Happiness In Intelligent People Is The Rarest Thing I Know.

They failed, because as the blogger Epicurean Dealmaker pointed out on Twitter, “Markets distill the biases, opinions, & convictions of elites,” which makes them “Structurally less able to predict populist movements.” The inability of those elites to grapple with the rich world’s populist moment was in full display on social media last night. Journalists and academics seemed to feel that they had not made it sufficiently clear that people who oppose open borders are a bunch of racist rubes who couldn’t count to 20 with their shoes on, and hence will believe any daft thing they’re told. A lot of my professional colleagues seemed to, and the dominant tone framed this as a blow against the enlightened “us” and the beautiful world we are building, struck by a plague of morlocks who had crawled out of their hellish subterranean world to attack our impending utopia. Surrendering traditional powers and liberties to a distant state is a lot easier if you think of that state as run by “people like me,” not “strangers from another place,” and particularly if that surrender is done in the name of empowering “people who are like me” in our collective dealings with other, farther “strangers who aren’t.” These sorts of tribal affiliations cause problems, obviously, which is why elites were so eager to tamp them down. Unfortunately, they are also what glues polities together, and makes people willing to sacrifice for them.  Elites missed this because they're the exception -- the one group that has a transnational identity.

Megan McArdle “'Citizens of the World'? Nice Thought, But ...”

The cultivation of Ideas   -   René  Magritte  1927

 Belgian  1898-1967

Iceland II, 2024, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

you have the most hilariously naive politics i've ever seen, it's milquetoast pacifist liberalism meets autistic rationalism. grow a fucking backbone you fuck.

I think there’s something deeply wrong with any kind of political environment in which “I am unconditionally not okay with mass murder” is considered contemptibly pacifist.

I’m not even saying that mass murder shouldn’t be discussed (though I think it’s super inappropriate to tell a fellow participant in the conversation that they should be murdered), just that certain subbubbles of the Left have constructed this environment in which it is inherently pathetic, inherently contemptible, to say “mass murder is a really awful thing and if we can achieve our goals without it that’s worth striving for” or even “no matter what, I won’t endorse or participate in mass murder”. 

I can imagine how I’d be a Marxist. 30,000 kids die preventable deaths every day and that makes me angrier and sadder than you can possibly imagine and if I’d gotten ensnared in an ideology that claimed the only way for that to end was to kill all of the rich people, I’d probably also go around saying “kill all the rich people!” But I hope I’d never, ever equate “willingness to call for murder” with “moral strength” or “strength of character”.

Valuing life is moral strength. Protecting people is strength of character. Calling for mass murder from your keyboard is cowardice. And the communities that deny those things, that circle the wagons around their conviction that willingness to kill people is equivalent to having a backbone, that claiming “the rich all deserve to die” is moral strength, that caring about human life is hilariously naive -

- well, first of all, you’ll never get anything done. My friends and I will end those  deaths, eradicate malaria, fix global inequality, hunt down every source of human suffering and watch it take its last breath while you’ll sit there going “milquetoast pacifists! hilariously naive! the rich are not innocent!”. But second of all, you’ll spend your not-accomplishing-anything time in a bubble where caring about all human life is a weakness, where not wanting to murder people is disgusting and contemptible, and I know people are different psychologically but I can’t imagine anything worse than that.

So, just so you know, there are people who are angry about global inequality, people who want to end all of the bad things in the world, people who feel the same pain and anger that you feel. But we don’t treat mass murder as inevitable. We don’t call people weak for disagreements. We don’t admire people for their willingness to kill for the cause, or even for their willingness to suffer for the cause - just for their ability to change stuff so there’s no more cause and we can all retire happily to a world without poverty. And we’d love to have you. If you ever get tired, come join us, we milquetoast autistic rationalist liberals, because you don’t have to rant on the internet about killing people to earn our esteem, you just have to fix stuff.

Glengarry Glen Ross is on Netflix, you should watch it a lot.  The easy "critique of capitalism" is that "second prize is a set of steak knives" because that's how little it costs to motivate you to work harder for them, and if that doesn't work there's always "third prize is you're fired."   But the real wisdom which is not about capitalism but which is about narcissism comes from understanding that first prize isn't a Cadillac Eldorado, you think Alec Baldwin needs a car?   There is no first prize.  Real closers don't want the prize, they want to be the best, that's why they will practice practice practice and don't play the lottery.  The car is a temptation only for people who do not know their own value, the value of their own work, who won't lift a finger to advance themselves, who are motivated only by threats or by rewards, who would rather have the appearance of success than actual success. "I got an article in the Times!"  celebrates the person whose brain is broken.  "Alec Baldwin's character is a raging narcissist!" Jesus are you stupid, Alec's name is MacGuffin, that's why he's in Act I and never again yet propels the story forward.  It is irrelevant whether Alec Baldwin has metal testicles or pathological grandiosity, what matters is that after years of C minus work, what finally gets those dummies fired up is First Prize or Third Prize, left to themselves they meander in mediocrity while deluding themselves that they are more than what they do. "I was number one in '87!"  So was Alf.

The Last Psychiatrist

St. David’s Day is on Sunday! Grab a leek and celebrate with Fluellen.

(Note: Scallions make good miniature leeks.)

Peel 201208 by den dzjow on Flickr.

I am not going to do the whole Jesus and animals thing. It’s just not my style.

Sarah Burgoyne, Christian Canadian Poet