Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Bitter Beliefs

The Zman's most recent post, Better Beliefs, is a good one and worth reading if you missed it. He relates how a civic religion does not necessarily need a god, but it certainly must have a devil. The modern leftist religion, which is something like Puritanism where God has been replaced by man, has shifted into overdrive on their devil narratives. He shares a sentiment that can't be shared too much:
If they were sober minded enough to reason through these things, they would not be on the Left. To be on the Left is to abandon all reason in favor of a set of beliefs.
Stefan Molyneux has put it similarly, "you can't reason a man out of a belief he didn't reason himself into." It's the reason why the alt-right learned in the last election cycle that memes and insults were more effective persuasion tools than facts and logic. Call it a consequence of universal suffrage. A lowest-common-denominator electorate demands a lowest-common-denominator political discourse. Arguing against lefties with logic is inherently unproductive because their identity is defined by a rejection of reality. Being a liberal requires convincing yourself that you don't know certain things.

One story in the news is about an adjunct professor at Victoria University who just lost her position. She was noted for having produced a study showing that polar bears are doing very well these days - in contradiction of climate change propaganda. She was fired for daring to publicize an unauthorized bear-related hate fact. Many of the comments in right-wing discussions forums were to the effect of "they're scared because they know the global warming narrative is falling apart, and they're lashing out." Those kinds of comments betray a low understanding of the mindset of the global warming promoters. No, they don't think that they have a narrative, let alone one that is failing. They are believers, so they are convinced they have the truth, and that while evil forces are trying to sabotage progress, their side is right and will prevail. They are in the upside-down world, where true is false and false is true.

The question could arise...how do we know that we aren't actually the ones in upside-down world? Our response is that we know we are correct because our side is congruent with reality, while theirs must ignore, distort, or outright fabricate reality to fit their beliefs. However, they would claim the same thing as well! So, who is correct? Let's consider this not as a strictly right versus left issue, but as masculine versus feminine, which is roughly equivalent to technical versus social. Consider the two valid mindsets that either side might hold.
  • The predictions of the global warming people always fail, and the model for runaway greenhouse warming is technically flawed, therefore global warming theory is false.
  • Global warming has the power to ruin the lives of professionals who contradict it, therefore global warming is real.
Women are much more oriented towards social dynamics than men. Women navigate social webs; men solve physical problems. Men take a while to realize that many alleged technical debates are really just social phenomena with a mask of analytical rigor. Women inherently have a sense that social fads come and go, and that it is wiser to float with the tides than to constantly swim against the currents. Just as men learned to hold off death by acquiring resources and fighting hostile outsiders, women learned to hold off death by not allowing their families to be branded as heretics in times of mandatory piety.

Machiavelli said the same thing. He advised to have your own independent thoughts, but to always feign allegiance to the religion. Today, that religion is climate hysteria, trans kids, and all that. Is it worth condoning such awful lies for the sake of social cohesions? I say not, but mostly people do. Well, I skew heavily to the analytical, so that makes sense. A highly social person, the type of person who never "got" math but is invited to every party, is going to pick the socially smart choice, which is to stay in the middle of the herd on divisive issues. There is some conventional wisdom that these socialites have bigger hearts, they're liberal because they care, and the analytical types are too cold and systematic. I think that's a big lie. I think these social chameleons - so aligned with Machiavelli - are selfish, caring for only their own survival. They'll allow the gender-confused children to permanently mutilate their reproductive organs, so long as they don't risk sabotaging their own careers for some politically incorrect comments on social media.

But that's not entirely fair to the feminine sector, which is mostly women - although increasingly includes men soy boys. What binds our perspective to theirs is children. Ultimately, women are cunning social creatures so that they can protect and promote the interests of their children. A woman with a child in danger is a force of nature to be reckoned with. So, consider this, a woman is naturally inclined to do exactly what we believe to be our foremost duty: to protect children from the evil forces of the world.

That common intersection of masculine and feminine objectives is like a little bridge that brings us back to where we started. We should see now that if an article provided a thousand solid, indisputable reasons why global warming is false, and also mentioned that a professor lost her career for stating an unauthorized fact, that article would tend to increase support for climate change policy. The bulk of society want to side with the strong horse and aren't interested in even the faintest of technical facts. The most convincing article against climate change support would be one where climate activist professors are ruined by unreasonable tyrannical power. The moment that support of climate change hysteria starts to trigger women's ancient faculties of child protection, the popular sentiment will shift very quickly.

We can see some problems here with modern democracy. Universal suffrage means that the group least inclined to think systematically is empowered to make the systematic decisions. In an electorate where the bulk flock to the strong horse, a petty tyrant is more popular than a principled peacenick. When the safe choice is always to avoid contradicting mob mentality, then mobs are certain to run amok, thereby threatening everyone's safety anyway.

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