Neither chaos nor randomness is implicit in uncontrolled
circumstances. In a virgin forest, the flora and fauna are not
distributed chaotically or randomly. ... It is a systemically determined
outcome with a pattern, not chaos.
- Thomas Sowell, 'Intellectuals and Society', p. 60
How
is this hierarchy organized - a structure that emerged in large part
from the bottom up, over the vast spans of evolutionary time? We return
to the same answer alluded to earlier: through the constant
cooperation and competition - the constant jockeying for resources and
position - defining the struggle for survival and reproduction. ...
Negotiation for position sorts organisms into the omnipresent
hierarchies that govern access to vital resources such as shelter,
nourishment, and mates.
- Jordan B. Peterson, 'Beyond Order', p. 13
Individuals
and communities that practice successful strategies will, over time,
out-perform those that do not. In human society, this means negotiating
the exchange of what you have to offer for what you need from others -
day after day, iteratively, throughout the course of life.
2023-02-14
Morning Report: 2023-02-14
USA: OHIO TRAIN DERAILMENT.
Legal Insurection: EPA identifies three additional chemicals - ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene - in addition to vinyl chloride, on the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3.
The residents evacuated but could return after the authorities burned the vinyl chloride in a controlled burn. Authorities tried to convince people the air was safe.
However, residents remained weary because they never released a full list of the chemicals on the train. They demanded more transparency.
USA: CHINESE SPY BALLOON DID "A LOT OF DAMAGE" - MCCAUL.
The Blaze: House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R - TX 10), speaking on CBS News' 'Face the Nation', stated that the Chinese spy balloon seen over Montana did "a lot of damage" to national security:
"I think it's important to say, in plain view of the American people, you know, in Montana — the triad site, air, land, and, sea nuclear weapons — in Omaha, the spy balloon went over our Strategic Command, which is our most sensitive nuclear site; it was so sensitive that President Bush was taken there after 9/11. And then, finally, Missouri, the B-2 bomber— that's where they are placed. ..."
2023-02-05
What we know.
Most of what we know about the world, we learn from other people. Therefore, our ability to understand the world depends on our ability to understand people.
We live in a world full of people who need and want things. They will ascribe value to us according to our ability to provide for their wants and needs.
Each of us will die, and others will live on after us. Whatever we may believe about the afterlife, this is the only empirical truth we know about life and death in this world.
People are complicated. Assessing and navigating our position in the social universe is the most difficult, and most important, mental task that we perform in life.
2023-02-03
Solomon Yue on the Republican National Convention.
Oregon's Solomon Yue on what happened at the Convention.
Morning Report: 2023-02-03
NORTH AMERICA: Chinese spy balloon over Montana.
Or whatever it is. Indepdndent UK: 'While defence officials have said the balloon’s current flight path carries it over “a number of sensitive” military sites, President Joe Biden is believed to have decided against shooting it out of the sky due to risks of falling debris.' In Montana? Well, if he says so. There's been a sighting over Canada, too. Military Matters has some thoughts.
NEW JERSEY: Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour killed.
Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour was shot and killed outside her home. She was 30 years old. Police believe it was a targeted killing.
2023-02-02
When did "misinformation" become a problem?
If you're old enough to remember the early days of the World Wide Web, you probably remember that you could log on to the internet and find practically anything - claims of fact that were true, false, questionable, or just plain crazy.
And YOU UNDERSTOOD THAT IT WAS YOUR JOB to figure out which facts were true, or credible, and which ones weren't. You didn't expect the internet to make that decision for you.
"All of us are smarter than any of us." That's what the internet pioneers at least claimed to believe in the early days: information could be shared, discussed, debated, and challenged. Knowledge was seen as distributed, not concentrated.
Now, it seems, "misinformation" is suddenly a problem on the internet. It's almost as if, at some point in the recent past, certain powerful interests felt themselves threatened by too much free inquiry. Something had to be done.
So, when was that inflection point?
 |
| Google Trends search on term "misinformation" 2004 - present. |
So if you thought you were suddenly hearing a lot more people complaining about "misinformation" on the internet, it's not your imagination.
2023-01-30
Morning Report: 2023-01-30
ISRAEL: Neve Yaakov attack victims remembered.
Asher Natan, aged 14, was the youngest of the victims. Shaul Chai, aged 68, was the gabbai (sexton) of the Zechor L'Avraham synagogue in Pisgat Zeev. Irina Korolova was an Ukrainian citizen who immigrated to Israel six years ago and worked in the neighborhood. Raphael Ben Eliyahu, another victim, was 56 years of age. Eli and Natali Mizrahi, aged 48 and 45, were also murdered in the attack, when they left their home to try and help the victims. The seventh victim was 26-year-old Ilya Sosnaski.
COVID: Project Veritas sting captures Pfizer exec discussing "mutating" virus.
COMMENTARY: John Woods on election integrity.
An Irregular Thinker: A cheater has no authority.
We as free born American citizens have the right to question our government , our elected officials, and the faceless bureaucrats who enable the progressives to maintain a hold on power.
There has been many discussions and speculation, that for years and specifically in 2020 and 2022 that there was large scale cheating, people who didn’t win the election but were cheated in, through ballot manipulations or phantom voters. I cannot prove conclusively that cheating happened, but like smelling smoke I can say that somewhere there is a fire burning. With this information I can say strongly to our Oregon Democrat politicians “Since you cannot prove that you were not cheated into office, your authority and presentation of laws and bills are suspect at best. “
Until I know that your election was legitimate and honest, I will treat you as a usurper....
Read the rest at the link.
2022-07-08
Identity.
Identity in a group is negotiated between the individual and the group. It is a bilateral relationship. The group agrees to accept the individual as one of its own, with all the attendant rights and responsibilities. In return, the individual agrees to abide by the rules and norms of the group, and to uphold the group’s values and honor. In many cases, membership may entail an element of exclusivity: If you want to call yourself a member of A, you cannot also belong to B. And this process is the model of how the individual, as a unique being, comes to terms with his or her place in society. It is the process of growth, maturity, and further growth.
The social market.
The social market is the complex web of courtesies and communications, small talk and discourse, through which we negotiate our interactions with others. Through it, we assess the trustworthiness and relevance of the information others provide, and attempt to establish the value of the ideas we share with others.
2022-07-01
Notes
Almost everything we know about the world, we learn from other people. It follows that our ability to understand the world depends on our ability to understand people.
What we can observe directly is the behavior of the people who control the information.
The technocrats are acting like they've got something to hide. They are showing with their own actions that there's something there.
I don't have a lot of specialized expertise. I look at what I can observe directly. What I can observe directly is the people in power and their actions; what I can observe directly is the media and their actions.
We make practical and moral decisions primarily, and most reliably, on the basis of first-hand knowledge. The function of propaganda is to supplant what we know from direct observation.
Human beings are competitive, like all living things. Unlike other creatures, we have the ability to follow a moral code, and we are competitive even in that. Virtue envy - the resentment of another person's moral standing - is as old as Cain and Abel. Even when we stand to gain nothing by it, it is easier to take the other guy down than to build ourselves up.
There's a deliberate strategy to decouple moral reasoning from the objective, observable consequences of your actions. Global warming, pandemic masks. It's so that your sense of guilt can be properly manipulated.
Performative virtue: disconnection of perceived "virtue" from any tangible results in the real world.
If I convince myself that most people are ignorant bigots, then I get to feel "special" just by not being a bigot. If I believe the other guy is a nazi, then I only have to be 1 percent better than a nazi to be the good guy.
The Covid scare campaign appeals to a certain strain of vanity: the conviction that "I am among the selfless few, bearing the burden for an ungrateful and ignorant humanity".
What "climate change" and the covid scare campaign have in common is that they are designed to focus your moral decision-making on things that you cannot directly observe - global temperatures or infection rates - so that you must outsource your moral decision-making to the Authorities. This is the same top-down model of the communist command economy, applied to our social, moral, and cognitive universe.
The goal of the technocrats is to get you to subordinate your local, mundane knowledge - things you can observe directly - to the "information" you are fed by authorities.
Rebel News: Parliament Police confiscate a table at Canada Day.
https://www.rebelnews.com/parliament_police_confiscate_illegal_table_during_canada_day_events
Ottawa Police issued warnings Thursday about a crackdown on " unusual noises" and "shouting" but made no mention of banning tables.
2021-11-01
Hungry in Jerusalem: 'A Whole Loaf' by S. Y. Agnon
HUNGRY IN JERUSALEM
A Whole Loaf – S. Y. Agnon
Like Agnon’s work in general, ‘A Whole Loaf’ draws on traditional Jewish religious sources, but is thoroughly modern in style and theme (particularly in the themes of anxiety and indecisiveness). Also typically for Agnon, the story has a dream-like (or nightmare-like) quality.
The unnamed narrator is in Jerusalem at the end of a hot Sabbath day. His family are abroad (for reasons we never learn) and he has to fend for himself, which he is doing rather poorly. The simple tasks of procuring food and drink seem to elude him, even as the heat of the day is described in almost hyperbolic terms. In fact, the heat is described as emanating from the ceiling, walls, and floor of the narrator’s apartment – oven-like – so that he is literally baking.
Early in the story, the narrator encounters the Moses-like figure of Dr. Yekutiel Ne’eman, who gives him some letters to deliver to the post office, after scolding him for allowing his family to be separated from him. The narrator earnestly promises to do so, and momentarily experiences a feeling of real guilt at Ne’eman’s reproof, but mostly he seems to be motivated by “a desire to make Dr. Ne’eman feel more pleased.” We begin to suspect that this man has shallow relationships with his fellow human beings, and that he is a rather poor judge of character. His feelings of guilt and duty are equally shallow, and evaporate as quickly as they arise.
Agnon, as a devout Zionist, no doubt shared and endorsed Dr. Ne’eman’s rebuke, and it is safe to say that the story is, on one level at least, an allegory of the duty of the Jewish people to forsake the assimilated life of Europe with its decadent temptations and return to the Land of Israel.
(In the commentary of the translation I’m using, A Book that Was Lost, Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman, eds., there’s some exposition of Agnon’s symbolism in the story, and it’s well worth reading. I myself am not a scholar, so I will confine myself to remarking on the plain sense of the story.)
The man resolves to take the letters to the post office, as he has promised Dr. Ne’eman, but he’s also hot and thirsty and dying for a decent meal; so he’s torn between going to the post office first or going to a hotel to grab a bite to eat, and spends most of the story dithering between these two courses of action.
“It is easy to understand the state of a man who has two courses in front of him,” he comments reasonably enough. But here and in a number of other places, he sounds insecure and seems to solicit the reader’s (or listener’s) agreement and sympathy for his situation. You can almost picture the guy with a pleading look on his face saying “You do understand, don’t you?”
In the second half of the story we meet Mr. Gressler, whom the narrator seems eager to please, even though Gressler is the one who struck the match that burned down the narrator’s home and books. (The narrator lived upstairs from the apostate textile merchant – whose wares were “like paper” – so this consequence was in no way unforeseeable.) Our narrator lets on to some mixed feelings toward Gressler following the fire, but in general seems to want to maintain cordial relations with him. I think he puts Gressler and Ne’eman on exactly the same level in his own estimation.
(As a biographical note, the house fire was not an abstract idea for Agnon, who lost his home and library to a fire in 1924.)
The one person the narrator feels unambivalent about is Mr. Hophni, the inventor of an improved mousetrap. (At first I thought the mousetrap detail might be the translator’s idiomatic rendering of some other phrase, since we have the expression in English, “build a better mousetrap”. But no, the story is talking about a literal rodent-catching device.) He finds Hophni insufferable. In particular, he finds Hophni’s bragging about his success objectionable. (Perhaps another measure of the narrator’s own insecurity.)
So when the narrator is offered a lift in Gressler’s carriage (a rarity in that place and time, we’re told), he happily accepts, but his happiness is short-lived when he sees Hophni coming aboard as a fellow passenger. Our narrator, now not only irritable from hunger and thirst but further provoked by the presence of Hophni, finally loses it and grabs the reins, causing the horses to panic and overturning the carriage. (His subsequent fear of being hit by a motorcar must be exaggerated, because if carriages were a rarity, how much more so motorcars.)
Psychologically, this is perfect: all through the story, the guy is incapable of making up his own mind and choosing a course of action, burdened by his doubts and anxieties. And when his frustration reaches the boiling point and he finally takes decisive action, it’s a disaster. I think we’ve all been there.
Two paragraphs near the end of the story – set off by repeated phrases before and after – appear to form a nightmare (or nightmare-within-a-nightmare) sequence.
The narrator, having stayed in the restaurant past closing time without ever getting his food (even the “whole loaf” of the title), finds himself locked inside. (The lock sounds “like the sound of a nail being hammered into the flesh” – a curious comparison, particularly in a Jewish story.) He is then paid a visit by a mouse, which he seems powerless to frighten away, as if physically immobilized. He expresses anxiety that the mouse might soon begin to gnaw on his body; from the anatomical progression envisioned in this scenario, we might suspect that there’s an element of sexual anxiety there as well. The mouse is then joined by a cat, whom the narrator expects to save him from the mouse. (We’re not told whether he is re-thinking his opinion of Hophni.) But the cat and the mouse take no notice of each other, instead gnawing on the bones of the left-over food, and the light in the room fades, leaving only the green glow of the cat’s eyes. Eventually the narrator wakens to see the cleaning staff and last night’s waiter. (“I took hold of my bones,” he says, in a final, disquieting echo of the previous night.)
The title of the story calls to mind the baking of bread, an image reinforced by the narrator’s oven-like apartment in the opening scene. In this reading, the man himself is the “loaf”. (The analogy of bread to man is not unreasonable, as both are traditionally spoken of as being brought from the earth by G-d.) But the locked room at the ending of the story – which was published in 1951 – hints at a more recent, and more ominous, use of ovens.
The story itself appears cyclical, with the closing passage almost identical to the beginning. At the end of the story, the Sabbath has ended, but the post office is still closed and the letter remains undelivered. The narrator is still alone. He’s still hungry, thirsty, and very very hot. And there’s no sign that his physical and spiritual torment is likely to end any time soon. I think the simplest explanation is that he’s in hell.
A Whole Loaf – S. Y. Agnon
Like Agnon’s work in general, ‘A Whole Loaf’ draws on traditional Jewish religious sources, but is thoroughly modern in style and theme (particularly in the themes of anxiety and indecisiveness). Also typically for Agnon, the story has a dream-like (or nightmare-like) quality.
The unnamed narrator is in Jerusalem at the end of a hot Sabbath day. His family are abroad (for reasons we never learn) and he has to fend for himself, which he is doing rather poorly. The simple tasks of procuring food and drink seem to elude him, even as the heat of the day is described in almost hyperbolic terms. In fact, the heat is described as emanating from the ceiling, walls, and floor of the narrator’s apartment – oven-like – so that he is literally baking.
Early in the story, the narrator encounters the Moses-like figure of Dr. Yekutiel Ne’eman, who gives him some letters to deliver to the post office, after scolding him for allowing his family to be separated from him. The narrator earnestly promises to do so, and momentarily experiences a feeling of real guilt at Ne’eman’s reproof, but mostly he seems to be motivated by “a desire to make Dr. Ne’eman feel more pleased.” We begin to suspect that this man has shallow relationships with his fellow human beings, and that he is a rather poor judge of character. His feelings of guilt and duty are equally shallow, and evaporate as quickly as they arise.
Agnon, as a devout Zionist, no doubt shared and endorsed Dr. Ne’eman’s rebuke, and it is safe to say that the story is, on one level at least, an allegory of the duty of the Jewish people to forsake the assimilated life of Europe with its decadent temptations and return to the Land of Israel.
(In the commentary of the translation I’m using, A Book that Was Lost, Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman, eds., there’s some exposition of Agnon’s symbolism in the story, and it’s well worth reading. I myself am not a scholar, so I will confine myself to remarking on the plain sense of the story.)
The man resolves to take the letters to the post office, as he has promised Dr. Ne’eman, but he’s also hot and thirsty and dying for a decent meal; so he’s torn between going to the post office first or going to a hotel to grab a bite to eat, and spends most of the story dithering between these two courses of action.
“It is easy to understand the state of a man who has two courses in front of him,” he comments reasonably enough. But here and in a number of other places, he sounds insecure and seems to solicit the reader’s (or listener’s) agreement and sympathy for his situation. You can almost picture the guy with a pleading look on his face saying “You do understand, don’t you?”
In the second half of the story we meet Mr. Gressler, whom the narrator seems eager to please, even though Gressler is the one who struck the match that burned down the narrator’s home and books. (The narrator lived upstairs from the apostate textile merchant – whose wares were “like paper” – so this consequence was in no way unforeseeable.) Our narrator lets on to some mixed feelings toward Gressler following the fire, but in general seems to want to maintain cordial relations with him. I think he puts Gressler and Ne’eman on exactly the same level in his own estimation.
(As a biographical note, the house fire was not an abstract idea for Agnon, who lost his home and library to a fire in 1924.)
The one person the narrator feels unambivalent about is Mr. Hophni, the inventor of an improved mousetrap. (At first I thought the mousetrap detail might be the translator’s idiomatic rendering of some other phrase, since we have the expression in English, “build a better mousetrap”. But no, the story is talking about a literal rodent-catching device.) He finds Hophni insufferable. In particular, he finds Hophni’s bragging about his success objectionable. (Perhaps another measure of the narrator’s own insecurity.)
So when the narrator is offered a lift in Gressler’s carriage (a rarity in that place and time, we’re told), he happily accepts, but his happiness is short-lived when he sees Hophni coming aboard as a fellow passenger. Our narrator, now not only irritable from hunger and thirst but further provoked by the presence of Hophni, finally loses it and grabs the reins, causing the horses to panic and overturning the carriage. (His subsequent fear of being hit by a motorcar must be exaggerated, because if carriages were a rarity, how much more so motorcars.)
Psychologically, this is perfect: all through the story, the guy is incapable of making up his own mind and choosing a course of action, burdened by his doubts and anxieties. And when his frustration reaches the boiling point and he finally takes decisive action, it’s a disaster. I think we’ve all been there.
Two paragraphs near the end of the story – set off by repeated phrases before and after – appear to form a nightmare (or nightmare-within-a-nightmare) sequence.
The narrator, having stayed in the restaurant past closing time without ever getting his food (even the “whole loaf” of the title), finds himself locked inside. (The lock sounds “like the sound of a nail being hammered into the flesh” – a curious comparison, particularly in a Jewish story.) He is then paid a visit by a mouse, which he seems powerless to frighten away, as if physically immobilized. He expresses anxiety that the mouse might soon begin to gnaw on his body; from the anatomical progression envisioned in this scenario, we might suspect that there’s an element of sexual anxiety there as well. The mouse is then joined by a cat, whom the narrator expects to save him from the mouse. (We’re not told whether he is re-thinking his opinion of Hophni.) But the cat and the mouse take no notice of each other, instead gnawing on the bones of the left-over food, and the light in the room fades, leaving only the green glow of the cat’s eyes. Eventually the narrator wakens to see the cleaning staff and last night’s waiter. (“I took hold of my bones,” he says, in a final, disquieting echo of the previous night.)
The title of the story calls to mind the baking of bread, an image reinforced by the narrator’s oven-like apartment in the opening scene. In this reading, the man himself is the “loaf”. (The analogy of bread to man is not unreasonable, as both are traditionally spoken of as being brought from the earth by G-d.) But the locked room at the ending of the story – which was published in 1951 – hints at a more recent, and more ominous, use of ovens.
The story itself appears cyclical, with the closing passage almost identical to the beginning. At the end of the story, the Sabbath has ended, but the post office is still closed and the letter remains undelivered. The narrator is still alone. He’s still hungry, thirsty, and very very hot. And there’s no sign that his physical and spiritual torment is likely to end any time soon. I think the simplest explanation is that he’s in hell.
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