In the human world before civilization, there were moral norms, but not law. In that world, people were taught how they should ideally enforce moral rules. If B harms A in violation of local moral norms, and if A confronting B gives an inadequate response, then A should tell near associates about it, and this group should talk and coordinate, deciding who to believe and what to do about it.
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles. De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brusselles i Tel Aviv . . . Els nacionalsocialistes van venir a alliberar París, nosaltres no el vam destruir.
Cap país segueix el seu propi curs en aquesta invasió perquè és una agenda política liderada per l'ONU i impulsada pels jueus i els seus titelles (polítics). La majoria de la gent simplement no sap ni entén que aquesta és una agenda política. Tanmateix, alguns aconsegueixen entendre que els polítics estan treballant deliberadament per importar musulmans i substituir gent, però això és tot, són com un ordinador que no pot funcionar perquè el programa no ho permet.
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
Funny, first thing, I did a string replace and read the story about Anthony and Bruce! The hard thing about replacing A is you have to remember to specify that case matters. I suggest use names or X and Y next time.
Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
At the end you say "Thus those low in status and value might reasonably embrace fewer norms." I agree this is a reasonable choice. However, those who embrace fewer norms against harming others are more likely to violate those norms. This could partly explain why those low in status and value are more likely to harm others. It also leads to the prediction that when the rule of law is strong and norms are enforced regardless of status, then low status people are less likely to commit harms. Less likely than in the weak rule of law situation.
If you’re low status, the practical approach is, “These are the rules noöne will ever remember in your favor, but everyone will zealously uphold against you when they feel the need to justify their behavior—not to you, of course; to one another”.
If you cannot be honest about the sex, what can you be honest about?
When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Arnold couldn't admit he likes fat girls and Maria couldn't admit she was too anemic to get the job done anymore . . . After all, marrying into the Katholic Kennedy Klan should come with special social privileges, should it not?
Whatever happened to 'make love not war' or 'free love, baby'?
Did Arnie just miss the flight of the Lolita Express that weekend, or did Bill Clinton and Bill Gates have the flights booked that month?
We can't afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everybody else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies, and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master, the one who drowned the world and demanded a witch be burned alive, or an adulteress be stoned to death . . .
Like the song says, 'Heaven is Just a Sin Away'.
Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion . . . an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to attach vicarious liabilities in the secular law, to control monarchial successions, as well as to establish ecclesiastic control over white female procreativity and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, married or not.
All of this makes sense, but the problem with this kind of meta-ethical analysis is it never acknowledges the actual ethical problem of the universe: That everything reduces to power, the most powerful thing wins by definition(Whatever that means, however tautological it sounds), and it doesn't ever question this. Should we be playing this power game, even if not playing it is a losing game? What is the end game of playing vs. not playing this kind of game? What I think the end game is , is beings who are essentially psychopathic, unable to process what ethical facts there are (humanity is already the larval stage of this, it's a deeply psychopathic, autistic, ethically idiotic species, as a function of power acquisition), distill more and more psychopathy and power. Anti-psychopathy is incompatible ultimately with power acquisition.
Hey, it's Compassionate Cat from Reddit! Glad to see you still kicking around and writing. I was afraid you might have gotten tired of our "lower gradient of hell" universe and taken an exit.
"Power" in "The most powerful thing wins by definition" does not map onto our conception of power. It also includes the power of love, the power of friendship, the power of numbers, and the power of moral sentiments. Saying "everything reduces to power" really just means "re-define everything as power and eliminate all other categories of thought".
History never repeats itself . . . Time is linear, a circle is a line, we use a circular clock to measure time, or a sundial that measures the rotation of the earth before the learned machinations of springs and gears . . .
. . . If you draw a circle with x=cos(t) and y=sin(t) and pull it uniformly in the z direction, you get a spatial spiral called a cylindrical spiral or helix.
The idea that history repeats itself is completely illogical in itself, but it serves a propaganda purpose for its users . . . Meaning . . . You cannot go back to older cultural ways of doing things because that makes you a sinner, a nazi, or some kind of pagan devil.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master who drowned the world and demanded that a witch be burned alive. or an adulteress is stoned to death . . .
Monogamy is an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to establish vicarious obligations in secular law, control monarchical succession, and establish ecclesiastical control over white female reproduction and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, whether married or not.
All of this destructive Jewish propaganda in Hollywood and destructive Jewish religious practices brought to the West via Christianity arose from their desire to destroy the white race.
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Heinrich Himmler on the spread of homosexuality and misogyny in Bolshevik Christianity. . .
It doesn't matter what it maps onto, because the statement approaches reality from top->down. I don't care what we value or see as power, I care about what power ultimately is, and we can call that the winningest thing in existence. That is an objective idea and just acknowledging it is enough to work forwards.
> Saying "everything reduces to power" really just means "re-define everything as power and eliminate all other categories of thought".
Everything *does* reduce to power. It's not about eliminating other categories of thought, but acknowledging that everything you could possibly value and strive to work towards is at odds with conscious systems who are seeking dominance in general. Do you care about what's true? Well those who want to maximize power have something to say, because maybe they don't want you to know certain truths. Or maybe they don't want anyone, including themselves, to know certain truths, because they are simply anti-power.
Ethics is a more narrow form of truth, perhaps you care about ethics. Well again, power doesn't care about ethics(Unless... this ethics is somehow useful for acquiring and sustaining power, which is not an honest way to say "cares about ethics", when someone says they care about ethics, we want that to mean *actually* care, actually be concerned about morality, and not "cares about ethics" in the way a psychopath/politician might care about ethics)
So you won't get anywhere, if you're only playing other games, because the power game is eventually going to come knocking at your door. This is the problem I'm trying to articulate, hope it's more clear now.
Edit: I'm not sure why I say "eventually" here, since humanity is already a primarily dominance oriented species with every other values game being utterly superficial.
It does matter what it maps onto, because "what it maps onto" is just a more-explicit way of saying "what it means". You wrote: " I don't care what we value or see as power, I care about what power ultimately is." That's an essentialist position--the belief that the word "power" denotes some timeless, eternal essence in a transcendental world, and that we must each try to use the One True meaning of it, even if everybody we talk to means something completely different by the word.
We can't talk if you use an essentialist approach to words. It means you refuse not only to speak things that others might understand, but that you insist on interpreting what others say according to your own peculiar definitions.
"It's not about eliminating other categories of thought, but acknowledging that everything you could possibly value and strive to work towards is at odds with conscious systems who are seeking dominance in general. "
Systems are not conscious, and you have no idea what I could possibly value and strive to work towards. Probably, for everything I value, there is some /person/ somewhere who opposes it. But that doesn't tell us anything. That isn't significant. To make it significant, you'd have to suppose a general law of nature that every good thing creates some power system which opposes it, and that this malicious evil powers always and everywhere overwhelm the power of people being nice to each other. That's literally the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard. It doesn't just require most people in the world to conspire against themselves; it requires the laws of nature to conspire against us, and it requires sets of social conventions to achieve consciousness. That's literally schizophrenic.
Tell me how to detect these "systems of power", and measure their influence, and how to discriminate "power" from "being nice to people and loving people", and maybe something could be said.
“The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength with the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus, it denies personal worth, contests the significance of folk and race, and thereby withdraws from mankind premise for its existence and culture.” ― Mein Kampf
In a more perfect world, for the benefit of blue dresses and laundry stains all over America, former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton would be now making television commercials for Spray 'n Wash®, or as the late Rush Limbaugh so cleverly positioned the advertisement’s timing on his radio program, Spot Shot®.
Whatever happened to Don’t ask, don’t tell? By the way, remember who Bill Clinton put on the United States Supreme Court? She is still kvetching from the grave with the overturning of Roe v. Wade . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/just-shout-it-out
We must outlaw abortion, because Jesus Needs More Babies for His War Machine, not because abortion is a ritual murder performed upon the altar of vanity before an idol of conceit . . . We can’t afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everyone else’s for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
There is no “free market,” there never has been . . . it is Jewish Mammonism . . . Every year the USA gives away an $8,000.00 health insurance deductible for every natural born U.S. man, woman, and child, just to Israel alone . . . Israel was just given $20 billion . . . It would cost $20 billion to build apartments for every homeless person in America to live in until they died, and the traitors in Washington D.C. sent ten times that to the cross-dressing gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
You aren't paying attention. Marxists are not democrats. They are every bit as opposed to democratic institutions, free speech, and individualism as Nazis are. They also seek to destroy civilization in the hope that something "purer" and "more authentic" will spring up in its place. Woke philosophy today is explicitly Nazi; you can trace most of it directly to Heidegger, Spengler, social constructivism, and other Nazi-era German philosophy. They preach race essentialism, the impossibility of different races getting along, the grounding of belief in subjective emotional experience, the grounding of ethics in "authenticity", and the beliefs that power is the only legitimate way of establishing authority, and that all arguments must ultimately be settled by intimidation and violence.
And today they're outdoing the Nazis by leaps and bounds in their hatred and persecution of Jews. Get with it. If you're a Nazi, Marxists are your allies now.
Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
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“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
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“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
The Spartans seemed pretty good at teaching this; at least, if you were strong enough to profit from the lesson, rather than having others profit at your expense. The key was to openly encourage bullying, instead of pretending to oppose it.
Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
The entire point of Jesus was the overturning of Judaism. You lack even the most basic understanding of Christianity. Back to square one - or, better yet, go pray to Odin with Varg in a field somewhere.
Au contraire . . . Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau leur faisant croire que les Juifs sont leur salut; et 2., leur anglais est de la merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . .
Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont plus récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux.
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont le subsistance quotidienne de nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, à nos universités, et sur nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs ont inondé l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme punition pour ceux qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli dans le cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme, et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
On se demande parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s’entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement souvent ouvertement antireligieux prend-il le parti d’une religiosité farouche qui semble s’opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a toujours prétendu défendre ? Une partie de l’explication réside dans le fait que l’Islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune: le judaïsme.
Don Rumsfeld avait raison lorsqu’il disait: «L’Europe s’est décalé sur son axe», c’est le mauvais côté qui a gagné la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et cela devient chaque jour plus clair . . . Qu’a fait l’OTAN pour défendre l’Europe? Absolument rien . . . Mes ennemis ne sont pas à Moscou, à Damas, à Téhéran, à Riyad ou dans quelque croque-mitaine teutonique éthéré, mes ennemis sont à Washington, Bruxelles et Tel Aviv . . . Va te faire foutre toi et ton dieu juif.
The second to last sentence seems like the wrong comparison: “The benefit of a norm helping to coordinate behavior might be less than the costs of resentment when others fail to support A’s complaints based on the norm.” I’m having trouble articulating the correct comparison. But clearly one would not make a rational decision on the basis of whether the benefit of the norm exceeds the cost of resentment. Perhaps one could compare the cost of the norm to the cost of resentment, or the benefit of the norm (including avoided resentment) against the benefit of not holding the norm.
If you cannot be honest about the sex, what can you be honest about?
When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Arnold couldn't admit he likes fat girls and Maria couldn't admit she was too anemic to get the job done anymore . . . After all, marrying into the Katholic Kennedy Klan should come with special social privileges, should it not?
Whatever happened to 'make love not war' or 'free love, baby'?
Did Arnie just miss the flight of the Lolita Express that weekend, or did Bill Clinton and Bill Gates have the flights booked that month?
We can't afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everybody else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies, and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master, the one who drowned the world and demanded a witch be burned alive, or an adulteress be stoned to death . . .
Like the song says, 'Heaven is Just a Sin Away'.
Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion . . . an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to attach vicarious liabilities in the secular law, to control monarchial successions, as well as to establish ecclesiastic control over white female procreativity and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, married or not.
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
>When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Or, people were actually morally outraged, and you lack the intuition to recognize this because you yourself are immoral. Also, a key that opens many locks, etc. Men sleeping around is less outrageous for obvious evolutionary reasons.
>We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine
Nah, just because killing babies because you wanted to have an orgasm is wrong. Problem?
>Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion
Nah, it's good. I'm sure you'd love your mom having a revolving door of men banging her every week. Paganism lost, will continue to lose in perpetuity, and there's nothing you can do about that. Go cry to Odin about it. Cheers!
[26] The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
[27] The ecclesiastics take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms compounded of metaphysics, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.
[28] In what shop or operatory the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.
[29] When the fairies are displeased with anybody, they are said to send their elves to pinch them. The ecclesiastics, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition; or one prince, enchanted with promises, to pinch another.
[30] The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.
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Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994 . . . Leviathan: Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness . . . Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness, and to Whom it Accrueth . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/leviathan-part-iv-of-the-kingdom
Robin's post here is frankly just terrible. From the descriptive, "it is often in onlookers' selfish interest to back up the abusers," he leaps without warrant to the normative, "the abused are bad and we shouldn't associate with them." By what theory of ethics could you justify such a leap? Half the point of ethics is that sometimes pursuing selfish benefit is unethical.
Now consider Robin's own frequently stated resentment of academic norms that worked against him - norms that he has little hope of changing. I used to like and conditionally agree with these doomed complaints of his, but maybe I shouldn't. He's telling us we shouldn't.
If this is the kind of rhetoric going forward, the blog should be renamed "endorsing bias." In this case, the bias is against the victim, perpetuating the falsehood that the victim was not harmed unfairly (against norms). To overcome bias means to fight against it even when bias would serve your interests. Is that not what the blog is about anymore?
You said, "Thus even today resentment remains a bad sign about a person." Not a bad sign about the abuser - you say it's a bad sign about the abused. "Bad" is a value judgment, not a fact about the society.
You said that one might "reasonably resent" the abused for appealing to egalatarian norms. Now what is "reasonable" is a value judgment, not a fact about the society; you are saying you approve of such resentment of the abused.
You said the abuser may be more "valuable" than the abused, as a reason why it is in others' interest to support the abuser. What is valuable is, by definition, a value judgment.
It seems the whole post is an argument to convince people not to associate or side with the resentful. What are moral arguments, other than attempts to persuade people to act a certain way or endorse a certain behavior? That's what morality *means*.
If you look at other comments you see many people interpreting your words as such a persuasion attempt, and liking it for that reason, because they enjoy the narrative that the strong should do what they like to the weak. That's how it is coming across. If that's not how you meant it, the fault is yours for making such an easily misinterpretable post.
All signs are pointing towards you indeed meaning it as it was interpreted by others but just not liking the branding of "morality" applied to your moral argument. If that's not what you meant, it's on you to clarify.
There are plenty of counterarguments for why to side with the abused. If we live in a society where hypocrisy and abuse is tolerated, more bad things are going to happen in that society. Corruption collectively weakens us, even though it may be in the interest of many individuals. Why didn't you say anything about that?
> "Thus even today resentment remains a bad sign about a person."
I think you misunderstood the context of "bad" here, he's saying this not as his personal judgement of the person, but in the context of strategic systems.
edit: Oh, and I agree with your ethics, I am anti-power if you read my responses here, and I think you can sort pretty much everyone making any kind noise in any moral intellectual space as either playing a pro-power values game, or essentially saying that power is inherently unethical. I'm in the latter camp but virtually everyone who does meta-ethics(the entire concept of meta-ethics rather than just acknowledging right and wrong is a psychopathic word game that attempts to solve the problem that ethics poses for power) will be pro-power, people like Robin, people like Rob Henderson, anyone who is in favor of AI, anyone who is in favor of continuing humanity, essentially identify with this psychopathic species and say "Onwards, let's become gods" but they don't quite understand what the implications of what that is ethically. They think things get better the longer you go (or they hope so), when in fact things can only get worse as a function of the evolutionary system, physics system, and game theory system.
This is of course a deeply unsexy idea, and a maladaptive idea, so it will not flourish despite being the truth.
"Bad" is fundamentally value-laden; it is about blame assignment, and blame assignment is not a base fact about reality, but fundamentally depends on your values.
Do you blame the victim, or the abuser? Someone's actions might contribute to a bad event although they are not to blame, and if so, we do not call them bad. For example, a maniac might make a resolution to go on a murder spree if ever he sees someone wearing a red polka dot scarf. Then he does see someone wearing a red polka dot scarf. The scarf-wearer's decision to wear the scarf resulted in the murders, but the scarf-wearer is not to blame and is not bad for wearing the scarf. We blame only the murderer and call only the murderer bad, because only the murderer violated our norms.
Re power: bad people value power above all. Good people value power only as a means to achieve good results. It is good to want to grant more power to institutions and people that seek the truth, that try to help those who suffer, and that advance mankind. Just because you don't value power above all, does not mean you should reject the ideas of power entirely. For good to win, good must be strong.
> "Bad" is fundamentally value-laden; it is about blame assignment, and blame assignment is not a base fact about reality, but fundamentally depends on your values.
I would reframe this as "blame" is about free will. Without free will, blame is incoherent. You can talk about good and bad without blaming anyone in the absence of free will, or specifically moralizing them or saying they should be punished. That's your accusation right? So the solution is just throwing away punishment/blame, not changing the meaning of bad to make it inherently moralizing.
> It is good to want to grant more power to institutions and people that seek the truth, that try to help those who suffer, and that advance mankind. Just because you don't value power above all, does not mean you should reject the ideas of power entirely. For good to win, good must be strong.
Good can't win though because it's always going to be constrained by other values(truth, ethics). Something playing a "win at all costs" game is only constrained by the strategy of winning, and while winning at all costs employs ethical games and truth games, these are ready to be sacrificed whenever real power is in view.
The idea of strength + goodness is a mythological fantasy. We are raised on such fantasies, we invent them constantly, they saturate culture in the form of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. The reality is, to get the sorts of traits you'd need to combat evil, you must yourself be evil, while operating on a noble fantasy narrative(something like Christian crusaders). There's no dramatically different good and evil where evil has darkness and malevolence driving it and good has genuine virtue driving it. This is a human fantasy(at some deep level).
What I'm saying very plainly is our universe is constructed so that it distills evil with time and this is inevitable, and our current species is malevolent, has tortured life on Earth, continues to, and will only be stopped by something more evil, while telling itself it's something much nicer, nobler, entitled, as an adaptive strategy.
Isn’t this just a particular case of “Associate with the powerful, disdain the weak, bully the bullied”? Of course, power has to be understood as including whose side third parties are likely to take. At the end of the day, no sign of weakness will be forgiven.
Agreed. I once told my superior at work that our new hire was just not up for the task. And when nothing was ever done I began to resent this person that I had to work with
Re. "Note also that if A’s early teachers had expected them to be low status, they might have reasonably taught them fewer moral norms." - This would lead to low-status people having less resentment in general. My impression is that this isn't the case, but I don't know. Nor do I know how to measure resentment.
It is hard to anticipate who will be low status, and which norms won't be enforced for them, and hard to adjust teaching to individual differences. So this whole teaching effect should be weak.
In practice A will tend to collect allies with the same, or similar, resentments: Others also wronged by B, or wronged in a similar way. Thus a coalition is formed, and A might increase their social standing within that coalition by being its leader. (A=Thomas Jefferson for example). You focused on the negative social aspects of harboring a resentment ("Thus in this world, resentment is a bad sign about a potential associate") but with the right audience it can be a positive. The enemy of my enemy is my (potential) friend.
Add to this the fact that there is often a wide gulf between what is communicated publicly, what is communicated privately, and what ones actual beliefs/motivations are – and it becomes a very subtle dance indeed. I'm convinced that the majority of our emotions and social brain functions are designed to navigate situations like this, as well as reciprocal altruism.
I wonder how you would interpret cancel culture through your lens. There it seems that the more aggrieved and justifiably resentful one is, the higher their standing within the community of "activists" involved in these cancellation campaigns. *I* resent their resentment, but a lot of other people seemingly do not.
How would you explain data that showed resentful people in the past correlate positively to powerful people in the future? (I don't have that data, but I can imagine it being true)
More evidence that Robin is our Nietzsche.
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles. De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brusselles i Tel Aviv . . . Els nacionalsocialistes van venir a alliberar París, nosaltres no el vam destruir.
Cap país segueix el seu propi curs en aquesta invasió perquè és una agenda política liderada per l'ONU i impulsada pels jueus i els seus titelles (polítics). La majoria de la gent simplement no sap ni entén que aquesta és una agenda política. Tanmateix, alguns aconsegueixen entendre que els polítics estan treballant deliberadament per importar musulmans i substituir gent, però això és tot, són com un ordinador que no pot funcionar perquè el programa no ho permet.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Off topic, but scenarios are more parseable if you call the characters human names like Alice and Bob instead of A and B.
You could easily do such a string search and replace if that helped you.
That's a big ask from individual readers...
Personally I don't mind, but this response seems rude
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“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
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Funny, first thing, I did a string replace and read the story about Anthony and Bruce! The hard thing about replacing A is you have to remember to specify that case matters. I suggest use names or X and Y next time.
Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
Seems right but I'm not sure it requires that much complexity. Isn't it enough to say:
Resentment signals that you lack the power to respond to slights.
The rest just describes ways you might lack that power.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
B is always getting away with it - B is kind of a B, no?
At the end you say "Thus those low in status and value might reasonably embrace fewer norms." I agree this is a reasonable choice. However, those who embrace fewer norms against harming others are more likely to violate those norms. This could partly explain why those low in status and value are more likely to harm others. It also leads to the prediction that when the rule of law is strong and norms are enforced regardless of status, then low status people are less likely to commit harms. Less likely than in the weak rule of law situation.
If you’re low status, the practical approach is, “These are the rules noöne will ever remember in your favor, but everyone will zealously uphold against you when they feel the need to justify their behavior—not to you, of course; to one another”.
If you cannot be honest about the sex, what can you be honest about?
When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Arnold couldn't admit he likes fat girls and Maria couldn't admit she was too anemic to get the job done anymore . . . After all, marrying into the Katholic Kennedy Klan should come with special social privileges, should it not?
Whatever happened to 'make love not war' or 'free love, baby'?
Did Arnie just miss the flight of the Lolita Express that weekend, or did Bill Clinton and Bill Gates have the flights booked that month?
We can't afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everybody else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies, and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master, the one who drowned the world and demanded a witch be burned alive, or an adulteress be stoned to death . . .
Like the song says, 'Heaven is Just a Sin Away'.
Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion . . . an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to attach vicarious liabilities in the secular law, to control monarchial successions, as well as to establish ecclesiastic control over white female procreativity and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, married or not.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/heinrich-himmler-on-how-bolshevik-christianity-spreads-homosexuality-and-hatred-of-women
All of this makes sense, but the problem with this kind of meta-ethical analysis is it never acknowledges the actual ethical problem of the universe: That everything reduces to power, the most powerful thing wins by definition(Whatever that means, however tautological it sounds), and it doesn't ever question this. Should we be playing this power game, even if not playing it is a losing game? What is the end game of playing vs. not playing this kind of game? What I think the end game is , is beings who are essentially psychopathic, unable to process what ethical facts there are (humanity is already the larval stage of this, it's a deeply psychopathic, autistic, ethically idiotic species, as a function of power acquisition), distill more and more psychopathy and power. Anti-psychopathy is incompatible ultimately with power acquisition.
Hey, it's Compassionate Cat from Reddit! Glad to see you still kicking around and writing. I was afraid you might have gotten tired of our "lower gradient of hell" universe and taken an exit.
We Can't Afford Healthcare for American Children Because We Need to Keep Bombing Everyone Else's for the Love of Jesus and Israel . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
"Power" in "The most powerful thing wins by definition" does not map onto our conception of power. It also includes the power of love, the power of friendship, the power of numbers, and the power of moral sentiments. Saying "everything reduces to power" really just means "re-define everything as power and eliminate all other categories of thought".
History never repeats itself . . . Time is linear, a circle is a line, we use a circular clock to measure time, or a sundial that measures the rotation of the earth before the learned machinations of springs and gears . . .
. . . If you draw a circle with x=cos(t) and y=sin(t) and pull it uniformly in the z direction, you get a spatial spiral called a cylindrical spiral or helix.
The idea that history repeats itself is completely illogical in itself, but it serves a propaganda purpose for its users . . . Meaning . . . You cannot go back to older cultural ways of doing things because that makes you a sinner, a nazi, or some kind of pagan devil.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master who drowned the world and demanded that a witch be burned alive. or an adulteress is stoned to death . . .
Monogamy is an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to establish vicarious obligations in secular law, control monarchical succession, and establish ecclesiastical control over white female reproduction and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, whether married or not.
All of this destructive Jewish propaganda in Hollywood and destructive Jewish religious practices brought to the West via Christianity arose from their desire to destroy the white race.
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Heinrich Himmler on the spread of homosexuality and misogyny in Bolshevik Christianity. . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/heinrich-himmler-on-how-bolshevik-christianity-spreads-homosexuality-and-hatred-of-women
It doesn't matter what it maps onto, because the statement approaches reality from top->down. I don't care what we value or see as power, I care about what power ultimately is, and we can call that the winningest thing in existence. That is an objective idea and just acknowledging it is enough to work forwards.
> Saying "everything reduces to power" really just means "re-define everything as power and eliminate all other categories of thought".
Everything *does* reduce to power. It's not about eliminating other categories of thought, but acknowledging that everything you could possibly value and strive to work towards is at odds with conscious systems who are seeking dominance in general. Do you care about what's true? Well those who want to maximize power have something to say, because maybe they don't want you to know certain truths. Or maybe they don't want anyone, including themselves, to know certain truths, because they are simply anti-power.
Ethics is a more narrow form of truth, perhaps you care about ethics. Well again, power doesn't care about ethics(Unless... this ethics is somehow useful for acquiring and sustaining power, which is not an honest way to say "cares about ethics", when someone says they care about ethics, we want that to mean *actually* care, actually be concerned about morality, and not "cares about ethics" in the way a psychopath/politician might care about ethics)
So you won't get anywhere, if you're only playing other games, because the power game is eventually going to come knocking at your door. This is the problem I'm trying to articulate, hope it's more clear now.
Edit: I'm not sure why I say "eventually" here, since humanity is already a primarily dominance oriented species with every other values game being utterly superficial.
It does matter what it maps onto, because "what it maps onto" is just a more-explicit way of saying "what it means". You wrote: " I don't care what we value or see as power, I care about what power ultimately is." That's an essentialist position--the belief that the word "power" denotes some timeless, eternal essence in a transcendental world, and that we must each try to use the One True meaning of it, even if everybody we talk to means something completely different by the word.
We can't talk if you use an essentialist approach to words. It means you refuse not only to speak things that others might understand, but that you insist on interpreting what others say according to your own peculiar definitions.
"It's not about eliminating other categories of thought, but acknowledging that everything you could possibly value and strive to work towards is at odds with conscious systems who are seeking dominance in general. "
Systems are not conscious, and you have no idea what I could possibly value and strive to work towards. Probably, for everything I value, there is some /person/ somewhere who opposes it. But that doesn't tell us anything. That isn't significant. To make it significant, you'd have to suppose a general law of nature that every good thing creates some power system which opposes it, and that this malicious evil powers always and everywhere overwhelm the power of people being nice to each other. That's literally the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard. It doesn't just require most people in the world to conspire against themselves; it requires the laws of nature to conspire against us, and it requires sets of social conventions to achieve consciousness. That's literally schizophrenic.
Tell me how to detect these "systems of power", and measure their influence, and how to discriminate "power" from "being nice to people and loving people", and maybe something could be said.
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The Jewish doctrine of Marxism . . .
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1. - . . . rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature
2. - . . . denies personal worth
3. - . . . contests the significance of folk and race
4. - . . . withdraws from mankind premise for its existence and culture
_____________________________________________________________________________________
“The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength with the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus, it denies personal worth, contests the significance of folk and race, and thereby withdraws from mankind premise for its existence and culture.” ― Mein Kampf
In a more perfect world, for the benefit of blue dresses and laundry stains all over America, former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton would be now making television commercials for Spray 'n Wash®, or as the late Rush Limbaugh so cleverly positioned the advertisement’s timing on his radio program, Spot Shot®.
Whatever happened to Don’t ask, don’t tell? By the way, remember who Bill Clinton put on the United States Supreme Court? She is still kvetching from the grave with the overturning of Roe v. Wade . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/just-shout-it-out
We must outlaw abortion, because Jesus Needs More Babies for His War Machine, not because abortion is a ritual murder performed upon the altar of vanity before an idol of conceit . . . We can’t afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everyone else’s for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
There is no “free market,” there never has been . . . it is Jewish Mammonism . . . Every year the USA gives away an $8,000.00 health insurance deductible for every natural born U.S. man, woman, and child, just to Israel alone . . . Israel was just given $20 billion . . . It would cost $20 billion to build apartments for every homeless person in America to live in until they died, and the traitors in Washington D.C. sent ten times that to the cross-dressing gay satanist Israeli operative Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
You aren't paying attention. Marxists are not democrats. They are every bit as opposed to democratic institutions, free speech, and individualism as Nazis are. They also seek to destroy civilization in the hope that something "purer" and "more authentic" will spring up in its place. Woke philosophy today is explicitly Nazi; you can trace most of it directly to Heidegger, Spengler, social constructivism, and other Nazi-era German philosophy. They preach race essentialism, the impossibility of different races getting along, the grounding of belief in subjective emotional experience, the grounding of ethics in "authenticity", and the beliefs that power is the only legitimate way of establishing authority, and that all arguments must ultimately be settled by intimidation and violence.
And today they're outdoing the Nazis by leaps and bounds in their hatred and persecution of Jews. Get with it. If you're a Nazi, Marxists are your allies now.
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Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
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“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
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“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
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FUCK YOU AND YOUR JEWISH GOD
The monotheist God and the pagan gods are not the only alternatives.
Wonderfully explained. Why can't school text books be like this?
The Spartans seemed pretty good at teaching this; at least, if you were strong enough to profit from the lesson, rather than having others profit at your expense. The key was to openly encourage bullying, instead of pretending to oppose it.
Rape is the main weapon of Jihad . . . Jews and Muslims have similar roots and customs . . .
“You shall put all of the males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children and the livestock, and everything in the town – all of its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy which the Lord gives unto you.” — Deuteronomy 20:13-14
“The Messenger said, ‘If the disbelievers do not accept Islam, kill them, loot them and rape their women.’ And thus, advance Islam and strengthen Islam.” — Al-Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 54, Hadith 464
Perhaps the correct lesson is to not be resentful.
Why is being resentful useful?
I think being mad at moral violations is pretty intrinsic to morality.
We can't afford healthcare for American Children because we need to keep bombing everyone else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/satanism-is-a-jewish-cult
The entire point of Jesus was the overturning of Judaism. You lack even the most basic understanding of Christianity. Back to square one - or, better yet, go pray to Odin with Varg in a field somewhere.
Au contraire . . . Pardonne mon français . . . Je suis obligé d'écrire dans plusieurs langues parce que: 1. La plupart des gens aux États-Unis ont subi un lavage de cerveau leur faisant croire que les Juifs sont leur salut; et 2., leur anglais est de la merde et ils ne peuvent pas rester silencieux assez longtemps pour entendre ou voir ce qui se passe évidemment autour d'eux . . .
Le judéo-messianisme répand parmi nous son message empoisonné depuis près de deux mille ans. Les universalismes démocratique et communiste sont plus récents, mais ils n’ont fait que renforcer le vieux récit juif. Ce sont les mêmes idéaux.
Les idéaux transnationaux, transraciaux, transsexuels, transculturels que ces idéologies nous prêchent (au-delà des peuples, des races, des cultures) et qui sont le subsistance quotidienne de nos écoles, dans nos médias, dans notre culture populaire, à nos universités, et sur nos rues, ont fini par réduire notre identité biosymbolique et notre fierté ethnique à leur expression minimale.
Les banquiers juifs ont inondé l’Europe de musulmans et l’Amérique de déchets du tiers-monde . . . L'exil comme punition pour ceux qui prêchent la sédition devrait être rétabli dans le cadre juridique de l'Occident . . . Le judaïsme, le christianisme, et l’islam sont des cultes de mort originaires du Moyen-Orient et totalement étrangers à l’Europe et à ses peuples.
On se demande parfois pourquoi la gauche européenne s’entend si bien avec les musulmans. Pourquoi un mouvement souvent ouvertement antireligieux prend-il le parti d’une religiosité farouche qui semble s’opposer à presque tout ce que la gauche a toujours prétendu défendre ? Une partie de l’explication réside dans le fait que l’Islam et le marxisme ont une racine idéologique commune: le judaïsme.
Don Rumsfeld avait raison lorsqu’il disait: «L’Europe s’est décalé sur son axe», c’est le mauvais côté qui a gagné la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et cela devient chaque jour plus clair . . . Qu’a fait l’OTAN pour défendre l’Europe? Absolument rien . . . Mes ennemis ne sont pas à Moscou, à Damas, à Téhéran, à Riyad ou dans quelque croque-mitaine teutonique éthéré, mes ennemis sont à Washington, Bruxelles et Tel Aviv . . . Va te faire foutre toi et ton dieu juif.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Being mad about moral violations against oneself, in particular?
Plausible that makes one more mad.
Is that the fundamental morality, or a separate factor combining with moral feelings?
The second to last sentence seems like the wrong comparison: “The benefit of a norm helping to coordinate behavior might be less than the costs of resentment when others fail to support A’s complaints based on the norm.” I’m having trouble articulating the correct comparison. But clearly one would not make a rational decision on the basis of whether the benefit of the norm exceeds the cost of resentment. Perhaps one could compare the cost of the norm to the cost of resentment, or the benefit of the norm (including avoided resentment) against the benefit of not holding the norm.
But then why did resentment evolve in the first place? This account of resentment is probably incomplete.
Being mad at norm violations is a key part of having norms at all.
If you cannot be honest about the sex, what can you be honest about?
When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Arnold couldn't admit he likes fat girls and Maria couldn't admit she was too anemic to get the job done anymore . . . After all, marrying into the Katholic Kennedy Klan should come with special social privileges, should it not?
Whatever happened to 'make love not war' or 'free love, baby'?
Did Arnie just miss the flight of the Lolita Express that weekend, or did Bill Clinton and Bill Gates have the flights booked that month?
We can't afford healthcare for American children because we need to keep bombing everybody else's for the love of Jesus and Israel . . .
We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine.
The older pagan sexual mores were much more conducive to the health of Nordic-Scandinavian societies, and much more supportive of women than those of the Jewish god Yahweh, the locust master, the one who drowned the world and demanded a witch be burned alive, or an adulteress be stoned to death . . .
Like the song says, 'Heaven is Just a Sin Away'.
Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion . . . an unnatural order created by Zionist churchmen to attach vicarious liabilities in the secular law, to control monarchial successions, as well as to establish ecclesiastic control over white female procreativity and individual white male posterity . . . All men are born of a woman, married or not.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/heinrich-himmler-on-how-bolshevik-christianity-spreads-homosexuality-and-hatred-of-women
When it's useful, but resentment is a different feeling than righteous anger, as you note.
We Can't Afford Healthcare for American Children Because We Need to Keep Bombing Everyone Else's for the Love of Jesus and Israel . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
You ok mate?
_______________________________________________________________________________
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
_______________________________________________________________________________
>When Arnold Schnitzel-wagger got caught impregnating his voluptuous maid, the tsunami of faux moral outrage swept across television and computer screens from people who have the slenderest claim to any semblance of fidelity or ethics of any kind.
Or, people were actually morally outraged, and you lack the intuition to recognize this because you yourself are immoral. Also, a key that opens many locks, etc. Men sleeping around is less outrageous for obvious evolutionary reasons.
>We must outlaw abortion because Jesus needs more babies for his war machine
Nah, just because killing babies because you wanted to have an orgasm is wrong. Problem?
>Monogamy is a hackneyed tenet of religion
Nah, it's good. I'm sure you'd love your mom having a revolving door of men banging her every week. Paganism lost, will continue to lose in perpetuity, and there's nothing you can do about that. Go cry to Odin about it. Cheers!
[26] The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
[27] The ecclesiastics take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms compounded of metaphysics, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.
[28] In what shop or operatory the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.
[29] When the fairies are displeased with anybody, they are said to send their elves to pinch them. The ecclesiastics, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition; or one prince, enchanted with promises, to pinch another.
[30] The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.
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Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994 . . . Leviathan: Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness . . . Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness, and to Whom it Accrueth . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/leviathan-part-iv-of-the-kingdom
Robin's post here is frankly just terrible. From the descriptive, "it is often in onlookers' selfish interest to back up the abusers," he leaps without warrant to the normative, "the abused are bad and we shouldn't associate with them." By what theory of ethics could you justify such a leap? Half the point of ethics is that sometimes pursuing selfish benefit is unethical.
Now consider Robin's own frequently stated resentment of academic norms that worked against him - norms that he has little hope of changing. I used to like and conditionally agree with these doomed complaints of his, but maybe I shouldn't. He's telling us we shouldn't.
If this is the kind of rhetoric going forward, the blog should be renamed "endorsing bias." In this case, the bias is against the victim, perpetuating the falsehood that the victim was not harmed unfairly (against norms). To overcome bias means to fight against it even when bias would serve your interests. Is that not what the blog is about anymore?
I didn't say the resentful are morally bad.
You said, "Thus even today resentment remains a bad sign about a person." Not a bad sign about the abuser - you say it's a bad sign about the abused. "Bad" is a value judgment, not a fact about the society.
You said that one might "reasonably resent" the abused for appealing to egalatarian norms. Now what is "reasonable" is a value judgment, not a fact about the society; you are saying you approve of such resentment of the abused.
You said the abuser may be more "valuable" than the abused, as a reason why it is in others' interest to support the abuser. What is valuable is, by definition, a value judgment.
It seems the whole post is an argument to convince people not to associate or side with the resentful. What are moral arguments, other than attempts to persuade people to act a certain way or endorse a certain behavior? That's what morality *means*.
If you look at other comments you see many people interpreting your words as such a persuasion attempt, and liking it for that reason, because they enjoy the narrative that the strong should do what they like to the weak. That's how it is coming across. If that's not how you meant it, the fault is yours for making such an easily misinterpretable post.
All signs are pointing towards you indeed meaning it as it was interpreted by others but just not liking the branding of "morality" applied to your moral argument. If that's not what you meant, it's on you to clarify.
There are plenty of counterarguments for why to side with the abused. If we live in a society where hypocrisy and abuse is tolerated, more bad things are going to happen in that society. Corruption collectively weakens us, even though it may be in the interest of many individuals. Why didn't you say anything about that?
> "Thus even today resentment remains a bad sign about a person."
I think you misunderstood the context of "bad" here, he's saying this not as his personal judgement of the person, but in the context of strategic systems.
edit: Oh, and I agree with your ethics, I am anti-power if you read my responses here, and I think you can sort pretty much everyone making any kind noise in any moral intellectual space as either playing a pro-power values game, or essentially saying that power is inherently unethical. I'm in the latter camp but virtually everyone who does meta-ethics(the entire concept of meta-ethics rather than just acknowledging right and wrong is a psychopathic word game that attempts to solve the problem that ethics poses for power) will be pro-power, people like Robin, people like Rob Henderson, anyone who is in favor of AI, anyone who is in favor of continuing humanity, essentially identify with this psychopathic species and say "Onwards, let's become gods" but they don't quite understand what the implications of what that is ethically. They think things get better the longer you go (or they hope so), when in fact things can only get worse as a function of the evolutionary system, physics system, and game theory system.
This is of course a deeply unsexy idea, and a maladaptive idea, so it will not flourish despite being the truth.
"Bad" is fundamentally value-laden; it is about blame assignment, and blame assignment is not a base fact about reality, but fundamentally depends on your values.
Do you blame the victim, or the abuser? Someone's actions might contribute to a bad event although they are not to blame, and if so, we do not call them bad. For example, a maniac might make a resolution to go on a murder spree if ever he sees someone wearing a red polka dot scarf. Then he does see someone wearing a red polka dot scarf. The scarf-wearer's decision to wear the scarf resulted in the murders, but the scarf-wearer is not to blame and is not bad for wearing the scarf. We blame only the murderer and call only the murderer bad, because only the murderer violated our norms.
Re power: bad people value power above all. Good people value power only as a means to achieve good results. It is good to want to grant more power to institutions and people that seek the truth, that try to help those who suffer, and that advance mankind. Just because you don't value power above all, does not mean you should reject the ideas of power entirely. For good to win, good must be strong.
> "Bad" is fundamentally value-laden; it is about blame assignment, and blame assignment is not a base fact about reality, but fundamentally depends on your values.
I would reframe this as "blame" is about free will. Without free will, blame is incoherent. You can talk about good and bad without blaming anyone in the absence of free will, or specifically moralizing them or saying they should be punished. That's your accusation right? So the solution is just throwing away punishment/blame, not changing the meaning of bad to make it inherently moralizing.
> It is good to want to grant more power to institutions and people that seek the truth, that try to help those who suffer, and that advance mankind. Just because you don't value power above all, does not mean you should reject the ideas of power entirely. For good to win, good must be strong.
Good can't win though because it's always going to be constrained by other values(truth, ethics). Something playing a "win at all costs" game is only constrained by the strategy of winning, and while winning at all costs employs ethical games and truth games, these are ready to be sacrificed whenever real power is in view.
The idea of strength + goodness is a mythological fantasy. We are raised on such fantasies, we invent them constantly, they saturate culture in the form of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. The reality is, to get the sorts of traits you'd need to combat evil, you must yourself be evil, while operating on a noble fantasy narrative(something like Christian crusaders). There's no dramatically different good and evil where evil has darkness and malevolence driving it and good has genuine virtue driving it. This is a human fantasy(at some deep level).
What I'm saying very plainly is our universe is constructed so that it distills evil with time and this is inevitable, and our current species is malevolent, has tortured life on Earth, continues to, and will only be stopped by something more evil, while telling itself it's something much nicer, nobler, entitled, as an adaptive strategy.
We Can't Afford Healthcare for American Children Because We Need to Keep Bombing Everyone Else's for the Love of Jesus and Israel . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
Isn’t this just a particular case of “Associate with the powerful, disdain the weak, bully the bullied”? Of course, power has to be understood as including whose side third parties are likely to take. At the end of the day, no sign of weakness will be forgiven.
Agreed. I once told my superior at work that our new hire was just not up for the task. And when nothing was ever done I began to resent this person that I had to work with
So why do you say "agreed"? Sounds like you are the resentful "A" here, whom Robin is disparaging.
oh I just meant it is as in yes, I agree this pattern seems to exist. Although "B" didn't wrong me per say, so maybe its not a 1:1 mapping
Re. "Note also that if A’s early teachers had expected them to be low status, they might have reasonably taught them fewer moral norms." - This would lead to low-status people having less resentment in general. My impression is that this isn't the case, but I don't know. Nor do I know how to measure resentment.
It is hard to anticipate who will be low status, and which norms won't be enforced for them, and hard to adjust teaching to individual differences. So this whole teaching effect should be weak.
In practice A will tend to collect allies with the same, or similar, resentments: Others also wronged by B, or wronged in a similar way. Thus a coalition is formed, and A might increase their social standing within that coalition by being its leader. (A=Thomas Jefferson for example). You focused on the negative social aspects of harboring a resentment ("Thus in this world, resentment is a bad sign about a potential associate") but with the right audience it can be a positive. The enemy of my enemy is my (potential) friend.
Add to this the fact that there is often a wide gulf between what is communicated publicly, what is communicated privately, and what ones actual beliefs/motivations are – and it becomes a very subtle dance indeed. I'm convinced that the majority of our emotions and social brain functions are designed to navigate situations like this, as well as reciprocal altruism.
I wonder how you would interpret cancel culture through your lens. There it seems that the more aggrieved and justifiably resentful one is, the higher their standing within the community of "activists" involved in these cancellation campaigns. *I* resent their resentment, but a lot of other people seemingly do not.
Yes resentments that you already share with them seem positives to you, in contrast to the resentments that you don't initially share with them.
How would you explain data that showed resentful people in the past correlate positively to powerful people in the future? (I don't have that data, but I can imagine it being true)
Seems unlikely to me.
do you think resentfulness is a consistent personality trait? your essay seems to hinge on that
Huh? I describe a process that produces resentment, so only claim it is consistent to the degree that process is.
I realize I was adding things in my mind to your essay that weren't there. My bad.