“Never give up, never surrender.” – Galaxy Quest
Originally I’d intended or the interview with Dr. Dutton, co-author of At Our Wits’ End which I reviewed in two parts (Review Part One At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First: Increasing Intelligence and Civilization, Review Part Two At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy)) to be here – I’m still working on the transcription. It’s not done because the raw transcript is over 10,000 words, and family came in from out of town unexpectedly via parachute assault, and we were poorly defended. I should have the interview complete by next Monday’s post.
One of the themes and concerns I see on a continual basis in my wandering around the web is that we are living in the endgame of a society. Dutton and Woodley quoted Charles Murray discussing the eerie way that we get the sense “. . . that the story has run out.” There is a sense of national exhaustion. It’s hard to do things. It’s like we have become a nation of teenage boys on summer vacation with no summer job.
As a nation, the United States built a continent-spanning railroad in about six years, mainly by hand, with the only explosive available being black powder. I don’t know about you, but that just seems like so much work when I could be in my basement eating Cheetos® and playing Fallout™ instead. California, at least, has the right idea. They have been spending billions of dollars on a high speed railroad to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. This project was started in the 1990’s, so it must be nearly complete now. Oops. They’re pretty sure this high speed rail line will never be built, likely due to the high concentration of Cheetos© and video games in the state.
From a societal standpoint we seem to be at or near the point of no return, headed in the wrong direction on multiple fronts. It’s not just the inability to tackle or construct big things. Heck, the Empire State Building was designed in weeks and built in a little over a year. Freedom Tower in New York City? Over seven years of construction, and that doesn’t include the years of design that had to take place before anyone was even bribed.
It’s not just railroads and buildings that seem to be headed the wrong direction:
- Political Violence. Wearing the wrong hat will get you fired – the Left has Hataphobia©.
- We all know that the bad math is eventually replaced by firing squads, but like winning the lottery, we get to dream first.
- Pink? Purple? Are you an anime character?
- Bad tattoos. You’re gonna have to live with that tattoo sleeve when you’re in the rest home and have to explain to the kids changing your bedpan how cool Justin Bieber® was.
- Constant remakes of television shows and movies that weren’t that good in the first place. Why won’t they remake some quality television, like Hogan’s Heroes®?
It’s easy to give up. In fact, every bit of the media challenges us to give up our values. We’re told we should celebrate children being pumped full of hormones after they make the brave and courageous decision at the age of seven that biology was a mistake and they’re really DeeAnn instead of Dean. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust a seven year old to find the remote control around my house. Trust them with decisions about pumping chemicals into their body that will utterly change the future? Sure. Makes sense.
The politics of the media have reversed: it used to be that free speech was celebrated. Now? Free speech is celebrated, but only if the free speech in question follows the values of the elite. For a brief moment in time, platforms like Twitter® really were able to amplify voices that cared about values. Now? Those voices will be silenced from those platforms. From financial systems. From jobs and eventually housing, if the Left can manage it.
I’ve seen this world-inversion where every value that was known to be good and true is vilified and every value that was known to be evil is celebrated. It’s at this time I really need to pause and remind our viewing audience that the central tenant of Christianity isn’t “Do what thou wilt.” That’s an utterly different religion with a boss who smells like sulfur with shiny horns and a pitchfork. Except in Clown World™, “do what thou wilt” is the single highest value.
Alright John Wilder, you’ve convinced me and depressed me. Why should we bother to continue?
It’s simple. We should continue because it’s what we’re born to do. Going gently onto that goodnight? If you’re reading this blog, that’s not your style. And despite what media is trying to convince you – what is good and right is not finished. That’s why they’re so desperately attempting to use the media at this point – to create despair. Despair is the main tool of evil – it causes us to curl up like we’ve been eating too much soy and give up without a fight.
Don’t give in.
How should we continue?
We continue by living our daily lives and living them unashamedly. Living them devoted to what is good and true. By having wonderful children. By teaching those children the values that we know are true. By teaching them to discriminate between good and evil, and how to choose good. By being good role models. By being fit. By being prepared for the tougher times ahead.
We continue because that’s what we do. I do think that times in the next decade will be tougher than the times a decade or two decades before.
That just means we’re lucky. Calm seas don’t make good sailors. Easy lives don’t make moral men.
But I will get that transcript done before next week, paratroopers or not.
I take it that your inlaws assault like Soviets in Red Dawn, rather than a bunch of fat National Guard troops on exercise. Good luck
Nah, it was a daughter and a grandson. But one preschool grandson is like . . . a Tasmanian Chocolate Storm
There is a fine line between gritty determination and outright despair. Nostalgia is a powerful force and boy I wish we could go back in time and correct course but we can’t. Those days are gone and not coming back, in my lifetime anyway. So I prepare for the hard times to come and hopefully make an impact on those I can so the future, probably after I am gone, can be brighter.
Absolutely. But we can’t lose touch with what’s good and real.
Mr. Wilder, I admire you for continuing to blog in these latter days. While I never made an explicit decision to cease writing mine, I seem to have stopped anyway. I think I got tired of my own anger. And, as for parody, America (and lots of other places) in 2019 seems quite parody-proof. When one often can’t tell a “straight” news story from something in The Onion, well, parody’s tough to do.
I think the best single thing that normal people — and, I hope, that’s still most of us — can do is to revive the simple art of the horselaugh: loudly, publicly, and frequently. There’s no shortage of appropriate occasions for exercising that art.
Well, I tried to stop, but, I gained a lot of weight . . .
Yeah, I actually have parody ideas in my Box of Creativity that have become real.
Sigh. “Where’s the fetus going to gestate? In a box?”
What will supporters of the police state say when their beloved police come to arrest them for racist hate speech, to confiscate their guns, and to force them to board trains headed to the concentration camps?
Probably something about needing chargers for their phones on the trains?
the supporters of the police state don’t have guns to confiscate. If they do happen to make racist hate speech, probably it would be such that it would be approved racist hate speech (kill whitey!!!) If it reaches the point they are getting loaded onto trains for the concentration camps, there won’t be anyone around that would think that to be a bad thing!
i keep thinking back to the posting of the rat experiment. At first, i thought it applicable to some of our big cities, but even larger than that…could “the experiment” include the who planet? But you and i (and isis and antifa, etc) are a little more complex than the average rat AND our experimental box is a little more varied than just a habitat with plenty of food.
i don’t think we are in the endgame of society, just that we are approaching a tipping point where our societal makeup will soon be undergoing a significant “correction”…democracy is run amok… so let’s lower the voting age to 16, so hopefully we can have MORE voters to vote for increased taxes to support a growing “rat” society (the bigger the rat society gets, the more it can strengthen it’s established voter base)…and in the Rwanda genocide, (i forget the details) but one of the victimized groups were seen as “cockroaches” that need to be exterminated…
it seems wrong to me to dehumanize other humans as rats, but thanks to that “dystopia” posting, i don’t think i can “unsee” that viewpoint. Probably it’s gonna be those four (or was it 5) green berets that do the chicago takedown (it probably would be good if some of those other rat-infested cities get “corrected” at the same time, else TPTB security expansion might make it harder down the road.) careful. dangerous commentary going on here (i am afraid i am violating the approved “freedom of speech” limitations??) TPTB are probably reading this comment right now! (where the heck did i put my tinfoil hat???)
As this got stuck in my spam filter, your last lines are fairly chilling.
Every comment is on point and perfect, which might explain why it got caught in the filter?