America Needs A Vision, Not A 12-Step Program for Racism

I found this post linked on another friend's Facebook page: Charlottesville UVA White Nationalist Rally Proves America Is Racist. Like many articles from a leftist perspective, it refers to America's fundamental character as racist.

This country was built on systemic racism

It's comforting to insist that racial hatred is not who Americans are...

So yes, racism absolutely is American...

We have a president with a long and clear history of racism: His family company was once investigated for refusing to rent property to black Americans.

The article is a condemnation of America as such on the basis that racists exist in America.  True but not particularly convincing.

It also indicates the election of president Trump as some kind of compelling evidence as if the election wasn't a reduction of the lesser of two very bad choices.  I feel the need to remind everyone that he was running against Clinton, one of the least electable and most polarizing "most-qualified" candidates the Democratic party has ever put forth.  

Sorry, I'm still not convinced that America was racist when we had two very bad choices.

Declaring America racist is a sort of declaration that the racists have already won and that we just have to admit it so that we can start to change like so many delusional alcoholics.  But only white people have to admit it apparently because they're the only delusional alcoholics.  

They need "Racists Anonymous".  The rest of us can just carry on.

Racist by What Measure?

What does it take to qualify?  An act of racism?  A dozen?  A single statue?

I don't have any criteria on which I can draw a line between a country that is racist and one that is not.  I suspect that means this is a meaningless concept designed to foist guilt and shame upon all of the people in the country until we all capitulate and submit to our Politically Correct Overseers.  Sorry, not all of us... just "white people".

Here's what I know.  The Declaration of Independence, America's philosophical document, makes to mention of an ethno-state.  It is not an identitarian document.

It declares that all mankind is equal endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  There is nothing racist about it.  

What Federal, State, and Local governments do should always be held to this standard.  And the LEFT are as guilty as the RIGHT when it comes to giving up the core principles of the United States.

If the leftists want to call America Racist, they also have to accept their part of the blame for letting government run rampant in flagrant disregard to America's original principles.

None of these actions which disregard the principles diminishes the truth of them.  They are mere bits of dirt and disease in a long-lived organism with an immune system.

Mental Hygiene, An Individual Process

The article clearly thinks that delusional alcoholic racists (whites) need to confess their racism.  It's like some kind of weird alcoholics anonymous thing where in order to give up your addiction you have to confess your helplessness to it.  I don't get how that helps personally.

Here's what I see.  

Racism is a symptom sickness of the mind, but it's not the disease.  The core disease is irrationality: ideas that don't comport with reality.   Unless you're a doctor or a scientist making a study of disease, you don't make disease your primary focus.  For most of us, we merely focus on how to keep our health, which is to say, how to incorporate hygiene into our lives.

To make avoiding disease our primary focus is to give it undue attention.  The focus of every human being should be to organize one's own thinking and life so that one can thrive.

As pertains to healthy thinking, the analogy to hygiene is exact.  A good mental practice leads to clean thinking and a lack of practice leads to unclear thinking: mistaken notions, bad logic, and ideas that do not comport with reality (such as racism or any kind of supremacism).

There is no racial input into mental hygiene.  Every person of every race has to figure this out or pay the price, which is to act from bad ideas that don't comport with reality.

There is no way to prevent a person who is unwilling to be responsible for his/her own thinking from holding bad ideas.  The final arbiter is each person him or herself.  And thus, individual responsibility is a fundamental moral requirement of mental hygiene.

Vision vs. Virtue Signaling 

Here's the bottom line.  

Calling America Racist isn't going to change my behavior (or the behavior of anyone who is already rational) because I'm already doing the hard work of clear thinking.  (And, in any case, as I'm not white, the article already excluded me.)

Calling America Racist won't affect the actions of any supremacists (no matter what the color or ethnicity) because they are not moved by reason or facts as far as I can tell.  And they will certainly not be moved by poorly supported arguments of the wrong variety.

So let's be real okay?   The only thing the author of the cited article is achieving by calling America Racist is virtue signaling.  Like masturbating, virtue signaling is designed to feel good without achieving very much.

Dear Author: Grow the fuck up.

Wanna lead America to a better place?  Start with a vision that stands for all time like the principles in the Declaration for Independence.

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This is America: All of mankind is equal under the law, endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted among men to protect these rights.

Joe Rogan Experience #877 - Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos http://www.selfauthoring.com/ 100% off the Future Authoring Program code: "ChangeYourself" - The offer is extended until the end of December 7th

I've only checked out the episodes of Rogan that friends have said I have to listen to except for this one, which I have listened to with no recommendation.

Rogan has proven himself to be a really smart and knowledgable host who can hang with nearly anyone, at their level. This one has an amalgam of philsophy, psychology, and mythology and it's pretty dense at times but it's a great discussion about the cancerous effects of Postmodernist philosophy and its war against clear thinking and elevation of feeling over fact.

Peterson has decided to take a vocal stand against recent legislation in Toronto in regards to gender pronouns and I first became aware of him from Sam Harris's podcast but this conversation flows a lot better than the ones between Harris and Peterson.

This is a 3-hour chat. It is profound and worth your time.

How Anger Blinds You and Makes You Feel Virtuous While Lashing Out

This morning, while listening to Econtalk, I encountered interesting back-and-forth discussion on Anger as relates to Paul Bloom's controversial ideas on empathy.

• Some people argue anger is good, e.g. it indicates injustice
• but it makes you blind
• still it may indicate areas that require action
• as long as you don't act out of anger (directly)
• anger has the effect of justifying all sorts of regrettable action and even making you feel virtuous at the moment of lashing out
• you always have a choice of how you respond to anger
• how you choose to respond to anger is part of being an adult

The discussion gets personal and considered for both, host and guest, when they consider anger in regards to parenting.

• When you're disciplining your child... you shouldn't let your anger dictate how you would respond
• Both host and guest never struck their kids
• There are things you can do to your kids which isn't hitting them that is a lot worse: humiliating, belittling, etc.
• It's easy to fool yourself that what you do in anger is "in the kid's best interest"
• Anger and Empathy are poor emotions for a parent to use as a moral guide

Very fascinating discussion. Check it out. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/paul_bloom_on_e.html

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Photo Credit: Anger | Patrik Nygren

Observations on Resentment

This morning after reading a vague emotional post by a woman who has decided to write off white women...

Two friends and I set up a rule — no more white women for 2017. We are not accepting friend requests online or in real life. We don’t have the energy required to vet people and then wait for the other shoe to drop.

Can't help but muse that people who truly develop self-esteem can't get this upset by not being seen by others. People who establish good boundaries are not subject to surprises by who she thought other people were.

You cannot base your self-esteem on accidents of your birth. Your race. Your height. How good looking you think you are.

Neither can you base your self-esteem on your relationships. The people who try this always end up resentful and bitter. (And, apparently, more than a bit racist.)

I suspect the most important thing to your self esteem that you can do is to look at the world and decide what you're going to try to be. Then do it. Then check in and ask yourself how it's going.

It is my prediction that people who are intentional and rational harbor fewer resentments toward others. There are probably fewer incidents of misplaced trust as well. When you begin with the idea that no one else owes you anything, every kindness is a gift rather than an expectation. The people in whom you take pleasure are enjoyable for their own sake for as long as those interactions last.

What is the relationship between expectation and resentment? What is the relationship between ideas about moral duty and expectation? How is it that people you barely know can "betray" you so badly you are "waiting for shoes to drop"? What would happen if you just accepted people the way that they were and interacted more with the ones you sincerely enjoy without trying to change the ones you enjoy less?

These are all questions of attitude. And they are worth muddling through for a person who seeks to understand themselves and spend more time acting out of self-worthiness than resentment of others.

That's a worthy goal isn't it? To spend more time acting out of your self-worthiness. Sounds good, anyway.

Rationality: Willingness to Observe and Not Being An Arrogant Fool

Rationality depends on 2 things:

1. Being willing to look a phonemena and make observations about fact.
2. Accepting/learning that it is possible to look at coincident facts in some phenomenon and come to the wrong conclusion about causality at work in that phenomenon.

If either of these 2 aspects are absent you can still make assertions but you may not say that the assertions are rational.

Rationality is thus at odds with hubris, which assumes your own infallibility.

It is also at odds with faith.

An application of rationality to an assertion which begins as faith can be regarded as rational but can no longer be regarded as faith, which eschews the need for evidence. The more one rejects the need for evidence, the more one's faith is said to be strong.