Neil Armstrong, R.I.P.

Neil Armstrong died yesterday.  To me, it is a tragedy.  The first man to walk somewhere other than Earth is gone.

There were lots of predictions about making it to the moon going back through history.  None of them managed to predict that it would be broadcast live and in color.  I remember watching it on a 13" color TV and I remember having tacos for dinner that night.  It's funny how some of the trivial details stay with us.

In 1969 being an astronaut was a dream.  Being a rocket scientist was cool.  We managed to land an even dozen men on the moon over the course of several years.  Today, we couldn't repeat that feat, despite the tremendous advances in technology.  We have lost the will to greatness.

I miss that America, even with all its flaws we still dared to reach for the stars.

Anti-harassment policies

It seems that quite a few conferences are now adopting some really draconian anti-harassment policies in an effort to appease the pretty, pretty princesses who say they won't show up if there is even the slightest chance that the proletariat males might even glance in their direction, much less dare to even say "hello".

This is such bullshit, I'm seriously considering boycotting the conferences that adopt this sort of policy.  Or maybe I should start a counter-movement requiring the women attendees to dress in such a way as to not sexually harass me.  That bright red lipstick is signalling sexual availability and that low cut top is being worn to show off the merchandise, right?

I'm really sick and tired of the hared and loathing that so may women show towards average guys like me.  I get that you want me dead, but you would be in a world of hurt without all the guys like me who are still propping up this society.  Get it, cupcake?  Probably not, women live in their own psychodrama that has only partial correspondence with the real world.

Death and Destruction

I came across an interesting post (the usual link to a link sort of thing) talking about white males and our lack of consciousness about being members of the group labelled "white males".  He makes some very good points and I want to follow up on what he said.  Historically, white males as a group have shown a terrifying ability to deliver death and destruction in wholesale quantities.  I'm not talking just about violence or killing, I'm talking about the scale that white males have been able to achieve.  Lots of examples in the post I linked to and lots more throughout history.  I had never thought of it that way until I read the post. 

It's really quite terrifying.  One of the next steps could be to glass over significant parts of the globe.  I really don't want to see that happen, I grew up during the Cold War.

What can people do?  Simple, quit beating up on white males for being white males, that's already starting to make us conscious of belonging to that group.  If we give up our egalitarian beliefs and start deliberately favoring others of our group, bad things could happen again.  And I'm talking about truly horrendous things that I don't want to ever see happen again.

I suppose this does sound racist, except that modern beliefs say people can't be racist against whites.  As a culture we've managed to create a bunch of victims based solely on various group memberships, please don't get whites thinking that they are victims, the backlash could be very bad.

Personally, I work very hard at being a pacifist, so I'm not one of the folks to worry about.  It's the others who are willing to use violence and wanting to use violence I worry about.  I would like to figure out a way to reduce the tensions I see building, but as long as folks, particularly liberals, keep poking white males with metaphorical sharp sticks, I don't think it's going to get any better.

Predictions

I just finished watching "Armitage III" on Hulu. The original release was in 1995, but quite a bit of it is quite topical even today.  Without getting into spoilers, it takes place on Mars, has robots as sexbots (but not explicitly graphical) and has a strong anti-feminist tone.  There's a lot more including the evolution of Artificial Intelligence.

Artistically, the style is not my favorite, but the quality of the animation is very high considering when it was done.  I was very surprised when I went back to see when it was created and found out it was that old.  The subtitles take quite a bit of liberty with the dialog, I don't speak Japanese and even I caught a number of places where "that's not quite what was said".

If you like science fiction and don't have a dislike of anime, I recommend this 4 episode series.

GLBT thoughts

As should be evident from my writings, I'm not exactly a political liberal.  In fact, I find liberals are usually too narrow minded, which is an accusation thrown at a lot of conservatives.  Instead, I try to look at the facts and make up my own mind.  Still, a lot of liberal thoughts and events do pass through the information streams I tend to follow.  Even though I often disagree with the conclusions drawn, I think it is important to not only know what is going on, but to understand how people came to those conclusions.

Currently the media and a large number of liberals find it chic to beat on people like me, straight white males.  I hear it on the radio, I see it in the papers, I hear it from the pulpit and I get it in person with some of the social groups I participate in.  It has gotten to be more than tedious.  But, I also have to realize that I live in a town that really doesn't make a big deal out of people's gender preferences or orientations.  My favorite realtor is a lesbian, one of the instructors I take classes from is gay, so what?  I've been over to their houses for various social events and felt quite welcome.  I've shared a hotel room with a transgendered woman.  I know a number of other transgendered folks, it's not a big deal to me.  I treat people as people, sexual interests are only a small part of interpersonal relationships to me.

So I'm beginning to get what some people mean when they talk about straight white males being privileged, it's true that there are very few groups that have a deep and abiding hatred of people like me, it's more of an ongoing dislike that pervades society, but very few people actively want to see me dead.  On the other hand, there are no organizations who are interested in my continued well being or lending any sort of support when I'm going through a rough spot.  This is a huge contrast to the large number of organizations who are dedicated to helping the GLBT and other groups.  There really are folks out there who want to see GLBT folks dead and others who want to help them live.  This is in contrast to folks like me, where there aren't many folks who want to see me dead, there also isn't anyone who cares if I continue to live, even my church was only interested in my money, not me as a person.  My world is one that not only doesn't care whether I live or die, it's one where no one would notice if I died for many months.

So, while it's easy to feel pity for "those folks over there" or to believe the ongoing narrative that you are being discriminated against because you belong to some group or another, don't let it blind you to those around you who, as individuals, sometimes need help and support.

Ummm, What???

 There's a new video going around that I'm told is supposed to be feminist.

http://youtu.be/4v9gXTkf_tY


I'm guessing the producer of this is deeply convinced that everyone who watches this video will find it intuitively obvious that the claims are false instead of actually doing research and seeing how many are true.

Or maybe I'm taking this at face value and there is something much deeper going on, I'm not very Machiavellian.

Visit to a local church

This past Sunday I visited a local Unitarian-Universalist church that I haven't been to for a couple of years.  Back then they were between permanent ministers, now they have had a new minister since August.  She's seems nice enough, but I suspect she is a raving feminist.  There was a guest in the pulpit this last Sunday, so I didn't get a feel for her sermons.  However, the service had some of the usual feminist touches, including substituting "She" for "He" when referring to God.

I think the one thing that annoyed me the most was the children's storytime (a common feature in UU churches).  The protagonist was a little girl (no surprise there) who repeatedly followed her urges in spite of being warned about the dangers who then gets off by being cute.  This is a really bad lesson to be promoting.  Choices have consequences, and the education in moral and ethical behaviour is one of the reason many parents take their children to church.  Telling little girls that they can get away with their misbehaviour is doing them (and the rest of society) a great disservice.

I find the Unitarian-Universalists churches to be interesting.  While they to be open and accepting of diversity, most of the time it's only a very narrow kind of diversity.  Not being politically liberal seems to be one of the kinds of diversity that they won't accept, even though the Universalists tended to be of a rather conservative bent.

I'm glad I went and I will drop back in from time to time, but it's obvious they don't want someone like me, except maybe for the money.

Those poor deluded fools

One of the professional organizations I'm a member of is currently having a rather drawn out discussion about coming up with a harassment policy for conferences and shows.  And, while they may try to sound egalitarian about how it applies to everyone, it's really about those "poor oppressed women" in who are being driven away from computing and other IT related careers by the hordes of obnoxious sexist males they encounter.  There is also a strong undertone that sexism, harassment and oppression have gotten a lot worse over the past few years.  Yeah, right.  The reality is that women are trapped into continuing to play the victim card by the liberal narrative that many geeks and nerds follow, since women aren't allowed to actually stand up for themselves.

So, how did this come about?  Well, geeks and nerds are typically not very socially adept, I know because I am one, so they tend to believe the stated rules of behaviour in our modern society.  Which, of course, are total bullshit.  Add to that the removal of social restrictions on female hypergamy even over the past decade or so, and fewer women than ever are willing to spend time around those sorts of "losers", when there's some hot bad boys they can be chasing after.  This leads to women making more and more excuses for their behaviour, and the geek brigade takes their words at face value, instead of seeing the truth.  And, as the demands from the women get shriller and shriller, the foolish nerds become even more obsequious.

It took me decades to get rid of the misconceptions I was raised with about gender relations, mostly because things weren't all that bad thirty years ago.  With the way things are going today, I wonder how long it will take for the younger generation to wise up.  I know that I am trying to move the process along, with a few small successes, but that by trying to understand both sides of the issues I have placed myself in no-man's-land and folks at either extreme are going to be taking shots at me.

And he keeps going...

It seems that Mr. Scalzi is still at it.  He's feigning wide-eyed innocence and asking "Why are so many folks saying such angry things?".  Umm, yeah.  He is obviously enjoying poking a lot of folks in very sensitive spots and chortling over their responses.  There's a name for people who take pleasure in causing others pain (and it's not M.B.A. graduate).  Maybe he's doing it out of a desire to save their souls.  Or was that Torquemada?

It's kind of pointless to argue with anyone who has that strong a sense of self-righteousness, whether they are liberal or conservative.  It will take a much greater shock than mere words to shake that sense of infallibility.  As always, I hope it will be some sort of positive life changing experience instead of a negative one.

Since he is a highly trained professional, I recommend against getting into an argument with him, with his eloquence, he will almost certainly win.  Other than that, I do envy the fantasy that he is successfully living in.

A dissenting view on beta treatment

I've been reading University of Man for a little while now and I find myself disagreeing with his current "Shame the Beta" drive.  To start with, the whole idea of making people feel ashamed or guilty has been way overdone in modern society.  It's just piling even more negativity onto men who are trying the best they know how to have a life and relationships. 

There is a lot of talk of "Alpha" and "Beta", with Alphas being defined as men who display dominance.  But what is dominance?  The most common definition in the manosphere seems to be someone who is unrestrained by the rules of society.  These kind of men will gladly destroy anyone and anything to get what they want, they are vandals.  This works really well for picking up and bedding women, but in the long run it is unsustainable.  Another kind of Alpha is the leader of men.  Not through being bigger and badder, but by being better.  The sort of man who attracts followers through admiration instead of fear.  The sort of man who then pulls his people up instead of beating them down.  That's the sort of man who builds civilizations.

I have personal experience with the vandals of our society.  That's the normal behavior in modern business and it really sucks.  I've also had experience with having troubles and learning that there is no support for people like me, the world would be happier if I just went off and died.  I'm probably not unique in having experienced that there is only ridicule abuse and exploitation when I asked for help.  This is not the sort of world I want to be a part of.

So, I'm calling to all of you who read this to reach out and help your brothers.  Go ahead and get the hottest girl for yourself, but make sure your brother gets the second hottest.  Help your brother learn the annoying truth about gender relations.  Not by beating on him, but by being his friend.  Not with scorn, but with wisdom and kind humor.  Try to make the world just a little bit better, in the long run we can all benefit from it.

Taking the Blue PIll

This is a follow up to my previous post about John Scalzi and his assertions of the advantages that straight white males have.  I'm a fan of his Science Fiction work and have been paying attention to what he has said about personal history.  It has led me to think about the bad guy in the first Matrix movie who wanted nothing but to have the reality of the world he was living in wiped away and to go live a wonderful fantasy.  That was his agreement with the machines.  I really get that.  Mr. Scalzi managed to get his in the mating game a couple of decades ago and hasn't really been paying attention to the realities of gender relations since then.  Lucky guy.  In addition, he's become a big name in the Science Fiction communities (and he deserves it), so has spent a lot of time with people who are a long way from average.  With the reinforcement from so many adoring fans, it's tough to get objectivity.  Not to mention he is a writer, so to be successful he really need to have a very strong belief in himself and his abilities.  So, I can really understand his viewpoint, I just think he's a deluded fool, who seems to have a bit of the "don't confuse me with facts, my mind's made up" attitude, which I have run into quite a bit with liberals.

Watching the aftermath has been interesting.  He certainly seemed to enjoy ridiculing those whose disagreed with him but lacked anything close to his skills with words.  As another author I know once said "never get into a war of words with a highly trained professional".  He also has been getting lots of support from other folks, but I have learned to pay attention to not only what is said, but to the silences.  One of the folks who remained quiet is a Mormon (or LDS Church, if that's a more comfortable term).  I'm of the opinion that the Mormons have a much better understanding of human nature, particularly gender relations, than almost any of the liberals I have met, so if he was to speak up it could have a negative impact on is career and income.  I applaud his wisdom in staying out of the discussion.

There's a lot more I would like to say, but I would run the risk of sounding mean and narrow-minded, so I'm going to stop with this.  Even with people I loathe, I never want to descend to trying to dehumanise them.

We must hang together....

...or we will surely hang apart.

It's always been one of my favourite quotes and I think it is is very applicable in today's world.  We have been very effectively manipulated into destroying our communities and so we are hanging alone.  At the same time, other groups have effectively organised to destroy folks like me.  It's frustrating.

Yeah, this is nothing new, so why am I writing about it now?  Well, John Scalzi wrote a blog post today at whatever.scalzi.com likening being a straight white male to playing the video game of life on the simplest setting.  Yeah, he's deluded, and it's not surprising.  He's an award winning science fiction author with a wife and daughter living in semi-rural Ohio.  I've read his work and he is a very talented wordsmith.  I have also read his blog for a while now and it has, at least to me, some very interesting on how he got to where he is today.  He was lucky enough to find the one woman in 10,000 who would actually call a guy who gave her his card.  This was roughly 20 years ago, before the mating game had reached it's current level of insanity.  For a greater insight into his character, look up the video of him on Oprah.  Since then he has gone on to become a famous author with thousands of adoring fans who show up to see him at conventions.  He's also well socialised and does a very good job of interacting with the public, unlike some authors I have known (rest in peace Jack, my friend).  Not surprising, he is also a flaming liberal and it keeps getting reinforced by the environment he lives and works in.

What's my point in all of this?  Well, I'm speaking out against the liberal narrative that brands people like me as evil.  I'm tired of being told that I have such a great life because I'm a straight white male.  No, I have an adequate life because I have an IQ of 145 and I've been working hard for most of my life.  I've never married because I was stupid and actually believed what I was taught growing up, I didn't discover the "Red Pill" until the last few years.

So, stand up for yourself and, more importantly, your fellow man.  Humans came out on the top of the evolutionary game by their ability to work in teams, teams larger than any other creatures out there.  We need to reclaim this ability.

Thoughts on Mothers' Day

Over the past few years I have learned to avoid going to church on Mothers' Day, or at least to be ready for massive hypocrisy.  You see, I typically attend Unitarian-Universalist churches, which follow the typical liberal narrative that says that women should be independent and have careers instead of having a family.  It is really annoying.  While there are occasional words from the pulpit in favour of families, the majority of what is said, and more importantly, done is in effort to discourage family formation within the church membership.  This is so typical of the Unitarian (but not always the Universalist) mindset that I am tired of dealing with it.

Look folks, that's a good way to commit cultural suicide.

It's not quite as bad as some of the Liberals I've spoken with who believe the world is already overpopulated so white folks shouldn't breed at all, just adopt children from poor countries.  Of course, you don't see them actually doing that, they just want ever other member of the "privileged" white class to do it.

Another case for the Red Pill

This is one of those odd situations that I've been meaning to write about for a month or so.  In a nutshell, I'm trying to figure out how to get a coworker to take the "red pill".  Unlike most of the folks who I would normally try to explain "Game" to, he's a fairly natural alpha.  He's tall, slender, in really good shape and looks 15 years younger than his real age (he's in his mid 40s).  He's been divorced for a couple of years now with a teenage kid.  From his description, his ex-wife just went totally crazy and dumped him for a younger guy, and I suspect the reality is pretty close to that.  After that he wound up dating someone half his age for several months who apparently got pretty heavy into drugs after they split up.  He's still really upset about the divorce and the anger sort of surrounds him, I find it really noticeable whenever I spend much time around him.  He certainly seems to be good at attracting women, but I'm starting to think he may be attracting ones who have a lot of issues and they go for him because a serious hormone/endorphin rush.  He seems to be genuinely interested in long term relationships, but is lacking the skills to keep someone around.  If I get the opportunity, I'll recommend "Married Man Sex Life", but it's a rather daunting task given the amount of anger he has.  Plus, I haven't had a date in a long time, so I doubt he will listen to anything I have to say.  He has the Alpha trait of thinking he is always right about everything, so trying to contradict him is more effort that I really want to expend.

I'm not sure what I will wind up doing, but I did want to get my thoughts down in writing.  It's my nature to try to help people, which is not a successful personality trait in modern society.

Inclusive? Are you sure?

I've been chatting online with a Unitatian minister in the UK for a while now.  He is doing something very un-Unitarian in that he is very actively promoting the church.  I think this is a very good thing.

Unitarians tend to be very open on the subject of creed.  I know Christians, Jews, Atheist, Agnostics, Buddhists & Pagans who are members of various Unintarian-Universalist churches.  Now, he has made a point of saying that Heathens were welcome.  Since some of the heathens I know are Asatru, I'm wondering how welcome they would actually be.  You see, unlike most Pagan and Wiccan traditions, Asatru tend to have very old fashioned beliefs about gender roles. women should be in charge of hearth, home and family, and men should do the providing and protecting.  This is not going to sit well with the usual politically liberal narrative that most Unitarians follow.

In addition, this minister seems to be very intelligent and has deep technical knowledge from his previous career, but he lacks a lot of cultural awareness.  I was amazed to discover that he had no idea who Terry Pratchett is.  For someone who is working in a church in England that is dedicated to social change, not having read Terry Pratchett's social commentaries that are disguised as fantasy is a major failing.

I wish him well and hope I can actually help with the success of the church, but I think he needs to get out more.

All genders are equal,

but some are more equal than others.  I suppose George Orwell isn't popular in schools these days, he told cautionary tales that are all to appropriate today.

I have seen a sharp increase in the "women are being oppressed" theme in the last few weeks.  Even though most of the arguments have been thoroughly debunked, they keep repeating them over and over.  The strategy of telling the same lie over and over has been proven to work in other venues, so why try something new?

I'm tired of it.  I'm tired of being told that I'm a horrible, evil, oppressing white male.  I often wish I didn't have as strong morals and ethics as I do, it's the sociopaths who are succeeding and prospering in today's society.

Liberal narrative?

I've recently started reading a number of blogs again.  One of them is written by a very talented and well known writer who is typically a flaming liberal.  Yeah, he has a Ph.D. as well, why do you ask?

In a recent blog post he attacked the conservatives and Republicans (again) picking on a number of issues.  One of them was education.  He made a big deal about the fact that teen pregnancy in red states was much higher than in blue states.  I will certainly agree that there has been a failure in education.  However, like many liberals, he fails to consider the long term implications of his beliefs.  For all his yammering about evolution, he fails to take into consideration what is happening right now.  Liberals are a dying breed, the conservatives are just plain out-breeding them.  The liberal ideology is a losing strategy in the reproductive lottery.

I'm not happy about it either, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking the moral high ground is going to be successful in the long term.  Reality is what it is.

On a related note, I have objected to the small-minded attacks that some liberals have been making about Dick Cheney's heart transplant.  As much as I dislike the man and think American politics would be much better off without him involved, as a human being he still deserves a minimal level of compassion.  Dehumanizing those you disagree with has led to atrocities throughout history, I really don't want to see that happen again.

I didn't follow the script

As I have been known to do, I pointed out something that didn't follow the Liberal narrative and I'm being painted as a bad person because of it.  The short summary is that I referred to the Wall Street Journal article of last year that observed that not only are women graduating from college in greater numbers than men, they are also making more money at least until their mid-30s.  This disagrees with the liberal worldview that women are always victims.

I'm really tired of the whole "victim" thing.  We, as a society, have been telling members of too many groups that they are victims for far too long.  Instead we need to start telling them that they can succeed, not that they will fail because they are always being oppressed.  People will live down to expectations, so we need to raise them.

Yeah, I have a history of asking uncomfortable questions and pointing out awkward facts.  This has led to quite a few liberals despising me.  Mind you, I've also been known to point out the same sort of things to conservatives, but the liberals seem to take a much greater dislike to me.

I'm feeling like a bit of an outcast right now.  I have realized that I can more easily reach many of my life's goals by going and joining a fundamentalist Christian megachurch than I can by being a member of a liberal church that claims to support people with open minds.  It's a paradox that I'm still pondering.

Guilt is exhausting

Yet again the media is full of how women are being abused and oppressed. This has led to another round of "why aren't there more women in IT?" and the usual response that it must be because IT is full of misogynists. After decades of being beat on and told that I'm a bad person and that I'm to blame for all the troubles that women have in society, I've had it. I'm no longer able to feel guilty about it. In fact, I'm tired of being used as a scapegoat. I've been in the business for a long time and I've never seen women treated in the discriminatory way that I keep hearing about. These days when somebody starts spouting off that particular line of Politically Correct bullshit, I no longer am willing to give them a lot of credence on anything else they may have to say.

Yeah, there has been a decrease in the number of women in IT and I don't think it is a good thing. There are a lot of factors leading to the change. There was an interesting article publish by the Association of Computing Machinery about a year ago that went into a lot of the social reasons. It was very un-PC. At this point the IT business is no longer a level playing ground for women, instead they have a lot of advantages and they still want more. This sort of behaviour is starting to lead to a strong backlash, which is also going to be a bit unpleasant.

I'm happy to treat women as equals, it just seems that's not what they actually want and they probably aren't wired for. Too bad, it's their loss.