TheLolGuy

I've noticed recently, over the past few months, a growing internal debate on the left primarily about Islam, which sometimes branches off into other subjects but undoubtedly stems from the religion. As far as I can tell the debate is being generated mostly by Sam Harris, who identifies himself as a liberal, and the following he has accumulated, including Bill Maher, Maajid Nawaz, a British politician of the Liberal Democrat party (a predictably leftist party) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has had first hand experience of the brutality commonly meted out by third world Islam. In fact, even Richard Dawkins questioned the accuracy of the recent media story on the Muslim and the clock. If this forms one camp, the opposing one contains the usual 'I'm offended, we're all the same, don't criticise other people (unless they are white males or conservatives)' brigade. The types who control speech on the university campus, who prevent Ayaan Hirsi Ali from speaking on her treatment as a woman in a Muslim country, or who slander Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins with the usual epithets, racist, bigot, xenophobe! I have sensed in some of Sam's latest blogs and interviews, a frustration and something close to despair (though he has such a calm demeanour), about the value of trying to have an honest conversation on Islam, Islamic countries and the connection between the doctrine of jihad with so much of the violence in the world. I'm not surprised given the amount of slander anybody will receive for being skeptical in these topics. But does this schism provide some hope for the future? That the left isn't monolithic on the silencing of criticism of other cultures? And should we support the effort?

When you look into some of the most famous strikes and the security agencies hired to contain them, it's never as simple as the poor innocent workers merely attempting to obtain improved working conditions and wage increases, who are then suppressed by the big bully capitalists. The lefty types couldn't conceive of any other possibility. What often happens is there is violence on both sides or a provocation is premeditated by communist agitators, who will quickly play the victim when necessary!

He is also working on a documentary on the absence of fathers and their indispensable role in the family.

I should probably add a caveat - this guy is completely unapologetic and about as far from political correctness as the two ends of the expanding universe. There can be a lot of cursing - and if anybody thought Stef was candid about his thoughts on single mothers, this guy is totally unmerciful! He can act like a comedian sometimes, other times he is quite serious, but ultimately I think you can perceive his sincere passion to raise black communities to a higher standard.

I stumbled across this guys youtube channel recently https://m.youtube.com/user/tnnraw2 He's a black man who totally rejects the self victimisation narratives we see all the time in the media on racial issues, he promotes individual responsibility and works to support fathers in black communities. And he does it with all his passion, indignation and humour. Really entertaining to watch! Thought it could be a fun and productive interview to have. See this video for example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY2QiF7878 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7YcIL2irjbM "The biggest problem that black people face right now is black women."

Found a couple of great comments in Hayek's book The Constitution of Liberty. "It is impossible to study history without becoming aware of "the lesson given to mankind by every age, and always disregarded - that speculative philosophy, which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of life and the outward interest of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them, and in the long run overbears any influences save those it must itself obey." Though this fact is perhaps even less understood today than it was when John Stuart Mill wrote, there can be little doubt that it is true at all times, whether men recognise it or not. It is so little understood because the influence of the abstract thinker on the masses operates only indirectly. People rarely know or care wether the commonplace ideas of their day have come to them from Aristotle or Lock, Rousseau or Marx, or from some professor whose views were fashionable among the intellectuals twenty years ago." pg 98 . . . "There is, in fact, never so much reason for the political philosopher to suspect himself of failing his task as when he finds that his opinions are very popular. It is by insisting on considerations which the majority do not wish to take into account, by holding up principles which they regard as inconvenient or irksome, that he has to prove his worth. For intellectuals to bow to a belief merely because it is held by the majority is a betrayal not only of their peculiar mission but of the values of democracy itself." pg 100

I'm currently reading A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by historian Orlando Figes. Thought you guys would be interested in some of the quotes I found. "In Saratov province, for example, the provincial welfare department issued a 'Decree on the Nationalisation of Women': it abolished marriage and gave men the right to release their sexual urges at licensed brothels. Kollontai's (Commissar for Social Welfare) subordinates set up a 'Bureau of Free Love' in Vladimir and issued a proclamation requiring all the unmarried women between the ages of 18 to 50 to register with it for the selection of their sexual mates. The proclamation declared all women over 18 to be 'state property' and gave men the right to choose a registered woman, even without her consent, for breeding 'in the interests of the state.'" - Page 741 Here is a quote on the Soviet schooling system - "As Lilina Zinoviev, one of the pioneers of Soviet schooling, declared at a Congress of Public Education in 1918: "We must make the young generation into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of family life... We must nationalise them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of communist schools. They will learn the ABC of communism... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet State - that is our task."" - Page 743 One last quote on a Bolsheviks vision for human life. "Alexei Gastev's (Head of Central Institute of Labour) aim, by his own admission, was to turn the worker into a sort of human robot... Gastev envisaged a brave new world where 'people' would be replaced by 'proletarian units' so devoid of personality that there would not even be a need to give them names. They would be classified instead by ciphers such as 'A, B, C or 325, 075, 0 and so on.'" - page 744 All the dystopian novels of Orwell, Huxley and Rand don't seem to be all that exaggerated when you come to read of life under the Bolsheviks!

Self knowledge, psychology, they can become very abstract and thus abstruse topics. I hope to compile a list of practical suggestions to aid empathy with the self. Please contribute your suggestions too. Hope this helps! What I have found useful so far: - Photographs of myself as a child. Analysing them, trying to remember the time or place or feelings connected with the memory, and anything else which arises with it. - Old school reports. Found a few of them stretching a long way back in my childhood. Interesting to see how my teachers described and interpreted my behaviour, it can be very insightful. I try to think how accurate their assessment is, how it matches to the memories of my experience. - Music. My favourite songs never fail to summon all kinds of emotions within me. I think about why it is these songs have such a deep resonance, what is it about the lyrics, the tone or tempo. Freud once used the metaphor that self knowledge is like archaeology, we dig and uncover the ruins of our histories, fragments of memories and emotions. We may never accurately reconstruct every edifice to the last measurement - but we can still use certain techniques to make reasonable inferences. I hope some of these suggestions can act as your brush and pick.

His solutions most irritate me, as he proposes the typical and tired concept of a socialist revolution, that is to say, a massive aggrandisement in state power. Indisputably he has fluent and engaging oratorical skills but his knowledge of history, philosophy and economics is embarrassingly lacking. And his arrogance prevents any flexibility in thought. Thus he uses his talents in the service of evil, in a particularly abject and grovelling way!

Thanks for sharing Kevin! The theory makes sense to me, it being consistent with my regrettably extensive experience in this. I became gradually and almost totally isolated in my teenage years, approximately over the last 3 years of high school. High school was the most toxic environment I have ever had to exist in thus far in my life. Firstly, it was near unremittingly boring because so monotonous. Very little choice, very little individuality permitted. The mornings were grindingly slow, I would spend most of the day in a fatigued daze. Teachers were for the most part either uninspiring or terrifying, with less than a handful of exceptions. Add to that the typical group of bullies, and you have a potent recipe for the creation of social anxiety. Without any substantive relationship with my parents or "friends", the only relief to be found from that world of pain and ennui, was in isolation. The popular modern day distractions, video games and the internet, are perfectly suited for this. That was the only place where I could switch off the anxiety. Social interaction was and can still be exhausting to me, because I expend so much mental energy thinking about what others might be thinking about me. My strategy in school was to attempt to disappear, to "fade into the background", as a teachers' report observed. Perceptive for a teacher, but apparently there was no will to make a serious investigation of my experience. Attention was dangerous because it often lead to some form of attack, so the only solution available to me at the time was to avoid attention. But that life of isolation, junk food, video games, internet, was severely limiting because I wasn't exercising any social skills or developing and pursuing any ambitions. My sole purpose in life had become to disappear and to stay that way. When I was a young child I was implacably energetic. Always on the run, climbing trees, riding bikes with my childhood acquaintances, had an irrepressible curiosity. I was very frustrated having to sit in a classroom for so many hours. After high school, I was interested in almost nothing, I had no motivation to be active or creative, no reason to get out of bed. I was socially anxious, depressed, and in brief moments, suicidal. When I think about this transformation, a flash of anger surges through my chest. To think what they took from me, what potential for happiness was tossed in the trash, less valuable to them than a piece of scrapped paper. And they called this "character building"! As if I had not any character and was yet to build one. The truth was the opposite. My character was already standing and they tore it down with all of that toxicity. "Character destroying" would be the more accurate term. Now I am in process of rebuilding. And that sense of injustice is a powerful driver for me out of the darkness of depression.

I live in England where soccer (I'll call it that for the North American readers) is the national religion. I was never interested in soccer and that is more bizarre and ridiculous to people here than proclaiming atheism. In high school I was insulted and made the subject of cruel jokes because I didn't know the names of soccer players, what positions they played in, the names of all the teams and their places in the various leagues. Even as an adult now, if somebody asks me which team I support and I inform them that I don't watch soccer, there follows the dreaded awkward silence, because there is nothing else of substance on the table for discussion. What would the English do with themselves without soccer?

Additionally I try to challenge my unhelpful thought patterns as they arise in my mind. If I start self attacking or attacking others unfairly, I check myself and question how useful it is to me. It has really helped me to develop a sort of minds eye which keeps watch internally and investigates disturbances. I have found that with practice it reduces the regularity of these occurrences.

That aspect of the plot is similar to the one in Land Before Time, which Rodger wrote about as being his favourite movie as a child, when the Dinosaur loses his mother. That seems to be a common theme, the loss of the mother, perhaps the divorce and the sudden introduction of the fathers girlfriend contributed to that? It really struck me in his manifesto how neglected he was, how he was left to try to figure out issues he was having without any parental guidance or adult experience to learn from. For example, when he plays basketball and stretches his body out hoping to grow taller because he was unhappy about his height. He did this for quite some time and it sounds as if he had no adult to talk to, to help him resolve this trouble. Maybe this is why all these videos seem so childish, that cartoonish villainous laugh, the quoting from Star Wars, he was still partially living in a child's world because he had never had the parental guidance necessary for a healthy development into the adult world.

Thanks Lians. I also felt in his videos that it was some kind of act and not a very convincing one either. But that might be all that a narcissist has left for a personality. I'm sure Sam Vaknin has spoken about this too - https://m.youtube.com/user/samvaknin Vaknin is a diagnosed narcissist with strong psychopathic traits and uses his youtube channel to explain what his experience of it is. Everything a narcissist does is designed to attract attention, attention is the indispensable resource a narcissist must acquire to survive. In one video he describes that without attention he can have devastating panic attacks which can lead to suicidal thoughts. It is typical of the media and society in general to politicise these tragedies - 'Its the men!' 'Its the guns!' 'Its the video games!' Anything except the parents. I'm sure in Stef's video on this he will correctly assign the moral responsibilities both to the killer himself and to the people who created that killer. That is the most important message we have to get out there.

Anyone who has a curiosity for psychology, I'm sure you'll find this interesting- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638049/7-dead-drive-shooting-near-UC-Santa-Barbara.html (Let me know if the link works for you, sometimes links don't work when I post on my iPad) It links to a Daily Mail article which contains a video made by a serial killer only a few hours before he embarks on an homicidal and suicidal spree. His rationalisations for his plan, aside from being extremely disturbing, I think can supply us some insight into the nature and origins of murderous rage. Particularly disturbing is that strangely forced laugh, which sounds like an imitation of a stereotypical villain. He complains in his video that he was rejected by girls, condemned to isolation, but wants to show by using violence that he is the "alpha male". When he talks about his rejection, I noticed in his body language that he was slightly uncomfortable and restless. Perhaps that intermittent laugh is an attempt to cover up his vulnerability, as if to say, 'but I don't really care because I'm laughing about it'? That would be the typically "alpha male" thing to do. From my amateur knowledge and in my experience watching the video, I received a very strong sense of his narcissism, especially when he claims what an superior and perfect gentleman he is, when he is condemning girls for not having sex with him, and that it should be a crime to reject him, punishable by death. I have seen in many cases narcissism used as a defence mechanism for the isolated. This must be another example of it. Those were some of my thoughts but I'm sure there is more to be gleaned from the video. Don't know much about the boys history other than what he relates and bits from the article. Son of a successful TV producer, very financially wealthy. What was your experience watching the video? Here's an article just published with more detail on the killer's history - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638427/He-disturbed-boy-British-grandmother-Santa-Barbara-mass-killer-boy-grew-Hollywood-royalty-posted-chilling-blogs-vowing-revenge-against-women-rejected-him.html Unsurprisingly the killer had been expressing disturbing thoughts for some time. Parents divorced and both of them are successful on the Hollywood scene; and to be successful in Hollywood I would imagine requires a great deal of time and effort, which means less time spent with their child. Neglect was an ingredient in the making of this killer. Quote from the killer's father: "I put my family through a lot of difficulties making this film because I was away a long time."