At The Mitrailleuse: Dreams, Consciousness and Sanity

This Just In:

It’s interesting that before he became the first human to die live on the Web, Tim Leary changed his tune (and the title of one of his books) from Exo-Psychology to Info-Psychology.

Leary acknowledged that his one-time obsession with space exploration and the future of humanity off-planet was at least partly the result of his time in jail in the 1960s and 70s and the natural tendency of the mind to want to free itself by flying high above the prison grounds. For an old dude, he seems to have rapidly grasped the possibilities of the Web and some of the changes to our lives that digital world would bring. He apparently continued to consume plenty of drugs up until the end. The funny thing, to me, is that there’s no indication that in all his years of psychonauting he ever deeply explored the free, easily available and abundant resource that’s provided to us every night: The Dreamscape.

Read the rest at The Mitrailleuse

Hiatus

I haven’t posted anything here for over two months and am distancing myself from most of the hoopla on the web for now.

First there was Bruce Charlton’s Addicted to Distraction. Then, the other day there was Tony Schwartz’s Addicted to Distraction. That was the final nail in something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. Not disconnecting, but at least disengaging. From the so-called news, from my hourly perusal of Drudge, from obsessively tweeting out links to stuff I thought important. Really, it wasn’t.

Yesterday I was checking out some personnel files where I work and I had a chance to read my own hiring file, the one they put together on me after interviews. Three of my former superiors gave my overall performance, out of 10: 10, 9.5, 9/10. Which is nice, except for the last 10 years I’ve spent like four fucking hours a day on the web reading “news” and making blog posts and so on.

I’ve been coasting on my IQ and natural ability to read, evaluate and brief information very quickly for my whole life. I mean, since kindergarten. I haven’t really applied myself to shit, and here I am at 55 making a solid upper-middle-class salary and living large.

I sure as hell don’t want to die in 15 or 20 or 30 years and think, as the lights go out, “I sure did keep up on useless internet shit.” It’s not all useless, of course, but the trick is knowing the difference…

I’m writing a book about “Sanity.” If I ever complete it I’ll get back here and flog it.

Meantime, you might want to check out Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s book The Power of Full Engagement. One of the authors of the book on full engagement found it nearly impossible to quit his internet addiction.

“Full engagement” is what’s needed, all right. But not on fighting with SJWs, winning internet threads or discussing “news.”

I still might read and comment on your blog, occasionally, so don’t go soft, my niggas.

The Failure of the “Social Sciences” is the Failure of Progressivism

There has been no dearth of commentary in the last two weeks on the now-infamous “Reproducibility Crisis.” The original in Science was about psychological studies, but no one with half a brain doubts that reproducibility (and fraud) problems extend to sociology, criminology, Gender and Ethnic “Studies,” and even nutrition and health.

Among the more intelligent looks, Scott Alexander thoroughly explains yes, it’s a crisis in response to this head fake in the NYT by some psych prof with her fingers in her ears. Steve Sailer, a former market researcher, wonders if psychology is more like astronomy, or marketing research? The latter only wants results now; psychology(in a pretend quest to be physics) seeks Permanent Laws of the Entire Universe.

Sailer does point out that not all areas of psych seem to have a replication crisis (TRIGGER WARNING – CRIMETHINK AHEAD!):

By the way, some fields in psychology, most notably psychometrics, don’t seem to have a replication crisis. Their PR problem is the opposite one: they keep making the same old predictions, which keep coming true, and everybody who is anybody therefore hates them for it, kill-the-messenger style. For example, around the turn of the century, Ian Deary’s team tracked down a large number of elderly individuals who had taken the IQ test given to every 11-year-old in Scotland in 1932 to see how their lives had turned out. They found that their 1932 IQ score was a fairly good predictor. Similarly, much of The Bell Curve was based on the lives of the huge National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 sample up through 1990. We now have another quarter a century of data with which to prove that The Bell Curve doesn’t replicate. And we even have data on thousands of the children of women in the original Bell Curve sample. This trove of data is fairly freely available to academic researchers, but you don’t hear much about findings in The Bell Curve failing to replicate.

And there you are friends: It’s not exactly a reproducibility crisis, it’s a crisis of Progressivism. The entire Prog edifice, that’s supposed to be based on a concrete foundation of Science, is tottering quite badly, because social science is full of big cracks that are widening daily.

This reminded me of something I wrote over four years ago, from a different angle, while ruminating on some of Robert Heinlein’s predictions, in both non-fiction articles and in his science fiction books and stories. I’m an unabashed Heinlein fan, but that has little to do with the piece, which is reproduced (slightly edited) below. It’s not about problems with methodology or even fraud in the social sciences. It’s about their abject failure to deliver what they promised–which is still true as of noon today:

(Original written in May 2012)

The Failure (So Far) of Heinlein’s Vision of “Social Science”

I recently read an article at The Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson, “The New Phrenology.” Subtitled “How liberal psychopundits understand the conservative brain,” the piece goes into some detail about the numerous news stories most of us have probably seen lately, with titles like that of Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality.

With that background, I want to make explicit that this is not a political post, nor is it an analysis of the psychology of any particular group. The meta point of “The New Phrenology” has been made powerfully by a number of others–the current state of the “social sciences” is barely scientific, after 100 years or more of effort. The mere gloss of scientism is now provided by colored pictures of brain images, publication in peer reviewed journals and the use, and misuse, of statistics.

One hundred years ago Robert A. Heinlein was about to turn five and people of a wide variety of political and philosophical views, from Freud to H. G. Wells to Woodrow Wilson, believed that economics, psychology and sociology were taking their first firm steps toward becoming true sciences, where national and world economies would be managed in steady prosperity without booms and busts, criminals and the mentally ill would be reformed or healed through drugs and therapy, and populations would be managed toward happiness through education, advertising and techniques like mass hypnosis and official propaganda. Eventually, all of these efforts would be put on a firm base of physics and neuroscience and mathematical statistics, with formulas fed into computing devices and the right answers for societal management coming out.

These ideas can be seen clearly in many of Heinlein’s early works. Indeed, the Future History takes place against a background where this social management is often simply assumed and only mentioned en passim when necessary. In other instances, it is made explicit as an important part of the story, as with the extensive explanation of economic management and Monroe Alpha Cliff’s work near the beginning of Beyond This Horizon or the debate about using mass hypnosis to recondition the populace toward freedom at the end of “If This Goes On–“. In Methuselah’s Children there is mention of statistically rating the impact of words, and the strategic planting of useful rumors based on mathematical formulae. For a good short explication of this idea under the general heading of “social engineering” see the “Logos” section of this article on “If This Goes On–“ by Bill Patterson.

Here in 2012 I would argue that these fields have made very limited progress toward being “science.” In economics, the worldwide Big Bust of the last four years provides compelling evidence that legions of Ph.D. economists are subject to forces far beyond their control, their manipulations of money and interest too much, too soon or too little, too late. Criminals are still with us, in plenty, and while the soma of a wide variety of “anti-depressants” masks the symptoms of perhaps 20% of the American populace, all the billions and indeed, trillions of dollars expended on “scientific research” into education, reform of prisoners and the proper raising of children seems to have merely, mostly maintained the status quo ante in these areas.

But back to “The New Phrenology.” Mostly believing that the mind is just a useful, or useless fiction, the reductionists have deployed the truly wonderful tools of modern medical imaging in the study of the brain and declared the colored pictures taken therefrom the answer to a broad number of questions. Why do people do what they do? Hook them to a forest of electrodes and ask them question or show them some naughty pictures, see what lights up, gather some stats and you’ve got yourself a peer reviewed journal article that will help further your career path in the Academe!

I do not claim that this kind of study is necessarily useless, biased, wasteful or harmful. It may be that discoveries from these techniques really will result in a better life for us and our children.

So far though, what we’ve got is that drug users’ pleasure centers light up when they use, that brain scan color pictures prove that there is no free will, and that political” conservatives” are a fearful, authoritarian bunch. I don’t claim to know the entire field–I just read the newspapers, and that’s what I’m seeing.

It’s a long, long way from the vision of Heinlein and others, during those early, heady days, that all of this research would eventually give us scientific solutions to social problems.

Another side of Heinlein, the rugged proponent of individualism, liberty and the generally untamable nature of Man, would probably be delighted at these developments. So far, that’s the side that seems to be winning in the real world.

To sum up: Those of us who have studied Progressivism in its evolution from “Enlightenment” through Marx through Liberal Democracy through Woodrow Wilson, FDR, the Great Society, Feminism and LGBTIQ understand that it always claimed Science! as its support, as its very foundation. Its opponents were always “theocrats”, “ignorant, uneducated louts”, “behind the times”, and, as above, “Republican science-deniers.”

The Reproducibility Crisis is not just a “problem” in psychology, it is an existential threat to the Progressive worldview. Without the club of “science” and actual results backing their conceits up, Progs have nothing real to support their right to rule.

Of course they are doing, and will do, their best to explain away, confound, obfuscate and deny the problems exposed recently in the “social sciences.” With the help of Cathedral media and universities they’ll partially succeed. These recent developments are not a killing blow to progressivism, but a cut with a few drops of blood oozing out.

The effect of a thousand such cuts is left as an exercise for the reader.

Building a Neoreationary “Tribe”

The NRx is gradually coalescing, making more personal contacts “IRL”, in public and private forums. The NRx, is, to an extent, becoming coherent.

Something that will be useful moving forward is not necessarily The Official Neoreactionary Position® on political or social questions so much as an increasing sense of tribal feeling. In the future I’ll cover how ritual and initiation could fit in with this good. For today, let us touch on the tribal history of the NRx.

(As inspired by this post from Mountain Guerilla):

You see, one of the characteristics that defines a tribe, both anthropologically and practically, is a shared history, whether real or mythic. This history may be ancestral. Generally, all members of a kin-group tribe will be able to trace their ancestry back to a common individual, but often—thanks to the phenomena of intermarriage and adoption in tribal societies, those ancestral bonds are as likely to be mythic as they are to be connected by DNA. In sodalities, like guilds and war-band type tribes of course, it’s almost a given that the shared ancestry of the tribe—the nucleus that makes them a tribe, their “mutual exclusivity,” is going to be more mythic than real.

That’s okay. Why is that okay? I mean, isn’t that a lie?

Let’s back up, for just a moment, and look again at what defines a tribe. A tribe is a social unit that possesses something that defines the group’s boundaries, but also that separates it from the rest of humanity. It’s the “us vs. them” that Jack Donovan discusses in his writing. I refer to it as “mutual exclusivity.” It’s that je ne sais quoi that defines the boundaries of “our” group from others. It doesn’t need to be real, as long as it’s real to the group.

That mutual exclusivity, typically, can be defined as the shared history, ancestry, values, traditions, and customs, of the people of the tribe. Some may be shared with other tribes, but the specifics of how OUR tribe recognizes or exercises them is different enough that it separates us from them. In pre-Christianization Europe, for one example, pretty much all tribes that are now recognized as having belonged to the Germanic linguistic group—the Cherusci, the Allemani, the Marcomanni, the Franks, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; the Vandals and Gepids, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, and Lombards, were “Germanic.” Their languages were all connected. Their cultures shared similarities, but their cultures were not identical. They were separate tribes, even as they shared common cultural characteristics.

Today however, we’re going to discuss one particular characteristic of tribalism and neo-tribalism, the immense value of the shared mythic ancestry of a tribe.

In what can be defined as an “intentional tribe,” such as a guild or war-band type association historically, or in our post-modern context, the intentional grouping of like-minded families for mutual assistance, where shared ancestry is not—and almost cannot—be certain, the mythic ancestry, and the lessons that can be gained from claiming a shared mythic ancestry cannot be overemphasized.

An example of this can be seen in the military, with the adoption of unit lineages. The United States Army says the following about the lineage of the Ranger Regiment: “The U.S. Army Ranger history predates the Revolutionary War.” Now, BY DEFINITION, nothing of the United States can predate the Revolution. So, by citing Majors Church and Rogers, fighting for the British, in the French and Indian War—especially considering Major Rogers’ later loyalties—as ancestral figures for the U.S. Army’s Rangers, is the very definition of a mythic ancestry for the unit. That doesn’t, however, change the fact that the exploits of Rogers’ Rangers, for one, have long served as a catalyst for awesome achievements by members of the unit.

The Mythic Ancestry of the Neoreaction

Let’s consider what “mythic ancestry” we might consciously choose. Our first thought is naturally Unqualified Reservations (UR) and Mencius Moldbug.

It is certainly a lovely coincidence that “UR” pronounced as a word sounds like the birthplace of Abraham, which would surely be a suitable beginning of our mythic ancestry, but we’ll consider that line “taken.” Neoreaction is not exactly a of new Judeo-Christian-Muslim cult, after all.

If I recall correctly, my own exposure to Moldbug began when I ran across this reference by Arnold Kling back in ought-nine – just about six years ago to the day. I also recall immediately blowing a couple or four work hours delving in to the UR archives. I admit I’ve never really been the same, since.

Moldbug and his oeuvre itself is, however, too recent and too passivist to make a functional mythic ancestry. He only began UR, as such, on April 23, 2007. His heroes and mentors are mostly gentlemen of the 19th and prior centuries, which is promising, but generally writers and thinkers rather than men of action. The collected works of Carlyle, for instance, are extremely important and influential in our community, but building a mythos upon writings just doesn’t work for me. Moldbug seems to have a healthy respect for the Cavaliers, and they were men of action, of glorious battle and brave deeds…but they lost.

28 June, 1098

I believe that we ought to consider the beginning of the beginning of the NRx as…28 June, 1098.

The Battle of Antioch.

A diverse group of the men of the West, starving, depleted, surrounded by Muslims; in other words, London a few years from now:

On Monday, 28 June, the crusaders emerged from the city gate, with Raymond of Aguilers carrying the Holy Lance before them. Kerbogha hesitated against his generals’ pleadings, hoping to attack them all at once rather than one division at a time, but he underestimated their size. He pretended to retreat to draw the crusaders to rougher terrain, while his archers continuously pelted the advancing crusaders with arrows. A detachment was dispatched to the crusader left wing, which was not protected by the river, but Bohemond quickly formed a seventh division and beat them back. The Turks were inflicting many casualties, including Adhemar’s standard-bearer, and Kerbogha set fire to the grass between his position and the crusaders, but this did not deter them: they had visions of three saints riding along with them: St. George, St. Demetrius, and St. Maurice. The battle was brief and disastrous for the Turks. Duqaq deserted Kerbogha and this desertion reduced the great numerical advantage the Muslim army had over its Christian opponents. Soon the defeated Muslim troops were in panicked retreat.

I see the basis, the beginning, of a tribal myth here. The First Crusaders were the Neoreactionaries of their time. They just didn’t know it! I find this no more of a stretch than the U.S. Army claiming soldiers of The Crown as their own.

Following up on events after AD 1098, as above, I’m game to claim the Cavaliers as part of our Glorious Adopted History. Before and after that, fully open to suggestions!

Bruce Charlton Gets It (Followup to “Magicians of the Outer Right”)

All too oftern I indulge my childish sense of delight in obscurity, enigma and riddles, and thus welcome approaches from others that illuminate from a different angle, so to speak. Bruce Charlton is one such; highly intelligent, learned and straightforward.

After my recent wanderings amongst the Magicians of the Outer Right (and Part II) I was delighted to discover a post that ploughs some of the same ground, differently.

Why I Don’t Feel Bad About Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A reply to this post by James E. Miller at the Mitrailleuse. I don’t usually recycle a comment as a post, but I thought that this explained in a nice, pointed way, my thinking and my approach to a lot of issues beyond the one at hand:

James,

I must respectfully, but profoundly, disagree that “we should still feel bad” about the atomic bombings. This is logically equivalent to “we should still feel bad about slavery” and child labor and witch burning and, and…

“We” didn’t do it. I don’t agree with the line of thinking that “the country’s history is my history. I own its triumphs and defeats.” Human history is also my history, and I could feel truly awful about every cruelty, every horrific killing and injustice ever perpetrated, Stalin and his torturers, Hitler and his extermination camps, Mayan’s cutting the beating hearts from children…

But, I don’t.

To get specific to Japan and WW II, the atomic bombs were functionally equivalent to the massive firebombing of Tokyo and other major Japanese (and German, for that matter) cities. Tens of thousands dead, “the melting the faces off of small children, the complete erasing of the future of hapless civilians,” and so on. One can plausibly argue that fallout was an additional horror, but in a strictly moral calculus the massive bombing and warfare inflicted on civilians by the Allies must be regarded as a whole, and weighed against the war, as a whole.

Nuclear weapons have in the years since 1945 acquired a particular mystique and legend as a kind of special tool of the devil, through media repetition and scary stories. They are indeed, terrible and their use again should avoided at almost all costs. But that’s all post facto to August 1945. I’ve read the biographies of most of the U.S. leadership at that time, those of the main scientist participants in the development of the bomb, Gen. Groves book, and much other WW II historical material; and for you in 2015 to blithely speak of “amoral monsters in our nation’s capital” is easy, but really, a gross oversimplification.

The finest resource I’ve found to understand the issues is Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog at http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/. I’ve read most of it, and it’s a great and even-handed look by an historian at all the complexities, technical and moral, of the development and deployment of the atomic bomb.

“Magicians of the Outer Right, Part Zwei” Now at The Mitrailleuse

My latest at The Mitrailleuse.

Sample:

In the last 20 years or so, with the rise of the Web, this conception has been hyper-reinforced. I post my “Neoreactionary” arguments and evidence about how fundamental “right-wing” changes to society would result in peace, prosperity, less crime, happier children, more intelligence, less obesity and, in the long run, the breeding of unicorns that defecate gumdrops. Some SJW grrrl just out of Wellsley (or more likely, struggling to complete her Womyn’s Studies B.A. at a state university) posts that I’m a POS racist sexist LGBTIQ-phobe whose ideas would lead to death camps for everyone except white cismales. She argues that fundamental “left-wing” changes to society would result in equality, peace, equality, less crime, equal children and animals, equality of intelligence, social justice, racial justice, economic justice, sexual justice and, in the long run, Gaia defecating non-GMO unsalted manna that would feed the world and allow her to pay off her student loans.

Both her and I suffer from a serious blind spot, at least if we believe our posts will somehow change the world through the force of the ideas. Our posts will only change the world if a person dedicated to implementing our ideas, whether ourself or another, obtains power.

So hie thee hence!