Category Archives: Cultural

Lying about how many and how often

Posted on by
Reply

When I was around 15-16 I read a Playboy article about “Sex on Campus” where they had a set of statistics on how many times someone had had sexual relations among university students. I don’t recall any of the data other than that the highest possible category was “8 times or more”. I assume that more than once with the same partner only counted as one. This was pre-pill and pre Sexual Revolution, which soon made “8 or more” into a nonsense figure so far as university students were concerned. It must look absurd to today’s Millennials. We thought we were “liberated” back then, although decadent seems more like it. The only time I made my Mother really angry with something I said was quoting from this friend of mine who said, “Better a sexual revolution than no revolution at all”. I now side with my Mother on this, but that was a whole lifetime ago.

The reason I bring this up is because of an article I have just come across on Dating Deception: When Sex Is On Our Minds, Lying Comes Naturally. Not surprising I suppose, but this did surprise me.

For what it’s worth, both men and women tended to report lower falsified numbers of sexual partners in the presence of an attractive individual, and on average the most common false statistic given was seven previous partners.

I was not surprised to find the number shaded since no one wants to look like a complete tart, yet it does suggest that the old morality about sleeping around still lurks somewhere in the culture. But it was the number that everyone now thinks of as a moderate, not particularly loose kind of person, that got to me. The potential for disease and heartbreak must be enormous since there must be some kind of commitment required, or so I would hope.

Although this may sound preposterous today, when I started out “dating” – such an odd term today, does anyone now “date? – you were looking for someone to marry. You might be 13-14, but there was only one end-game in mind which was to find a life-long companion to live with, have children with and to see each other through old age. Sleeping with someone meant in virtually all cases that you had decided to marry each other. Lots of people I still know married the first person they ever slept with, and often enough not until they actually were married.

I don’t know what the rules are today, but from what I see from a very great distance it all looks bleak and dreary.

And let me add in this which I have just come across at InstapunditInstapundit.

READ’EM AND WEEP, LIBS: Institute for Family Studies demonstrates that multiple research studies find conservatives are consistently, measurably happier than non-conservatives. And it gets even better (or worse, depending on your POV), according to Glenn Stanton.

Seems to make my own point in a different kind of way. From one of the articles linked.

Conservatives are also vastly more likely than liberals to believe marriage is essential in creating and maintaining strong families. They are also much more likely to actually be married, 62 versus 39 percent, thus benefiting from all the ways marriage improves overall well-being and contentment, personal happiness, economic security, long-term employment, longevity, better physical and mental health, and more.

About time

Posted on by
Reply

From RJC Releases Brutal Ad Hitting Democrats For Anti-Israel Agenda but it’s not “brutal” in any way.

I’m glad to see someone has finally said it

Posted on by
Reply

Re Katie Hill.

But what truly bodes ill for our civilization, reflecting a virtue/vice tipping point, is the increasingly common belief that there was nothing at all wrong with Hill’s actions. CNN commentator Aisha Moodie-Mills perfectly epitomized this sexual devolutionary moral relativism/nihilism, saying last Monday of Hill that there “was nothing necessarily improper about this woman living her best life” (sheesh, I’d hate to see her worst one).

And if you don’t know the back story, how’s life been while living under a rock? But let us continue:

Here’s a little Philosophy 101: Right and wrong aren’t determined by what people, even great masses of them, have done and want to justify. Right doesn’t become wrong because wrong becomes a rite.

Man has always sinned. But civilization is maintained by repenting and changing our ways — or, at worst, sinning privately — and professing morality publically. As for dumbing down standards and leading others toward Perdition just to self-centeredly salve our feelings, this is likely a far greater sin than whatever it is we aim to justify.

The joining of two liberation movements of historically oppressed, despised, and ghettoized people

Posted on by
Reply

Ray Charles in Israel. The final two paras:

By the late 1970s, though, many people on the left—including activists in African American communities—would begin to challenge the assertion that the two liberation movements of historically oppressed, despised, and ghettoized people should continue working together, or see their collective struggles as in any way equivalent.

Ray Charles never bought it. In 1982, a decade after his first visit, he returned to give a series of sold-out performances. And in 1987, on his last visit, he performed in the former Roman amphitheater at Caesarea. The Israeli jazz saxophonist Nadav Haber was at that performance. He told a Haaretz reporter that even in that large performance space, Charles managed to create a feeling of intimacy. “Ray,” Haber said, “is the kind of artist who takes you in a kind of trance; you leave altered. Many people in the amphitheater came to relax and enjoy themselves. I came to be with Ray, and that is what actually happened.”

Personality traits academic achievement requires

Posted on by
Reply

In order to calmly debate all ideas, you need to put emotion aside.

Similarly, new ideas, or being contradicted, will likely upset some people. But, in the pursuit of academic debate, you have to ignore this and calmly present both sides. Low in Conscientiousness (“rule-following”) and high in intellectual curiosity are useful personality ingredients. This means being better able to understand that the truth is ever more closely reached by being non-conformist—by questioning the current “truth.”

Academic achievement requires a combination of  high IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness. This means being clever enough to solve a difficult problem, but also low in rule-following, while also being able to “think outside the box”. And, being low in Agreeableness, not caring about offending people, which original ideas always do.

An aspect of Agreeableness is empathy—being concerned with the feelings of others and being able to guess what they might be. People who are high in “systematizing” (with systematizing being vital to problem solving) tend to be low in empathy.

Universities, traditionally, have in essence been about giving geniuses a place in which they can attempt to solve their problems, working at their chosen problems for years on end.

Genius breakthroughs are only made, ultimately, by causing offence.

Giving geniuses a place in which they can attempt to solve their problems

Posted on by
Reply

Now here’s a question: Are Women Destroying Academia?. In amongst the text we find this as part of the answer:

In order to calmly debate all ideas, you need to put emotion aside. But females are simply less able to do that than males because they are higher in Neuroticism—feeling negative feelings strongly. Thus, they more easily become overwhelmed by negative feelings, precluding them from logical thought. (Data on personality traits is drawn from Personality, by Daniel Nettle, 2007).

Similarly, new ideas, or being contradicted, will likely upset some people. But, in the pursuit of academic debate, you have to ignore this and calmly present both sides. However, this is more difficult for females, because they are more sympathetic, meaning that “not hurting people’s feelings” can become their highest ideal. Higher in Conscientiousness (“rule-following”) and lower in intellectual curiosity than males, females are also more conformist. This means they are less able to understand that, in academia, the truth is ever more closely reached by being non-conformist—by questioning the current “truth.”

Thus, argues DeGroot, female domination of academia will seriously damage academia as a place where ideas can be seriously debated.

Ed Dutton, in a video entitled “Do Female Reduce Male Per Capita Genius?” takes this critique of feminism even further. He argues that geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier high IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness. This means they are clever enough to solve a difficult problem, but being low in rule-following, can also “think outside the box,”. And, being low in Agreeableness, they don’t care about offending people, which original ideas always do.

An aspect of Agreeableness is empathy—being concerned with the feelings of others and being able to guess what they might be. Dutton shows that people who are high in “systematizing” (which males typically are compared to females, with systematizing being vital to problem solving) tend to be low in empathy. Thus, Dutton argues, you don’t get many women geniuses because their IQ range is more bunched towards the mean; and also because they are too high in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.

Universities, traditionally dominated by males, have in essence been about giving geniuses a place in which they can attempt to solve their problems, working at their chosen problems for years on end. But Dutton argues that female academics tend to be the “Head Girl Type” (chief prefect at all-girls schools in the UK) with “normal range” high IQ and high in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness—the exact opposite of a typical genius. Accordingly, once you allow females into academia, they will be promoted over genius males because they come across as better people to work with—more conscientious, easier to be around and more socially skilled. But this will tend to deny geniuses the place of nurture they need.

As females come to dominate, the culture of academia will feminize. High in Conscientiousness, women will create a rule-governed bureaucracy where research occurs through incremental steps and a certain number of publications must be presented every few years, rather than through genius breakthroughs. But geniuses typically work on huge problems for years. So this bureaucracy will make it impossible for them to do this and keep their jobs.

Women will also create a culture of co-operative “research groups,” anathema to the kind of anti-social loners who tend towards genius. And females will, of course, tend to create an atmosphere of emotion and empathy, the enemy of the unemotional, coldly systematic style of the genius—and, traditionally, of academia.

In this atmosphere, “not causing offence” will become much more important. But genius breakthroughs are only made, ultimately, by causing offence.

“Systematic efforts to denigrate men”

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t believe that such sentiments were allowed into print: ‘Boys Are Stupid; Girls Are Awesome’ – Most TV Shows & Movies Today. The opening paras:

Most kids’ shows today are pretty much twaddle.

However, in moments of exhaustion and weakness, I let my boys watch the occasional age-appropriate movie or TV show. But I usually find myself having some ‘splainin to do with them afterwards.

That’s because, more often than not, they have just watched something in which the female lead is the smart and capable hero, and the male lead is the bumbling idiot who must be rescued by his female companion. For the sake of their self-esteem, I find myself having to clarify that what they are witnessing is a systematic effort to denigrate men for the sake of exalting women, all in the name of “equity”.

The way things went was that we had men and women whose traditional roles had evolved over millennia. And then some women said that they were as good as men, so we let them try. And some things they could do, like being doctors and lawyers, and some things they couldn’t do, or didn’t want to do, like being garage mechanics and computer programmers. But even after half a century of trying, women do not have anywhere near half of the major jobs in our society. Lots of explanations, but facts are facts. One of the ways this is being addressed by our ever-present social engineers is to exalt women and depreciate men, as the article discusses. It is the way we in the West deal with what is supposedly oppression, but is really just attempts to help those who cannot help themselves. Those who can help themselves, such as Asians within western economies, nothing at all is done to assist.

#Et Too Brute

Posted on by
Reply

I have to say I have been drawn to the Katie Hill story and it’s not because of the pictures. Here is Caroline Overington’s take in today’s Australian: Katie Hill’s career over through another’s misdeeds? Bonkers. Let Caroline tell the story.

Here is a tale of the bonk ban, ­coming to bite some people on the bum.

You perhaps remember the furore­ over Barnaby Joyce having an affair with Vikki Campion, now the mother of his two sons? ­

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull brought in the bonk ban to prevent MPs from having a relationship with anyone who works for them. The US congress has one, too.

Now meet Katie Hill. She is young, a woman, bisexual, and a Democrat, and until this week she was a rising star in her party, having blazed her way into the congress during last year’s mid-terms.

Hill, 32, was elected during an audacious changing of the guard. She defeated a two-term Republican, scooped up a Los Angeles district not held by her party since 1990, and helped the Democrats win back the house.

She quit this week, not long after she was accused of being in breach of the bonk ban. Hill was married when she ran for congress. She was also part of a year-long thruple. That’s a three-person relationship — one lad, two ladies — with her husband, Kenny Heslep, and female campaign worker Morgan Desjardins.

Want more? Here’s more.

She ended both relationships upon being elected to the house, and was accused last month of starting a new one with a male staff member, Graham Kelly.

Now, the Desjardins relationship does not violate house rules because she was not on Hill’s congressional staff. The relationship with Kelly — which Hill “abso­lutely” denies — would violate new house rules banning sexual relationships between members and staff. The house ethics committee launched an investigation.

Hill would not, at first blush, appear­ to be the natural target of the #MeToo anti-harassment ­initiatives. These rules were ­designed to prevent the reprehensible sexual harassment of women in the workforce: think Harvey Weinstein, or Roger Ailes-style behaviour. But of course they apply to everyone, and if Hill was in breach, she would have to go.

Pretty straightforward, yes/no? Well here’s Caroline again:

It does seem odd that consensual relationships can be wrong, however. You cannot stop people who work together being attracted to each other. Michelle and Barack Obama met at work. So did Bill and Melinda Gates, and Gerry and Katie Harvey, and about a billion other people. Everyone’s an adult here.

Yes, why be judgemental? Except this is a person who is supposed to be making rules for the whole of society. And she is absolutely prohibited from having sexual relations with someone who is her subordinate within her Congressional office. But this is the new generation, with whom all such things are just as normal as holding hands. Caroline blathers on:

Millennials live their lives online. They find their sexual partners on Twitter. They take nudes, and send them to people, or else they store them in the cloud. ­Except there is no cloud. It’s just other people’s computers. They are bound to leak….

There has been some outrage over Hill’s adventurous approach to sex, like it was anyone else’s business. Millen­nials also do not consider it unusual for people to be bisexual, or to have more than one partner at the same time.

Also, who’s surprised by this? Hill is attractive, ambitious, confident, capable and female, and she was fighting for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Of course they went after her sex life.

Caroline Overington is the worst imaginable judge of sexual morality and politics. Read the whole of what she wrote but it is disgusting. Her attitude to Donald Trump would be an interesting contrast. Sounds pretty judgemental to me. And who is this “they” that went after her sex life? And Caroline, are you aware that Katie stole the election in her own district? And do you think her husband, who released the photos, was a Republican? You are ignorant of everything that matters.

Meanwhile, for a different look at these same things, there is this: The MeToo Revolution Eats Its Own.

The marriage between feminism and the sexual revolution has been akin to a prude marrying a playboy. Its offspring were bound to be screwed up. One of its dysfunctional children is the MeToo movement, which continues to devour its friends, from Sen. Al Franken to Rep. Katie Hill….

Katie Hill is suffering the fate of a feminist who could handle feminism’s rhetoric but not its arbitrary rigor. The same feminism that tells women they can “do whatever they want with their bodies” didn’t like what Katie Hill was doing with hers, as she cavorted with female and male staffers. The new rules of feminism, which include prohibitions on office sex, require a level of discipline Katie Hill’s let’s-try-everything, sexually omnivorous generation is incapable of upholding. To the Katie Hills, today’s feminism is a cruel paradox, espousing the moral philosophy of lechers while turning rule-making and ethics inquiries over to prudes.

You should read it all, which leaves Caroline’s views in the cesspool where they belong. Here’s the way it ends.

The marriage between feminism and the sexual revolution has resulted in a raft of bewildered orphans whose education in degeneracy made them ill-prepared for cultural change. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, liberalism, educationally speaking, destroys the organ and then demands its function. All of the columnists commiserating with Katie Hill are in one way or another bemoaning that incoherence implicit in feminism. Yesterday’s feminism made Bill Clinton a president and Teddy Kennedy a revered senator; under today’s feminism, Hill couldn’t even keep her minor seat.

But then, what did the Frankens and the Hills expect? The liberalism to which they subscribe is inherently arbitrary, owing to a relativism that makes coherent governing impossible. A wilfulness writ large, liberalism has no consistent principle save one: power and its ever-contradictory whims.

What they wanted was a set of rules that would trap their political enemies but spare their friends. How love, marriage, children and a long life together come out of this is beyond me. How any of this breeds happiness and contentment is to me an unknown. A life of instability and misery seems like the most probable outcome.

And a pictorial reminder of what was going on.