Month: August 2024

Creeping, All-encompassing

The Engineers press forward to what they consider the future, creating a “new slate.” The past is not a problem; they will just rewrite it and point toward a future that they believe no one else has thought of.

They wield government to create executive orders, audits, investigations, penalties, fines, regulations, government healthcare, and to restrict the free market with wage and price controls.

When finally free speech becomes hate speech and the engineers take control of the family, education, and children’s lives, then we have crossed over the Rubicon.

Man sells himself for comfort.

The Deserts of Memory

Can memory be reset? It seems it’s easy. Change can happen faster if the past of your enemies is maligned and if your own past is forgotten.

Repeating what you want others to remember is an effective method in bringing about forgetting the bad, emphasizing a person’s good traits or successful actions. “I would never do that,” says the morally superior human. Forgetting his past, his opponents’ maligned, and he a new person.

Radicalism kills history, kills memory, kills examination. Because of pain, we don’t want to look back. But self-awareness is the only way the future can amend wrongs and errors.

Day 4

Apparently, you can have it both ways.

You can say you want to be uniters, while disparaging the opposition. You can revile your opponents and declare openness. You can claim “joy,” while exhibiting pure anger.

These are not happy warriors. Using stronger emotion to drive your politics and crushing dissent are the making of tyrants.

DNC troubles?

The news media has been drawing parallels between the riots at the 1968 DNC and the planned protests at this week’s DNC. One difference is that there are still significant Democratic believers in the right of Israel to protect itself. How long will that be true?

College students are carrying the torch for Hamas. They stop traffic, they shut down businesses. No matter your belief on the war in Gaza, we should be able to agree that your fellow citizens should not be harassed.

I was watching an episode of Somebody Feed Phil wherein the happy chef is enjoying a carnivorous meal and a bothersome anti-meat crusader passes by Phil and his companions, saying “meat is murder,” or something to that effect. Phil responds, “I guess no one learned manners.”

People deserve to be free from harassment. Your cause may be important to you, but don’t force others to have to support your cause.

It’s a basic tenet of our Bill of Rights. You get free speech and freedom of association, and others get their freedom to not have to listen to your free speech and to associate with people who don’t care about your cause.

It’s time to grow up.

Olympic Medals for Tyrants

The Olympics are, of course, a time for international brotherhood and friendly competition. But one country is brutally persecuting its minorities–and carrying it on without penalty for its crimes. China is a completely different entity inside the country than it is in outside appearance.

Lest we forget, the CCP has actively persecuted Uighurs since the 1950s, through the 1990s, and especially after 9/11 in the name of fighting terrorism. For over the last 25 years the party has also been targeting Falun Gong practitioners. This harrowing story reveals what the CCP has perpetrated on these minority populations (the article above also lists a number of articles about these horrors). These populations have undergone live organ transplants (like removing corneas and tossing sometimes-living bodies in incinerators), forced abortion, forced labor and internship, cultural suppression, mass surveillance, brainwashing, and other human rights violations. Whistleblowers have risked their lives to reveal these crimes.

The world has been banning Russia from the Olympics. It’s time it bans China, too.

Olympic View

After the last two weeks, I am more convinced that mankind believes and has hope in good things.

Why are teamwork and peace and friendly competition lifted up between nations, not perfectly at peace, ideals? Yes, there are many issues and many conflicts around the world right now, and one can’t be Pollyannaish. But hope is a good thing.

Just finished The Magicians Nephew. Of interest to me right now is its bit about how someone could block Aslan’s words out of mind to a point where all you would hear is a roar or growl. Makes you think about how His voice should reach you, and warn against conscious blocking out of His voice. Lewis was such a master and had a perceptive vision of human nature.

In anger one can purposely drown out the good voice, angry about struggle. But where can we go? The dream that permeates the world still speaks today.

China and the Abolition of the Citizen

As to exercising power over others, China knows how to do it. The Chinese citizen is familiar with (accustomed to) tyranny of the Han Chinese majority over minorities like the Uyghurs, forced abortion, and their every move and action being measured and evaluated through a social credit score. Lewis saw this in and after WW2, but the CCP is surely one of the greatest perpetrators today. Man there is a quantity, not a special quality.

Philosophy 101: More on Lewis’ Abolition of Man

Lewis wrote that the “social planners” have their ideas of what society should look like. They know what men and women need; they know how to improve society. They are the architects of a new utopia, not restrained by old ideas of right and wrong, old ideas of religion and morals. Through science they will create a new replacement for the old superstition.

Lewis was writing in in the 1930s and 40s, when the Nazi scourge was rewriting good and evil. After it, came the horrors of communism, which sought another kind of social engineering that ended in tyranny.

Today, there is a new strain of scientific engineers. Religion is something holding society back. Many of the horrors of the past are considered due to religion, according to the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris. Even the friendly Neil deGrasse Tyson has a following of mockers of religion.

Part of the new scientific rewriting is due to the information explosion. Computer scientists bequeathed computing power to the architects of the internet, who gave it to the social media giants, who are spreading their own understanding to our Gen Z and Alpha youth. Each generation is weaker than the previous because of what they owe.

Now new planners have also arisen. With the money their forebears–and customers–bequeathed to them, they are now pursuing social engineering of their own. One focus of Big Philanthropy is “food security.” Social engineers like Bill Gates think they know what is best. They believe their money and knowledge make them fit to rule. The proles just need their guidance. They know best.

But even these planners are ruled over by their forebears. They really aren’t free and the planners of yesterday rule over them. Each generation bequeaths to its descendants the powers it wants to. Each generations is under the power of its predecessors.

Lewis is perennially proven right. You can’t just drop all right and wrong and rewrite society as you best see fit. Even though knowledge has exploded and some things have improved in the quality of life, that does not make you fit to rule over others. There is a standard (Lewis called it the “Tao”) that you must eventually appeal to when making decisions. Nothing comes of nothing.