Cobb

Huxley's Intellectual

It's funny that I still find it interesting to quote Aldous Huxley on the dichotomy between sexual and intellectual pursuit. Somebody nominated me to become, in the place of retiring Rabbi Findley, the moderator of the Stoics of Los Angeles. But right now there is so much chaotic shit in my life that I cannot bear the added responsibility, as minute as it would be. And yet it is a validation I cannot ignore.

The 'unregulated sex' argument went through the logical nets of people who haven't the fine mesh I have constructed over the decades, and so I let it be. I'm a bit tired of explaining. But if you asked me what exactly it is that I find more interesting than sex with people, it is testing to see how finely their logical nets have been crafted. I start with something pithy and provocative and see how many of the implications they get, and for the most part they don't. I am accustomed to this. I am alienated by this. I am adrift wondering why, at times, how it has become so difficult to be possessed of the kind of background I have. So I keep, with disdain, answering stupid questions. I can only laugh in the presence of old men who know. And all we do is know - because to know and to do is to draw a thick barrier around the human frailty of being an old man. Who would Mattis be without his Marines? He would be me, full of theory and vulnerable to not having all the troops. All the troops in your organization, all of the priests in your archdioceses, all of the agents in you station, all of your players on the field. I have all of 1000 friends on Facebook, but if I took pictures of my ass, I'd have more.

There is, in old men such as myself, the difficulty of the energy crisis. In America, you cannot outdo hustle. It is the hustler who learns all the angles. He cannot construct a thing of beauty from scratch, rather he polishes the ball to perfection by bouncing it everywhere and abrading it on every surface available to him. He is empirical, and so am I because I never got the sponsorship. Now I think I've learned that I've been oriented to achieving that sponsorship I never got, and introduced to the troops I would then lead. But there are no troops for sale. One must come from the ranks. I don't have the energy to ascend any more hierarchies. I need to win the lottery or move to Alabama. Or Texas. Or Louisiana. I'm not sure where there is such a place for me, but perhaps I am done with humanity and need most to commune with fish and trees. Everyone disappoints me. Everyone slogging through the mud of life having lost all care for the care of their feet. Oh but boy are they moving fast. Like baby goats. Can anyone out hustle kids?

It doesn't seem to require much precision to think one's way out of the various colored bags of America's intersectional, post-modern, post-industrial nook & cranny-verse. There are two to the 10th powers of elves for their culturally-appropriate shelves. The Wizards have figured out all of the market share trends and moments. There couldn't possibly be more 1024 options. If so, then the directors and producers will greenlight the project. There will be good and evil, black and white, rich and poor, foreign and domestic, left and right, straight and gay, rural and urban, hot or not, young and old, popular and obscure. But that's all, digital jaggies and a 8 bit world. Only a few pixels pay, only a few boxes sustain. That is humanity, according to the conventional and unconventional wisdom.

More later.

The Case for AirPods

#1 They fit better than any other earplug, because they're not plugs. They don't stopper your ears, so they have the best of both worlds - audio transparency to the air, and good bass like an earplug.

 

#2 Stereo mic. They work better than the line-based mic in the old wired Apple headset. It's as good a mic as any for everyday non-professional use.

 

#3 As a wireless device, they last all day easily.

 

#4 Actual, very good sound quality. I miss nothing from any headphones I would take outside. So I don't count my Grados.

 

#5 At first I felt stupid wearing airpods in public, now I feel stupid wearing 'DJ' headphones in public. On a plane, maybe less so. But I expect noise cancelling airpods are coming.

 

#6 The wireless convenience is real. Popping back and forth with the bluetooth pairing is simple and painless. They are light - perfect for running, hiking, etc. They are so comfortable you can wear them for hours without a problem.

 

#7 They are actually easier to keep track of. You never forget the case is in your pants because it's expensive. But it's something you don't take for granted, you tend to treat it like an expensive watch. I would easily ruin 3 pairs a year of the old style.

 

#8 The big plus comes if and when you get the Apple Watch. The coolness of being able to leave your phone at home cannot be overstated. There are a lot of things that just make more sense with the watch and headphones.

 

On this point and #5 I can see that me being in the IT industry and being a gearhead make me more flexible. But I also do pay more attention to human factors than the ordinary Joe. I kind of hate that the Apple Watch has made me, practically, less of a watch guy. My other 12 are sitting jealous. And I still feel that it's a little less cool than goiing two fisted like i used to with my Fitbit. But for the health monitoring, the Apple Watch is such a huge advantage that it's worth it. So I have really transformed my subtleties in going out in public with my electronics.

 

The interesting thing is that I treat my phone as a bit more precious. And now I see that some apps, like weather and health monitoring and music are just more appropriately done on the wrist. I'm liking messaging on the wrist too, which demonstrates to me that it's rather overdone elsewhere.

 

I really hope Signal makes a watch app.

On Unregulated Sex

"Unregulated capitalism is good for the same reason unregulated sex is good."

So what I'm saying is that neither is best unregulated.

 

I thought of this matter when considering a complaint against my Catholic upbringing. I think that was inspired by a meme in which some snowflake was triggered by the fact that the 'Coexist' bumper sticker only signifies two genders, male and female. So I considered why I thought that was funny - it is because so many people take the idea of sexual freedom for granted that they wish to elevate every possible intersection of identity into equality with the presumption of the evil of those who would suppress such expression.

 

So what is the problem with pre-marital, of extra-marital sex, of non-heteronormative sex? It is the lack of a sense of the value of chastity. We expect that passion and desire should not be regulated.

 

Now I defer to the words of Marcus Aurelius.

 

"In comparing crimes together, as, according to the common idea, they may be compared, Theophrastus makes the true philosophical distinction, that those committed from motives of pleasure are more heinous than those which are due to anger. For he who is a prey to passion is clearly turned away from reason by some spasm and convulsion that takes him unawares. But he who sins from desire is conquered by pleasure, and so seems more incontinent and more effeminate in his vice. Justly then, and in a truly philosophical spirit, he says that sin, for pleasure's sake, is more wicked than sin which is due to pain. For the latter sinner was sinned against, and so driven to anger by his wrongs, while the former set out to sin of his own motion, and was led into ill-doing by his own lust."

 

So here we consider #MeToo. Why is it that the American woman does not feel comfortable in raising the alarm when she is sexually assaulted? It is because she has every reason to suspect that her chastity is not respected in the general population and that her sexual desire is and should be expressed outside of such regulation. If her body is no one's but her own, as if my money is no one's but my own, then she alone is responsible for the definition and defense of its borders. She alone decides without recourse to the regulation of the general public whether or not she is violated.

 

And so what is the 'nasty woman'? She is a transgressive against the expectations of the public. She is alone.

 

We do not fully understand the implications of unregulated sex, but perhaps we should imagine it in these terms. If one can imagine evils of unregulated capitalism, then one should be able to recognize evils of unregulated sex. Consequently, as we understand the temptation of elevating the status of those purveyors of arcane complex unusual financial arrangements without regard to their risks, we too should understand the risk in elevating arcane, complex and unusual sexual arrangements. This is in the public interest.

 

What, therefore is the practicality of sex outside of irrational passions and desires, and how does its common practice affect the common person? We should meditate on this and consider that to be a standard from which we risk much by deviation.

 

I should add that it is not immediately clear to me precisely what Aurelius implies by 'incontinent and more effeminate' vice as I am not clear on his definition of manliness. But I expect that his take would not be far from the archetypes of masculine order and feminine chaos. To be conquered by pleasure thus would be unmanly.

 

(the whole thing)

The Coddling of the American Mind

The book is a long and sometimes tedious explanation of what we all know to be true - that undergraduates are slightly unhinged and that colleges treat them as a market, not as adults. A 10-30% minority of students who are willing to advocate for violent action against offensive speech have upset rationality on the American campus. iGen girls are committing suicide at an alarming rate due to the outsized influence of social media. Threats to liberty come from alt-right and Antifa activism and that college campuses overreact by creating speech codes, safe spaces and taking 'microaggression' seriously. The lack of political diversity in the professoriate threatens the capacity for institutional bias disconfirmation. The distortions of social justice premises of equality generate profound dislocations and moral hazard in Title IX implementation. 

In the end, Haight seems to be directing his primary admonishments to a generation of helicopter prone parents in the top (half) of socioeconomic class in hopes that the next crops of undergraduates have their heads screwed on straighter and so do not corrupt the reality of the mission of academia, which is the search for truth. He does so with care, rigor and the best intentions.

His description of 'safetyism' is fair but does not encompass the larger political narrative of what the Right has been calling the 'nanny state'. So he has limited the applicability of this term to academe, but it is part and parcel of a larger infantilization of Americans and the major political movements that seek to disable the individual. I am talking of course about abortion and gun control, two perennial issues in which partisans aim to remove responsible choice by legal fiat 'for their own good'. It seems to me that Haight has sacrificed the greater argument for greater specificity and so it goes under 'whats wrong with these kids today'. But the enemy is us, and Haight leaves most of us off the hook.

I am fond of the book for its consistency in demonstrating the effects of acceptance of the 'three great untruths'. The truths they contradict are part of enduring human wisdom. We are thus simply left with using them to clean up the mess in American higher education and everywhere else foolishness reigns. 

Obligatory Seriousness on Living in the Trump Era

For a number of reasons, I am finding my way to reading John Stuart Mill 'On Liberty' for the first time. It's lovely. I picked it up particularly to read its second chapter, the one on free speech. In those meaty and well-considered paragraphs, Mill does a fairly excellent job of considering the reason of wrong thinking in both the dimensions of truth and utility. It is truly a masterwork of thought that forces one to consider his premises at several levels and from a dialectic point of view. Of course, I was looking to receive such wisdom. It is consonant with my lifelong civil libertarianism. Just previous to this book was the Heterodox Academy's Jonathan Haight, whose 'Coddling of the American Mind' is a bit less precient and wise than Allan Bloom's presaging book 'The Closing of the American Mind' that I read back in the 80s. But now that everything Bloom has predicted is obvious, the closed minds need reminding that they are being coddled. What could be a better metaphor for the presidency of Donald Trump. A closed-minded man who has been coddled.

The helicopter parents of Trump are, of course, the power hungry and wandering tribe of Republicans who try desperately to be Conservatives but end up just being to the right of common sense. For all I can see, they do so in a retro kind of way which is quite odd considering that few could remember much of what the recently deceased George HW Bush did, besides be two orders of magnitude more dignified than the current Oval Occupant. Since I am into my 10th year of Stoicism, I can't say that I've pursued much satisfaction in political philosophy. I am truly happy with those sectors of American life that are about as good as it gets, as long as I am able to appreciate and afford them. I've ridden the tallest rollercoaster in the park. That's enough. I don't need to remain high. I don't need to chide the Republicans for their failure, I just occasionally need to hear better men than myself do so, and prepare for the end times when better men have abandoned the field that is America's ruling class. In the meantime, as I cultivate and tend to my own worldview, I think my observations on the state of sub-catastrophe might be of some use.

No there is no catastrophe. The Department of Justice has not been dismantled. Trump's own government (as if) is setting after him and his associates with a view to burning them in oil. The fate of that dastardly subset of government functionaries and flunkies will burn brightly enough to satisfy cynics and witch-hunters alike. But there seem to be few with the courage to pursue actual justice of the sort the country most desperately needs. I speak of the impending collapse of our bourgeois proletariat in the face of the coming inflation as the Fed inevitably raises interest rates after the ridiculous holiday of free money certain Americans have gotten. I'm not sure how to feel about that in consideration of my remaining hopes to climb higher in society. Another dumbell curve strategy, I suppose. Plan for great success and great failure at the same time. What we have been able to demonstrate and complain about over the past couple of years is astounding, and I still consider a great portion of that to be courtly theatre of the most sniping sort. Even Haight in his book makes the exact same mistake he blamed Trump for in citing foolishness 'on both sides' of the dustup in Hooterville. Or was that Charlottesville? Since we know Americans hate Americans for being Americans, it certainly doesn't help that the head political hack in charge of the Executive Branch has consigned all of his enemies and non-flunkies to the sharp end of his blunt force Twitter feed. That kind of divisiveness used to be understated. Now, as the young people say, it's fire. A dumpster fire. I know it's a cliche, but what is really happening that's so horrible in the long view of things?

China, Russia, Mexico, Britain, Syria and various shithole countries.
The American people do not understand China. They do not believe that Russia is dangerous or that Mexico creates refugees. They don't believe that Britain can possibly survive without an empire or at the very least a seat or two in Brussels and they don't believe that the USA did anything to actually destroy ISIS. I can't tell if my assessment of those beliefs are accurate, but I do get a sense that there aren't very many 5,000 word essays that are making the appropriate rounds to put things clearly.

What is think is most important to understand about China is their bloodless attitude towards the emerging world. To me, it seems like they cannot believe that any other country could possibly be as civilizingly industrious as they are and so they are obligated to lead the way. I suppose I believe some of the worst things about China that many other countries blather on about the US, with respect to 'imperialism'. China is more of a obsequious nanny who was whipped as a child. So it holds a rod over those in its expanding sphere of influence saying 'concrete is good for you'. As if nobody actually knew. The obnoxious Chinese are in that way, like the fearful parent who publicly scolds her child in the supermarket, not caring who hears them whimper. Trump's America is incapable of seducing away China's soon-to-be client states. He'd rather go toe to toe in a battle royale. Americans don't particularly care to be nationalists. It's fair to say we haven't been since Kennedy and the Space Age. So there is no gumption to correct Trump's tariff slap fest. Moe hits Curly. Curly hits Moe. China is indeed stealing intellectual property right and left, and is most certainly engaged in cyberwarfare against the US, as is Russia. There is a smart way to straighten all that out. Trump will not pursue the smart way. That might have been the job of Rex Tillerson, the only member aside from General Mattis, whom I found to be exceedingly admirable in the current White House. Tillerson is out. Tweeted out.

As for Mexico, it's a rehash of nationalists vs globalists. Not really interesting to me anyway. Mexico makes good car parts for some small minority of cars Americans care about. Mexicans themselves make for good Americans when the choice is made clear. There's no doubt they'll work for it, but half of America doesn't want them to. Because nobody is illegal. More tweet logic.

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Once again I am exasperated in trying to make sense of some consistent political philosophy that American candidates and the electorate are disciplined to. I don't know why I bother. I am at peace with that part of the world fouled by its own nasty terms. I have better places to go.

 

 

Advice to the Young Married Man

Q: How do I prove that my woman is wrong?

A: The gun is always loaded. The wife is always right.

If you want to prove one woman is wrong you simply find another woman who agrees with you. Of course now you have two women to deal with which is the worst of both worlds.

If you actually want to prove your *wife* is wrong. Then it narrows things down considerably. It has got to be either your mother or her mother who agrees with you.

Again, I cannot think of any situation in which it is reasonable to apply such a logical and effective tactic such as this. You are much better off taking the L. Because it is just as likely, (and practically inevitable) that the woman you chose who agrees with you will change her mind. Sometimes for spite.

Instead, you can only hope that your woman (or wife) is of an agreeable nature and is willing to admit she is wrong for the sake of harmony and tranquility. If you have more than one neuron, you already know the answer to that question of character.

Considering the fact that you posed the question, I presume that you are blessed with the company of a hardheaded woman. Such a woman will save you from making a fool of yourself. So relent for the sake of rationality and logic, and try to keep this conversation a secret, mkay?

Racial Reasoning, Racist Buckets and Effective Racism

From a Facebook conversation

Here's the difference between 'racial' and 'racist'. Racial means you never ignore race. Race is always taken into consideration. If you are a racialist, like my dad, then you will always say "My friend Bill, a white guy, just called me on the phone today." With racial reasoning, you think race is always material, and that to talk about any kind of situation involving people, if you don't identify them by race, then you're leaving something important out.

Now then the question goes to how deep you think race goes. I think most Americans think race is skin deep and then some. This is more than it used to be 30 years ago. So without making a moral judgment, I say most Americans are 'colorstruck'. Anybody who uses the term 'people of color' are colorstruck. But I think this is mostly a social construction. In fact I say it is a social construction that is fake, but more deeply enforced because of multiculturalism. Most multiculturalism has become hard multiculturalism which is nothing more or less than racial essentialism. How do you know? Anybody who talks about what is 'authentically black' or 'authentically latino' is not talking about culture at all. They are talking about race. 'Cultural appropriation' is nothing more than 'you people have no business doing that'.

The logical inconsistency in this is very clear to me, but I think many Americans have been buffaloed. That is because of the use of the term 'diversity', which again presumes that there are different kinds of people who can and must be identified not by the way they think issue by issue, but by race, gender, sexual preference. And this is why every survey of every kind in the media focuses on these essentialisms. Not blood type. Not what sect of Christianity. Not height. So the difference between 'diversity' and 'variety' are exactly what the multiculturalists want, and they have made you think their way when you use the term. This is a Progressive political agenda that has succeeded. It is being pushed back now by the Heterodox Academy.

It is only a slightly deeper take, and I say mostly negligible if you argue that race is a hard-coded genetic divide of humanity. What you may see in the future but don't see now are people who take a 23-AndMe genetic test and say "I'm not white, I'm 47.3% northern Italian..." or "I'm not black, I'm 12.5% European..". So now we go to quadroons and octoroons? That's still transparently racial. But since we already have 'cultural appropriation' and 'Native American studies', the deeds have already been done. They are racial lines.

Where the rubber meets the road in however these lines are drawn, whether culturally or genetically, is how people expect members of any group to be perceived and judged (or ignored and not judged). If there is any difference whatsoever, then it’s racist. It’s racist because there is a value statement applied to race. It sounds kind of obvious when it is said this way but that’s the difference between racialism and racism. Racialism says you can absolutely divide people into relatively static mutually exclusive groups over which they have no control. You ARE black. Forever. Period. You ARE yellow. Forever. Period. We know all of the races and you are in one of them, period. So I can ALWAYS identify your race and you cannot escape, deny, ignore or hide your racial identity. You are part of this in your immutable history and future. That is racialism. This is what I think most Americans, now colorstruck by multiculturalism now believe. Why? Because American universities have made (starting with black history) it their job to colorize history and politics.

Finally what is racism? Racism is the belief that each of these buckets of humanity have particular destinies and paths to follow and that it is inefficient at best, and immoral at worst for them to deviate from these paths. That people should be judged according to how they fulfill their racial destiny. Every race has natural or social advantages that dictate how they should interact with others inside or outside of their race. SHOULD.

How racist is racist? It’s the difference between, ‘occasionally sorta kinda should’ and ‘always absolutely must under punishment of death’.

 So here’s the most interesting part, and that is Effective Racism. Which basically asks how well does the racist idea work? Now let’s revisit our example of the ‘unarmed black man’ and the white cop.

 If I absolutely believe that I am a black man in the racialist sense. That I am culturally and/or genetically black forever, then half the battle is won. I am racialist myself. If I also believe that I have a particular inescapable role and destiny as a black man and that I SHOULD be (perceived, ignored, judged, not judged) differently according to my racial identity, then I am racist myself. If on that second value I am a ‘occasionally sorta kinda should’ then I might not be an effective racist. But if I’m always subject to that SHOULD, then I am effectively racist. This is what DuBois called dual consciousness. I am an American, but I’m also not.

 So into any situation I go with my own effective racism. My acceptance of my own non-individuality, my own racial consciousness which also accepts that it is significantly different, if not completely opposed to other people’s racial consciousness. That’s pretty damned effective. If I am disciplined to a political ideology that enforces this consciousness upon me, I’m a racist.

It doesn't matter how much power one has if you are playing a racial role. If your racial role says that you should be dominant over your 'opponent' then you will assume an attitude of dominance whether or not you have any real power. If your racial role says that you should be submissive, that will be your attitude and you will find playing the role of a victim is more cherished. If you are to be subversive, then you will play that racial role in the assumption that the system is always corrupt. If you are to be a sacrificed martyr in asymmetrical warfare, then you can be effectively racist all by yourself without provocation. What is a 'trigger warning' other than something that amplifies the power of a college professor when it must be assumed that the role of a minority race is to be so powerless as to be traumatized by the mere utterance of a word? In all of these ways the effectiveness of racism can be determined. It's not about prejudice + power. It's about accepting a racial identity and playing the role.

So in a one on one situation, it matters whether I play the role that is determined by my racial consciousness and makes the situation effectively racist. There’s the dynamic. Is this a racial thing? Is this a racist thing? That’s entirely under the control of the way people decide to behave, effectively with regard to their racial identities.

Everybody, whether or not they accept racial identities imposed upon them, are always in control of how they act and behave in every situation. “I’m going to do the Christian thing.” “I’m going behave professionally.” “I’m going to represent Brooklyn.” “My grandfather told me that I should always do this.”

I should add that I think its critically important to understand that humans will form in-groups and out-groups of arbitrary boundaries. The psychological research is clear, even though I'm not good at citing it. I think the key researchers here are Milgram and Zimbardo, separately. But there is a more recent study that shows that any division of people, even completely arbitrary divisions, will lead to in-group thinking and behavior. We could make it hairy arms + dark colored shoes vs light colored shoes + drinks milk. People conform to any group. So what is the biggest problem with race? That we ever bother to think about it - it will inevitably make value of itself whether or not the lines are logical or consistent.

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The most pernicious aspect of today's Progressive agenda is the way in which it convinces people to recast their own experiences into a racialized narrative. It does so against the other essentialisms as well, but the focus here is on race. In fact, personal individual experience is in my view, the most important tool that people have to divest themselves of imposed identities whether racial or otherwise. So I am convinced that the cure comes from the realm of psychology and mental health because it seems obvious to me now and in retrospect that only someone who has been psychologically weakened will accept outside identifications.

This is in consonance with my standard definitions of Left vs Right. The Left uses the power of the state to defend against dysfunctions of the family. The Right uses the power of family to defend against dysfunctions of the state. Therefore when challenged the Left will run to Congress and the Right will run home. The Right will more likely dysfunction into honor cultures of blood and soil. The Left will more likely dysfunction into Orwellian state cultures.

This is also in consonance with my particular definition of America's political split on identity and intersectionality; the two ideological tribes:

The problem with today's multiculturalism is that it is different than pluralism. Pluralism is the proper ethos for America, multiculturalism is not. The difference can be explained simply by assuming Americans can be divided into two tribes:

Ideological Tribe A
We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained without regard to race, creed, religion, color, gender, sexual preference, etc..

Ideological Tribe B
We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained with special regard to race, creed, religion, color, gender, sexual preference, etc.

Conclusion: None. I just provide this for analysis.
PS. Most of us are familiar with this non-discrimination language but don't even know what a 'creed' is or what creeds were considered in drafting the language.