coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
What can we learn about optimal cultural leadership in light of the 2013-2021 social justice period?
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Religious leaders did not adequately stand up against the mass movement. Although many conservatives see value in religious institutions as a cultural defense, mainstream Catholicism and Protestant denominations did not substantively address the social justice craze. In some cases they placated or even promoted it.
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Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement. It is not the case, for instance, that the experts in western history, literature, or philosophy were more likely to argue against the mass movement in any substantive way. This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
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The main “public critics” of the period have little in common except that they were passionate and somewhat neurotic men. Yarvin, Peterson, Weinstein, Scott Adams(?). My memory of who was most dominant in this period is somewhat hazy, maybe someone with a better memory can correct me. There were more psychologists among critics than philosophers. You had people like Stefan Molyneux passionately criticizing the proto-movement well before its zenith. His Twitter attests to his neuroticism.
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Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
It’s difficult to come away with clear takeaways. IMO: (1) it is beneficial to increase anonymous discussion, as this laid the groundwork for future criticism, and allowed for arguments to spread which would otherwise be banned. (2) It may be essential to increase the number of passionate and neurotic men, over men with other skills, as the major critics were more often passionate and somewhat crazy. A “passionate” temperament is occasionally inaccurate, and may result in behavior that leads institutions to weed them out — but their utility in sensing and addressing threats compensates for the occasional bout of craziness.
There is a funny review of Jordan Peterson from 2013, possibly the first time anyone commented about his personality online. It was made on the anonymous literature board of 4chan in 2013, long before his rise to fame.
he's craaaaazy. he so crazy. I had a class immediately following one of his lectures like, his was from 1:15-3:15 in Room 101., and my different classes was from 3:25-5:25 in Room 101 too. ok? So... he would totally bug out if someone opened the door early. Like, screaming fits and stuff. my prof (who was just a postdoc and wasn't going to get tenured at u of t) encouraged us all to fuck with his head because in addition to being a rageaholic spaz, peterson would also leave the podium really dirty. also, he lectures in a cape for some reason. he went on this ontario talk show with his daughter talking about how they're both clinically depressed bla bla, I feel bad that she's his dad, that must be hard to deal with
Editing for clarity
The question is geared toward users who believe that wokeness constituted a threat — to institutions, America, truth, etc. I suppose there are some users who do not believe that wokeness was a threat. I can’t recall seeing such a comment in years on this forum, but if you’re such a user, you are of course welcome to comment and critique in any way that you’d like. Feel free to comment on the premise, the points, a tangent.
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Why were the individuals leading the fight against wokeness outside of the traditional framework of understanding and designating cultural authority? The study of philosophy, the study of history, the study of great works, the study and authority of religion — these things did not create any of the influential “fighters” publicly arguing against wokeness. If they couldn’t detect, grasp, and eliminate the threat, then how important should we consider these pursuits and domains? Why did they fail when they were needed? Are these pursuits less valuable in moral formation than generally conceived? Many conservatives believe that these mainstays of Western education are important to study; yet the students of these were impotent against the threat. There are conservatives who studied these, and who teach these.
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”Institutional capture” doesn’t factor in here because there are non-woke members of these domains, perhaps a few percent or a few tens of percents, but none of them were to be found among the influential critics of wokeness.
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It appears to me that temperament played a larger role than anything else in deciding who was instrumental in tackling the threat. Do you agree? Do you disagree? From Peterson to Musk, the great “defenders” against it were passionate and somewhat crazy personalities. They cried publicly. They had strange personal lives. If that’s the case, should temperament be considered a greater deal in the selection of authority?
I think this clarifies. There’s a mismatch between “the study of Western things leads to great moral conduct!” and the reality of how everyone behaved during a mass movement which veered toward moral hysteria. “Traditional education” did not avail anything. This is interesting, provided of course that you agree with the premise.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
I think uplifting the in-group by getting them jobs sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain is pathetic.
Why? It works incredibly well for China, who has seen consistent gains in QoL. It worked well throughout the history of the West. Sewing bras is more conducive to wellbeing than stacking them on a shelf. Picking fruit is so Edenic that it’s the first recorded activity of humanity. In what world would “picking fruit” be pathetic? I think you are having trouble dissociating the image you have of these things now, with what they would look like if employers didn’t have a semi-slave class. There’s a farm near me where people — college-educated, white, smart — sign up to plant and reap for free. Because in return they get free room and board, and most importantly a social environment filled with other young white people. They work quite hard, then they drink in the evenings and dance and fuck and make music and so on. This is exactly what agricultural work was for nearly all of history. Not for the slaves, of course, but for the non-enslaved.
I'm not concerned that these Guatemalans coming across the border are going to out-compete whites because they have a "better" culture.
Well you ignored all of my points regarding this. If I also ignored all of the points I would agree with you.
coffee_enjoyer
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13hr ago
requires non-free or at least desperate labor to get done in sufficient quantities
What is your excuse for why China is able to do it while having a one standard deviation higher median IQ over America? Even Japan does not utilize as many foreign laborers as America.
coffee_enjoyer
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13hr ago
Do you think that the Honduran or Mexican illegal tenant housing advertises their roommate openings in Craigslist, in English? No. This is absurd to believe. Especially not around farming operations.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
As our resident holocaust expert: have there been any cases of elderly camp guards admitting to the holocaust? We should expect that some percent of elderly camp guards would admit to a bunch of traumas and atrocities once they develop age-related declines in inhibition. I imagine most of this is written in German, but I could only find cases of the opposite: elderly camp guards losing their inhibition and then expressing a denial of the event.
coffee_enjoyer
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12hr ago
So your answer to the question of how White Americans can compete with semi-slave illegal workers is
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Go ask around a Waffle House
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Look around on Craigslist for illegal housing
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(Ignore remittance payments)
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(Ignore cultural and early life influences involving manual labor, eg that some of these Hondurans have been doing it since 12)
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(Ignore crucial cultural factors related to social wellbeing like finding a wife)
coffee_enjoyer
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17hr ago
They do it for years at a time. It’s called WWOOFing. Lots of the scions of high human capital humans do it.
Perhaps you find it hard to believe because, like the person above, you can’t imagine that QoL and wages for farmwork will increase if the semi-slave laborers are deported. When conditions improve, more people will be willing to do it, and more places will look like WWOOFing.
coffee_enjoyer
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12hr ago
Then consider Japan, which only employs 50k migrants in its agricultural and forestry sector.
People who have the option to be laborers in cities will prefer that to being agricultural laborers
And if there is an absence of agricultural workers, the wages for agriculture go up, meaning the conditions become as desirable as WWOOFing, meaning people return to work in agriculture.
coffee_enjoyer
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13hr ago
In the 2016 and 2020 elections, white non-evangelicals with college degrees and even white non-evangelicals without college degrees supported Biden by a wide margin
The arbitrary filtering of one of the largest religious groups is silly. The shift to D is mostly among women, not the men. If you’re like me, and think politics should be reserved for the male-brained, women shifting D after a media propaganda blitz that utilized emotional propaganda about victimhood is not at all persuasive in regards to any trend that matters.
less than 50% of Republicans are now in favor of decreasing immigration, down from 88% last year.
This question doesn’t tell us anything, because it is in regards to the “present level of immigration”, under Trump who has been (at least presenting himself as) deporting illegals. The average has no idea that the country plans to import so many Indians. The average voter has no idea about the statistics related to yearly immigration, like, at all. You’re asking them about vibes. Shame on Gallop here.
coffee_enjoyer
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14hr ago
My comment on WWOOF was made to argue that White people — even some of the pristine “human capital” that sociopaths autists certain people value over others — are willing to do genuinely difficult farming for long hours when the social conditions are right. One WWOOFer I know is the son of two high-powered lawyers. I know someone who runs a place and she’s a very intelligent pianist. They would never in a million years do it if they were only around Hondurans who barely spoke English, and if there were zero breaks and harsh foremen watching them. Just like, in the South, not many White people were willing to “compete” with slaves in agricultural work.
Re 1: WWOOF is usually done for many months at a time, probably no more than a year at a time, but you have WWOOFers who do it for 5+ years along different locations as a way to travel for free. Why wouldn’t agricultural work look more like WWOOFing in the absence of a semi-slave class? Do the Chinese working in agriculture today have the same conditions as 1950? Of course not, because wages and benefits have increased. Really we’re just asking, “how badly can we get away with reducing QoL for the poorest using semi-slave labor” which is the wrong question to ask in the face of Jeff Bezoses.
Re 4: I know one place that sells lots of their products at a local market. I know another which is a kind of co-op farm where local people “invest” in a portion of the crops. I am probably describing this poorly.
I am not saying that WWOOFing is the future, I am saying that agricultural work will look more like WWOOFing in the absence of semi slave labor.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Nuclear threats are for deterrence. You want the other country afraid to risk it. Israel’s highly religious minority cannot risk the grounds of the Temple Mount becoming contaminated, because it is unequivocally essential for their end of times prophecies. The entire religion is predicated on the Messiah returning and the Temple being rebuilt on these grounds. Some Haredi even believe that the Shechina is especially found at the Western Wall:
The real reason why the Western Wall was not destroyed was not the one that counts midrash – the reality is that the general assigned to demolish it was incapable of doing so. O midrash reveals that the Western Wall remained standing thanks to an oath from G-d promising its eternal survival. And, in fact, it teaches that the Divine Presence never withdrew from the Western Wall
When nuclear weapons are being launched, no one cares about offending someone’s sensibilities (lol). The threat may be enough to cause the ultra religious population of Israel to take a more diplomatic approach to Iran, unless their foolishness is the thing that causes the impossibility of their religious prophecy. That would be a big deal. An example of how serious they treat this stuff — the infamous tunnel under Chabad in NYC was to fulfill Rebbe Schneerson’s wish to attach two buildings together. So the literal world Chabad headquarters built a secret tunnel underneath Manhattan to connect the two buildings, and rioted when the police put an end to it, in order to fulfill the will of the Rebbe.
Iran should obviously see their current predicament as one of civilizational survival. Are they going to surrender to Israel for the rest of time, having no ability to ever fight back because of the pace of technological development, or are they going to try to retain sovereignty over their land? I know that if I were Iran, i would be nuke-maxxing and doing whatever it takes to ensure I have sovereignty in my country. Even if it is “offensive”
They would love when the price of consumer goods go up if their wages go up as well.
coffee_enjoyer
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12hr ago
And the Japanese? How about the Japanese in the 80s?
coffee_enjoyer
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9hr ago
The Middle Class already does crappy work for a living. I don’t think farming is grunt work — if I had a choice I would sooner enslave the financiers than the farmers. I would rather import Chinese and Indians to take the jobs of White financiers than the farmers, because that is truly innoble work. The Western Christian legacy is considering this work as innoble, as beneath human dignity. Even programming demeans humanity more than “picking fruit”. Look at how they write on Twitter. They are halfways to the singularity and I pray that their wishes come sooner and they become fully machine.
a few Oaxacans and Hondurans
Right, it’s obviously an incredibly larger amount than this which can easily make the White population dwindle to 5% by the end of the millenia.
better for everyone
Not at all. Actually, there’s a good argument to be made that deportations could increase all the wages of the lower middle class. But if we’re really basing things off of “better for everyone” we need to talk about waste among the .1% income level.
coffee_enjoyer
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5hr ago
It’s crucial to understand why this isn’t the case. The mechanic competes in wages with the fruit picker (in an economy with an absence of illegal labor), not directly but transitively, because the mechanic competes with somebody who competes with somebody who […] competes with the fruit-picker. Increasing opportunity for the lower class increases it for the lower-middle, which increases it for the middle. Everyone’s QoL and wages increase. Food prices increase, but wages increase higher than they for the lower and middle. It won’t increase wages for the upper white collar professionals, because there’s a strict barrier where they simply would never consider entering a trade or working as a chef even if wages in these places rose considerable, which is because of the class association. (And remember remittance payments: 66 billion yearly just for Mexico!)
coffee_enjoyer
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5hr ago
7.77 million tons of rice production annually isn’t trivial and neither is 77,000 tons of green tea
coffee_enjoyer
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12hr ago
You’re missing the entire substance of the argument, which is that the reason the QoL of agriculture is too low for natives is because of the migrants. If you deport them all, ag needs workers, ag must increase QoL, it looks more like WOOFing which white people love doing.
If I could immediately hire foreign English-speakers as paralegals, importing them in and keeping them in cramp accommodations and ensure they are afraid of leaving the job because finding work as an illegal is tricky, the paralegal market in America would implode. There would be no American paralegals left. So the American paralegal cannot compete with the migrant worker driven paralegal industry.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Because if it’s rebuilt it’s like a whole thing. Sacrifices have to resume daily etc. And just the idea of the holiest of holies land becoming contaminated is a dissonant thought.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
The whole city is not within the limits of the Temple Mount, and nuclear weapons are made in different magnitudes. So this could conceivably be accomplished with negligible loss of life.
coffee_enjoyer
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5hr ago
If it were viable to employ illegal workers as baristas, you would be shocked at how horrible the QoL for baristas is too. Have you seen how bad the QoL is for soldiers? It’s because they don’t have a choice!
Wow, horrible, picking berries. They are performing literally the same physical movements that a grocery stocker performs, except the objects are lighter, they aren’t breathing in microplastics all day, the ground beneath them isn’t concrete, they don’t hear horrible pop music 24/7… how could anyone do this?
What is the source that they fled for work at factories as opposed to increases in efficiency of agriculture and an absence of employment driving them to work in factories?
Any amount of physical labor is backbreaking if you have a supply of illegal labor that you can abuse. Even retail would involve an inhospitable amount of bending and lifting if the employer could abuse them without the public seeing.
coffee_enjoyer
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9hr ago
We should make national policy decisions based on the projected wellbeing of citizens. That would include the psychological theories of Csikszentmihalyi, which shows that certain occupational activities are more conducive to happiness.
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
Respond to women in variable ratio intervals, and only in a way that increases their engagement.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I like that he referenced Tertullian in relation to the mystery of the Mass, in criticizing evangelical worship for being insufficiently mysterious and reverent.
There are reasons to “uplift the in-group” and you need to articulate why this is an innoble goal in and of itself. They are citizens; they have more in common with you if you are a wealthy white person; for evolutionary reasons, it is natural to have an interest in uplifting those that are similar to yourself; for reasons of national security, you do not want so many citizens who believe that the American project is not worth investing in; they may have a higher IQ than Hondurans; they may have different levels of compassion or a different taste in aesthetics which may be informed by genetics.
College-educated White males lean toward Trump. It’s just women who shifted a lot toward Harris.
This may have something to do with the millions of migrants brought in to undercut wages, the exact thing we’re talking about. No, you can’t ever compete with them, because —
Remittance payments mean that they can afford a higher quality life while temporarily living a lower quality life in America
They are raised with values that are de-socialized by our ridiculous mandatory education culture, and this isn’t the kind of thing you can arbitrarily re-socialize at will
They often live in illegal accommodations, requiring less funds, and these require a network that natives aren’t a part of
They live within a culture where the women expect to marry laborers
I’m also not sure if you’re agreeing with him that it would increase wages, and just disagree that this is important, or if you think it won’t increase wages.
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