Monday, June 20, 2011

When is discussing useful anyway?

I'm a Hellenist in the sense that I hold thinking, reasoning and discussing in the highest regard. My view is clear: everything is open for exploration. But nevertheless there is the right time, place, context and participants for any meaningful discussion. To start with, certain rules of civilized society apply, e.g. we do not come naked with a hard-on to a debate. If certain fundamental conditions are not met, it's not a debate at all. Then there are the debates that are not good debates, due to lack of intelligence or intellectual honesty of the debaters. Or the inability to listen to what one's opponent actually said. Typical for the most interesting topics is that the majority of the participants cannot control their deepest emotions of fear and hate, which get triggered by touching upon taboos which set their core myths in berserk mode.

Certain topics are so infected by wackos that an open public debate is effectively impossible. Try discussing with 911 Truthers. Or with Hindutvas about how Christianity is not at all exactly like Islam. Or try pointing out to Sikhs that they have a proselytizing religion. The Jewish question might not even be as bad as some of the other examples I gave here. But bad enough to -- as a rule of thumb -- generally avoid open public debates about it. And that's what I referred to with the title of my previous post.

In any debate, arriving at the debate in Nazi uniform and greeting the participants with a Hitler salute, is always a bad idea. Regardless of what you intended to say. And for the rest, this debate is not worth having -- leave the room.

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During the years I have had much use of Internet debates. Partly by learning from people, and partly for studying them; studying them more or less like an anthropologist. By finding what taboos set them off in emotional berserk mode it is possible to identify and describe their core myths. It's been a dirty job, but now it's mostly done. Even for a devoted zoologist, after studying a few hundred times how hyenas eat, shit and copulate, it does not make sense any more to be there out in the field to see it again.

For many reasons I have reached a point where my personal view is that Internet discussions are mostly meaningless. My participation in blog comments sections is minimal. And if I would start writing seriously again, then I'm not particularly interested in having people commenting on what I say. And the duty of moderation is like keeping a hyena farm, and takes too much time and energy. And apart from the moderation, most people who comment will have grossly misunderstood what had been said, and will go on and on about some pet hang-up of theirs. One reason why Internet discussions mostly get stuck in meaningless tirades is that people with serious emotional or psychiatric problems are overrepresented -- not in numbers, but in volume! It's like fighting a multi-headed hydra, and mostly a waste of time.

So how can we go forward without debates? Well, we need to qualify that. First of all, people that recently awoke and started exploring taboos etc. will have a great net gain by Internet discussions (such as I had a decade ago). And myself I keep on thinking, reasoning and discussing. But I'm much more exacting about the context of a debate today. I generally avoid open Internet debates altogether.

But there is a more important point to be made here. The problems that face the West will not be solved by public debates or discussions. We will not be saved by 1) the people finally being enlightened through insightful public debates, and then 2) them voting the right political party in power, that will 3) fix all the problems and set everything straight again. We are far far beyond that possibility. What will happen is a convergence of catastrophes (which will happen in this century). And then we will have to rebuild our societies from the ashes of that.

So, debates are completely pointless with regards to solving our political problems (within the system). But they can help a lot for how mentally prepared we will be after the convergence of catastrophes have happened, and for what we do during and after that.

Open discussions on the Jewish question (JQ) are particularly useless. There is always someone who will enter the room with the metaphorical Nazi uniform. And then the discussion is already dead. And even if that doesn't happen, there will be someone with the reverse emotional hang-up imagining someone in the room having a Nazi uniform on. Either way the end result is just the same. An hysterical quarrel with people going emotionally berserk. We witness a human behaviour here which makes a herd of chattering chimpanzees look good in comparison. And even if the topic of the discussion is not the Jews, there are enough people with such an obsessive hang-up on the JQ, that they will shoehorn it into many other discussions. With the very same devastating result as above.

Once the two sides of the JQ get started it is like listening to a quarrel of a married couple. There are certain wounds in each of them, that will be triggered as soon as there is an argument. And infallibly the whole thing escalates into a hysterical quarrel, and at this point it has nothing at all to do with how the argument started. But all to do with the structure of the wounds on each side, and how they get triggered (like a wildfire). So it's the very same quarrel every time. It's a constant. Precisely the opposite of intelligent debate. I'm not interested in listening to the quarrel of a married couple, or anything resembling it (to the advantage of the married couple is that they can have make-up sex afterward).

I've previously used the analogy of two black holes, with gravity so strong that virtually everyone will be sucked into any one of these extremes. I'll now present another analogy for these discussions about the JQ. It's a trench war with each party deeply entrenched on each side of the battlefield. It's a situation of complete deadlock. No one is really trying to come to a common view of things, just fervently dismissing each other and dig deeper into the trenches. And here comes another analogy from the First World War: anyone who crosses the battlefield between the two lines will be met by crossfire. I have been placing myself at that field a number of times. Being a man of moderation, I've been wanting to present a balanced view. But generally I have been dismissed from both sides as an extremist. Of course there's no logic to that. But then there's no logic to the two trenches where these combatants have put themselves -- no more than a quarrel between a married couple. It's all deeply emotional.

And when strong emotions of fear and hate enters, the possibility of an intelligent debate walks out of the door. When people start acting like a bunch of chattering chimpanzees -- or worse -- there's no point in participating in that.

PS. The issue of Jews as a minority group can be addressed without explicitly calling them by name. E.g. by discussing how to deal with ethnic minority groups in general. I've done so before, and I'll get back to this. This is a way of keeping the berserk emotions of the chimpanzee crowd in check. Of course, sooner or later someone will bring up the Jews (be it the husband or the wife) if it's an open Internet debate. The brains of all the participants subsequently switches into red alert mode and nobody's able to think clearly anymore.

8 comments:

Armance said...

An important part of our current malaise is that our whole history is clouded and darkened in Platonic cave-style, and people feel ideologically obliged to take sides, like Edmund Burke in the aftermath of the French Revolution. One of the most painful and clouded chapters of our history is what really happened in Europe in the 20s-30s-40s. That's where the Nazis vs. Jews soap opera comes from.

In my understanding, historically speaking, Europe of the XXth century is just a footnote to the French Revolution, American Revolution and the Enlightement, the same way as somebody considered that the whole Western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato.

If my comment passes the moderation test, I will start with what I consider Chapter 1: America as an overseas victory of Jacobinism. Then I will approach step by step the gist of this post.

Conservative Swede said...

Dear Armance,

Sounds very interesting. Send the texts to me by email and I'll make you a guest columnist and publish it as blog articles.

Regarding moderation. A Jewish friend of mine recently wrote in an email: "we need to reassert the positive value of discrimination even more than we need freedom for expression for all".

You have hereby been discriminated :-)
(Maybe our finest value)

Conservative Swede said...

A nice synonym for "discriminated" is "distinguished".

Conservative Swede said...

This is a comment from Rebellious Vanilla:

For some reason, OpenID doesn't work and I don't recall the password of my multiple accounts that google hated and wanted me to verify(I believe google has enough information about me as it is). So here is my comment:

"Armance, the dual moral system is actually out of the absolute morality of Christianity. Absolute good vs absolute evil. Probably Conservative Swede read far more about religion, but I believe that this is an inevitable trait of monotheistic religions because there is a single God, who is perfect.

I'm inexperienced in regards to polytheistic religions, but this can't be the case in them because all gods must be valid and hence one can't be the embodiment of absolute goodness, which by default makes for absolute evil too. So I would go even further back because the Protestant revolution, Enlightenment, American Revolution, the French Revolution are just parts of a continuum(with Marxism and the Frankfurt school as a cousin of this other branch).

Some of the current features of our culture are typical bourgeoisie values - the reason most people don't realize this is because they use the Marxist understanding of the bourgeoisie as a class. The suspicion of high culture, the polite society(and hence polite talk -> political correctness) and the like are features of this class. What we live in is a blend of these things - the two branches of secularized Christianity in Marxism and Americanism and some of the bourgeoisie values. At least this is my hypothesis. If I had Fjordman's patience, I could study the history of these ideas. Like this, I can just look at which people are foolish and which groups are older and create a family tree of these ideas.

I'd like to point out that even Luther was a fruitcake in terms of combat. He believed that the Europeans shouldn't fight when the Turks were seiging Vienna because they are a scourge sent from God against sinning Christians and that resisting them is the equivalent of resisting God."

Conservative Swede said...

Rebellious Vanilla,

It's even a grave error of "translation" to use the same word (god) for both Jehovah and Odin. They are not at all of the same kind.

Compare the narratives. Everything -- truth, knowledge, morality -- rests on the shoulders of the Christian god (Jehovah). Him dying is unthinkable. But if he did, then immediately the planet Earth and the Universe would cease to exist. Moreover the previous (current) existence of it would disappear too, since without Jehovah, no time-space continuum. And even if that hadn't been the problem, without Jehovah, no truth or knowledge, so also in that sense it would no longer be true that you and I once existed. It would all be darkness and void.

When Odin dies, it's simply the start of a new era. There's nothing strange with him dying, and it's part of the Pagan narrative to say that he will. And Nordic gods have already died, e.g. Balder.

Odin and his gang are not at all gods in the sense of the pretentious Jehovah. They are more like immortalized legendary heroes.

But not even precisely immortalized! (Since they do die, and will die). It's more like Lenin and Mao embalmed in their mausolea: made eternal, but in an imperfect way (obviously they will not stay in this shape forever).

In the taxonomy of mythological creatures, Odin and Thor are at the level of Lenin and Mao, or slightly above. But no way near the surreal height of Jehovah.

Armance said...

Uh, my comment about the founding fathers as Jacobins and Civil War as the American Terror didn't get through? Google is depressing me.

I don't want to start with Christianity, the discussion will be too inclusive and large then.

Conservative Swede said...

I'm sorry but I checked the spam filter and it's not there. It's simply gone. Scheiße!

Could you please write it again? And as I said, you may send it to me by email for publication.

And do not trust comment fields. So many things can go wrong: bugs, glitches, browser crash, Internet failure and of course moderation and spam filters. I always save my comments elsewhere before pressing "Publish".

Sol Ta Triane said...

Hi CS,

Agreed regarding the tendency to take emotional sides and destroy a discussion. I for one enjoy the learning experience and mourn the ruin perpetuated by desperate commentors.

I think you are touching on an idea of a new kind of etiquette that is needed today. Go for it.

When I went to school a couple male teachers had a paddle. We didn't act up too much because we didn't want to hear that paddle echo through the hallways.

Also, the desire to fight seems to be right up front in people these days when they come to certain topics. I find it dull to read those feisty, one-sided kinds of comments.