FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
This may sound shallow, but I value most that my church is mine. I was baptized there, took first communion. I disliked the architecture as too modern when I was young, now I admire it as an artifact of its time and fight to preserve it from those who want to make it more modern.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
You may be a construction worker workin' on a home Might be livin' in a mansion, you might live in a dome You may own guns and you may even own tanks You may be somebody's landlord, you may even own banks But you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody) Yes, you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody) Well, it may be the Devil or it might be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
TLDR: The most important choice you make in life is who you will choose to follow. Obedience is agency.
Earlier this week, there was a long conversation about agency and its apparent reduction, leading to my reply on the topic of how we build agency in kids. Particularly this example passage from Herodotus sparked a lot of discussion from the crowd:
When the boy was in his tenth year, an accident which I will now relate, caused it to be discovered who he was. He was at play one day in the village where the folds of the cattle were, along with the boys of his own age, in the street. The other boys who were playing with him chose the cowherd's son, as he was called, to be their king. He then proceeded to order them about some he set to build him houses, others he made his guards, one of them was to be the king's eye, another had the office of carrying his messages; all had some task or other. Among the boys there was one, the son of Artembares, a Mede of distinction, who refused to do what Cyrus had set him. Cyrus told the other boys to take him into custody, and when his orders were obeyed, he chastised him most severely with the whip. The son of Artembares, as soon as he was let go, full of rage at treatment so little befitting his rank, hastened to the city and complained bitterly to his father of what had been done to him by Cyrus. He did not, of course, say "Cyrus," by which name the boy was not yet known, but called him the son of the king's cowherd. Artembares, in the heat of his passion, went to Astyages, accompanied by his son, and made complaint of the gross injury which had been done him. Pointing to the boy's shoulders, he exclaimed, "Thus, oh! king, has thy slave, the son of a cowherd, heaped insult upon us."
At this sight and these words Astyages, wishing to avenge the son of Artembares for his father's sake, sent for the cowherd and his boy. When they came together into his presence, fixing his eyes on Cyrus, Astyages said, "Hast thou then, the son of so mean a fellow as that, dared to behave thus rudely to the son of yonder noble, one of the first in my court?" "My lord," replied the boy, "I only treated him as he deserved. I was chosen king in play by the boys of our village, because they thought me the best for it. He himself was one of the boys who chose me. All the others did according to my orders; but he refused, and made light of them, until at last he got his due reward. If for this I deserve to suffer punishment, here I am ready to submit to it." [116] While the boy was yet speaking Astyages was struck with a suspicion who he was. He thought he saw something in the character of his face like his own, and there was a nobleness about the answer he had made; besides which his age seemed to tally with the time when his grandchild was exposed.
I offered it mainly as a fun little example of boys being boys throughout human history, whether it is ten year old Persian boys playing palace, or 12 year old boomer boys playing sandlot baseball, or 14 year olds in 2002 playing D&D late into the night at scout camp; how the best and brightest rise naturally to be leaders in any of those endeavors, and this teaches boys to find their role in the group and seek to raise their status by getting better at things according to their ability. But some of our friends saw something a little darker in it:
@Bombadi said:
I would think that the latter kid shows far more agency than the first, who simply follows the rules. Now, what did the kids not named Cyrus learn from this game? Did the game make them more agentic or less? After electing the king, didn't they simply follow his commands? I would suggest that in your example you are not teaching agency to the kids. You are teaching them to fall in line and follow a strict hierarchy that once set cannot be broken. You are creating one king and a legion of servants.
@Corvos among other things said:
I'm probably being a little belligerent. It's not even that I disagree with you completely, it's just the stunning levels of naivete and smugness in that story from Herodotus (on which my own schooling was at least partially based) irritate me. Oh, you didn't kiss the boot when the big kid told you to, and then he had his mates beat you up? Clearly you aren't high-agency and are doomed to a life of sad mediocrity while we reorder our society into bronze age Persia. Let the kids treat each other however they like, all things are for the best in this the best of all possible worlds...
And my reply to first one, then both of them spiraled outward until it became entirely too large to be a reply to one small comment, so I’m branching it out.
You gotta serve somebody. Obedience and submission is the ultimate act of human agency and will. Who you choose to obey and what you choose to submit to is what decides who you are and how you live your life, for good and for ill. An effort to avoid serving anyone, to be totally free of obligation or obedience, is a life thwarted, stunted, never to grow to its possible power.
Cyrus was not the only one displaying agency here, all the boys were displaying their agency, except the son of Artembares who was displaying cowardice and weakness. The boys got together, decided on a set of rules, elected a leader, and followed the orders of their chosen leader. They all used their will collectively to imbue their chosen leader with power, to make their chosen rules the rules, and make that will a reality. That is the essence of agency: organizing amongst themselves to work together, and choosing a leader who will work most effectively towards those goals.
And they could not have chosen better. We hear nothing of these boys in the future, to my recollection. But if they maintained their relationship with Cyrus after he became Great King, if he remembered their loyal service in their youth, then they were set for life. The spoils of Cyrus’ empire would have flowed into their coffers, they would have been Satraps and Generals, lords over peoples and estates. They would have pillaged Babylon, Lydia, Egypt, Ionia, Phoenicia. They would have had rich and beautiful wives of noble family, their sons would have been great princes and nobles.
Those who were cruel to the young Cyrus were luckier if he forgot them. The son of Artembares, he displayed not agency but weakness. He chose the game to start, he chose Cyrus, then he hesitated, he lacked the courage to commit, he tried to change horses midstream and wound up all wet. Rather than abide by the rules that he and his peers had organized together, rather than live in the world conjured by their own collective will, he tried to run to his daddy and get bailed out. He’s lucky if he was simply forgotten when Cyrus was Great King.
The choice of who to follow determine our lives. Man is at core a political animal, “apes together strong,” how we choose to organize ourselves determines our power and our ability, and who we choose to align ourselves with determines how far we rise. Whether we are ancient Persians choosing to follow a king, Romans choosing a Consul, Israelites choosing a Rabbi who claims to be the Messiah, soldiers choosing how to follow orders from an officer, citizens choosing sides in a civil war, students choosing which professor to try to seek mentorship from*, choosing a boss to follow or a business partner to work with or a company to dedicate our efforts to building, a young athlete determining to listen to everything the coach or the team captain says, a woman choosing a husband, an investor choosing a startup to go all-in with, a man picking a religion or a political party. We all gotta serve somebody.
Agrippa was the childhood friend of Augustus, he chose to follow Augustus at a time when it was not an easy choice to remain loyal and his loyalty made him a great man whose name and story I remember off the dome. The Apostles of Jesus and the Companions of the Prophet and the Sravakas of the early Sangha all became great men, great religious leaders, saints, because they saw a man worthy of loyalty and remained loyal. Lafayette and Hamilton submitted themselves to Washington when they joined the Continental Army. Ringo and George became gods following John and Paul around.
Every Billionaire makes many millionaires, some make other billionaires! Wozniak would never have been a household name if he had refused to follow Jobs. Ballmer would never have bought the Clippers (and gotten into trouble for breaking the salary cap rules) without the money he earned working with Bill Gates. Musk, Thiel, Bezos, and Huang have all made many of their friends and compatriots and early employees rich. The great coaches across sports spawn sprawling family trees: Bellichek and Saban famously demanded total dedication and loyalty from their assistants and players, but dozens of their assistants and former players have become great head coaches in their own right today. You’re much more likely to get rich by choosing the right guy to partner with or to work for than you are to get rich by founding the company yourself.
And you can choose wrong, with dire consequences. Think of those who chose to follow Benedict Arnold instead of George Washington. Think of those who backed Pompei over Caesar. Think of those zealots who aligned with Judas Iscariot over Jesus Christ. Think of those who backed and dedicated their lives to the vision at WeWork or at Theranos, instead of Tesla or OpenAI. You gotta serve somebody.
For most people, most of the time, agency is in choosing who to follow, who to take orders from, what orders to take. Choosing who to submit to in marriage is the most important decision most people make in their personal lives, and choosing to punt the decision and never marry is an equally important and life-deciding choice. Whose treatises and manifestos do you read? What political party do you sign up for? What candidate do you vote for? Who do you work for? Who do you give your money to? This is what agency looks like.
Coming off @Thoroughlygruntled ’s reply from the prior thread bringing up the Boy Scouts as a vehicle for boys to “go into the woods and throw rocks at each other” and thus build agency, and returning to kids for a moment. What I see as the truly great aspect of Boy Scouts is that if an average boy remains in the scouts from 11 to 17, he will go through every phase of the troop. He will join as an 11 year old, working to make Tenderfoot, and he will be in the bottom group of 11-12 year olds who are basically useless to the troop, who need to be shown how to do anything, who can’t keep up on hikes and their backpacks are taken up by the stronger older boys, who need to be protected from others and from themselves, who will need to be closely supervised when doing any task. The 11-12 year old looks to the older boys for help and guidance with everything, for leadership and mentorship, and they learn to listen to the older boys. Then they’ll grow up, get their First Class badges, and they’ll be in the middle group of kids, 13-15, who are basically self-sufficient and competent, who can be trusted with basic tasks like building a fire or pitching the kitchen tarp. They’ll become responsible members of the troop, trusted to handle themselves and expected to do what the 16-17 year olds tell them, and to instruct the 11-12 year olds. Then they’ll grow a few years older, and the older boys they grew up with will graduate and leave the troop, and they will become the older boys, the troop leaders, the 16-17 year olds. They’ll become the Senior Patrol Leaders and ASPLs and Quartermasters that the younger boys rely on for guidance and support. They’ll become the older kids guiding the younger boys. Boy Scouts is one of the few remaining organizations that delivers that kind of clear life advancement over time for kids.
Or at least it was. I had this argument many times with people about admitting girls to the Boy Scouts. It’s not that I think girls can’t enjoy or benefit from mostly the same program and activities that Boy Scouts runs, it’s that the moment you insert 12-17 year old girls into the group, it can no longer be self governing. Nobody wants to see a 17 year old senior patrol leader “guiding” a 13 year old girl without close adult supervision, and once you add close adult supervision the entire vision is destroyed. Who knows if my sons will be able to benefit from scouting, if they’ll ever get Eagle or get voted into the Order of the Arrow like their old man.
But I hope, whether it is in scouting or elsewhere, that they’re able to learn to obey and to lead. One cannot truly be capable of one without the other. Someone who cannot listen cannot give orders, someone who cannot give orders can’t really listen. We all give orders or take them in greater or lesser degrees as our talents provide in the Great Chain of Being, but we all gotta serve somebody.
*One of the reasons “Mentor” and “Mentorship” have become degenerate buzzwords rather than live concepts is that we do such a bad job of teaching young people how to be proteges. Mentorship isn’t a one way street, wherein your mentor altruistically imparts knowledge and favors onto a young subordinate in exchange for nothing. Rather, the protege must demonstrate his value. This can be that the protege demonstrates his simple talent: one day he will be important, and that will reflect well upon his mentor as well as put him in a position to dispense favors to his mentor in his turn. It may be doing favors or tasks for his mentor. It may be willingness to take the fall, take the blame, take the bullet for his mentor when necessary. But it will certainly involve loyalty and obedience. Choosing a person within an organization to be loyal to is a key part of advancing in any hierarchy, whether it’s a sports team or the Boy Scouts or a corporation or a police department or a courthouse or a military. However meritocratic a bureaucracy may purport to be, who you know is always important. Without the loyalty of the protege, the mentorship is meaningless, just an endless series of networking lunches.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
My apologies, I misunderstood your opinions.
Yes.
While people have pointed towards a racist coalition of "everyone but the Blacks," it's pretty tough to come up with arguments for why every stereotype about blacks is true and unchangingly based in genetics, while all stereotypes about Chinese are either lies or bias or cultural coincidence.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
It's really tough to make arguments built around "Noticing" patterns which will be able to stop people from holding all kinds of folk prejudices. If evolution doesn't stop at the neck, why does it stop at morality? If my aunt Hilda was absolutely right about the niggers, why was she completely wrong about the kikes?
The argument that IQ is measurable while morality is not, is just a case of looking for your keys under the streetlight. Pay attention to the race of criminals, but ignore Epstein and Weinstein, ignore the ethnicity of the Bolsheviks and the cultural Marxists, etc.
Encouraging race blindness is the best way for Jews who wish to remain distinctive within larger societies to survive.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
You can't unring that bell. Saying "Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in the halls of power compared to their population" can't be taboo if everyone is running around saying that about the whites. If Con. Inc demands its audience stop noticing, they'll be ignored.
This hits the nail on the head. The post-Holocaust Jews advocating against racial consciousness knew what they were doing. Noticing begets noticing. HBD or idpol based arguments on Right or Left will always lead to anti-Semitism as long as Jews are tracked as a distinct group in any way.
There's no stable HBD argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't build an argument around 13/52, that simultaneously avoids questions about Jewish over-representation.
There's no stable idpol argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't complain that blacks are under represented in XYZ, without protestant whites eventually noticing that there are almost no protestant whites in XYZ.
Chesterton's Fence.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
The 911 call isn't something you see a lot of in fetish scenes.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Obviously, well executed false flags are not recognized as so.
Not necessarily. Consider that we don't tend to see the intermediate category of false flags that fall apart after long investigations.
For murders, we see murderers that are caught immediately with terrible alibis, we see murderers that are intelligent and nearly perfect but fall apart under long investigation, and we see murderers that have somewhat decent alibis but fall apart under moderate investigation. We can speculate that there exist some very intelligent or lucky murderers whose alibis never fall apart under investigation.
With false flags, we only seem to see those that are caught immediately. There's no intermediate categories of false flaggers whose alibis fall apart after moderate investigation. There's a missing part of the curve.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal. That's not idpol as it's been during the culture war. The culture war idpol has been "being concerned about the fates of SOME ethnic groups is OK, but about others is pernicious racism".
Isn't that exactly what western Zionists are doing? Jews are allowed to look out for Jews, but Christians aren't allowed to look out for Christians. Imagine a Heritage Foundation report about how over-represented Jews are at prestige schools and professions, and how correspondingly under-represented Protestant Whites are. Do you think the ADL and Bari Weiss would say that was acceptable?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Jussie was also, you know, gay.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
So, is everyone ready for the Republican Jussie Smollet?
We're using the NYPost here, I figure it is more reliable where Republican hoaxes are concerned.
A former New Jersey GOP aide allegedly paid a fetish artist to carve dozens of cuts in her skin and had a pal scrawl “Trump Whore” on her stomach in order to claim that she was the victim of a politically motivated violent attack, according to shocking new court documents. Natalie Greene, 26, was arrested Wednesday and charged with concocting the violent bogus ambush at Egg Harbor Township Nature Reserve on July 23, the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey announced. Prosecutors said the accused fraudster claimed three gun-wielding men approached her and a friend on the trail around 10:30 p.m. before threatening to shoot her and hitting her in the head. The suspect said the fictitious attackers then hogtied her with black zip ties, held her down while slashing her face and body, and etched anti-Trump slurs onto her stomach and back because she worked for a Republican, the complaint said.
I was riding my bike past that nature preserve around then. I wasn't attacked by any Antifa. Go figure.
Two days before the alleged phony assault, Greene drove to Pennsylvania and paid a body modification artist she found on Instagram $500 to deliberately carve gruesome wounds into her face, neck, chest, back, and shoulders with a scalpel, the court documents alleged.
On the day of the alleged staged attack, Greene’s accomplice frantically called police, claiming she had been singled out by name and violently assaulted, according to the complaint. Officers found the accused con artist in a wooded area just off the trail, hands and feet bound together, her shirt pulled over her head, and the words “TRUMP WHORE” and “Van Drew is a racist” scribbled in black marker on her horrifically scarred body, as she screamed that one of her attackers had a gun. Horrific photos in the complaint show Greene with deep, grisly cuts on her body and face.
Prosecutors said Greene was taken to a hospital, where she and her accomplice gave police conflicting accounts of what happened and provided faulty descriptions of the phantom assailants. Black zip ties and duct tape were also found in Greene’s Maserati the night of the disturbing alleged scheme, and federal officials said her unidentified sidekick searched “zip ties near me” on their phone two days earlier and went to a Ventnor Dollar General to pick them up.
Lol Rutgers Law.
The young Ms. Greene's motive in this is pretty unclear. She was at one time a staffer for a NJ representative, presumably from Cape May county. But so far no one is reporting really extreme kind of politics. Cape May County Republican is practically the definition of "boat owner" Republican. It's a red tribe area in the way that any wealthy white area with lots of retiree fisherman and a few small farms would be. But it's not militia country or something. It's not somewhere full of conspiracy nuts, at least it wasn't.
Have we just cracked this much? I'm a little unclear on what kind of body modification is in the offing here exactly, is that stuff semi-permanent? That's HORRIFYING. Is it that worth it to hurt the other team? False flags all seem to be so poorly executed that they don't achieve anything for the "team" attempting them.
I'm unclear on whether this story fell apart so quickly that it was never reported as actually occurring, or if the story was suppressed because of the "wrong team" associations. I never heard anything about it until I heard she was being charged for false reporting. The cover-up appears to have been so thin and weak that it fell apart almost immediately. I haven't even seen much reporting on the Jussie Smollett of it all. Is this kind of insantity so routine it doesn't even break through to the front pages anymore?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
I done been pushin', but I ain't hear the whistle.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
Anecdotally, at least half the boys I grew up with who ultimately came out as homosexual were pretty obviously "different" compared to the other boys from a very early age.
That can fit with either a born this way natural inclination model that they were less masculine because of estrogen in the womb, or with a sin model that they were effeminate boys who were targeted or turned by propaganda later. Either it's a natural inclination that manifests as not enjoying football or war early. Or it's a case of less masculine boys who don't enjoy football or war choosing homosexuality as a kind of fallback that valorizes them as an effeminate man. Or if you prefer the abuse theory, effeminate boys are targeted for conversion by homosexuals.
There are also outliers, of course. I'm not really clear on what I think homosexuality is anymore.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
People do start high value careers at 32 years old. Every elite law school has a few people in their 30s in every class. It's rare, but it doesn't have to be.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Given that Eowyn is the female character given the most "screen time" in the entire trilogy, inherently her role is glamorized and elevated over that of the other women in the series. Galadriel and Arwyn are distinctly side characters (in the book rather than the film, where Arwen got a lot more girlboss prominence and we see more of Galadriel), Eowyn is only a step below the fellowship in character importance to the story.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
If you want to be a general's wife you have to marry a lieutenant.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Eowyn is the character on point here.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Hey chat, what's your best solution to constipation?
I'm assuming this is cosmically linked to the Philadelphia Eagles' struggles on offense (they can't get AJ "Brown" into the "endzone" for a "touchdown"), but getting the iggles' offense in gear isn't really in my purview, so I'm gonna need something more personal.
I first noticed it right before flying, so maybe it was psychological, though it might have started earlier and I just didn't notice it? It started before I flew to Green Bay two weeks ago, when I tried to make sure I emptied out before heading to the airport, only to find that I could not. Typically, first thing in the morning I wake up and drink an espresso and immediately go to the bathroom. But for two weeks now I either haven't at all, or barely manage anything.
I've tried miralax to soften stools, and that had some positive effect, but I don't think the issue is solved. I tried suppositories, which got something out, but my bowel movements haven't returned to normal yet. Everything is small and soft, rather than large and firm.
Do I need to do something more drastic and mechanical like an enema? Is it more of a diet and lifestyle thing? My diet isn't perfect in general, but there wasn't any changes leading into this.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Related: I've never watched anyone working on a computer and not thought they looked like a complete idiot. I'm always watching them fiddle around on the screen looking for something and I'm screaming internally IT'S RIGHT THERE!
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
We despise the experiences our ancestors told us would build character in young people, then are shocked that we lack men of character.
Building things, inventing things, writing things. Some athletes, I'm sure, but I doubt many were at the top of the pecking order at school.
Bohr was on the Danish National Football team at the Olympics. Hemingway boxed and played football. Every president between Eisenhower and HW Bush, except LBJ, was a varsity athlete. Robert Moses was a varsity swimmer.
but read say CS Lewis about his time at school for a counterpoint.
And yet he still became CS Lewis.
Or look at Elon Musk who went through a heck of a character building school experience back in the bad old South Africa:
Isaacson—who has authored other best-selling biographies, such as those of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Leonardo Da Vinci—writes of young Elon’s time at a South African “wilderness survival camp known as veldskool.” The business savant refers to it as a “paramilitary Lord of the Flies.” There, “bullying was considered a virtue,” Isaacson writes. “The kids were each given small rations of food and water, and they were allowed—indeed encouraged—to fight over them.” Small and awkward at the time, Elon was “beaten up twice” and lost 10 pounds during his first stint there. At one point, attendees were “divided into two groups and told to attack each other,” Isaacon writes. “‘It was so insane, mind-blowing,’ Musk recalls. Every few years, one of the kids would die. The counselors would recount such stories as warnings. ‘Don’t be stupid like that dumb f**k who died last year,’ they would say.”
Which sure sounds like it would be bad for Elon Musk, awkward target of bullies, and not at all like character building. It probably isn't something I would choose to send my kid to as described. But then he turned into Elon Musk. So we shouldn't totally discount that being the victim of bullies is a canon event that builds the character of the outcast who becomes a genius.
Sorry, I'm up too late and a bit bleary, but this just doesn't match on to my experience of life at all. Being good at this stuff (except football) makes you a loser. There is nothing that schoolboys (and often pre-1980 or so the men that they grew up to become) like to sneer at more than some swot earnestly making an effort to be good at things.
What the original comment advocated for was not sports specifically, or for every kid to be forced to hang out with every other kid and play sports. It was for kids to be allowed to self organize to do what they want to do. That can be form a band, that can be D&D, can be a creative circle, can be a WoW raid.
I've all the sympathy in the world for the loser, the outcast, the dork, the nerd, the geek. But I don't think they are any better served, ultimately, by safetyism than is the jock.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
I was talking of rather higher ambitions.
And what, pray tell, might those be? Unless it's something utterly esoteric, or so rarefied as to constitute such a tiny number of people that statistical analysis becomes impossible, I posit that you'll find more athletes than you expect among their number.
That's not the way I heard it. He did it because his father suggested it. (I will look this up when I can).
From his autobiography:
Having been a sickly boy, with no natural bodily prowess, and having lived much at home, I was at first quite unable to hold my own when thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents. I was nervous and timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired--ranging from the soldiers of Valley Forge, and Morgan's riflemen, to the heroes of my favorite stories--and from hearing of the feats performed by my Southern forefathers and kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them. Until I was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more definite shape than day-dreams. Then an incident happened that did me real good. Having an attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake.
On the stage-coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys who were about my own age, but very much more competent and also much more mischievous. I have no doubt they were good-hearted boys, but they were boys! They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in return. The experience taught me what probably no amount of good advice could have taught me. I made up my mind that I must try to learn so that I would not again be put in such a helpless position; and having become quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by training. Accordingly, with my father's hearty approval, I started to learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I can see his rooms now, with colored pictures of the fights between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan and Sayers, and other great events in the annals of the squared circle.
Teddy directly states that this formative experience changed his entire life.
you seem to be advocating that the 'natural leaders' of boys and girls should be put in charge of society when they grow up.
Well I didn't really say it, Herodotus did, though he is ultimately right about everything. Science says so as well: Studies show huge percentages of Fortune 500 CEOs were college athletes, though maybe that's too boring for you again, and the really smart kids are outcasts who do super important stuff like write groundbreaking Harry Potter fanfics or something.
But also, it's not really advocating for jocks per se as natural leaders. It would be those with the relevant talent to the task at hand who would assume leadership, whose peers will recognize them as leaders. Kids will recognize a great mathematician if his skill helps him win at cards, or a great prankster who makes everyone laugh, or a great singer if they're trying to form a band. All aspects of human endeavor naturally lend charisma to their practitioners. I'm advocating for letting kids pursue their goals on their own, how they organize is up to them.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
If anything, the children who do well in later life seem to be the misfits who had to learn because nobody else was there to lean on.
Cope. There is no positive correlation for misfits and genius or success, we just tell ourselves there is because it's a comfortable story to tell to losers. Some teenage misfits are smart, others are dumb. Some jocks are very successful. All studies on the topic show that varsity athletes do better than non-athletes across most life metrics.
Even in earlier times, much British and American greatness (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) came from aristocrats who were educated at home and did not go to school.
Young Teddy was asthmatic and sickly as a child, but at 14 he got bullied by some older kids and he decided to do something about it. He took up exercise and boxing, and made himself better. He dedicated himself to The Strenuous Life to advance himself. His entire life is the proof of the character building thesis: the bullies who attacked him triggered the rise of the Rough Rider. If he had never met those bullies, he might never have become the man he was destined to be.
That's not to say that the optimal level of bullying and hurtful comments is 0%, but leaving boys to self-organise society does not produce [a] good society.
I'm not advocating for boys organizing the whole of society, I'm advocating for boys (and girls) being allowed to organize themselves in a limited setting.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
To steel-man the idea that "knowing the cost" is always possible, I'm not sure it'd be reasonable to expect my (car) mechanic to define payment terms for a fix before even popping the hood. There are enough potential complications in complex procedures (emergency cesarean sections in childbirth, for example) that probably can't be trivially bundled up front.
The question isn't really do we know the cost, it is who carries the risk that the cost turns out to be higher (or lower) than expected. There are lots of situations where we are unsure about the cost going into a transaction, and the risk has to be distributed. Right now we operate on the system that the Hospital takes on only the risk that they don't get paid, while an "honest" patient takes on all the risk. We could quite easily choose to distribute that risk differently.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
What if it does both? What if you can't get one without the other? What if you can't have character building without risking some kids getting bullied?
I loved Shogun, but I understood it completely differently after reading King Rat, Clavell's first and largely autobiographical novel. Viewing Shogun as the work of a man who lived through imprisonment by the Japanese, I think it's asking much more interesting literary questions. The book is about forgiveness,How can Blackthorne ever forgive the Japanese for boiling his crewman alive and pissing on him? Meaning how can Clavell forgive the Japanese for what he went through in Changi? And how, in turn, can the Japanese forgive the West for Hiroshima? Clavell, personally, experienced having his life saved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how can the Japanese forgive that?
Viewed as Clavell working through those questions psychologically, I think the book is much more interesting.
What's always disappointed me about Clavell is that I read Shogun first, and all his other books are only half as good by comparison.
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