Authored by Gaius Baltar (http://gaiusbaltar.substack.com)
It is becoming increasingly clear to more and more people in the West that something has gone terribly wrong with the Ukraine project. Predictions and projections didn’t pan out and the West doesn’t seem to know what to do. The Russian economy wasn’t a house of cards as predicted, Russian weapons weren’t inferior as predicted, Russian soldiers and commanders weren’t incompetent as predicted, and Russian technology wasn‘t inferior as predicted.
In some respects the Russians even seem to be superior to the West. Their weapons are effective and in many cases outright technologically superior, as clearly demonstrated by their hypersonic missiles, SAM systems and electronic warfare systems. Their economy appears to be surprisingly advanced and diversified and based on real wealth creation rather than financialization and debt like the West’s. Their strategic and tactical thinking also seems to work, while the West‘s clearly doesn‘t.
The whole mess is often explained as a result of a miscalculation by the western elites – they underestimated Russia and overestimated the West. The situation, however, is far worse than that. Every day that passes reveals the impotence of the West more and more and the situation is becoming outright humiliating. At this point the rest of the world either shakes their heads or simply laughs at the West and its politicians and diplomats – not to mention its crazed populations.
The dysfunction of the West is far deeper than just the situation around the Ukraine project. It’s absolutely everywhere. The West can’t do diplomacy in general, it can’t run its cities or countries except into the ground, its high-tech projects fail almost as a rule, its infrastructure is crumbling, its economies are crumbling, and all public policies seem to have a civilizational suicide as a final goal. The West’s control mechanisms over the rest of the world are also crumbling, including the dollar, sanctions, color revolutions, military interventions and threats. Nothing seems to work and everything the West does seems to make things worse.
Any rational person upon hearing a western leader, diplomat or “expert” speak, asks himself this question: “Are they just lying or are they really this incompetent and delusional?” The answer is “both” but the incompetence factor is far greater than most people can imagine.
Why has this happened? It’s clear that the cause is far deeper than the deindustrialization of the West or economic problems in general. The economy doesn’t explain the incredible incompetence shown by the West before and during the war in Ukraine.
I suggest that the cause of this unfolding disaster is a serious structural problem in the West – which Russia seems to have largely avoided. This structural problem is a necessary condition for the current western system and has been purposely created to bring it about and maintain it. This problem is the subject of this article – as well as the “mechanism” behind it. This is unfortunately a long article, but the subject matter demands it.
Human capital and its properties
The current ideologically-based power structure of the West outright requires that certain types of people be in positions of influence and certain types of people be sidelined. This applies to all steps of the social ladder; from kindergarten teachers to university teachers and corporate executives, and all the way up to the leaders of society itself. This has been progressing steadily for the last five decades or so, and has resulted in a major structural problem for the West. That problem is the obvious and massive degradation and misallocation of human capital in the West.
Human capital can be described as the quality of a company’s or nation’s workforce, or more specifically how competent the employee pool is – how well they are trained, how quickly they can be trained, how they are educated in general, and how they make decisions. In order to understand what competence really means, let’s define it further.
Competence can be described as specific or general. This distinction is extremely important and must be understood by anyone who attempts to manage human capital on a small or large scale.
Specific competence is the ability to do a certain type of work. This can be carpentry, coding, chemistry, medicine, piloting an airliner, and so on and so forth. Some of these types of jobs may require a lot of competence, training and intelligence, but what they have in common is that their scope is limited and clearly defined. They exist within clear boundaries, separate from the complexities and vagueness of the world in general. Each type of work requires certain abilities innate in the person, as well as varying degrees of training. People, of course, differ a lot in their level of specific competence within each field.
General or high-level competence is the ability to do work that is beyond clearly defined boundaries. The subject matter of those types of work exists in a complex “variable universe” and can be exceedingly vague and confusing. It requires the ability to be adaptive and be able to transfer skills between different types of work. This also applies to expertise in one field being applied to a completely different field – such as applying psychology to economics or astrophysics to climate science.
Examples of positions requiring general or high-level competence people are corporate executives, all kinds of planners and administrators, product developers, inventors, high-level consultants and analysts, military leaders and planners, diplomats, judges, political leaders, and high-level scientists and theoreticians, to name a few.
Specific and general competence types of work are not two separate things. Types of work or “jobs” can be said to range from almost completely specific up to almost completely general. Almost all types of work have elements of both but in varying proportions. To illustrate this I will take an example from a company I’m personally familiar with. This is a software company with several owners, most of whom work at the company. One of the owners is an exceptionally competent database specialist. However, when he contributes to decision making for the company as a whole, he becomes an outright problem. The management structure of the company had to be “modified” to neutralize him in that role, as well as a few others. This employee has exceptional specific competence but very poor general competence. He cannot “transfer” his specific database competence over to competence in moving the company into the future. He simply cannot operate objectively or sensibly outside his database job.
So what makes this employee have such poor general competence – or more specifically – what is general competence? General competence requires three necessary conditions: a) High general intelligence or IQ, b) the ability to be objective, even in situations where the result of your conclusions may not be to your liking, and c) the ability to reach conclusions without being influenced by others (i.e. independent thinking). The latter two conditions are a direct result of how the human brain interacts with the environment. The mechanism behind it is too complicated to describe here, but in simplistic terms it can be said that humans range in their relationship with reality from the emotional-outward/subjective to the introspective/objective. This variable, like all evolutionary traits, including IQ, is normally distributed. This has rather disturbing implications which may be difficult for some people to understand.
Let’s first look at IQ, or general intelligence. In order to be able to deal with seriously complicated work or get through a real university program, an IQ of about 125 is necessary. Only about 5% of the population in the West has this IQ or higher. This means that the pool of potentially high-level competence people is very small to begin with. Even if we use a cut-off of an IQ of 115, which is sufficient for most semi-complicated work, the potential pool only goes up to 16% of the population.
Now let’s take a look at the other variables, i.e. objectivity and independent thinking. Those two are correlated and we will, for the sale of convenience, handle them as the same variable or trait, even though they aren’t. They are normally distributed, much like IQ, with most in the middle and fewer toward the extremes in both directions. On one side of the distribution are people who, to state it bluntly, are incapable of thinking objectively about any issues that may interact with their personal views about anything at all. They can be competent in a limited field which is “neutral” to them (such as databases), but not involving anything else. They can’t run a company in a competitive environment, except into the ground. They can’t run a city, a country, a military campaign, an economy, or anything requiring general competence, except into the ground, regardless of their intelligence. These people are clearly not suitable for general/high-level competence jobs.
So, what is the proportion of the population that is objective enough and independent thinkers enough to be suitable for those jobs? That’s difficult to determine but it’s clear that it is maximum 50% of the population. In reality it’s far less but let’s be generous and say it’s 30%. What does that mean?
IQ and objectivity/independent thinking are somewhat correlated but let’s assume they are not. Let’s say that we have a pool of potentially objective and rational people that is 30% and a pool of people with IQ of 125 that is 5%. That means that the pool of high-level general competence people is 5% of 30%, or 1.5% of the population.
If we are really generous and assume that 50% of the population is objective and rational and an IQ of 115 is sufficient for those jobs, then we have 16% of 50%, which is a pool of 8% of the population.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. This group, whether we define it as 1.5% of the population or 8% of the population, is extremely valuable. This is essentially the only group in society that can reliably evaluate complex situations and make subsequent rational decisions. Without it, modern technological society simply cannot be built or maintained – let alone advanced. Let me rephrase this – if we do not identify and utilize this group, we cannot run our complicated societies except into the ground.
The western purging of competence
Modern western society is from a governance standpoint ideologically motivated and ideologically controlled. It is being pushed in a very clearly defined ideological direction, led by the European Union and the current US administration. This ideology is not the subject matter of this article, but it can be seen everywhere by any rational and independent-thinking person. For the uninformed-curious a good place to start is the website of the EU’s policy-making body; the World Economic Forum.
In order to achieve these ideological goals for the West, two things must happen: a) The right people must be put into power at all levels of society and b) any disruptive elements must be eliminated or suppressed. Since all ideological goals tend to be more or less in conflict with reality, there is no group more disruptive to them than the one who operates objectively and independently. People like that simply cannot be allowed into positions of power, and if they must be, they must be kept quiet and/or forced to toe the line.
The objective/rational/general competence group, whether it is 1.5% or 8% of the population, therefore becomes a problem rather than a resource. This is exactly the situation in the West today.
Many people have noticed that meritocracy has been systematically abandoned in the West and the relationship between competence and reward severed in giant swaths of the economy – and almost completely in government. What few people seem to realize is that this is a necessity for the West’s ideological goals to be reached. High-level competence cannot be promoted because it is a threat. It cannot therefore be rewarded.
In order to illustrate this, let’s take a look at what happens when a member of the 1.5% is allowed to gain significant power. Elon Musk is a smart man, probably with an IQ of 150 or more. He is also quite objective and realistic in his assessments, and an independent thinker. His ownership and governance of Twitter/X is a major problem for western ideological goals. Free speech is an obvious threat to any ideology and, to rub salt in the wounds, Musk belittled the guardians of the Ideology at Twitter by making fun of them, then by firing them all and only keeping the competent ones. This cannot be allowed to stand and we can already see the response. The EU is planning to use force to stop this affront to the Ideology and may actually block Twitter in Europe. Ideological champion (and suspected lizard robot) Mark Zuckerberg was even instructed to cook up an ideologically pure Twitter copy in response – but seems to have failed. We eagerly await further responses, which may range from lawfare up to more “direct” actions, and will most likely be directed at Musk personally.
The reconfiguring of western education
As previously noted, two things must happen for the ideological goals to become reality: The right people must be promoted and the wrong people must be suppressed. This process of elevation/suppression has become the main goal of the western education system – all the way from kindergarten up to university. If we look at what the education system has been doing, this becomes extremely obvious. Here are a few examples:
Evaluation of competence is being systematically degraded to avoid comparison between the competent and the incompetent. Exams are being discarded in favor of constant “projects” and students work in groups so the incompetent may hide. Schools avoid testing the individual directly as much as they can – and thereby comparing him to others. The competent ones must not be encouraged, and if at all possible, they themselves must not realize that they are above others.
Universities are increasingly basing admittance on other criteria than competence, including quotas based on non-competence variables. The most insidious selection method is the “personal essay” which applicants must submit – and is sometimes even more important than grades. All applicants know that the more they signal virtue in the essay, the more likely they are to be admitted. On the basis of the essay, the universities can pick the ideologically pure – which is the only purpose of the essay requirement to begin with.
Almost every academic subject is being turned from the objective to the subjective to assist the irrational-incompetent student. This even applies to hard subjects such as mathematics – where nowadays 2+2 doesn’t necessarily equal 4. Even intelligence is now subjective and the stupid can be as smart as the intelligent – it’s just a question of perspective, the right measuring tools, and idiotic inventions such as “emotional intelligence.”
Almost every subject has been made easier than before to help the incompetent students and even critical fields such as medicine are now graduating people who are utterly incompetent and clueless – on a large scale. This systematic lowering of standards also has the added benefit of creating disinterest in smart and rational students. A smart student performs better and better relative to others as the subject gets harder. If the subject is easy or made uninteresting, he will sink down to mediocracy – which is a part of the purpose of lowering the standards to begin with.
Disciplines which may be a threat to the irrationality of the Ideology have been massively subverted and corrupted. This applies to several fields, but particularly to psychology and history, which in their proper forms would be a massive threat to western ideological goals. Psychology has been twisted into an almost unrecognizable abomination, and history is mostly just lies these days.
Fake disciplines have been invented from the ground up for the purpose of training the ideologically pure without the need for competence or intelligence or any connection to reality. These disciplines can be found in lists of “most useless university degrees” all over the internet, but that is a misunderstanding. Those degrees are not useless at all – they elevate the ideologically pure in society by awarding them university “certification.” This certification justifies giving them important positions in society.
Western society, in general, has abandoned rationality and replaced it with subjectivism (formally designated as “post-modernism”). The purpose of that is not just to train and advance the ideologically pure, but to use subjectivism as an oppression tool against the 1.5/8 group and the rational part of the population outside of it. The best way to suppress a rational person is to subject him to an existence of total and constant irrationality. It is essentially gaslighting on a civilizational scale, directed at the dangerous rational group.
While the dangerous rational group is being suppressed and subverted, the ideologically pure “leaders of tomorrow” are indoctrinated rather than educated, given university certifications rather than real degrees, and finally provided with an unending amount of fake and well paid jobs in both the private and public sector. This well-paid ideologically pure group then becomes the power base of the new ideological system.
The upward migration of the incompetent
The goal of this deliberate intervention into the educational system is to create what you might call a “migration pattern” in society based on (lack of) competence and ideological purity. The right people need to be put into the right positions and the right jobs, and since they are incompetent, this needs to be managed for them. After they leave school with their certifications, government and the private sector take over and actively push them upward, while pushing the dreaded 1.5/8 group away from influence and well-paid jobs.
Two developments in the West have been godsends for these efforts: the outsourcing of western manufacturing to Asia and the virtual abolition of competition in the corporate sector. This massively decreased the complexity level of the western economy and subsequently the need for the 1.5/8 group. When most companies operate services in a protected environment, there is far less need for high-level/rational people – while in a “real economy” these people simply cannot be sidelined. Also, when you can get away with operating a fake economy based on the dollar reserve status, you can also operate a fake society run by incompetents.
Let’s take a closer look at how this upward migration of the ideologically pure is managed after they receive their university certifications – and how the 1.5/8 group is systematically blocked. There are five main methods being employed – which together form a long-term takeover process of society. These methods are the following:
Public sector filtering – This describes the job selection process in the public sector. Initially the “foot-in-the-door” method is used. A few ideologically pure politicians and bureaucrats position themselves within the system and start controlling who is hired. This increases exponentially over the decades as more and more purists gain access to the levers of power. Currently the process is so overt that it is starting to become expressed in recruitment policy papers – such as the recent example of the British government excluding “white men” from becoming fighter pilots. The West has almost completely been able to exclude the 1.5/8 group from public-sector positions using this method – including its armed forces.
Public sector stuffing – As the public sector filtering process advances, the purists inside the system start creating more and more positions for their purist brethren. New departments are created, work groups and committees appear, and the public sector expands. Publicly owned companies, such utility companies, hospitals and schools are also often used as storage units for large numbers of the ideologically pure. This is extremely obvious in the West. Every unnecessary law or initiative requires more and more people – and these people are all carefully selected.
Job-creation by decree – This method is directed at the private sector, as well as the semi-public sector. Government purists start creating new laws and standards which all companies must fulfil. Those are justified on the basis of “goodness” and usually involve the environment, equality, safety and such things. This creates a large number of positions within private companies which are tailored for the ideologically pure – particularly in support functions such as human resources, compliance functions and others. This enables a “foot-in-the-door” situation in the private sector and gives the purists access to the levers of powers there – much like they already have in the public sector.
Private sector filtering – As the purists have gained access to the private sector – particularly human resources (which is the standard purist Trojan horse in private companies) – they start filtering new recruits exactly the same way the public sector does. As in the public sector, this filtering process is becoming more obvious. A significant number of companies are now specifying which groups will not be hired in their job advertisements. Since they can’t overtly say “we don’t hire smart, independent thinkers” they usually use “white men” as a proxy for that group for some reason. That group is considered to be a particular threat, although you can be sure that anyone who doesn’t follow the program will be fired, regardless of their gender or the color of their skin.
Private sector stuffing – Shortly after Elon Musk bought Twitter he fired something like 80% of its employees. That 80% was the company’s private sector stuffing ratio – quite high. Companies, particularly in sectors which can influence public opinion – but not solely, are increasingly creating a large number of positions which are either totally superfluous or intended for influence operations against the public.
Those filtering and stuffing methods are the primary mechanisms that have been used for the takeover of western societies by the ideologically pure. There are other mechanisms, such as ESG, filtering by certain banks and investment funds regarding who gets financing and who doesn’t – and the uncontrolled immigration engineered by the ideologically pure which is seen by them as a continuation of the internal migration process. However, all that is beyond the scope of this article.
The ideologically pure have systematically been moved into almost all positions of power in the public sector and a large part of the private sector – and the situation in the private sector is increasingly mirroring the public sector in hiring practices and employee stuffing. The dangerous 1.5/8 group is being kept away by all means, and with great success. The power base of the Ideology is firmly in place.
This job migration program hasn’t been cheap. Millions of unnecessary jobs cost money and it is clear that a significant part of western public debt can be attributed to this program, a fact which doesn’t seem to have been noticed by many people.
The consequences
The main thing to understand is that western societies and economies have been put on an ideological footing. Productivity, competitiveness, technology and science are simply not priorities anymore in the West. Explaining the consequences of this process for the West would take many articles, or a book of several hundred pages. Still, let’s mention a few examples.
The inverse competence crisis – The goal of this entire project has been to place the ideologically pure in all positions of power at all levels of society. These positions are, in a normal and competitive society, occupied by the highly competent 1.5/8 group. The process has now reached near-completion with most positions of power occupied by the ideologically pure. Some of those people have high IQs but they are neither objective nor independent thinkers. The Ideology they must subscribe to is simply incompatible with those qualities. This has some serious consequences.
Remember that positions of power and influence are more likely to demand general competence than other positions (as opposed to specific competence). The greater the power, the more the position demands general competence. The people in these positons now are selected by ideological fervor and reliability – so the higher you go, the more ideologically enthusiastic the people who hold them. This means that the least objective and independent thinking people hold the positions which require the greatest objectivity and independent thinking. Therefore, in the West incompetence becomes greater and more common the higher you go. As someone said – “a general is an incompetent colonel.” This can be seen absolutely everywhere except in some holdout private companies. Those exceptions are of course being addressed as we speak.
The second problem is that many of the irrational/subjective people holding all the power have reasonably high IQs. That may seem to be a positive thing but it has a major disadvantage. Moderate to high IQ irrational/subjective people are the easiest to brainwash of all people. The reasons for that are complicated and need to be addressed in another article – but what this means is that the top tier in the West is not only the most incompetent it can possibly be in comparison to what their jobs require – but are also the most malleable and delusional.
The cost and debt crisis – The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value. These jobs are much more numerous and more widespread than most people realize, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 20%-30% of the entire labor force of the West could be fired without any adverse effect. In fact, the effect would be positive, especially if those people could be made to work the (mostly menial) real-economy jobs they are suitable for.
Deindustrialization has been blamed for the extreme debt levels and tax burdens of the West. That is, as far as it goes, true – but maintaining this giant group of incompetents in their fake jobs is also placing an extreme burden on the West. Western societies are now completely unsustainable and cannot be run without constant debt increase.
The competition crisis – This crisis can be explained by the following example: Let’s say there are three companies with combined 100% market share in some sector. There is no real competition between them and everybody can just relax because the customers can’t go anywhere else. These companies can get away with absolute incompetence on most levels, including in management. They don’t need to think about efficiency, safety, productivity or costs, except on their websites and in annual reports. However, if a competitor with competent employees manages to infiltrate the sector, those three companies will hit a wall. There will be an enormous crisis and one or more of them will most likely go under.
This is exactly the situation in the western economies now. Monopoly and oligopoly is the rule and the main objective of most large western companies is to prevent anyone from infiltrating their sector – usually by bribing regulators or by buying the competition. This is a necessity because a huge number of western companies are now run by incompetent management and staffed by incompetent people, particularly in support and management functions. The immortal words of the nameless Boeing employee about the 737 MAX apply to most large western companies; “this airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Western companies are no longer competitive. They cannot compete with Chinese companies now and soon they won’t be able to compete with companies in general outside the West. They simply can’t function except inside an economic safe-space. In fact, the situation is such that the Chinese already do the real work for many of them and reshoring the work is problematic because of (surprise!) the human capital degradation in the West caused by the repurposing of its education system.
This also applies to western societies as a whole. The entire leadership and diplomatic classes of the West are no longer competitive against the rest of the world for exactly these reasons. They are being outmaneuvered by the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everybody else at every turn. Even African leaders are now more competent than western leaders. They have consistently made decisions that are better for their people than leaders in the West – for the last few years anyway.
The complexity crisis – Earlier in this article I stated that the 1.5/8 group is extremely valuable for modern societies and without it complicated modern societies cannot be managed. In the West this group has been successfully sidelined to a great degree and a good part of it doesn’t even bother with university education anymore. The situation, however, is even worse than that. The reconfiguration of the education system and the break between competence and reward in the job market has fundamentally changed the decision making process behind the selection of university education. Why study engineering (which is hard) when you can get an even better paying job with a degree in psychology (which is easy nowadays)? The reconfiguration of the western education system has changed the reward structure, encouraging young people to pursue easy and useless education – simply because the “system” will provide them with jobs.
This has already caused a major crisis in western societies, particularly in the US. The “maintenance” of complex aspects of US society needs a large group of engineers and people with related education. This maintenance is faltering now, and significantly relies on foreign engineers educated in US universities. You see, why would Americans study engineering in a system which doesn’t reward it? If China and India could somehow recall their engineers and others with hard education from the US, the US system could probably not be maintained, let alone advanced. This will get progressively worse and we will soon reach a point where complex systems which underpin society cannot be kept running. That will require some kind of “reset” to a less complex society, with less prosperity of course.
There are far more crises than those four, but I wouldn’t want to sound like a doomsayer by listing more.
Russia and the future
So, what about Russia? Firstly, there are clear signs that the Russians have figured out what is happening in the West and are learning from it. Recently they left the “Bologna process” which is a European education standardization system. The Bologna system has the express purpose of diluting education in member states, implementing certifications rather than real degrees, and filling European societies with badly educated and generally incompetent “experts” who follow the consensus, no matter what. The Russians saw this system as a threat to their country, which it is, and have, at least partly, reverted to the older and more hardcore Soviet system.
Secondly, the Russians seem to be carrying out purges of the incompetent and corrupt within state structures, including the military. Meritocracy seems to be on the agenda, a radical concept these days. The Russians most likely see these efforts as critical to the continuation of their state and nation – and they would be right.
The situation in China is much the same and there are indications that the rest of the non-western world is catching on. Remember that one of the results of the recent Russia-Africa summit was a Russian-organized education effort in Africa. I doubt that women’s studies will be a part of that curriculum.
The current clash between the West and Russia – and increasingly between the West and the rest of the world – is becoming a clash between the incompetent and irrational and the competent and rational. The result is obvious – but what happens when an irrational person who is backed into a corner has access to nuclear weapons? That’s anybody’s guess.
By putting its societies on an ideological footing the western elite has backed itself into a corner. They can’t compete; they can’t develop their economies or societies; and they can’t go back. Fixing the problems of the West will require an economic revival, where a real economy will replace the current fake financialized service economy. This cannot be done without putting the hated 1.5/8 group into positions of power. Therefore, it will not be done as long as the current western ruling class is in power. Western societies will not survive an economic revival in their current ideological configuration. Conflict is therefore the only remaining option for the ruling class to hang on to power.
I’ve read many great articles this week but this opinion jumps to #1. Exactly the stimulus I’m looking for. Thanks for the share. I’ll join Gaius’ substack and pass on.
Regards that description of Mark Zuckerberg, did you see Iceland’s parody video of his Metaverse marketing? That should be partnered with their space parody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enMwwQy_noI
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmOISr3k3y0
PS: I loved ‘Battlestar Galactica’.
PPS: I loved it too. It’s heartening to see that Gaius is still trying to assist humanity some 150,000 years later 🙂
🙂
Number 6 would also have been a good name. That moment that sexy robot walked up to the shocked ambassador and ironically asked him: “Are you human.” And then kissed him. In retrospect, she may have summed up our politics.
A terrific read! So true unfortunately!
The “document” you are referring to is a proven fake. Your comment proves the point that western eduction sucks.
With love from Russia.
I have my qualms with Wikipedia here and there but the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” entry is unexpectedly well researched and presented. Even western educated dudes should be able to grasp the uncomplicated story of this fakery. Meanwhile, your anti-semitic sentiments are dully noted. Don’t feel obligated to respond, I’m not interested.
It was not proven “fake”. It was declared to be a “forgery”.
Thus the question arises: a forgery of what? What is the original document, that it is based upon then…
1984 is SciFi too, yet serves well as a reference point.
That reflection is exactly what the Malaysian govt has followed to control their vote base politics.Malaysia is a country which,is embarrassing, to Singapore vs malaysia.Its a no brainer to state that Malaysia has failed to compete with singapore. Power is how to use manpower and max them out to think outside the box..
You’re a real gem Gaius, a highly polished, nimble thinker and have landed in a great spot here,
Thanks for that Larry
Impressive work! My cousin from Germany, who is better than average and knows how to think for himself, keeps telling me exactly this. He says that society is collapsing, and at the top of the pyramid is the most incompetent government in the history of Germany.
Discworld did it better than Germany which only has Toothpick Politicians standing atop a Grey Marshmellow Public that’s seated comfortably atop a Pragmatic Ember heading towards the Great European Fire.
It is not incompetence – it is malice.
Scholz government has destroyed Germany and Russia will not save it this time.
Thierry Breton will help a lot the EU to go into the ground. The web used to be a window, poor quality but open, to reality. With him at the helm plenty of jokes about the poor quality of the USSR informations will find a legitimate reuse.
This opinionI is spot on. The Western elites are cornered and will drive the West into the ground and fight hard to go deeper.
The article gets to the heart of the matter.
Once the mind is polluted, it takes generations to recreate a clear and healthy mind.
Putin has taken massive countermeasures starting in 2018 by requiring new textbooks to be written.
Putin is now bringing 2.5 million new books to schools and libraries.
One lets train the personnel in the schools and universities anew.
In the further he ordered yesterday that all officials of the country have to drive domestic cars, the production capacities would be sufficient.
Verbatim:
“There is nothing wrong with the fact that “it will be more modest somewhere”, “on the contrary, it is even good”, the President stressed. In his opinion, the whole bureaucracy should understand: It is necessary to strive for the development of domestic brands.”
He is nesting out the bureaucracy that have been comfortably nestled for decades, starting in Soviet times and anchored under Yeltsin to the so-called 5th column.
He has managed this process very wisely and prudently. There were powerful cartels that counteracted with the participation of the West.
Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky (dead), Chubai, etc., who left their networks in Russia.
How it will turn out in the West: from my point of view, it has to get worse first, so that people wake up even more.
They have been conditioned for decades.
Degradation and misallocation of any type of capital harms and may ultimately destroy from within any society or other group that pursues it.
Makes sense.
And once the degradation and misallocation progresses past a certain event threshold – the point of no return or recovery – a certain proportion of the high IQ + objective/independent thinkers will simply leave for safer and greener pastures, accelerating the process toward the unavoidable collapse.
A great Article !
I agree fully with the the description of WHAT happens, but have a minor quibble about how and why. The way you write it, it feels (maybe only to me) as if some overarching plan is being executed, by some entity pulling all the necessary strings.
I would argue this works without anyone at the steering wheel:
As you succinctly point out, only few people are born with sufficient cognitive capabilities and enough emotional detachment from problems thrown at them, to be able to find the best course of action in complex decision situations. Others who are either less intelligent, or too much driven by emotional personality traits to be able to find those choices, have a natural envy of the 1.5, and (rightly !) perceive them as threats to their own positions.
As institutions age and replacement personnel is chosen, be it by appointment committee in academia, or by other managers in companies, the non 1.5 are always in the majority, and slowly, one by one, recruit non 1.5ers, as they will not threaten their own positions.
So, once the real world doesn’t matter all that much, the dependence on the 1.5ers disappears, and that dependence was the only reason why the 1.5ers were allowed into positions of power in the first place. The subsequent purge is then automatic, a consequence of people being as they are and always have been.
In my 4 decades of experience in academia and IT companies, I see that still in some narrow areas where 1.5ers are indispensable to create some profit, usually some innovation, they are still grudgingly allowed into power positions. The very moment something is deemed business a usual, they are made to either behave like non-1.5ers, or are eliminated by whatever means the wolf packs can find.
Maybe some readers find this process more plausible than the top-down way that you describe (or i read between the lines).
Yes, very plausible. For almost a decade I worked for a government grant funded organization and I got to see the process in action.
Totally agree. This isn’t some great over-arching master plan, although it is tempting to see it that way. It has happened incrementally, as a result of psychological tendencies that are both generic to humanity and specific to the West at this particular time.
You can take them to the river – but you can not make them drink…
So here is the river, for those, that are thirsty:
https://archive.org/details/fulltheprotocolsofthelearnedeldersofzion/mode/2up
One could simply explain it as the “Peter Principle”: the principle that members of a hierarchy are promoted until they reach the level at which they are no longer competent.
Thanks, thats exactly what I wanted to add too.
I think this was only possible due to the abundance of everything, not only but also by living off printed money at the expense of the rest of the world.
But of course the nature of the 98.5ers and ideology reinforce each other. And once an ideology is settled, the mechanisms mentioned above come into play.
It would be interesting to analyse past ideological governments and systems with regard to this. It seems to me that the 1.5ers were not suppressed that much as now, but that might be incorrect.
Deterioration in education system down here where I am (AU) has been obvious for decades but I just did not see it as deliberate policy. Some of it was driven by education unions who saw nothing wrong with constantly changing the way education was delivered but if one was to suggest that new educational ideas should be tested first would loudly object that this would be ‘experimenting’ with educational outcomes of students that may be subject of such a study. Needless to say, the article does suggest an explanation for incompetence in West European leadership we see today. It seems low level of education for the masses is the desired outcome and it seems to be the case. Its much easier to manipulate masses of people that know no history or not much of anything else.
Excellent post!
the problem is that reading the chart of the people with high iq, one can easily notice that these people didn’t invented anything useful. case iq tests are something one can trains himself about, and aren’t related to real intellectual capacity. is totally methaphisics to relòy to a way so abstract and ambiguos to valuate intelligence, and the decaying of the west is evident also cause of the presence of people that seriously believes to unicorns, like the relationships between these useless games and the ability to solve real problems
Then why was the military the first to use the test. They determined that those with an IQ lower than 80 could not do even the lowest level job in the military.
@ Jim
lol do you seriously believe that the current lot has IQs over 80? Might as well believe in unicorns…Santa Clause at least.
@ Giandavide
Excellent comment and good advice.
Absolutely brilliant commentary, Gaius.
“Are they just lying or are they really this incompetent and delusional?”
That’s the conundrum with which I’ve personally wrestled–that, and ‘how on earth did we go from a reasonably functional society that ‘built things’ and enjoyed social cohesion, more or less, to where we are today–in oh, forty years or so. I mean: even declining empires generally don’t just fall off the civilizational cliff, as it were. They may lose military and economic power, but I don’t honestly recall an historical instance in which an entire civilization suddenly, strangely, appeared committed to its own destruction at every level.
Your article offers a very useful explanation. Thank you!
Bloody fantastic. I’m actually researching a book on an overlapping theme, so this was timely. In several years, I doubt that I’ve read an article which is more pertinent to our current plight.
My own experience bears out what you are saying about the deliberate screening out of people seen as threats to the system.
In the early 1990s, when higher education in the West still meant something, I took a degree at a certain university, usually ranked as either the first or second in the world. About 8 years ago, I applied to return to my old college to study for a Masters. Initially, all seemed well – the university suggested that I have a chat with someone they had earmarked as a potential supervisor. That conversation lasted well over an hour, and he said that he would be happy to work with me on my chosen topic. The very next day I had a sheepish email from him, bowing out of his commitment. That was swiftly followed by a rejection from the university. It was abundantly clear that I had been blacklisted. How else to explain the sudden volte face?
“the university suggested that I have a chat with someone they had earmarked as a potential supervisor. ”
That they suggested the coercive process of supervision rather than the co-operative process of sharing would alert some of subsequent outcomes despite the university attempting to obfuscate matters by use of “a chat”.
“It was abundantly clear that I had been blacklisted.”
Being blacklisted is an honour, but less of an honour than being expelled from a nation state, since they afford opportunities of testing transferability of present facilities in different contexts, unless as Mr. Louis MacNeice observed it is your intention to:
Sit on your arse for fifty years
And hang your hat on a pension.
That was a contributory factor in the ongoing process of the transcendence of “The Soviet Union” and “The United States of America” by The Russian Federation.
Field Marshal Paulus, a man who is very infrequently mentioned by the intelligentsia, suffered on so many levels from the Wehrmacht’s disastrous invasion of Russia/USSR 80 short years ago.
Then like now, Paulus put the disaster down to an over estimation of German/western military, technology, economics and their superior moral rights, while totally underestimating the enemies military, technology, economics and love of the motherland.
Having studied for many years the real world war two, not the laughable official version, it is absolutely shocking to see the same over estimation of western superiority and the total refusal to acknowledge the obvious superiority of the Russians.
Paulus, when he was finally released in 1953, resisted the formation of a 500,000 man Wehrmacht in West Germany and lectured and debated throughout the country, east and west, for the Germans to ally with Russia and work with them, not against them.
It would be no surprise to Paulus if he was around today, wouldn’t be surprised to see that his words fell on deaf ears as back when he was alive he knew that Germany was forever doomed.
An excellent reminder – thank you. I’m going to look for a book on Paulus.
So many echoes from the past in this. Ukraine’s “will to win” is a substitute for aircover, new wonder weapons from the West, Russia is a “gas station masquerading as a country”…
1. “The chief characteristic of Hitler’s leadership was his over-estimation of the power of the will to win; this will had only to be translated into faith down to the youngest private soldier.” ~ Erich von Manstein
2. “Hitler overestimated the importance of technology. As a result, he would count on a mere handful of assault-gun detachments or the new Tiger tanks to restore situations where only large bodies of troops could have any prospect of success.” ~ Erich von Manstein
3. “We have only to kick in the door,” Hitler said, “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
It seems that every time the West “loses its mind”, an invasion of Russia is the end result.
I saw this early on in the SMO, in Izvestia (Yandex translate):
“And this trend is disturbing in its recognizability: once again, Europe, intoxicated with its own civilizational exclusivity, is uniting on a single ideological platform that is intolerant of dissent and of specific nations. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter what exactly underlies this ideology: the “holy inquisition”, Bonapartism, fascism or liberalism — the result is almost always the same. And again Drang nach Osten and Lebensraum in the East. Again, the armament is far beyond the necessary defense. More threats and reprisals.”
“Once every 100 years, this invariably happens. We hoped that our generations would not catch this. Our faith in the collective intelligence of Europe seems to have failed us again.” ~ Konstantin Kosachev, Versailles’ World of Illusions
And the end result is always this:
Excavating German Soldiers
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=excavating+german+soldiers
What is interesting about those excavation teams is that occasionally they uncover bodies and relics from the Napoleonic War, Crimean War, Civil War, World War I in addition to World War II – all of Southern Russia is a layer cake of human remains and war relics …and the United States is now adding the another layer, right on schedule. (sigh)
2. “Hitler overestimated the importance of technology. As a result, he would count on a mere handful of assault-gun detachments or the new Tiger tanks to restore situations where only large bodies of troops could have any prospect of success.” ~ Erich von Manstein
This part have some reason behind it’s madness. A single Maxim machine gun was capable of dealing with large number of enemies, as long as they are armed with pointed sticks. All of the colonial warfare is based on quality-over-quantity principle. Germans considered/hoped Slavs to be their Indians.
Germany knew that it could not compete in sheer numbers, and had to go with smaller-number-of-better-stuff approach. The result were many wunderwaffen, including the biggest tanks.
The biggest battleships were built by Japanese, because they knew that they can not match USA in numbers of ships built.
The end results turned out to be less than stellar, because a big technological gap is crucial in order for this apporach to work. In this case, technological gap was not even present. Yamato and Musashi were sunk by aircraft carriers, from a safe distance. Maus ended up on a train to Kubinka tank museum. I guess all German tanks are destined to get close to Moscow somehow. Even the modern ones are on their way.
Your comment actually gave me a case of the shivers.This is the exact same mode of thinking the United States uses today.The nations leaders and by extension its people believe they are both morally and technologically superior to Russia and the rest of the world.
In other words the United States has become the Nazis.
“Western societies will not survive an economic revival in their current ideological configuration. Conflict is therefore the only remaining option for the ruling class to hang on to power.”
Doesn’t the author mean Western “leaders” will not survive…
Help me here.
No he means the whole “society”.
The entire structure is rotten from top to bottom. Changing the idiots at the top to other idiots won’t change the outcome.
I can’t make any valid argument in favor of not burning it to the ground and starting over in the ruins, because that is what it will take.
Agreed!
I expect he means “societies.”
Eg, say Germans overthrow their current “government.” They have discovered too late that you can’t replace fossil fuels with solar & wind. Their industry is already collapsing due to lack of gas. They can’t just throw a switch to turn it back on. And who do they replace their government with? More incompetence?
(I would start looking at people who refused the jabs…)
Who will maintain nuclear sites in France or the US? You can’t just turn them off. There will be, at some point, nobody capable of maintaining them. There could very well be, at some point, repeats of Chernobyl around the country & around the world.
The lockdowns showed the fragility of the global supply chain. What happens when it breaks down completely?
Yes, on its current trajectory society will break down completely. And it may not be too far off…
James Howard Kunstler has been saying this for over 20 years.
You will have seen my fulsome (and well-deserved) praise, but I have a couple of minor quibbles.
“Let’s say that we have a pool of potentially objective and rational people that is 30% and a pool of people with IQ of 125 that is 5%. That means that the pool of high-level general competence people is 5% of 30%, or 1.5% of the population.
“If we are really generous and assume that 50% of the population is objective and rational and an IQ of 115 is sufficient for those jobs, then we have 16% of 50%, which is a pool of 8% of the population.”
This method of calculation only makes sense if one assumes that there is no negative correlation between having a nominally high IQ, and being objective and rational. I would argue that this is far from being a safe assumption, given how credulous and suggestible so many supposedly high-IQ people are. The article does refer to this further down, when you observe that the brightest are often the most easy to brainwash. Therefore the real number of people who satisfy all three criteria could potentially be much smaller than 1.5%.
My second quibble relates to the importance of having strong moral principles. There is a good case to be made that many of the supposedly ideologically pure who are doing so much to wreck our institutions are perfectly capable of making objective and rational decisions, if it only suited their interests. Maybe the real problem is that the rational cynic regards their self-interest to entail going along with the agenda. Only a moral, highly intelligent, objective and rational person would have both the capacity and the motivation to struggle against the tide. Now, that must be a number that is vanishingly small.
That was a very thoughtful commentary. On that note you might find this interesting:
Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox: Are High Status People More Likely to Lie?
https://quillette.com/2021/04/03/persuasion-and-the-prestige-paradox-are-high-status-people-more-likely-to-lie/
One might assume individuals go into medicine and science to help people and learn new things, however, there is another motivation which may be stronger: that of having the highly prestigious title of Dr. and a PhD / MD after your name.
That can create a problem when a finding comes up that contradicts prevailing orthodoxy and forces one to take an unpopular position. If you went into science and medicine solely for the prestige, are you going to really reduce that prestige by taking an unpopular position? Will you throw all of your hard earned social approval away by presenting a thesis or set of facts that elicits social disapproval? Not likely. IMHO
Long winded way of reminding us that MD/PhDs are just as easy to buy as politicians, or petty crooks.
It takes some principle and courage to speak truth to power.
Thank you very much indeed for the link – that is very useful for me.
I was thinking along the same line. Negative correlation between IQ and Independent thinking has bene on full display during the COVID scare. Strong morale principles are an importante variabile in the equation, hence the constant attacks on everything that Is sacred in the name of a “liquid” society. As an ex academic turned farmer, may I suggest a positive correlation between objectivity/Independent thinking on one hand and practical/manual labour on the other? I keep repeating to my former collegues that there Is more experimenting and problem solving in day-to-day farming than in years of academic research. Real consequences hit you in the face, no matter how ideologically blinded you are.
I couldn’t agree more. Have a look at Gilbert Ryle’s ‘The Concept of Mind’, in which he discusses the age-old prejudice against physical labour as embodied intelligence.
Thanks, will do.
Well said.
Finally , I can understand why obviously dim-witted miscreants such as Blinken, Bush, Biden, Kerry , Bolton , etc. have managed to be the superficial figureheads of governments and government departments. It now makes sense. The best article that I have read in a long time !! Thank you , Larry
“WHY IS THE WEST SO WEAK (AND RUSSIA SO STRONG)? THE ROLE OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND WESTERN EDUCATION”
Partly as a function of some within “The Soviet Union” perceiving that “The Soviet Union” was weak from 1945 onwards and required to be laterally transcended through modes of co-operative social relations with others not coercion, in order to transcend “The United States of America” with their complicity as “force multiplier” as functions of “The United States of America”‘s purposes and coercive modes of attempted implementation.
Some of the purposes and modes of attempted implementations are outlined in the article, but the article remains framed by culturally derived practices, namely the failure to acknowledge significances of the agencies of, and interactions with, others outwith “The United States of America”, thereby illustrating a continuing half-life of the ideological construct “exceptionalism”.
“Conflict is therefore the only remaining option for the ruling class to hang on to power.”
Perhaps the replacement of “Conflict” by “continued coercion and blowbacks” would be more representative since onmiscience is never an option, nor is certainty in interactions – Mr. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle refers – since “continued coercion and blowbacks” are processes not restricted to linear paradigms, although the opponents believe that not to be the case, and hence their continuing efforts to limit change within linear paradigms of “acceptable tolerances”, that many others are not willing to tolerate, rendering the opponents complicit in the the preclusion of their own purposes and contingently complicit in their own transcendence.
That was the case in “The Soviet Union” including the attempts at reforms (within linear paradigms of acceptable tolerances) which were never viable, and the purpose of the wise to transcend opponents in co-operation with others including the opponents, facilitated by their attempts at seeking to satisfy their purposes, the opponents including but were not limited to “The Soviet Union”.
Napoleon and Hitler underestimated Russia too. Lessons have not been learned… |
This is about the inevitable collapse of the post WWII Western system called the American Dream, as a result of fraudulent financial liberalism. A person is either part of the matrix therefore gets paid or is against it then ends up unemployed even homeless.
The so-called “American Dream” was redirected into a nightmare the moment FDR died and the British Lobby reasserted influence.
They actually pounced at the preceding nominating convention, when they got Wallace replaced with Truman as sitting VP.
this is a fascinating little book
“As He Saw It” 1946; (recollections of FDR’s war years, by son Elliott Roosevelt)
https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/as-he-saw-it.html
e.g., numbered pages 110-115
things might have been far different if Wallace hadn’t been moved aside by the British lobby
Als ehemaliger Entwicklungsingenieur in einem Max Planck Institut ( Germany) kann ich das nur bestätigen. Clowns sagen was Wissenschaft ist und die Affen applaudieren. Sieben Verwaltungsangestellte und nur ein Ingenieur. Allein das sagt alles.
This explains so much. Thank you for this!
We need revolution in the west. Full stop.
Hallo Larry,
Deine Reichweite vergrößert sich im deutschsprachigen Raum:
https://uncutnews.ch/eine-ernste-situation-in-westafrika-braut-sich-ein-neuer-krieg-zusammen/
I was thinking of the building of High Speed Rail lines in China, US and UK. This article gives a good explanation of the different experiences.
One of my favorite, now seldom used, summaries at the end of observing the sheer incompetence of the component parts of something big : “But yet it works”. Fortunately, in the private sector, there are pockets of competency keeping us fed. For how much longer is anyone’s guess.
Sorry Charlie, but you’re wrong: only debts are keepin’ you fed
” I have a couple of minor quibbles.”
Some would suggest that they are neither minor nor quibbles since “knowledge/science” is catalysed by curiosity/doubt/facility.
This method of calculation only makes sense if one assumes that there is no negative correlation between “………..( brightest and brainwash) when you observe that the brightest are often the most easy to brainwash.”, despite the use of the indefinite/undefined conditioner “often”.
” Only a moral, highly intelligent, objective and rational person would have both the capacity and the motivation to struggle against the tide.
Now, that must be a number that is vanishingly small.”
That is a function of a complex lateral process which some mistakenly attempt to limit to “socialisation” akin to the creation of infinity which is in part a construct/synonym of “don’t know”, rendered by some to be deemed appropriate as a function of reliance on binary framing such as physical/mental and on “statistical methods” which some in “Ancient China, Greece and various other cultures” recognised and attempted to minimise in their “designs of education” by including physical aspects including but not limited to “sports”, which like the author you apparently fail to include as interacting components within the lateral process through projection of to some degree your mutually shared “socialisation”.
It is easier to rule over incompetent people but it’s much harder to have a functional society with incompetent people. It all depends on what your priorities are. The collective West is run by incompetent, vain, narcissistic, entitled, greedy, deviant clowns. A society pervaded by sociopathy from top to bottom is bound to implode. Otoh, China and Russia are run by people with national interest in mind. China and Russia are far, far from perfect places to live. I confess that afaic, I’d pick France as it was before it was taken over by the Left as the place where I’d want to live. One just needs to take a look at TV programs for children in the West and TV programs for children outside the West. China and Russia have a future. The West as it is has no future.
Excellent article!
It seems to me that the point of no return was about 2007. Until then it was possible to make good money by applying one’s skill and experience to real-world problems in companies that made real things. All of a sudden, everything mattered except for reality. Even in fields that ought to be hard-core technical, such as corporate IT, noone will listen to a proposal based on priciples and sound design, which could save a billion with an investment of a few million (currency of your choice). Bring in the big consulting firms the field staff as described in the article, be “agile”, implement the next platform or tool without any idea about the problem to be solved or goal to be accomplished, and you will be a well-rewarded hero.
should be
ring in the big consulting firms that field staff as described in the article,
I agree with the concepts of specific and general competence but I don’t think its simply a matter of IQ.
Several other factors need to be taken into consideration:
The 5 Laws of Human Stupidity by Cipolla:
2nd Law. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of the same person: i.e. even high IQ people can be stupid about things outside their specific expertise, this correlates with Gaius’s remarks about high IQ people often lacking general competence and being easy to manipulate/brainwash.
5th Law. The stupid person is the most dangerous person that exists: Well, they are destroying our civilisation. How much more dangerous can you get?
Then there is von Hammerstein-Equord’s comment about the qualities of military officers:
I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
Unfortunately, it appears the stupid and hard working have taken over.
And finally, Kiyosaki on A, B and C students:
B students go into governments, A students work for C students
Putting all these together, in my experience the very smartest, highest IQ, engineers are highly focused on their expertise and are often clueless about anything outside it, and rarely (not never) have “general competence”. It is just not funny how often excellent engineers have been promoted into management only to fail miserably, this has been a constant refrain in engineering management literature for well over a century. I would expect this to be true for other disciplines/professions.
Kiyosaki’s C students are often vH-E’s “clever and lazy”, having worked out how to graduate with minimum effort while taking to time to have a broader life education than the diligent A students.
Other C students are merely stupid but hard working.
A students are also hardworking, and according to Cipolla, half of them are also stupid.
I see these other factors as being complementary and supportive of Gaius’ thesis
Firstly, Musk is fake. An actor.
Secondly, the problem is that the capitalism is dead, as a few people own everything. Thus, there is no competition, implying no innovation.
The solution is a redistribution of the wealth. And it has to be imposed by force. The rest will follow, if not too late. You see, Hannibal already has crossed the “portas”. Good night!
Your solution: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. From no competition to no competition.
The authoritarian’s answer to authoritarianism he doesn’t approve of is more authoritarianism. And you expect those new dictators to give up their power once their so called redistribution occurs and allow an honest free market economy to develop?
Well, i can imagine you cannot imagine what i have been talking about. We share different experiences. But do not worry: keep yourself alive and there is a chance you might figure it out. Cheers.
Your name says it all.
It is not my real name :-)))
… Please to meet you, hope you guess my name…
You are Zika Obretkovic.
A few people owning everything is endgame of capitalism, just like in game of Monopoly. Capitalism is slavery with extra steps. Redistribution of wealth is anticapitalist. Your lack of understanding is tipical for Muricans. The only thing missing is slava cocaine.
You have only 2 colours lenses, black and white. Freedom in markets is needed to push innovation, but correct tax policy and other control mechanisms, which are corruption agnostic/resistant can control that we never reach the monopoly end game… The welth redistributiin will happen either in a controlled manner, or thru some kind of shock, like a civil war… The laws of history are inevitable, you can just postpone it with AI and Boston Dyn robocaps….
“Hannibal already has crossed the “portas”.
But Hannibal chose the wrong vehicle as did “The Soviet Union” and likely you, since you apparently forgot blat and Mr. Djilas.
Awesome article!! “Righteousness exalts a nation,
But sin is a reproach to any people.” Proverbs 14:34
The Biden regime’s primary focus is on transgender well-being, the parasitic Zelensky dictatorship, the annihilation of “speech” itself, eradication of the US population, “sheep” and all, and the interference, molestation and eventual rape of many, many other countries. I could add significantly to this list of things the US regime and Congress are feverishly involved in including eliminating the US citizens who stand in the way of their desperate efforts and delusions of ultimate grandeur on the world stage which is rapidly running out of room for terrorist comedians.
Strangely no mention of the Frankfurt School and Comintern’s involvement in destroying western civilization?
Hannah Arendt, Nazi “philosopher” Heidegger’s lover, translated all his works to English polluting the entire transatlantic. The attack on the “Authoritarian Personality” is only hinted at in the Article.
I have to say one thing that may get me into a lot of trouble.
There was a “Trust” between the Soviets and the western oligarchy “New Age” to destroy primarily the western foundation principle of Progress.
The result is what Russia now faces on its doorstep, what we face in D.C. London, Berlin, Brussels, Paris.
In other words it must be said the Soviet sowed the wind, Russia reaps the whirlwind.
There is a deeper reason for this attack on Progress. In Russia it is the problem of Raskolniki which Dostoevsky promoted as the “Third Rome”, and the Nazi’s imported as “Third Reich”. In the west it is oligarchic hatred of the Nation State based on General Welfare – the first ever being the USA.
Addressing the root causes of decadence is for me the most important aspect when attempting a diagnosis of the current world situation. Thank you for this analysis! Incessantly talking about signs and symptoms only obscures the problem.
I work on high tech equipment used in the medical industry. The same technology is used in veterinary hospitals but the charges are 10% of what it costs for a human to be treated. Health insurers keep about 35 cents of every dollar we pay them and return 65 cents to the industry. Government financing is even less efficient. Using the animal to human cost comparison we are effectively getting 6.5 cents worth of service for every dollar we spend. The reason for this can be explained by this post. In my over 4 decades in the industry I have seen the competence of leadership and staff decline in alarming ways. The author stops short of saying the obvious. 40 years ago management and doctors were almost exclusively male. Now management is mostly female with a spattering of beta males with skin color being a major criteria for selection. Doctors are increasingly female and the male doctors are less competent. Decision are made emotionally and costs are never considered. It can only work in a government protected monopoly financed by debt. If there was any competition the existing industry would quickly collapse so it has become important to squash alternative therapies and protect drug monopolies with a prescription system. But it is coming to an end with the collapse of dollar hegemony. The sad thing is we have no competent leaders to rebuild and as always the masses will suffer for the folly of others.
As a 38 year veteran of the medical profession, I agree but I don’t think it is simply a male female issue. It gets back to the 1.5/8 rule in the article. When I started in the field we used to refer to highly skilled but arrogant surgeons as “walk on water” types. Now if you talk to most surgeons, you couldn’t tell them from a local plumber. This is not to say they are unskilled, but that they are definitely in the malleable group of high IQ people mentioned in the article.
I’ll stick my neck out here and observe that whilst the key process described here matches my own experiences and that of many others of my acquaintance over the past almost five decades the article does not go far enough in a number of key aspects.
The article accurately argues that ideological criteria has been applied to weed out the competent.
However, here is where I suggest there are a number if problematic issues with parts of the analysis and synthesis in the article which detract and weaken its key theme and argument:
These problematic issues might best be tackled by reference to how the process described was carried out and what tools and models were utilised in the process of making every institution and organisation throughout the West in the ideological image of the oligarchy.*
*sidebar: Micheal Hudson’s recent tome “The Collapse of Antiquity” has a great deal of relevant material in this regard.
By and large the way this has been carried out across many organisations and institutions is by applying the ideological criteria via an individual appraisal model based on the “normal” – ie Gaussian – distribution which is fundamentally flawed in terms of its practical efficacy in the context in which it has been used.
As with most systems the application of the normal distribution model, just like the “laws” of thermodynamics for one example, is only of practical use within specific contexts. If you are looking at physical distributions of, say, height or weight it tells you something that is of statistical utility. However, the way this was used across organisations and institutions within and across the West caused havoc simply because it pre-assumed what it aimed to deduce by trying to fit the assessment of individual work performance into the distribution. Resulting in artificially shoehorning 20% of the workforce into the below performance requirements in every iteration.
This was certainly subjective in that the process involved “leveling meetings” between units in each group to ensure everyone was fitted into the distribution. Resulting in not only a ready made excuse for reducing the workforce because the “normal” distribution model says that at any one time 20% of the workforce are useless but also a musical chair scenario in which 20% of each unit had to take it turns to “take one for the team ” every quarter.
And this was the same for the management. Till you got to the point in which “management” became the only recognised legitimate “skill” and all other “lower” – ie “specific” – level competencies could be obtained by taking people off the street at the bus stop, giving them a weeks CBT and a week on the job with someone who themselves had only been doing what was, in the real world, a skilled job requiring both specific and higher level general competencies for about eighteen months, if that.
And this is where I have a problem with some of the assumptions in the article.
Firstly, it does not adequately define its key terms such as “ideology” and “competence.” In terms of the model used for “competence” it not only assumes the same limited normal distribution model out of context in the same inappropriate way in which the management movement used it in the process the article accurately criticises it also falls into the habit of over simplifying the concept by using the same reductionist approach to compartmentalise it into two convenient and separately distinct categories – specific and general.
It seems reasonable to posit that this in itself is a convenient ideological construct which produces the kind of outcomes the article accurately critiques. The Western model only has room for a limited number of individuals within its artificially manufactured and ideologically constructed hierarchy. Thus, models will be constructed to justify this. Like the out of context misuse of the “normal” distribution model along with the simplistic quantitative based IQ model and the compartmentalisation to the point of enclosure of various attributes such as skill, intelligence, competence etc.
Thus, there is no consideration here of the ability to carry out a specific function such as carpentry or data processing and a more general systemic level function. Each of the two compartmentalised attributes are assumed to be singularly innate to each individual – who is shoehorned into an artificially manufactured category of one or the other but not both. Moreover, the same approach is used to determine training and education. Again, pre-assuming what it aims to deduce by insisting that only a limited number of people can be educated and trained in what are categorised as higher level competencies so there is no need, conveniently, to bother with the majority of the population who are considered by the “normal” distribution model to be incapable.
Thus the incompetent hierarchy is preserved in aspic.
Point being that using the same models and approaches as the paradigm being criticised weakens the argument.
In regard to ideology the article is insufficiently clear in its definition of precisely what this ideology is, where its located, and in whose interests it serves. The way in which the argument is constructed seems to suggest that its location and origin is in the public sector and its philosophy and that it has taken over the private and other, third, sectors.
Should this be the case it would seem reasonable to suggest a revisit of this assumption by properly defining the terms, operational criteria, and philosophy of both these spheres – public and private. Simply because the experience of not only myself but also many others among my peers and acquaintances over a considerable period of decades is the exact opposite.
Harrison Bergeron was a prophecy.
The unanswered question.
Who are the ringmasters who have orchestrated Western Societies downfall? Do they realise they have sawn through the branch they are standing on?
The collapse of infrastructure is inevitable, and with that goes the collapse of civilisation.
The proponents of the Western system have underestimated the role of millions of professional people who cooperate together to build the ships and planes, design and manufacture their monstrous and complex machinery, and who make the modern world function.
You tube is a good educational resource for learning about the design and manufacture of E.g. the giant Diesel engines which power modern ships. All the skills are dying out.
One presumes that the ringmasters assume (wrongly that it can all be done by computer.
A brilliant and thought provoking article.
Good points but if I have one criticism of the essay it would be that the term globalists is not mentioned and the WEF only once. Perhaps the incompetence is over emphasized and the relationship to ideologically of the WEF and psyops pressure by the MSM is not emphasized enough. Remember the scariest goal of the WEF is for depopulating the earth by 85% announced in their first Agenda 21 Web site. This threat is real and THEY refer to it as the great RESET. The timing, however, is not an accident and coincides with the failures of free press MSM, the first WEF broadside of Covid and the early signs of financial failures.
For the WEF, the policies are seen and can be described as “Success is Failure, and Failure is success”. Their goals are incompetent but the process is planned.
And yes, while the preparation for this movement likely goes back to the Club of Rome (save the planet, the greening of the world) of the 1960s, the preparation for this has morphed into a political movement of corrupted science. The training of prospective world leaders in a globalist course was the foundation for the 5th column approach to infiltrating the political machinery of the West. The U.N., of course, is also compromised (the 2030 Plan). These elitist creatures hope to have most of the vandalism done by 2030 and we see some of this damage extensive already: attack on agriculture, economies (deindustrialisation), energy (global warming) and immigration (open borders to destroy cultural identities), monetary change (CBDC) and to a lesser extent attacking Russia. Recall that Russia and China have rejected globalism as have most of the global south (BRICS). So what is becoming the reality is the formation of an East Bloc vs the West Bloc where in the East (BRICS) countries embrace nationalism and economic growth and in the West deindustrialisation and a unipolar position that encourages decline rather than competition of the multipolar relationships.
Now the reality is that we in the West have WEF controlled governments that are attacking their own countries and degrading them for the elitist class. And I know this worldview is going to be a hard sell to many thinking people but the threat is real; this is programmed incompetence with the goals I have outlined very briefly here. Think political movement and coup d’etat of many Western governments. Biden’s election, in other words, was a coup of a corrupted election and an additional one given he is also a globalist. The Democratic Party IS the party of globalists. Also consider that there may also be a globalist presence in the Republicans or other opposition parties in other captured countries.
L. (the other Larry J.)
Thanks alot. This article speaks to my heart. I’ve been wondering if I’m going stupid or the people around me. I kept thinking I was in the wrong movie. But I can’t leave this movie because I’m in the middle of it. Now it is clear to me that this will be my path. I’ll look around for people in the same segment. I know pearls aren’t easy to find on the street, but you can find them…
And yeah, I used a translator because my english is a little bit…
The number one problem in the US isn’t IQ. It’s organized syndicated criminal control. Our government is being weaponized against us, taxpayer money is being misspent. Our industries have been shipped overseas to reduce wage costs, which has put the US at risk, since even US weapons and armed vehicles are made in in other countries.
The irony is that the entire U.S. MSM believes that the exact opposite is true.
Russia’s sustained output of artillery shells exceeded all of NATO’s capacity. Can any western shill find a way to spin that fact?
Well yes, there probably is a Western shill who can spin it .. because that’s all Western elites can do .. state of the art bullshitting. Thats the most important quality for a Western elite to have.
That, and endless networking. I think that is a highly underrated factor. Our elites get to their elevated state with endless endless cultivation of allies and backstabbing of others who are in their way
Yes the western MSM are stating that Russia has to rely on purchasing shells from N Korea.
Are they just lying or are they really this incompetent and delusional?
The answer must be both. My two areas of focus, medicine and climate are full of experts who are lying, incompetent and for sure delusional. I think stupid and insanity describe the mainstream experts well.
The west if ready to further break its back on the false climate narrative when CO2 is the most necessary, important gas of life and when delivered transdermally the single most powerful medical intervention on the planet because CO2 controls oxygen.
China and India are building coal fired plants like there is no tomorrow and the west is suiciding itself with its zero carbon fantasy.
And lets not even get into the madness of the labratory created Covid weapon of mass destruction and the even worse genetic vaccines which are ripping up western populations.
I got out of America 32 years ago and there is not a second that I regret that. A billion dollars could not move me to even visit the place and its sad for there are good people there. But everyone who supports its present president is insane. Did you know the whitehouse is getting closer and closer to support cooling a cooling planet?
This is perhaps the best of Larry’s posts (I live in the neck of the woods where Larry is from – think I recognize his face?).
This was just starting when I went to school – open admission – more students – more money flowed – but high drop out rates – so they lowered the standards .. thus started the university industrial complex.
Meritocracy matters.. Propaganda can cover this up – until it can’t.
Why is the western core principle of Progress so important, and under attack for 80 years?
Take JFK’s announcement of a Moon mission when none of the technology existed.
Take the SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative proposal by President Reagan to the Soviets – beam weapons were only a twinkle in the eye.
Both programs were viciously attacked.
Result – we are left with the nuclear democles sword, only because Progress was rejected.
Our lives depend on Progress!
Macron … in Burkina Faso
In an absolutely arrogant and humiliating speech to Ibrahim Traoré’s predecessor, the current president.
https://bachheimer.com/images/2023/frankreich/Makaron.mp4
This contemporary document is proof of the abject arrogance of French neo-colonialism and cause to put an end to this presumption via coups.
Le Pen should think or does she want to continue this?
One hears little from her.
She has, after all, spoken out in favor of supporting Ukraine with weapons.
Same with Giorgia Meloni in Italy. She must have got an offer she couldn’t refuse. I wonder what’s the leverage.
actually, I see EU/UK/EU fumbling as ongoing attempts to fumble in an adaptive direction, with the initial attempts not working;
no surprise;
growing aggregates must constantly find new cultural methods;
neither old cultural methods nor first-stab new cultural methods work … duh! just keep trying;
we’ve been working on supra-tribal cultural methods for >8000 years; No one said it was easy.
we need methods that allow & drive:
1) more coordination, (damp, don’t escalate frictions)
2) adequately distributed Reserves (i.e., appropriate, distributed Tolerance Limits)
NONE of this is surprising, once viewed as a systemic tuning task.
We always have to try something new? Yup.
EVERYTHING we try next is guaranteed to be sustainably better? Nope.
(The current tack ain’t working.)
So make collaborative re-analysis, not war.
(It’s really puzzling that we even have to say this, 500 years after the Renaissance.)
meant USA/UK/EU fumbling
The Gaius essay is one of the most important ones that I have ever read. Note that I have stated often enough that the WEF is at war with the West (having largely failed in the global south) but most do not see the globalist movement as a political movement, like communism or fascism. The goals are quite similarly a slavocracy in the making, and the “build back better” statement strongly hints at the theme expressed in this essay. Another theme in stating much the same thing is found in the movie. “Idiocracy” a comedy of great wisdom. If you can find it, please watch it. Segments were available of YouTube and Wikipedia describes the film as does IMDB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ and we see much the same process results as these incredible flaws become institutionalized. Here is the opening scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
This is not the Peter Principal in action, that thesis I recall was a natural process while the present vandalism unleashed on the West is the result of political policies of the WEF globalists and their captured governments, and is much more a planed escalation and an attack on a meritocracy. The press keeps the population unaware and confused and the attack on excellence and support of mediocracy is politics in action. In effect this process is a planned attack on Western (and other) societies that is up to now only seen as incompetence but given that these captured governments are led by governments that are uniformly seen as incompetent and (strangely) operating on all the same ideology and policy attacks it speaks to something much more organized. Although these governments are dismissed by thinking people as something natural (only about 6 percent of my area have even heard of globalists) they are winning the war against us for the very lack of awareness of the peril.
Thanks very much, Larry, for sharing this with readers. You are doing a great service for us all.
L. (the other Larry J.)
I think the reason why high IQ people appear so gullible is because, being high IQ, they are threatening to the ideologues, and are thus subject to a much more rigorous program of propaganda/brainwashing.
As to the more recent popular stupification in the US, aside from the wilful corruption of education, I think the 1992 lead (Pb) paint abatement act, coupled with the dubious LEAD SAFE regulations at the time, lead to contractors using power tools (not economical to spend hours with a paint knife and water spray bottle to clean up a window frame, e.g.) without air vacuums with HEPA filters et alia (a more recent advance, allowing clean-up with power tools), hence an undiagnosed epidemic of Pb poisoning, hidden by “geometric mean confirmed blood lead level,” a demonstrable scam. See chapter 4, section 3:
https://we.tl/t-iBdu9iftqj
Also hence the crime wave of the last decade (heyjackass.com refers to the crime wave as 90s like crime conditions).
Very good article, thanks.
Three follow-up points:
1) There is no group of people planning this decadence. The [most proximate] ultimate cause is the fall of the Soviet Union. Without serious systemic competition, the West simply decayed, it ceased to seek excellence and merit by mechanically, deterministically falling into a dynamic where elites preyed upon the middle- and working-classes with the complicity of governments much more stronlgy than they were previously allowed to do (e.g. consider the rising economic inequality, outsourcing of industrial jobs to non-Western countries, and inmigration).
2) The distribution of intelligence or its proxy IQ, as well as the capacity for objectivity and independent thinking, most likely do not accord to the shape of the normal distribution (which is symmetric) but rather, these distributions of intellectual talent have a long tail to the left and a short tail to the right.
3) Russia and China have picked the banner of meritocracy, especially China, and this creates a new incentive for the West to mechanically, deterministically, recover excellence and meritocracy, but this re-building will take decades, and when the West becomes fully recovered, the world will be a different place.
“The [most proximate] ultimate cause is the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Words are catalysts of connotations and hence the usage of the linear construct “the fall”, including but not limited to its biblical connotation” in interaction with connnotations of “the end {the ultimate}/(the fall from grace)” in the narrative, served the purposes of “The United States of America” in furtherance of their belief/contention that “We won the Cold War” and simultaneously the purposes through silences of The Russian Federation to facilitate/protect the contextual vulnerabilities of moments within the ongoing process of the transcendence of “The Soviet Union” by The Russian Federation and its necessary contextual obfuscation to encourage the continuing illusion of “The United States of America” that “We won the Cold War” thereby rendering the analytical outcome “We have been complicit in our own transcendence” an implausible belief through the propensities of “The United States of America” to deny/perceive any blame/complicity in respect of themselves.
This was/is facilitated by “The United States of America”‘s immersion and reliance upon linear paradigms of change within “reasonable tolerances”, such framing significantly restricting perceptions of lateral processes of change to practitioners of STEM whose agency had been increasingly/(progressively) limited since the 1970’s through vectors of “anti-intellectualism”, and consequently their opportunities of applying such ideas outwith the division of labour which was deemed to be STEM.
“The Soviet Union” was/is a culture whose lateral components continue to have a half-life of varying degrees as lateral components of The Russian Federation, and hence “The Soviet Union” did not/has not fallen, but as a function of its ongoing transcendence has evolved/mutated through various chrysalises in varying velocities.
The reason why the West developed flush toilets and designed and built the sewer system was to control and prevent cholera and typhoid.
Those cities in the USA in which pavement defaecation is commonplace will inevitably succumb sooner or later to cholera, typhoid and other faeces born diseases.
Spread by minimum wage cooks and food workers who have no decent accommodation and no proper washing facilities. (And those automated touch screens have been found to harbour more bacteria than a toilet seat.)
The unwinding of civilisation is a messy process,
The “Germ Theory” of disease is an unproven hypothesis. No virus has ever been isolated.
The people who have these “diseases” have been poisoned.
People die of cholera because their bodies are trying to get rid of the toxins. They become dehydrated. The cure to cholera is a simple intravenous saline solution. Not antibiotics.
Vaccines are poisonous as everyone should know by now. The healthiest kids in the USA are the kids of the Amish. In California, autism exceeds 1:35. It is especially high in Silicon Valley. An example of the most intelligent being deficient in common sense.
Suggested reading:
“What Really Makes You Ill”
https://www.amazon.com/What-Really-Makes-You-Ill-ebook/dp/B082ZPVLZ5/
– Cholera is not caused by virus, but by bacteria.
– Bacteria can be seen with a microscope.
– Antibiotics kill bacteria.
– You are retarded.
– Antibiotics can’t help with that.
Suggested reading:
Dictionary.
Viruses have been isolated, they can be seen with electron microscopes. Biologists routinely sequence their RNA and DNA. The smallest of them at 20nm is larger than the smallest computer gate produced by humans currently around 7nm. It’s what nano-technology allows us to do. Individual atoms can be seen with a tunneling electron microscope.
Alfred doesn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change either, he explains any warming we are getting is caused by the increasing irradiance of the sun. Problem. If the sun is is the cause why is the stratosphere cooling whist the troposphere is warming. When I last looked the stratosphere was closer to the sun than the troposphere, and I thought heat flowed from the hot place to the cold place. If it was the sun causing the warming of the troposphere wouldn’t the stratoshere warm even more?
And if climate scientists are so wrong why are the Navier – Stokes equations used for climate modelling wrong when they have been used to design thousands of fossil fuel boilers that work.
The Navier Stokes equations, their derivatives and spectroscopy of electromagnetic radiation from the sun (quantum mechanics) predicts a mean surface temperature of earth of around -16 deg C in the absence of greenhouse gasses and water vapour. Almost exactly the same as the moon at 15.5 deg C which also doesn’t have greenhouse gasses or water vapour.
Why is this. Take away the greenhouse gasses and all of the water in the atmosphere which is the predominant green house gas condenses as rain and snow, so like the moon the average is -16 but it would swing to around 140 deg c in the day time and -171 at night. That would be fun. You would have to live underground.
I think you need to get a real job.
Computers have clouded our perception of quality.
We have to react against the so called modern progress
scientists have become political scientists and vice versa
Which is why we cannot send a rocket into space and the Russians can
The recovery will be very painful
@Robert Garnett
You have replied to the wrong post. I have not even mentioned isolation of viruses, nor climate.
Alfred is a joke, so I made one too.
I happen to have scietific background. I know how science is done, and how it is abused. Discussing stuff like that in comment section is complete waste of time.
@Jim Croft
As someone that is relatively close to Russia, I can confirm what you wrote.
Well yes, there probably is a Western shill who can spin it .. because that’s all Western elites can do .. state of the art bullshitting. Thats the most important quality for a Western elite to have.
That, and endless networking. I think that is a highly underrated factor. Our elites get to their elevated state with endless endless cultivation of allies and backstabbing of others who are in their way
Dilbert became popular because so many people related to the absurdity in the corporate world. Scott Adams was in management at Pacific Bell. NUFF SAID! But now Dilbert ruffled too many feathers this year and was dropped by several publications.
The only argument I have is the summer WEF meeting was held in China and Russia just came out with their CBDC, digital ruble, about the same time as Fed Now. The “W” in WEF is for world.
At the risk of being unpopular, I read here the popular keening lament, sob-sob, chain rattling.
That is NOT American.
When 2 nuclear super-powers face off, with guaranteed extinction, chain rattling is NOT ENOUGH!
So put these weapons on the redundant list – do a Strategic Defense Initiative IMMEDIATELY!
Whether China, Russia or the USA proposes this is OK.
This will bring the cultural decadence in ALL 3 to the table immediately!
Al l 3 MUST face their own deadly cultural tendencies that the global oligarchy likes to play off – see Sir Henry Kissinger KCMG in action AGAIN at 100yr old.
Civilization needs DE-WORMING!
And India of course – it has more than its fair share of cultural decadence!
Only these 4 Powers have any chance of defeating the global oligarchy, together.
is there really a “global oligarchy” ?
If so, it’s always opposed by a … what, global rabble?
Global barbarians outside every gated community?
Putin calls it the Golden Billion.
That Golden Billion is run bya very few, and know their days are numbered.
The new Multipolar world is where it is at.
This is the first succinct and complete description I’ve read that identifies the fundamental reason “The West” is slipping into a latter/day “Dark Age”.
BRAVO, Gaius!
We used to think the problem insoluble: too many differences in religion, ethnicity, language. By design. Seemingly impossible to generate civility due to increasingly finer, and thus more numerous divisions among us. When the real issue is sidelining the capable.
We can recover if we find the courage to do the necessary
This is true, but it also has another context: sinking societies must necessarily be more subjective because the possibilities of legitimizing them in a rational and objective way are dwindling. This is why postmodernism and moralism can be so successful. When “everything goes”, nothing goes, and that is a sign of historically failing societies.
Although I get the point the author is trying to convey and I sympathize with that, there are some serious holes in his arguments:
The author does not seem to grasp a basic knowledge in psychology. For instance, the lack of “transfer” from a specific to general competence is not seldom due to high neuroticism (one of the Big Five personality traits). It should be pointed out that 70+% of people with high IQ that tend to have low neuroticism, which is good, but as noticed, there is indeed a percentage of people with high IQ with high neuroticism and/or other adverse Big 5 traits. Therefore, using IQ as a1D term to talk a person capacity is faulty in its foundation.
Ideologies are vessels or “excuses” or layers or simply BS to pacify the masses, but in reality, to justify other purposes, usually not directly spoken. Hence, to talk about “ideological goals” is playing the game of those who create these BSs.
The fact of the matter that people are not hired based on competence but rather on how that potential new hire is perceived as useful (idiot) WITHOUT being a threat to the hiring manager (HM). How come? People try to work for themselves, and use the hiring company as a tool, from the janitor to the CEO, including the HM. Thus, the reason of why talent leave as companies grow and mediocrity increases. Hence, purging of competence has been in the humankind forever, not only in the West or now. Certainly, there are cultures where meritocracy is stronger than others but that has not always been like that. Hence, don’t fool ourselves that the West reached its level due to meritocracy. Europe has certain geographic conditions that allowed it to flourish as it did compared to other places in the world, and certain countries had some advantages than other within the Europe, and meritocracy has been one of the results, not necessarily the starting point. Please, read Sowell’s “Conquests and Cultures” to begin with.
The fact of the matter is that those in top know they are lying and their closed followers pretend to believe them because they take advantage of that. Period.
PS: Funny that the author’s name is Gaius Baltar is the same as a fictional character in the TV series Battlestar Galactica.
Of course. One can’t say everything in 1 essay.
The usual route is to lay out concepts in layers.
First pass, outline.
Second pass, chapter summaries.
Third pass, full text.
.
..
…
(nth pass) annotations
Eventually summarize by inviting people to summarize a growing system where every subcomponent population can & does exhibit a defined spectrum of variance.
It’s not just absolutes, the closer we look at anything & everything all we see are probability functions.
It’s just that the probability of teaching probability in K-12 education has dwindled to a recurring low. 🙂
Could you elaborate a bit on the 4th paragraph about the “natural” increase of mediocrity? Or provide a link?
Aaron Good has argued that American academia has been corrupted by plutocrats.
Wow, Larry. Best article of the year!!! It really connects a lot of the dots.
Things are getting exciting! The new government in Niger has renounced any military agreements with France. The French forces stationed in Niger (1500 men) have been expelled from the country and must leave Niger.
French media report that the new government signed a contract with Wagner troops of Prigozhin.
Wait for the official reports. But if it is true, Macron is facing a big problem, which is not only related to uranium production.
Sources:
https://t.me/SergeyKolyasnikov/51048
https://t.me/neuesausrussland
The squirrel again?
Le Monde has reported that France will have to withdraw the contingent of 1500 soldiers.
Many states will shed fear of US-NATO or already have.
They are all now rebelling under the auspices of Russia.
The weakness of US-NATO, its weapons and its leadership structures has come to light.
World public opinion sees it.
Russia we get a big global weapons market.
There are still many US bases to be dismantled.
The elephant in the room is DIVERSITY!!!! Also, why don’t you look at what tribe controls the levers of power in the US banking system, hedge funds and capital markets? HUH? How about Hollywood? How about all the dual citizenship politicians? If you talk about these elephants you are racist and antisemitic. Diversity is absolutely destroying the US. Russia has zero diversity compared to the US. Russian cities are mostly homogenous. Even Chechen Muslims are more white than Arab despite their religion. America has a cancer and it has nothing to do with low IQs.
The West collectively has around 30,000 super-geniuses with 160 IQ who can do advanced and original work in almost any discipline.
China has 300,000 of them (4x population, 5 points higher average IQ, which is a log scale), and they all work in government, thanks to their 1500 year Confucian tradition of hiring only geniuses into their civil service.
Yes, and? …..
Look where it got them the last 500 years. And the Manchus before that, and the Mongols before that.
Everywhere you look there are [expanding] polynomial control functions, and we don’t teach polynomials in K-12 education anymore. Go figure!
Is Wagner already on the ground? My assessment of the situation in Niger.
Thomas Guest – Legionnaire
Thomas Gast was stationed in Africa 13 times for 4 weeks each time.
His assessment of the current situation based on his experience and knowledge as a foreign legionnaire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyVsvRl6X_w
Brilliant, smart-set analysis. Thank you Mr. Johnson
CTl-F “frankfurt school” yields zero results, as does searches of derivatives of “frankfurt school”
The de-platforming is purposeful; it is a way of removing enemies who may exert influence and control.
How to fight?
We do not, we re-route. Russia is now more American than America is.
Regarding Russia….
They have been subverted by the communists but are now , with Hungary , a people as God intended peoples to be.
How did this happen? How did Hungary and Russia survive, recover, prosper and now, dominate?
I ask this because this is the fundamental issue that faces the “smart fraction” in America today.
Hi. I’m not Hungarian or Russian. Nor have I ever visited those countries. Nonetheless, I think you’ll find the answer to your question by listening to what Mssrs. Orban and Putin say about their respective nations: They know who they are. If you know who are, you can tolerate the other, until they try to change you into that “other”. That’s why you don’t see Soros NGOs operating in either Hungary or Russia. The Hungarians and Russians know their enemies when they meet them, and have the stones to take corrective action.
Brilliant article, reminds me of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. She, a Russian, with an Irish surname through marriage!, had America pretty much figured out back in the 1950s. She was no genius, but being an outsider with a decent education, she must have been as shocked as I was when I worked in the US for a summer as a 17 year old. I thought the USA was the best country in the world before that summer, the best the world had to offer.
After my first week I was in total shock, huge obese people everywhere, working with university students from ivy league universities who were so dumb and gullible, med students who didn’t know basic biology, I could go on forever.
After 12 weeks I couldn’t wait to get out of the place, taking the piss out of people is only fun for a while and then it gets boring and rather worrisome. My father was in New Jersey at the same time, he was the CEO of a massive American corporation’s Irish division at the time. We both were absolutely shocked at how dumb the so called educated class were. My father was further shocked when he learnt that his totally useless secretary appointed to him during his stay was hired because of the 5% rule.
Returning home, I realised that the Irish education system wasn’t that bad, probably because every student was tested for their IQ at the beginning of high school and separated into different groups depending on their level. Also, we had two types of high schools, academic ones and technical ones.
Nowadays I’m afraid to say, the Irish education system has been totally dumbed down. The brightest students are in the same class as the dumbest, every class seems to have many students with dyslexia or autism, back in our day these students would have been called dumb and ignored, now they are celebrated and put on a pedestal which was once reserved for the brightest in the class.
Like the article, I could go on forever, but as someone who is an educationalist and who has witnessed first hand the dumbing down of my country to the level of the USA back when I worked there 30 something years ago, the future for my kids and future grandkids looks great.
Real education and intelligence comes from parents, not society and government bodies. The Russians, Chinese, worked this out a long time ago and have always nurtured the brightest minds from the brightest families.
Meanwhile in India the Modi regime has just stopped the teaching of the Periodic Table and the theory of evolution in schools. Engineering is in a total crisis with the majority of graduates unable to find jobs. Medicine is headed the same way.
If you think India will be a threat to the west, think again.
Wow. Can you tell us more? We hear so much of dumbing down in the West, I for one would appreciate having a broader perspective on what is going on elsewhere.
You undermine your argument by glorifying Musk. He is a privileged rich kid and a serial liar – a huckster for ‘driverless’ cars who fakes their range via fraudulent software.
Lying is as great a problem as the ones you cite. Consider our politicians as uniform examples.
What a breath of fresh air!
A thorough understanding of banking/money and psychopathy is needed to fix it all.
Short of all out war, that is.
This needs to be read by everyone. The raising of interest rates is sucking money out of the fake economy. Do the banksters realize things have gone to far? The old Golden Goose is on life support and they can’t run to the new Eurasian Goose – Xi and Putin won’t put with their crap. They have to make a going concern of the west but are being blocked by all the mutants they financed.
Twenty five years ago you would have one county or city inspector overseeing a state construction job. Now they pay ‘Engineering Companies’ with squads of white helmet wearing scarecrows following the actual workers around taking thousands of pictures and generating millions of e mails. The contractors say nothing but constantly rail against the few pitiful remaining trade unions .
Eventually once the veil is lifted this mostly worldwide degradation will be shown to be by design. !!!
“Certain parties” have long planned to totally degrade the US (for one) thus weakening
what was some time ago the most powerful country on the planet. They are close to succeeding with the massive accumulated debt, the gender agenda, gradual dumbing down
of the education system along with the efforts of ‘big pharma’, and the undermining of
religion. Perhaps a reading of the Protocols of Zion could give a clue here.
You nailed it!
I don’t think we need to worry about women studies majors when the current batch of nuts can’t define women as adult human females.
“If we are really generous and assume that 50% of the population is objective and rational…”
That’s not generosity – that’s delusional. The percentage of people who are objective and rational in almost any area, to include their immediate personal functionality in their private lives, let alone their work, let alone any general domain of relevance, is so low as to be almost invisible.
Humans are “capable” of logical reasoning. This is utterly ruined by the influence of human emotion. Therefore the fact that they are “capable” of it is almost irrelevant to their actual performance.
I submit the percentage of people who are both rational in general and competent in their field is 2% maximum, and likely closer to 1/10th of one percent. Separating the two areas out, competence in a field is probably closer to 2%, and general rationality is closer to 1/10th of 1 percent.
“I submit the percentage of people who are both rational in general and competent in their field is 2% maximum, and likely closer to 1/10th of one percent.”
The significance lies primarily in the modes of interaction between the percentage of people who are both rational in general and transferrably competent outwith their field and the rest of the population
In “The United States of America” this is attempted to be limited through divide/mutually irritate and rule by divisions of labour, assignment of differential significances, and differential “benefits” derived therefrom, a model which was emulated in “The Soviet Union” through creation of the nomenklatura including “red experts” after 1928, which was rendered unsustainable as a function of its existence, primarily by way of “differential “benefits” derived therefrom.
Consequently among the components of the ongoing transcendence of “the Soviet Union” and “The United States of America” by The Russian Federation are at best vectors in adolescence with differential velocities in furtherance of from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs not restricted to The Russian Federation in furtherance of its half-life sustainability/transcendence.
Spot on Gaius. I recently completed 33 years as a middle professional in two American companies. The difference in the competence levels among at the management level between now and then is startling. While there is an elite level with generally high IQ at the top, just as the writer describes the middle level is staffed by mostly human resource and compliance types who are excellent at following procedures and who will never challenge the current orthodoxy. I shudder to think how they will fare if they had a truly competitive market without the protection of federal rules and regulations.
Brilliant! This explains so much about what’s behind the destructive and delusional actions of those in charge as well as the sheep that blindly follow them.
Oh, and engagingly well-written, too!
I’ve read a condensed version of this before:
18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise!f Amen.
26For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. 31They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.
32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them
Amen
https://youtu.be/hRguZr0xCOc
We are DEVO…
Do we really need more high IQ people? I live in an area of high and over-achievers, and to be truthful, I’m not all that impressed. We need more Samwise Gamgees and Tom Bombadils. Simple, common sense folks, who see through illusion and accept reality for what it is.
Excellent article Larry, you covered many of things that have been concerning me for years, seems I wasn’t just paranoid but correct. This article actually establishes your IQ bona fides and adds credibility to anything else you may write or have written.
Would also add that the system now is so top (and bottom) heavy with ideological incompetence that it is way past reform that even if vigorously undertaken would take decades. Russia had their collapse and got a decent leader to steer them out, I do worry the West will have to suffer far longer till the right people can emerge.
Wowzer! Well said, and very eye opening. But also very scary! “Immunity to Change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey is a must read! And Solomon said it well in the 26 chap of Proverbs.
A lot of things happened in reality while all this blaa blaa was written and then, Musk AGAIN. Can`t you just talk about Nicola Tesla? Who is Musk?
You waste time building architectures of the MIND! Its like you would try to build and repeat a same neurology pattern and think of people and life as a dictated machinery. It just doesn`t work that way if you want to live in a reality.
No-one can teach real time politics. This is my opinion.
The best article on society that I have read in years. It coherently explains a lot of things that I have observed in my 73 years.
“This group, whether we define it as 1.5% of the population or 8% of the population, is extremely valuable.”
I would say it is much less than 1%. However, these individuals have the ability to motivate and direct many others who are less gifted in the right direction.
Think in terms of righteous religious leaders. Engineers, I am one, are quite unsuited to this task.
The thing is that such 8% should be of a quality nearly a saint to want to lead….
People submitted to fear, coercion and menace of misery react as we witnessed through the “pandemic”, turning against their own peers to save their own asses…
The planners at the WEF were sure that a whole 80% would be controled by fear and the remaining 10% would be so nauseated by the view of their peers running to get the Gestapo jacket that they would forget about politics, not to mention leading anybody, for the rest of their lives, and would get as purpose only to save themselves.
I guess that was what happened to many soviet people like Viktor Bout or Daniel Estulin who found themselves at their expenses when their country failed them and had to reinvent themselves at multiple business in África o wherever….
The other day, I was hearing to the last broadcasting by Daniel Estulin about the current affairs in Africa, where he stated that Boko Haram, main terrosit group in Nigeria ( currently being recruited to fight the Niger state, demonstrating in the way that there is no terrorism which is not state sponsored…) has around hgalf million effectives…The condition to achieve such numbers of recruits, an army in fact, in keeping the population of Africa in perpetual misery conditions and lack of opportunities so that the only way to prospere remains venturing into the desert and oceans to migrate, or joining a terrorist group ( this when you have not been forced as a child warrior….)
Well, although it could be a greatly gratifying enterprise, I guess, I can not imagine the load of work to try to redime such half million of outcasts who did not hesitate to join thier very executioners against their own people to terrorize and destroy their own country.
This comment went through unwillingly as I was correcting, you can delete it so as to not occupy so much space to say more or less the same.
I respotes as i was not sure what was happened with the comment, whether I had deleted it unswillingly.
Thanks.
The thing is that such 8% should be of a quality, as you correctly guesses, nearly a saint to want to lead….
People submitted to fear, coercion and menace of misery react as we witnessed through the “pandemic”, turning against their own peers to save their own asses…
The planners at the WEF were sure that a whole 80% would be controled by fear and the remaining 10% would be so nauseated by the view of their peers running to get the Gestapo jacket that they would forget about politics, not to mention leading anybody, for the rest of their lives, and would get as purpose only to save themselves.
I guess that was what happened to many soviet people like Viktor Bout or Daniel Estulin who found themselves at their expenses when their country failed them and had to reinvent themselves at multiple business in África o wherever….
The other day, I was hearing to the last broadcasting by Daniel Estulin about the current affairs in Africa, where he stated that Boko Haram, main terrosit group in Nigeria ( currently being recruited to fight the Niger state, demonstrating in the way that there is no terrorism which is not state sponsored…) has around hgalf million effectives…The condition to achieve such numbers of recruits, an army in fact, in keeping the population of Africa in perpetual misery conditions and lack of opportunities so that the only way to prospere remains venturing into the desert and oceans to migrate, or joining a terrorist group ( this when you have not been forced as a child warrior….)
Well, although it could be a greatly gratifying enterprise, I guess, I can not imagine the load of work to try to redime such half million of outcasts who did not hesitate to join their very executioners against their own people to terrorize and destroy their own country.
I guess that is part of the Wagner group work in Africa, as they did in prisons during the first stances of the Russian SMO, very commendable and worth of admiration, all the more a work which will never be publicly recognized.
Excellent article. This whole degradation of the West based on ideology is eerily similar to what happened to the Russian Empire after a certain tribe took it over and created the USSR on purely ideological foundations. Economy, morals, society in general was destroyed.
The same tribe now controls the West and a similar degeneration of society, based on delusional ideology is in progress.
Does anyone see a parallel?
Your knowledge of USSR is beyond pale. People shouldn’t be opining on subjects they either know nothing about or involved emotionally with. You didn’t even try to hide your anti-semitic sentiments in your comments. It’s quite disgusting, Jeff Cox.
Good for you, Emma. I’m also sick to death of the monomaniacal, logically -challenged anti-semites.
They should have a good look at modern Israel, and note how persecuted the ordinary Israelites are by their vile leaders. This is not to ignore the plight of the Palestinians by the way, who are in an even worse position.
There are psychopaths of every religious persuasion, and every culture, and we shouldn’t make blanket assessments based on either.
You sound like tribe member doing psyops.
Is the writer a white person? Thought so. Remember a number of years ago, the Smithsonian had a controversial exhibit by the National Museum of African American History and Culture which defined the traits of whites. One of the blasts (I think it was meant as an insult) is that whiteness is defined by the emphasis on the scientific method which uses objective rational linear thinking, cause and effects relationships, and quantitative emphasis. The exhibit was three years ago, and the poster with this stuff was taken down. Below is link to story and entire poster what was removed. Thing is, much of what was on the poster has infected US and UK culture. Basically, competence has become a negative racial trait.
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333
Coincidentally, I assume, a couple of days ago, another thoughtful and complementary piece was published by Aurelian which approaches the same phenomenon from a similar perspective. Well worth the read.
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/reality-would-like-a-word?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Can You (someone) explain a little bit more about this western ideology?
It is no so obvious to me.
An outstanding article Larry, thanks. I agree with every word.
What would make a really good companion article would be a systematic comparison of 3 other systems with the west: Soviet, modern Russia, and modern China. Maybe you can recruit a Soviet expert, a Russian expert and a Chinese expert to contribute such a comparison.
You touched in Russia and China but only very narrowly. I am no expert, but I would guess the old Soviet system had a complex relationship to these issues. On the one hand, extreme specialist competence seems to have been intensively nourished in the Soviet system, I suspect in all fields or almost all. But what of Communist Party membership? Intuitively one (in the west) is inclined to suspect that the “promotion of incompetence” may have played an important role in the degradation of the Soviet system, but with a critical difference: experts with exceptional proven competence outside the Communist Party were extremely pressured to join the Communist Party, even when they were ideologically disinclined to the system (excepting those crossing red lines of course). Thus in the Soviet system the opposite condition seems to have applied, that the high general competence group seems to have been aggressively encouraged to join the Communist Party. (Maybe there were exceptions in some socialogical or political fields, or maybe my assumption of some forces promoting incompetence within the Communist Party is wrong anyway).
One additional comment I’d like to make: I know for a fact that within Buddhist institutions around the world, the CIA and MI6 have for decades run covert campaigns to aggressively undermine rational teachers and aggressively promote those teachers who push supernatural concepts (alleged supernatural powers), including covert manipulation by the CIA to make it appear that such teachers have supernatural powers (whether with or without the knowledge of the teacher themselves). Particularly so if the teacher happens to conform to the ideological system desired. They regard this as a productive way of controlling society, but at the same time it also tends to select for ideological incompetents.
Oops, I just noticed the article was by Gaius Baltar not Larry, sorry!
Oops, I just noticed the article was by Gaius Baltar not Larry, sorry! …
Oh boy! I do agree that there is a crisis of education, but to look at IQ as one of the reasons is a huge problem, not to mention that IQ score is very much invented quantification of human thinking. As for the crisis, the idea of human capital, indeed, is part of it, but in a very different sense than it is discussed here. One of the architects architects of this disastrous idea is Gary Becker: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. It is a part (I would call it) of neoliberal ‘revolution’ with its goal to privatise and financialised every aspect of our lives. Anyway……I just would like to point out a different reading of the eduction crisis, which I think is important to discuss.
“not to mention that IQ score is very much invented quantification of human thinking. ”
Yes.
Another attempt at measuring the qualitative by measures of the quantitative.
” It is a part (I would call it) of neoliberal ‘revolution’ with its goal to privatise and financialised every aspect of our lives.”
Not only, but also:
Another attempt at restricting change within linear paradigms of “acceptable tolerances” of which Gaius Baltar outlines some examples in emulation of Mr. Marx’s observation that : Philosophers here to fore have merely described the world when the purpose is to change it – (rendering philosophers (and others) complicit in their own transcendence as a function of their purposes and methods of attempted implementations).
As Mr. Shakespeare may have chosen to extended his observation – “All the world is a stage” (upon which most performances are comedies/tragedies) – dumbing down being a form of sitting on high branches whilst sawing the high branch – including but not restricted to Intelligence quotient (I.Q.), Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.), Cui bono ?, we the people hold these truths to be self-evident, etc.
“I just would like to point out a different reading of the eduction crisis, which I think is important to discuss.”
That depends on purpose as you interpret an “educational crisis) whilst some others interpret “educational opportunities” including outwith present vectors of “education” through transcendence not “reform”.
I had never heard so much about IQ measurement until I arrived in US geopolitical blogs….especially I tested Pat Lang´s blog commentariat dedicated quite some time for a while to talk about personality tests and IQ measures….
That is not a usual proceed, nor conversation, in Europe, to measure IQ….
A person, at least at my time in university, was measured by his/her results and works.
Of course, I am talking about public education…I guess well off people in Europe measure their children IQ too so that to test the effectiveness of their selection process thorugh partners, couples, and so on…….
Dear Mr Johnson,
this is the best article I have read in Years. I congratulate you for it.
if you ever expand it to a book, I will be your first buyer.
A clear and concise description of the reality we are living under.
Much of what you write here, I have been suffering for most of my life from a very early age. To the point of desperation.
I thought that the system had been sequestered by the unproductive, unintelligent and incompetent, it is maybe (like) a natural or biological process because it is the only way they can prosper and survive. To parasitize the productive and competent Host. The problem is that today the “Parasite” is much bigger than the Host, and is killing it.
We are living in a catastrophe. The system is crumbling, due to the complexity of it, and the lack of competent people to keep it going on. The prognosis is bad for the future of the west.
Now I know 100% sure that the change, when it comes, it will be very violent because the parasite will not leave or change its behavior willingly. The Parasite must die, or be severely reduced. When the system collapse, there will be megadeaths, and the chances for the 1.5-8 % to survive will be intrinsically better than those of the rest. Survival is directly related to competence, consciousness and awareness.
Maybe there is a natural process, or something inherently biological related.
It happened before, it will happen again.
Sorry, I mean MR BALTAR!
I feel fully identified with this excellent article because it adds an interesting framework to my political expertise.
This same thing is happening in some global south countries as Argentina where I live. Ah! My other country, Austria, is the same. Obviously, I’m not lucky.
It is an ideology to ruin countries. This needs sheep herds instead of free and thoughtful citizens and the Orwellian education is its main tool. We are within a cultural war, whose battles are being lost and that isn’t nice for me. I’m suffering its consequences but my spirit doesn’t give up.
I live in EU and read some excellent points. To go deeper on every problem is not possible since it takes too much words.
1) Everythings starts with education and here it already goes wrong. Just for context I do have an IQ higher than 130 and I notice it has become difficult to connect with other people, my brain works different. We had a new policy a decade or more: Everyone can get a higher degree. To achieve that they lowered standards, gave students more years to achieve a diploma (6 years instead of 3 or 4), all which makes a higher education worthless since many have no competence. And many student courses are absolute worthless and a waste of tax payer money.
2) Politcal incest. Or maybe you prefer career politicians. These people are in office for a lifetime, in front or behind the scenes. If they screwed u national politics they can get a beteer paying job on EU level and screwing everything more up. Take a look at who’s in power in the EU, most are losers and failed politicians on a national level. I mean people like Ursula von der Leyen, really? And for them theres always a job at the many EU institutions, look at the European Court of Auditors. Each member state gets a seat, a perfect example is Annemie Turtelboom, failed national politician that got the job as consolation prize, making 25.000 euro each month. Not bad for a screw up. Or the got a
job at the ECB, NATO or a seat on the directors board from big companies so they can lobby more easily. On a rare occasion you have intelligent and independant thinkers in politics, who are not welcome because being independent thinker and want to change for the greater good. But they can’t change because in the current system nothing can change. The main task of current politicians is staying in power and they do everything in order of the next election. Carreer politicians are the problem.
3) Growing corruption with politicians, media and justice department. Where to begin, I rather keep it short. How about a gangrape (illegals) and all 5 have to write an essay as punishment. Or how a fraternity caused the death of a pledge during hazing (not English so I don’t know the correct terms for this) and got away with a 200 fine. It was a high class fraternity with wealthy parents. Judge called them vulnerable boys. But a bar owner got effective jailtime and pay 8000 euro for putting up some (so called racist) memes at the window. When I drive an old diesel car to Brussel I get a fine of 350 euro, torturing someone to death is cheaper. Also strange how fast justice work form some people while for you it takes years. So much insanity going on and people start asking questions.
4) Covid-19 prooved how many people are sheep. I put the data together an come to the conclusion I has less than 1% to get severe sick. So I refused the jab and in return I got criminalized. About 10% of us refused the jab. Here we also got to meet the real goverment, how they worked together with the media and how justice treated ordinary people as murderers. The West is no longer a democracy, see corruption and carreer politicians, it doesn’t who you vote, nothing changes.
5) When talking about economic suicide I guess you mean the Green Steal? West ern economies don’t function anymore. We are not productive or innovating. Currently we have profit model aimed toward grants and creating wealth. Just look at all the big companies, their business model it making money with grants because non of this green economy is profitable or competive. In the West politicians forget that they don’t have money, it’s tax payer money. The short solution is creating more debt (no one can repay this ever) and printing more money.
6) Now we have this woke craze, diversity is a strenght. So far I have seen no evidence that diversity is strength. They force these people in job functions at the cost of competent people, same in school with limited students.
7) Money transfers make the best EU nations incompetent. First the government steals more than 50% of your paycheck. A part it goes to the EU, which transfer it to the southern nations, most of it goes to Eastern EU which still are corrupt. The real problem it doesn’t create wealth. Rich EU countries just get poor and need to make cuts on social programs, eduction, infrastructure,… it ‘s not hard to understand the consequences of this.
So much more can be said. In the end politicians have no connection with reality are basic knowledge of ecnomics or how wealth is created. Nor do they understand the conseqences of their decisions. Take a look at this war, total insanity and economical suicidal for the EU. Green parties really believe that expensive energy is a good thing. Or look at the decision of pushing electrical vehicles. 50% of West EU citizens can’t afford an EV, and so many practical problems. Sorry not all of us live at a large mansion with driveway and have solar panels, and be at home during the day so we can charge the car. But what about Eastern EU? How are they going to afford EV’s? All we did is killing are automobile sector. Charging an EV at a public charger is already more expensive than a ICE car. The solution is to make what we don’t want more expensive, so when you charge 10 euro/l then yes EV become cheaper. Because you are trying to replace a better product with a worse one they have to put taxes on everthing on what they don’t want. It’s completely insanity to force an economy that’s less productive, competitive, in all ways is a step backward on us and try to force it on putting taxes on one and giving grant to the other. The biggest mistake are solar panels and wind turbines. So much ‘free’ energy and yet we pay the most ever in our lifes. They totally ignore reality and really think they can make their wishes true with laws. One they to might cancel gravity. Green energy doesn’t exist, EV’s are not going to became cheaper and the market will dominated by China for us the poor. Dacia is growing year after year. The made an article asking why. I know why; Dacia is the cheapest brand, it’s just that simple. Most car constructors are abandoning small cars. The usual cars as Ford Fiest, Toyota Yaris, Opel Corsa have gone up 40 to 100% in price. The realty is that the West is bankrupt, people are suffering, middle class is disappearing, it can only go downhill from know. My biggest concern for the near future is the war in Ukraine. The NATO lost, but they can’t accept that outcome so all they can do is lying and escalate. At the start, after the hysteric ranting of von der Leyen, I gave a 70% it will end in a nuclear war. The bully got challenged and had its ass kicked. Any rational person could see expanding the EU to the east was a historic mistake, expanding NATO east wards is even a bigger mistake. Anyone have a good solution for the war that doesn’t destroy half of earths population? Can you really the West on making a realistic decision? When you the West lives in delusional world? It would be cynical if USA invades Niger in the coming days. They believe the world loves them but in reality large parts of the world hate the USA. But if you live in this bubble of lies you loose any grip on reality.
” The NATO lost, but they can’t accept that outcome so all they can do is lying and escalate.”
They will simultaneously likely increase levels of stress and resort to emotional responses thereby accelerating the levels and scopes of their ineptitudes.
” in reality large parts of the world hate the USA.”
Those of agency, facility and motivation to transcend “The United States of America” do not emulate “The United States of America” by self-indulging in emotional responses including hatred, since they understand that doing so would preclude their purpose.
However as you illustrate “The United States of America” remains immersed in the illusions that their opponents are as stupid as they are.
I am a failure and the reason is because everyone in power is stupid.
A lot of words to say the above….
Your brand of reductionism is a good illustration of what Gaius is talking about.
Great article!!!! I’ve been saying for ages now – At home & at school I was taught how to think……Today people are being told what to think!
Something I noticed during my children’s time in American public schools was the rise of the Group Project as a part of the learning/grading process.
A typical class would be divided into groups of five or six, with each group containing a mix of students, from best to worst. Each group was graded on final output, and each group member received that same grade individually, regardless of their participation or input.
Time after time I watched as the high-achievers did all the work to get a good grade to keep their GPAs up for college, and stoically accepting the fact that they were carrying the losers, some of whom they’d later be competing with for spots in college, and some of whom they had to compete with while hobbled by Affirmative Action and quotas.
There were and are other small ways in which the system advantaged bad students at the expense of good students, but the kids nowadays deal with it from pre-k to college, so they accept it as a fact of life and a deserved injustice, because they know that adults will never change it.
The only thing which can change the system now it complete collapse, which appears to be where it is headed.
1. “Ideology” is a tenacious business-model.
2. The only way to curb-bias it to apply discretion,
i.e. to enforce IQ testing in order to weed-out morons.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism
4. MBA = Monkey-Business Agitation = Mystery-Babylon America
and is the root-source of appointing incompetents i.e. science-illiterati
namely who cannot understand the physics and mathematics of weapon systems.
This may be one of the best articles I’ve ever read on this site, Larry’s articles not included as they are of a rather different nature. Frank Chodorov, a Conservative Libertarian author from the 60s pointed out the root cause of this phenomenon in his book “The Rise and Fall of Society”, for anyone who is interested. The author comes to almost the same conclusion that many have before him: the only way out of this is to completely wreck the broken civilization. Much to my dismay, I feel he might be correct.
This is one big political rant that is only lightly dressed up as a rational analysis. The sheer number of posts on this particular post, and the lack of critical analysis being thrown at it because it no doubt matches many people’s views, is sort of ironic given the article’s condemnation of lack of critical thinking.
This is really a pity because the initial question–what is the reason behind our current decline (assuming it exists)–actually merits serious thought, investigation, and debate. However, perhaps we are now beyond the point of being able to do so.
Nothing can be more true. It explains our path to the future portraied in the movie “Ideocracy” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) 😟
I believe the following article nicely complements Gaius Baltar’s excellent essay.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/
One of the first attempts I have seen to go beyond describing the symptoms of Western decline to ponder the causes. It at least opens up the subject for debate and probably hits the mark on many of the actual complex of causes of Western decay.
The mediocrity disease is widespread in the West. I recommend the lecture of a very relevant book on this topic by Jean-Paul Brighelli, a recently retired French pedagogue who held important jobs in the French Ministry of education. He wrote a book bearing the title “La Fabrique du Crétin : la mort programmée de l’école ” .
It is only after his retirement that he was able to speak his heart out on how the once famed French educational system was turned into a factory of cretins.
He also concludes that the disease has infected all of the Western world. He goes on and declares that Russia, China, and many other East Asian nations that stuck to the traditional schooling methods are forging ahead and occupying the top echelons on the educational excellence ladder.
Bottom line summary. Most people are idiots. I figured this out 5 decades ago. We’re screwed
It’s not that people are idiots; there still are very bright and smart people around, but the social escalator is biased and screwed up: it promotes the cretins and sycophants and banishes the bright and capable.
You have mostly people with “management” or “political science” background that occupy very highly technical positions of influence. It’s rare to find experts in the hard sciences with rational fact-based reasoning in those roles.
“Political Science” is an oxymoron in itself and its graduates are ideologues of the worst kind.
“It’s rare to find experts in the hard sciences with rational fact-based reasoning in those roles.”
Depends whether you believe that your opponents are as stupid as you are, whether you are immersed in seeing is believing, and where you look.
““Political Science” is an oxymoron in itself and its graduates are ideologues of the worst kind.” and hence confirms that the purposes have been achieved to some degree rendering “political scientists” complicit in their own transcendence.
This is all logical consequence from “The Long March Through The Institutions”.
Look it up, the perpetrators declared their plans openly.
Also managerialism.
https://mises.org/library/managerial-revolution
What’s totally missing from both the article and the discussion is the decline in the G-loaded, heritable part of average IQ due to decreased child mortality starting from around the year 1800.
Elite nobility in the West was the first group to be affected (starting from around 1800, because they were the first to have access to improved medical procedures). Think of the difference between Napoleon, born in 1769, who was a totally naturally selected member of the lower nobility and Queen Victoria, born in 1819, who managed to affect much of Europe’s elite nobility with blood clotting disorder by way of her many surviving children.
A number of countervailing factors such as continued medical advances, population increases due to industrialization and the carried-over momentum of natural selection on the less wealthy classes led to G-loaded average IQ in the West peaking sometime around 1880. As pointed out, it was different in different parts of the population. Maybe that was the reason why the dumbed-down elites brought the two world wars on everybody else, who were not yet as dumbed down and were thus able to fight these wars to devastating effectiveness.
The decrease since 1880 might have been by as much as 20 IQ points. Imagine a society where everyone’s IQ is 20 points higher as today, on average.
Other parts of the world have not proceeded as much along this path, hence the picture that we are seeing. Russia got an additional boost by the crisis of the 90’s. This crisis was so severe that it led to drastically increased mortality, which mostly affected the less intelligent as they were less able to adapt and survive.
Normally what happens in such situations is the dumber, more civilized society getting conquered by hardier, more intelligent borderlanders.
“This crisis was so severe that it led to drastically increased mortality, which mostly affected the less intelligent as they were less able to adapt and survive.”
Morbidity rates like many other statistically derived datastreams in The Soviet Union were not rigorously published or even collected or calculated for various reasons rendering the analysis of comparative trends difficult.
So on what datastreams do you base your assertion that “This crisis was so severe that it led to drastically increased mortality ?
Death is a process of varying velocities and phasing, so on what datastreams using what methods including but not limited to methods of validation do you base your assertion that “increased mortality, which mostly affected the less intelligent as they were less able to adapt and survive”?
“Normally what happens in such situations…”
Apparently you fail to outline in which locations such situations normally happen, and whom is the dumber – the spectator who believes the data that has been invented, or the inventor of the data, or the aggregater of the data in creation of the framing/presentation of the data including , or the spectator who believes the data is correctly rigorous and of utility in establishing comparatives over time?
Thank you for your co-operation in illustrating some components of some narratives
created to “describe” situations without specific locations deemed to exist in Russia during “the crisis of the 90’s” which continue to enjoy half-lives.
“This crisis was so severe that it led to drastically increased mortality, which mostly affected the less intelligent as they were less able to adapt and survive.”
Morbidity rates like many other statistically derived datastreams in The Soviet Union were not rigorously published or even collected or calculated for various reasons rendering the analysis of comparative trends difficult.
So on what datastreams do you base your assertion that “This crisis was so severe that it led to drastically increased mortality ?
Death is a process of varying velocities and phasing, so on what datastreams using what methods including but not limited to methods of validation do you base your assertion that “increased mortality, which mostly affected the less intelligent as they were less able to adapt and survive”?
“Normally what happens in such situations…”
Apparently you fail to outline in which locations such situations normally happen, and whom is the dumber – the spectator who believes the data that has been invented, or the inventor of the data, or the aggregater of the data in creation of the framing/presentation of the data including validation , or the spectator who believes the data is correctly rigorous and of utility in establishing comparatives over time?
Thank you for your co-operation in illustrating some components of some narratives
created to “describe” situations without specific locations deemed to exist in Russia during “the crisis of the 90’s” which continue to enjoy half-lives.
In 1983, there were 2.87 million people who worked for the government, out of 89.8 million full-time employees. That’s only 3.19% of the total. The growth of American’s dependency on the government rose by a staggering 351%.
I wrote about incompetence in my Mind Control Series, INCOMPETENCE (3)
https://trygvewighdal.substack.com/p/mind-control-series-incompetence
Great article, I will send it to many friends. It explains why I feel like Oliver Douglas in the sitcom Green Acres most of the time. Several years ago a physician friend said something to me that sums up the entire article in a nutshell. “The dummies are winning.”
So, what about the people who maintain the petro-dollar system and the dollar-controlled world financial markets? I guess as argument could be made that Volker and Kissinger set the system up 50 years ago and only now is it showing real signs of fracture and instability. Still, someone in the West manages these systems, which seem to be propping up the Imperium, as well as the massive media-control operations.
Hello from whatever is left of Western Europe. This article is superb, perhaps the best I’ve ever read on this precise issue. Have forwarded it to dozens of people. Deserves to be translated into every European language. Anyone listening out there?
Excellent article. I came to the same conclusions, but not in this granular detail. Thanks for spelling it out.
We must oust the incompetent. This requires a strategy…
West’s Test: A Satirical Rap Quest
*(Verse 1)*
Ukraine, West’s play, perceptions astray,
Thought Russia was a pawn, but it led the ballet.
Tech, economy, military might,
While the West’s strength wanes, shadows swallowing the light.
Dysfunction deep, from Wall Street to the elite,
Dollar’s reign wanes, sanctions obsolete.
Not just an economic slide,
It’s human capital, the West’s bruised pride.
*(Chorus)*
Focused competence, yeah, we ace that test,
But broadly? We’re stressed, far from the best.
High IQ, objectivity too, gotta be free-thought crew,
But only a few, can truly see through.
*(Verse 2)*
Elon’s tweets, causing EU heartbeats,
Shaking the system, dancing to his own beats.
Ideological chains, keep competence in lanes,
Merit’s ghost remains, as ideology reigns.
Education’s game, not about the name,
Ideology’s aim, is to keep true skills tame.
Exams cast aside, ideologies ride,
If you don’t toe the line, you’re left outside.
*(Chorus)*
Rationality’s been ousted, subjectivity’s been boosted,
Challenging minds doused, as the narrative’s juiced.
Economic alterations, rise of ideologues in stations,
Inverted competence, leading nations to frustrations.
*(Verse 3)*
Debt piles high, under the western sky,
Jobs without value, make prosperity shy.
Monopolistic spree, killing competition’s glee,
China, India rise, as the West’s on its knees.
Complex structures demand, a competent hand,
But the West’s strategy? Like shifting sand.
Russia’s play, educational dismay,
Prioritizing skill, as the West fades away.
*(Bridge)*
Titanic clash, ideology’s flash,
West battles the Rest, as systems crash.
Elites in their sphere, clutching what’s dear,
Hourglass grains fall, end drawing near.
*(Outro)*
West’s path seems curved, a swerve unnerved,
Change is reserved, but urgently deserved.
Once led the scene, now caught in between,
Need a new dream, for a resurgence unseen.
This article is perhaps the most important piece of journalism written this year, maybe this decade, for the West. It provides a different yet essentially similar analysis of Western (USA) society as Tom Nichols “The Death of Expertise”. We’ve decided that ideology is more important than competence and irrationality more important that critical thinking. This is going to result in the implosion of the Western world and we will be laughed at, ridiculed and pummelled into insignificance by the rest of the world. And we must ask ourselves “who is directing this ideology, as surely they want to see the West collapse and fall into mediocrity”. And based on what I have read, especially in the Unz report found on https://unz.com, it’s the international banking cartel who mostly lives untouched and beyond any legal authority in the one mile square City of London, guarded by the dragons. If you have been to London UK you know what I mean. And the most influential of all is of course the Rothschild family.
The political situation today has
changed, people are not interested
to be member of a political party,
they feel alienated, and the parties
then banking of big campaigns, with promises they never will full-fill, to the voters. Then a lot of small
parties emerging, with about 5 %
in general elections.
Then the bigger 20% parties must shape a coalition government, often too week, or as in Sweden cooperate with rightwing parties, they just used to despise, to reach the power, the winner takes it all,and small parties get an influ-ence far beyond their share of the votes.
My point, people are tired of the political system, of the tactical
considerations, and the political
twittershow, running 24/7, all what lacks stability, as before, when the political programmes were clear and visible, and not opportunistic, and the partyleaders didn’t act in a narcissistic personal shows.
And the paradoxical result, people begin to look at the royal houses,
the monarchs, who stand for traditions and stability, and here just the king, the same family, Marshall Bernadotte’s, since 1814, from Pau, in France, Bonaparte’s officer, recruited to Sweden.
And the most worrying, even the poor politicians try to get close to the royalties, as if they lack an own spine, and the king seems to use this, to advance or take back that
old royal society, he feels, he is needed, respected, and not a joke, especially during war times.
The Chinese and Russian leader-ship can take advantage of this
Western and EU political fatigue,
selfinflicted.
Gaius Baltar (I don’t know your preferred pronouns),
It would be great if in a follow up article you could explain the “ideology” this article is based on.
What is the “ideology”?
Who created the “ideology”?
Who is pushing the “ideology”?
Who does the “ideology” benefit?
How can the “ideology” be stopped and reversed, if it is harmful to humanity in general?
The ideology is one of power over other people, that is, psychopathy.
You defeat it by shunning liars and teaching your children to do the same
“preferred pronouns”
You are part of the problem.
Larry, great article as always, but I am confused. I consider myself somewhat informed, but how did this buffonish Kagan clan become so influential in our foreign policy? None of these people have any experience fighting in wars, engaging in true diplomacy, creating any viable for profit businesses, or helping anyone through a meaningful nonprofit.
I have no explanation. Money is at the root I suspect. They aren’t given this kind of access because of their good looks.
Correct. The money comes from bankers and the connections/positions come from a certain culture/ethnicity background.
This is literally a masterpiece of an article!!!!👏👏👏👏👏
Looking at this through an evolutionary lens. The fact that “high-level, general competence” people are a tiny fraction of the population means that these traits have not been selected for, which in turn suggests that (perhaps until very recently) they have not been essential to the survival of societies. Seems strange.
They are tiny fraction, but a necessary one. Much like vitamins are in nutrition.
Every ant colony requires that small percentage of them go off the beaten path (pheromonized path, to be more exact), and most of them to follow it. Without those “explorers”, “regular ones” will run out of food to collect. Long time ago I’ve read a scientific paper about the optimal ratio of those. Too much of special ones is also bad for the “society”.
Super well done Larry!!!!!
Your work is always sterling, but this insightful essay is one of the top 10 I have EVER read! Insights should be part of required curriculum in Junior High and High Schools, as well University programs.
Dr Jordan Peterson now a serious competitor !!!
People who have endured oppression, or their loved ones, understand how the “nahrishkeit” of the western propaganda has become an existential threat to Liberty, and you have just written the preface for further in depth examination from you in the future. Do Not Stop writing these type of insightful essays!!!
Thank you.
I can only take credit for publishing it. The author is Gaius, a former contributor to the SAKER. But yes, very insightful and we need more of this.
Yes, it’s very much so, Larry. But I believe the dumbing-down of the West is a much more complicated process than one explicable by the rise of idiotic ideologies on the Left. It could be that the phenom of “woke” itself is largely a function of something else. I suspect that we are victims of the side effects of long-lasting economic prosperity, and enormous accretion of technology which has over the last few generations completely transformed the workplace and made redundant some skills which were previously essential in carrying out the tasks of a job. Take math skills for example. In early 1970’s in my early days in Canada I worked for an accountant. His ledger system was all manual. He never used a calculator and hated seeing me use one. “It destroys your mind”, he said. Today, three out of five cashiers in a market, would not be able to calculate in their head a correct change to the total without the help of a machine. A hundred years ago, most store clerks would be adding a list of purchases with piece of paper and a pencil. On a managerial level, today’s rapid replacements of technology makes it very hard to master the process around implementing it to any level of expertise. By the time, you figure out the nooks and crannies, it’s thrown out and replaced by something else. Today’s managers prefer to call in “experts” to figure it out, and to take blame if it doesn’t work. (I know. I worked as one of those outsourcing experts in IT for years). So, you have objectively less pressure to perform well in jobs, because job productivity becomes a function of automation, and less and less dependent on the brains and hustle of people. And we are now at the threshold of AI that threatens to discard the value of critical human thought at every step of every process.
Great Article, many of us have become a victim of this ideological worldview. The author forgot to mention communism. At the the root of this whole ideological shift is communist ideals. This system will degrade and punish anyone who thinks for themselves independently and intelligently. Meritocracy is not the answer, for it is how society falsely measures an individuals worth and not their intelligence. By that extension, show me the billionaires and millionaires of the culture; most of them stayed away from the boring, failed university system. It too is a farce and has been taken over. This system will collapse and is as we speak. The Russians and Chinese education is superior, but it wasn’t always this way. At the root of the whole thing is the human list for power, greed, and control by narcissistic personalities at the top. Good luck in trying to navigate the system of failure they will create. We will more than likely be dominated by the Chinese communists.
I knew it!
I read your writing with deep interest because it deals with an issue that is completely ignored in the West: the state of profound decadence in which western societies find themselves, with the exception of the Russian one (which certainly must historically and culturally be counted among the Western countries despite some of its obvious typical features). The main problem with this argument is that it cannot be addressed because the MSM is totally engaged in a self-congratulatory activity aimed at hiding this weakness and, on the contrary, exalting strengths most often the result of obvious lies. In this regard, your idea that this depends on the phenomenon that you define as “misallocation of human capital in the West” is certainly acceptable: in western societies, with the exception of Russia, a process is underway that systematically brings the least competent part of these societies to their leadership. Equally agreeable is your methodological approach which divides the competence into specific and general, attributing to the latter the task of guiding an efficient society (with the obvious consequence that otherwise the society will not be able to achieve positive results). On the other hand, your reference to the IQ to measure the requirement to be able to possess a general type of competence is less acceptable: the IQ is a very technical index, extremely suitable with reference to the specific competence but which can determine evident aberrations if referred to the general competence; nevertheless it can still be considered an acceptable approximation of the intellectual requirement necessary to occupy positions of high responsibility in a modern society. From my point of view, however, the explanation you give of the crisis is, on the contrary, wrong when you attribute it to the ideological drift taken by Western societies: that ideological drift is only a tool adopted by incompetent elites to justify their permanence in power; in essence it is an effect of the crisis not its reason. On the other hand, if this were not the case, the question of why Western societies would have decided to commit suicide would still remain unresolved. Historically, all civilization processes have known final phases in which the abandonment of all the traditional values – on which they had built their strength- is added together with the regression of all the material parameters that measure the strength of a civilization, first of all the efficiency of the education system: Polybius taught that history is cyclical so that every social phenomenon, like a human being, goes through different stages in its life ranging from birth to extreme senescence and finally to death. The reason for this is easy to understand: in order to prosper, a society needs an iron discipline in which single individuals are willing to sacrifice their personal interests in the name of the collective well-being (this phenomenon is made technically possible by the identification of a widely shared values within which personal ambitions find their insurmountable boundaries); this system of self-limitation works perfectly in the affirmation phase of a society in which it fights against external enemies, it is, conversely, gradually abandoned when this society reaches the mature phase in which it has defeated its enemies and feels strong and secure; the whole of society will prefer a more comfortable and less rigorous lifestyle and will tend to conceive the old values as something uncomfortable and to get rid of; it goes without saying that the elites will take the greatest advantages from this process (for example the phenomenon of nepotism and in general all patronage phenomena will become common practices) while ordinary people, in the face of small and ephemeral initial advantages, will actively and stupidly participate in the destruction of the system in which it was able to thrive; moreover, typical of a decadent phase will be the phenomenon whereby the real holders of power will begin to act behind the scenes, letting a group of incompetent individuals, unscrupulous but easily influenced by various forms of blackmail, formally take the reins of power (and it is precisely the phenomenon you are talking about of the reverse selection of often incompetent but always corrupt and immoral individuals who are extremely easy to blackmail). To justify the new balances, a new system of values – fully representative of a weak and lascivious society – will therefore be introduced. The phenomenon tends to be irreversible but acts with greater or lesser force depending on the presence of groups of thinkers with general competence who can predict the developments of the situation in advance and warn their fellow citizens of the terrible dangers looming over them; on the contrary the technicians (people with particular competence) who in the ascendant phase have made the fortune of their own society will become the most efficient demolishers of its strength precisely because they are extremely capable of grasping the momentary advantages of the new situation but instead unable to grasp its aspect ephemeral.
In the decline of Western society, the role of the Anglo-Saxon countries cannot fail to be highlighted (which for at least two centuries have assumed an absolutely fundamental role in the development of these societies) where technical skills are traditionally well cultivated (Francis Bacon who is considered the inventor of scientific method was in fact English) but which, compared to other European countries, have not rarely shown a clear delay in general skills (a philosophical or even literary work written by an English or American author of the nineteenth or early twentieth century always appears childish when compared to the works of a German philosopher or a French or Russian writer). In this context, Russia seems to play a role of its own because clearly, due to the characteristics of its history, the fundamental prerequisite for starting the process of decadence is missing: the feeling of security and self-satisfaction typical of a mature society; on the contrary, Russia has always been confronted (and continues to confront) with existential threats that put its very existence at risk and that in the last two centuries have been systematically brought to it by other Western countries. On the other hand, I believe that the phenomena taking place in post-Soviet Russia, where a country in economic collapse and whose elites had largely become good friends with Western capital (with which they had begun to share the wealth of their country) have been overturned by the so-called siloviki – who have re-established the full sovereignty of their country – are so exceptional and interesting that they will certainly constitute an important reason for study for the political scientists of the future
“so exceptional and interesting that they will certainly constitute an important reason for study for the political scientists of the future”
Your framing is a linear projection of present divisions of labour/perceived competences which also informs your whole text and is summarised within :
“On the other hand, I believe that the phenomena taking place in post-Soviet Russia, where a country in economic collapse and whose elites had largely become good friends with Western capital (with which they had begun to share the wealth of their country) have been overturned by the so-called siloviki – who have re-established the full sovereignty of their country – are so exceptional and interesting that they will certainly constitute an important reason for study for the political scientists of the future.”
including by relying on belief that some phenomena have been completely “overturned” and “full sovereignty” which never existed, has been re-established, and great persons of history have sole/primary agency.
This was/is a popular perception of past and present “political scientists” – an oxymoron – thereby obfuscating the ongoing lateral processes of transcendence
and rendering the complicity of “political scientists” and many others in its continuing lateral ongoing.
Another illusion of “his storians” and “political scientists” during the 1970’s and subsequent was “convergence theory” allegedly facilitating “detente” – whose evangelists included but were not limited to, Mr. Stephen F. Cohen and Mr. John Mearsheimer
Components of facilitation included/includes, but was/is not restricted to, present divisions of labour including but not limited to “education”, framing through what is perceived to be precedentally important, “tools” developed “to analyse” that which is perceived to be precedently important, the continuance of the great persons of his story with sole/prime agency, and the perception of some that “dumbing” down is a requirement to sustain their social relations within “acceptable tolerances”, facilitating the reduction of general understanding of the esperanto of science, all in illustration of Jethro Tull’s observation of “Living in the past.”
Living in the past? Probably, I think you can agree that discussing politics without looking back is a bit difficult. But look back to the past GAZING the 70s, mr Marsheimer, mr Cohen and Jethro Tull is, at least, a bit reductive: Realism – one of the dominant schools of thought in international relations theory of which Mr Mearsheimer is considered an exponent- was not born in an American university in the 70s but, a few years later, in Italy in Florence in the Renaissance by Niccolò Macchiavelli. Popular thought? Perhaps this definition applies to Mr Maesheimer and Mr Cohen, hardly for a man like Macchiavelli: in 15th century Florence the word popular had a completely different meaning than what we mean today. Is the term political science an oxymoron? Of course, if you think that history is dominated by transcendent processes, I personally prefer to observe the actions of politicians (both great and little), states (sovereign and not), social groups thinking they are real facts rather than GAZING into a DARK MIRROR outside inscrutable transcendent forces are at work.
“I think you can agree that discussing politics without looking back is a bit difficult.”
No
that is the illusion of opponents as you emulate, and a component of why “political science” is an oxymoron, and partly:
“WHY IS THE WEST SO WEAK (AND RUSSIA SO STRONG)? THE ROLE OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND WESTERN EDUCATION”
rendering many spectators to “personally prefer to observe the actions of politicians (both great and little), states (sovereign and not), social groups thinking they are real facts rather than GAZING into a DARK MIRROR outside inscrutable transcendent forces are at work.” thereby facilitating their complicity in their own transcendence whilst increasing opportunities of transcendence of spectators whose perceptions are linear derivatives of the past by practitioners not living in the past.
“Components of facilitation included/includes, but was/is not restricted to, present divisions of labour including but not limited to “education”, framing through what is perceived to be precedentally important, “tools” developed “to analyse” that which is perceived to be precedently important, the continuance of the great persons of his story with sole/prime agency, and the perception of some that “dumbing” down is a requirement to sustain their social relations within “acceptable tolerances”, facilitating the reduction of general understanding of the esperanto of science, all in illustration of Jethro Tull’s observation of “Living in the past.” refers.
Thank you for your service.
‘Mediocre-tocracy’ is what rules rampant in the nations that conform the Anglo-zionist-western-alliance and the all pervasive and dominant ideology is ‘Wokeness’, which is pushed, by all means, by the ‘Main Stream Media’ and the ‘Schooling System’.
These nations and its societies are doomed to fail & fall because the live blind to’reality’; they are corrupt to the marrow and the source of this corruption is the debt based financial -US dollar centered- economic system, which can create unlimited amounts of dollars, backed by unlimited debt creation and not by anything with intrinsic value.
Two Faced Trudeau gets Analyzed
https://youtu.be/9ygsN53wumk
This guy nails it and is a prime example of exactly what Gaius Baltar talk of in his article.
This explanation dances around the uncomfortable fact that all of these trends are the result of the unavoidable and inherent processes of advanced capitalism. Financialization (including economic management by central banks). Bureaucratic sterility in both corporations and government institutions. Alienation of human activity (including genuine community, family and cultural values) in a society increasingly devoted only to corporate and financial profit and wealth accumulation for a small elite. Dysfunctional and corrupting extremes of unproductive wealth (along with income and wealth stagnation for the great majority). A political system in which any semblance of democracy has been overwhelmed not just by growing concentrations of wealth but by a smothering corporate media system using proliferating technologies and networks that make propaganda, surveillance and censorship ever easier and reveal the basic incompatibility between advanced capitalism and democracy, not to mention genuine humanity.
Too right, though modern financial capitalism is only the latest head on the hydra. It really cannot be stated enough that every time a society goes from producing products and services for the sake of improving the lives of one’s fellow man, with profit as an aftereffect measure of how well-received your work is, to finance-based production and rent-seeking for the sake of profit complete with all possible manipulations to achieve that profit, disaster *swiftly* follows. All stable ancient regimes had proscriptions on usury and mechanisms to enforce them for a *reason*, backed by concepts of honor/duty/commitment to your society and people at large. We’ve been taught this lesson many times – the growth of money-power at first undermines, and then soon destroys us utterly.
“All stable ancient regimes had proscriptions on usury”
and practices of jubilee facilitating sharing by the forgiving of debts, and mechanisms to enforce them (these practices) for a *reason*, backed by concepts of honor/duty/commitment to your society and people at large. ” whilst some fools continue to believe that they have significantly injured The Russian Federation by seizing circa 300 billion dollars of their assets, instead of interpreting that the The Russian Federation made an investment whose returns have proven very beneficial and will continue to be so in multiple lateral presentations through time greater that 3 months and even 1 year.
I think that besides objectivity and capacity to think rationally, you need a certain dose of courage to be able to face criticism and even prosecution, and even a whole crowd after you, if your are to take the correct decission….
For, without the courage to risk everything agsint fascio, you, in spite of your high IQ, flexibility,creativity, and competitiveness, will achieve nothing.
Only those who were able to resist the presure during the “pandemic” in the West ( I do not know what was the level of presure in Russia, but I can asure here it was almost unbearable…) proved to have made the right decission, at least with regard their health capital and natural immunity. You can be the most intelligence in the room, but without health, or sruvival instinct, you have counted days….
Thus, I would add, to the characteristics of a leader, or of those who could lead us outside this mess, the courage and capacity to risk everything of value you had built through the years/decades, and here I mean, everything, ranging from your homeland, to your wife/husband, family, friends, job, career, money, etc….
IMHO, It´s those who resisted the “pandemic” presure who should lead us, displacing those who pledged to the most mean and really criminal behavior and still rmain in power or at the head of educational, government and international institutions and mass media.
While this is not done, overthrowing those who tried to install a fascist technosanitary dictatorship, which in fact acted as conditioning for the population to accept support for nazi Ukraine and russophobia in the war against Russia, and the displacement of national budget to the Zelensky mafia, we will achieve nothing.
That is precisely the proccees taking place in Africa…the displacement of the sold out to the exploitative West.
If the play ends well, I would may be considering moving to Africa, as I had the impulse when visiting Zanzibar…at least when retiring…
“I think that besides objectivity and capacity to think rationally, you need a certain dose of courage to be able to face criticism and even prosecution, and even a whole crowd after you, if your are to take the correct decission….”
The Russian Federation knew and practiced most of that and more from at least 1969, and this was incorporated in the planning of the restructing (perestroika) of the KGB implemented from 1971 onwards, thereby reducing the intake of the nomenklatura and increasing the intake of street wise kommunalka kids, and various “hooliganski” of experience thereby increasing scope and productivity.
“IMHO, It´s those who resisted the “pandemic” presure who should lead us, displacing those who pledged to the most mean and really criminal behavior and still rmain in power or at the head of educational, government and international institutions and mass media.
While this is not done, overthrowing those who tried to install a fascist technosanitary dictatorship, which in fact acted as conditioning for the population to accept support for nazi Ukraine and russophobia in the war against Russia, and the displacement of national budget to the Zelensky mafia, we will achieve nothing.”
You are many things in becoming but not a strategist, which your resort to emotialism and other ingrained practices preclude, which in limited measure could be acceptable for de facto quite junior analysts such as The Saker, although his employers may have assigned him a more “prestigious” rank.
Understandably you are presently mostly a romantic attempting to set phasing, trajectories, velocities, and outcomes beforehand in lateral processes which will often preclude your hopes and wishes.
The over-estimation of abilities is always a significant weakness facilitating collateral damage not restricted to self.
“That is precisely the proccees taking place in Africa…the displacement of the sold out to the exploitative West.”
You are mistaken since the ongoing lateral process of transcendence – not displacement – is more complex, including in lateral trajectories and velocities that you apparently presently perceive as being linear, as is the case with the opponents as a function of them attempting to deem hopes and wishes to be “strategies”.
The usage of some modes of broadcast have become unproductive and hence change of emphases will be undertaken.
Enjoy your journey, and try to remember that being alive affords more options than being dead.
“Understandably you are presently mostly a romantic….”
Really? Quite a lot less than first time we meet each other, I hardened a lot through treating these gringos but especiallu through the last three years….I wanted to save all the people and the world…..Now, I only try to save those who want to live….I will try to help the most people I can from where I work, until it is still possible. This will end as soon as my phisical integrity is seriously at danger, as nearly happened…
I will not look back if I need to leave, i will not link my life and future to a people who is not able to rise for freedom and dignity.
A romantic like Ibrahim Traoré, I guess…. do you think he will last long?
Sounded quite determined, his eyes reminded me those of Guevara when giving that memorable and encouraging speech….
Wondering what his background is and why he has his cheeks scarified….his trbie custom, or is this an Afrique street wise kid…
“The usage of some modes of broadcast have become unproductive and hence change of emphases will be undertaken”.
Then, you are leaving, again, well, enjoy your journey too….
See you over there….I guess….
https://youtu.be/jmZxHKlI0X0
P.S: you are, or at least were, a romantic too, with those tangos you used to broadcast….The more you live, the more you love, although you may think you are made of steel, like Stalin….
“A romantic like Ibrahim Traoré, I guess…. do you think he will last long?”
Spectators spectate whilst practitions ponder how to.
“Sounded quite determined, his eyes reminded me those of Guevara when giving that memorable and encouraging speech.”
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a self-indulgent clown in matters “strategic” who over-estimated and over-extended his abilities, including forgeting to take his asthma medication when travelling.
The contingent consequences included but were not limited to the deaths of his companions in Bolivia in 1967, affording the opportunities of his opponents to elevate him to “sainthood” and T-shirts, thereby aiding the increase of romantics joining los Tupamaros and MIR and the subsequent JCR (Junta Coordinadora Revolutionaria), which motivated The Condor years whilst facilitating the levels of executions and disappearances of romantics throughout Latin America with their complicity as a function of their naivete , whose half-lives continue until today, more than 60 years afterwords.
This illustrates why romantics should never be leaders unless like “The United States of America” you want to render them martyrs, since they fail to understand that leadership includes recognition and implementation of responsibility of/for others.
“you are, or at least were, a romantic too, with those tangos you used to broadcast”
No the connotation was la Boca its geography and practices performed there-in and exported there-from, which you interpreted as romantic.
“you may think you are made of steel, like Stalin”
No I don’t think that.
Mr. Stalin was an insecure, vindictive malcontent who misguidedly believed that he listened regularly, whom during his life was responsible for the deaths of others by his illusions that he always knew best, and whom after death through his efforts, inheritors and productions was complicit in the ongoing transcendence of “The Soviet Union” by The Russian Federation party through recognising its and “The Soviet Unions'” errors, apologising for them, and attempting to rectifying them including but not limited to, helping lubricate the “independence” of the Near Abroad.
So enjoy your journey.
“This will end as soon as my phisical integrity is seriously at danger, as nearly happened…”
Preparation is almost always the way of wisdom as is co-operation.
“his eyes reminded me those of Guevara when giving that memorable and encouraging speech….”
Some of limited or no experience thought his observation outside “The United Nations Building” that we will measure the success of our economy by the shine in our children’s eyes was cute/heartwarming, despite our “Che” being a doctor in Brasil and elsewhere knowing that children’s shining eyes could also be an indication of their level of starvation and the proximity of their deaths.
This “caballero de la rosa” was always a snake-oil salesman, not an exception in Argentina where Buenos Aires at one point had the highest rate per capita in the world of psychologists/psychiatrists.
“Wondering what his background is and why he has his cheeks scarified….his trbie custom”
It is a tribal custom throughout West Africa in variable design, but as you infer the salient question to ponder is was he part of the tribe, since in some instances scarification is used by politicians to appear to be one of us, akin to Mr. Boris Johnson pretending to speak and understand Cockney after attending Eton College, and a Jewish lady visiting a country which still retains significant levels of anti-Jewish sentiment and offering the locals yesterday’s bulka without salt or hot beverages to welcome them into their own home through idiocy not chutzpah.
With regard overestimating abilities, I consider myself quite rooted to the ground, and quite aware of danger and dangerous situations which I usually preview even before others around me can do it.
In fact, I chose quite a modest career for my abilities, in the opinion of one of my teachers, who thought it was way too little for me, but I was determined, since I just needed to start working soon….
I do not regret anything, time proved it was a good decission…Can not imagine the burden now if I would had venture any further…Anyway, the putrefaction of this rotten system, especially after the take over by the WEF, makes you nearly hate even the most dedicated and vocational of jobs….
“I do not regret anything”
Of course no point.
You can’t change the past, only re-interpret the past thereby rendering some of the past the present, if deemed a contextually significant pursuit, hence a component of
MirrorGazers says
8 August 2023 at 06:23
“I think you can agree that discussing politics without looking back is a bit difficult.
No.
and a couplet from Louis MacNeice in a different thread introduced by the preface
unless of course your purpose is to:
“Sit on your arse for fifty years
and hang your hat on a pension”
” I chose quite a modest career for my abilities, in the opinion of one of my teachers, who thought it was way too little for me, but I was determined, since I just needed to start working soon….”
These processes facilitated by specific divisions of labour are designed to keep the food sources and human shields accomodating, acquiescent and stressed to sustain coercive relations within linear paradigms of “acceptable tolerance”, primarily for the benefit of the “masters” of the food sources and human shields, and minimally for the food sources and human shields, hence the focus on transcendence by some, and the constant attempts of coercion by others.
“but I was determined, since I just needed to start working soon….”
Yes when you wish to transcend another, the most productive vector is another.
“especially after the take over by the WEF, makes you nearly hate even the most dedicated and vocational of jobs”
Yes the victim of your ridiculous decisions and motivations was yourself.
Try to remember Mr. Shakespeare and the suggested rectification of his “omission”
All the world is a stage (upon which most plays are comedies).
Lateral change is a constant whose variables include but are not limited to trajectories and velocities.
So “after the take over by the WEF”
How long do you speculate that will last ?
Enjoy the performance and your participation within it, as many of the population of The Russian Population did/do from 1980 to date, whilst the scribes wrote in emulation of Mr. Noam Chomsky’s observation:
My country (The United States of America) doesn’t lie, because to lie you need to know “the truth, hence the necessity of “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident” that the comedians “The founding/foundling fathers” cooked up”, and why almost my first comment on this blog was in response to Mr. Johnson’s
presentation of his relatives fighting in “The War of Independence” was:
Did they see the errors of their ways and apologise ?
That is the minimum of what The Russian Federation does and continues to do, and that is a systemic component of “WHY IS THE WEST SO WEAK (AND RUSSIA SO STRONG)? THE ROLE OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND WESTERN EDUCATION”
Enjoy your journey.
The detailed symptoms ailing our western societies as discussed by Gaius seems to accurately describe whats going on.
But if you examine the action from an elevated point of view, the theory of memes and genes, firstly described
by eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and further elaborated by philosopher Daniel Dennett from Tufts University and Susan Blackmore from Plymmouth university , makes incredible sense.
There is nothing but replicators, memes and genes. We humans are our genes phenotypes, enabling their virtual immortality. Memes on the other hand were extremely beneficial for our human evolution and survival throughout our history, sapiens sapiens is the dominating species on this planet with the help of the tools memes provided to us (although the insects,i.e. formicidae might disagree), but they are doing their own game. Some memes (or memeplexes) are tremendously harmful for individuals and societies (like some religions or cults,ideologies like socialism,liberalism,feminism,genderism),some are annoying but trivial see popular music and TV soaps and some are beneficial like scientific thinking,philosophy and research.
According to this worldview our western societies are just getting ‘infected’ with several new strains of a mind ‘virus’, a process which will be inevitably rooted out by the forces of evolution.
If the memes are not beneficial but highly toxic the hosts (we the phenotypes) will die out and so will the toxic memes. This happened innumerable times in our history, countless cults,religions,ideas,worldviews,ideologies and habits just got superseded by better, more efficient ones and died out.
“There is nothing but replicators, memes and genes. ”
Your apparent lacuna probably lies within the framing tending to obfuscate that the replicators do not replicate complete analogues (Another example of Mr. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.)
In thermo-dynamics the same concept is roughly described by some as
Lateral change is a constant whose variables include but are not limited to trajectories and velocities through lateral interactions which catalyse/facilitate variability which can be encouraged : ergo waiting for Godot is not the only option.
“A romantic like Ibrahim Traoré, I guess…. do you think he will last long?”
Spectators spectate whilst practitions ponder how to.
“Sounded quite determined, his eyes reminded me those of Guevara when giving that memorable and encouraging speech.”
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a self-indulgent clown in matters “strategic” who over-estimated and over-extended his abilities, including forgeting to take his asthma medication when travelling.
The contingent consequences included but were not limited to the deaths of his companions in Bolivia in 1967, affording the opportunities of his opponents to elevate him to “sainthood” and T-shirts, thereby aiding the increase of romantics joining los Tupamaros and MIR and the subsequent JCR (Junta Coordinadora Revolutionaria), which motivated The Condor years whilst facilitating the levels of executions and disappearances of romantics throughout Latin America with their complicity as a function of their naivete , whose half-lives continue until today, more than 60 years afterwords.
This illustrates why romantics should never be leaders unless like “The United States of America” you want to render them martyrs, since they fail to understand that leadership includes recognition and implementation of responsibility of/for others.
“you are, or at least were, a romantic too, with those tangos you used to broadcast”
No the connotation was la Boca its geography and practices performed there-in and exported there-from, which you interpreted as romantic.
“you may think you are made of steel, like Stalin”
No I don’t think that.
Mr. Stalin was an insecure, vindictive malcontent who misguidedly believed that he listened regularly, whom during his life was responsible for the deaths of others by his illusions that he always knew best, and whom after death through his efforts, inheritors and productions was complicit in the ongoing transcendence of “The Soviet Union” by The Russian Federation party through recognising its and “The Soviet Unions'” errors, apologising for them, and attempting to rectifying them including but not limited to, helping lubricate the “independence” of the Near Abroad.
So enjoy your journey.
The Deep State script writers are serving up a witches brew for the 2024 election, perhaps even more fantastical than 2020. Without doubt, the 2024 election will impact Ukraine so it may be worthwhile to clear the air about 2020 election given that the dynamics of that election will drive 2024.
The 2020 election put of full display the Deep State’s ironclad grip on the selection process. One need only examine the final play of Jan 6th where the ball was pushed over the goal line to deliver the Biden win. An important memory holed lead up to Jan 6th was the two “Stop the Steal” rallies in DC utilizing essentially the same venue as Jan 6th. These rallies “set the stage”.
On Jan 6th there were over 100 congress members who had declared their willingness to contest the fantastical ballot results in the key states that Texas tried to contest but was denied “standing” by SCOTUS. Election fraud was a primary concern of the Founding Fathers and with an eye toward the rampant fraud in the end period of the Roman Republic they put strong safeguards in the Constitution.
The States legislatures are given sole authority to conduct elections as they were seen as closest to the people. In reviewing each States elector ballots the Vice President was granted plenipotentiary powers to conduct the session in the House of Representatives. The VP did indeed have the power to either throw out a disputed States electors such as in a case where multiple elector slates were submitted or the VP could return the disputed result back to the State.
In the case where a sufficient number of State’s elector slates were thrown out, if the remaining elector count threshold was not reached, then VP could have the House of Representatives vote for a President on party lines. Given the House was majority Republican, Trump would have remained POTUS.
Obviously the Deep State did not want an open, fair vote in the House. To head that off, a psy-op was carefully prepared to be portrayed as an “insurrection”. This created a delay in the proceeding and a smokescreen allowing a quick vote to certify the fraudulent election. The fraudulent election could never have withstood careful examination by the 100 plus Congressmen who had declared they would dispute swing States electors.
Everything Trump did and said Jan 6th was carefully choreographed. Trump broke no laws and merely exercised his 1st Amendment right regarding a political proceeding. For the Deep State, Trump’s role is to act as a cut-out in the event Biden fails miserably. Trump presided over the great vaccine hoax and his 4 years as POTUS saw a massive build up of the Ukraine military in anticipation of the Deep State’s insane plan for tanking the Russian economy and bringing regime change to Russia.
Events have gone horribly wrong for the Deep State. The Deep State script writers and psy-op specialists can conjure up many things, but hiding a massive military defeat of the US lead NATO at the hands of the Russians marks a historical sea change that no amount of lip stick on the pig will disguise.
” Without doubt, the 2024 election will impact Ukraine..”
Do you believe they will be able to find it?
After all I heard that in 1949 they lost China.
Trust me on this, irrational incompetence is NOT the objective of the game,
but it’s effect. The game is to have ONLY people who can be OWNED running the system, and that’s what you get with people who can be OWNED: irrational incompetence.
Fubar Dhu
“The game is to have ONLY people who can be OWNED running the system, and that’s what you get with people who can be OWNED: irrational incompetence.”
Of course it is, but the “people” don’t want to believe it since they would be required to acknowledge their own complicity and stupidity whose avoidance necessitates, “we the people hold these truths to be self-evident” as comfort blanket, a required basis of “The American Dream” in most matters.
Consequently among prime factors within “The United States of America” are alienation, fear, mutual contempt, and repressed self-disgust requiring comedies of bravado to avoid the death of the salesmen.
“The United States of America” is a performance of:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.-Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
intoned by the self-indulgent salesmen/spectators who are co-operation/decision incapable in matters of significance thereby enabling collateral damage to themselves and others whilst facilitating their complicity in their control by others – the fools whose lives are useful for others through chosen avoidance of Mr. Field’s observation:
There comes a time in the affairs of men when we need to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.
One question: you wrote that some of the capabilties are normal distributed, e.g. the IQ and the independent thinking. Do you have specific source(-s) for this statement?
Great article, spot on! What I’d like to know: Are there any scientific papers (or statistics, books…) that have dealt with the mentioned different “degrees of objectivity” of people? Personally, I have the same impression, but I would be interested to know what the actual number of objective thinkers in the population is. (The author guessed 30%). And wheather objective thinking can be learned.
By the way: Sometimes I have the impression, that ideology plagued people simply are simply missing a part of their brain. Because they don’t recognize self-contradictions at all.
Bruce Pardy
@PardyBruce
“Right now the nation states are so big & so powerful, and they are working in this intergovernmental way … that marginalizes, disenfranchises, and disempowers people.”
@allenmendenhall speaks with @katewand for @aier
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SSWzUI6Nn5M&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&feature=emb_title
Excellent piece. The root, however, is unaddressed. And even after the non-peaceful resolution, should it be managed and intelligence and competency again become supreme, unless the root is addressed, we will be right back here.
The do-good/feel-good was not part of the rise of the West; it is doubtless the fall.
From whence…? Suffrage.
Even if the rational and competent win the coming conflict, again enfranchising those valuing “oh that poor…” only can result in arriving at this same juncture.
Of course we could, instead, repeal 19A, re-instate testing for corporate hiring and admit and deal with IQ differentials. Or destroy ourselves.
It’s a binary choice we’ll need to make soon, between doing nothing and repealing suffrage.
https://babylonianempire-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2023/08/19/o-diabelskiej-sztuczce-przy-pomocy-ktorej-wyburzono-world-trade-center/?_x_tr_sl=pl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pl&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Still flogging that dead horse, eh?
I’ve reviewed entrance applications for our local medical school, so I know firsthand that “equity and social justice” activities are far more important factors for a student’s acceptance than their intelligence or rationality. I have a son in Engineering, and every day I wonder more and more if there’s any point to his staying in school. Yes, we need Engineers – but I’d hate to see his talents and years of brutally hard study wasted in an environment where they’re unappreciated and undercompensated. I’ll be sharing this article with him and see what he thinks, thanks a million for this.