By declaring that everyone could Be Like Me (if only they were properly socialized), the clever can, with clear conscience, continue to surreptitiously wage class war against the clueless.

Steve Sailer, Noticing

The idea that all brains are equally capable of performing all operations is the great scam of our times. “You aren’t trying hard enough!” “You will achieve mastery if you invest 10,000 hours.” “Everybody can succeed in college.” These are egregious lies that hurt people, saddle them with debt, and undermine their lives. But we aren’t noticing because those who have the capacity to do so benefit from not noticing.

I was going to skip Sailer’s article about Jackie Robinson because I vaguely know the story and have no interest in whatever sport he played. But as I was leafing through the piece, my eyes snatched the following sentence: 

We tend to be more outraged by minor slights to winners than by mass atrocities against downtrodden losers.

This is undeniable. Compassion – which means a common, or shared suffering – starts when we identify with the sufferer. What if this pain was visited upon me? What if I were hurt in this way? It’s harder to feel compassion when you don’t want to put yourself in the sufferer’s place at all. And it’s always easier and more pleasant to identify with somebody you see as “just like me”.

Show me who elicits your compassion, and I’ll tell you how you feel about yourself.

Since becoming department Chair 4 years ago, I have found out that every university service – be it accounting, HR, advisement, admissions, interlibrary loans, disability services, or anything else – has one person who’s carrying the workload of the entire unit, knows how everything functions, and guarantees the smoothness of operations. In addition to that one crucial person, there’s a number of confused, bumbling individuals in each unit who know nothing and often get aggressive as a result.

Interacting with these departments always consists in identifying that one individual who actually works and addressing her directly, bypassing the 15 or 20 deadwood workers. After 4 years on the job, I have a list of the people who know what they are doing and interact with them directly. These are always the most cheerful, energetic workers who enjoy what they do and love helping others.

Nobody would even notice if the rest of the workers were fired tomorrow. So it’s not just Twitter.

This is a quote from a 2003 review of Charles Murray’s book Human Accomplishment:

Murray expects that almost no art from the second half of the 20th century will be remembered in 200 years. Indeed, Europe, homeland of geniuses, has collapsed into a comfortable cultural stasis reminiscent of Rome in the 2nd century A.D. In addition to Murray’s philosophical explanations, I’d also point to causes such as the genocide of Europe’s highest-achieving ethnic group (Jews were about six times more likely than gentiles to become significant figures from 1870 onward); the rise of anti-elitist ideologies; and the decline of nationalism. From Vergil to Verdi, great men engendered great works to celebrate their nations. Nobody, however, seems likely to create an epic glorifying the European Union.

Noticing (2024)

The review also mentions that female achievement only grew in literature but not in other fields since the 1950s. The percentage of women receiving Novel Prizes was actually cut in half in the second half of the twentieth century compared to the first. This confirms the findings of my first book that women responded to the triumph of feminism by embracing high degrees of self-infantilization (see the first post of the day, as well.)

The difference in correlation with voting between this standard-of-housing index and the overall standard-of-living index suggests, once again, that it’s housing costs, rather than other costs such as groceries or health care, that are crucial to voting Republican or Democrat.
Despite the explanatory power of the Dirt Gap and the Mortgage Gap, these concepts have not been widely discussed.
The problem limiting their popularity may be that they are too objective, too morally neutral.
What people want to hear instead are explanations for why they, personally, are ethically and culturally better than their enemies.

Noticing, Steve Sailer

This is an article from 2005, way before the current inflation that is changing people’s strategy. But the highlighted portion is very true. Moral superiority is addictive, and people seek it out everywhere.

I know, the commenting function has gone to the dogs recently. It’s not you, it’s WordPress futzing with a system that worked perfectly and needed exactly zero improvement. But employees have to justify their salaries, so they improved the comment box into a sorry state. I hope the changes get rolled back soon.

Yes, it’s totally a Tesla Cybertruck. Klara says the owner is the Dad of one of the girls at school. I never expected any rich kids to be at that school, so now I wonder.

Technological advances aren’t always great, and that’s a theme that unites Tesla and the WordPress comment box.

We have removed ourselves to an unpeopled place for a mini-vacation:

It’s not completely unpeopled, to be honest. We came across the owner several times. He used to be in the Secret Service, so it’s impossible to predict where he’s going to crop up.

I’m becoming persuaded that women in Congress from both parties have been bribed by an organization promoting the idea that women are too stupid to be in politics. Or anywhere outside a seraglio.

And even after this, people will flock in droves to vote for the ditzy MTGs, AOCs, and all the rest of them.

Representative democracy only works if everybody is educated to at least some baseline level of civilized discourse and if norms of public behavior are collectively imposed. Once public education collapses and the very idea of civilized behavior and self-restraint is vilified, many people lose their only method of finding out that the disgraceful behavior we are seeing in Congress is not OK. As a result, they vote for the politicians who most closely mirror their own unchecked behavior.

I really wanted to read an in-depth investigative report on the Wa drug cartel. I opened Patrick Winn’s Narcotopia, hoping to find information and insight. Instead, from the first pages, I discovered that the Wa druglords are good because they are indigenous to the area where they live. I’m not remotely indigenous to the area where I live but I don’t believe that either situation is inherently morally charged. What is inherently morally charged is whether you sell drugs. I don’t, and I tend to take that as far more important to my character as to whether I’m “indigenous.”

It gets worse. Winn insists that the US is guilty of Wa’s drug trafficking. Why? Well, because the US is guilty of everything. A bear farts in Magadan, and it’s America’s fault. According to Winn, if Americans would have only given Wa “a little bit of food”, they wouldn’t have cooked and sold meth in the first place. It’s apparently America’s duty to prevent people from becoming drug overlords by feeding them. Of course, the idea that anybody would give up the immense fortunes and power brought in by running a cartel in exchange for a bowl of rice is extremely strange but we’ve heard this reasoning before. Whenever there’s a riot here in the US, we are told that the rioters are looting Louis Vuitton stores because they are perishing of hunger.

It gets better. Winn accuses the CIA of attempting to conduct “regime change” in the territories controlled by the cartel. I keep wondering how do people not get bored of this tired old narrative about CIA regime changes? There’s never any proof but that’s not even the point. We are supposed to accept that “regime change” is a bad thing. But why? Nobody ever explains. Regime change = bad, America = bad, indigenous = good.

People, do help. I saw a car in town today, and it was so unusual. It looked like a futuristic tank. Very geometric, steel-grey. I thought we were being invaded by space aliens.

And now I can’t find it on Google because my descriptions don’t lead to anything like that vehicle.

Does anybody know what I’m talking about and can drop an image? Or a name? This is driving me nuts.