Meaningless High School

When I was in high school my life consisted mainly of four things: high school, family, partying, and science fiction. The first two were close to meaningless, and the last two meant a lot. In fact, they were pretty much the focus of my high school life.

It took me years to figure out what the answer was to that puzzle of why the first two meant so little and the last two so much. I didn't have a bad family life. It was just that, like a lot of kids then and now, family just didn't mean that much (I'm sure I would have realized just how much it meant if I didn't have it). Finally, I realized the answer was pretty simple: it had to do with meaning. The first two had little meaning to me; the last two a great deal. Everything has to have meaning, or it's not really worth doing or having.

For the last few decades there has been a lot of controversy among many people about the break-up of families. They have a point, and it's an important one. But when families are intact, there is something else little noticed but very important. As Ortega y Gassett has written, "People do not live together merely to be together. They live together to do something together."

Because of the way American life has evolved (in large part due to the interference of the State), there was no place for most teenagers when I was growing up, in society or the family. It's no different today. Teenagers have been marginalized for a long time, including in the family, even if it's not purposely done. Lots of teenager's lives don't have much purpose or meaning, even in their families. There is no true sense of community. That, I realized, was one of the main problems.

A few years ago I was in Memphis, sitting in a mall on a Friday night with a woman I know, waiting for a movie to start. I watched the same kids circle the mall, widdershins. That's all they were doing. I especially remember two girls, dressed like Goths, who I saw four times as they circled, before we left for the movie. That was the meaning and purpose of a lot of their life for these teenage girls. Walking in circles around the mall on a Friday night.

Not long ago I was in Chicago, in another mall on Saturday morning. I saw the same behavior among teenagers I saw in Memphis.

It wasn't always like what I saw. The only book by Laura Ingalls Wilder I've read is Farmer Boy, her biography of the life of her husband, Almanzo Wilder, when he was ten years old and growing up on a farm. I was surprised by his life, which wasn't all that long ago -- in the 1860's.

Almanzo had a place and a purpose in the family, and an important one. The functioning of the farm was very much dependent on him, and Almanzo didn't mind at all. He enjoyed it a great deal. How many teenagers today can say the same? How many today just live with their families, but don't truly feel part of them? As for school -- ugh.

There was something very interesting about Almanzo's life. He hated school passionately and apparently only attended a few months at the most in his entire life. Yet he grew up intelligent and well-read.

He also remembered nearly everything that happened to him when he was young. I remember little, mostly because I spent most of my time in school, and it was the same meaningless thing day after day. I couldn't tell one day from the other. I have few memories from in-between the ages of seven and 10. I'm not the only one.

So, school, too, is a major part of the problem with teenagers today. Many have little purpose or meaning in their families, and even less in school. Unfortunately, to borrow a phrase from John Taylor Gatto, the purpose of government factory schools is indoctrination. That's why it puzzled me at first why family and school didn't mean that much to me. I especially had no place, or meaning, or purpose, in school. Indoctrination is not education, and it's always boring and never has any meaning.

Almanzo had an important place in the family, but no place in school. That's why he hated it. School meant nothing to him, and it bored him. It isn't any different today.

When I was in high school, we formed our own little communities. The same thing happens today. We called them "cliques" back then. To a degree I found it amusing even at the time. For one thing, in the one I belonged to, we all dressed exactly the same, from head to feet. It was the uniform for our community. More than anything else, what I remember from high school is the group I belonged to, and how we dressed.

The only acceptable shoes were Hush Puppies (I don't even know if they exist these days). Dark socks. White sweat socks? Ack! "Greasers" wore them. I didn't even know what a greaser was. None of us did.

Pants? Blue jeans as long as they were Levi's. They had to have the welt down the outside, and be flares, which were sort of a modified bell-bottom. Shirts? I remember flannel shirts were okay in the winter, as long as they were worn with a blue peacoat. No button-up shirts, especially with short sleeves. Pure Nerdsville. No hats were acceptable, either. Long hair was an imperative. Mine was down in-between my shoulder blades.

Sound silly? Not really. It was the uniform of our community. It was part of the ritual. And without ritual, community and meaning, you'll get not much more than alienation.

As for the purpose and meaning of my group, there was exactly one: partying on the weekends. And I'll tell you what: I had a great time. I belonged to a true community, and all of us had a meaning and purpose. It was nothing that could last for life -- partying never does -- but for those few years, it was wonderful. When I told one of my friends stories of my teenage years he admitted years later he was envious of me, because his high-school years consisted of him and his best friend sitting in the basement eating popcorn and watching TV. While I was on an island with 500 people, partying around a bonfire.

The science fiction, I knew even at the time, gave me what is commonly called "a sense of wonder." I traveled from one end of the universe to the other, from the beginning of time to the end. It was amazing stuff - meaningful stuff, to me - and to this day I still read it. Even in middle school and high school I knew it was a reaction against the boredom of both. I just drifted away in my imagination, which at the time was more vivid than life.

When the Harry Potter books came out, and I saw they were so popular that kids dressed like him, I understood why. Harry also had no place in his family. It wasn't even his real family. He was an outsider, an outcast, a scapegoat. I think that's one of the reasons for the popularity of the books, because even many small kids realize they don't have any true place or meaning in their families. It wasn't until Harry went away to Hogwarts that he was given a place in his new family, and a meaning -- in his case, a very important meaning.

Is it any wonder those books are so popular?

I've come to the conclusion there is no hope for the public schools. They bore kids, they destroy their imaginations, they give them no meaning or purpose. I'd shut them down on the spot if I could. How many kids like school? Almost none. Doesn't that tell people something?

Why in the world do we need 12 years of schooling anyway? What exactly does it take 12 years to learn? And that doesn't include college and graduate and post-graduate work. Is all of this necessary? It isn't a good thing, of that I am convinced.

I read an article several years ago about a rather strange man who lived in a cave with his 12-year-old daughter. He taught her out of a set of old encyclopedias. When the police finally found them, investigators said the daughter was "unusually intelligent and knowledgeable."

I'm certainly not recommending living in a cave with your kid, only pointing out perhaps schools are only not necessary, maybe they are instead a obstacle to true education. Watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off sometime. It reminds me of a nightmare I sometimes have: it is the last day of high school, and for some horrible reason I won't graduate and have to go another year. It is the only nightmare I have repeatedly.

It'd be better if a lot of kids started as apprentices at 12 years old. I've known several people who just simply could not finish high school. All of them later became successful in their field. One friend who lived next door to me when we were in high school dropped out, and later became an airline pilot. None of them could find a place, a meaning and a purpose in schools they attended.

As for families, I do know one thing: the State is the cause of most of their problems. Interference by public schools, interference in the economy, destruction of neighborhoods and communities...all of these things are created and exacerbated by the State. Interference by the State takes away the meaning and purpose of people's lives, and tries to replace it with its meaning, which is generally bureaucracy, militarization, war and empire.

The State does a lot of bad things to people. Taking away a true meaning to their lives and replacing it with false one is one of the worst. Or, as Robert Nisbet put it in his The Quest for Community, "The conflict between the central power of the political State, and the whole set of functions and authorities contained in church, family, guild and local community has been, I believe, the main source of those dislocations of social structure and the uprootings of status which lie behind the problem of community in our age."

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed

Men Teaching Classes for Women at the Adult Learning Center

(This was sent to me and I have no idea who the author is.)

Men Teaching Classes for Women at THE ADULT LEARNING CENTER.

REGISTRATION MUST BE COMPLETED by Sun, September 1, 2013.

NOTE: DUE TO THE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THEIR CONTENTS, CLASS SIZES WILL BE LIMITED TO 8 PARTICIPANTS MAXIMUM .

Class 1

Up in Winter, Down in Summer - How to Adjust a Thermostat Step by Step, with Slide Presentation. Meets 4 weeks, Monday and Wednesday for 2 hrs beginning at 7:00 PM.

Class 2

Which Takes More Energy - Putting the Toilet Seat Down, or Bitching About It for 3 Hours? Round Table Discussion. Meets 2 weeks, Saturday 12:00 for 2 hours.

Class 3

Is It Possible To Drive Past a Wal-Mart Without Stopping?.Group Debate. Meets 4 weeks, Saturday 10:00 PM for 2 hours.

Class 4

Fundamental Differences Between a Purse and a Suitcase - Pictures and Explanatory Graphics. Meets Saturdays at 2:00 PM for 3 weeks.

Class 5

Curling Irons - Can They Levitate and Fly Into The Bathroom Cabinet? Examples on Video. Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

Class 6

How to Ask Questions During Commercials and Be Quiet During the Program. Help Line Support and Support Groups. Meets 4 Weeks, Friday and Sunday 7:00 PM.

Class 7

Can a Bath Be Taken Without 14 Different Kinds of Soaps and Shampoos? Open Forum Monday at 8:00 PM, 2 hours.

Class 8

Health Watch - They Make Medicine for PMS - USE IT! Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

Class 9

I Was Wrong and He Was Right! - Real Life Testimonials. Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Location to be determined.

Class 10

How to Parallel Park In Less Than 20 Minutes Without an Insurance Claim. Driving Simulations. 4 weeks, Saturday's noon, 2 hours.

Class 11

Learning to Live - How to Apply Brakes Without Throwing Passengers Through the Windshield. Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, location to be determined.

Class 12

How to Shop by Yourself. Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

Post Traumatic School Disorder

I have only one recurring nightmare, which I have about once a year, and have had since I graduated high school.

It is the last day of my senior year, and I suddenly realize there is a required class that I have not been to all year. Unless I take the final and pass it, I will have to go another year, while all my friends are away at college. I will be 18 years old, stuck for another year with a class of 17-year-olds. It gives me the exact same feeling as being a high school senior and being returned to first grade. "You have to repeat everything from first grade to high school...you'll be 30 when you finally graduate high school." It's like being an adult and forced to sit at the kiddie table all you life during Thanksgiving.

Usually, I can't find the class. Space and time are distorted. New hallways appear; when I turn around the ones behind me are gone. I feel like some of Lovecraft's Elder Gods are in charge of the universe, and have especially targeted me for torment. I'm in a panic. The layout of the school is different. I'm disoriented, and spend what feels like hour after strange hour looking for the class. Sometimes I do find it. I don't recognize the teacher or any of the students. They look at me like I have waving antennae sprouting from my head. The test makes no sense. The teacher is usually a pudgy spinster with a faded sack-like dress and cat's-eye glasses. She looks just like Miss Wormwood in the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes,” or any of the women in “The Far Side.” The test appears to be Corfu, or worse, math (and I can’t even make out the numbers). I always end up failing and am condemned to another year in high school.

Someday, I'm sure I'll see the name on the building, and it will read, "HORROR HIGH" (it did not surprise me at all when I discovered there is a satirical movie called Return to Horror High). My teacher will probably ultimately be dressed like the Devil – horns and a red suit, like John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, (probably with the cat’s-eye glasses) and when I beg desperately for help he will give me an evil BWAHAHAHAHA! I fully expect to turn around and find there is no exit from the classroom – the door will be bricked up, like what happened in The Matrix.

Occasionally, I wake up, and am so disoriented I've gone to the front door, opened it and stuck my head outside, because I feel like I'm suffocating. I tell people I have Post-Traumatic School Disorder. I should sue someone.

Some of my friends have the almost the exact same nightmare. How can that be? Is there a Nightmare Factory somewhere cranking out the same nightmares, and parceling them out when we're asleep? I don't have nightmares about college, or any job I've had. It's always the last day of high school. I'll bet I could write a book, call it The Last Day of High School, and many people would buy it for the title alone.

That's what public high school did to me and some of my friends. It has given us permanent nightmares – literally, a mild version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Old soldiers may twitch when they hear firecrackers; I cringe whenever I hear a fire alarm bell.

I did have some great times in high school, but it was always on weekends. School itself was a sentence to be served – sit, march, sit, march, sit, march, walk on the right side of the staircase. We even had an Up staircase, and a Down one, just like in Bel Kaufman's book about school, Up the Down Staircase. I was bored silly and sometimes fell asleep in class. It's a feat to fall asleep sitting up, but I managed it. Some other kids managed it, too. Some couldn't quite pull it off with panache, and instead looked like the almost-passed-out kids in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, when Mr. Monotone himself (Ben Stein) was unwittingly torturing them with his lecture.

If I had the power (or a magic wand), I would close down every public school today, within the next nanosecond, refund all the tax money to the parents, and let them educate their children any way they wanted. (I can hear the dimbulb socialist NEA types now: "Oh no! They'll teach them religion!") I tell people I would tear the schools down and salt the ground, then pepper the teachers because so many of them are bland, but I'm joking. Really, I am. Honest.

From what I've been able to gather, the sit-march-sit structure of the public schools was originally to train students into being obedient little automatons for corporate business. A three-month summer vacation was intended for students to help with the harvest.

Talk about being over 100 years behind the times. Three months off for harvest? When's the last time that was necessary? 1930? Training students as automatons for corporate America? That certainly is the way to create a nation of polymaths, I'll guarantee you.

John Taylor Gatto , author of The Underground History of American Education, claims that modern public schools were inventions of people like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan. Along with the help of "efficiency expert" Frederick W. Taylor, they designed the schools to create standardized employees and customers. The boredom and alienation was intentional, in order to produce good consumers. Learning and character were secondary. The purpose of the public schools, according to Gatto, was to serve the unholy marriage of corporations (what these days call Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations) and the State.

I don't believe the structure to the schools these men wanted was any kind of evil conspiracy. I'm more of a believer in what Napoleon said, "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." These corporate businessmen apparently believed they were doing good. I'm sure they thought, "After all, we are trying to produce good workers and consumers. What is wrong with that?"

What is wrong with "that" is the schools are supposed to develop critical thinking skills, and create knowledgeable students with good characters. Not "good workers" and "good consumers." Being a good worker automatically comes from having a good character. It's not like you can have the first without the second.

Public schools have become so boring that kids are now drugged with Ritalin so they can sit still and pay attention. When I was in high school many of the kids used marijuana, which calmed them down. They didn't use booze, which often makes people combative.

I suppose Ritalin, an unnatural drug related to cocaine, is okay to place within children's brains because the State approves of it and has made it legal. Would parents approve if doctors prescribed coca leaves, which South American Indians have used for thousands of years with no ill effects? What's the difference, except one is legal and the other is not? Or that coca leaves are safer than Ritalin?

I'm sure that Rockefeller, et al didn't realize that the boredom and drudgery of public schools would ultimately lead to drug use – legal and illegal – so the kids could combat the ill effects of sitting and marching all day. There is also a massive drug problem in similar institutions, such as prisons and the military. Why can't the "experts" see these similarities? Maybe that old joke is true – "ex" means "has-been" and "spurt" means "drip." Most "experts" are a bunch of has-been drips.

I tell people I never learned a thing in between fourth grade and graduation day. I didn't, either. I think I may have brain damage. I could do math in the first grade. The ability disappeared soon after.

I blame most educational problems on the State's interference in schools. When the State gets involved, competition ceases. Without competition, the quality goes down. You can believe in that as a law of nature, just as you can believe the sun will always rise in the east.

I'm as free-market as they come, and as "capitalist" as can be, which means I believe in schools completely free of the State and corporations. Corporations are themselves creations of the State, since they have the legal status of persons. Remove that protection, and I suspect many of these gigantic multinationals would disappear. The free market would set the size of a business, not the State.

As tragic as it is, all of the school shootings have occurred in public schools. They haven't occurred in voluntary private schools. When's the last time a kid opened up in a Montessori school? Like never, that's when.

The public schools shove kids together who in life would have nothing to do with each other. The kids get around this by forming cliques. Sometimes the whole school turns into pool of piranhas. It wasn't for nothing that Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, was a best-seller, and turned into a hit movie. And what was it about? Public high school. And what did the survivors end up with? PTSD, that's what.

The tragic victim of King's novel, Carrie White, was a scapegoat and an outcast, just like most of the school shooters. Carrie not only destroyed the school and many of the students, she destroyed the town. "The artist is the antenna of the race," wrote Ezra Pound. All the "experts" pontificating and scratching their brains about the school shootings would be better off paying attention to a horror writer instead of a bunch of Ph.D.s in Psychology.

Want to see another movie about the boredom and alienation in public schools? Try the aforementioned Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's about a kid who has outsmarted the system and is free of it. And what does his nemesis – the high school principal – want more than anything else? To make sure Ferris doesn't graduate so he has to spend another year in school. My nightmare on film.

Ferris isn't the archetype of the scapegoat and an outcast, like Carrie. Instead, he is the Free Man, free from the public schools, which, like corporations, are creations of the State.

Unfortunately, for a lot of kids – especially the smarter ones – high school is about having your brains permanently warped. If it isn't true, why so many nightmares for so many people? Nightmares that have even made it into blockbuster movies? The saddest part is that the nightmares – inside our heads and outside – can be avoided by removing the State from education.

Sex As Meaning Nothing

Sex “taken by itself...is a degradation of human nature.” - Kant

I have, three times in my life, had naked women get into bed with me. The first time, it lasted perhaps one minute. The second girl, it lasted maybe a minute and a half. The third girl, about a minute.

With the second girl, there was a second time. It lasted about a minute. She wanted there to be a third and fourth time, but I ignored her.

Each time, the sex, since it was so brief, meant nothing to me. For them, it was clearly just physical relief. One actually said to me, “I really needed that.” Notice she didn’t ask a thing about me. That’s significant.

I've always known other girls who used sex as relief. Two-thirds of them ruined their lives when it came to relationships. Those who didn't still had difficult relationships. All of them, which is what happens when you screw 20 to 30 guys. (Those who really believe in "Alpha Fux and Beta Bux" don't know what they are talking about. It's more like "Fuck whom I want and end up alone because I don't understand how self-centered and insensitive I am so I'm blame all my problems on men.")

I suppose some guys would be envious of me. In fact, I know some were, because the second girl, we lived in a co-ed house in college, and she ignored the other guys in favor of me. Yet, when it comes down to it, there was nothing for them to be envious of.

Each of these girls was extremely promiscuous, and I do not think they were capable of love. I wonder if there is a inverse relationship between promiscuity and love? After all, notwithstanding silly fantasies like Pretty Woman, how many prostitutes fall in love at least once in their lives? I doubt it’s all that many.

As far as I'm concerned, a slut is not necessarily a promiscuous woman. I know a woman who was promiscuous in college, and it had something to with long-term molestation by her father.

A slut is a promiscuous woman who is concerned only with her own physical pleasure. For all practical purposes guys are just organic dildos to them.

One question I have never been able to answer is, where do you draw the line? What is the upper limit on sex partners? I do know that devoting your life to physical pleasure will destroy you. That’s been noticed as far back as the ancient Greeks.

Physical pleasure has its place. I always think of Jesus, who went to weddings and ate, and drank wine. He approved of it. And what happens at these parties? Dancing and music, of course. It all has its place in life, along with sex. But you can’t be drunk all the time, or eat all the time. Or have sex all the time, either.

Speaking of Jesus, I consider these people to have fallen for the First Temptation – people do not live by bread alone. “Bread,” if it means anything, means materialism. Such materialism includes food, money, drink, sex. Pleasure. No one can make such things the meanings of their lives, such as epicures try to do. Ultimately, and generally quickly, it leads to a degraded life.

I’m not disapproving of sexual promiscuity in a moral sense or even in a physical one, although there can be physical repercussions from such promiscuity. I’m interested in only the psychological effects. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that the more sexually promiscuous someone is, the more difficulty they will have in maintaining a long-term romantic relationship.

I think the reason for this difficulty is that in case of every one of these girls, they were self-centered and lacking in empathy. Lacking in those feelings, they tried to fill the empty place in themselves with physical sensation. That, of course, never works, since physical sensation always ebbs and flows, goes up and down. So you end up needing another fix, but fast. That’s the nature of pleasure.

The original meaning of the Greek word “daemon” (perverted into the word “demon”) was a natural function that took over one’s life, be it sex or food or alcohol. It appears when one gets taken over by a daemon, not much of the personality is left for anything else. Such is the nature of addiction.

The Land of Let's Pretend

The pleasant thing about good fiction is that it does all the intellectual and imaginative heavy lifting for me. I can take advantage of someone else's work and thoughts, for just several dollars. They can spend a year or more creating a novel, and I get all of it for a few bucks. It almost seems unfair to them, since most don't end up like Stephen King, who once bought a radio station so it would play the music he likes, and the purchases didn't put a dent in his wealth.

That's the funny thing about ideas: if someone has some, and shares them with me, it's an increase, because then we both have them. It's not a zero-sum game, or a pie when if I take one piece there is one less for the person who gave it to me. It's more like they give me a huge pie, one they've baked for years, and not only do I have it, they still have it for themselves.

A good writer can create an entire world, one I can move into and take advantage of. He does the creating and all the work; I do the enjoying. All I need is a little imagination and knowledge to discern whether his world makes sense or not. Imagine how slow and cumbersome the world would be if all of us couldn't share ideas and inventions, and had to do everything on our own. We wouldn't have progressed far beyond drawing bison on cave walls.

Not all fiction is good, unfortunately. The good stuff is based on what the world would be like if human nature is taken into account. Writers engage in a "what if" scenario and try to predict what would happen if their ideas were implemented in reality. Sometimes we get Karl Marx, who was a fiction writer, and an incredibly bad one at that. He took all the bad in human nature -- which he thought was the good stuff -- and thought its expression would make a Utopia.

Other times, we get Neal Stephenson, one of my favorite authors.

Stephenson writes massive, lovingly detailed novels such as The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash. All are fine science-fiction novels in which he deals with extrapolations of what the world would be like, among other things, if all governments collapsed. Do I think the future would be exactly as Stephenson imagines? No, I don't. Predicting the future exactly is impossible. But in general outline, I believe Stephenson is right.

The Diamond Age, published in 1995, won the Hugo Award, science-fiction's highest award, in 1996. It deals with many of the same themes as Snow Crash -- ubiquitous nanotechnology, encryption, and the collapse of governments and nations and their replacement by racial and cultural tribes (which he calls "phyles").

He correctly zeroes in on really the only way to permanently collapse all governments -- starve them of their lifeblood, money. Not revolution, not taking over governments and shrinking them -- just starving them to death. He doesn't engage in libertarian fantasies of "somehow" the State just disappearing, or it "somehow" being reformed through legislation and then everyone living in a libertarian Utopia. He just kills them off by starving them of the main thing they are interested in -- Other People's Money.

In both novels, this collapse happens because of advanced technology, specifically encryption. Everyone, and every business, is is able to hide their finances from the prying eyes and fingers of the tax collectors, which cannot break the codes because they are complex beyond the ability of the most powerful computers. Without taxes, without money, all governments collapse. That's one of the main reasons today all governments are so terrified of encryption: maybe if they had a computer the size of the universe they might break one encrypted message.

To make things more interesting, he also throws in the collapse of nations. For the very large ones, those with many different tribes, I suspect this would happen. In fact, there is a great diaspora of tribes throughout the world, briefly alluded to, not because of the collapse of large governments, but because of the collapse of countries.

What takes the place of all these collapsed governments and countries? Do people suddenly turn into what I call "disconnected libertarian atoms" and move around the world in a Utopia of No More Borders, the way open borders crowd thinks? Not on your life.

Instead, they do what they've always done in the past, do now, and will do in the future -- they form cultural and racial tribes. Some of the tribes are large and powerful because they are intelligent and work hard; others are small and weak because they are stupid and lazy. Some tribes are "artificial," that is, they are composed of people who got together because they share common interests. There is even sort of a Nerd/Trickster phyle, of which most of the world is terrified because the members move around the world as individuals, and no one can tell who they are. Most, however, are tribes that have been around for hundreds or thousands of years.

All tribes have sentries to guard their borders from intrusions by other tribes. These sentries aren't people - they're nanotechnological guards, literally curtains of floating microscopic nanobots which guard against the incursions of other, dangerous nanobots sent from other tribes.

Stephenson is taking old ideas of tribes and sentries, projecting them into the future, and dressing them up with a lot of fancy (and so far non-existent) technology. He's taking some very old stories and imagines how they would be told in the future. He's taking human nature into account.

People will always form racial and cultural tribes; there is no way around it. And these tribes get along very well as long as each stays on its own territory and engages in trade with the others. The ending of the novel is about the violence that happens when one huge phyle attempts to move smaller phyles off of its traditional territory.

Curiously, in his societies those who do not belong to tribes are invariably criminals, an illustration of Aristotle's comment, "He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." In Stephenson's mind, such people are beasts, and even though he does not come out and say so, he obviously does not believe in the leftist/leftist-libertarian fantasy of everyone in the world holding hands and living in a Barney the Dinosaur episode.

Stephenson is not explicit about the distinction between the Political Means of States (theft, murder, etc) and the Economic Means of Society (liberty, free trade). But he clearly does know the difference, and it shows in his novel.

Each phyle is self-governing; there is no State, per se. But those who do not conform to the customs of the tribe suffer the fate of being expelled. And they are given a lot of leeway before this happens. Those who are murderers, muggers and thieves are executed. There are no prisons mentioned in The Diamond Age, although jail is. Expulsion or execution - there appears to be little in between except an occasional caning as a warning to change your ways. The worst, violent criminals - those who belong to no tribe -- end up executed. In fact, the book starts off with the execution of a tribeless armed robber who badly injures one of his many victims.

Like most (if not all) good writers - and especially science-fiction writers - Stephenson is rather anarchist/libertarian. Yet, because he takes human nature into account far more than leftists do (who I doubt take it into account at all), he's somewhat conservative. I can't remember who said it (it might have been T.S. Elliot, but I can't find the quote), but whoever said it, made the comment that all the greatest writers have been conservative, in the sense of understanding what Russell Kirk called "the permanent things."

Stephenson understands that people will always form themselves into tribes. It's human nature. It's one of those "permanent things." In that sense, he is "conservative." J.R.R. Tolkien was the same way: he's best known for creating the tribes of Men, Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, all of whom stayed on their own territory, and because of this, got along just fine with their neighbors...with the exception of the Orcs, who didn't respect anyone's territory.

I suppose you can say that Stephenson is a conservative libertarian. At least he appears to be one from his novels. He understands there are bad people - tribeless Orcs, if you will - who will trespass on others. He clearly does not believe in the borderless Utopian fantasies of some libertarians. He understands that as important as the individual is, we are group beings, and will always form ourselves into tribes who will always occupy a certain territory. It's perhaps the main reason the Iraqi and Afghani tribes are trying to throw the American tribes off of their land.

This tribal characteristic of human nature is something the open borders crowd will have to come to terms with, contra their borderless, tribeless fantasies of disconnected individuals united by nothing but the free market. Those who do deny it are idealists courting tragedy.

If you want to see a current movie about what open borders does, try Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. There aren't any borders, the world has swamped by Third Worlders who don't have the ability sustain any advanced civilization, and those who can maintain have moved to a space station. Call it Beverly Hills in Space.

No nations - open borders, free movement of everyone - inevitably leads to catastrophe, contrary to the delusions of, well, the deluded.

"We're Germs, Kid. We're Going to Kill You."

One of my friends and I occasionally discuss our perceptions this is not the same country we grew up in. And it's not like we're old fogies; we're not old, or fogies, whatever a fogy is. But it doesn't seem to be that much fun for kids today, compared to when we were out wreaking havoc.

We don't see the kids doing the things we used to do -- dirt-clod or snowball fights, King-of-the-Hill, wrestling with each other, racing downhill on bikes as fast as possible. Or riding our bikes ten miles from home without telling anyone. A lot of kids today appear to be inside, addicted to video games. I'm sure that's not such a good thing.

Most of the things we did as kids were risky, but risk had a lot to do with making it fun. It was a controlled (and at that age, a mostly mild) risk, but it was still a risk.

Here's an example: when I was a kid, there were no such things as bike helmets. Do I see helmets as a bad thing? Mostly I don't, but in some ways, I do. I've never known a kid to hurt his brains by not wearing a helmet. I'm sure it's happened, very rarely, but is it worth it when you can't get on your bike without worrying, "I have to put my helmet on so I'll be a vanishing fraction safer"?

Here's another, more interesting example from when I wasn't a kid, but about 21: my car starting spinning on the highway after I hit an unseen patch of black ice hidden by the night. I spun around, went off the road and rolled a few times, and came to rest with the car on its side. I remember the motor was still running and the headlights still on. I wasn't afraid the entire time, even though I could have gotten killed, just in a state of disbelief

In that state everything dropped into slow-motion, and my perception grew very acute. After the car was lying on its side, I opened the door like a tank hatch, got out, and went "Woo hoo!" Everything was very bright and clear and intense. In a way, it was one of the most fun things that ever happened to me. The thrill was beyond description, and from that accident I learned why guys jump out of airplanes and engage in other extreme risk taking. It's some of the most fun play there is.

Is life supposed to be about being safe and bored all the time? Always feeling anxious and thinking, well, I'd better worry about doing this irrelevant thing, or that meaningless thing, so I'll be just a teeny-tiny bit safer? As compared to never giving it a thought? Which is more fun? Thinking the whole world is out to get you, or thinking it's a place where you can have a lot of fun?

I still drive all the time, and never worry about getting into an accident.

The problem, really, is thinking the whole world is an unsafe place, out to get you. I am reminded of cartoonist Gahan Wilson's book, Nuts, which is about young kids. One of the cartoons in particular sticks in my mind: a little boy, in bed with the sheets pulled up below his chin and a look of terror on his face. Why? Because many little oozy monsters are crawling up his sheets, grinning as they tell him, "We're germs, kid. We're going to kill you."

When I was a teenager we rode horses and mini-bikes (which had lawnmower pull-start engines), swam in lakes, sailed our goofy Sea Snark Styrofoam sailboat, jumped off of cliffs into rivers. Nothing bad happened, no one drowned, or even came close. The most unusual thing we did is inflate one of those inner-tubes off of an 18-wheeler, then six or seven of us would stand on it in the middle of the lake and rock it back and forth until it upended. Only once was I was on the low end, and had every one fall on top of me. I remember I was so far down under the surface people were kicking me in the head. When I surfaced, everyone had concerned looks on their faces, because it took so long for me to come up. But I wasn't in danger, even that far down.

Not once as a teenager do I remember thinking, "Maybe I shouldn't swim in this lake. . .I could drown. . .maybe I shouldn't ride this mini-bike. . .I could fall off and cut my knee." The latter I did do; even today I have a three-stitch scar on my left knee. So what? Scars are permanent souvenirs.

What would life be like if all the fun and excitement and risk and adventure were sucked right out of it, in the name of safety? Would it be worth living, if the ability to play was eradicated? And doesn't play always involve some risk? All animals play, not only when young but when adult. In their case, it always involves teeth and claws. Would they ever stop playing because of the possibility of a scratch? You already know the answer: no.

One image I often have is that I'm looking at an attempt to return us to the womb. That's even more regressive than being a swaddled baby in a crib. There is no fun or adventure or excitement or risk in the womb. There's also no intelligence either. It sounds like an attempt to return us to the Garden of Eden, and contrary to the conventional wisdom, I would find it a heck of a boring place.

Here's what I wonder: is the desire for play and excitement and adventure in any way related to intelligence, the desire to learn, the desire to explore, to invent? Are they the natural outcomes of freedom and liberty? Seems so to me. And if you take away risk and fun and adventure, what happens to those good qualities of exploration and innovation? I think they go away, for the most part. After, hasn't it been the free countries that have produced just about everything in the world?

Dr. Stuart Brown, who has spent his career studying play, thinks it's essential. He writes:

"In my career I have reviewed more than 6000 life histories, looking specifically at a person’s play experiences over his or her life. In studying these histories it has become vividly apparent that play is enormously significant for both children and adults.

"I began thinking about the role of play in our lives while conducting a detailed study of homicidal males in Texas. What I discovered was severe play deprivation in the lives of these murderers. When I later studied highly creative and successful individuals, there was a stark contrast. Highly successful people have a rich play life.

"It is also established that play affects mental and physical health for both adults and children. A severely play deprived child demonstrates multiple dysfunctional symptoms-- the evidence continues to accumulate that the learning of emotional control, social competency, personal resiliency and continuing curiosity plus other life benefits accrue largely through rich developmentally appropriate play experiences. Likewise, an adult who has “lost” what was a playful youth and doesn’t play will demonstrate social, emotional and cognitive narrowing, be less able to handle stress, and often experience a smoldering depression."

Who's behind this attempt to make the world out of Nerf - to take the fun out of everything? Politically, it's leftists. But what's leftism? Isn't it just Mommy by another name? And don't Mommies want to make the world all safe 'n' snug, even though they don't understand they're taking all the fun out of everything? And maybe removing our brains, too?

It's not Daddies who're trying to rid the world of BB guns, and attempting to put little boys on Ritalin because they're acting like little boys and not little girls. It's Mommies who are trying this. And, to his everlasting shame, Daddies are letting Mommies do this.

Fred Reed has the perfect comment about this kind of Mommy: "censorious, moralizing, self-pitying, endlessly instructive, and so achingly tedious that men find themselves thinking of moldy bath sponges."

Men in general are far more risk-taking than women. The schools, for that matter, are trying to turn little boys into girls. And get rid of playing, to boot.

Maybe those boys on Ritalin just need to go outside and have some rough-and-tumble play for a few hours instead of being forced to sit motionless at desks, which little girls can do far more easily than little boys.

Another image I have is that of “Star Trek's” the Borg. The components of the Borg are completely safe womb-to-tomb, always taken care of - and they have no excitement, no adventure, no fun, and no consciousness or intelligence. And it's completely in character that the Borg Cube (which is just a huge womb flying through space) is ruled by a Queen, one who is motherly and concerned for the welfare of her little worker drones. To me, her most frightening and eye-opening saying was when she commented: "Why do you resist us? We only wish to improve the quality of your lives."

The welfare state is Mommy. And the bigger her welfare state, the more play will decline and with it our intelligence, and along with it will go innovation, and fun, and excitement, and adventure. What a life, if you can call it a life. People will go from playing chess to checkers, then finally have problems with "Go Fish."

Does play, even if it involves risk, stimulate our brains. It serve a deeper, more profound function than simple recreation. And it is necessary throughout our lives, especially as a baby and a teenager. All societies are damaged when Mommy takes over, because our brains go plop right out of our heads. It's too risky otherwise.

Why All Women Should Want to Have Sex with Me

"If we could castrate all scoundrels, and shut up all stupid geese in monasteries and give persons of noble character a whole harem and provide men, and indeed complete men, for all maidens of mind and understanding, a generation would soon arise what would produce a better age than that of Pericles." - Schopenhauer.

All women should be ecstatic to have sex with me. It’d be good, in fact great, for the world. (As a aside, in some cases, it’d be better for the women, and in others better for me…but that’s another story).

Well, actually not all women. The fat, ugly and stupid ones should be sterilized, along with short men. It’d be okay if fat, ugly and stupid women married short men, as long as both were sterilized. It’s not like I want people to be alone and unhappy. I just don’t want to them to have kids.

It would also be better if these people were forced to live in a state by themselves. It’s not like I want to look at them, either.

I figure people can be bred like dogs, within certain parameters. And since I’m smart, funny, tall and good-looking, it’d be best if my descendents took over the world. Which means, actually, all smart, funny, good-looking and fairly tall women should be mobbing me because they’d want to have sex with me, get pregnant, and have thousands of kids by me.

We’d have as close to Utopia as we’re going to get in this world.

Yet I'm not being mobbed. I can only conclude...

...People are retarded. Except for people like me, of course. I remember years ago reading an article that the reason the boxer Mike Tyson had bodyguards was not to keep men away from him, but women. Apparently hundreds were throwing themselves at him.

I thought, what is wrong with these women? Tyson is ugly, stupid, and about as mature as a four-year-old. Why were these women after him? Because he’s rich and famous? That trumps all the rest of the stuff about him? Blech!

Now these women are perfect examples of ones who should not be allowed to reproduce, even if you have to sterilize them. I doubt the IQs of 99.99% of them are more than 100.

The average IQ is 100. That means half the people in this country have IQs of less than 100. Oh my God! Neuter them!! Otherwise the world will end up like the story, “The Marching Morons” or the movie, Idiocracy.

But even a high IQ is not enough. There are all sorts of high-IQ people at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, yet almost all of them are lacking in character, which is why they go to work for the federal government. They’re worse than worthless. They’re dangerous.

Smartness is only good when good character is involved. And that’s me!

In a fair world I would have 200 wives – all of them smart, funny, witty, and knowledgeable. And good-looking. Then each would have two kids – 400 descendents! Why, in about 100 years, what with the forced sterilizations of the Yechs! my descendents will take over the world.

Just imagine – all of the problems that plague humanity, they’d all be mostly gone. All the retards would disappear and the world would be populated by the noble, that is, me and my descendents.

And people tell me there are no answers. Ha! How little they know!

The Real "Alpha" Is The Most Evolved Version Of You

I don't use the word "Alpha" as a serious concept. It's a dumb word as used in the Manosphere and most of those who use it don't even know what it means. It comes from the study of canines and it means one thing, and one thing only: parent wolves. If you transfer it to humans, what you get is a patriarch.

Worse, the accepted definition in the Manosphere is an almost clinical definition of a narcissist, and there is nothing good about being a narcissist at all. Whoever came up with that definition has some problems, and I'd say some pretty deep-seated ones.

There are other problems. When you have a fantasy hierarchy of from Alpha to Omega, the wimps are going to call themselves Alphas (the wimp Ted Nugent is a perfect example) and sneer at and denigrate others as Betas, Gammas, Omegas, etc.

There is nothing new in the Manosphere, contrary to the delusions of the uneducated. Thinkers in the past discussed these things and they were just as smart as us, if not smarter. Personally I think they were smarter.

I recently ran across a book called Engineering the Alpha. The authors were smart enough to dismiss the accepted definition of "Alpha" and instead substituted another one, which is the best definition: the real Alpha is the most evolved you can be.

Guess what? I've been saying that for a long time, and it wasn't me who came up with the definition. It was the Greeks, well over 2000 years ago. More like 2200 years, as best as I can tell.

The Greeks believed you achieved eudaimonia (well-being/flourishing) through arete - which is excellence. Being the best you can be. Being the most evolved you can be.

"Excellence" is sometimes translated as "virtue," however, "virtue" means "the powers of man." Being the best you can be is a power inherent in all men.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), that most winning of coaches, had this to say about excellence: "The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor."

Sometimes virtue is translated as "phronesis", which means "practical or ethical wisdom". Eudaimonia was (based on older Greek tradition) used as the term for the highest human good, and so it is the aim of practical philosophy, including ethics and political philosophy.

In other words, society and culture should be set up to allow people to be the best they can be.

The word "education" literally means "to draw out." Education is supposed to draw out what is already in you, and help you develop it to its fullest. What passes for education these days mostly does not do that.

The only way people can be the best they can be is through liberty - free from the depredations of the State. The State wants you to serve it. It's supposed to serve you, instead.

The State is a machine and wants to make you into a cog. Cogs can never develop themselves to their fullest potential. Cogs don't have any potential. They are what they are and that's it.

As Joseph Campbell put it, “Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute...is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity? Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart."

Lombardi also spoke of "the heart": "Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success."

What everyone wants is the richest and happiest life they can have. And by "richest" I mean internally rich. And by happiest I am the greatest well-being/flourishing you an possibly get. To be free.

You might even say the purpose of life is to express yourself to your fullest potential.

Envying the Fantasy PUA/Dark Triad/Alpha

"This deep insecurity and self-loathing causes him to set up a false idealized self." - Krauser on The Great Gatsby.

When I first encountered the concepts of Alpha/PUA/Dark Triad I pretty quickly (for me) noticed they had certain things in common: they were all narcissistic.

The accepted definition of an Alpha is an almost clinical definition of a narcissist; the Dark Triad is about narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and PUAs have to be narcissistic to be PUAs.

None of these things are good things. In fantasy, sure, but in real life they are catastrophic. In fact, a narcissist is someone who is grandiose because he covers up his devalued self. Bluster covering up feelings of humiliation.

Men in general are devalued today by society. Society attempts to degrade and humiliate them. The inevitable reaction is to become grandiose. The corollary to that is to put women down. The Greeks called it Hubris (originally meaning to humiliate someone in public) followed by Nemesis (revenge, which is an attempt to replace shame with pride).

The ultimate purpose of all of these concepts is to replace shame with pride, that is, self-esteem.

The interesting thing, in real life, is that these people have no guilt and do what they want with no concern for what others think. Notice, though, that while they have no guilt and run roughshod over everyone, they can be easily be shamed and humiliated, which is why they go insane with rage when people mock, ridicule, and insult them. This is why the psychiatrist James Gilligan, who spent 35 years studying violent prisoners, said, "The most dangerous man is the one who thinks he is a wimp."

The upside, in the TV/fantasy world, is that they strut through life immune to criticism and what others think. In reality they are as insecure as hell, which they cover up with bluster and grandiosity.

Shame comes first in life, followed by guilt. This has been noticed by mythology, and confirmed by science

In the myth of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are ashamed when they realize they are naked, but not guilty. Christianity added guilt. On top of that, when Adam and Eve feel shame, they blame their problems on others; Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent, a symbol of hate, envy,and revenge (he wants to bring them down because they are the most favored of God).

When people feel shame and humiliation they blame their problems on other people. Then they put them down out of envy and hate - revenge.

This is why I have pointed out several times feminism is based on hate and envy. On feelings of shame and humiliation, which they blame on men. It's an attempt to replace shame with pride.

The concepts of Alpha, Dark Triad, etc. are a response to men feeling shame and humiliation by doing the same thing to women that women have done to them. That's why I I point out it's Hubris followed by Nemesis, but in reality it's a feedback loop, a cycle, a cybernetic system. It goes round and round.

Some men envy/admire what they think are Dark Triad Alphas and so memorize the concepts and try to imitate them, with little and sometimes no ability to analyze the concepts, see what they really are, and where they will inevitably lead.

What goes around, comes around. And around and around and around.

I oppose the concepts of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Dark Triad, etc. because I see where they are going to lead. And it is not someplace good.

Where's My Flying Car and Disintegrator Pistol?

I’ve been a little miffed since I was 12 years old because I didn’t have a flying car, and most especially, a disintegrator pistol. They existed in the movies, books, and on TV, but as for real life, forget it.

I can’t remember the first time I encountered both of them. I do remember a TV program about puppets, called Fireball 500, which was off the air before I was born, so I saw the reruns. And everyone in it had flying cars. There were no disintegrator pistols, unfortunately. I think they had rockets, though.

I think the first time I saw a disintegrator pistol was in a pretty bad movie called Teenagers from Outer Space, which was also made before I was born. There was a scene in it where one of our juvenile delinquent teenager aliens disintegrated some guy. Next thing I see is a skeleton clattering to the ground. Evaporated the flesh right off of him, leaving nothing but his skeleton. I was amazed. I was probably about six

Then of course there was the original Star Trek, which made the word “phaser” into a cliché. And I do remember reading Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was about 11, and running across flying cars you could park in the sky while you slept, and not only were there disintegrator pistols - called “radium” pistols, a word almost as dumb as “phaser” – but also swords. Swords, flying cars, and disintegrator pistols. What more could you ask for? Well, there were the scantily-clad Martian princess babes.

I really believe I would have a flying car, a disintegrator pistol, and also cures for all diseases, if the State hadn’t been meddling in the human race since before recorded history. It’s been meddling since the beginning of recorded history, so why not before? Its nature hasn’t change.

The Romans were clearly on the verge of the Industrial Revolution, and the Greeks before them had shown some signs. Both the Greeks and the Romans collapsed, courtesy of their respective States. All empires collapse, just as the United States, an empire, is going to collapse.

If the Greeks had succeeded, we’d be 2000 years ahead of where we are now. It wouldn’t be 2011; it’d be 4011. I’d have my flying car and disintegrator pistol. And probably half-a-dozen sexbots, looking like the one in Cherry 2000.

I’ve read estimates that perhaps up to 200 million people were killed in the 20th Century, in State-created wars. (Contrary to the mythology, the Communists were ten times as bad as the Nazis. The Communists and the West won, so, as always, the winners write the history.

That’s a lot of people dead before their time. How much advancement would we have had if they hadn’t been killed? How many Edisons and Teslas died? Aristotles? Isaac Newtons? Who survives and gains political power? The Bushes, the Gores…the Obamas. Ugh

Imagine if we didn’t have the State crushing everything and everyone. Life would be so much easier – and happier.

Wages stopped going up in 1973, again courtesy of the State. Two main things caused it to happen at that time – Nixon going off of the gold standard in ’71, allowing the Federal Reserve Bank (which is not federal, has no reserves, and if it’s a bank I’m a banana) to destroy the dollar through inflation, and the second thing was the oil crisis, in which we sent trillions of dollars to our enemies in the Middle East, instead of becoming energy self-sufficient and keeping that money in the U.S.

At the minimum, imagine how it would be if we had no Federal Reserve Bank destroying the value of the dollar through inflation. Imagine no national debt. Imagine the Fed not buying up the debt – “monetizing the debt.” The dollar would still be worth a dollar, not a penny when compared to 100 years ago.

I have estimated the average salary now would be $70,000 a year, but Tyler Cowan, an economist at George Mason University, estimates it would be over $90,000 a year. If what he writes is true, imagine how cheap a flying car and a disintegrator pistol would be. How much? Three months salary?

I consider the State to be the Blob. It’s a close to perfect metaphor. The State expands, with increasing inflation and national debt, growing taxes, more laws and regulations – the Blob. The Blob grows and civilization recedes. Only there’s no Steve McQueen to save us.

When I was about 12 years old I read a story by Robert Heinlein called “Waldo.” One of the characters gets in his flying car and goes to the moon. I remember that night when I was outside I looked at the moon and thought, “Darn.”

Imagine flying to the moon in your private car, maybe hitting a few golf balls around in your private spacesuit, and then flying home. Or imagine if some criminals try to break in your house. Bzzzt. No evidence. Why even call the police?

It drove me crazy then and it still drives me crazy now. It just isn’t fair. Someone deserves to be disintegrated for this.

Without Men There is No Civilization

In college I walked out of the back door of the house I was living in just in time to see two women put a quart of oil in the engine of the VW convertible Bug one owned. I dashed over, yelling, “STOP!!”

“Why?” one asked, confused.

“Because that’s the CARBURETOR!!” I yelled.

She and her friend had poured the entire quart of oil down the carburetor. I had to take the carburetor off and clean it out. It took a while, but I finally got the car running. After three days. I told them they should give the car to me before they destroyed it completely. They declined.

I also knew a woman who, when her car wouldn’t start, hit the battery posts with a hammer. She broke a post off. End of battery. She also thought the way to tell if a car needed oil was to wait until the red oil light came on. She also blew up an engine driving it when the thermostat was stuck closed. She didn’t believe it would blow up, even though I guaranteed her it would.

I’ve also gotten two women’s cars – both of whom were strangers – running by simply cleaning the battery posts. One was in a gas station and one at a bank. I also once changed a woman’s tire in a parking lot, staring at her in disbelief as she tried to change it by herself with the wrong tools. She couldn’t figure out how to loosen the first bolt.

The humorist P.J. O’Rourke has written that without men civilization would last until the next oil change. I’d have to agree with him.

The feminist Camille Paglia, though a lesbian, is surprisingly not a man-hater. In fact, she understands that men created civilization, and has famously written that if civilization was left in the hands of women, we’d be living in grass huts. I’d agree with her, too.

I am completely mystified how some women, maybe even most, have no sense when it comes to the simplest of mechanical things. I know a mechanic who won’t let his wife drive the car. I understand. For another example, again in college, I found a woman trying to take the front door off the hinges with a screwdriver.

When I asked her what she was doing, she said the door wouldn’t shut, so she was going to take the door off the hinges to find out why. I told her doors don’t come off using screwdrivers, especially little toy plastic ones about three inches long, then spent five seconds diagnosing the problem, got my hammer and pounded down a finishing nail that popped up from the floor, preventing the door from closing.

Occasionally, let’s say when I’m outside, I’ll look around and subtract everything invented by men. What’s left? Almost nothing. Cars, houses, streets, heating, cooling, advanced technological society, advanced intellectual accomplishments, medicine, dentistry – gone. What’s left? Paglia’s grass huts.

There are no female Aristotles, Newtons, Eulers or Einsteins. I wish there were, but there aren’t. Women in general do two things: have babies and determine the comfort level of the home – otherwise most men would live in a pigsty, including eating over the sink and wearing their underwear until it fell off.

I once worked at a place that employed mostly women. At the end of the shift they would all gather together and complain about men. Women may think men complain about women, but they don’t, not to the degree women complain about men. It’s not even one percent compared to what women do.

The difference is that when men complain about women, their complaints are almost always justified. Women, on the other hand, always seem to have vague complaints that consist mostly of blaming their problems on men. And it’s always about their relationships.

These women would complain and complain and do it in front of me as if I was invisible. The other men who worked there were never around when these whine-fests erupted…which was every night. Maybe that’s why they were never around.

I also know that when many wives get together they mostly complain about their husbands. Do they think they married down?

I thought, what do these women want? Men have created/discovered close to 100% of everything in the world, in fact created civilization, and apparently that isn’t enough for them?

I occasionally run across women who tell me, if women were in charge we wouldn’t have this or that bad thing. I ask them, so men created civilization and are supposed to hand the keys over to you because you think you can do a better job?

That problem is that they didn’t know what men have done, and if told, probably wouldn’t believe it. Some of them think there is a suppressed history of women geniuses who invented all kinds of wonderful things, or that they are as a sex “oppressed,” which is a close-to-meaningless phrase that’s supposed to explain everything.

It’s a bizarre situation…one sex that has created civilization, and the other one has created almost nothing and complains about the gifts given to them.

I sometimes investigate what others think a man is supposed to be. It's pretty much the same in all cultures - rational, creative, curious investigates/discovers, fixes things, protects, competent.

If a man cannot be these things (say if society denigrates it and prevents him from fulfilling his nature, then he is going to turn into not-so-good. Perhaps a parasite, a mooch, a predator.

Look at what lower-class men have turned into - parasites and predators. That's could be our future - and all because society says many men no longer count.

"Whoever Loves the Least is in Control"

"Woman's age-old instinct [is] to nurture and sustain life, man's instinct [is] to protect and defend it..." - Anne Baring

When I was 21 and in college, my girlfriend told me her mother had informed her, "Make sure your husband loves you more than you love him." I had immediate red flags go up (with klaxons going off, too) because what my girlfriend was told, "Whoever loves the least is in control."

I figured her mother had control issues - and I was amazed she told her daughter this. Fortunately, her daughter did not listen to her mother.

Not long after my girlfriend told me this her mother visited, and we went out to dinner. My girlfriend asked me something (I don't remember what), and I said, in front of her mother, "No. Why? Because I don't want to."

Her mother looked shocked, which I expected. Perhaps she realized I was in charge of the relationship. This is how it should be. By the way, I don't think her mother liked me very much.

Whenever two or more people are involved in anything, someone ends up in charge, because there is no such thing as equality. There never has been, and there never will be.

In a relationship, the man should be in charge (although not in the way most people automatically think). If it's not him, then it's her. If it's not him, men become (as we see today) "emasculated, predators, parasites and slugs."

You can see the "predators" in the PUA/"Game"/hedonists. In the long run, they are going to be sorry. Very sorry. I've seen how the lives of these guys turn out. It ain't pretty.

If women are in charge, they become burned out, used up, bitter, hateful toward and contemptuous of men, blaming all their problems on them, convinced that men are disloyal and useless. I've seen these women turn into cat-owning spinsters.

One way around all these messes is to live according our true natures. Men and women should be complementary, in harmony, in balance with each other. Societies should be set up to develop this. Ours is not.

Men are supposed to be in charge/control, to lead, to take responsibility, to love women, cherish them, lead them, provide for, defend and protect, teach. (Don't give me any of that Alpha/Beta/Gamma crap; that's exactly what it is.)

Even the Bible says the man shall be the head of the household.

Every culture in the world has agreed on what men and women are supposed to.

Let's use the Eastern concepts of Yin/Yang. Yin is the capacity to be receptive. Yang is the capacity to be creative (if one is creative, there has to be that which is receptive to it). Yin/Yang is the concept of duality. Yin and Yang are compliments and opposites in life.

Yin is female and Yang is male. Yet with Yin is a bit of Yang and within Yang is a bit of Yin. Carl Jung also noticed the same thing, which he called the Animus and the Anima.

Women are more Yin and men are more yang. Women become unhealthy when they're not good at being receptive, because they are not utilizing their primary trait, which is receptivity. Men become unhealthy when they do not utilize their gifts of contribution and creativity, which are their primary traits.

"Contribution and creativity" are why men have created everything in the world. Women who have are statistical outliers.

Self-sacrifice and accomplishment are good for men and they would be wise to devote themselves to pursuits that enable them to give and to feel the flourishing/well-being (the Greek eudaimonia) that comes from surmounting challenges, which means they give of themselves to what they can do best. Men need to know they have an impact and a positive effect on others. They want to leave their mark, to make a difference (in the Code of Chivalry this is listed as "To fight for the welfare of all").

Yang (male) protects Yin (female) and Yin nurtures Yang. Together, they form a complete whole - and the word "whole" comes from the same root word as "healthy," "hale," and "holy."

Since men are more yang, they tend to be more aggressive/assertive and are apt to label situations as threatening/broken, which requires them to fix it. Their predominant yang makes them protective of what they might perceive as yin - or something or someone needing protection. In the West this was encoded in the aforementioned Code of Chivalry - to protect the weak and helpless, to succor widows and orphans, to be armed and willing to do violence to malefactors.

This need to protect and serve is inherent in the yang. It is a necessary and very powerful force. And though it can be increased or repressed, or perverted in some way, especially by the rules of different cultures and society, it is very important for women to understand that it is natural for men to feel this way, and not attempt to change or repress it.

Now let's go back to the idea of "controlling."

Whenever a woman calls a man "controlling" (unless he's a narcissistic whackjob), you might just want to dump her. Such women generally have some issues, generally involving their fathers. What they are really saying is that they want to be in control, to have the final say. And that is a very bad thing, for them, for men, and for society.

Such women usually drive away the good men, then wonder "where are all the good men?" These women offend men and drive them away. Often, these women are emotional vampires.

The way many relationship are today are lose/lose, instead of win/win, as they are supposed to be. They are supposed to be based on reciprocity and trust.

To be win/win, all people have to do is act according to their true natures. And, of course, society should help them live according to it. Which, currently, it does not, since it overwhelming supports feminism, to the detriment of men, women and society.

The Eternal Fight Between the Bug Killers and the Bugs

I don't believe in democracy. The Founding Fathers didn't believe in democracy. The ancient Greeks didn't believe in it. It always falls.

Aristotle perceptively noted something quite interesting about political science: he classified democracy as the deviant form of a polity (both grouped under "many rulers").

Tyranny is the deviant form of kingship (one ruler), and oligarchy is the deviant form of aristocracy (few rulers).

This country was founded as a mixture of all three of the good ones: the one, the few, the many. Now it's heading toward dictatorship (it's not going to be the current buffoon in office, by the way), we already have a oligarchy (State and Corporation, which is how Mussolini defined fascism), and we've been a democracy for quite a while. So, right now, we are in pretty sorry shape.

What all three of the bad forms have in common is the expansion of the State, and right now the State is huge. Bizarrely, many people think a big State is a good thing, sort of a combination of Mommy and Daddy.

The State may fool the many, but not the few. (I am reminded of an observation by Plato, Socrates and Jesus: all tyrants call themselves benefactors.)

One major difference between the good and the bad is the sense of noblesse oblige. Dictators, oligarchs don't have it. Neither does it exist in democracy.

Under the mature forms of political rule it does exist.

The State is a kind of horror. It's a parasite, a vampire: it sucks the lifeblood out of people, and ultimately kills them - along with itself. It fits the archetype of the horror story: evil attacking good, chaos attacking order.

I recently saw The Great Gatsby and Elysium, and was struck by the fact that in both of the rich and politically connected had no sense of noblesse oblige. None whatsoever.

The lack is worse in Elysium, in which the rich and powerful don't share anything (including cures for all diseases), or have any sense of fairness, or any compassion for those less fortunate than them. Of course, they get overthrown.

The rich and powerful had no sense of justice. Aristocrats do. Oligarchs do not.

What we are heading into right now is what is predicted by Elysium: a small minority of the super-rich living in gated, armed communities, a very small, virtually non-existent middle class and everyone else poverty-stricken.

That's one scenario. The other scenario is because of the leaps and bounds in science and technology everything gets better and better.

And what it truly bizarre is that both are happening at the same time. One the one hand we have aristocrats trying to make our lives better and the oligarchs trying to make them worse. It's the eternal fight between freedom and slavery, between the bug killers and the bugs.

I Am Worth 20 Billion Dollars

A coffee shop I frequent has foreign bills pinned to a board by the counter. This is the funniest one.

When it was Rhodesia it was a great place to live. I knew an American mercenary who fought on the Ian Smith side, and it said it was a turkey shoot when it came to Africans trying to fight them. Unfortunately the West supported the wrong guys and embargoed weapons for the good ones. So now Rhodesia is Zimbabwe.

I wonder if this is worth a cup of coffee? Somehow, I doubt it.

"I Tell Them What They Want to Hear"

I know several guys who've devoted their lives to seducing women. They all have psychological problems (this is why I know that people like Roosh, Roissy, Krauser, etc. are liars, frauds and braggarts).

The worst guy I know whose done this has a count of some 100 women. He admitted that most of them were unattractive, overweight, and not that smart. He targeted them specifically because of those traits. They were easy. He said, "I didn't care if I dumped them or they dumped me."

His life, not surprisingly, turned out to be a catastrophe, and he said if he had to do it over again he would have been a high school coach. His best friend considers him a weakling and a coward.

He also said something that is the biggest red flag identifying these kinds of guys: "I told them what they wanted to hear."

Now I move to Hugo Schwyzer, I would have never heard of him except for reading the Manosphere, and when I read his article about how women are supposed to poke their boyfriends in the butt with a dildo I knew he was a whackjob.

Not all surprisingly he had some sort of catastrophic mental collapse, just as my promiscuous acquaintance did, and just as the three PUA types I mentioned will.

Turned out Schwyzer was sleeping with his students and who know what else. What he told all these women was....

"What they wanted to hear."

He told them he was a feminist, put down men, etc. The silly, naive girls ate it up, and he cleaned up.

In order to seduce a lot of women you have to lie to them. There is no way around it. You have to lie to them, try to manipulate them, and enjoy the power you have over them. In other words, you have to be narcissistic - and that is not a good thing, contrary to the delusions of the naive who think the "Dark Triad" is a admirable thing instead of the abomination it is in real life.

In order to seduce this many women most of them have to be unattractive. There is no way around them. Seducing 100 beautiful women? Nope.

History has shown without exception that those who devote their lives to hedonism become degraded.

Those who alter their lives and characters merely to get laid are doing what women want - at least some women. This has never been considered an acceptable thing. In fact, in the original code of chivalry it specifically states a man is not supposed to alter his character - the better parts of his character, meaning he is not to degrade himself - merely because of the desires of silly, immature females.

I could have slept with perhaps 50 women. But I never did, since most of these women were interested in relationships and I was not. So I wasn't going to lie, mislead and seduce them. And I don't consider myself degraded.

There are, however, men out there I consider degraded - because they are.

Fathers should tell their daughters to stay away from men who "tell them what they want to hear." They should tell them to find men who tell them the truth, not comforting, foolish lies. And the truth, ultimately, is that no man a feminist.

Neill Blomkamp Is Laughing at the Chattering Classes

I saw Neill Blomkamp's first film, District 9, and was very impressed. I knew the libtards were going to interpret the movie the wrong way, and they did (they thought it was an anti-apartheid film, which it isn't). I recently saw his second film, Elysium, and knew libtards were going to interpret it the wrong way - and they did. They thought it was pro-universal health-care and pro-legalizing illegal immigrants.

Blomkamp, a Boer from South Africa who was brought to Canada at the age of 10 by his parents after blacks starting killing their friends, is a subversive film-maker. I'm sure he knows libtards are going to interpret his films one way, when in reality he means the exact opposite.

The fact that Blomkamp saw his country destroyed by savages doesn't bode well for anyone who believes he is for open borders or believes every culture in the world is equal. Or people for that matter, since in District 9 he portrays Nigerians as voodoo-worshiping cannibals, whose women work as prostitutes who have sex with the alien "prawns," who look like seven-foot-tall insects.

Elysium is set in the future, where open borders have essentially destroyed the world. And who wanted open borders? Corporations, of course, for cheap workers and lots of profit. But the world has gone downhill so badly the super-rich have left the earth to live in a gigantic rotating space station. Call it Beverly Hills in space.

The poverty-stricken of earth try to sneak into this idyllic space station, and have their ships blown out of space by the orders of Delacourt (played by Jodie Foster), who is doing this to save her children from the flood of Third Worlders she know will destroy the space station.

Now here's where things get very interesting: your emotions are on the side of the illegal immigrants seeking a better life, but intellectually you know they'll destroy the space station and the last civilization that exists, just the way they did on earth.

Enter Matt Damon (Max), who appears to be the last young white man in LA. He's recruited to help take over the space station. Why is he chosen? Because he's a white man and more competent than everyone else!

He's quite brave but isn't that smart. Again, emotionally you're rooting for him but intellectually you he know he's an idiot because he's helping destroy the last vestige of civilization that exists.

And that's exactly what happens.

There is a very interesting character on the space station: a man from India. What's interesting is that in the novel, The Camp of the Saints when Europeans make their last against being destroyed by Third Worlders, one of those who pitches in is an Indian.

Of course, one of the things we want to happen does happen: the corporate types get theirs. And the space station falls to the Third Worlders.

What is Blomkamp really telling us here? The super-rich corporate types are destroying the world through the importation of Third Worlders, just for a little bit of money. And then they'll use money to flee the destruction they have caused. They have much, including the cure for all diseases, and they share nothing. There is no sense of nobless oblige.

And what do the dispossessed Third Worlders do? Follow the white man around like a dog, seeking what he has created since they cannot.

In District 9 Blomkamp is also mocking your basic dumbass sheeple human. There are two kinds of prawns; the dumb ones with no brains, and the very small minority of smart ones, who have a sense of nobless oblige. That's the one you see in the clip.

When the elite prawns cannot lead the dumb prawns, and the dumb prawns are on welfare, they sink straight to the bottom, just as happens with humans.

Essentially, everyone in Eysium is an idiot: the idiot corporate types seeking to impoverish and exploit everyone, the Third Worlders who have the whole earth to themselves and still can't get a viable civilization and economy going, and a "hero" who is too dumb to realize what he is doing.

This movie is an illustration of what the Greeks noticed: Hubris (thinking you are god-like) is always followed by Nemesis (revenge). In other words, the Corporate State screwing up the entire world will get what it deserves, after a lot of poverty, death and destruction.

Why I Despise Corporations

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My Last Name Means "Slave"

My last name, Wallace, is generally considered to be a Scottish name, yet it means “Welshman.” So, then, it is originally a Welsh name (it's related to such names as Walsh, Welch and Wales, as in the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales).

The name is derived from is “walcea,” which is the Old English word for “slave.” The English used to kidnap the Welsh and sell them as slaves in the Dublin markets. In the long ago and far away I had ancestors who where slaves.

But then, who hasn’t had ancestors who were slaves? Slavery was a very common thing in the past.

The word “slave” itself comes from “Slav,” from Slavs being kidnapped and sold into the slavery. By Muslims, by the way, who were slavers a few thousand years before Europeans - and even today, still are.

The fact my ancestors were slaves means nothing to me. When people whine about how their ancestors were slaves - the way some blacks do - I dismiss them as self-pitying fools not taking responsibility for themselves and blaming their problems on others.

Most people don't know it, but the reason Moses wandered in the desert for desert for 40 years is so that all the former slaves would die off. Don't believe me? Ask any Jew.

Many white people were slaves in the past. Many of them came to America as indentured servants, and were treated horribly.

I personally don’t understand slavery, but then, I wasn’t raised with it. Would I have approved of it if I had been raised in such an environment? I have no idea. I like to think I wouldn’t.

When it comes right down to it, people can only enslave others if they don’t consider them quite human. It’s our inborn narcissism, actually, that turns other people into things, “things” we can use as slaves.

Slavery can only exist if it’s legal. When it’s illegal, then there can be no slavery. In fact, it being legal, in other word being lawful through the power of the State, is as big, if not a bigger problem, than our narcissism.

I make a distinction, as do any people, between government and the State. Government should be as small as possible. The Founding Fathers, influenced by John Locke, said its purpose was to protect “life, liberty and property.” If it goes beyond that it turns into the State.

The State these days doesn’t protect life, liberty and property. It intrudes on all three. It takes people’s lives away, their liberty, and their property. It enslaves (even if it calls it conscription), it murders (including mass murder through war) and it takes away property (and your life and your body are your own property).

With the growth of the Corporate State (which is how Mussolini defined fascism) Americans have in a sense been turned into indentured servants. When a child is born it is automatically in debt to - how much? $70,000? If that's not being an indentured servant, what is? The only choice you have is to leave the country.

I’ve always been amazed at people who think the State can do Good Things. Some realize the awfulness of the State when it comes to war, but then they turn around and think it can provide us with health care. They can’t seem to comprehend it’s the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

People who support universal health care – socialized health care – don’t realize they want to be slaves of the State. They will not get to choose their doctors or dentists; bureaucrats will. The same bureaucrats will choose their treatment and if they live or die.

Without choice people are slaves.

I’ve had people tell me socialized health care works in Canada. No, it doesn’t. People up there with serious problems come to the U.S. A woman in Canada who thinks she might have ovarian cancer can’t get diagnosed up there for two or three months. That’s why they come down here.

Without us to fall back on, Canada’s health-care system would be in a lot worse shape than it is. In a sense it’s a parasite on ours.

People also claims socialized health care works in northern Europe. No, it doesn’t. With socialized health care there will always be shortages, so the question is, who is not going to be treated, and who is going to die?

In the Scandinavian countries they very rarely attempt to save premature infants. They put them off the side and lie them die. Unlike us, who make very effort to save them, no matter how much money it takes.

In the rest of Europe, you don’t get treatment after a certain age. You get painkillers until you die.

Those governments and their socialized health care programs – which should be called “slave non-health care” – are nothing the U.S. wants to emulate. If we do, perhaps it should be called the Walcea Health Care System. Very few would get the irony.

Our health care system certainly needs to be overhauled. Actually, it needs to go back to the free market, and right now it’s anything but.

The State does not consider people to be quite human. In fact, people with great wealth and political power rarely consider us quite human. We are concrete to be shoveled around, checkers to be move as it sees fit. What the people want does not matter. It never has. That’s been the history of the world without exception.

There is something in people that wants to be both free and slave. Norman Mailer, in fact, said he considered the natural state of humanity to be fascism. There is something in people that wants to be a slave. Why?

A false sense of security, perhaps. But the truth is what Ben Franklin noticed: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

He's not the only one who's noticed that. I prefer what Jesus, Plato and Aristotle observed: All Tyrants Call Themselves Benefactors.

Firearms As Equalizers

Pistols, in the 19th Century, were called “equalizers” because they made the tiniest woman equal to the biggest man. I’m not even going to say I’m a believer, because I don’t “believe” it’s true, no more than I believe 2+2=4. It just is true.

I have known three women who were murdered. I did not know them personally. One was strangled by a serial killer about a week after I left my job and she was hired. She was a small young woman, and for that matter, the guy who killed her wasn’t that big. I could have taken him, which is why these guys kill the weaker, such as women.

In fact, when the police came to the serial killer's house, merely to question him, he hid behind his wife. He no longer lives with his wife, since he's spending his life in prison. His name is Dale R. Anderson, in case you're interested.

The other two women were sisters, and I did meet their mother. They were raped and thrown off of a bridge by four teenagers. They were, I believe, 19 and 20.

So far, only one of the murderers has been executed, and to his dying breath he claimed he was innocent. He wasn't.

In each case, if these women would have had a pistol, or even a knife, they would have survived. Even a two-shot, .22 derringer would have saved their lives, just with the threat of it, if nothing else.

I once wrote an article about the two sisters, and made a silent bet with myself that at least one imbecile would tell me young people should not carry guns. I responded, “So you’re saying it’s okay that these women were raped and murdered, then?” and got no response.

I am reminded of the classical definition of a liberal: someone who would rather see a woman raped and strangled with her own panty-house rather than defend herself with a handgun.

I think it should be a law that everyone has to carry a concealed handgun. Sure, there would be an adjustment period in which those genetically and character-deficient were eliminated, but in the long-run (meaning a few weeks) society would be much more peaceful.