Making choices makes you... you?

 So if you make a choice, does it define you?  Are you implicitly rejecting the other choice?  Can you sit on the fence and keep everyone happy or pick no sides and be on no ones side?

If you change your mind and take the other path... does that choice alone then define you?  Does the time spent exploring the other choice count?  Does the time spent on the fence matter?  

If you keep your feet on both forks of the path... are you just indecisive or making no progress? 

On the other hand, there is the case of making a decision and going for it.... with the risk that it may turn out in an unexpected way.  Every choice has risk, there is no way to eliminate it completely. 

So is choice just about risk?  Trying to pick the least risky choice?  What are the other factors?  Outcomes?  Time investment? Resources?  Ability to execute?  Side effects?  Intangibles? 

Do you pick the choice that will make you who you desire to be?  Will you still desire it when you get there or will the journey reform your desire along the way? 

How to live without discrimination....

 I am seeing more and more end games of anti-discrimination cropping up.  Poor folk who have not had any barriers or boundaries placed on their lives and are ending up in situations to which they are not suited. 

Its interesting to ask the question, is the situation not suitable for the candidate or is the candidate not suitable for the situation?  

I have always ascribed to the idea that people have to change to suite the environment.  But its always good to challenge an idea to see if its a rule or a heuristic.  Are there sufficient edge cases to re-evaluate the rule? 

So the instance I ran across today was about a woman who wanted to sue the US Navy because she could not get what she wanted.  The details are sad and not worth repeating... but the essence is that the environment (the Navy) would not give the woman what she wanted... for reasons. 

The issue I identified was that the Navy was not able to exercise judgment (for right or wrong) and reject her application... and the woman had been strung along and waffled around for so long that she had now passed an age cuttoff.  Imagine a system as large as the US Navy and the only boundary they have left is age.  All their other discrimination mechanisms have been systematically removed.  

This means that the organisation cannot effectively make a decision and enforce it directly.  The system has now adopted what always happens and has evolved indirect ways of trying to get an efficient result. 

There is plenty of scope to argue about need to change and was the previous discrimination system fit for purpose... but that's not the point.  The point is that without a discrimination system, the system has become frustrating, abusive, manipulative, untrustworthy and inefficient.

Its interesting that even as poor a candidate as she is for the role she wants (elite forces officer) the system has spent a lot of effort to prevent her getting in.  It would have been very simple to play the strategy of "just her have a go and fail by herself".  So was this because they did not have faith that she could be failed by any of the internal systems?   Were they just protecting her? (Seem unlikely) Were they protecting the system/institution?  (More likely... as all organisations have some self protection) or were there other considerations?  

The problem is that this woman may not have failed most of the physical challenges and the remaining ones she might have received a "wave through" as has happened for various reasons in military fitness standards.  This would have resulted in her getting the role she wanted. 

So the question still is... where they right to discriminate against her for organisational reasons... even while they did it indirectly? Did the recruiting personnel have good insight into the role and used their instinct to keep her out?  

Having just re-watched moneyball... it makes some interesting points about "selection personnel" that are probably exactly as valid for the military. However, in moneyball, they were not selecting from a general population, they were selecting from already elite players who had "issues".  Very very carefully selecting around the issues.  

In this instance they had a civilian who had "self-selected" as being an elite candidate and was trying to force their selection.  Is this the same or different?  Is there enough wiggle room between the two positions?  

An alternate hypothesis is that the system rejected her (by indirect methods) because of other factors that are not being reported clearly.  My personal take is that the candidate is demonstrating what is called in America a "Type A" personality.... an egomaniac bully.  Perhaps they don't actually want candidates with these personality disorders in positions of extreme responsibility?  Just a thought. 

   

  

Burn it all ... up?

 Watching the current tariff shenanigans and listening to superficially rational people panic is both startling and a bit sad.  I realise that there is going to be a lot of people take injury from the convulsions and I am sympathetic to their distress.

This is human nature at play and there is plenty of learning to be learned. 

Firstly, all the media and talking heads who are busy crying (or expressing glee) about the stock market movements... are treating it like its the centre of the world.  When on any other day, they want to pretend that its just not that interesting.  
Are they just trend following (some) are they disingenuous (many) are they just pointing slackjawed as something exciting happenes that they don't really have any idea about (lots of them too).  Mostly they are just fools spectating on something that they think is a trainwreck... and yelling everything they know about trains.  

Watching the politicians wriggle on the hook is more interesting.  So many of them want to say alot of nothing domestically... while keeping their heads down internationally.  

The irony is that very little of this will directly effect anyone... except the doomsayser.  They are having a field day. 

I have come across a couple of "Analysts" who are trying to "rules-lawyer" their ways out of this and argue about the minutia and "prove" that its wrong and how it should be wound back immediately.  

So far, the more predictable things have happened... there has been a panic on the stockmarkets as all the usual chickens run around looking for the next "sure thing". The biggest correction has been about 10% which is just a normal fuckup day for most stocks.  This is the sort of thing you see when market news comes out that a CEO has been caught with their hand in the cookies again.... I think its reflective of the retail share holders panic and dumping the stock.  Usually this would be the time to pick up a bargain. 

But the fundamentals have not really changed except for the US domestic market.  People are still going to buy stuff tomorrow shops are going to pass costs on... etc etc.  The normal rules of economics will still happen.   These corrections are going to ripple for a while as different supply chains figure out what's happening and contracts get renewed... and then they will all get back to business.  There will be winners and losers... as there always is. Retail investors will pick new "winners" and try to inflate their value by talking them up... the great cycle continues. 

I was amused to see the don come out and try to reassure the US domestic markets this morning.  I don't think he was really ready for the amount of crying and hand wringing from all the voices in the US.  But he did a good job and said nothing to make it worse. 

The truly fascinating part of this is that having a second run at the presidency has given his team a lot of time to learn from their mistakes the first time.  They had four years to see the consequences of their actions and all the holes and this time they have done a blanket system.  So it will be interesting to see if this actually gets a result without all the holes to wriggle through. 

Fundamentally, this is an attempt to force all the US companies that have off-shored their manufacturing to bring it back on-shore.  However, four years is not going to be long enough to up-skill and re-build all the capacity that the US once had.  So its a start... but will it start a trend?  Only time will tell.  I think this is probably the last roll of the dice for the US middle class to recapture dominance of manufacturing.  The problem will be with all their domestic policies on wages and standard of living etc that force up the cost... the only way out will be robotics.  Which ends up at the same place... not enough labour involved in the market. 

The other interesting possibility is that all the seeding of capacity that has gone on in other countries blooms into new production of products that are not US owned.  That will be the truly wonderful outcome of this change.  

Hopefully there will be a bunch of other countries that play the trade barrier game and shatter the "free market" because while its been an interesting experiment... really has completed all the outcomes that the policy could achieve.  The winners and losers in that game have been decided and now its just static.  There needs to be a new game, with new opportunities... and lots of new players.  And this could be it.  All the incumbents are going to cry and try to maintain their monopolies, but this is the best chance to shake up the order and create new opportunities.  

Zero sum Woke

 There is a common pattern in the hobby takeover, pop culture IP takeovers and political takeovers by the woke/SJW/genderist/minority rights  movements. 

The pattern that I keep noticing is this idea that the existing audience/demographic has to "leave" so the preferred mob can "occupy" the conceptual space. 

Superficially, this seems to be about power.  But that does not hold up to much scrutiny.  Because by pushing out the existing audience, the replacements will only have power over themselves.  Which they already had in their own echo chambers. 

The next is that its about forcing "The Message" down the throats of the existing audience.  Again, same problem.  If the audience is forced out, then they will not consume the message embedded in the media.  And the message morphs and changes constantly.  So its hard to know what the observer should take from it apart from the fact that its "different" and "inserted".

Finally, we get back to spite/revenge/punishment.  They want to take something away from you that you love.  This is the same pattern as the mean, petty sibling stealing a toy just to wound.   This is immature and stunted mindset that is all about the "now" and redressing some score board that they have in their head.  There is no concept of the future, of having to live with the consequences.  Perhaps there is no concept of consequences?  The righteous seeker of "justice" for their imagined slights.   Its all about righting the wrongs of their "past", evening up the scoreboard. 

Anyway, this is the pattern.  The spiteful child who seeks to wound for redress of imagined slights. 

There is a slightly more malicious spin on this mindset that develops once the child sees that their initial action has not had the desired effect, which is to double down.  Take even more.  Or to destroy the toy infront of the powerless other sibling.  This is the pattern being played out where pop culture IP's are being systematically corrupted and "changed" into something that is the antithesis of what they once were.  The systematic despoiling of a loved story or universe just to see someone cry.  And once they get addicted to the thrill of the crying... its going to be hard to stop.  This is the "uglification" movement... taking away nice things... even when that nice thing is their own physical body.  

This is what a bitter angry adult does when they cannot get their way and just want to burn it all down and see the pain in someone else's eyes.  They start looking for more eyes to get the same rush.  

The problem was never the partriarchy...

 Al Bundy said it best... "Women understand women and they hate them.". 

The matriarchy is the thing that scares women the most.  Judgement, criticism, accountability all come from older women. Simply be existing, a matriarch of a successful family holds a mirror up to an unsuccessful woman and shows her what she is not.  And the older matriarchs of the family are the ones who see through the bullshit of young women so easily.  And they know the words that will hurt the deepest. 

If you are a young irresponsible woman who wants a life without accountability, how do you get these things? You need to destroy the power of the matriarchy.  But what is the power of the matriarchy?  Family and family bonds.  

But what happens if you raise your hand against the matriarchy?  The matriarch will summon all her words and talk to you.  They will say things that you cannot bare to hear.  They will point out your flaws and show you the consequences of your actions. They will predict your future... accurately. And it will not be pleasant. 

But what happens if you can ignore the matriarchs words?  Do you win?  No you do not.  Because the matriarch will escalate the problem and remove you from of the safety of the family. Because the matriarch controls the power of excommunication.  She defines the family.  Who is in and who is out. 

If you are still a problem outside the family, then you are a problem for the ultimate matriarch power.  The patriarchy.  The family problem solver.  The matriarch looks inward at the family troubles. The patriarch looks outward at the troubles that come from outside.

The patriarchy is someone who spends their life specialising in all the issues and topics that can threaten the family.  Solving them, avoiding them, fixing them, protecting against them, planning ahead to avoid them or killing them.  

So, the only way to "disarm" the matriarch is first to remove the patriarch. Only then can you destroy the thing that scares women the most... being accountable to the matriarch.

Feminism is not done yet

 It occurs to me that these claims that Feminism has run out of ideas might be a little bit early.  There is some major work yet to do that I don't think has occurred to the grifter set yet. 

Let me set a little background for you first and you will get there. 

Consider if you will the movie "Year 1" with Jack Black.  Absolutely wonderful movie.  Ok,  now go back even further.  Back to some mythological time... the garden of eden!  Ok, not that far... bump forward to some mythical time when everyone was just wandering around and eating and ... procreating... and doing it all pretty solo.  Think of it like some nature documentary but with opposable thumbs.  

So,  at some point emergent behavior or social stuff started happening.  Familial groups formed. Competition for mates started to be selected for.  (If you are an evolutionary type) or one or more gods told people to get their shit together and society started.  But really rudimentary!  Think pre-alpha version. The sort of really basic stuff you see when a bunch of 4 year olds a just hanging out.  None of them has an agenda or wants any responsibility.  They just want snacks and entertainment.  Ok, got that picture in your heads? 

Now how did this simple idyll turn into the patriarchy?  Well they figured out that there were some downsides to life.  There were lots of unsuccessful life choices and if they wanted their playmates to be around for a while... there were some monsters under the bed that needed to get handled.  Or some other narrative that involves a lot of people trying to figure out successful life stuff and pass it on to their kids so they stop annoying them. 

Anyway... society evolved through trial and error.  Sooo much error.  The point is that we arrived at something that we would recognize today... in different countries and different cultures we still have similar collective knowledge that we collectively call "Society".  Some people call it the patriarchy.  I honestly don't care as its actually fairly descriptive... lots of dudes organizing stuff and trying to keep their kids alive.  At the same time there are lots of women organizing stuff and trying to keep their kids alive... so yep, patriarchy for want of a better word to argue over. 

The thing that needs to be destroyed and all that.... 

We can tussle over who did what and how much housework and where babies come from and who hurt who.  At the end of the day the patriarchy is as good a name as "Society" for the thing that "progressives" are trying to deconstruct.  And that deconstruction has clearly happened in areas of the west that are more "progressive".

But here's where it gets interesting.  Now what?  

Lets take a little step back for a bit.  What is "the patriarchy"?  Once you strip away all the anger and shitty life experiences that get tangled up in the conversation... and lets be honest... people having shitty life experiences has been a thing since day 1.  The point is that society/patriarchy was a set of rule and enforcement mechanisms.  Right or wrong, no matter which side of the fence you ended up on, there were rules.  Plenty of which have been modified over time to suit different environments and technologies... but the point is that it was rules + enforcement mechanism, generally agreed on by the people playing the "Society" game. 

So once you try to strip away the "male" bit.  You still have rules + enforcement mechanism... but run by women.  

Now we could go down a huge rabbit hole here about why historically there was a patriarchy of men running the show... but that's not actually relevant except as a contextual fact.  I think that it is plausible that it could have gone the other way and been a matriarchy historically, as has happened in some cultures.  I think its just a factor of the environment and probably the inequity in the deathrate of adults that forced a patriarchy to form.  The horrific death rate of women in childbirth simply left more men alive and running households at some point and so the patriarchy was established. 

The point is not that the patriarchy happened... the point is that something was going to happen.  It could have been a matriarchy, it could have been balanced, it could have been based on the people who had green fucking eyes got to be the rule makers.  Someone was going to get selected, in some fashion and it was going to be them who decided good and bad in society.  It was going to be something. 

The point is, what do you do when society trys to change who makes the rules. Is this easy? Are there vested interests?  Does it look easy or hard?   Who cares! We are past the hypothetical and we can see that change is upon us.  The question is:

"What is the replacement rules system?"

Cause at the moment, there is a whole lot of folk still trying to pull down the patriarchy or whatever authority figures they personally hate because of their shitty childhood's.

The key point I want to raise is that it took a lot of thousands of years of trial and error to get where we are.  Its going to take a lot to evolve a matriarchy as a viable replacement for the patriarchy and there is no sign of it happening at the moment.  But if any of us don't want society to fall back to the stoneage, it needs to start happening ASAP because we have a very very very complex society at the moment.  No matter if you like it or loathe it, a complete change of management in any large group of people causes a lot of chaos.  Now extend that chaos over many generations.... 

So my question is: 

Where the fuck in the Matriarchy ready to take over setting the rules? 

Just parachuting women into leadership roles in the existing structure is not going to enact any fundamental change. Because authority is still authority and that's what most of these "progressives" are trying to demolish.  Society without authority is just chaos with screaming in the same language.  It will be interesting when the social expectations, rules of polite society, legal frameworks and tax systems have all been completely overhauled by the new "Matriarchy". The American experiment with the progressive Democratic party is a tiny nod in that direction, but I still think its based on 99% existing patriarchy. 

 We have not even touched on the second half of the equation yet.  The "Enforcement" mechanism for the rules. 

Historically, "might is right" was the mechanism.  The patriarchy's authority was backed up by its ability physically impose their authority. I assume any matriarchy will try something different because... deconstruction and rejection and all that.  So it should be really interesting to see what happens in a society where the mechanisms of control are not based on physical power. 

Here's hoping it will be less dystopian than all the writers imagine. 

The interesting aspects of this is that there is no "matriarchy" stepping forward to set the rules for women's behavior online.  At the moment its just a screaming mob that is encouraged by the software and the social media networks to engender attention and eyeballs to sell advertising.  There is so little attempt to "correct" because this is the first generation to really grow up with this technology, so they are going to be the ones best placed to figure out how to live with it in a sustainable way without going even more insane.  I suspect its going to take a couple of generations to really sort out because of how slowly humans actually evolve their social behaviour.  It will need social media that includes multiple generations occupying the same network, which we have not managed to achieve yet.

What the redpill dare not say

 There is a common consensus amoung a bunch of the red pill channels on youtube that social media has somehow changed the world.  Usually its something along the lines of "social media runined women and lead them astray"  some variation anyway.  There is this unsaid idea that if only social media would "stop" everything would be ok and women would go back to being "normal'.

The issue is that social media is still just people. Its just human nature with a megaphone.  It did not create anything new, just put everyone in a bigger room together.  Then mixed in capitalism and competition.

The red pill community is benefitting from social media the same way that they are pointing the finger and claiming it has ruined the world (or at least the bit they don't like) it has allowed them to group toether and imagine they are a pattern.

Hypergamy is a real thing.  Attention seeking is a real thing.  Shitty lives is a real thing.  Being able to see over the next hill is now a real thing.  Knowing (or thinking ) that the grass is greener has always beena  real thing. These are just human nature that has always been with us.  There are also lots of little quirks of human nature that social media is allowing to bloom that previously were probably too small and too isolated for anyone to even start to identify.  Social media has shone a 1000w spotlight on them and humans are still figuring out how to live with these new ideas. 

One of the pervasive ideas is that 'back in the day" people's choices where constrained to a geographical region, they found their mates in that region and got on with life.

There are stories and social memes from generations ago about women in small towns having their heads turned by a "tall dark stranger".  (Usually with a maserati... as the story goes) and running away with them.  Why would such a story exist if it did not speak to human nature (and mens fears of external competition)  The exciting traveller who will sweep in and woo the town's virgins.  This stirs something primal and threatening in all "hard working men".

The island effect is real. Is it possible that the whole of western civilisation is actually just a side effect of isolation and limited choice? Given complete freedom, will society just decay back to tribes of monkeys with one alpha and a hareem of women? 

The truths are that the majority of men are not winners.  They are not needed for the species to continue. They are needed for the machinery of society to keep chugging along.  They are consumed in the process...  

The converse is also true.  The majority of women are not winners.  They are also filler matieral for society. They are also consumed in the process...

 This is the true horror that social media is revealing, its just that most people are too busy to notice or even consider it.  They cannot see the forest for the trees. Thankfully for most people do not yet have a strategy to deal with this kind of big life question. 

Social media has let loose the emergent behaviour of the mob in ways that the mob is not ready for.  Society has turned out to be a collective figment of their imagination... and quite a few are now imagining different things.

There are interesting glimses of this realisation starting to spring up in all sorts of corners.  "Quiet quitting", MGTOW, "laying flat" etc are all ways of trying to check out of the game.  "Self deletion" is another but more tragic.  An interesting one that is not obvious is the whole "bushcrafting" and back to nature themes that pop up.  Early retirement, van life, travel and backpacking... the more you look the more you can find.  These are all ways of "escaping" the ratrace.  Passport bros is an interesting half step... but its still a step off the path. 

The core theme is that for the past few thousand years is that people comming together into bigger and bigger piles (urbanisation) was beneficial. Collectivly they benefitted, but the social structures had to evolve to make towns and then cities function.  Law and custom emerged as they best tools.  The convention of marriage, trade, ecconomy and industry were interesting side effects.  The fact that the ecconomy has grown into this massive abstract game that has a life all of its own is endlessly fascinating... but is still essentially a side effect of urbanisation and the trade that was required to make that work. 

What happens when urbanisation is no longer pulling in the crowds?  What happens when urbanisation is no longer self-sustaining and only mass migration can be used to jam enough people into one place to keep the game going?  What happens when social media unpicks the island effect and people start acting like monkeys again? 

Its interesting that there are all solved problems.  Its also interesting that we are living in a moment of change and its so disconcerting, because "change is hard".  Watching politicians unpick society for their own self-interests is a kind of karmic balancing that takes a kind of crazy to appreciate.

Finally we circle around to politics... or otherwise know as "human nature" at scale.  

Politics is just one of the emergent behaviours that urbanisation has created.  There are no politcians when everyone is working to feed themselves.  Politics and trade need each other.  

The fun fact to realise is that without trade, politics stops.  Without trade and politics, law iis irrelevant.  That older darker aspects of human nature manifest... those survival traits and strategies start to come back into focus.  

On that theme, we get to homelessness and "illegal" migration.  These are manifestations of the simpler human strategy.  The one that says 'move toward opportunity".  

What if the opportunity is no longer in big urban piles?  How much of a percentage change would it take before the urban environment was no longer 'oppertune" for the "average" person?  With the way the ecconomy machine has managed to mine all the inefficiency and profit out of "modern western life" there is nothing left on the bone for your "average" people.  They are all starting to look for where the grass is greener. 

The girls are looking for some rich chad somewhere and the boys are looking for some foreign girl in a distant land... thats broken.  Not to mention the middle class "the average folk" do not see a future for their kids in the cities.  Every institution looks like it has cultural change sweeping through it and its being over taken by ideologies.  Nothing unusual here, this is the eternal fight that has raged in every city as new ideas take over and transform old.  The only problem with this one is that the new lifestyles are now completely childless.  The machine cannot self-sustain except by constant migration for replacement parts. 

What more can the machine do?  Where is the new resources to mine?  Where is the profit? The machine has canibalised all the players in the game and extracted value from every single aspect of their lives... about the only thing left is to sell debit to the migrants before they even arrive.  How about sell debit to the countries that the migrants are comming from so that the countries actually force the migrants to leave for the ubran machine so that the machine can keep chugging along?  

One of the interesting side effects of this change has been the complete collapse of the millitary.  The mechanisms that previously worked to convince people (mainly men) to sacrifice themselves for "the greater good".... are just gone.  Previously the whole of society was geared toward producing a functional military... with no end of problems... but anyway the point is valid.  What happens when the emergent behaviour that created a functional military gets disturbed?  THe only possible result is a non-functional military.  

why did the roman empire fall?   Because its leadership did not understand or were unable to effect the emergent behaviour of its population to keep it going.  It took hundreds of years and thousands of threads getting cut before the consequences became inevitable.  was there ever a point in time where anyone could have seen enough of the issues to have changed the outcome?  Perhaps.  Was there ever a person who was able to stand against the tide of eveyrone elses self interest and change the course of an empire?  A few, but the rest of them just went with the flow and society fell apart and reformed itno the next day.  Change happened. 

A fun question is 'do you think anyone in the roman empire was aware of it falling"?  Did they perceive it as falling or just changing?  Did they see the forest or the trees?  

Keep in mind that society is an illusion that is shared but not the same shared illusion.  Everyone is playing their own game at all times. 

So what is the trueth that the red-pill community does not want to speak?  

"Change is hard"!