Supremely Unpopular Opinions

[Apech]

Of all the human virtues, the most effective and widely used is that of dull stupidity.  The force of ignorance once fully invoked into the mind and body is like a seemingly unstoppable bulldozer which removes obstacles, satiates appetites and delivers one to a place of such supreme unknowing that it is certainly the peak experience for almost every person.  It is true that the completed state can sometimes be contaminated by vague feelings of unrest, such as thinking that one is not getting all that one wants in every moment.  But with enough obstinate commitment these fleeting clouds of dissatisfaction can be shovelled to the side and put away.  In dealing with others, the consummately ignorant has always the upper hand, while sensitive and intelligent types worry and dither, the army of the stupid moves on without even a momentary glance at the list of 'issues' which those lesser folk eat up time considering.  In being completely unaware and ignorant one is empowered to know that one is always right, no matter what.  You will hear no hesitation in the voice of they that cast aside the petty matter of information.  If mankind has made an evolutionary misstep it is that it developed from the apes and forgot its true ancestor the pig.  Apes, with their fingers and thumbs and bloated brains, have made much trouble in the world - roaming here and there in search of knowledge.  They opened the door to a disturbing light.  A light which it is a human being's duty to extinguish forever.

 

 

 

 

[NaturaNaturans]

I agree with you. It is the fall from Eden.
What do you think of this:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question

Mill

 

 

[Taomeow]

The art of verbal insult has been cultivated by the human race for millennia, but while some countries have mastered it to perfection, others remain at the stone age level of finesse. 

As an example of the former I would offer the English way and the French way to insult individuals, groups and whole species.  Among many tools they developed there's, e.g., elegant and eloquent mockery thinly veiled as praise -- of exactly the traits and features they are putting down.  

By contrast, American, Russian, Italian put-down styles lack sophistication and tend to be unveiled, direct and plainly rude, most often related to physiological acts reinterpreted as demeaning -- sex, defecation and its product, etc.. 

Chinese and Japanese insults are routinely limited to the withholding of the carrot rather than the application of the stick.  Some curse words are so complex in their originating context that they require an explanation and even a story or a historical anecdote in order to be understood as insults. 

[SirPalomides]

Insults are truly a branch of the poetic art, and I can't disagree that Americans are quite impoverished in that department (except maybe in the field of battle raps/ diss tracks). I've seen some videos showcasing Nigerian insults which really illustrate how beautifully devastating the English language can be with the right mindset. I also have an acquaintance from Romania who shared some deliciously blasphemous and over-the-top profanities from his country. We can all do better. 

[liminal_luke]

 

Funny or supremely unpopular?  You be the judge.

Edited July 25 by liminal_luke

[Apech]

3 hours ago, NaturaNaturans said:

I agree with you. It is the fall from Eden.
What do you think of this:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question

Mill

 

 

Are you familiar with the expression ‘like a pig in shit’?  This is what we must aim for.

[NaturaNaturans]

18 minutes ago, Apech said:

Are you familiar with the expression ‘like a pig in shit’?  This is what we must aim for.

Hm, partly, but I also belive we should have one foot in the unknown.

[Apech]

37 minutes ago, NaturaNaturans said:

Hm, partly, but I also belive we should have one foot in the unknown.

That is endearingly serious of you.

[Apech]

9 hours ago, Taomeow said:

The art of verbal insult has been cultivated by the human race for millennia, but while some countries have mastered it to perfection, others remain at the stone age level of finesse. 

As an example of the former I would offer the English way and the French way to insult individuals, groups and whole species.  Among many tools they developed there's, e.g., elegant and eloquent mockery thinly veiled as praise -- of exactly the traits and features they are putting down.  

By contrast, American, Russian, Italian put-down styles lack sophistication and tend to be unveiled, direct and plainly rude, most often related to physiological acts reinterpreted as demeaning -- sex, defecation and its product, etc.. 

Chinese and Japanese insults are routinely limited to the withholding of the carrot rather than the application of the stick.  Some curse words are so complex in their originating context that they require an explanation and even a story or a historical anecdote in order to be understood as insults. 

I don’t know if this is the same in the US but in England there is a strong north/ south divide in how insults are expressed.  In the North it is blunt and ‘in yer face’ while in the south it is indirect and tangential.

 

 

[Taomeow]

3 hours ago, Apech said:

I don’t know if this is the same in the US but in England there is a strong north/ south divide in how insults are expressed.  In the North it is blunt and ‘in yer face’ while in the south it is indirect and tangential.

 

 

 

I haven't been to the south of the US except on a drive, once upon a time, along the east coast all the way from New York to Florida.  The impression I got on the way was that of extra politeness but I only interacted with gas stations attendants and motels personnel.  There's a difference between east and west though, the western style is somewhat less immediate I would say.  In the east they rush into an insult headlong, without missing a beat, while in the west they take their time to think about it first.  And then verbalize something of equal weight but with less gusto, so some of the effect is lost to the delay.  Timing is everything, as taoist sages say.     

[silent thunder]

I have found in the South when someone wants to say Fuck You, in the US... it comes out Oh Bless Your Heart.

[Taomeow]

Stupidity is an acquired skill.  Mother nature meant us to be smart.  We couldn't possibly survive for hundreds of thousands of years if we were stupid from the get-go, because we are born in a very helpless state, into an environment that doesn't meet our needs on autopilot.  Our young remain helpless and unable to take care of their own needs longer than the entire lifespan of many other mammals.  Our young had to always rely on smart adults, otherwise they would never reach adulthood and our species would go extinct a long, long time ago.

 

Cultivating all-around, all-encompassing stupidity is the surest way to depopulate.  Smart people can survive an untold number of adversities -- they are inventive, resourceful and resilient, they learn on the fly, adapt, find non-obvious solutions which stupid people couldn't see in a million years.  Smart people's ability to withstand an untold variety of assaults gives them a chance because it may surpass the assault repertoire of their adversary -- unless their adversary is smarter, but I doubt destruction is smarter than creation in the long run, I doubt the universe could exist on this kind of premise.  Yet wherever agents of destruction figure out that, since they can't increase their own smarts, increasing mass stupidity in the population is the way to go, the surest way to tip the scales in their favor, their victory is guaranteed. We as a species are simply not cut out to survive mass stupidity for a long stretch of time.    

[Apech]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Stupidity is an acquired skill.  Mother nature meant us to be smart.  We couldn't possibly survive for hundreds of thousands of years if we were stupid from the get-go, because we are born in a very helpless state, into an environment that doesn't meet our needs on autopilot.  Our young remain helpless and unable to take care of their own needs longer than the entire lifespan of many other mammals.  Our young had to always rely on smart adults, otherwise they would never reach adulthood and our species would go extinct a long, long time ago.

 

Cultivating all-around, all-encompassing stupidity is the surest way to depopulate.  Smart people can survive an untold number of adversities -- they are inventive, resourceful and resilient, they learn on the fly, adapt, find non-obvious solutions which stupid people couldn't see in a million years.  Smart people's ability to withstand an untold variety of assaults gives them a chance because it may surpass the assault repertoire of their adversary -- unless their adversary is smarter, but I doubt destruction is smarter than creation in the long run, I doubt the universe could exist on this kind of premise.  Yet wherever agents of destruction figure out that, since they can't increase their own smarts, increasing mass stupidity in the population is the way to go, the surest way to tip the scales in their favor, their victory is guaranteed. We as a species are simply not cut out to survive mass stupidity for a long stretch of time.    

Yet high IQ people have less children - so is it not a route to extinction??

 

genuine question

[forestofclarity]

From the POV of certain spiritual traditions, without ignorance (i.e. stupidity) we wouldn't have all the wondrous manifestations around us: Italian cappuccinos, golden doodles, or hand holding. 

 

 

8 minutes ago, Apech said:

Yet high IQ people have less children - so is it not a route to extinction??

 

This is the exact plot of Mike Judge's Idiocracy. 

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

Yet high IQ people have less children - so is it not a route to extinction??

 

genuine question

 

IQ has very little to do with being smart.  True life-sustaining intelligence has been shackled and chained, and the little fragment thereof residing in the upper part of the neocortex is chiefly a trauma processing/reinterpreting machine and a prison guard tasked with keeping the rest of our intelligence suppressed and inactive.  Genuine fact of physiology per cognitive neuroscience.

 

As for the number of children, I'm convinced that having too many is a side effect of this state of affairs to the same extent as having too few.  Original human tribes typically didn't exceed 120 members and maintained this number -- I'm pretty sure via intelligent fertility regulation, primarily with plants in their environment. 

I own "A Barefoot Doctor's Manual," a fundamental work undertaken in China circa 1977 toward overcoming the health care crisis inherited from the "cultural revolution."  Alongside modern western and TCM material it includes a lot of rare and formerly secret herbal remedies which families of healers that inherited them for many generations were forced to surrender.  Among other things there's a couple of herbal formulas that grant temporary reversible infertility, one of them for a whole year after a single dose, with no ill effects on the woman's or her future children's health.  I don't know if those herbs still exist but I am pretty sure our earlier, pre-civilized ancestresses knew them all and used them expertly.  The story of our overwhelmingly genius contemporaries having had stupid helpless irresponsible blood-thirsty etc. "prehistoric" ancestors is very modern and far as I can tell, entirely unscientific.  Much more unscientific in the sense of being a groundless confabulation than the memory, vague but consistent in all parts of the globe, of the golden age we once knew.   

Edited July 26 by Taomeow

[Nungali]

5 hours ago, Apech said:

Yet high IQ people have less children - so is it not a route to extinction??

 

genuine question

 

It could be a route to not having overpopulation .

[Nungali]

4 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

IQ has very little to do with being smart.  ...

 

 

Indeed !

 

I prefer this definition ;  (and in honor of our opening poster / thread maker  , I present  'harmful cat '   : 

 

http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/

 

" A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

 

... We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. "

 

..

 

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by Nungali

[Nungali]

By the way, the above paper was very unpopular with some . I heard that after the author died the family took control of the work and suppressed it . It was gone off the internet for a while . It seems someone resurrected it ?

 

Like Homer ... no one wanted to hear  "  You lot are really being stupid ! "

[Sanity Check]

Our culture and storytelling sectors have not done a good job defining the nature of human foolishness.

 

Stubbornness is the most valuable survival trait a person can have.

 

A person who stubbornly refuses to give up on life and success is unstoppable.

 

Yet there is a thing that happens where stubbornness is substituted for cognition. We cease to use our brains and argue from a perspective of stubbornness instead. We cease to acknowledge facts or science and rely on stubbornness to carry us to the correct conclusions.

 

We label conditions associated with stubbornness: foolishness and human stupidity but their origins are found within them being essential valuable traits for survival and success.

 

One thing that can be said of those with high intelligence is they often lack stubbornness. They give up easily. They are prone towards overthinking things and relying too heavily upon logic without exercising a healthy balance of stubbornness needed to achieve their goals.

 

Given the lack of stubbornness in those with intelligence & vice versa. Human intelligence might be defined opposite to stubborness rather than foolishness.

 

Over time, it could be fair to say that stubborn people are becoming more intelligent.

 

While the intelligent are becoming more stubborn.

 

What does this mean for the future?

 

All of the biggest gains for society can always be found at the bottom. Elites tap out their learning potential. Their potential for growth is minimal. While growth potential at the bottom is always highest.

 

In this era where people are being denied good sources of leadership and guidance. 

 

It creates a vacuum.

 

Some say nature abhors a vacuum.

 

Perhaps circumstances are aligning for that maximum growth potential at the bottom to be realized.

 

Edited July 27 by Sanity Check

[Mark Foote]

 

On 7/26/2024 at 12:44 PM, Taomeow said:

 

IQ has very little to do with being smart.  True life-sustaining intelligence has been shackled and chained, and the little fragment thereof residing in the upper part of the neocortex is chiefly a trauma processing/reinterpreting machine and a prison guard tasked with keeping the rest of our intelligence suppressed and inactive.  Genuine fact of physiology per cognitive neuroscience.

 

As for the number of children, I'm convinced that having too many is a side effect of this state of affairs to the same extent as having too few.  Original human tribes typically didn't exceed 120 members and maintained this number -- I'm pretty sure via intelligent fertility regulation, primarily with plants in their environment. 

I own "A Barefoot Doctor's Manual," a fundamental work undertaken in China circa 1977 toward overcoming the health care crisis inherited from the "cultural revolution."  Alongside modern western and TCM material it includes a lot of rare and formerly secret herbal remedies which families of healers that inherited them for many generations were forced to surrender.  Among other things there's a couple of herbal formulas that grant temporary reversible infertility, one of them for a whole year after a single dose, with no ill effects on the woman's or her future children's health.  I don't know if those herbs still exist but I am pretty sure our earlier, pre-civilized ancestresses knew them all and used them expertly.  The story of our overwhelmingly genius contemporaries having had stupid helpless irresponsible blood-thirsty etc. "prehistoric" ancestors is very modern and far as I can tell, entirely unscientific.  Much more unscientific in the sense of being a groundless confabulation than the memory, vague but consistent in all parts of the globe, of the golden age we once knew.   
 

 

Fascinating, mifepristone blocks progesterone.  

Meanwhile:

 

Why does the presence of mistletoe —a parasitic plant that roots in oaks and other host trees— confer the right to kiss whoever you’re with?
 

The answer occurred to John Lee, MD, a family practitioner in Mill Valley, back in 1967. Lee was then editing the Marin Medical Society Bulletin and on the lookout for topics for his monthly column. He came across an article in a Harvard alumni publication describing the pagan rituals of the Celts who lived in the British Isles in the millennium before Christ. For their winter solstice celebration, the Celtic priests —Druids— would collect berries from trees bearing mistletoe.
 

Coincidentally, Lee had just read an item in the Journal of the American Medical Association stating that mistletoe contains a compound very similar to progesterone. He had an insight: “The berries were life in the middle of that cold European winter, when everything else was bleak and apparently lifeless. The Druids called mistletoe ‘a gift from the gods.’ They would take these berries and mix them with hot mead [an alcohol drink made from fermented honey] and they would all have a weeklong party where gifts were exchanged and they would celebrate that the sun was going to return and winter would not mean the end of the world.
 

“When a woman takes progesterone and then quits, a period is induced. I realized the mead laced with mistletoe would decrease everyone’s inhibitions and increase everyone’s libido for their four- or five-day party. It was free sex! And after four or five days of celebration they would quit. All the women would have their periods, and no babies would occur. No wonder they called it ‘a gift from the Gods!”
 

Lee compares the discovery that mistletoe prevented pregnancy to the discovery that limes prevented scurvy —a major advance in the annals of medicine. “The sailors didn’t know it was Vitamin C. The Celts didn’t know it was progesterone. They just knew it worked.” Lee hypothesized that kissing under the mistletoe is a form of “symbolic sexual promiscuity” going back to the days when the berries served as a birth-control device during pagan winter solstice parties (the persecuted Christians having scheduled their own holidays to coincide with existing celebrations).
 

Lee’s editorial evoked no response from the readers of the Marin Medical Society Bulletin —maybe they were disturbed by the juxtaposition of Christmas and sex— and never made it into the general lore.

 

(The Meaning of Mistletoe)

That topical progesterone can be good for the health of men and women in the age of xenoestrogenic compounds everywhere, a supremely unpopular opinion among the medical professionals, owing to the fact that malpractice is defined as not doing what everybody else is doing (and has nothing to do with science). 

Progesterone that is synthesized but molecularly identical to human progesterone, never a national test in this country, because it can't be patented (the Australians have done some testing, particularly with  regard to breast cancer).  The progestins, which have been tweaked by a molecule so they can be patented, pages of side-effects in the physician's desk reference--you doctor won't even know you aren't talking about progestins, if you mention progesterone, such is the medical profession's level of education on the subject.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by Mark Foote

[Taomeow]

Supremely unpopular opinion number next:

 

Subconsciously, humans will never forget that we used to belong to tribes originating from families, where everyone was "one of us" while everyone in another tribe was not, anymore than a modern family can forget they're a family and count all accidental neighbors as members of their family.  A family doesn't casually decide to go live in a neighbor's house or apartment, swap spouses and children and grandparents and cats and dogs on the premise that the neighbors are also "us," use their bank accounts and their cars as their own, go to the hospital to do the neighbor's orthopedic surgeon job while the neighbor goes to their HVAC job, and so on.  But subconsciously, humans will never forget that "us" used to mean extended families of 120--150 members, and whoever was not part of that tribal family was not "one of us."  Humans will forever project this mentality onto every stand-off for "us," for "belonging" that civilization has offered instead.  When (hypothetically and utopically) "everybody is equal" they will find ways around this, finer and finer divisions, in order to obey this subconscious imperative to differentiate between "one of us" and "not one of us."      

 

Latest example.  This has been spotted over one of our highways:

 

  

It says, "Go home LA asshats."  If you happen to live in San Diego, everybody who lives two hours away in LA is "other."  "Not one of us."  Not a member of the imaginary "tribe."

Same thing with "zonies," tourists from the neighboring Arizona.  There's no end to put-downs the locals use to describe this special alien species, the zonies.  Who are "not us," "intruders," "invaders."  

 

Funny how these things work.    

[Apech]

36 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

Supremely unpopular opinion number next:

 

Subconsciously, humans will never forget that we used to belong to tribes originating from families, where everyone was "one of us" while everyone in another tribe was not, anymore than a modern family can forget they're a family and count all accidental neighbors as members of their family.  A family doesn't casually decide to go live in a neighbor's house or apartment, swap spouses and children and grandparents and cats and dogs on the premise that the neighbors are also "us," use their bank accounts and their cars as their own, go to the hospital to do the neighbor's orthopedic surgeon job while the neighbor goes to their HVAC job, and so on.  But subconsciously, humans will never forget that "us" used to mean extended families of 120--150 members, and whoever was not part of that tribal family was not "one of us."  Humans will forever project this mentality onto every stand-off for "us," for "belonging" that civilization has offered instead.  When (hypothetically and utopically) "everybody is equal" they will find ways around this, finer and finer divisions, in order to obey this subconscious imperative to differentiate between "one of us" and "not one of us."      

 

Latest example.  This has been spotted over one of our highways:

 

  

It says, "Go home LA asshats."  If you happen to live in San Diego, everybody who lives two hours away in LA is "other."  "Not one of us."  Not a member of the imaginary "tribe."

Same thing with "zonies," tourists from the neighboring Arizona.  There's no end to put-downs the locals use to describe this special alien species, the zonies.  Who are "not us," "intruders," "invaders."  

 

Funny how these things work.    

Reminds me of:

 

For Schmitt, the political is reducible to the existential distinction between friend and enemy.^[5] This distinction arises from the fact of human diversity: identities and practices, beliefs and way of life can, in principle, be in conflict with one another.

[Taomeow]

40 minutes ago, Apech said:

Reminds me of:

 

For Schmitt, the political is reducible to the existential distinction between friend and enemy.^[5] This distinction arises from the fact of human diversity: identities and practices, beliefs and way of life can, in principle, be in conflict with one another.

 

Yes, and they're in conflict more often than not, but even in the absence of the real conflict, it is way too easy to create out of nothing, out of the slightest of (inevitable unavoidable) differences.  Politicians looove to exploit this unfortunate trait to the max.  I don't think it could disappear even if that wasn't the case, but it would have been a whole lot less harmful and malicious.  After all, it's one thing to make a tasteless joke based on someone being different (whether the difference is fundamental or imaginary), and it's another thing to go to war over it, or to make the lives of those unable or unwilling to enlist under the latest dominant baboon of ideology living hell.  

[Cobie]

3 hours ago, Apech said:

Reminds me of: … Schmitt …

 (Didn’t read the thread, just saw this name)  Carl Schmitt was a prominent member of the Nazi Party. 

 

 

Edited August 1 by Cobie

[Nungali]

6 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Supremely unpopular opinion number next:

 

Subconsciously, humans will never forget that we used to belong to tribes originating from families, where everyone was "one of us" while everyone in another tribe was not, anymore than a modern family can forget they're a family and count all accidental neighbors as members of their family.  A family doesn't casually decide to go live in a neighbor's house or apartment, swap spouses and children and grandparents and cats and dogs on the premise that the neighbors are also "us," use their bank accounts and their cars as their own, go to the hospital to do the neighbor's orthopedic surgeon job while the neighbor goes to their HVAC job, and so on.  But subconsciously, humans will never forget that "us" used to mean extended families of 120--150 members, and whoever was not part of that tribal family was not "one of us."  Humans will forever project this mentality onto every stand-off for "us," for "belonging" that civilization has offered instead.  When (hypothetically and utopically) "everybody is equal" they will find ways around this, finer and finer divisions, in order to obey this subconscious imperative to differentiate between "one of us" and "not one of us."      

 

Latest example.  This has been spotted over one of our highways:

 

  

It says, "Go home LA asshats."  If you happen to live in San Diego, everybody who lives two hours away in LA is "other."  "Not one of us."  Not a member of the imaginary "tribe."

Same thing with "zonies," tourists from the neighboring Arizona.  There's no end to put-downs the locals use to describe this special alien species, the zonies.  Who are "not us," "intruders," "invaders."  

 

Funny how these things work.    

 

is there a solution ?   Apparently, in some places, times and 'tribes'  .   Here in OZ , for a long time (and here that means loooong time ) things where a bit like that ; the 'wild west' , as it where  ( the archaeological record shows incidents of conflict and 'warfare' ; it was the 'Great Drought',  ( Ice Age ) very long, very harsh ) . Then came 'The Big Melt' , ice age ended , and the rainfall increased , life  and resources became abundant in 'The Great Island ' , so there was no more need for such conflict ... but people are what they are .... how to  create a system where land and resources  could be shared , where tribes could develop and explore their own 'identities' and uniqueness yet still  have connections and interactions that bind them together in various other ways ?

 

Wibalma ,  a Munga-nunga (  ‘artist as visionary’ ... and I would say , very relevant 'spiritual teacher ' or 'Prophet' )  arose  , came up with a system, others decided to adopt it and it still exists today . 

 

 

http://www.ifrao.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/31-1-Doring.pdf

Edited August 1 by Nungali