It is amazing how people have been taught to hate and paid handsomely for spreading it and shaming and condemning all those who have a different take on things. All the while everyone applauds the hate. What has happened to our culture?
Thanks Janice for your courage in bringing this up.
Thank you for writing this. It’s a very painful topic. You get closer to the truth of the matter than anything else I’ve seen so far. This is not the ‘left eating the left’. Not cancel culture’. This is a society turning against itself with vengeance and malice. What is happening is pure evil.
I’m going to put it country simple: the past several years of “black voices” have proven who the villains are. I read somewhere a while ago that black people score high in narcissistic traits and everything lately confirms that bias. Narcissists can’t take criticism and attack their critics. If you can’t take criticism, you can’t improve. Africa is the most corrupt and inept continent on the planet. The US has elected numerous corrupt black politicians to our detriment. Alvin Bragg?!!!
I say this as a white woman whose every life threatening experience was at the hands of a black person. That I could still approach each individually still is a miracle. But I do, still, after the buck fifty threat, having a brick thrown at my white face on the bus, the attempted rape-- still approach every black person as an individual. And what do I get in return? Treated like a “racist” white person by racist blacks - spit at, run off the sidewalk, barricading the subway doors and still I refuse to hate these racist people.
I was accused of being racist by a well trained student for not letting her exempt from my writing class because she couldn’t write. Kangaroo trial. Blatantly discriminatory statement by HR: SHE doesn’t have to provide evidence-- all that matters is the way she felt.
Keep enabling this bs, white people--
There was an incident a few years ago over “racist” Halloween decorations. A “healing workshop” took place at the YMCA. “Healing” meant denigrating the mostly white participants for an hour. This Topsy had nothing healing to say.
I will continue to judge people as individuals but I have a funny feeling I know why Africa isn’t up to snuff.
I received a job settlement for black racism about 15 years ago. They were so arrogant, that they didn't even try to hide it, confident that they could get away with it. Today, they could have gotten away with it.
I would be very surprised if "black people score high in narcissistic traits" but not at all surprised if people such as the DEI instructor mentioned in this article do score highly.
What a great find! I will definitely be sharing this around.
The authors make several assumptions, right off the bat, that I seriously question. Without going into too much detail and making this an essay, I'll just say that, given that blacks report higher self esteem than anyone else and that that is not characteristic of oppressed, marginalized populations, my first reaction would be to question whether blacks are currently oppressed or marginalized to any meaningful extent.
A strident narcissistic trait is to play victim in order to control the alleged “oppressor.” They also distort meaning and intentions for personal gain. White people are at their mercy when speaking to them. A notorious incident at an artist’s colony in the early aughts comes to mind, when a question that everyone asks everyone was asked of black writer Sapphire: How did you get in? Or something to this effect—commentary on the overall exclusivity— for everyone— she made a scene, all kinds of accusations, and basically did to this poor gay white male poet what was done to the subject of this essay. I’ve seen and experienced too much of this to trust them to act charitably in good faith. So goes the warning re narcissists in general: RUN!
Narcissism is epidemic. Primarily, it is characterized by a lack of empathy and can usually be traced to childhood neglect or abuse. I would be very surprised if blacks in America didn't score high in narcissism as the traditional black family is all but gone in America.
It's possible that the children would share heritable traits that cause pro-social behavior running in some families, and misfit behavior running in others.
Well, I guess it's just wild and crazy and un-evidenced to believe that children are affected by their upbringing, too. Just nuts! Where's our evidence? Honestly.
I'm not lying. That's actually how I see your logic carried out. If I misunderstand you, I'm happy to be corrected and admit that. But I'm not "lying." I genuinely, honestly, absolutely for real think that my extrapolation is the logical endpoint of what you said. You find it incredible that anyone could claim that bad childhood treatment could lead to narcissism? That's, well, that's actually exactly what happens.
Is it that you think I'm a liberal? Do you think I'm excusing the behavior of blacks? Is that what makes you think I'm "lying"? If so, I'm not so excusing.
I probably should have said 'often' rather than 'usually'. It's also often posited that being spoiled can lead to narcissism and there there may be an underlying genetic disposition to it.
As far as being "social constructionist," that would only apply if your contention is that narcissism is an immutable characteristic, at least in the current academic sense of the term. "Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts (Subramaniam 2010)."
Psychology has been largely captured by such postmodernist nonsense so it's always wise to be wary of that bias, but you can't just ignore it all. Here is an article that, in my experience and opinion, best sums up what narcissism actually is although it doesn't focus on causal factors, which can only really be guessed at--pretty much like most things in psychology.
I’m not surprised that you used an article by a jewish, OPENLY anti-White, pro-feminist psychologist who promotes the idea that there is such a thing as toxic masculinity.
Nor am I surprised that you acknowledged the capture of psychology by “postmodernism” (quite a euphemism there, lol. Like referring to black criminal mobs as “teens”), yet immediately - in the next sentence, no less - made an appeal to an authority of a jewish fella who promotes that same ideological agenda.
The reason I’m not surprised is that so many of our ideas have been given to us by the same people who get called “postmodernists,” “Marxists,” “leftists,” etc.
When your idea of evidence is to look for essays written by self-promoting ideologues - in other words, when you resort to “so-and-so says” - it should be a red flag to yourself that 1) you have a big gap in your knowledge base, and 2) you are opening yourself to ideologues rather than seeking direct knowledge.
You’re right that blacks do display personality traits that can be described as narcissistic. You’re mistaken about why.
They aren’t that way because of the absence of the black family. They are that way everywhere they live. It IS innate. Temperament is highly heritable and there are distinct racial differences in temperament that exist independently of culture.
When you hear a story that a Good Samaritan stopped to help a man and woman who had a flat tire, and they inexplicably beat him to death and stole his car (there are multiple cases of this happening), you don’t visualize a young black man stopping and a middle aged White or Japanese couple beating him to death.
You’re aware of racial temperaments. You just need to erase the programming that was done to you by the same people you call “postmodernists.”
I chose that article because I largely agree with what it says. Not being a bigot, I didn't give a fuck what his religion is or that he may have other positions I disagree with. You should try that some time.
Poor Mr. Bilkszto. Unfortunately, his encounter with anti-White racism in the school system is painfully common. We have tolerated mad Black Supremacist and Rad Fem bullies among professors for too long; if anyone did this to a black woman they would rightfully lose their job or perhaps go to jail.
Capitalization is a minor but irritating game they play. Some years back I noticed that in books published prior to the 1960s either neither race was capitalized or it was Black and White out of respect. The leftists capitalize just Black where I am from so I have started capitalizing both (I seem to have forgotten in the above comment). It's a personal choice and I understand why you don't like to capitalize; a lack of a capital does make skin color into an attribute of ethnicity like "brown-eyed" or "fair-haired" rather than the main identifying feature
Yes, I thought it was the ultimate in cruelty, selfishness, and hatred to mention that about how a man's death--at least partly in direct response to her strident verbal attack--was being exploited to prevent her and her colleagues from killing more white men. Wow, the coldness. If she had simply expressed sorrow, even without apology, it would have had a smidgeon of basic decency.
Thanks for the background. Even without the facts, I was suspicious of the celebration of Biltszto as someone who resisted. His suicide seemed, to me, to be more evidence of atonement for his sins against the narrative than resistance of any kind.
Even the supposedly incendiary comments he made were simply his assessment that the DEI movement had actually achieved some successes. It was hardly criticism of any sort.
The poor guy was a dupe, for sure, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't support a wrongful death suit against Ojo-Thompson and the university, as well. Isn't it the woke crowd that's always whining about the 'existential threat' of bullying? Well, they literally bullied this poor sap to death. Let them pay.
This is just evidence of how narrow-minded the education system is, and how little the wiggle room for disagreement. There's no room for nuance or discussion within an institution when the smallest deviation will be judged as heresy, and hence there is no room to "hide" by pretending to go along with the main narrative while trying to reform the system from within; someday the narrative shifts and you may blurt something out that will get you excommunicated. Thousands of young women who weren't comfortable supported LGBT because they were afraid to get excommunicated and they still got called TERFs when they suggested it was wrong for pre-op men with a rap sheet to use the same bathroom as them.
In the case of men like Mr. Biltszto, they are (in my experience) conditioned to keep their heads down and act as submissive as a woman under the Taliban. It was already common back when I volunteered at a school for male teachers to make self-deprecating statements about themselves to get along with their feminist female colleagues, for example, much to the discomfort of male students. This isn't to dunk male teachers. Most of them are excellent at their jobs. Many are also true believers and sincerely care about getting that immigrant girl who comes from a conservative country and thinks she is destined to become a housewife to care about her math score; in this way they have probably done more for girls than their feminist counterparts who focused on pushing politics. But after years of living like that, and having that be your life, I think it is difficult to not internalize the self-hating element of the politics in some way. What might have been poor Richard's mistake is also feeling proud of his achievements. He was happy that his country was improving, by the standards he believed were the right ones, and to the people who hated him for his skin that was unacceptable.
Your comment prompted me into imagining such a scenario. I found it almost impossible. Only a couple of days ago I witnessed a black woman board a train largely full of white men on their way to a rugby match (in one of the few areas of the UK where such a passenger is still a rarity): three of the men quite independently and invisibly to each other rose simultaneously to offer their seats. Gynocentrism and oikophobia are perhaps the true 'fragility'.
There would be outrage even if she committed homicide. It would be seen as justified, even if they might not come right out and say it publicly, as a response to systemic oppression.
Thank you, Janice, for this excellent analysis. Something that you don't mention, which I think deserves highlighting, is that Bilkszto suffered so deeply from this shaming because he was fundamentally a good man who deeply wanted to do right by others. A man who didn't care, or who was indeed bigoted, would not have been affected much by the bullying. It is, in my opinion, the fact that identity politics and wokeness are weaponized directly at good people that makes them so profoundly evil. I mean that literally. We are facing evil in feminine form here. We are familiar with evil in masculine form, but not with its feminine manifestation. I wrote my first book, "The Hand That Rocks the World," to make this case.
Thank you, David (and apologies for being so slow to reply; writing this essay bothered me so much that I put off reading most of the comments). I agree with you that this is evil in feminine form, and that it wouldn't work if men like Richard Bilkszto weren't fundamentally decent.
That's the key to the success of DEI -- actual hateful bigots would respond to such accusations with a "who cares?" and continue their violence and oppression.
Yes, Trish. So what is happening here is that good, caring, unprejudiced people are being accused and shamed relentlessly if they deny the accusation, while the few actual racists are unaffected. This is perverse in the extreme, which is why I label it evil.
Janice what you have written it the classic use of techniques related to "Relational Aggression" and Mobbing.
I am glad you said what I sometimes have thought, people who make a stand, sometimes are not equipped to withstand the level of bullying and vitriol that follows. This is why I think and feel the reason many people mostly of the male gender hide in the trenches hoping that they won't come for them.
Many are not equipped, Phillip, because the response is so often vicious and humiliating and inhumane beyond what decent people can even imagine. Good people are particularly vulnerable because the hatred shocks them so much. I would not want to go through what Richard Bilkszto did, and although I am sure I would not kill myself in response, I know it would hurt me and change me.
"Many are not equipped", sadly that is very true and even people who are equipped have a very hard time of it.
Part of the reason I think especially in Western Societies we live very safe lives, so when something really bad happens to us people usually don't have the skills to manage it.
The saddest thing about people who suicide is that if they take it one day at a time, the feeling will eventually pass. But even those who are in the helping fields are more vulnerable to committing suicide than the general population.
The guy was asking questions in good faith. He had no idea of what was coming. It was completely out of his life experience. He would have been in a deep state of shock and probably hardly aware of what he was doing when he jumped. I know that feeling from when I was on the receiving end of workplace bullying.
Great opinion piece Janice. My understanding is that in general men & women deal with conflict differently. Men use face to face, direct confrontation. Women use more subtle and non-confrontational tactics. Such as relational aggression, mobbing mentioned along with Isolation. I'm not a social scientist so my explanation is very simplified. However, the way women deal with conflict works quite well in an office or corporate environment. However, men have a very difficult time coping with this type of conflict. If men use the form of conflict that comes natural, they will be punished. I think it leaves men very frustrated and very vulnerable.. The DEI person we are discussing is using that subtle conflict style thats very difficult to resist in a group setting.
I used to work in a large corporation. The DEI policies were initiated by the board of directors. An elite group of "diverse" people who were chosen from a small pool of candidates. Many probably knew each other before joining the board. Thomas Sowell said that its easy for the elites to make these crazy decisions from on high because they are unaffected by the consequences of their actions.. As more and more employees became disenchanted and resentful due to the DEI indoctrination sessions, it was HR and management that had to deal with the repercussions.
I agree that it's very difficult for a typical man to respond to this kind of relational aggression. If it had happened to a woman, she would at least have had an idea how to find allies in her workplace or at least outside of work. She would likely have had a more advanced vocabulary for talking about how it hurt her and why it was so unfair. Most men don't have that vocabulary and don't necessarily find useful that kind of talking out of feelings. Unfortunately, relational aggression seems to be becoming more and more common in many workplace settings.
Yeah I am in Oz, reading about dingo packs attacking their prey, they take it in turns, just like wolves or the wild dogs of the Sahara.
In Nursing, I noticed that if one of the female nurses is pissed off with someone she will find out who are her allies and then they gang up on the person using very covert tactics to make their life miserable.
It can involve the cold shoulder, being hypercritical of something, being too busy to provide assistance, etc.
Half Newfie; "women deal with conflict works quite well in an office or corporate environment."
Sorry to burst your bubble on that one, but within the field of Nursing, indirect aggression does not work well and it is known as "Horizontal Violence" within the nursing field and is a major contributor to hospital mishaps, nurses suicided, nurses suicide rate is 4 times that of the normal female population. "Horizontal Violence" in nursing creates a toxic culture and is a major factor in why nurses leave the profession.
If you read Myrna Blythe book "Spin Sisters" she show that the undercurrents that happen with female interaction.
A book I only recently became aware of even though it was first publish in 2003, is "In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women: Why We Hurt Each Other and How to Stop".
Interestingly search engines will not show this book if the words "In the Company of Women" as used as a parameter.
thank you Phillip! Point taken.. I'm familiar with the situation with nursing and its brutal.. I have been told by some female nurses that they were glad to see men get into the profession. They said it was an equalizer.. I've never heard of the term 'Horizontal Violence' before..
My thought was that with non-confrontational conflict resolution it can be more difficult for management to explicitly identify the victim & victimizer. Particularly if the conflict involves male & female. Their is still an empathy gap that biases against men... Its very important to note that these are generalizations...
I just read a few pages of "In the company of women". I really wonder how they can write that 95% of women were bullied by other women without analyzing who did the bullying? They also seem to have the normal "females are victims" approach, as did the Marie Claire article.
Joyce Benenson's "Warriors and Worriers" is better I think since it analyzes the evolutionary roots and is quite even handed. But even she cannot completely escape the victim mentality in the section about Worriers.
Peter, I laughed out loud (in chagrin) when I got to a point in the Marie Claire article saying that the reason women bully is because they have been victimized by men!
quote<Starting gate Rescuers (SGR) see themselves as “helpers” and “caretakers.” They need someone to rescue (victim) in order to feel vital and important. It's difficult for SGR’s to recognize themselves as ever being in a victim position – they’re the ones with the answers after all.>unquote.
There is a paper by Barbara Leckie, "Double-Edged Sword of Exclusion and Rejection." Girls Bullying Behaviours and Peer Relationships", what struck me was the similarities between the bullying behaviour of school girls and that of nurses.
I will have to look up "Warriors and Worriers" but you raise an interesting point about the victim mentality, I wonder if this is used to stimulate the protective reaction from men, men who are the rescuers.
There is the Karpman drama triangle of Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.
Interesting paper. Skimming it seems to confirm what Benenson says.
Funny, I am 65 but this stuff is a lot more complicated than I thought. Men seem to have mostly figured out how to handle their aggression and strength with laws and enforcement but I do not think women have figured out how to handle the female pathologies. With the increasing feminization of society, it is not unimportant for our common welfare that they do this quickly.
I find this also. There is no problem in society with recognizing the danger of male aggression and potential for violence. We have put in place systems and customs to recognize and control it. Female aggression, on the other hand, is often not even recognized. If it is, it is minimized and justified.
Exactly. However, accountability is a masculine, not a feminine trait, and so I don't expect that women will voluntarily hold themselves accountable, the way that men did starting in the 60s. I wrote my first book, "The Hand That Rocks the World", to document female social power and its contemporary pathologies.
I agree with what you are saying, the issue with "Horizontal Violence" was first researched in the 1980's and the issue instead of decreasing has increased experientially in perhaps the last 15 years.
There is a book "Venus the Dark Side" that I put off buying and even after I bought it, it sat on my shelf for a fair while. My biggest fear was that it was going to "trigger me" but after reading it told me nothing I had not figured put by myself.
I've recently been using a new (at least new to me) search engine called Luxxle, and using those words, I did find the book. I find Luxxle to be a pretty good searhc engine so far, much better that the Intersectionality Goggles that Google has become.
You have to examine motives to understand if a strategy works well or not. If "Horizontal Violence" is employed as a means to compete with others and rise to the top of the hierarchy, it probably works quite well.
I have met perhaps more than my fair share, working as a nurse. Perhaps one advantage of being a male is that I was not aware most of the time, sometimes I had a sense something was going on, but didn't really care one way or another, that is until it wore me down.
Working in a Surgical ward, giving injections is a regular occurrence and occasionally I would misplace the plastic sheath for the needle and it gets lost in the bed linen somewhere.
I don't have time to search high and low and it is a low priority.
Some nurses would find that plastic sheath and instead of just putting it in a bin they would walk whatever distance it was to find me and go "You left this behind!" I didn't care it was a non-issue for me. Now I realise what they were actually doing.
There are the hyper exaggerations "You left a room in a mess!" when there may have been an empty chips wrapper in a bin. They simply could have taken the wrapper out of the bin and disposed of it in another bin.
This type of behaviour is reflected in households all around the world, she wants him to do more housework, but he is not doing it the way she wants it done. Take folding towels she likes them folded one way and he folds them his way.
The obsessive-compulsiveness I am just starting to realise.
Sadly some of the stories I would like to share publicly would end up getting me sued.
It is insidious.
One I will share.
I was on night duty in an Intensive Care unit and my patient, who was on a ventilator with a tube inserted to help her breathe. The doctors wanted for that tube to be withdrawn 2 centimetres. As an X-ray it showed that it had been inserted too far in and was at risk of entering the right main bronchus.
This is a two-person procedure. The team leader walked past the cubicle after her tea break and I asked her for her assistance.
She said she was going to check with the Nurse in charge first and then come back. I waited and she did not come back. I was about to ring her when my patient had a medical emergency because the oxygen levels plummeted as the ETT (breathing tube) had migrated into her right main bronchus.
I then pushed the emergency buzzer and help arrived, the tube was withdrawn 2 centimetres and the crisis was resolved. I was absolutely furious because if I had had the assistance that was needed in the first place, the crisis would have been avoided.
I then reported to the Nurse in charge who was male, what transpired and that I had asked for assistance, and it got turned on me, that I should have rung him earlier.
Perhaps it's more difficult not notice shady behavior by a particular group if the accepted narrative about that group is that they are the embodiment of kindness and compassion (while their opposites are all things cruel and abusive).
First of all…”koan-like”…well thats my new word for the month…I can’t wait to pull it off during a hallway consult!
Janice, this was so well done I HAD to read it twice to make sure I wasn’t misreading your drift. Thank You doesn’t quite cover it.
I’ll probably take some flack for this, but St Scott Adams was spot on. This is heading in only one direction. There, I said it and I’m glad I said it!
Yes, Chuck, I agree. I feel the same way about Adams' common sense statement. I wish to stay as far away as possible from people who hate me because I'm white. I also wish to stay as far away as possible from people who justify that hatred, whether they're white or black, etc. For years, I tried to understand, empathize, self-reflect, educate myself, accept 'reparations,' listen and learn. Finally I realized that the continual inner resistance/rebellion, the insistent quiet questioning of all the lies and double standards I was being forced to adopt--could not be quelled. I gave it up. Guilty no more.
Well that’s true but, why take a chance on biting my tongue when ‘Koan-like’ checks all the same boxes😊… and no one I know has ever used the word before!
Thanks for the vocabulary enrichment. I've actually been searching for a word or phrase to describe my take on the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac and I think 'koan' fits the bill.
From my perspective, and mind I’m not well versed in things biblical at all, the most interesting thing about the story is why Abraham didn’t have a full fanatic freak out when God told him to take Issac up the mountain and let him have it in the first place.
That must have been because child sacrifice was common at the time I bet.
No, I seriously doubt it was common among the Hebrews, at least.
The story just has no rational explanation. Every aspect of it raises questions that have no logical explanation if you accept the tenets of Judaism. It's like a lesson in intellectual humility.
Whites are prone to guilt. Some psychologists attribute this to evolution: i.e., whites evolved in a cold climate that required substantial group cooperation for winter survival, which led to an egalitarian ethic that included guilt as a means to control selfishness. Blacks are easily able to exploit this guilt, especially among progressive whites. In addition, few whites are willing to consider group differences in intelligence, so they fall prey to the “miasma” theory of racism that explains all disparities as the result of an invisible racism.
The theory of systemic racism - and patriarchy - is very similar to primitive theories of magic. In primitive theories of magic, all adverse events or situations are blamed on the evil eye.
Wokeism is a quasi-religious movement that reflects the psychology of more egalitarian and guilt prone whites. Christianity reflects this egalitarian psychology, too, but it lives on in secular whites because it’s likely genetic in origin.
I think it's far more a cultural trait that is pervasive in Europe and North America. The Japanese, on the other hand, are far more likely to be motivated by shame than guilt.
In my opinion, the concept of 'white guilt' is intended to shame white people and has little to do with actual guilt. Guilt is about what you did and shame is about what you are. Clearly, 'white guilt' is about what white people are, as an identity, and not about any individual white person's actions.
Wokeness is all about obfuscation of meaning. You can never take wokeisms at face value.
I lived in asia for several years. Shame there is felt when people find out publicly about some behavior that goes against community standards. Guilt is a learned self degradation victims feel when their belief code is violated. No one needs to know what you did to feel guilt. Shame cultures are collective and nothing is immoral as long as the shit you pull isn’t made public.
I would argue that shame is often the reason people keep things that they are ashamed of secret so that no one ever knows about them. People can be deeply ashamed of things about themselves even when this perception is not reinforced by others who are aware.
For example, you might be ashamed of being a coward, a homosexual, having a birth defect, or any number of things that don't require you to do anything or for anyone to know those things about you. Typically, though, guilt is about something you did that you wish you hadn't, particularly if it negatively affected others.
It's also quite possible to feel guilt and shame simultaneously if you, for instance, fail to come to someone's aid because you are afraid, and then that person suffers because of your inaction.
I had that up bringing too, though my dad communicated through his actions that it was just pro forma bullshit. I decided in my 20s after looking at the evidence and reading the texts that Christian theology, as well as Buddhism were useless for getting ahead. It’s sticking to Judeo Christianity. That makes people feel guilty. I shucked that shit off sometime ago and never look back. There is nothing genetic about dumb ass religious ideas, woke or not.
You think I shoulda led with white Jews… I was trying to be, ya know, inclusive! But yeah, in the old days, Jews would have held the patent. But my Catholic cousins had a corner on that street too!
Who is behind DEI and slo-mo White genocide? It's not Blacks: without someone pulling their strings, they can barely organize a carjacking. And anyways they don't have the money, the huge piles of money behind this, behind tranny schoolteachers grooming, behind Open Borders, behind the USA 'Democratic' Party and most of the Republicans. So who? They're not White, they're not Christian, they're 'Fellow White People', and our cultures and countries decayed as they achieved their Ascendancy over us: we weakened and sickened as they waxed fat and vaunted their chutzpah.
The wealth of the many accrues to the greed of the few, or the one.
Race is tactical, not strategic. It's right there in their Postmodernisr creed that everything is about power. Wokeism is an elitist scheme to consolidate power into fewer and fewer hands and homogenize the masses into weak and paranoid slaves.
Race is core strategy for them: it's right there in their Torah: they are the Chosen People, and we are their golems, exist to serve them. This is typical for tribal religions; theirs should have died out long ago with the rest of them, but they've kept it and their evil 'Yahweh' demon very much alive. The problem isn't people who happen to be born into it: it's the ones who embrace their Ascendancy over us, and the fellow-travelers who are the sea they swim in.
If you're referring to observant Jews, maybe, although Mormons, the Amish, and others can be pretty ethnocentric, too. Either way, I don't believe there's a racial or genetic component to it.
: the attitude that one's own group, ethnicity, or nationality is superior to others
The definition is broader than you claim it is. Ethnocentrism can be discriminatory based on race, ancestry, etc. but it need not be. One could even make the claim, with perfect utility, that multiculturalism is an ethnicity.
It is an entirely different type of guilt and it is over entirely different things. Theirs is a very selfish, self-centered, and self-important sort of guilt.
‘Whites are prone to guilt’…as any well educated, faith based individual, taught the value of introspection, and in control of their impulses might be!
To feel guilty or pride for an immutable characteristic is neurotic, fantasy thinking. You would have to be getting some intrinsic/extrinsic reward for it.
The so-called conservative, uncomfortably disdainful of controversy, seldom has the energy to fight his battles, while the radical, so often a member of the minority, exerts disproportionate influence because of his dedication to his cause.
"God and Man at Yale", 1951
Liberalism cannot sustain our civilization on the little it has to offer. It is sustaining the majority of our intellectuals, but that proves easier than holding together the world.
"Up from Liberalism", 2nd ed, 1968
The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks, and extremists this side of the giggle house.
"On the Right", 1967
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
I hope they aren't, but if anyone reading this is contemplating suicide, please remember that well over 90% of people who intend to kill themselves but are stopped, or fail, never decide to try again. Suicide is a fleeting impulse to a solvable problem.
If you won't listen to me, here's an excerpt from an article I read about people who survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge that has haunted me ever since:
"Survivors often regret their decision in midair...On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over...Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
The key point, as you suggest, is that this man was a collaborator not a resistor. He went along with the DEI ideology for years, until it finally turned on him in the form of the thuggish Ojo-Thompson. You have to confront this ludicrous ideology early and call it out for what it is, not wait until it's too late.
On this topic, I recommend a book called 'Whiteness: the Original Sin' by Jim Goad. It's highly entertaining and intelligent.
Thank you, Janice. Anti-white racism is as much a part of leftist ideology as man-hating feminism is. Sometimes bloggers on Psychology Today combine anti-white racism with anti-male feminism by using slurs such as "white male privilege" - which ignores the fact that white men account for 75% of U.S. suicides.
It is amazing how people have been taught to hate and paid handsomely for spreading it and shaming and condemning all those who have a different take on things. All the while everyone applauds the hate. What has happened to our culture?
Thanks Janice for your courage in bringing this up.
Thank you for writing this. It’s a very painful topic. You get closer to the truth of the matter than anything else I’ve seen so far. This is not the ‘left eating the left’. Not cancel culture’. This is a society turning against itself with vengeance and malice. What is happening is pure evil.
It is evil. And it seems to be getting worse. I hope I’m wrong.
I’m going to put it country simple: the past several years of “black voices” have proven who the villains are. I read somewhere a while ago that black people score high in narcissistic traits and everything lately confirms that bias. Narcissists can’t take criticism and attack their critics. If you can’t take criticism, you can’t improve. Africa is the most corrupt and inept continent on the planet. The US has elected numerous corrupt black politicians to our detriment. Alvin Bragg?!!!
I say this as a white woman whose every life threatening experience was at the hands of a black person. That I could still approach each individually still is a miracle. But I do, still, after the buck fifty threat, having a brick thrown at my white face on the bus, the attempted rape-- still approach every black person as an individual. And what do I get in return? Treated like a “racist” white person by racist blacks - spit at, run off the sidewalk, barricading the subway doors and still I refuse to hate these racist people.
I was accused of being racist by a well trained student for not letting her exempt from my writing class because she couldn’t write. Kangaroo trial. Blatantly discriminatory statement by HR: SHE doesn’t have to provide evidence-- all that matters is the way she felt.
Keep enabling this bs, white people--
There was an incident a few years ago over “racist” Halloween decorations. A “healing workshop” took place at the YMCA. “Healing” meant denigrating the mostly white participants for an hour. This Topsy had nothing healing to say.
I will continue to judge people as individuals but I have a funny feeling I know why Africa isn’t up to snuff.
I received a job settlement for black racism about 15 years ago. They were so arrogant, that they didn't even try to hide it, confident that they could get away with it. Today, they could have gotten away with it.
I would be very surprised if "black people score high in narcissistic traits" but not at all surprised if people such as the DEI instructor mentioned in this article do score highly.
It’s quite evident in current “discourse” that there’s rampant malignant DARVO narcissism in this population: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656611000912#:~:text=That%20is%2C%20Black%20individuals%20may%20express%20highly%20positive%20self%2Dviews,psychodynamic%20mask%20model%20of%20narcissism.
What a great find! I will definitely be sharing this around.
The authors make several assumptions, right off the bat, that I seriously question. Without going into too much detail and making this an essay, I'll just say that, given that blacks report higher self esteem than anyone else and that that is not characteristic of oppressed, marginalized populations, my first reaction would be to question whether blacks are currently oppressed or marginalized to any meaningful extent.
A strident narcissistic trait is to play victim in order to control the alleged “oppressor.” They also distort meaning and intentions for personal gain. White people are at their mercy when speaking to them. A notorious incident at an artist’s colony in the early aughts comes to mind, when a question that everyone asks everyone was asked of black writer Sapphire: How did you get in? Or something to this effect—commentary on the overall exclusivity— for everyone— she made a scene, all kinds of accusations, and basically did to this poor gay white male poet what was done to the subject of this essay. I’ve seen and experienced too much of this to trust them to act charitably in good faith. So goes the warning re narcissists in general: RUN!
Taking certain groups’ reported answers at face value is a sign that you should study that group’s psyche more deeply.
This is it exactly. Oppressed people don’t act this.
Narcissism is epidemic. Primarily, it is characterized by a lack of empathy and can usually be traced to childhood neglect or abuse. I would be very surprised if blacks in America didn't score high in narcissism as the traditional black family is all but gone in America.
That’s a very social-constructionist belief. Do you have any evidence for causality?
Surely you're not questioning the importance of a healthy family in raising a healthy person.
It's possible that the children would share heritable traits that cause pro-social behavior running in some families, and misfit behavior running in others.
Well, I guess it's just wild and crazy and un-evidenced to believe that children are affected by their upbringing, too. Just nuts! Where's our evidence? Honestly.
And that a high percentage are raised by single mothers exploiting the government. Now that wouldn't have an effect on their psyche, would it...
Josh, it speaks volumes that in order to make a point, you need to lie about what I said.
I'm not lying. That's actually how I see your logic carried out. If I misunderstand you, I'm happy to be corrected and admit that. But I'm not "lying." I genuinely, honestly, absolutely for real think that my extrapolation is the logical endpoint of what you said. You find it incredible that anyone could claim that bad childhood treatment could lead to narcissism? That's, well, that's actually exactly what happens.
Is it that you think I'm a liberal? Do you think I'm excusing the behavior of blacks? Is that what makes you think I'm "lying"? If so, I'm not so excusing.
I probably should have said 'often' rather than 'usually'. It's also often posited that being spoiled can lead to narcissism and there there may be an underlying genetic disposition to it.
As far as being "social constructionist," that would only apply if your contention is that narcissism is an immutable characteristic, at least in the current academic sense of the term. "Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts (Subramaniam 2010)."
Psychology has been largely captured by such postmodernist nonsense so it's always wise to be wary of that bias, but you can't just ignore it all. Here is an article that, in my experience and opinion, best sums up what narcissism actually is although it doesn't focus on causal factors, which can only really be guessed at--pretty much like most things in psychology.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-is-2020/201701/the-true-roots-narcissism
I’m not surprised that you used an article by a jewish, OPENLY anti-White, pro-feminist psychologist who promotes the idea that there is such a thing as toxic masculinity.
Nor am I surprised that you acknowledged the capture of psychology by “postmodernism” (quite a euphemism there, lol. Like referring to black criminal mobs as “teens”), yet immediately - in the next sentence, no less - made an appeal to an authority of a jewish fella who promotes that same ideological agenda.
The reason I’m not surprised is that so many of our ideas have been given to us by the same people who get called “postmodernists,” “Marxists,” “leftists,” etc.
When your idea of evidence is to look for essays written by self-promoting ideologues - in other words, when you resort to “so-and-so says” - it should be a red flag to yourself that 1) you have a big gap in your knowledge base, and 2) you are opening yourself to ideologues rather than seeking direct knowledge.
You’re right that blacks do display personality traits that can be described as narcissistic. You’re mistaken about why.
They aren’t that way because of the absence of the black family. They are that way everywhere they live. It IS innate. Temperament is highly heritable and there are distinct racial differences in temperament that exist independently of culture.
(con’t)
When you hear a story that a Good Samaritan stopped to help a man and woman who had a flat tire, and they inexplicably beat him to death and stole his car (there are multiple cases of this happening), you don’t visualize a young black man stopping and a middle aged White or Japanese couple beating him to death.
You’re aware of racial temperaments. You just need to erase the programming that was done to you by the same people you call “postmodernists.”
I chose that article because I largely agree with what it says. Not being a bigot, I didn't give a fuck what his religion is or that he may have other positions I disagree with. You should try that some time.
Why would you be surprised?
Because people are basically the same.
Poor Mr. Bilkszto. Unfortunately, his encounter with anti-White racism in the school system is painfully common. We have tolerated mad Black Supremacist and Rad Fem bullies among professors for too long; if anyone did this to a black woman they would rightfully lose their job or perhaps go to jail.
Capitalization is a minor but irritating game they play. Some years back I noticed that in books published prior to the 1960s either neither race was capitalized or it was Black and White out of respect. The leftists capitalize just Black where I am from so I have started capitalizing both (I seem to have forgotten in the above comment). It's a personal choice and I understand why you don't like to capitalize; a lack of a capital does make skin color into an attribute of ethnicity like "brown-eyed" or "fair-haired" rather than the main identifying feature
Best regards
quote “This incident is being weaponized to discredit and suppress the work of everyone committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. unquote.
So in the process of diversity, equity and inclusion, she destroys a man who happened to be white.
She rationalises her abusive behaviour and now plays the victim, long after her victim is dead.
Yes, I thought it was the ultimate in cruelty, selfishness, and hatred to mention that about how a man's death--at least partly in direct response to her strident verbal attack--was being exploited to prevent her and her colleagues from killing more white men. Wow, the coldness. If she had simply expressed sorrow, even without apology, it would have had a smidgeon of basic decency.
She's a sick little kitty, which is why she's psychotically cattish.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Thanks for the background. Even without the facts, I was suspicious of the celebration of Biltszto as someone who resisted. His suicide seemed, to me, to be more evidence of atonement for his sins against the narrative than resistance of any kind.
Even the supposedly incendiary comments he made were simply his assessment that the DEI movement had actually achieved some successes. It was hardly criticism of any sort.
The poor guy was a dupe, for sure, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't support a wrongful death suit against Ojo-Thompson and the university, as well. Isn't it the woke crowd that's always whining about the 'existential threat' of bullying? Well, they literally bullied this poor sap to death. Let them pay.
This is just evidence of how narrow-minded the education system is, and how little the wiggle room for disagreement. There's no room for nuance or discussion within an institution when the smallest deviation will be judged as heresy, and hence there is no room to "hide" by pretending to go along with the main narrative while trying to reform the system from within; someday the narrative shifts and you may blurt something out that will get you excommunicated. Thousands of young women who weren't comfortable supported LGBT because they were afraid to get excommunicated and they still got called TERFs when they suggested it was wrong for pre-op men with a rap sheet to use the same bathroom as them.
In the case of men like Mr. Biltszto, they are (in my experience) conditioned to keep their heads down and act as submissive as a woman under the Taliban. It was already common back when I volunteered at a school for male teachers to make self-deprecating statements about themselves to get along with their feminist female colleagues, for example, much to the discomfort of male students. This isn't to dunk male teachers. Most of them are excellent at their jobs. Many are also true believers and sincerely care about getting that immigrant girl who comes from a conservative country and thinks she is destined to become a housewife to care about her math score; in this way they have probably done more for girls than their feminist counterparts who focused on pushing politics. But after years of living like that, and having that be your life, I think it is difficult to not internalize the self-hating element of the politics in some way. What might have been poor Richard's mistake is also feeling proud of his achievements. He was happy that his country was improving, by the standards he believed were the right ones, and to the people who hated him for his skin that was unacceptable.
Yes, absolutely agree. Well said.
Imagine the outcry if a black woman committed suicide after being shamed and bullied for her race and sex by arrogant white men.
Your comment prompted me into imagining such a scenario. I found it almost impossible. Only a couple of days ago I witnessed a black woman board a train largely full of white men on their way to a rugby match (in one of the few areas of the UK where such a passenger is still a rarity): three of the men quite independently and invisibly to each other rose simultaneously to offer their seats. Gynocentrism and oikophobia are perhaps the true 'fragility'.
There would be outrage even if she committed homicide. It would be seen as justified, even if they might not come right out and say it publicly, as a response to systemic oppression.
Thank you, Janice, for this excellent analysis. Something that you don't mention, which I think deserves highlighting, is that Bilkszto suffered so deeply from this shaming because he was fundamentally a good man who deeply wanted to do right by others. A man who didn't care, or who was indeed bigoted, would not have been affected much by the bullying. It is, in my opinion, the fact that identity politics and wokeness are weaponized directly at good people that makes them so profoundly evil. I mean that literally. We are facing evil in feminine form here. We are familiar with evil in masculine form, but not with its feminine manifestation. I wrote my first book, "The Hand That Rocks the World," to make this case.
Thank you, David (and apologies for being so slow to reply; writing this essay bothered me so much that I put off reading most of the comments). I agree with you that this is evil in feminine form, and that it wouldn't work if men like Richard Bilkszto weren't fundamentally decent.
That's the key to the success of DEI -- actual hateful bigots would respond to such accusations with a "who cares?" and continue their violence and oppression.
Yes, Trish. So what is happening here is that good, caring, unprejudiced people are being accused and shamed relentlessly if they deny the accusation, while the few actual racists are unaffected. This is perverse in the extreme, which is why I label it evil.
David, I agree with your assessment.
Janice what you have written it the classic use of techniques related to "Relational Aggression" and Mobbing.
I am glad you said what I sometimes have thought, people who make a stand, sometimes are not equipped to withstand the level of bullying and vitriol that follows. This is why I think and feel the reason many people mostly of the male gender hide in the trenches hoping that they won't come for them.
Many are not equipped, Phillip, because the response is so often vicious and humiliating and inhumane beyond what decent people can even imagine. Good people are particularly vulnerable because the hatred shocks them so much. I would not want to go through what Richard Bilkszto did, and although I am sure I would not kill myself in response, I know it would hurt me and change me.
And where do you find a therapist to help you who isn't, quietly or loudly, a green haired moral monster?
"Many are not equipped", sadly that is very true and even people who are equipped have a very hard time of it.
Part of the reason I think especially in Western Societies we live very safe lives, so when something really bad happens to us people usually don't have the skills to manage it.
The saddest thing about people who suicide is that if they take it one day at a time, the feeling will eventually pass. But even those who are in the helping fields are more vulnerable to committing suicide than the general population.
The guy was asking questions in good faith. He had no idea of what was coming. It was completely out of his life experience. He would have been in a deep state of shock and probably hardly aware of what he was doing when he jumped. I know that feeling from when I was on the receiving end of workplace bullying.
It is unimaginably horrific.
Especially if the jumper, on the way down, realises suicide is a grave mistake.
Great opinion piece Janice. My understanding is that in general men & women deal with conflict differently. Men use face to face, direct confrontation. Women use more subtle and non-confrontational tactics. Such as relational aggression, mobbing mentioned along with Isolation. I'm not a social scientist so my explanation is very simplified. However, the way women deal with conflict works quite well in an office or corporate environment. However, men have a very difficult time coping with this type of conflict. If men use the form of conflict that comes natural, they will be punished. I think it leaves men very frustrated and very vulnerable.. The DEI person we are discussing is using that subtle conflict style thats very difficult to resist in a group setting.
I used to work in a large corporation. The DEI policies were initiated by the board of directors. An elite group of "diverse" people who were chosen from a small pool of candidates. Many probably knew each other before joining the board. Thomas Sowell said that its easy for the elites to make these crazy decisions from on high because they are unaffected by the consequences of their actions.. As more and more employees became disenchanted and resentful due to the DEI indoctrination sessions, it was HR and management that had to deal with the repercussions.
I agree that it's very difficult for a typical man to respond to this kind of relational aggression. If it had happened to a woman, she would at least have had an idea how to find allies in her workplace or at least outside of work. She would likely have had a more advanced vocabulary for talking about how it hurt her and why it was so unfair. Most men don't have that vocabulary and don't necessarily find useful that kind of talking out of feelings. Unfortunately, relational aggression seems to be becoming more and more common in many workplace settings.
Finding allies is what I call the Dingo pack, in your country it would be the wolf pack.
You are correct in that your gender has a more advanced vocabulary, even my daughter when she was little had a more advanced vocabulary than my son.
So you're in Oz, Phillip? Or perhaps in that area of South Asia from whence the dingo was brought to Australia?
Yeah I am in Oz, reading about dingo packs attacking their prey, they take it in turns, just like wolves or the wild dogs of the Sahara.
In Nursing, I noticed that if one of the female nurses is pissed off with someone she will find out who are her allies and then they gang up on the person using very covert tactics to make their life miserable.
It can involve the cold shoulder, being hypercritical of something, being too busy to provide assistance, etc.
Half Newfie; "women deal with conflict works quite well in an office or corporate environment."
Sorry to burst your bubble on that one, but within the field of Nursing, indirect aggression does not work well and it is known as "Horizontal Violence" within the nursing field and is a major contributor to hospital mishaps, nurses suicided, nurses suicide rate is 4 times that of the normal female population. "Horizontal Violence" in nursing creates a toxic culture and is a major factor in why nurses leave the profession.
The Mean Girls of ER https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/a14211/mean-girls-of-the-er/
If you read Myrna Blythe book "Spin Sisters" she show that the undercurrents that happen with female interaction.
A book I only recently became aware of even though it was first publish in 2003, is "In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women: Why We Hurt Each Other and How to Stop".
Interestingly search engines will not show this book if the words "In the Company of Women" as used as a parameter.
thank you Phillip! Point taken.. I'm familiar with the situation with nursing and its brutal.. I have been told by some female nurses that they were glad to see men get into the profession. They said it was an equalizer.. I've never heard of the term 'Horizontal Violence' before..
My thought was that with non-confrontational conflict resolution it can be more difficult for management to explicitly identify the victim & victimizer. Particularly if the conflict involves male & female. Their is still an empathy gap that biases against men... Its very important to note that these are generalizations...
Thankyou. You might have just helped me with a suicidal character in a play I have in mind.
I just read a few pages of "In the company of women". I really wonder how they can write that 95% of women were bullied by other women without analyzing who did the bullying? They also seem to have the normal "females are victims" approach, as did the Marie Claire article.
Joyce Benenson's "Warriors and Worriers" is better I think since it analyzes the evolutionary roots and is quite even handed. But even she cannot completely escape the victim mentality in the section about Worriers.
Peter, I laughed out loud (in chagrin) when I got to a point in the Marie Claire article saying that the reason women bully is because they have been victimized by men!
Peter this may interest you;
quote<Starting gate Rescuers (SGR) see themselves as “helpers” and “caretakers.” They need someone to rescue (victim) in order to feel vital and important. It's difficult for SGR’s to recognize themselves as ever being in a victim position – they’re the ones with the answers after all.>unquote.
There is a paper by Barbara Leckie, "Double-Edged Sword of Exclusion and Rejection." Girls Bullying Behaviours and Peer Relationships", what struck me was the similarities between the bullying behaviour of school girls and that of nurses.
I will have to look up "Warriors and Worriers" but you raise an interesting point about the victim mentality, I wonder if this is used to stimulate the protective reaction from men, men who are the rescuers.
There is the Karpman drama triangle of Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor.
Interesting paper. Skimming it seems to confirm what Benenson says.
Funny, I am 65 but this stuff is a lot more complicated than I thought. Men seem to have mostly figured out how to handle their aggression and strength with laws and enforcement but I do not think women have figured out how to handle the female pathologies. With the increasing feminization of society, it is not unimportant for our common welfare that they do this quickly.
I find this also. There is no problem in society with recognizing the danger of male aggression and potential for violence. We have put in place systems and customs to recognize and control it. Female aggression, on the other hand, is often not even recognized. If it is, it is minimized and justified.
Exactly. However, accountability is a masculine, not a feminine trait, and so I don't expect that women will voluntarily hold themselves accountable, the way that men did starting in the 60s. I wrote my first book, "The Hand That Rocks the World", to document female social power and its contemporary pathologies.
In the near future, I will be writing an article along that vein.
I agree with what you are saying, the issue with "Horizontal Violence" was first researched in the 1980's and the issue instead of decreasing has increased experientially in perhaps the last 15 years.
There is a book "Venus the Dark Side" that I put off buying and even after I bought it, it sat on my shelf for a fair while. My biggest fear was that it was going to "trigger me" but after reading it told me nothing I had not figured put by myself.
I've recently been using a new (at least new to me) search engine called Luxxle, and using those words, I did find the book. I find Luxxle to be a pretty good searhc engine so far, much better that the Intersectionality Goggles that Google has become.
You have to examine motives to understand if a strategy works well or not. If "Horizontal Violence" is employed as a means to compete with others and rise to the top of the hierarchy, it probably works quite well.
I am grateful for these titles. This is a key issue of our day.
I should add it took me decades to understand, what was being said. I didn't hear, until I started looking and researching.
The problem with covert behaviour, is that it is covert, not easily noticeable there is a sense something is going on, that is not obvious.
Women in academia can be especially vicious but it’s “never clear what’s going on.”
I have met perhaps more than my fair share, working as a nurse. Perhaps one advantage of being a male is that I was not aware most of the time, sometimes I had a sense something was going on, but didn't really care one way or another, that is until it wore me down.
Now you got me started, the nitpicking.
Working in a Surgical ward, giving injections is a regular occurrence and occasionally I would misplace the plastic sheath for the needle and it gets lost in the bed linen somewhere.
I don't have time to search high and low and it is a low priority.
Some nurses would find that plastic sheath and instead of just putting it in a bin they would walk whatever distance it was to find me and go "You left this behind!" I didn't care it was a non-issue for me. Now I realise what they were actually doing.
There are the hyper exaggerations "You left a room in a mess!" when there may have been an empty chips wrapper in a bin. They simply could have taken the wrapper out of the bin and disposed of it in another bin.
This type of behaviour is reflected in households all around the world, she wants him to do more housework, but he is not doing it the way she wants it done. Take folding towels she likes them folded one way and he folds them his way.
The obsessive-compulsiveness I am just starting to realise.
Sadly some of the stories I would like to share publicly would end up getting me sued.
It is insidious.
One I will share.
I was on night duty in an Intensive Care unit and my patient, who was on a ventilator with a tube inserted to help her breathe. The doctors wanted for that tube to be withdrawn 2 centimetres. As an X-ray it showed that it had been inserted too far in and was at risk of entering the right main bronchus.
This is a two-person procedure. The team leader walked past the cubicle after her tea break and I asked her for her assistance.
She said she was going to check with the Nurse in charge first and then come back. I waited and she did not come back. I was about to ring her when my patient had a medical emergency because the oxygen levels plummeted as the ETT (breathing tube) had migrated into her right main bronchus.
I then pushed the emergency buzzer and help arrived, the tube was withdrawn 2 centimetres and the crisis was resolved. I was absolutely furious because if I had had the assistance that was needed in the first place, the crisis would have been avoided.
I then reported to the Nurse in charge who was male, what transpired and that I had asked for assistance, and it got turned on me, that I should have rung him earlier.
Perhaps it's more difficult not notice shady behavior by a particular group if the accepted narrative about that group is that they are the embodiment of kindness and compassion (while their opposites are all things cruel and abusive).
This. I am an academic in a helping field, with a reputation for caring. My experience is exactly the opposite.
That is so true. Take the nurse in Stephen King's book Misery. She was the embodiment of kindness and caring while being abusive and inflicting pain.
It causes Cognitive Dissonance, an intellectual and emotional conflict that took me in particular a long time to resolve.
King's protagonists are the real side of his progressive politics.
Sometimes the author exposes more of themselves through the characters they write about.
For example the Criticism of Peterson often tells us more about the critic than the actual substance (if there is any) of their criticism.
First of all…”koan-like”…well thats my new word for the month…I can’t wait to pull it off during a hallway consult!
Janice, this was so well done I HAD to read it twice to make sure I wasn’t misreading your drift. Thank You doesn’t quite cover it.
I’ll probably take some flack for this, but St Scott Adams was spot on. This is heading in only one direction. There, I said it and I’m glad I said it!
Yes, Chuck, I agree. I feel the same way about Adams' common sense statement. I wish to stay as far away as possible from people who hate me because I'm white. I also wish to stay as far away as possible from people who justify that hatred, whether they're white or black, etc. For years, I tried to understand, empathize, self-reflect, educate myself, accept 'reparations,' listen and learn. Finally I realized that the continual inner resistance/rebellion, the insistent quiet questioning of all the lies and double standards I was being forced to adopt--could not be quelled. I gave it up. Guilty no more.
Thanks for being the Stand-Up Thinker and Voice I’ve always known you to be😊!
"koan-like" is good, although 'oxymoronic' conveys a more personal sentiment.
Well that’s true but, why take a chance on biting my tongue when ‘Koan-like’ checks all the same boxes😊… and no one I know has ever used the word before!
Thanks for the vocabulary enrichment. I've actually been searching for a word or phrase to describe my take on the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac and I think 'koan' fits the bill.
From my perspective, and mind I’m not well versed in things biblical at all, the most interesting thing about the story is why Abraham didn’t have a full fanatic freak out when God told him to take Issac up the mountain and let him have it in the first place.
That must have been because child sacrifice was common at the time I bet.
No, I seriously doubt it was common among the Hebrews, at least.
The story just has no rational explanation. Every aspect of it raises questions that have no logical explanation if you accept the tenets of Judaism. It's like a lesson in intellectual humility.
The only problem arises when 'koan' is heard not written, and you risk the wrath of the ADL.
Haha. Never thought of that.
Ha…I get it…I’ll make sure I specify the spelling!
Whites are prone to guilt. Some psychologists attribute this to evolution: i.e., whites evolved in a cold climate that required substantial group cooperation for winter survival, which led to an egalitarian ethic that included guilt as a means to control selfishness. Blacks are easily able to exploit this guilt, especially among progressive whites. In addition, few whites are willing to consider group differences in intelligence, so they fall prey to the “miasma” theory of racism that explains all disparities as the result of an invisible racism.
The theory of systemic racism - and patriarchy - is very similar to primitive theories of magic. In primitive theories of magic, all adverse events or situations are blamed on the evil eye.
You mean christians, not whites.
Wokeism is a quasi-religious movement that reflects the psychology of more egalitarian and guilt prone whites. Christianity reflects this egalitarian psychology, too, but it lives on in secular whites because it’s likely genetic in origin.
I think it's far more a cultural trait that is pervasive in Europe and North America. The Japanese, on the other hand, are far more likely to be motivated by shame than guilt.
In my opinion, the concept of 'white guilt' is intended to shame white people and has little to do with actual guilt. Guilt is about what you did and shame is about what you are. Clearly, 'white guilt' is about what white people are, as an identity, and not about any individual white person's actions.
Wokeness is all about obfuscation of meaning. You can never take wokeisms at face value.
I lived in asia for several years. Shame there is felt when people find out publicly about some behavior that goes against community standards. Guilt is a learned self degradation victims feel when their belief code is violated. No one needs to know what you did to feel guilt. Shame cultures are collective and nothing is immoral as long as the shit you pull isn’t made public.
I would argue that shame is often the reason people keep things that they are ashamed of secret so that no one ever knows about them. People can be deeply ashamed of things about themselves even when this perception is not reinforced by others who are aware.
For example, you might be ashamed of being a coward, a homosexual, having a birth defect, or any number of things that don't require you to do anything or for anyone to know those things about you. Typically, though, guilt is about something you did that you wish you hadn't, particularly if it negatively affected others.
It's also quite possible to feel guilt and shame simultaneously if you, for instance, fail to come to someone's aid because you are afraid, and then that person suffers because of your inaction.
I had that up bringing too, though my dad communicated through his actions that it was just pro forma bullshit. I decided in my 20s after looking at the evidence and reading the texts that Christian theology, as well as Buddhism were useless for getting ahead. It’s sticking to Judeo Christianity. That makes people feel guilty. I shucked that shit off sometime ago and never look back. There is nothing genetic about dumb ass religious ideas, woke or not.
Jesus, what this comment section is turning into.
Jesus, indeed!
You don't think Jews are prone to guilt? They practically hold the patent.
You think I shoulda led with white Jews… I was trying to be, ya know, inclusive! But yeah, in the old days, Jews would have held the patent. But my Catholic cousins had a corner on that street too!
White Jews? You mean converts?
No I was conflating the two to ease the convo.
That’s a whopper of a conflation. The ADL got Whoopi Goldberg kicked off her own show for two weeks for saying jews are White people.
Confession has a way of bringing out the guilt.
There’s a joke about that actually!
Who is behind DEI and slo-mo White genocide? It's not Blacks: without someone pulling their strings, they can barely organize a carjacking. And anyways they don't have the money, the huge piles of money behind this, behind tranny schoolteachers grooming, behind Open Borders, behind the USA 'Democratic' Party and most of the Republicans. So who? They're not White, they're not Christian, they're 'Fellow White People', and our cultures and countries decayed as they achieved their Ascendancy over us: we weakened and sickened as they waxed fat and vaunted their chutzpah.
The wealth of the many accrues to the greed of the few, or the one.
Race is tactical, not strategic. It's right there in their Postmodernisr creed that everything is about power. Wokeism is an elitist scheme to consolidate power into fewer and fewer hands and homogenize the masses into weak and paranoid slaves.
Race is core strategy for them: it's right there in their Torah: they are the Chosen People, and we are their golems, exist to serve them. This is typical for tribal religions; theirs should have died out long ago with the rest of them, but they've kept it and their evil 'Yahweh' demon very much alive. The problem isn't people who happen to be born into it: it's the ones who embrace their Ascendancy over us, and the fellow-travelers who are the sea they swim in.
Wow! I think I just had a BitChute flashback.
Jews are prone to guilt but they are also ethnocentric to an extent that whites are not.
If you're referring to observant Jews, maybe, although Mormons, the Amish, and others can be pretty ethnocentric, too. Either way, I don't believe there's a racial or genetic component to it.
From Merriam Webster:
ethnocentrism
noun
eth·no·cen·trism ˌeth-nō-ˈsen-ˌtri-zəm
: the attitude that one's own group, ethnicity, or nationality is superior to others
The definition is broader than you claim it is. Ethnocentrism can be discriminatory based on race, ancestry, etc. but it need not be. One could even make the claim, with perfect utility, that multiculturalism is an ethnicity.
The Semitic religions all champion guilt as a method of control.
…and the endless study of whys and wherefores of that pays off in the need to be introspective, no?
It is an entirely different type of guilt and it is over entirely different things. Theirs is a very selfish, self-centered, and self-important sort of guilt.
You sound like a sweetheart…let’s sit down over a beer sometime!
Mr. Goldman, did I hit a nerve? I didn’t mean to.
More importantly, was what I said untrue?
Not even at point blank…
Historical perspective and chronology are everything in that discussion… you now have all you need to figure it out on your own.
‘Whites are prone to guilt’…as any well educated, faith based individual, taught the value of introspection, and in control of their impulses might be!
Guilt is a very useful feeling if you have something to feel guilt about. Free floating guilt? Not so much.
To feel guilty or pride for an immutable characteristic is neurotic, fantasy thinking. You would have to be getting some intrinsic/extrinsic reward for it.
Some quotations from American conservative author and commentator William F Buckley Jr (1925-2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley_Jr. seem relevant here:
The so-called conservative, uncomfortably disdainful of controversy, seldom has the energy to fight his battles, while the radical, so often a member of the minority, exerts disproportionate influence because of his dedication to his cause.
"God and Man at Yale", 1951
Liberalism cannot sustain our civilization on the little it has to offer. It is sustaining the majority of our intellectuals, but that proves easier than holding together the world.
"Up from Liberalism", 2nd ed, 1968
The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks, and extremists this side of the giggle house.
"On the Right", 1967
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk
CAMPAIGN FOR MERIT IN BUSINESS
http://c4mb.uk
His suicide is proof of his guilt to these DEI psychopaths.
I wonder how they feel about this principle they have staked out previously:
"While the intent may not be to harm, we must acknowledge impact."
Oh, the intent here was definitely to harm.
Yes, now that the shoe is on the other foot, I wonder too!!!! Good catch.
I hope they aren't, but if anyone reading this is contemplating suicide, please remember that well over 90% of people who intend to kill themselves but are stopped, or fail, never decide to try again. Suicide is a fleeting impulse to a solvable problem.
If you won't listen to me, here's an excerpt from an article I read about people who survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge that has haunted me ever since:
"Survivors often regret their decision in midair...On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over...Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
https://archive.ph/oy2Nd
Survivors often regret their decision in midair. I don't see why we should think people who didn't survive were any different.
The key point, as you suggest, is that this man was a collaborator not a resistor. He went along with the DEI ideology for years, until it finally turned on him in the form of the thuggish Ojo-Thompson. You have to confront this ludicrous ideology early and call it out for what it is, not wait until it's too late.
On this topic, I recommend a book called 'Whiteness: the Original Sin' by Jim Goad. It's highly entertaining and intelligent.
Thank you, Janice. Anti-white racism is as much a part of leftist ideology as man-hating feminism is. Sometimes bloggers on Psychology Today combine anti-white racism with anti-male feminism by using slurs such as "white male privilege" - which ignores the fact that white men account for 75% of U.S. suicides.