Welcome to the first installment of our WTF? series, where we'll look at subjects that, on the surface, seem to have nothing to do with what’s going on, but do, each in their own way. A fact easily confirmed once one pokes past the surface. The purpose of this series is to poke past the surface. After that, we’re on our own.
Note: When it comes to "subjects that, on the surface, seem to have nothing to do with what's going on", obviously the one exception in this series is the very topical Critical Race Theory. Still, CRT fits nicely into this series. Because, when it comes to Critical Race Theory, I mean, really, WTF?! You'd think Democracy would be topical as well, especially since the hostile elite can't shut up about it, and they can't. But in that case, the WTF? comes from me in response to their use of the word.
So, for our first installment we’ve chosen Cultural History.
WTF? Indeed. With everything going on right now it seems crazy to suggest that we consider the subject of Cultural History.
But the key word here is seems.
As we’ve said throughout this blog, particularly here and here, The Irreducibles are an important part of our work, exactly because each one of The Irreducibles are just that, irreducible.
The Irreducibles = Social Interaction, Social Institutions, Explanation, Culture, and Behavior
So, they're not just important to PRC, they're central to life itself.
In other words, we simply can’t avoid them. The only choice is whether to be conscious of our engagement or not: that is, whether we’re aware, or not, of what we are doing as we attempt to control, guide, and direct our responses to The Irreducibles.
In short, whether our cultural actions are by design or default.
The Irreducibles have to do with solving problems here and now. Here (the cultural area) and Now (this moment in history).
In other words, Cultural History.
But it’s not all about us and our here and now. There have been other moments in our culture’s history wherein attempts were made to solve the problems confronted during those periods.
The point being, the problem-solving process is constant, though problems and methods have changed through time and space.
And by our culture is meant Western Cultural Life, the science, philosophy, art, and religion (valuation) of the last 500 years.
Obviously, there are forces at work today that are highly motivated, well-organized, well-funded (and therefore truly privileged) and very active in trying to eliminate, delete, or cancel that entire culture. Those forces have been referred to in the past as The Frankfurt School, Political Correctness, or Cultural Marxism, but today are known more as Identity Politics, Woke Culture, Wokesterism, Wokeology, Woke Inc., Cancel Culture, Critical Race Theory, or, my personal favorite, Bullshit!
The fact that Identity Politics is the dominant ideology of the Western world undermines the very Oppressor/Oppressed argument upon which the entire ideology is based. Worse, Identity Politics is also contradictory, and so self-refuting, in as much as its irony-free believers use aggressively antidemocratic means to, in their own words, Save Our Democracy!
What do you call that if not 100% Grade A Bullshit!?
Identity Politics is a self-refuting Explanatory System!
An explanatory system that consists entirely of metaphysical pseudo-entities that are never examined or analyzed. They can't be. Because if they were their entire bullshit explanatory system would be reduced to rubble faster than you can say Whiteness.
Why do you think it attracts so many crazy dumbshits!? The whole Woke Inc. thing brings to mind a cabal of high school hall monitors: petty, narrow-minded, sanctimonious and authoritarian.
All of them overhyped and underperforming. A mob of midwits and dumb shits who claim to be oppressed in spite of the fact that they now have the power to effectuate their insane demands to be placed above criticism, loved unconditionally and blindly obeyed.
What could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, since this is a Culture blog, we'll refer to Identity Politics here as simply Cancel Culture. And exactly why I think it's bullshit, or, more seriously and more ominously, an inoperable verbal cancer, will be revealed throughout this series.
For now what we'll say is this, the difference between the Cancel Culture of Identity Politics and the Culture blog of PRC is the difference between what we'll refer to as Dogma versus Pragma.
What is the difference between their Dogma and our Pragma?
Easy. Pragma is willing to expose its ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction - and Dogma isn't.
And the fact that it isn't is why it's an inoperable verbal cancer, and why it attracts so many fanatics, coward-bullies, and the aforementioned crazy dumbshits (all the same thing really).
Hence the malicious, anti-human spirit of Cancel Culture.
Moreover, PRC is capable of explaining both itself and Cancel Culture. Whereas Cancel Culture can't even explain itself.
That's why their attack on the West comes in the form of a protracted, highly aggressive, rather monotomous, and not at all well-informed, ad hominem attack. When that fails, as it always does and always will, they resort to direct action, ie; violence.
Not being very bright their approach isn't exactly subtle, which is funny given fhe fact that they obviously love the word nuanced.*
*Yet another word they've destroyed, like the words diversity, empathy (if anything deserves a WTF? it's their use of that word), and of course, identity itself. All being words that come from 19th century European Romanticism and 20th century American Pragmatism. In short, the words of whiteness!
And what is their approach? Simple. They just take all of the things none of us can live without and deny them to their Designated Scapegoat, anyone who objects to Cancel Culture.
For a quick example in passing, we all have a nervous system and that system's responsive range is known in more popular terms as Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn, the survival instinct for short. It's exactly this that is so badly damaged in child abuse for obvious reasons. Not surprisingly, that damage can last a lifetime. That's why recovery never ends for those lucky enough to get into it.
Now this survival instinct is intimately related to one's sense of value and identity, two other things we simply can not live without. That's why it's so awful when they are damaged in any way, but especially in child abuse (which is why it is so hard to get people to talk about child abuse in general and in their own families in particular, exactly because it is so awful. Contact with this disturbing information gives such people a knowledge about themselves that they do not want to have). And this is the real target the hostile elite is aiming at, the sense of value and identity of a single group (in this case whites) who are serving as their designated scapegoat. To do this they're simply going for those things no one can live without and denying them to whites (we will address this in more detail in our entry CRT? WTF?).
Since Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn is so basic to our survival, only a crazy person would deny them to you and expect to be taken seriously, let alone attack you as "bad" for defending yourself against them by, in part, exposing their obvious insanity.
Anxiety is a human constant. Since it's connected to fear it needs to be balanced. You can hardly develop a healthy and reasonably stable sense of value and identity if you're living in a constant state of chronic fear and anxiety. That's why human beings the world over have developed ways to protect themselves, ways that are essential to the socialization process (which, again, is why child abuse is so horrible, because it deprives the child of a kind of learning essential to its survival and healthy functioning).
Things like innate preparedness (we're pre-programmed to learn what to fear, etc), genetic predisposition (we pass on what we can of our survival instincts), and development factors (learning certain attitudes and habits from specific experiences and events).
What the hostile elite, their useful idiots and paid proxies are really interested in is eliminating the survival instinct in whites, or anyone else who might want to challenge the elite's authority.
That's why the hostile elite doesn't simply want to abolish your basic freedoms, they want to abolish your basic survial instincts.
This is what a sick, crazy and stupid family system does to its designated scapegoat. In fact, scapegoating is proof that the social system was already sick. And what keeps that sickness going in any social system is that system's fear of facing itself, hence the corresponding need to scapegoat. A vicious cycle, indeed.
This is what is really meant by the term Cancel Culture. But, since psychotic arrogance and self-awareness don't go together, these childishly ahistorical, pseudo-intellectual cringe meisters, so sick, crazy, and stupid they don’t know they’re sick, crazy, and stupid, don't realize that they represent a threat, not just to whites, but to the healthy functioning of the very social-institutions their power now controls, in as much as Cancel Culture, Problem-Solving and Biological Adaptation do not go together.
Note: A threat matched only by those who are afraid to stand up to them.
This is why over the last 50+ years they've squandered their considerable power by destroying our teaching-learning institutions so as to build their monument to intellectual backwardness, social dysfunction, and moral imbecility.
Problem-Solving and Biological Adaptation go together. Obviously. But both do not go together with Cancel Culture.
Why?
Cancel Culture not only eliminates the problem-solving process itself, it also eliminates the historical process by placing history outside of time! Cancel Culture is biologically maladaptive!
But of course it's biologically maladaptive. After all, it's based on a self-refuting Explanatory System! Remember? Let that sink in.
Note: This is not to say that the results of the problem-solving process guarantees perfect adaptation. On the contrary. Problem-solving that is competent, adequate and responsible, starts from an acceptance of the fact that perfect adaptation is impossible. So, instead of being lectured about the systemic racism of the USA, we should be talking about the systemic delusion of Identity Politics.
It might be adaptive to itself, and, given the narcissistic quality of Cancel Culture, that’s more than enough. But, again, since psychotic arrogance and self-awareness don’t go together, its activists never know the difference between what is adaptive to them in the short-term and what’s adaptive to the world in the long-term. Just as a singer might be in tune with himself but not the band. Is that band going to produce anything worth listenting to? Of course not. So, could you imagine a public not only forced to listen to the crap it does produce, but that has to pay for it too?
Well, when it comes to the entire Western world you don't need to imagine it. Because that's the situation it is in right now, thanks to a Cancel Culture paid for* and promoted by The Hostile Elite.
*paid for with money the elite steals from the public through taxation (which truly is theft).
At least you can auto-tune a bad singer, like Madonna. But there's no auto-tuning stupidity. Like the kind of stupidity that abounds in Cancel Culture and Madonna. But that doesn't keep the MSM from trying. In fact, auto-tuning stupidity seems to be what they're there for. Which is why they look so ridiculous and aren't at all convincing. Hence their dependency on scapegoating and violence (a better word than dependency would be addiction).
Since we are an educational consultancy with a focus on problem-solving and since Cancel Culture is a problem, our modest proposal here at PRC International is that the values of High Culture (the attributes of wisdom) is the solution to Cancel Culture, which we've now come to refer to as Cancer Culture.
Of course, central to Cancel Culture is Critical Race Theory.
In any event, another way of using The Irreducibles as an analytical tool for understanding the maladaptive nature of Cancel Culture would be to say that Cancel Culture is maladaptive exactly because it is entirely dependent upon an explanatory system that operates in the realm of the absolute.*
*And if there's one thing history has made clear, especially since the French Revolution, absolute freedom (of an authoritarian elite answerable to no one) leads to absolute tyranny. And, of course, absolute tyranny leads to wholesale slaughter. A fact that Americans would do well to keep in mind.
The dominant ideology today is a self-refuting belief-system that operates in the realm of the absolute. Now let that sink in!
Since it is placed above criticism it can not be questioned or analyzed, thereby rendering the social institutions that Cancel Culture’s practitioners control dysfunctional and maladaptive.
How? Because a social institution isn't merely dependent on explanation for its survival. A social institution is an explanation.
And the best explanations are open-ended in two directions, theory and behavior. This is why tyranny inhibits growth and why all tyrannical systems becomes dysfunctional and maladaptive.
Why? Because their explanations are closed from top to bottom.
So, there's no feedback, no correction, and no growth. Hence, the dysfunctional, maladaptive nature of all tyranny. A better example of mankind's rage for order would be impossible to imagine.
Note: This is why their primary explanation, Critical Race Theory, consists of vague abstractions, glittering generalities, and absurd absolutes. None of which have any bearing on concrete reality.
So, basically, at its core, Cancel Culture is an attempt to solve problems by eliminating the problem-solving process itself. This explains Cancel Culture's pretzel logic, absurdity and injustice.
That's why it represents nothing less than the full return to the superstition of the Old Testament in its most barbaric form. Or, as someone once put it, The old evil in a new and horrible guise. I know this all sounds crazy, and it is. But that's not my fault. This is why its activists are constantly demanding to be placed above criticism, loved unconditionally, and blindly obeyed. Or else!
And, of course, that is what it is really all about - Power.
And, unlike the imaginary “supremacists” their paranoid delusions (or is it conscious lying?) seem to find under every rock these days, these activists and the elite who support them actually have the power to effectuate their insane demands. Thereby making them the only real supremacists. Obviously!
Whoever heard of a supremacist with no political power or institutional control? A powerless supremacist? It’s an oxymoron, something as absurd as putting a God on a Cross (worse, it's as insane as making a hero out of a drug-crazed criminal who dies of an opiod-induced heart attack while resisting arrest).
How can you get a God on a Cross? as Nietzsche once asked.
Who would even think of something so perverse? Worse, who would ever be dumb enough to believe it in the first place?
Who in the world would be dumb enough to convince themselves that what they really need in life is a God they can feel sorry for?
It’s as crazy as believing that a snake is responsible for all of the evil in the world after having just praised The Creator for having made everything else on earth! Of course, what's even crazier is calling that belief The Truth and then allowing that truth to control your behavior - for the rest of your life!
Which would explain why such believers never bother to ask themselves the obvious question - Who made the snake?
Notes: It’s as insane as blaming Piggy in The Lord of The Flies for the plane crash or, worse, blaming the designated scapegoat for a family’s multigenerational dysfunction, as if the scapegoated child gave birth to himself, his siblings and his parents! Hence the pretzel logic of dysfunctional family systems, not to mention the absurdity and injustice. Since those three go together in any corrupt social system.
However, if you make The Creator a Legislator and convert The Legislator into a person; and if you were to turn Jesus into a real, living human being, with courage, honesty and intelligence, and then apply the tools of critical thinking, art, philosophy, science, psychology, anthropology, and cultural history, in short, the tools of Western Cultural Life,* then everything begins to make sense.
*God doesn't want empty-headed souls for his chidlren. Does he? I guess it depends on one's definition of God. One thing's for sure, nothing is more repulsive and obnoxious than listening to some crazy and insecure dumbshit tell you what God is. The only thing worse is listening to a psychotic Wokster with all of the institutional power and cultural control in the world tell you how oppressed they are, and that it's the fault of oppressors with no institutional power or cultural control.
The God of The Old Testament then becomes the paranoid coward-bully and insufferable control freak that he always was, while Jesus becomes a power of example whose personal sacrifice helps all of us to find the Christ within, whether or not we’re believers, since his sacrifice speaks to life, not religion.
In short, once you apply The Irreducibles to cultural legend and religious myth, you can see the same patterns in contemporary political life. And once you’ve done that you can take ownership of your responses and are on the road to becoming who you are!
The meaning of life is your response to it.
Speaking for myself: I would much rather stumble on the right road of self-discovery and spiritual growth, than walk tall on the wrong road of social conformity and self-betrayal.
Embrace The Fucked-upness indeed!
After all, it’s my life. Why would I surrender it to someone else?
Note: Though I am not a Christian, I have to say that the one great thing about Christianity is that it not only permitted itself to be transcended, it even encouraged it. That's sacrifice. That's love!
And the other two Abrahamic religions?
But this is exactly what the hostile elite, their useful idiot activists, and their paid proxies, not only want, but demand.
Because, ultimately, you know, life’s really just all about them.
Again, it's why they’re so dependent on scapegoating, censorship and violence. After all, how else could these mediocrities get anyone to listen to them, let alone take whatever they have to say seriously, unless they used violence against their scapegoats?
The consequences of the verbal and, well, nonverbal, behavior of today’s Cancel Culture are why we have spoken so often here at PRC about The Pyrrhic Victory of The Hostile Elite.
Another way of directing attention to the maladaptive nature of Cancel Culture is to say that its activists aren’t the least bit interested in things like reflective thought, universal truth, social justice, personal empathy, and shared compassion, anymore than they are interested in the insane triumvirate of diversity, inclusion and equity, or DIE (talk about Orwellian Newspeak!). Not at all.
What they’re interested in is in living out of The Dark Triad.
The Lust for Power + Narcissism + Psychopathology =
The Dark Triad
Let’s unpack this briefly.
The Lust for Power = the need to control everything and everyone at all times, always, or else.
The justification and insane rationale for this is that if they don’t control us we’ll kill them. Of course, this is the classic rationale of all power hungry “revolutionaries.” It’s also total bullshit.
But it helps explain why after every revolution we always end up with the same thing we started out with. Perhaps this is the reason why Cultural Transcendence will always be the more intelligent, practical, and healthier alternative to political revolution.
Narcissism = it’s all about them and only them and never us.
Psychopathology = no conscience, at all, for their many crimes.
All of this behavior has precedents and can be easily subsumed by the very culture they’re attacking, though the ahistorical nature of that attack keeps them from seeing this, and a lot else.
Note: Though this behavior does indeed have precedents in everything from history to the family, it still has to be said that the peculiar nature of today’s hostile elite truly is unprecedented.
Or, if they don’t see it they at least sense it.
In which case it offers an even easier to understand explanation for their desire to silence everyone by demonizing dissent and pathologizing opposition, so as to create their dystopian heaven on earth by, in part, concealing their many crimes against those who value their freedoms, their families, and their self-respect.
And remember what we said about heaven in our sixth entry,
And that’s what they want, their own little heaven on earth.
But there’s a snake in this garden too and it’s good news for us.
Us being anyone who prefers freedom over tyranny. You know, the very people they plan on sending to the hell on earth they’ve created as a place to send their designated scapegoats.
Heaven for them. Hell for everyone else.
But, again, there’s a snake in this garden too and it’s good news for us. And the good news is, their efforts are doomed to fail.
Why will it fail? Well, certainly not because I said so. Not at all.
No. What they’re doing now will ultimately fail because:
Any attempt by an elite to impose a social order that is free of control and sustained by force will only increase the uncontrolled exercise of naked power. That’s why!
And it’s that force, constantly applied, that destabilizes the very social institutions the hostile elite’s power now controls. The more institutional control the more cultural impoverishment.
At PRC International we like to refer to this half-jokingly as
The Physics of Social Management.
But there are other reasons why it will fail.
To understand those reasons and how that understanding can help us understand our current dilemma, and how we might possibly free ourselves from it, is the purpose of this culture blog in general and this WTF? series in particular. Because, to repeat, though much of their behavior has precedent, much of it is also unprecedented. Either way, the more we know about it the better.
For this reason, we’ll take a quick three-part look into the subject of Cultural History and its relation to Problem-Solving beginning with Part I The 17th century. So, until then!
Note:
All of this is why, though attempts were made in the second half of the 20th century, Cultural History isn’t taught at universities today. In fact, thanks to Cancel Culture, since indoctrination has replaced education, nothing is taught today. Nor is anything learned. Because learning has been replaced by dictation of ideological dogma. As anyone who cares to look can see, the consequences are immense.
The point is, if problem-solving is essential to the human condition then it’s impossible for anyone actively engaged in Cancel Culture to be a good person. Which means they have no moral authority.
In short, since Cancel Culture itself is immoral it has no moral authority. It just has what any dysfunctional, maladaptive social system has that is based on a poisonous pedagogy, ie; coward-bully-fanatics who live out of The Dark Triad. Treason against Cancel Culture is Loyalty to Humanity.
P.S. Though Cancel Culture will fail, simply because it's so counterfactual and therefore unsustainable, that's not to say that one should underestimate the damage it can do. Not at all.
In fact, damage seems to be the only thing it's really capable of or even interested in.
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