Zaphod on June 3, 2021 at 12:27 am said:

@DNW:

You speak as if self-knowledge and actualization are Good Things. Are you sure you want Joe Public, let alone John Chinaman introspecting? Are you really sure?

One of the good things about a conceptual bomb-thrower and cynical iconoclast is that despite himself – or deep down maybe not “despite himself” – he addresses root questions and issues most of us would like to parry away with platitudes or displays of received wisdom.

Even on blogs and discussion boards, there are areas of politics and religion that are just better not discussed at least too deeply lest things become uncomfortable and uncivil. An attitude you are apparently at war with.

So there are a cluster of issues that are partially taboo; one of which you enjoy broaching.

Another of those issues is the package of implications that logically follow from trendy values nihilism. Much in the way that atheists shrug off propositions mooting the non-existence of a transcendent law giving authority with the irrelevant remark that “That does not mean we can’t act morally”, the broader class of moral nihilists shrugs off the implications of the zombie man: i.e., in my use, not someone who has absolutely no self-awareness of reflective consciousness, but rather one who shrugs and accepts the image of the elephant and the helpless rider as an analog to the human body and mind in a similar manner. In other words, the willfully semi-conscious man.
In both cases, those responding are pretending that the critical issue really does not by implication change things all that much because we can mindlessly continue on as usual more or less but not really; when in fact the difference changes everything, and yes, really.

Your question asks, essentially then, if in our system of moral evaluation who or what the master of our consciousness is, matters.

And, whether, once having by evolutionary accident, Divine inspiration, or clawing effort gotten one’s perceiving head above the waters of habit and genetically programmed glandular secretions, it matters in terms of “human” value, if the subject decides to just sink once again and flow along with the current.

Let that current be random organic impulses generated within by a “self” insofar as such a being would have a “self”, or by another more dominant other, “itself” motivated or impelled by equally unexamined, and barely consciously registered “drives”.

What is such a thing? What is its value?

What kind of morality has such a being?

Frankly, it is a morality equivalent to that of the drug addict, the schizophrenic, or of any other mindless organism either simply impelled by a program, or being buffeted about by forces it has never questioned or come to grips with.

Is such a thing even worth its own time much less yours?

Well, I guess that depends on whether you think that consciousness – and the self-awareness it eventually entails which even allows a question regarding its value to be mooted, is the critical difference between man, and utterly pointless matter.

And whether you think that distinction itself matters.

I don’t know that I’d call the Chinese Mindless Insects or Chinese Society a Borg.

I don’t think that I would either. And those poor Chinese who flee to unofficial Catholic churches in search of existential meaning, or those “lie down flat” boys who are not enticed by the Social Credit Sino-Borg program of Xi Jinping, are to my mind evidence of it.

There’s plenty of individualism — get a Chinese outside his extended family and there’s nobody more selfish and solipsistic. Chinese domestic propaganda and censorship is mainly there to crush any Baizuo (White Left = Progressive Poz) Tendencies coming from the Edumacated classes… and also there to head off any Yellow Left paleo Maoist criticisms along the lines of ‘what happened to you know, actual Communism, eh, Comrades?’

That is another good point which I cannot tell if is intended to be a simple retort or an observation which you are aware opens up the hidden core of collectivist loyalty: that it is based not on genuine altruism, but on a theory of personal gain. That is to say that the loyalty to the collective is seen by the subject as its main chance. It is not motivated by some feelings of real mutuality or [shudder] affection.

The instant you see that, the thread from Asian collectivism to modern American liberalism reveals itself as an impulse one and the same – one and unbroken.

This insight was first brought to me as I mentioned before by a Japanese national I had known for years who decided to become an American. We had never discussed anything personal. Then one day he showed up in my office and started talking.

We covered a number of points, but in response to my comments he remarked that Americans often imagined that the Japanese collective impulse was based on some fellow-feeling akin to interpersonal affection and caring. He stated forcefully that although duty once played a role in their mutual care and identification ways, “love” so-called, did not. And that the younger generation had not even that habit of duty and respect.

Surprised the hell out of me. But made things much clearer.

You speak as if self-knowledge and actualization are Good Things. Are you sure you want Joe Public, let alone John Chinaman introspecting? Are you really sure?

I don’t know that I’d call the Chinese Mindless Insects or Chinese Society a Borg. There’s plenty of individualism — get a Chinese outside his extended family and there’s nobody more selfish and solipsistic. Chinese domestic propaganda and censorship is mainly there to crush any Baizuo (White Left = Progressive Poz) Tendencies coming from the Edumacated classes… and also there to head off any Yellow Left paleo Maoist criticisms along the lines of ‘what happened to you know, actual Communism, eh, Comrades?’

Xi Jinping doesn’t care what you think about Blacks or Racial Differences or which school of Anthropology you subscribe to or what your position is on the Schleswig Holstein Question. He’s only going to crap on your head if you have Bad Thoughts about Xi Jinping. It’s very clear what thoughts are not OK. And the list of thoughtcrimes doesn’t retroactively vary from year to year. Can you say this with any confidence in the USA today?

As for Christianity in China…. at best it seems to devolve into a Prosperity Gospel Shtick. They love money. As well they should. There’s SFA social security net. At worst, well you get the Taipings. And that’s just the most successful mad religious sect has run amok in China in recent memory. China is fertile ground for movements which cater to spiritual longing when times are tough — like the language itself, religion has been worn smooth over the past few thousand years. So there is a void just waiting.

Bethink you that there were huge American policy failings and misunderstandings leading up to the ‘Loss of China’ because the then American elites were so easily taken in by missionary boosterism and the blandishments of nominally Christian Chinese interlocutors: The Soong family are just one to come to mind here.

I’m not saying don’t bomb China with Bibles. I’m just saying It’s Complicated.

“Zaphod on June 2, 2021 at 8:27 pm said:

@DNW:

I’d probably throw Chinese Christians into the volcano too….”

Just in case another lunatic should peruse the scriptures and then claim to be the brother of Jesus Christ, it appears. Nip the danger in the bud so to speak.

But social discontent in China seems to be taking a much more passive stance nowadays. You can of course easily tear down churches and beat old women in order to stamp out Christianity and the notion that it is acceptable to imagine that there is a God higher than the race. And according to SerpentZA and his street videos, altruism and fellow feeling [as we understand it] have not traditionally been a weakness Chinese nationals suffer from. Though that has its humorous aspects too as many YouTube Chinese national tourists abroad videos illustrate: “Look out at the buffet table and salad bar!

But how you stamp out slacking as a form of social protest is quite the trick. Some form of culling might be necessary for the more reluctant of the potential Sino-Borg. Fortunately, the CCP is there with its social credit program; and the threat of social death for noncompliance might do it, all while preserving that virginity of the soil.

But why do these soil conservation programs always seem to wind up creating a termite heap rather than a city of men? How do you, in fact, save men, by turning them into mindless insects?

Theoretically speaking, what is this program ultimately in aid of and where does it lead, exactly …?

“The twin pillars of Western Civ:

1 — the inheritance of Judeo-Christian Ethos and its ideas of Truth and Good”

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=judeo-christian&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cjudeo%20-%20christian%3B%2Cc0

I’m holding a seance tonight to try to raise Sapir and Whorf to see if can get any comments.

Or is it Strauss and Jaffa I should be dialing up on my Ecto-phone?

All correct.

When I need to analyse data it’s off to JuypterLab and a bunch of very powerful tools. If I want to do symbolic math, SageMath. I won’t pay for Mathematica.

But old school HP Calculators are fun. Haptics. And knowing that you are handling an artifact which was designed by the best of the best to be the best possible tool for the job and to last.

Haptics are why I’d rather play around with a real HP-15C than an emulator app on phone which runs much faster and can print a virtual ticker or show more of the stack.

When doing self-study, there’s a lot to be said for getting away from all screens and going back to paper books and a good calculator. Fewer distractions and Dopamine Traps.

But from a purely utilitarian perspective, yes.

As I said. They are a social cancer, eating away a the foundational aspects of Western Civilization.

The twin pillars of Western Civ:
1 — the inheritance of Judeo-Christian Ethos and its ideas of Truth and Good
2 — Classical Greek notions of Thought and Ideal
Are the targets of literally **everything** PostModern Liberalism is about.

They WILL destroy Western Civ, if left to fester. Until everyone wakes up to this except those assholes looking to destroy it, we’ve got a major problem.

}}} A lot of the supercharged racism uber alles ideology we’re seeing right now under the general banner of “critical race theory” is not new. Most accounts place its origins in the late 1980s or 1990s, but in fact it is possible to make out the essential dynamic back in the 1960s.

Au Contraire, Pierre.

Most of this began after WWI, as the Classical Liberal, so proud, so arrogant, about what Western Civ had given to mankind, saw the results of that stupid war and turned like a spurned woman on it, and morphed it into PostModern Liberalism by the early-mid 1930s.

All the racism part was is an incremental tool to be used to beat Western Civ to death with — yet another aspect of its ideals which it fails to fully and totally support all through its existence, and thus is not worthy of consideration at all.

“Tear it down and destroy it.”

That’s the eternal goal.

Other than test-taking requirements (which often don’t allow phones due to internet-cheating possibilities) there is literally zero justification for owning any calculator other than one of the printing calcs used by bookkeepers and the like.

Not only can you have a calc on your phone, there’s probably an emulator for most of those calcs out there — if not, there’s probably someone working on one for funsies.

I know it is easy to get apps that do “paper” calculator (i.e., it has a “roll” which shows previous results), there are scientific calculators that do anything those HPs do (though it may not support RPN, which I know is a selling point — I’d bet there is someone out there who has an RPN calc), as well as actual graphing calcs comparable to the TI’s.

Yup… https://play.google.com/store/search?q=caluclator%20hp%20emulator

HP 45, 67, 89, 10BA…

I’d probably throw Chinese Christians into the volcano too. The Taiping Rebellion is why. Memory of this is also why the CCP is so down on Falun Gong. Syncretism is inevitable and throws up all kinds of unpredictable weirdness in virgin soil.

Sounds harsh? The Taipings killed almost as many people as the CCP did. They’d be well in front if it wasn’t for the Great Leap Forward.

Regarding the rest, I’ve yet to see a Philosopher floor an Atavist. Now a Cunning Atavist with a ‘Philosophy’… you want to watch out for those.

“But what are we returning to now if we drop the Classics?”

An anarchic period without principles, at, or philosophy.

One reason they’re dumping classics is there aren’t enough students taking the classes. And college is supposed to entertain these days: climbing walls, ethnomath, food courts… “Sport in the Ancient World…” And if you can’t get enough students to take the undergraduate classes, you drop the department… Pretty soon, there will be no one studying Latin or Greek, ancient near eastern philology, history and philosophy of science, Anglo-Saxon, or any of the other abstruse majors with limited appeal and small enrollment… And there will be no where to study them.

(I was in the Near Eastern Studies Department and I joked we should have the following classes: “Beer on the Ancient Near East,” and “Sex in the Bible,” and we’d have a YUGE enrollment in them.)