Some things are beyond parody. It does not mean one ought not parody them: Read the remainder of this entry »
Ruth Johnson has a fourth column about psychology and the Culture War which may be of particular interest to science fiction fans:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/11/11/culture-war-post-4-the-war-over-archetypes/
The culture war over “gender” has been especially bad in the last two years. You know it started out as about job equality for women, then it shifted to ending exclusion and discrimination against gay people, but lately it is going much farther. If marriage is the same whether a man marries a woman or another man, then in a sense, being a man or a woman is just an external accident, like having a birthmark or blonde hair. What really counts is who you are inside, not how you look on the outside. The next logical step is transgender, the idea that you can shift from man to woman at will, regardless of what you were born. As we write this piece, there are news stories about the federal government ruling that any man who identifies as a woman must be given unrestricted access to women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and a few days ago, voters in Houston rejected a proposed city law to that same effect. I’ve read any number of opinion pieces that say “gender is a construct,” and that you are a man or woman only to the extent that you believe it inside.
I see this battle as a war over the importance or reality of archetypes. …
Because archetypal ideas are part of our animal instinct, our sense of what makes the world right and safe, the war over gender issues always has a layer of fear to it. When I read things about why we should accept whatever gender someone feels they are [sic], there’s usually an argument about how people will die if we don’t. They will commit suicide, or they will be beaten up by gangs. It’s not just an argument, there are news stories linked to show that this very thing has already been happening. The argument goes that we need to make these changes so that people won’t die tragically. If you resist and oppose change, then either you don’t realize that people are dying, or you don’t care, or in your own small way, you’re participating in killing them. And if you aren’t actually killing them, then you’re helping keep them vulnerable by denying their reality a full place at society’s table. So it’s not an academic dispute, it’s felt to be about life and death, good and evil. There’s a call to action: which side are you going to take, the side of hate and death, or our side?
…
Q: So the group that is interested in exploring gender roles and seeing them as less restrictive probably loves books like Ancillary Justice or Left Hand of Darkness, which do just that. In fact, it was probably a major factor in Ancillary Justice winning the Hugo in 2014.
A: If there’s one thing the two sides in the Hugo controversy agree on, it’s that the most important thing about Ancillary Justice is not the story itself but the way it used pronouns to obscure gender. Everyone is “she” until the narrator has a reason to identify male or female. It’s explained in the story as just part of the narrator’s native language which, like Chinese and Turkish, doesn’t specify gender in a normal sentence. The narrator, writing in English, is forced to make gender choices in every sentence, so instead just uses “she” for everyone. But I had to read some of the story to understand the thing about language, because when people talk about Ancillary Justice, they elevate the single pronoun to such importance that it’s like the story was really just about obscuring gender. If they liked the story, it’s because at last we’re disrupting mental assumptions that gender will always be visible. If they didn’t like the story, it’s because obscuring gender became more important than whatever was happening.
So that’s a great example of the wider culture battle interfering in science fiction and crowning a winner in what might otherwise just be a dispute about literary taste. Once it’s connected to the wider question of how we, in real life, see men and women, then it’s about life and death, good and evil. It’s like they’re saying, “If you don’t like this story, maybe it’s because you want to suppress the “‘other’.” Those who didn’t like the story respond in defensiveness: “well maybe if you like the story, it’s because you care more about message! You just want to disrupt society.” Now it’s no longer about literary taste, it’s about hurting people or destroying the culture…
… As we’ve said, I’m an outsider to fandom. But watching this from a distance, I noticed the vehement insistence among the mainstream publishers that it was about race and gender identity. Not just insistence, but vehement, at times highly emotional, insistence. A core idea in my personality theory is that parts of our minds are organized around inborn ideas of what a safe world looks like. When I see such vehemence, I suspect that at least some of the people actually feel, deep in their minds, that safety is being challenged. It’s not just “politics” to them…
When you already have a strong fear, it’s very hard to believe that something isn’t connected to it. And with this particular set of fears, Introverted Intuition is a driving force. … All you need is for someone to suggest that “Gamergate and straight white men are trying to hold onto power” and anyone with this belief framework will instantly feel the truth of it. From that point on, any protestations to the contrary are just so much rubbish and self-deception.
When I look at the Sad Puppies, I don’t see straight white men, but I do see leaders who have personalities that value human role archetypes. Their books don’t try to confuse roles like hero and villain or man and woman. They have what I’ve been calling the A combination, in which Intuition is willing to believe anything, but Sensing is deeply tied to roles. When they attack “message fiction,” they are not attacking fiction with any message, but rather the fiction that has the anti-archetypalmessage.
Read the whole thing
Here is my column for today’s EveryJoe THE WRIGHT PERSPECTIVE, which I post herein hope of readers may make visiting the column a regular habit.
Atheism Causes Brain Damage
There are two kinds of atheist: a rational atheist, whose disbelief in God is grounded on some rational reason he can articulate, and an irrational atheist, who hates a God in which he allegedly does not believe, grounded on various unseemly appetites emotions and passions (anything from an infatuation with sin to a hunger for fads to a hatred of moral reality) passing with furious clamor through echoing emptiness of his brain. A rational atheist is one with whom one can have a rational discussion, and be a dispassionate as a judge in a courtroom. An irrational atheist has something wrong with his brain, and he belongs on a psychiatric couch.
I have noticed of late the rational atheists are disappearing and the irrational atheists blooming, and fear I know the cause.
In my youth, one could find from time to time an honest and thoughtful man who, not believing in God, could give a rational and honest reason for his disbelief.
He could say it was a logical contradiction to say an omnipotent and benevolent creator could permit evil a place in his creation, since a creator lacking the ability to forestall evil is not omnipotent, or, lacking the motive, not benevolent.
Or the rational atheist could say an omniscient being possessing or bestowing free will was paradoxical, since only the acts of an unfree will can be foreknown.
The rational atheist could say that natural causes were sufficient to explain the cosmos and man’s role in it, ergo so no inquiry into supernatural causes is needed.
Or a rational atheist could say that Christian theology was essentially the same as pagan mythology, and since even Christians admit such myths are manmade falsehoods, there is no rational way to defend one myth as true while condemning all others as false.
Finally, a rational atheist could point out various inconsistencies in the Bible or in Church tradition, or enormities committed by followers of Christ, to lend weight to any doubts one might entertain in taking the Bible or the Church as a trustworthy authority or trustworthy witness. This final argument is not meant to prove atheism is true, merely that it is a sound position.
I regret to report that, so far in my career as a Christian, not one of these rational atheist arguments has been encountered by me.
Not one.
Read the remainder of this entry »
I am not exactly a one-issue voter, but I do think some things have priority over others.
As an ex-newspaperman and newspaper editor, I am perhaps more sensitive to how loathsome, dangerous, and morbid is the corruption in the Media. It is part of the Democrat Party political machine, an organ of propaganda, and engine designed deliberately to deceive the people, and it exasperates me that many an otherwise intelligent person allows himself to be deceived, and by such transparent and halfwitted tricks as the newsharlots routinely employ.
The media machine is the enemy.
Without them, the Leftists have no power, and the Jihadists have no support, no apologists, no smokescreens to hide their evil deeds, no propagandist to blame the Jews for daring to be the victims of these lunatic barbarian fanatics. The media are destroying the nation by addicting it to a diet of lies.
So it is with great pleasure that I see a candidate, and not in a blustering or angry way, rebuke and dismiss the routine falsehoods of the Democrat party activists posing as journalists, and call them out. Read the remainder of this entry »
I hope the mood of the nation is beginning to change. A lot of people are sending this around the Internet, and I thought I would help spread it further:
Mike Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington is not your stereotypical left-wing teacher. On the heels of a report that showed that liberal arts professors overwhelmingly support Democrats, Adams’ semester-opening statement to his students has gone viral.
First printed in Townhall in late August, over the last few days it has beenreprinted multiple times.
[Trigger warning: The following is extraordinarily insensitive and its candor may cause some students to be highly offended. Symptoms of being confronted with viewpoints other than one’s own may cause one to get “the vapors” and students have even been known to collapse in a fainting spell upon reading offensive literature. Reader discretion is advised.]
Here is what he said to his students:
Welcome back to class, students! I am Mike Adams your criminology professor here at UNC-Wilmington. Before we get started with the course I need to address an issue that is causing problems here at UNCW and in higher education all across the country. I am talking about the growing minority of students who believe they have a right to be free from being offended. If we don’t reverse this dangerous trend in our society there will soon be a majority of young people who will need to walk around in plastic bubble suits to protect them in the event that they come into contact with a dissenting viewpoint. That mentality is unworthy of an American. It’s hardly worthy of a Frenchman.
Let’s get something straight right now. You have no right to be unoffended. You have a right to be offended with regularity. It is the price you pay for living in a free society. If you don’t understand that you are confused and dangerously so. In part, I blame your high school teachers for failing to teach you basic civics before you got your diploma. Most of you went to the public high schools, which are a disaster. Don’t tell me that offended you. I went to a public high school.
Of course, your high school might not be the problem. It is entirely possible that the main reason why so many of you are confused about free speech is that piece of paper hanging on the wall right over there. Please turn your attention to that ridiculous document that is framed and hanging by the door. In fact, take a few minutes to read it before you leave class today. It is our campus speech code. It specifically says that there is a requirement that everyone must only engage in discourse that is “respectful.” That assertion is as ludicrous as it is illegal. I plan to have that thing ripped down from every classroom on campus before I retire.
One of my grandfathers served in World War I. My step-grandfather served in World War II. My sixth great grandfather enlisted in the American Revolution when he was only thirteen. These great men did not fight so we could simply relinquish our rights to the enemy within our borders. That enemy is the Marxists who run our public universities. If you are a Marxist and I just offended you, well, that’s tough. I guess they don’t make communists like they used to.
Unbelievably, a student once complained to the Department chairwoman that my mention of God and a Creator was a violation of Separation of Church and State. Let me be as clear as I possibly can: If any of you actually think that my decision to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence in the course syllabus is unconstitutional then you suffer from severe intellectual hernia.
Indeed, it takes hard work to become stupid enough to think the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional. If you agree with the student who made that complaint then you are probably just an anti-religious zealot. Therefore, I am going to ask you to do exactly three things and do them in the exact order that I specify.
First, get out of my class. You can fill out the drop slip over at James Hall. Just tell them you don’t believe in true diversity and you want to be surrounded by people who agree with your twisted interpretation of the Constitution simply because they are the kind of people who will protect you from having your beliefs challenged or your feelings hurt.
Second, withdraw from the university. If you find that you are actually relieved because you will no longer be in a class where your beliefs might be challenged then you aren’t ready for college. Go get a job building houses so you can work with some illegal aliens who will help you gain a better appreciation of what this country has to offer.
Finally, if this doesn’t work then I would simply ask you to get the hell out of the country. The ever-growing thinned-skinned minority you have joined is simply ruining life in this once-great nation. Please move to some place like Cuba where you can enjoy the company of communists and get excellent health care. Just hop on a leaky boat and start paddling your way towards utopia. You will not be missed.
Earlier this year, Adams won a court victory against the school, when he sued, asserting that he was not promoted due to his outspoken conservatism.
My comment: His is mere common sense, hardly worth repeating, and within my lifetime was the commonly held unspoken agreement of both Right and Left. But when the seas have receded, and all the waters of the world dried up, and left behind a parched and arid wasteland, even a small oasis-pond is worthy of wonder.
Is there an additional step or stage further down the Morlock can descend?
I suggest that there is not. Nihilism is the philosophical belief that no universal truth exists, and thus philosophy as such is in vain. This is the philosophy to which one adheres, knowingly or unknowingly, once one has abandoned truth and reason, embraced the darkening of the intellect by becoming addicted to the self-righteousness of Narcissus, and devoted oneself to sadistic hatred of self-imposed enemies.
Nihilism is a halt-state: once one believes the philosophy that says all philosophy is in vain, one cannot use philosophy to reason oneself out of this position.
If the Morlock cannot change, what happens next?
Next he destroys himself. This is usually done indirectly rather than directly, but notice the enthusiasm which which Morlocks uphold and celebrate everything that is either foreign to them, hostile to them, or mutually exclusive to them. Islamic terrorism is an obvious example, but by no means the only. Even the support of such gentle institutions as schools that discourage learning, art that destroys beauty, and governments that cannot govern has its roots in this self destructive attitude which is the visible sign of nihilism in action.
Morlocks are, as a race, suicidal. They are allured, almost as if under an erotic allure, to images and symbols of death, destruction and decay, to things that are against nature, or that are sterile, vain, futile, and ugly. Go into a modern art museum or watch a gay pride parade to see visible displays of an invisible self loathing.
The flaw is spiritual rather than psychological. While theories about undeveloped amygdala, or the rabbit strategy of welcoming predators into an overpopulated meadow may have some merit, when you see a man who wishes to destroy himself and his homeland, look to the formation of his conscience for the answer to this dark and ugly riddle.
You see a man whose own values, whose own sense of right and wrong, has condemned him to death. Something in his conscience tells him he is unworthy of life.
Now, look next at what he believes, what he tells himself is true.
If he is a hard core Leftist, he believes he was produced by blind natural forces, out of nowhere, and for no reason, blown together by the wind like a sandheap for an hour, to die and blow away again, and never to again live or laugh or love for all the countless eons of eternity.
He thinks he is a meat robot, a thing without free will, without even the dignity of an animal. At least animals are not fools fooling themselves into believing in the illusion of free will. He is the weakest and saddest of beasts.
He also, if he is a hardcore Leftist, he believes that these same blind winds created an injustice so deeply ingrained into society that there is no reasoning with the powers that be, no way of peaceful reformation. Evolution works by the Darwinian law of the jungle, survival of the strong. This is true of social evolution as well (or so his perverse worldview tells him).
If the evils of society cannot be mended by sweet reason, violent overthrow (not merely of part of society, but of the whole rotten structure from top to bottom) is the only alternative.
Hence, for the hardcore Leftist, any love or loyalty to his homeland is a betrayal of his highest sense of goodness and righteousness, because then he is supporting the evils of mankind.
For him, any love of peace or desire for law and order slows the progress of social evolution for the same reason keeping the weak alive to reproduce slows racial evolution.
(Perhaps the Leftist hatred of America keeping the bloodbaths of fascists and communists contained has its roots in this same uneasy sense that violence is needed for progress: by maintaining civilization, the United States during the Cold War and after kept the weak old order alive, and did not allow world war to kill off the unfit so permit the superman to arise. )
Suppose instead of a hardcore leftist, you are merely a flabby moderate leftist.
You have all the same beliefs as the hardcore leftist, but are too weak and silly to call for the violent overthrow of the evil society blind evolution has produced. You lack the integrity to think through your philosophy and come to the harsh but logical conclusions.
You are too sentimental to sacrifice the weak and sick to the great progressive god of Darwin. But sustaining the sick and weak causes racial and social degeneration according to this sick worldview: and so again the conscience of the moderate leftist condemns him for his lack of fidelity. He is a disgrace to the forces of evil.
And so Leftism, the religion that replaced Christianity in Europe since the Great War of 1914, requires a man to believe that he is worthless, less than a beast, less than a dog, but the beneficiary of an evil world-system which must be destroyed, but which he lacks the strength and will to destroy.
Small wonder they want to die. It is a worldview perfectly designed to rob a man of all gratitude and hope, and without gratitude, there is nothing in life but resentment, envy, fear, and disgust.
Longtime reader Nate Winchester says:
I don’t know… I guess like the lovely Mrs Wright, I’ve known a few… I guess they weren’t full SJWs, but one might call them larvae… and they’re not bad people!
It’s like the zombie movies ya know? They’re infected, I get that we’ll have to shoot them in the head, just wish we could figure out some way to cure them before it gets to that point, ya know? Especially because they seem to fight it sometimes.
It just gets… old.
I agree. The SJWs are not bad people. Not at first. Even Lucifer was not totally wretched and evil at first.
That is the important thing to remember.
They are good people with a bad theory who are addicted, like a cocaine addict, to the rush of ego-gratification that comes from self-righteousness.
The Morlocks once were human, once dwelt on the surface, under the sun, and once ate wholesome meats, and did not feast on human flesh. It takes several steps of evolution to go from being a good man to being a subhuman troglodyte cannibal. Not all have taken all the steps
It is a three stage trap into which they fall, and at each stage, for the best of reasons.
Read the remainder of this entry »
When I first heard of this, I thought it was an Onion parody.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426260/halloween-colleges-costumes-consultants
olleges are hanging flyers around campus with phone numbers of officials that students can call to consult with about whether or not their Halloween costume is perfectly politically correct. “Unsure if your costume might be offensive?” asks a poster that’s been hung around campus at State University of New York at Geneseo. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions.” The poster contains the phone numbers and e-mails of five (five!) campus officials that students can contact and discuss the very important issue of whether or not what they will dress up as to get drunk in will be advancing social-justice causes. Wesleyan University has been hanging similar posters around the school — but with six (six!) numbers listed.
It’s a good first step. Maybe next year, the schools can deploy cultural-sensitivity control officers to bust into parties and round up anyone spotted in a sombrero or afro wig. To make the world, you know, better.
My comment: The irony here is, first, that these are college age students, that is, men old enough to serve in the military and be placed in charge of multi-million dollar vehicles and ordinance, women old enough to bear children and be in charge of a family; and, second, that they are college age students are a college, an institution allegedly devoted to the education of the young, a process requiring intellectual discipline and academic freedom.
And yet the campus will not prevent fornication between students and coeds, unwed motherhood, or other matters far more ruinous.
I just read this review of Jim Butcher’s latest book:
1 of 106 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
I’m just going to rate this a 1/5 on principle…
By Zoe S. Galaitsis on October 6, 2015I’m just going to rate this a 1/5 on principle, after Jim Butcher got nominated by Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies. Not sure what’s going on there but Butcher hasn’t come out and said a thing, not even to deny their platform of reviling women, gays, and non-Christians. I’m generally wary of reading anything by him or giving him any money at this point.
Hmm. Funny. I do not recall our platform reviling women, gays and non-Christians. I recall our platform was to support books on their merit and entertainment value, regardless of political correctness, and to give science fiction awards based on their skill at telling a science fiction story, not to give science fiction awards based on political party loyalties.
I do recall being in the receiving end of actionable libels from major international news organization, and I do recall thinking that no one was stupid enough actually to believe such obvious and clumsy lies, but in this case I overestimated the intelligence of the reading public. I thought that they would be smart enough to, you know, read.
Therefore the principle that this reviewer is upholding is the unreality principle, that principle that lies are better than truth, and outrageous lies are better than lies; the principle that injustice is better than justice, so judging books based on the fact that someone you arbitrarily and unjustly decided to hate likes those books is better then reading the book and judging on the merit.
Have you wondered why award-winning SFF books and stories, the kind sold to libraries and touted as best sellers, are all so bland and bad?
Consider the simple logic of it. A community must either judges stories on the merit or not on the merit.
If the community judges stories on the merit, then the most meritorious works will be lauded, assuming the community has any taste at all. (And if you do not agree with the tastes of science fiction readers, why read science fiction?)
If, on the other hand, the community judges stories not on the merit, as when, for example, you judge the story on the political correctness of the message or of the author’s private life, then not the most meritorious works will be lauded. Bland and bad stories will be promoted and feted, and your, the reader, will not hear if there are any good stories out there.
Do you want to know why brilliant hard-core science fiction like THE MARTIAN by Weir did not win awards but boring and predictable lecture-fiction with little science fiction in it, or none, won instead? It is because fairplay is not in fashion among the termites who have eaten their way into positions of influence in the award-nominating structure.
Envy the Morlock! How simple it becomes to live in a world with no right or wrong, which are subtle and silent and require a nicety of judgment and wisdom to discern: but party loyalty is obvious, self-aggrandizing and loud, and any idiot can see who is a member of the groupthink collective, and who is an unperson scorned by Big Brother.
Humans think. Morlocks hate.
They hate whoever the two minute hate says to hate. It does not matter whether Emmanuel Goldstein is real or not, or whether Jim Butcher writes well or poorly. The target is created for the sake of the hate; the hatred is not a reaction to some hateful thing, real or imaginary the target has does or is.
Be that as it may, this review was a sufficient incentive to buy a copy of Mr Butcher’s latest book. Money permitting, I shall buy two copies.
I don’t know and I don’t care what Mr Butcher’s political leanings, sexual preferences, denomination or race is. I have not examined his Ahenpass, or discovered is he has a quatroon as a greatgrandfather. I am not a Leftist. I care if he can perform the job for which I pay him, that is, write a good story in return for my hard earned book buying dollar.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cinder-Spires-Aeronauts-Windlass/dp/0451466802/
