesto outlining his racial reasons for doing so?

"If the latter example had occurred, the media would have provided blanket coverage of the 'racist murder spree'—but it seems that racism is only newsworthy when it is perpetrated by whites. Any non-white racism is simply covered up, as the Elliot Rodger case proves once again.

"Note: Grammatically speaking, 'blond' without an –e, refers to males, and 'blonde' with an –e refers to females. Few people, Rodger included, are aware of this grammatical difference, and in his manifesto he referred to both male and females as 'blonde.'"