Perhaps the best explanation is the not having to look anybody in the eye. In the past most people you called on the landline were people you had at some point looked in the eye. But now not looking anybody in the eye sets the tone of all human relations, I really don't believe that Trump could have become president at any other moment in history.
The absolute worst thing you can say about the new media is that it makes London, Paris and New York a wholesome village by comparison to this level of connecting people. Cold and it has no soul, instant and it has no depth... It is a large ingredient in thinking about eternity for less than 5 seconds and believing you've reached some interesting conclusions. So shallow
And it would certainly complicate the Flynn effect. It could be that we've maxed out education, just how much learning can do to make you smart, but have bottomed out at innate intelligence which works on a use it or lose it basis. We are now losing more intelligence through convenient lifestyles than we are gaining intelligence at school. From here on out books will not make us smarter, but more hardship will. In every sense the Flynn effect has reversed.
Although university today explains why people are poorer but not so much being dumb. I can see why it wouldn't you make any brighter, but actually more stupid? University is 80% diploma mill like a huge tax we pay before entering the workforce to provide work for lecturers. That would help explain why we are poorer.
But the actually more stupid I look towards others things. What else was significant about 1975? Well, it was the beginning of TINA the unwinding of the cold war. Maybe the reason why the west became so stupid is because it won without having to defeat anybody, decades at the top without a real challenge. For decades we won by default as a complete idiot. Maybe that's the reason why
I dunno. According to the anti-vaxxers we should all be dead by now, and I don't feel dead.
I keep saying that I think the world is too complicated for the best and brightest to understand even half of it. Humanity is out of its depth in an unsustainably complicated world which doesn't mean that some random guy in the pub has it all worked out. It means that even the best, those most qualified to judge, can't actually do it. Humanity out of its depth.
How do we become better informed? In theory the internet is a great library, in reality it's cat videos.
In contrast to being well-informed I argue for skepticism. Nobody is well-informed and be amongst the small number who knows that they don't know. The world is becoming infinitely more complicated and infinitely less understood by everyone. There's no such a thing as well-informed outside of the artificial intelligence perhaps, and we don't understand that neither.
Happened to a friend of mine. Met a girl in America, a girl from Korea which is a big difference from Tinder. You won't find your soulmate within a 15 mile radius in a world of 8 billion.
A system of checks and balances. A jury is the one part of the justice system that is no more psychopathic than the general public, everyone else in it is far more psychopathic.
A lot of women would be mortified, other women definitely would welcome it. Don't forget he's married a much younger foreign woman so he's just one of them kind of blokes, a John.
And weirdly now, in my own generation, you rely on right wingers not to leave the room because of what someone said. You rely on right-wingers to have things like wit, you rely on them to be all over the latest ways of doing things.. ain't that strange?
And the best antidote for narcissism is an unplanned pregnancy with a very painful labour. The reason why being that what narcissism demands is everything on its own terms. You can't separate choice society from its raging narcissism, and raging narcissism has to be or has to have yes men.
And for a similar reason I attribute the post-war consensus with the greatest generation's experience with conscription. They didn't pick any of that, they were thrown together by the fates.
And perhaps not in the early boomers so much, they were still a little bit like their parents but by the people born in the mid 1960s the rounded person was dead, dead and replaced by niches and extremism and, well, selfishness.
Tribalish, yea. But also family people a different kind of tribe, one you can't choose you're stuck with it where you're forced into associating with people different to you are. Possibly different at least.
What I actually think of choice society is that people will freely choose to disassociate from anybody different than they are. It is an intensification of birds of a feather.
I always take the view that families and local communities were a good thing not because they are identical minds, but because they are not. You have to make do with it and I think that's the real source of being able to deal with anybody different to you are. It wasn't your choice thank god.
I've no real evidence for the theory but it wouldn't surprise me. A repressive society yet not at all closely knit. A diverse society yet not at all creative. As controlling as a village but not a village. Authority that is loveless and uncaring oppression that leaves you with neither liberty nor familiarity.
I assume it's to protect the legal process I assume. I think I heard that Europe has more of a need to know basis than America, Britain somewhere in the middle.
Although I do realize that magnanimity doesn't really work like that. It will be more punitive precisely because the powers that be could be fired out of airlock at any moment.
Magnanimity is for winners a generosity of spirit that comes from success even if it would be wiser for failing elites to do this knowing the shoe could be on the other foot at any moment. And the shoe could be on the other foot at any moment. If you don't believe the shoe could be on the other foot at any moment then you need to pull your head out of the 1990s.
And to be honest I'd forego community service, the shaming ritual, being branded the untermensch(criminal record)and anything that even comes close to wearing the yellow star of David. For your own sake I would be as magnanimous as possible.
I echo similar concerns about prison for the naive. Send them down and they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Imagine if there was a run on the banks, Trump returns to power, and these men are released and redefined as freedom fighters. And not just any freedom fighter, a freedom fighter who can beat a fully body armoured man to the ground. What does prison do apart from teach someone to rely on their own mettle instead of calling the police?
And it's an interesting experience with the Muslims because you could be forgiven for believing that they have no honour. But that's not actually true. They can adhere to their honour culture but they exploit us because they see us as easy/honourless white meat. They actually crumble in the face of he who behaves honourably, cannot stand the idea of they themselves looking like the honourless dog.
Anyway I talk about the Muslims because no one else really does this sort of thing anymore. In the modern world there are Muslims and there's everyone else.
But if I actually thought the customer was lying I'd give them a refund and not deal with them again. If I thought they were telling the truth, and I probably would think they're telling the truth, then the next delivery would be on me.
And if I thought they were lying and they're Muslims they get to keep their money plus a comment on their honour. Or lack thereof. What I expect from Muslims is haggling, for them to claim at the end of the job that the price agreed is lower than what was actually agreed. Now the best response to that is to not care at all about money and care completely about the honour, they'll squirm then try to give me the full price we agreed plus a tip, an offer I then refuse.
It would make sense in a disaster prone region of the world, but to the British it's like being sold volcano insurance. To be honest I think we'll be making the hazard out of early warning system.
To me this is the nerd precious strikes again. Technology for the sake of technology, data for the sake of data, cowardice for the sake of being cowardly. The nerd precious might just kill us all in their aversion to even the most unlikely of risk.
And what woke was is an extreme belief in nothing at all. The last of that nothing means anything world that goes well with Donald Trump. Personally I think something else is coming now in our post-woke world, internet aside things are getting a bit real now.
Or to give it another title to the spirit of the 21st century - the second religiousness. You might compare second religiousness to the Roman transition to Christianity. This is not magic, this religion is not a mystery to us, this second religiousness is done for perfectly practical reasons i.e. civilised people who can smell their own death. There's a very important difference between this and the first religion that met us when we were living in trees. The first religion is a little child but what lies is undeniably an old man with a great history it seeks to rebuild.
ChesneyChrist Blog Comments (1,393)
RE: Finding messages...
Perhaps the best explanation is the not having to look anybody in the eye. In the past most people you called on the landline were people you had at some point looked in the eye. But now not looking anybody in the eye sets the tone of all human relations, I really don't believe that Trump could have become president at any other moment in history.