The Singaporean Government's fixation on immigration.

Didact has an interesting observation on one of my pieces:

You see, Singapore is probably the most prosperous place in all of Southeast Asia- actually, more like all of Asia-ex-Japan. But, like most prosperous and (artificially) stable societies, Singapore also has a serious demographic problem. Essentially, Singaporeans aren't making anything like enough babies; the last time I checked, the birth rate is like 1.2 kids per woman, and that is even lower than Japan's.

[...]

Singapore today is rapidly becoming overcrowded and extremely expensive. Native Singaporeans don't even recognise their own city. Real estate is going through a huge bubble- and even subsidised government HDB housing now costs nearly double what it used to, even as the income gap has widened massively. Sure, you see some seriously fancy cars on the streets- Ferraris, Porsches, and Aston Martins are very common sights in the fashionable bits of Singapore (i.e. the bit of the country that I don't like). And there are foreigners everywhere, many of them from the Philippines and mainland China, who do not and never will share native Singaporean values. Add to that the fact that Singaporeans are themselves one of the most coddled and pampered groups of people anywhere on Earth, and you can see where the inevitable stress fractures will appear.

[...]

None of this will come as any surprise whatsoever to anyone who has seen what the American government has done to this country. The Singaporeans took the same set of dumb ideas and applied them on a vastly larger scale, relatively speaking, and are now wondering why the hell things didn't work out so well.

In another place, the usual cry from White Nationalists is that mass immigration is a plot to genocide the whites, and I have no comment on that issue, primarily because I don't really know enough about the situation to make a comment that others haven't already. But there are no whites in Singapore. Indeed, a whole lot of the immigrants are from mainland China, of similar, if not the same genetic stock as native Singaporeans. No one's being genocided here.

So why the hell is the Singaporean government so intent on immigration? Why not try to raise the birth rate as say, Russia is doing?

This is going to be a very long and winding train of thought, so bear with me. But we'll get there eventually. Well, for starters, let's take a look at some of the things my fellow Singaporeans claim will induce them to have more children, yes?

*Free education up to and including university, even overseas.
*Free healthcare costs for pregnancy checkups/hospital stays and if their children should fall ill.
*Free childcare to be provided by the government.
*Paid maternity leave, duration varies but the average seems to be about one year. That's one year any company has to keep the spot and shift additional workloads onto men and childless women.

There are many, many more, but these seem to be the mainstay of most prospective Singaporean "parents". And yes, I use the term extremely loosely, because...

Seriously, what the fuck? This is a fucking disservice to the generations who came before us, who raised children to be functional adults without so many of the fucking benefits these navel-gazers are demanding. To these people, there will never be a good time to have kids, because that would end their immediate joyride. Yes, this is not a good time to have kids. Neither was the Great Depression, neither was most of human history, by today's standards. I do not advocate irresponsible breeding ala single welfare mothers or popping out kids so they can be your pets, but neither is there going to be some magical perfect time when the planets all align.

But frankly, if it were up to me, the majority of Singaporeans should not breed, considering that their attitude towards their children is one more suited towards toys, pets and playthings than actual living beings.I still remember the career executive bitch the university invited to be guest of honour at my convocation crowing over how her three children see their nanny as another mother. This was supposed to be a good thing. Status, money, power, perhaps...but a failure of a human being on the level of the parents who sent their children to gay camp.

Didact says that Singaporeans are one of the most coddled and pampered groups of people anywhere on Earth. I'll add to that modernity-riddled, degenerate, materialistic, blindly credentialed, and miserable people - and they fully deserve the last, having willingly - or at least apathetically sold out their own souls for...what, exactly?

You expect these people to actually willingly embrace any sort of sacrifice, let alone that of parenthood? Hahaha! Their children are but toys to be tossed off to schools and caregivers! There are ten daycares within walking distance of my home alone!

Now, can you imagine what would happen if the Singaporean government made like Sparta and said "all right, ladies, you've had your fun, but we've got to take away your helot-filled estates from you now, chop chop"? It would be political suicide. No, they don't have to give a shit about local feminist groups, but they don't even dare to revise the Women's Charter, let alone have the guts to abolish it. Remember back in the late 1980s when Dear Leader Lee caught blowback from saying that high-intelligence women should have more children? Think of what he'd get today.

The problem is not women going out to work. As Aurini points out, women have been contributing economically since forever, and working outside the home was not a product of feminism, but that of housework being made easier and less time-consuming. My own grandmother was a tin panner, as were most of the women in her village. After marrying my grandfather, she worked the land attached to the home and brought vegetables to market.

The problem is modernity. Everything else is a symptom.

No, there's no way that going back to what came before can be established peacefully. Men and women alike love their toys, "self-actualisation" and navel-gazing too much for it. So be it, then. That route is closed to the Singaporean government. Barring collapse, the native birth rate will never be boosted above replacement; for all its riches and opulence, a society that fails the basic test of continuation is a failed society.

Singapore is the story of a failure.

But there's more to it than that. Even today, some forms of aid to lower-income households is predicated on the fact that said households have two or fewer children. The Singaporean powers that be know that encouraging the lower classes to breed won't produce the smart citizens that the country ostensibly needs, that doing so would have a dysgenic effect. Yet the fact that some people are ineducable and that said trait is heritable cannot be openly admitted because it would destroy the Singaporean narrative of meritocracy, that everyone can succeed given enough education. Education! Education! Education! Especially at a time when people are starting to whine about "elitism" and how placing students of differing abilities into different learning groups is a Bad Thing(TM) and Unequal(TM).

Oh, I doubt the Singaporean government will ever explicitly admit it was wrong with the Stop at Two policy. The reversal was a quiet, unannounced one. No apologies for the mass sterilisations, for the bright children denied education because they happened to have two siblings, for the door-to-door peddling of abortions, for the increased hospital costs...

They will never admit it was wrong to commandeer the land the kampongs sat on and herd the then-elderly into rat cages of HDBs - the current ongoing nonsense with Pulau Ubin is the last in the line of such reclamations over the past four decades. The mama shops are gone, the karang guni men are gone, replaced by Sembcorp waste trucks, and the old grandeur of downtown, the old colonial buildings have been replaced by modernist eyesores like the Esplanade and Ion shopping center.

Saving face is a great Asian tradition, after all, but it's far more than that. For all that Singapore is held up as a bastion of reactionary thought, the entire social narrative is progressive and modernist. Everyone is equal, everyone is equally Singaporean, you are weighed based only on your merit, if you study hard enough you can achieve anything, if you work hard enough you can be rich and successful. That the People's Action Party was responsible for turning the whole of Singapore from an underdeveloped sleepy fishing village (conveniently discounting the infrastructure inherited from the British), that they turned Singapore into a cosmopolitan first-world nation and so-called "global city", and this is where they derive their legitimacy from:

Singaporeans will tolerate a great deal from their government- they made a pact with their government that as long as the State provided economic prosperity and a basic level of comfort to everyone, they would trust the People's Action Party with basically absolute power.

If the PAP decried modernity, it would lose its entire narrative of the so-called "Singapore Story", the entire reason for its legitimacy would fall apart. They cannot admit the soulless rot modernity is, which they have brought Singapore into in the name of comfort and GDP growth. They cannot admit that some people are ineducable, so they create different bands and streams and split pre-tertiary education into two tiers of technical education and junior colleges, all while maintaining the narrative and hoping people don't catch on (which they have, by way of cries of "elitism").

The entirety of Singaporean society is based on lies, soullessness and hypocrisy; little wonder why we're the most miserable people on earth. Every single church I've set foot in since childhood has been soundly churchian, and it has only been getting worse; and my paternal grandmother wonders why I'm an agnostic. I can't speak for the muslims, but I suspect that modernity was heavily involved in pacifying them, too - the mosque closest to my house is very modern, all plastic, concrete and glass, air-conditioned and with a cafe to boot. There's not much left. Once the last of my grandmother's generation dies off and with it all of their roots and standards, we'll get full-blown dildocracy.

National Day was but three or four weeks ago, and to what extent? What's the national character? Much is made of "our shared heritage" and "ties that bind us together", but what the fuck are these? Money? 5 "C"s? Kiasuism? A HDB flat?

A soulless, gaping vagina waiting to consume? While the last of the societal fabric is being torn apart, we build a new garden for Changi Airport as our politicians and policymakers fall over each other to make Singapore "truly global". Spend millions on the Singapore Flyer, a giant ferris wheel...why?

The last of the pre-WW2 generation is disappearing.

Now perhaps, perhaps you can understand why the Singapore government is so dead-set on immigration as a population policy. There is literally no other way out. The only way to boost the birth rate is to repudiate modernity. That is tantamount to admitting the last four decades were for nothing. Immigration will certainly destroy the country (or should I say, cuntry) in the medium run (or perhaps even shorter, considering that only about half of Singapore's current population is native born and bred), but at least it'll allow the can to be kicked down the road on the current paradigm for a few more years.

Didact again:

None of this will come as any surprise whatsoever to anyone who has seen what the American government has done to this country. The Singaporeans took the same set of dumb ideas and applied them on a vastly larger scale, relatively speaking, and are now wondering why the hell things didn't work out so well.

They can't do anything else. If immigration fails, they have to double down on it regardless of the country fragmenting, regardless of the local populace being pissed off, regardless of...anything, really. There is no other way out. Unhappy Singaporeans think that if only they can kick out the "foreign talents" and redistribute wealth from those evil, evil ministers to them, everything will be peachy keen.

Guess what, fucktards: it won't. The moment you or your parents accepted modernity in the 1970s, it was all over. It took four decades, but you are dying, and rightly so. You can complain about foreigners depressing your workforce and wages, but the same could be argued of the push to get women out of the family and into the cubicle. You can complain about how the kampong spirit is gone, but you were the ones who happily devoured it when it was served up in the trough. You may be the ones who complain about rising COEs and HDB prices, but these are only the chickens coming home to roost. You can complain about the education system, but you were the ones who happily allowed the Prussian model to be imposed upon you. So long as the soma kept flowing, you were happy to be led to the factory floor.

And only now you seek to blame the PAP for your own failure? I find this picture highly amusing, for all the wrong reasons:

Death is the only solution.

...

I am fully of the belief that the only possible long-term outcome for Singapore is collapse. The path of modernity that the "gahmen" has pursued since the late 1960s is inherently unsustainable, consuming social capital to feed the gaping Singaporean vagina, which was only too happy to accept it. Like the West, we are running on fumes of what went before, only of a different sort. The only two things that truly bring money into Singapore are a) the port and b) financial services as a tax haven, and without these, everything else grinds to a standstill. Manufacturing, service, all gone.

Now imagine if the petrodollar fails...if fiat money fails...

I have already spelled out my path of retreat, to my grandmother's holdings in Malaysia. The farm has lain fallow since she passed away, but last time I checked the house is still standing, the well is still clean, and the fields, though overgrown with weeds, are not poisoned. It can be fixed, and there is time to gain the skills to do so. My mother survived that kind of life, and it seems I may have to in my later years.

Maybe humanity will have a better go of it next time around.

Chocolate mooncakes.

The mid-autumn festival looms again. The local bakeries are churning out mooncakes once more. Pastries stuffed with lotus paste and an egg yolk, immensely high in calories and cloying to the point where the recommended way to eat one is often in extremely thin slices.

More than one of them are offering modern "re-imaginings" of the traditional mooncake. Chocolate mooncakes. Pandan mooncakes. Fruit mooncakes.

Damn you, SWPL crowd. If it's not lotus paste, it's not a mooncake.

Gone are the paper-and-candle lanterns of my childhood, inner skeletons of bamboo first, then wire as I grew a little older. What few lanterns are toted around by children are made of plastic, moulded in a factory, and battery-operated.

Preferably with sound effects, too.

I can't think of any Singaporean public holiday (most of which are based on religious holidays) that hasn't been bastardised in some way. Good going.

It's been noted by a few others who've written about the peculiar case of Singapore that the governmental thede is not the same as the majority thede, and I personally believe that this is part of what has broken down down the natural segregation of races on the island to some extent (there are others, like forced desegregation and the destruction of ethnic enclaves, that I won't go into now). The governmental class has been what's been keeping Singaporeans together for the last four to five decades.

But what is the essence of the Singaporean government's thede? What has it to offer those within its fold? Nothing but GDP and riches and cars and cosmopolitanism and modernity and all the other attendant problems that go along with it. Love with strings attached to it is always in peril, which is probably why so many men find the idea that a woman's love is largely conditional to be upsetting.

The thede of the Singaporean government will inevitably fail; as well-managed (for a definition of well-managed) as it is, it simply cannot make good on the promise of infinite growth, and the discontent is showing of late. As the global economy continues to be Berkanified, so do Singaporeans lose their love for their government. The soma tap is running dry, and drug resistance is building at an alarming speed, as proven by the last national budget.

Like any other country afflicted by modernity, people torn from their roots may be kept alive in a vase of water for a short while, but wither and die anyway.

Christmas becomes about presents and meals. The mid-autumn festival becomes about the mooncakes and lanterns, so why not Bernakify them as well? Improvementate them, as Tex Arcane would put it. Enrichify them. Why stop at sweet things? The locals like curry, don't they? Why not a fish head curry mooncake?

Hollowed-out symbols of another era. Once the meaning is lost, the symbol eventually mutates into a symbol of this era. Burnt offerings of cars, cell phones and credit cards to our ancestors.

Why not an Angry Birds mooncake? Can't be any worse than rockstar Jesus. Who cares about what the holiday means, anyway - it's just another day off work.

Commencement.

Just got back from the commencement ceremony.

It was vile.

Disgusting.

Abhorrent.

The opening video was one of our Dear Leader LKY receiving a honourary doctorate of law at the Istana (our equivalent of your White House) earlier this year. Why this was shown, I have no idea.

The guest speaker was a regional manager for a petroleum company. She pontificated at length about her "work-life balance", which involved outsourcing the raising of her three children to her mother and mother-in-law, as well as their nanny, of which she openly bragged that her children regarded their nanny as another mother. This was followed by exhortations for men to do more in the home (we know you ladies don't really find us sexy when we do dishes) and "support their wives' careers", while urging the women to "find the bravery" to "reach top positions in the corporate world".

The dean's speech was little better, blathering on about how climate change was threatening the world, the roles of engineers in building social justice, blah blah blah blah diversity blah blah discrimination blah blah blah -

At least the valedictorian's speech was just a teeny bit less politically charged, although he gushed and bubbled over at how university was a great experience for him and how we should follow our hearts and everything which Cappy Cap points out is a big bull of crock you should not be paying thousands of dollars a semester for.

A big portion of what's wrong with modern society, squeezed into the small space of two hours. It's enough to make a man feel ill.

I can't wait for higher education and this society to crumble to dust.

Leave like a goddamned gentleman.

Four or five months ago, I decided to leave the Men's Rights Activists camp.

Not that I had been an extreme participant in the discourse, of course, but more of an observer (quelle surprise!) watching from the sidelines. But over the past month or two I had been worried about certain developments in the MRM, amongst them increased calls for leftist alignment, progressive ideology, "inclusion", and attempts at shaming those who did not agree. In short, hijacking and co-option of what I believed the MRM had been about.

This whole saga came to fruition of late, and it's been amusing to see how everything I said has come to pass.

Furthermore, I had come across arguments, particularly from No-Ma'am and Hawaiian Libertarian, that convinced me that the MRM was merely the next step of the exercise of the Hegelian Dialectic when it came to the complete dissolution and takeover of the family unit by the state. Champion the rights of women first, then champion the rights of men, and in the end the state is everywhere to act as a "mediator" with a finger in everyone's pie-hole.

Take note that this was not an easy task - while I didn't stay up nights agonising over the rights and wrongs, it nevertheless took considerable looking into the arguments, juggling them in my mind, and pitting them against observable examples to see which one was closer to empirical truth, such as Aurini's mention of the Canadian courts moving to "supervise" children in divorces, or right now, German kids being assigned handlers by the state "for their own good." If one toes the water for a long time before jumping in, coming back out should take at least as long, because a strong conviction is required on the basis of principles and morals, instead of adhering to some group or ideology because it validates your chosen lifestyle. (Ahem).

So, after I had formed my case for leaving the MRA camp, what did I do? Nothing much, and it was all limited to me. In the public forum, I took MRA sites off my blogroll and made a post on my blog about the reasons I was leaving, for anyone who was interested in what a Singaporean gook does with his life. Privately, I stopped watching MRA videos, reading MRA blogs, and writing on MRA forums.

That's all. Really. There were some who commented on my leaving post, arguing against my case; I addressed their arguments and sent them on their way. Simple as that. If you actually think out your case before making the move instead of basing it on your feeeelings, then you should be able to clearly address the people expressing consternation.

Right? Right?

What I didn't goddamn do was immediately run to the biggest social network I had access to, scream, howl and throw a tantrum, and wish death upon all MRAs while acting like a big drama queen, wanting others to pat me on the back, say "there, there" and validate my choice.

Now, I'm not asking one to pretend to be nice to the people whom you're leaving. I'm not expecting someone to find platitudes to mouth while walking through the doorway, that it was a nice time, so sorry for our differences of opinion, and I wish you all the best in the future. I don't wish the best for the MRAs, and indeed, I'm hoping (and predict) that they're going to fail for the reasons outlined by No-Ma'am and Hawaiian Libertarian. If you want to cease to be affiliated with anyone or any group for any reason, that's your pejorative, no matter how retarded I personally think your reasons may be. Certainly, those MRAs who cared about my leaving must have thought my reasons were silly, otherwise they wouldn't have protested.

But observe some goddamned decorum and leave like a gentleman, because the gentleman is a gentleman and never has an excuse to deviate from benevolence. If that's not good enough for you, howling and screaming will make you look like the idiot.

That is all.

The Singaporean pussy pass in full effect:

So it happens that a little over a week ago, a 31-year old single mother pushed her 9-year old mentally disabled son out of an apartment window to his death.

Unsurprisingly, the internet white knights have come crawling out all over the place. They blame everything - from the evil government that didn't give her enough free handouts, to assurances that she must be mentally disturbed and hence cannot be held culpable for her actions, the town councils that overlooked her -

Everything and everyone is to be blamed for the death of this boy - except the mother who pushed him out of the window. Because she's just a victim of this horrible, oppressive society, a leaf blown in the winds of fate.

You can't have it both ways, folks. If you want to claim no personal agency or responsibility, then you will have none of the attendant rights. If you can't claim responsibility when you push someone out of a window, why should we give you the privilege of voting?

I think I do understand part of the reason why the local girls hate our menfolk so much. They're all a bunch of dumb pussified white-knighting gammas.

Someone needs to do something about these horrors! Just not me. NGOs gotta take care of it. Pimp Daddy G's gotta take care of it. Town councils gotta take care of it. Just not me. Just not the neighbours. Just not the extended family. Just not other people. No, it's all someone else's problem.

You dumbshits, you atomised Singaporean society and now you complain that no one's got your back? If you're going to ditch others to get ahead, then why are you surprised when others ditch you? You tore apart the existing societal safety net and left yourself with no other option than Daddy G's sugar, and now you complain that he won't let you have any?

You all deserve what's coming to you.

Update: the exoneration of any and all culpability continues:

How could three persons, an old lady, a young mother and a special needs child lived on a $1,000 income. Maybe there were some handouts from the govt or some charitable organizations. This is a tragic story of the lives of three miserable beans trying to get by in one of the most expensive country in the world.

So, where are all the other people? Oh wait, to other people this woman and her family were fucking invisible. A nonentity. Only there for some people to get all righteously angry over...and as pawns in directing anger at the government.

The poor woman, now in prison for delivering her son, would probably think it is better to end it all. The poor child will be her life of living hell. She would have nothing else to live for short of a miracle, a little mercy from some kind souls.

[...]

"The poor woman in prison is likely to remain in prison for the rest of her life. She just switched from a prison without bars to behind bars. The latter may be less demanding financially and emotionally less draining. At least she will have a life of her own to live for, behind bars. At least she set free the poor boy trapped in a flawed body. Some may disagree and think it is better for the boy to continue to live. What about her mother, now with all $1,000 to herself for as long as she can work?"

You know, just reading these lines makes me sick. Killing your own nine-year-old son is "delivering" and "setting him free". I wonder if the kid felt free when he was plummeting to the concrete pavement below or terrified enough to piss his pants, but such is the logic behind dismembering babies to "save" them. Well, fuck.

No one has the right to declare another's life not worth living. Only the possessor of said life can even begin to argue to have the right to relinquish it.

Going through Dalryample's work again, the constant motif of the underclass, and the idiot fools who coddle and enable said underclass, is that of non-culpability. They know all the right things to say to the judges, all the right acts to put on in front of the social workers. The idea that they might even be marginally culpable for their own deeds is foreign to them - they describe themselves in the passive ("The knife went in"), helpless objects, victims of circumstance, suffers of a disease which Dr. Dalryample must now cure, or else in their eyes, HE becomes the one to blame for the mess they've made of their lives.

Oh, I am in full support of everyone's right to fuck up their own life - so long as others aren't asked to foot the bill.

Just look at the comments:

"She needs treatment not punishment"

"the woman has my sympathy."

"Feel sorry for what our country has done to drive her to this tragedy. She should be given treatment for her mental and emotional health not more punishment."

"She must hv felt stuck in a depressive situation for 78840 hrs. Seeing no end of her plight and decides to commit a crime like this."

"with fianancial difficulities, even if u go to any help centre they don't help if you have bills not paid an have an income of S$500.00 - S$1000.00 they don't help"

The gentleman does NOT deviate from benevolence, even in the midst of destitution. The people of the Great Depression by and large did not deviate from respectability, even though they were living in the most miserable times of the cnetury. There's not even the slightest shred of evidence that this woman was suffering from mental illness, and yet people automatically assume that - all while screaming at others not to judge because "they don't have all the facts".

What's worse than the fools clamouring for the pussy pass are those who immediately try and use this murderess' case to attack the established order - they don't even bother to feign sympathy for her before jumping straight into the calls for wealth redistribution.

So what now? When world finance and trade collapse and Singapore is left with shit, you're going to use that as an excuse to start a free-for-all killing and looting spree?

Look in the mirror. You are the ones responsible for this country's downfall. You allowed it to happen.

I will stand by and wait in my box, and there's only room for me and mine.

*Sigh*

I'm not completely heartless. I can understand extenuating circumstances - please be reminded that this is NOT one from the evidence presented, and that even if this murderess was truly mentally unstable, that does not excuse murder unless one tries an insanity plea - like stealing a loaf of bread when one is starving. That doesn't change that it's still stealing and we are still bound to be benevolent even in destitution.

Now, if I were the bakery owner, I would assess the situation judging on whether the thief were truly repentant and in need. If so, I might ask for a reduced charge. I might forgive him for the theft. If they were willing to learn and able-bodied, I might even take the fellow on for food at first, and then perhaps a small day's wages later.

And it will not wash away his deeds any more than a carousel rider can stride into church at 30 and declare herself a "born-again virgin".

But the idiots piling on to white knight don't even know if this murderess is repentant. Do we? There certainly haven't been any reports to the contrary. And for those idiots who claim a mother would never harm her children, please let me remind you of the average 15% infanticide rate in the ancient world, shooting up to as high as 50% in renaissance Italy and 17th-century China, and the 1.3 billion abortions worldwide since 1980.

Eat whatever you want, protest whatever you want, sue whomever you want, and fuck whomever you want – with no regard for yourself, for your children, for your country, or for what the future consequences are.

Don’t judge, just live!

And always be true to yourself.

- Aurini.

"Fairness". Pfah!

An equalist appeals to us as to why meritocracy is bad, and we should embrace fairness instead:

"Why is fairness a virtue - that is, why is it inherently good? I do not profess to have the best answer, but I shall share my views through a thought experiment.

Imagine leaving your current dimension and entering a state of non-existence. You have no idea what wealth or resources, material and non-material, you will possess at your point of birth. The only thing you are certain of is your own will - your freedom to choose what you want to do with your possessions, whatever they are.

This is what the American philosopher John Rawls called the veil of ignorance. As you put it on, ask yourself: would you prefer a fair society that rewards traits such as diligence (resulting from free will), by allowing everyone to start on an even playing field, or would you rather have a society that (unfairly) rewards individuals based on, for example, what material resources they possess at birth, something which you lack control over?

The intuitive choice would be the former - the fairer option. Fairness is a virtue because we desire it independently of worldly possessions. It is something that is so appealing to when we are stripped bare of our property and thrown into uncertainty. This is an important frame of mind to view things for a compelling reason: the living consists of only a single generation, while an infinite number of generations exist in exactly that state - unborn. Unlike in the thought experiment, they cannot choose the society they are born into, but we can. Thus, fairness becomes an inherent human endeavor, not just to create a society we desire for ourselves, but for future generations as well."

Let's take this apart piece by piece.

"As you put it on, ask yourself: would you prefer a fair society that rewards traits such as diligence (resulting from free will), by allowing everyone to start on an even playing field, or would you rather have a society that (unfairly) rewards individuals based on, for example, what material resources they possess at birth, something which you lack control over?"

The problem with this is that in order for this argument to hold water, one has to assume tabula rasa, which is a) not only falsifiable but b) the greatest lie of our generation. People are inherently different by virtue of their genetic makeup leading to physical/mental/behavioural/so forth differences demarcated along racial/sexual/so forth lines, and nurture has to work within the bounds set by nature. The author assumes that worldly possessions are the only factor that contribute to success.

The author would like a world to be what ought to be, instead of what is. And in the battle between is and ought, is will always win out in the end.

One might argue that the author is only arguing for equality of opportunity. Yet, as affirmative action and other such "positive discrimination" programs throughout the world prove, equality of opportunity invariably leads to equality of outcome, since opportunity is so nebulously defined and I'll wager the percentage of people who will admit they had every opportunity but blew them will be miniscule.

While the petty man can be uplifted to some extent and whipped into line, the gentleman has far more potential (and by definition of "gentleman", of course he exercises it). Once again, as various "fairness" and "equality" policies prove, they always involve dragging down the gentleman to the level of the petty man, since the latter cannot be uplifted to the level of the former. Hence, Harrison Bergeron.

We lack control over so many things in our lives. We lack control over our genetics, we lack control over how people react to us, we lack control over acts of nature, we lack meaningful control over how our governments act - what, are you going to bitch that you didn't have control over how that guy/girl blew you off? You're dealt a hand, the best thing you can do is play it to the best of your ability instead of coveting someone else's cards.

"Fairness is a virtue because we desire it independently of worldly possessions."

False. "Fairness", more often than not, is driven by envy, most often caused by a lack of worldly possessions. Even in the case of Cappy Cap's crusaders, they take up a cause because their lives are otherwise meaningless and they want to feel important. Psychopathic impulses may be desired by an individual independently of worldly possessions (for example, mass shooters have come from all walks of economic backgrounds in the name of all sorts of ideologies) but that does not make mass shootings a desirable occurrence.

"It is something that is so appealing to when we are stripped bare of our property and thrown into uncertainty."

Here we see the proof of envy showing up. "If I have nothing, other people should give up their stuff in order to make me feel secure!"

In short, "fair" is used in much the same way as "equality" is: a rhetorical platitude used to disguise envy and redistribution. It is intuitive, sure, but then again, even monkeys have been shown to show envy intuitively, so I fail to see how intuitive = good in any sense.

"This is an important frame of mind to view things for a compelling reason: the living consists of only a single generation, while an infinite number of generations exist in exactly that state - unborn. Unlike in the thought experiment, they cannot choose the society they are born into, but we can. Thus, fairness becomes an inherent human endeavor, not just to create a society we desire for ourselves, but for future generations as well."

"B-b-but it's FOR THE CHILDREN!"

Disgusting.

So, to sum up this fellow's argument:

-Look at all those fat cats hoarding all the advantages you should have!
-Appeal to nature (or in this case, intuition)
-If you support fairness, that shows you are so much more enlightened and virtuous because worldly possessions don't matter to you!
-Won't you think of the children?

The implications of the argument are clear: in order for a "level playing field" to be enforced, the wealth of parents should be confiscated and redistributed through taxation so each child has an equal amount of worldly possessions to start with regardless of innate ability or inclination to learn.

Well then. Why bother getting an education in the first place and making all that money if it's just going to be taken away anyway? For a society to prosper, there always needs to be a mild discomfort at the base levels, a hunger to improve, tempered with shame. Redistribution kills that dead.

The worst thing is that redistribution doesn't even solve anything barring the worst-case scenarios (such as dumping a kid in a third-world country). White lower-class students routinely score higher on average on standardised testing than black upper and middle-class students. Head Start in the US has been a tremendous failure, putting paid to the idea that racial differences in IQ and ability were due to nutritional deficiencies. Material wealth and standards of living have been repeatedly shown to have a far less marked effect on intelligence or academic ability than the cathedralists would have the masses believe; "10,000 hours of practice" is scarcely enough, but it perpetuates the pretty lie that you can do anything you want.

Ugh...

At times, I feel truly ashamed of my ethnicity:

Chinese Roadside Shitting, Baby Slaughtering, Spitting on the Floor Citizenism on Full Display.

Chinese Baby Rescued From Toilet Pipe (Photo):

Chinese Tourists Deface 3500 year old Egyptian Artifact:

Chinese wonder why their tourists behave so badly (Allow children to defecate on floor of airport, stealing, cutting in line, etc.)

Chinese Officials Cut out 8 month Baby from Mother and throw in Garbage:
 
Chinese Officials Arrest Parents for exceeding one child policy and place 13 month old on ground and run over repeatedly with truck:

2 Year old girl Chinese girl run over by car and 18 passers by ignore and fail to help her:

Chinese Van driver runs over toddler, realizes and runs over again to make sure child is dead ("Fine is Cheaper for killing child than medical costs to help"):

China building tallest building in the world, signifying the end of the boom there (Skyscraper index never lies):

Manboons are truly a global pestilence.

This is when I knew I would NOT enjoy the novel:

"I'm a writer."

"What sort of books?"

"Children's books. What were once called fantasies, but are now categorised as urban fantasies. No vampires, though," she added with a quick grin. "I don't do vampires."

This is when I take a deep breath, close the book and force myself to put it down calmly. Not that it was already stellar before, but this was the breaking point.

How utterly oblivious must you be to a) use your characters as mouthpieces and stand-ins for you and b) be so utterly wrong about the nature of the genre, its history, and what it stands for?

As an aside, I'm sure children will be more than enthused to read My necro-bestial-fae-magic Hot Boyfriend #9958403323476.

The degeneration of the genre has not gone unnoticed. It's sad.

"But that is neither fantasy nor science fiction.  What we are witnessing is the lingering death of two literary genres. What we are seeing is the subsumption of fantasy and science fiction by romance and horror."- Vox Day.

"But there are starving children in Africa!"

Hello there, folks. Today I'd like to address a particularly silly piece of rhetoric known to me as "but there are starving children in Africa!" I don't know whether it's just the circles I swim in, but I seem to be bumping into this a lot lately, and it's just about as good a topic as any other for a post.

First, an example of "but there are starving children in Africa!" in action:

Person A: We should do something about the local poor. I'm going to see if I can't round up some interested parties from our community to set up a soup kitchen and job center.

Person B: But there are starving children in Africa! Don't they deserve to be fed more than the local poor, who at least have junk food to tide them over? Are they your responsibility? If not, then aren't you a hypocrite for wanting to feed the local poor but not the starving African children?

Therefore, we see the gist of the rhetoric - person B claims that since there is a bigger, similar problem and if person A's solution does not turn their attention to it as well, then they are hypocrites and person A's solution, or desire to fix things is unfounded and wrong. Or to sum it up in three words: first world problems.

So far, I've come up with three ways to deal with this particular stupidity:

Firstly, point out any false equivalency present. This is usually easy, because most idiots who resort to this rhetorical device aren't very stringent in picking out their analogies. Hence, person A could easily point out that while starving children in Africa are indeed a concern, starving people locally are more of a concern because they directly impact local living in terms of crime and other forms of local unrest. Hence, the two are not equivalent and it would be not hypocritical to solve the problems of the local hungry first before turning outward to starving children in Africa. Once the analogy crumbles, so do their pretty words.

Secondly, you can point out that there are limited resources to which problems can be dealt with, and that some resources are better suited to certain tasks - making it more of a net benefit to spend these resources on a smaller problem than a bigger problem they are not optimal for. Hence, it would make more sense to focus on the local hungry, whose status you have more ability to change and get feedback on. You can turn a homeless man's life around by your intervention and see the results directly; the most you can do for a starving child in Africa that is reasonably within most peoples' reach is passing a couple boxes of canned food across a counter and never seeing where they end up, be it in the hands of an actual starving African child, a warlord, or rotting away in some dingy warehouse. You can try and influence local politics, something you can't do with African politics (unless you're African).

Finally, and I prefer this the most, is to follow where that inane line of reasoning leads to its very end. So it's hypocritical to want to feed the local poor without feeding a starving African child? Then isn't it hypocritical to want to feed a starving African child without feeding a starving African child in a war zone? Then isn't it hypocritical to...and you get my drift.

A problem is a problem is a problem, no matter how small or insignificant one might think it, and all problems can be addressed. There will always be a bigger problem than the one being currently addressed, and if one demands that the smaller problem be dropped in favour of the larger, then nothing will get done and anyone who even tries to do good work will be hypocrites.

And that is just plain stupid.

So much for "love".

I hate love, or at least, this modern incarnation of it.

This vile thing ranks up there with the idea of democracy with universal suffrage as one of the greatest bloody lies of our time, and with good reason, too.

Because, you see, anything is possible, anything is permissible, anything is justified in our modern society if it's done for "love". Free Northerner and Dalrock have recently wrote pieces in which he points out that contrary to popular belief, love does not make pre-marital sex any more justified from a Christian standpoint than it would have been without:

I repeat, there is absolutely NO moral difference between friends with benefits, a living-together relationship, a one-night stand, prostitution, and a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. There is not the tiniest bit of moral difference between Roissy’s pump’n'dump strategy, dissention’s advocacy of escorts, and Susan Walsh’s advocacy of “meaningful” relationships.

While I do not profess the Christian faith, the gist of the above two articles is nevertheless quite true. The power of love is widely extolled in our modern society, blaring from every radio, magazine and televitz to be seen. Love conquers all, we are told. Love is not just a good, but is good. Love should be pursued at all costs, so the televitz shows us rom-coms of guys doing all sorts of stupid shit to get a girl, and bodice-ripper romance novels tells girls that it's okay to stay with that dark, brooding guy with violent tendencies, he can be changed with the power of true love into a hot, studly man who'll still be violent - just not against her.

We all know how both of those work out in real life.

Solution A is not the fucking solution.

Yes, I know I have a project deliverable in 12 hours. No, I do not fucking care that I have yet to size and cost a steam-jet ejector and put down all my stream data into a neat table; I am pissed. Murder-if-I-could-get-away-with-it pissed.

Had another argument with someone (or maybe something would be better) who was for culling a good chunk of the human race because as everyone knows, we are horribly overpopulated despite everyone fitting into Texas, human ingenuity having proved more than a hundred years' worth of Malthusian theories wrong and people in the first world cramming thousands of calories' worth of starch and simple sugars down their gullets while others in the third world starve because we keep on sending them food aid and undermine their local agricultural industries.

I hate the masses.

I hate the masses.

Really, yes. What tipped you off?

More bellyaching from me? Who coulda guessed? Cyprus wasn't enough, so when I point out that New Zealand, Spain and Italy are considering hopping on the bandwagon, they shrug their shoulders and go back to the televitz.

Aurini - You were warned, and you didn't listen.

*Standing ovation*

Some days I hate the internet.

And an oldie but goodie:

 

Is this the part where I raise my arms to the air and scream "why am I surrounded by fools?"

More of an explanation.

Aurini says it better than I can.

God, I feel old and tired, but the righteous rage still burns. My cranium still throbs.

I don't fancy the coming sadness before the rush wears off.

Edit: Went to the gym, pumped some iron and bashed the punching bag around until my shoulders, knuckles and thighs hurt, and I still don't feel any less wound up. If anything, I feel more wound up for the exercise.

I'm not a paladin, I'm a squire at best. My job is to shine the paladins' armour, sharpen their swords, cook their meals and water their horses, and in return they teach me their way. And yet I can't for the life of me figure this out; it's tying my mind into a gordian knot with no sword in sight.

The point of a right is to prevent evil, isn't it? To maximise freedom and happiness and minimise suffering? In that case, how can someone, after having admitted that pursuing a certain right in a certain fashion not only increases evil, but also reduces happiness and increases suffering, still deny the point of a right and still advocate pursuing said right in that particular blind, unthinking fashion? It would be easy to write off if that person was evil or stupid, but an otherwise intelligent, decent person knowingly advocating evil that fails even a simple pain versus pleasure analysis? When they have conceded every single step of the way?

How can people just accept what they know to be wrong and evil just because a god or idealogy or whatever says so, even after they've conceded all the arguments?

"But I just proved that germs cause sickness!"

"Yeah, but we should still sacrifice a goat to the sky god."

***

"But I just proved that governments can and often do fudge figures!"

"Yeah, but they're the government, I'm sure they did it for a good reason."

ARRRRGGGHHHHH!

Edit 2: the rush finally wore off, now comes the sadness.

It's at times like this when I wish my body would let me stomach alcohol without puking all over the place.

The obsession with "rights".

A post over at Cogitans Iuvenis got me thinking:

The last assertion is a very serious claim to make, but unfortunately, I have concluded that it is undeniably true; or it appears that way to me on my morose days. Sure people care about having freedom for themselves, and maybe their close associates, but they couldn't care less about the freedom of the other person two towns over, much less a thousand miles a way. How else can you explain anti-smoking laws, the FDA using paramilitary to storm raw milk vendors, or the call for individuals to have greater government involvement in our lives? 

I have literally meet individuals that have stated they don't care that government restricts x, the right to bear arms, as long as they grant y, for example free health care. Never mind the demonstrably atrocious job the government has done with education or even managing their own check books. These individuals cannot, or will not, discern that social services are not rights. Free health care, education and a guaranteed standard of living is nice, of course ignoring the dire economic ramifications of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but they aren't innate rights.

Both Aurini and Fringelements have done numerous videos attacking the core assumption of modern-day society that democracy with a universal franchise (and sometimes without) is the bestest thing since bread that's been sliced on all three cartesian planes. Of course, no form of government is free from problems (unless you want to cede power to a completely neutral, all-knowing, all-seeing AI like Helios from Deus Ex is), but democracy does indeed seem to be the pits, especially once people figure out that they can just vote in more government cheese for themselves. You can go watch their videos if you'd like to learn more about their arguments.

And so you enter a debate with someone on the problems of democracy, you get them to admit that it isn't the best form of governance, you get them to admit the attendant problems such as power clustering in a few nodes and catering to the lowest common denominator, you get them to admit rampant voter fraud and "low-information" voters, you corner them into conceding every point and admitting that unrestricted democracy on a governmental level is a failure while brushing aside their histrionics ("Racist!" "Sexist!" "Classist!") and finally, finally they admit that everyone automatically having the vote is a bad idea...

Singaporeans are fools.

"Herp derp the government is bad."

"Herp derp we need more cheese."

"Herp derp we're going to vote them out at the next election! That'll learn 'em reel good! GE 2016! GE 2016!"

Listen up, you lot. If you take a larger view of things, what's going in Singapore right now is far beyond the scope of anything you're capable of handling, with or without the ballot box. Sometimes, it isn't your fault, as Mr. Clarey says.

All right, so let's ignore the impending ice age. Let's ignore the flailing global economy all across the world, which Singapore is terribly vulnerable to. Let's ignore the forces which are at work in the world today that extend beyond this little red dot two degrees north of the equator.

Let's even assume that, say, the Workers' Party wins enough constituencies to garner enough seats in parliament to form the new government.

What do you expect to change?

When the courts turn kangaroo...

Vigilantes may be the only solution. From the RooshV forums:

Anonymous doxxes hussy who teaches others to make false rape accusations:

I don't know which is worse, this or the idiot who was giving away her kid to foster care because she didn't want to be weighed down with the kid while seeking a new beta chump.

Dear average modern woman:

 Just when I think I've witnessed the depths of your depravity, you manage to astound me.

Feminists throw everyday women under the bus, part deux.

Well, here we go again.

A young woman suffered horrific facial burns after a woman wearing a Muslim veil threw acid in her face.

Naomi Oni, 20, was walking home after finishing work at lingerie shop Victoria’s Secret when the woman, wearing a niqab – which reveals only the eyes – appeared and launched the apparently random attack.

It is not known whether the attack was motivated by the victim’s work for the store.

But still, we haven’t heard a single feminist make an issue of this. Not one slutwalker has stepped up to denounce the attack. Feminists have maintained an eery silence over this woman-on-woman attack.

Why?

Well, it doesn’t fit their narrative. If a man had carried out the attack, they’d be busy denouncing it very noisily. If it had been a white man who threw acid on Ms. Oni’s face, their response would be deafening. However, in this case it is a non-western woman, and what good can come of publicizing that? What advantage can be gained? One cannot tax these women, as most do not work, nor can one use them to any other economic advantage. There is no real utility to the story - it is politically useless for feminists, because it falls entirely outside their narrative, which has the evil patriarchy oppressing everyone else.

So, the question is, do feminists really care about acid attacks when they cannot be somehow used to extort men? Apparently not. What a morally bankrupt “movement.”

Enjoy the worldwide decline, folks!