Curt Doolittle

Theme: Civilization

  • The Steppe Manufactures Aggression?

    SO IS THIS RIGHT?

    • Africa generated variation because it is actually quite a hostile climate.
      the first waves out were not aggressive people.
    • Each new wave has been more aggressive than the last, and exterminated, raped, mated with, or ate the previous generation.
    • At some point the steppe and desert started breeding aggression because of herding.
    • The steppe took over from Africa as the primary means of evolving increased aggression.
    • This process has continued with the Indian civilization first to be exterminated, then the Iranian and byzantine. Then the many attacks on Europe. The conquest and conversion of Russia to an aggressive steppe culture.
    • Islam is an adaptation of religion for steppe and desert cultures.
    • Islam is the most aggressive religion-political system yet.
    • Only the Chinese are wiling to resist it.
    Is this right?

  • The Steppe Manufactures Aggression?

    SO IS THIS RIGHT?

    • Africa generated variation because it is actually quite a hostile climate.
      the first waves out were not aggressive people.
    • Each new wave has been more aggressive than the last, and exterminated, raped, mated with, or ate the previous generation.
    • At some point the steppe and desert started breeding aggression because of herding.
    • The steppe took over from Africa as the primary means of evolving increased aggression.
    • This process has continued with the Indian civilization first to be exterminated, then the Iranian and byzantine. Then the many attacks on Europe. The conquest and conversion of Russia to an aggressive steppe culture.
    • Islam is an adaptation of religion for steppe and desert cultures.
    • Islam is the most aggressive religion-political system yet.
    • Only the Chinese are wiling to resist it.
    Is this right?

  • How Far Are You Willing To Go?

    [H]OW FAR ARE YOU WILLING TO GO? To protect your family? To protect your tribe? To protect your civilization? To protect mankind?

    What are you willing to do? Talk is cheap. Gossip is ineffective. The only solution is to raise the cost of the status quo until it is intolerable.

    Source: (5) Curt Doolittle

  • How Far Are You Willing To Go?

    [H]OW FAR ARE YOU WILLING TO GO? To protect your family? To protect your tribe? To protect your civilization? To protect mankind?

    What are you willing to do? Talk is cheap. Gossip is ineffective. The only solution is to raise the cost of the status quo until it is intolerable.

    Source: (5) Curt Doolittle

  • Michael Philip on Malthus (Smart)

    [F]rom Michael Philip

    I view Malthus as a tempered social revisionist who knocked down myths, thought in terms of social science mechanisms (he had both supply and demand and Keynesian macro in surprisingly sophisticated forms, not to mention an early form of Darwin’s theory of evolution), and was painfully aware of the importance of contingent human choices. He is one of the five most underrated, and also least understood, economists. To be sure, he favored small government and opposed the Poor Laws. But he was skeptical enough about the notion of a voluntary self-regulating order that I would not quite call him a classical liberal. I read his economics as starting with the Bible, and asking whether any mechanisms might bring us to a less tragic outcome than what is found in the Old Testament. He was never quite sure of the answer, and his mix of moralizing and skepticism later attracted Keynes.

  • Michael Philip on Malthus (Smart)

    [F]rom Michael Philip

    I view Malthus as a tempered social revisionist who knocked down myths, thought in terms of social science mechanisms (he had both supply and demand and Keynesian macro in surprisingly sophisticated forms, not to mention an early form of Darwin’s theory of evolution), and was painfully aware of the importance of contingent human choices. He is one of the five most underrated, and also least understood, economists. To be sure, he favored small government and opposed the Poor Laws. But he was skeptical enough about the notion of a voluntary self-regulating order that I would not quite call him a classical liberal. I read his economics as starting with the Bible, and asking whether any mechanisms might bring us to a less tragic outcome than what is found in the Old Testament. He was never quite sure of the answer, and his mix of moralizing and skepticism later attracted Keynes.

  • Taleb is On Board with Tribalism

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb
    Why GREECE, GREXIT, and “EUROPE” are an unnatural proto-Nazi “Aryan” construction — or why putting Teutons and Greeks together isn’t the smartest (and most stable) idea. Nor is it natural. The least *unnatural* union for Greece is some sort of *loose* Mediterranean League of City States (and another minor Balkan connection). But again, it would need to stay fuzzy –i.e., should you want to use history/culture, use them properly (“annales” style). + There are two natural cultural (eventually leading by mixing to ethnic) demarcations: butter vs olive oil (and eventually a third, the palm tree). The demarcation is robust: if people have the same food, they are the same (or eventually through mixing) become the same. Now if a nonblind but deaf Martian visited Turkey and Greece, he would think they are the same people (same with Lebanon and Western Syria). If words are different, body language in the Levant, Greece, Turkey and Southern Italy is similar. “Una faccia, una razza”. But a bureaucrat blinded by constructions would put the Greek in the same unit as the German, and bundle the Turk with the Huns in the Altai mountains near China. + But Mediterraneans are integrated as a socio-cultural unit. This is not just recent; the integration is 5000 years old in the East and 3000 in the West. The trend to “Europeanize” came with German scholarship which starting in 1820s (one Müller) tried to kill any Levantine/Babylonian connection to Greece, trying to give Germany some nobility in its historical roots, while French scholarship was until then considering Greece as deeply rooted in the Levant and Asia Minor, as a continuum from Babylon to the Phoenicians to classical Greece (mythology says that Europa herself was Phoenician). The rise of antisemitism played a part: the Teutonic cultural separation from the Levantine Canaanite race (the Jews and Phoenicians had near-identical language and ethnicity). + The Levant and what is now Greece spent at least 1000 years in the same political unit Rome-Byzantium and another few hunded in the Ottoman Empire; the Greeks and the Germans have now about 40 years together. + The nation-state started integrating the Mediterranean people. During the 19th Century only a few coastal cities such as Marseille and Toulon in Southern France spoke French, the rest spoke Provencal or Catalan. + The idea of a Mediterranean unit is not popular. Partly because it has been linked to Mussolini. + The Mycenians did not use a Semitic language (linear B). But the word Knossos (the capital) means “settlement” in Phoenician. + If a French person looks like a Mediterranean and speaks French, it is by colonization. The same applies to the “Aryanization” of Greece, to the “Turkification” of Asia Minor, and the “Arabization” of Syria or the “Aryanization” of India. Arian/Semitic/Hun is not a distinction beyond the language spoken.

  • Taleb is On Board with Tribalism

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb
    Why GREECE, GREXIT, and “EUROPE” are an unnatural proto-Nazi “Aryan” construction — or why putting Teutons and Greeks together isn’t the smartest (and most stable) idea. Nor is it natural. The least *unnatural* union for Greece is some sort of *loose* Mediterranean League of City States (and another minor Balkan connection). But again, it would need to stay fuzzy –i.e., should you want to use history/culture, use them properly (“annales” style). + There are two natural cultural (eventually leading by mixing to ethnic) demarcations: butter vs olive oil (and eventually a third, the palm tree). The demarcation is robust: if people have the same food, they are the same (or eventually through mixing) become the same. Now if a nonblind but deaf Martian visited Turkey and Greece, he would think they are the same people (same with Lebanon and Western Syria). If words are different, body language in the Levant, Greece, Turkey and Southern Italy is similar. “Una faccia, una razza”. But a bureaucrat blinded by constructions would put the Greek in the same unit as the German, and bundle the Turk with the Huns in the Altai mountains near China. + But Mediterraneans are integrated as a socio-cultural unit. This is not just recent; the integration is 5000 years old in the East and 3000 in the West. The trend to “Europeanize” came with German scholarship which starting in 1820s (one Müller) tried to kill any Levantine/Babylonian connection to Greece, trying to give Germany some nobility in its historical roots, while French scholarship was until then considering Greece as deeply rooted in the Levant and Asia Minor, as a continuum from Babylon to the Phoenicians to classical Greece (mythology says that Europa herself was Phoenician). The rise of antisemitism played a part: the Teutonic cultural separation from the Levantine Canaanite race (the Jews and Phoenicians had near-identical language and ethnicity). + The Levant and what is now Greece spent at least 1000 years in the same political unit Rome-Byzantium and another few hunded in the Ottoman Empire; the Greeks and the Germans have now about 40 years together. + The nation-state started integrating the Mediterranean people. During the 19th Century only a few coastal cities such as Marseille and Toulon in Southern France spoke French, the rest spoke Provencal or Catalan. + The idea of a Mediterranean unit is not popular. Partly because it has been linked to Mussolini. + The Mycenians did not use a Semitic language (linear B). But the word Knossos (the capital) means “settlement” in Phoenician. + If a French person looks like a Mediterranean and speaks French, it is by colonization. The same applies to the “Aryanization” of Greece, to the “Turkification” of Asia Minor, and the “Arabization” of Syria or the “Aryanization” of India. Arian/Semitic/Hun is not a distinction beyond the language spoken.

  • Speciation is Less Genetic and More Philosophical, Normative and Institutional

    (important) (alternate theory of man) [M]an adapts through ideas. Speciation in man is determined by his ideas: philosophical, normative and institutional. Man’s genes adapt largely through changes in distributions of reproductive desirability, aggression, intelligence, and impulsivity. These differences do not show up in our current level of genetic study, yet they determine our futures, because our futures are determined by how we compete with one another’s tribes.

    Different civilizations are different species. This defeats the genetic argument to the similarity of man. Forever. That argument is dead. This one reigns.

    Source: (4) Curt Doolittle

  • Speciation is Less Genetic and More Philosophical, Normative and Institutional

    (important) (alternate theory of man) [M]an adapts through ideas. Speciation in man is determined by his ideas: philosophical, normative and institutional. Man’s genes adapt largely through changes in distributions of reproductive desirability, aggression, intelligence, and impulsivity. These differences do not show up in our current level of genetic study, yet they determine our futures, because our futures are determined by how we compete with one another’s tribes.

    Different civilizations are different species. This defeats the genetic argument to the similarity of man. Forever. That argument is dead. This one reigns.

    Source: (4) Curt Doolittle