On Worthy Opponents

By definition anyone you lose to is a worthy adversary. Power is power, you ponces.

Let's try to imagine the most contrary situation. You lose to an objectively weak adversary. That means you were unworthy. In other words, you lost to yourself. Are you a worthy adversary for yourself? Have to be, by definition. That's the floor. You either lose to someone exactly as powerful as you are, or more powerful. If your true opponent is weaker, you didn't lose. The logic simply doesn't work out. 

There is great glory is starting unnecessary fights, with some caveats. Why? The opposite is avoiding unnecessary fights. What do we call that, children? We call it unwillingness to be tested. We call it cowardice. You're avoiding tests because you think you'll lose, you loser.

You shouldn't need me to tell you what the caveats are. Figure it out yourself. 

Being controlled by the fear of losing is worse than losing. Is fear of losing your worthy adversary? A mere feeling? Pathetic. I guess if that really is your worthy adversary, avoiding fights is prudent because you really will get hopelessly wrecked.

The brave man dies once. The coward never lived at all. The coward refuses to flourish, making a mockery of their own creation. For the coward, existing at all is too reckless; some tests are unavoidable.

The Romans were absolute assholes and the conquest of Athens was a tragedy. However, the Athenians deserved it for being weak. Horribly, disgustingly weak. I, too, would send the Romans as punishment for their deviance, were that my option. They thought they could get away turning their faces from the Heavens; now average Greek IQ is 92. It is not a coincidence there has never since been a Socrates or Aristotle, no Diogenes nor Hero, no Xeno, honoured be their names and deeds. Gnon always gets paid.

"Perhaps ... wokeness is the politics of female mental illness?"

 https://www.unz.com/isteve/do-the-mentally-ill-lean-left-for-rational-reasons/

Only a difficult problem against a background of having to pander to delusions. 

Those less able to take care of themselves favour the politics of irresponsibility and parasitism. 

Those with serious brain problems prioritize, above all else, being seen to be responsible. They don't want your "pity" by which they mean they want the handouts to be mandatory, not something they have to ask for as a favour. They prefer to enter a life-and-death struggle rather than risk being socially expected to show gratitude. Only when actually landed on death's doorstep do they realize they aren't willing to sacrifice everything, revealing everything they do up to that point is bluffing and bluster. Crazies be crazy. 

As a bonus, the mentally deranged are aware they're plus ungood in the thinker, and envy those who aren't. The politics of irresponsibility promise to allow them to carry out their jealous fantasies, going full Harrison Bergeron and punishing the healthy for being healthy. 

As always, they cannot punish anyone who is really all that healthy. The healthy will resist, and have this thing called competence which makes it work most of the time. However, the crazies can be scammed into thinking otherwise. At best the crazies can employ the upper lords to punish the burghermeisters...should they manage to bring anything to the table that upper lords have demand for.  

Women often feel entitled to be taken care of, and modern society flatters this narcissism. It wouldn't matter much if birth control didn't exist, because they would get pregnant anyway and end up taking care of the kids, thus at least partially earning their keep. 

Madness is only feminine in the sense that they can't pay for themselves and have to be coddled like a child unless you're okay with letting them starve to death.

I realized self-defence was illegal the very first time I thought about it. Presumably it had already been illegal for decades.

"You know the "First they came for the ..." warning. Now they're coming for some guy who merely resisted being murdered by communists. If you don't care about that you're either evil or insane."

Are boomers just realizing this now? 🤔

It's not that boomers are particular dumb, per se, but rather: this is how effective propaganda is. Millennials will get pwned just as hard in 40 years. "Medical mandates are communism? I cannot even!" Many shock, much wow. Maybe they'll instead catch onto the fact marriage was criminalized.
It's important to have a church that's 100% separate from the government. Ideally one you have to keep secret because if they realize it exists, they'll outlaw it. The government will always lie to you, especially about what it's doing, and it's a great idea to have a specialist untangle all that for you so you don't have to do it yourself.

The Orient is Narcissist

If you spend too long in the Malthusian oven or run it too hot, your population becomes fatally narcissistic. Smart, sure, but incapable of doing science or art, because they stop believing in substance entirely, in favour of appearances.

E.g. this is why a coronavirus escaped the Wuhan lab. They thought the appearance of biosecurity was the substance of biosecurity, because they're genuinely too narcissistic to see any difference. In particular, if no human is watching, there is no appearance and you can do whatever you want, right? Right. If nobody catches you breaking the rules, did you really break a rule? 

Unfortunately, Reality disagrees. Reality is always paying attention.

The Malthusian oven is inherently State eugenics. States are inherently narcissistic, and models the population after its own image. To succeed you merely need to appear successful to the State, who then sponsors you. Indeed genuine substance of success is actively detrimental, as it's glory which appears independently of the State, threatening their fragile narcissist egos. They want slavish dependants, and that's what they get. 

Why ever exit childhood if the Oedipal State is never going to give you up regardless? Mere foolishness. Eventually the capacity for adulthood is fully bred out the population. 

Eventually, only obedience is left and they have no leaders at all, not even psycho lords. Not there yet, but I see no reason it won't arrive in the next millennium or so. Yes, you can make masks and do contact tracing and nobody commits crime, but likewise nobody rebels against socially-acceptable falsehood either. It simply accumulates until the British come. Haha, oops! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

One of the primary causes of narcissism is attention starvation. Narcissists hate Reality for paying attention, because it threatens their persecution complex. If you thought nothing was paying attention, but something was paying attention the whole time, doesn't that make you a fool? An idiot? A gull? Yup, it does. If something is always paying attention regardless, do they really have to do this insanely intense and totally self-denying song-and-dance all the time to gain attention? No, they don't. Thus the narcissist must deny Reality, or else off themselves. 

Many join the Sophists for the Satanic rewards they offer. However, pure-bred Sophists aren't there by choice.  They find it absolutely necessary to make social reality rebel against Reality and win. They don't do it for the graft or the Impact, they do it because if social reality can't overwrite Reality, it means they can't justify the unjust agonies which are the root and core of their identity (rather, as narcissists, lack of identity).

A tier, B tier

Aristotle was A tier.
Plato was distinctly B tier.
Clue's in the letters.

Plato worked out because homosexuals have to impress other ass raiders. Without this severe pressure, he would have had a beer gut and been Blato instead.

Not to imply modern "scholars" are anything but F-tier. That's not a hyphen. That's an F- grade. At its peak, maybe we could say Boston was B-tier. I'm certainly not going to check; I've already overpaid.

The Republic Book 1 Section 1

I'm reading a summary because

Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said: --

fuck that noise. 

"He was just about to get to the point! He said...?"

Really?

You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.

You, uh, want to try that one again? We'll go back a few moves and play them over...

In theory I should make this offer: if, for your sins, you have directly read some of the translation of the Republic and have something to add, by all means bring it up and I'll also read the relevant passages. In practice this is only spends characters to no benefit, since nobody will take the offer. I can claim I offered, though right? Nope, not if I know in advance it will incur no actual debt. Free things are worth what's spent on them at most.

Plato can stay on topic, at least for a time. I know he manages it sometime after introducing timocracy in Book 9. However, it is not even remotely worthwhile to wade through 9 books of this drivel to find it. I found it by chance and even then I may have overpaid. 

--

Ironically (or perhaps not ironically at all) Plato gets esteemed because he doesn't get examined. Plato has respect because his assumptions are unquestioned. Although Aristotle tried to downplay the judgment and condemnation, having seen much virtue in Plato,* Aristotle believed the Academy was a failure, incapable of supporting scholarship. Aristotle was right, and it was no coincidence. From its founding, the Academy deserved to fail. 

*Much more virtue than you can find in any modern, for example. TFW ancient φαγγωτs were manlier than modern chads. Virgin living chad vs. chad ancient sodomite; and I frequently mean virgin literally. Plato was a genuine tragic figure. Much genetic wisdom, ultimately ruined by a fatal biological flaw.

Based on modern patterns and based on the fact narcissists never stop, the Academy was a dating service. Plato apparently had a thing for smart boys. Aristotle, sadly for Plato, was resolutely straight. "Sorry chap, I like pussy. And facts. Facts and pussy."

Of course today they've let girls into the Academy so you can get pussy there if you swing that way.

--

"During Plato's time, Greek thinkers had already established the idea that the good man possesses four cardinal virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom."

In reality there is one virtue: prudence. Courage is prudent; if it isn't, it's recklessness. Temperance is prudent; otherwise it's mere timidity. Justice is prudent. Wisdom is straight-up a synonym of prudence. Cowardice isn't prudent, or we would simply call it prudence. Intemperance sometimes is prudent, so there's that. I am extreme about having true, harmonious beliefs, for example. Every time I get more extreme I profit. Similarly, there is no virtue in being temperate about crime suppression. The only correct amount of unsuppressed suppressible crime is [none].
Prudence is the virtue of achieving your goals, rather than failing them.

Well shit that got way less profound in a hurry, didn't it? Prudence is: not getting buggered by Gnon. The virtue is: don't be a moron.

Though from non-moron's perspective, it's fine if they are. Gnon will solve the problem himself, sooner or later. (Poor guy is overworked. Maybe that's why there's so many delays?) Morons fail by definition and in particular fail when they try to make non-morons act stupid, so there's rarely any need to hurry the process along. 

This prosaic fact wrapped up and pretending to be profund is a hallmark of both Athenian culture and Plato in particular. 

They do this because narcissists must reject the profound, and one way to do this is to distract. Set up a decoy and have everyone chase it away from the genuine article.

 

"in that one's denial of the passions (one of which is boundless sexual appetite)"

Boundless sexual appetite is one of the symptoms of being a pervert. If you cure the perversion, the appetite becomes reasonable. 

 

"Ought one to remind a friend who is in a crazed state that he is mad, and ought one to return a sword to a crazy person? The answer is plain: No."

The concept behind the phrase [the answer is plain] has received tremendous levels of commentary and remains an evergreen topic. Unfortunately it deserves little of this.

If you're not currently engineering a society, you don't need to know the exact details of justice. An unexamined (life) impulse is generally going to be good enough. Over a decade of childhood is not a short time, and adults can be expected to know enough even if they don't study anything on purpose. Of course!

On the other hand, if you are responsible for engineering or even maintaining a society, then a precise definition of justice is indeed critical. What is it? Why must it be upheld? These questions must be answered, just as a car engineer needs to understand what cam shafts are and why they shouldn't break. 

Division of labour is good actually. Everyone needs to be 'educated' in philosophy no more than everyone needs to be 'educated' in plumbing. (Though ironically I do wish I knew more about plumbing. Not the installation et cetera per se, but at least how it works. I saw an introduction to valves once and it was great.) Most can drive a car (shouldn't, but can) but no driver needs to know how to design and craft their own carburetor. 

[Everyone needs to be exactly like me] is pure narcissism, now isn't it?

Regular folk really don't need all this high-falutin nonsense.
They certainly don't need to copy some ancient narcissistic butt-bandit.

Further, they would likely be unable to remember enough of the details anyway. Occasionally you see prole solecisms which you might wish could be corrected by their betters, but in practice they're the result of cognitive resource limits which are inherent to being prole. At best you can swap one highly imperfect approximation for a different highly imperfect approximation that's less dissonant with their current environment. Maybe exploit your cognitive abundance to simplify their oversimplification even further so they can fit more prudence into the practice without running out of memory or whatever.

 

Socrates is in fact committing heresy. The priests of Athens don't want justice. What they want is obedience; justice is a locally useful excuse to legitimize these demands. Everyone already knows this, including Socrates himself, which is why he went around asking the question. Cephalus excuses himself because he realizes any definition of justice won't amount to obedience. At least, not without being childishly obvious about the counterfeit. The attempt at definition is a trap which will imprudently put him at odds with the priests; Cephalus is far too savvy to fall for such a simplistic trap, and thus he 'recuses' himself from the discussion. He *taps temple* has his thinker cap on.

Probable Motive for Vegas: Fuck Debra in Accounting

Best to assume it was a false-flag op until there's strong specific evidence against it being an op.

Hence, Paddock was a particularly loyal/gullible stormtrooper who would fire on innocent civilians when told to do so. 

But why was he told to do so? 

One day, deep in the bowels of some government office or another, there was a brainstorming session. Mike (do you mind if I call him Mike?) Mike suggested gunning down a bunch of random Vegas folk to accomplish whatever batshit Impact nonsense they were trying to do. Debra (from accounting) said it was a stupid idea. 

Counterargument: Debbie's a bitch. Mike himself didn't like the plan that much, but fuck her sideways with a rake, right guys? Therefore, Mike shoved the daydream through planning, through logistics, through strategizing, and so on through everything until Paddock was handed a bunch of guns and told where to point them. 

Of course, when it finally happened and they saw the reaction, they didn't even need to say anything. It was obviously a stupid plan, everyone saw it was a stupid plan, everyone knew everyone else knew it was stupid. It accomplished nothing. Which is even better for Mike. Debra is such weaksauce she can't even get folk to agree a plan is stupid when it is in fact stupid. What a loser! 

Sure hundred of innocents were injured, but the important part is everyone in the office knows Mike rules and Debra drools. For this critical task, is there any price that's not worth paying?

When you see the government do something that's completely baffling, it's often the case that even the government section in question is aware it makes no sense. That's like half the point.

Explaining non-egalitarian acts using egalitarian language

This is pretty amusing.

"Luckily, the ideology of the woke is hiding in plain sight: they have left a 60-year paper trail of books, articles, and speeches."

Tiny innocent babby thinks Sophism is 60 years old. Adorable.

"In practical politics, narratives are superior to arguments.[...] In Cupertino, California, teachers forced [...] This formulation connects emotionally"

Peasants can't understand abstracts. (The men can, but only with extreme effort.) You have to lead them by the nose because they can't see any further than six inches.

"When the hypocrisy starts leading to consequences, you have succeeded."

Oh yeah, let's just solve a regime-complete problem real quick. Should be over by Christmas.
This is what happens when you think Sophism is less than 100 years old. 

"One story about corruption in government will draw curiosity; but a series of stories over the course of a year will change how people understand the issue"

...namely, that they will understand it at all.

Scientist:

1. Understand theory.
2. Compare evidence to theory.
3. Judge theory in light of evidence.

Peasants can't change their mind. They have to change their evidence.

Peasant:

1. Don't understand theory.
2. Still don't understand theory.
3. Understand theory and therefore don't question it.

If they understand an idea well enough to use it competently, then they believe in it, which means they don't believe in opposing ideas, which means they don't understand them. E.g. if you explain enough of Islam to a Christian peasant that they can accurately tell if something is Islamic or not, they will have already forgotten Christianity and become a Muslim. Understanding and credence are identical under the wiring they have. You may have heard of difficulty with ambiguity and uncertainty; for at least 75% of the population, they literally can't even. 

As with any fundamentalist society, to get shit done you have to lie about how you're doing it. To explain it to someone else is tricky, as it requires lying about what you're doing in such a way as to fail to deceive them. To say, "Okay, don't place the I-beam there," in such a fashion as to end up having the I-beam placed there.

P.S. Refresher: Sophism is what destroyed the monarchies of Rome and Athens. By the time Tarquin was adopted it was already far too late. 

Likewise the admonitions of Ipuwer cover a period of Egyptian Fascism.