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."

A common assertion I find, usually from some communist circles, against anarcho-capitalism is that anarchism and capitalism are contradictions because capitalism promotes hierarchy and exploitation, and anarchism opposes these things. Has anyone else come across this before, and what would your response be? What I'm particularly curious about, besides the definitional dispute of the term anarchism, are the questions - what is hierarchy and exploitation? - and why are they undesirable?

Seriously? We've already seen numerous times what these debates revolve around and it isn't interesting anymore! My prediction is this - Block will try to get Helfeld to admit that government by definition is the initiation of violence, Helfeld will evade the point and summon some absurd hypothetical, e.g. die in desert or steal to survive, fall from flagpole or jump onto someone's property - then somehow conclude that if you choose to violate property rights, this justifies the existence of a state. Once that goes nowhere, Helfeld will proceed to describe to us the distant future in detail, how society will self-immolate, how a civil war will ensue and how everyone will murder each other without a state. But I don't think I have the endurance to find out if I'm correct.

I wonder if Stephan K saw Stef's debate with Helfeld in his preparation and saw how the latter became more arrogant and condescending as their debate went on, then decided to be more assertive here.

Is this going to be another case of déjà vu?

Unfortunately I can't provide links on this device but if anyone is interested, the following songs are easily found on YouTube. Faint - Linkin Park "So I let go watching you turn your back like you always do Face away and pretend that I'm not But I'll be here 'cause you're all that I've got I can't feel the way I did before Don't turn your back on me I won't be ignored Time won't heal this damage anymore Don't turn your back on me I won't be ignored" To me this song is imbued with what I would call the rage of the neglected. It was a song I listened to regularly in my teenage years, when I was becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that my fundamental preferences were almost ubiquitously ignored at home and at school. Accompanying that awareness was a growing indignation and outrage which I felt could be identified with this song. Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day "Everyone is so full of shit, Born and raised by hypocrites, Hearts recycled but never saved, From the cradle to the grave, We are the kids of war and peace, From Anaheim to the middle east, We are the stories and disciples Of, the Jesus of suburbia ... And I leave behind, This hurricane of fucking lies, And I walked this line A million and one fucking times, But not this time I don't feel any shame, I won't apologise, When there ain't nowhere you can go, Running away from pain when you've been victimised, Tales from another broken home You're leaving... You're leaving... You're leaving... Ah you're leaving home..." So many witty and pointed lyrics in this song. It is an elegy for the youth, who live in a society of self righteous ignoramuses and imperious hypocrites, and who must somehow raise themselves. The first step to that end being to leave the broken home and to run from the "hurricane of fucking lies." Caught in the Hustle - Immortal Technique "So if I should ever fall and get caught in a hustle, Let them know that I died while I fought in the struggle, From the hoodrats to the rich kids lost in their bubble, Spray painting on the streets and at the subway tunnels, Write it down and remember that we never gave in, The mind of a child is where the revolution begins, So if the solution has never been to look in yourself, How is it that you expect to find it anywhere else?" If you ever doubted that a rapper could be eloquent, emotionally intelligent and nuanced, I offer you this song. A very thoughtful and inspiring piece, concerning the constant put downs, societal deterrents and the weight of history, all conspiring to extinguish individual motivation, but working hard to overcome. Bulls on Parade - Rage Against the Machine "Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes, Not needs, just feed the war cannibal animal, I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library, Line up to the mind cemetery now, What we don't know keeps the contracts alive an movin', They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells, Rally round the family, pocket full of shells, Rally round the family, With a pocket full of shells" As you can see from the lyrics, the song is about the military industrial complex, its vacuuming of resources, the drug war, the hypocrisy of politicians who speak of "family values".

Yes, it can be a place of scientific proof, when the court case is centred on the attempt by intelligent design proponents to insert one of their arguments into a schools biology curriculum. Behe et al had to prove in this case that irreducible complexity was scientifically sound before it could be included in a science class and was shown to be, by qualified scientists who cited scientific evidence, to be completely incorrect. I don't know what "silly fantasies" you subscribe to or what ad hominems you are referring to, all I was replying to was irreducible complexity and referenced a source which disproves it. Unless you can provide an example of irreducible complexity, which no one, not even Michael Behe, has done. As for the big bang, I've never pretended to entirely understand it, neither have I tried to supplant my ignorance with the word "God". It is the religious who claim to know how the universe began and what the creator desires of his subjects. That to me is the ultimate condescension and vanity.

Irreducible complexity was proven entirely erroneous some time ago, no where more clearly than in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial (2005) which involved its originator Michael Behe. He couldn't adduce a single example of irreducible complexity and was overwhelmingly disproven by the scientific evidence. Strange to see some people still regurgitating it but, with all due respect, it is an ignorant man's argument.

As for these three men, I am somewhat acquainted with the theory which they collectively argued for, namely "punctuated equilibrium". It is a theory attempting to explain the fossil record and the manner in which speciation develops. Essentially it says that speciation occurs in "fits and starts", between long periods of time of little if any change. This slightly differs from Darwin's explanation that speciation advances in a more regular and gradual pattern. But the former theory, since its first exposition in the 1970's, has also been contested by "famous scientists" such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and John Maynard Smith. It is by no means proven.More germane to your point however, is the fact that none of the proponents of punctuated equilibrium reject the core mechanisms which Darwin investigated and explained. All of those men have in fact regularly defended Darwin and have acknowledged that even if their theory were correct, it would not debunk Darwin's entire body of work. Here's an important insight from Wikipedia:"One reason for criticism was that Gould appeared to be presenting his ideas as a revolutionary way of understanding evolution, and argued for the importance of mechanisms other than natural selection, mechanisms which he believed had been ignored by many professional evolutionists. As a result, many non-specialists sometimes inferred from his early writings that Darwinian explanations had been proven to be unscientific (which Gould never tried to imply)." Note that Gould was not rejecting natural selection, rather he was trying to emphasise other mechanisms which he believed were more important to the process of evolution.Here is an excerpt from Raup's 1991 book "Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?":"The ideas I have discussed here are rather new and have not been completely tested. No matter how they come out, however, they are having a ventilating effect on thinking in evolution and the conventional dogma is being challenged. If the ideas turn out to be valid, it will mean that Darwin was correct in what he said but that he was explaining only a part of the total evolutionary picture. The part he missed was the simple element of chance! (p. 29)"Clearly not a wholesale rejection of "Darwinism". Regarding Eldredge, he wrote an entire book defending Darwin for his 200th birthday, called Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. This is just desperate slander. Are we to take it that because the theory was controversial at the time, it must be wrong? Most of the objections were from the pious who were offended that the theory refuted the popularly held belief of the time, that each animal was created individually with the care and attention of the Christian God, and that humans were not a part of nature. Of course some scientists ridiculed Darwin, many of them were themselves religious, but it is natural for a new theory in science to be viewed with scepticism. This is the process Thomas Kuhn wrote about on paradigm shifts. Thus, because your language has been extremely misleading and combative, and has betrayed your ignorance of the topic, I cannot take your recommendation. I won't waste my time or money, they are both in short supply!

He ostensibly wrote to inspire international solidarity amongst the oppressed, to make conscious the political and economic interests of the working classes, and to expound how the forces of history would inevitably lead to a socialist revolution in which private property, the division of labour, religion and the class system would all of it be eliminated. These are alluring ideas to an alienated and economically illiterate young man, as I was at the time. But I was also aware of the bitter schism between Marx, his "scientific socialists", and other leftist factions, some of whom generally disliked and in some cases despised the extensive theorising. One of his most prominent opponents was Mikhail Bakunin, an anarchist of some vague socialist stripe (whose book I have), who Marx once expelled from the first International (an international assembly of socialists). That actually stimulated my curiosity of anarchism, subsequently I sought out more anarchist thinkers such as Kropotkin, and eventually I found Stef's YouTube videos!

I once had an interest in Marx and his sidekick Engels some time ago when I considered myself something of a radical socialist. Some of their books still sit on my shelves! I remember trying to study the theory and it being so abstruse that little of it made an impression on me. As far as I know Marx didn't like the label "Marxist" or "Marxian" as it was increasingly being used towards the end of his life. He preferred to push the term "scientific socialism". From my experience of the leftist milieu, we would dote on those we perceived to be the champions of the poor. At the time I was aware of Marx's sordid side but there was an peculiar emotional admiration for the man which led me to look past his glaring personal hypocrisy, unconscionably. At any rate we thought his contributions to the critique of capitalism as we then understood it, were extremely valuable, though many of us didn't even understand much of what that was! It's a very emotional thing for a leftist. When I read the final words of the Communist Manifesto, "workers of the world, UNITE!", I felt galvanised, part of a large and noble cause. In the absence of reason and scepticism, it's easy to be misled by demagogues!