Courage

Courage

Another great post about the political / psychological war being fought in America.

The Courage To Be by Sarah A. Hoyt

Is it a problem if you don't notice it?

Problems experienced by original owners of three-year-old vehicles

Looking at this chart got me to wondering if it is accurate. Maybe we aren't looking at the actual number of problems, but the psychological profile of people who buy these cars. Maybe people who buy Volvos and Volkswagens are more particular about their cars, and people who buy Lexii are just oblivious. Or maybe people who drive Lexii have other things on their minds and can't be bothered with problems with their car.

Ressentiment

 The execution of Louis XVI in 1793.

Stolen entire from My Daily Kona who got it from Liam Out Loud

A Culture of Violent Ressentiment

 

An insatiable lust for violence and destruction is bubbling up in the collective psyche of the worst among us.

An incel Marxist goes on a shooting spree in Montreal and leaves behind a 104-page manifesto. Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered and a significant number of people celebrated. Luigi Mangione assassinated a CEO and countless people called him a hero. Others will tell you, in supposedly polite company, that they wish the attempts on Trump’s life had succeeded. I open X and a post about a trans person murdering someone for misgendering them has thousands of likes from people insisting it would be justified. Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire launched a wave of calls to eat the rich. On Facebook I find a page called Guillotines for a Better America, with a post claiming “all of your problems are because billionaires have heads,” and commenters debating whether they should execute millionaires too. One says all capitalists — which presumably means everyone who owns a business or a home. Another proposes starting with the wealthiest, waiting seven days, killing the next, and repeating until things improve, as though French Revolution-style slaughter were the surest road to prosperity.

We are told these are all different. And in scale, perhaps they are — some carry lethal consequences, others are only confessions typed into a screen. Most people treat them as unrelated problems, each with its own thing to blame. I believe they are deeply linked. The murderer, the celebrant, and the online daydreamer all hold the same conviction: that blood is the only path to a better world.

In each case, people argue over the cause. With the Montreal killer, one camp calls him an incel, another points to his Marxism, another to his anti-Zionism. Each reading holds some truth. But they share one flaw — they all assume the belief came first and the violent impulse second. That these were ordinary people until an idea entered them, took hold, and drove them to something horrific. Radicalization as infection.

Corrupted people do not stumble into dangerous ideas. They go looking for them.

Ideology can and does corrupt people. But the opposite is the more compelling explanation: that corrupted people seek out ideologies to justify their twisted aims. Centuries before the comment section, Nietzsche diagnosed this in his own time. He called it ressentiment — not ordinary anger, which comes and goes, but the slow poison of those who surrender all hope and autonomy, come to see themselves as perpetual victims, and resent the world for it. And ressentiment is creative. It does not merely sour a person on the inside. It builds values, justifications, entire moral systems designed to make a grudge feel like justice.

Nietzsche wrote that every drive within a person wants to become master, and once it rules, it philosophizes in its own spirit. The feeling takes the throne first. The philosophy is what the feeling dictates. We imagine we reason our way to our convictions and then feel accordingly. More often it runs the other way. The emotion seizes power, then conscripts whatever ideas will make its bloodlust feel virtuous.

These people say they want a better world. The guillotine page talks about co-ops and worker ownership. The killer’s manifesto promises an end to the loneliness that wrecks ordinary men. The activist swears the violence is self-defense for the oppressed. We are told this is idealism that has lost its way. But watch where the energy goes. The guillotine crowd is vivid, specific, and delighted about the killing. The Montreal manifesto spends pages detailing who must be liquidated and how, and offers only a flimsy sketch of the communal society that supposedly justifies it. All of these people — back to Marx himself — spend far more time naming who deserves to be on the receiving end of theft and violence than working out how their ideal society would actually function, let alone building it.

This is the difference between a genuine grievance and a pathological one. Ressentiment only subtracts. It locates the entire source of its suffering outside itself and proposes to remove that source from the face of the earth. Take off the billionaires’ heads. Liquidate the favored men. Cut down the one who said the wrong pronoun. None of these are doctrines aimed at stability or coherence. They are justifications for resentment.

That is why these movements hate the language of self-improvement — why the manifesto sneers at lifting weights, at becoming confident, at building something. It is why all the blame falls on the health insurance CEO and none on the millions living with lifestyle-induced chronic disease. It is why billionaires’ heads become the cause of all your problems. To improve yourself is to admit you have agency over your own life, and agency is surrendered long before ressentiment swallows the soul. That is what the sane are truly up against. Not a single ideology, but the spirit that spawns them all.

Heaven’s Gate Cult

The Leader - Tribeca Festival

Remember Heaven’s Gate Cult? Variety has a review of a movie about it:

‘The Leader’ Review: Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga Are Creepy and Powerful in a Disturbing Drama About the Heaven’s Gate Cult by Owen Gleiberman

Good reading since we seem to be seeing a lot cult-like behavior these days.

Water

An Engineering Student's Notes, Technical, Philosophical and Otherwise by John Richards

JMSmith talks about clams and education and included this from the above book:

“I am beginning to think that water-craft, that is, human craft on the water, is much the same as it is in animals. It is absorbed in an insensible way throughout a term of years, or a lifetime, and is not a specific thing to be learned, like building houses or shoeing horses. A kind of second nature. Put a water-skilled man on a steamer, a ship, in a boat, on a raft, or a life buoy, it is all the same. He knows the traits and trends of the water, and how to keep on the surface of it. Geometry, dynamics, mechanics, or even a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, will do him no more good than a heathen’s talisman, unless he has been trained to the water, on and in the water.” - John Richards, An Engineering Student’s Notes, Technical, Philosophical and Otherwise (San Francisco: Industrial Publishing, 1904), p. 155. 

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen - Timothy Norris/Kia Forum

You might think, like I do, that Bruce Springsteen is apparently suffering from a full blown case of TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome. But now I am confused. I found this in a story on Variety:

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times,” he said, in his now-familiar invocation and statement of intent that has opened every night on the tour. “Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over —”

And the now 18-member E Street Band crashed into a cover of Edwin Starr’s Vietnam-era anthem “War,” which the group had originally covered on the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour some four decades ago.

Which sounds exactly like what everyone on the right has been saying. So I don't understand what Springsteen's problem is, other than he has lost his mind.

Doom

The Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches (Official HD Music Video)
The Presidents of the United States of America

It just occurred to me that conservatives are not going to prevail in blue cities. The majority of people, somewhere between 60 and 90 percent, operate on the 'get along to go along' method. Logic and reason have no effect on these people, they operate on feelings. Charlatans make use of this to get into power and enrich themselves. As long as we have free speech we are not going to be able to shut them down, and free speech is kind of essential to freedom. If you don't like living in a blue city the only solution I see is to move to the country, which reminded me of this tune. Blue cities are just going to continue to get worse until they are like Latin American cesspools.

Education & Discipline

Found this in a story from Willamette Week:

Teachers whom OJP [Oregon Journalism Project] spoke to say there’s a high level of workplace dissatisfaction, despite the funding increase from the Student Success Act. They say inflation consumed much of the increase and classrooms are crowded and often unmanageable because of legislation limiting disciplinary action that may be taken against students.

Most of the story is about politics and money, but this one line was the only mention of trouble in the classroom.

I am all in favor of only allowing students in the classroom who want to be there, and excluding unruly students. What to do with the excluded kids? Put them in the bullpen. Staff the bullpen with guards armed with firehoses.

I wonder just what is legislation limiting disciplinary action that may be taken against students? Google gives us the kind of usual gobble-de-gook. I suspect corporal punishment is right out:

As of 2024, corporal punishment is still legal in private schools in every U.S. state except Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey and New York, legal in public schools in 17 states, and practiced in 12 of the states.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer

How Intelligent People Deal With 'Idiots' – Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Thought Architect

The video in my previous post on the subject disappeared, so now we have the long form video. 25 minutes of droning is a little long for my taste, but watchya gonna do?

TSA SNAFU

Airline Travel

I don't understand people's penchant for air travel. To me, it is the absolute worst way to spend your time. It's tedious, boring, annoying and uncomfortable. According to the above graph, half the people in the country are with me, though I expect that the reason they aren't flying is they don't have any money, much less enough to blow on airline tickets. So I am kind of an outlier. I can certainly afford a plane ticket, but I would rather go to the dentist than go to the airport. A visit to the dentist, while annoying, is going to be over in an hour, while a trip on an airplane is going consume the entire day. Anyway, I don't have any sympathy for people waiting in line for hours because of the TSA snafu. I suspect most of them are line-waiters by nature. If they weren't in line there, they would be looking for another line they could get in and wait. Herd animals is what they are. Sheep in other words. Guess that's nothing new.

Mistakes Were Made

Mistakes Were Made
James Butler

I don't know why, but I really enjoy listening to this guy.

Analog versus Digital Recording

The Real Reason Why Analog Recording Is Better
Freaking Out With Billy Hume

Superbowl

Psychology of People Who Don't Obsess Over Sports
Psycholody Simplified

This video is a little elementary, but maybe that's just as well. It did contain one nugget that I had been wondering about - it says that 60% of people have the tribal affiliation gene, which kind of explains why sports is such big business.

Then bustednuckles posted this story:

My Fate Hangs In The Balance Of The Results Of A Stupid Football Game

My wife is also a sports fan, though she is not nearly as much of a fanatic as Busted's is. 

We watched the game, or most of it anyway. It's gotten to be that it's almost as important as Christmas or the Fourth of July. I still kind of wiped out from my excursion into Oxy land, so I was content to just sit there and watch it flow by. We watched the broadcast version, for free, using an antennae. All those fancy services fell on their face when the big day arrived. I would say bad things about them but it's not worth the effort, and what would it gain me? 

Most of the game involved kicking - punts and field goals. It wasn't until the second half that anyone started making any touchdowns. Many of the Patriot's quarterback's passes seemed off the mark - sometimes too long, sometimes not accurate.

I caught a few minutes of the halftime show. It looked they imported a small forest onto the infield. Bad Bunny was singing in Spanish, and the tune was meh. Did nothing for me. I went and got something to eat.

Gifted vs. Bright

A retired elementary school teacher sent me this. Schopenhauer could have used this.

Gifted vs. Bright: Understanding the Difference

While bright children possess a strong foundation in academic skills and a keen interest in learning, gifted learners exhibit unique traits that extend beyond typical academic achievement.

BRIGHT CHILD	GIFTED LEARNER
Knows the answer	Asks the questions
Is interested	Is highly curious
Is attentive	Is mentally and physically involved
Has good ideas	Has wild and silly ideas
Works hard	Plays around yet tests well
Answers the questions	Discusses in detail, elaborates
Top group	Beyond the group
Listens with interest	Shows strong feelings and opinions
Learns with ease	Already knows
6-8 repetitions for mastery	1-2 repetitions for mastery
Understands	Constructs abstractions
Enjoys peers	Prefers adults
Grasps meanings	Draws inferences
Completes projects	Initiates projects
Is receptive	Is intense
Copies accurately	Creates new designs
Enjoys school	Enjoys learning
Absorbs information	Manipulates information
Technician	Inventor
Good memorizer	Good guesser
Enjoys straightforward, sequential presentations	Thrives on complexity
Is alert	Is keenly observant
Is pleased with own learning	Is highly self-critical

ADHD

The thought process of people with ADHD can look like a messy mind map. More than struggles with focus, the map could indicate a very curious mind, one researcher suggests. - Drafter123/Getty Images

The boss sent me some notes about ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Sounds just like me.

What Hyperfocus Really Is

Hyperfocus isn't great concentration.

It's attention that gets stuck.

Time disappears.

The world fades.

Stopping feels almost painful.

Hyperfocus in ADHD (Why We Can Focus for 8 Hours... or Not at All)

If you can focus too much - and not at all this is ADHD.

You Can't Choose Hyperfocus

This part matters.

You cannot decide to hyperfocus on:

• emails
• cleaning
• boring work
• admin

But you can accidentally hyperfocus on:

• research
• ideas
• creative work
• games
• conversations

It's not discipline. It's chemistry

Why Hyperfocus Happens

ADHD brains run low on dopamine.

When something is:

• interesting
• novel
• emotional
• urgent
• meaningful

dopamine spikes - and the brain grabs on hard.

ADHD Isn't a Lack of Focus

ADHD isn't "can't focus.

It's can't regulate focus.

Attention is either:

scattered

or

locked in place

Very little in between.

Hyperfocus Isn't a Superpower

It can be useful. It can also be destructive.

Hyperfocus is a coping mechanism -your brain clinging to stimulation to feel regulated.

Why People Get Confused

Others see hyperfocus and say: "If you can do this... why not everything?"

Because ADHD focus is interest-based, not effort-based.

Baby Ideology

A tweet:

Camus

@newstart_2024

Bret Weinstein just said something that won't leave my head:

For the first time in 300,000 years of human evolution, we removed the cost from the single biggest reward nature ever invented - sex and pair-bonding.

Reliable birth control + abortion = you can now cash the evolutionary lottery ticket without paying the 20-year mortgage of pregnancy, diapers, sleepless nights, and college funds.

Result? An entire generation of 18-35-year-olds walking around with the energy, libido, hormones, and protective instincts that evolution spent millions of years calibrating for child-rearing... but with zero actual children. That energy didn't disappear. It got redirected.

Heather Heying's observation is brutal: young women especially began treating ideologies the exact way evolution wired them to treat babies. Climate change, social justice, whatever the cause of the month is - it gets defended with literal mama-bear ferocity, the same neurochemistry that once guarded a toddler from predators now guards an abstract idea from wrong think.

Via Xenophilic 

Parasites

Reverie, 1872, Edward Radford

Biological, not political. Petr Frost's Newsletter has a very weird tale:

Are tiny parasites messing with our brains?

They might be causing changes in behavior, but the changes might be subtle, and only to a small portion of the population. Still, pretty weird.

P. S. Looking for information about Edward (the artist), I found lots of sites selling his pictures, but Wikipedia has no page about him. Google tells us he lived from 1831 to 1920.

Blinded by Love

 From My Daily Kona:

The 14 Red Flags of a relationship

You’ve probably had a friend who started dating a woman that really made you scratch your head. She was flaky, possessive, and high-drama. Everyone could see that the gal was toxic and really bringing your buddy down…everyone, that is, except your buddy.

You tell yourself, “That would never happen to me.”

But then it does.

What gives? How do people end up in unhealthy relationships despite warning signs that their partner was bad news to begin with?

Answer: we’re blinded by love.

Seriously.

Using MRI machines, researchers at the University College London found that “feelings of love lead to a suppression of activity in the areas of the brain controlling critical thought. It seems that once we get close to a person, the brain decides the need to assess their character and personality is reduced.”

Not only does romantic love suppress our critical thinking, but feel-good chemicals and hormones like oxytocin and dopamine cloud our judgment even more. Love truly gives us a drug-like “high,” and it feels so good that we simply ignore the red flags waving right before us. If by chance you do take notice of a gal’s negative behavior or attitude, you’re likely to minimize it, writing it off as a cute quirk, or telling yourself, “Oh, it’s not that bad. Besides, maybe I can be the guy to help her improve.”

6 Types of People

6 Types of People Who Run the Modern World
RING OF GRIM

Not all people are the same.

Tribalism

Tribal

Sarah A. Hoyt talks about Tribalism:

Tribalism is the bane of mankind.

If there really were no great civilizations before ours, the fault would be squarely laid at the feet of tribalism.

To the extent the West has managed to take humanity further — further away from want, further away from famine, further away from the misery of barbarism — it is because through a combination of historical, philosophical and religious circumstances, the west (some places to a higher extent than others) came to view humans as all (more or less) part of the same tribe. All “human.”

Because you see, in tribalism you don’t. Those people who are related to you, or look like you, or tie their flegfardt as you do are people. Everyone else, them over there, who wear their spoons sideways? They’re not human. They’re terrifying animals who look like humans but who are as likely to kill you and eat you as look at you.

In the deep past of mankind — AND STILL IN MUCH OF THE WORLD — your humanity is conditional on how close you resemble the tribe in question and sometimes on whether you were raised there.

In the US we joke that there are places like small town New England or places in the Appalachia where if you haven’t lived there three generations you’re foreigners. Many places in Europe are or were like that till recently, (at least the one I came from was submerged in “foreigners” sometimes literally, so it’s no longer like that) but that’s not what I am talking about. It is perhaps the narrow edge of it.

However in true tribalism, you really don’t consider the rest of humanity “human.” The corollary, by the way, is that you don’t consider yourself quite human. You’re a being of the group. Your identity, the fact that you’re human at all is wrapped up in this sometimes very small group of people. You only make sense in connection with them.

Even the place I came from was/is a bit like that. It’s the West, of course, and of course other people are human, but there is an overwhelming tendency to think of yourself only in relation to the family, the tribe and their needs.

Sarah goes on for a bit. You can read the whole thing here.