Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 17
The following is one of the most painful things I've ever forced myself to listen to. It's a 2hr long slow-motion epistemic train wreck.
James Lindsay is a right-wing PhD professor who completely misunderstands and butchers post-modernism, mysticism, esotericism, and leftism.
This talk is so wrong, so backwards, so ignorant, it leaves my mind dizzy. And yet, the conservatives who listen to it think it is profound (just read the YT comments).
This is what I mean when I say that conservatives do not understand post-modernism. Conservatives cannot understand post-modernism because if they actually understood it, it would destroy their religion, culture, and morality. Because religion is a relative social construct. So any religious conservative is obligated to misunderstand post-modernism. They aren't interested in understanding, they are interested in defending their religion. And this is why they are so passionate in their opposition to it. It's personal. They feel it is their duty to combat and destroy post-modernism — a thing which they do not even understand. This kind of attitude has spawned a whole cottage industry on the right, with Jordan Peterson as its ring-leader.
My series on Post-Modernism is aimed at clearing up this whole confusion, so no one falls for such right-wing misinformation.
You don't need to like or agree with post-modernism. But before you do, at least understand what it is you're disagreeing with. There is plenty to criticize about post-modernism without demonizing it in this way.
Notice that Lindsay is pitching a grand meta-narrative: a conspiracy of woke gnostic post-modern Luciferian Communist mystics who have existed for 2500 years, who are infiltrating every element of society, from academia to government, to destroy Western civilization and orthodox religion. According to Lindsay this is objective truth. It's every right-wing boogeyman collected into a single demonizing grand narrative: mystics, Communists, SJWs, leftists, wizards, gays, feminists, Nazis, Satanists, pedophiles, Jews, Illuminati, post-modernists, academics, cultists, elites, DEI, CRT, environmentalists, demons, Kamala Harris, Mickey Mouse — all working together to enslave you. Just take every perceived enemy of the American right and lump them together into a single epic cabal of evil-doers.
This is actually a conspiracy theory known as Cultural Marxism/Bolshevism, whose roots stretch back to the Nazis, but Lindsay is more than eager to put lipstick on that old pig.
This is the intellectual nonsense you get when you mix right-wing reactionary politics with philosophy and religion. Now you see the problem, the epistemic foolishness, of grand narratives. The ego is masterful at constructing an infinite array of grand narratives to suit its biases and survival needs. There is no limit to the grand narratives your mind can spin and hold as truth.
This is a profound example of the levels of creative self-deception the mind is capable of. This isn't just your run-of-the-mill self-deception, like that of traditional religion. This is a highly creative, conspiracy-brained level of self-deception. It's self-deception as art-form. Lindsay invented this elaborate grand narrative out of thin air under the guise of scholarly work. This should leave you terrified of what your mind is capable of.
Total misunderstanding and misuse of the concept of "hyper-reality".
Total misunderstanding and misuse of negative theology.
This is how the culture wars will rot your mind if you aren't careful.
I found a potential cure for tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
Over the past 12 months I have been suffering from serious sound-induced tinnitus and hearing damage. It made my life a living hell.
There is no conventional cure for tinnitus. However, after much internet research and experimentation, I discovered two technologies that have helped me and others. I am sharing the first technology here in this post.
The first technology is called Tinnitus Mix. I found it shockingly effective, helping a lot with my tinnitus in a short period of time. Its effects were beyond placebo. However, I make no guarantees that it will work for you. You'd just have to try and see.
Tinnitus Mix is a single audio file which you play using headphones which knocks out tinnitus. It doesn't just mask tinnitus — which itself can feel good — it can permanently remove tinnitus over time. But it doesn't work for all people.
Tinnitus Mix is a free technology invented by David Case. You can download the audio file here: Tinnitus Mix
It's simple to use. His website explains the basics of how to use it.
Here are my suggestions for how to use it:
- You must listen to Tinnitus Mix for long periods of time. Hours on end. It's recommended that you listen to it in your sleep 8hrs per day. But you can start off listening to it less. You can also listen to it during the day. But even 2 hrs of listening can help. It just won't be permanent.
- Do not compress the WAV file into MP3 format. Compressing the file could reduce its effectiveness.
- Start by playing it at the lowest possible volume 1/10 or 2/10. If it's working for you, gradually increase volume over the days and weeks that you use it.
- The full protocol requires listening Tinnitus Mix for 8hrs per day, every day, for 3 weeks straight. It's important to stick to this regimen as closely as possible and don't skip days, otherwise your tinnitus could regroup and return.
- You need to use headphones, and high quality headphones. Do not use earbuds. Do not use speakers. Do not use cheap crappy headphones. Make sure you get comfortable headphones so you can comfortably wear them long-term and during sleep.
- Two headphone recommendations:
- Audio-Technica ATH-M50X Pro - $150
- Koss KTXPro1 - $20
- Tinnitus Mix is intended to cure tinnitus caused by loud sound or sudden onset. There are other kinds of tinnitus, so be careful. Tinnitus Mix is not designed for people with reactive tinnitus and might make reactive tinnitus, or other kinds of tinnitus, worse. Think carefully about what kind of tinnitus you have and what caused it.
- Be cautious when first starting this protocol. There is a small risk that it could make your tinnitus worse. Start low and short duration (2-3hrs/day).
- Tinnitus Mix is not a 100% guaranteed cure. It works for approximately 50% of users, and don't expect it to eliminate tinnitus entirely, rather expect reduction in severity. It did not entirely cure my tinnitus but it helped reduce the worst of it, bringing it down to a tolerable level.
- Do not listen to Tinnitus Mix if you have severe hearing damage or extreme sensitivity to sounds.
- When you first start listening to Tinnitus Mix, it will sound horrible to your hears. Don't fret. It sounds grating at first but you will quickly get used to it, and it will soon even become soothing. Just trust the process and use very low volume to start.
- Warning: This is experimental alternative medicine. It comes with some risks and it is not as well-studied or well-documented as conventional medicine.
If you know anyone with hearing damage from loud sounds, or tinnitus, recommend them to try this out. The risk is minimal as long as you don't blast it too loud in your ears.
If you have success with this method, please report your results and feedback to David Case so he can catalogue it to help others. David is very responsive and he collects feedback on his technology for the benefit of others. Also, report your success to me, so I can know how effective this method is for others. At this point I have only tried it on myself.
Full credit to David Case for this amazing invention.
Best of luck.
Important Links:
I will share a second important technology in Part 2.
This is a great example of the challenges of defending the position of universal human values as something "rational" and objective.
It's ironic that in this video Carl Benjamin (the conservative) is using Post-Modernism against Boghossian, in a move very similar to Dugin. The lesson here is that the conservative mind will not hesitate to weaponize PM against its enemies in cynical fashion. So be ready for this kind of trick. Jordan Peterson does it too. He will use PM when it suits him, then denounce it in the next sentence.
Contemplate: Are universal human values really rational and objective? What does rationality even mean in this case? Is it truly rational to believe that homosexuals should be allowed to walk the streets in Afghanistan? Is that an objective good? Or is rationality here being used to smuggle in hidden subjective Euro-centric values?
Notice that any definition of universal values is going to be very difficult to defend if you're doing serious philosophy. You can't just assume that everyone will see the world as you do, or agree with you what the ideal world is. This is what Post-Modernism anticipates and addresses which Modernism does not.
The Modernist mind (Boghossian) struggles to understand why the notion of universal human values is problematic. That's what paradigm-lock does. It's hard to see that rationality itself is a bias and a subjective value. Not everyone cares to be rational and not everyone believes that rationality should be the highest value.
It is not a given that rationality is the best basis for a healthy society. This is an open question. And of course, there is the deeply problematic assumption that there is only one valid form of rationality — my rationality — when in practice there could be dozens of different ways to do and apply rationality.
Is it really rational to force others to be rational, where you define "rational" as that which conforms to your narrow notions of what ought to count as rational? This kind of rationality quickly gets very self-serving. And is it really rational to use rationality to push your biases on everyone else, under the guise of "objectivity" and "universality"?
Thaddeus Russell is a post-modernist. It's illuminating to listen to how a post-modernist thinks in-action. The problem with most "post-modernism" is that it's just considered as an abstract theory but rarely seen explicitly argued in public. That's why the following is so valuable:
"Back in 1990 — decades before he got into politics, Trump reportedly acknowledged owning a copy of Mein Kampf. The admission came in an interview with Vanity Fair shortly after his divorce from his first wife, Ivana. Here's what the magazine reported:
'Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade.'
Vanity Fair reporter Marie Brenner asked Trump if his cousin had given up a copy of the book to him. She wrote this is how Trump responded:
'Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew,' Trump told Brenner.
Brenner then asked Marty Davis whether he gave Trump a copy of the book.
'I did give him a book about Hitler,' Davis told her. "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish.'"
Source: ABC News
Robin DiAngelo gets a lot of criticism, but everything she says in the following talk is true. DiAngelo reveals many sneaky, self-deceptive ways the mind is racist. This is important for everyone to learn.
The reason DiAngelo gets so much shit is because people do not want to confront the fundamental truths of racism. Yes, racism is way more subtle and sneaky than just, "I hate black people". Conservatives are in deep denial about this, which is why they troll and raise a stink. Conservatives would rather distract with drama than do inner work. We can learn valuable insights from DiAngelo without going on an all-out SJW crusade. You should be mindful of racism without being obsessive about it.
As part of your consciousness work you should introspect about your subtle racist biases. I certainly have them. It would take a lot of work to get rid of them all. And there are certainly racist biases within your community, sub-community, and culture at large. To deny this is self-deception.
It's amazing to me how much political drama and noise people create just to avoid development. There should be nothing controversial about what DiAngelo said in the video above. This is just basic, basic consciousness work. Stop whining about "wokeness" and just do the development work.
I love that racism is so subtle, sneaky, and intelligent! All self-deception is beautiful in the eye of a sage.
This video is an astonishing piece of propaganda. I'd like you to just admire it:
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"Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not." — Hitler speech, 1923
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Everything Prager said is ahistorical, misleading, backwards, and ignorant.
Here's the historical reality:
- Hitler was a far-right ultra nationalist.
- As soon as Hitler took power in 1933, that same year he banned the German Communist party, arresting all its members. That same year Hitler banned the Democratic Socialist party. All remaining left-wing parties in Germany were banned or harassed out of existence.
- Hitler ended democracy in Germany. Hitler viewed democracy as against Nature, where Nature meant that the strong must rule the weak.
- Hitler believed that Marxism and Communism were an evil leftist plot by the Jews. Communists and left-wingers were Hitler's top enemy alongside Jews.
- Hitler hated Communists and Marxists just as much as Jews. Because he didn't distinguish between them.
- The "socialism" in National Socialism meant an extreme form of German nationalism. The entire purpose of the movement was to centralize power in a rigid hierarchy to serve a nationalist agenda.
- Hitler's nationalist agenda was similar to Christian Nationalism and Project 2025.
- Hitler's whole movement was deeply ethnocentric and glorified the return of Germany to its traditional roots, values, and glory.
- Nazis held traditional conservative values: masculinity, strongman hyper-masculine leadership, patriarchy, survival of the fittest, traditional family values, religious mysticism, persecution of minorities and deviants, a rigid power hierarchy, conformity to traditional culture, etc.
- Most businesses in Nazi Germany were privately owned. Private property existed.
- Some industries were denationalized and privatized.
- Heavy state control and intervention was implemented in order to make sure that industry fit Nazi nationalist goals and militarization needs.
- Hitler allowed German industrialists to earn huge profits.
- Independent labor unions were banned. Worker rights and strikes were suppressed.
- Hitler and Nazism was closed vs open to diversity of perspectives and peoples. Anti-pluralist.
- Hitler did not divide the world by race, he divided it by ethnicity, privileging German/Aryan ethnicity and blood.
- "Blood and soil" is a classic Nazi slogan which is now adopted by the American far-right/alt-right. Right-wing conservatives chant "Blood and soil", leftists and progressives do not.
- Holocaust denial is largely a racist right-wing phenomenon. The left wing does not engage in Holocaust denial.
- Race IQ and race science is popular on the right, not the left.
- Prager saying that the right-wing is not obsessed with race is ridiculous and false. The KKK is a classic racist right-wing group, and there are many more. Racism is most popular with conservatives. It is conservatives who oppose interracial marriage. It is conservatives who complain about ethnic minorities "invading" the country. It is conservatives who complain about The Great Replacement.
- White supremacists are conservative and right-wing.
- It is conservatives who are caught on video praising Hitler and doing Hail Hitler salutes. It is conservatives who do apologetics for Hitler.
- Hitler did not hate capitalism. He hated Communism. Which is why most businesses in Nazi Germany were privately owned. If Hitler hated capitalism he could have abolished private ownership of businesses. The reason Hitler so-called "hated capitalism" was because he needed organize Germany industry to fuel his insane levels of militarization for war. In this sense it was similar to how the US economy was state-guided during WW2 in order to mobilize for war. A war economy has to be highly coordinated by the state, that doesn't make it socialist or Communist.
- All historians recognize Fascism as right-wing. Hitler is recognized as a Fascist. Hitler was friendly with far-right Fascist leaders like Mussolini.
- Nazism strictly promoted traditional gender roles.
- Nazism was strongly anti-egalitarian and anti-equality. The strong are supposed to rule the weak.
- Nazism was anti-intellectual, with suspicious of university academics and intellectuals.
- Nazism hated "degenerate" unorthodox art. Just like how today's right-wingers hate postmodern art.
- Nazism opposed democracy, liberal values, progressive values, pluralism, and diversity.
- Nazism opposed individual creative self-expression, forcing conformity to traditional roles and values.
- The term "socialism" in National Socialism was used as a strategy to appeal to and attract average working people, who were attracted to Marxist ideals about empowering the working class. Given Marxism's popularity at the time, Hitler wanted to tap into that populist energy in order to gain power.
- For Hitler, the term "socialism" meant a form of national solidarity and collectivism based on race and nation, not class. By this logic, today's Christian Nationalists could be called Christian Socialists because they want to build a nationwide community of Christian domination.
- Hitler and Nazis were extremely hostile to LGBTQ people, sending many of them to concentration camps for extermination. Nazis, like most conservatives around the world, are homophobic, transphobic, and anti-feminist. This holds true globally, across all cultures. The more conservative, the more homophobic and anti-feminist the culture. For example, Afghanistan.
- Hitler and the Nazis sent other minority groups to the gas chambers too. Minorities were treated as weak, inferior, and unworthy of existence.
- Right-wingers today move to 3rd world countries, saying it's better because these places are less feminist and LGBTQ. Today's right-wingers like Andrew Tate glorify subservient women. They also glorify control and domination over women. And hostility towards effeminate men. These are all right-wing values.
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Quotes from Hitler:
"The problem of how the future of the German nation can be secured is the problem of how Marxism can be exterminated." (Mein Kampf)
"The whole of Judaism is a sworn enemy of National Socialism. The Jew is the incarnation of Marxism, of Bolshevic revolution, of universal subversion." (Speech, 1933)
"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (Mein Kampf)
"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread." (Mein Kampf)
"The invention of democracy is a crying example of this sort of mind virus, for has anything more mischievous ever been devised than concocting a system wherein a numerical majority of incompetents can outvote a minority of the capable?"
"We must eliminate homosexuals root and branch... We can't permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be entirely eliminated." (Speech 1934)
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If a conservative ever tells you that Hitler and Nazism was left-wing, you should call them out on their bullshit by using the facts above.
Dennis Prager is one of the top propagandists of our era. Shamelessly defecating in the epistemic ecosystem by the metric ton.
Prager started a channel called PragerU Kids, which makes fun right-wing propaganda videos for children. A pipeline for teaching kids that Hitler was left-wing. Millions of kids will grow up thinking that Hitler was left-wing. Thanks Dennis.
Behold, pure brilliance:
This video summarized a lot of the stuff I have been talking about over the years. I've even called it a Dark Age myself. It's nice to see that some independent philosophers are actually doing quality philosophy.
The epistemology and metaphysics of the 20th and 21st centuries are profoundly dysfunctional. This leads to all sorts of unrecognized social and cultural problems.
I came up with a new label for our condition:
The Era of Epistemic Quagmire
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Torch in hand,
together we wade,
through dark swamp,
of human bullshit,
molested by mosquitos the size of eagles,
in search of dry ground and Light.