Tag Archives: Culture Wars

On the culture that creates wealthy people

Well, as a former member of that set, the thrill of the competition in one’s field, despite that much of it is a lottery effect, is exceeded only by the excitement of meeting and working with increasingly interesting rather than tedious and mundane people, on projects and ideas that are increasingly interesting rather than tedious and mundane.

Nassim dealt with the (exasperating and epistemically challenged) financial sector, but engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, athletes and artists tend to be fairly interesting – and they fill you with awe and humility. And that experience is as awe inspiring on a daily basis as is the feeling of revelation one experienced from one’s most profound professors.

So we tend to forget that what separates the west from the rest is heroism. Egalitarian heroism. And the absurd excesses of the upper economic classes are a minor side effect of the cultural processes that create them. And that cultural process is what produces, when not suppresses by authority or mysticism, the rapid evolution of western civilization, despite its status as a small, poor, backward people on the margins of the bronze age.

Be glad we produce such extremes, because of the benefits we obtain from the cultural process that creates them.

Revel in it. If there is anything in man that approaches the divine, that is it

‘For National Security, Keep Foreign Terrorists Out’ – Dutch MP needs 24/7 security, faces two trials for hate speech

Brenda Walker: Member of the Dutch Parliament Geert Wilders has paid a high price for his courage in speaking out about the threat from Muslim immigration, Not only does he need 24/7 security, but he has had two trials for hate speech in the Netherlands. In this Gatestone Institute speech, he proposes “Ten concrete measures to prevent Islamic terrorism in the Netherlands.”

Into the Cannibal’s Pot

“Egalitarianism leads to democracy; democracy leads to socialism; socialism leads to economic destruction; and democratic socialism in multicultural societies leads to death and democide. This, in shocking detail, is what Ilana Mercer illustrates superbly in her case study of post-apartheid South Africa. America’s political and intellectual ‘elites’ will ignore this book, because it is politically ‘incorrect.’ We can only do so at our own peril.” – HANS-HERMANN HOPPE

www.amazon.com/Into-Cannibals-Pot-Lessons-Post-Apartheid-ebook/dp/B00564TFM4/

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462

In this book Nicholas Wade advances two simple premises: firstly, that we should stop looking only toward culture as a determinant of differences between populations and individuals, and secondly, that those who claim that any biological basis for race is fiction are ignoring increasingly important findings from modern genetics and science. The guiding thread throughout the book is that “human evolution is recent, copious and regional” and that this has led to the genesis of distinct differences and classifications between human groups. What we do with this evidence should always be up for social debate, but the evidence itself cannot be ignored.

That is basically the gist of the book. It’s worth noting at the outset that at no point does Wade downplay the effects of culture and environment in dictating social, cognitive or behavioral differences – in fact he mentions culture as an important factor at least ten times by my count – but all he is saying is that, based on a variety of scientific studies enabled by the explosive recent growth of genomics and sequencing, we need to now recognize a strong genetic component to these differences.

The book can be roughly divided into three parts. The first part details the many horrific and unseemly uses that the concept of race has been put to by loathsome racists and elitists ranging from Social Darwinists to National Socialists. Wade reminds us that while these perpetrators had a fundamentally misguided, crackpot definition of race, that does not mean race does not exist in a modern incarnation. This part also clearly serves to delineate the difference between a scientific fact and what we as human beings decide to do with it, and it tells us that an idea should not be taboo just because murderous tyrants might have warped its definition and used it to enslave and decimate their fellow humans.

Feminist Entrepreneur: ‘I Don’t Want to Hire Women’

Over the years, I have hired outstanding women – educated, intelligent and highly articulate. Yet, I am exhausted. I have become profoundly tired of being a therapist and a babysitter, of being drawn into passive-aggressive mental games and into constantly questioning my own worth as a manager. I have had several women who quit to stay home to “figure out what to do next”. No, not to stay home and care for children, but to mooch of a husband or a boyfriend while soul searching (aka: taking a language class or learning a new inapplicable skill that could be acquired after work). Incidentally, I have not had a single male employee quit with no plan in mind.

I have had women cry in team meetings, come to my office to ask me if I still like them and create melodrama over the side of the office their desk was being placed. I am simply incapable of verbalizing enough appreciation to female employees to satiate their need for it for at least a week’s worth of work. Here is one example to explain. My receptionist was resigning and, while in tears, she told me that although she was passionate about our brand and loved the job, she could not overcome the fact that I did not thank her for her work. It really made me stop in my tracks and so I asked for an example. “Remember when I bought the pictures with butterflies to hang in the front? And you just came and said ‘thank you’? That is a perfect example!” – “Wait”, I said, “So, I did thank you then?” – “Yes! But you did not elaborate on what exactly you liked about them! Why didn’t you?” She had bought them with the company credit card and I actually did not like them at all, but I digress.

I have developed a different approach for offering constructive criticism to male and female employees. When I have something to say to one of the men, I just say it! I don’t think it through – I simply spit it out, we have a brief discussion and we move on. They even frequently thank me for the feedback! Not so fast with my female staff. I plan, I prepare, I think, I run it through my business partner and then I think again. I start with a lot of positive feedback before I feel that I have cushioned my one small negative comment sufficiently, yet it is rarely enough. We talk forever, dissect every little piece of it, and then come back to the topic time and time again in the future. And I also have to confirm that I still like them – again and again, and again.

I am also yet to have a single male employee come to my office to give me dirt on a co-worker or share an awkward gossip-like story. My female employees though? Every. single. one.

clarissasblog.com/2014/05/14/i-dont-want-to-hire-women/

***

CURT:

I think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for men. I mean. Not only are we oblivious, but we just don’t care, and women don’t expect us to care. We just do our thing. And go on obliviously.

Men are easy. They want to know their place. If they have a place, and don’t have someone too stupid in the way, they’re happy. I’m extremely communicative and very friendly with anyone who will engage me so managing men is pretty easy. I love the young guys who want to learn so I spend extra time filing their heads. They love it.

I have had very bad luck with women in senior exec positions. In fact, it’s been almost fruitless. I suppose in other industries it’d be different. But in my generation the combination of feminism and craziness has just been impossible.

But in middle management, it’s been just the opposite. In middle management you’re trying to facilitate – herding cats. In executive management you’re trying to discriminate – apply scarce resources to the best return whether people like it or not. And women are much better at herding cats, and processing multiple lines of communication than men and that’s just how it is. I don’t argue with it. I just accept it. I have found male middle managers to be free riders, and female middle managers to be more effective. I think it’s genetic. I have been on a career long quest to reduce middle management, indeed all management, to the bare minimum wherever possible and to empower the talent whenever and wherever possible. This tends to lead to a project-based company that is often reorganized, rather than a department based company structure, that is rarely reorganized.

The gossip mill that women create is almost always destructive and the only cure is over-communication. I’ve tried to manage anti-gossip campaigns whenever possible. But the gossip thing is just insanely painful to deal with.

(My favorite example is the accusation that I was sleeping with my young female assistant, and I simply could not silence it, despite the fact that she was actually sleeping with one of my married business partners from the east coast. I never even sold the guy out. But he never defended me in public either. I don’t ever want to touch women at work. Too dangerous for white males in america. Just ignore them. But everyone thinks I do for some reason. Which is probably more that I’m friendly and clueless than anything else. )

It’s really good if you can get all the admin chicks in your company on a gossip containment committee. This turns the problem into an effective means of control because the girls at the lowest level who have the greatest access to gossip become empowered by policing gossip. You try to get them to tell you anything that’s negative. Then you tell the the TRUTH about what you’re doing and let them do the work. The problem is you can never lie to them. And if you screw up you have to tell them.

Good gossip lifts people up. Bad gossip cuts people down. It’s hysterical how effective this technique is. (I tell people, “if you want to gossip and conspire to make me a more successful person then please do.”) So there are positive ways to channeling negative behavior if you understand the incentives. (As strange as chick-incentives are to us men.)

What bothers me still, and something I would like to find a way to solve, is the degree of self destruction women practice upon one another. The hen pecking thing is just impossible. And yes (straight) women are much higher maintenance.

I hope to improve some of this over the next decade with Oversing. But I suspect that stopping women from trying to social climb their chick-status-ladder by gossip and undermining is freaking impossible.

Now that he’s racist, New York Times suggests Donald T. Sterling is a southerner instead of a Jew

NYT: Donald T. Sterling, Southerner
By Steve Sailer on April 29, 2014 at 12:09am

From the New York Times:

After 33 Years of Sterling, a Boiling Point

APRIL 28, 2014

By JULIET MACUR

… For decades it was perfectly acceptable to let him run his team like “a Southern plantationlike structure,” as the former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor once charged in a lawsuit. …

That suit also accused Sterling of running his franchise with the mentality of a Southern plantation owner, as a man who preferred a team of “poor black boys from the South” who were “playing for a white coach.”

Baylor lost the lawsuit, but among the most shocking parts of it — just like the most shocking aspect of the most recent accusations against Sterling — was how long Baylor put up with “the Southern plantation” mentality before standing up for himself.

[emphasis added]

the “rational restlessness” of the West

–“I can think of only four individuals, two philosophers of history, one
sociologist, and one world historian, who have spoken in a wideranging
way of:
i) the “infinite drive,” “the irresistible trust” of the Occident,
ii) the “energetic, imperativistic, and dynamic” soul of the West,
iii) the “rational restlessness” of the West,
iv) “the deep-rooted pugnacity and recklessness of Europeans”
– Hegel, Spengler, Weber, and McNeill respectively.”– Ricardo Duchesne

Foucault On Obscurantism: ‘They Made Me Do It!’

No one should ever go to a university without understanding the nature and motives of post-modernism.

“… Searle claims Foucault told him: ‘In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.’ When Searle later asked Pierre Bourdieu if he thought this was true, Bourdieu insisted it was much worse than ten percent …”

www.critical-theory.com/foucault-obscurantism-they-it/