Victimhood
Fashionable debasement used to obtain unearned spoils.
A mentality we adopt to provide ourselves with a warrant to victimize others.
A self-defeating status that is currently glamourized. As a result, we are actively encouraged to discover ways to reduce ourselves to victims and integrate any perceived victimhood into our identities. Once this occurs, it is unlikely we are willing to give it up because it defines us; without it, who would we be?
While not technically considered pathological (for now), a tendency towards viewing ourselves as victims is a recognized dimension of human personality. The victimhood mindset is currently measured by four criteria:
Constantly seeking recognition for one’s victimhood
A sense of moral elitism
Lack of empathy for the pain and suffering of others
Frequently ruminating about past victimization.(1)
Sound like someone you know? If we look for something, we will find it everywhere.
In cases where real victimization occurs, there is an expectation that residual trauma requires treatment. What complicates things is when people have imagined that they are victims – when something benign can be interpreted as harm – as is seen in the reporting of microaggressions, one of the purest examples of pseudo-intellectual garbage. More complicated still, due to how some victims are showered with attention and compassion, or are even given political clout, some may construct elaborate lies in order to benefit from an environment of callousness that seeks to destroy perpetrators - real or imagined.
The popularity of declaring yourself a victim is an indication that you live in a society that is wealthy, stable and predominantly just. If it were not wealthy, stable and just, then sharing your vulnerability and weakness publicly would be a death knell, as the most vulnerable and the weakest are primary targets for the violent and the vicious. Untreated trauma is generally the cause of a victimhood mentality, which is both unfortunate and a testament that people are not getting the help they need. That being said, obsessing over it is not a virtue, it will likely cause you to suffer more, and it will probably turn you into an ASSHOLE.
The fact that vulnerability is most often responded to with compassion in the Western world is testament to its success, it is not a sign of inhumane corruption. If you announced your vulnerability publicly in a society without resources, a complete absence of stability and riddled with injustice, then you would be beaten, robbed and left for dead before dawn. The value of human life approaches zero in such countries, so, if we still yet live, have a somewhat stable existence and enjoy numerous luxuries, then our lives cannot be that bad, all things considered. Things can always be better, but a complete absence of discomfort and injustice is a fairy tale.
Everyone has been victimized, some more than others, and some worse than others. A question should emerge however, that can be asked both internally and externally: why are you choosing to focus predominantly on your victimhood?
See: BAD ACTORS, PERCEPTION
(1) Kaufman, S. B., Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood, June 29, 2020, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/
Revised: 18 Feb 2023
Traffic
One of the most honest representations of humanity.
Observing traffic tells you almost everything you need to know about human nature.
When we are insulated from any immediate consequences for our conduct, we are far more likely to behave like an ASSHOLE. The internet has confirmed this.
We perceive ourselves far more proficient at driving than is actually the case.
We drive vehicles far beyond our economic means that steadily depreciate in value because we really want them.
We drive vehicles far larger and less fuel efficient than we need while we pretend to care about the environment.
We use our SMARTPHONES while driving because laws prohibiting this were clearly designed for everyone else. We are excellent at dividing our attention to effectively perform both functions simultaneously despite the fact that humans are notoriously poor at multitasking.
We predominantly drive in the lane we like despite each lane serving a specific purpose.
We wait until the absolute last second to change lanes and then accuse others of being impolite when they do not immediately let us in as we hold up traffic.
We break rules of the road if it serves our interests while believing that what we are doing is perfectly fine. We reserve the right to circumvent rules if we deem it appropriate.
We behave as though our actions are only inappropriate if we suffer consequences.
It is predictable who will be overly cautious and fearful, which makes the road more dangerous for everyone else.
It is predictable who will be needlessly aggressive and antisocial, which makes the road more dangerous for everyone else.
Our two most meaningful ways of communicating with other drivers are indicator signals and our horn, both of which we use incorrectly.
In the middle of the night, and with no other drivers or police anywhere to be seen, we will wait for stop lights to change so we can advance. We have been so thoroughly trained that we remain obedient to authority even when it would be STUPID to do so.
We accelerate too quickly and brake too late.
Our orienting reflex will cause us to focus on nearby collisions that do not involve us in any way nor do we have any intention of getting involved to assist.
We leave later than we should to make it to our destination and compensate for this by driving in an antisocial manner while blaming everyone else on the road for our delay.
We talk trash to other drivers despite the fact that they cannot hear us.
Despite a thorough and rigourous historical record of human suffering and death caused by HUBRIS and human shortcomings, we continue to drive plagued by exactly the same traits and somehow expect different outcomes.
Despite having access to multiple mirrors and each vehicles having a predictable turning radius, we are incapable of parking properly. The addition of cameras to modern vehicles do not seem to have improved this. It could also be that we just do not give a shit.
When we behave generously towards others, it encourages others to be generous as well. This rarely occurs.
Extrapolate these tendencies and apply them to any human context and you will be able to predict human outcomes with impressive accuracy.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Teacher
An adult with little to no life experience.
Teachers have widely adopted the notion that they are best suited to know what is best for children, even more than parents. This is due to common misconception held by many graduates that learning about something in the abstract for a few years is somehow superior to actually doing something real. Due to the severe lack of real life experience among teachers, their schooling is all they have.
It is therefore necessary for them to conclude that they have not wasted their time and money earning their degree, and so their ego insists that their schooling is not only a valid substitution for parenting and life experience, but that it is in fact a superior source of practical knowledge. This is an attempt to have others believe they occupy legitimate positions, not because they have done real things, but because they read about them in school.
Under this model, they are better at baking a cake than a successful pastry chef because they looked at the recipe a few times. This is especially true if the chef did not receive a formal education, like they did.
This is considered a ludicrous position to everyone else.
The most common profession occupied by pedophiles, and not by a small margin. This should not be surprising as schools are a perfect environment to groom and prey on children without parental oversight. There have increasingly been reports that teachers are requesting that young children keep secrets from their parents about what happens in class. Nothing to see here.
What is interesting about this is that all spheres of education are dominated by women, which introduces a litany of concerns about the efficacy and safety of environments where only one sex is prominent. Despite this, male priests are considered the archetypal child predator, which suggests that academic institutions have a much tighter relationship with the NEWS MEDIA than the Roman Catholic Church.
Most teachers attend school from an early age, then they attend more school, then they graduate from high school to attend more school. After receiving a degree, they go to teacher’s college where they do not learn anything about CHILDREN or learning. They will earn their credentials after they have sufficiently demonstrated their conformity with the prescribed ideological perspectives, and, if fortunate, they will get hired by an academic institution. Here, they will confidently espouse information to classrooms of naïve young people that they have neither verified is true nor is likely to be remotely useful in the real world.
Plus, they get summers off.
See: ACADEMIA
Revised: 16 Mar 2023
Stupid
An unexamined idea.
‘Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.’ - George Orwell
By default, people are equally deserving of the care and respect we owe them by virtue of their sentience and consciousness.
Ideas, on the other hand, can be ignored, dismantled, incinerated and beaten until bloodied.
The less examined an idea is, the more likely it will face an untimely and justified death.
See: INTELLECTUALS
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Spirituality
An anti-intellectual settlement for faithful egotists. A belief structure for moral relativists.
Residents of this settlement are purveyors of both mental and linguistic gymnastics, although their performances are always clumsy and uninspired.
In the midst of our search for something larger than ourselves, it is common to notice the shortcomings of a particular faith. That being said, religions are greater than the sum of their parts, and their shortcomings are often a conjugation of humanity in some sense that is important to notice. Recognizing this does not incline us any more than we might be otherwise, because we still find them distasteful. As a result, many forego traditional faiths and settle on a loosely knit substrate of new age incoherence comprised of ideas stolen from existing religions. The spiritual are patrons at a religious buffet, they take the items they want and leave the rest.
You can quickly identify adherents because they enthusiastically inform everyone that they are spiritual, second only to vegetarians and vegans in their proclivity to notify others of these mundane characteristics. Beyond these prideful offerings, they may introduce concepts such as energy, vibrations, extra sensory perception, positivity and negativity, and they will often make appeals to the cosmos or universe.
They often possess a whole host of items designed to restore balance or catalyze energy in some way. Strangely, there are always new trinkets coming out to assist them with these tasks, which means that there is both an industry and a market for these spiritual implements. Thank goodness those who deal in candles, bracelets, talismans and crystals are such honest and selfless brokers, otherwise this might constitute a racket.
If you ask any questions in an attempt to clarify or understand what is meant by anything they put forward, their answers will contain mysterious sounding conjecture that they hope you will confuse for profound wisdom.
There are two features of spiritual beliefs that glaringly demonstrate it is an analogue of egotism.
Every aspect of its amorphous structure is blended with a contrived optimism that classifies the believer as a conduit through which all energy is transformed into potential. They have replaced God with themselves, and so their faith is self-referential.
There are no major universally held beliefs or tenets; adherents can essentially believe whatever they want. It is a Choose Your Own Adventure style of belief, which in some way is an honest admission that the entire thing is made up.
Whether formalized religions have it right is irrelevant, as they are at least asymptotic. Without a model to follow, good and evil have no meaning because they cannot be compared to anything we can mutually agree upon. This introduces moral relativism into the conversation, which is a tried-and-true philosophy for those preoccupied with a hedonistic lifestyle while pretending to comprehend the totality of human suffering that exists beyond their own nose.
Being spiritual is a luxury belief for those who already occupy a stable existence. Give a salt lamp to someone who is poor, destitute and sick, and they will throw it at your face.
See: HUBRIS
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Social Justice
Social injustice.
A meaningless term that combines two ill-defined abstractions in an attempt to sound progressive and empathetic. Among the most overused terms in the modern era that virtually always means the exact opposite of what it purports.
See: ACADEMIA
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
An atomistic approach supported by communist academics who pretend to understand psychology.
Advocates use posturing jargon to confuse and disarm parents into believing that it is an innocent academic program. When programs like this are implemented, unqualified and immoral pseudo-intellectuals will prey on the mental stability of young children and destroy their capacity to function in society by replacing merit with ‘competencies.’ These, of course, will be determined and defined by them, but they transparently drive towards awakening a ‘critical consciousness’ in children.
This will be rationalized in the minds of supporters as simply the cost of ushering in the utopia. The truth is that it will produce a complete and utter waste of human well-being and potential perpetrated by champagne socialists in search of a proletariat they can lord over.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Social Constructivism
One hell of a drug; the anesthetic of choice for those plagued by an existential dread brought on by the recognition that the universe does not conspire in our favour.
An ideology of attribution wherein ‘society’ is the explanation for everything because reality interferes with their sense of justice and desire to control human outcomes.
Formally accepts human agency as a reality, but either does not include it in its calculations, or finds a way to explain how it was socially or environmentally influenced. Personal responsibility is somehow always explained away, where society is a greater force than our individual capacity to make decisions in all circumstances. It is cynicism formalized as epistemology.
Everything can be explained by a theory that ignores basic reality, purportedly because they said so. Because everything is viewed through this lens by adherents, it is functionally useless because it deliberately avoids understanding anything real as a basis for postulation.
Half true and mostly misleading on the best of days.
Even a blank slate would be made of something that would limit what may be done with it. The analogy itself fails a basic examination.
People are not blank slates, because nothing is.
See: IDEOLOGY
Revised: 20 Mar 2023
Smartphone
(1) A super computer designed by one of many super wealthy companies who employ armies of psychologists to exploit our shortcomings in an attempt to promote addiction. It also makes calls.
Applications are then created to fill the devices using the same manipulative psychology in an attempt to induce MENTAL ILLNESS and compromise our stability in its absence.
Despite all of this information being publicly available, PARENTS purchase smartphones for their children. Apparently, having children who are depressed, anxious, addicted and potentially suicidal is preferable to having the only child in the neighbourhood without such a device.
After all, we don’t want our children to feel left out; they should all be able to have a mental illness. Now they will be able to make others feel as inadequate as they do while venturing online.
(2) A substitute parent, which makes it the only parent in some children’s lives these days.
(3) A loaded gun that we hand to children so they can point it at themselves and others.
See: FIREARM
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
The Science
Formalized egotism; a set of conclusions typically absent a stated hypothesis. The opposite of science - it is scientism.
The purpose of these approaches is to produce specific outcomes while giving the appearance that real SCIENCE is being done. The outcomes are generally favourable to whoever funded the project, and so the research is constructed around the preferred outcome in order to deceive others of its legitimacy. Even well-meaning researchers may fall victim to the allure of an outcome that is consistent with a stated hypothesis, especially after a lengthy and meticulous project. We want our efforts to have produced something, and doubt is not a particularly profitable product. As a result, the pressure and temptation to generate profitable outcomes that remain consistent with a specified business model is too great for any business or government to ignore.
The only way to prevent becoming parasitized by this formalized egotism is to demand access to the research and read it for ourselves. This typically requires money, some amount of scientific literacy, and a great deal of time we are willing to sacrifice in lieu of the litany of other things we would likely rather be doing on any given day.
Because most of us are not willing to do this, we happily settle for adopting and regurgitating The Science as though it were the real thing, even if it means destroying our civilization because an EXPERT said so.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Science
Formalized modesty; a methodology that has emerged once in human history as a means to generate reliable models that are subject to innovation over time.
A word used most often by people who do not know what it is or how it is done.
The only reliable strategy that can be employed in the pursuit of progress with a chance of avoiding total disaster. This of course means that if you claim to be progressive, you should get used to being wrong more often than not. If you believe yourself to be on the right side of broad public issues more often than not, then you are likely confused about what progress looks like.
The scientific method is uniquely positioned to serve as a bulwark against human shortcomings, and even then, it is rarely completely effective in this regard. If done properly, it is an invalidating mechanism, a deliberate attempt to seek and destroy our assumptions and bias. The necessity and importance of this cannot be underestimated. No other human tendency or model can even coherently pretend to perform this function. This means that if fields of scientific research are confused about their purpose, or if they have been captured by perverse incentives, then we are headed for catastrophe.
Even a minor examination of human predispositions paints a vibrant landscape of self-serving conclusions that remain unified beneath a banner of confounding limitations. This does not mean that the scientific method is anti-human, rather, that it is a tool we can employ to verify if our inclinations generate predictable and reliable outcomes. Stated another way: it increases the resolution of our pictures.
Because it is a tool, how it is employed, and to what end, will largely be determined by the hand that wields it. Even when starting from a perceivably noble position, it is the clumsy hand of humanity that shapes unintended consequences with such a degree of frequency that many remain rightfully concerned about the whole endeavour. When modesty is absent from the endeavour, it becomes poor quality science at best; at worst, an utterly corrupt waste of human capital and well-being.
The tempering agent for research will therefore necessarily include sharing every detail of your work with the public so it may be scrutinized. Without both persistent and ongoing formal and informal peer review, only a FOOL would consider the results of an experiment worthy of application in everyday life. Despite any peer preview, all research has the potential to garner interest, but due obfuscating human predispositions, such as confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, we need to retain an adequate amount of doubt to avoid becoming snared by maladaptive proclivities.
Without doubt, modesty is impossible. Therefore, any endeavour absent doubt should never be confused with the scientific method, these imitation approaches are referred to as THE SCIENCE.
Science cannot be settled by definition, and if you think it can, you do not understand it.
See: MODEST
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Schooling
The opposite of EDUCATION.
A set of courses and lessons designed by a state or academic institution containing whichever prescribed information they believe will produce an obedient citizen. This is by design, and a minor examination of the origins of modern Western schooling would not inspire faith in the system.
Beyond the categorically sabotaging design of schools, there are further confounding factors inherent to schooling. Students who flourish in schooling will perceive it as a worthwhile and valuable pursuit, and some of them become TEACHERS. Teachers obviously like school, otherwise they would not dedicate so many years working towards an occupation that permits them to stay there forever. As a result, the system is self-validating, and it will become a reflection of the values and priorities of teachers, who were once obedient and enthusiastic students.
Schooling has a tendency to marginalize students who demonstrate a proclivity for trades. If the establishment can characterize trades as lowbrow or menial, it improves the chances that students will find academic careers more attractive, which translates into more money for universities and colleges. This is despite the fact that tradespeople build and maintain everything, and they are the only ones capable of keeping communities functioning during tough times.
Teachers and administrators would be utterly useless in a time of crisis, if not a hindrance. This means that, of course, that we require many more of both.
This is why schooling does not prepare anyone for the real world: it does not teach students anything that would be useful outside of an academic setting. Additionally, it is why both teachers and the broader academic establishment consistently fail to manage, develop, or educate children with divergent neurobiology and behaviours.
Schooling seeks to jam square pegs into round holes, and if our children cannot suffer the squeeze, their futures will be held hostage until they learn to comply.
Revised: 11 Jan 2023
Privilege
The political term for advantage, employed most frequently by those who enjoy public self-flagellation and the myopic judgment of others.
Often used to describe every advantage that anyone has when, if it is to have any coherence at all, should be used to describe unearned advantages. Owning a car, for example, may be an advantage, but it is not a privilege if someone worked for the money to buy it instead of spending their income on extraneous and superfluous goods. It was earned. This line of inquiry is deliberately avoided because it would eliminate the vast majority of privileges that activists profess are responsible for disparate outcomes. It is in this way that discussions about privilege tend to bastardize ideas such as free will and personal agency, concepts that most activists are incapable of discussing with any depth in most circumstances. They are inconvenient to their cause.
Traditionally, having advantages was considered good fortune, however now it has become a way to introduce feelings of guilt into the hearts and minds of ordinary people. This gives rise to an endless sea of guilt that we are all encouraged to recognize at every moment when interacting with others. If we experience guilt when examining the privileges we enjoy, then we are far less likely to leverage them for our benefit.
This appears to be the intention of the privilege crusade: you have something that others do not, so you should feel bad and move to the back of the line. It is an unconventional yet surprisingly effective tool for wealth redistribution, utilizing sophistry and emotional weaponry to shame empathetic citizens into submission.
Whether our privilege is earned or unearned, we are told it must be made available to the grasping hands of others, those who are deemed worthier than us. These hands are, of course, determined at the discretion of an incoherent intersectional mind that rests upon the laurels of its own idealism to justify its theft. It is not quite wealth redistribution; it is opportunity redistribution.
While it was once considered wise and virtuous to play the hand we have been dealt, it appears that now we have self-elected dealers. These dealers reserve the right to collect any number of cards from whichever hands they choose, and redistribute them however they see fit. Their defense will be that the deck was stacked prior to dealing, and now they are correcting it.
Essentially, they are just stacking it in another way, in the manner that they choose, to produce a specific outcome that they imagine is preferable. They will call this SOCIAL JUSTICE; humans masquerading as arbiters of justice and hoping we do not notice that they are reincarnations of Joseph Stalin.
See: POLITICS
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Politics
The most prolific analogue of power; the quickest and most reliable way to ruin something. Technically distinct from government, although it would be difficult to imagine one without the other.
A quick way to determine if someone is trustworthy is to notice their proclivity to make things political. There is an inverse correlation between someone’s proclivity to make something political and the likelihood that they would make a suitably honest and cooperative companion. The more willing they are to inject politics into an issue or a discussion, the less trustworthy they are.
If you cross paths with someone like this, they are trying to either convert you, beat you, or control you. Their satisfaction comes from making your soul as rotten as theirs.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Political Correctness
An ideological orientation that prioritizes lying above truth. A gift that nobody wants.
A term that was originally used to describe adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. If it benefitted the party, it was acceptable, anything opposed is unacceptable.
It has undergone minor adaptations over time, but its purpose remains intact. If our language benefits the party, it is acceptable, anything opposed is unacceptable. This is often conflated to condemn opposition as anti-progress or unenlightened; this is confession through projection.
A common invocation by defenders of political correctness is the Whorfian hypothesis. It asserts that our perception of reality is determined by our thought processes, which are influenced by the language we use. In this way, it is claimed, language shapes our reality and tells us how to think about and respond to that reality. According to the hypothesis, using sexist language promotes sexism and using racial language promotes racism; language not only reveals our biases, it promotes them. Like many STUPID ideas, it contains a requisite number of good intentions and a semblance of concordance with our observations, but then immediately begins to fall apart when you examine it closely.
Language does not shape reality; it both shapes and is influenced by our perceptions. This feedback loop is persistent and it receives regular updates from reality. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISTS have cornered the market on flighty hypotheses, which predictably promote a naive understanding of the world where our perceptions are more real than reality, and we exist as miniature deities. The world is made better, whatever this means, by speaking more politely. If we cannot be bothered to simply be better by using their language and their perspectives, neither of which are supported by logic or reason, then we are to be cast out from civilized society. Romantic delusions trump any discovery of an objective truth; thus is the operating system of dialectical materialism.
When hollow academic theories fail to justify political correctness, etiquette is invoked in its stead. They will argue that if the social etiquette is breached, then we should expect disapproval of the group as punishment. The innate flaw of this view is that political correctness is artificial; it is designed by special interests in a particular manner to achieve a particular goal. While etiquette is an evolutionary product, it emerges among social groups based on a shared understanding of values that are evidently worthy and purposeful. One or more individuals deciding what is best for everyone and then imposing it on the community is a social engineering project, it is not a valid representation of etiquette.
Political correctness incentivizes deceit by rewarding those who deny reality. The promise is that if we deny reality for long enough and force others to do it as well, the world will become a better place.
As the late George Carlin stated, ‘political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners’.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Pleasant
People are always pleasant when they get their way and nothing is at stake.
Introduce compromise or disrupt their comfort and it is incredible how many of us transform into petulant children.
If behaving like an infant gets you want you want, then be prepared to encounter a society comprised of insufferable children.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Parents
The first and last line of defense in the maintaining the stability of CHILDREN.
Perhaps the most fulfilling and burdensome title that a human can obtain, which suggests that meaning is strongly correlated with responsibility and concordance with evolutionary precepts.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023
Pain
A disruption in stability or equilibrium.
Our capacity to experience pain is an evolved trait that informs an animal that something is wrong. This seems straight-forward enough, but whenever a phenomenon is stretched by the human mind, it takes on a predictable complexity.
We are notoriously inept at honestly legitimizing our disequilibrium. Physical pain is easier to reconcile as there is often a particular part of the body that can be examined to reach a reasonable conclusion, but even then, the BRAIN is a lawyer and a trickster. When mental or emotional pain is involved, and our discomfort is entirely internalized in some sense, it becomes much more difficult to pinpoint its genesis.
Our perceptions alone can cause us pain, but it is rare that we verify their truth or accuracy. Our belief in the legitimacy of our own pain is often enough for us claim it is valid, and due to the empathetic nature of others, they will often take our word for it. Additionally, this creates a game wherein the claim of pain is sufficient to warrant attention and care, taking for granted that all pain is legitimate and equally deserving of attention. What if we are wrong about our pain? What if it is based on an illusion or a misunderstanding? What if we are lying to ourselves and others because we like the attention it purchases?
The temptation to find a target for our pain - an origin point - is potent. We do not want to feel pain, and we often choose the immediacy of temporary relief over the additional pain that compounds when we search for a higher order insight into the nature of our pain. It is this preference for immediate consolation that is directly responsible for a resentment that is difficulty to satiate. We will target one thing after another in search of relief, when the source of our pain in most frequently our inability to reconcile ourselves and our expectations with reality in a manner that is commensurate with our suffering.
Human existence is most accurately defined by suffering; this is not a pessimistic outlook. Pain and suffering, indicators of disequilibrium, are the fuel for human action, propelling us towards a desire to understand things well enough to integrate them into our being. Aside from clear actions that demand compensatory punishment, our suffering should never be used to cause more suffering, especially not to others.
Curiously, of all the emotions we can experience, pain is the only one without a saturation point. This means that there is no limit to the amount of pain we can experience. Things can always be made worse, and we can always be made to suffer more. This is what it means to be a product of a competitive process called evolution. I did not choose it and neither did you, but living a life defined by avoiding pain at all costs, or numbing it and missing its goading nature, is to live in a manner that is antithetical to what we are.
We should avoid unnecessary pain when we can, but welcome the requisite amount of pain necessary to develop our adaptive tendencies.
The tricky part is distinguishing between the two.
Posted: 2 Jan 2023