Feminists howl and cry over bawdy Singaporean Armed Forces song, SAF capitulates.

Well, was I expecting any different? Let's pick out some hilarious quotes from the article:

"However what was revolting was the flood of misogynistic and sexist comments against AWARE for interfering in the internal affairs of MINDEF. AWARE is a non-profit organization, a member of civil society who actively engages with the government. Since the 1980s, AWARE has published books, reports and held discussions with statutory bodies to elevate and strive for gender equality. In 2003 the restriction on female intakes in NUS’s medical faculty was lifted after AWARE made the efforts for it. Either the public is oblivious of AWARE’s long-term efforts to empower women or sexism is still deeply embedded in Singapore’s culture."

*Typical destruction of masculine space by women who have no skin in the game.
*Non-profit organisations (that mysteriously have well-paid members, boards, and suck up tons of government money in grants) are not automatically good. If anything, they are actively detrimental, being instrumental arms of the Cathedral.
*Assumption that sex equality is good. (Do not use gender. Do not use the left's terminology and accept their frame.)
*The training of women doctors is an active malinvestment, considering the repeated global studies oft cited in the manosphere regarding hours worked, time taken off, specialisations, and individuals who leave the workforce for any period of time between the sexes in the field - a greater return to society is given when men are trained as doctors compared to women. Strictly speaking, the restriction of places for women was a logical and rational move. But as has been repeatedly shown, economics and reality be damned, ideology trumps all. Equality!

"This Purple Light saga has revealed much of our society’s mindset and deep-seated hatred for AWARE."

And rightly so. You are anti-civilisational and should be reviled, as Queen Elizabeth I did to the feminists of her time. Feminism has been recorded as one of the many reasons why great civilisations such as Greece, Sparta, and Rome have fallen - but of course, progressives see history as one great line towards greater progress and glory, unable to observe the cycle of history as outlined in all those silly bronze age texts put forth by goat herders.

"The response clearly shows that advocacy groups like AWARE have a long way to go in combating stereotypes and prevailing attitudes that undermine the efforts of women."

"We have a stereotype that people who use stereotypes are stupid." - Bryce Laliberte.

"What should be exhaustive is society’s silence on crude misogyny and relentless chauvinism. Yes Singapore is not an institutional patriarchy. However the patriarchal mindset is still detrimental to both men and women. It has negative effects on society and makes no sense to future growth. Sexism and misogyny has no room in the modern century. Until we do not raise our voices and work towards correcting these myopic attitudes, social justice and equality will never be achieved."

*Unable to state "negative effects", nor how it is supposedly detrimental to men and women, when the exact opposite is becoming more evident by the day as society becomes more and more dysfunctional. How's that 25% of all US women on antidepressants working out for you?
*Unable to define "growth", nor how patriarchy makes no sense to it. 
*"Wrong side of history" argument, contention that the past has nothing to teach us.
 *Assumption that "social justice" and "equality" are good things. Why? They just are.

"This is a textbook example of feminine discourse. Note how she doesn’t actually bring up any specific proposition of mine and then argue against it, she just calls me sexist, claims offense, and leaves with a non sequitor." - Bryce Laliberte.

 Essentially, the entire article can be boiled down to two points:

*Singapore is sexiss.
*Bawdy versions of army songs are sexiss and normalise rape.

I also finds it amusing that she openly admits AWARE has been caught lying about their achievements (claiming "Purple Light" was banned) and yet trumpets their "achievements" as proof that they do good. One would be more inclined to inspect those claims, no?

For any of you Singaporean guys out there, I'm sure you all know "Purple Light" - anyone who has been through the SAF's grindmill should. Am I surprised the SAF was all over themselves to grovel and whine and say they are not sexiss? Well, what am I supposed to expect to an army made up of merchants, in a nation made up of merchant?

"As Sunshine Mary observed, leftists are oppressed by reality itself, so do not acknowledge being on top and privileged.

Thus racism and sexism, strangely, never go away, no matter how much privilege women and black receive, which justifies ever more drastic measures against their oppressors." - Jim.

It would all work, really, it would all work, if it weren't for those evil racists/sexists/homophobists/capitalists/saboteurs/kulaks/monarchists just ruining all our wonderful utopian dreams!

Monarchy makes a comeback in the minds of people.

Just throwing this out there:

1/3 of Russians want their Tsar back.

Georgians consider a return to monarchy.

Seems like more and more people are waking up to the idea that democracy is a bad idea. Courtesy of Radish Magazine (click to enlarge):

A nation of merchants.

Recently, Vox Day ran a piece on Singapore, which I linked in my previous post.
 This is not about that, but rather, a comment that was posted in reply to that piece:

My former company had a policy of sponsoring people from Singapore to work for us for 18 months at our plant in the Bay Area. Subsidized by their government, because they wanted to attract biotech. They were some of the best workers.

What was mind boggling to me was: the women had Masters degrees in science. Yet they were very, very good administrators and dotters of I's and crossers of T's, but no interest in science itself or discovery of new things, testing new ideas. Here they were working at the pioneer of biotech, access to the cutting edge of science....and.....just wanted to make good money.

The other wacky thing was the married women, coming to America for 18 months. Without their husbands. With zero (and I mean absolutely zero) visits by either spouse during the entire 18 months. All of them. No interest in having children, and all they could talk about was networking and getting their next better (read higher paying) job.

I don't understand the absolutely mercenary mindset displayed by some cultures, to the exclusion of all other joys in life.

And from good old Didact:

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.

Why did the Singaporean people so willingly give up their dialects, trash their traditions, leave their kampongs, and do everything they were told and give up everything they asked, so long as they could have jobs and a subsidised HDB flat?

It's not as if they were happier in the HDB flats, not with my paternal grandmother and the rest of the older generation complaining about how things were and how happy they were growing tapioca and raising chickens.

And then the sullen realisation hits: we are a nation of merchants. Founded by merchants, for merchants, for the purpose of mercantilism. The Chinese? Merchants. Indians? Merchants. Europeans? Merchants? Maybe not literally so, but all the immigrants to Singapore were possessed of the merchant spirit, which the whole "abandon your roots to sink your fortune" shtick. Unlanded people willing to abandon everything in the world for the promise of work and money.

Given that psychological traits are at least partially heritable, why am I not surprised?

I remember my history teacher telling me about the '60s, about the push for independence and how a lot of Malayan-born Chinese and their parents rapidly embraced Malayan nationalism, undergoing drives to learn Malay language and culture...at the same time when the Federated States of Malaya were shifting their feet as to what to do with all these Chinese and whether to just leave them stateless, kick them out or grant them citizenship with conditions.

If that's not a merchant ethos, what is? The eternal chimaera. How could I have expected any more from the Singaporean people at large, the descendants of merchants and money-changers? So this is what you get when you have a nation of merchants?

The questions remain. Am I a freak in a nation of merchants, or am I just another merchant that has identified the non-merchants as the winning side and is merely seeking to mimic them for my own comfort and profit in the long term? How can I test myself?

I'm thinking that there might just have been something to the ancient Chinese ranking the merchants on the bottom of the class system.

Weaselly Mainstream Media is Weaselly.

"Gripping spectacle as 18-year old girl wrestles 3 men at Kampong Ubi CC"

Taking out three heavy men in the wrestling ring is no easy task - especially for a petite 18-year-old girl.

Last night, Republic Polytechnic student Lee Xin Yi was seen attempting to do just that. (Bolded emphasis mine). Spectators cheered as she dodged blows from her much bigger opponents while trading dropkicks, cross-body blocks and headlocks.

The video provided in the article was not of the event itself, but a demonstration headed off by two muscular guys.

Could she be one of those +3SD upper body strength women that Vox talks about? Why, sure. But given all things, I'm betting on a case of Curie-Hultgreen syndrome and the press needed something to create social opinion. Note the implication in the first paragraph, that she actually took out three guys, and then the weaselly bolded quote in the second.

Psht.

Time Preference and Civilisation, Part 2.

Continued from my previous post.

So jungle-dwelling man A has now twenty apples a day, a shelter, and a flute. Man B has his ten apples a day. Along comes Big Chief, who thanks to his possession of a big club, has an effective monopoly on violent coercion, and says to man A, "that's not fair. To be fair, you must give man B five of your apples, let him sleep in your shelter, and play your flute. Who can argue against equality? Oh, by the way, I have a big club."

So man A is forced to share his goods with man B, who has little incentive to build anything of his own now, let alone maintain anything that man A has made. He has little idea of what went into the making of the shelter and flute, and constantly soils both, much to man A's chagrin. Yet man A is kept in line with Big Chief's equally big club.

Given the insanities of Big Chief, it's perfectly rational for jungle-dweller A to shorten his time horizon to nothing at all. Why save apples when Big Chief will take them away? Why build anything when Big Chief will make him "share" it? Big Chief, oddly enough, does not live with man B despite singing man B's praises, living in his own gated community of his chieftain's hut. Man A makes the rational decision and enjoys the decline. He picks no more than ten apples a day, lets the shelter fall into ruin, and the snick and flute are snapped in two.

Why hold out on the promise of twenty apples tomorrow when Big Chief will take them away, as opposed to ten apples now?

And so civilisation crumbles, this being just one spreading crack in the base.

Time Preference and Civilisation.

Two men live in a jungle. One has a low time-preference, the other a high time-preference. Both men require ten apples a day in order to survive, which they spend the whole of a day picking.

One day, both men independently come to the conclusion that if they could craft a special stick, that would make apple-picking so much easier, allowing them to pick twenty apples a day. However, the stick will take a whole day to craft, time they need to spend picking apples. Survival on nine apples a day is possible, but not without some discomfiture.

The high time-preferenced man, by definition, elects to avoid hunger and continues as he is. He spends the rest of his life solely engaged with picking and eating apples.

The low time-preferenced man endures a diet of nine apples a day for the next ten days, then spends the gathered ten apples on the day he crafts the stick. He now only needs to pick apples every two days to meet his apple needs. Then he realises he could do better with a shelter to keep the rain off, and spends every other day designing and building a shelter. With the shelter complete, he sleeps more soundly and feels more alert and inspired in the mornings. To express this inspiration, he whittles a flute...

The high time-preferenced man may desire and know how to build a shelter, or he may feel the need to express himself artistically, but regardless of his intelligence or innovation, he will never have the spare time or resources to build anything past his ten apples a day.

"I-it's not my fault!"

 
Well, the job hunt continues. Went for some more interviews, mailed in my CVs, went for a walk-in interview or two. No dice. Seems like the global joblessness plague is hitting this lovely little island as well.

In any case, this little tidbit caught my eye. Our glorious leader LKY denies that Singapore's low birthrate is his fault in his new memoirs:

In his new book 'One Man's View of the World', Lee Kuan Yew shares that he has given up on solving the problem of low fertility and also emphasised that money won't solve the problem.

He suggested that if he were the prime minister, he would introduce a huge baby bonus which was equal to 2 years of the average Singaporean's salary.

He expected that running such a scheme for 1 year would prove beyond doubt that even super-sized monetary incentives have only a marginal effect on fertility rates.

This would prove that "low birth rates have nothing to do with economic or financial factors, such as high cost of living or lack of government help for parents.

Locally, the Stop at Two policy wins the award for the greatest "keblekan pusing" (Malay: about face) that the incumbent government has done. Is he right? Partly, yes - the effects of atomised people, hedonism, political freedom, breakdown of patriarchy and traditional social support networks, etc, etc - these factors are all universal across time and cultures to bring on the downfall and resultant zombie apocalypse of the golden masses in every civilisation in which they manifested themselves. This is, after all, the cycle of history. One can no more expect things to be different today as opposed to the women of Sparta, who refused to partake of the very activity which made them so valuable.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that Lee's government back in the day actively pursued policies that contributed to this situation. Legalising abortion, selling sterilisations and abortions door to door to the point when a single doctor found themselves performing nine sterilisations per day, exponentially increasing fines and hospital fees past the first two children, denial of education to third and fourth children, and that's from the policy alone. Not to mention the targeted (whether intentional or not) breakup of the extended family structure, then once those support ties were severed, refusing government assistance to women with more than two children - a policy which continues to this day with the lower class. (In this last point I can see why dysgenic fertility should be discouraged, but the means should be a 'discomfiture at the bottom rung' that's socially imposed. More on this another time.)

Things would have gone downhill eventually, as Mr. Lee suggests. But people respond to dis/incentives, so that doesn't excuse him from blowing the brakes to hell and claiming "not my fault". Dis/incentives are why some cycles take longer to turn than others - hardship, affluence, decadence, destruction, back to hardship. At this point, the only way to fix this is what history has gone through before - destruction of affluence and artificial governmental constructs leading to the family being net positive to those who don't eat their seed corn, and a return to the patriarchal social structure. It's only a matter of time now.

On a side note, the idea of overpopulation is nothing new - it's been bouncing about since at least the second century AD with Tertullian. Apparently having a track record of being wrong for 1900 years hasn't dampened their enthusiasm any.

What I find curiouser and curiouser is that manosphere ideas are beginning to permeate the local culture as well, although it seems that the authors of these articles haven't quite grasped the full extent of human realities the average game blogger might, let alone a reactionary.

Gresham's Law - it just gets worse and worse and worse...

From Wikipedia:

Gresham's law is an economic principle that states: "When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good".

Aurini has written a small piece on this little law, which examines how it applies to sex and culture. He concludes:

"The result of the interplay between Cad/Dad and Lady/Slut-Bitch is a mating market that’s slightly more focused on meaningless sex, and slightly less focused on emotional bonding.

That was the first iteration: now repeat ad nauseum."

Just fine, innit? An escalating arms race where good behaviour is rapidly driven out by the bad. Just a couple of hours ago, I wander by Mr. Sturges' and see this post:

He has this to say about these "gags":

"Well isn’t that nice. How many of you guys out there when faced with a fake pregnancy test that results in a positive every time would know the difference from a real one? Definitely not me, it’s something that I never concerned myself with. Can you see the consequences of this? Some poor sclub has sex with some predatory bitch hitting the wall hard and then is confronted with one of these fake tests. Well the poor bastard just thinks he hit the jackpot, finally he thinks to himself, “I’m going to have a kid!” Not so fast bucko, what’s going to happen next is she’s going to want to get married and then when he does, all of the sudden there’s a miscarriage the response of which she’s going to fake all of the appropriate emotions that someone who’s lost an unborn child is supposed to go through. After a couple of months of grieving here come the divorce papers, she’ll tell the judge that the “trauma” of losing the unborn child was too much and there goes half his property. Notice that the person that is on the losing end of this “prank” is called the “victim“. Given the implications of what could happen with something like this it makes perfect sense.

[...]

"Well, isn’t this nice too? If it is convincing enough to fool the requisite gullible guy can you see this getting out of hand? Given that 90% of the guys out there are gullible as hell, look for sites like this to proliferate. All because these bitches know that with very little evidence they can extract the hard earned resources from men with very little evidence and by preying on the gullibility of men who just want families.

Good grief, I’m glad I got snipped 15 years ago. But I’m going to make a prediction here that you might not believe, but given what I’ve seen over the past decade, is quickly going to come to pass.

This bullshit site is just the beginning. As more women hit the wall and more women become single mothers without support, look for sites catered to these whores where if you’re a man and leave behind so much as a spent cigarette butt, a hair or your saliva on a drink glass that she can get possession of, there will be services and websites that will make sure that the bitch’s bastard spawn matches your DNA whether you even met her or not. Given the family court system these days you are going to be screwed even if you didn’t lay the cunt. And, with ubiquitous DNA testing that surrounds us these days and the faith the general public puts into the results of any test like this, look for these types of tests to be abused. Especially if resources can be extracted from a productive male."

Oh, but the men aren't going to lose out. Gone are the days of poked holes in condoms - as Mister Grumpus comments:

"On the other side of things, there are plenty of sites selling fake (but of course real-looking) sets of birth control pills, replete with fake prescription documents, etc.

Which of course reminds me of that one outfit that sells fake ATM balance receipts. The more money you want it to show that you have, the more you pay.

Try to cheat and end up surrounded by cheaters, I guess."

Commenter Earl has some other ideas:

I have a great idea.
Act like you are poor and insane.
Tell her your job is part time greeter at the Sizzler.
And that you see snakes all the time…there is even one on her face.
Demonstrate low value to every slut you encounter.
If they are going to go the route of lying to get what they want…so will I.

Wonder what the next iteration will be?

Bad money drives out the good. Bad sex drives out the good. Bad behaviour drives out the good.

I think I can say we're in a free-fall spiral right now, and from within the safety of my reinforced box, I can say I'm loving every single moment of it as a young curmudgeon.

Debating evictionism.

Debating evictionism as a justification for infanticide over at Save Capitalism. Still ongoing. Will see how it turns out; this post will be updated as the debate progresses.

Update #1 up.

Update #2 up.

Update #3 up! Idiot explodes!

Fights break out locally over Hello Kitty toys.

Really. And one wonders why democracy is a bad thing?

On laws and the lowest common denominator.

It's a general rule that the more mainstream/popularised something is, the more dumbed-down it gets. Anything, you name it - art, music, culture, hell, even World of Warcraft. This is because it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and unfortunately, that isn't very high.

The laws of a society, at least those written down on paper, are meant to apply to everyone. Hence, they have to be dumbed-down so the common man can understand them, unfortunately.

Stop feeding the cats, damn it.

There is an orphanage-cum-nursing home within walking distance of my home. This does not count for much, considering how cramped most of Singapore is, but the location harbours an alley of the sort that's formed by two high walls, one of the orphanage proper and the other of a condominium complex.

When I go get my morning tea, there's this middle-aged woman who lugs around a huge sack of dry cat food and paper plates, and sets out food for the local strays. Shielded from view by the high walls, the cats emerge from wherever it is cats go, and congregate to feed.

I have no idea why this woman feeds the cats. Maybe she's just a crazy cat lady. Maybe she believes that feeding the cats will earn her merit. Maybe she thinks the cats are just starved, the poor things. Maybe she's just plain crazy. Whatever the reason, it doesn't change the end result: the cats come to be fed, and she feeds them. In considerable numbers, too: to and from watching the old folks hang up their songbirds in the morning, I've counted anywhere from between twenty to thirty different cats lounging about in the alley each time.

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.

The not-so-invisible people of Singapore.

The tissue sellers have emerged.

I don't remember seeing them as recently as fifteen, or even ten years ago. Elderly men and women in their late fifties to early seventies, staking out roadsides, underground passageways, food courts and more in a bid to sell their wares - hand-sized packets of tissues. The tissues themselves are priced at three or four times what it would cost to purchase them from a newsstand or drink stall, highlighting the fact that it's not so much business as charity that the tissue sellers are looking for, only they'd rather not be overtly looking for handouts.

"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.

Yet another protest.

For the third time this year, Singaporeans have gathered at Hong Lim Park on the eighth of June, this time to protest the new MDA regulations on "news sites". For a people notorious for their political apathy, this is a bit of a record, especially considering that the Speaker's corner has, prior to this year, been woefully underutilised. Two thousand protesters may seem a small amount to folks in western countries where demonstrations are common, but it's a bit of a milestone for us, for better or for worse.

My personal suspicions are that it's going to be for the worse.

What makes this episode slightly more interesting is the timing, which has happened to largely coincide with the whole nonsense about PRISM and the NSA over on your side of the pond, and Aurini has recently come up with a video on privacy and technology.

Have the more vocal Singaporeans acquired a taste for protesting? I'm personally not sure if this trend will continue, but I can see how it might; protesting, like voting, is ultimately like masturbation: it feels good, but rarely does it accomplish anything. A powerful but useless ritual that makes people feel like they've done something and stuck it to The Man.

Like the US government, the Singaporean government is in damage control mode over the new regulations, although the chance that anything substantive will be changed is next to nil. It'll be interesting to see how things play out, at the very least.

Singaporean delusions of democracy.

In the midst of the hoo-hah over the recent vaguely-worded "licensing framework" for "news sites" by the Singapore government, on which I have not really reported because frankly, people around these parts have been half-expecting some attempt at internet censorship by now.

What I found interesting in particular, is this:

And then ask yourself: why should you, as a citizen of this country, be subject to such state-imposed fear? Why should those who should be your servants in turn lord over your very right to speak up – a right which is guaranteed in our Constitution?

Ask yourself: why should a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in a statutory board have such immense power over you?

[...]

Article 14 (1) (a) of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore guarantees that “every citizen of Singapore has the right to freedom of speech and expression”.

We must not let this right be so easily usurped by unelected bureaucrats, without any engagement, discussion, debate or dialogue. For if we do, then what is the value of our Constitution and what it guarantees us as citizens, especially if you cannot even post comments on websites?

Surely, it is not the intent of our Constitution to forbid this.

 Let me draw attention to a couple of phrases: "unelected bureaucrats in a statutory board" and "usurped by unelected bureaucrats without any engagement, discussion, debate or dialogue". Hell, let's narrow it down even more to one word:

"Unelected".

Has that sunk in yet?

"Unelected". Say that three times, then turn around and clap your hands.

"Un-elected".

Now, fellow Singaporeans, let's imagine that there was an election tomorrow, and you threw all the MPs out of parliament through the ballot box. Let's imagine that happened without any shenanigans pulled like what happened during the recent Malaysian elections. Let's imagine that, say, the Worker's Party or whichever joke of an opposition party formed the new government, hurray hurray, stick a flag in it, it's done.

Who is going to oversee your CPF?

Who is going to overlook your Medisave and Medishield?

Who makes the laws that govern your lives? It's definitely not the MPs in any substantive amount.

Who controls the media?

Who makes sure the buses and trains run on time?

Etc, etc, etc...

Can you vote them out? Oh no, you can't.

Can the government you voted in root them all out and throw them out of their positions, even if it wanted to? As likely as Elvis suddenly reappearing in the middle of the desert like some B-horror/SF movie.

Democracy and the power of the ballot box is the biggest delusion of our modern age, and it's not hard to see why: it allows people to operate under the belief that they have some control over their fate. You voted? Then you endorsed the system and have to accept the result. You didn't vote? Then you have no right to complain, aye?

What a pretty lie. If not for the fact that refusing to vote is an offence in Singapore, I wouldn't even bother.

"Hey man, I still think we can turn this around." That's what your vote says. Voting implies consent. It implies that you still believe in the system and are satisfied with your options. I'm not advocating apathy. I don't want you to stop caring. I want you to stop believing. I want you to withdraw your consent. The best thing you can do for your country - for the men around you, for the future - is to let the system tear itself apart.

- Jack Donovan.

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.

Idiocracy is here.

I am inclined to believe it when it is claimed that people as recently as a hundred years ago were a whole SD smarter than the people of today. Consider this excerpt from the 1887 White House Cook Book, so kindly provided for by Mrs. TT:

"To Clean Brass-Ware, etc.:—Mix one ounce of oxalic acid, six ounces of rotten stone, all in powder, one ounce of sweet oil, and sufficient water to make a paste. Apply a small portion, and rub dry with a flannel or leather. The liquid dip most generally used consists of nitric and sulphuric acids; but this is more corrosive. 

Polish or Enamel for Shirt Bosoms is made by melting together one ounce of white wax, and two ounces of spermaceti; heat gently and turn into a very shallow pan; when cold cut or break in pieces. When making boiled starch the usual way, enough for a dozen bosoms, add to it a piece of the polish the size of a hazel nut. 

An Erasive Fluid for the Removal of Spots on Furniture, and all kinds of fabrics, without injuring the color, is made of four ounces of aqua ammonia, one ounce of glycerine, one ounce of castile soap and [Pg 567]one of spirits of wine. Dissolve the soap in two quarts of soft water, add the other ingredients. Apply with a soft sponge and rub out. Very good for deaning silks."

Remember that this is what was expected of the average housewife back then: purchasing reagents from a chemist, mixing them up together and applying the result without hurting oneself - in essence, basic applied chemistry. Now let's see what we have today:

Close to half of Australian adults lack the basic reading, writing and maths skills needed for every day living such as interpreting instruction manuals or using the internet, a study has claimed.

Preliminary results from an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that 44 per cent of adult Australians - or 7.3 million - achieved literacy results that were in the lowest two of five bands. About 8.9 million, or 55 per cent, were in the lowest two bands for numeracy.

The international assessment, held in 25 countries, also showed that 38 per cent of employed adults were in the lowest bands for literacy and 38 per cent for numeracy.

The test, which some completed using pen and paper and others did online, demanded solutions to real-life tasks such as getting information from a medicine label or navigating a website.

About 9000 Australians aged 15 to 74 took part in the sample testing. Australian Council for Educational Research senior fellow Dave Tout, a member of the group which designed the numeracy test, said the results were alarming.

 Stick a knife in it, we're done.

I'm angry and hateful and I couldn't be happier about it.

"You're so angry."

This was professed to me by my sister over the phone after I'd stated a few tenets of the Reactionary position. As summed up by Aurini in Freedom and Authority:  

"While I'm not exactly in a hurry to go out and buy one of those things, I like that we have the freedom to buy a double-ended dildo, and think that we should have the freedom to buy one of those things. But strong authority in society is necessary to deal with the underclass, and quite really, it doesn't really affect me all that much if double-ended dildos get banned. The fact that so many drugs are illegal that shouldn't be illegal is an irritant to me. I'm not a slave to chemical desires...a reactionary society is going to require strong legislation and strong leaders, and every so often you're going to have a stupid law. But the smart people can avoid the stupid laws."

This was the line which provoked said response.

Are the words alone innately angry? I wouldn't say so. Did I say them angrily? Perhaps. But even if so, so what? "You're so angry" was as relevant to the current discussion at hand as "you're scaring me", and for the same reasons, too.

In any case, I chose that point to pass the phone to my mother and be done with the conversation.

Am I angry? Why yes, I am. Properly tapped, it's an incredible source of strength at times.

To never be angered is to never have conviction or passion, an existence of pleasant soma. Anything goes! Do what you will! To never hate, to never judge, the loins burning with love, the mind rationalising away endlessly, the heart missing, no chest, no ribs, no blood.

If you don't feel angry at anything, then you are not alive.

Which is why "I believe X is wrong, but won't speak out against it because I don't want to impose my morals upon others" is a pile of crap. Either you do believe X is wrong, in which case you are condoning evil by not speaking out against it, or you don't believe X is wrong, in which case you're a liar for claiming it is. Note I don't mention cowardice, because people do have to look out for number one, and most still do speak out where it is safe to do so.

And imposing morals on others by force? Well, isn't the only intolerable crime in the eyes of the PC brigade these days intolerance? In the end, the only thing that matters is whether said morals and mores are pleasing in the eyes of the Gods of the Copybook Headings, yes?

Anger is a perfectly valid response to injustice. Hatred is a perfectly good reaction to evil. Yet in the world of Agape before Logos, both have been criminalised, and the only hate allowed is that which is performed in the name of love. A people unable to be roused to rational anger is a people comprised of sheep and cattle, ready to be herded by fast food and cable television. Pliant. Controllable.

Little wonder why they're trying to stamp it out, trying to turn the very concepts into little more than expletives. They've succeeded quite well.