Curt Doolittle

Theme: Agency

  • IS THERE ANY BETTER FEELING THAN WHEN YOUR KIDS HUG YOU? I dunno. When my daught

    IS THERE ANY BETTER FEELING THAN WHEN YOUR KIDS HUG YOU?

    I dunno. When my daughter hugs me it’s like life has some meaning after all. 🙂 The rest is just making license plates.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-28 13:01:00 UTC

  • PSYCHOLOGICAL GAME OF THE DAY. Pulling out of a hotel parking lot in to traffic.

    PSYCHOLOGICAL GAME OF THE DAY.

    Pulling out of a hotel parking lot in to traffic.

    Waiting.

    Blonde boy, thin hair, black cap with skateboard asks “please. Please. Give me your car. Please?”

    Mind races through multitude of life lessons i might deliver at this moment.

    I choose one.

    “What will you trade me for it?”

    Shock. Open mouth. Silence. Fantasies fill his mind.

    Before he can gater his wits “I want your soul.”

    Incomprehension. Twinge of fear.

    “I am the devil. I want your soul.”. I smile. “For the car.”

    Half smile mixed with confusion. “yes!?”

    “I thought so. I have it already.”

    Smile. Notice a few horrified adult onlookers. Pull into traffic.

    Never going to forget that moment. I’m sure.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-26 17:16:00 UTC

  • WHY ARE FATHERS BETTER SINGLE PARENTS? Ok. So the data is beginning to look like

    WHY ARE FATHERS BETTER SINGLE PARENTS?

    Ok. So the data is beginning to look like single fathers are much better parents producing happier and more successful children than single mothers.

    Given the vast propaganda to the contrary, and the demonization of men by the feminist movement, why would this be true?

    Is there some sort of selection bias? It looks like the researchers try to compensate for it in their models. What else could it be? Is it income or class related? (I suspect that it’s skewed heavily to the right). But the answer doesn’t just leap out at me.

    There is something very valuable to be learned about parenting, and society in answering this question.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-26 13:06:00 UTC

  • GOOD FRIENDS, GOOD BUSINESS, GOOD FAMILY : GOOD LIFE You know I have issues like

    GOOD FRIENDS, GOOD BUSINESS, GOOD FAMILY : GOOD LIFE

    You know I have issues like everyone else, like post-divorce legal nonsense, and a daily war with a touch of Aspergers that requires an extraordinary and unwavering effort of will to contain – I need more than a finger stuck in the dike to hold it back. And god knows I’ve had enough health problems to take down a dinosaur — but I keep on fighting the good fight.

    But if a man puts together a business, has good friends to run it with, has good family to love and be loved by, and at least one hobby or interest that allows him to escape into a cave and relax, then life is pretty good.

    Life is pretty good — even if you have all sorts of problems. It’s pretty good.

    (PS: if it weren’t for the government it’d be great, not good.) 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-21 10:45:00 UTC

  • IGNORANCE AND REPRODUCTION IN POLITICAL AGREEMENTS ON IGNORANCE The problems wit

    IGNORANCE AND REPRODUCTION IN POLITICAL AGREEMENTS

    ON IGNORANCE

    The problems with erasing ignorance are, in stages, a) Having knowledge of your own ignorance on a topic b) Having sufficient knowledge to discount what passes for popular knowledge of the topic. c) Having sufficient knowledge of a topic that you do not rely upon the opinions of others for your own. d) Sufficient knowledge of a topic to know the current limit of understanding in the topic. e) sufficient knowledge of a topic to extend the limit of understanding

    In other words, ignorance is a spectrum, and at each point in that spectrum listed above,

    The only reason to claim knowledge is to act or to coerce. To act risks only your time, effort and money. To coerce by argument is to take from others time, effort and money from that which they plan to achieve to something you prefer to achieve.

    We can never say we have certain knowledge. Only that we have erased all possible ignorance, and have embarked upon the process of invention.

    We can only say we have the knowledge required to take action, and the self awareness of our ignorance to know the current stage of the uselessness of our opinons.

    Since politics is not a process of debate for agreement on true statements but at best, agreement on consensual statements, or at worst, under majority rule, agreement by one group to oppress another — and since political debates must be made in a state of necessary ignorance about the nature and future of man, if not the resources available at the moment, they are, in fact, arguments made in ignorance.

    And since political decisions are made in ignorance, they must be made according to some method or other.

    Demonstrably, human beings make political decisions on moral instinct. And the interesting thing, is that by and large, moral instinct reflects their reproductive strategy.

    And with this understanding we see how simple all of this nonsense we call politics really is. A complex device for conducting evolution of ourselves and our allies by the proxy violence of government rather than the direct violence of the human body.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-21 10:13:00 UTC

  • HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS It’s not something with empirical support, just an obs

    HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS

    It’s not something with empirical support, just an observation that’s proven consistent over a lifetime: most unhappiness is the result of wishing someone else would act in a way that you wish they would, our by you acting differently from how someone else wishes you would.

    Very few of us manage to realize the obvious fact that the world is absolutely overflowing with human beings. And you’re better off looking around for those people who you don’t want to act differently, and who don’t want you to act differently than you ever will be trying to change others or, sometimes, changing yourself.

    It’s a demonstration of intelligence to make the choice to seek out others. It’s a demonstration of wisdom to know whether or not to change yourself. But only a fool tries to change others to suit one’s preferences. And thats mostly why the world is full of unhappy fools.

    Unfortunately, family and familiar relations are cheap entertainment and security, many and people prefer to buy consistently unpleasant familial and familiar entertainment at low cost rather than invest in new relations us care far less about changing our familial relations, and far more about tolerating them. This isn’t so much just foolishness, but laziness or the poverty of the malcontented mind.

    But the ability to joyfully tolerate unhappy family members who you wish would act differently, or who wish you would act differently, is a product of the number and quality of relationships who wish neither. So emotional wealth which we call happiness is the result of finding and cultivating those relationships.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-16 16:23:00 UTC

  • A CHAT ON GENDER RELATIONS : THE CONSTRAINT OF ALPHAS (From a chat with Shan) SH

    A CHAT ON GENDER RELATIONS : THE CONSTRAINT OF ALPHAS

    (From a chat with Shan)

    SHAN

    I have a cold…but it is just a woman cold…so it will probably be gone tomorrow. 😉

    CURT

    Love it. I wish I would get woman colds rather than man colds. 🙂

    SHAN

    Just one more reason to consider a sex change.

    CURT

    Um. No. Ack.

    SHAN

    You could be so much more clear headed …and have amazing intuitive powers!

    CURT

    It’s just safer, even in THIS conversation with an exceptionally wise and rational woman, to choose as we men do in ALL conversations with women, to allow any woman to preserve their illusions of rationality and circumstantial superiority. 🙂

    The purpose of women’s gossip, nagging, conjecture, impulsivity and emotional irrationalism, is to constrain alphas from within a position of perpetual weakness. First to motivate their female peers, who then motivate their male mates and relations, to constrain power-seeking alphas. Women do this not with reason, but with complaint, distortion and annoyance.

    Alphas are a problem both for males and females. But males must cooperate to take down an alpha.

    There is a small body of work at present that suggests that the suppression of alphas by gossip is the primary reason for the development of language, not as was previously thought, coordination in hunting. Or that cooperation evolved both in hunting, and in constraint of alphas in tandem.

    This is collective rallying through gossip is the power of women. It is the only power of women. Males are demonstrably superior both physically and mentally, at least as a group, because males SPECIALIZE. And while men may not understand the power of women in the sense that they can articulate it. They feel it. 🙂

    But I, like most men, am quite aware of the balance between our superiority and the power of women to rally other men to suppress us. Unfortunately for me, as a specializing alpha, I’m entirely conscious of what’s going on. 🙂

    If this does not illustrate what is occurring in the sea change that is taking place in western democracies as little more than an expression of feminine instincts, then nothing will. 🙂

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-07 07:23:00 UTC

  • HOW TO TELL A CHILD ABOUT THE TRAGEDIES THAT RESULT FROM MENTAL ILLNESS CHILD: “

    HOW TO TELL A CHILD ABOUT THE TRAGEDIES THAT RESULT FROM MENTAL ILLNESS

    CHILD: “What does mental illness mean?”

    PARENT: “That’s a great question. I’ll try to do my best to explain it.

    “So, do you know how when you first wake up from a dream that you aren’t sure what’s going on? And how you can’t tell whether the dream or what you are seeing is real? and how the mood from the dream stays with you for a long time after you are awake? Well, mental illness is sort of like that. There are ideas like dreams in people’s heads and they can’t make the dream or the mood go away. Sometimes they can take medicine to help the feeling go away. But not always.

    “Do you know how, If you get sick that you will not always think the same as you do when you are well? This just means your body is not working right while you are sick, and when your body doesn’t work right it affects your brain. For people with mental illness, they are usually sick in some way or another that affects their brain. Some of this sickness they are born with. And some of it they develop over time because of illness or an accident.

    “Do you know how when you are tired, or sick or have a headache that you have no patience? And then you get angry at things that would not make you angry if you felt well? People with mental illness feel angry and have no patience like that all the time, and it never goes away. So, just like you might be frustrated or angry because you’re tired or don’t feel well, they become very frustrated and very angry because they don’t feel well, and they can’t make the feeling go away.

    “And do you know how you can even get made at people you love, like your mother when you are sick, or tired, or frustrated, and how you say things you don’t really mean, or do things that you feel bad about afterward? People with mental illness say and do things to others because they are tired, or frustrated or sick and they want to fix their pain, and because they aren’t thinking the right way, they often choose bad ways of trying to fix their pain.

    “For some of these people, medicine can help them. For other people we don’t yet have medicine to help them. And for many people they don’t like the medicine so they don’t take it.

    “We decided a long time ago, back in the 1960’s, that it was’t right to lock people with mental illness in hospitals. Partly because it is very expensive to care for them. And when we did that we decided that it was better to risk having a few tragedies than it is to lock people in hospitals. But we still aren’t sure we made the right decision.

    “Does that help?”

    CHILD: “…..um… I think so. They are sick, they are tired of being sick, and they are angry, and they aren’t’ thinking right, so they try to stop the pain they feel the wrong way”. “And we don’t want to put them in hospitals so it’s expensive. So we let them kill children in schools to save money…..”

    PARENT “Now, go explain it to some adults. They don’t get it either. :)”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-24 10:59:00 UTC

  • IS IT TRUE THAT WEALTH MAKES A PEOPLE STUPID AND OF NECESITY SELFISH? I’m strugg

    IS IT TRUE THAT WEALTH MAKES A PEOPLE STUPID AND OF NECESITY SELFISH?

    I’m struggling with this problem. What we call enlightenment individualism is important in the sense that we must have several private property in order to have individual incentives to act, and out of self interest, to act in the interest of extra-familial “others”.

    But the wealth that results from these incentives to produce gives us freedom to buy the luxury of spatial freedom. And with it, the luxury of freedom from daily compromise with others.

    Society requires information systems that compensate fir our limited perception, knowledge and comprehension. The first is interpersonal compromise. the second is the market. The third is money. The fourth is accounting.

    This is society.

    But without interpersonal compromise. Can we in fact maintain those dependent institutions.

    I am not yet sure.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 00:26:00 UTC

  • THE ERAS IF ONE’S LIFE How do you break down your life into sets of memories? I

    THE ERAS IF ONE’S LIFE

    How do you break down your life into sets of memories?

    I don’t think anyone uses years. Years measure. They don’t explain.

    I think in terms of jobs and women. After that, cars. The women and jobs are connected. The cars aren’t. 🙂

    My friends stay constant over time. So that doesn’t categorize anything.

    I haven’t thought about what that means.

    Just curious how others think of their lives. Whether systems are isolated like that or a continuity of relations. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-22 11:57:00 UTC