Curt Doolittle

Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

  • “As an historian who had been studying insurgencies for over 50 years I knew the

    —“As an historian who had been studying insurgencies for over 50 years I knew the key question was not the current number of activists but the size of the recruiting pool. “How many people are potential recruits?”

    “Oh, about 3 to 5 percent of Islam,” a CIA analyst responded.

    “That would be 39 million to 65 million people,” I replied.

    Every analyst in the room nodded yes and smiled. That was what they had been trying to tell the Bush White House, they said. No one would listen.

    This was the moment in the movie Jaws where the police chief says “We’re going to need a bigger boat.””—

    WHEN ESTIMATING THE POWER OF REBELLIONS OR TERRORISTS THE QUESTION IS THE SIZE OF THE RECRUITING POOL, NOT THE ACTIVE NUMBER OF MEMBERS

    If we mobilized 3-5% of american males, that would be 15m total, with a distribution of young in the lower third – maybe 3-5M.

    That puts the scale in perspective. We are outnumbered by ten to one.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-11 06:58:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-11 02:34:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS I have always considered americans ignorant, but that igno

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS

    I have always considered americans ignorant, but that ignorance is cultural, not systemic. We are taught ‘how the world works’ from birth. Law, commerce, the environment, weather, and scientific method are systems we understand – and we look at the world as systems. Partway through my third year here, I have begun to see that it is not just a matter of language and culture, but people in this part of the world are just exposed to much less information than we are. So between exposure to much less information, less information about systems, zero awareness of commercial, legal, and political systems, they are handicapped compared to us. They are skilled in ‘small’ systems (the family and friends) but they are not schooled in american-scale systems: big complex things that work because people do what they promise. The vision the average (ignorant) american high school kid understands, (even in the lower classes) is almost inconceivable here to the average person. I know very well educated people here, and very smart people, but they think in the “Radius of Their Cultural Trust” like all of us do. And that means that they think ‘small’. They have small ambitions. Small companies. Small circles of trust. And they have small wallets because of it.

    Maybe today i’m sensitive but it really bothers me.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-10 13:30:00 UTC

  • HEGEL RIGHT, OR IS THE ANSWER MUCH MORE SIMPLE?

    http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2014/10/hegel-and-progression-of-western-spirit.htmlIS HEGEL RIGHT, OR IS THE ANSWER MUCH MORE SIMPLE?

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-07 12:44:00 UTC

  • Talking to Johannes. And am reminded that the Muslims have successfully weaponiz

    Talking to Johannes. And am reminded that the Muslims have successfully weaponized the family, just as much as the west has weaponized truth and commons, just as much as germans have weaponized duty, just as much as jews have weaponized language.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 06:41:00 UTC

  • Anglos are the most obnoxious well intentioned fools on earth. OMG. The more I u

    Anglos are the most obnoxious well intentioned fools on earth. OMG. The more I understand the world, the more I am proud of dragging humanity out of ignorance and poverty on the one hand, and on the other hand, the more I want to hang our puritans (my ancestors) and neo-Puritans (current northeast secular democrats) and Cosmopolitans (Jews) from tree-limbs and beg the german people for forgiveness, and apologize to the rest of the world of the after that.

    The most important strategic change in the world must be the overthrow of the united states government and its perpetuation of the puritan, neo-puritan, cosmopolitan ideological cancers, and to return to familialism and nationalism.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 06:32:00 UTC

  • ON CHINA Broadberry’s data presents a more nuanced picture. In it we can clearly

    ON CHINA

    Broadberry’s data presents a more nuanced picture. In it we can clearly see the economic “efflorescence” of China’s medieval economic revolution and the wealth that came with the mid-Ming economic reforms. In many of these periods the average Chinese man was more wealthy than his European counterpart. China was far from stagnant for 1,000 years.

    But it also never had sustained economic growth. As happened across the premodern world, successful dynasts would establish a system that allowed commerce to flourish, urban centers to grow, and wealth to increase. In the words of Jack Goldstone, these societies would undergo an economic “efflorescence” that historians of later days would remember as a Golden Age [3]. These Golden Ages would not last. After a few centuries these societies would push agrarian civilization to its limits and contraction would begin.

    This process is seen quite clearly in the Chinese data. The decline in GDP per capita between 1600 and 1750 hides the fairly impressive economic achievements of the early Qing: despite a fourfold (!) increase in population, Chinese living standards remained on par with most of Europe, even though most of this expansion was happening in unproductive, virgin lands far away from China’s traditional urban centers while expensive levies were continually raised to pay for one war after another. Alas, this type of efflorescence could not endure; as the centuries passed the condition of the Chinese peasant plummeted. It is sobering to realize that the average Chinese of 1000 was twice as rich as his descendents were 850 years later.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 04:57:00 UTC

  • IT’S “THE NORTH SEA”, NOT “THE WEST” —“‘Rather than focus on why Europe diverg

    IT’S “THE NORTH SEA”, NOT “THE WEST”

    —“‘Rather than focus on why Europe diverged from the rest in 1800 we should be asking why the North Sea diverged from the rest in 1000.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 04:47:00 UTC

  • CLASSICAL(HEROIC), LEVANTINE (MAGIAN), FAUSTIAN(SEARCHING) Apollonian / Magian /

    CLASSICAL(HEROIC), LEVANTINE (MAGIAN), FAUSTIAN(SEARCHING)

    Apollonian / Magian / Faustian These are Spengler’s terms for Classical, Arabian and Western civilisations respectively.

    Apollonian Civilisation is focused around Ancient Greece and Rome. Spengler saw its world view as being characterised by appreciation for the beauty of the human body, and a preference for the local and the present moment.

    Magian Civilisation includes the Jews from about 400BC, early Christians and various Arabian religions up to and including Islam. Its world feeling revolved around the concept of world as cavern, epitomised by the domed Mosque, and a preoccupation with essence. Spengler saw the development of this civilisation as being distorted by a too influential presence of older cultures, the initial vigorous expansionary impulses of Islam being in part a reaction against this.

    Faustian Civilisation began in Western Europe around the 10th century and according to Spengler such has been its expansionary power that by the 20th century it was covering the entire earth, with only a few Regions where Islam provides an alternative world view. The world feeling of Faustian civilisation is inspired by the concept of infinitely wide and profound space, the yearning towards distance and infinity.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-06 03:33:00 UTC

  • The 80/20 Rule of Western Genius

    [T]he Left’s Hatred of Dead White European Male (DWEM) Genius

    —“Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray (2003) makes clear that world-historical, genius level accomplishment is – or rather, was – numerically and proportionately a Dead White-European Male (DWEM) thing.”—

    Yes but I am pretty sure that I have stated WHY it was a DWEM thing: TRUTH.

    The question is how much of truth telling is genetic and how much is cultural. I tend to nearly ignore genetics in my arguments, and focus on distributions and norms – which is the opposite of the approach of the NRx movement per se.

    However, it is possible that europeans’ reduced impulsivity and aggression, plus our rather unique rather uniform mix of verbal and spatial intelligence produced some specific genetic advantage; or it is possible that we self-selected for lower impulsivity and aggression out of

    Watch how naturally white people work in formation. I don’t know if we selected for it or evolved it. But one way or another it’s part of us – combined risk. So that is what tends to make me think that western achievement is not entirely normative.

    But I am still with the 80/20 proposition, that while as individuals our behavior is 80% genetic and 20% emergent, that western uniqueness is 20% genetic and 80% dependent upon the emergent effects of truth-telling and outbreeding.

    Curt