fear. fear. fear.

the fall of Western Civilization is founded upon a total stupor, a paralysis based on the paranoia of an animal tired of being electrified.

the Puritan method worked too well until it failed.

the best way to avoid punishment is paralysis: “if I stay put, nothing will happen to me.” living death.

since capitalism hates it’s actuality, this is also the best way to kill it: the uttee suppression of the will to think.

electrify a child when she wants to create and you have just produced yet another civil servant.

fear. fear. fear.

a whole society, globalized by callous adventurers, killed by the trap of charitable discipline.
creative intelligence flees, gets the hell out. those that remain are rats in a cage.

he who is not in the frontier will die in the front.

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first drafts on morality

morality is something complex. my relation with it is hard

in general, my first move is to retreat from it. morality can justify horrific things and be utterly useless given my determinist convictions. but then a problem occurs: these are also two very moral convictions. i believe in avoiding horrific things and in determinism because i ultimately think they are good.

damn. it would be indeed amazing to be able to be amoral. you know, just predicting you own future behavior and chilling. it isn’t, and here is the tragedy of human existence: we have to act, to choose, to decide what is good and bad.

so, let’s try and dig through this mess: what is good? what is right?

1) on a “meta” level, i believe the best thing is: everyone gets to decide individually and thus create their own morality. the archipelago model and the patchwork kinda-sorta work towards this. dynamic geography is the best alternative so far for the total individualization of morality.

2) given that, i would choose the patch/island which implemented most thoroughly the same principle, i. e., individual choice. so i’d choose somewhere which respected my choices and everyone else, conceded some private space for experimentation and generally didn’t meddle with individual choices within such private spaces.

the problem here are twofold: a) how to distribute private spaces? b) what about interactions between private spaces and individuals?

i believe a) is easily solvable with an occupancy and use standard, with differing rules for the end of property according to statistically measured “standard cycles of usage“. thus property is always being used for innovative ends, whilst speculation is granted for a while. this model still presents some sort of problem, given the desirability of renting stuff (mobility is nice), but i can guess you can uberize things so that rents become services (and so the problems are eliminated).

b) can be solved through the concept of consent.

here, though, is where morality gets really tricky. can consent be formally defined, as a specific procedure? it don’t think so, since it has blurry edges, but we can at least try some “family resemblance” trick and build from there.

what is consent? at its simplest, it envolves a proposition by party A to party B, and an explicit, reliable and definite positive answer by party B. “can i enter your property?” “yes” would be a perfect example.

the world is far from perfect, though. what if B is under (physical or moral or economic or weaker kinds even) coercion to say yes? what if B is lying (or otherwise the answer is not reliable) and won’t behave according to the positive answer he gave (by shooting the “invader” A, for instance)? what if B changes his mind afterwards? what if B is a child or mentally challenged? what if B is an animal?

ideally, all these questions would be answered in the contract both parties agreed to. in reality, this hardly happens and whole lotta of mechanisms and expectations get in play. what should one do in those? well, given the archipelago/patchwork, one should follow the positive law established at the island/patch, or leave. in current reality, only gnon knows. individual morality will prevail (and here i am already leaving the subject of morality per se, and delving into historical analysis).

what would i do? alleviate as much as i could the specific pressures/coercion over my contracting party, allow her to change her mind later at the cost of restitution of original property and a small fine, have means of defense in case of fraud (up to restitution and a small fine), and deal only with perfectly capable (human) adults (at least until animals, aliens or robots get into play by being able to consent explicitly, to complicate everything even more).

simplistically put, i am a libertarian (who worries about social pressures on individuals as well).

on realism (aka “stop whining”)

if reality rules, the first thing is to recognize it.

civilization works and wins out. liberal civilization works better and wins out even more often.

civilization is able to produce a legitimized and hence very functional hierarchy out of essentially egalitarian young male primates. this turns out to be a very efficient military organization, that eliminates its competition. territorial conquest follows.

the downside of civilization is that after some time it gets exhausted. status competition becomes more central than military conquer, resources get mostly concentrated in the hand of a few, people – especially the essentially egalitarian young male primates who were the basis of civilization – get fucking pissed off at dying for a few leaders (that are usually the moronic sons of former approved kings, or the compulsive liar politicians of late republics) and internal order collapses inexorably. too bad, but natural selection is a tough bitch. stupidity dies.

western (i.e., liberal) civilization works pretty much the same way all civilizations: astounding military conquest, territorial expansion, ensuing stupidity in managing social order. but some strange loops make liberal civilization weirder (and gets one wondering if this time it’s different).

anyone attempting to analyse or do something in the present is certainly advised to looking back to history as a teacher. but not as a moral teacher. to think that history is unfair – our side lost! – is already to give up any sort of teaching it may have. spooky ghosts won’t teach you what works. and what doesn’t work dies. in fact the very definition of “death” could be “not functioning”. whining about how wicked civilization is, or how improperly demoralized liberal civilization has become, is to ignore that, well, civilization slaughtered every other type of social organization and, well, liberal civilization overtook the globe. sadness is not an argument.

once one learns the lessons of history, the question is “what happens next?” good prediction makes fortune. the more moralistic “what should be done?” is going to look for ghosts. of course, individually everyone will have to decide what to do at every moment. that’s the predicament of human life: imperfect knowledge and hence free will. our feebleness entertains the gods. but if a blurry glimpse of the future is allowed to our primitive senses through prediction, fortune may be made.

so, what works for the Left in the wake of the 21st century, in view of history and the little prediction we can harvest? a few themes suggest themselves:

1) give up governments, go to small scale: fragmentation is becoming the worldwide trend, not onyl in communication, but emanating out of it into human organization. it’s a known in network science that centralized networks are less resilient (and hence less durable) than decentralized or (preferrably) distributed ones.

2) relentless outbreeding and/or genetic engineering towards human admixture (we’ve been through this yesterday, go check).

3) guns and AI are your friends; “proper science” is not: if we’re coming back to small-scale, lab-coat monks are not the raw materials. we need insane inventors, like old scientists, not theoreticians.

4) kill Christianity once and for all; side with witches: i am not one to despise the strength of organized rituals, but rejecting human imperfection in search for some “transcendental values” (even if they are oh so very progressive), and looking forward to taming dissent, is not at all what the Left feeds on. what ever happened to “we are the daughters of all the witches you couldn’t burn”. stick to the runes and the naturalness of paganism. the elementals are closer to reality than the Pope or the Good Book.

5) stop whining; start doing: the Left shall slowly perish into a whirlwind of complaints as long as it views its objective as “pleading for our rights”. the State doesn’t care, God doesn’t care, no one cares, which your supposed “rights” are. if you can’t build and defend them, they are void.

a realist Left, that understands power in order to effectively distribute it, that brings its madness into action (and not merely lodge it in low-grade literary academic papers) is the challenge ahead. if we fail reality, reality doesn’t go away, we do.

whining will only get yourself killed.

connexions #1

maybe Land is still a freaking libertarian:

Mathematical theorems, in particular [sic], are universal truths. Any assertions that can be constructed to a comparable level of formal rigor (and ultimately mechanization) can lay claim to the same status. However, with the slightest departure from this — rigidly algorithmic — criterion, controversy rapidly begins. This is not the place and time to argue the case for transcendental philosophy (within which praxeology in included), but such a case could be made.

is made here.

also, from the same essay:

The question of universalism as it concerns us here is not a matter of meta-mathematics, epistemology, or the philosophy of science. It is rather directed at the political scope of argument. Is it mandatory to demand that argument, according to the highest principles of (logical) cognitive compulsion, be imposed globally? Does the quality of argument — however exalted — require its unrestricted application across space and time?

the (left) libertarian answer is no:

In short, the equality that Locke and Jefferson speak of is equality in authority: the prohibition of any “subordination or subjection” of one person to another. Since any interference by A with B’s liberty constitutes a subordination or subjection of B to A, the right to liberty follows straightforwardly from the equality of “power and jurisdiction.”

so here’s wrong with pure Jacobitism. “If reason is so secure, legitimate, supersensibly guaranteed, why all the guns?”

ADDED: basically a Tuckerite. gets me wondering if tech-comm isn’t just plain old anind.