On the one hand it is clarifying to explain what makes these people tick and to classify them. On the other hand: if you try to put a scientific outlook on them, it will serve as another step towards normalization.
I say: Let's call them what they were always called: EVIL. So that it is clear to anyone who likes the good guys to win, what it is they should be opposing.
Like many of your posts, this one is extremely interesting. While you are surprised that many people read you, I'm not surprised. Many of us wonder how the world works, and your analyses provide pieces of the puzzle that are very hard to find elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if you are the only one who has publicly made the connection of these psychological traits with the ruling classes.
Now here is a question. Assuming that you are correct and that the normalization of pedophilia is because the narcissists want to be free from conscience, why now? Why has pedophilia been a taboo for centuries? Wasn't the ruling class full of narcissists 1000 years ago? What prevented them from normalizing it at that time?
I can think of some answers to the above but I'm interested in your perspective.
I think the normalization of pedophilia is happening now because these social forces have reached the necessary weight to do it. If a small part of society tries to do it, it won´t work as well or at all. However, this was a long time coming and there have been both attempted and successful bridgeheads in the past. For example it seems there were barely any French philosophers or intellectuals in the latter part of 20th century who weren't pedophiles - and they really tried to transform their pedophilia into a social force. See for example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age-of-consent_laws
While the sadism thing is, in my opinion, both real and an important part in pushing the changes we're seeing, it's probably not the only one. I have discussed this in at least two other essays focusing on other drivers. One is the move to more 'physicality' which I suspect is fueling the increase in the sexual 'lack of discrimination' we're seeing.
The other one is the possible drop in self awareness or 'consciousness' and the ability of people to analyze and challenge what they're told. I think people are becoming more and more automatic, like they are running on a program - rather than analyzing and questioning things.
I rarely talk about any of this with people I know - but recently I was with a group of people who were discussing Syria. I pointed out to one of them that HTS was just re-branded ISIS/Al-Qaeda. This is an intelligent man but his argument was simple: He just said 'NO!' That was it. No discussion, no willingness to obtain information, no nothing.
He was just running on a script which was 'Assad=bad; non-Assad=good.' There was no reflection or willingness to engage or to learn. Someone like that can be fed almost any script, like 'pedophilia=normal' or 'Russians=subhumans."
I think this has increased in our societies for reasons I discussed in other essays, particularly in people with low self-awareness to begin with. It's like a good part of our populations are becoming more and more like blind drones.
In the third paragraph You write: "The other one is the possible drop in .... the ability of people to analyze and challenge what they're told.“
It's not just a “possible drop“, it is a real one, and it’s widely abundant.
By design the educational system in the countries of the Europaen Civilisation is organised to deliver technically skilled workforce obeying the orders of their superiors. Technically in an all-encompassing sense beginning with being literate over high school grad up to university master degree. See f. e. "Deschooling Society", publ. 1971 by the Austrian born philosopher Ivan Illich, 1926 - 2002. Its main aims are both obedience and skill. Critical thinking, what is the ability or power to assess phenomena through ones own reasoning by combining facts, experience and the rules of logic, in short the proper use of one's mind, is not wanted and intended. There is no systematic education and training in productive use of the "tools" of human brain. Rather there eixists a broad spectrum of means to suppress and restrain curiosity, doubt, questioning and dialoge, ranging from carrot to stick. Of course, nothing is perfect. Some pupils and students always find ways to properly form their intellectual and mental skills despite an unfavourable environment, often supported and supervised by not fully adapted, complaisant teachers, and not least by their parents.
The formation of „Urteilskraft", (ability to judge, power of judgement) a valuable concept of critical thinking by the outstanding German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), has its goal in the proper use of the „Verstandeswerkzeuge“ (tools of the mind) in order to make a decison on how to act in the best way of one's own interest. In short, power of judgement is required for successfull acting in all fields of life.
It is also prerequiste for gaining new knowledge, for creativity, and innovation. In the long run you cannot be creative in an environment like the military or in a big enterprise having its final purpose in making money, a “product“ standing not for itself but as means to some totally different end like the satisfaction of sexual need. Sooner or later you will have to decide between confirmation, obedience and resistance. The first means to skip your own thinking, questioning, imagination, and of content related in depth-discussions with your colleagues. Resistance bears the risk of expulsion or the necessity to leave on your own decision in order to save your well-being and health.
In your valuable essays WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE POLITICAL CLASS?, Sep. 2023, and IS CONSCIOUSNESS FADING IN MODERN SOCIETY?, Dec. 2024, you described the type of character he ruling class actually asks for and selects for commanding ranks in politics, public administration, and economic business. One important trait is absence of critical thinking. The movement there to started with the defeat of the most advanced "Western" military apparatus 1973 in Vietnam.
On from the very beginning of the martial activities waged by the USA in 1954 well informed, independent domestic and foreign critics contested the government’s decision to intervene with bombers and automatic guns in the politics of a small country far away on the other side of the globe. This martial policy, pursued for years with gross brutality by both Democratic and Republican administrations, led to widespread public protest in the country and abroad, and to resistance of young Americans being drafted by force to serve in a war against a people exhibiting no agression towards their country. It's disastrous results led to a big disgrace of the political decision-makers and to corresponding loss of trust in the electorate.
In order to avoid such bad consequences next time the political arm of the “power elite“ (C. Wright Mills, 1956) produces a similiar disaster their strategists decided to undertake and make efforts to further weaken and eventually extinct the common man’s power and ability to judge on political issues and affairs by reasoning after his own interest. They removed critical staff from the public and private press, broadcasting and tv-stations, and recruited instead adapted yes-sayers. The same programme was executed in the spheres of politics and education. Your essay, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE POLITICAL CLASS? dealt with the political one. In academia, the advanvced level of education, the three freedoms of teaching, study and research were reduced drastically. This process started about 1980 with the replacement of clarity of thought, logical stringency, adherence to facts and data, and of other virtues of the scientific approach to reality by relativism and constructivsm, the very notable “postmodern“ ways to knowledge.
i agree with this observation about people being less 'conscious'. i think this is a deliberate aim, if not the deliberate aim. there is a scientists named nehls i think, who wrote a book essentially on this subject. jack kruse also has referred to this process. he says that several modern innovations such as the increase in non-native EMF, blue light, several other things all tend to produce this effect of deadening consciousness. julian jaynes i think also had something to say on this issue way back in the 70s.
There indeed was entire societies of child murdering freaks thousands of years ago. Read up on Carthage, for example. And the same people are at the centre of it today. Reading how sex with 3 year olds is viewed in the Talmud certainly gives one a clearer perspective concerning the WHO orchestrates this sort of thing. But of course… it’s taboo to spell it out.
I've thought for some time that the attack on the working class was more than just the greed of the "ruling" class, that there's almost a gleeful, vindictive quality to it. As if to say that exploitation isn't enough, there must be actual pain (deprivation) and humiliation.
“Narcissistic behavior intended to elevate self-perception has a very wide range. Its mildest and most common forms are basic oppression, such as ‘banning’ others from saying or doing certain things and oppression/manipulation using passive-aggressive behavior and victim mentality.”
Why are these dark triad traits growing more prevalent in today's world?
There must be some common thread that is in motion now, that didn't exist before.
Here's one answer:
There are certain ideologies or religions that take an otherwise normal individual, and incite their innate tendencies towards narcissism. According to your thesis, this would also include incipient sadism. Woke leftism (wokism), fits this description. The wokust ideology solicits potential narcissists, then encourages latent narcissistic tendencies in those who have bought into the ideology. It invites, solicits, exposes, permits, aids, abets, incites, encourages, and exacerbates individual narcissism.
For wokism, it's a special form of narcissism, moral narcissism, that upon joining the wokust cult, automatically elevates the novice into a higher class of humanity than everyone else from her previous life. It supersedes the reasons for her subconscious self-loathing, and obscures them from her day-to-day consciousness, thereby providing relief from mental and emotional anguish. It's a secular religion and a cult, that exposes and exacerbates even more narcissistic behaviors. It infiltrates like a virus into the mind, undermines basic tenets, and totally changes a person's style of thinking, to the exclusion of objective logic and rational decision making. Because of its deceptive moral authority, it has insinuated itself into every aspect of western societies, and subverted the oblivious masses who reside there.
Feedback from objective reality becomes less and less a part of mental processing. Narratives replace reality and take control of the mind. Narcissism coupled with phenomenology creates expectations that magic words can transform the outer world. Symbols become more important than that which is symbolized. Reality can be socially constructed via narratives, memes, and techniques of semantic deception.
This approach to dealing with the world doesn't require reliance on the flawed self to do all the exhausting, failure-prone hard work in the real world. All of this constitutes an assimilation process, pulling away from the exterior real world and towards the internal mental perfection of idealistic delusions. It's a mental fantasyland of idealism. It requires immanentizing the eschaton as ultimate proof of its essential perfection, i.e., the continual destruction of reality because it's intrinsically flawed and will never match idealistic perfection. For the insane, everyone else must submit to the narrative, otherwise those on the outside, who are still involved with reality, can pull others out of the hivemind into which they were assimilated. The wokust mindset requires constant feedback and confirmation from everyone else. If it's not automatically given, the offender will be declared an unbeliever, a threat, and receive some sadistic form of punishment. Don't expect forgiveness, because that's not part of the wokust belief system.
It should be overwhelmingly obvious that woke leftism must be eradicated from society. Otherwise society, especially western cultures, will continue its slide into insanity and evil. This is more than just a political agenda, it's an existential war against everything we hold dear, everything that we automatically expect as the basis for a normal, happy life in a worthwhile community, society, and nation.
As I started to read your captivating essay, what came immediately to my mind was "the depopulation project".
Who is inspiring this modern quest for sadistic freedom ? Qui bono ?
You observe the normalization of sadistic acts, even extreme acts that would be traditionally called evil acts. These acts are now performed at a very large scale.
When describing the extent of normalization of sadistic acts, you did not mention the normalization of medically controlled killing, aka euthanasia, that targets old and/or vulnerable people. You did not mention the normalization of transgender surgery that mutilates kids forever. Nor the satanist esthetics in the fashion and show business worlds. Nor the tolerance of the western society to the war with Russia until the last Ukrainian. And so on, and so on.
To me, it is very unlikely that such a normalization, at such a scale, in every western country, comes out of the blue. Darwinism does not explain this trend. It is more likely that this normalization is the result of a concerted effort by a powerful group of people inspired by malthusianism.
The normalization of sadistic acts is an elusive mass destruction weapon.
Fortunately, for now, this phenomenon remains confined to the Western world, despite the global power of Hollywood.
I absolutely agree that this normalization effort is much bigger than what I discussed in the essay. I said in the essay that I was just going to touch upon the social effects - because it would have been 50 pages if I had gone through it all.
In fact, I have several examples in addition to the ones you mentioned.
That would require an entire speculative essay to answer. However, you just gave me an idea. Perhaps it would be possible to analyze all these efforts (I believe there are several) and use them to construct a reasonably rigorous psychological profile (or profiles) for the people behind them.
I thought sociopathy has a 2% prevalence in the population. Its presence must have some survival/reproductive advantage over altruistic behavior. I am clueless on this but it is very interesting
Sin duda, es, como ud. dice, un gran dilema decidir sobre la pena de muerte. Yo mismo me encontrado, en diferentes momentos, en los dos campos, a favor y en contra. Hay argumentos poderosos tanto para uno como para otro. Sin embargo, en algún momento el pensamiento se traduce en acción; la puesta en práctica de cualquier opción es inevitable, como lo son sus consecuencias.
Me inclino a pensar que las mayores y peores consecuencias se trasladan al criminal, en el caso de estar a favor, y, en el caso de estar en contra, éstas las sufre la víctima.
Porque, ¿por qué alguien, que niega y arrebata la única oportunidad a otra persona de tener su vida, debería gozar de una segunda oportunidad para la suya?. ¿No es esto injusto de raíz?
Lo que me inquieta actualmente, es que percibo que gradualmente la balanza se inclina a favor del verdugo. En el afán por comprenderlo, terminamos justificándolo y la víctima pasa a un segundo plano.
Incluso para la rehabilitación o reinserción social me hago esta pregunta. La cuestión no es si es posible, sino merecida por el agresor y justa para con la víctima.
Puedo comprender la puesta en marcha de una legislación penal sin pena de muerte y enfocada a la reinserción, pero cuando de ésta está ausente la cadena perpetua, contiene penas máximas relativamente cortas para crímenes atroces y la reinserción es un programa para todos y todas, incluso los compulsivos, esa sociedad ha puesto el carro delante de los caballos.
Si añadimos, como ud. bien explica, una "educación" sádica para las nuevas generaciones y una determinada política migratoria, sin entrar en detalles, creo que estamos condenados. Como puede ver, somos víctimas. Víctimas de un culto a la muerte.
Me gustaría que tratará ud. el tema migratorio en un ensayo, concretamente en Europa.
Por cierto, estoy seguro de que todos los que le leemos deseamos que sus ensayos sean muy largos.
Celia Farber: The Hidden Hand: Babylonian Radhanite Banksters And The Ancient Roots Of Usury, War, And Human Sacrifice. "These Are Not Jews We're Talking About."
Scapegoating Jews Is A Way To Avoid The True History Of Pagan, Moloch Baal, and Mammon Worshipping Pagan Bankers "The History Of Usury Is The History Of The Demonic World Marching Through History."
Hmm, food for thought. About 10 years ago, when the series "Vikings" was airing, I noticed the series glorifies violence for no higher goal. At some point I noticed the series is being aired on TV. I found that a bit disturbing. I wondered how will the future be, if the people today are viewing such material and enjoying it. 10 years later, let's say I know what the answer to that question is. #blockaders #woke #strugglesession #fierybutmostlypeaceful
Keep on, it is so rare nowadays to meet and read original and gifted intelligence. We recognize almost immediately when we meet people with similar gift, almost as finding a dear brother , separated geographically and temporarily, only by being born in a physical alien family.
Or , maybe, we are the " alien family" that haunting the humanity (=normality) from its very beginning...
I find your articles not long enough actually. I am always looking forward to the new ones. Your analysis and insights put a lot of things in different perspectives for me. Thank you!
But a great read. Learnt a quite a bit... There are absolutes in our moral code... not necessarily religious but born out of the Natural Laws.
Seems like many people today are trying mighty hard to make right and wrong relative.
It amazes me that political elements of our society push so hard for gun control while at the same time they push those TV shows and movies so loaded with violence and guns. It's hypocrisy...
I wonder... Social Media... when I first heard about it around '06 I thought it was ludicrous... "Who thinks I care what they had for lunch?"..... yet, it seems to be a huge push for narcissism, huh?
This article is over my head, at least on the first read. I try to start out simple.
My understanding is that a sociopath has no empathy. He or she has no concern about the mental anguish or physical consequences of his acts of deception, manipulation, control etc. on others.
A sadist I always lumped together with a psychopath. But as you state, a psychopath gets no enjoyment from what he inflicts on people, whereas a sadist does? (Got to re-read- forgive me. I was an orthopod, and a very bitter one at that.) I had interchanged sadism with psychopathy.
My ex, the good doctor, had no concerns that she had lied to me, tricked me, deceived me, used me etc. and planned out her trap over our seven year marriage, with five spent in residency in Albany NY, how she was going to lure me back to her home town in Elizabethtown KY, and then go into professional, marital, and maternal meltdown, even after my having paid off all of her medical school loans. She had never intended to work, take care of the children, or be faithful from the day she entered medical school. I was the chump/simp. In fact, in my memoirs "My Medical Legal Back Pages," Archway publisher, Bryce Sterling pen name, I wrote that my ex had no concerns about what she had done to me. Once I had filed for divorce ( because she was unfaithful, refused to work as a fully licensed, board-certified, double fellowship trained in open heart and obstetrical) MD anesthesiologist, or in the alternative, of her expectations that the court allow her to be a "full time mother," meaning I would be expected to pay alimony and full child support so she would never have to work a day in her life. Yet she refused to take care of our 3 and 5 year olds while she ran around, literally and figuratively, with other men on the 10 K circuit, dropped the children off at third party care all day which I paid for, etc. ) Once I had decided to take action, she had no more use for me and was out to get as much money as she could. She had no more empathy than one would have for the trash that is placed out to the curb. Her psychological profile showed elements (admittedly not full-blown axis) of narcissism, histrionics, and hedonism. Her MMPI was flat- she fudged it. Mine was normal. This is only the tip of the iceberg of what happened to me in KY, and then NC. But she was snickering with a Duper's Delight when she wiped me out in the divorce and left my career in ruins because of a related anesthesia case. Last I heard, she was in anesthesiology pain management as a fully tenured professor at U of Louisville, having duped them as well into taking her.
I'm sorry about your troubles. Your ex sounds like a malicious narcissist. They are a total nightmare to be around. It's also possibly that she's a narcissistic sociopath. It can be difficult to distinguish between those two.
The issue with empathy is that it is a phenomenon which only refers to the ability to read other people's emotions, and to literally feel them. If you feel sorrow, the empath can also feel sorrow. What others feel, they can feel. It is not the same thing as compassion or altruism. High empathy people will tell you it is, but it isn't. Feeling emotions does not equate to being a 'good person.'
If you were to manipulate people emotionally, particularly if you do it often and compulsively, you need to be able to read other people's emotions. You need to understand emotions for that. You don't understand emotions unless you have emotions. The stronger you feel emotions, the better. Strong and clear emotions are necessary for having high empathy. A person with muted emotions can't understand the emotions of others, and obviously has low empathy.
In other words, for emotional manipulation it's necessary to have empathy. The more empathy you have, the better at emotional manipulation you will be.
This is crystal clear. The most emotionally manipulative people tend to be emotionally charged - including sexually. A narcissist is emotionally and sexually charged, and will almost always cheat in a relationship.
A sadist (not the psychopath type) is a like an emotion vampire. He literally feels your pain and humiliation (emotions) and derives pleasure from that. Your pain, which he feels directly, gives him a high. A low-empathy person with muted emotions simply can't do this. You have to have high emotional salience, which is necessary for having high empathy, to be able to be a sadist.
Sociopaths have emotions and they can be extremely manipulative. They, however, have limited or no compassion because they don't have the specific emotions necessary for it. This contradictory combination is what makes sociopaths so hard to understand.
Psychopaths have no empathy because they have no emotions, apart from the basic ones. They don't have any compassion either.
Back to your ex. If she is a malicious narcissist, she is highly emotionally charged and with high empathy, and a compulsive need for emotional manipulation. But she is so massively self-important that you simply didn't matter to her as a human being in comparison. Any compassion was therefore suppressed/rationalized away.
What is hard to understand is that a narcissist can love you and absolutely despise you at the same time. People generally can't wrap their heads around something like that. They simply can't believe that people like that actually exist.
Sometimes, rarely, my ex could appear very emotional, eg, after making her father's last wish list trip to Custer's Battlefield with me, her, her mother, and her father who had pancreatic cancer and just weeks to live. He died a few days after returning to KY. My ex and I returned to Albany NY after that and attended a church service. I felt very sad as it all hit me, but she was crying. So your comments are very intriguing.
I had considered her a narcissistic sociopath as she loved appearing in the news, getting articles written about her, collecting trophies running 10K races against sedentary housewives so as to hang up on the wall along with all of her degrees to impress people. But it was the manipulation, the constant manipulation! Even friends who had just met her were immediately turned off by it. You would have to always be on guard. "Now what does Laura want? She's talking to you because she wants something."
I was very angry and this divorce brought the worst out in me. But my ex tried to keep me from seeing the kids so as to solidify her position as the caregiver who deserved total all out support and wouldn't have to work. She immediately remarried and moved 2 hrs away- and moved in with an extremely sheepish, passive guy, an accountant who was a runner whom she met at the starting line of a race. The only time my daughter and I saw each other after 15 years was when she needed money, ( but after I had ponied up $200,000 and wouldn't give her any more, she stopped communicating. The first thing out of her mouth was "there's no love" between her and Stan. They have an open marriage. My daughter, raised exclusively by this passive guy (a spineless jellyfish who could be controlled from the get go) and my ex wound up having two children out of wedlock, addicted to oxycontin, later had a felony conviction for embezzling her employer, and had even been criminally charged by her mother and jailed for stealing her jewelry and giving it to her boyfriend to fence for drug money. Daughter was very intelligent, with an IQ of 131, but manipulative and a pathological liar. My ex was also a hoarder; jewelry and clothes. Many duplicates. Had to build an extension onto Stan's house to keep all her clothes -if that offers any clues. But indeed, this is very confusing in so many ways
Thank you for such clear thinking. Now that you have defined the problem, I would be interested in 1) how you might quantify the problem and 2) how you would suggest we greatly reduce the problem.
Nice try, to come over the road from narcisism. This makes it personell, if not individuell. But there are structures of power behind the trend, to normalize Sadists. Please, reader, try to read some parts of Will Zoll's substack (https://prussiagate.substack.com/p/table-of-contents) or look at the books (V, Gravitys Rainbow) by Thomas Pynchon - more clarity guaranteed.
But thanks, Gaius, I save all your substack-artikles for doubble reading!
On the one hand it is clarifying to explain what makes these people tick and to classify them. On the other hand: if you try to put a scientific outlook on them, it will serve as another step towards normalization.
I say: Let's call them what they were always called: EVIL. So that it is clear to anyone who likes the good guys to win, what it is they should be opposing.
Like many of your posts, this one is extremely interesting. While you are surprised that many people read you, I'm not surprised. Many of us wonder how the world works, and your analyses provide pieces of the puzzle that are very hard to find elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if you are the only one who has publicly made the connection of these psychological traits with the ruling classes.
Now here is a question. Assuming that you are correct and that the normalization of pedophilia is because the narcissists want to be free from conscience, why now? Why has pedophilia been a taboo for centuries? Wasn't the ruling class full of narcissists 1000 years ago? What prevented them from normalizing it at that time?
I can think of some answers to the above but I'm interested in your perspective.
Thank you for your kind words.
I think the normalization of pedophilia is happening now because these social forces have reached the necessary weight to do it. If a small part of society tries to do it, it won´t work as well or at all. However, this was a long time coming and there have been both attempted and successful bridgeheads in the past. For example it seems there were barely any French philosophers or intellectuals in the latter part of 20th century who weren't pedophiles - and they really tried to transform their pedophilia into a social force. See for example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age-of-consent_laws
While the sadism thing is, in my opinion, both real and an important part in pushing the changes we're seeing, it's probably not the only one. I have discussed this in at least two other essays focusing on other drivers. One is the move to more 'physicality' which I suspect is fueling the increase in the sexual 'lack of discrimination' we're seeing.
The other one is the possible drop in self awareness or 'consciousness' and the ability of people to analyze and challenge what they're told. I think people are becoming more and more automatic, like they are running on a program - rather than analyzing and questioning things.
I rarely talk about any of this with people I know - but recently I was with a group of people who were discussing Syria. I pointed out to one of them that HTS was just re-branded ISIS/Al-Qaeda. This is an intelligent man but his argument was simple: He just said 'NO!' That was it. No discussion, no willingness to obtain information, no nothing.
He was just running on a script which was 'Assad=bad; non-Assad=good.' There was no reflection or willingness to engage or to learn. Someone like that can be fed almost any script, like 'pedophilia=normal' or 'Russians=subhumans."
I think this has increased in our societies for reasons I discussed in other essays, particularly in people with low self-awareness to begin with. It's like a good part of our populations are becoming more and more like blind drones.
In the third paragraph You write: "The other one is the possible drop in .... the ability of people to analyze and challenge what they're told.“
It's not just a “possible drop“, it is a real one, and it’s widely abundant.
By design the educational system in the countries of the Europaen Civilisation is organised to deliver technically skilled workforce obeying the orders of their superiors. Technically in an all-encompassing sense beginning with being literate over high school grad up to university master degree. See f. e. "Deschooling Society", publ. 1971 by the Austrian born philosopher Ivan Illich, 1926 - 2002. Its main aims are both obedience and skill. Critical thinking, what is the ability or power to assess phenomena through ones own reasoning by combining facts, experience and the rules of logic, in short the proper use of one's mind, is not wanted and intended. There is no systematic education and training in productive use of the "tools" of human brain. Rather there eixists a broad spectrum of means to suppress and restrain curiosity, doubt, questioning and dialoge, ranging from carrot to stick. Of course, nothing is perfect. Some pupils and students always find ways to properly form their intellectual and mental skills despite an unfavourable environment, often supported and supervised by not fully adapted, complaisant teachers, and not least by their parents.
The formation of „Urteilskraft", (ability to judge, power of judgement) a valuable concept of critical thinking by the outstanding German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), has its goal in the proper use of the „Verstandeswerkzeuge“ (tools of the mind) in order to make a decison on how to act in the best way of one's own interest. In short, power of judgement is required for successfull acting in all fields of life.
It is also prerequiste for gaining new knowledge, for creativity, and innovation. In the long run you cannot be creative in an environment like the military or in a big enterprise having its final purpose in making money, a “product“ standing not for itself but as means to some totally different end like the satisfaction of sexual need. Sooner or later you will have to decide between confirmation, obedience and resistance. The first means to skip your own thinking, questioning, imagination, and of content related in depth-discussions with your colleagues. Resistance bears the risk of expulsion or the necessity to leave on your own decision in order to save your well-being and health.
In your valuable essays WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE POLITICAL CLASS?, Sep. 2023, and IS CONSCIOUSNESS FADING IN MODERN SOCIETY?, Dec. 2024, you described the type of character he ruling class actually asks for and selects for commanding ranks in politics, public administration, and economic business. One important trait is absence of critical thinking. The movement there to started with the defeat of the most advanced "Western" military apparatus 1973 in Vietnam.
On from the very beginning of the martial activities waged by the USA in 1954 well informed, independent domestic and foreign critics contested the government’s decision to intervene with bombers and automatic guns in the politics of a small country far away on the other side of the globe. This martial policy, pursued for years with gross brutality by both Democratic and Republican administrations, led to widespread public protest in the country and abroad, and to resistance of young Americans being drafted by force to serve in a war against a people exhibiting no agression towards their country. It's disastrous results led to a big disgrace of the political decision-makers and to corresponding loss of trust in the electorate.
In order to avoid such bad consequences next time the political arm of the “power elite“ (C. Wright Mills, 1956) produces a similiar disaster their strategists decided to undertake and make efforts to further weaken and eventually extinct the common man’s power and ability to judge on political issues and affairs by reasoning after his own interest. They removed critical staff from the public and private press, broadcasting and tv-stations, and recruited instead adapted yes-sayers. The same programme was executed in the spheres of politics and education. Your essay, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE POLITICAL CLASS? dealt with the political one. In academia, the advanvced level of education, the three freedoms of teaching, study and research were reduced drastically. This process started about 1980 with the replacement of clarity of thought, logical stringency, adherence to facts and data, and of other virtues of the scientific approach to reality by relativism and constructivsm, the very notable “postmodern“ ways to knowledge.
i agree with this observation about people being less 'conscious'. i think this is a deliberate aim, if not the deliberate aim. there is a scientists named nehls i think, who wrote a book essentially on this subject. jack kruse also has referred to this process. he says that several modern innovations such as the increase in non-native EMF, blue light, several other things all tend to produce this effect of deadening consciousness. julian jaynes i think also had something to say on this issue way back in the 70s.
There indeed was entire societies of child murdering freaks thousands of years ago. Read up on Carthage, for example. And the same people are at the centre of it today. Reading how sex with 3 year olds is viewed in the Talmud certainly gives one a clearer perspective concerning the WHO orchestrates this sort of thing. But of course… it’s taboo to spell it out.
I've thought for some time that the attack on the working class was more than just the greed of the "ruling" class, that there's almost a gleeful, vindictive quality to it. As if to say that exploitation isn't enough, there must be actual pain (deprivation) and humiliation.
I'm more and more inclined to think that others suffering matters to them more than money.
“Narcissistic behavior intended to elevate self-perception has a very wide range. Its mildest and most common forms are basic oppression, such as ‘banning’ others from saying or doing certain things and oppression/manipulation using passive-aggressive behavior and victim mentality.”
Why are these dark triad traits growing more prevalent in today's world?
There must be some common thread that is in motion now, that didn't exist before.
Here's one answer:
There are certain ideologies or religions that take an otherwise normal individual, and incite their innate tendencies towards narcissism. According to your thesis, this would also include incipient sadism. Woke leftism (wokism), fits this description. The wokust ideology solicits potential narcissists, then encourages latent narcissistic tendencies in those who have bought into the ideology. It invites, solicits, exposes, permits, aids, abets, incites, encourages, and exacerbates individual narcissism.
For wokism, it's a special form of narcissism, moral narcissism, that upon joining the wokust cult, automatically elevates the novice into a higher class of humanity than everyone else from her previous life. It supersedes the reasons for her subconscious self-loathing, and obscures them from her day-to-day consciousness, thereby providing relief from mental and emotional anguish. It's a secular religion and a cult, that exposes and exacerbates even more narcissistic behaviors. It infiltrates like a virus into the mind, undermines basic tenets, and totally changes a person's style of thinking, to the exclusion of objective logic and rational decision making. Because of its deceptive moral authority, it has insinuated itself into every aspect of western societies, and subverted the oblivious masses who reside there.
Feedback from objective reality becomes less and less a part of mental processing. Narratives replace reality and take control of the mind. Narcissism coupled with phenomenology creates expectations that magic words can transform the outer world. Symbols become more important than that which is symbolized. Reality can be socially constructed via narratives, memes, and techniques of semantic deception.
This approach to dealing with the world doesn't require reliance on the flawed self to do all the exhausting, failure-prone hard work in the real world. All of this constitutes an assimilation process, pulling away from the exterior real world and towards the internal mental perfection of idealistic delusions. It's a mental fantasyland of idealism. It requires immanentizing the eschaton as ultimate proof of its essential perfection, i.e., the continual destruction of reality because it's intrinsically flawed and will never match idealistic perfection. For the insane, everyone else must submit to the narrative, otherwise those on the outside, who are still involved with reality, can pull others out of the hivemind into which they were assimilated. The wokust mindset requires constant feedback and confirmation from everyone else. If it's not automatically given, the offender will be declared an unbeliever, a threat, and receive some sadistic form of punishment. Don't expect forgiveness, because that's not part of the wokust belief system.
It should be overwhelmingly obvious that woke leftism must be eradicated from society. Otherwise society, especially western cultures, will continue its slide into insanity and evil. This is more than just a political agenda, it's an existential war against everything we hold dear, everything that we automatically expect as the basis for a normal, happy life in a worthwhile community, society, and nation.
Wokism delenda est!
Reading this made me update my internal moral framework. Owning a woodchipper now seem like a moral imperative and a command from God.
Maybe paint St Michael the archangel on it
As I started to read your captivating essay, what came immediately to my mind was "the depopulation project".
Who is inspiring this modern quest for sadistic freedom ? Qui bono ?
You observe the normalization of sadistic acts, even extreme acts that would be traditionally called evil acts. These acts are now performed at a very large scale.
When describing the extent of normalization of sadistic acts, you did not mention the normalization of medically controlled killing, aka euthanasia, that targets old and/or vulnerable people. You did not mention the normalization of transgender surgery that mutilates kids forever. Nor the satanist esthetics in the fashion and show business worlds. Nor the tolerance of the western society to the war with Russia until the last Ukrainian. And so on, and so on.
To me, it is very unlikely that such a normalization, at such a scale, in every western country, comes out of the blue. Darwinism does not explain this trend. It is more likely that this normalization is the result of a concerted effort by a powerful group of people inspired by malthusianism.
The normalization of sadistic acts is an elusive mass destruction weapon.
Fortunately, for now, this phenomenon remains confined to the Western world, despite the global power of Hollywood.
I absolutely agree that this normalization effort is much bigger than what I discussed in the essay. I said in the essay that I was just going to touch upon the social effects - because it would have been 50 pages if I had gone through it all.
In fact, I have several examples in addition to the ones you mentioned.
So, qui bono ?
That would require an entire speculative essay to answer. However, you just gave me an idea. Perhaps it would be possible to analyze all these efforts (I believe there are several) and use them to construct a reasonably rigorous psychological profile (or profiles) for the people behind them.
They like to wear small hats under big hats.
I just realized that you already started in your "SCIENCE-FICTION GLOBALISM: HOLLYWOOD’S DESTRUCTION OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING" essay...
I thought sociopathy has a 2% prevalence in the population. Its presence must have some survival/reproductive advantage over altruistic behavior. I am clueless on this but it is very interesting
Who is inspiring this modern quest for sadistic freedom ? Qui bono ?
I wonder this, as well.
Gracias por responder.
Sin duda, es, como ud. dice, un gran dilema decidir sobre la pena de muerte. Yo mismo me encontrado, en diferentes momentos, en los dos campos, a favor y en contra. Hay argumentos poderosos tanto para uno como para otro. Sin embargo, en algún momento el pensamiento se traduce en acción; la puesta en práctica de cualquier opción es inevitable, como lo son sus consecuencias.
Me inclino a pensar que las mayores y peores consecuencias se trasladan al criminal, en el caso de estar a favor, y, en el caso de estar en contra, éstas las sufre la víctima.
Porque, ¿por qué alguien, que niega y arrebata la única oportunidad a otra persona de tener su vida, debería gozar de una segunda oportunidad para la suya?. ¿No es esto injusto de raíz?
Lo que me inquieta actualmente, es que percibo que gradualmente la balanza se inclina a favor del verdugo. En el afán por comprenderlo, terminamos justificándolo y la víctima pasa a un segundo plano.
Incluso para la rehabilitación o reinserción social me hago esta pregunta. La cuestión no es si es posible, sino merecida por el agresor y justa para con la víctima.
Puedo comprender la puesta en marcha de una legislación penal sin pena de muerte y enfocada a la reinserción, pero cuando de ésta está ausente la cadena perpetua, contiene penas máximas relativamente cortas para crímenes atroces y la reinserción es un programa para todos y todas, incluso los compulsivos, esa sociedad ha puesto el carro delante de los caballos.
Si añadimos, como ud. bien explica, una "educación" sádica para las nuevas generaciones y una determinada política migratoria, sin entrar en detalles, creo que estamos condenados. Como puede ver, somos víctimas. Víctimas de un culto a la muerte.
Me gustaría que tratará ud. el tema migratorio en un ensayo, concretamente en Europa.
Por cierto, estoy seguro de que todos los que le leemos deseamos que sus ensayos sean muy largos.
Long essays are fun and instructive. Not a problem indeed, actually the inverse.
How do we solve the problem? I'd think the old Movie Rating, or something like that, should come back.
We have, in the USA at least, Freedom of Choice. This however seems to be debasing into Libertinage.
And yes, anyone engage in pedophilia deserves a tree and a rope like they did in the American Old West.
Thank You, Gaius. I read it thoughtfully, all the way through, though it was difficult.
I will pair it with this in the blog post I am composing: https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/the-hidden-hand-babylonian-radhanite
Celia Farber: The Hidden Hand: Babylonian Radhanite Banksters And The Ancient Roots Of Usury, War, And Human Sacrifice. "These Are Not Jews We're Talking About."
Scapegoating Jews Is A Way To Avoid The True History Of Pagan, Moloch Baal, and Mammon Worshipping Pagan Bankers "The History Of Usury Is The History Of The Demonic World Marching Through History."
Hmm, food for thought. About 10 years ago, when the series "Vikings" was airing, I noticed the series glorifies violence for no higher goal. At some point I noticed the series is being aired on TV. I found that a bit disturbing. I wondered how will the future be, if the people today are viewing such material and enjoying it. 10 years later, let's say I know what the answer to that question is. #blockaders #woke #strugglesession #fierybutmostlypeaceful
Keep on, it is so rare nowadays to meet and read original and gifted intelligence. We recognize almost immediately when we meet people with similar gift, almost as finding a dear brother , separated geographically and temporarily, only by being born in a physical alien family.
Or , maybe, we are the " alien family" that haunting the humanity (=normality) from its very beginning...
I find your articles not long enough actually. I am always looking forward to the new ones. Your analysis and insights put a lot of things in different perspectives for me. Thank you!
A depressing read.
But a great read. Learnt a quite a bit... There are absolutes in our moral code... not necessarily religious but born out of the Natural Laws.
Seems like many people today are trying mighty hard to make right and wrong relative.
It amazes me that political elements of our society push so hard for gun control while at the same time they push those TV shows and movies so loaded with violence and guns. It's hypocrisy...
I wonder... Social Media... when I first heard about it around '06 I thought it was ludicrous... "Who thinks I care what they had for lunch?"..... yet, it seems to be a huge push for narcissism, huh?
Two words to you, sir: Thank you.
This article is over my head, at least on the first read. I try to start out simple.
My understanding is that a sociopath has no empathy. He or she has no concern about the mental anguish or physical consequences of his acts of deception, manipulation, control etc. on others.
A sadist I always lumped together with a psychopath. But as you state, a psychopath gets no enjoyment from what he inflicts on people, whereas a sadist does? (Got to re-read- forgive me. I was an orthopod, and a very bitter one at that.) I had interchanged sadism with psychopathy.
My ex, the good doctor, had no concerns that she had lied to me, tricked me, deceived me, used me etc. and planned out her trap over our seven year marriage, with five spent in residency in Albany NY, how she was going to lure me back to her home town in Elizabethtown KY, and then go into professional, marital, and maternal meltdown, even after my having paid off all of her medical school loans. She had never intended to work, take care of the children, or be faithful from the day she entered medical school. I was the chump/simp. In fact, in my memoirs "My Medical Legal Back Pages," Archway publisher, Bryce Sterling pen name, I wrote that my ex had no concerns about what she had done to me. Once I had filed for divorce ( because she was unfaithful, refused to work as a fully licensed, board-certified, double fellowship trained in open heart and obstetrical) MD anesthesiologist, or in the alternative, of her expectations that the court allow her to be a "full time mother," meaning I would be expected to pay alimony and full child support so she would never have to work a day in her life. Yet she refused to take care of our 3 and 5 year olds while she ran around, literally and figuratively, with other men on the 10 K circuit, dropped the children off at third party care all day which I paid for, etc. ) Once I had decided to take action, she had no more use for me and was out to get as much money as she could. She had no more empathy than one would have for the trash that is placed out to the curb. Her psychological profile showed elements (admittedly not full-blown axis) of narcissism, histrionics, and hedonism. Her MMPI was flat- she fudged it. Mine was normal. This is only the tip of the iceberg of what happened to me in KY, and then NC. But she was snickering with a Duper's Delight when she wiped me out in the divorce and left my career in ruins because of a related anesthesia case. Last I heard, she was in anesthesiology pain management as a fully tenured professor at U of Louisville, having duped them as well into taking her.
I'm sorry about your troubles. Your ex sounds like a malicious narcissist. They are a total nightmare to be around. It's also possibly that she's a narcissistic sociopath. It can be difficult to distinguish between those two.
The issue with empathy is that it is a phenomenon which only refers to the ability to read other people's emotions, and to literally feel them. If you feel sorrow, the empath can also feel sorrow. What others feel, they can feel. It is not the same thing as compassion or altruism. High empathy people will tell you it is, but it isn't. Feeling emotions does not equate to being a 'good person.'
If you were to manipulate people emotionally, particularly if you do it often and compulsively, you need to be able to read other people's emotions. You need to understand emotions for that. You don't understand emotions unless you have emotions. The stronger you feel emotions, the better. Strong and clear emotions are necessary for having high empathy. A person with muted emotions can't understand the emotions of others, and obviously has low empathy.
In other words, for emotional manipulation it's necessary to have empathy. The more empathy you have, the better at emotional manipulation you will be.
This is crystal clear. The most emotionally manipulative people tend to be emotionally charged - including sexually. A narcissist is emotionally and sexually charged, and will almost always cheat in a relationship.
A sadist (not the psychopath type) is a like an emotion vampire. He literally feels your pain and humiliation (emotions) and derives pleasure from that. Your pain, which he feels directly, gives him a high. A low-empathy person with muted emotions simply can't do this. You have to have high emotional salience, which is necessary for having high empathy, to be able to be a sadist.
Sociopaths have emotions and they can be extremely manipulative. They, however, have limited or no compassion because they don't have the specific emotions necessary for it. This contradictory combination is what makes sociopaths so hard to understand.
Psychopaths have no empathy because they have no emotions, apart from the basic ones. They don't have any compassion either.
Back to your ex. If she is a malicious narcissist, she is highly emotionally charged and with high empathy, and a compulsive need for emotional manipulation. But she is so massively self-important that you simply didn't matter to her as a human being in comparison. Any compassion was therefore suppressed/rationalized away.
What is hard to understand is that a narcissist can love you and absolutely despise you at the same time. People generally can't wrap their heads around something like that. They simply can't believe that people like that actually exist.
Sometimes, rarely, my ex could appear very emotional, eg, after making her father's last wish list trip to Custer's Battlefield with me, her, her mother, and her father who had pancreatic cancer and just weeks to live. He died a few days after returning to KY. My ex and I returned to Albany NY after that and attended a church service. I felt very sad as it all hit me, but she was crying. So your comments are very intriguing.
I had considered her a narcissistic sociopath as she loved appearing in the news, getting articles written about her, collecting trophies running 10K races against sedentary housewives so as to hang up on the wall along with all of her degrees to impress people. But it was the manipulation, the constant manipulation! Even friends who had just met her were immediately turned off by it. You would have to always be on guard. "Now what does Laura want? She's talking to you because she wants something."
I was very angry and this divorce brought the worst out in me. But my ex tried to keep me from seeing the kids so as to solidify her position as the caregiver who deserved total all out support and wouldn't have to work. She immediately remarried and moved 2 hrs away- and moved in with an extremely sheepish, passive guy, an accountant who was a runner whom she met at the starting line of a race. The only time my daughter and I saw each other after 15 years was when she needed money, ( but after I had ponied up $200,000 and wouldn't give her any more, she stopped communicating. The first thing out of her mouth was "there's no love" between her and Stan. They have an open marriage. My daughter, raised exclusively by this passive guy (a spineless jellyfish who could be controlled from the get go) and my ex wound up having two children out of wedlock, addicted to oxycontin, later had a felony conviction for embezzling her employer, and had even been criminally charged by her mother and jailed for stealing her jewelry and giving it to her boyfriend to fence for drug money. Daughter was very intelligent, with an IQ of 131, but manipulative and a pathological liar. My ex was also a hoarder; jewelry and clothes. Many duplicates. Had to build an extension onto Stan's house to keep all her clothes -if that offers any clues. But indeed, this is very confusing in so many ways
Thank you for such clear thinking. Now that you have defined the problem, I would be interested in 1) how you might quantify the problem and 2) how you would suggest we greatly reduce the problem.
Nice try, to come over the road from narcisism. This makes it personell, if not individuell. But there are structures of power behind the trend, to normalize Sadists. Please, reader, try to read some parts of Will Zoll's substack (https://prussiagate.substack.com/p/table-of-contents) or look at the books (V, Gravitys Rainbow) by Thomas Pynchon - more clarity guaranteed.
But thanks, Gaius, I save all your substack-artikles for doubble reading!