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I think subcultures in general shouldn't be trusted. My experience with them and with seeing their affects on others is that they are forms of cults, except less organized, with no charismatic leader. But they're nonetheless parasites on people's minds and time. I'll mention a few.
I_am_carrie is in the Inu Yasha fanfiction subculture. She spends up to 10 hours a day talking to other fanfiction writers, reading fanfiction stories, writing them, entering contests, moderating communities of fanfiction contests and stories, and so on. Since entering it it has absorbed her life and her life now revolves around it.
Newedition was in the Objectivists subculture; it too absorbed much of her time and beliefs, until she finally managed to escape. Unfortunately she escaped into the 9/11 conspiracy theory and natural health & medicine subcultures, but at least that's an interesting change.
The same is true for many other people I know: Miyu and the elegant gothic lolita fashion subculture, charbile and the furry subculture, etc. etc. -- it just consumes most of a person's time with very little given back to them in return.
I myself was never very absorbed in any subculture, with the possible exception of one I invented myself (the Heroists, which are a group of artists who seek to alter world culture and the future through art), but at least that's just being absorbed by something you created.
There's also the independent games subculture, but that one's kind of unavoidable because that's what I do, and even so I intentionally try to limit my time spent within that subculture -- I'm not as into it as most of the people on the TIGSource forums for instance, and have beliefs that most of them find unorthodox, such as the idea that story is gameplay, the idea that games are not just for fun, the idea that creating games just because you like creating them isn't the only valid reason to create them, etc.
Now I do think subcultures can be worth dipping into, they're interesting and often have ideas of value and you can meet interesting people through them. And if a person spent time in a subculture or two it tends to make them more interesting people. But when it reaches the point that most of a person's life is consumed by them, and when most of their thoughts and reactions and beliefs become indistinguishable from most of the other people in that subculture, I think they're more trouble than they're worth.
I_am_carrie is in the Inu Yasha fanfiction subculture. She spends up to 10 hours a day talking to other fanfiction writers, reading fanfiction stories, writing them, entering contests, moderating communities of fanfiction contests and stories, and so on. Since entering it it has absorbed her life and her life now revolves around it.
Newedition was in the Objectivists subculture; it too absorbed much of her time and beliefs, until she finally managed to escape. Unfortunately she escaped into the 9/11 conspiracy theory and natural health & medicine subcultures, but at least that's an interesting change.
The same is true for many other people I know: Miyu and the elegant gothic lolita fashion subculture, charbile and the furry subculture, etc. etc. -- it just consumes most of a person's time with very little given back to them in return.
I myself was never very absorbed in any subculture, with the possible exception of one I invented myself (the Heroists, which are a group of artists who seek to alter world culture and the future through art), but at least that's just being absorbed by something you created.
There's also the independent games subculture, but that one's kind of unavoidable because that's what I do, and even so I intentionally try to limit my time spent within that subculture -- I'm not as into it as most of the people on the TIGSource forums for instance, and have beliefs that most of them find unorthodox, such as the idea that story is gameplay, the idea that games are not just for fun, the idea that creating games just because you like creating them isn't the only valid reason to create them, etc.
Now I do think subcultures can be worth dipping into, they're interesting and often have ideas of value and you can meet interesting people through them. And if a person spent time in a subculture or two it tends to make them more interesting people. But when it reaches the point that most of a person's life is consumed by them, and when most of their thoughts and reactions and beliefs become indistinguishable from most of the other people in that subculture, I think they're more trouble than they're worth.
This was a comment in the Ron Paul LJ community which I meant to be much shorter but which spiraled off; it may be worth saving. And then after that was another comment on why I felt the campaign didn't win, which may also be worth saving.
*
I think the war of ideas is pretty much determined by who has the ability to transmit and disseminate those ideas.
RP took advantage of the current strength of informal media -- blogs, sites like digg.com and reddit.com and facebook.com and myspace.com, web 2.0 and social networking in general, even livejournal.com -- but the current strength of informal, secondary media relative to mainstream, primary media is an anomaly and in all likelihood won't last very long, perhaps not even the four years until the next election after this one. It certainly wasn't anywhere near as strong four years ago.
This election cycle was also very weird because it actually had a few politicians who were principled and on the people's side running for president (Gravel, Paul, Kucinich to some degree), but this probably won't be the case most of the time.
It was a constellation of unlikely factors which caused the RP campaign to progress even as far as it did. I realistically don't see that constellation repeating in the next 10,000 years. So it's unfortunate that we lost, because the chance of winning this time was higher than it ever was before.
That isn't to say things are hopeless -- the chance of a billionaire or someone of great wealth, fame, or power clandestinely gaining power and then acting on loyalties to principles and the people rather than the power structure is becoming increasingly likely. It used to happen fairly often during the age of monarchy and empires, due to the untrustworthiness of loyalties through hereditary dynasties, but it's still possible now. The Founding Fathers fell under this category to some degree, so were a few of the so-called benevolent dictators (Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great).
But it's just as likely today, because of a decrease in the ability to control people's thoughts as effectively as was once the case, ironically through the increased ability for anyone anywhere to control the thoughts of others, as seen in cults, leading to confusion as minds are pulled in many directions at once and forced to adapt. And because no minds are more controlled than those in the power structure itself, this weakening of the ability to control minds may lead to anomalies like people in power caring more about normal people than about maintaining their power.
Normally what happens currently when an anomaly appears within the power structure is that that person is identified and pushed out of it by the others. So what really needs to happen is that a network of them develop and keep themselves hidden within it. That too is becoming increasingly possible (and may even exist right now, for all we know).
*
I think the biggest reasons the campaign didn't win are:
- Most everyone focused on putting up signs and building airships and almost nobody focused on face to face interaction and convincing friends and family members one on one, when the second is easily ten-thousand times as important and effective. Most often my experience is the average RP supporter had not convinced a single member of their family or a single one of their friends, if they even had any, to vote for him.
- The RP campaign staff itself was surprisingly ineffectual, as described in good detail an article I linked to from this community a few months back. He really should have hired the greatest talent he could, rather than relying on his personal friends and the Lew Rockwell crowd, or worse.
- RP worship, which led to relying on him to do everything because of a mistaken premise that he's superhuman and that all that was required was cheering him or chanting his name like a mantra, despite his repeated claims that he was just a messenger and that it was up to us.
- RP himself failed to be as convincing or as charming as he could have been when the opportunity arose. Another reason was his earlier personal immoralities, particularly the issue with letting bad stuff be published under his name -- even if it was without his knowledge, it's pretty inexcusable to not have knowledge of things done by your own ghostwriters and such. Some slack should be given to him in the articulate department because he's like 73 of course, he did a good and occasionally a great job during most of his interviews and the debates, but it still could have been far better.
- Resistance from the other campaigns, including infiltrators, and resistance from the power structure, including mainstream media. But those resistances were expected and should have been taken for granted.
*
I think the war of ideas is pretty much determined by who has the ability to transmit and disseminate those ideas.
RP took advantage of the current strength of informal media -- blogs, sites like digg.com and reddit.com and facebook.com and myspace.com, web 2.0 and social networking in general, even livejournal.com -- but the current strength of informal, secondary media relative to mainstream, primary media is an anomaly and in all likelihood won't last very long, perhaps not even the four years until the next election after this one. It certainly wasn't anywhere near as strong four years ago.
This election cycle was also very weird because it actually had a few politicians who were principled and on the people's side running for president (Gravel, Paul, Kucinich to some degree), but this probably won't be the case most of the time.
It was a constellation of unlikely factors which caused the RP campaign to progress even as far as it did. I realistically don't see that constellation repeating in the next 10,000 years. So it's unfortunate that we lost, because the chance of winning this time was higher than it ever was before.
That isn't to say things are hopeless -- the chance of a billionaire or someone of great wealth, fame, or power clandestinely gaining power and then acting on loyalties to principles and the people rather than the power structure is becoming increasingly likely. It used to happen fairly often during the age of monarchy and empires, due to the untrustworthiness of loyalties through hereditary dynasties, but it's still possible now. The Founding Fathers fell under this category to some degree, so were a few of the so-called benevolent dictators (Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, Peter the Great).
But it's just as likely today, because of a decrease in the ability to control people's thoughts as effectively as was once the case, ironically through the increased ability for anyone anywhere to control the thoughts of others, as seen in cults, leading to confusion as minds are pulled in many directions at once and forced to adapt. And because no minds are more controlled than those in the power structure itself, this weakening of the ability to control minds may lead to anomalies like people in power caring more about normal people than about maintaining their power.
Normally what happens currently when an anomaly appears within the power structure is that that person is identified and pushed out of it by the others. So what really needs to happen is that a network of them develop and keep themselves hidden within it. That too is becoming increasingly possible (and may even exist right now, for all we know).
*
I think the biggest reasons the campaign didn't win are:
- Most everyone focused on putting up signs and building airships and almost nobody focused on face to face interaction and convincing friends and family members one on one, when the second is easily ten-thousand times as important and effective. Most often my experience is the average RP supporter had not convinced a single member of their family or a single one of their friends, if they even had any, to vote for him.
- The RP campaign staff itself was surprisingly ineffectual, as described in good detail an article I linked to from this community a few months back. He really should have hired the greatest talent he could, rather than relying on his personal friends and the Lew Rockwell crowd, or worse.
- RP worship, which led to relying on him to do everything because of a mistaken premise that he's superhuman and that all that was required was cheering him or chanting his name like a mantra, despite his repeated claims that he was just a messenger and that it was up to us.
- RP himself failed to be as convincing or as charming as he could have been when the opportunity arose. Another reason was his earlier personal immoralities, particularly the issue with letting bad stuff be published under his name -- even if it was without his knowledge, it's pretty inexcusable to not have knowledge of things done by your own ghostwriters and such. Some slack should be given to him in the articulate department because he's like 73 of course, he did a good and occasionally a great job during most of his interviews and the debates, but it still could have been far better.
- Resistance from the other campaigns, including infiltrators, and resistance from the power structure, including mainstream media. But those resistances were expected and should have been taken for granted.
I know Charbile will snicker at this idea, but lately I've been finding the more instinctual/social emotions -- embarrassement, shame, feeling good when you get attention or bad when you're shunned, pecking order stuff involving being bossy or being subservient, guilt, pride, narcissism, and all that -- pretty elegantly done.
Of course it's not a good idea to get too caught up in them or else you'll be like Peter Keating from The Fountainhead (for those who read that), but as evolutionary solutions to the problems and conditions of civilization we've had and still largely have they're amazingly well done, and people shouldn't, like, be ashamed to feel shame, and treat all those things as petty or beneath them.
We should feel those things fully rather than resist them, and even find enjoyment in them, while recognizing when they work and when they don't work and what they are so that we don't only act on habit or instinct, and even when we do we should recognize it.
This goes for instincts in general too, it's only through embracing something that you gain control over it, rather than feeling antagonism toward them or pretending they aren't there.
An analogy I can think of is: we have instincts to walk: (yes, we have to learn how to walk, but instinct doesn't mean born with, it means born with a tendency toward; we aren't born with sexual desire either and that's pretty instinctual). And it's true that walking isn't always the best way to get places, there's also cars and bicycles and such now, but we didn't achieve those better ways through saying walking is beneath us or being resistant to walking. Likewise we can't achieve a better society by disliking the instincts responsible for the way group harmonies works, even when those lead to distasteful results like racism, or in-groups of cool kids and outcasts, or whatever.
Of course it's not a good idea to get too caught up in them or else you'll be like Peter Keating from The Fountainhead (for those who read that), but as evolutionary solutions to the problems and conditions of civilization we've had and still largely have they're amazingly well done, and people shouldn't, like, be ashamed to feel shame, and treat all those things as petty or beneath them.
We should feel those things fully rather than resist them, and even find enjoyment in them, while recognizing when they work and when they don't work and what they are so that we don't only act on habit or instinct, and even when we do we should recognize it.
This goes for instincts in general too, it's only through embracing something that you gain control over it, rather than feeling antagonism toward them or pretending they aren't there.
An analogy I can think of is: we have instincts to walk: (yes, we have to learn how to walk, but instinct doesn't mean born with, it means born with a tendency toward; we aren't born with sexual desire either and that's pretty instinctual). And it's true that walking isn't always the best way to get places, there's also cars and bicycles and such now, but we didn't achieve those better ways through saying walking is beneath us or being resistant to walking. Likewise we can't achieve a better society by disliking the instincts responsible for the way group harmonies works, even when those lead to distasteful results like racism, or in-groups of cool kids and outcasts, or whatever.
Lately I've been losing whatever inclination I had to express thoughts in words. The very idea of writing something has become detestable. EDIT: Let alone writing something as long as this entry.
This might be due to an increasing distrust of the abstract (and all words are abstract, some more than others, but all of them.) I think a good response is to instead only write in a storytelling, pointing way. Truths that exist which cannot be conveyed in that way aren't usually worth conveying.
China will replace the US as a superpower solely on the basis that they eat more omega-3 fats than we do, and because the lack of them is associated with most forms of mental illness and all kinds of neurological troubles. They also don't have HFCS and so on (which is not to say that their diet doesn't have some problems, but it's far better than here). Also, although both the US and China are fascisms (in the sense of an unholy alliance between business and government), but at least theirs is more corrupt, and corruption is usually good for the people of a country because it keeps fascisms weak and ineffectual. Their economy also grows at around 10% a year and ours actually shrinks at around 1.5% a year if you account for standard of living and inflation. I suggest a good time to immigrate there is around 2035, 27 years from now; the relevant stars align around then. By 2050, definitely. To bad I have to wait so long to see how this turns out, but there are interesting things to do in the mean time.
There are all kinds of things happening in the world and it's hard to decide which is the most interesting to follow and work within. Just through proximity and other accidents the ones I follow the most are independent game development, nutrition / scientific alternative medicine, and the ridiculously ineffectual minarchist movement. But they could just as easily have been any of a thousand other things that people are interested in and work within, and although it seems to me that these three may be more important than most of those, anyone with a familiar knowledge of any of those thousand other movements would likely believe likewise. I do think that some may be more important than others, but just that with the bias of knowing some in more intimate detail than others, it's easy to be mistaken. For all I know, the so-called Mexican illegal immigrant invasion or the so-called Jewish banking conspiracies or the people who talk about drunk driving or the war on terrorism or the problems caused by not banning (or banning too many) guns or global warming or abortion or class warfare could be more important than the things I'm interested in are.
There are thousands of things that seem important to a lot of people which are irrelevant, stupid, or only mild curiousities to many other people. I wouldn't even dismiss the possible importance of celebrity culture and the people who intensely follow the activities of movie stars (even those who do so while admitting it's not important), even that kind of stuff could be more important in its possible effects on the world than I or even they realize: it sounds ridiculous, but maybe Clay Aiken really is more important than the torture camps in North Korea, or something (and I don't mean that just humorously, it's possible).
Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but here is how it's possible: people are largely controlled either through pleasure or pain. The more cruder nations tend to use pain to control, the more sophisticated countries tend to use pleasure to control; that goes not only for nations but also for just individual control of one person over another, parents over their children, cult leaders over their cult: the greater and more subtle control is obtained by pleasure rather than pain. Threating to cause someone pain is actually less effective than threatening to cut off their pleasure; psychology has shown this in studies as well. The Victorians as an example prevented people from having too much sexual pleasure, whereas other societies did the opposite and tried to overwhelm with too much of it. So while North Korea uses torture camps and force to keep its people chained, other governments have celebrities -- and many other things, such as pornography or various customs and holidays and economic products like drugs (illegal, prescription, or legal) -- to keep its people not chained but in a way enraptured.
And I'm not saying it's preferable to live under the former than the latter, or that NK does not use pleasure (think of those perfect birthday dances they have) or that we do not use pain (look at all the brutality in our prisons), just that one should recognize the essential similarity between the two methods to reduce the extent to which one is controlled, either by pain or pleasure, at least when you don't think it's a good idea to be controlled in a certain way (and it's usually not). Left to their own devices people in nature do not naturally seek out to maximize their pleasure to the extent that people do in many industrial democracies, and when they occasionally do they don't feel as guilty about it as the civilized do, but above all they don't drastically change their principles or their lifestyle or what or who is important to them just to maximize pleasure the way that's routinely done here. Pleasure is a mechanism and when it's working correctly most every-day things are pleasurable, just staring at the snow fall or doing a good day's work or just waking up or going to sleep. Requiring specific objects or activities or substances, at cost, in order to have pleasure is strange and inhuman when you think about it, it's kind of the inverse of torture, where there's pain for the sake of pain rather than pain for the sake of avoiding every-day things that are harmful.
So! What I think is good: ever-constant pleasure from every day life rather than its rise and fall, avoiding exterior behavior controls most of the time which limit you, being interested in a few domains while recognizing that they probably are no more important than the domains others are interested in, and moving to China around 2035.
This might be due to an increasing distrust of the abstract (and all words are abstract, some more than others, but all of them.) I think a good response is to instead only write in a storytelling, pointing way. Truths that exist which cannot be conveyed in that way aren't usually worth conveying.
China will replace the US as a superpower solely on the basis that they eat more omega-3 fats than we do, and because the lack of them is associated with most forms of mental illness and all kinds of neurological troubles. They also don't have HFCS and so on (which is not to say that their diet doesn't have some problems, but it's far better than here). Also, although both the US and China are fascisms (in the sense of an unholy alliance between business and government), but at least theirs is more corrupt, and corruption is usually good for the people of a country because it keeps fascisms weak and ineffectual. Their economy also grows at around 10% a year and ours actually shrinks at around 1.5% a year if you account for standard of living and inflation. I suggest a good time to immigrate there is around 2035, 27 years from now; the relevant stars align around then. By 2050, definitely. To bad I have to wait so long to see how this turns out, but there are interesting things to do in the mean time.
There are all kinds of things happening in the world and it's hard to decide which is the most interesting to follow and work within. Just through proximity and other accidents the ones I follow the most are independent game development, nutrition / scientific alternative medicine, and the ridiculously ineffectual minarchist movement. But they could just as easily have been any of a thousand other things that people are interested in and work within, and although it seems to me that these three may be more important than most of those, anyone with a familiar knowledge of any of those thousand other movements would likely believe likewise. I do think that some may be more important than others, but just that with the bias of knowing some in more intimate detail than others, it's easy to be mistaken. For all I know, the so-called Mexican illegal immigrant invasion or the so-called Jewish banking conspiracies or the people who talk about drunk driving or the war on terrorism or the problems caused by not banning (or banning too many) guns or global warming or abortion or class warfare could be more important than the things I'm interested in are.
There are thousands of things that seem important to a lot of people which are irrelevant, stupid, or only mild curiousities to many other people. I wouldn't even dismiss the possible importance of celebrity culture and the people who intensely follow the activities of movie stars (even those who do so while admitting it's not important), even that kind of stuff could be more important in its possible effects on the world than I or even they realize: it sounds ridiculous, but maybe Clay Aiken really is more important than the torture camps in North Korea, or something (and I don't mean that just humorously, it's possible).
Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but here is how it's possible: people are largely controlled either through pleasure or pain. The more cruder nations tend to use pain to control, the more sophisticated countries tend to use pleasure to control; that goes not only for nations but also for just individual control of one person over another, parents over their children, cult leaders over their cult: the greater and more subtle control is obtained by pleasure rather than pain. Threating to cause someone pain is actually less effective than threatening to cut off their pleasure; psychology has shown this in studies as well. The Victorians as an example prevented people from having too much sexual pleasure, whereas other societies did the opposite and tried to overwhelm with too much of it. So while North Korea uses torture camps and force to keep its people chained, other governments have celebrities -- and many other things, such as pornography or various customs and holidays and economic products like drugs (illegal, prescription, or legal) -- to keep its people not chained but in a way enraptured.
And I'm not saying it's preferable to live under the former than the latter, or that NK does not use pleasure (think of those perfect birthday dances they have) or that we do not use pain (look at all the brutality in our prisons), just that one should recognize the essential similarity between the two methods to reduce the extent to which one is controlled, either by pain or pleasure, at least when you don't think it's a good idea to be controlled in a certain way (and it's usually not). Left to their own devices people in nature do not naturally seek out to maximize their pleasure to the extent that people do in many industrial democracies, and when they occasionally do they don't feel as guilty about it as the civilized do, but above all they don't drastically change their principles or their lifestyle or what or who is important to them just to maximize pleasure the way that's routinely done here. Pleasure is a mechanism and when it's working correctly most every-day things are pleasurable, just staring at the snow fall or doing a good day's work or just waking up or going to sleep. Requiring specific objects or activities or substances, at cost, in order to have pleasure is strange and inhuman when you think about it, it's kind of the inverse of torture, where there's pain for the sake of pain rather than pain for the sake of avoiding every-day things that are harmful.
So! What I think is good: ever-constant pleasure from every day life rather than its rise and fall, avoiding exterior behavior controls most of the time which limit you, being interested in a few domains while recognizing that they probably are no more important than the domains others are interested in, and moving to China around 2035.
In college I once told one of my roommates that although I liked listening to political talk radio it was surprising that not once in years and years of listening did I ever see anyone change their mind about anything. It's as if the world of facts and the world of interpretation of those facts are distinct mental areas, or at least, because there are so many facts and because attention is selective you can always find facts that confirm what we believe.
Consequently, realizing this, I've never really tried to convince anyone of anything. Reason is good for an individual but it doesn't work between individuals. I sometimes go through the motions of argumentation but I never have the expectancy that it'll convince anyone, which is impossible to do through argument alone, usually persuasion works on a more animal level, beliefs are chosen for reasons other than truth, except for those areas where truth really is important immediately and untruth has painful consequences (usually related to a person's work).
I think that (ironically) the smarter you are the better you are at fooling yourself; facing a bunch of facts supporting an argument a less intelligent person would be persuaded, but a more intelligent person can find contradictory facts to support his previously held position. So contrary to common belief I think more intelligent people change their minds less often than less intelligent people (even when their beliefs are wrong). My experience pretty much backs this up; of the wide range of people I have known (offline and online) the more intelligent people hold pretty much the same beliefs now as when I met them, whereas the rest are more flexible. Or another way to put this is the better you are at using your mind the better you are at selective attention too, at finding more and more reasons to believe as you do. Almost nobody ever changes their mind about things of course, so the difference is pretty marginal.
Another thing I've been noticing lately is that people believe that if someone else believes something other than they do that they must be stupid or crazy or something, but that's not the case at all; very smart people believe in very wrong things (Newton's belief in alchemy for instance), what your beliefs are usually have nothing to do with how well you can think, they have to do with which beliefs you have had good reason to believe or which idea managed to latch onto a person first and reinforce itself and immunize itself against contradictory ideas before competing ideas could arrive. There may be some correlation between some beliefs and intelligence (creationism or something), but I suspect most beliefs have no correlation with intelligence, and even with things like creationism is not that creationism is an idea only the stupid could accept, it's more that the idea is socially associated with stupidity so that anyone who doesn't see their identity in that way gets rid of that idea early on.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe things of course (although we should try to believe only in empirical things of course, which can become a habit). Our minds work in a certain way and we must work within the bounds of the possible. But a lot of things are possible.
Consequently, realizing this, I've never really tried to convince anyone of anything. Reason is good for an individual but it doesn't work between individuals. I sometimes go through the motions of argumentation but I never have the expectancy that it'll convince anyone, which is impossible to do through argument alone, usually persuasion works on a more animal level, beliefs are chosen for reasons other than truth, except for those areas where truth really is important immediately and untruth has painful consequences (usually related to a person's work).
I think that (ironically) the smarter you are the better you are at fooling yourself; facing a bunch of facts supporting an argument a less intelligent person would be persuaded, but a more intelligent person can find contradictory facts to support his previously held position. So contrary to common belief I think more intelligent people change their minds less often than less intelligent people (even when their beliefs are wrong). My experience pretty much backs this up; of the wide range of people I have known (offline and online) the more intelligent people hold pretty much the same beliefs now as when I met them, whereas the rest are more flexible. Or another way to put this is the better you are at using your mind the better you are at selective attention too, at finding more and more reasons to believe as you do. Almost nobody ever changes their mind about things of course, so the difference is pretty marginal.
Another thing I've been noticing lately is that people believe that if someone else believes something other than they do that they must be stupid or crazy or something, but that's not the case at all; very smart people believe in very wrong things (Newton's belief in alchemy for instance), what your beliefs are usually have nothing to do with how well you can think, they have to do with which beliefs you have had good reason to believe or which idea managed to latch onto a person first and reinforce itself and immunize itself against contradictory ideas before competing ideas could arrive. There may be some correlation between some beliefs and intelligence (creationism or something), but I suspect most beliefs have no correlation with intelligence, and even with things like creationism is not that creationism is an idea only the stupid could accept, it's more that the idea is socially associated with stupidity so that anyone who doesn't see their identity in that way gets rid of that idea early on.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe things of course (although we should try to believe only in empirical things of course, which can become a habit). Our minds work in a certain way and we must work within the bounds of the possible. But a lot of things are possible.
I wanted to save a theory I expressed to konami recently but haven't written about here.
The idea is that humans are not adapted to grow up and live in safe environments, we were adapted to have to struggle for survival: to be constantly on the lookout for things to hunt or things hunting us, including other tribes, to have to work hard all day and make life and death decisions fairly regularly.
Today, especially in industrialized countries, but even to a good degree in third world countries, that's all gone. In the past you had to work extremely hard to live to 10, now you can pretty much do whatever you want, even just laze around all day and expend no effort whatsoever, and live to be 80. The difference is tangible and unimaginable.
I'm not saying we should go back to the old ways, only that we should recognize that this change has brought along problems and maladaptions. I'll go through a few.
Take habits for a big example. Habits were originally intended to get us to repeat things which help us survive and not repeat things which do not. But today, no matter what you do, you will probably survive. You don't need habits anymore. Really, habits are completely useless today, even though they were life-saving and indispensable 50,000 years ago.
I'd even go so far as to say that our propensity to habit is a very big liability today, particularly because they work by detecting what helps you survive and repeating it over and over; this leads to addictions, but more importantly this leads to repeating arbitrary actions over and over simply because those actions don't kill you; your brain reasonably believes that if you're doing something and you're still alive, it must be a good thing to repeat.
A second thing is free time. Our brains weren't built for idle thought; thinking without action is the cause of most psychological problems. Knowledge exists as a supplement for action, the only reason we're as good as we are at thinking is because it helps us choose better actions. But collectively humanity has become so good at choosing actions that we've pretty much eliminated the need to choose actions.
In other words, humanity is so good at thinking that there is no longer any reason for any person to think. You can think like Einstein or you can think like Forrest Gump and chances are you'll live the same amount of time either way. Maybe you'll gain another three years on average if you're a better thinker, by avoiding unhealthy foods or whatever, but big deal.
Because this is so, thinking, like habits, has become counter-productive. In most people, it causes more problems than it solves. I'm not saying we should abandon thinking, because we can't; we can't abandon it any more than we can abandon habit. But we should recognize that most of the time thinking causes more problems than it solves, just as having habits causes more problems than it solves.
I don't mean normal thinking like figuring out how to best get from point A to point B on a map or figuring out how to tie your shoes. I mean abstract thinking, such as whether mankind is inherently noble or ignoble, or whether or not this movie is Kurosawa's best movie, or who killed JFK. That type of thinking doesn't actually help you do anything, it makes no tangible difference in your actions, it's for all intents and purposes waste heat, which exists because that type of thinking was once useful in your evolutionary past but no longer is. Most habits are bad, and most thoughts are bad. Even when the thought is factually correct, it can still be morally bad to dwell on it, to have it consume you.
The cause of most political and social problems is at root psychological, that humans are not yet adapted to always being safe and never having to fight for survival. And we probably never will be adapted for that, for biological reasons (particularly because, genetically, extremely large populations evolve extremely slowly, and there's 6 billion of us -- there's a reason the cockroach hasn't changed much in so long: there are so many of them).
But what can't be changed genetically can be changed through culture, and I think a culture in which we foster things adapted to civilization has been developing for some time. There are pretty major ways that culture tries to adapt you to civilization, things which are completely alien to tooth-and-nail life: various moral ideas are just the start, entire emotions (or more specifically emotional interpretations) have been fabricated and brought into being which didn't previously exist, yet feel just as real as can be.
There are deep manipulations of someone's psychology going on as they grow up that aren't noticeable, even when we look for them. They mainly take the form of expectations about ourselves, such that we usually falsely believe such things are part of human nature when they are not which only becomes obvious when you read ethnographies of peoples still living in prehistorical ways and notice, say, that 90% of them aren't monogamous or that most of them don't see murder as a serious crime if it's done to someone outside your tribe or that most of them don't have a concept of falling in love (and neither did even Western civilization until recently).
But back to my point: we are built for tough lives, not soft lives, and the more comfortable your life is the worse you feel. Happiness comes from the achievement of goals, but if you're handed those goals before you're even born (supermarkets to provide easy food, sinecures to provide easy funds to buy that food, and the rest is entertainment) there can be no happiness in the sense that someone who struggles to survive knows happiness.
There are no real answers to this problem. You can't just become a hermit in aboriginal Australia (well you can, but not practically), nor can you accept the full comforts of modern society and expect to be happy (not even content), and any attempt to mix the two will also fail because they can't be mixed, either life is constantly dangerous or it isn't, either you're living on the edge of death or you're not.
The best answer I know of is Karma Yoga: to do good work and to focus all your energy on doing good work. It doesn't matter if that work is making games or baking cakes or building watches, as long as it can't be done automatically (a living death) and especially as long as there is a constant struggle to do it better and better and some type of prideful record of one's work, like a stack of novels you're written that's getting ever taller. If done correctly this maintains the safety of modern society while avoiding most of its problems (it avoids habit because it provides an constant, if artificial, challenge, and it avoids thinking too much because there's no time to be idle).
Preferably the work should do good for others and be useful, but that isn't even mandatory, building houses out of cards and trying to get ever better at that, or juggling 7 balls and then 8 balls and then 9 balls and trying to become a master juggler -- both of those sound pretty useless but they're still Karma Yoga. My personal preference is that the work be useful, but even someone pursuing mastery of juggling is better off than someone who just entertains themselves by watching X-Files or going to concerts or all the other millions of things that people become stuck in habits around, and certainly better off than people who think all the time and never do anything and create psychological problems which eventually end in suicide.
EDIT: And yes I know this entry is doing exactly what I say we shouldn't do (thinking too much), but in my defense I'm so overactive at thinking that I can come up with theories like this over the course of the few minutes it takes to drink a cup of coffee, and I type at 100 wpm and this entry only took a few minutes to write, so it doesn't really take up much of my time, most of which is spent on making and playing games (or, more recently, on getting Ron Paul elected).
The idea is that humans are not adapted to grow up and live in safe environments, we were adapted to have to struggle for survival: to be constantly on the lookout for things to hunt or things hunting us, including other tribes, to have to work hard all day and make life and death decisions fairly regularly.
Today, especially in industrialized countries, but even to a good degree in third world countries, that's all gone. In the past you had to work extremely hard to live to 10, now you can pretty much do whatever you want, even just laze around all day and expend no effort whatsoever, and live to be 80. The difference is tangible and unimaginable.
I'm not saying we should go back to the old ways, only that we should recognize that this change has brought along problems and maladaptions. I'll go through a few.
Take habits for a big example. Habits were originally intended to get us to repeat things which help us survive and not repeat things which do not. But today, no matter what you do, you will probably survive. You don't need habits anymore. Really, habits are completely useless today, even though they were life-saving and indispensable 50,000 years ago.
I'd even go so far as to say that our propensity to habit is a very big liability today, particularly because they work by detecting what helps you survive and repeating it over and over; this leads to addictions, but more importantly this leads to repeating arbitrary actions over and over simply because those actions don't kill you; your brain reasonably believes that if you're doing something and you're still alive, it must be a good thing to repeat.
A second thing is free time. Our brains weren't built for idle thought; thinking without action is the cause of most psychological problems. Knowledge exists as a supplement for action, the only reason we're as good as we are at thinking is because it helps us choose better actions. But collectively humanity has become so good at choosing actions that we've pretty much eliminated the need to choose actions.
In other words, humanity is so good at thinking that there is no longer any reason for any person to think. You can think like Einstein or you can think like Forrest Gump and chances are you'll live the same amount of time either way. Maybe you'll gain another three years on average if you're a better thinker, by avoiding unhealthy foods or whatever, but big deal.
Because this is so, thinking, like habits, has become counter-productive. In most people, it causes more problems than it solves. I'm not saying we should abandon thinking, because we can't; we can't abandon it any more than we can abandon habit. But we should recognize that most of the time thinking causes more problems than it solves, just as having habits causes more problems than it solves.
I don't mean normal thinking like figuring out how to best get from point A to point B on a map or figuring out how to tie your shoes. I mean abstract thinking, such as whether mankind is inherently noble or ignoble, or whether or not this movie is Kurosawa's best movie, or who killed JFK. That type of thinking doesn't actually help you do anything, it makes no tangible difference in your actions, it's for all intents and purposes waste heat, which exists because that type of thinking was once useful in your evolutionary past but no longer is. Most habits are bad, and most thoughts are bad. Even when the thought is factually correct, it can still be morally bad to dwell on it, to have it consume you.
The cause of most political and social problems is at root psychological, that humans are not yet adapted to always being safe and never having to fight for survival. And we probably never will be adapted for that, for biological reasons (particularly because, genetically, extremely large populations evolve extremely slowly, and there's 6 billion of us -- there's a reason the cockroach hasn't changed much in so long: there are so many of them).
But what can't be changed genetically can be changed through culture, and I think a culture in which we foster things adapted to civilization has been developing for some time. There are pretty major ways that culture tries to adapt you to civilization, things which are completely alien to tooth-and-nail life: various moral ideas are just the start, entire emotions (or more specifically emotional interpretations) have been fabricated and brought into being which didn't previously exist, yet feel just as real as can be.
There are deep manipulations of someone's psychology going on as they grow up that aren't noticeable, even when we look for them. They mainly take the form of expectations about ourselves, such that we usually falsely believe such things are part of human nature when they are not which only becomes obvious when you read ethnographies of peoples still living in prehistorical ways and notice, say, that 90% of them aren't monogamous or that most of them don't see murder as a serious crime if it's done to someone outside your tribe or that most of them don't have a concept of falling in love (and neither did even Western civilization until recently).
But back to my point: we are built for tough lives, not soft lives, and the more comfortable your life is the worse you feel. Happiness comes from the achievement of goals, but if you're handed those goals before you're even born (supermarkets to provide easy food, sinecures to provide easy funds to buy that food, and the rest is entertainment) there can be no happiness in the sense that someone who struggles to survive knows happiness.
There are no real answers to this problem. You can't just become a hermit in aboriginal Australia (well you can, but not practically), nor can you accept the full comforts of modern society and expect to be happy (not even content), and any attempt to mix the two will also fail because they can't be mixed, either life is constantly dangerous or it isn't, either you're living on the edge of death or you're not.
The best answer I know of is Karma Yoga: to do good work and to focus all your energy on doing good work. It doesn't matter if that work is making games or baking cakes or building watches, as long as it can't be done automatically (a living death) and especially as long as there is a constant struggle to do it better and better and some type of prideful record of one's work, like a stack of novels you're written that's getting ever taller. If done correctly this maintains the safety of modern society while avoiding most of its problems (it avoids habit because it provides an constant, if artificial, challenge, and it avoids thinking too much because there's no time to be idle).
Preferably the work should do good for others and be useful, but that isn't even mandatory, building houses out of cards and trying to get ever better at that, or juggling 7 balls and then 8 balls and then 9 balls and trying to become a master juggler -- both of those sound pretty useless but they're still Karma Yoga. My personal preference is that the work be useful, but even someone pursuing mastery of juggling is better off than someone who just entertains themselves by watching X-Files or going to concerts or all the other millions of things that people become stuck in habits around, and certainly better off than people who think all the time and never do anything and create psychological problems which eventually end in suicide.
EDIT: And yes I know this entry is doing exactly what I say we shouldn't do (thinking too much), but in my defense I'm so overactive at thinking that I can come up with theories like this over the course of the few minutes it takes to drink a cup of coffee, and I type at 100 wpm and this entry only took a few minutes to write, so it doesn't really take up much of my time, most of which is spent on making and playing games (or, more recently, on getting Ron Paul elected).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_su
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_yo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_li
Most personalities are actually subcultures in disguise D:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_yo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_li
Most personalities are actually subcultures in disguise D:
(5:33:37 AM) Harlock D Hero: "WINTER HAVEN
Report: Man Sold Cocaine to Sheriff's Deputy
An undercover sheriff's deputy arrested a Winter Haven man Wednesday evening after buying cocaine from him near a church."
(5:33:42 AM) Harlock D Hero: notice how it says "near a church"
(5:33:56 AM) Harlock D Hero: an irrelevant detail, you'd think, but relevant to the law here
(5:34:06 AM) Harlock D Hero: wherein if you commit a crime near a church, it's extra time on your sentence
(5:34:53 AM) Paul Eres: ha
(5:34:57 AM) Paul Eres: why even live in a theocracy then
(5:35:05 AM) Harlock D Hero: who can escape?
(5:35:06 AM) Paul Eres: if it really was that bad in florida
(5:35:09 AM) Paul Eres: which it wasn't
(5:35:12 AM) Paul Eres: you'd have moved out long ago
(5:35:16 AM) Harlock D Hero: how can i move?
(5:35:20 AM) Harlock D Hero: i have no money at all
(5:35:23 AM) Paul Eres: easily
( Read more... )
Report: Man Sold Cocaine to Sheriff's Deputy
An undercover sheriff's deputy arrested a Winter Haven man Wednesday evening after buying cocaine from him near a church."
(5:33:42 AM) Harlock D Hero: notice how it says "near a church"
(5:33:56 AM) Harlock D Hero: an irrelevant detail, you'd think, but relevant to the law here
(5:34:06 AM) Harlock D Hero: wherein if you commit a crime near a church, it's extra time on your sentence
(5:34:53 AM) Paul Eres: ha
(5:34:57 AM) Paul Eres: why even live in a theocracy then
(5:35:05 AM) Harlock D Hero: who can escape?
(5:35:06 AM) Paul Eres: if it really was that bad in florida
(5:35:09 AM) Paul Eres: which it wasn't
(5:35:12 AM) Paul Eres: you'd have moved out long ago
(5:35:16 AM) Harlock D Hero: how can i move?
(5:35:20 AM) Harlock D Hero: i have no money at all
(5:35:23 AM) Paul Eres: easily
( Read more... )
Patrick Dugan wrote an entry about Movements in Game Design which got me thinking about how "game engine" games (Ohrrpgce, Game Maker, RPGMaker, Mugen, etc.) and game developers who make games in those engine form a semi-enclosed movement, with its own culture and aesthetics and recurrent goals. I think that most games that come out of those engines (including mine to a degree) share the following:
1. They are usually created in the style of Japanese console games, particularly NES and SNES, even down to the pixel art techniques used. Aveyond and Sword of Jade are much more similar to Japanese-made RPGs than American-made RPGs; Cute Knight is in the style of Princess Maker. Also, the genres explored are usually Japanese console style genres like the platformer, the RPG, and the shmup, rather than more western genres like RTS and FPS and puzzle games. They're sometimes even given Japanese titles (even though the author doesn't know much Japanese), like Kishi Kawaii and Sekai no Owari.
2. They often include direct references or even include as characters the author, his friends, and the close-knit communities that they're made for. Specplosive's Vet RPG, PenGamer's games, the OHR House series, Mormon Mission, etc. -- games know they're not going to get a large audience so they're free to have in-jokes that only their community would understand.
3. They're often parodies or joke games that get their value from some trick or oddity; the Arfenhouse series or Stickman with a Chainsaw are examples, but there are thousands of 15-minute joke games made in game engines.
4. They often have very strange, gimmick-like gameplay and weird, surreal situations; in Don't Push the Button you can't push a button, in Sheep Rancher you put a rock down to herd sheep which always turn left (or was it right?), in Never Go West you can't take a step to the west or else you die, in the Last Blitz the enemies are abstract art and the different game developers argue with each other in the game.
5. They usually focus much more on the story than on the gameplay; people make them to tell stories and they create them as stories: they create the game up to chapter 1, then create the game up to chapter 2, creating sprites and monsters and other elements as they need them rather than planning ahead; they're written like novels.
The defining characteristic of this movement: because games made with game engines are very simple to make, and the authors don't have to worry much about coding, and because they aren't intended for large audiences, they can focus less on making the games impressive or competitive with other games over an audience, and more on making the games interesting to the creator of the game. They're usually very personal games.
1. They are usually created in the style of Japanese console games, particularly NES and SNES, even down to the pixel art techniques used. Aveyond and Sword of Jade are much more similar to Japanese-made RPGs than American-made RPGs; Cute Knight is in the style of Princess Maker. Also, the genres explored are usually Japanese console style genres like the platformer, the RPG, and the shmup, rather than more western genres like RTS and FPS and puzzle games. They're sometimes even given Japanese titles (even though the author doesn't know much Japanese), like Kishi Kawaii and Sekai no Owari.
2. They often include direct references or even include as characters the author, his friends, and the close-knit communities that they're made for. Specplosive's Vet RPG, PenGamer's games, the OHR House series, Mormon Mission, etc. -- games know they're not going to get a large audience so they're free to have in-jokes that only their community would understand.
3. They're often parodies or joke games that get their value from some trick or oddity; the Arfenhouse series or Stickman with a Chainsaw are examples, but there are thousands of 15-minute joke games made in game engines.
4. They often have very strange, gimmick-like gameplay and weird, surreal situations; in Don't Push the Button you can't push a button, in Sheep Rancher you put a rock down to herd sheep which always turn left (or was it right?), in Never Go West you can't take a step to the west or else you die, in the Last Blitz the enemies are abstract art and the different game developers argue with each other in the game.
5. They usually focus much more on the story than on the gameplay; people make them to tell stories and they create them as stories: they create the game up to chapter 1, then create the game up to chapter 2, creating sprites and monsters and other elements as they need them rather than planning ahead; they're written like novels.
The defining characteristic of this movement: because games made with game engines are very simple to make, and the authors don't have to worry much about coding, and because they aren't intended for large audiences, they can focus less on making the games impressive or competitive with other games over an audience, and more on making the games interesting to the creator of the game. They're usually very personal games.
The question in the subject has been on my mind off and on since I saw those Hans videos [2, 3] (as I call them). I think I've boiled it down to a few causes:
1) Virtually nobody really bases their world view on empirical data and statistics, they base it with the more inaccurate method of using case studies and generalizing theories, usually with case studies brought up to justify the theories. This is a universal problem, because it's how we evolved to think, even though it's not the best way to think. People 10,000 years ago didn't have a huge sum collection of human knowledge to study, because there was no accurate record-keeping they only had what they could see with their eyes or what their witchdoctors or tribal elders told them is true, so their thinking style reflects the tribal system of myths and legends which were -- for the time -- the best way to think.
2) As our media improves (especially as it moves from a more organized corporate control to independent blogging and suchlike) things which were kept hidden before are becoming revealed, so that it appears as if more and more bad things are showing up when it's more that they always happened and just weren't reported about as much.
3) Unpleasant stories are more popular to report on because they are more likely to be repeated to others by word-of-mouth (pleasant things are the rule, not the exception, so they don't get repeated as often -- also important is that warnings are more important to know than reassurances, so we're predisposed to transmit warnings disproportionately), and that makes it so that most of what we are *told* about the world is bad, even though it doesn't accurately represent what's happening in the world, it only represents what people tend to tell others about.
1) Virtually nobody really bases their world view on empirical data and statistics, they base it with the more inaccurate method of using case studies and generalizing theories, usually with case studies brought up to justify the theories. This is a universal problem, because it's how we evolved to think, even though it's not the best way to think. People 10,000 years ago didn't have a huge sum collection of human knowledge to study, because there was no accurate record-keeping they only had what they could see with their eyes or what their witchdoctors or tribal elders told them is true, so their thinking style reflects the tribal system of myths and legends which were -- for the time -- the best way to think.
2) As our media improves (especially as it moves from a more organized corporate control to independent blogging and suchlike) things which were kept hidden before are becoming revealed, so that it appears as if more and more bad things are showing up when it's more that they always happened and just weren't reported about as much.
3) Unpleasant stories are more popular to report on because they are more likely to be repeated to others by word-of-mouth (pleasant things are the rule, not the exception, so they don't get repeated as often -- also important is that warnings are more important to know than reassurances, so we're predisposed to transmit warnings disproportionately), and that makes it so that most of what we are *told* about the world is bad, even though it doesn't accurately represent what's happening in the world, it only represents what people tend to tell others about.
Harlock especially might like these links:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlin
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d
http://www.commondreams.org/headlin
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d
Watching the news is occasionally useful, filtered though it is. I learned two important things from it yesterday.
The first is that Kissinger has been advising this white house on the Iraq War. That makes a lot of sense (and unlike most people I rather like Kissinger). As I've said before, I think the primary reason for invading Iraq was as a prelude for invading Iran (note that Afganistan and Iraq now sandwich Iran). Once Iran is ours, China will lose its oil supply to us and thus be unable to maintain its 9% yearly GDP growth rate and thus be unable replace the US as a superpower, and that's the point of the entire war on terrorism -- it's really a war on China. Kissinger and the rest don't really care about terrorism so much as they do the rise China, and with good reason, as a China-US cold war would probably end up in China's favor if it happened (after China has had a few more decades of growth); cutting off their oil supply is basically the only thing that could be done to prevent that war. That Kissinger is *directly* involved (it seems he's seen around the White House very frequently) is kind of encouraging; it also makes me trust his judgement that Condi Rice is even better at international affairs than he is more, since if he's directly in the loop of their plans then he'd be in a better position to judge that.
(As an aside, I'm not really sure I even *want* America to remain the only superpower, after reading about that Jesus Camp documentary. America is well on its way to becoming a Christian theocratic totalitarian state. Whether or not that'd be better than China's Communist totalitarian state, who knows.)
But that's not the point of this entry, the point is the second thing I learned: that Bush has a speech writer who deliberately inserts the subcultural code words of the evangelist movement into his speeches, so as to reassure the evangelists that he is working for them and one of them (even though he isn't). According to the person who pointed this out on the news, each subculture has its own code words, and using them pacifies that subculture, anyone who uses a subculture's code words reassures that subculture that everything is going okay and that that person is an ally. I've noticed this very often among the Objectivists: they have particular words and phrases that they use over and over, as signs to eachother. And what happens is that if you're not familiar with a subculture's code words, you don't even notice that they are code words, you just think it's that person's idiosyncratic way of talking or writing. That's what I'd assumed with regard to evangelists, but now that I think about it, there *are* evangelist code words, just as there are Objectivist code words and Marxist code words and Heroist code words. Evangelism is just as much a tightly knit subgroup as those subgroups are, it's just way larger. So I think it'd be a good idea for me to learn what those code words are in more detail, since you don't really know how the people in a subculture tend to think until you know those code words. Because evangelism was basically started by Billy Graham, I'd assume that watching his speeches (and perhaps those of a few other famous evangelists) would familiarize me with what those code words are. But on the other hand Ayn Rand and Peikoff didn't use the Objectivist code words with anywhere near the degree of frequency that other Objectivists tend to use them, so perhaps it'd be better just to go to evangelist forums or something. Probably both are needed.
(As an aside, I don't take the 'being in a subculture is inherently non-individualist/bad' perspective anymore, even though I used to. The reason is: most people who *aren't* or haven't been in any ideological subculture tend to be even more mindless than those who are or have been in one. I also suspect that subcultures are just personalities writ large.)
The first is that Kissinger has been advising this white house on the Iraq War. That makes a lot of sense (and unlike most people I rather like Kissinger). As I've said before, I think the primary reason for invading Iraq was as a prelude for invading Iran (note that Afganistan and Iraq now sandwich Iran). Once Iran is ours, China will lose its oil supply to us and thus be unable to maintain its 9% yearly GDP growth rate and thus be unable replace the US as a superpower, and that's the point of the entire war on terrorism -- it's really a war on China. Kissinger and the rest don't really care about terrorism so much as they do the rise China, and with good reason, as a China-US cold war would probably end up in China's favor if it happened (after China has had a few more decades of growth); cutting off their oil supply is basically the only thing that could be done to prevent that war. That Kissinger is *directly* involved (it seems he's seen around the White House very frequently) is kind of encouraging; it also makes me trust his judgement that Condi Rice is even better at international affairs than he is more, since if he's directly in the loop of their plans then he'd be in a better position to judge that.
(As an aside, I'm not really sure I even *want* America to remain the only superpower, after reading about that Jesus Camp documentary. America is well on its way to becoming a Christian theocratic totalitarian state. Whether or not that'd be better than China's Communist totalitarian state, who knows.)
But that's not the point of this entry, the point is the second thing I learned: that Bush has a speech writer who deliberately inserts the subcultural code words of the evangelist movement into his speeches, so as to reassure the evangelists that he is working for them and one of them (even though he isn't). According to the person who pointed this out on the news, each subculture has its own code words, and using them pacifies that subculture, anyone who uses a subculture's code words reassures that subculture that everything is going okay and that that person is an ally. I've noticed this very often among the Objectivists: they have particular words and phrases that they use over and over, as signs to eachother. And what happens is that if you're not familiar with a subculture's code words, you don't even notice that they are code words, you just think it's that person's idiosyncratic way of talking or writing. That's what I'd assumed with regard to evangelists, but now that I think about it, there *are* evangelist code words, just as there are Objectivist code words and Marxist code words and Heroist code words. Evangelism is just as much a tightly knit subgroup as those subgroups are, it's just way larger. So I think it'd be a good idea for me to learn what those code words are in more detail, since you don't really know how the people in a subculture tend to think until you know those code words. Because evangelism was basically started by Billy Graham, I'd assume that watching his speeches (and perhaps those of a few other famous evangelists) would familiarize me with what those code words are. But on the other hand Ayn Rand and Peikoff didn't use the Objectivist code words with anywhere near the degree of frequency that other Objectivists tend to use them, so perhaps it'd be better just to go to evangelist forums or something. Probably both are needed.
(As an aside, I don't take the 'being in a subculture is inherently non-individualist/bad' perspective anymore, even though I used to. The reason is: most people who *aren't* or haven't been in any ideological subculture tend to be even more mindless than those who are or have been in one. I also suspect that subcultures are just personalities writ large.)
Occasionally I sit and stare at the blank "Update Journal" page and think of many things. This usually lasts a few minutes, sometimes half an hour. Sometimes nothing comes up that's worth writing about and I leave the page go about my business, sometimes a thought I particularly like comes up, and I write it down. So here:
Culture's not that great.
I don't mean high or low culture, I mean all culture. It isn't really that useful. Sure, it's useful for some things, like transmitting inventions and scientific theories and cooking recipes and medical information, but the majority of culture isn't like that, it's silly information that never should have been transmitted in the first place, but in fact *is* transmitted because of the habit of culture. People would be a lot smarter if they ignored most culture, culture makes people stupid, even naturally stupid (retarded) people are made worse off if they pay attention to culture.
From now on I'm going to be plenty selective about what information I transmit, because I don't want to contribute to the plague of culture any more than I have to. My input filters for culture are pretty solid, I don't need to worry about those, but not everyone is as good as I am at beheading the messenger even before he delivers the message, just because he's a messenger.
Culture's not that great.
I don't mean high or low culture, I mean all culture. It isn't really that useful. Sure, it's useful for some things, like transmitting inventions and scientific theories and cooking recipes and medical information, but the majority of culture isn't like that, it's silly information that never should have been transmitted in the first place, but in fact *is* transmitted because of the habit of culture. People would be a lot smarter if they ignored most culture, culture makes people stupid, even naturally stupid (retarded) people are made worse off if they pay attention to culture.
From now on I'm going to be plenty selective about what information I transmit, because I don't want to contribute to the plague of culture any more than I have to. My input filters for culture are pretty solid, I don't need to worry about those, but not everyone is as good as I am at beheading the messenger even before he delivers the message, just because he's a messenger.
OMG I hate virtually everyone on this list!!
*
Gallup's List of Widely Admired People, a poll of United States citizens to volunteer the names of the individuals whom they most admire, is a list compiled annually by The Gallup Organization. This is the only question that Gallup has asked every year since its founding in the 1930s. In December 1999, they concatenated this information with their final survey for the 20th century, producing a list of eighteen people from the 20th century who are "most admired":
1. Mother Teresa
2. Martin Luther King, Jr.
3. John F. Kennedy
4. Albert Einstein
5. Helen Keller
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt
7. Billy Graham
8. Pope John Paul II
9. Eleanor Roosevelt
10. Winston Churchill
11. Dwight Eisenhower
12. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
13. Mahatma Gandhi
14. Nelson Mandela
15. Ronald Reagan
16. Henry Ford
17. Bill Clinton
18. Margaret Thatcher
*
Gallup's List of Widely Admired People, a poll of United States citizens to volunteer the names of the individuals whom they most admire, is a list compiled annually by The Gallup Organization. This is the only question that Gallup has asked every year since its founding in the 1930s. In December 1999, they concatenated this information with their final survey for the 20th century, producing a list of eighteen people from the 20th century who are "most admired":
1. Mother Teresa
2. Martin Luther King, Jr.
3. John F. Kennedy
4. Albert Einstein
5. Helen Keller
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt
7. Billy Graham
8. Pope John Paul II
9. Eleanor Roosevelt
10. Winston Churchill
11. Dwight Eisenhower
12. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
13. Mahatma Gandhi
14. Nelson Mandela
15. Ronald Reagan
16. Henry Ford
17. Bill Clinton
18. Margaret Thatcher
There are three major criticisms of other people (the mass of people, in general) that you tend to hear: that other people are too stupid, that other people are too immoral, and that other people are too sheep-like (passive, copycats, only doing what they say, having a desire to be controlled). Those are fair criticisms. But I think those don't really get at the root of the problem. The primary thing wrong with the mass of humanity is not that they are too stupid, or too immoral, or too sheep-like, but that they're too young and inexperienced.
The average age in the world is around the mid-twenties. Some people are much more mature for their age than others, due to a natural variation in life experiences, opportunities for self-training, role models, or whatever -- a natural variation in maturity exists, but still generally older people are better than younger people are, on average, in most ways. They're more intelligent (due to having more practise in thinking), more moral (due to trial and error), and less sheep-like (just you try to find a conformist 100-year-old). There are sometimes mental problems associated with old age, but those tend to be related to health. Healthy 90 and 100 year olds do not mentally degenerate with time.
Therefore, the primary problem with the world is that our life span is too short. Extend the human life span, and people will be more intelligent, more moral, and more individualistic. Simple as that.
Now I know you might be thinking "I know some terrible 80-year-olds who never seem to learn their lesson about anything!", and true, those exist, but I'm talking averages. On average 80-year-olds are better people than 40-year-olds, who are in turn better people than 15-year-olds.
The average age in the world is around the mid-twenties. Some people are much more mature for their age than others, due to a natural variation in life experiences, opportunities for self-training, role models, or whatever -- a natural variation in maturity exists, but still generally older people are better than younger people are, on average, in most ways. They're more intelligent (due to having more practise in thinking), more moral (due to trial and error), and less sheep-like (just you try to find a conformist 100-year-old). There are sometimes mental problems associated with old age, but those tend to be related to health. Healthy 90 and 100 year olds do not mentally degenerate with time.
Therefore, the primary problem with the world is that our life span is too short. Extend the human life span, and people will be more intelligent, more moral, and more individualistic. Simple as that.
Now I know you might be thinking "I know some terrible 80-year-olds who never seem to learn their lesson about anything!", and true, those exist, but I'm talking averages. On average 80-year-olds are better people than 40-year-olds, who are in turn better people than 15-year-olds.
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