psychology – Page 98

Is Social Media About to Split Into A Right-Wing Sphere And A Left-Wing Sphere?

Left-wingers rejoiced when a group of major tech companies colluded to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from their sites last week. Right-wingers were horrified, seeing the spectre of Communist-style mass censorship. This essay discusses the possibility that these targeted right-wingers will switch to alt-media, finally following Styxhexenhammer’s repeated admonitions to do so, dividing social media into a right-wing and a left-wing sphere.

The Left is now the Establishment.

If that wasn’t obvious from Brexit, where the Left stood side-by-side with the bankers, big business and the Conservative Party to oppose the working class, or from the American Presidental Election, where the Left threw its weight behind neoliberal warmongering psychopath Hillary Clinton instead of the Bernie Sanders that America needed, it’s obvious by now, after the Free Speech Purges of 2018.

The Left is now the Establishment, and the Right is now the counter-culture.

Neoliberalism is the dominant global political ideology, and has been ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dumped it on an unsuspecting Anglosphere in the early 1980s. The core belief of neoliberalism is that deregulation brings wealth, therefore we ought to repeal all laws that restrict the movement of both labour and money. Laws restricting the movement of labour are bad for business because they drive up wages, and laws restricting the movement of money restrict the investment freedoms of the wealthy.

Being the Establishment, the Left promotes neoliberalism. This has mostly been achieved through leftist support for mass immigration, which had the benefits of destroying solidarity among the locals who received the immigrants, which in turn helped to destroy unions and to drive down wages. The more immigrants, the lower the wages, and therefore the greater the profits. For over three decades, the Left has been involved in laying guilt trips on anyone who didn’t support this.

Unfortunately for the Establishment – and for us – this mass immigration didn’t go as smoothly as most people had expected. Instead of a multicultural paradise, things turned out a lot more like what mass movements of people historically turned out like – an invasion. Despite 24/7 propaganda intended to convince people that this forced integration of different cultures was a good thing, and has had good results, people have become aware of what they have lost.

Like control freaks everywhere, the Establishment cannot admit that it made a mistake. Once an individual becomes part of the Establishment, they consider themselves second only to God, and so far above the plebs that they simply do not ever have to say sorry. Consequently, the Establishment cannot and will not admit that neoliberalism has been a mistake, that it has actually lowered people’s standards of living, instead of raising them.

As before, so after. We can predict from what happened elsewhere what will happen next. The Establishment will crack down on dissent harder and harder as the failures of neoliberalism become ever more obvious. As the realisation grows that neoliberalism has failed and was only beneficial to a small financial elite, people will get angry. The Establishment will respond with ever more aggressive anti-free speech laws.

These can already be seen on major tech platforms like Reddit, where free speech is limited to a small number of subreddits such as The_Donald, on Twitter where calls for the genocide of white people go unpunished but remarks about Jews or blacks result in instant bannings, and on FaceBook where right-wing jokes result in 30-day bans while left-wing calls to violate the human rights of right-wingers get no sanction.

For alt-centrists such as us here at VJM Publishing, this division of social media is not welcomed, because it is another sign that the political centre is dying and the extremes are growing, which is a sign of impending war. War means waste of blood and treasure, which means that fewer people are willing and able to buy our books.

However, we have to admit that our prediction is for the crackdowns against freethinkers to continue, until those on the Right decide they have had enough. At that point, social media to split into a left-wing sphere where discourse is dominated by Establishment tech firms, and a right-wing sphere where discourse is free. Evidence of this comes in the form of massive recent growth in alt-tech platforms such as Minds and BitChute.

Anyone who thinks that this sounds like a revolution – it is. The revolution against neoliberalism is underway. The political world is about to split into a globalist, authoritarian Left and a nationalist, libertarian Right. This authoritarian Left will be the major apologists for neoliberalism, while the Right will look to the future.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).

Writing Bulimia Nervosa

Bulimia nervosa (usually known as bulimia) is a psychiatric condition characterised by intense bouts of over-eating, followed by a “purge” of some kind. The condition is about nine times more common in women than in men, and is believed to affect 1% of young women at any given time. This article looks at how to write engaging and believable characters with bulimia.

The classic example of bulimic behaviour is to consume an abnormally large amount of food, and then go to the toilet to vomit it all up. It’s worth noting that simply throwing up a lot, even after eating, is not sufficient for a bulimia diagnosis. The throwing up is not the main factor, as the condition is psychological and not physical.

It’s also worth noting that bulimia is very different to anorexia, despite that both conditions are eating disorders caused by a nervous complaint. Bulimics and anorexics share many symptoms, in particular the obsession with food and body image, but there are major differences. Bulimics are often at or near a healthy weight (despite the unhealthiness of much of their activity), and anorexics do not binge eat as a general rule.

If the protagonist of your story encounters another character with bulimia, it might be a matter of slowly coming to the realisation. The character with bulimia might show signs of having thrown up a lot or recently, such as bloodshot, puffy eyes or burst blood vessels in the face. Other physical tell-tale signs are low energy and evidence of self-harm.

Another character might give away signs that they are falling into a pattern of bulimia. An obsession with dietary rules is a common early sign. A character developing bulimia might also develop a set of strict dietary rules that they expect themselves to abide by. These rules might seem obsessional to a second character, but the bulimic character is unlikely to appreciate this sentiment.

These rules are key to understanding the condition. Because consuming fewer calories than one needs to survive is not sustainable in the long-term, the strict dietary rules will inevitably be broken. This doesn’t come with a sense of relief but a sense of horror and shame – feelings so intense that they have to be purged. In this state, vomiting often brings the desired relief.

If the protagonist of your story has bulimia, they are likely to live a very difficult life with a considerable amount of confusion. Thoughts of suicide are common, a symptom of both the condition itself and the difficult life circumstances caused by the condition. Also common are depressive and obsessive-compulsive thoughts, especially self-recrimination and rituals relating to food.

A protagonist with bulimia will probably experience a great deal of anxiety in their everyday life. This is not just because of the condition itself, with the neverending worry and guilt relating to food and body shape. It is also because of the social anxiety that comes with trying to keep their condition a secret. Your protagonist might find themselves telling lies to keep other characters from realising they are bulimic.

A character who develops bulimia may do so on account of exposure to media images that create an idea about what a human body ought to look like. It’s common for teenage girls – especially those who have never previously thought about their bodies as things that sexually attract men – to develop an obsession with what their bodies ought to look like. Bodily self-hate is an inevitable consequence of this for some people.

Some societies that have not yet been exposed to sophisticated and manipulative Western advertising culture find it a shock when they finally are. Many people have been unaware of the possibility of hating their own body on account of it being the “wrong shape”. Some cultures are naive when it comes to lies and lying, and are more easily affected by them. These cultures can see sudden spikes of bulimia rates when this advertising does come.

Like many other psychiatric conditions, bulimia carries an increased risk of depression, anxiety and self-harm. Thoughts like this form an unpleasant positive feedback loop, where the low self-regard puts a person at risk for bulimia and the bulimia causes low self-regard. A character with the condition may not realise that their thoughts are circular. On the other hand, they might be all too aware, and start losing sanity.

Also like other psychiatric conditions, there is a body of literature that suggests a strong correlation between having bulimia and early childhood abuse, in this case sexual. It’s possible that the trauma of sexual abuse leads to some difficulty in handling thoughts and feelings related to one’s own sexual attractiveness.

Bulimia is, along with anorexia and schizophrenia, one of the psychiatric conditions most likely to end in suicide. It is easily possible that such a fate will await a bulimic character in your story – after all, the average woman can no easier look like a photomodel than the average man can look like Schwarzenegger. However, like most mental illnesses, the majority of people with bulimia find some way to accommodate it in their lives.

This article is an excerpt from Writing With The DSM-V (Writing With Psychology Book 5), edited by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Buildings Words

Hospital – hōhipera

Some prostitutes get shot outside a hospital and come inside to get medical care. The hospital is a whore helper.

School – kura

A courier rider rides through town, and eventually rides into a school to drop off a package. He’s the school courier.

Church – whare karakia

A ferry sails past with a church on top of it. Suddenly there is a big crack that splits the ferry in half, right up through the centre of the church all the way to the spire. The church is a ferry crack.

Airport – papa rererangi

A family is sitting at an airport. A young man gets off his phone and says to his father “Papa, Rory rang”.

Library – whare pukapuka

A ferry sails past with a library on top of it. Inside the library, two cars full of cow manure drive through looking for books. The library is a ferry poo car poo car.

Town Hall – hōro

Outside of a town hall, a number of prostitutes stand in a line. The town hall is now a whore row.

The Māori word for ‘school’ – kura – shares ‘k’, ‘u’, ‘r’ sounds at the beginning with the English word ‘courier’

Railway Station – teihana rerewē

Outside of a railway station, a man sits balancing a pile of tea bags in one hand and a tea kettle in another. The railway station is a teahand railway.

Fire Station – whare tinei ahi

A ferry sails past with a fire station on top of it. Two firemen have one eye normal and one eye made of tin. The fire station is a top a ferry tinny eye.

Port – tumu herenga waka

On top of a cargo ship, two cows are listening to a noise below. Down below at the port, a man is using a weed whacker to keep some vegetation at bay. At the port is two moos hearing a whacker.

Post Office – poutāpeta

The Post Office is flooded, but a petal falls off a giant flower and lands on the water like a boat. The postman uses it to paddle out of the Post Office. He is a boater petal.

Museum – whare tongarewa

On top of a ferry, there is a museum. An electrician wearing a Tongan rugby jersey enters the musuem and pulls out some wires to rewire then. The museum is undergoing a ferry tongan rewire.

Tower – pūwhara

Atop a stone tower, a man stands with his son. The man points to an object and asks “What’s that?” His son looks through some binoculars and says “It’s a poo, father.”

The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Ethnonationalism Spectrum

Despite being an accurate description of the way that human societies organised themselves for ten thousand years, the word ‘ethnostate’ has become taboo recently. Although the debate is usually dominated by arguments between insane Nazis and insane Marxists, there is a fascinating variety of opinions on the question of how wide and/or porous the group borders should be. This essay attempts to put them on a spectrum.

The two poles of the ethnonationalism spectrum are ethnosupremacism and ethnomasochism.

Ethnosupremacism found its apogee in the racial supremacist doctrines of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1940s, under which the Eastern Europeans were declared subhuman and therefore less worthy of existing in the lands of Poland and Ukraine than the German soldiers to who the land was promised. This pole of the spectrum fell out of favour, understandably, when the German “Drang nach Osten” ended up causing the deaths of over 25 million people.

There are two aspects to ethnosupremacism (see: The Three Definitions of Racism) and one is much more dangerous than the other. The first can be considered a sort of pride in the achievements of one’s kin and is little different to individual self-esteem raised to the group level, whereas the second is the belief that other ethnicities are categorically lesser and perhaps even ought to be exterminated.

The first step from ethnosupremacism towards sanity could be called ethnoconservatism. This is the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” of the ethnonationalist spectrum. This position is similar to regular conservatism on the class spectrum. Essentially it says that, because one’s own kind are doing well from the way that society is structured, there is nothing wrong with the way society is structured and it should therefore stay the same.

This is different to ethnosupremacism in the sense that the ethnosupremacist doesn’t believe that any amount of money can help the lesser races overcome their inherently base nature, whereas the ethnoconservative doesn’t care, they just don’t want to pay for it. Likewise, the ethnoconservative doesn’t despise other races, they just don’t think it’s right to mix with them, for whatever reasons.

This is a common position in the New World, on account of that the remnants of the native population are often much poorer than the descendants of the settlers. If an individual feels that the Government shouldn’t charge them taxes in order to fund social programs etc. intended to reduce income inequality, they are likely to take this position.

Ethnomasochism has found its apogee today, in the anti-white SJW culture that represents the furthest swing of the Great Pendulum away from the ethnosupremacism of the Nazis. Ethnomasochism is discussed at length here but could be summarised as a belief that one’s own kind were worthy of particular disgrace on account of some past political misdeeds. Very often, ethnomasochism is the result of a low self-esteem, whereby the individual’s self-hatred is projected onto the race as a defence mechanism.

The first step from ethnomasochism towards sanity is a realisation that individuals do not inherit sin from their forefathers, and that even if they did, it would be impossible to determine how much blame one’s forefathers had caused one to inherit. However, if one is more intelligent than the average person one might come to perceive that gross pride in one’s race is considered vulgar by most cultured people and that a modicum of racial humility ought to be adopted, on occasion, for the sake of politeness.

A white person here might not possess any self-hatred but might make a joke about how a high proportion of child sex offenders are white people. An Asian might make a joke about how he’s shit at driving, and a black person might make a joke about how he feels tempted to steal something. This is not genuine self-hatred but a kind of self-deprecation for the sake of social utility. Indeed, a person needs to have genuine self-esteem before they can joke about themselves in this manner.

This is the position most commonly associated with sanguine cosmopolitanism and could be described as ethnocurious. Many people who are university educated or who identify with the left-libertarian quadrant (of the common political model) are here, especially if they are the sort of person who does a lot of international travel. Ethnocurious people often have foreign girlfriends or boyfriends, and can prefer other races on account of that interactions with their own kind lack novelty.

In the middle of the spectrum is a point of reason. Here it is acknowledged that each person is an individual, and therefore neither responsible for the crimes of their race nor able to take credit for its accomplishments, and yet that each person has genetic characteristics that have shaped the way that their environment has treated them, and which have thereby shaped their life story.

Here one believes that the most logical thing to do, therefore, is to treat everyone else as equal partners in a grand human project to minimise the amount of suffering endured by conscious beings in this world. Other people are to be understood but their resentments are not to be encouraged.

Unfortunately for us, this point of reason conflicts with all the other positions. Ethnosupremacists will shun you for being a weakling who is unwilling to stand up for his own kind. Ethnoconservatives will shun you for being a suspected Marxist. The ethnocurious feel like this position wilfully misses out of much of the flavour that life has to offer, and ethnomasochists will despise you for not adopting their quasi-religious narrative that their particular race is guilty.

Even more unfortunately, this point of reason conflicts with neoliberal ideology (the prevailing ideology of our age), and so a combination of state and corporate power has colluded to obscure the truth about it. Neoliberal ideology demands that any desire on the part of big business for cheap labour can be met by simply opening the borders to mass Third World immigration, and so any problems that might be caused on account of mixing together people of genotypes that never previously mixed can be dismissed as racism.

The dumber a person is, the more likely they are to pick an unsophisticated position at either pole of the ethnonationalist spectrum. If they are sadistic they will choose ethnosupremacism where everyone else is subhuman, if they are masochistic they will choose ethnomasochism where everyone else is an immoral oppressor. If they are intelligent they will have a nuanced position somewhere centrist.