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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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Nothing. I've evaluated my own goals, values, and notions of what I'd like to accomplish and realized they all came down to either direct egotistical buttressing or else buttressing for secondary layers. @SubstantialFrivolity above notes he gains satisfaction from making the world around him a tiny bit better, but that reeks of a secondary layer of buttressing, while even his talk of jobs well done sounds like he's glorifying perfectionist urges latent in certain 'engineering-minded' individuals rather than, necessarily, true results.

True results would reveal that, for instance, slop-programmers earn more not only in commercial terms but also in terms of social praise in many cases than perfectionists, so that external signals would seem to validate their proclivities to a greater degree. Many of the world's most successful people operate on a haphazard basis. The proclaimed principle of doing a job well done would seem to be entirely removed from objective measurements, and so its validity can only be attested by its own proponent, whose benefits in promoting social acclaim for urges he inherently possesses cannot escape notice.

Unflattering terms cannot be avoided because the underlying human animal is unflatteringly conceived. A species born of darwinian struggle, embedded in social structures encouraging egotistical self delusions and self-promotion of their own worth and validity, all the while chasing means to further darwinian success. The instincts for biological selflessness and charity, in comparison, are very little.

In this case, we can write off the category of "coverup for simian greed" as useless, as all categories that include everything are, and proceed to categories that are useful for more than nihilistic grandstanding.