Clown World Chronicles: What is 'Pathological Altruism'?

Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Pathological Altruism’?

Altruism is the mortar holding together every community of social beings. In the biological past, groups of social beings that learned to be altruistic outcompeted those who were more selfish. This led to the range of pro-social behaviours that we see on display in the world today. But there’s an upper limit to how much altruism is appropriate. Too much of it, and it becomes pathological.

Pathological altruism arises when a population forgets how dangerous the world naturally is. It’s most common in populations where the crime rate has stayed low for an extended period of time. In populations like this, people can mistakenly come to believe that low rates of predatory behaviour are normal, and therefore precautions do not need to be taken.

In Clown World, pathological altruism manifests as kindess and tolerance towards people who show no inclination to reciprocate it. It can be seen everywhere people attempt to stop abuse by showering love on the abusers. It’s a phenomenon closely related to both narcissistic masochism and virtue signalling.

A kind but non-pathological person will withdraw their kindness once they see that it isn’t respected. A pathological altruist, by contrast, will keep making sacrifices for others even when those others clearly demonstrate that they aren’t grateful. This is a pathology because helping the ungrateful will quickly end up destroying the helper.

Pathological altruism might be summed up best by the Parable of the Woman and the Snake from the film Natural Born Killers:

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, “Why have you done this to me?” And the snake answered, “Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.”

Some of the altruism being shown in Clown World today is much like the altruism of the woman in the above parable. It’s a reckless, quasi-suicidal mentality that is similar to that of the Dodo birds of Mauritius approaching the Portuguese sailors. Unfortunately, in Clown World, this pathological altruism affects many people, and the rest of us are in danger of being dragged down with them.

There is already ample evidence that allowing certain folk groups (in particular Muslims and Africans) into one’s country will lead to a decrease in the average person’s quality of life.

Most convicted rapists in Sweden are foreign-born. One Aftonbladet study found that 82 out of 112 gang rapists were foreign-born. In Scandinavia overall, immigrants commit rape at over 40 times the rate of natives. In Germany, North African immigrants commit crimes at some 17 times the rate of natives. In some parts of Britain, half of all rape and murder suspects are foreigners.

Yet, despite the ample and undeniable evidence that mass immigration of these groups leads to suffering, anyone who points this out is liable to have people turn on them like a pack of wild dogs. Clown World altruism is so pathological that anyone who questions its application is marked as a sadist. It’s become so absurd that those who question the value of the mass immigration of Muslims and Africans are now blamed for the consequences of it.

In Clown World, pathological altruism is not only displayed towards outsiders at the expense of oneself and one’s own kin. It can also be displayed towards moral reprobates at the expense of oneself and one’s own kin.

As demonstrated in the later chapter ‘Justice in Clown World‘, pathological altruism can arise in the courtroom, where it gives light penalties to unrepentant criminals who will predictably continue offending. Pathological altruism is to blame every time a judge gives a psychopath a sentence that will see them back out on the streets in short order.

Usually such moves are explained as kindness. However, this kind of altruism is pathological, because it increases the amount of suffering in the world by enabling patterns of abuse. When an unrepentant abuser finds someone who enables their behaviour, it can continue to extreme lengths. Being kind to abusers makes no more sense than the lamb being kind to the wolves.

This is not to argue that altruism itself is bad. Genuine kindness is very much the gold to the silver, iron and clay of all other sentiments. However, gold is soft, and as such it can be easily defeated. If kindness is applied without discrimination, it leads to more suffering than if kindness was reserved for the right targets.

Pathological altruism is different to the ruling class showing altruism to outsiders at the expense of the lower classes. The ruling class never invites refugees into their own neighbourhoods; they might invite them into the country, but inevitably dump them in working-class neighbourhoods. This isn’t pathological, because, by doing so, they manage to keep their class enemies divided and conquered.

The ruling class preys on existing pathological altruism, especially in the middle class, to manufacture consent for measures that harm the masses. The mass importation of cheap labour is the primary way this is done.

Pathological altruism is highly prevalent in Clown World because people have had it so easy for many decades. When people are wealthy, they treat each other more kindly. So when people are wealthy for a long time, it means they are kind for a long time. This leads to people thinking that kindness is normal, and that all humans are inherently kind if just given a chance.

This child-like naivety is pathological in adults. In its most extreme form it can lead to cases like the Norwegian politician Karsten Hauken, who felt guilt when the Somali immigrant who had raped him was deported. Having altruistic sentiments towards someone who raped you is deeply sick, practically suicidal. Yet in Clown World, such sentiments are common.

The presence of pathological altruism ensures that mass Third World immigration will keep happening, despite that a majority of Europeans want to stop further immigration from Muslim countries completely – only 20% of those surveyed wanted it to continue. Even famously pro-refugee Sweden wants to take in fewer refugees. But as long as the ruling class can get a vocal minority to scream about racism every time someone suggests border control, the cheap labour will keep flooding in.

Pathological altruism won’t go away until Clown World collapses and Westerners suffer for an extended period of time. That will teach us, like the generations that preceded the Boomers, to be more correctly discriminating with our compassion.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in January 2021.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 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 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

If you would like to support our work in other ways, please consider subscribing to our SubscribeStar fund. Even better, buy any one of our books!

Clown World Chronicles: What Is ‘Solipsism’?

Clown World is a mess for many reasons: physical, emotional, economic, political, spiritual. Some of the reasons are philosophical. These philosophical reasons relate to popular delusions that have arisen as a result of faulty logic. One of the most harmful of those delusions is solipsism.

Solipsism is the belief that the only consciousness that exists is one’s own. To the solipsist, the material world may or may not be real, but other people are not conscious. All other humans are what is called a philosophical zombie – a non-conscious being.

There is soft solipsism, which is the belief that the existence or otherwise of other consciousnesses is unknowable. There is also hard solipsism, which is the belief that it is known for certain that other consciousnesses don’t exist.

Solipsism is a major philosophical issue, for reasons that become apparent when one thinks through the implications.

Developmental psychologists believe that infants are born solipsistic, and this explains why they are so selfish. Most of them, however, grow up to assume that other people are conscious. This assumption is made by way of analogy. I have a body, and I am conscious. Other people have bodies, therefore they must be conscious too.

When most people reach what Jean Piaget called the formal operational stage, at the start of adolescence, they gain the ability to start thinking in abstract terms. When they do, they often question previous assumptions. If they do this, they soon realise that they don’t actually have any hard proof, whatsoever, that other people are conscious.

The realisation that consciousness has never been detected or measured by any scientific instrument leads to the realisation that no-one really knows if other people are conscious. One’s own consciousness might be entirely alone in this universe, surrounded only by shadows. This is arguably the most terrifying existential thought of all time.

Some people respond to this thought by becoming a variant of solipsist, i.e. someone who believes that they might be the only consciousness in the world. These people believe that other bodies might exist, but those bodies are not conscious and so there is no-one who experiences the suffering or joy of that body.

Others adopt a strange kind of balance position. Other bodies exist, and those bodies may or not be conscious, and so there may or may not be anyone who experiences the suffering or joy of that body. Therefore, that suffering doesn’t need to be taken as seriously as one’s own, because one knows for certain that one’s own suffering is experienced.

The degree to which a person discounts the suffering of other people is the degree to which they are a danger to those others. These beliefs – that one might be the only consciousness in the world, or that only one’s own consciousness is valuable – lie behind all kinds of atrocities and crimes.

If one thinks about it logically, a person’s level of empathy is related to whether or not they think other people are conscious. If other people aren’t conscious, or if their consciousness is of a lower quality, then there’s no reason to take their suffering into account when making decisions. Any measure that decreases the suffering of conscious beings while increasing the suffering of non-conscious beings is permissible.

This logic underpins exploitation of all kinds, from that of animals to that of people considered subhuman. The idea that animals/women/black people aren’t conscious (usually expressed as the idea that they don’t have souls) has underpinned exploitation since the beginning of civilisation. Today, exploitation continues under the logic that, although animals/women/black people may be conscious, the quality of that consciousness is significantly lower.

A psychopath acts as if theirs was the only consciousness that existed. This leads them to act as if other people’s suffering doesn’t matter. As a result, they take decisions that are characteristically psychopathic, such as causing great suffering to other people for marginal benefit to themselves. All exploitation is quasi-psychopathic in nature, and solipsism encourages this exploitation by justifying it.

Solipsism, then, is a major social issue. An increase in solipsism will lead to people making more selfish decisions, which will in turn lead to an increase in suffering. Social decline and solipsism follow each other. If everyone was a solipsist, this world would be hellish, because no-one would ever take other people’s suffering into account. It would be purely dog-eat-dog.

In a normal, healthy state of reality, living beings can sense the consciousness of others. This leads them to behave in ways that minimise the suffering of those others. In Clown World, people are so self-obsessed that they might as well be solipsists. Materialism and spiritual decay have led us to a state where many people are indifferent or oblivious to the suffering of other people. The result of this apathy is Clown World.

There are two ways to solve the problem of other minds.

The first is faith. This is the way that most people overcome solipsistic dilemmas. One simply has faith that other people are conscious. With sufficient faith, questions about whether the brain generates consciousness don’t need to be asked. The risk is that faith wavers, which can lead to ‘solipsistic crises’ where the existence of other consciousnesses is doubted.

The second is gnosis. This way is extremely difficult, and very few have done it. Gnosis involves knowing that other consciousnesses exist. To realise this requires stepping outside the bounds of ordinary consciousness and having a mystic revelation. The risk here is that one can stray too far from normal society. It’s difficult to live the mystic truths and not be considered insane by the masses.

The advantage of the gnosis method is that it leads to a life that’s in tune with the Tao. The person who has achieved theognosis knows that God self-expresses as the multitude of different beings that inhabit this world (and more). As such, the enlightened consciousness regards all other beings as expressions of God, their suffering equally meaningful as one’s own.

If you would like to support our work in other ways, please consider subscribing to our SubscribeStar fund. Even better, buy any one of our books!

Clown World Chronicles: What Is ‘Virtue Signalling’?

Anyone spending any time in social forums recently will have observed people making passionate defences of mass Muslim immigration, of ten-year old drag queens or of transfaggotry, despite not really believing in the truth of their own assertions. This behaviour might seem strange, or even paradoxical. But it’s a long-observed behavioural pattern known as virtue signalling.

In short, virtue signalling is when you show off how wonderful you are. In Clown World, this usually manifests as an overt attempt to communicate one’s moral rectitude to other people.

It’s originally a biological term referring to the efforts of male suitors to impress potential breeding partners. Being well-groomed and smelling good is a way of demonstrating one’s physical health to females. So is performing vigourous physical activity, or posing in a way that displays one’s muscles. These actions signal one’s physical virtue and suitability as a breeding partner.

In the discourse of Clown World, virtue signalling refers to the ubiquitous moral grandstanding that has infected public discussion. In everyday conversation today it’s normal for people, instead of contributing to an exchange of knowledge, to promote themselves as a moral authority. This phenomenon is especially acute on social media and at universities.

In practice, there are three forms of virtue signalling in Clown World.

The first is the aforementioned biological one, of trying to demonstrate one’s genetic quality through superior health and conditioning. When a man raises a curled arm with clenched fist to show off his biceps, or when a woman grows her hair long to show off her youthful vigour, it’s virtue signalling. Although these behaviours happen in Clown World, they are not what is usually meant when ‘virtue signalling’ is used as a pejorative.

The second form is intellectual. The most common expression is using unnecessarily large or uncommon words when speaking or writing. The purpose of doing so is to ascend the intellectual dominance hierarchy by intimidating lesser minds. Although this also happens in Clown World, it’s also not what is usually meant by ‘virtue signalling’.

The third form is moral. This moral grandstanding is usually associated with political and religious figures. It involves presenting oneself as if one possessed a more sophisticated, more refined, more educated moral sense. In Clown World, this third form of virtue signalling is extremely common. When Clown Worlders refer to virtue signalling, they’re probably referring to this.

Am important corollary to this third form is that the virtue signaller does precisely fuck-all about solving the issue they’re beating their chests over. Even when presented with an easy opportunity to help, they will not take it. Actions risk going wrong and lowering one’s social standing – by comparison, virtue signalling is risk-free.

Understanding this form of virtue signalling is essential if one wants to understand Clown World behaviour. It’s so common today that, in 2019, the brilliant American psychologist Geoffrey Miller was able to write an entire book about it.

Virtue signalling is especially common among gutmenschen, baizuos, simps, soyboys, dhimmis and Social Justice Warriors. The undisputed king of virtue signalling, however, is the Christcuck. The Christcuck’s entire gambit is to present himself as a moral authority of such distinction that everyone else is obliged to submit to his instruction.

The origins of virtue signalling, in a human context, reflect our social origins. In the biological past, when we lived as tribes, human societies were more like criminal gangs. If one got offside with the wrong people, one could get ostracised, which probably meant death. Because of resource scarcity and the ever-present threat of famine, people have always needed to get other people to think of them as valuable.

Human societies, whether they admit it or not, are all obsessed with the question of which individuals are the most valuable. This is true from the village to the imperial level. It seems to be hard-wired into the human brain to both rank other people in terms of value, and to strive to be seen as higher value.

All forms of virtue signalling are intended in increase the social position of the signaller. The purpose of loudly proclaiming virtue is that other people will see you as a moral authority.

Intelligent people correctly understand virtue signalling to be a sign of weakness. In practice, high-value people don’t need to virtue signal, because their value is either clearly apparent to everyone, or other people make it apparent to everyone. This is the reason why most professional workers dress without ostentation.

Anyone who does virtue signal, then, is probably low-value. If they weren’t, they’d let their own actions do the talking.

Dumb people, on the other hand, believe that virtue signalling increases their social standing. They are so anxious about being seen as moral authorities, or at least with not being seen as moral reprobates, that they can’t resist a chance to talk themselves up. The act of talking up one’s moral qualifications is the essence of virtue signalling.

Virtue signalling is not going away, because resources are becoming scarcer, and this will intensify the fear of getting ostracised. Also, globalisation has led to steeper and steeper social dominance hierarchies, which require ever-more effort to ascend. Worst of all is the opportunity afforded by social media to effortlessly virtue signal to more and more people.

If you would like to support our work in other ways, please consider subscribing to our SubscribeStar fund. Even better, buy any one of our books!

Clown World Chronicles: Intellectual Culture In Clown World

The intellectual heritage of the West is our greatest achievement and most treasured possession. The insights that our great thinkers have had into the nature of reality are what has led to life here becoming so good. Unfortunately, the coming of Clown World means that everything is now shittier than it needs to be. In few ways is this more evident than in the decline of our intellectual culture.

In Clown World, popular culture has regressed to the lowest common denominator in every aspect. People are less physically healthy than ever, less mentally healthy than ever and less spiritually healthy than ever. This manifests physically as a lack of interest in outdoors activities and sports, and it manifests mentally and spiritually as a lack of interest in intellectual culture of any kind.

In Clown World, people don’t give a shit any more. The spiritual demoralisation that is at the core of our problems has led to a lack of interest in all metaphysical subjects. The only important thing is where the next sedative is coming from, and it doesn’t matter if that sedative is television, alcohol, Oxycontin, social media, porn or psychiatric medications.

The last thing anyone wants is to know any more about this terrible place. Intellectual curiosity is seen as a defect and not a virtue. Better to know as little as possible, and just plod onwards until death.

Because this attitude has become widespread, it has not been necessary to enslave anyone with chains of iron or the threat of execution by riflefire. The general spiritual and existential malaise is severe enough that people are satisfied to merely be granted distractions. As long as those distractions keep coming, we are sufficiently grateful to be complacent.

Intellectual culture has withered from all these distractions. Because the mass media directs its appeal to the lowest common denominator, intellectual culture has all but vanished from television and is being pushed from the Internet. In its place we get celebrity gossip and racial hysteria, the low-frequency soundtrack to the Muttening.

These phenomena were anticipated by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. In this novel, Huxley suggested that the totalitarianism of the future didn’t need to brutalise people into submission. It could, instead, use sophisticated modern psychology to manipulate people into wanting to submit. Instead of soma, we are bombarded from all sides by the mass media.

The ultimate effect – of distracting us from discontent so that the ruling class can tyrannise without opposition – is much the same. The last thing the rulers of Clown World want is philosophers like John Locke arguing that revolution is a duty when the rulers become too corrupt, or like Thomas Jefferson arguing that the tree of liberty needs to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants.

The nadir of intellectual culture in Clown World may have been reached with the Slavoj Zizek vs. Jordan Peterson debate, which took place in Toronto on April 19, 2019. This debate encapsulated intellectual culture in Clown World. It pit two highly unbalanced men against each other, whereupon they promptly embarrassed themselves and taught the audience little.

Peterson represented an excess of order. His voice was strained, neurotic, as if he was afraid to let it out. He critiqued Marxism and The Communist Manifesto on the grounds that it promoted identity politics, which in his view led to authoritarianism. This was to hold closely to the official title of the debate, which was ‘Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism’.

Zizek represented an excess of chaos. The man was incoherent, a dribbling mess: the psychosis to Peterson’s neurosis. Anyone who didn’t know that he was a highly esteemed philosopher could be forgiven for thinking he was a crazy person. Anyone who did know that he was a highly esteemed philosopher could be forgiven for thinking he was on hard drugs.

Supposedly Zizek was to mount a defence of Marxism. Instead he ranted and raved, launching a searing attack against phantasms in his own head. After this barrage of nonsense, Peterson’s will to engage collapsed, and the two men seemed to enter an unspoken agreement to wrap things up with as little further mutual humiliation as possible.

The overall impression was abortionate. Neither man could conduct a coherent attack of their opponent’s position, or even describe meaningfully what it was. Neither man could even explain his own position. Apart from Peterson’s initial salvo against The Communist Manifesto, which he attacked as if it were the holy text of an enemy religion, it wasn’t clear what either of them wanted to achieve from the spectacle.

Intellectual culture in Clown World isn’t just shit, it’s also absurd. One element making it so is the televisionisation of popular culture. Thanks to this phenomenon, people now imagine that television entities like “The Science Guy” Bill Nye are legitimate scientific authorities, and that “Bill Nye said X” is a wise argument that leads to truth.

The height of absurdity was reached when Clown World realised that Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren was a higher scientific authority than Nye, on account of that Lundgren has a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering while Nye only has a Bachelor’s degree. Very few have ever argued “Dolph Lundgren says X” by way of settling an intellectual argument – but it would unironically be a better argument than appealing to what The Science Guy says.

Despite all the mainstream crapness, there are places where intellectual culture flourishes. In fact, the mainstream crapness has encouraged those of a more discerning taste to search far and wide for intellectual forums on the Internet. Many of these places are like Wild West saloons, where anything goes. Others are like cybersanctuaries that are not easy to find.

Because of the role that universities have played in encouraging Internet access, many of the residents of such places are highly educated young people. This has made these far-flung Internet spaces the true hotbeds of today’s intellectual culture. The anonymity makes it possible to discuss ideas that one doesn’t want associated with oneself in meatspace, something very difficult to achieve at a university.

Encouragingly, the shittier mainstream intellectual culture becomes, the more people get driven to these cyberbackwaters. Many of them are now full of the world’s most intelligent and most free-thinking people, liberated from the strictures of political correctness that have destroyed intellectual culture at universities.

If you would like to support our work in other ways, please consider subscribing to our SubscribeStar fund. Even better, buy any one of our books!