"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs is the principle of the family when there are the intimate ties of love and affection, the principle of the cancer cell when there are not."
Ta. The sister of a friend, who is an orthopaedic surgeon, made the observation about being the principle of the cancer cell. I took the idea and fleshed it out. Lefties tend to be folk who either had golden childhoods, and want everything to be like that, or awful ones, and want the family crushed.
I think in political activism there is more people who act out hatred, spite and anger. Their actions and rhetoric are incompatible with declared intentions of " making world just and welcoming".
But sadly yes there are people who come from the world of plenty and want to extend it to everybody else.
The saddest part is many of initially well intentioned sacrifice their lives on the Moloch's altar . And in the end make their own lives miserable .
The rule, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” creates incentives for people to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need.
There are multiple sayings in multiple non European languages that say the same as above.
It’s super uncomfortable to acknowledge since the real concern is that it’s a thin red line from the above to “all people of type XXX are not capable of doing YYY”
That maybe true but it is more nuanced and the human mind, by and large is not nuanced, we did not evolve to think slow
For example, the statement, “Statistically, the odds that in a equal collection of 18-25 year old Jamaican men and Jewish men, 99% of the Jamaican men will run the 100 meter dash faster than the Jewish men and 99% of the Jewish men will score higher in a SAT equivalent test” is objectively very true but also disconcertingly close to blanket generalization of “Black men are dumber than Jewish men and Jewish men can’t run”
I can’t say I am unhappy with Trump 2.0 while I did not vote for him.
Perhaps he is wrecking ball needed to take down. Rotting edifice 🤷🏽♂️
There is in every boxing match THREE people in the ring. If the referee thinks that nobody should win so that nobody will lose, then you have social justice. And the referee is the champ.
I've never been so pessimistic about the prospect of multi-ethnic society because of these lunatics.
Without hereditarianism, it's impossible to explain disparities in outcome. With hereditarianism, and with the template these morons brought with their horribly anti-human garbage during covid (we all have to be the same - vaccinated, in that case, but also applies to wrong-think), trouble is brewing. If you apply that to skin color or sex, we're in for a very bloody and fucked up future.
Yet these delusional people have no idea that they have a role in what is unfolding. No clue.
It has occurred to me that this dwelling in the glorious future also applies to the climate change emergency narrative and the imagined efficacy of the - currently being enacted in some benighted countries - net zero solutions. When there are issues with the weather (reality) which means we have to use gas and the prices go up, the solution always being proposed is just implement more renewables as if that will magically solve the problem somehow. It is the same mindset aided by scientific ignorance in many cases.
Oh yes. Especially as, so far, warming has been a boon in greening the Earth—more rain, more CO2 for plants. Warmer is better, colder is worse for human civilisations. Yes, if the land ice melts, we have all sorts of problems, but we are a long way from that.
Everything the Left disagrees with is Fascism. No, they do not mean well, they mean to rule. It would appear we stumbled awake just in time to set back their scheme.
An interesting thought occurred to me reading this article - mandating equality of outcomes is the direct equivalent of economic price controls - and has the same perverse outcomes. So if interfering with the law of price results in: hoarding, black markets, barter replacing currency-trade and so forth reasserting the laws of price - then what processes will manifest themselves to reassert merit viz forced equity?
You are welcome to supply the answer, my thoughts haven't run that far ahead yet.
Question is whether this damage is reversible. You do see reformed leftists converting and confessing on X but the number of irredeemably damaged brains must be colossal. If so, how do we continue to function societally unless we wrest control immediately of the education system. If we leave it in the hands of the current ideologically-corrupted teaching profession, nothing will change and it’s torture ad infinitum. And wresting control, being by definition an aggressive action that will be resisted, can society be saved without violence?
All good and serious questions. Closing down all Education Faculties/Departments has to be done along with shifting to, in effect, an apprentice model of teacher training.
A good read. A reminder that our government “leaders” transitioned from “thou shalt not” to “thou must” and that this transition has been bad for everyone.
Great article! I started writing a reply, then just deleted it. I need to think more about what I believe is the problem: how to arrive at a broad based understanding of what you describe and how to course correct (which frankly seems impossible.)
Another great post, with much attractive language to support your ideas. Of the several areas I might cite, I think this is the one that jumped out at me this time:
"This enables generating any level of moral purity and rhetorical superiority from one’s belief in the imagine[d] future, as one is not stuck with defending anything real, with all the sins and trade-offs such entails. It also means one is not defending any actual achievement, still less with wrestling with what achievement—or even basic practicality—requires.
One ends up with bonkers morality that utterly refuses to wrestle with the problems of making societies work."
Discrimination, including the ability to tell truth from fiction, is essential. We need more discrimination and less prejudice. The 'woke' authoritarian left are clearly in favour of prejudice, because they know everything about you from the colour of your skin, but they are against discrimination, they say.
By the way, it is impossible to avoid cultural appropriation without using discrimination between 'us' and 'them'. If we are all the same, then there can be no appropriation.
Another one of those great "oh so obvious" statements that needs to be repeated many times to have the impact that they should have.
Lorenzo's comment "... precisely about grounding claims in an imagined future from which there is no information, so one can make any claim one likes about." is another.
I think James Lindsay is on to something with his observation that Marxism is a theology. Communism is that imagined future, which is why they can say 'real communism hasn't been tried' with a straight face. It's a Kingdom of Heaven for self-declared atheists.
Excellent essay, nicely encapsulating the problem and mindset that got us here. I appreciate that it also highlights the universality of the issue, how humans of nearly any belief set are prone to falling into this sort of error when their beliefs drift into this realm.
Yes, abolishing the original LBJ EO and the DEI in the US government, military, and education, and encouraging private businesses to do the same, made President Trump the most consequential president of the 21st century.
While LBJ had genuinely good intentions, and the consequences of such EO were not easy to foresee, in the rearview mirror, the failure was inevitable due to the impossibility of making all groups of people (and in a final Marxist utopia, all people) reach equal outcomes, at which time the activists - the ultimate real-world underachievers - would be presumably satisfied. This brings back a thought on Eric Hoffer on mass movements, and perpetually dissatisfied - good luck with that. And human nature - the desire to break the perfect peaceful life because it would be boring and leave nothing to strive for. But I digress.
The feckless policies of the Biden administration with their atrocious DEI/intersectionality overreach paved the way for the silent majority to become so disgusted with the left that they voted for Donald Trump (among other factors of the past 4 years, of course). Trump is a genuinely unlikely hero coming to the rescue.
However, he is perhaps the first truly secular president (regardless of his other flaws and strengths), which was also part of his appeal to all, including atheists who are the largest portion of population ever. However, his vehicle - the Republican party - should have some humility - which they will not - considering Trump's election as an endorsement of their theocratic agenda. It was an anti-overreaching-far-left election per independents, but not so much for theocratic Republican activists. If they do not moderate, they will lose the next election because it was not the Republican party as such that was given the mandate, but Donald Trump's MAGA agenda.
It is funny to observe everyone dance around the elephant in the room like it's made of hot lava. Lorenzo's big reveal was that President Trump was out here with a giant eraser, trying to undo LBJ's 'whoops, my bad' anti-discrimination laws. But oh no, our fellow commenters? Don't say the name of the one not to be named, and god forbid to say anything positive about him?!
So, I tossed the above grenade into the conversation just to see if anyone would actually acknowledge reality. Crickets! Lorenzo, carve this into the stone of human folly - we're all just a bunch of under-evolved primates, but hey, at least we're consistent in our denial of whatever our 'moral' sense makes us blind to.
Great post. I am going to use this:
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs is the principle of the family when there are the intimate ties of love and affection, the principle of the cancer cell when there are not."
Perfect definition and framing of the issue
Ta. The sister of a friend, who is an orthopaedic surgeon, made the observation about being the principle of the cancer cell. I took the idea and fleshed it out. Lefties tend to be folk who either had golden childhoods, and want everything to be like that, or awful ones, and want the family crushed.
I think in political activism there is more people who act out hatred, spite and anger. Their actions and rhetoric are incompatible with declared intentions of " making world just and welcoming".
But sadly yes there are people who come from the world of plenty and want to extend it to everybody else.
The saddest part is many of initially well intentioned sacrifice their lives on the Moloch's altar . And in the end make their own lives miserable .
The rule, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” creates incentives for people to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need.
There are multiple sayings in multiple non European languages that say the same as above.
It’s super uncomfortable to acknowledge since the real concern is that it’s a thin red line from the above to “all people of type XXX are not capable of doing YYY”
That maybe true but it is more nuanced and the human mind, by and large is not nuanced, we did not evolve to think slow
For example, the statement, “Statistically, the odds that in a equal collection of 18-25 year old Jamaican men and Jewish men, 99% of the Jamaican men will run the 100 meter dash faster than the Jewish men and 99% of the Jewish men will score higher in a SAT equivalent test” is objectively very true but also disconcertingly close to blanket generalization of “Black men are dumber than Jewish men and Jewish men can’t run”
I can’t say I am unhappy with Trump 2.0 while I did not vote for him.
Perhaps he is wrecking ball needed to take down. Rotting edifice 🤷🏽♂️
> but also disconcertingly close to blanket generalization of “Black men are dumber than Jewish men and Jewish men can’t run…
It is simply the truth. Why truth is disconcerting?
I feel like we need culture which values the truth. Not the lies in the name of ... Does not matter in which name. Lying is the sign of wrong path
It’s unnuanced and leaves no room for the exception and exceptions are what drive us forward.
There is in every boxing match THREE people in the ring. If the referee thinks that nobody should win so that nobody will lose, then you have social justice. And the referee is the champ.
I've never been so pessimistic about the prospect of multi-ethnic society because of these lunatics.
Without hereditarianism, it's impossible to explain disparities in outcome. With hereditarianism, and with the template these morons brought with their horribly anti-human garbage during covid (we all have to be the same - vaccinated, in that case, but also applies to wrong-think), trouble is brewing. If you apply that to skin color or sex, we're in for a very bloody and fucked up future.
Yet these delusional people have no idea that they have a role in what is unfolding. No clue.
It has occurred to me that this dwelling in the glorious future also applies to the climate change emergency narrative and the imagined efficacy of the - currently being enacted in some benighted countries - net zero solutions. When there are issues with the weather (reality) which means we have to use gas and the prices go up, the solution always being proposed is just implement more renewables as if that will magically solve the problem somehow. It is the same mindset aided by scientific ignorance in many cases.
Oh yes. Especially as, so far, warming has been a boon in greening the Earth—more rain, more CO2 for plants. Warmer is better, colder is worse for human civilisations. Yes, if the land ice melts, we have all sorts of problems, but we are a long way from that.
That's why Trump wants Greenland! He's buying up beachfront (icefront?) property like Lex Luthor in that Superman movie.
Everything the Left disagrees with is Fascism. No, they do not mean well, they mean to rule. It would appear we stumbled awake just in time to set back their scheme.
This is one of the finest things I've ever read, and I've read a lot of things. Gobsmackingly good.
I greatly admire your thinking, and your exceptional ability to express your thoughts so powerfully.
The navy signal flags "B" and ""Z" when raised together indicate "Job Well Done". Bravo Zulu to you, Sir.
Thank you very much. It is great to be appreciated.
An interesting thought occurred to me reading this article - mandating equality of outcomes is the direct equivalent of economic price controls - and has the same perverse outcomes. So if interfering with the law of price results in: hoarding, black markets, barter replacing currency-trade and so forth reasserting the laws of price - then what processes will manifest themselves to reassert merit viz forced equity?
You are welcome to supply the answer, my thoughts haven't run that far ahead yet.
Question is whether this damage is reversible. You do see reformed leftists converting and confessing on X but the number of irredeemably damaged brains must be colossal. If so, how do we continue to function societally unless we wrest control immediately of the education system. If we leave it in the hands of the current ideologically-corrupted teaching profession, nothing will change and it’s torture ad infinitum. And wresting control, being by definition an aggressive action that will be resisted, can society be saved without violence?
All good and serious questions. Closing down all Education Faculties/Departments has to be done along with shifting to, in effect, an apprentice model of teacher training.
A good read. A reminder that our government “leaders” transitioned from “thou shalt not” to “thou must” and that this transition has been bad for everyone.
Nicely put.
Great article! I started writing a reply, then just deleted it. I need to think more about what I believe is the problem: how to arrive at a broad based understanding of what you describe and how to course correct (which frankly seems impossible.)
Another great post, with much attractive language to support your ideas. Of the several areas I might cite, I think this is the one that jumped out at me this time:
"This enables generating any level of moral purity and rhetorical superiority from one’s belief in the imagine[d] future, as one is not stuck with defending anything real, with all the sins and trade-offs such entails. It also means one is not defending any actual achievement, still less with wrestling with what achievement—or even basic practicality—requires.
One ends up with bonkers morality that utterly refuses to wrestle with the problems of making societies work."
Discrimination, including the ability to tell truth from fiction, is essential. We need more discrimination and less prejudice. The 'woke' authoritarian left are clearly in favour of prejudice, because they know everything about you from the colour of your skin, but they are against discrimination, they say.
By the way, it is impossible to avoid cultural appropriation without using discrimination between 'us' and 'them'. If we are all the same, then there can be no appropriation.
"We need more discrimination and less prejudice."
Another one of those great "oh so obvious" statements that needs to be repeated many times to have the impact that they should have.
Lorenzo's comment "... precisely about grounding claims in an imagined future from which there is no information, so one can make any claim one likes about." is another.
I think James Lindsay is on to something with his observation that Marxism is a theology. Communism is that imagined future, which is why they can say 'real communism hasn't been tried' with a straight face. It's a Kingdom of Heaven for self-declared atheists.
Excellent essay, nicely encapsulating the problem and mindset that got us here. I appreciate that it also highlights the universality of the issue, how humans of nearly any belief set are prone to falling into this sort of error when their beliefs drift into this realm.
Yes, abolishing the original LBJ EO and the DEI in the US government, military, and education, and encouraging private businesses to do the same, made President Trump the most consequential president of the 21st century.
While LBJ had genuinely good intentions, and the consequences of such EO were not easy to foresee, in the rearview mirror, the failure was inevitable due to the impossibility of making all groups of people (and in a final Marxist utopia, all people) reach equal outcomes, at which time the activists - the ultimate real-world underachievers - would be presumably satisfied. This brings back a thought on Eric Hoffer on mass movements, and perpetually dissatisfied - good luck with that. And human nature - the desire to break the perfect peaceful life because it would be boring and leave nothing to strive for. But I digress.
The feckless policies of the Biden administration with their atrocious DEI/intersectionality overreach paved the way for the silent majority to become so disgusted with the left that they voted for Donald Trump (among other factors of the past 4 years, of course). Trump is a genuinely unlikely hero coming to the rescue.
However, he is perhaps the first truly secular president (regardless of his other flaws and strengths), which was also part of his appeal to all, including atheists who are the largest portion of population ever. However, his vehicle - the Republican party - should have some humility - which they will not - considering Trump's election as an endorsement of their theocratic agenda. It was an anti-overreaching-far-left election per independents, but not so much for theocratic Republican activists. If they do not moderate, they will lose the next election because it was not the Republican party as such that was given the mandate, but Donald Trump's MAGA agenda.
It is funny to observe everyone dance around the elephant in the room like it's made of hot lava. Lorenzo's big reveal was that President Trump was out here with a giant eraser, trying to undo LBJ's 'whoops, my bad' anti-discrimination laws. But oh no, our fellow commenters? Don't say the name of the one not to be named, and god forbid to say anything positive about him?!
So, I tossed the above grenade into the conversation just to see if anyone would actually acknowledge reality. Crickets! Lorenzo, carve this into the stone of human folly - we're all just a bunch of under-evolved primates, but hey, at least we're consistent in our denial of whatever our 'moral' sense makes us blind to.
Nice work
Brilliant