tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7923132418625200602024-03-15T07:28:13.292-07:00Letters to HannahRogue philosophy at its (almost) finestJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.comBlogger289125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-30233691060970761512022-06-16T05:48:00.001-07:002022-06-16T05:49:37.078-07:00I've moved to SubstackDear reader,<div><br /></div><div>After years of getting shadowbanned by Facebook and Twitter I've moved to Substack. My views have already gotten better, and I'm looking forward to seeing you there.</div><div><br /></div><div>The link is <a href="https://lettersofj.substack.com">https://lettersofj.substack.com</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. The app seems to be pretty good too, and allows you to follow lots of great writers pretty easily. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhJ8pPYetoDCWSuZtl4lqXz2iGW18k10D5mUWBHQTQeaH-GwU_79tj8C2Kk3McutqJn6xCqL5FWBfsq8uWeH2rrz6y2QO3itP16NV-eF07EHadOGA2RgqciC9MwRxJAM6zAZp5cogia_kMCoJ6ZuL3XvHV-B7MfmIVlXjG11MqLblqLWG9XeMvBE9tvw/s1920/2dd4cc07b303be2b611cb868eb5cdb90.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhJ8pPYetoDCWSuZtl4lqXz2iGW18k10D5mUWBHQTQeaH-GwU_79tj8C2Kk3McutqJn6xCqL5FWBfsq8uWeH2rrz6y2QO3itP16NV-eF07EHadOGA2RgqciC9MwRxJAM6zAZp5cogia_kMCoJ6ZuL3XvHV-B7MfmIVlXjG11MqLblqLWG9XeMvBE9tvw/s320/2dd4cc07b303be2b611cb868eb5cdb90.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-83695728769538609662022-06-13T07:14:00.005-07:002022-06-15T07:17:21.410-07:00On being privilegedDear T,<div><br /></div><div>The concept of <i>privilege</i> is easy to prove, but liberals were trying to prove it. That's why so few of us swallowed it. All they had to say was <i>some people have it easier than others</i> and left it at that. They could have pointed to people living in the ghetto and said <i>isn't that worse? </i>Or at ugly people and said <i>wouldn't that be hard? </i>But they put <i>white</i> in front of it or <i>bias</i> and put the blame on the wrong people the wrong way*. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>You can't be blamed for not wanting to bang a fat person. You can't be blamed for centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. But instead of focusing on how hard it is for the sufferer, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/04/dont-they-matter-too-much-already.html">they tried to make you an oppressor and it backfired</a>. They had a good shot at making us feel bad for others and they ended up making us feel mad at others. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mostly at liberals, but at blacks and fats too. They took what was already hard for people in bad situations and made it worse. They tried to get rid of black grades and now everybody with a brain is questioning black doctors. They lumped the worst black criminals with black saints and black businessmen and now black neighborhoods don't have police**. They defended the obese until they couldn't wash themselves or hold a job and COVID started killing them willy-nilly. Is this comedy or tragedy? To kill everything you're trying to heal -- <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/04/first-they-came-for-nazis.html">and still think you're being the hero</a>? </div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUhNqcbmfiUgHAzjvjgtBMg1_mI_PJWN5UElJN7HUFiUAu1Wv4soMX2IYbSMaKXc0-I7LYezq7_CCj4EOrMCxNvJU8z_e1WcZA4HqEW1xg16Z_23j5ijV-7DVh2NfUp-JR5RO1MJ6OQ3-bkBSERUhMuoIfcy3EplvQqO1SlUovFenYUfoTB7_0gUWwQ/s800/larges2-ep1-people-profilepic-lannister-tyrion-800x800-807893385.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkUhNqcbmfiUgHAzjvjgtBMg1_mI_PJWN5UElJN7HUFiUAu1Wv4soMX2IYbSMaKXc0-I7LYezq7_CCj4EOrMCxNvJU8z_e1WcZA4HqEW1xg16Z_23j5ijV-7DVh2NfUp-JR5RO1MJ6OQ3-bkBSERUhMuoIfcy3EplvQqO1SlUovFenYUfoTB7_0gUWwQ/s320/larges2-ep1-people-profilepic-lannister-tyrion-800x800-807893385.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrion Lannister, fellow overcompensator<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>I bring this idea of <i>privilege </i>up because, like most people, I myself am both privileged and disadvantaged. I thank God mostly for the first but I've begun to thank Him for the second, too. The crooked back He gave me, which has kept me out of sports and locker rooms and hiking and swimming and biking and even sitting for too long, has made me a <i>peculiar</i> kind of person -- a man who loves mornings, when his mind is fresh before the pain starts; who values things I can keep close, like books; a man who hides, much of the time, from company -- who stretches and works out to not fall apart completely, which has kept me fitter and more vibrant than almost everybody else; who feels a need to stand out at work; who fights harder than anyone else to be loved by women; who accepts pain as a part of life, but savors every moment without it -- a man who values his mind more than his strength, who relies heavily on manners and charm, who is constantly overcompensating for what I lack, for what I hate, for what I am. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don't believe every man has a path carved out for him, but I do believe all of us have paths blocked off. It's our choice to take what's left for us, to hack our way through jungle or waltz across a meadow. What God gives is a gift, sometimes even when it hurts. I imagine what I'd have done if things were "better," and I don't want it. What I am now, where I am now, I chew on and savor -- I am the only one like me, the only who who does what I do and who does it so well. I know the pain I bulldoze through every day, and I take pride in how strong I actually am. I am inferior in one way and that made me superior in a dozen others.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Francis Bacon writes, in his essay <i>On Deformity***</i>,</div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>Deformed persons commonly get even with nature; for, as nature has done ill to them, so they do to nature, being for the most part (as the Scriptures say) “void of natural affection;” and so they have their revenge. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Certainly, there is an agreement between the body and the mind, and where nature errs in one, she ventures in the other. But because there is in man a choice about the frame of his mind, and no choice in the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline and virtue. [...] Whoever has anything fixed in his person that induces contempt, has also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons are extremely bold; first in their own defense, as being exposed to scorn, but, in process of time, by a general habit. </i></div><div><i>[...]</i></div><div><i>If they have spirit, they seek to free themselves from scorn either by virtue or malice; and, therefore, let it not be too surprising if sometimes they prove excellent persons; as was Agesilaüs, Zanger, the son of Soleiman, Æsop, Gasca president of Peru; and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with others.</i></div></blockquote><div>I am more vicious and more beautiful because I was born damaged. These essays, especially the ones attacking <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/07/a-gun-to-our-heads.html">things I found to be ugly</a>, are proof of it. But I was never wholly ruined. Bacon mentions Socrates not because he was a m*dget or a hunchback, but because he was just ugly -- which, thank God, I am not. I was given lots of beauty too, and just enough ugliness to make me exceptional.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div><div>*The ham-handed botching of liberal causes is (I believe) because of their intense desire to save themselves -- and not the person they claim to be saving. Eric Hoffer writes in <i>The True Believer</i>,</div><div><i></i></div></div><blockquote><div><div><i>The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.</i></div></div></blockquote><div>**Tom Sowell writes in <i>Black Rednecks and White Liberals,</i></div><blockquote><div><i>A crucial fact about white liberals must be kept in mind: they are NOT simply in favor of blacks in general. Their solicitude is poured out for blacks as victims, blacks as welfare mothers, criminals, political activists against the larger society, as well as those blacks who serve as general counter-cultural symbols against the larger society. White liberals have nothing approaching the same interest in blacks as the principal victims of black criminals or as people advancing themselves within the existing framework of American society, including many who have risen within the military, nor do they get particularly worked up over blacks who build up their own human capital or business capital. None of the many reports of black schools that excel academically seems to arouse any great interest among white liberals.</i></div></blockquote><div>***Francis Bacon is forgotten by the English-speaking world because he wrote in English. If he had written in any other language he could have been translated into modern English and appreciated by every generation of American students. But Cervantes gets a rewrite and Bacon lies in the dust-bin. </div><div><br /></div><div>Consider this passage of his, slightly rewritten by me as the one above was, and see how beautiful, how rich this man was -- and wonder why we don't do for the English what we do for the Greeks and the Romans.</div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>Natures that have lots of heat, and great and violent desires and disturbances, are not ripe for action till they've passed the meridian of their years: as it was with Julius Cæsar and Septimius Severus. [...] But reposed natures may do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Cæsar, Cosmus Duke of Florence, Gaston de Foix, and others. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>On the other side, heat and vivacity in age is an excellent composition for business. Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business. [...] The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold, stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; [...] use extreme remedies at first; and then, doubling all errors, won't acknowledge or retract them -- like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. </i><i>Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Certainly, it is good to use both young and old. It will be good because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both.</i></div><div><br /></div></blockquote>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-14634796137357220592022-06-05T08:05:00.002-07:002022-06-06T13:55:01.365-07:00On the two party system<p>Dear T,</p><p>People who complain about the two-party system are missing the point. There has always been a two-party system and there always will be, however we try to avoid it, and whatever name we call it. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Aside from the fact that nature Herself is comprised of opposites, such as light and darkness, cold and hot, and wet and dry, and neither of these opposites can exist without the other, any measure you put forward either gets a yes or a no, which means there is always a <i>for</i> and <i>against</i>. You can name ten parties in a system and what eventually happens? Put something to a vote and they form blocs, and whoever has the majority wins -- not ten parties, but two. Ten is the name and two is the substance. </p><p>One advantage of a multi-party system is that more people can express their ideas more clearly. Thus instead of cramming millions behind a flag that barely, vaguely, loosely represents their ideals, you can be specific -- a policy which means, maybe locally, they can have leaders they believe in, and real representation, and a platform that excites them. But on a large scale this close representation is impossible, and even if they get a small-scale party they like, the large one they mesh with will be a disappointment, and probably even offensive to them in many ways. A truly one-world democracy is a government for nobody. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5PelxVOrHImDH_MXT2--8fcEahGBRKH0yeOZOD0BQXSqnZhEd0pi4Arha0CgxZQfkjIAG4bXjtHWeAvx592yKGlRKxsDO8oV-cN7rhrqE-kqAlz2_6TEf4iOcBaPmHsVZE4-Ml48jP664zmV8cSc5NqDtylVdH5-Q2aDR3gOVtS4JdrCF9cCAHQcrg/s1440/o-REPUBLICAN-VS-DEMOCRAT-facebook-e1432328003768-1440x926-2575670876.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="926" data-original-width="1440" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5PelxVOrHImDH_MXT2--8fcEahGBRKH0yeOZOD0BQXSqnZhEd0pi4Arha0CgxZQfkjIAG4bXjtHWeAvx592yKGlRKxsDO8oV-cN7rhrqE-kqAlz2_6TEf4iOcBaPmHsVZE4-Ml48jP664zmV8cSc5NqDtylVdH5-Q2aDR3gOVtS4JdrCF9cCAHQcrg/s320/o-REPUBLICAN-VS-DEMOCRAT-facebook-e1432328003768-1440x926-2575670876.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>But large parties eventually become necessary. Even if there are technically no parties, and people vote on single issues instead of on platforms, people will need to work with people. There will be some people who share similar values and others who don't, and people will quickly find out who's likely to work with them and who's likely to stand in the way. A person who lines up in many ways with another will start working with them to get others to vote with them; compromises will be made with those on the fence; handshaking will become a habit and people will begin to rely on allies, and before long, you'll have what effectively becomes a party system anyway. If parties are officially banned, a platform will be adopted unofficially. It will become known to those on the inside of the political game, and mysterious to everyone outside it. <br /><p></p><p>The politicians who refuse to play by these rules in a large country, idealists who believe in politics without a machine, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2022/02/why-im-not-libertarian.html">will be shut out</a>, and their constituents will vote for somebody else -- who will form platforms, and machines, and maybe have a chance at winning. The more idealistic the politician, the more narrow his views, the less he's willing to compromise what he believes in to get some of it done, the less likely he is to win. What he needs is a majority -- the minimum amount of people required to win, at the maximum amount he can possibly stomach compromising. To go beyond this point is to risk vagueness in policy, and thus disappointment in practice. I doubt anyone in a large country can hold the line with a 70% approval rating for too long -- unless there's a war going on, and the party in power happens to be doing a great job fighting it.</p><p>This means every country needs to have an enemy if it wants to stick together. When you're up against Soviet Russia, for instance, or Nazi Germany, it's easier to rally big-tent parties, because what's different about your neighbor is generally less threatening than what's different about a foreigner. But a country without an enemy becomes its own enemy. Suddenly the only fears it has comes from its own constituents. Their plans, which seemed <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/07/rethinking-danes.html">miniscule and even petty</a> during a hot or cold war, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/07/other-peoples-opinons.html">become grandiose and diabolical</a> in the new post-war perspective -- the idea of survival and national freedom, both simple concepts when weighed against foreign infiltration or attack, become matters of <i>how</i> we survive, and <i>what</i> freedom means, which are much more complex, and vary wildly from person to person*. The neighbors' habits, his styles, his preferences weigh on you heavily; one neighbor tries to push his agenda on another, and suddenly you find out the Soviets you feared yesterday were in-house. In our case they are -- and worse. But we <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/12/why-liberal-means-left-winger.html">didn't feel this when we kept voting for FDR</a>.</p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J </p><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-24962683508817644512022-05-28T04:44:00.018-07:002022-05-31T06:00:20.597-07:00On finding a churchDear M,<div><br /></div><div>I tend to have a problem with authority. Not generally with my boss (why argue with a paycheck?) or the police (<a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/05/confession-of-average-joe.html">why end up in jail?</a>), but with anyone who tells me what to think. I could swallow anyone's opinion if the reasons behind it seem good, and in fact I do: it makes little difference to me when or where or who it comes from. But if I have to accept it based not on the delivery but on the delivery boy, I probably won't accept it. Not from my parents, not from a pastor, not from a President, and not from the Pope* -- although I might <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/02/mormon-jesus.html">fake it if I have to</a>. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Who else's lights am I supposed to go by? Say I pick a man to pick an idea for me and the idea turns out bad. Unless I'm held at gunpoint, it's double the wrong, not half. I still had to pick him and then I had to swallow his failure. Even if I claim the Bible as my authority**, why would I trust someone <i>else's</i> interpretation of it? Unless their interpretation becomes mine I have no choice but to believe it's the <i>wrong</i> interpretation. There is no church, no government, no school who shifts this responsibility to anybody but me. I can be an accomplice or a dupe, but never Pontius Pilate. I don't believe he gets much of a pass from anybody anyway, but he tried, God bless him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why believe a pastor's thoughts are higher than my thoughts? Which of us is fit to be the arbiter of what's God's and what isn't? And if there <i>is</i> inspiration, why can it come only from the organ known as the church? Isn't the Bible a record of an official church or theocracy -- and God constantly pulling outsiders in to correct it? Isn't it in many cases <i>written</i> <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/12/the-first-protestant.html">by the outsiders</a>? </div><div><br /></div><div>There are answers to this issue of spiritual authority, and the first is that the early church had miracles. It also had a leadership hand-picked by Jesus Christ. Not much of a Bible as we know it today, or many dogmas, but still a real feel of authority. Where else are we supposed to find this? Go to any Protestant church and you'll find, in 90% of the cases, that the man in charge (or at least, the man in front) is someone picked off the street, many times unknown to even the church itself, whose theology comes from a random school (oftentimes ran by unknown men), and who speaks with little real genius, or charisma. Not a bad man or a moron, necessarily, but just a man. Am I supposed to take orders from <i>him</i>? Does he know more than me about life or about God -- because he went to school for four, six, maybe ten years? Is school where you learn about God -- about <i>life</i>?***</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite this position I still strongly believe in authority, and thus in conformity. If God is speaking to more than two of us we have to agree on something He says. If God is speaking to lots of us then the message should be relatively coherent. You get enough messages and there has to be an interpretation of them. You have to organize them and then organize yourselves. You need to know who's true to the message and who isn't. You need to know who's new and who's experienced. You need to know who has a proven track record in being godly and who needs to be punished, or kicked out. Thus whatever the "spiritual" people say about organized religion, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2015/02/how-to-tell-if-youre-in-relationship.html">spirituality without organization isn't spirituality</a> -- it's pantomime. The end result of all spirituality, especially once it touches morality, is sociability. Spirituality gives us evangelists and prophets, and the children of the prophets are the bishops and archbishops. But do bishops and archbishops ever give us evangelists and prophets? </div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6C2eVbbb5f0Sezv7dEMmgDhg9vjNmVHck5MBc784vIr3PDjlZZc8pB4gvs2bBJ01joFXjJ7evvqQ1O2cDzwQ-sS8mIfa8QLWhKHRJpOhHbsJvqIjMsWWQmu7GcY1aGGaF_Dysls59iNLm9oVTxmq0fxz5UUWX-VlTo12zSWVz7_qbFYZ73kSZbCPqgQ/s474/th-2032673740.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="474" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6C2eVbbb5f0Sezv7dEMmgDhg9vjNmVHck5MBc784vIr3PDjlZZc8pB4gvs2bBJ01joFXjJ7evvqQ1O2cDzwQ-sS8mIfa8QLWhKHRJpOhHbsJvqIjMsWWQmu7GcY1aGGaF_Dysls59iNLm9oVTxmq0fxz5UUWX-VlTo12zSWVz7_qbFYZ73kSZbCPqgQ/s320/th-2032673740.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selfie of St Augustine (IPhone 2)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>What I need is a church that believes in miracles -- and claims to still have them. I need something that feels ancient -- not something that was invented yesterday and reeks of the suburbs. I'm no better than anyone else: I need the aura of holiness, the weight of history, a catalogue of the saints, old prayers to recite, songs my forefathers sang, things (like kneeling and crossing) to do physically in unison with others, the knowledge that <i>my</i> church, where I receive my teachings, is teaching the same things all over the globe -- <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/10/a-short-review-of-plantingas-knowledge.html">that I'm not in a fringe sect, but in <i>the</i> sect</a>; that my doctrine and flavor isn't American, Republican, even <i>Western</i> but global, and timeless. Is this all an illusion? Much of it, probably. But it's what I think I need -- what I <i>feel</i> I need -- and so far as I'm aware, there's only one church offering it. But I doubt I can believe in Pope Francis or the Vatican. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I strongly believe that <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/10/a-birthday-gift.html">God is talking to people out there</a>, and that God wants me to find them. I believe that there's such a thing as goodness, that God's ways are higher than our ways, and that I can find out what those ways are, because He's trying to tell us. I believe those ways must necessarily come in conflict with our ways, and that obedience, not just reason, is the way you find out who speaks for God. But how am I supposed to put my faith in God first? Unless He speaks to me personally, won't that require putting some faith in a <i>man</i>? </div><div><br /></div><div>My search for church begins in two weeks. I'm taking a pay-cut to have Sundays off to do it. I'm asking for divine intervention and we'll see if God answers -- or if the Protestants are right, and the miracle I've been looking for is my brain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>*Regarding theology students, there's a beautiful passage from <i>Anna Karenina</i> about how things are supposed to go and how they <i>do </i>go. </div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>He was not of a jealous disposition. Jealousy in his opinion insulted a wife, and a man should have confidence in his wife. Why he should have confidence — that is, a full conviction that his young wife would always love him — he never asked himself; but he felt no distrust, and therefore had confidence, and assured himself that it was right to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy is a shameful feeling, and that one ought to have confidence, had not been destroyed, he felt that he was face to face with something illogical and stupid, and he did not know what to do. Karenin was being confronted with life — with the possibility of his wife’s loving somebody else, and this seemed stupid and incomprehensible to him, because it was life itself. He had lived and worked all his days in official spheres, which deal with reflections of life, and every time he had knocked up against life itself he had stepped out of its way. He now experienced a sensation such as a man might feel who, while quietly crossing a bridge over an abyss, suddenly sees that the bridge is being taken to pieces and that he is facing the abyss. The abyss was real life; the bridge was the artificial life Karenin had been living. It was the first time that the possibility of his wife’s falling in love with anybody had occurred to him, and he was horrified.</i></div></blockquote><div>This happened to an man who'd been making Russia laws for years, maybe decades. How bad could it happen to a <i>theology student</i>? And about how many more aspects of life? A serious question to ask about any pastor -- but was that how Paul felt about Timothy? Between Timothy and David, it's clear that a man's heart and his mind are two things given by God, and no amount of training or rubber-stamping can substitute for either of them. </div><div><br /></div><div>As such, Kant's <i>Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals </i>is poison if swallowed whole, but this passage is the good food it was hidden in:</div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and whatever talents of the mind one might want to name are doubtless in many respects good and desirable, as are such qualities of temperament as courage, resolution, perseverance. But they can also become extremely bad and harmful if the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature and which in its special constitution is called character, is not good. The same holds with gifts of fortune; power, riches, honor, even health, and that complete well-being and contentment with one's condition which is called happiness make for pride and often hereby even arrogance, unless there is a good will to correct their influence on the mind and herewith also to rectify the whole principle of action and make it universally conformable to its end. The sight of a being who is not graced by any touch of a pure and good will but who yet enjoys an uninterrupted prosperity can never delight a rational and impartial spectator. Thus a good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of being even worthy of happiness.</i></div></blockquote><div>*<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/">The PEW Research Center says</a> that only 99% of Christians believe in God, which leads me to an important question: does the PEW Research Center know what <i>Christian</i> means? </div><div><br /></div><div><div>In fairness to statisticians the question is a tough one. Augustine's rule was that anyone who held to the core doctrines of Christianity would be considered a "real" Christian. But who decided which doctrines were superfluous? Augustine did, of course (if he ever did clearly) and if you didn't listen to Augustine, you were (ostensibly) rejected by Jesus. </div><div><br /></div><div>Quite an ego on Augustine, but it's the same authority each man appropriates to himself. To say you know who's saved by God and who isn't directly goes against the teachings of Jesus (see: The Parable of the Tares and the Wheat). But to say all professing Christians are Christians is to destroy Christianity. You say you know which doctrines are "essential" and you're slapping God in the face. After all, which of His words don't matter? But you say you don't know which ones are essential and you don't have a church. </div><div><br /></div><div>Which man, which country, which council decides this question? Every single one, from First Baptist Church of Valdosta Georgia to the Russian Orthodox -- and at best, the guilty voters hide their audacity under the guise of democracy. It wasn't <i>me</i> -- the decision we settled on was <i>us</i>. Typical, and the same evasion that gives such a low approval rating to congress. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>**It should be noted that almost everyone who accepts the authority of the Bible does it without reading it first. Quite a move -- not too unlike <i>we should pass the bill to find out what's in it</i>. But who would ever read it seriously if we didn't have that attitude?</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-7547102223804673682022-05-24T05:37:00.009-07:002022-05-24T06:17:14.655-07:00In defense of gossipDear S,<div><br /></div><div>Jonathan Haidt argues in his article <i><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/">Why the Past 10 Years Have Been Uniquely Stupid</a></i> that</div><div><blockquote><i>Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous. Is our democracy any healthier now that we’ve had Twitter brawls over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tax the rich dress at the annual Met Gala, and Melania Trump’s dress at a 9/11 memorial event, which had stitching that kind of looked like a skyscraper? How about Senator Ted Cruz’s tweet criticizing Big Bird for tweeting about getting his COVID vaccine?</i></blockquote></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>I would counter-argue that he should lower his expectations. Democracy in the extreme (<a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/12/salvaging-democracy.html">which I don't believe in</a>) means not that the best of us should direct public affairs, but that all of us should -- including the least of us. And this effectively means the worst of us. The question isn't whether our concerns as a society are petty. The question is how far you want to include <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/11/for-better-and-for-worse.html">the worst of us</a> in fashioning society. </div><div> </div><div>But beyond this I believe the things Haidt calls "frivolous" are pregnant with meaning, even if they appear petty. Ocasio-Cortez's dress was "only a dress" -- but it said "tax the rich" when she's one of the richest people in America, and her nana was dirt poor. This raised the question, <i>should people put their money where their mouth is</i>? -- a teaching of every great self-styled spiritual leader, from Jesus Christ to Michael Jackson. Ted Cruz may have criticized Big Bird, but this raised several questions, chief of which was <i>are children's shows also propaganda</i>? The question of Melania's dress may have been paranoid speculation -- but still raised the question of, <i>do clothes <u>mean</u> things</i>? <i>Even without words on them?</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>You can call these things petty, but each of these is actually meaty, and gives lots of ammunition to philosophers and pundits, even if they end up asking <i>shouldn't you be paying attention to more important things</i>?* </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6v-lAtPiH4DoiZ2SKEbXilqu75bYOOr76tQ9859mwOPmUBmvgSFkXaic649HPQDVn8k_7jdp0jxcgKQE66umk2FKvqcFvrCJEq5MhYewMSWib0gIFsI-w9if-M1jpWP5XS1X0k-u30eYStzAvD8gl2liL7NJdtUZ2zfEubiXcdpLzn9bN057GDKJwJw/s1024/external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6v-lAtPiH4DoiZ2SKEbXilqu75bYOOr76tQ9859mwOPmUBmvgSFkXaic649HPQDVn8k_7jdp0jxcgKQE66umk2FKvqcFvrCJEq5MhYewMSWib0gIFsI-w9if-M1jpWP5XS1X0k-u30eYStzAvD8gl2liL7NJdtUZ2zfEubiXcdpLzn9bN057GDKJwJw/s320/external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>This leads me to believe that gossip at bottom is philosophy, even if the common prejudice is that it's mainly "for women." Both gossip and philosophy cover more or less the same ground: what people do, whether it's right or wrong, how we're supposed to deal with life, and what we can and can't accept. Gossip has few rules other than the conversation has to be <i>interesting</i> -- which makes the average woman more fun than the average ivory tower philosopher. It's also highly practical, which makes many women more useful than the typical theorist. But most of all it's subtle, taking many little things we ignore and digging out the meaning in them. Thus we introduced women, the matriarchs of the gossip world, into politics, and were surprised (as only men could be) that women kept talking like women. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What makes gossip so different from "philosophy proper" is that it's so close to life that it tends to be vicious. The philosopher argues about the meaning of life. The gossip talks about a local affair. One questions whether love is all you need. The other is about someone who needs love. They're two sides of the same question, really, but one of them feels far away, and the other one is right up close and personal, because it involves an actual person. Then the media took the things that were far away and put them up close. Pictures were infused between the words, and suddenly the most perceptive among us were reading between the lines. Suddenly we became aware of things the Vice President said -- and didn't say, on the clock and off it, and what she wore. We were just as capable of studying her laugh as we were of studying her speeches. And one of them was just as interesting as the other. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's true that much of our gossip is actually speculation and slander, and when it crosses that line -- when it's spread without any consideration of truth, without any consideration for a few shreds of decency, or without any intention of fighting off bad behavior -- gossip loses most of its value. At this point it becomes more about "us versus her," or bald entertainment -- still useful, in some cases, and still human, but diabolical. This is why <i>Downton Abbey </i>and <i>Mad Men</i> are popular, and why people still love Jane Austen: both direct our talk somewhere other than our neighbors, letting us color life with our opinions without having to actually destroy anybody. A novel is the difference between paintball and the Vietnam War.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this leads us to ask why gossip is known as a "women's" sport. My theory is that for millennia, men were trying to work outside the home, and oftentimes beyond the neighborhood. There was a division of labor between home and beyond, and this clear-cut line between men and women and what they did gave rise to a division of mindsets. </div><div><br /></div><div>Put simply, we've always needed men to watch the horizon. For as long as we can remember, women were left home and didn't have a newspaper. If they had lots of kids they were too busy to cause too much damage, but the dinks and stay-at-home one-childers and nanny-buyers had more time to discuss the lives of others and the happenings in the neighborhood, and thus women took the helm. They've been gossiping expertly ever since, probably way more since the rise of the middle class; and their reputation, even in an age where both sexes are working the office, has stuck. (Even Paul tells the early Christians, who were mostly poor, that widows need to shut up and get to work so they won't sleep around or tattle on neighbors). </div><div><br /></div><div>Men were on the job and holding office, and were the only ones who could vote (when voting was possible), so their minds were fixed on "bigger" things -- not actually above life, but delegated to much longer ranges. To catch a man whispering about Sally too much made him seem petty and silly, like a king who was really good at playing the flute when he was supposed to be dealing with currencies, and laws, and nations, and armies, and churches, and tariffs. Thus women got a reputation for talking about people, and men got a reputation for talking about <i>things</i> -- both philosophy, and both important. Both about people, too, and both oftentimes vicious, but one of them seemed grander, and less personal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then there were the "philosophers." The philosopher believed in his own superiority, and he needed a way to prove it. So instead of going the distance sideways, like the man "beyond" the woman, he stuck his neck above the herd and into the heavens, pondering things like whether justice was better than injustice in a king, or whether man had a soul, or whether we can know reality -- not a removal of dross, but an exclusion of many things closest to us. He was even prejudiced against business, which was in many countries considered beneath the nobility, and thus he went many times into poverty -- a lack of know-how and self-sufficiency which he relabeled <i>asceticism</i>, which fed his pride even more needlessly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The more abstract his subjects, the further off from "menial" life, he thought, the better -- and as he became more abstract, he became less concerned with (and usually less good at) real life. He contributed many great things and many more stupid things and argued over them both. Not less petty, just generally more abstract. Angels on pinheads and such. Eleanor Roosevelt says, <i>Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people </i>-- a statement that would be true if great ideas weren't constantly practiced by little people in everyday life, and "men with great ideas" weren't so boring, especially to the opposite sex.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think many women's disinterest in "great" ideas is half our fault and half theirs. It's their fault because most gossip is malicious -- an interest in seeing someone else fail, probably to make sub-par women feel better about themselves, and to better cement alliances between them. But their reputation as gossips is also men's fault, because women are more practical in philosophy than we are, and if we can't see the "public utility" in something, many times we avoid it. We forget that the public is made up of individuals, and that the common man, what he says, and does, and feels, and thinks, and loves, and hates, and means, and even wears, eventually becomes public. My theory is that if men have traditionally been guardians of the laws, women have traditionally been guardians of the norms. Their jurisdiction is thus much more extensive than ours, but ours gets more fanfare. </div><div><br /></div><div>But men these days aren't supposed to talk about politics and religion at work or play anyway, and what they're left with are cars and guns and shop, or (God forbid) one-liners from Adam Sandler movies, or (Lord help us) sports: things that many times represent man's logical, tactical, eyes-on-the-horizon side**, but are too far from actual <i>life -- </i>and subjects most interesting to halfwits. Thus I believe women on average are better philosophers than men, even if they rarely impress men with their philosophy. Most men are either beneath it out of fear, or try to style themselves too far above it. And most men don't have the brains for the latter.</div><div><br /></div><div>I would say to Haidt that times have changed anyway, and we changed alongside them. Pettiness, the mass obsession with a slap at the Oscars, or a slur, isn't actually petty, as maybe we used to think. It's big things put in small ways***, and these days everyone has more leisure to discuss them. We're almost all capable of voting now. If the quality of the news means anything, we're certainly all gossiping now. We believe that because we're gossiping that we can't be good at voting. But I don't believe this is true. We aren't more petty because we gossip more. We're more petty because we don't know how to gossip <i>well</i> -- and we believe too deeply in the extremities of democracy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>*In Haidt's defense, the tendency has been for men to join in on the "petty" issues without women joining in on the "grand" ones. We joined their sphere without them ever getting competent in ours. What this means is that the superstructure of our society, the rule of law, what little fair play existed, the abstract, "cold," principled notions that may not be the life-blood, but serve as the <i>bones</i> of our society, and which were hard-won after centuries of struggle, have been overthrown almost entirely -- leaving little recourse to political opponents but scandal and violence. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus contrary to the prevailing opinion -- that men are responsible for dragging us to war -- it is <i>women</i>, and their disinterest in political theory, who lead us into fights we don't need, which we could have avoided, and can't win. We gave them the keys to the Chevy and never asked if they knew how to drive. And they are driving us off a cliff.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/mtp-daily/watch/nbc-poll-shows-major-shift-in-congressional-preference-since-2018-137233989979">MSNBC reports</a> that during the last two years, when cities became swamped in violence, when people were forced to take bogus meds that hurt them, when the border was left wide open, when children were being groomed by perverts and concerned parents were getting followed by the FBI, when World War 3 threw shadows grimly over the horizon, and fiscal policies directly strangled the middle and lower classes, college-educated women are the <i>only </i>group that has swung left. </div><div><br /></div><div>**Even sports stats and drafts and such, the bane of most intelligent men, are long-range and tactical. They involve knowing who's who and what they're good for, and signifies our need to get a team up and running. Whether the team is literally running is beside the point, but only slightly. The goal of a game may be to just run a ball beyond a line. But even this is pregnant with meaning, and if we spend lots of energy organizing a team, it means we still have the germs of manhood inside us, however small: we were just excluded from the squad and the board room and the cabinet. We always dream that someday we'll be running either -- and thus we practice on football. </div><div> </div><div><div>***Tolstoy's <i>Anna Karenina</i> is probably the most perfect fusion between <i>gossip </i>and <i>philosophy</i> -- a book in which no action, thought, lifestyle, decision, mannerism, philosophy, or failure is too small for a big idea -- where Tolstoy goes into detail not about a man's face, but about the state of a man's mind -- where personality clashes against ideals -- where desire breaks through religion -- where the noblest ideas backfire, and the so-called "pettiest" touches spur serious thought. He reminds us that there are interesting people and boring people, and that the difference between them is that one is interested in life, and sees the meaning in it, and others judge most of it as "petty." </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus I believe Tolstoy was one of the fullest men who ever lived. He knew that philosophy isn't a formula, but a <i>story, </i>full of passion, interest, heartbreak, and drama, and that to really understand how a man works, how a woman works, to really perceive what makes them tick, to dig into varying types of minds and really get a <i>feel</i> for them -- that this is the work of a real philosopher -- <i>and a novelist</i>. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy-audiobook/dp/B0014GPWJI/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37DU6KRPI36VL&keywords=horovitch+anna+karenina&qid=1652011815&sprefix=horovitch%2520anna%2520karenina%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1">David Horovitch's rendition of <i>Anna Karenina</i></a> on Audible is perfect. I can't recommend any novel more than this one, and, with all sincerity, I worry I'll never read a better one. </div><div><br /></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div> </div><div><br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-73212481460791872022022-05-21T04:50:00.000-07:002022-05-21T04:50:20.352-07:00What exactly is culture?Dear M,<div><br /></div><div>Yesterday I met a man from Mumbai. He happened to mention that he was new to Idaho, so I asked how new, and it turned out he'd only been here a month and a half. He spoke good English, and I learned he'd gone to an English-speaking school, which made his getting a job here in Idaho possible*.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>I asked him what he thought about Boise and he said he loved it here better than Mumbai. <i>People don't care about you in a big city</i>, he said. <i>Whether you live or die makes no difference to them</i>. But here in a little-big city like Boise, he said he could stand outside a store with a large purchase and people would ask if he needed help. He'd already done this the day before and been asked by <i>eight</i> people. He'd never seen anything like it.</div><div><br /></div><div>His wife and children had the same impression, and were generally impressed by how <i>healthy</i> the culture was here. Not the same ugly bustle of a New York City or a Philadelphia, the facelessness of the crowds, the concern for you and yours and yours only, but a real humanity that sees a neighbor as a neighbor and asks him if he needs anything. </div><div><br /></div><div>The irony of the situation is that red-staters, and particularly people from rural areas, have a reputation for not only being unfriendly to foreigners, but for being morally cold. The cities on the other hand have a reputation for tolerance and empathy -- the idea that people care about the downtrodden and forgotten, and that they're doing whatever they can to help. </div><div><br /></div><div>I believe this reputation exists partly because big city people <i>are</i> so faceless and downtrodden. First of all, it's widely recognized that blue states, where people have a lust for equity and "equality," <a href="https://reason.com/2022/01/01/against-champagne-socialists/">are places where economic disparities are sharpest</a>, and the ultra-wealthy, who run the affairs of society and tax the elderly out of their retirement homes, live almost next-door to the street junkies, illegal aliens busting their backs for bare sustenance, and the people ground into the dust by giant corporations like Amazon. Big cities in blue counties are also known for people sleeping and shitting on the streets, for drugs and all kinds of crime, and for the racial divide being so bad that whole blocks get burned down when <i>criminals</i> get shot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because of this, blue states are places where "egalitarian" policies are upfront. Not the reality of it, but the emotional fanfare. Nobody can tally the maybe dozens of times you need help and a stranger shows up and offers support; but a public program, payed for with taxpayer money, has a long campaign to get it started, and leaves the city or state with a reputation for giving -- even if the average person gives less personally, which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-democrats-charity-philanthropy.html">The New York Times admits they do</a>. One place has a giving culture. The other has a giving machine. And it's the machine that gives a reputation of a culture, because we can all see the machine and who voted for it, but the culture has to be experienced individually. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaw3KcWwZY8zXoh3sPntho6mPHg3Vg_J9sZSwvUXEfnJOnaoKE8HXgJ45AV9ML-LjP8bktNiDJTH-LMbfdwnKwEb2xTuHXe8Iu1RnPUW8XRaMKXhMX4ax3sEj794TYyqatdZEuDizEWE8tHpQoNq_QyO38JtYFudZX0ll-vRVqf_PM6jjmjJd0LzsSaA/s960/84mn224wxeyz-231982059.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaw3KcWwZY8zXoh3sPntho6mPHg3Vg_J9sZSwvUXEfnJOnaoKE8HXgJ45AV9ML-LjP8bktNiDJTH-LMbfdwnKwEb2xTuHXe8Iu1RnPUW8XRaMKXhMX4ax3sEj794TYyqatdZEuDizEWE8tHpQoNq_QyO38JtYFudZX0ll-vRVqf_PM6jjmjJd0LzsSaA/s320/84mn224wxeyz-231982059.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When people say a place like Idaho doesn't have "culture," what they mean is we don't have a booming place for "art". To the lopsided city-dweller, painting, writing, music, fashion and filmmaking comprise almost the totality of culture. But beyond these, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/04/in-defense-of-prejudice.html">most things in life take art</a>, and Boise has a preponderance of them. Such as the art of being neighborly, or driving politely, or gardening -- the latter possible only where people have yards big enough for gardens; or raising chickens, or raising a big family, or church-running, which thrives here where there are lots of Mormons, and social cohesion is extremely strong, and everyone is watched over because they're considered important. There's also the art of farming, and hunting, and fishing -- and let's not forget the art of business, which exists here just as much as in Seattle, or San Francisco, or New York City. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Big Tech is important, but it isn't the only important business, and if feeding your family and making the customer happy is the purpose of all business, and in fact the only way to <i>stay</i> in business, then Idaho is doing pretty well. We have plenty of mechanics and barbers and the techies of Micron -- not to mention the big agribusiness of Simplot, which fuels farms and ranches all over the world and even supplies fries to McDonalds; Albertsons and Winco, which deliver goods all over the US, making large-scale production possible; St Lukes and St Alphonsus, which deliver top-notch medical services to rich and poor alike; and hordes of dentists, miners, builders, theologians, professors, dancers, and everything you could possibly imagine to make life livable, and even bearable. </div><div><br /></div><div>To those who say we lack "art," the invention of TV and the internet has spread the best and worst of humanity wherever there's electricity anyway; and anyone can buy Tolstoy, because books are sold cheaply, and they can be mailed through something (ever heard of it?) called a postal service. This is a flyover state only to people who are too brainwashed and uncultured -- I would add here too <i>prejudiced</i> -- to recognize a thriving, healthy, relatively happy civilization. </div><div><br /></div><div>I would add here that people from Idaho -- that is, people whose families have lived here for generations -- are a specific breed of Americans, and worthy of their own category. Neither West-Coasters nor Rust-Belters, the Idahoan has escaped both the big-city perversions and the dying industrial wastelands to his left and to his right. The men are beefier here, and more handy, and believe in themselves, because they themselves are worth believing in -- not the "I'm special because I'm gay or black" fraud pretended by the left-wing, but real confidence from self-sufficiency and know-how. The women here are fairer, more fertile, and also, when true Idahoans, more handy than the average man from Seattle. </div><div><br /></div><div>An Idahoan is usually simpler than a Californian: he oftentimes lacks nuance in his social and political positions, and is generally bad at bullshitting, and worse at humor. But his simplicity comes with a benefit. You're getting someone almost untainted from the mass-cramming of people, who can still see a stranger struggling and offer to help him, whose nose still functions, and smells the rot of a sodomite or a street junkie; who can still be genuinely disturbed, and thus still possesses some semblance of purity, and wholesomeness. Things are sacred here, and thus we West-Coasters come off many times as disgusting. They include me here sometimes with the degenerates, and after some thought, I sometimes have to agree with them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. The man from Mumbai wasn't the first Indian who spoke well of us in front of me. I saw another Indian (<a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/10/why-i-love-indians.html">my favorite kind of foreigner</a>) say to his son in a thick accent, right after getting change from a cashier,</div><div><br /></div><div><i>You don't have to count this again. In other countries you have to count it, but not here. Here they give you exactly what they're supposed to.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I was tempted at first to say this isn't entirely true. But I haven't lived in India <i>and</i> the United States, and he has, and who am I to question him? Maybe we aren't all honest. But the world is a place full of differing weights and degrees, and he weighed us and he weighed the Indians, and he found us to his liking. </div><div><br /></div><div>*When people teach children another language they fail to instill in them what learning a new language means: that you were given the keys to a new kingdom. You could almost say to <i>another life</i>. And when you experience another life, your old one loses its monotony. It's only by experiencing what foreigners experience, by living in it, by tasting, smelling, observing, <i>chewing</i> on it that you realize how strange you are, and that what you consider "normal" is only an option in a constantly shifting smorgasboard -- and that whether you like it or you hate it, it can be lost. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>My family learned in Italy, when one of us attended a NATO school, that when something needs to be done for the kids many Europeans look for some official to do it -- but Americans see a need and start volunteering. And we are in fact the public-spirited, volunteer, DIY society of the world. This doesn't mean we deserve to run the whole world, but it does mean we deserve to run ourselves. </div><div> </div><div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div> </div><div><br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-40407996492720282352022-04-29T07:35:00.002-07:002022-05-04T07:01:21.777-07:00How to keep your manDear ladies,<div><br /></div><div>I've been married for over a decade now, and married successfully, I think -- at least successfully enough to give some tips to some of you sub-par ladies out there who got married recently (or are getting married soon) because the dating pool is drying up and you can't keep wrecking homes. Some people will tell you marriage is an art form, but they're wrong. It's a science, and if you follow these universal, time-tested principles to not make your man hate you, you can <i>stay</i> married, which is one of the two necessary prerequisites, alongside being a good Republican, to get into heaven. <div><br /></div><div>These principles are as follows:</div><div><div><br /></div><div>1) Never be a stinky wife. </div><div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Stinky wives are the worst people on the planet, and, taken instance for instance, are responsible for wrecking more men's days than even ex-wives, whom husbands can no longer smell. Step one to avoiding this catastrophe is brushing your teeth. Also wash under your armpits and between your legs when you shower. Feel like passing gas? Then be strong like a man and hold it in. Feel free to grit your teeth when you do this, if necessary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some people feel so strongly about passing gas at the table that some religions allow you to beat your wife over it (Surah 4:34). If you belong to a religion that doesn't, don't feel too safe: every sect has its own dangers. Episcopalians will let your husband wear a dress in public to embarrass you (they do this whether you fart or not), and Lutherans will let him curse at you like their founder. The United Methodists are probably the safest sect for a farting wife to be in, since most stanky women belong to their church, and they won't take legal action against you, since being a United Methodist is already a punishment in itself.</div><div> </div></div><div>2) Stay desirable.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are two things that make a woman sexier than anything else, and one of them is desirability to other men. This is nearly impossible to prove without getting in trouble (especially for the homelier women out there), so hire a guy at least once a month to physically chase you down the street in full view of your husband. </div><div><br /></div><div>This will prove not only that you're desirable, but that you're faithful. Make sure to not pay the same guy every month or your husband will recognize him out on the town and try to fight him, and probably end up in jail. The first time it's charming, and even funny. The third time? The same guy? You will both be chased by your husband, and believe me: <i>he will catch you</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>3) Exercise daily. </div><div><br /></div><div>No, this doesn't include shoving food into your gullet. Not only is it important for you to be fit, but it's good for your husband to see you working, or else he'll think you're a lazy good-for-nothing bum. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj6YgcmqWehkMpRB_XDzB1rPXo8gKEp_SmXql3xXMaFjMoeATqGsCmrv1AsPtFp8-sdMckVUGH8vh2fe4W2V34o47RjGOVID6MjDiHx_OUUCfN8QYD5LQUtBNKPE6WWyKJrIS1znzs4e-pMWyzy2ybDK4Pt3-RNYUKZeT4P_Fdv8dV_-ic9zewYNU-yg/s1306/zfncgncg.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1030" data-original-width="1306" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj6YgcmqWehkMpRB_XDzB1rPXo8gKEp_SmXql3xXMaFjMoeATqGsCmrv1AsPtFp8-sdMckVUGH8vh2fe4W2V34o47RjGOVID6MjDiHx_OUUCfN8QYD5LQUtBNKPE6WWyKJrIS1znzs4e-pMWyzy2ybDK4Pt3-RNYUKZeT4P_Fdv8dV_-ic9zewYNU-yg/s320/zfncgncg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Women don't have much to do, so a woman who wants to keep her man will have to make some work up. Dig a ditch if you have to. But there's a method to making work up too. Going out with friends doesn't count as "being busy": there has to be a moderate amount of suffering in order for him to approve of your schedule. So buy a weight set and pack on as much muscle as you can without showing too much definition. A man won't have sex with his wife if she has too much definition, but he will absolutely try to wrestle her -- and believe me, if it comes to this, <i>you will lose</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>4) Stop pretending to like sports. </div><div><br /></div><div>Men just talk about sports because you won't let them talk about politics and other important subjects because you'll cry if you don't agree. And we hate seeing you cry, especially for a bad reason -- why be a baby when a man can make babies to cry for you? </div><div><br /></div><div>When a woman pretends to like sports it undermines her credibility. We know you only watch it because you want to see men in tights bending over, which is tantamount to cheating. In fact there is nothing men can watch (in public) equivalent to this, and we know that if we were to fake enjoying tennis, when women were required to wear yoga pants and bend over for the camera, you would see right through it and try to beat us to death: a battle which, believe me, <i>you would lose</i>. Men are faithful to you, so how about being faithful to us for once? </div><div><br /></div><div>5) For the love of God, stay sober. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nothing annoys a man more than coming home after a hard day at work and seeing a drunk goomba laying on the floor passed out. But even moderate degrees of drunkenness are ugly to us. The key is to constantly prove how sober you are.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't be obvious: sing the ABC's out loud backwards every so often (do not do this in a baritone voice, which can be taken as a challenge), and show him how well you can stand on your tippy-toes. If you do things like this at random, he'll be proud of how sober his wife is when so many wives are driving into trees and barfing on their children. </div><div><br /></div><div>But be warned: in order to walk around on your tippy-toes you have to keep your weight down -- nearly impossible when eating is the only thing that gives half of women meaning. If tippy-toes are impossible because you stopped using your legs years ago and you roll around on your sides instead, I recommend going with "particular models" of husbands, since some are more tolerant of this thing than others. To find these models, please look out for the tell-signs, such as a sombrero, or spinning rims. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div> </div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b> <br /></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-81149317075289072542022-03-13T06:43:00.015-07:002022-05-28T05:40:51.133-07:00RomaniaDear T,<div><br /></div><div>When I went to Romania in the late 1990's I was in eighth grade, and it was the first time in my life I was away from my parents in another country. I was part of a youth group called Club Beyond, a Christian outreach program for kids in military families deployed all over the globe. I was actually too young to go, being in eighth grade, but the club leadership had decided I was well-behaved for my age, so I went to all the fundraisers and packed up my duffel bag and jumped in a bus with a bunch of random Navy brats.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Leaving Italy was the first challenge. First of all my mom had been worried about giving her eighth grader a passport, so she kept it at home in Naples and sent me with a photocopy -- a mistake, it turned out, because the people patrolling the (if I remember correctly) Slovenian border held up the whole bus until we could get a hold of the American consulate at six in the morning. A miserable, embarrassing affair which left me with a hatred of crossing borders and set the tone of the trip for me -- already an outsider due to my age (I was a year ahead of my grade) <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2015/07/how-to-ruin-your-homeschooled-child.html">and my awkwardness</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>It must have been winter, because it was cold and when we finally got to Romania I remember a lot of browns and grays. Not that this was all God's fault. The buildings were plain and concrete looking and generally ugly, a result (I was told) of Romania's communist history, and the regime they had only recently thrown over. The one shopping center we went to was drab and had little of anything interesting (I remember hearing about a McDonalds, but I don't remember going to one), and when we got to our final destination things got worse. </div><div><br /></div><div>A giant concrete box with filthy single-pane windows and a bare courtyard was our home for a week. I don't remember exactly what it was used for when we weren't there, but they had a lot of empty, freezing rooms for us to use, full of bare walls and bugs and worn-out mattresses which had been pissed on a few dozen times and left out to dry. The food was a kind of gruel we choked down every morning and stale bread and salami later in the day. The less we ate there the better. We were impoverished for a bit, but the people we came for were worse off.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our target audience was in a youth prison. I was told we were going there to build them a playground and other such things, but I was never assigned to a building crew (probably safer for them), and I figure most people couldn't be. There were too many of us and too little work to do. But despite this we had little free time, and got up early and attended some sort of a daily church service, and met in small groups, and went into the prison to try and save and interact with the locals. Lots of shaved heads and crew neck sweaters, which was actually how teenagers dressed in Italy anyway. I was never completely convinced whether the mission trip was for them or for me. Maybe it was both. I don't remember feeling like I did much for anybody. </div><div><br /></div><div>We tried to talk to the boys in jail, but the language barrier was difficult, and the translators did the best they could. The boys I talked to said they were innocent, which I now know they all say in prison; but I was told by my group leader that they actually could be. Word had spread around the youth group that Romania had a 100% conviction rate, and that if a crime was committed, <i>someone</i> would pay the price for it. This meant that if somebody ran somebody over and drove off and you were there for it they would put <i>you</i> in jail for manslaughter or God-knows-what-else -- a story which I didn't fully believe, which I still have a hard time believing, and which I tell now only because everybody repeated it. If it's not true, it's a reminder of the days when word-of-mouth was the main source of information, and if we heard fewer outright lies, the chance of squelching them, especially on the obscurer subjects, was next to zero. If the story about Romanian law is true, it's proof that "justice," even in a so-called "liberated" country, can mean wildly different things to different people. Still, I believe most people would find the policy disturbing. As Rochefoucald says, more people are more worried about suffering an injustice than being just*.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was surprising how similar all the prisoners looked to me. Even ignoring the fact that America is racially diverse, we're such a blend of white nations that whites can look incredibly different from each other. Romanians all looked nearly the same to me, and had a national flavor about them -- even more than the Italians. There was one kind boy about my age in the prison named Octi, which I assume was shorthand Romanian for Octavius. I spent the most time with him and we gravitated towards each other, and I always remember him because he gave me his email and he never got mine, and I promised to write him and I never did. I had many chances to but couldn't bring myself to do it. First of all I couldn't think of what to say. But second I didn't know what I could do for him. I've felt guilty about not writing him for these twenty-plus years now, not just as a human being, but as an American. This was probably his first time meeting one of us, and I turned out to be a liar. A pretty bad ambassador's career, especially for one who claimed to be from the Kingdom of Heaven**. </div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of the Kingdom, there was more trouble from the youth group than from the convicts. There was one girl named Jean who was sent home early for groping a black baseball player dubbed T-Rex. And there was a boy who was obsessed with Nine Inch Nails -- which I knew because he kept drawing "NIN" everywhere, which had to cause a few eye-rolls and frowns from the leadership. But the worst of them all was a tall, fat boy whose name I can't remember, who would shove me around, call me names, and even went so far as to throw a bucket of paint on me. He was never disciplined because I never told on him, and when it came time for prayer group and everyone was doing the usual confessing about lust, I was the only deviant in the group who broke the trend, and said I wanted to push a bully out a window. They asked me if I ever wanted to shoot people, and I didn't, so they left the matter alone. We were surrounded by horndogs, and it was more efficient to deal with them.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the time came for us to leave I remember boarding at a train station and that we were heading to all different parts of Europe. I saw the bully there for the last time, and I remember having some strong Christian urge to say something to him. So I walked up and looked him right in the eye and smiled without mentioning anything else and said sincerely, <i>I forgive you</i>. I shook his hand and never saw eyes like that in my life. He was actually hurt. I don't know what was going through his head at the time, but he nodded at me silently, and I remember walking off and being totally confused by the matter. He probably remembers me to this day and can't do anything about it. So we both left feeling like scoundrels. I imagine everyone has an Octi.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ride back, when we finally got back on buses, was a welcome relief aside from a few idiots beat-boxing, and the passport issue ended nicely thanks to the laziness of the Italians. I remember getting to the final border crossing and crossing my fingers and my heart rate going up and seeing the guard step on, peek his head in and quickly look us all over, and when it was done asking if the Romanian girls were hot. I don't remember being enamored with any or even if I saw any anywhere other than an hour at the shopping center, but we all gave him a thumbs up, he stepped off the bus without a care in the world, and we went back on to Naples.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know what we accomplished for the Romanians, or if the trip had the intended effect on all of us, or whether anybody was converted. But I haven't supported a mission trip since, and when I did send my money to missionaries, I made sure they were stuck with the locals, and didn't have the option to not write. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgLeQHnEhkAlQlFaz7tiZp4rG1-ZllddzGZppx7W3UFzF6EVgMwszGSntljLgca4oonQgetX9qCzIothERCwN7E8b5r8fq9eRRTyiORLaP_Wl6CKNF0xf5_2KG_5PT7zJ2nP3HChuVthTdt8d_BD2srEomPK7G_VOpfPtOyW8f6-grxfXj-eqCy4aQ_ug=s900" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="694" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgLeQHnEhkAlQlFaz7tiZp4rG1-ZllddzGZppx7W3UFzF6EVgMwszGSntljLgca4oonQgetX9qCzIothERCwN7E8b5r8fq9eRRTyiORLaP_Wl6CKNF0xf5_2KG_5PT7zJ2nP3HChuVthTdt8d_BD2srEomPK7G_VOpfPtOyW8f6-grxfXj-eqCy4aQ_ug=s320" width="247" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Emperor Haile Selassie<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>*Romania's policy, if it really existed, was rivaled in insanity by several of Ethiopia's, one of which was the cutting off of hands and legs for minor offenses. The second was that if someone committed murder, he would have to be disemboweled, in public, by his closest family member. Finally there was what they called <i>lebasha</i>, a method for "discovering" thieves. In this method a medicine man would find a small boy, get him high on drugs, and send him into a house. When the boy entered the house he would point someone out, and whoever he pointed out would have his arms and legs cut off <i>immediately</i> -- a practice which could strike anyone at any time. All three of these practices were banned by the emperor Haile Selassie. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Haile was in many respects a forward-thinking and just person. He gave Ethiopia a constitution and a national bank, and their first newspaper, and electricity, banned iron chains and stocks from prisons, reduced capital punishment to death by firing squad, and got rid of the slave trade, all by the early year of 1950. But he had a nasty habit for promoting the most slimy, sycophantic bunglers into power, and made the worst mistake possible for his situation -- sending high-born Ethiopians to Western schools. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Ethiopians educated in our colleges got wowed by Western law and order, wealth and equality, free speech and other rights, came back with a haughty attitude and a bunch of left-wing university ideas, were embarrassed for their country and its incompetent bureaucracy, and instead of being grateful for what Haile <i>did</i> do, immediately turned on him -- a story which can be read in Ryszard Kapuscinski's <i>The Emperor: Downfall of an Aristocrat.</i> He was overthrown by Marxists in 1974, and murdered the year after that.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>**Can we judge God by His followers? In almost every circumstance <i>no</i>;
but in Christianity, where people claim to be indwelt and moved by God
Himself, where the office of ambassador extends to every practicing
Christian, where we are supposed to radiate His goodness and wisdom and
beauty and justice and mercy -- an office more important than the CEO
of Amazon or the President of the United States of America -- <i>maybe</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2015/02/gods-orphan.html">I admit this office broke me</a>.
It was impossible to live as Christ's representative on earth
every second of every day, and to be His likeness, to claim dominion in
His name wherever you walk. But is there a better option? On the one
hand, the burden can crush you. On the other, you get rid of the
gravity of the situation, the weight of the whole universe, and you're
left floating airless in the void. The job is worth the wages. And I refuse to
believe that if Christianity is true it's not our job. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've
only known one man in my life who took the office of Christ's
ambassador seriously: an Eritrean named Z-------s M-----e. Living proof
that when Christ said He came to bring a sword, He meant it. This man,
the living manifestation of Saint Paul, who would open every greeting
with things like "Blessed be the name of our God and Father," who talked
incessantly about God and sin and Scripture, who believed the end times
were here and Jesus could show up any minute, was constantly at odds
with his company and family, and terrified of being corrupted by the
world: a scrawny, lively, fighting, smiling, kind-eyed financier of a
Seventh Day Adventist. The first man I met who made me feel like I knew
an apostle -- and sadly, the last.</div><div> </div>But this leads
me to ask a serious question of myself. Am I a saint if I don't
believe the Gospel -- that I can be saved <i>and</i> be a sinner? Or in my trying to be like God, am I more like the
Devil?</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-3078878459902128372022-02-27T04:49:00.000-08:002022-02-27T04:49:56.185-08:00Why I'm not a libertarian<div>Dear M,</div><div> </div><div>The reason I'm not a libertarian is because I'd like to be free. The libertarian says he does too, but is living proof that <i>wanting</i> something and <i>getting </i>it are two completely different matters -- and that his theory stands directly in the way of his practice. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>First among his failures is his dislike of government, which he shares many times with other "conservatives." This means he's the least likely to actually go into it (and who wants to hire a man who doesn't believe in his job?); and the positions he forfeits, all kinds of important bureaucratic and so-called "oppressive" jobs get filled by his enemies. A quick look at the policies of the FBI, the CIA, the FDA, the CDC, and OSHA proves it. He says he'd like to downsize or even get rid of them, but he can't, so instead many times he does nothing -- not a fight, but a forfeiture. </div><div><br /></div><div>Second is his tendency, also general among the right-wing, to say public schooling and other cultural and state organs can be "neutral:" that you can cater to everybody and nobody at the same time, somehow, and still churn out solid people*, and that we don't have to clean house of obvious heretics -- a job which nobody securely on top ever forfeits, and which most people who love truth usually enjoy. The leftists don't believe any power can be entirely neutral, and that's why they own the institutions, and will continue to own them even when we win elections.</div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiD2OZKupJ61oHVak9HcJcZSGe39E2G2_hTCfHr8iPNZljlGSGrv3S4ADqSi_H3q7oK2HKNbvcVyjQamViYvLHNvX-z4ke8ZM56rbGrfPO6DlvrOH0vV5fCqrD1HLIaWmJMDVj-lGLzNqLXcmVLCMz-MN_wWaxZ6S68OU9KFpPbL7csrcCpfxeAmu9M-g=s474" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="474" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiD2OZKupJ61oHVak9HcJcZSGe39E2G2_hTCfHr8iPNZljlGSGrv3S4ADqSi_H3q7oK2HKNbvcVyjQamViYvLHNvX-z4ke8ZM56rbGrfPO6DlvrOH0vV5fCqrD1HLIaWmJMDVj-lGLzNqLXcmVLCMz-MN_wWaxZ6S68OU9KFpPbL7csrcCpfxeAmu9M-g=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Disclosure: not a fan of Jo Jorgenson<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Third is his belief many times that taxation is "theft," and that a government that taxes (and does) least is the best -- a joke philosophy that if taken seriously would lead to his immediate domination by a foreign power, and leaves him underfunded, impotent, and incapable of being believed in. But more importantly than this I would add that his love of business, and the "right" of every man to do whatever he wants "with his own property," nearly without exception, leaves international corporations free to <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/09/selling-america-out-our-problem-with.html">sell us out at home</a> and abroad, and to dictate what their employees (and <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/04/the-purge.html">many times even their customers</a>) can and can't say and do. These days it means bosses can tell employees what to put in their bodies. The libertarian believes the only kind of slavery is to government, and completely ignores that the rich man who pays you, especially in a world dominated by large and left-wing corporations, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/12/why-liberal-means-left-winger.html">to some degree owns you</a>*. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Even if libertarians held a clear majority there are instances where numbers and a "principled cause" were beaten by better organizers anyway -- for instance when Spain, in 1936, blew up in
a civil war between fascists and leftists. That year revolution was
happening in the big cities. Churches were ransacked by the left-wing,
and around 7,000 clergy were murdered in cold blood. They threw
prisons open and the criminals ran amok. </div><div><p>The factories
were taken over by radicals too, and workers' communes were set up to
spread the wealth around, and rich men and right-wingers went into
hiding so they wouldn't be shot. Farmers and bakers brought in food by
the truckloads in exchange for manufactured goods, and good wine flowed
from the cellars of the "liberated" estates. The mood in leftist
Barcelona and Madrid for a while was high, and from the majority's
perspective Spain was heading for the New Millennium. </p><p>They
weren't, of course, because the fascists wouldn't have it and they
staged a counter-revolution; but during all this, the biggest and most
hopeful sect of revolutionaries, by far, was the anarchists. Their
flags flew over all the cafes and barber shops and every factory they
took over. Anarchist pamphlets flooded the streets, and they held an
overwhelming and energetic majority, and from every vantage point it
looked like Spain was going their way. </p><p>But there was something
standing in the anarchists' way, and it was their belief in anarchy.
According to Adam Hochschild, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Spain-Our-Hearts-Americans-1936-1939-ebook/dp/B011H55NQC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1620834558&sr=8-6"><i>Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War</i></a>,
the CNT, a federation of anarchist unions, had two million members and
only a single officer. It turns out that anarchists hated bureaucracy.
They ran no candidates for parliament. They had some sort of a
national committee -- but nobody could serve more than a year, and a
recall could happen any time by a vote. They won union strikes but were
100% against union contracts. All forms of government were disgusting
to them, and they believed Soviet Russia was a slaughterhouse not
because Stalin was an ass, or because of one-party rule, or because they
had no freedom of speech or assembly or religion, but because Russia
had a government <i>at all</i>. These were the people who took over Catalonia and the surrounding regions. </p><p>But
the anarchists couldn't hold them. Their "allies," the vastly
outnumbered communists, believed deeply in government, and thus were
experts in top-down organization. They were also experts in silencing
opposition, in disarming their opponents, and in getting foreign
funding. While the anarchists were honest and trumpeted the revolution,
the Communists were practical, and tried to pretend it wasn't
happening. To the communists, the war could only be won by keeping the
West neutral -- in other words, with an appeal to foreign investors and
the liberal bourgeois. To the anarchists, there was no point in a war
without a revolution. The commies aimed for less so they could win it.
The anarchists didn't want it if they couldn't have the whole thing.</p><p>Little
more needs to be said here. The anarchists were suppressed by the
communists**. The communists were bulldozed by the fascists. I'm not
saying Spain would have done better under anarchists. In any fight
between fascists and communists I always side with the fascists. I'm
saying that even if you have the vast majority of the country on your
side, if you won't or don't know how to play politics, if your ideals are too
libertarian and cat-like, or too idealistic to be practical, or too
stupid, or even just out of step with the times***, you're going to get
wrecked. And if it was because of your pride, you deserve it. <br /></p><p></p><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. Am I saying that I'm totally against libertarianism -- that it has nothing good to offer, that it isn't tailored in any way to reality, and that its adherents are what the critics say -- a bunch of selfish assholes, stoners, autists, and oglers of underage women? Not at all, and in fact <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ref=monarch_sidesheet">I agree largely with the spirit of Ayn Rand</a>, which believes deeply in inequality through ability and character, that the universe belongs to the strong of mind and heart, that American society was a miracle but that <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/04/wheres-mohammed-when-you-need-him.html">it's become a sewer</a>, that philosophy and worldview are the life-blood of all civilization, that a stance of "neutrality" is a forfeiture of your power, that the universe can largely be understood and to some degree conquered, that alcohol and drugs are a bad fit for a thinking man, that people <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2022/01/your-body-my-choice.html">who value the wrong things will be slaves</a>, that altruism as a political stance is a slippery slope towards slavery and murder, and that we shouldn't be giving rights to countries who don't give their citizens rights -- the manliest philosophy to ever come out of a woman, brilliantly stated, free of all turgidity and ivory tower obfuscation, and lacking mainly in its throwaway attitude towards God and religion, its absolute failure to value compromise and a piecemeal victory, its refusal to take any tyranny other than government seriously, its inability to see that big money plus human nature equals corruption, and its belief that a productive morality is the <i>main</i> thrust of morality. Read <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">The Virtue of Selfishness</a>, </i>or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952/ref=monarch_sidesheet"><i>Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal</i></a>, or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087/ref=monarch_sidesheet"><i>For the New Intellectual</i></a> and it's obvious you're getting into the mind of a real giant. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>*I say that corporations to some degree can own you, but who owns the corporations? Hollywood <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1081435029/china-hollywood-movies-censorship-erich-schwartzel">kowtows to Communist China</a>. Walmart, where the leftists on Twitter don't shop, caves quickly to Twitter mobs. The leftist funds as much as he can with government money, and when hospitals, colleges, or businesses disagree with him, he threatens to withdraw it -- and gets what he wants. The main principle of capitalism may be that you can own and collect capital ad-infinitum. But you don't collect money in capitalism. You earn it. And if you offend too many of the people who pay it, you lose it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus beware of your boss. But beyond this, beware of who you cater to as a customer. In many ways they are the same person.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>**Albert Camus wrote <br /></div><div><blockquote><i>Men of my generation have had Spain in our hearts. [...] It was there that they learned [...] that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not rewarded.</i></blockquote></div><div></div><div>***Are the greatest orators masters or servants? You give one
speech, one time, as an expression of yourself, and if others hear the
drum and start marching it's power. But to keep that going, to
constantly play the right tune, to keep yourself calibrated to the
masses, is something not too unlike slavery. </div><div><br /></div><div>In
order to be a great orator, the man has to already be in tune with the
zeitgeist. He has to be as much a product of the times as the maker of
them. There may be a man for all seasons, but there's no such thing as
an orator for all ages. So I wouldn't have a problem seeing Cicero
laughed off the stage -- but it would break my heart seeing people fall
asleep to Edmund Burke. It wouldn't just mean he was out of step with
us. Much more uncomfortably, it would mean we were out of step with <i>him</i>. </div><p>Consider this beautiful random quote of his about the rise and fall of nations, and how nobody today -- and I mean <i>nobody</i>, in the public sphere, and even possibly the private, speaks like this:</p><blockquote><p><i>I
am not quite of the mind of those speculators who seem assured that
necessarily, and by the constitution of things, all states have the same
periods of infancy, manhood, and decrepitude that are found in the
individuals who compose them. Parallels of this sort rather furnish
similitudes to illustrate or to adorn than supply analogies from whence
to reason. The objects which are attempted to be forced into an analogy
are not found in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical
beings, subject to laws universal and invariable. The immediate cause
acting in these laws may be obscure: the general results are subjects of
certain calculation. But commonwealths are not physical, but moral
essences. They are artificial combinations, and, in their proximate
efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. We are not
yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence the stability
of that kind of work made by that kind of agent. There is not in the
physical order (with which they do not appear to hold any assignable
connection) a distinct cause by which any of those fabrics must
necessarily grow, flourish, or decay; nor, in my opinion, does the moral
world produce anything more determinate on that subject than what may
serve as an amusement (liberal, indeed, and ingenious, but still only an
amusement) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind
is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a
sure theory on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune
of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes: but they
are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more
difficult to trace, than the foreign causes that tend to raise, to
depress, and sometimes to overwhelm a community. </i></p><p><i>It is
often impossible, in these political inquiries, to find any proportion
between the apparent force of any moral causes we may assign and their
known operation. We are therefore obliged to deliver up that operation
to mere chance, or, more piously, (perhaps more rationally,) to the
occasional interposition and irresistible hand of the Great Disposer. We
have seen states of considerable duration, which for ages have remained
nearly as they have begun, and could hardly be said to ebb or flow.
Some appear to have spent their vigor at their commencement. Some have
blazed out in their glory a little before their extinction. The meridian
of some has been the most splendid. Others, and they the greatest
number, have fluctuated, and experienced at different periods of their
existence a great variety of fortune. At the very moment when some of
them seemed plunged in unfathomable abysses of disgrace and disaster,
they have suddenly emerged. They have begun a new course and opened a
new reckoning, and even in the depths of their calamity and on the very
ruins of their country have laid the foundations of a towering and
durable greatness. All this has happened without any apparent previous
change in the general circumstances which had brought on their distress.
The death of a man at a critical juncture, his disgust, his retreat,
his disgrace, have brought innumerable calamities on a whole nation. A
common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an inn, have changed the
face of fortune, and almost of Nature.</i></p></blockquote><div>We're
a degenerate people. We have to pull away from the masses to make
ourselves what we were. But if others won't go with us, is there a
point? To this I answer, if we always wait for others, will anything
great ever get done?</div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-20392983014738510052022-02-23T03:23:00.000-08:002022-02-23T03:23:48.214-08:00Is civil war stupid?<p>Dear T,</p><p>Charlie Kirk was asked recently, at one of his lectures, whether now was a good time to "use the guns." He answered that it wasn't, and I agree with him -- but only partially <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJvwqoSxres">for the reasons he stated</a>.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjThYHVLsc9bhwtjq5S6AbTtniqBMX6czMDIp--9fw9r0kN4NYA_2159Otsn3guYq5694SbRah2YqHtv42ZGsGcXXvHNeaMudDJ4Zd631NIOu1DwTvaFmlnLSXqgWOmOOMbEiRs6pJzYhSgl4aLd1S0jqeTzjEosaYRXBKqZ0bWoFNu8vcUnVuq1p8MaA=s960" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjThYHVLsc9bhwtjq5S6AbTtniqBMX6czMDIp--9fw9r0kN4NYA_2159Otsn3guYq5694SbRah2YqHtv42ZGsGcXXvHNeaMudDJ4Zd631NIOu1DwTvaFmlnLSXqgWOmOOMbEiRs6pJzYhSgl4aLd1S0jqeTzjEosaYRXBKqZ0bWoFNu8vcUnVuq1p8MaA=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The right-wing army, so far<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Simply put, the idea that right-wingers could start a revolution and win one, at this point in history, is comedy; and no, I don't care if that's the sole reason we have a Second Amendment and we have more AR-15's. First off we don't own <i>any</i> of the institutions -- including any branches of the military, which, although staffed by lots of great and respectable men, are currently run by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-military-gone-full-woke-pentagon-lloyd-austin">woman-drafters, white shamers, and tranny-loving ass-kissers</a>. <br /><i></i><p></p><p>I would add to this that social and big media are owned <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/04/the-purge.html">almost entirely by the left-wing</a>, which means we have no platform to mass-communicate. Do we run the CIA, or the FBI, or any national organization built to maintain law and order in a crisis? No -- all of it is in possession of the left-wing, which gives them a clear advantage in organization and persecution. <br /></p><p>But even if we did own some institutions, I would posit that these United States are so completely interdependent that any kind of real split, even without bloodshed, would result in mass starvation and eventually death. This isn't the 1860's, when clothes could be homespun and farms were all family owned. There isn't a single business in these states that maintains its existence within a single state: everyone is dependent on other businesses in other states, and many times in other countries, to supply what they need to function on even a basic level.</p><p>Consider then the national corporations, where so many Americans are employed, each of them necessarily based in a single state. Cut off the head and suddenly you're left with a bunch of dead limbs -- Walmart, Amazon, Applebees, Target, Tesla, Boeing, Chevrolet, <i>ad infinitum</i>: companies which, in the event of a war, would immediately cease to function cross-country, are oftentimes dependent on one another, and would immediately throw a hundred million out of work, if not more. And I haven't mentioned agribusiness here, or Big Pharma, or all the thousands of companies that make computer chips and innumerable widgets which none of us know about but we're extremely dependent upon. </p><p>This isn't even considering water sources and power grids: two things which have the potential to wreck life as we know it, and send whole regions into anarchy and the Bronze Age. Where are the power plants? The transmission lines? What are the sources of power -- dams, or coal, or solar, or nuclear? Idaho Power is only one company, and they power large parts of Oregon. <a href="https://www.infrastructureusa.org/interactive-map-visualizing-the-us-electric-grid/">Who powers the others?</a> What do we do if credit cards won't work? And what about banks in general? How do we get gas to the gas stations -- and know if they'll be able to pump gas anyway without electricity? And who will own and run the phone towers? The right-wing yahoo claims to love free enterprise so much -- could he have forgotten how businesses work, and where? </p><p>What we would be talking about, assuming any kind of civil war were to get underway, is a drastic shift in living standards that would require, upon the start of things, a strong central government, ready to provide the basic necessities and put millions of people to work <i>immediately</i> -- a kind of government typically known as "war fascism," which is the type of government the libertarian hot-heads are worst at, and to which at bottom they're morally opposed. </p><p>So I would urge them to give their "dream" up. The answer to American differences, at least for the foreseeable future, will <i>never </i>be civil war. And in fact, I don't believe many right-wingers think it is. But I'm tired of the poorly thought-out, unserious moralistic responses to the hot-heads -- who require a firm <i>no</i>, as all yahoos do, and not the mamby-pamby suit-and-tie "violence is not the answer" non-answers they've been getting.</p><p>In the meantime, I would advise them to consider Tolstoy's observation in <i>Anna Karenina</i>, that</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>There are people who when they meet a rival, no matter in what, at once shut their eyes to everything good in him and see only the bad. There are others who on the contrary try to discern in a lucky rival the qualities which have enabled him to succeed, and with aching hearts seek only the good in him.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>So take the latter route. See how the liberals <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/01/the-kingdom-of-heaven-belongs-to-such.html">crush us in everything we call silly</a> -- which is actually important. Stay armed and informed, but go into acting, writing, singing, and teaching. In other words make a dent on the culture of the nation, and try for once to be interesting instead of just winning a bunch of arguments. Life, after all, is passed on through things as embarrassing as sex -- and never through lectures. </p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J</p><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Subscribe by emailing </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i> and g</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">et my free essay collection!<br /></span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b> <br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-29160839700749117482022-02-22T04:45:00.020-08:002022-02-23T03:36:18.001-08:00Random early morning thoughts<p>Dear S,</p><p>Some random thoughts for you this morning, well before sunrise.</p><p></p><p>1) There are two kinds of perfect people. The first, a person who does what's "right" all the time, is a figment of the imagination and never existed anywhere, and in fact can't exist anywhere. The second is a person you look at, at that moment, and wouldn't change a thing. I know none of the first and lots of the second. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><br /></p><p>2) Regarding John Cage, <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=basquiat+paintings&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images">Basquiat</a>, and Pollock, no art is ever good if it could be made by a five year-old -- unless it's made by a five year-old, in which case it's great. Never trust a Basquiat fan. He's either a dupe or a liar, and he has to make a liar out of you to justify himself. </p><p><br /></p><p>3) There are three ways you learn about race in America, the first being personal experience, which is 100% true, the next being what your friends tell you, which is partly true, because all of them are afraid of getting ostracized, and the last being what you're officially taught by people and institutions in power, which is mostly lies. Always go with what your eyes tell you and forgive your friends -- they're under a lot of pressure. </p><p><br /></p><p>4) By the time you're in your mid 30's, within seconds you can tell who parrots opinions because it's what they're supposed to do and who's actually in love with their opinions -- and whose love has refined them into an art form. Once you get used to the latter it's impossible to enjoy the former. It's a matter of life and death because it's a matter of the living vs the dead. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK9vei4UAaSmpv-c4QOEmoXdKO1a7onnP7p82x5-jODROVMV8uaKkEt5bSzWWqIywoTRr2cVf7go0HRfksw7oW8yRkqdSPT1HGcRIDZTLmrsU7pDS3dHtMr2x5QK4ROtAFgAYmidi6HkuF1lDSv5g8lmssc49WVbL1oTOG2YIaUQeJRJWsCwOjtREHsA=s1347" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1347" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK9vei4UAaSmpv-c4QOEmoXdKO1a7onnP7p82x5-jODROVMV8uaKkEt5bSzWWqIywoTRr2cVf7go0HRfksw7oW8yRkqdSPT1HGcRIDZTLmrsU7pDS3dHtMr2x5QK4ROtAFgAYmidi6HkuF1lDSv5g8lmssc49WVbL1oTOG2YIaUQeJRJWsCwOjtREHsA=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>5) I don't know about other English-speaking countries, but in America you can only "tell the truth" if two of the following conditions are met:</p><p>a) Other people don't know the truth </p><p>b) People know, but you're "not supposed to say it" </p><p>c) Telling the truth could hurt you in some way </p><p>d) Telling the truth could hurt someone else in some way</p><p><br /></p><p>6) America's race relations after the Civil Rights Movement can be summed up by the concept of <i>loss aversion </i>-- the idea that hanging on to what you've got is more important, to most people, than the potential for gain.<i> </i>It was clear enough that many Americans felt bad about what they'd done to black people. But how to move from there? On the one hand you have the option to reach down to someone you've denied education for generations, and the chance to manage property, and to run a business or a city, and whom you've ground morally into the dust; and by a personal expenditure of time, effort, and risk, <i>maybe</i> see him get better. Or you could stay completely safe in white suburbia, wish him well, leave him to his own devices and a few government programs, and keep almost all your time, effort, and resources. Once we quit being overtly oppressive, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/11/why-chris-hayes-wont-live-next-to-black.html">white America did what we were programmed by God to do</a> -- wash our hands like Pontius Pilate, and try to hide.</p><p><br /></p><div>7) As far as Christianity is concerned, I'm the polar opposite of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson cut the miracles out of the Gospels and left us with the morality. I would cut the morality from the Gospels and leave us with the miracles.</div><div><br /></div><div>Neither of these by itself would give us the religion known as Christianity; but if I had to pick one, I'd take the miracles, the inspiration, the God-man, and the resurrection. The morality is too impractical for real life, and if being saintly means getting yourself killed, you've should probably have a backup plan.</div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><p><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></p>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-50276861282882622122022-02-11T07:36:00.012-08:002022-02-13T04:41:54.550-08:00Tying the knot and finding a mistressDear H,<div><br /></div><div>Tolstoy says in <i>Anna Karenina</i> that the Russians were having a sexual revolution. It was actually more like a marital revolution, but I say "sexual" because in Christendom, as in most places around the world, sex and marriage are inseparable, and the rules for having sex change wildly once you start messing with weddings.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>But it was also a parental revolution. Tolstoy says that the old Russian way of going about marriage was by having the parents hire a professional matchmaker. That was under siege back then, and the lack of a general standard left everything in confusion. </div><div><br /></div><div>There were models to pick from. The parents in France picked their children's spouses for them. The youngsters in England picked the spouses for themselves. The first was about convenience and the other was about love and both of them were considered barbarous to Russian parents. Which path were the Russians supposed to follow?* Whether either of these was more "successful" was anybody's guess, and depends on what you consider to be success in the first place. But one thing is certain, and that's that French people <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/study-says-french-most-likely-to-cheat-and-forgive-a-cheater-2015-6?op=1">have been known for centuries as cheaters.</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Montaigne was the first man I ever read who confirmed it. He believed (as a nobleman of the 16th century) that women were morally inferior to men, incapable of keeping their legs shut, and that they forced their husbands to care for other men's babies. If this is true and French men were so upright, I wonder, who were the women sleeping with? </div><div><br /></div><div>But this matter of fairness is almost beside the point. The English had taken the opposite policy of matchmaking and, at least in the middle classes, their marriages were taken seriously. If you really picked the woman you marry and you do it for love, who could possibly trust you if you cheat on her? You said all the sweet things and the vows and now she's had <i>your</i> children -- society has no choice but to consider you a bastard if you're out there making bastards**. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpqAp8q-UQ0KRosg71Fi7abylorndAYZ3vzm4ij4wXPVGscOQ9d7ogBix5uo1UWzP6lVyzNn-Dpnb9iRPB8COqHblLwKXY0km7wgv5JaGFsOf9k1MBqMxZgjMG2oFgKp71PAKWhzxiyrnOKjOoRuuzOFIYr6HzeT6mejDAhSROYAFjPrlJ2R-87P3v4Q=s2000" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1310" data-original-width="2000" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpqAp8q-UQ0KRosg71Fi7abylorndAYZ3vzm4ij4wXPVGscOQ9d7ogBix5uo1UWzP6lVyzNn-Dpnb9iRPB8COqHblLwKXY0km7wgv5JaGFsOf9k1MBqMxZgjMG2oFgKp71PAKWhzxiyrnOKjOoRuuzOFIYr6HzeT6mejDAhSROYAFjPrlJ2R-87P3v4Q=s320" width="320" /></a></div>The French on the other hand were sensible in their own way, and made the most of what they had. If marriage isn't for love then you have to find love outside marriage -- a reasonable proposition, in the end, which justifies "cheating" on someone you never picked in the first place. Thus romance and marriage were two different affairs altogether, for most, and if you strayed to someone you actually felt things for, probably another married woman, then good for you***. Just keep your home intact and love who you love discreetly and everything should be fine. Theoretically, at least.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What the outcome of the Russian policy was is beyond me, but we know the Arabs hoarded lots of women in the seraglios and left gangs of <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/08/nerds-with-guns.htmlhttp://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/08/nerds-with-guns.html">poor and horny men roaming around the cities</a> -- which probably resulted in the niqab, and an <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/03/muslim-womens-day.html">undying reputation for sexual harassment</a>. And the Indians? Many times arranged marriages, even today -- but no word yet, at least in my corner, of whether this policy led them to being famously rakish on the internet. Either way it seems that how you get into a marriage determines how you love outside of them -- and beyond this how you think of women in general.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J </div><div><br /></div><div>*Tolstoy writes in the 1870's of the culture wars,</div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>She could see that lately social customs had changed very much and a mother’s duties had become still more difficult. She knew that girls of Kitty’s age formed societies of some sort, went to courses of lectures, made friends freely with men, and drove alone through the streets; many no longer curtsied, and above all every one of them was firmly convinced that the choice of a husband was her own and not her parents’ business. ‘Nowadays they don’t give us away in marriage as they used to!’ said these young girls, and even the old people said the same. </i><i>[...] But how a girl was to get married, or how a mother was to get a daughter given in marriage, no one knew. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Everyone with whom the Princess discussed the subject said the same thing: ‘Well, you know, in our days it is time to give up obsolete customs. After all it’s the young people who marry and not their parents, therefore they must be left to arrange matters as they think best.’ It was all very well for people who had no daughters to talk like that, but the Princess knew that intimacy might be followed by love and that her daughter might fall in love with someone who had no intention of marrying or was not fit to be her husband. And whatever people might say about the time having come when young people must arrange their future for themselves, she could not believe it any more than she could believe that loaded pistols could ever be the best toys for five-year-old children. </i></div><div></div></blockquote><div>Proof that even the days we look back to, believing them safe from moral chaos, Change, the god that won't quit, was wreaking havoc on our expectations -- but that He leaves parents scared exactly the same.</div><div><br /></div><div>**It should be noted that despite such a drastic difference in sexual mores and marital laws, France and England were both booming countries, highly advanced, and for many years each others' rivals. </div><div><br /></div><div>I doubt you can do sex <i>any</i> way <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/08/sex-at-dawn-counterpoint.html">and walk away unscathed</a>. But as long as marriage survives, it seems the country does too, even if countries take opposite stances over how exactly to get it done -- and whether you can stray from it. </div><div><br /></div><div>***Affection is tricky, and hard to earn, and easy most times to lose. For some of us it involves the way you look -- which can change, and eventually for the worse. For some of us it involves charm, or the way we behave -- an act which is hard to keep up when we have so many different emotions, and each day throws different problems at us, and so many different interests. For most it involves what we provide -- hard work, in most instances, and riches or safety in others. Either way, earning affection is personally expensive, and each of us is changing, and going through different struggles and phases and discoveries, and if we're one way one day you can count on us being different the next. Not entirely, but in lots of little ways.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aside from this the people we love change too. This means that maybe their tastes change, or maybe they get tired of your schtick, or they take you for granted, or maybe you did too much for them and now they owe you and they don't want to be around you anymore -- each of them possible, and each of them likely. Affection means what you have to offer is what somebody else <i>that moment</i> is buying. There's no rule you can slap on it, no institution to safeguard love and keep it alive, no one-trick pony that works all the time with everybody. To keep people you have to be nimble, and attentive. You have to want to grow with them, and to keep trying to please them, and to love them as much as you want them to love you, and even this isn't a guarantee of anything. </div><div><br /></div><div>For this reason some men give up on love and recommend fear. Machiavelli says in <i>The Prince</i> that a ruler can't be loved by anyone for too long, but they can always be scary. Fear is something you can control. It means that you'll lash out if you don't get what you want, that you can hurt people if they cross too many lines, that people will stick close to you because <i>not</i> being on your side is more painful than being on it. This is how the law has functioned, and how it functions now, and how it will always function -- not a carrot on a stick, but a bat with nails in it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course this requires much less hard work and talent than coaxing the good out of others. But is this approach good for anyone -- other than the law? No, but still Machiavelli's point stands: that between being loved and being feared, being feared is easier. People forget the good you do them, and, being a finite being with limited resources, you can't do good to everybody, and you certainly can't do it all the time. But given enough power you can at least scare them. We are often more afraid to lose things than eager to gain. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>When the Catholic church made divorce nearly impossible, what was once a necessary roughness toward a few psychotic pan-throwers and monkey-screechers became the modus operandi towards the undeserving majority. Like the welfare queen, the lazy husband -- probably always the majority, as most are when they're <i>guaranteed </i>anything -- was given a choice between hard work that pays well and the easy way that barely holds things together. The state gave him a green light for the easy way, and, having a clear advantage in fisticuffs, he took it. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is <a href="https://quranunlocked.com/4/34">Surah 4:34</a>? A policy we make fun of the Muslims for, but only recently abandoned ourselves -- and which we had taken full advantage of, in Christendom, for centuries. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>***It should be noted that now, when French youngsters can pick their own partners, most of them <i>still</i> cheat -- proof that even when good reasons are gone, old customs die hard. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/study-says-french-most-likely-to-cheat-and-forgive-a-cheater-2015-6?op=1">According to <i>Business Insider</i></a>, fewer than half the French find cheating "morally unacceptable," and 63% of them believe you can still love someone who cheats on you. In this matter, that makes them the most forgiving nation in the world. </div><div><br /></div></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Subscribe by emailing </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i> and g</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">et my free essay collection!<br /></span></b></div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-37736635027666808022022-01-25T05:36:00.005-08:002022-01-26T09:11:33.736-08:00Diogenes the Cynic<p>Dear S,</p><p>We're not exactly sure how Diogenes got banned from Sinope, but from some accounts it looks like he debased their currency. We can be thankful he did, because it was in exile that he met his role model -- not a man, but a mouse. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div>Diogenes noticed that mice could be anywhere in any weather and eat anything and everything would be fine. So he hugged statues covered in snow and made snow angels in the burning sand. Anything to harden himself against anything nature could throw at him, because he knew nature <i>would</i> throw anything at him, and it was best to be ready for it. Thus he took pride in laying low, and got his kicks laying others low too. Well before Jesus existed he knew that it's better to take the lowly seat, and let the master move you to His right hand Himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>And God did. Apparently Diogenes was so good at debasing himself and other people that he became a kind of Groucho Marx of Greece. Diogenes Laertius (a different Diogenes) lists a whole volume of his one-liners, and says he was a constant pain in Plato's ass and had lots of fun at his expense. One time Plato said, in one his lectures, that he classified man as a featherless biped. Diogenes left the lecture, got a chicken, plucked all its feathers out, and dropped it off in front of the students. <i>Here is Plato's man,</i> he said. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Another lecturer was trying to prove that all movement is an illusion. Diogenes got up in the middle of the lecture and started wandering around aimlessly, ruining the lecture and getting laughs out of the students. One time Diogenes was giving a serious lecture about a serious topic, but nobody was listening. So he started whistling and whooping and then when he had everyone's attention, he asked them why they paid attention to stupid things but not to serious ones. </div><div><br /></div><div>When someone laughed at him because the Sinopeans condemned him to exile, his only reply was, <i>yes, and I've condemned them to stay home. </i>When he was captured and being sold into slavery, the marketer asked him what he was good at. He answered <i>governing men</i>, and advised the crier to ask the public if anyone needed to buy a master.</div><div><br /></div><div>When Xeniades bought him, he followed this advice closely, and Diogenes was put in charge of the kids. He taught them fighting and hunting and all his wise sayings -- which were so good they were memorized by heart, for fun, alongside the major poets and other famous philosophers. He kept the kids only moderately well exercised -- not enough to make them gym-rats, like so many other Greeks, but to keep them in good color and good-enough shape. They were taught, as rich kids, to be tough, and eat plain food and drink water, and to not rely on servants for anything. The kids loved him, and looked up to him, and enjoyed him -- which means they took him seriously. A real feat for any teacher, but especially a slave teaching rich kids.</div><div><br /></div><div>He said <i>disabled</i> people aren't the blind or the lame, but anyone who doesn't have a wallet. When someone asked him why people give to beggars, but not philosophers, he answered <i>because people think they could end up lame or blind, but never that they'll turn to philosophy. </i>When he was told to chase his runaway slave, he said <i>It would be absurd if Manes could live without Diogenes, but Diogenes couldn't get on without Manes. </i> </div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgnotr5txIByCq8HblYXs2O-dWDOxGI6h2AgCto2gfAd3jDrZzcLTFPH2YS9_qsiYoU42QmgIJ2sn4sqvN8wNMXMBegIUCdMPdskvQx5AZslsVib6GVS_7cPlzMVbGHSAn5Wt8VZw3WShUQdSsoqqd9C53XEsKFZmPL00iPYJW3YQLmtO0cNCVcn27irw=s1200" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="936" data-original-width="1200" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgnotr5txIByCq8HblYXs2O-dWDOxGI6h2AgCto2gfAd3jDrZzcLTFPH2YS9_qsiYoU42QmgIJ2sn4sqvN8wNMXMBegIUCdMPdskvQx5AZslsVib6GVS_7cPlzMVbGHSAn5Wt8VZw3WShUQdSsoqqd9C53XEsKFZmPL00iPYJW3YQLmtO0cNCVcn27irw=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alexander and Diogenes<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>These kinds of sayings, which he lived out notoriously, got him international renown. Alexander the Great heard about him and admired him and paid him a visit. Diogenes was outside trying to get a tan when Alexander stood right in the sunlight and said he'd give Diogenes anything he wanted. Diogenes propped himself on one elbow and said, <i>then move out of my light</i>. Alexander is reported to have said <i>If I hadn't been Alexander, I would have loved to be Diogenes.</i> <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Lysias the druggist asked Diogenes if he believed in the gods. Diogenes replied, <i>How can I help believing in them, when I see a god-forsaken wretch like you?</i> And when a disreputable man had him over to the house, Diogenes noticed that <i>Let nothing evil enter</i> was inscribed on the door. Diogenes asked, <i>then how is the master supposed to get in? </i>And when he saw a man getting arrested at the temple for stealing one of the worship bowls, he said <i>the great thieves are leading away the little thief -- </i>proof that Joel Osteen is as eternal and omnipresent as God, and smart men enjoy making fun of him.</div><div><br /></div><div>What's the official philosophy of Diogenes? Who cares? What I get from Diogenes and Rochefoucald is that lots of boring books are written by pretentious men -- and that real wisdom is destructive too, and comes in the form of a one-liner. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. One of my favorite lines, which didn't fit anywhere above, was when a prostitute's son was throwing rocks at a crowd. <i>Take care you don't hit your father</i>, Diogenes shot back. </div><div> </div><div>Was there ever a more fitting name for any philosopher? Diogenes means "Born of God." Cynic means "Dog." </div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-80072371997702100342022-01-18T05:54:00.017-08:002022-01-21T06:30:12.564-08:00RochefoucauldDear T,<div><br /></div><div>Rochefoucauld's collected sayings are fun to read -- and then to burn. They're too uncomfortable to think about too long, and Oxford World's Classics, in the introduction to his book, lists every excuse people use to pretend the sayings don't apply to us. </div><div><br /></div><div>First is that we take a "broader" view of humanity, and thus a less cynical one. Or that the sayings are inconsistent and contradict themselves -- which can be said of many truths in general. Or that they're only true of Rochefoucauld. Or maybe that they're true of most people (but not us). Or that they're only true of us at our worst. And finally if they <i>are</i> true of us, we sweep them under the rug and forget we ever read them. The age of self-esteem for fatties and good-for-nothings has seen the absolute disappearance of Rochefoucauld. Did time sweep him out of our consciousness? Or did our participation-trophy parents get too soft to pass him on? <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>This book of short, brutal, and many times brilliant statements was so offensive to people's self-esteem that it was thought to be against their very religion -- a rejection Rochefoucauld saw coming, and for which he hired a lawyer to write the preface. He was worried that his attacks on our moral pretenses would be taken as an attack on morality itself; and so far from being an amoralist, he intended to show us who we <i>really</i> were -- not an attack on all goodness, but an attack on our fakeness. And if all of these aren't right about all of us all the time he was still right. We <i>are</i> rotten. And he's right that we're experts at hiding it.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiXvZErCR7hvEnyTBOK-QissFWxKC7pvdpKyUwpFIgO6eOIDgUQlvQ_2Z4iddn747-y31xX-OLzxUS4nlG599juAPtGDMUeXSN2d9Ds8d6ypKL8Wr0qAPI0ze_aFSKa8e9zkEz-EypXDeoGJqKatN6u-B-2FpQFfcabFrrcvdH2PbqSBCBDr3MTfWbapA=s474" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="474" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiXvZErCR7hvEnyTBOK-QissFWxKC7pvdpKyUwpFIgO6eOIDgUQlvQ_2Z4iddn747-y31xX-OLzxUS4nlG599juAPtGDMUeXSN2d9Ds8d6ypKL8Wr0qAPI0ze_aFSKa8e9zkEz-EypXDeoGJqKatN6u-B-2FpQFfcabFrrcvdH2PbqSBCBDr3MTfWbapA=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francois VI, Duc de la Rochefoucald <br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Strangely enough this was exactly why he became popular. Eventually we like to be on the inside of a conspiracy, and a mirror look at mass delusion outs one of them. So he trashed us and we took it. We bought the sayings for centuries now, and chewed on them, and realized things about ourselves that we'd rather not say out loud, and spotted them (or thought we spotted them) in others, and felt the wiser for it. Like Diogenes the Cynic and H.L. Mencken, Rochefoucauld was a hero to many of us not for building anything beautiful, but for taking a wrecking ball to our pretensions -- a much needed job in any society, like plumbing. But not everyone can handle crawling in sewage. Most prefer to hide in a room and flush it away -- an aspect of us which is also admirable, in its own sense. </div><div><br /></div><div>A few gems:</div><div></div><div><i><i></i></i></div><blockquote><div><i><i>The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice. </i></i></div><div><i><i> </i></i></div><div><i>Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.</i></div><div><i><br /></i><i>A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.</i></div><div><i><br />
Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other.
</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.
</i></div><div><i><br /></i><div><i>Nothing should so much diminish the satisfaction which we feel with ourselves as seeing that we disapprove at one time of that which we approve of at another.</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>Sincerity is an openness of heart: we find it in very few people. What we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><i>The hate of favourites is only a love of favour.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><div><i></i></div><div><div><i>If we had no pride we should not complain of that of others.</i></div></div><i> <br /></i></div><div><i>If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><i>The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.</i></div></div></blockquote><div><div><i></i></div></div><div></div><div>Rochefoucauld was born in Paris in 1613, the son of a wealthy, famous aristocrat. He was married at 14, had most of his eight kids within twelve years, and got Louis XIV's cousin, the Duchesse de Longueville, pregnant out of wedlock. It was said by women close to him that he'd never been in love, and his maxims corroborate the theory. He writes in his own book, <i>there are good marriages, but no rapturous ones</i>, and <i>the thing missing in love affairs is love -- </i>two statements which cover all the bases*.</div><div><br /></div><div>By 15 he was involved in politics and war. He fought the Spaniards in Italy and the Netherlands, and when he was done fighting them, he fought Louis XIV. He played both the patriot and the rebel, and was wounded a couple times, nearly to death. He spent stints in exile and the Bastille. And he tried to have Cardinal De Retz murdered -- <i>cardinal</i> as in, a cleric outranked only by the Pope. So you could say even as a young man he was pretty experienced in almost everything. Everything except literary things, anyhow. </div><div><br /></div><div>Around 1657 he and a couple of aristocrats began writing epigrams for fun. But after a short while amusing each other it became clear he left them in the dust. Soon he had a collection people were sharing with their friends, with or without his permission, and he felt pressured to release an authorized version to the public. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was when he hired the lawyer. Seeing things all too clearly, he knew that an attack on people's pride would be taken as an attack on their morality -- and, since Christianity is supposed to make men feel like saints, that in the end it would be taken as an attack on their religion<i>. </i>He maintained the opposite was true, and that in order to really appreciate and lean on Christ you'd have to have your pride broken. People swallowed this answer alongside many of the maxims, and the lawyer's preface was dropped from the second edition.</div><div><br /></div><div>The question is, how true are his sayings? I would say many of them are, but to each of us the degree is different. And while we could take pride in pretending all of them are, because it takes a lot of honesty to admit so many terrible things about yourself<i>,</i> some of us have actually been in love, and some of us more than once -- and if we differ this much from Rochefoucauld in one way, and especially such a drastic way, we can differ from him in others too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><div><br /></div></div><div>*I have no idea how a teenager could <i>not</i> fall in love, but I guess there are other reasons to romance than romance -- pride being one of them, and sport, and jockeying for a position in life. It may be that faking romance was what kicked off his whole schtick. If your love isn't real, then what is? You have to start looking for ulterior motives in everything else. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus Rochefoucauld writes about virtue, </div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.</i></div></blockquote><div>And about love,</div><div><div><i></i></div></div><blockquote><div><div><i>Love lends its name to an infinite number of acts which are attributed to it, but with which it has no more concern than the Doge has with all that is done in Venice.</i></div></div></blockquote><div>One thing that "wise" people and "saints" have been conning us with for centuries is that all our good works are selfish. But the truth is that they're only complex. They pretend that if you earn money saving your country you're a mercenary, and if you save a beautiful woman you did it only for sex. But why not both? Why not be a patriot <i>and</i> get paid for it? Why only save a woman if you wouldn't have sex with her? Is it not love if you marry for personality and sex -- <i>and</i> prestige alongside them, or for money? </div><div> </div><div>The "saint" believes two goods cancel each other out, or make for a sin. But the truth is that we can get ten goods out of a thing and none of them cancel out the others. If anything they add to them. The saints say your morals are a scam, and maybe the way we market them is. But what about the man who glorifies himself -- by mislabeling everyone's virtues? I remind you that in the Bible, the Devil's original name is <i>The Accuser</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>**Not all of his maxims were caustic. Many of them are just plain wise, or interesting, and I've included some here for fun. </div><div><i></i></div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion. Both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it doesn't.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skilful men will not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to their hurt.</i></div><div><i><br />We promise according to our hopes; we fulfill according to our fears.</i></div><div><i><br />We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an excuse we say things are impossible.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><i>People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.</i></div><div><i><br />Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.</i></div><div><i><br />We all have sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of others.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.</i></div></blockquote><div><i></i></div><div><i></i></div><div>The whole collection can be had <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Sentences-Maxims-Fran%C3%A7ois-Rochefoucauld-ebook/dp/B0082UW1DE/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=rochefoucauld&qid=1641915074&sr=8-6">for free on Amazon</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b>Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>!</span></b></div></div></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-7699158344330324502022-01-13T19:36:00.004-08:002022-01-14T15:59:38.468-08:00Your body, my choiceDear M,<div><br /></div><div>I never actually believed in <i>my body, my choice -- </i>not only because it was invented to dissect someone else's body, but because it was never legal to jerk off in public. I've seen people try and it ends badly, whether or not the person is famous; and at most the saying only applies to women. For men, <i>my body, my choice</i> goes until a woman hears or sees you and then it's over -- for instance, until she hears you say <i>let's make a baby</i> <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-martyr-pig.html">at work when you're ugly</a>. Was her body affected? No. But then your body can't go back to Target. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>The truth is that <i>my body, my choice</i> can only be a thing when it really affects nobody, ever -- which is never. Like <i>judge not, lest ye be judged</i>, there were a whole lot of asterisks involved, and none of them made sense. Who were we supposed to not judge? The only people worth judging -- the people who did things we hate. Whose body is their choice, and <i>when</i>? When somebody decides to do something horrible and somebody else has to put up with it or pay for it. Thus both maxims are about freedom -- but only for one side. The whole point is the other person ends up a pushover or a slave. The question then is always, <i>who?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The CDC <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cdc-director-admits-over-75-of-covid-deaths-in-people-with-at-least-4-comorbidities">admitted this week</a> that 75% of people who die from COVID had <i>four</i> or more comorbidities -- four, as in, they were already on the way out and COVID showed up and finished the job. We already knew this two years ago, before people were locked out of their jobs for months, before we saddled posterity with astronomical debts to pay for locking people out of their jobs, before we forced healthy people to take an experimental vaccine that gave them heart attacks, before we allowed corporations to censor us on Facebook and Twitter over it, before doctors lost their jobs for telling us <i>about their own practice</i>, before medical professionals were fired en masse for not trusting the medicine, before neighbors began ratting each other out for birthday parties and Christmas, before we threatened the whole supply chain, and millions of people in Central and South America ended up starving. </div><div><br /></div><div>We already knew two years ago that COVID kills off the obese, but we still locked gym-rats out of gyms anyway. We kept strong fathers out of their jobs because they were "inessential" to their own families but it was essential to the survival of fatsos. Staying true to the program, we kept the liquor stores and pot shops open because we didn't want to tell others what they couldn't do with their bodies -- just what they couldn't do with their souls. Church was thus closed, and the police targeted churches that didn't. Getting high and choking down MacDonalds and binge-watching garbage on Netflix were all <i>my body, my choice</i>. Feeding your family? Going to school? <i>Getting screened for a potentially dangerous non-COVID disease</i>? Verboten. You could wear a thong at the beach but you had to wear a face-mask. No -- I take that back: the beaches, where there was more fresh air than anywhere else, were also banned. You could swallow a stranger on <i>Grindr</i>, but you couldn't go sunning. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7s8LbK0WdyrFJyY6V1-fo6SfN5wFhYCTxAaxkzKNzkdn49hGmlPbBQA37faFC7cDsjle-Ah9CFLmAfUmeU-08GM3DaQeq5dZ0DQf272yhFbErniR0SuVYizMettGUqIu-LBBWG3QqkfjnPPA4C8-4_g07UxNJq607o0fSyDvUuMYA-C4LJQQ2SHM-3g=s634" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="634" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7s8LbK0WdyrFJyY6V1-fo6SfN5wFhYCTxAaxkzKNzkdn49hGmlPbBQA37faFC7cDsjle-Ah9CFLmAfUmeU-08GM3DaQeq5dZ0DQf272yhFbErniR0SuVYizMettGUqIu-LBBWG3QqkfjnPPA4C8-4_g07UxNJq607o0fSyDvUuMYA-C4LJQQ2SHM-3g=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div></div><div>So it turns out that the unhealthy forced their lifestyle on <i>us. </i>We fought back a while and lost. None of them -- none of the people actually in danger -- were locked out of <i>Wendy's</i>. Nobody was told to hit the treadmill. Cigarettes and marijuana, the things directly affecting our lungs during a <i>respiratory</i> pandemic, were never banned where they were legal. Twinkies were still sold at Walmart, and electric scooters still ferried the obese between the aisles to get them. What did we build for ourselves? A society where men <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/06/the-opioid-epidemic.html">are encouraged to trash themselves</a> -- and everyone else, from the fit to the unborn, is turned into a slave to support them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J <i> </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b> <br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-64563917921282292942021-12-10T08:30:00.005-08:002021-12-10T09:31:56.434-08:00Our emotional managers<p>Dear T-</p><p>I imagine that back when we were wandering around in tribes the concept of empathy made sense. Then Billy could get sick and you'd wish him well, maybe bring him some broth or a blanket, or if his arm was broken you could watch out for him for a bit. To have someone you relied on go "sick leave" would be a doozy -- the worse if he's a great hunter or a fighter or some other useful role. Even if he wasn't useful it could still hurt a lot. After all you had been waking up every morning and seeing his smile and hearing him joke. He'd be bouncing his kids on his knee and singing to them and you couldn't separate him from <i>them </i>-- not from his parents and lovers and uncles and such; and you were probably one of his cousins anyway. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>In short there was no way for a tragedy to be anything other than <i>personal</i> -- every wound, every sickness, every death or heartbreak hit home because everyone <i>was</i> your home. And you were born and died in this like your parents and their parents lived and died in this; and this was the only thing you or anyone else knew. It was probably the only thing anyone really dreamed. Sure there were arguments here and there and people got jealous over women and such; but there was never any choice but to care. What happened in the next tee-pee affected nearly all the tee-pees, and there was very little privacy, and you were never really alone. But on the upside you were never really lonely.</p><p>When we started living in small towns things may not have been anonymous but they were awfully close to it. Suddenly there were people getting sick who you couldn't care about, either because you didn't hear about them or your hands were already full; and I imagine the shock of having people hurt so close to you and not giving a shit was pretty jarring at first. The prophet Ezekiel rails Sodom and Gomorrah not for being gay rapists, which is a capital offense, but for "being full of food" and "unconcerned" in the presence of the poor (16:49-50): a violation that could get you ostracized in any hunter-gatherer society, but was mandatory in an agricultural one. The writers of the Bible themselves, so far from speaking from an eternal perspective, were in the midst of a moral transition. </p><p>Things got less comfortable. Suddenly towns were turning into cities, and cities were getting lumped into confederacies and nations, and the feeling spread, on some level, that people from cities were responsible for other cities -- that what had been done to <i>them</i> was an affront to <i>us</i>. Still people lived and died "in unison" without others knowing they had ever lived at all, and what appeared cold-hearted in the city became par for the whole nation. </p><p>When nations of tribes became "us," and the major religions developed, this approaching so-called "universality of brotherhood" often meant zero concern for a random citizen's well-being at all: we could only watch out for national calamities, threats to the borders, tyrannical measures by a common ruler -- not single sicknesses, or murders, or homelessness, or kidnappings. We had become more sensitive to the brotherhood of mankind, but each of us were strangers and bastards in a completely inconceivable family*. Every man except maybe the merchant and the statesman had his concept of the world limited to his farm, his street, and his city; and he said he fought for the nation and died for the nation, but he never actually <i>saw</i> the nation, or could even accurately describe it. Belonging left the realm of the concrete and became a concept. </p><p>I remind myself of this whenever I see a national news story about a hiker gone missing or a housewife who got murdered. At first I think, <i>who cares? </i>and in an instant I hate myself for not caring. But who are they, who is she -- she, of all the people out there suffering, to get attention from <i>me</i>? Not that I'm a God -- I would argue that so far from being above her plight I'm beneath it: my excuse for not caring is that <i>I'm only a man</i>. </p><p>The truth is that the reason I care at all, if I do have the energy and capacity to care, if I even hear about her at all, is that someone else decided I should. And these people, who are totally uncomfortable letting her disappear, are supported by others, who are afraid of letting themselves be cold. <i>Give us someone to care about, </i>they say, and others deliver, and it makes them all feel like they're still alive, that they're still human, that they're not letting dozens, hundreds, thousands of others suffer and die right down the street -- which they are. A vague and inescapable guilt permeates modern man's consciousness, and a fear alongside it -- that just as we don't care about others, so others don't care about us, and that when it comes time for us to suffer, we're going to have to go it alone. </p><p>Thus I believe the militant empath is a lot like the bodybuilder or the health food enthusiast: removed from his natural surroundings, the health nut forces himself to eat vegetables and lift weights so he can attain the self he was supposed to be; and the empath, like the weight-lifter, has to <i>look</i> for someone to pity and save. He loves like others lift: not just because lifting or loving are intrinsically good, but because if that part of him isn't used regularly and exercised, other parts of him begin to die off. He creates artificially what nature was supposed to do and what society walled off. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDUwGBozQqaY4cLNtYHjM4P6vguhD87Ax1rllru-OiSVqp7idxFwNW62AlHNDhwP8Ca9lpKjboFvcvPeShp9ENbn6yieXPhIt86jp1AFo_qQSjLagmaNuvjYKCjZ2lSA6FOIiiA93O-KkTV3q7evJAmvg5YemKWcnJCpFU-9w0szgl5G238SeFbhGPRg=s1200" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDUwGBozQqaY4cLNtYHjM4P6vguhD87Ax1rllru-OiSVqp7idxFwNW62AlHNDhwP8Ca9lpKjboFvcvPeShp9ENbn6yieXPhIt86jp1AFo_qQSjLagmaNuvjYKCjZ2lSA6FOIiiA93O-KkTV3q7evJAmvg5YemKWcnJCpFU-9w0szgl5G238SeFbhGPRg=s320" width="320" /></a></div>The question is, who does he love? And if he loves truly, and advocates for anybody -- some stranger -- does he force you to love alongside him? Can he love someone <i>alone</i>? And who gets to choose the damsel? What makes a damsel worthy? Is she beautiful -- someone famous? Or is she suffering something lots of us are suffering? Or is she unique, and takes more energy to love? Or does she represent a <i>type</i> of person we're supposed to care about? Do any of these things matter if she suffers and we get to <i>feel</i> for her? Does feeling matter if we can't <i>do</i> anything?<br /><p></p><p>I don't have an answer to any of these questions -- the important thing to me is that they're asked, and that if we're being forced to swallow a sob story, that we note many times we sob because we're <i>told to</i>.</p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J</p><p>*As time progressed, the "brotherhood of mankind" rhetoric became louder as the reality of it slipped away. Maybe it became louder <i>because</i> it was slipping away. In Abraham's time and well after, not feeding and housing a traveling stranger could leave a major stain on your character; and even Lot, living in the middle of Sodom, was willing to endanger his own daughters for the sake of his unknown guests. Whether this was common practice among all nations back then is beside the point -- it is common practice <i>nowhere</i> in "civilization" now. </p><p><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></p><div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b>Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! <br /></span></b></div></div></div><p> </p>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-14853643304277716042021-12-07T06:46:00.004-08:002021-12-07T08:51:53.796-08:00Downfall of a hope merchant<p>Dear M,</p><p>$600,000 was found in the bathroom walls of Lakewood Church this week. Seven years ago they filed an insurance claim for the same amount getting stolen and this year a plumber found it in the wall. This doesn't mean Joel Osteen did it; but even if he did, it isn't the largest scam in the history of the church itself, and from my view it may even be the smallest.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>After all, how did he get the $600,000 in the first place? By making promises to the anxious, to the sick, to the bankrupt, the dying, the destitute, and the buyer of multi-level marketing schemes -- in short, to either the idiot or the hail-Mary desperado: people who haven't been able to hack it in the real world, and are banking everything on Someone from the next. Joel promises them God's favor and they pay Joel and wait for it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyFa8PxR4w0kKVMbB39loc7fEVYqesxgJXdwOft6z3Uu3cGrve4I2dFyFVkMO6IPkYh7YGkD0czz0zSBHB8dWMX9LqS9giYXQcprRZhtmdWX3ldO8xKR6tCG1GtMiA1LrjAsvb8LQB0STEW1q_vrSU1pL9nCdovE_UXJF9UzNH2DyvKpOSgrbJN9OSAg=s1200" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1200" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyFa8PxR4w0kKVMbB39loc7fEVYqesxgJXdwOft6z3Uu3cGrve4I2dFyFVkMO6IPkYh7YGkD0czz0zSBHB8dWMX9LqS9giYXQcprRZhtmdWX3ldO8xKR6tCG1GtMiA1LrjAsvb8LQB0STEW1q_vrSU1pL9nCdovE_UXJF9UzNH2DyvKpOSgrbJN9OSAg=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>It sounds horrible on paper, but is it really so bad in reality? Those of us who really study ourselves know we don't run on what we have but on what we dream, and that anyone dumb enough to give to Joel Osteen would be dumb enough to invest in the lottery, or in Pet Rocks. The spiritual reality is that Osteen is a fraud because he <i>can't</i> deliver. But the actual effect? That hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people all over the world can throw him $5 or $20 and feel like God is going to rescue them. </p><p>Which is better than the lottery for several reasons. The first of these is that most people's troubles are imaginary, which a belief in God's favor can sometimes calm. The second is that most of our problems will go away anyway. I'm not talking about terminal diseases here, but little fears that plague us throughout the day, fought by little prayers for minor "s" salvation -- for an interview to go well, or a car to start <i>one more time</i>. The chance that life will swing your way is high, actually, when you think about it; and when you've paid your $20 and it goes your way you can "know why." So you tell yourself it's because you believe in God and you have His favor, and that you're part of the bringing of good news -- that as Joel Osteen has blessed you, you've been able to bless him, and through him you've blessed others. </p><p>The downside to this outlook is obvious. Luck is on our side for most of the little things, and "my will be done" happens so often that things <i>not</i> going our way, even missing the shot into the garbage can, feels like a conspiracy against us. But when you believe that you've given and believed and that's what God <i>wants of you,</i> that He somehow <i>owes</i> you, that somehow the reciprocal process of you sending to God and Him sending back is mechanical, then God eventually turns on you, abandons you, forgets about you -- that your luck and your favor are the same thing, and to fall out of one is to fall out of the other.</p><p>A strange thing nobody in Paul's time would have believed when they were being thrown to lions, or in Theodosius' day when they were locked up for saying three isn't one, or in Zwingli's time for trying to read the Bible, or in our own time for going to church when China tells you not to. In truth Joel's philosophy is a philosophy of decadence -- not like the Puritans, who knew favor <i>plus </i>morality was the way to prosperity; but like the Mayans, who sacrificed their neighbors and expected God to send them rain. </p><p>Have I gotten too pointed here? Too bombastic? No -- because there are two ways to sacrifice your neighbor, one of them positive and one of them negative. The former means you tie him to a rock and you cut out his heart. The second is you tie up his funds and you cheapen his soul. Osteen wasn't a moral preacher and he wasn't a theologian. He didn't tell men to clean up their acts and that there was a coming judgment. He didn't tell them <i>how</i> to clean up their acts or teach them how to judge rightly. I don't even remember him teaching about heaven. What he did was take money from simpletons and illiterates, bleeding grandmothers slowly out of their grandchildrens' inheritance, taking food off of families' tables, or jackets off kids' backs, or money to pay hospital bills. He channeled a hundred-thousand rivulets into a single stream -- <i>his</i> stream, of unfulfilled dreams that none of us could see or even really imagine, but which could have been real, and because of him will never be. According to celebritynetworth.com, this preacher of Christ is worth <i>100 million dollars.</i> And I remind you, this is what he and the church <i>haven't</i> spent. </p><p>I said that these people are simpletons, and we know that <i>a fool and his money are soon parted. </i>And I said that people need hope, and that maybe the small price of hope, even if it is cheap hope that eventually runs out, is $20. And maybe Joel was thinking that if he didn't do it somebody else would, and that the ocean of <i>blab it and grab it</i> televangelists was already swallowing seafarers by the boatload. Maybe he thought this, maybe he didn't, and maybe people who think Jesus means a successful business deserve it. But if I was Joel, I would have thought again, and realized that like them my luck was going to run out too, and that when it did, no money in the world would be able to buy it back. And at this point, which all of us reach sooner or later, a plumber would be less dangerous to me than The Carpenter.</p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J</p><div><div><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b>Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-2151699873358537272021-10-31T06:32:00.025-07:002021-11-02T18:16:43.092-07:00Stefan Zweig (or, The View from Here) Dear M,<div><br /></div><div>There is only one God, and He's designed the universe so that every false idol will eventually be smashed. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Stefan Zweig's idol was Europe. He considered himself a "citizen of the world" but he was an Austrian, and he was in love with being a European. We know this because he wrote about Europeans constantly. One of the most widely-translated biographers in the world in his heyday, he was a kind of collector of Europeans, and as Will Stone writes,</div><blockquote><div><div><i>this zealous talent scout of history revealed at the opportune moment the key elements of a subject’s character, their position in a particular epoch, the example they left, their heroism or heroic failure, elements which chimed with his own inward preoccupations.</i></div></div></blockquote><div><div></div><div></div></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnfAMEmdSSUdahsQSUdHFHKW9WARBvcKxQh5EQhCSr-elKHchkr-oa3kSnqIAHt2yFEqhWzaDmvYTycZfnvjlsPeW1DOeonauo4LO8tLWjvZqhlk5I2RHdw-LFyQY4NYrFXF7E1IpDy7_H/s1929/dhrhgfh.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1253" data-original-width="1929" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnfAMEmdSSUdahsQSUdHFHKW9WARBvcKxQh5EQhCSr-elKHchkr-oa3kSnqIAHt2yFEqhWzaDmvYTycZfnvjlsPeW1DOeonauo4LO8tLWjvZqhlk5I2RHdw-LFyQY4NYrFXF7E1IpDy7_H/s320/dhrhgfh.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stefan Zweig<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>He had a massive library that he considered a work of art in itself -- not a collection of dusty old tomes, but a selection of the best and brightest minds Europe had to offer. His own work would pass away and he knew it, so he spent his time introducing others to works that wouldn't, and considered these introductions a great service to humanity. And they were. How else do you improve people but by putting them in good company? <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The first problem he faced is that he was born in 1881. This meant that he saw Europe shattered in World War 1, and that just as it seemed things were patching up, Hitler showed up and burned everything down again. He saw his country, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, broken up. Brownshirts took over the streets and truth-speakers were jailed and many good people's lived were ruined. Humanistic Renaissance ideals about the beauty of the individual gave way to barbarism and race hatred and tyranny and mass-murder. But the second problem he faced, aside from Europe's collapse and the shattering of his ideals, was that he was a Jew. </div><div><br /></div><div>In 1934 he fled Salzburg. He made stops in London and Bath, but the English were getting outmaneuvered constantly, and eventually the threat of Nazi invasion was imminent. It was even worse than this. On page 231 of Hitler's "black book" of people to be arrested after the invasion, Stefan Zweig's name was listed, alongside his London address*. He fled from Europe to New York, and from the U.S. to a German colony in Brazil. Even in exile he stuck with Europeans -- and the Europeans at that time most likely to hate him.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bring Stefan up now because many things we love are passing away, and from this position it looks like we're heading for a catastrophe. We're not so different from 1930's England, in fact, and the general feeling, then as now, was that the future would be much darker than the past. Consider the following facts and possibilities. </div><div> </div><div>-A key cybersecurity official quit last month, citing our total failure to keep up with the Chinese. This means, in the event of a war with the most oppressive, dangerous, faithless, ruthless, <i>upwardly mobile</i> country on the planet, that our businesses, utilities, and methods of communication could be shut down in an instant, and that America will likely collapse before the Chinese even have a chance to get here. I remind you that their army is as big as our populace, and that the only thing standing between us and them is our "technological superiority" -- which at this moment is <i>purchased</i> from them.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Every time the power flickers, or goes out, I wonder if it will ever come back on, and if the world I know is already gone.</div><div><br /></div><div>-Our border is wide open. 200,000 Central and South Americans and <i>Africans</i> break in here every month, and instead of sending them back, these "immigrants" are being bused into battleground states, presumably to throw elections. In many of these states, Democrats consider it "racist" to require an ID to vote, and our president is currently discussing paying illegals <i>reparations</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>-Conservatives, by and large, have been shut out of social media -- the main method today of sharing information. The Wall Street Journal says traffic to conservative news sites has been smothered up to 20%. I believe this is an understatement because my own site, which used to get hundreds of views every post, now gets around 80. To speak up about COVID-19 or many other serious subjects is to have your post strangled. "Fact checkers," a class of left-wingers completely devoid of humor or honesty or fairness, decide which things are seen and which things get you hidden. And this isn't considering the heinous "algorithm." <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Thus conservatives who complain about leftists and "own" them, people who have no capacity for inspiration or organization, are left standing, and <i>all real leaders, movers, and shakers are banned</i>. Milo Yiannopolous is gone and we're left here with Ben Shapiro.</div><div><br /></div><div>-The COVID-19 scare was used to purge conservatives from power. People were already being kicked out of the military, in the thousands, for being "right wing extremists." But a more expedient and politically safe method was found. Now people are fired from government positions, military positions, business positions, medical positions, and police forces for not accepting a questionable vaccine. This effectively purifies American society along ideological lines, making any kind of resistance to further mandates difficult. </div><div><br /></div><div>-So far, due to the COVID-19 panic, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, the right to run or even work in a business, and your right to freely travel were all restricted, for an extended period of time, without any serious challenge. Conservatives make a lot of noise about keeping the Second Amendment, but it's obvious now that they have no intention of using the Second Amendment to secure the other amendments -- which is its only purpose. </div><div><br /></div><div>-The national debt, per taxpayer, is running at over $220,000. Despite this, single bills are being passed worth over a trillion dollars during a period of historically high inflation. They say this is to help us, but the price of fuel, energy, food, cars, housing, and all other goods is going up drastically, making it hard for working-class people to live. The chance we'll be seeing hyperinflation itself is higher every month. It may be the only way to escape the national debt. </div><div><br /></div><div>-Hyperinflation means the possibility of a new currency, and beyond this a cashless society -- one in which every transaction will be monitored by the government, and nobody will be able to buy or sell without government sanction. Biden is currently proposing that the IRS have full authority to monitor all banking accounts, and we've already seen how the left-wing feels about dissenters having jobs. </div><div><br /></div><div>-Bills are being passed every year that are so big, we have no idea what's in them. The law itself is inscrutable. Rights are being given and taken away without our knowledge. Tomorrow the invisible things will become concrete -- and this realization, that rights are already gone and <i>we have no idea what they are</i>, is becoming more ominous every day. We just discovered that OSHA can force millions to take a vaccine, but that no legal recourse exists if the vaccine disables them. How many unelected government agencies can create policies like OSHA? </div><div><br /></div><div>-Race riots happen often for the sake of criminals, and our schools have been taken over by people who hate white people. Every year we churn out a class of "citizens" more hateful of whites than the last -- not critical thinkers or problem solvers, but fact-hiders and irresponsible blame shifters. "People of color" are never held accountable for their sins and shortcomings. We're held accountable for both ours and theirs. When people such as the Proud Boys defend themselves during these riots, they get rounded up and thrown into prison. Black Lives Matter sacks freely, and the FBI has openly admitted not keeping tabs on Antifa.</div><div><br /></div><div>-We're living in a corporate surveillance state. Thanks to absolute spinelessness on the part of our legislators and pro-business "conservatives," companies have been able to hijack and sell our information so totally that many times they keep a permanent record of everywhere we've been and everyone we've talked to and, online, everything we've ever said. Our phones and tv's and tablets are listening to us speak to family in our own houses. The wall between this information and the government is paper-thin. The moment the government needs the info, they can get it with a warrant.</div><div><br /></div><div>-We're living in a state of industrial decline. As the U.S. cost of living rose and we became more environmentalist, businesses began automating or shipping industry overseas -- a trend that's impossible to reverse. The future means an upper class rich beyond comprehension, and a massive, ignorant, useless bottom class, ground down and strangling each other over jobs at Amazon and Walmart. The sense of national decline will be unavoidable. Socialism, or government control of our resources, and the corresponding powers that go with it, will be the only conceivable way out to the masses. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is by no means everything, but it's a good representation of what's weighing on me and many others right now. I suspect someday you'll wonder what I did to stop any of this, and
I don't know what my answer will be. But from where I'm standing now I've failed, as an intellectual, as an American citizen, as a father, and as a
man**. And I say this to you from the bottom of my sleepless heart: I'm sorry. I would like to say I'll do better, but I'm just a working-class man who got here yesterday and I <i>don't know what to do</i>. So for now I'll give you this. <br /><div> </div></div><div>Stefan Zweig is important because he ran from the Nazis but he couldn't shake them. He and his wife, holed up in a jungle retreat outside Rio de Janeiro, felt the whole world was closing in on them. They decided to make an honorable exit from it, and, on February 23, 1942 they killed themselves -- and missed not only the defeat of Hitler and fascism, but the miraculous establishment of Zion. He ended his nightmare and just barely missed, by six short years, the fulfillment of the Jewish dream. </div><div><br /></div><div>Stefan Zweig is a testament to the fact that nobody but God knows what's around the corner. He admired many Europeans and tried to introduce me to them. But what I read about <i>him</i>, in the short introduction to one of his books, was more of a gift to me than any of his books were. The big question which he never asked himself, and which I dare to ask myself here, is, <i>are we looking for Zion in the wrong place?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>*Strangely enough, Stefan Zweig was personally famous with many Nazis. His biography of Joseph Fouchè, a ruthless French revolutionary without any scruples, was intended to be an object lesson about how <i>not </i>to behave. The Nazis found the book and took the opposite advice -- and Stefan was the one who paid for it.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This just goes to show that my dad had the best advice all along. <i>If you educate a thief, all you get is an educated thief. </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>**</i>I was tempted to leave this part out, as it was almost too personal. But then I remembered the words of James Baldwin,</div><blockquote><div><i>I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>I want to be an honest man and a good writer. </i></div></blockquote><div></div><div></div><div>So I left it in.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-11526747052181417192021-10-29T05:45:00.004-07:002021-11-02T08:38:27.998-07:00The end of science<p>Dear M,</p><p>Rebecca West writes, in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Meaning-Treason-Rebecca-West-ebook/dp/B00BBPW5GA/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=rebecca+west+new+meaning+of+treason&qid=1635368949&qsid=130-2320497-5014134&sr=8-2&sres=B08LLD1SCL%2CB00BBPW5GA%2CB0076LOUWU%2CB013J95EKY&srpt=ABIS_BOOK"><i>The New Meaning of Treason</i></a>, that a lot of our scientists during World War 2 were communists. There are several reasons this is important, but the first is that they immediately leaked our research on atomic bombs to Stalin. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>They honestly believed in a "global scientific community" -- that science knew no political boundaries, and that the world would be better if scientists shared all their information with each other. Somehow this would usher in an age of peace and plenty, and scientific know-how would mean food for the poor and an end to oppression. So they gave the bomb to the Soviets. To the people who used technology to keep millions in chains and torture them and starve them to death. These days American scientists are doing the same thing, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/saudi-women-tracking-app-google-apple_n_5c62e51be4b00ba63e4abf62">helping abusive husbands track their wives</a> in Saudi Arabia, and helping the Chinese develop <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/03/15/microsoft-denies-new-links-to-chinas-surveillance-state-but-its-complicated/?sh=1413c6c73061">social surveillance systems</a> and <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/10/21/faucis-agency-admits-it-funded-gain-of-function-work-in-wuhan-what-else-are-they-keeping-from-us/">biological weapons</a>. The scientists tell you how to do something and fail to understand or care why we shouldn't do it. Or maybe it's the money.</p><p>If this proves anything, it's that people who are taught to analyze physics can be really bad at reading people. They can theorize about matter and totally miss the substance of a movement. People say we need a more "scientific" outlook on the world and they're right. <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/01/the-kingdom-of-heaven-belongs-to-such.html">We need to teach our kids</a> to be skeptical, and systematic, and logical. What we <i>don't</i> need for this world to be a better place is for more kids to become professional chemists. We need more chemists to pick up <i>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.</i></p><p>You would expect a person with a "scientific" mindset to <i>look</i> for information, and to share it -- even a pie-in-the-sky communist. But the new fan of "science" doesn't trust the public with information, and so far as he can, when it doesn't fit his goals, he buries it. When he says "trust the science" he means "trust the scien<i>tists</i>" -- a group of people whose research he many times can't see*, hasn't read, and can't explain, whose funders he doesn't know, and whose political and social goals he hasn't been told. It's gotten so bad that OSHA, the branch of our government tasked with keeping workers safe, is <a href="https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/faqs#collapse-vaccine">no longer requiring businesses to report adverse reactions</a> to the vaccine -- for the reason that (I quote), "OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination." I don't know which scientists to trust, but I know who to <i>not</i> trust, and that is the person who refuses information and hides it. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEuHgYZYbSVwTDHQsstZTQ1F4rbbrUKuLNpIWu2rV51_lvWs4kj-gQBe2NdixAXJqOOXhb143ca-B2ZImYeQQGw4XOCAurepphqhHj5Nqso6uSSxVsZbAZTZrsaYvzqjuaFHn4s3gXUpNx/s800/sgasdgsdg.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEuHgYZYbSVwTDHQsstZTQ1F4rbbrUKuLNpIWu2rV51_lvWs4kj-gQBe2NdixAXJqOOXhb143ca-B2ZImYeQQGw4XOCAurepphqhHj5Nqso6uSSxVsZbAZTZrsaYvzqjuaFHn4s3gXUpNx/s320/sgasdgsdg.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A "correct" authority<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>A scientific mindset should be a machine and a method**. It should mean that you know what facts you know and what you don't know, that you're open to new facts and factoring them in, and that the most important thing isn't feeling right, but heading in the right direction. What being "pro-science" actually means today is that you have the "right" facts. Not that you're good at sifting, but that you're good at accepting -- and that you have the "correct" scientists as authorities. <br /><p></p><p>Today we see this in effect. Medical professionals -- the people who are specifically trained to deal with diseases and keep them from spreading -- are being fired <i>en masse</i> because they don't trust the medicine they're being offered. Who's firing them? Not scientists or doctors, but medical capitalists and other administrators who <i>believe</i> some doctors over others. In another instance, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-immunity-through-infection-or-vaccination-are-they-equal-n1280962?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR1WWPAOwv_vPhvj_UvHWQ7k7eAMdD9dqyMt_lrABYlJwvjzZA0clEjFNpY">NBC reported</a> that scientists were fighting scientists -- about whether vaccines were better than natural immunity. I was told by a pro-vaccine commenter to educate myself. I asked "by which scientists?" and got no answer. </p><p>I doubt we could have avoided this. The outcome of all development is specialization. The outcome of all specialization is the recognition of ignorance -- the fact that we have bodies of information out there that the general public won't and can't know, and that <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/09/on-going-to-college.html">power structures have to develop around them</a>. Thus whoever has the best press and the badge of authority will be considered the best "scientist." And in an age of social media, whoever's opinions will be shut out will effectively be the "non-scientific." </p><p>A reign of scientists is thus an age of authoritarianism. Not necessarily of peace and plenty, but of self-assured lab-coats pressing expensive panaceas, and government lab-rats using violence to back them. Quack medicines and programs will be pushed and swallowed. The media and social media will shut out the opposition -- the group from which <i>all</i> scientific progress comes. Smug women too stupid and hysterical for critical thinking will shout down dissenting researchers and doctors. Those who stand with the opposition lose their jobs when public policy or public "safety" are at stake. Will science prevail in an atmosphere like this? Yes -- the science of controlling the masses, and of keeping the scientifically-minded quiet. </p><p>We're in the beginning stages of scientific and social tyranny. Others have already passed through the late stages -- and the scientific outcome they got <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-BD-Digital-Copy-Blu-ray/dp/B07SSDQSHV/ref=tmm_blu_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635368896&sr=8-1-spons">was Chernobyl</a>.</p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J <br /></p><p>*I said above that most "believers in science" haven't read<i> </i>the journals and can't know what's in them, but <i>The Atlantic</i> says the truth is even worse. In an article titled <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/xkcd-science-paper-meme-nails-academic-publishing/618810/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1wLrsSl-9kuUGcIlqXZ-c9Ylm_Al6mlMyC-kedkS097KpUYe0bpWK_xfg"><i>Scientific Publishing is a Joke</i></a>, they wrote,</p><p></p><blockquote><p>'Many papers serve no purpose, advance no agenda, may not be correct, make no sense, and are poorly read. But they are required for promotion.' The scholarly literature in many fields is riddled with extraneous work; indeed, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that this sorry outcome was more or less inevitable, given the incentives at play. </p><p>Take a bunch of clever, ambitious people and tell them to get as many papers published as possible while still technically passing muster through peer review … and what do you think is going to happen? Of course the system gets gamed: The results from one experiment get sliced up into a dozen papers, statistics are massaged to produce more interesting results, and conclusions become exaggerated. The most prolific authors have found a way to publish more than one scientific paper a week. Those who can’t keep up might hire a paper mill to do (or fake) the work on their behalf.
In medicine, at least, the urgency of COVID-19 only made it easier to publish a lot of articles very quickly. [...] A staggering 200,000 COVID-19 papers have already been published, <i>of which just a tiny proportion will ever be read or put into practice </i>[emphasis mine]. </p></blockquote><p></p><p>The "scientific community" isn't just inscrutable. It's apparently full of blowhards. Their purpose many times isn't to teach you or probably anyone you know how the world works. You aren't their fan club or their employer, and many times you don't even know who they are. Thus their job is to toot their own horns, wowing journal editors and patting each other on the back for making a big show -- a Kabuki theater of neither useful ideas nor new theories, but of how many times their names can appear in things the public <i>won't and can't read</i>. </p><p>The question, then, is <i>who are they publishing for</i>? And furthermore, <i>why do we trust <u>them</u>? </i> </p><p>**The finest book I've ever read about the scientific <i>mindset </i>is Francis Bacon's <i>The New Organon</i> -- not a science manual, but a musing on how many ways the mind can go wrong, and what we have to do to avoid it. </p><p>He writes, in 1620,</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called “sciences as one would.” For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem to be occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>and </p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>let every student of nature take this as a rule: that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>--words that ought to be taken more seriously in a so-called "age of science."</p><p><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! </span></b></p><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-67699396314023425622021-10-20T07:46:00.005-07:002022-02-23T04:12:07.643-08:00Black Rednecks and White Liberals: Some Thoughts<p>Dear T,</p><p>In Thomas Sowell's never-discussed but ought-to-be-read book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594031436/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25D1Y8JNGKJAP&keywords=sowell+black+rednecks&qid=1634692478&qsid=130-2320497-5014134&sprefix=sowell+black+red%2Caps%2C314&sr=8-1&sres=1594031436%2C2512004538%2C0786176849%2C1541645634%2C0615748473%2C162157797X%2C0465002056%2C0465037380%2C0465025226%2C0817929924%2C0465022030%2C0465022502%2C1541675134%2C1505397596%2C0688062695%2C0465058728&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">Black Rednecks and White Liberals</a>, </i>he
notes that redneck culture, so far from being an American thing, is
actually north English. Even the name. He says that hundreds of years
ago, transportation was so bad and commerce so underdeveloped that many
people across the Isles were almost totally isolated: they spoke English
but couldn't understand each other, and cultures developed so
differently that they ended up many times being incompatible. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div> </div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0qzLxgXoOKvWIRdFRXujaOWFA1Dfwl95iIEhnb8dqrSpnI5KDvePOxACXYSRsR4NeCaHO3PiOk8lms0DcVeawSRZLwlX1-EZHoAiLxrbFk-wXUH1q1qgf7LnmHVWF0FIxQ05wGwBhl3c/s1000/fbnzfdbh.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="660" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0qzLxgXoOKvWIRdFRXujaOWFA1Dfwl95iIEhnb8dqrSpnI5KDvePOxACXYSRsR4NeCaHO3PiOk8lms0DcVeawSRZLwlX1-EZHoAiLxrbFk-wXUH1q1qgf7LnmHVWF0FIxQ05wGwBhl3c/s320/fbnzfdbh.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The inimitable Tom Sowell<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>He
lists among these northern English "redneck" characteristics the loud
and flamboyant style of oratory and preaching, a general aversion to
education and work, a taste for gaudy over-priced clothing instead of
savings, sexual promiscuity and the bastardy that goes with it, and
flimsy egos that resulted in fistfights and dueling. We took so many of
these animals that the British social reformers were able to extirpate
redneck culture in north England for the most part; and our puritanical
New Englanders, who were from both superior regions and stock, were left
here complaining about rednecks in their letters. It's safe to say
they still complain about them. When the Great Migration happened in
the early 1900's, and large portions of the South flooded into Northern
cities like Chicago, polls show clearly that poor Southern whites were
even less popular than blacks. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Sowell posits
that slavery did damage to American blacks, but nothing nearly as bad as
what redneck culture did -- and continues to do. He notes first of all that African immigrants from the West Indies, who arrived dirt poor and had also been freed recently, left most Southern blacks in the dust economically. But secondly he notes that the New
Englanders, during Reconstruction, sent thousands of missionaries to
found black schools and change the Southern culture. It was hard work
and many of them burned out and quit. But out of these New Englander
schools, where puritanical ideals such as self-control, hard work,
saving, chastity, and the value of an education were held in high
regard, came W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Walter
White, Mary Mcleod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King
Jr. Out of a single elite New Englander institution, Dunbar High
School, came many others -- including our first black general, our first
black graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, our first black woman to get a
PhD, our first black federal judge, and our first black cabinet
member. Many who thought blacks were biologically inferior were forced
to recant -- not because anybody told them to, but because their own
eyes did. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Black Rednecks and White Liberals </i>is a gem every God-fearing conservative ought to read, as it puts culture above race, and man's character above his birthright. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div> </div><div>P.S. It's been my policy for years now to buy any book I couldn't live without. I'd always believed there would be a collapse in the supply chain, or a cyber attack that shuts down the internet, or power outages, or maybe a full-scale catastrophe. What I didn't expect to see anytime soon was honest books disappearing because they were "too offensive." </div><div><br /></div><div>Tom Sowell's <i>Black Rednecks and White Liberals</i> is currently "under review" by Amazon. Not for quality concerns, or other legitimate issues, but broadly and mysteriously just "under review," despite the fact that Thomas Sowell is a well-known Stanford intellectual, and the book is well-edited, and has been in print for around ten years. The library has thus lost the Kindle version too, and if I hadn't bought the paperback, I wouldn't have a copy. I'm not advertising for Thomas Sowell, but if I were you I'd pick up the paperback before it's gone -- as many of the best and most honest books I suspect will be in a few years.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-43332645768797496282021-10-19T08:11:00.005-07:002021-10-20T07:38:16.459-07:00Why I love IndiansDear T,<div><br /></div><div>Let me be clear here: when I say <i>Indians </i>I mean <i>from India</i>. Of the so-called "Native Americans<i>"</i> I know little, except what I read in the papers -- which is to say, an assortment of liberal puff pieces which backfire and make Natives look <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53358330">criminal</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1044823626/indigenous-peoples-day-native-americans-columbus">corny</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039268981/media-petito-like-racism-native-americans">petty</a>, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1044973094/native-american-tribes-push-to-get-bidens-infrastructure-bill-passed">stupid</a>. I've known two or three "Natives" pretty well, one of whom was an angel and the other two drunks and liberals and scoundrels, but I refuse to make these several a model for the whole. Their <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/03/before-there-was-texas.html">whole gamut of tribes, races, religions, and tongues is a mystery</a> to me, and likely to remain so -- <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/03/black-elk-speaks-review.html"><i>Black Elk Speaks</i></a> is one of the only books I've ever read on them, and the "correct" opinion about them, that they're environmentalist sages and peaceniks, is <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2017/02/daylight-saving-time-and-its-detractors.html">absolutely unbelievable to me in every way</a>. I'm keeping a blank slate for them to be written on <i>by</i> them -- not what they say about themselves or what the media says about them, but what they make themselves appear <i>to me</i>. Hopefully better than what I hear from the Alaskans. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JX2RKSnutzeOU19IY3nS7klkkQ9t6ecgVRbdlxGFeLeJbCqHQVDyH-5PG3pjHMVJZxzKmkEtcL1-IGzCHYauzySru6XwyX9uNtrgfC0G1JgIyVWLtlRZ64WvKd3OdMU8qtKnCKlDFaer/s603/dgvsdgdsgb.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="603" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JX2RKSnutzeOU19IY3nS7klkkQ9t6ecgVRbdlxGFeLeJbCqHQVDyH-5PG3pjHMVJZxzKmkEtcL1-IGzCHYauzySru6XwyX9uNtrgfC0G1JgIyVWLtlRZ64WvKd3OdMU8qtKnCKlDFaer/s320/dgvsdgdsgb.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Get a load of this confidence<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Indians from India (henceforth: <i>Indians</i>) are a completely different story. With the exception of northern Asians such as the Japanese, no people on the planet have ever been more polite, or gentle, or accomplished in my experience: the women aren't loudmouths, or slutty; the men project a sense of professionalism and honest-dealing, and the idea of anyone hating or menacing these saints is incomprehensible to me, almost completely. They dress themselves respectably, reflect good will when it's given to them, and none of them bat an eye if you call them "brother." Well, not the men, anyway.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This, I admit, has always been a mystery to me. How is it that any group of people could be so full of <i>winners</i>? I've seen almost everyone else and the results of my findings are mixed -- at best. My own nation, a nation of a so-called "white majority,"* is filled maybe <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/07/on-being-half-white.html">30-60% with traitors</a>, loafers, looters, half-wits, cowards, ignoramuses, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/12/the-gay-mafia-comes-to-idaho_23.html">degenerates</a>, whiners, trailer trash, skanks, racist anti-racists, and a whole host of labels I'd rather not get into, but which fit us all too easily. The Mexicans are keeping up with us <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0579.htm">but fatter</a>, God bless them, and <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/06/what-do-they-really-want.html">there's no need to get into the blacks</a>. It seems every race is Yin and Yang except the Asians and the Indians. And the Asians haven't been able to hide from me entirely: I'm well aware they have a redneck problem, but they haven't been able to get to us here. At least not yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>What makes the Indians so miraculous is the fact that they were ground absolutely into the dust and <i>still</i> retain such dignity. First they were abused by their Mughals -- cruel, worthless emperors who hoarded the women and murdered and tortured and taxed their underlings into submission: not great men, but worthless men born into great power. Or maybe the great power made them all worthless. Then the Mughal empire began to collapse and barbarians made their incursions, not unlike the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Then the English came, beat the French in a quick fight for control of the region (read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Complete-Babington-Macaulay-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B01MXOVK6R/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=macaulay+delphi&qid=1634306202&sr=8-1">Macaulay's essay on Clive</a>), and quickly found ways to pillage their victims (see Burke's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Complete-Works-Edmund-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B01GGB7LO4/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=burke+delphi&qid=1634306233&sr=8-1">depressing speeches against Hastings</a>).</div><div><br /></div><div>Once word got out that the wealth of India was a free-for-all, the worst of the British swooped in. It was so easy to bully the men and steal the women that suddenly some "Christians" were bragging about being polygamists, and the worst of the rednecks, heading off like pirates for plunder, were coming back years later as parvenus -- a widely envied lot known as "Nabobs" who got rich at the expense of the innocent, and had absolutely no talent or virtue to deserve it. Americans complain today that soldiers and teachers are paid worse than football players. But imagine being a business owner in 18th century England, and barely scraping by by your hard work and know-how, and seeing some scoundrel come back from India rich as a Pajah, and knowing it was because he screwed everybody. Bribes, threats, and corruption of the law made British citizens rich fast, and once the word spread, the most heartless and rotten spread themselves into India. </div><div><br /></div><div>So here lies the question: how is it that a people so ground down for hundreds of years are able to produce, and keep producing, such talent? Isabel Wilkerson, in her must-read book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson-ebook/dp/B084FLWDQG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=caste&qid=1634306419&sr=8-1">Caste</a>, </i>admits in some sense it's because they'd been grinding <i>themselves</i> down for millennia. The caste system, which allotted you a place in life based on your family, and then said you were born there because you deserved it, placed some of them at the top and some of them at the bottom -- so far towards the bottom, in fact, that the Dalits were forced to call out in the streets so the Brahmin upper classes could stay far away from them; and if so much as a Dalit shadow fell on a Brahmin's foot, the Brahmin would have to clean himself in a religious ceremony. Seems a bit much, but how hard is it to clean off a shadow? Better to get help from the gods.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The downside of this horrible system is you might get born to the bottom. But what about the people on top? The people at the top had instant self-esteem: they were born for command -- the religious scholars and philosophers -- and were thus the most cultivated and manicured in life, while many others were condemned to pilfering garbage cans and dealing with sewage. In many ways the system is still in place. I'm told a Dalit isn't usually taken seriously in positions of power, that you can recognize them by their bearing, that they have a hard time squeezing a word in when a Brahmin is speaking ex-cathedra, and that a conversation between two Indians almost always involves trying to sniff out one's <i>jati</i>, or, one's place in the caste scheme. (How true is all of this? Some of it undoubtedly, but whether this is universally Indian is anyone's guess. In America we have George Floyd and Thomas Sowell, a scoundrel and a straight-laced genius, and Sowell's perspective is almost always buried for George Floyd's). </div><div><br /></div><div>This I believe is the key to my question. Wilkerson says in <i>Caste</i> that, so far from following the Statue of Liberty's stupid dictate, that we're a dumping ground for the world's rednecks and derelicts, India only gave us her best: Wilkerson says as little as 3% of the immigrants we get from India are Dalits, which means we get a disproportionate number of their upper and middle classes. If they have money to move <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2021/04/wheres-mohammed-when-you-need-him.html">and want to ruin their children</a>, America's doors are relatively open -- unlike Central and South America and these days even Haiti, where all you need to become an American is a criminal record. 200,000 of the third-world's poor break through our border every month, and I doubt this will give anyone a better opinion of Hispanics**. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J </div><div><br /></div><div>*Politically, there is no "white majority," and there hasn't been for my whole life. In fact, at least half of eligible white voters and their elected representatives are morally, intellectually, and spiritually incapable of voting in the "white interest." They're not only incapable of it, but openly against it, and most likely to undermine it. Except now what's known to be openly beneficial to whites is openly beneficial to the beautiful, to the competent, to the brilliant, to the cultured of all races -- in other words, to undermine so-called "white supremacy" in the United States means to throw away every form of meritocracy, and to sink the whole ship in order to save spoiled cargo. New York is booting high-achieving Asians out of their best schools to make room for low-achieving black kids. Oregon just threw their testing standards away altogether. How could this be good for anyone? </div><div><br /></div><div>Leftists like to argue that affirmative action, so far from being new, has been in place for centuries here, and that the great difference between now and then is that back then it was used to promote lousy whites. This is certainly true in cases where blacks were better choices than whites, and I insist a total injustice in general. But the problem with affirmative action today isn't just the injustice of it, but the math. In a society that's 80% white, you can still have exceptionalism because you're still competing with 80%. Most positions in this case would have most competitors fighting for them. But when 13% of the public -- and the part of the public most poor, most starved for education, most statistically criminal -- is forced into promotion in 80% of the jobs and institutions? You're not headed for equality. You're headed for disaster. </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>**Regarding a nasty perspective, I have a left-wing British friend who absolutely misunderstands American racial politics. Mostly because he lacks empathy. He described Indians when he visited India as "the worst people in the world" -- always looking to mug or swindle him, and lacking class in general. I refuse to downplay his perspective, as it was based on his experience: I just wish that he'd had mine instead, and that if he could imagine having a negative opinion about British interracial experiences, he could have enough imagination and empathy to believe ours. </div><div><br /></div><div>Every nation on earth has an underclass, locked in by their manners, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/04/on-ancient-custom-of-babylonians.html">their beauty standards</a>, their levels of education, and their bearing. Wilkerson is a dark mirror to Jordan B Peterson here, and while he talks about the hierarchy of lobsters, and how both lobsters and humans with good posture are taken for dominant, Wilkerson talks about wolves -- how every pack has an underdog "omega," and it gets to eat last, and is constantly picked on -- <i>and is mourned loudly and for a long time when it dies</i>. Why? Because she argues that without an absolute and official bottom, nobody knows where they stand, and they worry they can sink there any minute. </div><div><br /></div><div>She posits, brilliantly, I think, that the repositioning of our official bottom class is the reason white death rates have gone up. The news calls them "deaths of despair," and they usually result from drinking yourself to death, or choking on fentanyl, or blowing your brains out, or eating yourself into a heart attack. It makes sense to me. For centuries, no matter how low you got, at least you were still white. Even if you were poor, or stupid, or ugly, or just worthless in general, the white people thought that if a black person was on your side of the street, he'd have to move somewhere else -- a rotten system that lingers to this day, especially in the South. And as it disappears, it reminds people that God is watching, and he's weighing, and no matter what barriers were in place for how long, propping you up despite your own failures, there is a bottom, and you are becoming it. <i>Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div>My dream has never been that all the people of all the races will live together in harmony. It's that the best people of all the races, the peacemakers, the straight-thinkers, the hard workers, the patient, the understanding, the honest, the open-minded, the true lovers and the best warriors, will recognize one another across every artificial line the world has set for us, that we'll fight for each other, and that the refuse of humanity will be kept in line <i>beneath us</i>. </div></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></div><div><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b> <br /></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-62452963635392268582021-10-10T05:36:00.000-07:002021-10-10T05:36:07.221-07:00Why Marxists are phonies and failures: chapter one of Capitalist RealismDear M,<div><br /></div><div>Mark Fisher's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-There-No-Alternative/dp/B08WTVTFSN/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=mark+fisher&qid=1633712110&sr=8-2"><i>Capitalist Realism</i></a> was a joy to listen to and it cost me $5. The reason I bring up the $5 is because Mark Fisher charged me this even though he hates capitalism. Or his left-wing publisher charged me this. Or maybe they both agreed to charge me this. Either way, I got the book and they got my money. <span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ0PqBVWdNO-3AiQNBFJ9Ck1oW0NGWnPerHevo7Hifs3CPczklS0nkzDfrQATo3GXEO8CMGeGn4G-tDyf1QnzZLthm-SLIt2BfrRHJpnEhUziCALu-uZ6tt_lxhQyCMeMS3VwblFNWyvV7/s926/Slavoj.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="926" data-original-width="861" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ0PqBVWdNO-3AiQNBFJ9Ck1oW0NGWnPerHevo7Hifs3CPczklS0nkzDfrQATo3GXEO8CMGeGn4G-tDyf1QnzZLthm-SLIt2BfrRHJpnEhUziCALu-uZ6tt_lxhQyCMeMS3VwblFNWyvV7/s320/Slavoj.png" width="298" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slavoj Zizek: Failure Nerd<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>That communists and socialists are almost <i>always </i>participating in capitalism has become kind of a stale joke at this point; and authors such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Slavoj Zizek, the latter who inspired this book with "<i>it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism</i>," have been making a living telling us how rotten it is making a living. This level of hypocrisy has no historical comparison. It's as if all the followers of Jehovah could only worship Him at the altar of Ba'al, or as if the only way to fight racism was to pick a race and demonize it into submission. <br /> </div><div>The question is, why? Why is it that every socialist and communist and every pie-in-the-sky utopian finds himself taking part in the very thing he claims to hate? They all argue that until the system is smashed they <i>have to</i>. But I posit that what they call <i>capitalism</i> isn't a system or an ideology at all, but a series of assumptions we all take for granted, and that if we questioned them seriously, we'd all end up killing each other within weeks.</div><div><br /></div><div>These assumptions are that, in order to survive,</div><div><br /></div><div>1) A person ought to have something that he has a right to use at any time, and that this "something" is known as his <i>property</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>2) That everybody else is excluded from using it, unless he gives them permission to.</div><div><br /></div><div>3) That he can give it away if he wants to, and he can also trade it for something somebody else owns, and </div><div><br /></div><div>4) That people who take what isn't theirs are dangerous and worthy of persecution.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you accept these four general positions you're a full-fledged capitalist. You can refuse them, of course, but that means war -- a hellish uncertainty where everything you think you own can be taken at any minute (a state known as <i>anarchy</i>), or a world where somebody else decides what little you get to have and thus everything you get to do (a system commonly known as <i>slavery</i>). </div><div><br /></div><div>Thus I posit there is no "system." There is no conspiracy. There's no cabal of rich Jews keeping everyone subservient, bait-and-switch, to Mammon. The "system" exists in every single one of us at every single moment and comes into play whenever two people, who think of the future and plan on living happily for a bit, are forced to interact with each other. </div><div><br /></div><div>The leftist rails "the system" because all leftism is an attack on systems. If leftism blames the underclasses for their own failures it turns into conservatism. So like the average moron criminal <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/10/melons-in-england.html">or deadbeat environmentalist</a>, the leftist puts all the blame <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/03/the-last-refuge-of-moron.html">on everything but himself</a>: the more faceless the enemy, the more abstract, the further removed from his own personal needs and choices, the better*. He accuses everyone else of the things he won't quit, because he won't and <i>can't</i> quit them. He's worse than cursed with Original Sin: he's effectively his own devil.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, Capitalist Realism is a fun read for several reasons. He writes about marketers who capitalize on the sacred,</div><div></div><div><i></i><blockquote><i>The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its ‘system of equivalence’ which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or </i>Das Kapital<i>, a monetary value. Walk around the British Museum, where you see objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts.</i></blockquote><i></i></div><div></div><div>He adds,</div><div></div><div><div><i><blockquote>Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.</blockquote></i></div></div><div></div><div>Aside from the fact that others' beliefs, unless we adopt them, can <i>only </i>rise to the level of either a curiosity or a threat, he apparently never read Ayn Rand, or at least <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=ayn+rand+new+intellectual&qid=1633710325&sr=8-2">her speech pertaining to the meaning of money</a>**. He believes that putting a dollar price on something cheapens it when we used to put sheep on it, or the deed to a house on it -- in short, that most everything material <i>does</i> have an exchange value, and that when money is gone, people rank things in ammo, or bar soap: not a rise in value or a heightening of sentiments, but a drop in both convenience and precision. </div><div><br /></div><div>He also ignores the fact that many things <i>can't</i> be bought with money: that few are willing to sell their children, or sell a kidney, or even keep a job when they'd rather tell the truth; and that if many people are selling relics or American flag boxer-briefs or turning George Floyd into a talking pull-string doll, there are many believers who are disgusted by these sales and won't touch them -- that sacredness may be commercialized to <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/01/midsommar-review.html">everyone except those who consider things sacred</a>. The man who reveres something pays for it not with cash, but with attendance, prayer, dancing, singing, penance, tithing, submission, and acts of outright sacrifice. He can live for it, but he can never own it. It owns <i>him***</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>He further quotes Badiou about why capitalists gloss over the sins and abuses of capitalism: </div><div></div><div><i><blockquote>To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. </blockquote></i></div><div></div><div>Fisher adds,</div><div></div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>The ‘realism’ here is analogous to the deflationary perspective of a depressive who believes that any positive state, any hope, is a dangerous illusion.</i></div><div></div></blockquote><div></div><div>What he ignores here is the rock-bottom fact that having your family tortured and dying in a Gulag is objectively worse than being poor and having a shitty boss, and that everything you choose to do in life involves pain anyway. The question isn't whether to get rid of all pain, but which pain you prefer to the others. You either suffer at the gym or you suffer from being fat. You <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2020/07/in-these-troubled-times.html">suffer reading the news</a> or you become it. To dream of a world without suffering isn't idealistic but stupid; and the great spiritual enemy of the socialist isn't the capitalist, but the effectively Buddhist: the man who realizes goods in evils and evils in goods, and has made up his mind for the latter. </div><div><br /></div><div>To hope for perfection is to damn yourself to failure. It's to consign yourself to a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. The man who aims for everything will enjoy nothing. Thus the capitalist hasn't thrown away hope: he's achieved it. He lives in a state of constant exchange and thus possibility. He has, in his possession, the thing the man in Venezuela, in North Korea, in Communist China -- in the Soviet gulag -- dreams about. </div><div><br /></div><div>So much can be said for chapter 1, and I encourage anyone interested in thinking (and in the narrator Russell Brand) to rent it -- but not before buying Ayn Rand's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=ayn+rand+new+intellectual&qid=1633710325&sr=8-2">For the New Intellectual</a>. </i>Property should be spent on people who respect it. Borrow Marxists' books from the library -- or follow their lead and steal them. </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Yours,</div><div>-J</div><div><br /></div><div>*Of course, the truth is we're responsible for our own actions <i>and</i> we live in broken systems. We inherit so many privileges and problems, never equally between any two people, that to blame anyone entirely for his own life requires absolute coldness -- a policy we adopt with nobody we love. For ourselves and the objects of our affections we make excuses.</div><div><br />But the fact of the matter is that, to <i>not</i> hold anyone responsible for his own actions is to ruin him. No system, or improvement of systems, or eradication of systems, can ever make a man great. It can debase him, confuse him, ostracize him -- make him lose hope until he divorces the idea of <i>morality</i> from <i>prosperity</i>. But unless you give him agency and dignity and responsibility, a system can't <i>make </i>him. </div><div><br /></div><div>Socialism is the idea that a system can make men good. Capitalism is the idea that struggling against nature can make men strong. Christianity is the idea that only an eternal, objective perspective about God can make men right. I prefer a combination of the last two, and I'm told by the Christian Left they're mutually exclusive. But so are liberty and equality, if you try to have them both entirely. </div><div><br /></div><div>**One small passage from Ayn Rand's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=ayn+rand+new+intellectual&qid=1633710325&sr=8-2"><i>For The New Intellectual</i></a> -- which every thinking man ought to have on his shelf:</div><div></div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?</i></div></blockquote><div><i></i></div><div></div><div>***Fisher, perhaps sensing he's been outclassed, quotes Marx on degeneracy: </div><div><i></i></div><div><i><blockquote>[Capital] has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.</blockquote></i></div><div></div><div>The problem here isn't capitalism, but a lack of religion go with it -- the finest historical objection to Marx being a business owner (who claimed to be God) grabbing a weapon and beating money-changers out of the temple. James said <i>money is the root of all kinds of evil. </i>Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for lying about a donation. The key isn't to get rid of property but to hold on to your soul. It is <i>communists</i> who fought hardest for materialism -- and are most surprised at the moral bankruptcy of materialists.</div><div><br /></div><div>He writes further of Capitalism's absorbing and cheapening all things -- as it monetizes them:</div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>
Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’. When it actually arrives, capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture. It is a system which is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis. The limits of capitalism are not fixed by fiat, but defined (and redefined) pragmatically and improvisationally. This makes capitalism very much like the Thing in John Carpenter’s film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into conta</i><i>ct.</i></div><div></div></blockquote><div></div><div>This, as I've said before, is a fallacy based upon the idea that capitalism is a "system." Once it's been made clear that no such system exists, that what we call "capitalism" is a fundamental aspect of human happiness and survival, capitalism's "mutability" makes sense. It devours all because it encompasses nearly every hunger. All it involves is someone out there, trying to feed his family, seeing a need or a desire and trying to satisfy it. It thus has no form, and can capitalize on Jesus Christ or romance or pulled pork or Black Lives Matter. </div><div><br /></div><div>Capitalism -- or the appreciation and unfettering of property and business -- at bottom, is the attempt to make your neighbor happy. It can only rise as high or as low as you personally make it. It can't give you that inner joy or sacredness or religion. That has to come from other things, and most usually yourself. But killing capitalism means killing charity -- not by ending it, <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2016/02/a-note-on-generosity-of-myanmar.html">but by ending it as a means for survival</a>****. The man in the socialist system doesn't work to make his neighbor happy. He works for a party official -- who always has a gun to his head.</div><div><br /></div><div>****Probably one of the most disgusting byproducts of capitalism is the big-time philanthropist -- the man who "gives millions without taking." But the plain fact is that a philanthropist is a horn-tooting strangler. He finds the best way to squeeze money out of his business, usually by not giving employees health care, or vacations, or decent wages, or bonuses at Christmas; and once he's put them in the poor-house, he finds a random poor-house and sends it a million bucks. He works his employees to the bone, and then <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/10/saint-bezos-act-of-penance.html">like Jeff Bezos, throws away billions at the junkies</a> and the criminals <i>in the same city</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Paul said the "Christian" who won't feed his family is worse than a heathen. Right behind this barbarian, I think, is the man who works you to the bone but spends his money bolstering Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Imagine how much better the world would be without philanthropists -- where workers are fed well, and the refuse of humanity starves! </div><div></div><div><p><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Get my free ebook essay collection by emailing me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com</i>! Start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></p><p><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b> <br /></p></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-43956176377478933662021-10-07T08:05:00.009-07:002021-12-08T06:27:59.114-08:00How to abort yourself<p>Dear H,</p><p>A while back I knew a man who prayed for children. So far as I'm aware not even to get children, but to make a new man of himself. His theory was that the more children he had the more he'd develop his character, and in the act of procreation he was creating a new version of himself -- more patient, and kind, and giving, and in general more Christian. He'd create something out of his body and the end product would be the Fruit of the Spirit.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>It was an awful theory, because all I ever saw him do was flip out because he had too many kids and couldn't handle them. You could tell when he was holding back, almost as if he knew he'd be yelling again in no time and he had to make up for it by smiling forcibly -- a fake-ass crocodile smile on a bald head on borrowed time. I don't know how he's doing now (or for that matter how his kids are doing), but I think of him every now and then, and I laugh about it. We're told that God moves in mysterious ways and what they should have said was God is also a malicious, banana peel-dropping prankster. God never made him a saint but He at least gave me a clown. </p><p>I on the other hand never prayed to be a better father and so far I'm better off for it. At least I never prayed this before having children. I never even wanted children before having children. I was happy reading books and playing games and wasting my time doing whatever -- so long as it was <i>my</i> whatever, and nobody else's. The announcement that I was having children was like hearing I was being drafted and sent off to war. I had no idea I would enjoy it so much as I do. Which makes me think maybe I should also try combat.</p><p>Nobody can prepare you for the experience of having kids. It belongs in its own completely isolated category, and opens categories of feelings and experiences that can't be appreciated until you get there. And like almost all of life we're better off for not knowing. Joys that are anticipated lose some of their savor -- we dream about them, and the fun of dreaming about them is most of the fun. Expectations are set too high and we're often disappointed. Nobody can do with this parenting. What God throws at you is a total surprise -- He left you no room to spoil it.</p><p>A short list of things you never knew you needed:</p><p>-Having someone grab your pinky with his whole hand while you're walking.</p><p>-Seeing tiny people run to you at the door after you get home from work.</p><p>-Getting to pick someone up after she falls down, and letting her know it's okay, and having her hold you tight.</p><p>-Having someone ask you a question -- a real and important question about life -- and being able to answer it authoritatively.</p><p>-Sitting down next to someone and showing them how to pray, and then hearing them talk to God on their own level.</p><p>-Having someone beg you to play with them because they think you're so fun.</p><p>-Driving off to work and looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing someone in a diaper chasing you and waving from the sidewalk.</p><p>-Hearing someone cry in the middle of the night because they're scared, and getting to go to them, and knowing that they feel safe because you're there.</p><p>These are of course only a few of the things that make parenting beautiful, and they only happen a little while, and then they're gone. And it's impossible to get most of them anywhere else. I try to remind myself of this on hard days, but my life is moving too fast, and I'm "too busy," and I like to live inside my head -- not a bad parent, like Old Yeller up above, but an absent-while-present doofus. It amazes me how much I throw away for things that don't matter, and how being tired from working and being in pain rob me of you while you're standing right in front of me. Parenthood is the one time you really need meth and probably the worst time to use it.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidIlSpQz9q5njAPMET-BxrvRw907FJqSHJSKhodti5gxBFSgQ0hkxlxqrtRqLpE0ZFkQ1fAL-8fIsjb8rAA3nuQG-STiDkgO_ddCKQtWmI6f8pC91weCzjh9dORLK1bDWHqxjUsaFYkKiT/s828/167925827_3838224739603692_1988979070075024303_n_kindlephoto-883439683.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="828" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidIlSpQz9q5njAPMET-BxrvRw907FJqSHJSKhodti5gxBFSgQ0hkxlxqrtRqLpE0ZFkQ1fAL-8fIsjb8rAA3nuQG-STiDkgO_ddCKQtWmI6f8pC91weCzjh9dORLK1bDWHqxjUsaFYkKiT/s320/167925827_3838224739603692_1988979070075024303_n_kindlephoto-883439683.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>People like to focus on the murder aspect of abortion, but from a parent's perspective, what the abortion actually does is it murders a part of yourself. It allows someone who has no idea what beauty is yet, who thinks sex is an end in itself and there's nowhere higher to go from there, who sees all the troubles of motherhood but none of the joys, who has no idea what it really means to be loved and needed and looked up to, to snip, or poison, or vacuum away the most really precious things in life because she feels she isn't <i>ready</i> for them*. And she probably isn't. But isn't that the beauty of it?<br /><p></p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J </p><p>*Here's an interesting question for you: we all know a woman who's gotten knocked up and has no money and no man have an abortion. But have you ever heard of a mother of two getting one? The teenager with no kids has few qualms about getting the job done. The mother of two knows what getting an abortion <i>means</i>. She imagines taking one of her living children and slitting his throat to save time and money. </p><p>Not to downplay the dangers of having a child out of wedlock. A policy of life has to occur in lock-step with a policy of marriage. Romance and fidelity and making things work have to be taken seriously before having babies can be taken lightly. The single mom aborts her baby before she meets him, but imagine meeting him and loving him for years, and putting him in a ghetto, and having to work all day to feed him, and never being able to raise him**, and having him end up dead or in prison. Which is worse? To kill the person you're guaranteed to love most -- preemptively, out of bad potential? Or to see them torn away from you because you were never able to save them?</p><p>I offer no solutions here, only a warning. </p><p>**Moses offers some guidance here. In Exodus 21, verses 2-4 (emphasis mine):</p><blockquote>If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. <i>If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. </i></blockquote><i></i><div>What does this mean? Not that a master should own a slave's wife and kids, but that no man ought to start a family when he's incapable of handling one. Thus every man who put himself into unpayable debts, who couldn't run a free farm, who crashed and burned his business, would be put under the direct supervision (and effectively training) of someone who <i>made it</i>. The free man, kept liberated on a daily basis by his own personal wisdom and strength, is to own the families -- even if it means owning his beta-boy neighbor's family. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've already stated at length what happens <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/08/nerds-with-guns.html">when the rich men buy up all the women</a>. But every position has pros and cons, and having the weakest, least-responsible, most unreliable men make children certainly has cons. Moses had an answer. At the moment, aside from Margaret Sanger, we don't.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like most controversial issues, this "who should own the children?" is more a question of <i>values</i> than <i>morals</i>. A moral is simple, a <i>don't tell lies </i>or <i>don't commit adultery, </i>and usually agreed upon by everyone vaguely. A value is a ranking of how important the morals are individually, tells you how far you'll take each moral, and is something few of us know until we're put to the test. </div><div><br /></div><div>For instance, we know you shouldn't trade your wife out for another. But what if she throws pans at you or bangs all your friends? We all know things would be better if we were honest -- but how much truth do you need to say when all it will accomplish is to get you or your loved ones in trouble? Is it wrong to kill people? What if it's the middle of the night and those people just broke into your house? You say you judge people by their character, but what happens if your daughter comes home one day -- with a black boy in saggy pants and a du-rag? How much time do you give him to prove himself? </div><div><br /></div><div>There are varying opinions on these questions because people have varying histories, interests, loves, and levels of intelligence -- and thus different values. The beauty of Old Testament Law is that it's both the morals <i>and</i> the values to place them. That's why The Ten Commandments were followed by whole chapters of laws, and the Book of Exodus was followed by Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Thus every good Jew know the difference between taxation and theft, and when to turn the other cheek and when to tell his neighbor to shove it, and when you had to keep your wife and when you could finally get rid of her. The Ten Commandments are the bones of the law, not the meat and blood of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>I once told this to a Christian girl, how in Leviticus 17:19 Jews were ordered, by law, to air their grievances so that things could get fixed and so grudges wouldn't fester -- a great national policy which Jewesses and the men who date them confirm to this day. She said to me <i>we're not under law anymore, we're under grace</i> -- and I never brought up anything beautiful to her again. She already disrespects her God. What more could I have to offer her?</div><div><br /></div><div>I value religion highly because I value a conformity of <i>values</i> highly. This was one of religion's main jobs: to police the soul while the state policed the body. But in a country where the church is dying you can count on camaraderie dying too. People who have the same morals but different values are often totally incompatible; and every man on the street is a mystery to us, uncovered when the shit hits the fan, or when an election happens. A loss of Christendom means being a foreigner in your own land. Almost everyone here is a stranger -- first to God, and then to his neighbor***.</div><div><br /></div><div>***It might be safe to surmise here that a drop in religious belonging corresponds directly to a rise in virtue signaling. Man feels a need to know who's around him, so he announces himself slyly or loudly; and when he's in a position of power, he requires those around to signal <i>for him</i>. A religious society, one which predominantly features one form of a religion, is actually more free in this aspect: we assume we know where people stand, to some degree, and so we don't require them to <i>declare it</i>.<br /></div><div><p><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Email me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com </i>and start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></p><p><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></p></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-27438983910501741152021-09-15T07:35:00.020-07:002021-10-08T06:07:33.923-07:00On going to college<p>Dear H,</p><p>The way to spot a man of genuine intelligence isn't to look at his brains, but to look at his stomach. I don't care if you have a degree. What do you feed on? Can you stop reading? Can you stop talking about and chewing on tough ideas? Does new information scare you, or do you take it as a challenge? <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>The man of middle-rank intelligence is already full and has already "arrived": he has an ideology set up and impervious to all assaults, a shelf of books that rarely grows, a fascination with one or two pet subjects and little else -- above all a belief that he's already gotten "an education." He looks not for what's beautifully stated, not for what's well put-together, not for the slap-in-the-face things we <i>need</i> to hear, but for what already confirms his beliefs. He may only be 30, but his mind is a museum.</p><p>A really intelligent man doesn't want confirmation all the time -- he wants a fight. He wants to fight because he loves to express himself and to grow. He can never really lose a fight, and he knows it. To be contradicted and beaten is to become wiser. The ego takes a beating, not the man; and the more a man he is, the less his ego takes a beating.</p><p>The growing usually begins after boring-ass professors stop giving you badly-written books and asking you <i>their</i> questions. Churchill said <i>I began my education at a very early age; in fact, right after I left college</i>. At this point, when you can find what you love or hate and dive deeply into each, your passions open your mind and spill out your soul; fertility and virility in one vibrant package. Then your professors aren't the middling sort but the geniuses -- the greatest of your age or, if you're really smart, the ones who made it out of their own. Brilliant men who found the most brilliant things about men and became interesting to men they'd never have a chance to meet. <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/03/the-dream-and-gift.html">The deader the authors, the better the bookshelf</a>.</p><p>And this of course is up to you, not anyone else. The quality of your education is determined by your appetite to know how and why, your ear for a good sentence, your taking something said five-hundred years ago and making it fit today. To the healthy mind everything and everyone is a lesson* -- but some things are better lessons than others, and your ability to chase them, to chew them, to sift them defines how smart you are: not your profession or your degree. </p><p>This being said, I regret dropping out of college not because I could have learned something, but because I could have met somebody. Not a single professor of mine inspired me, or taught me anything useful -- except maybe that professors are mostly blowhards. But what I realize now is that what college failed to do for me, aside from giving me a middle-class profession, was what college is <i>actually </i>intended to do for me. And that is to give me a middle-class flavor**.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQi4rr_fBxlABCw-MGJA5SUaRK_G2pyrekW0HFtBWE3-Fc7F9jov0bg9mlcogvd8X0qBMri1QGKPLPoc6mELSCbpyHeyMkkSmQDZsWuDic3B9QgvrR7ORLB7s6-1flnyQWYjSq4PCBJDGk/s900/dhdhdhd.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQi4rr_fBxlABCw-MGJA5SUaRK_G2pyrekW0HFtBWE3-Fc7F9jov0bg9mlcogvd8X0qBMri1QGKPLPoc6mELSCbpyHeyMkkSmQDZsWuDic3B9QgvrR7ORLB7s6-1flnyQWYjSq4PCBJDGk/s320/dhdhdhd.png" width="320" /></a></div>The courses themselves are a large part of the whole process, but as I get older I doubt they're the main part. The big thing that comes out of a college education is a college socialization -- the rubbing of shoulders with intellectuals and on-the-way-ups; the widening of a horizon; the witnessing of people reaching for and getting the possibilities of life; the laying of middle-class women before they become mothers; the smoothing of rough edges, the polishing of manners. The knowing the cues, the body language, the lingo of the well-to-do, and the making of connections of all kinds. Things that make for "success" in life. Not taking Psych 201 but knowing the psychology of the winners and makers and movers. Not just the bachelor's degree but the carriage, the dignity, the whole spirit of entitlement, of being <i>above</i>. We leave college and we put on a job; but before we can really rise to some jobs, we have to put on the college. Rarely do we meet a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist who doesn't have an <i>air</i> about him. The confidence goes hand-in-hand with the know-how (and many times without it), and for everything it gives in charm, it has a tendency to make the learned obnoxious. Not all of them, but many of them.<br /><p></p><p>This marketing is both blatant and secret. The wealth-ridden, stately, mansionesque palaces of the university aren't a novelty but a feature -- to instill a sense of its greatness in the pupils, and reinforce a sense of worship. Colleges have done for us what the Catholics have mastered and the Protestants have mangled: to make our senses teach us what the lectures don't. It impresses on us a sense of smallness in the shadow of towers (sometimes built to look ancient), and steeples, and columns, and cobblestone or red-tiled streets, and well-manicured groves. We have no choice but to accept the superiority of the faculty, in their robes and hats, like our ancestors used to bow to the cardinal. We look at our own homes, especially here in America, where the Old World grandeur exists almost nowhere but Wall Street and the state and the college and occasionally the church, and we assume that where we came from is vulgar, and that we've entered the presence not only of the wealthy, but of the superior.</p><p>But this is mostly showbiz. The chance that your professor is genuinely intelligent is low, and the chance that he's manly or useful or charming or virtuous is even lower. His ideas are accepted as truth often before we've had the chance to really process other ideas. We haven't had a chance because we're too young. Education is thus always kind of a swindle -- not because teaching is always wrong, but because most students never have a chance to size it up. At least <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/03/the-joys-of-being-thirty-something.html">not like a 40 year-old man would.</a> </p><p>The students who do try to question it and digest it properly, the brave, the intelligent, the considerate and the skeptical, only show their youth by challenging the status quo. College isn't a place for finding truth but for transmission, and in the student's case, for <i>reception</i>. In a well-run state it's a place to churn out "our" kind of people -- the kind of people we need to keep this society well-run, and prosperous. Each people has its own particular flavor to better spice up the national recipe. In a collapsing state colleges manufacture new snake-oils, and churn out the resentful. A really intelligent student, one who knows what a college does, answers the questions the "right way," gets his A+, and talks shit behind the professor's back. </p><p>A college is a hill to die on -- for everyone except the students. If a riot needs to happen, the people who should be burning the college down are the parents***. </p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J </p><p>*Montaigne wrote, in his essay <i>On The Art of Discussion</i>,</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>A bad way of speaking reforms mine better than a good one. Every day the stupid bearing of another warns and admonishes me. What stings, touches and arouses us better than what pleases. These times are fit for improving us only backward, by disagreement more than by agreement, by difference more than by similarity. Being little taught by good examples, I make use of the bad ones, whose lessons are common. I have tried to make myself as agreeable as I saw others unpleasant, as firm as I saw others lax, as mild as I saw others violent.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>To learn from books is good, but the real sport for intelligent men is talking. When we put ideas together on the fly, when one man's library collides with another's, when one man's perspective merges into another's, when we're forced to consider others into our dreams, <i>then</i> we learn whether we really know things or just think we know them. On our own, in our rooms, we plan, we tinker, we dream about how things are and how they ought to be. When we talk to others, we learn how far we're willing to push these thoughts -- and what we're willing to give up in order to fit in. </p><p>**Am I saying that I lack charm, or manners, or the capability to socialize with the well-to-do? Absolutely not. I just don't know many intellectuals -- and my lack of connections to public intellectuals has <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/09/on-not-being-famous.html">buried my whole writing career</a>. </p><p>An unconnected intellectual has to be an exceptional self-marketer, which I'm not. My essays, being an unholy mix between history and philosophy and personal reflection and polemics and footnotes, are bad fits for most (no -- <i>all</i>) magazines. <i>Who*****</i> you know in academia and in the public sphere is almost always more important than <i>what</i> you know. A good word from a mediocre pundit can sell even a bad book. But who can save these letters? They'll probably get buried when I do. </p><p>***These days the colleges are funded by the people, but the people aren't in control of the colleges. "Democracy" and "equality" are preached and the practice is totally subverted. </p><p>But here we have some questions. Yes we're mad at the colleges right now. But have colleges ever been of, by, and for the people -- or are they a tool of the elites? Have the lay-people, and especially the lower classes, ever <i>really</i> had control of the college system? <i>Could</i> they? Would you trust Joe Plumber to know what makes a great professor of anything but plumbing? And if the average man really did take control of it, would it be worth sending your kid to? </p><p>I submit that when the elites are rotten and state-funded, control <i>has</i> to be taken back****. If the elites are rotten and self-funded, Mao had the right idea in The Cultural Revolution -- that the teachers had to be beaten up, and worse. But just like an anarchist takeover of a factory, you had better be prepared, at least for a while, for things to go sideways. The public can destroy an evil here, and perhaps get rid of a cancer, but they're incapable of making a really great college. </p><p>This of course is in line with democracy anyway. There was never a time, even in the most democratic environments, where "the people" were able to run things. The function of anything requires a power structure comprised of a few people and their connections, and the battle of any election isn't between peoples, but between cabals. The majority fights over which minority will rule them, and how far the minority can go. Thus the main point of a democracy isn't positive, but negative. It was never for the people to rule things. It was so they could stop them.</p><p>C.S. Lewis put it better, in his much overlooked <i>Present Concerns</i>,</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. </i></blockquote><p></p><p>****Why is it that our colleges are so rotten? For the simple reason that colleges are about business. It might be easy to say, here, that the college is the business and the students are the customers, but this is only half true. The college is the customer and the professor is the business. As always, the question to be asked is, who's selling, and who's buying? </p><p>It all comes down to advertising. How does a would-be professor market himself? He could do what he's supposed to do, which is to teach tried-and-true things in an interesting way. But being interesting is hard, and what's interesting to the quasi-intellectual snobs who run the college? Simply put, new spins on old things. </p><p>But there's only so much spin you can put on an old thing, and at some point you have to start saying new things, writing new books, whipping up a frenzy for a moral fad, or a new classification of learning, or a counter-take on a hero or a nation. Whatever gets people's attention and makes your college stand out. </p><p>Novelty and genius, being products of the imagination, are easily confused -- and in the world of academia, where social theories can be churned out <i>en-masse</i> without testing, and a lack of fresh ideas is taken for a lack of genius, the college has to pick between boring people to death and killing them with snake oils. The former saves society at the expense of the schools. The latter boosts the schools but ends us killing the society. </p><p>Thus I posit that a dynamic society, a liberal society, an open society will always have a tendency to kill itself -- not out of a suicidal tendency, but out of its intellectuals' need to feel <i>alive</i>.</p><p>*****I know I’m supposed to use the word <i>Whom</i>. I know when to use <i>Whom</i> and when to not use it. It’s just that every time I use <i>Whom</i> I feel like I’m pretending to be somebody else, and that the somebody else I’m trying to be is a giant tool. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Email me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com </i>and start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></p><p><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></p>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-792313241862520060.post-13000559678109952722021-08-11T04:50:00.016-07:002021-08-25T15:22:57.882-07:00Sex at Dawn: a counterpoint<p>Dear T,</p><p>I read Christopher Ryan's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships-ebook/dp/B007679QTG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sex+at+dawn&qid=1627906945&sr=8-1">Sex at Dawn</a></i> because I'm a horndog, and like all horndogs I need an excuse. His short and brutal work, an evolutionary survey of human sexuality, a work which Mr. Ryan says provides no solutions and levels us with the apes, is great at describing the problem of sex; and if it doesn't provide any solid guidance, at least it helps you to not feel like a freak. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Which I did until I was about 30, because <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2018/04/the-family-at-end-of-world.html">I was raised in a strict Evangelical household</a>. My mom was born out of wedlock in Tegucigalpa. She'd spent her childhood hiding in closets from her father's new wife*, and had a pretty strong view of sexuality -- that it could wreck your life, and had to be controlled. In short sexual expression wasn't <i>really</i> approved in our household, because what happened to her was never going to happen to us, or any of her grandchildren. </p><p>It was said that sex was for marriage and left at that. "Talks" were awkward and disturbing and delivered too late. Groans of disapproval followed every casual mention of sex on tv. I was told women don't like sexual attention**, nobody told me about masturbation or ejaculation until well after I'd crossed all the lines, and if a woman was scantily-clad, the overall rule was "eyes to the floor." It was always <i>no</i> and Jesus was watching -- not just where your hands and your eyes went, but where your mind went. </p><p>This put me into a state fluctuating constantly between ecstasy and shame and terror. I was always thinking about naked women, and the thought that one day I'd get <i>discovered</i> was hanging over me like a death sentence. So when a man like Ryan comes along and tells me I'm not a fallen man, but a high-standing ape, I listen. Perspective is everything when you're looking for a pardon. Did you get kicked out of heaven -- and deserve to be shamed? Or are you climbing out of the mud -- and deserve to be pitied? </p><p>Ryan believes it's the latter, and that if we came from the apes, the climb to chastity isn't isn't a stroll up a valley, but more like scaling a cliff. He has plenty of data to back it, such as </p><p>1) that we're genetically most like chimps and bonobos, and that bonobos are the horniest, skankiest animals on the planet -- worse than dogs.</p><p>2) That gibbons are the <i>only</i> really monogamous apes. </p><p>3) That a man's genitalia, unlike most other animals, is gigantically-sized and built for repeated and promiscuous intercourse. </p><p>4) That unlike almost all other animals, menstruation is <i>hidden --</i> meaning we have sex anytime, regardless of fertility, and</p><p>5) That this means fatherhood can be easily hidden. </p><p>He states, in no uncertain terms,</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more “human” than animal. Strictly reproductive, once-in-a-blue-moon sex is more “animal” than human. In other words, an excessively horny monkey is acting “human,” while a man or woman uninterested in sex more than once or twice a year would be, strictly speaking, "acting like an animal."</i></blockquote><p></p><p>In addition to the above, he cites the mountains of advertisements claiming to spice up old marriages, the wild success of the porn industry, and if these aren't enough, he asks us to take a frank look at the things we dream about, plan for, and look back fondly upon***. (He also cites archaeological digs and studies of bushmen****, but I feel to little effect. The bones tell us nothing about romance, and the bushmen are the beta-men. The nobodies who lag behind everybody <i>do </i>teach us a lesson -- and it's <i>don't be like us</i>.) </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj20tXxq2bxuHMAvqoqtYR_uFa8phCOzhj5rAU0GF3tImyiHxKbJ8r46akF4Mq7ZBQI5cBMoI0e7DHx9Csm1aw5wGPtjiyFMBjHoUqcYBqME8aXUfuTUFA5vXKvdhEJR341jQ5z10cv_rgq/s1170/Adam-and-Eve-1170x658.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="1170" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj20tXxq2bxuHMAvqoqtYR_uFa8phCOzhj5rAU0GF3tImyiHxKbJ8r46akF4Mq7ZBQI5cBMoI0e7DHx9Csm1aw5wGPtjiyFMBjHoUqcYBqME8aXUfuTUFA5vXKvdhEJR341jQ5z10cv_rgq/s320/Adam-and-Eve-1170x658.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>All this evidence leads him to wonder why, exactly, we took up monogamy so globally. Like the average Marxist, he speculates it was the Agricultural Revolution. Once we had property, sexual paradise ended. Then you weren't sharing your kill but hoarding your crops -- a way more arduous job in general. When you were hoarding your food, and every ounce of it was worked out of the ground by skill, and sweat, and by luck, you were careful whom you shared it with. <br /><p></p><p>Other men's children took a backseat to your own. If some were your children then so were the women you made them with. One or more women, if you could afford it (the more the merrier, for a while); and the more prosperous you were, the more women traded you sexual exclusivity for security. Thus sex, for a woman, was just as much for profit as for romance. What was once an all-you-can-eat buffet, <i>a la</i> the Garden of Eden, became a closely-guarded hen house. Marriage was a contract, and the worst thing to a man was to have his wife cheat on him and end up slaving for some lesser man's bastard.</p><p>This at least is what Ryan proposes. But what's surprising is he believes we can get rid of it. As if jealousy was something we invented, or that pillow-talk promises are merely business. As if sharing goods in common and sharing women in common are the same thing. As if getting rid of a barn really means going back to The Garden. </p><p>But even if (as Marxists believe) going propertyless means going promiscuous*****, the bridge was burned before any of us knew it. Once the population exploded we became slaves to the fields. Every advance we ever made was a trap in the same mold. We flew to the moon and got chained to our desks. Property meant a new way of thinking, of planning, of loving. What may have been monkey business at one point became serious business -- to the point where a whole society armed itself against the promiscuous, and the societies that didn't were left behind, from yesterday's bushmen to today's ghetto. </p><p>Even polygamy lost out to monogamy. The men who had too many wives couldn't keep up with them. The men who had no wives <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/08/nerds-with-guns.html">caused trouble for everyone else</a>. The monogamists bred their children faster, raised their children better, kept the men in line better. Society was more stable, and what was once a fringe element, even to the Chosen People, ended up a world standard. The equal distribution of goods was a bust, but the equal distribution of women was wildly successful. We also gave communism a shot. Word is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Communist-Exposing-Communism-Restoring-ebook/dp/B00B76J804/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=the+naked+communist&qid=1627910283&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFZMzNJUVk0RUNBM1MmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAzNjc3MTYyRUk0TkxYOEVYNzVFJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA1ODM1MTUySk1UM1NHWUVYMEtDJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==">it ended badly</a>******.</p><p>Some people say that promiscuity and polyamory are disgusting. But Ryan says <a href="http://www.letterstohannah.net/2019/04/on-ancient-custom-of-babylonians.html">tastes vary between cultures</a> ("an islander had sex with an 11 year-old in public!"), and that if some African hillbilly can drink saliva beer, maybe we can do gang-bangs too. And what about the apes? Isn't it possible that if we left their ways behind, we could pick them up again?</p><p>To this question I ask, which ape's ways? Promiscuity like the bonobo? Or gang-bangs during fertility like the chimpanzees? How about we do it like the gorillas or the orangutans -- polygamy, or sometimes rape? And if the apes are different from each other, couldn't we, the most unique of the apes, be different from <i>them</i>? Couldn't the species that loves Romeo and Juliet have its <i>own</i> brand of sexuality -- one that's way more robust, fantastical, romantic, nuanced, embarrassing, surprising, hilarious, guilt-ridden, exhilarating, perverted, regrettable at times, making most of us vulnerable and anxious, overpromised and underdelivered; underpromised and overdelivered; building and wrecking reputations; everyone an amateur but some of us turned professional? And wouldn't this make us completely unique? With our own laws, customs, manners, and art-forms? And couldn't those of us who do it ape-style be worse off -- financially, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally -- even if we have the nads for it? </p><p>I don't doubt that we share lots with the apes, and that one of these things is an insatiable drive for "free" sex. But one thing we don't share with apes is our foresight; and once we got these brains, whether from God or from Mother Nature, we applied them to relationships. So Mr. Ryan is expressing his birthright as a human being here: to see what's being done and imagine it another way -- the foundation of all progress and, in an age of science, of almost every human catastrophe. But there's a difference between imagining the possibilities and calling them equal; and if Ryan thinks he can change romance by bringing up the apes, he'll probably end up with one of his kids hiding in the closet from his newest mistress. And if the kid's got any brains, she'll see her father acting like a bonobo, and decide instead to ape great grandpa -- probably a Catholic, or an Evangelical. </p><p>Yours,</p><p>-J </p><p>P.S. The thing that irks me about this book is the way it was framed. It could have been a paean to chastity -- a deep look a the enormous difficulty of being true to someone and sticking with them until they die. But the difference between liberals and conservatives is starker here than ever. A conservative would look at this book and then admire the man who has ten kids, provides for them, raises them well, and is loved by his wife. Otherwise what we know as the <i>human, </i>almost god-like talent for family values. But the liberal doesn't look up to the patriarch, the master of his urges and the establisher of dynasties. The liberal looks back to the bonobo -- not to show how far we've come and how majestic we can be, but to justify the baby-daddy.<br /></p><p>Ryan's take is discouraging, but he leaves us some real gems:</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>Sartre
got it backwards when he proclaimed, “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (Hell
is other people). It’s the absence of other people that is hellish for
our species. Human beings are so desperate for social contact that
prisoners almost universally choose the company of murderous lunatics
over extended isolation. “I would rather have had the worst companion
than no companion at all,” said journalist Terry Anderson, recalling his
seven-year ordeal as a hostage in Lebanon</i></blockquote><p></p><p>and</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>making
sense of human nature is anything but simple. Human nature has been
landscaped, replanted, weeded, fertilized, fenced off, seeded, and
irrigated as intensively as any garden or seaside golf course. Human
beings have been under cultivation longer than we’ve been cultivating
anything else. Our cultures domesticate us for obscure purposes,
nurturing and encouraging certain aspects of our behavior and tendencies
while seeking to eliminate those that might be disruptive. Agriculture,
one might say, has involved the domestication of the human being as
much as of any plant or other animal.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>and this well-buried nugget of Mark Twain's, </p><i><blockquote>[Man]
has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of
all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the
heart of every individual of his race…sexual intercourse! It is as if a
lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a
rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he
should elect to leave out water!</blockquote></i><p> </p><p>*My grandpa Enrique is dear to me and I never met him. He's actually dear to the whole family. He was so smart and talented that the Honduran government hired him as a civil engineer, and there are still highways and bridges you can point to, to this day, and say that he made them. He saved his money, and spent wisely, and with everything he saved he reinvested into the family -- sending all his siblings to college, and thus saving them from third-world poverty. I'm fuzzy on the numbers, but from what I can gather he sent between six and ten people altogether. If we can prove two miracles I believe this qualifies him for sainthood.<br /></p><p>He had a sense of humor so sharp and so rascally that it would leave everyone in stitches -- a sense of humor I inherited, and for which my grandma, his ex-girlfriend, calls both of us <i>el terriblé</i>. He was so charming with women that they couldn't keep their pants on, which I also inherited. I learned to control myself and he didn't.</p><p>He tried to marry my grandma after my mom was born, but grandma refused. I thought it was because he was a playboy, but I hear it was also a class issue. He was from a well-bred family and she wasn't, and she was always made to feel it. Not that she didn't love him, but when you marry a man you marry his family. But my mom was born to him nevertheless, and if my grandma wasn't married into the family, mom unofficially was. And when my grandpa married somebody else, mom would still visit him, and when the wife came around, my mom was told here and there to hide in the closet. She always felt unwanted, illegitimate, something to be covered up and hidden away. He broke her heart and she carried it with her the rest of her life. </p><p>I never met grandpa Enrique because I never had the chance to. Mom was adopted, effectively, by other members of his family -- great people, hard-working people, middle-class and solid Catholics -- and she was taken out of Tegucigalpa to be raised in the San Francisco bay area. She always wondered if he loved her, but was so badly burned that she never really talked about him******. And she didn't want us to get burned like she was. I never got a call from him, or a letter, or, so far as I'm aware, even a mention. She stayed away from him and she made sure I did. Out of sight, out of mind. </p><p>But one day she realized she was a woman with children of her own, and in a stable, loving family; and she decided that what happened ought to be put behind her, and that maybe it was time to reconcile. She made the trip back to Honduras and saw him for the first time in decades -- and he was so charming, so friendly, so familiar, that she said it felt like they had been together the whole time. </p><p>He told her he had a surprise for her. This eighty-plus year-old man then proceeded to introduce her to her <i>new sister</i>, a baby, when he was over 80 years old and his actual wife was post-menstrual. Mom then realized he was the same he'd always been, that he was still ruining women's and children's lives, and she left him behind, never to see him again. He passed away shortly thereafter. I want to meet him and I'll never get the chance to.</p><p>**I don't believe women are uninterested in sex because I've met too many of them. But some evidence does favor my mom's theory. </p><p>One interesting study mentioned by Mr. Ryan (Clark and Hatfield, 1989) involved students at Florida State University. These researchers got a hot girl and a hot guy to go around asking people for a roll in the hay. When the men were approached by the hot girl, 75% of them said yes, and if they couldn't say yes, they <i>almost always</i> asked for a rain check. But when the hot guy approached the women, <i>zero</i> said yes -- a result we've gotten many times on many campuses since.</p><p>This doesn't prove women are frigid. But it does mean they have brains, and that if you want to turn them on, you've got to have either talent or booze.</p><p>***Much can be said about remembering our past lovers fondly, but the fact stands: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/sexual-partners-and-marital-happiness/573493/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3wV4U8Hg-dYOo6e--hzZSIo7uWJehSuU3q3knWnMhH0hqgnmi6jmPrYEE">according to even <i>The Atlantic</i></a>,
in a modern society, the fewer sexual partners you have, the happier
your marriage is likely to be. By some miracle I did okay, but most skanks and players don't. In the long run, the prude almost
always has the last laugh.</p><p>****Ryan writes regarding the Matis people, </p><i><blockquote>Anthropologist
Philippe Erikson confirms, 'Plural paternity…is more than a theoretical
possibility…. Extramarital sex is not only widely practiced and usually
tolerated, in many respects, it also appears mandatory. Married or not,
one has a moral duty to respond to the sexual advances of opposite-sex
cross-cousins (real or classificatory), under pains of being labeled
‘stingy of one’s genitals,’ a breach of Matis ethics far more serious
than plain infidelity. ”Being labeled a sexual cheapskate is no
laughing matter, apparently. Erikson writes of one young man who cowered
in the anthropologist’s hut for hours, hiding from his horny cousin,
whose advances he couldn’t legitimately reject if she tracked him down.</blockquote></i><p>This
hilarious example aside, one thing that's missing in the "monogamy is
just a matter of taste" argument is that other forms of sexuality go way
beyond comedy and "tastelessness." I mention here such abominations as
pederasty, incest, bestiality, kidnapping women and forcing them to
marry you, war as a means of acquiring sex slaves, and giving somebody a
Dirty Sanchez -- each of which I think deserves a giant scowl and a
gallows to match it. </p><p>Ryan, like the cosmopolitan and the
sociologist, argues from a broad perspective. He takes everyone as a
whole and forgets how to be somebody in particular. But to be offended
by nobody is to be disgusting to everybody. The fastest way to become
disgusting is to argue nothing is.</p><p>*****Some evidence that <i>property</i> necessitates <i>monogamy </i>is Winston Churchill's mom -- a woman reputed in <i>The Last Lion </i>to have over 200 lovers; and whose lovers, on almost every continent, and in every place of privilege, opened the whole world to her son. We might even owe winning World War 2 to it. If she'd been a poor black woman in Newark she would have been labeled a ho, or died of disease, and Winston would have ended up mired in crime and suffering and embarrassment. But somehow Jennie Churchill had a great time and got "further in life" because of it. Money seems to be the answer here. That and a title to cancel out follies.</p><p>The Victorians come across as prudish to us, but the fact here is that the prudishness was mostly for the middle and lower classes. To be nobility in Victorian England was to be a lover of nobility; and massive parties were arranged, in mansions with dozens or hundreds of rooms, where extra-marital affairs were planned by the hostess in advance. </p><p>A good planner got a reputation by knowing whose room to put next to whose. When the lights would go dim, ladies and gentlemen would scurry out of their beds and into another's, and before the sun came up, before anyone could see any faces too well, a servant would ring a bell, and husbands and wives would slip quietly back to their rooms. </p><p>Today we excuse fooling around <i>before</i> marriage, and if you cheat on your wife you're a bastard. The Victorian nobility believed almost the opposite. You were chaste until marriage and then you could (discreetly) act single. Jennie Churchill cheated on Randolph until the day he died. He got syphillis from a random prank encounter with a prostitute, went insane, and from the moment they found out about it, he never made love to Jennie Churchill again. </p><p>The big question is, how did Winston feel about it? </p><p>He adored her and never got her attention. He never really chased women, had sex rarely, and by the time he was a mover and a shaker, was completely impotent. Like with my mom, one extreme begets another. Monogamy begins with the suffering from promiscuity. You can throw the rules aside for a while, but someone, maybe a child, maybe a grandchild, will pick them right back up again -- and turn you into a horror story. </p><p>******Cleon Skousen writes, in <i>The Naked Communist</i>, of the Marxist view of problem-solving,</p><i></i><blockquote><i>[The Communist's doctrine is] that problems can be solved by eliminating the institution from which the problems emanate. Even Marx and Engels may have been unaware that this was what they were doing, but the student will note how completely this approach dominates every problem they undertook to solve. </i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Take, for example, the problems of government. Marx and Engels would solve these problems by working for the day when they could eliminate government. Problems of morals would be solved by doing away with morals. Problems growing out of religion would be solved by doing away with religion. Problems of marriage, home and family would be eliminated by doing away with marriage, home and family. The problems arising out of property rights would be resolved by not allowing anyone to have any property rights. The problem of equalizing wages would be solved by abolishing wages. Problems connected with money, markets and prices would be solved by doing away with money, markets and prices. Problems of competition in production and distribution would be solved by forcibly prohibiting competition. Finally, they would solve all the problems of modern society by using revolution to destroy this society. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It seems the phantom of Communist hope can only arise from the bowels of the earth through the ashes of all that now is. Communism must be built for one purpose—to destroy. Only after the great destruction did the Communist leaders dare to hope that they might offer to their disciples the possibility of freedom, equality and justice.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It is this dismal and nebulous promise for the future which Communism offers the world today. Until such a day comes, the Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as “based on force and unrestricted by any laws,” the suspension of all civil liberties—suppression of free press, free speech and assembly, the existence of slave labor camps, the constant observation of all citizens by secret police, the long periods of service in the military, the poverty of collective farming, the risk of being liquidated if discovered associating with deviationists, and finally, the tolerance of an economic order which promises little more than a life of bare subsistence for generations to come.</i></div></blockquote><p>*******Solomon says <i>a father is the glory of his children. </i>Thus
despite my grandpa's failings, it was the policy of my grandma to never
speak a bad word about him. A good thing, too, since a boy knows where
he comes from. To destroy a man in front of his child is to destroy the
child -- something many single moms are too stupid to realize. You crush the stalk and you ruin the flower. </p><p>I'd add to this
that no boy wants to be like his mother. In the absence of a father
he'll cling on to his memory, or what's spoken about him; and if neither
happens, some other man, or ideas of men, will fill the space. If he's
lucky, a good man will fill it, but in a single-parent household run by
the mother, a household due to obvious reasons most likely located in a
ghetto, the man within arm's length is likely to be low quality --
another child, a chronically unemployed loser, a gang member, a football
gorilla, or another one of his mom's goddamned boyfriends. Thus there
is no such thing as an "absent man." You either pick a good man and
stick with him, or your boy picks his own man to follow, and probably
not the man you would've. <br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Email me at <i>letterssubscription@gmail.com </i>and start your subscription today.</span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></b></p><p><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;">Support the Letters by sending a gift to </span></b><a href="http://paypal.me/supporttheletters"><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;">paypal.me/supporttheletters</span></b></a><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; color: red; font-size: 18pt;"> or </span></b><b><span style="background: none 0% 0% repeat scroll white; font-size: 18pt;"><a href="http://www.venmo.com/TheLetters">www.venmo.com/TheLetters</a></span></b></p><p> </p><div><i></i></div>Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02037654579970701695noreply@blogger.com0