Amerika

We might view The Human Problem as something like that of a mouse. Foraging in the field, he finds a seed and seizes it; now his entire outlook is dominated by the need to get this seed back to his burrow. But a snake appears, and although the mouse can outrun him if he drops the seed, his mind resists.

On the other hand, mice often get fooled by ignoring the “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” homily. If the mouse sees what he thinks is a mound of grain just over the next hill, he might drop the seed he has in order to pursue this foodtopia, but then forget where he dropped it when the mirage pops.

In this way, both tangible items and concepts are demons in our minds. Concepts are tangible if they involve tangible things like food, money, sex, status, and power. The mind seizes on that tactile concept and then skews everything else it knows to fit that vision. This is rationalization.

From this comes the perpetual inverted thought of human beings. We seize a seed or an illusion, and backfill all the details that make it seem perfect, then lunge toward this shimmering ideal, only to have it vanish when reality intrudes.

A process engineer might come up with a relatively simple solution, namely some kind of checklist:

1. Are there any threats nearby?
2. How do you know that what you think you know is real?
3. Is there an easier way of doing this?
4. What will the results be in an hour, month, year, and decade?

We might call the above The Conservatism Checklist. While the Right generally is seen as being threat-fixated, this is just the first item on our checklist. We are also fixated on verifying the accuracy of our perceptions, efficiency, and long-term results, which is why we “conserve” time-honored methods.

Seizing on one item out of many and then complaining about it from the perspective of a victim has been a classic strategy for the Left. You present them with a functional plan, and they find one thing that outrages them and use that stonewall moving forward until you give in.

This is a classic low-IQ argument strategy and higher IQ people have almost no defense against it. You can point out that the whole works better, but if someone is claiming victimhood, the crowd turns on you until you resolve the issue to their satisfaction.

Interpreted as a cynical philosopher might, this is the long fallout of equality… the voice of an idiot is equal to that of a genius, so all the geniuses sit around while idiots complain about details and miss the big point.

One way to balance this is to establish a parallel view of several domains of importance, roughly described as:

• Individual: any policy which changes the wealth, status, or power of an individual has impact here, but the blind spot is that much of those comes from the quality of the group and the whole.
• Collective: this term gets a bad rap, but it refers in this context to the same thing populism does, namely the populace, ideally minus those who are known bad actors such as criminals or non-contributors.
• Whole: categories that require brainwork get ignored, but the whole refers to all of reality and how it is changed, sort of in a sense of the categorical imperative more than the materialist/individualist Golden rule; the whole can be summarized as “nature + civilization + the sacred,” and includes culture, ecosystems, continuity with past and future, heritage/genetics, faith, and a belief in the benevolence and goodness of life itself.

As usual, Leftism focuses on only one: the individual. Its “collective” consists of individualists who have formed a group for mutual self-enrichment at the expense of others, sort of like a union or monopoly, and their primary goal is to deny time.

They want what they want right now, they want someone else to administrate/subsidize it, and they want to face no consequences for these demands. This is pure individualism, sometimes mistakenly called “materialism,” and it is the essence of our modern narcissism that exploits typical human solipsism.

As a result, they want us to stop considering more than one goal at once. They see the seed, they pick it up; they see what looks like more seed over the hill, and they drop what they have and rush off after it. These are the animals that would be tasty prey in nature.

The only possible defense the high-IQ can offer to their lower IQ critics is to point out that we need to consider not just right now, but externalities and results over time for more than one person. The victimhood of the individual is used to victimize the group and whole, in most cases.

Tags: conservative checklist, individualism, materialism, narcissism, solipsism, the human problem, victim, victimhood, victimization