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.