Comments by "Dan" (@Dan-ud8hz) on "The Damage Report"
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'Reviewing the work of the white churches, Frederick Douglass had this to say: “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”'
https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/
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“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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If 2,977 people died from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, then Dereliction-of-Duty Donny's criminal negligence has led to 70 times that many lives lost to the Trump Virus - so far.
Oh, and there’s the equivalent of another 9/11 in American lives lost to the Trump Virus every few days.
Osama bin Laden couldn't have dreamed of doing as much damage to the US through terrorism as Dereliction-of-Duty Donny has through criminal negligence.
"A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/the_basic_laws_of_human_stupidity.html
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"I do not take responsibility at all."
― Impeached President 'Dereliction of Duty Donny' Trump
“Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
“The politician, small or lofty, who menaces the people with frequent reminders of the possibility of crime, violence, or terrorism, and who then uses their magnified fear to gain allegiance, is more likely to be a successful con artist than a legitimate leader.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
― C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
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“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison
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Solution: An Aggressively Green New Deal
Since business-as-usual industry and technology are contributing to the degradation of the planet's life support system, priority number one is to stop the practices that are causing mass extinctions.
An analogy comes to mind: The first step in the casualty procedure for flooding aboard submarines is to isolate and stop the incoming water flooding the compartment. The other steps of the procedure following the first, such as dewatering the compartment and repairing and restoring damaged equipment, are actions made to recover from the flooding and will not be effective unless the flooding has stopped. If water comes into a space faster than it's being removed, the space will fill with water.
Excessive carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activity may not be as urgent an issue as a flooding submarine to its occupants, and the life-support systems of a submarine are much less complex than the natural ecological life-support system, but if carbon dioxide is being emitted into the atmosphere faster than it can be removed, then the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to increase until critical thresholds are exceeded and irreversible effects will occur.
However, on a submarine, it's not likely that you'll encounter active resistance from a person who insists on allowing the flooding to continue the same way we encounter active resistance to cutting carbon emissions. Almost like a passenger in a car traveling on a highway attempting to grab the wheel and steer the vehicle into oncoming traffic, there is a short-sightedness in corporate large-scale industry that seeks short term gains over long term sustainability (and existence) that won't stop unless regulated to stop, and even then will continue to try to cut corners wherever it can. This has led me to think that the "Gordian Knot" to cut is an socio-economic and political one that redistributes the wealth accumulated from profiteering off of environmental destruction to first remove control from the passenger who's trying to steer the car into oncoming traffic, and to fund a variety of concerted technological and social efforts beyond the crumbs they're currently allotted to sequester carbon and get to real recovery and restoration work.
To save the 'camel' from the final 'straw that breaks the camel's back,' the 'camel's' burden should have nothing more added until it can be unburdened to a manageable load.
Supplements:
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
(Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z (Links to an external site.)
"Innovation has slowed in the U.S., stymying economic growth. To get back on track, the U.S. needs more low-income children, women, and minorities to become inventors — but that won’t be easy."
(Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors)
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors (Links to an external site.)
"For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it."
(The constructal law of design and evolution in nature)
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0302 (Links to an external site.)
"Whenever we make even the smallest change within a complex system, we risk dramatic unintended consequences. The interconnections and dependencies within systems make it almost impossible to predict outcomes—and seeing as they often require a reasonably precise set of conditions to function, our interventions can wreak havoc. The Precautionary Principle reflects the reality of working with and within complex systems. It shifts the burden of proof from proving something was dangerous after the fact to proving it is safe before taking chances. It emphasizes waiting for more complete information before risking causing damage, especially if some of the possible impacts would be irreversible, hard to contain, or would affect people who didn’t choose to be involved."
https://fs.blog/2021/06/precautionary-principle/ (Links to an external site.)
Atlantic Ocean: Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers (w/ Dr. Michael Mann)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxu--0oE8Ag (Links to an external site.)
Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization-
•The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then.
•Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses.
•Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that.
•Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and agriculture will be impossible.
•Human society will once again be characterized by hunting and gathering.
"For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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"We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews." Jean-Paul Sartre
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Now that's Orwellian.
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
― George Orwell, 1984
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Want to read some fake news?
Just wait until you crack open your bible 😘
"In truth, there was only one Christian and he died on the cross."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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Prominent Russians describing Russia and Russian culture:
“A nation that roams Europe and is looking for something to destroy, to simply dust everything.”
– F. M. Dostoevsky
"We are not a nation, we are a crazy hell.”
– Vasyli Rozanov
"Ah, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this place full of the stench of physical and moral deception, a place of wickedness, lies and wickedness.”
– Sergei Aksakov
"The most important sign of victory for the Russian people is their cruelty full of sadism.”
– Maxim Gorky
"The Russian is the biggest and most naughty liar in the world.”
– Ivan S. Turgenev
"A people who hate freedom, worship slavery, love chains on their hands and feet, defiled physically and morally… ready at any time to defile everything and everywhere.”
– Ivan C. Shmeliov
"People regardless of their smallest duty, the smallest justice, the most insignificant truth, the people who do not recognize human dignity, do not generally recognize human freedom or free thought… Alas, how sharp the Russian language is!”
– Aleksandr Pushkin
"We are not a people, but cattle, rats, wild hordes of villains and murderers.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov
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There's no such thing as a conservative christian. Christianity is literally socialism:
James 5:1-5 New International Version (NIV)
Warning to Rich Oppressors
5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.
Isaiah 10:1-3 New International Version (NIV)
10 Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, 2 to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. 3 What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?
Acts 2:44-45, "All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need."
Acts 4:32-35, "Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ... 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
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“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”
― George Orwell, Partisan Review (1942)
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King Couch Potato (Thief-in-Chief) steals peoples' futures. Yours included.
"Pornocracy is a government ruled by prostitutes or by corrupt officials (who metaphorically "prostitute" themselves for power)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornocracy
'The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure'
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
'Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018'
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
‘Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors’
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
― Frederick Douglass
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
― The Declaration of Independence
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"Nazis kill children, women, old men. To let a Nazi remain alive in your land is to abet the murder of your own people. Only the dead Nazi can he trusted to leave the innocent unharmed. Every Hitlerite killed is a step forward on the road to the liberation of mankind."
― Lyudmila 'Lady Death' Pavlichenko
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
(Emergence of a Peaceful Culture in Wild Baboons):
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020124
"In his book A Primate's Memoir, Sapolsky studied the activities and lifestyle of the Forest Troop to explore the relationship between stress and disease. In typical baboon fashion, the males behaved badly, angling either to assume or maintain dominance with higher ranking males or engaging in bloody battles with lower ranking males, which often tried to overthrow the top baboon by striking tentative alliances with fellow underlings. Females were often harassed and attacked. Internecine feuds were routine. Through a heartbreaking twist of fate, the most aggressive males in the Forest Troop were wiped out. The males, which had taken to foraging in an open garbage pit adjacent to a tourist lodge, had contracted bovine tuberculosis, and most died between 1983 and 1986. Their deaths drastically changed the gender composition of the troop, more than doubling the ratio of females to males, and by 1986 troop behavior had changed considerably as well; males were significantly less aggressive.
After the deaths, Sapolsky stopped observing the Forest Troop until 1993. Surprisingly, even though no adult males from the 1983–1986 period remained in the Forest Troop in 1993 (males migrate after puberty), the new males exhibited the less aggressive behavior of their predecessors. Around this time, Sapolsky and Share also began observing another troop, called the Talek Troop. The Talek Troop, along with the pre-TB Forest Troop, served as controls for comparing the behavior of the post-1993 Forest Troop. The authors found that while in some respects male to male dominance behaviors and patterns of aggression were similar in both the Forest and control troops, there were differences that significantly reduced stress for low ranking males, which were far better tolerated by dominant males than were their counterparts in the control troops. The males in the Forest Troop also displayed more grooming behavior, an activity that's decidedly less stressful than fighting. Analyzing blood samples from the different troops, Sapolsky and Share found that the Forest Troop males lacked the distinctive physiological markers of stress, such as elevated levels of stress-induced hormones, seen in the control troops.
In light of these observations, the authors investigated various models that might explain how the Forest Troop preserved this (relatively) peaceful lifestyle, complete with underlying physiological changes. One model suggests that nonhuman primates acquire cultural traits through observation. Young chimps may learn how to crack nuts with stones by watching their elders, for example. In this case, the young baboon transplants might learn that it pays to be nice by watching the interactions of older males in their new troop. Or it could be that proximity to such behavior increases the likelihood that the new males will adopt the behavior. Yet another explanation could be that males in troops with such a high proportion of females become less aggressive because they don't need to fight as much for female attention and are perhaps rewarded for good behavior. But it could be that the females had a more direct impact: new male transfers in the Forest Troop were far better received by resident females than new males in the other troops.
Sapolsky and Share conclude that the method of transmission is likely either one or a combination of these models, though teasing out the mechanisms for such complex behaviors will require future study. But if aggressive behavior in baboons does have a cultural rather than a biological foundation, perhaps there's hope for us as well."
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"Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter that explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him."
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (1944)
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"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
— C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“We have all met a class of men, very remarkable for their activity, and who yet make but little headway in life; men who, in their noisy and impulsive pursuit of knowledge, never get beyond the outer bark of an idea, from a lack of patience and perseverance to dig to the core; men who begin everything and complete nothing; who see, but do not perceive; who read, but forget what they read, and are as if they had not read; who travel but go nowhere in particular, and have nothing of value to impart when they return.”
― Frederick Douglass, Self-Made Men
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Reviewing the work of the white churches, Frederick Douglass had this to say: “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
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"... the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation."
―Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever increasing inequality."
―Stephen Hawking
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
―Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?”
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
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“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives...
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party...
There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."
― John Stuart Mill (British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865-1868) @DanielJStromme
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“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
― Frederick Douglass
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"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
— Frederick Douglass
“Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
― Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
"...In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience..."
― Kwame Ture
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If 2,977 people died from the #terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, then Dereliction-of-Duty Donny's #criminal #negligence has led to 67 times that many lives lost to the Trump Virus - so far.
Oh, and there’s the equivalent of another 9/11 in American lives lost to the Trump Virus every few days.
"A #stupid person is the most #dangerous type of person."
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/the_basic_laws_of_human_stupidity.html
-------------------------------------------
"I do not take #responsibility at all."
― Impeached President 'Dereliction of Duty Donny' Trump
“Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
— C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
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"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
― C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
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Ever hear of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"When effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases."
(Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism)
10.1177/0146167212439213
“If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to “win,” how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“If anything, people without conscience tend to believe their way of being in the world is superior to ours. They often speak of the naïveté of other people and their ridiculous scruples, or of their curiosity about why so many people are unwilling to manipulate others, even in the service of their most important ambitions. Or they theorize that all people are the same—unscrupulous, like them—but are dishonestly playacting something mythical called “conscience.” By this latter proposition, the only straightforward and honest people in the world are they themselves. They are being “real” in a society of phonies.”
“The politician, small or lofty, who menaces the people with frequent reminders of the possibility of crime, violence, or terrorism, and who then uses their magnified fear to gain allegiance, is more likely to be a successful con artist than a legitimate leader.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
― George Orwell, 1984
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If 2,977 people died from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, then Dereliction-of-Duty Donny's criminal negligence has led to 70 times that many lives lost to the Trump Virus - so far.
Oh, and there’s the equivalent of another 9/11 in American lives lost to the Trump Virus every few days.
Osama bin Laden couldn't have dreamed of doing as much damage to the US through terrorism as Dereliction-of-Duty Donny has through criminal negligence.
"A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/the_basic_laws_of_human_stupidity.html
-------------------------------------------
"I do not take responsibility at all."
― Impeached President 'Dereliction of Duty Donny' Trump
“Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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@Rhiannon011 “In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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Why Dumpsterfire Donny received assistance from America's adversaries in the 2016 election, and why he'll receive assistance from America's adversaries in the 2020 election:
“In our article, we briefly summarized some of the potentially harmful tendencies of narcissistic leaders, such as the following: defensively dismissing criticism and attacking critics, prioritizing the elevation of their public image over national well-being, refusing to admit they lack relevant knowledge instead of learning new information, making self-serving decisions instead of maintaining consistency with their stated beliefs, turning on anyone who stops singing their praises, and etc.,” Fiala explained.
“Frankly, it is hard for me to look at that list and believe it is a summary of a book chapter written in 2006 by the founder of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior rather than an editorialist’s recap of last week’s headlines. I am left wondering whether Trump supporters would have been more concerned about the narcissistic traits they saw in him if they were aware that these traits tend to motivate these types of potentially disastrous behaviors, or whether they would be as accepting of such behavior if they understood it to be motivated by narcissistic traits.”https://www.psypost.org/2020/04/trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds-56646?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds
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"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives...
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."
― John Stuart Mill
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"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
William Gibson
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
Stephen Hawking, 2015 Reddit AMA
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred, the US was mired in a 40-year population health crisis. Since 1980, life expectancy in the US has increasingly fallen behind that of peer countries, culminating in an unprecedented decline in longevity since 2014."
doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.26339
"Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions."
Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
doi: 10.1007/s11948-011-9277-z
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
"Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.”
Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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'Reviewing the work of the white churches, Frederick Douglass had this to say: “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”'
https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/
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King Couch Potato (Thief-in-Chief) steals peoples' futures. Yours included.
"Pornocracy is a government ruled by prostitutes or by corrupt officials (who metaphorically "prostitute" themselves for power)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornocracy
'The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure'
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
'Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018'
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
‘Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors’
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
― Frederick Douglass
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
― The Declaration of Independence
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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Trump is going to die in prison.
If 2,977 people died from the #terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, then Dereliction-of-Duty Donny's #criminal #negligence has led to 67 times that many lives lost to the Trump Virus - so far.
Oh, and there’s the equivalent of another 9/11 in American lives lost to the Trump Virus every few days.
"A #stupid person is the most #dangerous type of person."
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/the_basic_laws_of_human_stupidity.html
-------------------------------------------
"I do not take #responsibility at all."
― Impeached President 'Dereliction of Duty Donny' Trump
“Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
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Why Dumpsterfire Donny received assistance from America's adversaries in the 2016 election, and why he'll receive assistance from America's adversaries in the 2020 election:
“In our article, we briefly summarized some of the potentially harmful tendencies of narcissistic leaders, such as the following: defensively dismissing criticism and attacking critics, prioritizing the elevation of their public image over national well-being, refusing to admit they lack relevant knowledge instead of learning new information, making self-serving decisions instead of maintaining consistency with their stated beliefs, turning on anyone who stops singing their praises, and etc.,” Fiala explained.
“Frankly, it is hard for me to look at that list and believe it is a summary of a book chapter written in 2006 by the founder of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior rather than an editorialist’s recap of last week’s headlines. I am left wondering whether Trump supporters would have been more concerned about the narcissistic traits they saw in him if they were aware that these traits tend to motivate these types of potentially disastrous behaviors, or whether they would be as accepting of such behavior if they understood it to be motivated by narcissistic traits.”https://www.psypost.org/2020/04/trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds-56646?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds
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Since business-as-usual industry and technology are contributing to the degradation of the planet's life support system, priority number one is to stop the practices that are causing mass extinctions.
An analogy comes to mind: The first step in the casualty procedure for flooding aboard submarines is to isolate and stop the incoming water flooding the compartment. The other steps of the procedure following the first, such as dewatering the compartment and repairing and restoring damaged equipment, are actions made to recover from the flooding and will not be effective unless the flooding has stopped. If water comes into a space faster than it's being removed, the space will fill with water.
Excessive carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activity may not be as urgent an issue as a flooding submarine to its occupants, and the life-support systems of a submarine are much less complex than the natural ecological life-support system, but if carbon dioxide is being emitted into the atmosphere faster than it can be removed, then the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to increase until critical thresholds are exceeded and irreversible effects will occur.
However, on a submarine, it's not likely that you'll encounter active resistance from a person who insists on allowing the flooding to continue the same way we encounter active resistance to cutting carbon emissions. Almost like a passenger in a car traveling on a highway attempting to grab the wheel and steer the vehicle into oncoming traffic, there is a short-sightedness in corporate large-scale industry that seeks short term gains over long term sustainability (and existence) that won't stop unless regulated to stop, and even then will continue to try to cut corners wherever it can. This has led me to think that the "Gordian Knot" to cut is an socio-economic and political one that redistributes the wealth accumulated from profiteering off of environmental destruction to first remove control from the passenger who's trying to steer the car into oncoming traffic, and to fund a variety of concerted technological and social efforts beyond the crumbs they're currently allotted to sequester carbon and get to real recovery and restoration work.
To save the 'camel' from the final 'straw that breaks the camel's back,' the 'camel's' burden should have nothing more added until it can be unburdened to a manageable load.
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"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
— Frederick Douglass
“Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
― Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
"...In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience..."
― Kwame Ture
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"Trump Cited As A Motivating Factor In 81 Murders And 7 Terrorist Plots"
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/update-trump-cited-as-a-motivating-factor-in-81-murders-and-7-terrorist-plots-JL1pSBucv0OSGgGvL2XFPQ/
"Domestic Terrorism. Domestic terrorists—a phrase typically used to denote terrorists who are not directed or inspired by FTOs—have caused more deaths in the United States in recent years than have terrorists connected to FTOs. Domestic terrorist attacks and hate crimes sometimes overlap, as perpetrators of prominent domestic terrorist attacks have selected their targets based on factors such as race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.
White supremacist violent extremism, one type of racially- and ethnically-motivated violent extremism, is one of the most potent forces driving domestic terrorism. Lone attackers, as opposed to cells or organizations, generally perpetrate these kinds of attacks. But they are also part of a broader movement. White supremacist violent extremists’ outlook can generally be characterized by hatred for immigrants and ethnic minorities, often combining these prejudices with virulent anti-Semitism or anti-Muslim views.
White supremacist violent extremists have adopted an increasingly transnational outlook in recent years, largely driven by the technological forces described earlier in this Strategic Framework. Similar to how ISIS inspired and connected with potential radical Islamist terrorists, white supremacist violent extremists connect with like-minded individuals online. In addition to mainstream social media platforms, white supremacist violent extremists use lesser-known sites like Gab, 8chan, and EndChan, as well as encrypted channels. Celebration of violence and conspiracy theories about the “ethnic replacement” of whites as the majority ethnicity in various Western countries are prominent in their online circles. " https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0920_plcy_strategic-framework-countering-terrorism-targeted-violence.pdf
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“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
― Frederick Douglass
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"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
— C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
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Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization-
•The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then.
•Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses.
•Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that.
•Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and agriculture will be impossible.
•Human society will once again be characterized by hunting and gathering.
"For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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Megalomania Traitor Goon belongs in an asylum, not in the capitol building.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
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"... the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation."
―Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever increasing inequality."
―Stephen Hawking
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."
―Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?” https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
“Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.”
― Niels Bohr
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller
“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
―Marvin Minsky
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"If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?"
― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943)
"He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him."
― C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“We have all met a class of men, very remarkable for their activity, and who yet make but little headway in life; men who, in their noisy and impulsive pursuit of knowledge, never get beyond the outer bark of an idea, from a lack of patience and perseverance to dig to the core; men who begin everything and complete nothing; who see, but do not perceive; who read, but forget what they read, and are as if they had not read; who travel but go nowhere in particular, and have nothing of value to impart when they return.”
― Frederick Douglass, Self-Made Men
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King Couch Potato (Thief-in-Chief) steals peoples' futures. Yours included.
"Pornocracy is a government ruled by prostitutes or by corrupt officials (who metaphorically "prostitute" themselves for power)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornocracy
'The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure'
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
'Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018'
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
‘Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors’
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
― Frederick Douglass
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
― The Declaration of Independence
“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
" Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
― The Declaration of Independence
“Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense
"Every Nazi who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Nazis are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a Nazi, I am saving lives."
―Lyudmila Pavlichenko
"It is bias to think that the art of war is just for killing people. It is not to kill people, it is to kill evil. It is a stratagem to give life to many people by killing the evil of one person."
―Yagyu Munenori
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
― General William Tecumseh Sherman
"...the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
―Karl Popper 1945, The Open Society and Its Enemies
“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
―Marvin Minsky
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Karl Popper's "Critical Pluralism" identifies three principles that connect epistemology and ethics through intellectual responsibility:
"1) Principle of Fallibility: Perhaps I am wrong and you are right. But we both could turn out wrong.
2) Principle of Rational Discussion: We want to try, as impersonally as is possible, to weigh up our reasons for and against a theory that is definite and criticizable.
3) Principle of the Approximation to Truth: Through such an impersonal discussion, we almost always come closer to the truth. And we come to a better understanding, even if we don't reach any agreement."
"For they imply, among other things, toleration, tolerance: If I can learn from you and I want to learn in the interest of truth, then I have to not only tolerate you, but recognize you as a potential equal. The potential unity & equality of all people is a prerequisite of our willingness to discuss matters rationally. Also of importance is the principle that we can learn a lot from discussion, even if we don't reach agreement. For a discussion can help us shed light on some of our errors.
Thus ethical principles underlie science. The idea of truth as the fundamental regulative principle is one such ethical principle. The search for truth, the approximation to truth is also an ethical principle. So too is the idea of intellectual honesty & fallibility, which leads us to a self-critical attitude and to tolerance."
- Karl Popper, 1981 Lecture (in German)
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Have any of you ever heard of the acronym "DARVO" regarding behavior of abusers?
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender.
It's also the root of modern "conservative" politics.
"If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?"
― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943)
"In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice."
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
"The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission."
(The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans)
DOI: 10.1057/pcs.2015.53
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Kill your masters
'In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.'
Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
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“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
― Frederick Douglass
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Why Dumpsterfire Donny received assistance from America's adversaries in the 2016 election, and why he'll receive assistance from America's adversaries in the 2020 election:
“In our article, we briefly summarized some of the potentially harmful tendencies of narcissistic leaders, such as the following: defensively dismissing criticism and attacking critics, prioritizing the elevation of their public image over national well-being, refusing to admit they lack relevant knowledge instead of learning new information, making self-serving decisions instead of maintaining consistency with their stated beliefs, turning on anyone who stops singing their praises, and etc.,” Fiala explained.
“Frankly, it is hard for me to look at that list and believe it is a summary of a book chapter written in 2006 by the founder of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior rather than an editorialist’s recap of last week’s headlines. I am left wondering whether Trump supporters would have been more concerned about the narcissistic traits they saw in him if they were aware that these traits tend to motivate these types of potentially disastrous behaviors, or whether they would be as accepting of such behavior if they understood it to be motivated by narcissistic traits.”
https://www.psypost.org/2020/04/trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds-56646?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=trump-perceived-as-abnormally-sadistic-and-narcissistic-by-both-conservatives-and-liberals-study-finds
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Not surprised. "If the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness?"
― C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943)
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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla)
1. "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."
2. "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person."
3. "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
4. "Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."
5. "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person."
The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws (Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi)
6. "Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem."
"Cipolla’s quadrant highlights several fundamental features of those systems that can be described as both “complex” and “autocatalytic,” where the growth rate is proportional to the size of the stocks. These systems include living creatures, biomes, entire ecosystems, as well as human-created entities such as companies, organizations, and entire economic systems. The analysis of Cipolla’s quadrant, carried out using the Lotka-Volterra model shows the similarity of many phenomena driven by the dissipation of energy potentials: from life to commerce [26]. There are, indeed, some basic laws at work in these systems and when we use the term “law” for a physical system we mean that some factors are at work to keep it, if not perfectly regulated, at least within some boundaries.
Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world."
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“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
― Frederick Douglass
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
" Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
― The Declaration of Independence
“Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense
"Every Nazi who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Nazis are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a Nazi, I am saving lives."
―Lyudmila Pavlichenko
"It is bias to think that the art of war is just for killing people. It is not to kill people, it is to kill evil. It is a stratagem to give life to many people by killing the evil of one person."
―Yagyu Munenori
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
― General William Tecumseh Sherman
"...the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
―Karl Popper 1945, The Open Society and Its Enemies
“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
―Marvin Minsky
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The Book of Revelation is not part of the Torah. The relevant part of the Torah, the creation myth, was a mythical recollection of a history that repeats itself due to human stupidity.
Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization-
•The stable climate of the Holocene made agriculture and civilization possible. The unstable Pleistocene climate made it impossible before then.
•Human societies after agriculture were characterized by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses.
•Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that.
•Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene and agriculture will be impossible.
•Human society will once again be characterized by hunting and gathering.
"For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures."
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.102488
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"What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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