Wokism is an extremist religion. The West has not faced so powerful of an extremist religion movement since the 1600s. One of the maxims inscribed outside the Ancient Greek temple at Delphi was “nothing to excess”. Aristotle expanded on this with his concept of the Golden Mean: Moral virtue is a mean . . . between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency . . . it is such because its character is to aim at what is…
Note: This is a re-post of a post originally from September 24, 2017. I am reposting because it is more relevant than ever. I will be posting more on this subject. I’ve said it before: religion is an innate part of human nature. Someone can give up on organized religion, but he can’t give up on being human, so religiosity will still be a part of his character. Those who give up on church just transfer their religiosity to other…
Note: This is a re-post of a post originally from July 25, 2017. I am reposting because it is more relevant than ever. I will be posting more on this subject. I’ve previously written that Religion is an inescapable part of human nature—it has been a part of all human cultures everywhere and at all times. Religion serves important functions by providing, among other things: 1) a way to make parts of our lives sacred and allow us to commune…
Note: This is a re-post of a post originally from June 20, 2016. I am reposting because it is more relevant than ever. I will be posting more on this subject. Summary: Religiosity is an inescapable part of human nature. Secularization won’t—can’t—overcome it. Instead, the growing trend of secularization has just led those professing no religion to express their innate religious natures in sub-optimal, ill-thought-out, ad hoc ways. I just finished reading Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions by Catherine Bell. It…
According to this and this, ESPN (which is owned by Disney) lost 203,000 subscribers in October and is estimated to lose 480,000 more in November. That’s 683,000 households who have given up on ESPN in the two months since the national anthem protests began, . In 2017, an estimated 98.7 million households had pay TV of some sort. That means that .7% of pay TV-watching households cut the cord and dumped ESPN in two months. Cable and satellite providers pay…
Film producer Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual assault and sexual harassment shouldn’t come as a shock. Everyone’s known that this sort of thing has been going on Hollywood since the 1930s. Corey Feldman and Elijah Wood have each talked about how Hollywood does far worse: pedophilia and sexual exploitation of children. The question is, why do we tolerate it? Hollywood makes its money because its films get copyright protection. But the U.S. Constitution says that the sole purpose of…
Some people are dumber than others, yet everyone’s vote counts the same. Surveys since the 1950s have consistently shown that most Anericans are poorly informed about basic, important civic facts about our country, government, and political situation. An academic overview of research since the 1950s about voters’ knowledge found that a majority of Americans didn’t know the answers to questions about: definitions of key terms such as liberal, conservative, primary elections, or the bill of rights; knowledge of many individual…
I’ve said it before: religion is an innate part of human nature. Someone can give up on organized religion, but he can’t give up on being human, so religiosity will still be a part of his character. Those who give up on church just transfer their religiosity to other things. Unfortunately, most of those other things are poor replacements. And the worst replacement is the most common: the Church of Social Justice. To show what I mean, let’s look at…
Another interesting passage from Starship Troopers: That old saw about “To understand all is to forgive all” is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them.
Google apparently dropped all the accounts of a statistics professor, with no warning. His activities and his blog were apolitical, but that didn’t seem to matter to Google. He lost his blog archives, his email address, and years of archived emails. Google tried something similar with psychology professor Jordan Peterson until public outcry forced Google to back down. Google has taken too much power over modern life, to the point where it has near-absolute power over many people’s digital lives….