This Week in Reaction (2014/01/09)

The week started out with The Post-Rationalist Religion Discussion (Artificial and Otherwise) very much at the top of the News of Reaction^®. But the Islamic extremist attack on Charlie Hebdo HQ in Paris changed all of that. I’ll leave it to the youngsters more attentive and diligent than me to classify and curate the Wider Reactosphere’s full reaction to the incident. My own veers dangerously close to a pox-upon-both-houses approach. I’ve no sympathy for Charlie Hebdo, a publication that would have no audience in a natural, healthy society; and I’ve no sympathy for Islam nor a fortiori the extremists it seems to have produced lately. The irony, if only it were funny, is that the very toleration of the presence of Mohammedans, of even the known-to-be-radical type, in Christian (genetically) France is itself a symptom of the social and psychological disorder of a nation in which Charlie Hebdo is defended and widely read. The antagonists, in short, seem to deserve each other.

Free Northerner says, “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie”. Je ne suis. Legionnaire asks, “Qui Je-suis?” As a bit Francophile myself, I could ask the same. NIO offers his two three cents.

First point– the media is left wing, anything or anyone that attacks them is attacking the left and not ‘me’, ‘us’, ‘Christianity’ or ‘western civilisation’.

Second point – Should Muslims (the cape) be the target? Or should the matador?

Third point – This is an extension of the second point, which is how, exactly, could Muslims exist in such large numbers in the west if there was no benefits systems in place, our elite did not aggressively enact discrimination against the majority ethnic population and law and order were applied with 100% force.

Henry’s thoughts on the matter in “Terrorists Win” align closely with my own. An enemy hostile to my way of life, who doesn’t understand the nature of power, has blithely promoted the entry of another of my enemies who does.

It is really that simple: the pretenses to liberalism can be disrupted by small metal objects measuring 7.92 mm in diameter hurled forth at 715 m/s. Goodbye pretenses. Goodbye debating-hall rights.

Mark Yuray applies a very wide-angle lens to The Charlie Hebdo Attack in Perspective. Mitchell finds a place where Conspiracy Theories, Russian News, and Charlie Hebdo Converge. Malcolm Pollack’s thoughts on the subject here. And Ash Milton says, “#JeSuisCharlie Won’t Save Free Speech”, over at Social Matter. More on that below.

Now what was I gonna talk about this week?

Oh yeah…

The Post-Rationalist/Religio Discussion (see here, here, here, here and here) continues with a major contribution from Mark Yuray: Quit Playing Prophet. Yuray takes a pessimistic view of the chances of successfully cutting a new pagan religion, with prosocial features we happen to like, from a new cloth. I, of course, share this pessimism. But, as I bleated on twitter a while back, I think the entire discussion remains too focused on the rites & dogma of religion, and not enough on the psychology and structure of which it produces. Religion arises naturally. Maybe not quite like gills on fish, but not as artificially as Corporate Statements of Core Values. Agnostic neoreactionaries, though sympathetic towards the role religion necessarily plays in social life, are taking an overly reductionist view of religion. Which strikes me as the same species of error that permits them to look at cosmos and not feel in their bones the absolute logical necessity of a creator.

Another response to Yuray inter alia from (new to me) Ted Colt: A Message from the Patriarchy: The Horror Approaching. Ted Colt gets a follow and a place on the (soon to be a permanent page here) weblog roll.

Speaking of religion and public life (or meta conceptions thereof), Bryce Laliberte drops a weighty part two in his series Religion, Coteleology, and the Gnonnic Eschaton:

The Enlightenment emphasizes the role of human reason in the actuation of the eschaton, but we now know that human reason is itself an element which is being acted upon in the production of the eschaton. The Church emphasizes the fulfillment of God’s purpose in the eschaton, while it also remains very agnostic on the efficient cause[.]

Also from Anarcho Papist’s main blog: Rules and Emergent Form and Parental Involvement and Civilization in which we find:

This leads me to a thesis: as greater parental involvement is correlated to K-selection, then it follows that social changes away from parental involvement in the significant life events of their children represents a regression. Parents, who were once intimately involved in the education of their children, now outsource this to professional agents of the state. Parents, who used to instill wisdom about the ways of the world, are afraid to contradict their children and lose their esteem. Parents, who used to exercise more influence in the selection of their child’s mate, now leave their children to figure out the rough terrain of sexuality on their own through trial and error. Present social norms of the relationships shared between parent and child have regressed to a state nearer that common to the animal kingdom; not that we have entirely regressed, certainly, but it remains that these norms are, compared to the past, relatively less K-selected.

Speaking of Bryce, he kicks off a new blog: Unterrorist, dedicated to more… <aherm>digestible </aherm> communications. It remains unclear, however, at this point how Cats are Making You Insane (Sort of) is any sense UN-terroristic. Also musings about Drones Delivering Drugs Paid for With BTC. And while The Mythical Male Experience may not be quite up-to-snuff (in Bryce’s judgement) for Bryce’s Main Blog, it’s definitely not throw-away stuff here:

Hitting on women can be harrowing, even risky, with a low chance of reward. If a man ever complains about the situation he faces, whether it is a legitimate complaint or not, he will be shamed as an autistic, basement-dwelling virgin. This tendency to ignore men who complain or whine, while clearly a natural reflex in both men and women, does lead to certain substantial disadvantageous asymmetries being overlooked. Society still portends to demand of men all that it has ever demanded, but for less and less reward. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that men are choosing to opt out of society, because a very simple and rational calculation dictates that the risks and costs of engaging women romantically outweighs any benefits. Women demand more than ever and expect to give less in return than ever. This is the perfect set up to many men and women being estranged from each other, unable to encounter and know each other in the traditional, parent-guided way Gnon intended, rather than the predatory, barbaric environment of seduction and pickup artistry.

Arthur Richard Harrison makes a rare appearance over at Theden to report that The Catholic Church Is Like, Relevant, Brah! But rubbing Catholic noses in the idiocy displayed by (some of) their Bishops’ (Staffs) was not his only intent:

Anything sacred is supposed to be eternal. But advertising plays on fads and trends. When religious rites are connected with this kind of an advertising campaign, maybe they will become “relevant” to young people’s lives, in the same way that countless fashion trends were “relevant” decades ago and induce groans and cringes when the people who wore them back then look at their own pictures today.

And I missed this last week, but also at Theden in another relatively rare appearance, Michael Anissimov picks up the mic to say: Scalise Did Nothing Wrong: The Mainstream Right’s Continued Cowardice With White Identity. The fact that Scalise “apologized” does not now bode well. The Progs smell blood. They won’t back down. I expect Scalise to be pushed under a metaphorical bus pretty soon.

Also from Michael (this week), some straight good sense about Monarchy in the Modern World; notes on Empirical Evidence for a Habsburg Effect; thoughts on Authoritarian Governments and Adaptive Complexity.

Also at Moreright this week, Athelron makes a rare (but increasingly less rare) appearance with Seeing double in which he takes Scott Alexander’s Ethics Offsets out for an uninspiring test drive.

And… Oh dang! I missed Nyan’s Moreright piece from last week: Median Voter Theorem and Democratic Activism—a nice bit of realpolitik in which the democratic (e.g., mainstream, polite society, electable) right is shown to be a sham, ineffectual party vis-à-vis the center left, who seems to be playing a long and effective game.

This week Jim takes on that age-old and knotty problem of White on Black Crime that we hear about constantly on the telly.

According to the FBI, in 2011, 193 black men were murdered by whites. He pauses to wonder:

But if these were actual murder type murders, should we not expect rather more of the victims to be not engaged in a felony at the time they were killed?

Depends on what ya mean by “murder type murders” I guess.

This Week in Social Matter

Well Surviving Babel and I were just goofing around on Skype one day and he managed to make a whole podcast out of it: Ascending the Tower – Episode 0: “We Call It ‘The Media’”. We hope the podcast will become a semi-regular occurrence, in which issues and ideas in the alternative right can be discussed with slightly less profanity than you might be used to. Guest interviews are expected to be a regular feature. “A project of The Hestia Society, Ascending the Tower is published by Social Matter who is responsible for its content.” Wow! That sounds so officialishy!! Also, as an inveterate C programmer, I gotta love the counting from zero thing.

On Tuesday, Henry Dampier lends some qualified Support to #BlackBrunch, which he sees as a species of blockbusting. There is certainly some salutary, even if unbelievably annoying, in being told in no uncertain terms that your persistence in enjoying your quiet meal, on private property, at your own expense is a form of oppression. If you agree, by all means join them. If not, perhaps you’ve met a sort of Soapbox Orator whose interests might run rather counter to your own. You should treat him accordingly.

Hadley Bishop says, White Males Are Gods. Well, relatively speaking at least: “Feminism is instantiation of low agency.” He speaks good sense to Disparate Outcome Noticers of both kinds:

For what it’s worth, the British were very good at cultural imperialism, and even now in former colonies, high-society British cultural norms are still high-status. It’s possible to civilize the uncivilized, although the arrangement is unstable if left alone to fester and unravel, or to be unraveled by unscrupulous parties looking to profit off the innate baseness of blacks at the expense of the common good. Markets be damned if gangster rap is profitable. Black thug culture should be crushed and shunned, both at the cultural root of music and aesthetics and through heavy-handed enforcement for those who still decide to act out thuggishly.

Feminist culture should be poisoned and made low-status through aggressive propaganda campaigns. That’s when females will revert back to feminine norms.

John J. Glanton’s Moderation is Off is a meditation on the increasingly bipolar—often multipolar—nature of political discourse and how political moderation is exactly how not to deal with that.

Friday brings Ash Milton’s astute (as usual) commentary on the Charlie Hebdo attack and the mutual antagonism that necessarily lies between freedom of speech and pluralistic ideals.

This Week in Henry Dampier

Over last weekend Henry Dampier took some folks to task with The Anti-Cop Pose is a Libertarian Strategic Error; and offered some good advice for a carry trade, “Buy Anything With a Yield, Capture the Spread”. Step 1) Become a Primary Dealer; Step 2) Profit; Step 3) Hide the Inflation (for now).

On Monday, Dampier offers Debating Tips for Tangling With Liberals. Rhetoric beats logic. This is an “is”, not an “ought”. The ought is: “if correct logic beats incorrect, then the former’s rhetoric ought to win”.

In The Orange Line’s Embrace of Black Militants Henry points the absurdity of Rand Paul’s recent pandering to blacktivists.

Henry offers a few supremely well put thoughts on Synthetic Religion from a surprisingly personal perspective.

More bad news for millennials in The Culling of the Young Entrepreneur. The 80s called and they want their entrepreneurship back (along with their MacGuyver mullet). But Henry never whacks you with a stick without offering at least a sip of energy drink:

[T]he problem is less one of mindset, which is the typical advice (“just believe in yourself” / “come up with an idea and execute” / “build a prototype and raise money” / “buy lunch for one new person a day”) and is more one of some combination of inborn talent, skill, and financial means. Focusing instead on temperament (‘hard work’) flatters the egalitarian world-view.

Well… at least I don’t think he ever does.

On Wednesday, Henry announces Book Review Thursdays. He then shows up on Thursday and delivers one: Book Review: Breakfast With the Dirt Cult.

Loved this bit:

It’s not exactly a political or anti-war novel. Where there are criticisms, it’s of the people in the media and those involved in planning the war, who are much more insane than even the screwed-up proles that make up the enlisted men.

And:

The part that is unbearable is the peace, and being treated like garbage by women, along with living in a culture that’s insane. That part is what’s harder for the main character than having friends die and being shot at. The nihilistic sexual politics are what drives him over the edge, traumatizes him, much more than the war does.

Sounds like a book that’s not about what it’s about.

From earlier today: Islands of Security, how the inefficient 20th Century systems to provide them are crumbling, and how security may yet be had at reasonable prices in the near future.

And finally, this just breaking: Blogs Are Electronic Letters. Who knew? I shall have to come up with a new name for this humble bl chroronological electronic letter. Henry Dampier keeps up with technology so you don’t have to!!

This Week in SoBL

Just missing last week’s Friday cutoff, Landers fired off Cuoco Steps Off the Feminist Reservation which is a quality take on round #7,596 of choice-positive feminists scratching out the eyes of their own for insufficiently choosy choices.

Mario Cuomo and What Ifs is an extended walking tour of the late governor’s legendary vacillation and a fine display of SoBL’s Kreskin-esque skill in predicting alternate futures of alternate histories. Fun reading.

A big sweeping piece on Deep City, the one behind (and under and over) New York City that is. What some overly cheerful people call euphemistically the “working out of democracy” would be deemed, by most honest observers, brutal tribal warfare. Po-tay-to po-tah-to, I suppose.

Turning from histories, alternative and otherwise, SoBL then sets his attention on finance in Don’t Blame JPMorgan or Citigroup, It’s the Credibility Trap.

We also created with the 1932 election the idea that if there is something wrong with the economy, the government is obligated to help. Hoover himself bought into it, and was doing FDR’s same pump priming during his one failed term. A growing economy became the obsession and yardstick for how presidents were measured. Banks just dominate now because of the FIRE economy’s ascendancy, the tax game and winner take all markets skew to concentration on top of concentration of wealth, and FIRE being bipartisan versus the productive economy, which skews to the right in donations.

Yes, we need to break up JPM and Citigroup. Yes, we need a new political system. We also need a new economy. We also need a new way to measure our societal health. Life is not just maximizing shareholder wealth for a rigged stock market nor expanding GDP through debt issuance. It’s all we have though as nearly all other social measures decline. Few even discuss other ways, but the SJWs do. An alternative measure and society to aspire to is definitely not the social justice warrior’s dream world. The credibility trap will exist until exhaustion, destruction or a new system is dreamed up that gives enough people incentive to change. Forget the media dominated conversation on gender or race, this is the conversation we need to be having.

Also from SoBL this week, some extended notes on Michel Houellebecq and his forthcoming (future history?) novel; a thoroughgoing skewering of what Law & Order hath become; and from late today Army of Darkness was Real

This Week Elsewhere

Briggs bestows the First Annual Bad Science Award. I can’t even.

Something tells me it’s high time #NRx had an honest and open conversation about Singapore, love it or hate it or both. Nick Land gets started on an outline.

Mitchell thinks Any Deal With The EEU Is An Abandonment Of Sanctions; also Europe Should Turn Towards Russia And Against America.

Bonald pens another bit of Traditionalist Catholic crimethink in Traditionalists must be anti-antiracists. But he provides proof, you say? Proofs be rayciss! Also from Bonald, some groundwork for the question of Nature, grace, and the coercive authority of the Church, with seconds; musings upon whether the United States are ready for monarchy; and some deep thoughts on the seemingly shallow subject of Disney Princess(es): “The princess is a placeholder for the lost social validation of femininity.” Human nature abhors a vacuum, too.

And more and MOAR princess stuff. From the former:

I was afraid that Ariel would be Disney’s last openly boy-chasing princess. The fact is that this generation is extremely uncomfortable with female sexuality. “Like a fish needs a bicycle”, etc. Back when I was born, it seemed entirely natural to people that a healthy sixteen year old girl (like, say, Aurora) would dream about getting a man and be duly impressed when she met him. One really should pity our poor easily-scandalized secularist friends.

LOL. Tho’ I fear Bonald may be more of an expert in this stuff than might be seemly. But it all seems to be for a good cause. Bonald watches Disney Princesses so you don’t have to!

Antidem’s got a very thought-provoking piece up: La Rue Sans Joie—exploring the deep psychology of winners winning and losers losing.

Sarah Perry pens another magnificent survey and synthesis piece with Ritual and the Consciousness Monoculture. Practically every time I read Sarah, I come away renewed in my faith that for every bit of magic explained away by modern science, two or more will arise in their place. Such that for every doubling (octave) of human knowledge, the total sum of human ignorance will rise at least an equal pace.

Reactionary Tree has some apposite and quite personal thoughts on the question of Being Alone vs Loneliness.

In what appears to be an on-going race, Legionnaire beat me to the publish button with his Friday Night Fragments for this week. Doh! Pacific timezone (IIRC). Not fair!! Also, from Monday, Legionnaire dares to ask the question, in The Hydra’s Embrace, of whose answer we do not speak. (Or something like that… IIRC.) Snazzy new template BTW, Legionnaire!

By the way, if you haven’t gotten over to Post Anathema on The Tumblr, cultivator of neoreactionary aesthetics, you really should. They update often. Social Matter has kewl tumblr plug-in on the side bar trained on it. Gotta see if I can get me one of them for this template.

Hot off the presses, Anissimov puts up an Infographic of the Cathedral over at Moreright. Not so much The Cathedral I think as a diagnosis of maladaptive 20th Century trends. But very interesting nonetheless.

Well that’s all I got timer fer… tryin’ to keep a deadline-n-all. If I missed given ya some coverage, which I’m sure I’ve done, give me a holler. See you next week. Til then: Keep on Reactin’… TRP, Over and Out!!