Curt Doolittle

Theme: Civilization

  • “THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION” : WESTERN POSITIVISM : THE SIX RULES OF PREVENTION :

    “THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION” : WESTERN POSITIVISM : THE SIX RULES OF PREVENTION : THE SYSTEMATIC WESTERN ADOPTION OF JEWISH OBSCURANTISM

    (insight)

    The interesting thing about western culture, is the underlying assumption that we can CHANGE THE WORLD to suit our desires. It’s a POSITIVE outlook on life. Life isn’t suffering or difficult. Its an opportunity for heroisim and GLORY. “The purpose of life is to bend nature to our will, such that we leave the world better for having lived in it.”

    Think about the rest of the world’s “golden rule” and the anglo saxon “silver rule”. While they say “do unto others” we say “do not do unto others, that which you would not have done unto you.” The implied sovereignty in the Anglo Silver Rule is quite different from the slavish peasantry implied in the Golden Rule.

    WESTERN CIV is the culture of PREVENTION, under the ASSUMPTION that we can achieve our desires if no external entity PREVENTS IT. So our goal is to let everyone pursue their desires, and for us to pursue our mutual desires, and to PREVENT anyone from impeding that process. Nature is beautiful for this reason, as is man, as is life. Because it is not a struggle for the opportunity to pursue one’s fancy, it is a struggle only to prevent those from preventing us from pursuing our fancies.

    This is much more English a vision than the German vision of accomplishing the same thru duty.

    THE MAGIC LAWS OF THE CULTURE OF PREVENTION

    1) PREVENT THE USE OF POWER : DECENTRALIZATION, BALANCE OF FORCES, COMPETITION, MILITIA, SOVEREIGNTY

    2) PREVENT VIOLENCE THEFT AND FREE RIDING : PRIVATE PROPERTY AND COMMON LAW, RIGOROUS NORMS

    3) PREVENT LOSS OF CAPITAL : FORCE ALL CONFLICT INTO THE MARKET WHERE IT PRODUCES CAPITAL RATHER THAN DESTROYS IT

    4) PREVENT THE IMMORAL SOCIETY OF THE EXTENDED FAMILY : NUCLEAR FAMILY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

    5) PREVENT CONQUEST BY SUPERIOR FORCES : RELY ON TECHNOLOGY, PROFESSIONAL WARRIORS, AND THE MILITIA, TO MAKE USE OF INFERIOR NUMBERS AND WEALTH.

    6) PREVENT FRAUD BY OBSCURANTISM : TRUTH, SCIENCE, AND OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE

    THE CULTURE THAT DECRIES HUBRIS

    Greek mythology would only be created by a people who had such confidence that their warning would be a universal caution against any incidence of hubris. It is the mythology of a cautious, conservative, but confident people. The same is true for Germanic mythology. Albeit Christianity tries desperately to tame it by directing it to positive uses. The church could not defend against the Normans so they directed them to fighting the crusades. Not that the crusades were not a good use of men. But that it gave vent to the warrior ethos. Chivalric codes did the rest by allowing warriors, or those who could not afford to be, or those not able to be, to demonstrate heroism through service.

    ON THE WESTERN ADOPTION OF JEWISH OBSCURANTISM

    Unfortunately Jewish culture has mastered the art of obscurantism, pseudo-rationality and pseudo-science, as a means of undermining land-holder moral and social codes, and we have failed to convert them to our aristocratic doctrine. Or we had succeeded prior to the second world war, when American Jewry and Scotts Presbyterians were indistinguishable from one another, and both doing our civilization justice. Since them, we have legions of westerners in university settings doing the same, since Freud, Marx, Cantor gave birth to the Bolsheviks, the Frankfurt School and the Postmodernists took control of the university in an effort to claim for themselves what had previously been the social power of the church.

    Thought leadership in obscurantism has, since then, become a western profession thanks to Kant, Heidegger, Rorty, Adorno, Foucault. Rawls tried to resurrect it with his Victorian parlor trick, and Hayek alone could not hold them back, because he confused psychology with the necessity of calculation and did not yet have the analogy of computer science to help him solve the problem as we propertarians have.

    Mises and Rothbard took us again, into another Jewish pseudo-science, which Hoppe partly rescued us from, and which I’m trying to rescue us from entirely.

    But the real heavy lifting has been done, as always in the west, by empirical scientists in the Anglo tradition, leaving the rationalists in the continental tradition, once again, searching for some form of obscurantism to justify their tyrannical appropriation from the masses, and the meritocratic natural aristocracy that would arise without their predation on them by means of force of government, and various modes of obscurantist language.

    Meanwhile at home, as means of resisting the state, the religious right uses a time honored form of obscurantism themselves to save their society from conquest by the predatory state bureaucracy.

    OBSCURANT LANGUAGE IS IMMORAL BECAUSE IT IS FRAUD. IF YOU CANNOT DESCRIBE IT IN THE LANGUAGE OF ACTION (AS OPERATIONS) THEN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. IF YOU USE OBSCURANT LANGUAGE YOU ARE LYING, WHETHER YOU UNDERSTAND IT OPERATIONALLY OR NOT.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 08:39:00 UTC

  • SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM Science helps

    SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM

    Science helps us understand causality:

    (a) incentives.

    (b) repetition.

    (c) emergent behavior

    (d) unintended consequences.

    I complain about most mystical religions for the same reason. Buddhism is the least bad of the bad.

    A friend just posted excerpts from the Dali Lama’s book. And while I find practitioners non-threatening, the argument troubles me. The argument that we should unite science and religion. Because the tradition in buddhist thought is that we explore the self. But, it is much less the process of exploration than it is the process of manufacture. The mind is emergent, not existent.

    If we look at the incentives it is a less political religion, because it is a more personal philosophy. We tend to attribute to buddhism less harm, because it is a personal, rather than political philosophy: a reformation of hinduism from the political to the personal.

    But there is no need to reconcile religion and science. We have. History as mythology. Heroes as gods. Politics as ritual. Science as personal philosophy. The participatory civil society so unique to the west. The civil society that our government, like the Chinese government, has actively destroyed by exporting responsibility for society to the bureaucracy.

    Now, it may be that this pagan religion of history, science and reason is focused on the group rather than the self. And it may be that this pagan religion is non-platonic. And it may be that this pagan religion is less INTUITIVE, but equally EMERGENT, and produces superior EXTERNALITIES by focusing human thought on cooperation, rather than introspection.

    It may be that this pagan religion is an aristocratic religion and that the buddhism, like most other religions, must be allegorical because it is not possible for all humans to grasp science and reason.

    It may be that the aristocratic political, and the commoner-introspective, are compatible. But I do not think that the civil society can tolerate it. And I this one of the reasons that buddhism feels more acceptable today to us – we have surrendered the civil society to the state, and become subjects, and can NO LONGER FIND SATISFACTION by participating in the civil society.

    Buddhism is escapism. Powerlessness. Acceptance of the world as it is. It masks the ease of intuitive internal obsession as the excuse not to engage in the difficulty of unintuitive, contemplation. It is so because the individual is indeed POWERLESS in the imperial bureaucratic society. Just as he is POWERFUL in the civil, participatory, society.

    Western man seeks to transform the world to his will. Eastern to accept and conform to the world. This is the fundamental difference between our cultures. They submit. We participate.

    The emergent mind in the practice of science produces the Flynn effect of making us all constantly smarter. And wealthier. And more healthy.

    The reason we are in conflict is that we are both scientifically AND we have surrendered the CIVIL SOCIETY to the BUREAUCRATIC STATE, and as such we seek a new religion, because our real religion CIVIC PARTICIPATION has been taken from us, in order to create worship of the state.

    The state did not kill christianity. Christianity was just ritual. The state killed our civic society.

    If you grasp this the will understand the interrelatedness of our mental models of the world, and the trivial simplicity of the organized religions compared to the CIVIL SOCIETY of the west, which, operating as city states of extended families, created the high trust society, and all the prosperity that came from it.

    – Curt Doolittle. Kiev.

    NOTE

    Allegorical language is the language of deception. It may be the language of self-deception. It may be the language of political deception. But it is the vehicle for deception. Science speaks in operational language so that we cannot so easily engage in deception under the guise of inarticulate language.

    Operational language

    Historical Language

    Allegorical Langauge

    Mystical Language

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 04:25:00 UTC

  • THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY (idea) I t

    THE NEW HOLIDAY: FRIDAY THE 13TH : TEMPLARS DAY : BANKING AND LIBERTY

    (idea)

    I think I’m going to celebrate every Friday the 13th as Templar Day! A ‘High Holiday’. 🙂

    Friday, 13 December 2013

    Friday, 13 June 2014

    Friday, 13 February 2015

    Friday, 13 March 2015

    Friday, 13 November 2015

    Friday, 13 May 2016

    Friday, 13 January 2016

    Friday, 13 October 2016

    COMMENT: FREEDOM AND BANKING

    If you have a bank, and you have weapons, you can form a state within a state. The mormons use an unpleasantly ridiculous doctrine to achieve this state within a state. But there is no need for a ridiculous doctrine. History is a sufficient mythology, and credit, and community, a sufficient incentive. People, money, and guns control geography.

    Banks are necessary for us to cooperate anonymously with one another: without understanding what each of us does. Money and credit are information systems, and a bank is a market for cooperation.

    TEMPLAR BANKERS

    “Though initially an Order of poor monks, the official papal sanction made the Knights Templar a charity across Europe. Further resources came in when members joined the Order, as they had to take oaths of poverty, and therefore often donated large amounts of their original cash or property to the Order. Additional revenue came from business dealings. Since the monks themselves were sworn to poverty, but had the strength of a large and trusted international infrastructure behind them, nobles would occasionally use them as a kind of bank or power of attorney. If a noble wished to join the Crusades, this might entail an absence of years from their home. So some nobles would place all of their wealth and businesses under the control of Templars, to safeguard it for them until their return. The Order’s financial power became substantial, and the majority of the Order’s infrastructure was devoted not to combat, but to economic pursuits.

    “By 1150, the Order’s original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves.[5][6][7] While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to “withdraw” funds from their accounts. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars.

    “The Knights’ involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money, as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars’ involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, “Since they weren’t allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead.”

    “Their holdings were necessary to support their campaigns; in 1180, a Burgundian noble required 3 square kilometres of estate to support himself as a knight, and by 1260 this had risen to 15.6 km². The Order potentially supported up to 4,000 horses and pack animals at any given time, if provisions of the rule were followed; these horses had extremely high maintenance costs due to the heat in Outremer (Crusader states at the Eastern Mediterranean), and had high mortality rates due to both disease and the Turkish bowmen strategy of aiming at a knight’s horse rather than the knight himself. In addition, the high mortality rates of the knights in the East (regularly ninety percent in battle, not including wounded) resulted in extremely high campaign costs due to the need to recruit and train more knights. In 1244, at the battle of La Forbie, where only thirty-three of 300 knights survived, it is estimated the financial loss was equivalent to one-ninth of the entire Capetian yearly revenue.

    “The Templars’ political connections and awareness of the essentially urban and commercial nature of the Outremer communities led the Order to a position of significant power, both in Europe and the Holy Land.[citation needed] They owned large tracts of land both in Europe and the Middle East, built churches and castles, bought farms and vineyards, were involved in manufacturing and import/export, had their own fleet of ships, and for a time even “owned” the entire island of Cyprus.”

    “The Templars were already a “state within a state”, were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes, and had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely through all European borders. However, this army no longer had a presence in the Holy Land, leaving it with no battlefield. These factors, plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars, were probably what led to his actions. However, recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of the french king. It seems that, with the “discovery” and repression of the “Templars’ heresy,” the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple case was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being the ultimate defender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christlike function that put him above the pope : what was at stake in the Templars’ trial, then, was the establishment of a “royal theocracy”.

    “At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy and other sacrilegious offenses in the Order. then they were put to death.”

    MANY MANY LIBERTARIAN LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 04:29:00 UTC

  • THE MASCULINE SPECTRUM OF TRIBAL ORDERS Adding Orthodox to the spectrum consisti

    THE MASCULINE SPECTRUM OF TRIBAL ORDERS

    Adding Orthodox to the spectrum consisting of:

    Orthodox->Conservative->Libertarian->Anarcho Capitalist yields:

    BIAS MODE MEANS JUSTIFICATION

    Orthodoxy: Rules, External Constraint, ‘Duty’

    Conservative: Reason, Moral Capital (behavioral capital), ‘Harmony’.

    Libertarian: Reason, Economic Capital, ‘Prosperity’

    AnCapitalist: Reason, Personal Capital, ‘Liberty’

    Different visions of the nature of man. Possibly, probably just reflections of class. And if that is true, we can get or use the data to prove it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 03:39:00 UTC

  • DOES THE WORLD LOOK LIKE WITHOUT FAMILIES? What does that mean for politics?

    http://www.newgeography.com/content/003133-the-rise-post-familialism-humanitys-futureWHAT DOES THE WORLD LOOK LIKE WITHOUT FAMILIES?

    What does that mean for politics?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-12 10:53:00 UTC

  • HERBIVORES VS CARNIVORES : THE CULTURE OF DECLINE : THE M.R.M. Joel Kotkin on Ja

    HERBIVORES VS CARNIVORES : THE CULTURE OF DECLINE : THE M.R.M.

    Joel Kotkin on Japan’s Herbivores: Males to decline to participate in society, decline to be competitive, decline to accumulate wealth and capital.

    Male Feminization: is the culture of ‘decline’.

    It is very cheap to be a man. If I could make 2K a month supported by the state, and have health care, and make another 1K a month under the table, I could live with other guys in a pretty good house, complete my writing, play video games, eat very well, drive a good car or motorcycle, and basically ride through life comfortably without any concerns.

    That’s true for between a third and half of all males.

    And you want to talk about ‘sustainability?’

    The only form of sustainability is malthusian poverty.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-12 10:14:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/29/sunday-review/how-5-countries-could-become-14.html

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 21:45:00 UTC

  • W.E.I.R.D.(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) WEIRD Societi

    W.E.I.R.D.(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)

    WEIRD Societies Think Differently

    Why? Nuclear Family and Individual Property Rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 06:34:00 UTC

  • CLARK – ANGLO SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EQ4OLA/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkGREGORY CLARK – ANGLO SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

    “A Farewell to Arms) discusses the divide between rich and poor nations that came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution in terms of the evolution of particular behaviors originating in Britain. Prior to 1790, Clark asserts, man faced a Malthusian trap: new technology enabled greater productivity and more food, but was quickly gobbled up by higher populations.”

    “In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy. By that according to Clark less violent, more literate and more hard-working behaviour were spread culturally and biologically throughout the population. This process of “downward social mobility” eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap. Clark sees this process also til today as the major factor why some countries are poor and others are rich.”

    COMMENT

    Now, you might not make the same association. But what I see is that immigration prevents downward rotation. It just promotes dissatisfaction. A body politics is BOTH an extended family AND a system of production. And you cannot just assume the latter universally trumps the former.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-08 14:01:00 UTC

  • RACISM Well, you know, pointing out our differences is all well and good. I want

    RACISM

    Well, you know, pointing out our differences is all well and good. I want to preserve my culture and my extended family and our gene pool too. And I certainly prefer to sacrifice and contribute to my gene pool rather than someone elses. I can’t imagine anything more moral and ethical than that. And I certainly respect the data that shows homogenous societies are superior to diverse societies in every respect.

    But those statements are in the context of city states and a barrier to political participation. With political participation, minorities can attempt to use the state to redistribute status, and with that, create friction and civil conflict that if conducted in the market would be beneficial, but conducted in politics is nothing but destructive.

    I am all for africa for africans, south american for natives, asia for asia, and every other blend of people’s on earth. But I’d also like europe for europeans. And that’s because there is in fact something very special about our culture, or we would not have started the industrial revolution in greece, and restarted in britain.

    So the moral argument is that the ultimate imperative is not redistribution, it is to create an environment where all extended families can compete in the market according to their abilities, biase and preferences without relying on majority tyranny to oppress one another.

    WHile I don’t feel guilty for the white man’s burden so to speak: I am happy that we dragged humanity out of ignorance and poverty with consumer capitalism and as the remainder of the world reluctantly secularized into the corporeal consumer capitalist system, I think westerners should take credit for it. No matter how badly they did it. No one changes the world easily and we destroyed our civilization in the process. if there is any price to be paid we have paid it.

    No more guilt. Ever.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-08 11:12:00 UTC