Curt Doolittle

Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

  • Who Are More Likely To Respect Animal Rights: Conservatives Or Liberals?

    Conservative view of man’s relation to nature is heroic:
    That nature is ours to modify for our benefit.
    That nature is capricious and something we must pacify for our safety.
    That the purpose of man’s life is to leave the world better for having lived in it.
    This is an heroic view of man that is as ancient as the indo-european peoples.

    Meaning:
    (a) animals do not have ‘rights’ – this is an absurdity – they are not human. In conservatism (which means “european aristocratic egalitarianism”). Even humans must ‘earn’ rights – which is why we take them away if they misbehave.  Animals can’t earn rights. (perhaps dogs to some minor degree.)
    (b) that we should care for animals because we desire to, because our world is better to live in if we have them. True. This is the logical reasoning, not ‘rights’.
    (c) that disregard for animals that we have normatively chosen to care for, and which are under our control,
    (d) that laziness in caring for animals is likely laziness in caring for people. True.
    (e) that cruelty to animals is likely cruelty to humans – and therefore you are unfit to live among humans. True.

    Unfortunately, this is an argument to NORMS: demonstrating the human character necessary to possess ‘rights’.  Conservatives place extremely high value on norms. Progressives do not.  The progressive movement is largely an attack on conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) norms. And the progressive movement has managed to, at least in education and other major areas of life, discredit norms.  And therefore the progressive movement has lost the ability to market policy that requires adherence to norms.  And therefore has, out of necessity, used the specious argument of ‘rights’, because it is the only means of justifying legal action that they have available to them.

    Of course, what may not be obvious is that:
    (a) it is not possible for animals to possess rights – a right is something that can be reciprocally granted and animals cannot conceive of this (except perhaps for domesticated dogs..)
    (b) that the word “right” is an attempt to load, or frame, animals anthropomorphically. in order to misrepresent the normative utility of protecting animals as a resource, as one open to legal rather than normative control.  In other words, it’s common marketing fraud.
    (c) that caretaking, even anthropomorpized caretaking, provides women with oxcytocin reactions, and that many females are addicted to this reaction. It is not rational. It is drug addiction. It’s just relatively harmless drug addiction. So our political policy is being driven by logically confused drug addicts using a deceptive marketing campaign, not reason.  In which case we would simply sell off the management of wild animals to private firms who would specialize in it and figure out how to make it profitable (the way we have with deer hunting in america).
    (d) that the female psyche evolved, and cooperation evolved, as a means of controlling alphas by gossip, complaint and excitement, to motivate the non-alpha males to organize against, and punish or kill the alphas, so that the females could control their own breeding rather than be the mere victims of alphas.  And that there is a significant correlation between the female members of the animal rights movement and their reproductive status.
    (e) That the anti-fur movement is absurd, and counter to the benefit of animals and man. It is a renewable resource. It encourages the protection of the species. It is inexpensive.  It is excellent protection against the cold, and it’s beautiful.   This same argument applies to hunting. And to wild animals. Because if wild animals were ‘owned’ rather than a ‘commons’ owners would protect them far better than governments do – just like we do with domesticated animals.

    This is a fairly damning critique of REASONING USED by the animal rights movement.  It is not however a critique of the conservative normative proscription. 

    The conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) proscription is that if you do not care for animals as if they are the commons that they are, and a commons that we have assumed responsibilty for from nature, that you have not EARNED the right from other humans to administer that commons on their behalf, and therefore they will withdraw your rights, which they reciprocally grant you, because you are unfit to live with rights, among others, who have them.

    Conservatives are rational but their moral code is ancient and they speak of it in metaphorical terms not suitable for an era where scientific language has all but replaced metaphor.  And this is why I write philosophy – to repair conservatism (aristocratic egalitarianism) by articulating it rationally.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-are-more-likely-to-respect-animal-rights-conservatives-or-liberals

  • Who Are More Likely To Respect Animal Rights: Conservatives Or Liberals?

    Conservative view of man’s relation to nature is heroic:
    That nature is ours to modify for our benefit.
    That nature is capricious and something we must pacify for our safety.
    That the purpose of man’s life is to leave the world better for having lived in it.
    This is an heroic view of man that is as ancient as the indo-european peoples.

    Meaning:
    (a) animals do not have ‘rights’ – this is an absurdity – they are not human. In conservatism (which means “european aristocratic egalitarianism”). Even humans must ‘earn’ rights – which is why we take them away if they misbehave.  Animals can’t earn rights. (perhaps dogs to some minor degree.)
    (b) that we should care for animals because we desire to, because our world is better to live in if we have them. True. This is the logical reasoning, not ‘rights’.
    (c) that disregard for animals that we have normatively chosen to care for, and which are under our control,
    (d) that laziness in caring for animals is likely laziness in caring for people. True.
    (e) that cruelty to animals is likely cruelty to humans – and therefore you are unfit to live among humans. True.

    Unfortunately, this is an argument to NORMS: demonstrating the human character necessary to possess ‘rights’.  Conservatives place extremely high value on norms. Progressives do not.  The progressive movement is largely an attack on conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) norms. And the progressive movement has managed to, at least in education and other major areas of life, discredit norms.  And therefore the progressive movement has lost the ability to market policy that requires adherence to norms.  And therefore has, out of necessity, used the specious argument of ‘rights’, because it is the only means of justifying legal action that they have available to them.

    Of course, what may not be obvious is that:
    (a) it is not possible for animals to possess rights – a right is something that can be reciprocally granted and animals cannot conceive of this (except perhaps for domesticated dogs..)
    (b) that the word “right” is an attempt to load, or frame, animals anthropomorphically. in order to misrepresent the normative utility of protecting animals as a resource, as one open to legal rather than normative control.  In other words, it’s common marketing fraud.
    (c) that caretaking, even anthropomorpized caretaking, provides women with oxcytocin reactions, and that many females are addicted to this reaction. It is not rational. It is drug addiction. It’s just relatively harmless drug addiction. So our political policy is being driven by logically confused drug addicts using a deceptive marketing campaign, not reason.  In which case we would simply sell off the management of wild animals to private firms who would specialize in it and figure out how to make it profitable (the way we have with deer hunting in america).
    (d) that the female psyche evolved, and cooperation evolved, as a means of controlling alphas by gossip, complaint and excitement, to motivate the non-alpha males to organize against, and punish or kill the alphas, so that the females could control their own breeding rather than be the mere victims of alphas.  And that there is a significant correlation between the female members of the animal rights movement and their reproductive status.
    (e) That the anti-fur movement is absurd, and counter to the benefit of animals and man. It is a renewable resource. It encourages the protection of the species. It is inexpensive.  It is excellent protection against the cold, and it’s beautiful.   This same argument applies to hunting. And to wild animals. Because if wild animals were ‘owned’ rather than a ‘commons’ owners would protect them far better than governments do – just like we do with domesticated animals.

    This is a fairly damning critique of REASONING USED by the animal rights movement.  It is not however a critique of the conservative normative proscription. 

    The conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) proscription is that if you do not care for animals as if they are the commons that they are, and a commons that we have assumed responsibilty for from nature, that you have not EARNED the right from other humans to administer that commons on their behalf, and therefore they will withdraw your rights, which they reciprocally grant you, because you are unfit to live with rights, among others, who have them.

    Conservatives are rational but their moral code is ancient and they speak of it in metaphorical terms not suitable for an era where scientific language has all but replaced metaphor.  And this is why I write philosophy – to repair conservatism (aristocratic egalitarianism) by articulating it rationally.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-are-more-likely-to-respect-animal-rights-conservatives-or-liberals

  • Untitled

    http://darussophile.com/about/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 13:23:00 UTC

  • LATE OUTBREEDING. RECENT SERFDOM. DIVERSITY. The low trust in eastern europe

    http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/russians-easterneuropeans-runs-of-homozygosity-roh-and-inbreeding/LOW, LATE OUTBREEDING. RECENT SERFDOM. DIVERSITY.

    The low trust in eastern europe.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-23 21:31:00 UTC

  • On Cultures as Competing Portfolios Of Property Rights

    CULTURE noun ˈkəl-chər KUHL-churEtymology Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’ (see cultivate). In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this (early 16th century), arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners’); culture (sense 1 of the noun) dates from the early 19th century. AlsoCULT (n.) (1) 1610s, “worship,” also “a particular form of worship,” from French culte (17c.), from Latin cultus “care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence,” originally “tended, cultivated,” pp. of colere “to till” (see colony). Rare after 17c.; revived mid-19c. with reference to ancient or primitive rituals. Meaning “devotion to a person or thing” is from 1829. (2) Cult. An organized group of people, religious or not, with whom you disagree. [Rawson] CULTURE: DEFINITIONS1) : SYSTEM OF ASSUMPTIONS, GOALS, PROPERTY RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS, RITUALS AND SIGNALS WHICH CAN AND ARE TRANSMITTED BETWEEN GENERATIONS.(a) Webster: “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior learned and transmitted knowledge to succeeding generations.” (b) Propertarianism: “a set of suppositions about the nature of man, and his preferred and necessary relation to others, and to nature. The myths that convey those relations, and attach positive and negative values to them. The property rights that codify and enforce those relations in daily life. The Gender Biases, Mating Rituals, Childrearing Rituals, Feast Rituals, Celebratory Rituals, Group Identity Signals such as dress, and learned food choice and preparation preferences. All of which can and must be learned and transmitted to succeeding generations, and which can and do survive transmission to succeeding generations. 2) : CULTURED Knowledge of or Mastery of, the cannon of the most well-crafted examples of History, Letters, and Arts, produced by members of that culture, which celebrate that culture, and demonstrating, and therefore, signaling, the Morals, ethics and manners, of those most well crafted examples. 3) SUBCULTURE (By Analogy), shortened to CULTURE by abbreviation, loading and analogy: A set of STATUS SIGNALS – the competing suppositions, myths, values, property rights, rituals and signals, of a racial (Genetic inter-temporal relations), religious (normative inter-temporal relations), or social group (generational, class, geographic, or occupational relations); 4) BY ANALOGY: POPULAR CULTURE (by analogy): A cyclical preference for a) inexpensive status signals used to illustrate coming of age, b) inexpensive status signals used to demonstrate group membership in order to create opportunities for entertainment, association, occupation or mating created by the set of goods and services marketed to people who are coming of age, participating in mating and child-rearing as well as early career development.

    CULTURES CONSIST OF A PORTFOLIO OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    CULTURAL PORTFOLIOS ARE INTERGENERATIONAL DEVICES FOR CONVEYING RULES OF ACTION, AND SIGNALS ABOUT FITNESS OF INDIVIDUALS WITHIN GROUPS MAKING USE OF THOSE RULES, THAT FACILITATE COOPERATION, WHERE COOPERATION TAKES PLACE ACCORDING TO A SET OF ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT MAN AND NATURE. [C]ultures consist of a set of myths and norms that determine the goals and limits of human action within each cultural group.. These myths and norms compose a ‘program’ consisting of a world-view about man’s relation to the universe, a series of myths, rituals and habits that reinforce that world view, and a set of property rights and obligations that by habituation rather than intent, survived generations of use in daily life and evolved to perpetuate that world view. While it is true that much cultural content is fungible, it is also true that much of it is not. That which is not, is what is unstated by the myths and traditions but which is a common assumption or implication throughout. In earlier centuries, there were fewer means of incentive with which to direct people to either cooperate, or to do as some individual or group willed. This is because there are very few means of ‘coercing’ people to cooperate toward a given end:

    • a)
    • b)
    • c)

    Early civilizations were split between the application of force, and the application of mysticism. Eventually, in large part, peoples everywhere in the world created organized means of violence for enforcing some system of property rights, even if they were the most corrupt possible. And religion usually formed a means of opposition to that violence, by determining the limits by which the population would consent to be governed – ie: institutional religion described the boundary of legitimacy, and formed a resistance movement. Wherever successful, the state then adopted that religious limitation and as often as possible took control of the religious institutions as well.

    PORTFOLIOS

    [C]ultures then, are defined by their different “portfolios” of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights. But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter – such as libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – such as progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people who understand (c) that norms are a form of property – conservatives. Norms are a commons that we all pay for. The tax we pay for them with is forgone opportunity to consume them, and absorbing the risk that no others will absorb them too. Aristocratic Egalitarian Culture (The West) prohibits not just fraud, theft and violence, but the more deceptive versions of fraud: profit from asymmetry of knowledge, and profit from involuntary transfer via externalities. Market competition itself, is an involuntary transfer via externality from people outside of the exchange (competitors). This is why humans naturally object to it, and must be trained to respect and practice competition. But this externality provides instruction and incentive to all in the market, such that we all seek greater variety and lower cost of production. It produces beneficial ends. But it is non-trivial to create the norm of respecting and practicing competition. That’s why so few cultures did it. [R]othbard was wrong. The market isn’t sufficient to maintain the norms against fraud theft and violence, and certainly not against externalities. The marginal impact of reputation in the market is lower than the marginal impact of fraud. That’s why only the west developed the high trust society – by out-breeding such that the entire nation to be an extended family – at least within it’s social classes. Without excessive out-breeding that destroyed the perception of extended family through common physical properties, and common normative behavior. In order to retain the sense of extended family, both physical properties and normative properties must be similiar enough that signaling is consisten within the group, and only class (selection quality) within the extended family differentiates between group members. Trust. The extension of familial trust to all possible exchange partners, by prohibitions on externality and asymmetry, when backed by warranty, is the composition that creates the high – trust society. Only AFTER these informal institutions are enforced by formal institutions, even if only the formal institution of the common law, will trust develop. And with trust, the velocity of trade that makes extraordinary marginal wealth possible for a group, because that group is more competitive than other groups.

  • ARISTOTLE ON DIVERSITY Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, a

    ARISTOTLE ON DIVERSITY

    Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be “a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants”. – wiki

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-19 12:06:00 UTC

  • CULTURES ARE PORTFOLIOS OF PROPERTY RIGHTS Cultures are portfolios of property r

    CULTURES ARE PORTFOLIOS OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

    Cultures are portfolios of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights.

    But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter – such as libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – such as progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people who understand (c) that norms are a form of property – conservatives. Norms are a commons that we all pay for. The tax we pay for them with is forgone opportunity to consume them, and absorbing the risk that no others will absorb them too.

    Aristocratic Egalitarian Culture (The West) prohibits not just fraud, theft and violence, but the more deceptive versions of fraud: profit from asymmetry of knowledge, and profit from involuntary transfer via externalities.

    Market competition itself, is an involuntary transfer via externality from people outside of the exchange (competitors). This is why humans naturally object to it, and must be trained to respect and practice competition. But this externality provides instruction and incentive to all in the market, such that we all seek greater variety and lower cost of production. It produces beneficial ends. But it is non-trivial to create the norm of respecting and practicing competition. That’s why so few cultures did it.

    Rothbard was wrong. The market isn’t sufficient to maintain the norms against fraud theft and violence, and certainly not against externalities. The marginal impact of reputation in the market is lower than the marginal impact of fraud. That’s why only the west developed the high trust society – by out-breeding such that the entire nation to be an extended family – at least within it’s social classes. Without excessive out-breeding that destroyed the perception of extended family through common physical properties, and common normative behavior. In order to retain the sense of extended family, both physical properties and normative properties must be similiar enough that signaling is consisten within the group, and only class (selection quality) within the extended family differentiates between group members.

    Trust. The extension of familial trust to all possible exchange partners, by prohibitions on externality and asymmetry, when backed by warranty, is the composition that creates the high – trust society. Only AFTER these informal institutions are enforced by formal institutions, even if only the formal institution of the common law, will trust develop. And with trust, the velocity of trade that makes extraordinary marginal wealth possible for a group, because that group is more competitive than other groups.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-19 01:54:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: UKRAINIAN BEAUTY Kiev Edition. Yes, women are really beau

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: UKRAINIAN BEAUTY

    Kiev Edition.

    Yes, women are really beautiful here. It’s true. Yes they are the most prized women in the world. But why?

    10 Reasons Why Ukrainian Women Are Beautiful:

    1) Women neither believe they are inferior nor feel afraid. Men are just strong gorillas that need to be kept as properly trained pets through careful management, just like children. Women are not weak. They are not afraid. They are not oppressed. They are powerful and they act like it.

    2) Women do not deny their emotions, but they also do not treat them as ‘truths’. They are physical manifestations that must be exorcised and ‘put’ somewhere so that rational thought can prevail. Western women, as a charter from the feminist movement, have adopted the posture that their emotions are both rational, justified, and often, the source of truth. (Which is my only explanation for why so many western women are literally both miserable and ‘crazy’.) Women are confident because of this. They do not fight with themselves or doubt themselves. They are not in conflict. They just experience the emotion. Exorcize it. and move on.

    This has an interesting effect on relationships here. Men are more understanding because they can separate the irrational and emotional reactions of women from the rational – providing comfort or acquiescence in the first, and friendship in the second. It’s accomplishing what western women desire, but through natural means rather than attempting to create a gender free society and denying our differences.

    3) Classes are evident but class signaling is not. You dont’ signal what you ‘are’ as much as what you either ‘have’ or ‘have control of’. This creates a very interpersonally open society. (friendly and calm.)

    4) Women dress to kill. This is because they (correctly) understand the power women have to wield, and that in an world where violence is no longer a currency, it may be true that men will hold the top positions due to loyalty and specialization, but that women will hold MOST positions because in a clerical economy, few if any positions require strength or violence. Even if they are poor, they dress well, and they are confident.

    5) The Sport-Look (clothes that allow you to be fat), and the Brittany-tramp look (close that are sport-sexy for when you aren’t fat) and the masculine-look (close that signal you can play in a man’s office world) don’t exist here (yet). That would be sacrificing feminine power.

    6) Women have relaxed faces. I don’t now if it’s a holdover from Serfdom, or from Communism, or if it’s biological, but if your face isn’t all that expressive, and you are more expressive with your body language than your face, you will look more peaceful and elegant. And the women look peaceful and elegant. (Well, aside from the shambling little babushkas that still show up now and then.)

    7) Long headed slavic tribe’s jaws are narrow which increases femininity and accentuates the size of eyes. There are round heads here too. And round heads with asian influences. But the tall thin fine featured women are a definite gene pool.

    8) They walk a lot. Cars and gas are expensive. The subway costs about a quarter (23 cents or so.) It’s safe to walk outside. Even in absurd heels.

    9) Women will not tolerate being fat any more than they will tolerate dressing poorly. Seriously. Four random women in any given restaurant here look like they’re out for auditions or photo shoots. You can tell the Americans by who is loud and dresses badly. (Guilty of the second but not the first.)

    And they are happy, friendly, and rational. It’s easier to be happy when you love yourself. And its easier to love yourself when you feel beautiful.

    10) Women choose to be beautiful. In reality, Ukraine is a melting pot of many different tribes, high middle and low germans, celts, scandinavians, poles, russians, czechs, and a mix of the south slavic peoples too (although I can’t identify them yet.) . … the list goes on. And the women aren’t, at least numerically, physically different from any other european country. But its our actions that determine our appearance. One can cultivate it or ignore it.

    Beauty is a record of good choices. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-07 11:57:00 UTC

  • REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE From; There are some pretty understandable r

    http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/THE REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE

    From; http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/

    There are some pretty understandable reasons why Seattle dresses casually.

    a) Scandinavian heritage – we don’t signal ostentatiously.

    b) When we do signal, we do so with sport or fitness. This signals that we are ‘locals’, not ‘those uncouth people.’

    c) Because we signal with sport or fitness we wear clothes that signal recreation.

    d) It’s changing, but it used to be that when you asked someone what they did, they replied with their form of recreatoin, not their job.

    e) We have a tradition of rebelling against the ‘east’ and clothing was one of those ways of demonstrating our special-ness.

    f) We imported a lot of engineers directly out of college and often attracted them with persisting the college lifestyle.

    g) The hippie movement that drove population into the northwest, with more communal to portland and more work oriented to seattle, perpetuated our natural biases toward comfortable clothes.

    h) people around the world generally signal with clothing if they have taste but less money. In the USA we signal with cars and houses. In the northwest we signal our effeteness with casualness.

    i) Our young professionals are largely from the middle class already and they work in the suburbs and drive cars, instead of walking in the city where signaling with fashion often grants you access to dating opportunities..

    j) In general, white (protestant) people signal with complexity (intellectual expression) rather than more base emotions – and seattle is the whitest large city in America.

    k) Fashion dress (street fashion) is a preoccupation of the lower middle and upper proletarian classes (most consumers.) Seattle doesn’t have an old aspiring working class looking to demonstrate their fitness for inclusion.

    l) in the attached map of the states, you’ll notice that high style over comfort areas are hispanic, and high comfort over style areas are anglo-germanic.

    In simple terms, we view ‘trying hard’ at style to be ‘gauche’. For all the reasons above.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-01 02:42:00 UTC

  • ‘WEIRDNESS’ (UNIQUENESS) OF WESTERNERS – AND AMERICANS IN PARTICULAR (You Should

    http://www.propertarianism.com/menu/reading-list/THE ‘WEIRDNESS’ (UNIQUENESS) OF WESTERNERS – AND AMERICANS IN PARTICULAR

    (You Should Read This Post. It’s a reply to the Pacific Standard article at the end of the post.)

    Dear Ethan Walters:

    Welcome to the Uncomfortable Enlightenment (or the Dark Enlightenment).

    History, Economics and Anthropology have addressed this issue for decades:

    RICHARD DUCHESENE: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    MARIjA GIMBUTAS: (Everything she has written)

    SAMUEL HUNTINGTON: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress.

    KAREN ARMSTRONG: The Great Transformation

    (Or See the reading list at: propertarianism.com/menu/reading-list/)

    We’ve learned that our enlightenment view of humanity is flawed. The purpose of that vision was to justify the taking of political power from the landed aristocracy and the church, by the emerging middle class of northern european merchants.

    That political change may have been necessary in order to create the industrial society that we live in. However, the aristocratic view of man and mankind was accurate. And our ‘enlightened’ view of the perfect natural man if only ‘set free’ is simply an error. Man is an animal that must be trained to participate in one society of another.

    Our ‘progressive’ view of humanity is flawed as well. The purpose of that vision was to justify the taking of political power by women and the working classes. The ‘progressive view’ was put forth by Marx and Freud.

    But as Friedrich Hayek said, the trend in 20th century political ideology, which was the product of Marx and Freud, will eventually be seen as a new era of mysticism – with no basis in fact. In fact, counter-to-fact.

    And that will mirror the warnings of most of the great historians: Toynbee, Gibbon, Braudel, Spengler, Quigley, Durant, Burnham, McNeil, Keegan. That we are unique and unique for circumstantial reasons, and that all of science and reason are the product of our uniqueness.

    It has only been since the progressive ideology has become received wisdom due to the ‘revisionist history’ put forth by the last generation of academics, and then followed by the collapse of western economic uniqueness, that we have begun to see scientists, and a new generation of academics begin to undermine that ideological view of man.

    Welcome to the “Dark Enlightenment”: We are unequal and Western Civ is Unique and impossible to replicate.

    Western civ is the product of individualistic aristocratic egalitarianism caused by indo european battle tactics learned as pastoral radiers. Objectivity, debate and science, and the unique western solution to the problems of politics and market are the product of the need to obtain consent from other peers, rather than obey a chosen leader.

    Then, the church created individual property rights, and created the universalism which led to the high trust society when it tried to break up the noble families, outlawed cousin marriage, and gave women property rights. Western high trust is a produced within the Hanjal line and the Lotharingian kingdom at the bottom, and the english and scandinavians at the top.

    Manorialism: or the ownership of land, and the need for men to demonstrate their conformity and reliability, as well as participate in military when needed, in order to gain access to land, created the protestant ethic. It encourage the working classes to adopt the ethics of the nobility.

    Chivalry provided a means for men regardless of land-holding to demonstrate their socials status through service -which is a unique means of status achievement we thing of as ‘heroism’ that no other society has in such abstract, non-familial terms.

    The need to ‘keep the east at bay’ using the germans, and therefore preserving german militarism was a intentional choice of the catholic countries. The western high trust society is the product of this aristocratic egalitarian individualism.

    Culture is a set of property definitions, property rights, relying upon myths, traditions and rituals to propagate those rights. It is a set of rules for sending status signals. Status signals are those things that we imitate because they give us better access to mates and opportunities. Property definitions vary from the individual to the commons on one axis, and administration of it from the individual to the state on the other. Cultures matter. Our culture matters most. Cultures are not equal, and ours was (not is) unique.

    Northern European (protestant) Americans (at least to some degree) carry this ancient aristocratic tradition with them today. It isn’t well understood that the anglo-celtic and german populations were about equal in america until the progressive strategy to take over ‘white’ america through immigration was put in place in the 60’s. (But that’s why American english speech is flatter than UK english – it’s merged with the flatter german tonal structure.)

    Americans did not have an ‘aristocracy’ or a landed church to rebel against. There was no opportunity like in europe to create a popular “US vs Them”. We retained our distaste for government, where the europeans saw themselves as taking over the government from the aristocracy and church. Instead, it became feminists and the lower classes against white protestant male culture. This is one of the reasons why other cultures think our male-female relations are ‘businesslike’ rather than intimate and affectionate.

    And quite contrary to the revisionist progressive historians, it was not luck that made we westerners successful in our ‘great divergence’. The west was a poorer, less numerous people on the edge of the bronze age who used technology, cooperation, speed and strategy to give their inferior numbers the advantage against an east that was always more brutal, totalitarian, numerous and wealthy.

    Americans have the lock on the world’s speculative capital, because we are the people least likely to abuse it through various schemes of privatization. In abstract terms, we own the stock market. and the Brits own the Bond market. The brits lend and the americans risk. You can trust an english speaker or one of the varieties of german speaker with your money. But you pretty much can’t trust anyone else in the world. And that is a cultural value that runs back 4500 years.

    We westerners apologize for our conquest and colonialism, but we have spent the past five hundred years dragging humanity out of ignorance, mysticism, totalitarianism and dirt-scratching crushing poverty, hunger and disease. We should not feel guilty for it. We should instead, require others thank us for it. For while we did it sloppily at times, we did it none the less.

    (In essence, that’s the Dark Enlightenment philosophy.)

    http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-26 03:29:00 UTC