Tagged: Ibsen

LIV Tamagotchi Omelette/Amulet

Prithee, tell her but a worky-day fortune. (Antony and Cleopatra)

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« L’histoire est le développement d’une logique immanente dont les grands personnages historiques ne sont que les instruments inconscients ; ils sont animés par leurs passions et réalisent leurs intérêts ; ‘mais en même temps se trouve réalisée une fin plus lointaine, mais dont ils n’avaient pas conscience et qui n’était pas dans leur intention’. C’est ce que Hegel appelle la ruse de la raison. » (René Serreau, Hegel et l’hégélianisme, 1968)

C’est très exactement une idée de Kant. Cette idée est exprimée en plusieurs passages de l’œuvre de ced dernier, de manière plus ou moins identique à la pensée ultérieure de Hegel ici présentée. J’ai pour l’instant retrouvé le passage suivant, qui montre d’ailleurs, citation à l’appui, qu’une telle idée de logique immanente dans le cours de l’histoire remonte à l’antiquité : « Ich meinerseits vertraue dagegen doch … (in subsidium) auf die Natur der Dinge, welche dahin zwingt, wohin man nicht gerne will (fata volentem ducunt, nolentem tracunt). » (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis) Je ne suis donc en réalité pas plus fondé à dire que l’idée est de Kant que Serreau à dire qu’elle est de Hegel, mais ce n’est pas non plus son but même s’il aurait pu souligner que l’idée n’est pas particulièrement «hégélienne»… Chacun d’eux, Kant comme Hegel, l’a reprise à sa manière, en lui donnant un sens particulier au sein de leurs pensées respectives.

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« À partir du prix de revient total du produit [=coût total : fabrication, marketing…], on trouve son prix de vente en ajoutant une quantité qui sera la marge génératrice de profit. … Dans la plupart des cas, il s’agit d’entreprises fabriquant plusieurs produits : comment alors attribuer à chacun sa ‘juste part de couverture des charges fixes’ ? » (A. Dayan, Le marketing, 1979) L’auteur prend ensuite l’exemple d’une entreprise qui fabrique trois produits, dont l’un est suffisant pour amortir les frais fixes, et qui peut donc pratiquer des prix offensifs sur les deux autres produits. De toute évidence, une telle entreprise ne se spécialisera pas sur le produit A, même si B et C sont « estimés non rentables selon la méthode de prix de revient complet ». Nous avons là un exemple de rationalité économique qui s’oppose à la spécialisation et donc à la théorie des avantages comparatifs, selon laquelle les nations ont intérêt à se spécialiser dans les productions où elles ont un avantage (absolu ou relatif), et sur laquelle les libéraux fondent le commerce international. Selon cet exemple, la théorie n’est donc pas viable même en pure rationalité économique et sans considérations extrinsèques de souveraineté nationale (qui exigerait le maintien de certaines industries même peu rentables), car la non-spécialisation comporte l’exercice d’un pouvoir économique sur les prix.

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 « Qu’il évite avec soin tout acte qui dépend d’autrui ; qu’il s’applique au contraire avec zèle à tout ce qui ne dépend que de lui-même. Tout ce qui dépend d’autrui cause de la peine, tout ce qui dépend de soi-même donne du plaisir ; sachez que c’est là en somme la définition de la peine et du plaisir. » (Les Lois de Manou, traduction par G. Strehly, p.118)

Cela pourrait servir de résumé très exact de la doctrine des Stoïciens.

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We’ll beat ‘em into bench-holes. (Scarrus, dans Antoine et Cléopâtre de Shakespeare).

Bench-holes est un terme archaïque pour désigner des latrines : « Nous irons les buter jusque dans les latrines. » Le Scarrus de Shakespeare anticipe donc de quelques centaines d’années la phrase du président russe Vladimir Poutine qui en a marqué beaucoup : « Nous irons les buter [les terroristes islamistes] jusque dans les chiottes. » Aucun commentateur, à ma connaissance, n’a relevé la référence shakespearienne.

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Think of the fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-ll [Brummel]! a nobody’s son; a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand, as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world! (Thackeray, Barry Lyndon)

So much for Barbey d’Aurevilly.

Au temps pour Barbey, auteur, comme on le sait, d’un peu convaincant Du Dandysme et de George Brummel, contredit par son congénère fictif, le gentilhomme Barry Lyndon.

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People who say manual labour is a good thing have never done any. (Brendan Behan)

With the notable exception of Henry David Thoreau.

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When the wise seer beholds in golden glory the Lord, the Spirit, the Creator of the god of creation, then he leaves good and evil behind. (Upanishads)

‘Good and evil behind,’ an early occurrence of Jenseits von Gut und Böse.

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What is the amount of information needed to convince people that a personality is present? The answer … is that very little information is needed. Simple line drawings of objects (as long as they have eyes or even a hint that they are alive), are quite enough to activate psychologically rich responses. Perceived reality does not depend on verisimilitude: A character doesn’t have to look anything like a real person to give and receive real social responses. (Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass, The Media Equation, 1996)

Il n’est donc pas besoin de construire des robots sociaux qui ressemblent à l’homme, surtout avec le risque d’entrer dans la vallée inquiétante (uncanny valley) ! Des personnages à la Nintendo première génération, néoténiques et kawaii, peuvent suffire à créer une interaction sociale homme-machine optimale.

L’avenir seul pourra dire si l’actroïde est capable de sortir de la vallée inquiétante. Je fais l’hypothèse suivante. L’apparence des robots humanoïdes ne cessera de s’améliorer mais il existe une limite indépassable qui les maintiendra toujours à la périphérie de la vallée inquiétante, c’est-à-dire que plus la familiarité avec le robot le plus parfait sera grande et plus son « étrangeté » de robot deviendra manifeste à son interlocuteur humain, qui aura dès lors à trancher s’il a affaire à un robot ou à un humain quelque peu dérangé nerveusement.

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And the joy of work, too. … people here don’t know anything about that either. … people here are brought up to believe that work is a curse, and a sort of punishment for their sins. (Ibsen, Ghosts)

Dans la bouche d’un peintre… (Aurait-ce été convaincant dans la bouche d’un ouvrier soumis aux nouvelles conditions du travail industriel ?) Cette apologie libérale du travail, ingénieusement opposée à une conception chrétienne, reflète le statut d’Ibsen comme écrivain subventionné par le Parlement bourgeois norvégien qui lui vota une indemnité à vie.

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Kantisme (notes)

1/ Raison pure

« La géométrie nous apprend que la droite tangente au cercle touche ce cercle en un point, mais si nous traçons le cercle et la droite sensibles, nous nous apercevons que la droite touche toujours le cercle en plusieurs points et que jamais nous ne pourrons obtenir une figure conforme aux définitions mathématiques. Or la géométrie ne peut, pour raisonner, se passer de la considération des figures, dont le tracé dément le discours que le mathématicien tient sur elles. » (Exposé de la pensée de Protagoras par Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey, dans Les sophistes, 1985) – Or c’est la construction synthétique a priori qui sert au géomètre et non l’aspect des figures tracées à la main, forcément grossières par rapport à ces constructions a priori. Contre ceux qui parlent des figures géométriques comme des approximations, des abstractions des objets perçus, lesquels s’écarteraient tous plus ou moins de la forme géométrique pure (Locke, Husserl), il convient de faire remarquer que la lune perçue dans le ciel nocturne est un cercle parfait et que l’horizon perçu est une parfaite ligne droite. Ce constat des formes géométriques pures perçues (intuitionnées) confirme l’affirmation kantienne selon laquelle une figure géométrique est une construction dans l’intuition et non une idée abstraite.

Le concept d’un triangle est sa pure et simple définition, et les énoncés qui posent cette définition sont analytiques. Synthétiques a priori sont en revanche les énoncés qui exposent les propriétés du triangle.

La dimension dite « quantitative/spatio-visuelle » des tests d’intelligence est conforme à la conception kantienne des mathématiques comme science intuitive pure.

La physique relativiste traite l’espace comme un concept et non comme une forme de l’intuition a priori.

C’est l’intuition du temps qui permet d’appréhender le changement, c’est-à-dire la prédication de termes contradictoires dans un même sujet (ici-pas ici) : l’intuition et non le concept.

Chacune des antinomies indécidables de la raison a une thèse (par exemple, le monde a un commencement dans le temps) et une antithèse (le monde n’a pas de commencement dans le temps). La thèse est appelée par Kant « dogmatisme » et a sa préférence : elle présente un intérêt pratique, et elle est conforme au sens commun (au « sens commun » d’un Chrétien, à la rigueur). L’antithèse est dite « empirisme » et Kant considère qu’elle est nuisible à la morale et à la religion. (Kant estime en revanche que l’intérêt spéculatif de l’empirisme est supérieur à celui du dogmatisme.) Schopenhauer adopte un point de vue opposé (en s’appuyant sur l’hindouisme et le bouddhisme) ; il affirme d’ailleurs que cette question du commencement ou non du monde n’est pas une antinomie car elle est selon lui tranchée (dans le sens d’un non-commencement du monde dans le temps).

2/ Raison pratique

La chose en soi n’étant pas soumise aux lois de la causalité, lois de la nature, elle est pensée comme libre.

La morale est une « logique » et non une science naturelle.

Considérer les phénomènes comme des choses en soi interdit de concilier la loi de nature et la liberté, tandis que la cause intelligible, en soi et en dehors de la série des phénomènes, peut être pensée comme une cause par liberté. Il y a ainsi deux types de causalité : selon la nature et par liberté.

« Comme pour toute marchandise, le capitaliste essaie d’acheter la force de travail le meilleur marché possible, car pour lui l’ouvrier n’est pas un homme devant vivre sa propre vie, mais une force de travail pouvant devenir source de profit. » (Cornélius Castoriadis, La société bureaucratique) On ne saurait mieux exprimer que le capitalisme viole constitutionnellement l’impératif « Agis de telle sorte que tu traites l’humanité comme une fin, et jamais simplement comme un moyen. »

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That subtle appearance differences have reproductive implications is suggested by findings showing that the degree of female physical asymmetry is reduced when females are fertile compared to the beginning and end of the menstrual cycle, when they are not fertile (Manning et al., 1996). (Michael McGuire & Alfonso Troisi, Darwinian Psychiatry, 1998)

Les femmes sont plus symétriques dans leurs périodes de fertilité que dans les autres périodes de leur existence. C’est une confirmation des conclusions du baron de Saxy-Beaulieu : ,,Das Weib ist Plastik.’’ (la femme est plastique) (voyez ici).

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« De manière générale les réparations, quelles qu’elles soient, n’ont bénéficié que de progrès technique faible (réparation de bâtiments, d’objets manufacturés, de meubles, d’horlogerie, etc.). » (Jean Fourastié, Le grand espoir du XXe siècle, 1949)

C’est pourquoi les réparations sont rares : on ne répare plus, on remplace, parce que la productivité des réparations n’a pas ou a peu augmenté. C’est aussi pourquoi la pression de notre civilisation sur les ressources du milieu s’accroît sans mesure.

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A few people dream entirely in color. (Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell, 1956)

I have never dreamt in black and white. Never. In fact I have never heard of people dreaming in black and white either. Was color-dreaming rare in Huxley’s time because TV was black and white and people dream not after a real-life but after their screen-viewing pattern?

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You’ve cheated me out of a mother’s joy and happiness in life. And a mother’s sorrows and tears too. And that was perhaps the greatest loss for me. (Ella Rentheim in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman)

Compare with Nora Helmer’s ‘duty to herself’ in A Doll’s House. Which quotation do people know, Ella’s or Nora’s?

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A multitude of working poor

The height of it [Luxury] is never seen but in Nations that are vastly populous, and there only in the upper part of it, and the greater that is the larger still in proportion must be the lowest, the Basis that supports all, the multitude of Working Poor. (Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees)

Anyone who has read Mandeville knows he is not being critical here; on the contrary, his fable claims the necessity of heightening luxury. Now let it be known that Mandeville was extolled by the Austrian School of Economics and Friedrich Hayek, intellectual seeds of the Chicago School.

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Phobos is being drawn to Mars’ surface at a rate of one centimetre every year. At this rate of attraction, in something like fifty million years, it will smash into the surface of Mars. (Mission to Mars: The Emirates Mars Mission and Mars Hope, 2015)

So there is something after all in Hörbiger’s contention that celestial bodies are spiralling toward one another… => World Ice Theory (Welteislehre)

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« Une onde se propage dans un milieu élastique entré en vibration sous l’action d’une force. L’air vibre et propage le son, l’air est le milieu élastique qui sert de support au son. Dans le vide, le son ne peut plus se propager. Le vide ! N’est-ce pas le vide qui règne dans les espaces interplanétaires et interstellaires que la lumière traverse à la vitesse de 300.000 km à la seconde ? Le vide serait-il donc un milieu élastique capable de transmettre l’onde lumineuse ? Une contradiction surgissait. » (Maurice Duquesne, Matière et Antimatière, 1968)

Une solution fut apportée par la théorisation d’une vibration de l’éther. L’existence de l’éther étant infirmée par la physique relativiste, la contradiction resurgit ; comment la relativité la résout-elle ?

Une autre solution pourrait se trouver dans la « cosmogonie glaciaire » (Welteislehre) d’Hörbiger ou toute autre théorie qui, postulant l’absence de vide interplanétaire, n’a pas non plus besoin de l’hypothèse de l’éther.

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Schopenhauer père de Darwin

« Revenu de son périple autour du monde, Darwin étudie les théories du philosophe [Schopenhauer] » (p.10), parmi lesquelles théories on trouve que

« Le chimpanzé a donné naissance à l’homme » (Édouard Sans, Schopenhauer, 1990, p.66)

J’ai déjà eu l’occasion de souligner que Darwin n’avait pas inventé la théorie de l’évolution des espèces, vieille comme l’antiquité, mais qu’il avait décrit de la manière la plus adéquate le mécanisme de cette évolution, à savoir la sélection naturelle. Les milieux pseudo-intellectuels anglo-saxons ignorent largement ces données et tendent à colporter une histoire des idées falsifiée dans laquelle le darwinisme, né par génération spontanée, a introduit pour la première fois l’idée d’évolution.

En l’occurrence, les origines simiennes de l’homme se trouvent déjà dans Schopenhauer (x) et, Darwin ayant lu, comme on le voit ici, ce dernier, il a sans doute laissé dans ses manuscrits l’hommage qu’on s’attendrait qu’il rende à un prédécesseur dans l’idée que « l’homme descend du singe », idée que l’on attribue toujours à l’un et jamais à l’autre.

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The history of the mammals in particular is a history of memory development. All through the Tertiary period, it is to be noted, brains in every group of mammals increase in relative size and complexity. With every increase, the power of learning from experience and of supplementing direct impulse by conditioned reflexes increases. (My emphasis) (H.G. Wells, The Outlook for Homo Sapiens)

Humans are more ‘conditionable’ than Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s doves.

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Liberty Steak with Freedom Fries

America entered the war [WWI]. Those great newspapers which had been opposing the entry now suddenly discovered the seriousness of the German menace … Hamburger became ‘liberty steak,’ and sauerkraut became ‘liberty cabbage,’ and so the world was made safe for democracy. (Upton Sinclair, The Wet Parade)

And French fries became ‘freedom fries’ when the French refused to support the U.S. war in Iraq.

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La « crise des fondements » des mathématiques (Hilbert, Gödel) est prédite par le kantisme et l’exposé des antinomies. Démontrer.

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Matsui est une marque du groupe britannique Dixons-Currys au nom japonais en raison du marqueur associé à l’électronique japonaise. Le slogan d’Audi « Vorsprung durch Technik », en allemand à l’international, est une idée de l’agence de publicité britannique BBG, en raison du marqueur associé à la technologie allemande. Stella Artois est une bière anglaise. &c

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L’effet Poetzl (ou Pötzl) de l’efficacité des images subliminales a été découvert grâce à des expérimentations sur la suggestion post-hypnotique. Poetzl observa que les rêves des personnes soumises à des images subliminales traitaient principalement le matériel subliminal. Il démontra ensuite que ce stock de « mémoire subliminale » peut influer sur le comportement : l’effet Poetzl, c’est que le jugement d’une personne valorise ou dévalorise des objets par association, en fonction de la mémoire subliminale.

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Les séances publiques d’hypnose en tant que divertissement (stage hypnotism) ont complètement disparu, à l’instar des freak shows.

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Abstraction vs Expressionnisme. La peinture abstraite n’est pas comparable à la musique atonale, qui est le pendant de la peinture expressionniste. L’abstraction est une réponse purgative à la « surchage perceptuelle » (perceptual overload) d’un monde surmédiatisé.

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Le cubisme architectural d’Adolf Loos, inspirateur du Corbusier, a criblé l’Occidental, principalement mais pas seulement, de « flèches empoisonnées » feng shui.

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As a rule making a living is boring to death.

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Le lait maternel a un fort goût umami, mot d’origine japonaise, la cinquième saveur de base avec le sucré, le salé, l’amer et l’acide. Et le lait commercial ?

Selon la pensée chinoise, l’expérience gustative dépend de tous les sens, qui seraient au nombre de trente-sept.

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 La machine à dire « Je t’aime » est le psychothérapeute de l’avenir.

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Je demande à une amie thaïlandaise si elle nourrit son talisman Kuman Tong car j’ai connu des gens qui nourrissaient un Tamagotchi.

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«The Entertainment Age cometh!» and it won’t be the Leisure Age.

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We shall have plenty of time on our hands with which to do something. (John Neulinger, The psychology of leisure, 1981)

Qu’est-ce qui a démenti cette prédiction tellement courante il y a quelques années et à laquelle plus personne ne semble croire aujourd’hui ? L’inflation annulant les effets des gains de productivité ?

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L’aristocrate est celui qui juge les gens d’après leur naissance, le démocrate celui qui les juge d’après leur diplôme.

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La culture était la « spécialité » de la classe de loisir (Tibor Scitovsky). La fin de la classe de loisir pour les hommes, la femme y restant de fait, devait rendre l’homme méprisable, car inculte, aux yeux de la femme, d’où un violent désir d’« émancipation » par lequel la femme était conduite à demander à entrer comme les hommes sur le marché du travail en tant que main-d’œuvre spécialisée. Ainsi, et ainsi seulement, pouvait s’opérer la réconciliation entre les sexes, dans l’inculture généralisée.

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Le statut est important pour le choix d’un partenaire de long terme, mais seul le physique compte pour le faire cocu. [C’est ce que j’ai appelé springboarding the Mogul => x]

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« Kant ne savait pas de quoi il parlait quand il parlait des femmes. » Il en savait peut-être plus que le cornard moyen.

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La consécration de l’intellectuel français : remettre un rapport à l’administration.

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J’ai eu le culte du chef aussi longtemps que je pouvais croire devenir chef un jour. Aujourd’hui, je trouve cela de mauvais goût.

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50 % de l’édition française est bonne à jeter ; le reste est traduit de l’anglais.

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A right to insurrection supposes the right to call to insurrection.

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‘Bags’ under the eyes are permanent (one has to remove them surgically), ‘shadows’ under the eyes are temporary (they disappear with better health). In films, successful, (moderately) mature men are depicted with conspicuous bags (thanks to makeup), women never (thanks to makeup). Bags, obviously, are not perceived as a marker of bad health in males. The cinematic practise surely relies on research (marketing research), so women must be looking for the bags (when in search of a springboard).

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You feel blue because of your blue genes.

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It is tempting to blame … self-interested advertisers for creating our desire for fats (Deirdre Barrett, Waistland)

As far as I’m concerned, I have never blamed advertisers for creating anything. But I am blaming them nonetheless.

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I had a dream which I dare not tell my shrink. A gentleman is chatting with a lady at one or the other’s cosy place. Then she says she needs to use the restroom and accordingly leaves the living room. The camera stays on the man’s face while we’re hearing monstrous noises from the restroom, explosive flatulences and splashes, and that takes a little while. When the lady comes in again, the living room is empty, a window open, curtains waving: the man jumped from it.

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Je m’appelle Florent mais ça ne répond jamais.

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The only thing science knows for sure is that it will kill all poets in the end.

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L’homme d’une seule femme à cent têtes.

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« Estoy triste » : c’est déjà relativiser.

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Si Lucette avait su…

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Très attendu au tournant.

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L’université n’a pas voulu de moi car elle croyait que j’étais d’extrême-droite. L’administration m’a laissé entrer pour la même raison.

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À vingt ans, j’ai failli mourir. À trente ans, j’aurais presque pu vivre.

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Le pouvoir corrompt. C’est ce que nient les partisans de la dictature du prolétariat ainsi que les réformistes qui se présentent aux élections.

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Le pouvoir corrompt (Montesquieu). Donc tous pourris.

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C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte,
Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre… (Verlaine)

Clitandre, ce nom, en poésie, depuis Corneille (au moins), c’est une blague ? On ne connaissait pas le mot clito à ces époques, immédiatement évoqué dans tous les esprits aujourd’hui quand on dit Clitandre ?

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As a true philosopher you thought you would be king.

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Je n’écris pas pour être lu, mais pour être connu. Si les gens me lisaient, ils mourraient de honte. (Ah bon, j’écris ?)

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How can you live, how dare you live after killing the poet inside?

There was a woman, it was my way to tell her: ‘You will give me nothing? I’ll give you everything.’ I sent her so many poems, then threw my poetry away.

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Tu traverses une passe difficile de pantalons trop serrés.

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J’étais devenu si conservateur qu’à la boulangerie je n’achetais plus que des baguettes tradition.

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Le poète romantique se regarde pleurer. Le poète contemporain se regarde écrire…

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Ce n’est pas rue de la banque mais rue bancale.

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I should have died long ago, what went wrong?

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Il n’y a pas de « vous » en anglais, seulement du « sir », qui ne doit donc pas être traduit par « monsieur » mais par le vouvoiement.

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Oil rent is something for nothing.

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Notre époque n’est pas héroïque car notre époque est bourgeoise, mais l’héroïsme existe car l’héroïsme est prolétarien.

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Il tire la sonnette d’alarme et se prend un seau d’eau sur la tête.

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Adventure de Jack London est un roman qui se passe en Polynésie. Les quelques allusions à la Polynésie française se bornent à dire la corruption de ses juges et bureaucrates.

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Malcom X et Eugene X (Eugenics).

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La poésie des peuples premiers ridiculise par sa profondeur tout ce que les universitaires occidentaux ont écrit sur leurs sociétés.

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Tout ce que le poète écrit sera retenu contre lui.

Et tout ce que le poète écrit se retourne contre lui.

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Le fonctionnaire français est jugé sur son enthousiasme pour les libertés auxquelles il n’a pas droit.

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As there’s a First Lady, my neighbor asks, what number is my wife?

LI The Future of Media Illiteracy

Does the idea of too high a price to pay for achieving one’s biological goals make any sense? In Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, the main character Nora has achieved reproductive success, she has three kids and her husband has just become head of the bank so together they will bring up their kids in the best possible conditions. She nevertheless leaves house, husband, and children to work on her own because she does not want to fail her “duty to herself” any longer. Can a “duty to oneself” be jeopardized by the pursuit of biological goals?

According to biosociologist Brant Wenegrat, “motherhood in societies like ours does predict an increased risk of depressive disorders” (Illness and Power, 1995). Some scholarly confirmation of the playwright’s insight, then, as motherhood and parenting, i.e. biological success itself would lead to increased biological risk, in the shape of dysfunctional conditions for the children raised by a depressive mother. Or is it nonsense? This prediction is not confirmed in the book Darwinian Psychiatry (1998), by McGuire and Troisi, which states that male celibates are the most at risk of depression, precisely because of their biological failure (failed reproductive machines). Two opposite conclusions, then, from scholars of the same school of thought. For McGuire and Troisi women’s mental health is not as dependent on the success of biological reproduction as men’s, whereas for Wenegrat successful biological reproduction tends to affect negatively women’s mental health and not men’s.

Modern work, now, is not an evolved biological media for male competition (contrary to what evolutionary psychologists Tiger and Fox, 1971, claim), as for millenaries slavery was the rule and dominant males did not work (savanna-activity, i.e. hunter-gatherer environment of evolutionary adaptedness EEA-like hunting was aristocrats’ hobby throughout the world in the past of civilization). In this way, and, again, contrary to the views of some EP scholars, modern work goes against biological tendencies. If a duty to oneself exists and, if we take Nora’s example, opposes the mere pursuit of biological goals, then modern work may be the way to fulfill one’s duty to oneself instead of biological goals. Yet in evolutionary terms I see nothing that warrants nor could even possibly warrant this ‘literary’ conclusion.

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Gustave Le Bon, in his Psychologie des foules, talks about women who throw acid at their lovers’ face as something frequent in his days. Today, the media talks about this, pointing the finger to men, mostly in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, throwing acid in order to oppress women because those men are Muslims. In fact, EP scholar David Buss also talks of Jamaican women doing the same with their female rivals nowadays. Yet talk about acid attacks these days, and you will find that people associate it with Muslim men. There is a Sherlock Holmes story by Conan Doyle about a woman throwing acid at her lover’s face too, to confirm Le Bon (The Adventure of the Illustrious Client).

*

Outline for a dystopian sci-fi novel. As a foreign body inside the societies where their communities live, the Lormocks have a perception of their own, the basic idea of which being that their community’s interest only partially overlaps with that of the host societies, which they seek to exploit. They are parasites. Neuroparasites. For a long time our knowledge of parasites was perfunctory; we knew lice and other pest that suction blood and weaken the body, and that’s about all. It took us decades to find out that rabies is a parasite that compels the dog host to bite in order to carry the parasite over to more hosts. Now we have a much broader picture of what parasites are doing: They control their host, sometimes they castrate it, sometimes they do not allow him to take food, they do as they please with their host. As the Lormocks achieve middleman-minority status due to their ingroup solidarity inside societies that they help make atomistic, they endeavor to control the channels of public expression, and of course they use these according to their community’s interest. Sycophancy toward the Lormocks, serving this foreign and parasitic body’s purposes, becomes a sine qua non of individual success –and fitness– in society.

*

Subliminal advertising: the elephant penis in the living room.

*

Since the July 2016 failed coup in Turkey, Erdogan has been conducting massive repression in the country. Thousands of civil servants are being sacked and their names published so they will never find jobs again in the country. Intellectuals are also targeted.

272 writers from all over the world have signed a petition against the judicial trials that will open against journalist Ahmet Altan and his brother, economist Mehmet Altan.

Both are accused by the government of having sent subliminal messages on TV about the impending coup. As far as I know, a world premiere! (Le Monde, Sep 21, 2016)

Turkey’s President Erdogan is thus giving support to my research. I am available as an expert at the trial.

*

Taco Subliminals

“There where similar charges [of the use of subliminal techniques, (like the “rats” in “democrats” in U.S. 2000 campaign trail, if you remember] by Andrés Manuel López Obrador against the right-wing candidate Felipe Calderón in the Mexican presidential elections of 2006, in which the color scheme for a popular soft drink and its publicity mirrored those of Calderón’s party. Opponent saw the similarity as a sneaky way to circumvent campaign spending limits by a corporate supporter of Calderón.” (Charles R. Acland, Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence, 2011).

Acland’s aim is to debunk subliminals as just another “urban legend.” Faced with such incredulity, it is really heartening to find support from intellectuals like Eric McLuhan [see Index for Professor Eric McLuhan’s contributions]. The example above shows that the use of non-verbal persuasion techniques is part of the public debate now, as it should be in media-literate constituencies. Information society must not amount to mass manipulation by mass media but to media literacy of the public.

*

The Age of Empathy (2009) by primatologist Frans de Waal talks of an experiment by Swedish professor Ulf Dimberg : When people are shown visuals of angry faces they tend to frown and of happy faces they tend to smile, and this is true also when the faces are subliminal! De Waal says Dimberg’s results have been met with resistance…

Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed (2000), Unconscious facial reactions to emotional facial expressions. Psychological Science 11: 86-89.

*

Jacques Castonguay’s book La Psychologie au service du consommateur (1978), said by prefacer Nicolle Forget, the then chair of Canada consumers association, to put the limelight on subliminal advertising (« Il aura eu le mérite aussi de ramener dans l’actualité la question de la publicité subliminale »), is terribly disappointing. Albeit not in denial, Castonguay says Marshall McLuhan and Wilson Bryan Key’s views are “exaggerated,” so the topic is expedited in a couple of pages and he can devote the rest of his book to conveying the nauseating platitudes that business insiders wrote for the public.

*

Take Buddhism. Basically a personality cult (in the person of the Buddha).

*

The three following statements cannot be true taken together and studies show that 3/ is consistently true.

1/ The activity and development of the brain’s right hemisphere is not taken into account in IQ tests. (Marshall and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science, 1988)

2/ Asians are right-hemisphere people. (Ibid.)

3/ Asians (Northern Asians) have the highest scores in IQ tests.

Well, they may be true taken together but only if Asians are superior to Westerners even in the skills that are not Asians’ best (left-hemisphere skills), that is, if Asians are superior in everything.

*

Laws of Media’s ascribing several contemporary art forms to the brain’s right hemisphere, such as atonal music, finds some resistance. These forms appear much too much intellectual (left hemisphere) to me – professors’ experiments rather than art proper. If atonality is an expression of acoustic space (p.52), yet our ears (as evolved) want no part in the business of atonality. “As evolved”: According to evolutionary biology, that is, not since the phonetic alphabet, but in the African savanna. Atonal music is an intellectual, abstract, left-hemisphere business: Left-hemisphere radicalism.

Same with relativity theory. Not that I know to which hemisphere it belongs; but I find it inconsistent with Kant’s transcendental idealism, that is, if time and space are a priori forms of our perception I don’t think it makes sense to say time-space can be distorted by massive objects.

Same with psychoanalysis. It has been exploded. Randy Thornhill, for instance, has concisely demonstrated that an Oedipus complex makes no evolutionary sense at all. “The Oedipus complex proposed by Freud would never have been given any credence if anyone had considered the evolutionary fate of a trait that produced such incestuous desires (Thornhill and Thornhill 1987). Because of the reduced viability of offspring produced by mating of close relatives, close inbreeding is selected against. Thus, Freud postulated as fundamental to human nature a trait that simply cannot exist as an evolved human psychological adaptation.” (Thornhill and Palmer, A Natural History of Rape, 2000)

Same with Copenhagen interpretation. If the idea is that we should get rid of determinism in science, then it makes no sense, by definition. The uncertainty principle only tells us that our perceptual endowment allows us not to perceive all causes and determinations in nature – not that these causes and determinations do not exist in nature.

*

Electric telephone man

Electric man is discarnate (McLuhan). What about the man who is used to telling his friends: “I don’t use the phone anymore except for emails”?

He is both discarnate and dyslexic.

Email is discarnate nudism because electric man cannot conceal his dyslexia.

Yet we can. Electric man has by now invented the simplified writing system that Eric McLuhan envisioned for our dyslexic times. He has made it almost completely phonetic:

4 => for

2 => to

8 => -ate ex. contempl8

Same process in French: “c’est” becomes just “c” etc.

*

Some exploration of the fringe: Reverse Speech

i

First thing first, one interesting thing about Australian David Oates’s reverse speech theory is that it is debunked on Wkpd by the same sort of arguments that are used against subliminal perception, namely “pareidolia, the tendency of the human brain to perceive meaningful patterns in random noise.“

According to this theory, the unconscious mind expresses itself backward in our utterances.

When reading about this, I was reminded of a video I saw a few months ago (now withdrawn). In that speech by Obama, the President at some point says: “Let me express, let me express my faith &c.” Playing the passage backward, the author of the video hears, and convincingly so, for “Let me express, let me express”: “Serve Satan, serve Satan.” A creepy commentary about the President’s faith.

The author says he could not reproduce the same effect when recording himself saying these words, which is confirmed by Oates. Our utterances, when played backward, do not pronounce the same even when we pronounce the same speech. That leads to the question of the origin of pronunciation differences (accents &c). Why do some people never lose their local accent even after living many years in the capital city when others lose it very fast in the same transplant conditions?

The theory is fascinating at any rate. For one thing, it could never be designed nor tested before the invention of audio recording.

But above all, if the unconscious can understand reverse speech (words pronounced backward, as stressed by Bill Key: cf W.B. Key at the 1995 Judas Priest trial), why could it not express itself backward as well? Key’s research helps buttress Oates’s contentions.

ii

Oates wanted to check the truth of evangelists’ assertions that rock music contains reverse satanic messages. He found some intentional reverse messages but also was led to the discovery that reverse speech can carry meaningful messages.

Using Jungian notions, he then says the word “Satan” occurs rather often in reverse speech because it’s embedded in the collective unconscious, and it serves to express negative feelings.

*

There is a school of thought that sees elaborate clothing as a way to conceal bodily imperfections and thus distort the choice of a mate. A few German racialists (Heinrich Pudor, Richard Ungewitter…) adopted such views, and nudism was considered sound and healthy in some Nazi circles (German Nazi nude photograph magazines are collector’s items today). Scanty clothing, in that view, such as that of contemporary American youth, boys and girls alike, would be close to that philosophy. In the absence of matrimonial intermediaries, who take a careful look at and check the physical condition of the future partners in arranged-marriage societies, people need to check by themselves. In free (as opposed to arranged)-marriage societies, nudism, or close substitutes, is in order.

*

Global Village’s Pizza Gate

(Posted as comment to a since then withdrawn YouTube video, Nov 2016)

The case is rather strong as here presented, however I don’t see ‘proof’ in the technical sense. Yet it definitely should be sufficient ground for the police to further investigate in that direction.

What is new about the so-called Pizza Gate is that it is a criminal investigation carried out by internauts. Being public, it can’t help being a smear campaign at the same time, and I guess this is the reason why several people involved in this new kind of investigation have been banned or shadowbanned on Twitter after the pizza parlor concerned asked Twitter to do something about it or be held accountable for the smear campaign.

Yet, as good ol’ Marshall McLuhan said, we have entered the ‘global village,’ meaning we really are back to village life. For one thing it means privacy will shrink to nothingness or almost nothing, like in a traditional village. It also means, from what I gather from public Pizza Gate investigation, that ‘villagers’ will take charge of law and order themselves. Remember these ‘investigators’ mainly work on the evidence brought to them – brought to everybody in the village – by WikiLeaks. Advancing a technicality according to which all evidence available in this way is void because the source is a ‘spy,’ a ‘traitor,’ a ‘renegade,’ whatever, as is common and perhaps sound practice in the traditional views of law courts, would seem extremely disconnected with the real world under the circumstances of the global village. And remember, these circumstances are here to stay.

*

The level of tax imposed on bachelors is indecent. I can’t even keep a mistress. One has to be a married man for that.

*

The beautiful people of adverts

Facial symmetry is more attractive than asymmetry and high-status people are more symmetric than poor people in general. Advertisers just pick attractive people (and usually airbrush the model according to systematic, technical rules): Turns out we associate these models with wealthy people.

Asymmetry can be due to adverse environmental conditions during development (deprivation) and betrays a less healthy phenotype –”wealth is health”– but the answer is not to torture our natural biases by trying to impose other, silly tastes on us, that would have us prefer crippled, perhaps sterile (in the case of obesity) persons.

Beauty is largely objective and a marker of health. Make all people healthier rather than trying, out of a misconceived sense of justice, to force unnatural tastes on people.

The beauty world of advertising systematically creates “supernormal stimuli” to which the real world can only be unequal. This is the true definition of the problem.

*

One result of behavioral science is that masturbation conditioning is particularly efficient. It even works with high psychotics – the least conditionable of all.

*

French journalists had once agreed they would make no news with politicians’ private lives. It shows they wanted no place for morality concerns in the public debate, which is an unjustified prerogative the journalists bestowed on themselves. This will not last, however. There have already been news on President Hollande’s affair with a B-rated actress a few years ago. They made news of it and the president’s popularity plummeted at once. Morality concerns ought not to be ignored.

*

McLuhanesque strolls

What’s the point of writing and publishing books, as literacy has ended? This thought brings me solace.

Also, in the literacy age, there was a public: It was made up by publishing houses and the press. Now the public has disappeared and thought is free.

Counter-culture is an ego trip now. Bad form. We’re the village.

The global village is already something real. Internet social networks are the village. The whole world on a “timeline” (Twitter jargon)! (English as single medium, all other languages due to be discarded?)

Thought becomes aphoristic: Think about the aphoristic-minded world of Twitter users whose every tweet cannot exceed 140 signs (280 now)! Literary heroes disappear. Academic scholars look awkward; the littlest rascal in the world can make fun of them and their ponderous knowledge in retweets as public as the original tweets. Journalists are corrected and insulted in front of their devoted readers. Comedians prove less funny than their followers. Actresses are less beautiful than their fans. Politicians receive sound advice from the administered herd.

We’ve all become sayers of sayings, each of us expresses the village wisdom. It’s tribal, deindividualized, exactly as predicted by McLuhan Marshall and Eric.

With the decline of the Gutenberg Galaxy, the written word is sheer lip service. It says whatever anybody wants to hear, upholds consensus. If the medium is the message, then the message is not even between the lines. It’s in quite another galaxy where literacy has no relevant use as such, only as distraction.

*

Libertarians defend personal liberty against the law but they seem to have nothing to say about personal liberty against mind control by big business, which has become a huge (muted) issue with the advent of scientific marketing. Against this control I see no other shield than the law, like Prohibition was a shield against the liquor industry’s endeavor to “break down sales resistance” by advertising and PR. The fake-news media opposed the Prohibition and contributed mightily to its inadequate enforcement (cf Upton Sinclair, The Wet Parade).

*

Mensa and GMAT

My correspondence from when I wanted to be a Mensa member without taking their tests.

Dear Sir or Madam, (to info@americanmensa.org)

On Mensa Website, qualifying score for the GMAT is “95% or above.”

At a second and last attempt after a crash course in 2004, I got 710 / 94%. My mother tongue is French and before taking my first GMAT test I only practiced English at school. Then, I took a second test after a few months in U.S.

Do you think that people having English as mother tongue are advantaged in the GMAT, or not at all? In case of a yes, shouldn’t the qualifying score for nonnative English speakers be adapted?

Given the time, and thus reflex, factor involved in the test, it seems English fluency (the test language) is important, which puts nonnative speakers at a disadvantage, although per se this fluency does not appear to be relevant to what Mensa membership is about. (July 5, 2017)

/

Hello,

Thank you for the email. Unfortunately, the only way we have to evaluate evidence that is sent in is based on the test publisher’s normative data. To be honest, I am not certain how the GMAC calculates the scores on the exam so I cannot speak to whether or not they make those kinds of allowances. We accept the 95th percentile on the exam based on the fact that their norms are somewhat skewed by the population that takes the exam. The population that attends graduate school is not necessarily a representation of the general population so we allow for more than just the typical top 2 percent.

(T. B., Mensa manager for membership and admissions, July 7, 2017)

/

Thank you very much for your reply.

Do you estimate that top 5% of graduate students population is an inclusive or rather restrictive approximation of top 2% of general population?

According to one source,

“Factors such as native vs non-native English speakers, US vs non-US, white vs non-white, etc – generally don’t affect one’s score too much. In terms of covariance analysis, the variation between these subgroups was always less than 1/4 standard deviation.”

I think we know the variation goes against nonnative speakers. In case you’d estimate the 95th percentile is not large already, would you be willing to take this variation into account too?

Now, according to Lawrence Rudner, GMAC’s chief psychometrician,

“Yes, the GMAT test is administered in English and is designed for programs that teach in English. But the required English skill level is much less than what students will need in the classroom. The exam requires just enough English to allow us to adequately and comprehensively assess Verbal reasoning, Quantitative reasoning and Integrated Reasoning skills.” (link)

That the test only requires “just enough English” doesn’t preclude a variation factor between native and nonnative speakers, due to mental reflexes ingrained in native vs nonnative speakers and more consequential in time-constrained tests than in classroom attendance. Such a variation may justify Mensa to accept a tolerance margin for its admissions based on GMAT scores in the case of nonnative speakers.

If the variation is not “too much,” “less than 1/4 standard deviation,” as I understand the phrasing it is not altogether negligible inside the scope considered (the above tolerance margin). (July 11, 2017)

/

Florent,

At this time, we do not take anything additional in to consideration for the GMAT. The 95th percentile score is the minimum we will accept. (T. B., July 12)

/

Thank you, T. I guess I’ll have to take the tests at Mensa France, then.

Yet I am curious how you get from “the population is somewhat skewed” to “2% translates into 5%”. Does the data support this? What does GMAC say about it? (July 12)

No more from T. Let’s ask GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council):

Dear Sir or Madam, (to customercare@gmac.com)

Mensa International is an “organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardized, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test.“

People who score at the 95th percentile or higher on GMAT are, however, entitled to join in, and the reason is:

“We accept the 95th percentile on the exam based on the fact that their norms are somewhat skewed by the population that takes the exam. The population that attends graduate school is not necessarily a representation of the general population so we allow for more than just the typical top 2 percent.” (Email from T. B., manager of membership and admissions, Mensa USA)

According to your knowledge, does the data support this translation “98th=>95th”?

I took a GMAT test in 2004 and scored 710 / 94%. I asked Mensa if they took into consideration a tolerance margin for nonnative English speakers and they said they did not, so I have been asking them the exact same question as I am asking here, currently waiting for their answer. It is, however, my understanding that Mr B.’s phrasing above rather hints at a “guesstimate” on their part, a rule of thumb that should justify them to show some flexibility.

No answer. Between those who refuse considering a pinch of pliancy with their rule-of-thumb regulations and those who coldly disregard emails, talk of psychorigids!

*

Aristotle’s “prime mover” (as God) has been given the coup de grâce by Kant, with the latter’s antinomies, according to which it is beyond human reason to determine whether the world is finite or infinite, has begun or has been eternal. Each of both opposite conclusions on these two antinomies (there are four in the Critique of Pure Reason) is a contradiction in itself+. This being because our mental apparatus does not describe the thing-in-itself (which, presumably, could not have contradictions in itself without ceasing to exist). I find it a sound position to hold, with Kant, that no rational proof of God’s existence is to be expected in such conditions. The one proof would be the moral law, if it could be ascertained that it’s something true and not derived from the laws of nature (which, for Kant, is the case indeed, so in no way Kant can be called an atheist).

+Monotheisms answer one of these antinomies with a created world, and a prime mover, whereas Hinduism and Buddhism answer with an uncreated world, and both are convinced their position is rational.

*

There’s a passage in Uncle Tom’s Cabin where a ruthless slaveholder defends his practice and monstrous unconcern for the well-being of his slaves (his practice being to exploit them to the utmost, calculating that it would lead the slaves to death, and to new expense from buying slaves, after a few years and inscribing this computation as a mere data in his books) with the words: “This is a free country.“

You may find the same kind of situation elsewhere. I once scorned the Jesuits of Paraguay because they made their wooden statues ‘speak’ to the Indians through clever contrivances, but it makes no doubt in my mind that their Socialist form of government with Indians was much more humanitarian than the lay encomiendas of the time. Yet the encomenderos defended their prerogatives as the heritage of communal liberties, while the Jesuits were, before the king turned against them, the arm of central monarchy. For a long time, in the Middle Ages, government authority and coercion were grounded by theologians on the original sin and the resulting wicked nature of man.

*

Contra EP (Evolutionary Psychology)

i

Several studies seeking to verify Devendra Singh’s result on a universal preference for waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of .7 could not confirm it. One was carried out in Peru and another in Tanzania among hunter-gatherers, whom EP claim are behavioral copies of our Pleistocene ancestors (although behavior of different groups of contemporary hunter-gatherers can vary greatly on many essential counts).

ii

In Adapting Minds (2006), David Buller shows convincingly that most of the main EP studies are based on sloppy reading of the data. For instance, Daly and Wilson (The Truth about Cinderella, 1998) amalgamate physical and sexual abuse (!), yet obviously sexual abuse by a stepfather is no confirmation whatever of their view that stepparents tend to be hostile to stepchildren because the latter are only an evolutionary cost to them. Reading the data attentively in fact disproves their view. Buller presents the alternative hypothesis that marriage offers mating opportunities rather than paternity certainty; in such a case evolution would not have selected an averse feeling toward stepchildren, which Daly & Wilson’s data do not even show. Buller also says social workers have a bias against stepparents when they fill child death certificates. So the data D&W examined, mostly from social services, in fact is biased against stepparents, and even then these data do not show the overrepresentation of abusive stepparents D&W claim to have found. Most likely, now, their work has reinforced, if possible, the social workers’ bias, and I have done the same here on my blog, as I followed on D&W’s steps, taking their conclusions with no grain of salt.

I might as well let Buller talk.

On anecdotal evidence from infanticide among mammals:

“the discussion of infanticide-as-adaptation turns to be nothing but a red herring in the end. … Daly and Wilson state the record straight … ‘Human beings are not like langurs or lions,’ they inform us. ‘We know that sexually selected infanticide is not a human adaptation because men, unlike male langurs and lions, do not routinely, efficiently dispose of their predecessors’ young. … Child abuse must therefore be considered a non-adaptive or maladaptive byproduct of the evolved psyche’s functional organization, rather than an adaptation in its own right. … All told, we see little reason to imagine that the average reproductive benefits of killing stepchildren would ever have outweighed the average costs enough to select for specifically infanticidal inclinations.’” (p.411)

On mating as paternity opportunity:

“if a male can secure paternity opportunities from a female by providing care to her children, even if those children are the offspring of another male, the male enhances his chances of having children of his own and thereby transmitting his genes to future generations. So, another male’s child can make a contribution to a male’s fitness via the opportunities for paternity provided by that child’s mother in exchange for parental care provided to the child. The possibility of such fitness payoffs, however, means that we should not expect male psychology to be so unconditionally averse to investing in unrelated children.” (p.390) (Paternal care is primarily a mating effort and second a parenting effort: p.393)

iii

One of Satoshi Kanazawa’s main claims, and all the other EPs (hippies?) with him, is that high-status men have more sex partners than low-status men. Yet Kinsey has shown the exact opposite in his famous, pioneering surveys. Something happened in the mean time?

In fact, all this BS about high-status males being like gorillas males in gorilla harems is an atrocious regression of Western scholarship. A few decades ago, Darwinians used to talk of the “fertility of the unfit” (that’s the title of a book). There’s a Darwinian contradiction in terms in such a phrase (fertility, of course, means high fertility here), wich a Darwinian could not fail to see and yet they (eugenicists) fully endorsed the paradox. They saw something to which EP boys, with their gorilla model, are blind. What they saw, and what solves the contradiction, is homogamy. Call it unfitness homogamy, if you like.

The EP view of “powerful and famous” males is based on primatology and misleading.

1/ From the longitudinal Stanford Marshmallow experiment, we know that children high on self-restraint have high status later in life. How does it square with having more sex partners than people low on self-restraint?

2/ Polygamy tends to be in the form of serial marriage (powerful and famous men tend to have as a matter of fact several spouses serially, but the number of their affairs is gossip and, as a matter of fact again, unknown). (A view held, among others, by Robert Wright.)

3/ Traditional types of philanderers now make the news as rapists, à la Harvey Weinstein.

4/ Even the highest rates of cuckoldry known (30% in some working-class compounds –number of children whose biological father is another man unbeknownst to the man at home) do not support the view that high-status males have greater access to females. In fact, all these 30% “bastards” may have been sired by working-class neighbors for all we know. Also, Buller relevantly points that in countries where dowry exists the fact that wealthy men have more wives hardly supports the idea that this is a female preference.

iv

The Fertility of the Unfit, 1903, by Dr. William Chapple (New Zealand)

First thing to take into account is the unprecedented fact of demographic transition. Unknown in nature, human populations have started declining as goods became more widely available (whereas in nature populations decline due to adverse environmental factors). This is seen as a confirmation of the moral restraint check on fertility posited by Malthus beside the two “natural” checks, vice and misery. Quotes:

“A rapid and continuous decline in the birth-rate of Northern and Western Europe, in contravention of all known biological and economic laws, has filled demographists with amazement.“

Whereas: “The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to population beyond the food supply“

“The very qualities, therefore, that make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and should raise the best progeny for the State, also enable him to limit his family, or escape the responsibility of family life altogether; while, on the other hand, the very qualities which make a man a social burden, a criminal, a pauper, or a drunkard –improvidence and defective inhibition– ensure that his fertility will be unrestrained, except by the checks of biological law.“

“If moral restraint with the consequent limitations of families is the peculiar characteristic of the best people in the state, and the absence of this characteristic expressing itself in normal fertility is peculiar to the worst people of the state, the future of the race may be divined“

“Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed, while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has led to a marked decline.“

&, as another way of phrasing the above: “The defectives are more fertile than any other classes because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society. The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against person and property, also allows their provocative impulse unrestrained activity.“

Please note that the phenomenon, also described as “rise of the Criminal,” predates mass immigration.

Chapple also alludes to homogamy among the unfit “which their circumstances necessitate.“

Last but not least, Chapple discusses mechanical contraceptives and considers that the least invasive technique is tubo-ligature, far preferable than vasectomy, as the latter “unsexes” males, leading to atrophy of the testes and impotence after some years. Ironically, today it is vasectomy that is more widespread (1 Englishman out of 5 is vasectomized, mark you). I have no doubt these vasectomies are practised on law-abiding citizens, according to their own will, as a moral restraint check on their fertility.

A consequence of demographic transition may be that marriage as paternity opportunity is now weak and that abuse of stepchildren has increased as a result (not as evolutionary adaptation)! Stepparent violence, if it’d be the result of demographic transition (stepparenting two kids from another bed entails a significant probability that the stepfather will have no kid of his own in a society characterized by the demographic transition, whereas it would have been no obstacle to siring a lot of children in the past), would be neither the result of evolutionary ADAPTATION nor, as in Daly & Wilson, a BYPRODUCT of evolution, a so-called “spandrel.”