Workers--Hoffer

 

Eric Hoffer’s third book, The Ordeal of Change, is a book that I am typing out chapter by chapter and commenting on when needed. His Chapter 9, Workingman and Management, runs from Page 78 through Page 82 in his book.

 

I have worked in at least 5 different labor unions, as a public and private employee. This does not make me an expert on labor-management relations, but it should give me a seat at the table.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “There are many of us who have been workingmen all our lives and, whether we know it or not, will remain workingmen until we die. Whether there be a God in heaven or not; whether we be free or regimented; whether our standard of living is high or low—I and my like shall go on doing more or less what we are doing now.

 

This sober realization need not be unduly depressing to people who have acquired the habit of work and who, like the American workingman, have the ingredients of a fairly enjoyable life within their reach. Still, the awareness of being an eternal workingman colors one’s attitudes; and it might be of some interest to indicate briefly what the relation between management and labor looks like when seen from his point of view.

 

To the eternal workingman management is substantially the same whether it is made up of profit seekers, idealists, technicians, or bureaucrats. The allegiance of the manager is to the task and to the result. However noble his motives, he cannot help viewing workers as a means to an end. He will always try to get the utmost out of them; and it matters not whether he does it for the sake of profit, for a holy cause, or for the sheer principle of efficiency.”

 

My response: I cannot disagree with anything Hoffer wrote above. I would add that, in the future, when near every worker is an individuating supercitizen, be he unionized or not, he automatically forces management to be more democratic, and his intelligence, fearless insistence well communicated to them, will ensure that he is heard and heeded, to a large degree. When he is heard and heeded—when he should be—he will know that he is respected and appreciated, and then the company will find no more loyal, industrious, innovative, caring employee. He will demand to well-compensated because he is worth it, and, sooner or later, his employer will acknowledge his contribution, and pay him better, accordingly-we hope.

 

H: “One need not view management as an enemy or feel self-righteous about doing an honest day’s work to realize that things are likely to get tough when management can take the worker for granted; where it can plan and operate without having to worry about what the worker will say or do.”

 

My response: If the work force, laborer, supervisor, or manager, is populated by individuating supercitizens, it would be impossible for anyone to take anyone for granted, due to being principled and respectful, and because workers would not tolerate being abused or disrespected. A more conscientious, skilled, innovative, fearless, critically thinking group of subordinates is not imaginable, and they will be loyal, but will tolerate no abuse, exploitation, or dismissal.

 

H: “The important thing is that this taking of the worker for granted occurs not only when management has unlimited power to coerce but also when the division between management and labor ceases to be self-evident. Any doctrine that preaches oneness of management and labor—whether it stresses their unity as a party, class, race, nation, or even religion—can be used to turn the worker into a compliant instrument in the hands of management. Both Communism and Fascism postulate the oneness of management and labor, and both are devices for extraction of maximum performance from an underpaid workforce. The preachment of racial unity facilitated exploitation of labor in our South, in French Canada, and in South Africa. Pressure for nationalist and religious unity served, and still serves, a similar purpose elsewhere.”

 

My response: Hoffer is right: those preaching oneness of management and labor, if they succeed, will drive labor to be underpaid, overworked, and exploited. A union or non-union work force of individuating supercitizens, individually and collectively, will not suffer being coopted, but nor will they get greedy beyond receiving what pay, say, and share of power that they deserve. They will compete with and fight with management, when necessary, but they will cooperate, and keep the enterprise growing, profitable, and producing excellent widgets or service to the customers—in this sense a rational, principled, practical work force (If labor is too greedy, too powerful, and too lazy, then they kill the business—killing the goose that lays the golden egg—and maverized workers would not be tempted to commit economic suicide.) will self-regulate, and not murder the business or management, metaphorically speaking. If it is bad for business, it is bad for labor, in the long run.

 

H: “Seen from this point of view, the nationalization of the means of production is more a threat than a promise. For we shall be bossed and managed by someone, no matter who owns the means of production—and we can have no defenses against those who can tell us in all truth that we, the workers, own everything in sight and they, our taskmasters, are driving us for our own good. The battle between Socialism and Capitalism is to a large extent a battle between bosses, and it is legitimate to size up the dedicated Socialist as a potential boss.”

 

My response: Hoffer is a loyal to the working man, but he is not a socialist; he knows that the free market system generally is better for workers, more freedom, more prosperity, more happiness and fulfillment. He might suggest that capitalism is the worst of all economic systems, except for all others.

 

H: “One need not call to mind the example of Communist Russia to realize that the idealist has the making of a most formidable taskmaster. The ruthlessness born of self-seeking is ineffectual compared with the ruthlessness sustained by dedication to a holy cause.”

 

My response: In these two truthful, extraordinarily insightful sentences, Hoffer reveals how and why he is an intellectual and ethical genius. The most ruthless supervisor or manager unleashed upon the suffering workers under capitalism is but an ineffectual child in comparison to the ruthlessness and boundless demands placed upon workers in a socialist, a totalitarian state, a state whose culture and regime is an active holy cause (North Korea, anyone?). Why is this so? Under a totalitarian, socialist regime or holy cause, the ruling class, are completely fanatical and completely selfless, these idealistic executioners of their Party’s work goals is what they gleefully inflict upon the workers, and this is altruism-collectivism at its worst or purest.

 

In a dispensation where supervisors and managers are true believers and enforcers of a holy cause, and they sacrifice without mercy or restraint all workers—and themselves—for the sake of the cause and the regime, their cruelty is unequaled.

 

Their fanaticism reveals their pure hatred, their viciousness, their wickedness.

 

Under a capitalist system, the managers, and supervisors, though often brutish, are still moderated and humanized a lot by their moderate and hybrid egoist-altruist morality.

 

Here, Hoffer indirectly shows that he believes that egoism and moderation lead to goodness on earth, and altruism and immoderation grow malevolence and needless suffering on earth.

 

H; “ ‘God wishes,’ said Calvin, ‘that one should put aside all humanity when it is a question of striving for his glory.’ So it is better to be bossed by men of little faith, who set their hearts of toys, than by men animated by lofty ideals who are ready to sacrifice themselves and others for a cause. The most formidable employee is he who, like Stalin, cast himself in the role as representative and champion of the workers.”

 

My response: The good deities decidedly do not want elites or managers anywhere to put aside all humanity when strive for the glory of God. Men of little faith, of little idealism, of low enthusiasm, of low ardor and less passion to bring about the ends sought by purveyors of a holy cause, are more individualistic, moderate, and moral employers than are those that are zealots and in charge, collectivized, groupist, on fire and without an ounce of mercy.

 

As an aside, Hoffer the atheist has a bit of a bias against the religious believer, that their faith in a deity, leads them inclined to be enthusiastic and potentially fanatical in faith, and, that is so, though the 20^th century was the scene of lots of secular/substitute/fake/demonic religions or ideologies, so faith is a problem more than gentle, rational, temperate skepticism, but they can be well-mingled under the umbrella of rational religion which gives people sentimental relief without the tendency to turn chauvinistic,, too evangelical and fanatical about their faith.

 

H: “Our sole protection lies in keeping the division between management and labor obvious and matter-of-fact. We want management to manage as best it can, and the workers to protect their interests as best they can. No social order will seem to us free if it makes it difficult for the worker to maintain a considerable degree of independence from management.”

 

My response: Hoffer is perhaps knowingly or subconsciously modeling the balance-of-powers and separation of powers that is the fine American constitutional republican model that has worked so well so long, by limiting governmental tyranny, by keeping the masses as free as possible (of course we have moved left, and away from this original ideal). The separation of powers envisioned and encoded into foundation law by the Founders was their worldly social order that protected individual rights, that some level of competing, diversified centers of power were necessary, to keep power from being centralized and made totalitarian under any of the three branches of government.

 

Hoffer is applying this political separation of powers model to economic relations between labor and management. Labor must not be enticed by nice-sounding beckoning from Management: “Let’s all get along, and all cooperate, and be one.” Workers as individuating supercitizens would be independent and compete with management when they should, and would be cooperative and honorably compromise when they should nor need too, but management requires some competition to keep them from being made drunk by too much power accumulation.

 

Hoffer: “The things which bolster this independence are not utopian. Effective labor unions, free movement over a relatively large area, a savings account, a tradition of individual self-respect—these are some of them. They are within the worker’s reach in this country and most of the free world, but are either absent or greatly weakened in totalitarian states.

 

In the present Communist regimes unions are tools of management, worker mobility is discouraged by every means, savings are periodically wiped out by changes in the currency, and individual self-respect is extirpated by the fearful technique of Terror. Thus it seems that the worker’s independence is a good an index as any for measuring the freedom of a society.”

 

My response: When the masses of America or any country are comprised mostly of individuating supercitizens, then worker’s independence with be strengthened and long-lasting, and this superb index measure how free the society is can also serve as a communal-conversational platform among workers to come up with an agenda to run society from the bottom up, to order elites around, and to replace them should they get power-hungry or disobey the masses.

 

H: “The question is whether an independent labor force is compatible with efficient production. For if the attitude of the workers tends to interfere with the full unfolding of the productive process, then the workingman’s independence becomes meaningless.

 

It has been my observation for years on the docks of San Francisco that, while a wholly independent labor force does not contribute to management’s peace of mind, it can goad management to perfect its organization and to keep ever on the lookout for more efficient ways of doing things. Management on the San Francisco waterfront is busy twenty-four hours a day figuring out ways of loading and discharging ships with as few men as possible.

 

Mechanization became marked on the waterfront after the organization of the present militant union if 1934. The forklift and the pallet board are in universal use. There are special machines for handling sugar, grain, cement, ore, and newsprint. New arrangements and refinements appear almost every day. Here nobody has to be told that management is continually on the job. Certainly, there are other factors behind this incessant alertness, and some of them play perhaps a more crucial role in the process of mechanization. But it is quite obvious that a fiercely independent labor force is not incompatible with efficient production.”

 

My response: In the not-too-distant future as robots, AI and smart computers could make all human workers, blue collar, white collar, or pink collar, obsolete and unemployed, we need to anticipate that this could occur. But humans were born to work and to self-realize, and if they were a pampered elite of non-working aristocrats, supported by an army of robots, society would fall apart within a decade.

 

People always need to work for their bread, and do most things for themselves, and in the future of high civilization, the expanding economy should create a near infinite potential of new jobs and new businesses for people to apply themselves at, though robots by the thousand and millions will work alongside them in the workforce.

 

H: “Contrary to doctrine propounded by some in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, mechanization has not taught docility to ‘refractory hand of labor.’ At least here on the docks we know we shall manage to get our share no matter what happens. And it is a dull workingman who does not see in the machine the only key to true millennium. For only mechanization can mitigate—if not cure—‘the disease of work,’ as de Tocqueville calls it, which has tortured humanity since the first days of its existence. To me the advent of automation is the culmination of vying with God which began at the rise of the Occident. The skirmish with God has moved back all the way to the gates of Eden. Jehovah and his angels, with their flaming and revolving swords, are now holed up inside their Eden fortress, while the blasphemous multitude with their host of machines are clamoring at the gate. And right there, in the sight of Jehovah and his angels, we are annulling the ukase with the sweat of his brow man shall eat bread.”

 

My response: The Good Couple and the Good Spirits are not worried that humans may overthrow them—a likely impossibility, though they would be angry should humans get swelled up with Luciferian pride and join the Dark Couple and the Evil Spirits to seek to overthrow the good deities in heaven and on earth, for that would do much to increase the power of Satan and Lera on earth.

 

Such an unwise rebellion would be harshly crushed.

 

As I noted above, machinery, robots, and intelligent computers must not be allowed to do all the work because humans turn sick physically, morally, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally if they do not have work and purpose, a reason to get out of bed each day as long as they live.

 

We were ordered by Jehovah, through our first parents, Adam, and Eve, to work for our bread because that is what God, the good deities and Good Spirits do every day. There is no meaning, no fulfillment, no self-esteem, no happiness unless one works and assumes maximum responsibility to quote Jordan Peterson.

 

H: “It is true, of course, that the cleavage between management and labor is a source of strain and strife. But it is questionable whether tranquility is the boon it is made out to be. The late Randolph Hearst shrewdly observed that ‘whatever begins to be tranquil is gobbled up by something that is not tranquil.”

 

My response: If something starts out tranquil and is gobbled up by something that is not tranquil, the power of powerlessness is at work here: both parties to the agreement talk peace, equality, cooperation and mutuality, but, over time, it is revealed that the equal arrangement is really one of unequal power sharing, and the dominant, aggressive partner begins to lust after more power, more concessions, and bears down on the more pleasing partner, thus the concord is smashed and warring recurs, and the aggressor may now be so powerful as to be unstoppable in totally devouring the more pleasing, peaceful party. Labor unions beware.

 

H: “The constant effort to improve and advance is neither automatic nor the result of a leisurely choice between alternatives. In human affairs, the best stimulus to running ahead is to have something we must run from. The chances are that the millennial society, where the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, will be a stagnant society.”

 

My response: My guess is that heaven is a place of working, individuating, becoming, creating, maintaining heaven’s infrastructure and system, with all going to work every day.

 

Hell is likely the stagnant society, where passivity and laziness rule supreme, with occasional gang violence, reigns of terror, wars, revolutions, and social upheavals will be planned or unintentionally erupting to “break up the stagnant monotony.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Conspiracy

 

I often react to pieces I find online, which are not authoritative or evidence-based, but I am an amateur thinker myself, so I go with what intrigues me, what seem relevant or worthy of comment. My brother-in-law has a distant Norwegian relative whom I shall not name, but this man is a conservative, perhaps evangelical Christian, and he posted a page of information online which I am going to copy and comment on.

 

N for Norwegian after this: “Trul asks AI: If you were the devil and had to make the western world and Norway follow your evil plans, how would you proceed to achieve it?

Chat GPT 40 answers:

 

If the goal was to get the western world, including Norway, to move away from healthy values and beliefs, a diabolical strategy could hypothetically entail the gradual undertaking of core principles such as faith, family, responsibility, and trust in truth. Here is the hypothetical plan divided into several strategic steps that could be thought to weaken these foundations:”

 

My response: this hypothetical strategy seems like a worked-out postmodernist/Marxist plot to undermine the West, by quietly, stealthily, over the last few decades, discrediting and belittling the Modernist culture, until the masses lose faith in their wonderful traditions, and abandon these mores, leaving them vulnerable for the Leftists to successfully introduce their postmodernist system. It has been cleverly implemented, and this capturing of Western institutions by cultural Marxists is well underway, and their victory is near at hand. Stephen Hicks and Christopher Rufo have written a book apiece, describing how cultural Marxism has captured Western institutions.

 

N: “1 – Erosion of Cultural Identity.

 

By promoting extreme individualistic ideas and continuous criticism of historical heritage and values, distancing people from cultural heritage and beliefs, and replacing them with a fluid global identity without strong communities.”

 

My response: Many Christians in Norway and in America regard individualism and egoism as anti-God and from the Devil, but I deny that, insisting that egoism is pro-God and pro-goodness. The Devil is groupist and negatively altruistic, either chauvinistic about tradition, or revolutionary and nihilistic about overturning the culture, and such radical activists are joiners, fanatics, and true-believers, not individualistic, but these extreme groupists to seek to destroy tradition.

 

Note that these Norwegian Brexit-type thinkers’ distrust global elites, distancing the peoples of the West from their cultural values and beliefs, and weakening warm, local communities. I subscribe to their disdain against global, Progressive elitists.

 

 

N: “2 – Breaking down the Family unit.

 

The family is the foundation of a strong community. By promoting a narrative in which the family is seen as old-fashioned and limiting, and promoting the idea that the individual’s freedom and feelings are superior to the community, one can undermine the importance of the family. It could promote freedom without responsibility, creating confusion about relationships, and provide support for solutions that put the individual before the family, by promising dating practices and stimulating happily single and childless.”

 

My response: Yes, the family is the foundation of a strong community. If the family is seen as old-fashioned and limited, perhaps it is, but perhaps we could use a little self-control. Even an egoist--like I am--must admit, that children need to come out of a strong, married family nuclear unit with a married, heterosexual mom and dad. I would want those parents to individuate, even if mom is a housewife or is a poet.

 

Channel Jordan Peterson, the cultural Christian, who downplays promoting freedom and rights without responsibility—and the Norwegian writer and Jordan are correct here. Both this Norwegian Christian and Peterson reveal how cultural Marxism is intentionally sabotaging Western culture, but their identifying an overemphasis on individualism and egoism as the culprits when in fact collectivism, groupism, socialism and altruism are the culprits.

 

Once one correctly identifies who the real culprits are, then one isolates what are they premises and goals, and to counter those goals by promoting opposite goals is approximately how we replace evil with good. The Norwegian, unknown author of this social media piece, and Peterson, want to counter modern, radicalized, totalitarian, absolute collectivism by returning to traditional Western and religious altruism as the solution. Now, that may work in part for a while, but collectivism and ideology in 25 years could overturn that again. We need permanent solutions so capitalism, constitutional republicanism, individuating supercitizens and individuators are structurally embedded in the Western masses to counter-attack the malicious cultural Marxists attacking the west today.

 

Too many children, especially boys, turn to gangs and peers because there is no father in the home. And without modeled, strong gender roles from the parents, there is gender identity confusion. I would put the individual before the family but suggest still that each individual preserve and serve his family too, at least in part, as all members of the united family ideally would be individualists and individuators.

 

How to destroy America and the West: Cultural nihilists aborting millions of babies, low nativist birth rates, high amounts of young people wanting no children, and 50% of marriages ending in divorce, teaching women not to have children; making boys effeminate and not manly and heroic, no longer taught to be responsible warriors protecting women and children.

 

N: “3 – Relativism and the undermining of Truth

 

If you can make people believe that everything is subjective, and that there are no absolutes, society will be easier to manipulate. This can entail a steady stream of false information, confusion about gender roles and biological facts, and the idea that everything is ‘fluid’ and can be defined by the individual themselves, without greater truths.”

 

My response. Modernist view-holders, be they conservative secular humanists, Objectivists, or Christian and Jewish traditionalists, are realists about values. They believe and assert (the moderate, epistemic in me does not side with them wholly but mostly) that everything is not subjective and that there is absolute, eternal (natural law or monotheist religious axioms) values, independent of socially constructed views held by humans.

 

They refute and defy current postmodernist, anti-realistic Marxist cultural values and assertions. What is alluring and deceptive about the cultural Marxists is their overt epistemic skepticism and relativism concerning the existence of absolute truths that bind human behavior and destiny; they tear down traditional Modernist and Western values, but secretly seek to replace these values with ideological content, and their holy cause, cultural Marxism, is an absolutist creed which these true believers are willing to enforce everywhere through violence, revolution, lying propaganda, terrorism; these zealous, totalistic absolutes work tirelessly and enthusiastically to make permanent the installment of their political and cultural revolution, to be propped up and protected through totalitarian government enforcement.

 

The law of moderation dictates that those, who reject realist values in favor of subjective and relativist values, do deprive and deny the masses of anything meaningful to believe in or hold onto, and that so frustrates the masses that they are willing to join the mass movement and advance the revolution upon the people.

 

As an indviduator and moderate I want a return of traditional values in the West that are not declared wholly objective and absolute, but mostly objective and absolute, but even if we traditionalists believe these values are objective and absolute, we do not use government coercion and pogroms to force people to our beliefs: only voluntary acceptance and compliance from all of the masses, of their own free will, is proper and permissible. Of course, all of us still must obey reasonable, encoded civil law and order legal rules.

 

Note that the articles shows that individualists are the relativists. But most individualists are not relativists, but are more absolutist prone, more inclined to think and act like Objectivists, Modernists, Realists and Monotheists (the religious neoconservatives).

 

 It is groupists that are diabolic: much less so whether they are civilized traditional group belongers, or much more so as pure, sickened groupists, who are complete modernized, wholly fanatical, radicalized and ideologized as true believers in cultural Marxist mass movement, without traditional Western values and institutional structures like family to slow them down, and keep them normal and calm.

 

 

N: “4 – Abolition of Religious Beliefs and Moral Values

 

Religion has long been an anchor of moral compass. Encouraging secularization, and portraying religion as outdated, ‘oppressive,’ or an obstacle to personal liberty, can create a distance between people and faith. This will lead to a society without a common understanding of right and wrong, and which is therefore more effective for rapidly changing ideological trends.”

 

My response: I mostly agree with what is said up above; again, pushing secular religion/ideology (cultural Marxism) is not the absence of religious faith and objective values; it is introducing to the masses, instead a radicalized secular faith, steeped in extremely relativistic values on one hand while secret promoting absolutist, totalitarian political values on the other hand.

 

It is rather the cases that the cultural Leftists substitute a secular holy cause to replace traditional religious faith. This holy cause is Leftism, and its true believing adherents are most willing to die for to spread it across the globe with 100% compliance and acceptance for all people everywhere to follow or be killed, tortured, or imprisoned. These fanatics regard traditional religion and objective values as objectionable because they tolerated a modest personal liberty, which their replacement secular faith, the ideological mass movement, cultural Marxism, seeks to wipe out even that modest personal liberty allowed under traditional Western religion and modernist, scientific secular democratic culture.

 

They will allow no individualism and no private life or thinking for anyone ever, and such apolitical structure, culture and value system are really at the end and at the bottom a satanic religion wholly groupist, wholly altruist-collectivist morality, and it will be the end of humanity as we know it.

 

 

 

N: “5 – Distraction through Materialism and Entertainment

 

Make people focus on material gain and consumption, and on continuous entertainment and stimulus, so that they don’t have time or energy to reflect on bigger issues. Reinforce and promote the trend towards a culture based on consumption, short-term enjoyment, and entertainment, instead of one that is based on in-depth understanding and meaning.”

 

My response: I agree and disagree with the author in what he/she writes in this short paragraph. Jordan Peterson would likely agree (though he is an unapologetic, successful capitalist worth at least 10 million dollars), that material gain and consumption will not give people meaning or happiness (I disagree in part because the individuator needs wealth, property and money as a solid basis upon which to maverize for a life time, and this is my average ideal individuating supercitizen of the future: she activistically would seek happiness and to limit suffering (suffering and loss and pain are unavoidable) to a minimum and never consciously to be malevolent towards the self, others, God or the world to extend the reach of needless suffering in the world).

 

Each indviduator should enjoy some wealth, some pleasure some happiness for their own sake, but duty, self-sacrificing to improve self via maverizing (self-sacrificing the self in the name of and for the intent purpose to perfect the self through constant self-improvement) not chasing mindless hedonism. Each individuator requires enjoying some pleasure but mostly delayed gratification is her preoccupation. Chasing intellectual, spiritual, ethical, and artistic in-depth understanding and meaning is what an individuator necessarily does intentionally goes for, and happiness is as a byproduct of serving God by individuating.

 

Jordan, a couple of days ago (around 11/10/24) wrote for X, I believe, that life is suffering, that the way to live well and be ethical (this middle piece is my paraphrasing) is not to chase after happiness, but to find meaning through reacting nobly and ethically to one’s inevitable suffering (again my rough paraphrase of what Jordan wrote). Jordan would agree with these Christian apologists in their criticism of the shallowness and emptiness of much of western modern materialistic mass culture and they have a point.

 

 

N: “6 – Polarization and Division of Community Groups

 

The more divided people are, the more difficult it is for them to assemble around common values. Fostering disagreement and conflict between different groups of society can lead to alienation, distrust, and create an atmosphere where cooperation and unity become impossible. This can happen through identity politics and the focus on differences rather than community.”

 

My response: The cultural Marxists intellectuals and leaders are cunning: they promote division and conflict, via identity politics, for three reasons. First, they are evil and nihilistic, and they love violence, war, revolution, discord, violence, lawlessness, destruction of civil society, for their own sake. Chaos, pain, and destruction are means to securing their ultimate goal, giving Satan and Lera, complete dominion over all people on earth. True believers serving their mass movement, their holy cause (be it nationalistic, religious, or political), seek to take over the world, and they seek to inflict demonic hegemony over the entire earth, though they may not consciously realize whom they work for and celebrate, the Dark Couple.

 

Second, if cultural Marxists sow division and civil war, and the democratic, capitalist, free and wealthy civil society collapses, they can bring in revolution and totalitarianism, their aim all the time. Identity politics would allow them to meet these aims.

 

Third, by pushing identity politics, the false dichotomy of favoring “good,” oppressed groups versus “bad; colonizing groups, then they can push the power of powerlessness and the wicked morality (altruism-collectivism, in its purest revealed form) allows that each individual has no identity, no purpose, no reason to live except as a member and follow of whatever groups he belongs to as he utterly is to sacrifice his personal interests to serve the collective interests.

 

Ironically, a society of individuating supercitizens, though hyper-individualistic, will give us unity around common values and a sense of community. Cooperation and community are best achieved and permanently achieved via millions of individuating supercitizens running the community, the society, the government, as maverizers pursuing the public good by first and mostly concentrating on their personal needs and ambitions. The average supercitizen will be motivated by egoist-individualist morality as her primary moral motive system, with a minor emphasis on altruism-collectivism as her moral motive.

 

 

N: “7 – Weakening of the Education System

 

Education can be used to shape mindsets. A weakening of critical thinking and an overfocus on specific ideological perspectives can shape future generations to become more conformant and less critical of structures and authorities that may have destructive intentions. By gradually undermining these pillars, a diabolical strategy would seek to create a society without strong anchors, making it more open to manipulation and control.”

 

My response: The German intellectuals, the greatest in the world for many years in the 19^th century, long advocated that the school system be used to warp young people to be convinced that their only function was to serve the state. The Communists do the same trick, and postmodern Marxists and the Left captured American and Western schools, universities, the governments and even large businesses, and mindsets were so shaped to render all in these institutions to be woke, social justice warriors and activists.

 

Constant Progressive gaslighting and deconstructing of all Christian, Jewish, Modernist culture and values was to deprive the young and adults of their individualism, their critical thinking their very independence, divorcing them from traditional culture and values, so as deracinated, anomic, frustrated, panicked members of the masses without anchor, they could be molded into a mass movement to bring about a Communist revolution.

 

Dennis Prager wants parents not to send kids to college and to pull them out of public schools to save them from being broken and brainwashed into little social justice activists.

 

I would go farther: we need to understand that people are born depraved, born with no self-esteem, born to excessively group-identify. People are born to favor group-living and their hatred and evil grows from social misery, heightened by their bad altruist morality under which they learn to hate themselves  even further, so they seek to escape an untenable self by fleeing into the group to self-obliterate and discover cover meaning and self-justification in an inferior, dissatisfying way of living, a way of living that the joiners tell each is normal, moral and ideal.

 

The bigger, the more centralized any institution is, the more its people are broken, selfless, evil, stupid, and conformist.

 

The best long-term solution is for parents to take control of their own lives and their children’s lives by becoming and fostering the young to be individuating supercitizens; this limits self-hating or low self-esteem. Hating grows evil in the world for it is evil incarnate and in action.

 

To teach oneself and one’s youngsters critical thinking is key to surviving as individuators and as a species.

 

We need to wipe out the federal Department of Education, and all education through 12^th grade should be locally operated and planned. All teachers and other educational bureaucrats should promote and teach morals and subject content only. Let the kids be encouraged to think for themselves and to manage their own educational growth as their personal power to decide, on their own over time as guiding parents slowly cede control over their children, if they see  each child can handle  making decisions about self-realizing as a mode of personal liberation and self-management of their own lives, as each child increasing runs their own educational plan.

It is hope with Donald Trump as our 47^th President, we can curb this cultural revolution nearing completion, ready to come out into the open.

 

N: “Chatting done. Seems credible and effective.”

 

 

Conscience

 

Dennis Prager the wise worries that conscience in most people is not that strong, and that people do wicked acts repeatedly, and sleep quite well at night.

 

I cannot much disagree with that. My thought is that most people follow an altruist-collective moral code, and that is a code that favors lying, emotionalism and extremism, so as people lie to themselves and do evil, even where it does not square with their existent morality, it is very easy to rationalize contradicting one’s moral code, without feeling bad about it, let alone ceasing to sin.

 

If we want people to have strong, better consciences that they keep tough and unrepressed, so that it can steer the self away from how not to act and nudge them to accept and live by how to act, we would do better to raise up a generation of youngsters steeped and trained in egoist-individualist morality. Under that morality, people are much less inclined to lie to themselves about their own misbehavior. They are more logical, rational, and temperate with the self, so telling the self-tough truths is much more easily introduced by others or by the self to the self, in the case of an individualist versus a truth-evasive groupist.

 

Once an individuator has internalized his conscience, or set of values, he cannot lie to himself, so he must act in ways that make his conscience get off his back. The individuator loves himself because he esteems himself, so he is proud where justified, and is self-critical and honest with himself where he falls short, and that could be a type of humility.

 

He cannot live with himself if his behavior falls short of his value system, too deeply or too often, so his conscience will be alive, well and operating. It is my contention that the typical individuator, proud but truthful, would have a strong conscience, and could not sin much, and still live with himself, so this fact usually forces him to behave so his guilty does not turn guilty and thus consumes him.  His conscience, which is an extension of his spiritually and morally good will, will disallow him from misbehaving for long, without an inner, uneasy assessment and behavior realignment so the self-acts consistently with what one preaches.

 

The nonindiviudaor lives a web of coherent and sometimes contradictory lies and fantasies, so his social existence inside an overwhelming world of falsehoods, fantasies, and justificatory dreams, makes it easy to him be socially swayed and corrupted, and this inevitably dulls his conscience, even murdering it in some cases. He is so deteriorated and far gone, that he is now able to say most anything to and about himself and then come to believe anything about himself, absolutely everything which covers his sins. He is too humble, so paradoxically he is too vain, and then his conscience is suppressed ad atrophies, as it must.

 

The contemporary, narcissistic egotists that moralists and psychologists denounce as being and often are morbidly self-conscious, but they are also morbidly group-conscious as much per capita and maybe more They can do evil and the group will run cover for its popular insiders and vice will be called virtue to be proud of and virtue will be called vice to be embarrassed of and ashamed about. The good are to be persecuted for their non-conformity to community standards. Group-living and group morality effectively dulls people’s consciences and limits their free-willing.

 

Whether a person serves God or Satan, and one always serves one or the other, to be contemptuous and rebellious toward either is imprudent and suicidal.

 

Most individualists are proud but realistic, so they will come around to recognizing, accepting their enjoyable sinning as a negative state of being that they are living, and that is irrefutable and factual. Most of them eventually will take corrective actions.

 

Also, in terms of their self-regarding, if they are too proud or not proud enough, they will adjust their thought and words. If they are too self-effacing, they will lighten up on themselves.

Okay Pride

 

Is there an okay form of human pride, or is it all wicked, Luciferian pride, the cardinal sin that Jordan Peterson derides?

 

Yes, there is an okay form of human pride, the one felt about himself by one that has earned the right to be proud of what he has done and has become. This merited pride is felt by the self-actualizing maverick that lives in accordance with his ethical code of egoism, and, while being proud of himself when and where he should, he also is secure enough in himself, not to overdo it.

 

Moderately felt, and modestly publicly stated okay pride, voiced by the individuator serving God is a pride that the good deities will tolerate and perhaps sanction.

 

If he serves the Good Spirits, they have enjoined him and other individuators, lest they forget that   excessive pridefulness, merited or not, or excessive pridelessness (self-deprecation) are both symptomatic of a self that is wrongly prideful, and wrongly humble, and that person, serving the group, serving Satan, and hating the self, is a living devil, and his malicious intent and schemes will nudge him to spread suffering and malevolence in the world, which need not have occurred. He has willed to make things worse and does.

 

None are so arrogant and prideful as this living devil. His form of pride is Luficerian pride, and this form of sinful pride is most certainly not okay with the good deities. If such joiners are fanatical, and worship Satan, and are proud of their membership in his ranks, they seek to make Satan the ruler of this world, and the universe, and they seek to overthrow the good deities up in heaven itself. Their bad pride and their power of powerlessness serves but one aim: to grow darkness in the world.

 

The individuators that esteem or love themselves, the good deities, and by extension other people, do feel okay pride and okay humility, and their power of powerfulness is intended by them and does work to grow the power of heaven on earth.

To Get There

 

It is my thought that we are born mostly depraved, self-hating, and evil. This is our basic nature.

 

There is hope. We are also born part-good, and filled with wondrous potential to become excellent morally, spiritually, intellectually, physically, emotionally, and artistically.

 

This is our civilized nature which we are to develop by hard work and persistence self-development. If we high-esteem ourselves veridically as to our accomplishments, and veridically low-esteem ourselves where we still fall short, then we have a realistic self-assessment upon which to build that beautiful self.

Fundamental Enemies

 

I watched a short YouTube video excerpt in which Jordan Peterson was talking, and I took notes on it, which I might lightly edit for coherency, and then I will comment on what he said.

 

Jordan: “The fundamental enemies of Christ in the gospels are the Pharisees, and the scribes and the lawyers. So, what does that mean?

 

The Pharisees are religious hypocrites. The scribes are academics who worship their own intellect. And the lawyers and the legal minds are they who use the law as a weapon.”

 

My response: All three categories of educated, privileged, members of the ancient Jewish ruling aristocracy. These enemies of Jesus are totally guilty of being consumed by wickedness and Luciferian pride, but these are not the narcissistic, arrogant individualist that Jordan seems to impute.

 

They are selfless members, very group-oriented, of the elite that ran ancient Judea; they are selfish, but they are not rational egoists.

 

Jordan: “So, they are the enemies of the Redeemer. That’s a subplot in the gospel story. And that actually all means something. The Pharisaic problem is the best possible ideas can be used by the worst actors in the worst possible way. And maybe this is an existential conundrum is that the most evil people use the best possible ideas to the worst possible ends.”

 

My response: His insight here is brilliant and well articulated. I always go back to the common person, an average member of the masses. Things start and end with the private citizen. If things are going well, the masses deserve the credit. If society is a mess, the masses deserve the blame.

 

Were each or the majority of the masses to be raised as a critically and originally thinking, individuating supercitizen, then no evil elitists could hold sway, diverting the best ideas to the worst possible ends, because the masses would disallow that. They would get organized, take over their country, and impose their agenda, namely, to use the best possible ideas to the best possible ends.

 

The Pharisees, ancient scribes and lawyers were part of the system, and, if in a mass movement, they would be the men of words.

 

Their existence is not a conundrum, though their obscure message may not revealed, but it does not matter, for the supercitizenized masses no longer allow elites to hold sway.

The Hollow Kingdom

 

I get subscribed news articles emailed to me from Chris Rufo, which I copy and comment on. He wrote and sent one on 8/7/24, entitled The Hollow Kingdom, A dispatch form London on the brink of chaos.

 

Rufo: “I have spent the last week in London. The city’s transformation, which I had followed only abstractly in the newspapers, has prompted a visceral shock.

 

‘I haven’t been to London since I was a student,’ I told a group of British journalists. The unstated premise of the joke was that everyone knows what the hell happened—mass immigration—but no one is allowed to speak about it. The statistics reveal the general trend. Since my last visit nearly two decades ago, the white British population of London has declined from 60 percent to 37 percent. Meantime, the Muslim population of London has nearly doubled, and migrants from South Asia and Africa have entrenched themselves throughout the city.”

 

My response: This is where America is headed, if it is not already there. To warn about non-white foreign immigration, legal or illegal, is considered racist in many circles. There is always a bit of truth in that, but the truth that must be spoken without fear of governmental or social punishment is to state that non-Western peoples, lacking Christian, middle-class, individualistic (relatively speaking), being very group-oriented, from more or less socialist and authoritarian countries, bring their lousy, multicultural values West with them, and it drags down the West, as all it did was allow these immigrants to bring their lousy ways and values to the West and take the West down, and this deterioration helps neither native Westerners or the immigrants.

 

Truth be told, the immigrants need to come only a few in number at a time, legally, and adopt the dominant culture, its language and values, assimilating as thoroughly and quickly and sincerely as possible. If they cannot or will not assimilate, they should not be let in, or sent home, period. The Western, wonderful cultures and capitalist democracies must be preserved at almost all cost, and, then we seek to educate peoples at home around the world to blend Westernism with their native cultures at home.

 

Truth be told: whites are not superior to other races or ethnic groups, but, Western and American culture and values are superior, and not to be watered down and compromised over in the name of political correctness. Whites happen to have engendered that superior culture, but anyone anywhere can adopt it, and flourish, so why should be apologize for having a superior culture when so depreciating what we have is a lie and a disservice to people at home and abroad, both natives and immigrants in London or in Pittsburgh.

 

Rufo: Anglos have been a minority for more than a decade. What I’ve observed in the city this week has amazed me. Women’s eyes peering through the slit of black niqabs. A procession of sub-Saharan Africans traversing Westminster Bridge, weaving the flags of their homelands and demanding reparations. Street corners that could be confused with Pershawar or Islamabad. Districts in which one could pass an entire day with barely a glimpse of an Englishman.

 

These are facts. There is nothing inherently racist or antiracist about them. The question is one of perspective. England’s progressives would have one believe that these snapshots represent the triumph of diversity. But this position appears increasingly untenable.

 

For good reason, England, unlike the United States, does not have a long history of assimilating others. And many of the country’s migrants—in particular, the large Muslim population—are the most difficult populations to integrate.”

 

My response: Islam is the most fanatical of all the great religions, and the least reformed, modernized, moderated and demilitarized. At best and at its most peaceful, its adherents are excessively, unflinchingly loyal to a quiet religious mass movement. When the mass movement is in its active phase, the true believers are aroused, these holy warriors and their holy cause are a horror to behold.

 

They never assimilate or acculturate, as a group, to the dominant local or national culture. They see their culture, faith, and mores as the one truth faith, absolutely superior to any other culture or religion in the world, mutually exclusive. They remain oppositional until they conquer and assimilate the local people and wipe out their culture. They never relent; they never change their minds; they never quit warring with infidels, until  the latter are dead, converted or pacified. To allow more than a few Muslims into one’s country is cultural suicide, and England, France and Germany are learning this too late. I hope America is not so reckless and foolish.

 

Rufo: From a critical perspective, the history of mass migration in Britain is a history of civil tension, punctuated by violence, riots, terrorism, murder, rape. Events of this week have brought this suppressed conflict to the surface again.

 

The day after my conversation with the British journalists, England broke out in another round of riots. A first-generation Rwandan teenager had stabbed three young girls to death, prompting British nationalists and Muslim counter-protesters into the streets. The resulting clashes led to significant property damage and nearly 400 arrests. Keir Starmer, has signaled his support for suppressing the nationalists.

 

A question lies buried under these events. What makes a nation? And what is the relationship between its content and form?

 

Its easy to understand why migrants from Somalia or Pakistan would select England as their destination. The political, economic, and cultural form of their home countries is a disaster.”

 

My response: It is not racist to say because England was white and had a superior culture and set of Christian and Western values, that exporting that European and Western set of values and culture to every country in the world, if they will receive it and adopt it, would make things so good at home, that legal or illegal immigration would almost disappear. The non-Western immigrants flee to England and countries in the West understandably, but bring and cling to their disastrous values, and in time, surely will turn England and Western countries into the totalitarian/socialist/collecitivized/groupist/altruistic hellholes which they fled from. They import their troubled culture and values as well as their persons.

 

Rufo: “In England, by contrast, these migrants are able to secure an income, often including public benefits, and enjoy the fruits of a developed, modern, peaceful country.

 

The predominant theory among Western elites is that the content of mass migration—the particular people, and the culture they bring—is irrelevant. All groups are equal, individuals are interchangeable. To think otherwise is to engage in bigotry.

 

My response: All individuals and groups are equal as long as these immigrants assimilate  wholly into adopting Western culture and values: if they refuse to assimilate, they should be sent home for the Western culture of the specific nation involved,  must be kept homogeneous and pure. If people of any race or color from anywhere around the world are willing to wholeheartedly adopt the English traditional and dominant cultural and value system, then every year, a few of those legal immigrants should be welcomed in with enthusiastic acceptance and open arms.

 

Rufo: “This logic has a whiff of liberalism, but only in the most reductive, naïve sense. The truth is that, even if we believe in the principle that all men are created equal, this does not mean that all cultures are equal or interchangeable—far from it. The structure of a civilization is a delicate thing. Changing its citizens will, over time, change its form.”

 

My response: Leftists are radicals and revolutionaries that hate all things Western, and they are fierce, eager, reckless, relentless in their attack on Western nations, by introducing millions of illegal aliens into these Western nations, with their bad cultures and values from all over, is both a deliberate effort to destroy the West and replace it with a Communist state, and, in part, it is the disastrous but well-meant attempt by idealists who have no idea how delicate a working civilization is, and how slowly and in tiny increments, it should be altered or experimented on. People are born depraved, so if we have wonderful almost utopian cultures and value systems in the West that work so well, only a fool or nihilist would smash that to smithereens, to see it replaced with tyranny, want, chaos and lawlessness.

 

Rufo: This process is underway in London. The buildings, avenues, and palaces look the same as before; there is still a parliament, a king, and the pound. But the central city feels hollowed out. The old connection between citizen and nation has been altered. The old bonds of culture have been frayed.

 

The situation in London recalls the Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment that asks, whether, if every part of the ship is replaced, it is the same ship in the end. The answer, in our case, is a confident ‘no’. England without the Englishman would no longer be England. The form—parliamentary democracy, economic growth, liberal culture—might hold for a time, but eventually, it would give way too.

 

To engage in violence is not the answer. But neither is the answer to pretend that this conflict, or this re-composition, does not exist. Sooner or later, Britain will have to answer some hard questions. Reality has a way of breaking through.”