the human condition – Page 41

Is Being A Worker in 2019 Preferable To Chattel Slavery?

The school system and the mainstream media put a lot of effort into convincing us to be grateful for our lot. An entire apparatus of propaganda is devoted to pre-emptively quell rebellious impulses, so that our ruling classes can go about their business unaffected. As this essay will discuss, the overall quality of the lives of many of us today may be lower than that of chattel slaves in times past.

Although it is not acknowledged today, there are many advantages to being a chattel slave that are not enjoyed by modern workers.

The physical body of the slave is an expensive asset. The joke is that slaves are antique farm equipment, but there’s truth to it. In relative terms, spending on maintenance to keep the bodies of the slaves healthy is one of the largest expenses borne by a plantation owner.

One thing about the modern system of employment is that responsibility for the maintenance of the body of the worker is placed back on the worker. The worker is paid when the slave is not, and this single fact alone is supposed to entail perfect freedom. But this means that the worker themselves have to bear the cost of maintaining their body so that they can continue to work.

In today’s economy, there are many workers who are also homeless. This doesn’t happen under a system of chattel slavery, because under such a system the slaveowner is obliged to provide shelter to his valuable assets, lest they become sick and unproductive. This incentivises the slaveowner to build and provide adequate housing.

The modern employer has no such concerns. The worker themselves is responsible for their housing, and if they have to go homeless then tough shit. The employer doesn’t need to care because, if the homeless worker becomes sick or dies, they can just import some more cheap labour from overseas.

The modern worker is also responsible for their own food and medicine. One might argue that the range of food choices available to the modern worker greatly exceed that available to the slave. Against this, it has to be pointed out that the slave ended up eating more nutritious food on average – as evidenced by lower rates of obesity and diabetes. The slave may not have had a banquet every night, but their owner did have an interest in maintaining their body.

This interest in maintaining the body of the slave, on account of that it was a valuable asset, is why slaves were not beaten and whipped as much as is often supposed. The degree to which this happened would seldom have exceeded the point at which it cost the slaveowner money. A slaveowner isn’t going to beat a slave to death any more than a farmer is to set his own combine harvester on fire. It would just cost too much.

This disinclination to abuse underlings does not apply to the modern working environment. Although corporal punishment is illegal, in practice any amount of psychological abuse is legal. Bullying and threats are considered normal and acceptable ways to establish compliance.

So those who say that a slaveowner wasn’t punished for working a slave to death have to balance that with the fact that a modern employer isn’t punished for working an employee to suicide.

Some might make the argument that the modern worker is free to choose another workplace if they don’t like their arrangement at the current one. At least the modern worker is not bound to one physical area like the slave is.

The reality, however, is that all employers within a country collude to make sure that labour costs never rise above a certain point. This they primarily achieve by lobbying the government to allow, and by propagandising the population to accept, the mass importation of cheap labour. This has the effect of driving labour costs to the floor. Therefore, it doesn’t matter where the worker goes – he can only earn a pittance.

If the worker wants more than a pittance, then fuck him out the door and replace him with an immigrant who lives thirty to a house and who is (ironically) supporting a family in their homeland with their remittances. They will be happy to be earning minimum wage because they’re not trying to raise a family here.

Others might make the argument that the modern worker is free to upskill if they don’t want to take a position where they are treated poorly.

For one thing, this ignores the fact that many people are not capable of upskilling to the middle class on account of that middle-class jobs almost invariably require an IQ of 100 or higher – and only 50% of the population has that.

For another, it ignores the fact that mass immigration has been so intense in recent decades that even wages for skilled labour have been driven to the floor. Realistically, in our modern society, there are owners and the owned – and the owners feel they have the right to staff their properties with whoever they see fit.

A further advantage to being a chattel slave on a plantation is that it was possible for your work to get done. A cotton plantation only has a certain acreage, and the harvest only occurs at certain times. Outside of these times, if there’s no work to do then no work gets done. When it was time to work the days would have been long and arduous, but the shifts wouldn’t have been longer than those worked by oilmen or hospital staff today.

This contrasts with the modern workplace. In the modern workplace, the employer has their systems optimised to squeeze every last second of productivity out of their worker, who works to an industrial schedule. The average workplace is no longer supporting a local industry, but is now part of a globalised network of industries that pillages the local area for the profit of someone who lives on another continent.

Perhaps the foremost advantage to being a chattel slave, however, is that it was possible to have someone to hate. The slaveowner might expect that you will work a certain number of hours for no pay, but at least you could hate him and talk to the other slaves about how terrible and evil he was, and you could expect them to agree.

The modern workplace offers no such simple pleasure. Hating your employer will see you fired nine times out of ten, and even confessing such a hatred to a workmate is liable to see you sacked. You’re expected to absorb psychological abuse and remain grateful for the fact that you’r able to eat.

All in all, the modern industrial worker might have many reasons to feel envious of a chattel slave from bygone times. That kind of life would not have been easy, but at least the suffering inherent to it would be limited by what was technologically possible for the time. The advanced and sophisticated psychological cruelty of the industrial system would not have been a factor.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

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The Four Kinds of Tribe

Humans are tribal animals, and have been since before we were even humans. It’s very difficult for an individual to feel at peace if they do not also feel like they are part of a tribe who are watching their back. As this essay will examine, there are four major kinds of tribe, corresponding to the four feminine elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

The element of Earth corresponds to the soil, and reflects one fundamental kind of tribe: that which grows out of the soil together. This kind of tribe is that which occupies a particular geographical territory. The element of Water corresponds to blood, and reflects the other fundamental kind of tribe: that which is related by family relations. Roughly speaking, Earth can be described as neighbourhood and Water as family.

In a state of Nature, there is very little difference between the first two kinds of tribe. This is because, in a state of Nature, the overwhelming majority of people don’t move very far from where they were born. So what people usually mean by their tribe is those who they share bonds of soil and blood with. For the first 99% of human history, one’s tribe was the same thing as one’s tribe of Earth or Water.

The third kind of tribe is the tribe of ideology. This corresponds to the element of Air. This could be said to have first come into existence with the arrival of civilisation. The advent of civilisation brought with it original dilemmas, such as whether or not a person should leave their tribe of savages to join the clean and peaceful people. This opportunity would have created great tensions with the loyalties to the tribes of Earth and Water.

In this sense, religions count as ideologies, because they are also supranational and also of the mind and not the physical world. The existence of religion creates an ideological tribe that inevitably leads to tension with existing bonds of solidarity with tribes of soil and blood. This is especially true now that the Age of Imperialism has mixed things up so much.

The fourth kind of tribe is the tribe of spirit, or frequency. This corresponds to the element of Fire, and reflects a person’s soul or true nature, independent of outside influences.

The bonds of solidarity at this level are, like flames, both subtle and extremely powerful. Not everyone automatically understands what their own spiritual tribe is, which is why the bonds are subtle. When understood, however, these spiritual bonds can often override the others.

All four of these tribal affiliations can play off against each other.

The tribes of Earth and Water can come into conflict when two blood tribes come to compete for the same territory. One tribe might get pushed out of their territory by a natural disaster or by a stronger tribe, and this often leads to them fighting with the incumbent tribe in the new territory they enter.

They also conflict a lot in today’s world on account of that there has been so much immigration. A New Zealander might find himself facing a loyalty test between people of a different race but who they grew up around and people of the same race but from other countries. This conflict occurs anywhere there is mass movement of peoples.

The tribes of Air often conflict with those of Earth and Water when ideological demands cause bonds of physical solidarity to weaken. Certain religious traditions, in particular the Abrahamic ones, run across racial lines. This means that followers of a religion might have divided loyalties, where they are as loyal to a foreigner of the same religion as they are to a countryman who follows a different creed.

Luke 12:51-52 cites Jesus as saying “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.” This says explicitly that the religious ideology promoted by Jesus would threaten existing bonds of soil and blood. This is all but inevitable, unless a person’s ideology stems directly from the soil and blood themselves.

Another common conflict here is when a person from a particular family graduates into a different social class. A person from a working-class family might get an advanced education, and this might put them in conflict between their intellectual peers – who respect that person’s education and appreciate them for it – and their blood relatives who don’t appreciate it or who feel envious about it.

The tribes of Fire conflict with all of the others. A person’s spirit will see them form bonds of solidarity with others who have the same spirit, and this is true even within a family or an ideology. These spiritual bonds can cause all kinds of subtle tensions – or gross ones.

A classic conflict is when a couple’s romantic inclinations cause them to come into conflict with their tribes of Earth, Water or Air. This often happens when a person falls in love with a foreigner, because foreigners are often of different religions and races as well as different geographical areas. Some family and friends will not approve – others will think it great.

Another one is when a person’s true Nature causes them to feel bonds of solidarity with certain people – and not others – within a workplace or social club. This phenomenon could be said to be the basis of true friendship, because the solidarity involved does not necessarily confer material benefit.

These four basic kinds of tribe can be found all over the world, and so can the basic types of conflict between them. As the world continues to rapidly change and become more complex, we can predict that conflicts between the four kinds of tribe will occur with greater frequency. This is true whether the conflict occurs between or within groups, or between or within individuals.

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The Truth May Incite Racial Hatred

Otago University professor James Flynn has had a book about free speech, In Defence of Free Speech, scheduled for and then pulled from publication by British publisher Emerald Press. A representative for Emerald Press wrote to Flynn and said the book “could be seen to incite racial hatred and stir up religious hatred under United Kingdom law.” This essay examines whether or not the truth itself incites racial hatred, and if so what we can do about it.

Professor Flynn is by no means a racist. There are many former students of his willing to attest to his sparkling intelligence and deeply thoughtful nature. He has never been accused of treating another person with disrespect on account of their race, and has never even been accused of making a racist remark. Measured in terms of hate for other races, Flynn is an entirely decent person.

Professor Flynn is, however, a scientist. This means that he is passionately committed to discovering the truth, and to helping the truth shine through from among all the misconceptions and lies. Being good at science means being able to tease out strands of truth from the tapestry of confusion that forms the background of our lives. A really good scientist will be able to do this even in the face of social pressure pushing them to lie.

Something known to all scientists is that there are no two identical things in Nature. There are no two identical mountains, no identical trees, no identical snowflakes. No two identical dogs, no identical cats, no identical people. This is true at all levels of nature, from stars down to ants, and is even true across the dimensions of space and time.

The fact that there are no two identical things in Nature is so deeply understood by real scientists that they even understand the laws that explain how this has come to pass. Gause’s Law, or the competitive exclusion principle, describes how no two identical things can exist in ecology because they would compete for the same niche and thereby destroy one another.

All of this means that the idea that all races must have the same IQ can be dismissed right off the bat. There is no reason to think that all races must have the same IQ any more than there is to think that all families or professions must have the same IQ. The way that intelligence is measured doesn’t matter in this regard.

This logic deeply upsets the many who passionately believe in racial equality. Those who cling tightly to the belief that all races are precisely equal in all non-physical characteristics tend to become enraged at the assertion of scientific evidence that suggests otherwise. Their position is known as equalitarianism, and the assertion that all races are the same in all intellectual and behavioural measures is known as the equalitarian dogma.

Social justice warriors have pushed for decades the idea that questioning the equalitarian dogma is the same thing as spreading racial hatred. This lazy, self-righteous line of thinking claims that the only reason a person would want to talk about racial differences is if they were a racist trying to sow discord between peoples, or to exclude or exterminate some disfavoured races. This tactic is, in reality, an example of the broader authoritarian strategy of silencing all opposition by whatever means necessary.

A 1994 article in the journal Intelligence by IQ researcher Philippe Rushton describes the same thing that happened to Flynn last month happening to Rushton 25 years ago – and to Hans Eysenck 20 years before that. Already in 1994 it was possible to state, of the documented difference in average racial IQ, that “Today the evidence has increased so much that it is almost certain that only evolutionary (and thereby genetic) theories can explain it.” But evidence does not appease the mob.

The abuse that Rushton documents in the linked article is eerily reminiscent of that facing scientists today. Eysenck was physically attacked in 1973 by activists marching under the slogan “Fascists Have No Right To Speak.” In 2019, Jordan Peterson comes in for similar treatment for similar reasons (a phenomenon this newspaper has previously described as Peterson Derangement Syndrome).

The Emerald Press decision might be ideosyncratic, but it also reflects the prevailing attitude among those who control the apparatus of propaganda. The world’s ruling class is implacably committed to the doctrine of globalism, for a variety of reasons. Globalism is a lot easier to accept if a person already assumes equalitarianism, because such an assumption implies that borders are arbitrary and people interchangeable. Therefore, assertions of other doctrines are suppressed.

The difficulty is that the science itself demolishes equalitarianism.

Books like IQ and Global Inequality, published in 2006, conclusively demonstrate that the average IQ of a population is the primary factor that determines that population’s standard of living. The fact that IQ predicts future wealth and earnings is one of the best documented phenomena in all of psychology, both at the individual and the group level. The higher the IQ, the wealthier is all but a law.

This suggests that allowing people from low-IQ countries to immigrate to the West is a recipe for lowering the standard of living that the West currently enjoys. Because intelligence is mostly hereditary, low-IQ immigrants will have low-IQ children, who will then grow up to make low-IQ decisions, thus impoverishing and lowering the living standards of those around them.

Unfortunately, this entirely reasonable position is equated, by the globalists who control the apparatus of propaganda, with the position that all races need to be segregated from one another, or worse. This deliberate conflation means that it’s all but impossible to discuss the science of race and intelligence without being accused of being a Nazi, supporting Nazis, furthering Nazism, or dogwhistling to Nazis.

All of this means that we are presented with a dilemma. We either speak honestly about the science of race and intelligence, which means that we expose ourselves to being attacked by hysterical mobs of virtue-signallers shrieking about Nazis, or we don’t speak honestly about the science of race and intelligence, which means that the superstitious fools who think with emotions and their authoritarian puppetmasters win the day.

Perhaps the best move, as has been discussed here previously, is to pull back to the secret societies who meet behind closed doors for the purposes of being able to discuss taboo subjects, safely away from hysterical moralisers. This is supposed to be what the universities are for, but now that the university culture has been corrupted by the mass entry of plebs it may be necessary to reform it under new conditions.

It’s either that or hope that the sands of public opinion shift to supporting free speech and free inquiry.

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How to Cope With Climate Hysteria

A recent article on NewsHub offered some advice for coping with climate anxiety and despair. What is needed, however, is advice for coping with something far more dangerous than climate change: the mass hysteria around climate change. This essay gives some advice to those trying to find a way to cope with the Climate Chimpout.

The Climate Chimpout is best personified by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who is jetting around the world to warn us of the consequences of excess consumption. In a voice quavering with rage, Thunberg admonishes us adults for our part in destroying the planet. Like Blade Runner‘s Roy Batty, Thunberg sees us as stealing her life potential.

Thunberg is far from unique. The human mind, having evolved over several hundred thousand years to solve short-term survival issues of finding food, water and shelter, is not at all suited to solving long-term global issues like climate change. The very thought of world-ending catastrophe just makes us chimp out. The more the media pushes the issue of climate change, the more hysteria our monkey brains will generate.

The first thing to keep in mind is that climate hysteria cannot be prevented.

Climate change itself may or may not be preventable, but the hysteria now has its own momentum. The people who own the mainstream media have an interest in keeping the consumer class in a state of anxiety, because anxiety keeps people consuming. The owners and manipulators of the apparatus of propaganda are skillful enough that they can produce virtually any result they desire – and they desire fear.

There are a limited number of things one can do about the hysteria, and they fall into two categories: things that are unhelpful and things that are helpful.

The most unhelpful thing that one can do is go along with the crowd and panic. Yes, it may well seem that scientific data is pointing towards major lifestyle changes being enforced upon us by resource scarcity. This is not a reason to panic and to add to the hysteria. Panicking will just lead to more shitty, short-term decisions being made.

These changes forced on us, no matter how major, will take place over many years and decades. Better to focus our energies on things like mindfulness and centering practices. A person could help things by calming their own frequency down to the point where they can think more clearly. This can inspire others around them to do the same.

Another unhelpful thing one can do is to fall into anarcho-nihilism. Global problems have the tendency to make individuals feel powerless. A paralysing condition known as learned helplessness can set in, making it impossible to motivate oneself to take any action. The result has been satirised with the Doomer meme, and described with the Black Pill meme, but is really just depression.

Much like panicking, falling into despair can also become contagious. The sight of another person in despair is sometimes enough to engender it in oneself, which is why the Greta Thunberg Show could be said to be a black magic ritual performed for the sake of seizing control. A moral imperative exists, therefore, to not despair, so that one might keep morale high.

Hedonism is a third option. This isn’t necessarily a failure, because there may be nothing more to life than the imperative to entertain the gods. Living to enjoy life as much as possible, while ultimately pointless, is at least meaningful in the immediate present. Acting to pursue pleasure, or at a minimum novel experiences, is at least a gameplan.

However, hedonism fails where the other two strategies fail: it does not significantly alleviate the suffering associated with human existence. The best it can do is distraction. As mentioned above, there may be no more to life than the patterns of behaviours we perform to distract ourselves from the suffering inherent to existence. But it is for those who feel there is more this essay is written.

At its most basic, the challenge brought about by climate change is an existential one.

One a deeper level, there is one brutal truth that can neither be escaped or denied. That is the fact that we were all going to die anyway, climate or otherwise, and therefore climate change doesn’t change the basic existential equation. In fact, most people today can expect to die before climate change causes them major survival challenges.

Most of us alive today will be dead within 60 years, as the natural metabolic processes of our bodies lead to them becoming worn out. Almost certainly, everyone currently alive will be dead within 120 years, and, even if we discovered some kind of process that allowed for extreme life extension, eventually the Sun will transform into a red giant and consume the Earth in cosmic hellfire.

Climate change, no matter how bad it gets, does not alter the essential truth that our great war is a spiritual war.

No matter how bad things appear to become in the material world, the fact remains that we are spiritual beings having a limited human experience. The solution, therefore, remains the same as it ever was. Make peace with God, then make peace with your neighbour. Enjoy the company of all the people you can, good and bad ones alike, for they are all cursed to die, just as you are.

It’s apparent that we cannot take any physical wealth with us into the next world, and it’s not clear that the social connections we have on this side will mean much either. It’s far from a sure thing that if we are intelligent, wise or strong-willed in this world we will be so in the next one. All of these qualities are merely contents of consciousness, and therefore as transitory and ephemeral as the others.

What is believable is that our frequency of consciousness continues beyond the death of the physical body. It is this that determines our fate when we stand, stripped of all illusion, before God. A high-frequency consciousness of kindness and understanding will reincarnate among like-minded. A low-frequency consciousness of narcissism and brutality will also reincarnate among like-minded.

Climate hysteria cannot affect a truly spiritual person, because they will understand that climate change doesn’t really change anything. The basic facts of life are still the same, and the most important thing is still coming to terms with them.

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