Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • The Religion of Postmodernism as a Reformation of Christianity

    [T]HE PURPOSE OF RELIGION IS TO CONCENTRATE POLITICAL POWER Either as a resistance, or as a military force. That is the purpose of a religion. EIther to take power, or to resist power. Religions concentrate human efforts. POSTMODERNISM IS A REFORMATION OF CHRISTIANITY Postmodernism is just the most recent religion in a long history of religions. 7) Postmodernism is a reformation of Protestantism. – Resisting Capitalism in response to the failure of socialism in both theory and practice (1960ad). 6) Socialism is a reformation of catholicism – French, then german, then worldwide resistance to anglo industrial capitalism. (1850ad) 5) Protestantism is a reformation of Catholicism. – Germanic countries exiting Mediterranean taxation and occupation. (1520ad) 4) Islam is a reformation of Judaism and Christianity – Enabling arab conquest of the Byzantines and Sassanids who were exhausted by war with each other. (600ad) 3) Christianity (Catholicism) is a reformation of Judaism. – adaptation to the roman conquest. (80ad), and eventual success by mobilizing the underclasses and women. Made possible by exhaustion of seafaring Rome by conquering landed Europe. 2) Judaism is a reformation of Zoroastrianism. – Exiting persian conquest, as a means of unifying various tribes. (650bc) 1) Zoroastrianism was authored by Zarathustra (Zoroaster) ( 1500-1000bc) Exiting the stone age, and adapting to the agrarian revolution, in order to concentrate political and military power, possibly to separate western tribes from eastern tribes. Religion is the means by which we make people believe untrue things in order to get them to cooperate according to one scheme or another.

  • Rights, Punishment and Human Rights

    [W]hen someone violates NATURAL RIGHTS (life, liberty, property, by fraud, theft or violence) we punish them by removing their NATURAL RIGHTS, by imprisoning them. Natural rights are NECESSARY RIGHTS to engage in cooperation via exchanges within society: life, liberty, and property. We pay for our natural rights by forgoing our opportunity for fraud, theft and violence. We also pay for access to opportunities to interact with others by paying the cost of effort to deonstrate manners, and the cost of forgone opportunities for stealing from others by respecting ethics and morals. For violations of normative laws, we are ostracized from opportunity (boycotted) rather than punished or incarcerated. But we retain our natural rights as long as we can find someone to voluntarily exchange with us who does not refuse to boycott us because of our manners, ethics and morals. However, we do not remove anyone’s HUMAN RIGHTS any longer for any reason. This is in no small part, because we are wealthy enough that deprivation from society and consumption alone are enough to coerce people into respecting both natural laws, and for normative laws. The international declaration of human rights was created in no small part to control the abuse of individuals by communist countries. It is a DESIRED list of rights. This DESIRED list of rights is a CONTRACT between GOVERNMENTS. This contract is a TREATY. This treaty demands that member countries hold governments accountable for the treatment of individuals, and to sanction those countries if they do not. Even to the point of replacing a government for their abuses of their individuals. It is important that we understad that this charter is a treaty by governments that like a treaty for the promise of mutual defense, binds other countries such that they are required to use legal, financial and economic sanctions against countries that violate the rights that the charter agrees all people in all countries, regardless of government, possess. In effect, as a worldwide treaty, it is a worldwide constitution for that limits the powers of governemnts. This is waht RULE OF LAW means: it means that governemtns, and the people in them, are limited to the actions that are allowed in their constitutions. Rule of law does not mean that there are laws. It means that the government itself is bound by law. The Charter of human rights is a very simple document. It is vaguely divided into sections. The first few are restatements of NATURAL LAW. After that there are a variety of prohibitions against the government, that require that all people in society must be treated equally before the law. That they have the right to live ordinary lives, marry, have a family, make friends, earn a living, Articles 23, 24, 25, and 26, were necessary to gain the support of the socialist and communist countries, in the same way that the north was required to allow slavery in order to gain the signatures of the south during the american civil war. This is the primary problem with the declaration of human rights: is that these are not possible, not testable, and not achievable except in rare circumstances and for short periods of time – and they create a moral hazard as well as perverse incentives. These are POSITIVE rights. And positive rights can only exist as preferences, not rights. Article 29 specifies how you PAY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, and that is by granting them to other people equally. Rights require exchange. Without exchange the term ‘rights’ is meaningless. One does not HAVE human rights as if they fall from heavens. One is granted them by others, and pays for them over one’s lifetime by granting the same rights to others. Otherwise the document is not terribly different from the American Bill of Rights. What I hope to get accross here is that these are not divine rights, nor necesary and therefore natural rights, they are human rights, and human rights are those that we choose to require, by threat of force and economic punishment, that all governments must hold to.

  • DIVORCE / RELATIONSHIP SUCCES I am about as opposite from the postmodern, progre

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805814027/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkPREDICTING DIVORCE / RELATIONSHIP SUCCES

    I am about as opposite from the postmodern, progressive, new age, nonsensical fabricated reality that a person can be. But I do care about normal human relationships.

    John Gottman has made a career out of studying marriages both successful an failed. He has written a series of books, (all which say the same thing.) But it’s based upon pretty good science. This article is a brief summary of why relationships fail. It is why my marriage to Allora failed when the disagreements became greater than each other could tolerate.

    I remember sitting in the living room looking up at her and saying “Do you tell everyone you know how much you hate your husband?’. And countless times “I’m flooded.” Which in male terms means your brain has shut down from all the negative emotion, and you don’t have any emotions any longer, you’re just numb. It’s not that you don’t care. It’s that nothing is working at all.

    1) Harsh Start To Conversation: “When one partner begins the discussion using a harsh startup, such as being negative, accusatory or using contempt, the discussion is basically doomed to fail.”

    2) Criticism: “Why are you so selfish? It was really nasty of you to lead me on.

    You should have told me earlier that you were too tired to make love.”

    3) Contempt: Criticism can lead to contemptuous comments directed at one’s partner. Some examples of contempt are when a person uses “sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor”

    Contempt communicates disgust.

    4) Defense: Becoming defensive is the usual reaction to being treated with contempt or criticized, but it is not a solution. It simply means they don’t know what else to do.

    5) Tune Out / Stonewalling: The escalating conflict usually leads to one partner tuning out the other and stonewalling.

    6) Flooding: Flooding means that your spouse’s negativity – whether in the guise of criticism or contempt or even defensiveness – is so overwhelming and so sudden, that it leaves you disconnected, numb and confused.”

    7) Body Language: Physiological changes in the body that coincide with flooding, such as an increased heart rate, the secretion of adrenalin, and an increase in blood pressure, are the fourth sign that enables Gottman to predict divorce. These physiological changes in the body make it impossible to maintain the discussion. Creative problem solving disappears You’re left

    with the most reflexive, intellectually unsophisticated responses in your repertoire: to fight (act critical, contemptuous, or defensive) or flee (stonewall) A problem solving discussion that leads to one or both partners becoming

    flooded is doomed to fail. Consequently, their problem cannot be resolved.

    8) The next sign that a marriage is bound to end in divorce is when one

    partner’s attempts at repairing the conflict fails. Repair attempts are efforts made by the couple to deescalate the conflict.

    9) The final sign that divorce is inevitable is when the couple recalls their past

    life together with a negative view.

    ADVICE

    1) Start all discussions positively.

    2) The “repair attempt” is the happy couple’s secret weapon.

    NAGGING

    Nagging does not work. You might think that you’re helping your man, but it does not work. Your spouse will always see nagging as criticism of failure, and helping as disapproval or accusation of weakness. Men live in a world of exchanges with men, and seeking approval from women. Women live in a world of caretaking. You cannot alter this reality. We could not exist as human beings if we did otherwise.

    http://www.amazon.com/What-Predicts-Divorce-Relationship-Processes/dp/0805814027

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-31 05:21:00 UTC

  • WHY ARE HAPPY PEOPLE HAPPY? Advice for teens and twenties. Unfortunately, pervas

    WHY ARE HAPPY PEOPLE HAPPY?

    Advice for teens and twenties.

    Unfortunately, pervasive happiness comes in large part from biological predisposition due to the different productivity of inherited cerebral chemistry. These problems are exacerbated by lack of exercise, diet, low level allergic reaction, and minor illnesses that are often difficult if not impossible to detect until late in life. Thankfully prescription chemistry, exercise, and diet generally compensate for the average person long enough to change behavior and disposition.

    2) Remember that until we mature fully, from the time we start adulthood, in males, lots of previous avenues for positive emotional stimulation are being shut off, and in females, lots of possible avenues for stimulation are being exaggerated. Each by different biochemistry. These changes place extraordinary challenges on our moods as we search for ways to maintain stable pleasurable inputs amidst ether decreasing avenues for getting them, or increasing sensitivity to negatives amidst a scarcity of positives. The only known way to combat it is actually exercise and socialization. But the school system’s emphasis on keeping people of similar age together instead of mixing ages, among a majority of adults, makes it very difficult for both teens and twenties, who are surrounded by people in similar periods of biologically induced psychological confusion.

    3) What can you do? Eat clean. Get hard exercise just a few times a week. (Yes, two hour sessions of very physical sex that make you sweat do count a little bit). If you get bored with exercise it just isn’t hard enough in a short enough period. And get drugs if you need to. As a side effect, a good deal of them actually make you quite a bit smarter – albiet slowly. And that’s always good for everyone.

    4) Magic bullet? The magic bullet is team sports. It doesn’t matter which one. This allows our very human pack instinct to give you feedback without having to search for ‘spirituality’ or some other private means of achieving the feeling of safety and participation in the pack. (Yes, that’s what that spiritual feeling is caused by and why we like it so much.) As a nerd, I understand the problem with team sports, but hey, I played competitive video games. It works, just gotta get exercise elsewhere. Walking fast while shopping will do it believe it or not. Book on tape and walking fast is great for the brain. ‘Cause that nonsense you were taught from 5th-12th grade, other than math, is probably absolutely useless in today’s society. And because of multiculturalism, the teachers can’t teach you anything meaningful about history. And history is the only reasonable record of what humans actually do, rather than what we wish they did.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-30 06:58:00 UTC

  • The Signaling Properties Of Secular Democratic Humanism Versus Christian Aristocratic Egalitarianism

    [D]EMOCRATIC SECULAR HUMANISM IS A RELIGION It is based upon false premises, and counter to observable fact. It is no less mystical or absurd than an omniscient omnipotent, artificial deity. It’s purpose is to accumulate power. IT IS A WAR ON AN OLD RELIGION BY A NEW RELIGION. The equality of man, the relativity of values, the irrelevance of norms, the equality of cultures, the permanence that technical innovation will ‘save us’, and a dozen other mythos, attribute untrue properties to man and society, in an effort to cast the extended order of human cooperation and competition as an extended family. Humans do not act in this way. Even practitioners of the religion do not act this way. If they did, they would tolerate the old religion. But they don’t. And, in fact, they only tolerate any religion with lower status signals than their religion. TRADING THE HIGH TRUST SOCIETY FOR FALSE, FREE STATUS SIGNALS And those free status signals are the ‘psychological device’ that provides the incentive for adopting the new democratic religion, rather than the old religion’s promise of life after death. This is the technological innovation of democratic secular humanism: it has replaced false promise of afterlife, true status signals, true suppositions about human nature, and true economic principles, with false status signals, false suppositions about human nature, and false economic principles. The net of this new religion has been the destruction of the nuclear family and a the slow regression away from the high trust society that the west built by local outbreeding over more than a thousand years. Because trust in *kindness*, which is an emotionally loaded term for the human need for acceptance and positive status signals, is counterproductive to the economic requirement for trust in trade and contract. [IDEA: positive signals for mere existence versus positive signals for economic action.] The innovation of the west that allowed it to create greater relative wealth at lower rates of corruption, and to tolerate higher risk and innovation, finally consumer credit, was the high trust society. And we can demonstrate empirically that increases in diversity of norms and culture, even race, cause accelerating decreases in trust. Our governmental conflict is just an expression of this difference. It is NOT POSSIBLE to create a civic religion without status signals. Humans value status more than money. No civic religion will ever exist that does not. However, the question is, what actions do those signals produce in the real world? Let’s see: SIGNALS OF TRUSTWORTHINESS IN CONTRACT [A]bsolute respect for the commons and private property, Competition, Individualism, the nuclear family, truth telling, adherence to contract, and conformity to commercial norms, were innovations adopted by the western cultures under manorialism (feudalism), as people sought to demonstrate that they were fit to rent land. Males embraced chivalry because it allowed them to achieve status signals without fighting, and in turn, it allowed them to achieve status through service. Further it did not require extraordinary wealth to do services, as did fighting. [T]hat it takes a long time to change signaling strategies once the capture of fossile fuels permits industrialization, therefore freeing the woman from the drudgery of the home and the man from teh drudgery of the field, and gives us enough free wealth and time to afford to educate our young is certainly good reason to extend property rights to women, and to extend political enfranchise to all consumers and laborers. This is true. But the practical reality is our goods and services may be cheaper and the least of us we may live better than nobility of the past, but that does not change the reality that we are vastly unequal in temperament and ability, and most of us require extraordinary training and reinforcement by others to maintain the high trust society that we buit by accident was counter to intuition and behaviorally expensive to maintain. People universally demonstrate a preference for the benefits of material productivity. Always. Yet they long for the behavior of the tribe and family, despite universal and inescapable tribal poverty, and despite universal and inescapable low trust in family-dominated, in-breeding-in-extended family societies. Be careful what you wish for. You’re getting it. [P]rogressive ideology is a longing for a return to the tribe. It is cheap false status signals that produce negative economic consequences. Cultures are empirically demonstrable to be unequal, and democracy only works in the west because the west started out as aristocratic. Without western culture the west will be like every other barbaric low trust civilization on the planet. Progressive ideology is to the west what christianity was to rome. There is no difference. It is mysticism in different robes. -Curt

  • THE DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL MODEL VS ISLAMI

    THE DEMOCRATIC HUMANITARIAN RELIGION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL MODEL VS ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM MASQUERADING AS A RELIGION.

    (And aristocracy, liberty and reason a casualty of their mysticisms.)

    “The many varieties of Socialism, Syndicalism, Radicalism,Tolstoyism, pacifism, humanitarianism, Solidarism, and so on, form a sum that may be said to belong to the democratic religion, much as there was a sum of numberless sects in the early days of the Christian religion. We are now witnessing the rise and dominance of the democratic religion just as the men of the first centuries of our era witnessed the rise of the Christian religion and the beginnings of its dominion. The two phenomena present many significant analogies.

    …. The social value of both those two religions lies not in the least in their respective theologies, but in the sentiments that they express. As regards determining the social value of Marxism, to know whether Marx’s theory of “surplus value” is false or true is about as important as knowing whether and how baptism eradicates sin in trying to determine the social value of Christianity–and that is of no importance at all.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-24 09:51:00 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

  • KEEPING PERSONAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ON THE SAME PAGE ‘Curt, Why do you write both

    KEEPING PERSONAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ON THE SAME PAGE

    ‘Curt, Why do you write both personal and philosophical posts on the same facebook account?’

    The answer is that we humans interpret things we dont understand through the lenses available to us, and the first lens we use is to judge the author. Because we seek out his intent, so that we can extrapolate his bias. Rather than spend the effort trying to understand his work.

    I discovered quite early on, that people constructed a vision of me based upon my philosophical and political writing that was the polar opposite of my personality.

    So, first, my work is truly inseparable from my life. And second, I find that the fact that I’m more than a bit silly, ‘humanizes’ the interpretation of my work, and intellectualizes people’s interpretation of me as a person.

    Now, I’m not two months, almost three months late kicking off the Propertarian Institute (the software we’re building is a pretty difficult distraction).

    And when that happens, I’ll separate the two streams of thought and post to my page and site FROM the Propertarian site. When it’s a good thing. But I have to let the editor have control of that. So FB for sketches and Propertarianism and the PI site for more thoughtful work.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-16 05:33:00 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

  • METAPHYSICS I am pretty convinced that all the evidence available to us today co

    METAPHYSICS

    I am pretty convinced that all the evidence available to us today confirms that we experience the material universe correspondingly.

    That our perception can be extended to both micro and macro scales through devices.

    That our perception of causal relations can be extended through recording information at micro, normal, and macro scales and then replaying these recordings at higher speed so that patterns emerge within our visible perceptions.

    That our perception of such causal relations is limited by the very small number of axis of causality we can cognitively identify.

    That our ability to improve this process of causal analysis is limited by our current concept of mathematics.

    That our deductive capabilities are jaundiced by our various cognitive biases.

    That our particular human preferences limit our ability to reason clearly.

    That the variation in human ability and rationality limit our collective accomplishment.

    And that superior intelligence, memory, and perception would only increase the rate at which we comprehend these relations

    That superior distributions of knowledge and intelligence would further improve that rate.

    And that different biases and preferences would do little more than impede that understanding in different ways.

    But there is little if any evidence that the vast metaphysical and epistemological distraction enthralling the philosophical profession has produced insight or value.

    Humans must act. All else is entertainment.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-26 05:58:00 UTC