religion

Political Autoimmune Disorders and Collapse of Civilizations

~ Chuck Pezeshki ~ Leave a comment

Grey’s Arch, Red River Gorge, Kentucky

It’s the day after election day in the U.S., and the results have been discouraging. If you actually believe the Democrats, they are going to sweep in and fix all the flaws in the Trump administration, which they call fascist, by doing all sorts of truly fascist things like putting everyone whom they want to finger in jail. Biggest among these ostensible perps, in the eyes of the Ds, is Elon Musk, whose primary sin has been in being too successful in actually starting industries that are paradigm shifting. This is classic Tribal behavior, and I discuss this in detail in the piece prior to this one. It’s just incomprehensible at this End of Elite Overproduction that one mode of ending the internecine violence might be to create more, better things. That doesn’t work in the status-based mindset.

And look — Ii’s not that the Trump administration hasn’t had its share of defects of corruption — it certainly has. The problem with the Ds, though, is the constant undermining of the notion of anyone other than their select coterie of Bolsheviks should have any power. And we all know from history how that ends (spoiler alert for the historically illiterate — millions of people die.)

The problem with all this is that, for some reason/stage of psychosocial development that I haven’t completely figured out, is that all the strategies for action being advanced by the D’s Praetorian guard, are projected onto the Republicans. As I said above, the Rs at this particular moment in time, in terms of actual sins, are more the standard garden-variety corrupt politicians. But normal corrupt politician sins are not what the avant-garde Ds have in mind. So when they accuse the Republicans of being fascist, they’re giving a darker window into their collective id. And hey – if the Republicans were really fascists, they would have rounded up all the Democrats and shot them all. And all that talk about the Republicans suspending elections would have already occurred. Nothing of the sort has happened, and more as a display of erratic political will, Trump has already said he wants to work with the Democratic leadership, and by the way, did you know the stock market is up?

Somewhere in the somewhat recent past, a person appropriated the medical term ‘autoimmune disorder’ to describe our politics. What is an autoimmune disease? An autoimmune disease is when your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body. The standard issue versions are rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In the political/v-Meme context, it’s when an infective agent uses your values to attack and destroy your system of social organization. A great example of that would be the situation I described above. Democrats are using free speech to attack the Republicans, calling them fascist, while essentially gaslighting the public to believe that the Republicans are authoritarians. They are counting on people’s natural moral sense to view the Democratic accusation as somehow justifiable, since we live in an ostensibly rational society. This is intended to cause some revulsion reaction in the general body politic that will relationally disrupt their sense of belonging with the current administration. But it’s without basis. Like I said — if Trump was really Literally Hitler, they’d all be dead. Instead, none of the worst are dead at all. They just LOOK like they’re dead. See the photo below of Connecticut Representative/Poison Frog Rosa DeLauro.

But when you listen to their thought leaders, it’s pretty clear what they want to do to the Republicans. Here’s an interview clip with Kara Swisher, a former tech reporter, who has gone all in on the personality psychopath angle.

A perfect example of an autoimmune political virus at work. Swisher’s words, at least, are scary — but the idea is straightforward — use the principles of justice in a liberal republic to go after those she views as enemies. Big Balls was tasked to participate in DOGE, the task force created by Trump, to go after corruption. For his participation in this, Swisher wants him in jail.

It gets worse. Hillary Clinton, otherwise known as an incarnated Demon from the 8th Level of the Inferno, shares air time with Swisher’s fantasy here.

Once again, it is using the systems inside a liberal democratic republic to wage war against the body politic, with the unstated intent of collapse. Positively psychopathic.

We are currently seeing a new wave of Muslim politicians who are also playing the same autoimmune card. The Islamic faith in any fundamental interpretation is profoundly at odds with the notion of a liberal democracy, that is built on a foundation of individual rights, and processes that clearly divide church and state. Additionally, there are a whole panoply of mullah-sanctioned offenses that would lead to literal execution if we followed Islamic law — such as stoning of homosexuals and adulterers.

But let’s back off the more dramatic vectors for Islamic autoimmune disorder. Let’s move away from women, and onto issues with animals. Forget the whole deal around pigs and bacon — dogs are a much larger level for social control in a Western society. According to some interpretations of the Quran, dogs are unclean, and in order for some Muslims to feel “safe” in society, dogs must be removed from public spaces in order to “respect their religion.” The recent media stream has seen quite a bit going on about the sacrilegious effects of dog saliva – an obvious trigger for some kind of appropriate revulsion reaction, as well as firing up their OCD partners on the other side of the Tribal v-Meme. This whole thing is legit, amirite?

The accommodation that will be sought, though, will be more banning, of course, and strict leash laws, with punishment. Why does this matter? Dog parks are one of the few places I’ve been to in the last ten years where I could actually talk to random people and build friendships. I don’t have young children any more, and if you’re not clubbing or on the PTA, you’re sorely limited in meeting people. Regular parks already have been wrecked for social connection due to homelessness, as well as general paranoia. Imagine me, a 64 year old man, approaching a young woman with a child, and telling them I want to be their neighbor. ‘Nuf said..

But dogs change that. Dogs don’t care who’s butt they sniff as long as they are friendly butts. This inevitably leads to conversations.

And, as we know, the group that finds this most reprehensible is the Islamic contingent, though Chinese people with OCD are also up there. They breed into their children a fear of dogs, even though kids naturally want to pat dogs. Muslim parents are actually fighting an uphillKids are also bombarded with images in the media of dogs being cute things that like kids and want to be petted. So those Muslim parents have some uphill work to do.

And the situation is also exacerbated by other autoimmune societal influencers. There is a powerful movement in the dog world that you shouldn’t own a dog that is not a rescue from a shelter. But in more toxic communities, like where I used to live (Moscow ID/Pullman WA) some percentage of the rescues were pit bull and pit bull crosses trucked up from southern CA shelters specializing in rescuing dogs from houses subject to drug busts. A large percentage of these dogs are actually un-remediable, and will bite. Not exactly the kind of dog you want off leash. The percentage of pit bulls in the pet population will directly influence people’s rational fears about getting bitten.

Where I live now, there are only a few, and most of these are on the leash. But regardless, because we’re at that point of societal devolution, no one would think of dog agency as something to be managed. And what THAT means is the owners of dogs with high bite potential would never muzzle their dogs — an easy solution. Muzzling your dog would be a huge status decrement, and would detract from the fact that you are superior to the people went out and bought a particular breed for specific characteristics. It would also send a parallel signal that you mapped to one’s hatred for any kind of cultural or dog breed relativism. You are no better than me with your well-trained purebred borzoi that will come from a mile away to your whistle. It is a weird form of White Guilt, eloquently described by Eli and Shelby Steele, in their latest eponymously named documentary. Pit bull lives matter!

The result is an amazing example of how a political autoimmune disease affects a particular niche of society, with repercussions. Loosely enforced leash laws, which really are ‘leash heuristics’ turn into societal connection destroyers. No one who doesn’t know a person already is going to walk up to another person with a dog on a leash and walk alongside them. Relational mixing is broken down, in the name of “respecting their religion.” Worse, on my way out the door from my last gig, I believe I had a preliminary Title IX complaint filed against me because I took my dogs to class for a “petting day”. As weird as this may sound, this was also a way of enforcing status-based authoritarianism already rife in the university environment. When the former president’s wife (called the First Lady!) was active, she had a pair of corgis who honestly spread joy to lots of students. I was considered acting beyond my station by doing the same. In case you missed it, Americans love dogs, and the kids in my class would eagerly grab onto my border collies for selfies and pats.

But there goes that autoimmune disease thing again — using a set of values (respect for someone’s religion) as a vehicle to shut down social connection and be part of a larger societal devolution. And yes — Islam is rife with that. Kathy Hochul wearing a hijab. It’s not hard to find examples.

The problem is once they’re in charge, that sense of plurality goes out the window, pronto. Forget the whole ‘life joy’ angle. As I’ve said, Big A Authoritarians need a lack of joy/depression mode for a majority of the population to have a functioning authority-driven social structure.

The wild thing is that you don’t have to look far afield to find actual Muslim countries that constrain the Muslim faith. Most of the central Asian ‘stans’ restrict the Azan — the Muslim call to prayer. There are other restrictions as well. It’s not hard to figure out which ones — look at native dress for women. Short version — if they are allowed to show their hair, the governments have realized some form of separation and control of religion. They may not be as “evolved” as our own government, with its bans on religious restrictions. But they also recognize fundamentalist Islam is problem. The mullahs issue fatwas for the religion, and functionally form the governments where they’re allowed to. The secular, but far more authoritarian states, realize that mind-fucking/auto-immune political viruses are real. And at some level, they inoculate themselves against them. You can badger your wife in your own home to wrap her hair up. But outside, she’s got freedom whether you like it or not. And more importantly, OTHER old women aren’t allowed to enforce these edicts.

Another factor, because of the power of religious authority in Muslim societies, and makes Islam particularly problematic, because there is no really evolutionary possibility for Islam in the context of psychosocial evolution. You can’t get to any real personal agency because you have the mullahs waving the Quran. And so, not surprisingly, we can see entire belts of nations, particularly in the Arab world, that are stuck. And thanks to our own government, that took out the secular aspirational leadership in places like Libya (not like these places didn’t have problems before, folks) we now have, in the 21st Century, slave markets. All endorsed by Islam. Sometimes, the autoimmune disease destroys the host.

The problems also occur when you have competitive autoimmune diseases who both are working on overwhelming the current systems of restraint. Once again — by using the liberal societies’ moral codes against it. These opposing forces are fine with co-opting these value sets, and even supporting others at the same psychosocial developmental level until they get control. Then, once control is achieved, they will turn on each other. All of these are relationally devolutional/psychopathic control strategies, so as long as there are lines in the sandbox that separate them enough, they will play well together, until they’ve destroyed the higher v-Meme host. And then you better believe all Hell is going to break loose. Nothing is more emblematic of this than the whole ‘Free Palestine’ movement being supported by the whole LGBTQ+ Poison Frog movement, who have decided to collaborate (often at a distance) with the Islamic community. The Muslim contingent of the Free Palestine movement, being fundamentalist, would have no patience if they ever gained control for purple-haired and nose-pierced lesbians, who have adopted totemic superficial symbols that allow easy identification.

It’s easy to pick on Islam, but you don’t have to go far psychosocially to realize that this is an aggregate development/cultural issue. The grooming gang scandal in the UK is mostly a Pakistani concoction, and a classic example of how an autoimmune disorder is unraveling a society in the wildest way possible. Legitimizing a lack of criticism because of racism of organized gangs literally raping tens of thousands of underage girls is how you destroy a society.

Likewise, making it a hate crime if a person refuses to use a trans-person’s pronouns. That’s another autoimmune disease. Why? When you extract all agency out of a society for a person to correctly relationally define themselves adjacent to someone else, you’re essentially banning a person from being rational. Surrendering that ability is what makes a liberal democracy possible. And so the devolutionary trend begins. The MAIN structure of an advanced, high trust society goes in the toilet.

The same thing has happened in the context of the various DEI campaigns. What happens is not that the body politic doesn’t recognize that it has an autoimmune disorder. It’s that there are warping reactions that occur in society to get away from it, as elites in a society use social status and money to move to more normal and normative means of relating. I’ll never forget a couple of summers ago touring the wine country in the Willamette Valley. We stopped at a particularly swanky winery — Chateau Serene — for a tasting. They had a complex gating system to get in, and even after that, a glass of wine cost $32. You better believe there wasn’t a minority in the place. And even in the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I’ve seen pictures of women hoisting a martini while NOT wearing the hijab. Elites will find a way to be cosmopolitan.

There’s a continuing list of psychosocial autoimmune diseases – things like chronic protests against the viability of the USA as being a reasonable country. Using free speech to hijack societal devolution is a standard. I’d encourage you to make your own list. Key elements are, of course, constantly tearing down present society with no constructive solutions, along with the consequential outcome of chaos and anarchy — all collapse vectors. Drugs and facilitation given to addicts, instead of enforced treatment — that would be a big one. Turning over libraries to homeless people in the name of “compassion”. Centering the freedom of the mentally ill — that would be a prime collapse narrative and a great example of a psychosocial autoimmune disease. Decreasing the window of tolerance for things that provide some kind of normative joy. Even incidental versions that are inconsequential — banning peanuts on airplane flights. The refusal to clean up government programs from corruption, as has happened in places like Minneapolis, MN, because of potential discrimination of the Somali community. What an autoimmune disease that is!

The first step towards fixing any of this is to recognize it. Here’s the blueprint. Now I gotta go play with my dogs in a public space. Boo Boo’s got some squirrels to hunt. Off leash. While I can.

Virtue Signaling and Psychopathic Manipulation

~ Chuck Pezeshki ~ Leave a comment

Pearl Farm Platform Women — Misool, Indonesia

One of the newest terms to dominate the political lexicon is the term “virtue signaling” — which basically means communicating, especially to your in-group, but also to larger society, your views on issues that will somehow establish your status of possessing a deeper morality relative to those same groups. The old fashioned word for all this is some form of “piety establishment” — which is literally as old as the hills. It is used to project virtue that one typically doesn’t back up with any action, other than spouting off at others. Classic virtue signals are phrases like ‘Black Lives Matter’ or ‘Defund the Police’. The first is meaningless save as a racist attack for immiseration. The second is advocating a policy position, ostensibly for protecting poor people, but one which few poor people would agree with. Living in violent communities teaches you the value of good policing, needless to say.

What is interesting about both these statements is that they are classic examples of what is known as a ‘double bind‘ — an inherently contradictory statement that a given recipient cannot respond to conclusively, creating emotional paralysis. Applied liberally, it creates a destructive cognitive schizophrenia in the target, which then ungrounds the individual, and makes them easier to control.

Which makes it a natural tool of choice for psychopaths and those wishing to propagate psychopathic manipulation. And certainly, in a multi-level authoritarian hierarchy, becomes a convenient go-to for leaders of all stripes. Once you understand and ponder it, it’s not surprising that top politicians and CEOs both use, and succumb to it. When the dominant information replication technique is mirroring, there’s nothing better than a good old-fashioned virtue signal.

That also means that most virtual signals are on the top level of the knowledge structure stack — whatever obvious thing, with embedded tribal meaning, that can be manipulated in the form of a double bind. My absolute favorite has to be “Love is Love”. While there are some standard representations of love we are aware of, it can quickly be commandeered to justify any perversion the individual wishing to propagate to a larger audience. Note how such an argument is used to justify pedophilia. And as with all profound psychopathic manipulations, debate is immediately constrained to the source of the virtual signal. If you respond to the argument ‘Love is Love’ with the notion that it might not exactly apply across the board, you’ll be accused of being a pedophile yourself. This dovetails nicely with psychopathic projection, of course — getting accused of the sin the perp is actually contemplating.

A notable champion of this tactic had to be former Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. She would proudly proclaim her status as a lesbian in public press conferences. But if someone else discussed her lesbianism, and whether it might cast some doubt on her fitness as Press Secretary, that person would be immediately shouted down. I’ve noticed this with my own students — if a student declares themselves as Mexican or Hispanic, no one notices. But if I say something innocuous — like “what is the Mexican perspective on this issue?” — the collective student audience gasps. That’s how deeply embedded these techniques are in the contemporary psyche.

There might be virtue signals in higher level knowledge structures, but they are difficult to ascertain. Higher level knowledge structures usually are underlaid with a deeper “why”, and that complexity doesn’t easily transmit across larger groups. Additionally, higher level knowledge structures usually have some conditional elements, or situational circumstances. “Love is love” starts losing its punch when you start describing sidebars to the idea. It may become more truthful when you’re describing a BDSM orgy, but it loses its edge for confusion. And confusion is the main point.

Psychopaths love virtue signaling precisely because of its memetic transmissibility. And bored people are especially susceptible to it. Any good virtue signal has its roots in an emotional response that leads to that paralysis. So people without meaning or meaningful connection have an open socket in their brain waiting for a virtue signal to plug into. They can adopt the signal for their own, or they can join the ranks of Immiserators for which the virtue signal becomes a weapon. Societies grounded in some version of Survival mode are far less susceptible to virtue signaling. Because bullshit will get you killed.

Organized religion is not exempt from supporting virtue signals. The one thing that organized religion has going for it, though, is vetting of messages against deeper origination myths. The minute you end up with a larger stack behind any top level message, there is at least some hope for dilution of damage.

Deconstructing any given virtue signal is almost always trivial from a rational perspective. In the case of ‘defund the police’ — one might cite a couple of statistics about violent crime, or the actual opinions of poor people. The problem is that the virtue signaler’s thought originates in the limbic system of their brain, which is really a dichotomous processing center — things are either right or wrong. And that will inherently be tied to an emotional reaction, which is likely not going to be pleasant.

The other thing key in understanding psychopathic manipulation using virtue signals is that because of the way they work in the brain, expecting to tie the virtue signal to any sense of responsibility will also fail. The idea that if you broadcast publicly a particular thought, you then are tied into some plan of action to actually remediate the problem, other than participate in a large, group activity that reinforces the virtue signal, is not the case. Most virtue signaling is low responsibility, and once again, because it originates in the limbic system, has poor consequentiality tied to it. No one’s thinking about the downstream outcomes. And when you start bringing those up, you’re going to end up in a hole pretty quickly.

In summation, virtue signaling is a technique for manipulation and control, used primarily by affluent psychopaths. It’s “do as I say, as long as you think I’m great, and I don’t take any collateral damage” that characterizes most virtue signaling. And for those that want to pursue a broader meaning, look at Rob Henderson’s work on “Luxury Beliefs”.