For want of a... word? Or of an understanding that should be named?

For want of a... word? Or of an understanding that should be named?

For Want of a Nail (1629)
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
For want of a rider, the battle was lost;
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

“Ideologies were invented so that men who do not think can give their opinions.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The old poem "For want of a nail...", shows how a seemingly small issue, can lead to catastrophic consequences. One such seemingly small issue that continually arises today, is our inability to name what most threatens our interests, and so, it's argued, for want of a word, we have to make do with a confusing flurry of words like Woke, Leftist, Extremist, Hard Right, RINO, Commie, Progressive, Woke Left and Woke Right/Woke Reich/Weak Reich, and so on, and on, and on, which further confuses the issue (at best). For want of this missing word, or words, so the argument goes, we cannot agree on what we should or shouldn't do to put matters right, and so for want of that, we in The West risk losing our world to endless waves of ideological assaults.

The question I have is, is the problem really a matter of our want of a word, or is it our habit of naming every seemingly new issue that arises without first identifying what the real problem actually is, which leads us to having an issue that's less one of our being in want of a word, than one of having an abundance of names for problems (many? One?) that we haven't yet either appropriately identified or named? Perhaps a bit of both? Maybe, but I suspect that if we handled the latter, it'd go a long way towards resolving the former.

The underlying problem with using these terms (Left/Right, Woke, etc.,) is that the attempt to make ideological diagnoses of such problems, across whichever fields of philosophy, theology, art, science, politics, etc., is the very process of naming and inflaming that ideologies engage people in to heat their tempers up, and to draw them into their ideological solutions, while successfully evading any substantial identification of the actual problems which they all have in common (don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg!).

"First learn to use this..."

It's not enough to call our pet peeves - or each other - names, when we haven't identified what it is that we're calling them names for, and why. Worse, failing to attend to first things first, enables all sides to claim to be trying to make progress, and ensures that the answers given to the question of "What is Progress?", will be "Progress is what we're doing!", and that regress is "what they're doing!", as each side accuses the 'other side' of being reactionary, hidebound, stupid, commie, capitalist, etc..

Do you know whether you're pursuing Progress or Regress?
* We need to make Progress in understanding what Regress is - pt.1
* Farewell to a friend - The Doubtful Roots of Progress - Progress or Regress pt.2
* Is History, history? - Progress or Regress pt.3
* Beyond the rants: Culture, Seinfeld and the Ferguson Riots - A Society of Culturettes - Progress or Regress pt.4a
* Savagery has a History in the past and the present - Progress or Regress pt.4b
* The Materialist's inversion: When power is not forced to serve Truth, truth is abandoned for Power - Progress or Regress pt.4c
* Goodbye 2014: From Gruber to Ferguson, Evil is the new Good - The History of Progress begins with its absence, part 5 a,b, c & d

First off, IMHO, we need to understand what it is that we're trying to name, before we can tell how and why this or that word does or doesn't apply, and what to do about them. Do that first, and I'm willing to bet that we'll soon make progress towards identifying any other word or words that we're in want of.

Progress begins...
Where to start? Well, IMHO, our first step should be to identify what can be recognized by us today, as having been not just a mark of Progress since the beginning of recorded history, but one that preceded progress in every other field of philosophy, theology, art, science, and politics, etc. Significantly, as we're often told that religion is man's first systematic set of beliefs about the world and our place within it, I think it's safe to say that when religion stopped demanding human sacrifice in the lands that would become The West, and started praising what was true and ethically just, that must surely rank as a, if not the, first example of meaningful progress, in the history of mankind.

Should we ask why that was a measure of progress? Without getting into trite praises for 'Reason!' (which this turn doesn't necessarily prove or justify), it may be more worthwhile to point out what that change of direction marked a turning away from. Leaving aside the obvious issues which ceasing to practice human sacrifice meant that people no longer had to contend with, the unvarnished purpose of such sacrifice is to influence, gain, or claim to be able to, control the source of ultimate power over us, which means that Power itself is what was being sought and worshipped by means of human sacrifice. That worship of power, which is not limited to human sacrifice, entails violence, terror, uncertainty, unpredictability, and the pervasive feeling that that which you've made most central to your life, is a direct threat to it. Whether or not we've fully turned away from that manner of thinking, ceasing to practice human sacrifice, was at least a recognition that we should turn away from that as an acceptable pursuit, and that was not only a mark of real progress, but a standard which all additional progress can be measured by, even (especially?) today.

OTOH, when the object of worship is that which commands you to engage in ethical behavior towards the world, towards your family & fellows, even towards your livestock, and holds that the creator of them all doesn't just value Truth & Justice, but is thought by them to be the essence & embodiment of what is real and true and good and just, then those who live with that belief at the center of their lives, are going to be infinitely more open to engaging in trust, friendship, family, and community, and consequently, that community is going to be far more conducive to pursuing (and towards understanding what it is that makes) lives that are worth living.

Whatever opinion that people might have of religion today, the step of turning away from the former form of it, and towards the latter form, was a monumentally significant example of meaningful progress, and what Moses and the Jews wrote down for us in The Bible, is what most obviously put The West on the path out of circular prehistory, and onto the path of true progress.

The Rule of Law in Progress or Regress
* pt 1: The Lawful scares of October... and beyond
* pt 2:Why a Govt of Laws, and not of men?
* pt 3:Who Benefits from transforming Rules into Laws
* pt 4:We hold these truths to be self evident
* pt 5:Thoughtful Images - Turning to the Rule of Law without turning away
* pt 6a:Snapping snap judgments, lest auld acquaintance be forgot
* pt 6b:Locke's Lab for DIY Political Science Experiments
* pt 6c:Property - The Progress of Cause and Effect into Life and Law
* pt 7:Artificial Reason turns the Pen into the might of the sword
* pt 8:Mutating Justice into injustice: the far reaching properties of Property
* pt 9a:Trick or Treating like it's 1984
* pt 9b: Perverting Progress into Poison - the Doppelganger Strikes Back
* pt 9c: Perverting Progress into Poison - How Pro-Regressives see Regress as Progress

Progress continues...
On the other side of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian hyphenation, the Greek's are responsible for taking two giant steps towards progress as well. Firstly, by advancing beyond the habitual submission to the rule of brutal and arbitrary tyranny, by entrusting their society to the reasonable possibility that they and their fellows were capable of engaging in the effort of self-governance together, which began moving control over the levers of power towards those decisions that could be made through reasoned argument, and away from the arbitrary whims of a powerful tyrant. Secondly, the Greek's development of theatrical Drama, which put tangible ideas before the consideration of the people, was another step of real progress that was a value in and of itself, and which set the stage for the development of philosophy.

Each of these steps moved early western society away from the sense of its people having no understanding of, or control over, lives that were lived in a fearful state of unpredictability, and moved them towards having lives that could be founded upon understanding and trust. That movement away from merely surviving under fearful & undefined notions imposed upon them by those in power, and towards conscious consideration of being able to understand what is meaningful, and why that is, is the essence of progress.

Those two steps also served to move the Greeks away from the word games and mystifications of the sophists and their claims that Might makes 'Right', and towards the attempt to identify what's real and true, and towards moving the mind away from fog and darkness, and towards clarity and light. Both of these had a significant impact on both the lives of those in their community, and of those other communities that became aware of their ideas, and sought to emulate them.
NOTE: Greek Democracy did not mean peace and safety for their society - see Thucydides' Melian Dialog - but it did introduce the expectation that reasoned argument should be involved in both the exercise and restraint of power, and that was progress.

The Greek's development of Philosophy - the love of Wisdom (a hat-tip to Proverbs is in order) - rested upon Aristotle's first rule of thought, that:

• a thing cannot both be and not be in the same time and context (Law of non-contradiction)

, and what he identified as being the fundamental rules for logic, requiring:

1. that all terms must be clear and unambiguous,
2. that premises must be true,
3. that conclusions must follow from those premises;

, and these led to an orderly interest in, and respect for what is real and true, and brought clarity to the worthwhile thoughts and actions of those living within their society.

Progress isn't all Greek to the West...
The Romans advanced upon the Greeks understanding of politics and law, with the more orderly and effective form of republican government based upon the Rule of Law - with Law understood to be "...The law is reason unaffected by desire..." (from Aristotle), as well as the understanding that Laws must be reasonable "True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions" or else they are no law at all (from Cicero). That too stands as another indicator of real, tangible, progress, as they brought more clarity, predictability, and accountability, to the lives of those living within their communities.

Christianity then introduced the world of the Greeks & Romans to the recognition & belief that each individual person, regardless of birth or status, as not only of equal standing & value before God, but was understood to be made in the very image of God. Prior to that revelation, it was a universal presumption that most people should be valued by their birth and status, and that they should be treated as being little more than bi-pedal tools, whose bodies were routinely used as fodder for the ambitions of those in power. Despite all the real progress that the Greeks and Romans made in philosophy, the arts, and law, they not only never recognized or entertained that thought, they routinely treated individual lives as being expendable, even extinguishable, for reasons of convenience or pique (the Roman father that found a baby to be flawed or inconvenient, had the power to toss it upon a rubbish heap to die of exposure, and an annoying child or wife could be put to death by his hand as well).

To say that Christianity's view of the value of each individual - each an Imago Dei - led to revolutionary progress for all mankind, is a monumental understatement.

The diminishing returns of Economic Thinking
1 - Looking beneath 2020 to spot our foundational issues - The diminishing returns of Economic Thinking
2 - When the 'Progressive' Left & the Populist Right lead to the same Pro-Regressive ends, Check your Map
3 - America - Some things that should not have been forgotten are being lost
4 - The Real Consequences of being boxed in by Economic Ideas
5 - What came before the Box we put ourselves in?
6 - 'Freed!' to Box Ourselves In
7 - Be aware of what it is that you obey
8 - Does your map distinguish between Progress and Regress?
9 - With friends like Economics, who needs enemies?

The joining of the Greco/Roman to the Judeo/Christian marked a measure of progress that has become the defining feature of Western Civilization, and the completeness of it owes a great deal to the efforts of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was Aquinas that made the most substantial progress in harmonizing the best of ancient Greek & Roman thought, from Aristotle to Cicero, with that of the Judeo-Christian, and his efforts unquestioningly improved the clarity of Western thought and behavior in every aspect of life, from philosophy, to law, the humanities, civil life, science, and even to religion itself.

The effect of that unity of understanding has shown itself in everything from the early republics of the Italian City States, to Britain's Magna Carta, the formulation of a constitutional monarchy, the English Bill of Rights, and Lord Coke's ordering of Law in respect to "A man's home is his Castle". Those, and other significant milestones, not least of which was the lighting of the light of science by Christian monks, beginning with Roger Bacon devising the first scientific experiments, in an effort to methodically investigate the wonders of God's creation, all contributed significant steps forward in the real civilizational progress of The West.

We can recognize these as self-evidently being real progress, because they brought ever more clarity to our ability to identify and communicate about what was and is real and true, which is of real value to human life, and to our understanding of it, and all of which served to place reasonable constraints upon the exercise of power over others, and contributed to improving people's ability to live lives worth living.

That increased clarity of understanding, improved Westerner's ability to engage reasonably within a more civil society, and respect what is justly due to others, is what is, and should be, meant by Progress, and how it is recognized and measured.

Conversely, that which obscures our understanding, dims our recognition of what is real and true, and increases the infringements of arbitrary powers being exerted on and over our lives, is the opposite of Progress... and that is something that we most definitely should have a name for.

Which Way Western Man: Progress or Regress?
This cumulative progress in the Western understanding which developed from Moses to Jesus, from Aristotle to Aquinas, and on down to Elizabethan England, accrued some philosophical & political 'mis-steps' as well (see especially Machiavelli, Sir Francis Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Hume), which opened the door to reintroducing sophistry and mystification into popular thought. At a critical point in that history, however, those regressions were recognized, identified, and, although only temporarily, halted its spread, through the rise of Scottish Common Sense Realism. SCSR, which was exemplified by Thomas Reid, identified the nature of those modern missteps, and restored Common Sense to the western mind in general, and to the American Colonies in particular.

By 'Common Sense', they did not mean that sense of 'Oh, how very practical and clever of you!', they meant it in the sense of what had commonly been known as the Three Acts of the Mind: to apprehend, judge, reason; as being the sense which all humans share in common, and which forms the basis of our Common Sense understanding that reality is what exists, and that we can know it, and that we can communicate to each other about it (see Robert Curry's excellent "Common Sense Nation"). That Common Sense is what enables us to correct errors and omissions in our own understanding of the world and of each other, and it is what makes it possible for any reasonable person to be brought to recognize and understand what came to be understood to be self-evident truths, which is what enabled the greatest feat of political progress in 2,000 years, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

Solid Ground for Standing Upon (Single Page Complete):

Preliminary Questions: How important is how you know what you know, to what you know?
Questions of perspective - Understanding our loss of understanding, and the question of getting it back
Metaphysics: Metaphysician: Heal thyself! 1-4
The Real Choice - Metaphysician: Heal thyself! pt1
What the Reality of the Abstract is - 'What is Truth' pt2
What is Truth: 'it is what it is' or it's 'Turtles: all the way down' - 'What is Truth' pt3
'IS' demonstrates that what is objectively true, is where the action is - 'What is Truth' pt4


Causality & its effects parts a-g
A well rounded knowledge of the root causes - causality & its effects (a)
The Causation of egg on our faces - causality & its effects (b)
Of Cause and Causelessness - causality & its effects (c)
Causation Squared - causality & its effects (d)
Distracting You With What Isn't Actually There - causality & its effects (e)
Facts are only as stubborn as you are - causality & its effects (f)
The Logical consequences of either caring about or ignoring 'What Is Truth?' - causality & its effects (g)


Epistemology: You keep using that word 1-6 (+1)
Epistemology: You keep using that word - 1
Epistemology's meaning is meaningless without Reality - You keep using that word 2
Logic: Observing and deactivating the boobytraps of modernity - You keep using that word 3
The Ethics of Epistemology - Escaping the Inigo Montoya Trap - You keep using that word 4
Would you recognize it if one of your beliefs was wrong? How? - You keep using that word 5
Enlightening the Dark Ages once again: Grammar as an Epistemology worthy of the name - You keep using that word 6
Why are our Culture Wars focused upon winning battles instead of winning the war - where's our Gen. Sherman?!


Destroying Society through Social Epistemology - AKA: Critical Thinking (coming soon)

At each step in the journey of the Greco/Roman - Judeo/Christian West, some aspect of our understanding of the real nature of ourselves, and of the world we inhabit - such as Aristotle's first rule of thought (Law of non-contradiction), Art's ability to communicate truth and worthy ideals, and our understanding that our individual rights are not the result of negotiations and agreements, but are derived from the nature of being human - Imago Dei; 'All men are created equal' - it became increasingly self-evident that Might does not make Right, and that only a clearer understanding of what is real and true can enable us to recognize what is right, and that truly practical might, can only follow from adhering to that, and so realize that every reasonable person has an equal claim to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Each of those steps can be identified as steps of true progress, because they clarified and identified our understanding of what is real and true, in everything from the purposes of the state, and the boundaries that must be placed upon its powers, to maintain those fruits of true progress. The accelerating refinement of learning, science, civil discourse, and manners, and whatever particular form of thought - philosophy, theology, art, science, politics - abides by and builds upon those fundamentals, and any claim to be seeking real progress, must harmonize with them.

And so it is my contention that every single step forward, across all forms of thinking, from philosophy, theology, art, science, politics, qualified as real progress, because they brought greater clarity of understanding of what is real and true, and so led society to become more moral, virtuous, and able to live lives worth living, within reasonable systems of justice.

In contrast to that, whatever form of thinking - philosophy, theology, art, science, politics - seeks to confuse, dim, abridge, confound, subvert, outright deny, and/or seek to get away with faking the fundamentals of sound thought, is declaring their desire to regress our thinking to a point that it is no longer bound by what is real and true, so as to gain some level of power over you through your misunderstanding of reality.

With that being common to all such aims, it seems to me that the proper name & description of those who seek to attain their desires by getting away with thinking in this latter way, should be:

Pro-Regressive.

Full disclosure, I've been trying to 'make fetch happen' for 'Pro-Regressive' for over a decade, not as an ideological label for the latest variety of troublesome tactics, but as a word that both identifies and describes what their subversive attacks are engaged in across our fundamental understanding of what is (Metaphysics), upon how we know it (Causality & Logic), and upon what we should or should not do because of our understanding of that (Ethics).

Those fundamentals are necessary for making clarity of thought possible, but the telos of pro-regressiveism has no interest in anyone successfully pursuing or achieving real progress, because it is by regressing your life and our society, that the Pro-Regressive makes progress in their pursuit of power.

Whatever may have been the particular disagreements and errors of past philosophers (lovers of wisdom) from Aristotle, to Aquinas, to Thomas Reid and our Founding Fathers, they were seeking to abide by what is fundamentally real & true, and they strove to bring clarity to our understanding of how to live a life worth living. That is what identifies them as the ones who have contributed to the making of actual progress.

The misosophists (haters of wisdom) who've tried to get away with faking those steps, from the relative innocence of Scotus and Ockham, to the increasingly deliberate efforts of Sir Francis Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Evola, etc., each has sought to get away with faking or denying some or all of those fundamentals, and that is what identifies them, across philosophy, theology, politics, economics, as being: Pro-Regressive.

How you determine that something is pro-regressive, is not by whether they favor this or that ideological position of the Left or of the Right, but by whether or not they are persistently evading those fundamentals through positions that insinuate misleading presumptions into your understanding (ask yourself what their positions are rooted in? What effect will they have upon your thoughts? What are they aiming towards and why?) in order to get a response from you, that's useful to them.

Because appearances - especially ideological appearances - can be deceiving, the common nature of the pro-regressive isn't always obvious - especially if you take them at face value and ignore their telos - but if you'll pause and look 'under the hood', you can see that they're more alike than not, in the underlying assaults on understanding, which they all share in common:

• Rousseau's idea of liberty: "... whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;..."
• Heritage President Kevin Roberts wrote on the need to "...require many on the right to reconsider some of their unquestioned maxims", which he offers support for by quoting from the character of the psychopathic assassin Chigurh: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
• Replying to the charge that he's importing Gramscian thinking into 'The Right', Christopher F. Rufo replies: "We can find utility in Gramsci's analysis of intellectuals, elites, institutions, culture, folklore, hegemony, etc., while rejecting his Marxism. Your argument seems to boil down to a form of word association, in which anyone you label "woke" is somehow beyond consideration..."

What do School Libraries Support
1) The Tragic Libraries of Education: 'They're just books'
2) For an Education to be meaningful, its books must be more than 'just books'
3) Our Founder's wrong turn towards Education today - The New Normal
4) Remove this dangerous technology from the classroom: Textbooks
5) Foundations & Compasses - Books are never 'Just books'
6) Disorienting America - the modern thinking behind abandoning True North
7) Never forget that 'Education Reform' is about reforming you
8) Accepting the 'Science!' of Education Reform
9) The 1st lesson from the dark wood of School Reform: Good intentions make a map to Hell unnecessary
10) Pragmatically shifting us off of our Foundations
11) Experimentally reading ourselves into illiteracy
12) The Power of Ignorance: 'Back to Basics' Reform

, do those convey their concern for clarity of meaning, or for evading that to induce conformity? Does either quoting a movie villain to dismiss American 'maxims of' constitutionalism, or presuming that you can easily scrape some utility from the deeply subversive & evil ideas of Marx & Gramsci, without absorbing any of the ill effects which their 'analysis' and tactics for employing them were formulated to cause - do those indicate an understanding and respect for the power of ideas and a concern for what they confront you with, or a shortsighted & shallow effort to manipulate language so as to produce effects in you, that are of use to them?

What you see that they're rooted in as you look beneath the rhetoric, is a vaguery that shapes popular opinion to their ideological passions, and those are roots that will not bear good fruit. Here are a few more likeminded examples:

• Ibrahim Kendi writes: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
• Sargon of Akhad: "The problem is that reality as we experience it might indeed be radically subjective, and until you can demonstrate that it isn't, then we are in a bind, aren't we?", and that "The critical theorists have been philosophically demolishing us for more than half a century. We have to get ahead of them."
• Christian Nationalist Doug Wilson, claiming to support American constitutionalism with a theocratic Christian Nationalism where "... a Protestant nation I think is capable of having carveout spaces for Roman Catholics and even for Jews...", although "...Catholic church bells would be okay, but a parade in honor of the Virgin Mary carrying an image of the Virgin Mary down Main Street. No."

, do they sound like they have an issue with discrimination, or with who has the power to get away with imposing discrimination?

Economic Labels kill off meaningful Questions - Step out of the Wizard's Circle of 'Common Good'

1. Labeling - applying answers to abort your questions
2. The Questionable Label of 'Libertarian'
3. The Wastefulness of *Economics* requires labels
4. The wishful thinking of the 'Classical Liberal' label
5. One Classical Liberal that took liberties with Life, Liberty, and Happiness - J.S. Mill
6. Political Economy is not just an old label for 'Economics'
7. The Common Good, Property, Liberty - united they stand, divided we fall
8. Using the 'Common Good' to harm the good of all



9. Dazzling us with what's partly seen while abandoning the full reality of what's left unseen
10. Slow down bro - thinking about rights, government, justice, law, politics, can't start with rights, government, justice, law, politics
11. IS that so - It all depends upon what the meaning of 'Is', is
12. Mystifying what the meaning of the word 'IS', is, is the means of making you dissappear from your life
13. The reality is that a common good must be common to all.
14. "Letgo of that Republic!' Gimme that...!"
15. Summing up by returning to the Questions that should precede Hazlitt's 'Economics in One Lesson'



16. What 'Economics' buys you is Tyranny on a budget
17. The TURD's Pro-Regressive retreat from the West A.D. to the B.C. past through the Wizard's Circle
18. The Wizarding World's Tools of Economic Magic: 'Value', 'Growth', and 'Law', reconceived as Semantic Deceptions
19. Totalitarian Opposition to individual decisions: Breaking the Say's Law
20. Transforming the Rule of Law into Rules for Ruling with
21. Exiting 'Economic Thinking' and re-entering into the Reality of what is real and true
22. Understand Classic American Liberalism and decline to be mislabeled

And then there's the notion that we're unable to know what is objectively true, which is a sentiment that's been pushed by thinkers from Descartes, to Hume, to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Gramsci, and on down through every post-modernist from CRT's DiAngelo on 'The Left', to the 'post-liberals' like Sargon on 'The Right'. One obvious question to ask of that assertion is, if that's *true*, then how can they know it? For if what they say is *true* and no one can know anything to be objectively true, why should anyone listen to what they have to say about what is or isn't *true*?!

But the better question to ask, given the popularity (and persistence) of 'their point' over time, is how and why do people give any attention to those who continue saying such things?

And the answer is that the ability of those who entertain their ideas, to think clearly and effectively about their lives and the world they live within, degrades - regresses - due to their thinking those thoughts within their head, and doing so without the fundamentals in place to safeguard them (hi Dewey!). Improving the clarity of your understanding is not their point, undermining and subverting your understanding, is.

With that in mind, take another look: does reading their statements bring you clarity of understanding, or the urge to exercise power over others and/or to react against its being used against you? Their rhetorical roots are in preferences resentments, rather than in what is understood to be real and true, because what they aim towards, is power over 'others' (which they'd never impose upon you, of course, nosireebob!).

Remember, it is not a single action that causes something to happen, and although modernity would prefer that be fully forgotten, Causation has several layers - four of which were identified by Aristotle: the Material (“that out of which it is formed”), the Formal (what it is to be), the Efficient (the active agent), the Final (the goal), and the fifth identified by Aquinas as the Exemplary cause (“what guides their intellect”) - and the Pro-Regressive, by their very nature, are intent upon corrupting one or more of those causes, so as to more easily undermine what a shallow reading of 'cause' would lead you to expect.

All Ideologies are united in their disregard for metaphysical realism, so as to practice utilizing language to blur key distinctions under your consideration, so as to confuse, dim, abridge, confound, subvert, and deny you clarity about what is real and true. Whatever apparent differences the ideological snippets noted above seem to have, they are but surface appearances that distract from the demolition work which each of their ideas are doing to the structuring of thoughts within your own mind.

Ideologies assert that their opinion of what reality should be, is what matters most, and under the pretext of urgency, they raise up their favored positions, over principles, to loosen their adherents' minds' grasp upon our shared reality, to overpower our judgement, and to invalidate our ability to know and communicate what is real and true. Those actions are how they increase their power, through your misunderstanding of the fundamentals of metaphysics, causality/logic, and ethical reasoning.

The test to be applied to what people say & do then, is not an ideological one of Left or Right politics, but a metaphysical one of whether their words and actions clarify understanding and reveal what is real and true and right to do, or do they seek to obfuscate, flatten and befuddle, so as to get away with acquiring the power to do unto you, as they will?

That shared telos is what defines their being Pro-Regressive, and we neglect identifying and naming that, at our peril.

So... what's it gonna be men of The West, Progress, or Pro-Regress? It is up to you.

Gaming the Game Theory Games, and other shades of 'Economic Thinking'

Gaming the Game Theory Games and other shades of Economic Thinking

"Theories are the creatures of men, which nature seldom mimics."- Thomas Reid

Shall we play a game? Should we? What game to play, how you go about it or what might be accomplished by playing it, I'm less concerned with, than with how some would advise you to decide if you should. Despite 'Economic Thinking' and Game Theory containing valid principles that can be followed to improve your activities in markets and/or your ability to 'play the game', I have concerns about leaping from engaging in principled actions, to using theoretical systems that have been built up around them to govern your life or our society with, as that game risks landing us all in a system that would 'justify' violating everything which those valid principles were derived from.

fauxYuri's game theory:

That was what was on my mind when an anon X account that I often enjoy when it's reflecting the commentary of its namesake, Yuri Bezmenov, and less so when not and is just fauxYuri, spun a thread on the glories of Game Theory, saying that:

"...game theory can be compatible with moral realism. In fact, it can clarify why moral rules and strong institutions matter..."

Compatible? The real Yuri Bezmenov, was the former KGB agent that wrote 'Love letters to America' and lectured in an effort to warn us of dialectical attacks upon what we understand to be real and true, that most people were unaware were already wearing our liberty away before our eyes. This fauxYuri, is writing to lure America into the arms of experts in Game Theory who promise 'improved systems' (?!) that will make things 'better'. One of these Yuri's is not like the other.

As fauxYuri despises my habit of defining terms that aren't being used clearly, it seems as if I should be sure to point out that since a key point of what being 'Compatible' means, is "...Capable of orderly, efficient integration and operation with other elements in a system with no modification or conversion required...", and so no, while moral realism can find theoretical computations to be useful, such computations cannot comprehend the fundamentally different nature of reasoning required by moral realism, and they should not be confused or otherwise equated. I replied that:

"I don't think so. An A.I. or a sociopath might be able to use game theory to blend their actions in with those of society, and it could generate stats to help them get away with that, but it can't clarify why moral rules matter, for the same reason why the A.I. & sociopath would try to use it to blend in - neither they nor it have any comprehension of right & wrong as understood by moral realism. Appearances can be deceiving, but they won't make unlike things, the same."

, not surprisingly that comment, and those of others who expressed concerns over fauxYuri's failure to distinguish between the two, were mostly deflected, minimized, dismissed, and ridiculed, which is itself behavior that you should be cautious of. In a separate thread where another account tried to make sense of that confrontational thread, I commented:

" Is game theory applicable to playing games? Sure. Can using game theory's calculations help you win games? I presume, so. Should you use game theory's calculations to win games of Scrabble? Chess? Poker? If you use game theory to answer that question, then IMHO you've either intentionally or unintentionally misapplied the word 'should', and so have lost the thread."

The order of 'Shoulds' - Don't 'should' all over yourself
If my point in that comment is less than obvious, you should take a closer look at the 'shoulds' here, as the issue is not about whether or not the calculations of game theory could improve your game. If within the context of the rules that you are employing game theory within, the use of those calculations are able to help you to optimize issues such as 'mapping' out corporate policy and business contracts within the bounds of The Law, or just helping you to improve your ability to think strategically within whatever games it is that you are playing, if that's the case and they are ordered to the good, then... good!

But. Whether or not you should use Game Theory where it's permitted, is not the 'should' you should be worrying about.

The more important Should, is that you should not use Game Theory to calculate the decision of whether you 'should' or 'should not' use game theory in your gaming of anything, because then you are no longer engaging in the ethical reasoning that the word 'should' is an expression of.

The concept of Should, rests upon what is (Metaphysics), and upon what we know of it (Causality & Logic), and it's with our understanding of those in mind, that we're able to properly consider what we should or should not do (Ethics). If you substitute a computational calculation for the links of that chain, and allow the output from that to determine what you 'should' do, then you have unplugged yourself from a vital connection to reality, and intentionally or unintentionally, you're no longer simply misapplying the word 'should', you've begun actively transforming your own understanding of what you 'should' do, into just so much output of artificial intelligence, and you are on your way to slipping out of reality and into a very different sort of game altogether.

This isn't new, BTW, it's all happened before, and with every bit as much self-congratulatory smugness and disregard for reasonable warnings as when 'Economic Thinking' was similarly 'sold' to us back in the 1890s, and if that process is not mitigated by us today, the consequences are sure to be at least as bad for those living in our future. If you're unsure what I mean by that, ask a random passerby (and yourself) what's of more concern to their lives, GDP & the state of the Economy, or a sound understanding of moral philosophy, and you'll likely see that for most people, as was warned, the latter has been displaced by the former.

Before the field was taken over by the calculations of economic systems theory, people from Adam Smith to Frederic Bastiat were concerned with discovering those principles of Political Economy that were the source of The Wealth of Nations. What they discovered was that the natural liberty of individual persons being able to make those decisions that they thought they should make, about whether to perform, grow, keep, buy or sell this or that during the course of their lives, was the true source of their, and their nations', wealth. Bastiat in particular showed how those decisions were derived from the nature of what a human being is, as well as how the folly of wrongfully imposing governmental force into what was rightfully an individual person's decision to make, violated natural law, and inevitably led to a cascade of inefficient decisions that not only wasted time and resources, but induced misery and poverty on a national & international scale.

The fact is, that deeper understanding of Natural Liberty which America was formed from, led to the unprecedented explosion of production, wealth, and prosperity across the 19th century, and with momentum enough to carry it into the 20th century, was a consequence of metaphysical realism's respect for orderly Causation. In that classical sense, Causation is understood as having: a Material Cause (“that out of which it is formed”), a Formal Cause ("what it is to be"), an Efficient Cause ("the active agent"), a Final Cause ("the goal"), and the informed and virtuous Exemplary Cause (“what guides their intellect”), which naturally led to those prosperous effects which historically followed.

The fact that particular formulas and calculations about the various aspects of those early ideas of Political Economy, were somewhat crude and inexact in predicting the economic consequences of either impeding or unleashing natural liberty (accurately predicting interest rates, price of gold, etc), were and should be considered to be of little importance. What was important, was the understanding that it is right for a person to be at liberty to make decisions about their own life & property, and so they should be able to do so, and that was and is the reason for, and the purpose of, preserving their Natural Liberty. That such ideas also helped to unleash prosperity to an extent that no one prior to that could have dreamed of, was a welcome consequence of upholding those first principles, but those effects are not why it should be done. A person is justified in being able to do what is rightful for them to think they should do, and though prosperity is a natural result of that, that prosperity is neither its causes or its justification - effects do not precede their causes.

Game Theory and 'Economic Thinking' reverses that process, as its projected results are taken as the justifications for implementing its strategies. That causal reversal ("let's raise interest rates to cool the economy!") is not compatible with moral and metaphysical realism.

These theories also loudly purport to be able to calculate their projections with great precision (just ignore their regular revisions of "...experts were surprised by the latest unemployment figures..."), and as the presuppositions of their calculations are reflexively utilized as if they were 'causes', they are reflexively used to justify imposing their predictions of what the 'data shows', upon local & national regulatory & legislative policies that 'experts' are then given the power to 'manage' production, demand, pricing, and other factors of 'economic growth', translates into their monitoring and regulating every move you make, as has been the case with the regulatory state.

The experts belief in their systems is the exemplary cause of every regulation on trade, finance, property, the 'Quantitative Easing' of printing fiat money, and so on, and on, and on.

But the fact is, that where the promises of such Economic Systems have actually led us to, have been typified by how 'Free Trade' was gamified into complex sets of international agreements and new international agencies to oversee them, all of which serves to bind and require, rather than free any one or any thing. These new systems of 'Economic Thinking' are contrary in nature & purpose to the Free Market of Natural Liberty that Smith & Bastiat described, and they have led to the greatest explosion in the growth of government and its regulatory laws, which tyrannically infringe upon the liberty of individual people to make their own choices about their own lives and property. To the Experts though, what an individual person might prefer or choose to do, is not valued in their calculations of what 'should' be done to promote 'economic growth', because the individual person has no place in their visions for the 'common good'.

That is the nature of their game.

It is what it is, and is not what it isn't
Again, the more important 'should' is not whether or not the calculations of either 'Game Theory' or 'Economic Thinking' (which are different... how?) could be of help in estimating various scores & outputs measured in economic growth, but whether or not individuals are at liberty to make decisions about what they should do based upon their understanding of circumstances, and that that 'input', is more important than any estimates of output.

Speaking of which, the 'Game Theorists' like fauxYuri, while positing their intent to analyze models & agents, will claim that we have no need to worry about their systems being imposed upon us, or to opening a backdoor of revisionary metaphysics, and that it will somehow 'operate' on a level beyond 'should':

"Level 3: formal analysis of strategic interaction. Once aims, motives, incentives, and rules are specified, what patterns of conduct are likely to follow? This is the level at which game theory operates."

Operates... how? On who? By what means? If they have no effects upon our "...aims, motives, incentives, and rules are specified, what patterns of conduct are likely to follow...", then what's the point of your theory's for gaming them?

More to the point, how does such a system utilize power in such a way as to anticipate and manage 'behaviors' which it cannot comprehend, but can only 'model' based upon... operator input (and not-put)? How are wrongs to be addressed 'strategically'? How are ethical wrongs, to be identified in their statistical 'models'?

Is their system going to somehow 'see' how some actions violate the individual rights of others? Spoiler: No.

Is their system somehow going to be used to monitor possible behaviors, which the system should then be empowered to anticipate and to manage? Spoiler: Yes.

fauxYuri likes to state that his game theory is 'Prudence friendly', and that:

"Madison stands in the same line of realism. If men were angels, no government would be necessary"

But James Madison was a prudent human being who understood SCSR (Scottish Common Sense Realism), the nature of man, and the role of government in upholding individual rights and curtailing the abuse of its power, and those 'angels' he spoke of weren't the calculated results of an algorithm dealing with 'models and agents', but with the understanding and identification of what human beings are, what the role of the rule of law is in our lives (more as restraints, than as the paddles & bumpers in a behavioralist pinball game), and the temptations of power in the hands of ambitious people in political life.

What the fauxYuri seems to miss, is that his pet theories are not the same as, or 'compatible' with, Realism, they are only computational models with numerical inputs that stand in for parameters of lust, shame, ambition, glory, and other easily quantified concepts [Ahem].

fauxYuri kant seem to fit it into his modeling mind that Game Theory can only deal with theoretical 'models and agents', and that to employ that application in the governmental administration of power, is to step out of the moral realism of reality, and into the computational realm of his theories, which will then 'somehow' apply those calculations, not to models and agents, but to people, and other people in positions of power, will then have that power to apply them, to still other people who are under their power.

IMHO, we don't we need computers to tell us about the nature of that game.

But again, if you disagree, then answer me: How?

How can a system of laws which are constrained by natural law to uphold and defend the individual rights of all, go about managing 'models' and 'agents' (AKA: you), without actively intruding upon what every 'agent' is doing in its 'model'?

Will that system's power somehow be limited by the understanding that it is derived from, and intended to uphold, individual rights? Who will write that code? Will they remember that its computations are based upon expected results, and not causes - systems management, not individual meting out of justice? Or will they be entranced by the 'beauty' of their theories?

If history is any guide - and it is - it will be managed and applied by experts in Game Theory (fauxYuri?) in newly established agencies which will advise congress and the POTUS's with 500 page studies (ever unread) and the ever vague message of "Better do this, or the game will go badly!", which will soon take the place of the venerable "Gotta keep interest rates low and raise GDP!". But what possible 'strategy' could justify the computational management of a population/human resources?

fauxYuri says that:

Game theory did not invent that terrain. It formalized part of it.

No, Game Theory did not invent the terrain, but Game Theorists like fauxYuri are attempting to terraform that terrain into a morally inert construct, with which they expect their theories will further perfect our cumulative behaviors with, but theses terrains are not compatible. Our great grandparents failed to consider what the results of getting into the habit of 'systems thinking', would be to their children and grandchildren, I hope for the sake of ours, that we won't continue on making the same mistakes today.

fauxYuri sets up what he considers to be the strong objection to his modeling:

So the objection runs: the model may not explicitly deny richer moral reality, but it still trains the mind to see politics through a narrowed lens.

That is a serious objection, and it deserves a direct answer.

, which he never actually answers, only models. Saying that:

"...Every analytic discipline foregrounds some features and backgrounds others. A legal brief does not capture the whole life of the parties...Yet none of these is therefore false or subversive simply because it abstracts."

But again, those analytic disciplines and legal briefs are not computational outputs and only LLM prompting fools (or worse) would confuse the two. Neither do computational models abstract. People do (developers kinda do abstract, but the software they develop does not). Only human beings with knowledge & wisdom in regards to a subject and its ramifications, are able to observe and abstract from that, to better understand and act in accordance with their understanding of the world. People who mistake computational models for abstractions, and confuse selective Input for informed observation and understanding, are the kinds of people who are a danger to every person that comes under the power of those they advise with their models.

fauxYuri somehow expects 'moral realism' to continue unabated, as their grasp of the underlying reality is increasingly replaced with Game Theory's models of it, because like most people enraptured by their own notions, they imagine their brilliance to be a cause, rather than a fleeting effect.

As it was the case with 'economic thinking', the proponents and practitioners of these theories come to use their impressive calculations ("...experts were surprised by the latest rise in interest rates!..."), to convince people to begin to subordinate principled thinking, to those calculations (promises) output by their theories. What then will soon come to guide our thoughts and actions, will be the always promised appearances of utility, and under which, what actually should be done, and why, will recede from our awareness, as what most serves the interests of those who're interested in acquiring the power to manage every aspect of your life, will be what is used to calculate what 'should' be done to you for the 'common good'.

A quantitative measurement or calculation cannot provide either understanding, strategy, or even a single 'should', not even when that data is shaped to appear as if it does. Calculative tools, even when named as a theory, can only supply data which a person can make use of in understanding how to support a 'Why', but that is a very different thing from what a model abstracts, and when you confuse the two, you're outsourcing your judgement to quantitive comparisons, and as the reality behind them recedes from your thinking, you sever your ability to be prudent.

It's the same game
But Van, why do you keep equating Economic Thinking, with Game Theory? Because in many respects they are the same kind of thinking, and there have been developed by the same people, and for the similar purposes. I've had those who've doubted my concerns about Game Theory, point me to links such as this one from Britanica, which explains that Game Theory is simply a tool to better model the reasoning of how 'agents' behave towards each other:

"game theory, branch of applied mathematics that provides tools for analyzing situations in which parties, called players, make decisions that are interdependent...."

, and my 1st reaction is that the last thing that we need those in power to do, is to take an even less personable and more 'abstract' view of our lives, rights, and property, to see us as computational models of agents and players, as elaborately automated calculators 'reason' about how people should respond to each other, or in their words 'play'. I'm also curious about what kinds of interactions they think we would be unable to determine the nature of for ourselves? Have we no schools to spread knowledge & wisdom? Oh... yeah... that's right... our great-grandparents converted them into more pragmatic, economically minded, institutions. Huh.

Another question is, are we even talking about actual person to person interactions... or something more like abstract scenarios where individual people and circumstances aren't actually examined, but only those probabilities that can be utilized in systemic schemes to develop more efficient aspects of population management?

That sounds a lot like 'Economic Thinking' to me... how about you? If you're doubtful, you should take a look further down the Britanica link, where it helpfully notes that:

"...In fact, game theory was originally developed by the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann and his Princeton University colleague Oskar Morgenstern, a German-born American economist, to solve problems in economics. ..."

The purpose of Game Theory, in the end, as is the case with 'Economic Thinking', is to model (meaning to substitute theory for reality) how best to escape from the 'restrictions' (AKA: the nature of your individual rights), which those in power feel are interfering with their desire to manage society more efficiently, so that experts can calculate the optimal utility of how best to serve the 'common good', through ever more efficient calculations of every move that you 'should' be made to make.

Personally, what I oppose is not 'economic growth', but justifying the abuses of our natural liberty on the basis of what either systems calculates they will have on economic & societal growth. I am not opposed to what can be learned from the data of Game Theory, but I am opposed to using such systems to target not just material decisions, but chipping away at more fundamental political, legal, ethical issues, along with our grasp of the metaphysical realism which they all ultimately rest upon (and cannot long continue as such without).

Those like fauxYuri deny that such a technocracy is their telos. I think that their denials ring hollow. Courtenay Turner summed up the issue of such denials on that first thread, with:

" Courtenay Turner @CourtenayTurner If that’s true then why are the game theorists so invested in hollowing out realist metaphysics? Because they explicitly say metaphysics must be redesigned to create a “scaffolding” that serves (science) their model! They need to erode the foundation so they can build models without the pesky confines of reality!! That’s constructivism!"

Those advancing 'Game Theory', are, knowingly or not, intent upon transforming that understanding of what is (Metaphysics) and what we know of it (Causality & Logic), which is the basis for Ethical Reasoning, into an artificially constructed tool for quantitative calculations which they need for more efficiently managing our 'input' (everything you think, say, and do, or as they like to refer to that as: 'The Economy'), as the means for using technology to reformulate the ends of our society, and to justify whatever means their calculations tell them 'should' be imposed upon us, for the 'common good'.

That is why those 'tech bros' that Courtenay notes, are proponents of technocracy, and of Game B (Nick Land, Brett Weinstein, etc.), who very much use (all) theory, towards their constructivist ends.

I want to see that growth and prosperity and winning, but I want it to be real, and not a pragmatic facsimile of it that is sure to precede total defeat.

I see no 'winning' in that 'game' for any of us.

Why are they called 'Protestors'? Because the pen is mightier than the sword and your carelessness can kill you

Not 'protesting': Stochastic terrorism

Stop calling them protestors. The pen is mightier than the sword, and wielding it carelessly can kill you. And they know that.

These people who've been acting violently in the streets (again), are not protesters, and you should not tolerate the misidentification of their threats to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

These people that are stopping people's cars in the streets, these people who are rioting outside federal facilities, these people that are harassing and interfering with law enforcement officers, rousting people out of diners, accosting random passersby while demanding that they identify themselves and denounce our laws, these people that invade and disrupt church services - these people are not protesters, and they are not in any reasonable way, committing their violent actions in support of any civil liberties, whatsoever.

CRT ...Maoism by any other name

Who and what these people are, are pro-regressive insurrectionists, who're driven by marxist totalitarian ideologies, and they are engaged in violence against the public peace of America. They're able to do what they are doing, day in and day out, because their unchecked misuse of our words is shielding them from the consequences of committing violence against us, consequences that should and would unquestionably follow, if we took our own language seriously. If you're one of those who was taught to think of grammar as unimportant & arbitrary conventions about the use of commas, see Josef Pieper's brief (and terrifying) essay: "Abuse of language, Abuse of power".

Why does it matter whether we call them 'protestors' or 'insurrectionists'? Because the pen is mightier than the sword!

If you persist in using their language of deception - a deception that goes back at least as far as the 'Berkeley *free speech* movement' (which was itself nothing more than organized political violence against the public peace) - that misidentifies who and what these folks are, then any reaction you have to their actions (actions which are plotted by them to instigate an overreaction from you), will be easily spun by them and their co-conspirators in the popular media, academia, and bureaucracies, to portray you as being in the wrong and as some form of anti-American fascist that is opposed to free speech and civil liberties.

Willful insanity

Our society is held together by language, do you really think that misusing and misunderstanding the language we use can be tolerated and engaged in without consequences?

Do you not understand that the laws that uphold and protect our individual rights, lives, and property, are made from those same words that we've got in the habit of not paying attention to? The Rule of Law cannot be any sounder or stronger than our understanding and commitment to the words they are made from!

The pen is mightier than the sword and mishandling it can lead to serious injury to you and those around you.

They are following the insurrectionist tactics that have been taught by Marxist revolutionaries, from Alinsky. to Prairie Fire, and Beautiful Trouble - each of which expresses a violent opposition to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Rule of Law - which is what makes them Pro-Regressive (they seek to regress our society to the time before those principles were understood and upheld), and a danger to every aspect of our lives.

Stop calling them protestors. Just stop it.

Training in Insurrection

You need to read this

Attacking persons & property

Another Shocking New Year's Resolution: Have a Questionable 2026!

As the year 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 comes to a close, and a new last half of the decade begins continues, ask yourself this: Can you spend fifteen minutes in a room alone with yourself, with no digital devices, TV, music, books or anything else but your own thoughts? According to a study - the details of which I find questionable, but in general terms, likely - 67 percent of men, and 25 percent of women, would rather give themselves painful electric shocks, than spend an uninterrupted 15 minutes of being alone with their own thoughts, without any distraction at all.

Apparently, there's a connection between that, and why “depending on where you get your numbers, somewhere between 81 percent and 92 percent of New Year's Resolutions fail.”

Can you face fifteen minutes alone with your own thoughts? I'll just add, that anyone who expects America to continue while filled with Americans who can't stand being alone with their own thoughts, is... to put it politely... a fool.

While I have zero interest in making New Year's Resolutions, that seems like a worthy one to strive for!

This is an interesting article on how most people fail to face themselves without distraction:

"...What is striking, is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.

Wilson and his colleagues summarized their findings this way: “The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself....”

Their 'studies say' that your resolutions to avoid snacking, drinking, surfing online fail, because you need those distractions from yourself, and that,

"...We reach for a donut the same way some study participants reached for the electric shock.

Is it a surprise that we turn to celebrity gossip or Facebook again and again? Anything seems better than an uncomfortable feeling. Coping works for a few minutes, but then we reach for a distraction...."

If you too would rather indulge in any distractions, even to the point of experiencing pain, over the prospect of being alone with your own thoughts, might I suggest that rather than making New Year's Resolutions to break bad habits... which you are 80% to 90% likely to fail at, that you instead begin the novel notion of getting comfortable with your own thoughts, by, wait for it: Thinking upon things worth thinking about?

I've suggested some of this for beginning a New Year before, and for giving thanks within the year as well, but now that 'studies show' that my suggestions might have a 'scientific basis' for them 😎, I'll suggest again that instead of making New Year's Resolutions, I propose some old questions to be newly asked. And while you won't have to return any membership fees if you fail to answer them, if you get in the habit of just asking them, you might also get to the point of preferring your own company, to that of a painful electric shock!

Start off with some basics:

"...Western Civilization didn't catch on because of its answers... those are still being argued about more than 3,000 years on... but because of its questions, and its method of comparing your answers to reality, and pursuing the questions which those answers lead to. Questions such as:

• What is real and how do we know it?
• What is Good? Why should we care?
• How can we recognize what is not Good?
• What is a Good life?
• What is Happiness?
• Should what is Right and Wrong, guide our actions?
• What is Beauty?...What is Truth?...What is Justice?
• What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

Ask the right questions, and your listeners [even if that listener is you] will question their own answers, and reality will do the rest...."

Most of all, question what you assume to be true.

There is of course also another very practical, and very important reason, to get comfortable with asking yourself these questions, and for questioning what answers you might first come to, and that is that they are consequential to your life, and to the future of this nation in the year 2020, and for the coming decade of the 20's. The immediate impact of considering such questions is in fact very likely to be far more compelling to our new present, than when I first suggested asking yourself them five years ago:

"...As the old year slips out and the New Year opens up, it's a particularly good time to ask questions that have to do with what is timeless... lest auld acquaintance with them should be forgot. And while it might not seem so, on the surface, these questions we've been asking most definitely involve issues that are timeless - see if you can see how. For instance: Where do you think you fit in, in today's world, are you Pro-Progress, or Pro-Regress? Are you for the Rule of Law, or the Rule of Rules? Are the 'Big Ideas' of Western Civilization something you think much about, or do you mostly shrug them off and just kinda make a snap judgment on various news stories that happen to flit into your view, now and then... and then forget about 'em? Or are you one of the many of us who don't see the point of considering such questions at all, especially not in the midst of the current events raging around us today - ''I'm not getting sucked into THAT mess!'? I hate to cast a pall upon the coming New Year, but I have a sad suspicion that what most people think doesn't matter, isn't going to matter much longer.

Can anyone really think that the precious snowflakes on our college campuses, or the SJW (Social Justice Warriors) brigades in our streets who are openly advocating to eliminate the Freedom of Speech, or 'unbiased' newscasters talking openly of how those they violently disagree with are 'enemies of the state', can anyone really think that these types are going to be tolerant towards those who say 'Oh, I don't pay attention to that stuff' for much longer? How much longer? And when that vocal 'majority' refuses to allow others the choice to either disagree or evade deciding, what do you suppose is going to be the reaction of those who do disagree with them, and what options will they have to do so?

Will the one side have any option left open to them, but to take the other side at their own words, as being their enemies?

No, the time is coming where all will have to decide, one way or the other, where they stand on these issues, because they are what is driving our current events, and your place within them, and brushing them off cannot remain an option much longer. Each person is going to have to choose what they support, and what they will reject. But for those who haven't been paying attention, those - Left, Right, Libertarian and the target rich Moderate center - who've been coasting along on the strength of their snap judgments on this and that - what are they going to base those decisions upon?..."

Again, don't worry so much about whether the answers that come to your mind are correct, just focus on questioning them. Even questioning just one or two of those questions, is likely to carry you through at least fifteen minutes of time. And at the very least, the results are likely to be less shocking than being left alone with nothing to distract you from them.

And remember, as the 'studies show' showed,

"Try to notice: Right before you reach for the habit you want to break, do you experience an uncomfortable feeling that you are trying to distract yourself from?

You won’t break a habit if you are not comfortable with being uncomfortable...."

Break the habit. Prefer the company of your thoughts for fifteen undistracted minutes, to getting an electric shock, for after all, the new year, not to mention finishing out the decade, is going to be very much longer than 15 minutes... prepare!

Happy New Year!