Logic is your Friend
i'm speaking to you, women
Of logic, intuition and authority, only logic trumps authority. But logic without intuition is competition without meaning.
On my last post, Breaking Up with Russell Brand, there was a marked difference in the comments from men and women, with notable exceptions on each side. The male exceptions were my regular readers, who draw on both sides of the brain. They should rightly take it as a compliment when I say their reactions were feminine, particularly those who had ‘feelings’ for Russell as a source of meaning during the tumultuous time of the ‘pandemic.’ On YT in particular, where I’d drawn my audience from Russell’s, these were nuanced and complex responses.
Women’s responses often drew on their intuition, sometimes for and sometimes against, and many times in the middle and staying open. I may have confirmed something they suspected. Or their feeling about my authenticity may have put them in conflict with their feeling about Russell’s. Again, these are generalities. But with 100% certainty, the women on my threads who loved Russell loved him for the same reasons as the men—because he was speaking an outer truth that resonated with an inner truth. It demeans us, not Russell, to make us naive and falling for his sex appeal.
And that was the implication of half of the men, who had never listened to him and ‘didn’t see his appeal.’ Rather than recognizing their own lack of authority, they saw themselves as possessing superior insight by never having paid attention to him. We who did must be slow, stupid or deluded to have taken so long to come around to what they knew at a glance.
The other half told me I was thinking beyond my pay grade to criticize Russell. One called me ‘Mr. Dunning-Kroeger,’ another implied I was propaganda that Substack promoted because I fit its ‘accepted leanings’ (definitely a new reader). A comment said, “I adore Russell. You, not so much.” Several told me Russell has seen the light, was now red-pilled and speaking truth, Praise Jesus! “Russell's eyes were finally opened and he arrived at the objective, absolute truth” whereas I, quotes the Bible, am ever learning and will never know. I’m taking that as a compliment.
The common theme of the yaysayers and naysayers was that they knew Russell Brand better than me, who is puzzling it out from a place of love and logic. Love gives ourselves the benefit of the doubt that what we love is authentic, whether or not the person is. Logic is discrepancy analysis, as Daniel Negase says. To analyze a discrepancy, you have to see both sides and be disturbed by their incompatibility.
As I replied to Mary, “Love is giving someone the benefit of the doubt that they do what they do for a reason, and you would do the same in their exact shoes. Just like RFK, I think there's a reason Russell isn't as outspoken about Palestine as he was 15 yrs ago, when it was much less popular. My guess is that they're both captured in some way, through blackmail. So my act of love is honoring the Russell who, I think, knows and wants to speak the truth, by not falling for the compromised role.”
Love the person, challenge the ideas.
Women are good at the first part, but not the second. Men are good at the second but not the first. If we’re going to get out of this rat race, we need to be doing both. I’m on a mission to make women more argumentative and claim logic as their friend. And perhaps a mission to make men less judgmental, which is to say more loving.
Violence is enabled by discrepancies that go unchallenged. Conflict brought to the surface is discussed and resolved. Women tend to be conflict-adverse because they don’t want to make someone feel bad or stupid by pointing out the flaws in their logic.
As I’ve told my daughters, you can’t create conflict. Conflict already exists in the other person’s mind, or they wouldn’t be bothered by your statement. They’d dismiss it or argue back, without anger, pointing out where you’re mistaken. It wouldn’t be an ego fight.
Women use a lot of qualifiers like ‘I think,’ ‘I believe,’ ‘I feel,’ ‘it seems like,’ and ‘it’s my opinion.’ They are non-confrontational. Yet this also puts their argument on a weaker footing as an emotional, irrational or subjective response. I’ve started saying, “My research has led me to suspect …” Or even, “It’s my theory or premise.” That puts it in the realm of scientific hypothesis and gathering evidence, not a religious belief.
An argument is systematic thinking. It organizes information according to its thesis, and provides a web of inference that is never conclusive proof but rules out alternatives. It starts by listing all possible explanations for a phenomenon. The same process can be used for philosophy, metaphysics, theology, anthropology and history.
The Left Brain alone is empathy-impaired, if we think of it as logic and information. The Right Brain alone is impaired by empathy. We see other people’s problems and feel their pain, and need to do something about it. A character in Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, is devastated by hearing about tragedies. As a result, they need to protect her from knowledge. It’s the same for all who feel too much—empathy can be too much of a good thing.
the logic of moral superiority
This dynamic between judging people vs. ideas came up in a conversation with Winston Smith, who felt I was criticizing Richard Vobes, whose video he had recommended. Here’s my statement:
We've been taught to judge people as good or bad. If they're good, we shouldn't disagree with them, argue with them or embarrass them with facts and logic. It's not polite.
If they're bad, we should disagree with everything they say and are associated with. If that's Trump, that means deriding and dismissing all of his followers and positions. That, I think, makes us pretty easy to manipulate as the last eight years have shown.
If you look at what I said about Richard, I never said anything dismissive or derisive about him. I challenged his ideas as not going deep enough in questioning the system, which isn't just about us being servants but whether other people have been made our slaves with our invisible consent. He provided me with the perfect example when he used chimneysweeps because there's nothing more extreme to show how the worst example of torturing and killing small children was accepted in the midst of a society that thought of itself as good and decent. …
But here's my paradox—once people are thinking within a paradigm of moral superiority, statements that I don't see myself as morally superior are seen as trying to one-up them in moral superiority. Suggestions?
Winston:
Funnily enough I too am like you, I try to judge or criticise the idea not the person, so I understand your way of thinking, … I aim to judge, critique and question the idea or concept always, however I've noticed when discussing things with people they interject their emotions into the mix and usually become an impenetrable intellectual brick wall, this is where I would start to judge the person... You can forgive ignorance of a situation, but once someone is made aware of their behaviour or actions or lack there of and how this affects them and the world around them, then they become responsible for their actions or lack there of...
Me:
You bring up an interesting point, that I've given much thought to, with your "Ignorance is innocence" argument.
For many years, child slavery on cocoa plantations was a major issue for me. When I would make someone aware of what was happening, their reaction was hostile. Why? Because as long as they didn't know, they were innocent. Once I made them aware, they were guilty. To the child on the cocoa plantation, it made no difference whether they felt guilty or not. Only their actions mattered. But it showed me that the underlying belief that "What I don't know I’m not responsible for" creates the resistance to understanding things like foreign policy or our money system.
Winston:
I said it can be forgiven, and then went on to say if you then continue to ignore the information, you are absolutely responsible for the harm... In reality of course the harm still existed.... But if someone doesn't know something, how on God's green earth can you hold them responsible for it ... Shall we make everyone responsible and guilty of everything that has ever occurred, that is what it seems like you're suggesting ...
As someone who says superiority is the only idea you criticise, are you aware that you're acting superior by not meeting people where they are? Their life experiences aren't the same as yours, to think they should feel like you and being unhappy when they don't, is a form of superior moral thinking.
Me:
You're saying that the only way I could make my point that people are morally equal is by not arguing with people who think some are superior. If I challenge the superiority implicit in their arguments, then I'm acting superior.
You confuse the equality of people, from my position, with the equality of thinking. I would never say that all ideas are equally true. That's the literal definition of non-sense, sense being the discernment of what's true from what's not true. If everything was equally true, then the innate superiority of some people over others would be just as true as the moral equality of everyone.
If it made me unhappy when people didn't agree with me, I'd be a pretty miserable person. This has nothing to do with my emotions. It has nothing to do with how I feel. If you're reading this as emotional rant and not a rational argument, it's a way of dismissing my logic. And yes, of course I believe my thinking is superior. If I didn't, I'd change my mind. So would you, I hope.
Winston:
In simple terms... Your premise ( all people are morally equal ) is flawed and you don't actually believe it to be true for yourself....
I'm certain that's called hypocrisy.
🤷♂️
Me:
Okay, I concede the point. People are morally superior and I am morally superior to you. There. Now I'm not hypocritical, we're in complete agreement on your ideology. I was in error that people are morally equal, as you've rightly and repeatedly and relentlessly pointed out. So now that you've convinced me that some are morally superior to others, it's not our ideas that are closer or further from reality, it's our innate characters that are better or worse. It's perfectly okay for us to judge other people. So, to be consistent with your ideology (since there's no difference between claiming my idea to be better and claiming myself to be superior) it's only a difference of whether you're superior to me or I'm superior to you. Thanks for clarifying my superiority, since there doesn't seem to be any alternative you're willing to accept.
Winston:
Are you trying to be facetious or sarcastic here? Or genuine? …
You … believe your idea is superior to others, has no flaws and you seem unwilling to take criticism of it.... Also you said YOUR THINKING is superior, that's a claim about you personally, not your flawed idea, that you're claiming is superior because you believe YOUR THINKING is superior..... You're starting to unravel the real problem that we face in this world... People believing they are superior, acting like they are, whilst ignoring advice, criticism or discussion that highlights that worldview to be flawed or hypothetical....
You're caught in a logic trap where you're claiming people aren't superior whilst claiming superiority.....
unraveling the real problem
Winston and I agree that “the real problem that we face in this world [is] People believing they are superior, acting like they are, while ignoring advice, criticism or discussion that highlights that worldview to be flawed or hypothetical....”
Let’s start with my definition of dogma: a belief that a person refuses to raise to question. What is my only dogma? That all people are inherently and equally good—born good, with an equal capacity to make good decisions, among those that are available to them.
Behaviors, words and ideas are NOT equally good. If they were, logic wouldn’t exist. Everyone should believe that their behaviors, words, ideas, and thinking are better than any other. If they don’t believe that, they should change it. Whenever I’ve found someone whose thinking on a topic was better than mine, I’ve abandoned mine and adopted theirs. Of course!
All worldviews are hypothetical. I’m stating mine as a belief that I’m choosing to live by. When Winston says mine is flawed, he’s stating his worldview as fact. If my premise [that people are morally equal] is flawed, the alternative is that some are morally superior. And yet we agree that people believing they’re superior is the real problem in the world.
When I finally agree and say, “Okay, so I’m morally superior to you,” Winston says, “Wha-a-a-t?” So the superiority that has to be accepted is ‘us’ over a hypothetical ‘them’ who aren’t in the room. For this, we’re trading off the important question of “Why? Why do people behave in these ways? What could make me do the same?” On those answers rests the future of the world.
the anti-semantic trap
It isn’t that Winston is a smugly superior person. Exactly the opposite. Winston is repulsed by the terrible things that are being done and his answer is to condemn those doing them. He has compassion for the victims. He wants to draw attention to the wrongdoers. Most people feel the same. It’s like our underlying belief that fear keeps us safe; the degree to which we condemn the wrongdoers makes us innocent.
I posit that worldview is—not flawed, because I don’t know the truth—but mistaken. It’s the actions we need to condemn with compassion for the actors and questioning what would make them do such things that harm others and, ultimately, destroy themselves.
My second discussion was also with a respectful, thoughtful and caring person who wants to end hatred and the actions it leads to. Librarian takes a nuanced view and is aware of the research on Unz Review and other sites, yet doesn’t see those histories as getting to the heart of anti-Semitism. I want to look at the semantics of anti-Semitism, to borrow a phrase from my friend Ernest. And see whether together, we can unravel a bit of this Gordian knot.
Influenced by my post on The Psychology of Semitism, Librarian wrote The Anti-Semitism Reality. Near the beginning, he writes:
The culmination of hatred is the Holocaust. Out of 60 million deaths in WWII, 6 million are said to have been Jewish. I do not intend to investigate anything about the Holocaust. Millions were killed in an extermination factory.
Why do some people "hate" some other group of people? I can't answer that.
With this statement, Librarian is saying other people think and do things that he would never do and that make no sense to him. Rather than questioning what wouldn’t make sense for someone like him, he accepts it as fact and reality for others. He states that he will not investigate the truth of it and says that he can’t answer why it is, but that’s not going to stop him. So everything is based on a foundation that some people think and do things that people like him never would and that make no sense to him.
My definition of dogma is a belief that you refuse to raise to question. I’m not against dogma but believe it should be chosen consciously, especially when it’s the evidence for a theology that takes hatred as human nature.
Statements of ethics can contain no proper nouns. If you need to know who before you decide what’s right or wrong, it’s not ethical. Justice is either blind or not just.
The phrase anti-Semitism itself is a statement that people who are not Semites have irrational hatred that incites acts of violence including extermination factories. It’s a standard for which one group is the victim and all others are potential perpetrators.
Could the concept be expressed without proper nouns? It would need to express WWII as “60M people were randomly killed by other people” with no group affiliation or authority. The two primary systems of authority in the world are nations and religions. We can talk about all of these except one, in which both are combined as a diaspora nation with a religion based on non-assimilation.
The phrase, “The Anti-Semitism Reality,” only makes sense with an a priori assumption of the victimization of Semites or Shemites, the chosen people of the Noahide Covenant. This assumes the guilt of others who harbor animosity towards Shemites, whether or not they act on it.
The sons of Shem were bequeathed the descendants of Ham—the inhabitants of Africa, Egypt and parts of Asia—to be their slaves, and the descendants of Canaan to be the lowest of their slaves. The inheritance to rule over the world and make others their slaves is Shemitism, according to the Hebrew Bible.
To be against Shemitism is to be against the concept of ruling and enslaving others. This isn’t an abstract concept. Its real-world application is brutally enacted against the Canaanites/ Palestinians now, it was a leading part of the slave trade of Hamites/ Africans, it imparted divinity to the right to rule of multinational dynasties, and it forms the ideology of the debt system of the last 5000 years.
Hatred comes in two forms: cold and hot. Cold hatred is domination and superiority, turning to hot anger and violence when challenged.
The phrase 'anti-Semitism' was developed by someone who wanted to give a name to the agenda and strategy of Semitism, so that he could organize resistance to it across nations. It wasn’t hatred but the self-preservation of people who were often indigenous to those countries. The early form of Shemites may have been the Hyksos, whose name meant foreign rulers. The formula could be described as rule by foreign infiltration rather than invasion.
Anti-Semitism doesn’t describe the hatred of people but the hatred of a system. The phrase itself has been turned into hate speech—the story of Jewish victimization and other people’s collective guilt—"we are good but other people are bad and hate us for no reason. Therefore, whatever we do to help our own is good, whatever is done to one of us is done out of hate, and whatever we do to others is deserved."
The one-sided assumption of innocence and the presumption of the religious bigotry of others could only create a vicious cycle, as intended. Anti-Semitism is NOT the collective guilt of the Semites, it’s looking at the stories and systems, resulting in actions, that are particular to this group. That has to include the word anti-Semitism as something that only applies to them and therefore makes them unique exceptions to the rule.
social cohesion or social domination?
In another post, Librarian continues this exploration:
He quotes me or someone I was quoting:
It was aptly said on the site, Third Paradigm, that “anti-Semitism” represents the tendency to criticize or resist Jewish social cohesion, while “racism” represents the attempt of white Gentiles to maintain a similar social cohesion of their own. But social cohesion on what basis? Hopefully not based on diminishing another group. There’s more to it than cohesion.
I would maintain that Jewish social cohesion would be called racism if done by whites. When white societies only allowed marriage to other white people, we called them racist even if they didn’t cut off the noses of the women, as was done to Jewesses who had relations with Gentile men. When Jews were 1% of the population in Russia, they represented 40% of colleges and universities. As 1% of Weimar Germany, they owned 30% of the wealth.
It seems that Jewish social cohesion diminished the countries that were their hosts.
debunking the anti-semitism psyop
At the end of The Anti-Semitism Reality, he includes a list (compiled by someone else) of 359 expulsions of Jews from 733 BCE to 2014. I would like the help of others to look at this list and put it in context. Here are the comments I have about the list:
Until 139 BCE, all sources are Biblical, which is circular history. At that point Rome kicks out the Jews for “being deceitful, lying, attempting to corrupt Romans into religious cults and cheating people out of money. But who were these Jews?
The word Jew wasn’t coined until the 18th c. while 284 ‘expulsions of Jews’ are prior to that. Were they all the same group? The same clan? The same race? Religious converts? Foreigners? Natives?
Judeans were expelled from Judea after they revolted against Roman rule in 70 CE. They were enslaved and sold throughout the Roman Empire, making social cohesion as a group impossible, along with maintaining bloodlines since slaves were raped as a matter of course. After this point, Jews couldn’t logically refer to 1st c. Judeans.
The primary sources for these entries are jewishhistory.org, jewishencyclopedia.com, jewishvirtuallibrary.org. The Lie: Exposing the Satanic Plot Behind Anti-Semitism, Jewish Persecution-History of Anti-Semitism, Popes and Jews, England’s Jewish Solution, and Anti-Semitism: Causes and Effects.
In 1948 it says the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and the West Bank. No citation needed, I guess.
And most importantly, what’s the other side of these stories?
In summary, I believe that morality supersedes religion and behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable no matter who does them. People do what they do for a reason, it’s up to us to understand why.
Looking at etymology and Bible genealogies, I examine the puzzle of the Ashkenazi, quote Laurent Guyenot on Yahweh as 'a sociopath among the gods,' and ask whether Judean meant rebel against the Roman empire and the high priests who enabled it through taxation.
James Corbett and Keith Knight give 10 lessons from Churchill, Hitler & the Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan. Ron Unz covers the same in American Pravda: Understanding WWII, and talks about prominent historians 'disappeared' from history for writing about it. The real history is shocking!
Many people have a hard time imagining the possibility that somebody could be on their side with manipulative intentions. Most people still don't understand the Fabian Society.
I’ve only just discovered your Substack and I’m really enjoying your writing and thought processes. You first caught my attention with your post on Russel Brand and my experience of him, including the timeline you mention, was more or less the same. I’m not sure what has happened to him but I don’t think he is being true to himself, possibly blackmail. When you look at how the PTB are set against Trump then you realise just how powerful and strong one has to be to withstand that and quite probably have to be an extreme character (for good or ill). I question everything now, on every side and my guidance comes from the underlying principles of A Course in Miracles but I forget many times over and fall into a despair and fear. That is the most dangerous aspect of all of this, that humanity loses the joy and wonder in life and I see that in our so called “developed” world.