Five Signs That Someone's Secretly Trashy

Five Signs That Someone’s Secretly Trashy

By the time most people finish high school, they know that it’s best to avoid trashy people. The problem is that, in the adult world, people engage in elaborate deceptions to hide their level of trashiness. This essay looks at five (relatively) subtle ways that you can see through the deception.

Note here that when we’re talking about trashiness, we’re talking about a person’s own level of rectitude. We’re not talking about social class, much less wealth. Low-frequency people who spread misery, fear and depression around them are trashy, no matter how much bling they may be adorned with.

For most people, it isn’t easy to determine whether another given person is trashy. Most people judge trashiness by inaccurate measures, so easily become misled. An education or a fortune doesn’t mean that one can’t be trashy. There are, in fact, several ways that a person can unwittingly reveal their inner trashiness to observers.

One of the most obvious ways to tell that someone’s secretly trashy is that their family don’t talk to them. If they have one or more adult children who don’t talk to them, chances are high you’re dealing with trash. This is especially true if the person claims to not know why their family members have stopped talking to them.

It’s not easy for someone to go no contact with a close family member. If it does happen, you can be confident that the reason was to protect against further abuse. Abusing one’s own family is perhaps the most characteristic sign of trashiness anywhere. If someone abuses their close genetic relative, it’s a certainty that they won’t feel bad about abusing you as well.

A second way is that a person is abusive to those weaker than them. The classic dating advice that if he’s rude to the wait staff he’ll be rude towards you is classic for good reason. It’s a sign of a bully. Trashy people tend to respect others only if they need to, they don’t respect by default. So if you’re getting respected by one of them now, don’t count on it lasting.

It could be countered here that abusing the weak is an obvious sign of trashiness, and that there’s nothing secret about it. That might be true, but there are a number of subtle signs of contempt and disrespect. A person’s regular use of them is a good sign that they are liable to turn to abuse. This is especially true if it’s coupled with obsequiousness towards the powerful.

A third sign is that a person chimps out whenever told no. In reality, if you respect someone’s boundaries then you also respect when they tell you no, even if you really wanted them to say yes. But some people treat being told no as if it was a grievous personal insult. This is a sign of very poor impulse control, which itself leads to many trashy behaviours.

A person who gets aggressive when told no is very likely to be the kind of person who takes advantage of others. It’s a sign that their moral development has stalled somewhere in early childhood. That kind of victimhood makes it possible for them to justify all manner of malicious actions. So be wary of anyone who behaves in such a manner, because if you ever have to assert your boundaries against them they will rage.

A fourth sign is that a person makes everything about them. Even at other people’s birthdays, weddings or funerals, trashy people act like the spotlight should be on them at all times. This powerful desire to be recognised is usually compensation for a life of little achievement. It’s often a sign of grandiose narcissism.

The classic sign that a person is a histrionic narcissist is that they seem excited when you talk about them, but then you talk about yourself and their eyes glaze over. This reveals the Main Character Syndrome that all but guarantees a person will treat those around them with undeserved contempt.

A fifth sign, perhaps the most subtle, is that a person discounts other people’s suffering. It might be a truism that tragedy is when it happens to me and comedy is when it happens to you. But a person who really acts as if other people’s suffering is meaningless is usually extremely trashy. A failure to empathise with a suffering people is a reliable indicator of trashiness.

This is especially true if their own suffering is considered important, just not anyone else’s. That’s the kind of egomania that is found among the trashiest of people. This goes triple if a person bullies people and claims that they’re joking, but get outraged when someone else “jokes” back at them.

In summary, there are several useful ways you can determine if another person is secretly trashy so that you can avoid them. These ways are mostly subtle signs of malignant narcissism.

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Clean And Dirty Information, And How To Tell The Difference

This essay describes a concept in information science. This is a concept that is of extreme importance in today’s Post-Truth Age, now that the media is even more full of propaganda than usual. It relates to the art and science of deciding whether a given set of information is trustworthy.

There are already conceptions of clean vs. dirty data. However, those conceptions are inadequate, because cleanliness is considered the same thing as accuracy. As such, they are not useful, because it would be simpler and easier just to use the term ‘accurate’ instead of ‘clean’.

A useful conception of clean vs. dirty information has to take into account the moral dimension of the people promulgating the information. Essentially, then, clean information comes from a clean source who cares about the truth only, with no view to the propaganda value of the information, and dirty information comes from a dirty source, who doesn’t care about the truth at all.

This division is very simple, but applying it in the real world of propaganda is highly complex.

For one thing, it takes great knowledge of the world and of the people in it to make accurate judgments about other people’s biases. The usual, poorly-educated approach is to trust people based on whether they have attributes in common with oneself: race, class, education, occupation etc. The more qualities they have in common, the more trusted.

Another poorly-educated approach used by many people is to determine truth based on whether the speaker has a high rank in the listener’s herd or not. So one’s pastor, boss, father or club leader becomes the authority to which one listens. All that matters is a high position in a friendly dominance hierarchy. This was the approach described in detail by Edward Bernays in Propaganda.

It can safely be said that all information from a political source is dirty. Any press release put out by a political party can be considered filthy. So can any article or book written by a member of a political party. The greater the influence of politics on any source of information, the dirtier it is.

It can also safely be said that most information from religious sources, particularly Abrahamic ones, is dirty. This is especially true of those who are seeking to gain followers for money or political power. Anyone who says that you have to obey them or suffer everlasting pushishment in a Hell Realm can be confidently written off as a dirty source. But in this regard, as with others, the world’s religions vary greatly.

Here it’s necessary to look at the reputations of the people pushing the information. Have they murdered their way around the world over the centuries? Do they regularly sexually abuse their children? Do they practice barbarisms such as infant genital mutilation? Do they have transparently sadistic animal slaughter protocols?

Perhaps there was once a time when the mainstream media was a clean source of information. This was back in the times when honest people chose to become journalists for the sake of spreading the truth (i.e. before the Charlie Mitchells took over). Today, no rational or intelligent person can trust anything in the mainstream media.

It used to be possible to trust scientists, because a lot of the people drawn to academia are the sort of person who values truth above merely material concerns such as political power or wealth. But then corporations started buying research favourable to their products. It turns out that scientists are only slightly harder to buy than politicians.

Who actually does tell the truth?

In order to reliably tell the truth, a person has to believe that there are positive consequences for speaking truth and negative consequences for telling lies. They have to believe in something like karma, or at least the Law of Attraction, before they can be trusted to put the truth before their own interests.

This is to say that it’s possible to trust genuinely spiritual people. But there, again, is another major problem: usually it’s impossible to tell if someone is genuinely spiritual or not. The low-IQ approach is to trust people at the top of the same religious herd as yourself. High-IQ people go on the reputation of the source among other high-IQ people.

If you would ask the ten most intelligent people you know who they consider clean sources of information, and if more than one of them suggested the same source, you could be reasonably sure that source was clean. This is the same logic as academic peer review, and, while an effective way of distinguishing clean from dirty, it’s far from infallible.

The tough news is that there’s no truly reliable way to tell if someone is a clean source of information other than going through everything they have written or said, comparing all facts therein stated to known truths, and subjecting their logic to the most rigorous examination. If they regularly make predictions that turn out to be false, that’s a good sign they’re a dirty source.

Perhaps the two rules of thumb are firstly: never trust an authority figure, because they have reason to lie to you. Secondly: prefer to trust someone who is trusted by smart people and distrusted by dumb people.

The great thing about clean information is that it can be absorbed without the need to take time and energy correcting for bias. A truly clean source of information is worth gold in the information marketplace of 2023. In this age of pervasive AI-generated content though, best of luck finding it.

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Common Sequelae Of Shit Parenting

Modern psychological science has revealed that the vast majority of mental illness is the result of bad parenting. Unbeknown to many, the human infant has a number of developmental psychological needs, particularly in the first few years. If those needs are not met – usually because the parents are abusive or neglectful – there are several predictable outcomes.

Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development consists of eight stages, each with a specific conflict or challenge that shapes personality. The first stage is trust vs. mistrust, which occurs from birth to 18 months and involves the infant’s relationship with their primary caregiver. A lot of permanent psychological damage can happen during this stage.

According to Erikson, if the caregiver is reliable, consistent and nurturing, the infant will develop a sense of trust, believing that the world is safe and that people are dependable and affectionate. This sense of trust allows the infant to feel secure and confident. They become willing to explore their environment and form other relationships.

However, if the caregiver fails to provide adequate care and affection, the infant may develop a sense of mistrust and insecurity. This could lead to a belief in an inconsistent and unpredictable world, fostering a sense of mistrust, suspicion and anxiety. The infant may also lack confidence in their ability to influence events, and may come to view the world with apprehension and fear.

The psychodevelopmental consequences of failing the first stage of trust vs. mistrust can be severe and long-lasting. Four of the worst effects stand out above the others.

Difficulty forming attachments: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have trouble forming and maintaining healthy and satisfying relationships with others. They may feel isolated, lonely or mistrustful, or they may have difficulties with intimacy, attachment or communication. They may also have problems with boundaries, assertiveness or conflict resolution.

Those with attachment-forming problems often don’t reciprocate their friends’ goodwill. They can be very quick to cut ties. They are typically the sort who neglect to return calls or to answer emails. It’s very common for people like this to end up viewing their friendships in a very transactional manner. It’s also common for them to drift out of touch.

Impaired emotional regulation: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have trouble regulating their emotions, such as anger, sadness, fear or shame. They may experience intense or disproportionate emotional reactions that are hard to control, or they may feel numb or detached from their emotions. They may also have difficulties expressing, understanding or coping with their emotions.

Most adults are now aware that hitting children leads to explosive violence from those same children later on. Many are still not aware. There are hordes of adults out there who abuse and neglect their children and then look on, mystified, when those children end up with learning or behavioural difficulties, or getting in trouble with the law because they learned that violence solves problems.

Abused children usually end up with an increased propensity to limbic hijack, otherwise known as amygdala hijack. This is when the body’s threat detection mechanisms launch into high alert and empower the emotional system for immediate action, bypassing the rational system. A tendency to chimp out is very common for those who suffered early childhood abuse.

Low self-esteem: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have a distorted or damaged sense of self, and may feel worthless, hopeless or guilty. They may have low self-esteem, and may struggle with self-care. They may also have a negative self-image, and may be prone to self-criticism, self-doubt or self-blame. Such people often suffer Impostor Syndrome if they become successful.

This is especially true for those who were made to feel worthless by abusive or neglectful parenting. After all, if your own parents don’t even care about you, then why should anyone else? It’s common for people who suffered childhood neglect to value themselves very lowly, and to behave accordingly when it comes to negotiations or conflicts.

Increased vulnerability to stress and trauma: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have a lower threshold for stress and trauma, and may be more susceptible to developing mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They may also have a weaker coping mechanism, and may resort to unhealthy or maladaptive behaviors, such as substance abuse, self-harm or isolation.

Complex PTSD is another common condition among those who were abused or neglected in early years. People with this condition often suffer stress-related physical conditions for life. Migraines, insomnia, nausea and chronic fatigue can all be triggered more easily in a person whose nervous system has been primed for hyperarousal through constant stress during important developmental windows.

These four signs will easily reveal a person who had a shitty upbringing. If a person hates themselves, hates others, has a hair-trigger temper or is constantly bombing out of every challenge placed in front of them, chances are high they were damaged in early childhood. If this sounds like you, have compassion for yourself!

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Five Aspects Of Masculinity

People are deeply confused today about what masculinity is. There are many differing thoughts, depending on the emotional maturity of the person thinking. Looking at masculinity from an alchemical point of view, there are five different aspects to be considered, corresponding to the top five steps of the Mithraic Ladder.

For young boys and emotionally retarded men, masculinity is about physical force, especially violence. The spiritually stunted tend to think of everything in terms of who could beat up who. These men represent the element of iron, at the third step of the Mithraic Ladder.

In pre-civilisational societies, or in societies of feral humans (such as criminal gangs), the dominance hierarchy is all about ferocity and physical strength. This sort of behaviour is masculine in a sense, but that’s only one very limited aspect of masculinity.

A higher kind of man grows out of the violence and learns how to make love. He represents the element of copper, which is the first of the precious metals on the Mithraic Ladder. Having realised, consciously or otherwise, that the point of fighting is to win women, the man of copper simplifies the procedure and simply works on making himself attractive to women.

Men who can readily attract women look down on brawlers as meatheads. If the meatheads take each other out, then the more women for the rest of us. In at least one major sense, men like this are far more masculine than the men of iron: they can attract women with less opposition.

A still higher kind of man grows out of cooming and learns social influence. The fifth step of the Mithraic Ladder is represented by silver, which is brilliant in comparison to the lowest four steps. This brilliance leads the man of silver to see a bigger picture, one that goes beyond mere dominance and pleasure to the creation of political structures.

Men at this level also look down on the brawler as a meathead, but on top of that they see the manwhore as a pointless coomer. The reasoning is that a man only needs one woman to have a family and children, so interacting with women beyond that is pointless unless one is seeking social influence.

A yet still higher kind of man judges his fellows on intelligence. Fighting, lovemaking and politics might entertain the gods to some extent, but they’re ultimately all mundane pleasures. Some rarer pleasures are only open to a few, no matter how hard they work. One of those pleasures is achieving a deep and accurate insight into the workings of Nature.

For men at this level, the level of mercury, mainstream interests no longer suffice. The aspect of mercury judges men on how far they have seen into the nature of reality. Fighting and lovemaking might be fun but they’re really for lower animals. Even gaining political power is barely respectworthy. The creative man, the one who can summon divine inspiration and transmute it into worldly forms, is higher than all of those.

The highest kind of man is spiritual. Men at this level are all but invisible to those who have not seen beyond. Despite this, their influence is the most powerful. These men of gold complete the divine calling begun by the men of mercury. The spiritual man has transcended the need to control the material world. Only the higher pleasures are still desired.

At the top level of the Mithraic Ladder, not even seeing beyond is enough. One must have fully integrated those visions, such that one’s own being radiates the divine. This is a conception of masculinity enormously far removed from the warrior at the level of iron. If the warrior imposes order upon the physical, the philosopher imposes order upon the metaphysical.

Complicating this admittedly one-dimensional view of masculinity are the great many bullshitters and bluffers. Because spiritual achievement is not something that can readily be measured, false gurus abound. The sour grapes of failing to assert oneself physically or sexually drives many a man to claim a spiritual acumen he doesn’t truly possess.

It must be emphasised that a man of true power is capable of representing all five of these aspects simultaneously, as per the needs of the situation. Plato may have been a superb philosopher, but he was also a superb wrestler. The completely masculine man is not limited to the level of gold, much less any other one of these five aspects.

These five conceptions of masculinity encompass the spectrum from most material to most spiritual. When times are tough, the men of iron will come to the fore. But when peace reigns, the men of gold start to shine through. The higher the proportion of men of gold in a society, the closer it is to divinity.

These five aspects of masculinity also correspond closely to Plato’s five stages of political decline, as described in Republic. Men of gold correspond to aristocracy, men of mercury to timocracy, men of silver to oligarchy, men of copper to democracy and men of iron to tyranny. Thus, the quality of any political system is primarily a reflection of the quality of the men who comprise it.

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