To put it in terms of our honor discussion this afternoon: you could find yourself in a situation that confuses unearned pride and raw ego for honor, and with the wrong set of incentives build an entire subculture out of that.. When you do that, an obvious madman looks like a martyr, and a hero looks like a villain.
🤣🤣🤣 I'm reminded of John Carter's Note about "racist" being essentially a racial epithet for white people, and something we should lean into and own, the way black people did with the "N-word." As in, greeting each other with, "What up, my raciss?" I'll have to track that Note down. That's one complaint I have about Substack Notes as opposed to posts, they're so hard to find if you're looking for one that's more than a couple days old.
America and most of western society, needs some form of intervention or twelve step program to get back to reality.
I want to blame smart phones and most forms of "social media", but I think they are both offshoots or spinoffs or just the physical manifestation of something much deeper and sinister. (Although if we all disconnected from electronic media for a period if time, we would most likely come out better.)
The cultural rot has definitely accelerated in recent years, but as you've pointed out with the '90's references it isn't new, just easier and faster.
Until more reasonable people can openly discuss the problem, we won't be able to find any solutions.
Something I recall from college was getting in early (commuting by train) to a student center to get coffee/breakfast and do some studying. The Commons room had a TV where everyone was watching the late-90s talk show crap, mainly Maury Povich at that hour.
I remember watching the people watching that shit and for the first time thinking, "Holy fuck, we're in a heap of trouble."
Yeah, the warning signs were there that the culture was in deep decline. People were still wealthy enough, at least compared to where they are today, that they could ignore the warning signs. Plus they hadn't kicked the Psyop machine into hyperdrive yet. You could still naively believe that you could trust your government not to kill a bunch of its own citizens just to enrich a few psychopathic elites.
It is lucrative to sell cheap goods and services to a bankrupt culture: Gold fronts and 18” rims come to mind. Those profits can be diverted to isolated luxury homes and private security, so this is not likely to change.
This. Capitalists should be licking their lips at the idea of million-dollar “reparations” because the recipients are going to blow through all the money in a month and be penniless again. There’s a small window of opportunity to get a very fat slice of the pie by selling them useless trinkets, much like our ancestors did when they swapped silver bells for gold ingots and gems as big as pigeon eggs.
It's isn't either/or. Biology and culture both play a role. Is American black culture perfectly designed to encourage their worst impulses? Yes. There's abundant evidence that high levels of violent crime correlate to fatherlessness, which in turn is facilitated by the welfare state. Do blacks also possess inborn cognitive traits that predispose them to higher levels of aggression, higher time preference, more impulsive behavior? Also yes. Higher levels of criminality in black vs Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, Indian, or white populations (by a lot), together with quite a fair bit of psychometric testing that consistently returns the same results, all point in the direction of biology playing a role.
Humans are cultural animals. But we are also animals.
We can't do anything about biology, though. We can do something about culture. However, if we ignore biology, and develop culture in this state of ignorance, we will not get good results.
On an individual level, of course, it can vary too widely for race to be a useful heuristic for prejudging people, but in the aggregate, some group differences will persist even if all else is equal. We can acknowledge this when it comes to athleticism and why blacks are overrepresented in professional sports, but it's taboo to even consider it as a possibility for why Asians are overrepresented in engineering. Something about cognitive and psychological differences, nobody wants to believe we could be in any way constrained by biology or genetics. This plays out in schools, where the trend is to eviscerate and eliminate gifted programs, and where no one can say some kids need to be "left behind" because they lack the intellect to keep up, but nobody has a problem with the football or basketball team cutting some players and relegating others to the bench. But once the Chinese take over, I'm sure they will have no problem ditching all the BS about "equity" meaning identical outcomes.
It's because we live in a culture that prizes intellect above all else. You see this on an interpersonal level, too. Call someone weak, ugly, old - they'll usually shrug it off. Call them stupid (when they ARE stupid, and know it) and they will get very angry with you.
The left implicitly understands this - it's why their go-to insult is 'hurrr ur dumb, educate yourself' - and it's also why they react so strongly against cognitive HBD. Deep down they assume the world would be better off if the stupid people weren't around (not them, naturally, they're smart), so if blacks aren't smart, well, there would be implications, in their minds....
Interesting to note that's where the Vonnegut-style "Handicapper General" is most active in our culture: in anything and everything pertaining to cognitive ability. (Although the Handicapper General does seem to be very big on expensive credentialism.)
When it comes to group differences, the Left creates the very perception they are trying to forbid people from having. I would so very much prefer not to categorize people by race, for race not to be any kind of defining characteristic. Instead, let's define people by competence and character, do what we can to remove artificial barriers that inhibit people from achieving their full potential, and then let the chips fall where they may; and if the ensuing hierarchy in certain fields fails to match the society's aggregate racial demographics, then so be it. But the Left insists on defining everyone in terms of race, pretending that competence and character are unimportant, and then arranging pre-determined outcomes where members of a favored demographic are promoted beyond their competence or in spite of their character flaws. And then everyone notices the double standard and sees that among their incompetent peers, certain demographics are overrepresented, repeatedly. It would be so much better to promote based on competence and character, and then your peers, no matter what their race, would be competent people of strong character.
This is certainly correct. Some cultural behaviors result better outcomes. It is patently obvious. Its a real shame that certain constituencies reject the idea and label anyone who correctly observes empirical evidence as 'racist'.
You know, maybe our ancestors weren’t wrong about these people, Read accounts written by explorers of our own race; see what they said about the tribes they came across. Feel that colonialist mindset sink in. It feels good, there is no impotent ire at being only able to complain about how dumb these tribes are. Of course they’re dumb. These people used to howl “evil spirit” at everything and anything. Now they howl “racist” and still don’t understand. They never will. That’s why we were only supposed to make Christians of them. Integrating them into our society is a failed experiment, and sooner or later someone is going to pull the plug (you won’t see the Chinese make the same mistake).
Very true. During the "Great Migration," black people took southern redneck culture into the big cities of the North and West Coast, including its more dysfunctional elements. And Jerry Springer; I hope a VHS tape of highlight reels from his show is in a time capsule somewhere to give future generations a window into 1990s pop culture decadence. And as you pointed out, the white trash and black trash on that show had much more in common than they had differences.
Years ago I, a son of lower middle class flyover rednecks, dated a lower middle class black girl from Dorchester. And damnit if we didn't have a hell of a lot more in common than I had with my Bahhstun Bhranim neighbors.
Thomas Sowell, in his book, Black Rednecks & White Liberals, traces Redneck culture to the lawless badlands on the border between England and Scotland. Apparently, 'Redneck' means 'cutthroat,' 'Charlie' was a name common to those people, and 'cracker' means 'bandit,' from the Gaelic word 'creach,' meaning booty or plunder. These pejoratives were used in Britain well before they were used in the USA.
True, but those terms are grandfathered in from at least three centuries ago, and they had specific meanings back then which are forgotten now. Hell, even the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feud began in the borderlands between England and Scotland, but nobody remembers why it started.
To put it in terms of our honor discussion this afternoon: you could find yourself in a situation that confuses unearned pride and raw ego for honor, and with the wrong set of incentives build an entire subculture out of that.. When you do that, an obvious madman looks like a martyr, and a hero looks like a villain.
Exactly. Thomas Sowell addressed the dysfunctional "honor culture" (false honor) you describe in "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."
That was a good book, though.
Shut up, racist!
🤣🤣🤣 I'm reminded of John Carter's Note about "racist" being essentially a racial epithet for white people, and something we should lean into and own, the way black people did with the "N-word." As in, greeting each other with, "What up, my raciss?" I'll have to track that Note down. That's one complaint I have about Substack Notes as opposed to posts, they're so hard to find if you're looking for one that's more than a couple days old.
Yes, it was meant as a term of endearment.
Dig that, my raciss!
America and most of western society, needs some form of intervention or twelve step program to get back to reality.
I want to blame smart phones and most forms of "social media", but I think they are both offshoots or spinoffs or just the physical manifestation of something much deeper and sinister. (Although if we all disconnected from electronic media for a period if time, we would most likely come out better.)
The cultural rot has definitely accelerated in recent years, but as you've pointed out with the '90's references it isn't new, just easier and faster.
Until more reasonable people can openly discuss the problem, we won't be able to find any solutions.
Something I recall from college was getting in early (commuting by train) to a student center to get coffee/breakfast and do some studying. The Commons room had a TV where everyone was watching the late-90s talk show crap, mainly Maury Povich at that hour.
I remember watching the people watching that shit and for the first time thinking, "Holy fuck, we're in a heap of trouble."
Yeah, the warning signs were there that the culture was in deep decline. People were still wealthy enough, at least compared to where they are today, that they could ignore the warning signs. Plus they hadn't kicked the Psyop machine into hyperdrive yet. You could still naively believe that you could trust your government not to kill a bunch of its own citizens just to enrich a few psychopathic elites.
It is lucrative to sell cheap goods and services to a bankrupt culture: Gold fronts and 18” rims come to mind. Those profits can be diverted to isolated luxury homes and private security, so this is not likely to change.
This. Capitalists should be licking their lips at the idea of million-dollar “reparations” because the recipients are going to blow through all the money in a month and be penniless again. There’s a small window of opportunity to get a very fat slice of the pie by selling them useless trinkets, much like our ancestors did when they swapped silver bells for gold ingots and gems as big as pigeon eggs.
It's isn't either/or. Biology and culture both play a role. Is American black culture perfectly designed to encourage their worst impulses? Yes. There's abundant evidence that high levels of violent crime correlate to fatherlessness, which in turn is facilitated by the welfare state. Do blacks also possess inborn cognitive traits that predispose them to higher levels of aggression, higher time preference, more impulsive behavior? Also yes. Higher levels of criminality in black vs Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, Indian, or white populations (by a lot), together with quite a fair bit of psychometric testing that consistently returns the same results, all point in the direction of biology playing a role.
Humans are cultural animals. But we are also animals.
We can't do anything about biology, though. We can do something about culture. However, if we ignore biology, and develop culture in this state of ignorance, we will not get good results.
On an individual level, of course, it can vary too widely for race to be a useful heuristic for prejudging people, but in the aggregate, some group differences will persist even if all else is equal. We can acknowledge this when it comes to athleticism and why blacks are overrepresented in professional sports, but it's taboo to even consider it as a possibility for why Asians are overrepresented in engineering. Something about cognitive and psychological differences, nobody wants to believe we could be in any way constrained by biology or genetics. This plays out in schools, where the trend is to eviscerate and eliminate gifted programs, and where no one can say some kids need to be "left behind" because they lack the intellect to keep up, but nobody has a problem with the football or basketball team cutting some players and relegating others to the bench. But once the Chinese take over, I'm sure they will have no problem ditching all the BS about "equity" meaning identical outcomes.
It's because we live in a culture that prizes intellect above all else. You see this on an interpersonal level, too. Call someone weak, ugly, old - they'll usually shrug it off. Call them stupid (when they ARE stupid, and know it) and they will get very angry with you.
The left implicitly understands this - it's why their go-to insult is 'hurrr ur dumb, educate yourself' - and it's also why they react so strongly against cognitive HBD. Deep down they assume the world would be better off if the stupid people weren't around (not them, naturally, they're smart), so if blacks aren't smart, well, there would be implications, in their minds....
Interesting to note that's where the Vonnegut-style "Handicapper General" is most active in our culture: in anything and everything pertaining to cognitive ability. (Although the Handicapper General does seem to be very big on expensive credentialism.)
When it comes to group differences, the Left creates the very perception they are trying to forbid people from having. I would so very much prefer not to categorize people by race, for race not to be any kind of defining characteristic. Instead, let's define people by competence and character, do what we can to remove artificial barriers that inhibit people from achieving their full potential, and then let the chips fall where they may; and if the ensuing hierarchy in certain fields fails to match the society's aggregate racial demographics, then so be it. But the Left insists on defining everyone in terms of race, pretending that competence and character are unimportant, and then arranging pre-determined outcomes where members of a favored demographic are promoted beyond their competence or in spite of their character flaws. And then everyone notices the double standard and sees that among their incompetent peers, certain demographics are overrepresented, repeatedly. It would be so much better to promote based on competence and character, and then your peers, no matter what their race, would be competent people of strong character.
This is certainly correct. Some cultural behaviors result better outcomes. It is patently obvious. Its a real shame that certain constituencies reject the idea and label anyone who correctly observes empirical evidence as 'racist'.
🙌🏼
💯💯💯👍🏻
You know, maybe our ancestors weren’t wrong about these people, Read accounts written by explorers of our own race; see what they said about the tribes they came across. Feel that colonialist mindset sink in. It feels good, there is no impotent ire at being only able to complain about how dumb these tribes are. Of course they’re dumb. These people used to howl “evil spirit” at everything and anything. Now they howl “racist” and still don’t understand. They never will. That’s why we were only supposed to make Christians of them. Integrating them into our society is a failed experiment, and sooner or later someone is going to pull the plug (you won’t see the Chinese make the same mistake).
Let us say his name: Hero of the City Daniel Penny.
Very true. During the "Great Migration," black people took southern redneck culture into the big cities of the North and West Coast, including its more dysfunctional elements. And Jerry Springer; I hope a VHS tape of highlight reels from his show is in a time capsule somewhere to give future generations a window into 1990s pop culture decadence. And as you pointed out, the white trash and black trash on that show had much more in common than they had differences.
Years ago I, a son of lower middle class flyover rednecks, dated a lower middle class black girl from Dorchester. And damnit if we didn't have a hell of a lot more in common than I had with my Bahhstun Bhranim neighbors.
I come not to praise Springer, but to bury him.
Yeah, whenever the audience started chanting "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry," it was never anything good.
Thomas Sowell, in his book, Black Rednecks & White Liberals, traces Redneck culture to the lawless badlands on the border between England and Scotland. Apparently, 'Redneck' means 'cutthroat,' 'Charlie' was a name common to those people, and 'cracker' means 'bandit,' from the Gaelic word 'creach,' meaning booty or plunder. These pejoratives were used in Britain well before they were used in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pls-Z0KOOgw
Thomas Sowell's books should be required reading in high school economics and history classes.
Agreed. And his lucid prose ought to be the model for how to write.
Nah bruh. In America at least, a redneck is a white man who works outdoors. Resulting in a red, sunburnt neck.
Source: home.
True, but those terms are grandfathered in from at least three centuries ago, and they had specific meanings back then which are forgotten now. Hell, even the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feud began in the borderlands between England and Scotland, but nobody remembers why it started.