Curt Doolittle

Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

  • ENGLISH ARE NOT A DIVERSE PEOPLE – JUST THE OPPOSITE. The north sea was a “lake”

    http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/02/human-admixture-common-in-human-history.htmlTHE ENGLISH ARE NOT A DIVERSE PEOPLE – JUST THE OPPOSITE.

    The north sea was a “lake” whose shores were inhabited by related families.

    —

    “The case of Northwestern Europe appears especially striking as none of the populations from the region show evidence of admixture.”

    “England is diverse only in the minds of pretentious historians.”

    We really are ‘different’. ‘Cause we’re all the same. Whooda’ thunk it. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-14 15:29:00 UTC

  • DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieva

    DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS

    Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto.

    As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group.

    However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority.

    In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly.

    In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population.

    The underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even.

    Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 02:56:00 UTC

  • EVERY TIME I THINK IT, READ IT, HEAR IT, SPEAK IT – I AM MOVED. –“To every man

    EVERY TIME I THINK IT, READ IT, HEAR IT, SPEAK IT – I AM MOVED.

    –“To every man upon this earth

    Death cometh soon or late.

    And how can man die better

    Than facing fearful odds,

    For the ashes of his fathers,

    And the temples of his Gods.”–

    If we honored the greatest men (and women) of every age, then which of them would you wish that you could ask advice of? Whom would you choose? Would you choose one, two, or ten?

    I think that in studying, or reading the works of, a great man (or woman) we take into our minds more than his words, but part of him, and combine some part of his mind with ours. Merging the mind that currently lives in us, with some part of the mind that lived at once in him.

    And that if, after some study, in a period of quiet contemplation, we ask that part of him that now lives in us, the advice we anticipate he would give us, is not much different, and often superior to, the advice he would, in life have given us.

    If I could bury my ashes in a temple to a great man’s honor, I would choose to do so without question, rather than to be spread upon the sea, or buried in a church yard, or lonely cemetery, or mass grave.

    And I can think of no greater honor that any of us could wish for, than that others would wish temples built in our names, tell our lives as heroic tales, ask our silent counsel in contemplation, and that their ashes joined with ours in death.

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM:

    We had it right all along.

    We ruined it.

    We Athenians (Anglos) took up war against the Spartans (Germans) and destroyed each other in the process. We killed our cousins and our whole line dies.

    Liberty is not universally desired, but universally of value.

    The source of liberty is the organized application of violence to suppress human preference for cheating whenever possible.

    Democracy requires many.

    Liberty requires but a few.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-10 17:37:00 UTC

  • THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCE: CULTURE. In a pub. Underground. Brick walls. Wooden tab

    THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCE: CULTURE.

    In a pub. Underground. Brick walls. Wooden tables.

    Faux Irish decor, much cleaner and better lit than the real thing.

    A television over the bar. The opening olympic ceremony.

    A digital jukebox. Silent. Slightly gaudy and out of place.

    Friday at 6:30pm – waves of friends meeting after work.

    Patiently. Calmly. Confidently. Humbly. One after another.

    With long coats buttoned against the cold – still style conscious.

    Scarves. Heels. Black shoes. No suits. Perfect hair.

    All the women are beautiful, even if they are not.

    No sense of urgency. Or of destination. Of nervousness.

    Animated cheerful conversation everywhere.

    No one bearing the burdened face of American isolation:

    That conflict between a desperate wish for attention and total fear of it at the same time.

    That fear: that our illusory self images, carefully tended in our private warrens, fragile as wisps of blown glass, might crumble at the first hint of rejection.

    American culture, if we can call it that, died with the state’s intervention in civic affairs.

    America is the fulfillment of the Smithian vision: a society predicated upon the moral action produced by commerce.

    But these are loaded words. Full of as much self deception as our self images but nowhere near as fragile.

    There is no culture. There is no american culture. None.

    Culture requires a community of common interest.

    Culture just means treating everyone as ‘family members that I just don’t know well”

    These fools killed the family. The black family. Now the white family.

    But they killed our communal sense of family as well.

    The state is a predator.

    It eats everything it can touch and kills everything else it can’t.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-07 12:11:00 UTC

  • I LOVE THESE PEOPLE: UKRAINIANS AND RUSSIANS They make such sense to me. Yes, th

    I LOVE THESE PEOPLE: UKRAINIANS AND RUSSIANS

    They make such sense to me. Yes, the government is so corrupt that only gangland Chicago comes even close. And that’s not even close enough. Yes, you cannot trust those that you don’t know (much). But you can trust the people close to you with your life. There is nothing like this feeling.

    In America, you cannot trust your business partners, and you cannot trust the state, you can no longer trust the law, you can no longer trust the police, you can no longer trust your neighbor. Morality has evaporate from moral, cultural and legal discourse in a money-grabbing attempt at ‘equality’ on one hand and ‘escaping the predatory state’ on the other.

    I just wish the combination of revolution, my “alien” status, the fear of the collapsing local economy, and an unwarranted unjust attack by my own government hadn’t made me feel constantly insecure here. I mean I love it here but it is a desperately poor country.

    I don’t, as most ‘illegals’ do, feel I have any particular right to be here. And those people in america who claim such rights make me incredibly angry.

    You are responsible for your government. For toppling that government if it does not serve you. And certainly to topple it and kill all of its members if it oppresses you. And to build a new one.

    Ukrainians are what I wish Americans were. They are what we used to be. What we used to be before the well meaning fools destroyed the family, the civic society, and the moral and ethical basis of our culture.

    If anything made me want to kill every living soul in the American government, and every well meaning fool in the media, it’s looking at these wonderful people and realizing what we’ve lost.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-07 12:00:00 UTC

  • ANGLO VS CONTINENTAL THOUGHT: TRADERS VS FARMERS (cross posted for archiving) Co

    ANGLO VS CONTINENTAL THOUGHT: TRADERS VS FARMERS

    (cross posted for archiving)

    Continental thought is heavily loaded with moral assumptions necessary for a diverse set of polities to cooperate on a shared land mass – and the philosophy is loaded at the metaphysical level.

    Anglo thought is predicated on individual sovereignty and the Smithian moral proposition that voluntary exchange PRODUCES moral behavior independently of any intentional, abstract or metaphysically invisible moral commitment. This is a rule based system independent of moral sentiments. Because traders do not share moral sentiments with their customers. They reduce morality to incentives and the satisfaction of them.

    The continentals desperately try to preserve moral authority as group identity. Anglo thought is the metaphysics of an extended family of island traders. Just as the French philosophers have always criticized Anglos for not being part of Europe because they are traders and craftsmen not farmers.

    Obverse: Trade=Navy=England = Athens = Analytic.

    Reverse: Farming=Army=Germany = Sparta = Continental.

    Karl Popper frustrates me because while he is often making statements about science in the anglo analytical and empirical sense, he is also retaining the continental religio-moral argumentative framework and the silly metaphysical nonsense prevalent on the continent that desperately attempts to retain commonality of moral experience, rather than relying upon action independent of experience to produce moral outcomes regardless of moral sentiment.

    So we can look at this spectrum with something like Smith on one end of the spectrum, Popper in the middle bridging the traditions, and say, Heidegger on the extreme european end, really trying to recreate christianity in the same manner as Kant.

    The continental idea in both napoleonic law, and in continental philosophy, suggests that we must have sentimental moral consensus prior to action. The anglo idea both in the common law and anglo philosophy, is that if we have simple rules, we will produce moral outcomes, regardless of our abstract moral commitments…

    So simple really.

    (So now my criticism of Crusoe ethics is complete.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-07 03:11:00 UTC

  • new ‘nine nations’ map has been floating around and it says pretty much the same

    http://www.policymic.com/articles/81321/forget-state-lines-this-map-shows-you-how-america-is-really-dividedThis new ‘nine nations’ map has been floating around and it says pretty much the same as every other map: BREAK UP THE EMPIRE and let us each live how we wish.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-06 10:31:00 UTC

  • DIDN”T REALLY EXPECT ANYTHING IN RUSSIA TO WORK, DID YOU? (rant) You have to be

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/02/04/journalists-at-sochi-are-live-tweeting-their-hilarious-and-gross-hotel-experiences/YOU DIDN”T REALLY EXPECT ANYTHING IN RUSSIA TO WORK, DID YOU?

    (rant)

    You have to be kidding. It isn’t in the Russian character to be honest with you about the quality of accommodations. Actually, it’s non in character to be honest with you about… well, anything much at all. Unless you are a close friend or relative you’re basically prey.

    Of COURSE the hotels are incomplete and nothing works. Of course everything will be inedible, undrinkable, working intermittently and done with the least care and effort possible? What did you THINK?

    The good of the commons? Are you kidding? Have you seen the commons anywhere other than the protestant west?

    Stupid humans… sigh.

    I’ll be very surprised if there isn’t much more damage done to Putin’s legacy by this escapade than the good he hoped to achieve by attempting to prove that Russia has joined the first world. Not gonna happen. Outside of a few urban professions, everyone in this part of the world does the least work possible for the highest return. It’s only rational for them to do so.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-05 11:35:00 UTC

  • WE’RE BEING POLITE: THE GRACIOUSNESS OF ENGLISH CHARITY REGARDING CONTINENTALS A

    WE’RE BEING POLITE: THE GRACIOUSNESS OF ENGLISH CHARITY REGARDING CONTINENTALS AND THEIR TOTALITARIANISM.

    “When talk about ‘the west’ we’re being polite. What we mean is the countries that adopted the anglo-american system of government as the result of military victories by the English speaking peoples. If the second world war or the cold war had ended differently, [the continentals] would not be westernized today.” — Daniel Hannan

    {more}

    “”What we [english] invented was constitutional liberty. … Our concept of democracy is a guardian of individual freedom rather than an expression of the will of the majority. ..our system, which is practical, individual, and points to specific rights contractually guaranteed. … Ours has worked better. It didn’t ever fall to fascism or communism or revolution.”

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-01 15:35:00 UTC

  • If you get all your neighbors together, sing a few songs, march in a parade, joi

    If you get all your neighbors together, sing a few songs, march in a parade, join in a feast, participate in a festival, celebrate a holiday, listen to speeches, watch plays, or play games, then pretty much it’s a good thing at all times. It pretty much doesn’t matter what songs are about, the reason for the parade, the food you eat, the origins of the festival, the content of the speeches, the plot of the play, or the rules of the game.

    What matters is that everyone feels the joy of all these many substitutes for running with the pack – where we act as one. As a tribe, pack, flock, school … a single body and soul.

    That’s what ‘church’ is for.

    Now, I would prefer that w sang songs of our pagan and heroic past, toasted our generals and politicians, celebrated the festivals of our scientists, philosophers and poets, gave speeches to current good deeds, watched plays about the civic virtues, and played games that celebrated our victories.

    But we can do non of that living in commercial rabbit warrens, protecting our status signal nest, and insulating ourselves from the reality of our irrelevance independent of one another.

    In the end of it all, you cannot be happy without people whom you love and are loved by. Everything else is just decoration.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-30 09:08:00 UTC