Clown World Chronicles: What Is 'Learned Helplessness'?

Clown World Chronicles: What Is ‘Learned Helplessness’?

Of all the psychological tricks that the ruling class uses against us, instigating learned helplessness might be the nastiest. Learned helplessness, as the name suggests, is a particularly abject form of conditioned apathy. In Clown World, it’s everywhere.

The concept of learned helplessness comes from a series of studies performed with dogs by psychologist Martin Seligman. The dogs were placed into boxes and given electric shocks until they learned that there was no escape from the suffering. At this point, a strange apathy came over them. These animals later refused to escape the shocks even when an obvious opportunity was presented to do so.

The dogs that refused to escape electric shocks were said to be suffering from “learned helplessness”. This was a conditioned state of extreme passivity. Further experiments demonstrated that most people will become depressed if exposed to extended suffering without being able to do anything about it.

Learned helplessness is also seen in elephant training. A young elephant can be tethered by a chain or strong rope, and soon learns that it cannot escape its bonds. Eventually it becomes passive. An elephant can remain so conditioned for the rest of its life, so that even as an adult it can be tethered by a thin cord and will not try to escape, despite being easily strong enough to break free.

When it comes to learned helplessness, humans behave in the same manner as other mammals. Given repeated adverse stimuli with no chance of escape, the human animal will also “give up”. This occurs for the same neurophysiological reasons as in other animals, namely a kind of nervous exhaustion. Learned helplessness feels a lot like depression, and it arises for similar reasons.

Learned helplessness explains, to a major extent, why we don’t resist the rulers of Clown World.

Most people are conditioned into being helpless through schooling. School teaches us – and is designed to teach us – that defying authority can only lead to suffering. Anyone who stands out from the crowd is ruthlessly abused back into position, either through physical or social violence. This is why depressive apathy is so common among high school students.

The purpose of all this abuse is to induce a state of learned helplessness.

School graduates can then be passed over, like broken-in slaves, to those who are effectively their masters. Sometimes these are military officers, who can then command the graduates to charge machinegun emplacements, safe in the knowledge that they would never dare to disobey. More usually, the new masters are employers, who can work the graduate all day for a wage on which they can’t raise a family, likewise safe in the knowledge that no protest will be forthcoming.

The leadup to the Iraq War intensified the widespread sense of helplessness in Clown World. The millions of people protesting the war had no influence on its course. We learned that, no matter how earnestly we expressed our lack of consent for a war being waged in our name, our supposedly democratic representatives would simply do as they liked. Protests and petitions didn’t matter and there was nothing any of us could do about it.

This state of advanced apathy endured for some years. In the end it seemed like war was going to be part of everyday life from then on. We simply got used to daily reports of drone strikes hitting weddings, schools and hospitals, and of Islamic terror attacks.

The rise of Barack Obama brought hope back. Obama campaigned on a ‘Hope and Change’ platform and there was no doubt that a black man, of all things, would mean a definitive change from the status quo. His 2009 Nobel Peace Prize win reinforced these sentiments, leading the whole world to feel that the dark days of George W Bush’s psychotic indifference to human suffering were over.

However, Obama turned out to be just as much part of the Establishment as everyone else. He surrounded himself with the same people as had surrounded the previous Presidents, and continued along an equally megalomaniacal path. With the destruction of Libya and murder of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Clown World realised that not even voting the Republicans out of power was going to change anything.

The realisation that Obama was actually another bad guy coincided with the realisation that the Global Financial Crisis had condemned a whole generation to be poorer than their parents were. For so many in that generation to put their hopes in a messiah-like figure, only to have them dashed like that, caused many to simply give up in despair. And that was all part of the plan.

When it comes to the subject of inducing a state of learned helplessness, we almost move out of the realm of psychology and into the realm of black magic. It is by so inducing a state of helplessness that the ruling class manufactures acquiescence. With their psychological hold then established over the population, the ruling class can do as it likes without interference.

This is partly the reason for the ongoing refusal to legalise cannabis. The point of cannabis prohibition – and many similar arbitrary and cruel laws – is to show who’s in charge. Putting someone in a cage for an act that doesn’t harm anyone might be immoral and it might increase the net suffering in the world, but that’s the whole point – they’ll learn to obey next time if they know what’s good for them.

Overcoming learned helplessness is mostly a matter of understanding that we do, in fact, have the agency to prevent our own suffering. This requires that we recondition ourselves to become more optimistic. Although this is a process that may take some time, the key aspects are threefold. One must learn to see problems as external to oneself, as temporary and as specific to the situation one is in at the moment.

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.

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Clown World Chronicles: Gender Relations In Clown World

Dave Chapelle once lamented that “men and women don’t get along anymore“. The sad reality is that men and women in Clown World are seldom complimentary, as are yin and yang. In Clown World, men and women are locked in a struggle for supremacy that has had dire consequences for our collective happiness.

The division between male and female is the most fundamental division in the human species. Not even the division between good and evil is as great, because that is a matter of degree and a function of environmental pressure, whereas the division between male and female is categorical and innate.

Although it’s denied by the SJWs and the baizuos, there is a male way of thinking and a female way of thinking. The male way of thinking evolved to hunt and protect and later developed into warfare; the female way of thinking evolved to gather and nurture and later developed into civilisation. Although we are all humans, these different gender-based ways of thinking create challenges for those who want peace and order.

When gender relations are good and tensions are dissolved with humour and good cheer, you have a golden age. This is what existed in ancient Greece when it was possible for playwrights such as Aristophanes to write Lysistrata. In such a time, it’s possible to gently make fun of the foibles of the other gender while still acknowledging their value and the ultimate importance of co-operating.

When gender relations are marked by the perceived need to get revenge for centuries of oppression, you have Clown World. Like much of Clown World, gender relations today are the way they are because of a massive overreaction to a lengthy period of Abrahamic shitness.

Abrahamic culture is male supremacist, and women’s awareness of their historical oppression at the hands of Abrahamists has created deep resentment. This deep resentment has led to support for measures benefitting women at the expense of men, on account of the belief that they settle some historical scorecard.

Measures such as restricting scholarships to female students are readily accepted by the middle-class women who are the primary beneficiaries. The working-class men who have to watch those middle-class women get exclusive advantages on account of some supposed greater need, however, become extremely resentful.

This resentment is typical of gender relations in Clown World.

The discord between men and women is the primary reason why Clown World is so fucked up. Because healthy gender relations are fundamental to a healthy society, the dysfunction here has led to dysfunction at every scale. It has led to family discord, which has led to community discord, which has led to national discord.

On a family level, more children than ever are growing up to see fighting and arguing between their parents. This has led to an increased perception that violence and aggression are normal, acceptable ways of conducting human relations. These children then grow up and bring their unhealthy attitudes to their wider community, making those communities hostile, suspicious and violent.

For a nation to have a healthy national sentiment it needs healthy communities, which requires healthy families, which requires healthy gender relations. So deteriorating gender relations serve the nefarious interests of globohomo. The more disharmony there is between men and women, the easier the entire population can be reduced to consumerist NPCs. This is why the mainstream media is always pushing a “gender wars” narrative.

Gender relations have now become so bad that it’s possible to speak of an “incel epidemic“. The proportion of American adults that don’t have sex at all has doubled since 2008, and has tripled for men under 30. This means that there are a lot of lonely people out there who have never experienced affection from the opposite gender.

This has happened for a number of reasons, but two are foremost. First, the advent of dating apps such as Tinder has made it easier than ever before for mediocre women to reject all suitors besides the most attractive Chads. Second, the perception that women are now more promiscuous than ever (see: roastie) had led to a number of men avoiding women out of disgust.

Unfortunately, the male mind does not respond well to lengthy periods of involuntary celibacy. The tendency in such cases is for it to become sadistic. Lengthy periods of involuntary celibacy can lead to a particularly bilious form of resentment that soon becomes the blackest of hates, a hate so powerful that it revels in the suffering of others.

The increase in sadism brought about by a widespread lack of sexual satisfaction has society-wide ramifications. It has made a large proportion of men unwilling to work towards the greater good, in any sense. Some men are so bitter about not being able to get laid that they have become happy to see people suffer, in any context. Incelibacy leads to men who just want the world to burn.

There’s little doubt that many of the men involved in the rioting of recent years are incels. But so far their actions have had little influence. The real danger is that the incel community, if they became numerous enough, could forcibly subjugate women again. This could easily be achieved by political violence, given the readiness and the ability of incels to use it.

The current social climate exacerbates this threat. Thanks to the MeToo movement and the feminist weaponisation of cancel culture, some men have become afraid to hit on women at all. Although this is not necessarily a bad thing, it has had consequences: it has added to the number of men who have become afraid to talk to women, as well as to those who have resigned themselves to a life of inceldom.

Complicating matters even further is the rise of transgenderism. The presence of trans people has blurred the boundaries between men and women, adding yet another reason to hesitate before interacting. The fear of ending up with a penis-wielding “woman” has led some men to give up on dating in general. Others are so horrified by the trans phenomenon that they become reclusive, doing their best to shut Clown World out of their minds.

Gender relations will stay bad in Clown World until a new foundational philosophy arises. This philosophy will have to root out the last vestiges of Abrahamic male supremacism and replace it with a more Taoist sense of masculine and feminine as complementary. Not until then will males and females be able to work together in harmony.

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Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Incel Rage’?

Although the subject of incels has been covered in another chapter, it’s necessary to take a closer look at one specific aspect of incels. This is incel rage. The phenomenon of incel rage has shaped Clown World society greatly, long before incidents like the Elliot Rodger chimpout and the Toronto van attack of 2018.

Incel rage doesn’t just manifest in people getting upset on the Internet. In fact, the world has always had incel rage, because the world has always had incels.

Incel rage is a naturally-occurring and mostly biological phenomenon that exists in all primate species. When an individual is denied mating opportunities, they become angry in an attempt to gain those opportunities by force. This anger, although it carries the risk of injury from violence, has been selected for by the increased mating opportunities it leads to.

The most typical expression of incel rage is violence against either innocents in general or women in particular. This can take the form of a sexual assault, or, as per the examples given above, murderous violence. Another typical expression is extreme recklessness, such as driving under the influence of drugs or binge-drinking alcohol.

Incel rage is a major problem because there are now more incels than ever before. It’s believed that over 30% of young American males are sexually inactive. These numbers are similar in other Western nations. The highest rates are in Japan, where almost half of the male population are incels.

Even if an incel is not fighting people or taking unnecessary risks, their rage can manifest in a great number of subtler ways, some unexpected.

The desire for control produces anger when things don’t go the way one wants. When this anger intensifies into rage, it can create an element of malice. There are a wide range of malicious expressions in the world’s raging incels, and they have a wide range of targets, but the primary target is women.

Many men wish to control women, but find it hard. These men understand, deep in their hearts, that they could beat the shit out of a woman and/or rape her, and that this would be much easier than trying to win her devotion through displaying rectitude. Many also understand that it was legal to hit women up until a few decades ago, and that that also made women easier to deal with.

This is incel rage.

Incel rage could be defined as the violent resentment of genetically unfortunate males towards the rest of society, on account of that women form pair bonds with other men, and, when they do form pair bonds with lower value men, aren’t particularly devoted to them.

Whenever you find expressed a sentiment to patrol thots, to restore the patriarchy, to strip voting rights from women, to hit children, to criminalise people for enjoying alcohol, tobacco or cannabis, to praise Islam for keeping its women under control, or to condemn all pleasures as some kind of “degeneracy” you have likely encountered a source of incel rage.

The men who support such measures are invariably either incels or men who have been driven to sadism by an extended period of incelibacy. They consider such sentiments legitimate ways of getting back at the society that has so unjustly shunned them. The logic is that if I can’t have a good time, no-one can.

This is the reason for the large increase in reactionary authoritarianism. This is not a new thing: most of Abrahamic culture is based on incel rage. Suicide bomber culture requires a large number of incels to target with radicalisation efforts, and the idea that women can’t be priests because they aren’t spiritual comes from incel rage.

Reactionary authoritarianism manifests in Clown World when it idealises primitive religious mentalities or totalitarian (Communist, Nazi) mentalities as “anti-degenerate”. When a person expresses the idea that we need to convert to Islam or Nazism to get degeneracy under control, chances are very high that that person is an incel frustrated at their lack of romantic opportunities.

Herein lies the great danger of incel rage – it leads people to extremism. A person who can’t get laid might decide they’ve got nothing to lose from society’s order getting tipped upside down.

Aggravating the danger is that Clown World is set up in a way to maximise incel rage. Young people today have trouble affording a private space where they could entertain a person of the opposite sex. Even if they could afford one, meeting a quality person is not straightforward. Clown World has the effect of reducing everyone’s average quality, so that dissatisfaction is more likely.

Casual Tinder sex is not fulfilling because it doesn’t assuage the deepest desire of the incel: to be wanted. Getting one’s end away is not enough, because, although one is wanted, it’s only for shallow reasons. The kind of truly fulfilling, compassionate, companionate love that tames a man’s heart is not easy to find on Tinder – or anywhere else.

As such, a great number of men are raging. Incel rage, along with the rage of sexual dissatisfaction, is a major reason why there’s so much negative energy in Clown World society. It lies behind a great proportion of sadistic or otherwise antisocial acts.

The cure to incel rage varies, depending on the person. For most incels, smoking weed or drinking beer might be the answer to making themselves more personable; for others, lifting weights or achieving career objectives might give them the charisma they need. Some unfortunates are born permavirgins, however, and in an age where there is no spirituality to dampen their rage this leads regularly to havoc.

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Clown World Chronicles: Race Relations In Clown World

Race relations have always been tricky, because they’ve always involved a degree of coercion. But for most of the recent history of the West, we’ve managed to muddle through. This was until Clown World dawned, and brought acrimony and hatred into every aspect of life, and few more so than race relations.

Ideally, race relations would be a matter of mutual appreciation in the same way that the yang appreciates the yin. In practice, the differences between all the races create a number of challenges. Varying biology leads to varying cultural values, and this makes it hard to find a middle ground that everyone can agree on.

In Clown World, race relations are maximally antagonistic. Things are so bad that it’s now possible to speak openly about resegregation (along the lines of e.g. the New Afrika model) or repatriation. This grim state of affairs is the case all over the Western World.

In the New World, there are natural tensions arising from the fact that all countries are colonies. This means there is an inherent conflict between the settler government and the political organisation of the natives. These tensions are especially bad in places like America, Brazil and South Africa, which all had some form of slavery.

In the Old World, there are similar tensions, only from different causes. The race problems in the Old World have been imported over the course of the last 70 years. Germany, France and Britain imported cheap labour from Turkey, North Africa and the West Indies (respectively), and now the offspring of those imports are clashing with the natives.

Race relations in the West probably peaked when Martin Luther King declared that people ought to be judged on their character and not on the colour of their skin. People tried doing that, and it led to a degree of race unity that posed a direct threat to the interests of the ruling class, particularly in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The ruling class quickly realised that, in order to secure their position, the various races had to be set at each other’s throats. The story of race relations in Clown World is the story of how this was achieved.

In Singapore, most racial tension was solved by the brilliant Lee Kwan Yew, who intuited early the problems that would arise from pretending all races are the same. Lee Kwan Yew understood that if we say all races are the same, then any economic disparity must have arisen from oppression. Therefore, equalitarianism is a recipe for resentment and discord.

The West, unfortunately, adopted a different approach, and it was partly the decision to do so that led to Clown World.

In Clown World, your skin is your uniform.

If you have white skin, you’re automatically to blame for all the greed of other people with white skin, both in the present and in the past. Wearing white skin marks you as a member of the oppressor class, a beneficiary of slavery and of warmongering. It means that you have “privilege”, and that abuse of you is “punching up” and therefore justified.

If you have dark skin, you’re automatically a victim. Poor, sweet, innocent, native, innocent of all misdoing. Any crime you commit is the fault of the white man whose economic oppression forced you into desperate circumstances. Even if you rape and murder someone, the white man made you do it.

This state of affairs, quite naturally, appalls two major groups of people: the working-class whites and the non-criminal browns and blacks, neither of who are given due respect. These two groups, who have a great deal in common, are thereby pitted against two other major groups of people: the middle-class whites and the criminal browns and blacks, both of who benefit enormously from racial conflict and strife.

In short, the ruling classes of Clown World understood that racial tensions had to be stoked in order to distract from their misrule. However, it’s not just a simple matter of stoking tensions. It’s mostly about the psychological control that can be seized as a consequence of those tensions.

Although your skin is your uniform in Clown World, this can never be admitted. Not only is racial consciousness higher than ever, but the imperative to deny it is stronger than ever. The slightest error will bring accusations of racism crashing upon you like an ocean wave. The race neurosis amplified by the mass media has brought about a renaissance in race-based thinking – mostly through constantly highlighting any and all race issues, and magnifying them into global dramas.

This has created a situation that is ripe for racial tension. Now, even though most people know it’s a bad idea, it’s normal to identify with one’s race instead of the wider community (such as the nation). People can’t help doing so because it’s become normalised thanks to McDiversity. Clown World is when society becomes ever more like a Californian prison, where social bonds are made on the basis of skin colour before any other quality.

These racial tensions have all but destroyed the west, and by design. As far back as Aristotle it has been observed that tyrants tend to rule over multicultural societies, because the racial tensions inherent to them created the kind of animosity that made people happy to put evil men in power. The citizens of Clown World have, thus far, shown no real desire to change the path of diversification. As such, it continues.

Race relations in Clown World, then, are about as poor as one might expect, given the enormous lack of social coherency and the aggressiveness of the propaganda campaign dividing us all. They promise to get worse, putting an ever worse type of person in power.

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