Max's Musings
Turns out you can test the character of a society much the same as you would with an individual: offer something for nothing.
Time for another installment of “Max’s Musings,” where I deliver quick takes on a variety of related and unrelated topics, as well as highlight the silliness and stupidity of leftists.
But first, marvel at the photo leading off this entry. Taken while Artemis II went around the Moon, it just blows the mind and the soul. To think that’s where we are and who we are, everything we know and love, the totality of all the makes up the human experience, against the vast emptiness of space… your brain itself suddenly empties.
The photo was compared to the iconic “Earthrise” shot taken while Apollo 8 orbited the Moon in December 1968:
Both photographs were taken during a time of great tumult for both the United States and the world. But you couldn’t tell just from looking at Earth. Even without humans, the world isn’t a peaceful place. Yet, if I were to happen upon this planet while exploring the universe, my first reaction would be, “That looks like a nice place to be.”
Anyway, let’s begin.
Liberalism’s Incompatibility With Darwinism
An X account calling itself “Deep Psychology” says:
Well, sure. Animals, unlike humans, are Darwinistic. Weaknesses is ruthlessly punished. Humans, on the other hand, have chosen to protect the weak to the point where it may not even beneficial to do so. I’m not saying the weak shouldn’t be protected, but there’s a difference between this versus allowing them to lead the rest of us, which we so often do as humans.
Respondents might say there’s a differences between intelligence and strength. Well sure, but the problem is that the premise stated in the post above is false. Animals demonstrably don’t select for intelligence. They select for strength. It’s actually humans who select for intelligence. But if you select for intelligence only and not strength, you end up with weak men and women leading the rest of us. Likewise, if you select for only for strength but not intelligence, you get brutes running the show. Intelligence and strength are positive traits, but they’re not virtues in it of themselves.
Another big difference is that animals are constantly fighting for survival. So are humans, but civilization has made day-to-day living such a sure thing, most of us aren’t conscious to that fact. The consequences of failure are far more forgiving. For animals, not so much. Therefore, animals cannot afford to worry about whether their leader is a person of color, sexual minority, or any of that nonsense. Neither can humans, actually, in times of genuine crisis. The one most capable of taking power and wielding it becomes leader, always. It’s humans who’ve turned the art of picking leaders into an overly complex, fraught, nonsensical affair.
I’m not sure what point Deep Psychology was trying to make. If they think humans ought to pick its leaders in accordance with Darwinistic principles, fine, sure. But I don’t think they’d be happy with who’d become leaders under a more animalistic order.
In another X post echoing similar themes:
Two things can be true: many wars have been fought in the name of religion and our societies would’ve been far more Darwinistic if not for religion. If not for religion, people like DJ Vlad wouldn’t have been allowed to exist. The only reason his life has value, which is never inherent, is thanks to religion. It’s religion which ascribes inherent value.
One more related X post:
You can test someone’s commitment to the theory of evolution by asking them if its the reason why gender roles exist and why men and women behave and think differently. If they disagree or reject the question altogether, which they so often do, they don’t actually believe in evolution. Since liberals reject the idea of gender roles, as well as any notion that men and women act or think differently or that they even should, this makes belief in evolution incompatible with liberalism.
In turn, this implies most of these people with lower levels of racism and prejudice probably don’t genuinely believe in evolution. Like most things, it’s a status-marker, a way to signal to everyone they’re on the “right” side, that they’re not one of those religious freaks, who always seem to be Christians, by the way, even though it’s far from the only faith whose belief in the origins of humanity stem from something other than evolution.
And no, one need not be a racist to believe in evolution. But to be an evolution-believer is to acknowledge that not all races evolved in exactly the same way. They just didn’t. The evidence is quite clear. The same people who refuse to believe this are the same people who readily acknowledge some races - non-Whites, specifically - are better at many things. They just can never be worse at anything.
The world is full of contradictions, but liberals promoting Darwinism or claiming to believe in evolution is the one which makes me laugh most of all. The fact that they don’t even realize that promoting Darwinism puts them in league with the Nazis, for whom social Darwinism was a core tenant, makes it infinitely more comical. Everything they hate is why they’re even here with us today. Not because they’re so much better humans than the rest of us.
“Our Values Are Barbaric”
Look at what was done to multiple memorial murals to Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian immigrant murdered by a feral black multi-time felon:
Upper-left is in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Zarutska lived and was murdered. Really, why would anyone vandalize these murals? The only reason I can imagine is that they really don’t like the idea of victims at the hands of blacks and other protected classes like illegal immigrants being memorialized. Sometimes, it’s just that simple. It’s a reminder to liberals of the failures of their policies, the total bankruptcy of their political thinking.
As you might imagine, they had excuses. In Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Brett Smiley defended the removal of a mural honoring Zarutska:
Divisive. Ugly. Meanwhile, this, also found in Providence, is what, exactly?
One of the reasons I became radicalized was when I realized none of our lives really matter, even as women, even as people of color, even as immigrants, unless they can be politicized. We’re all expendable when it comes to the official ideology of the land. We’ll be dispensed with and forgotten in the name of ensuring that ideology remains supreme, that no avenue for challenging dogma remains open.
A far-left Rhode Island state representative makes it clear what their values are:
Of course not. David Morales’ values are barbarism, criminality, and savagery. He’d know. Show me your heroes, I’ll show you your values.
Yes, Pop Culture Is Manufactured
Rock icon Billy Corgan, lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins, says aloud something that I’ve believed for many years:
Many essays ago, I noted how popular rock music was in the 2000s. Yet, as Corgan points out, by the late 1990s, there was already a concerted effort to diminish the exposure of rock music among cultural trend-setters. I recall that it became increasingly difficult to hear rock music on MTV, again to Corgan’s point, and we had to go to other music outlets like VH1 or the then-new Fuse TV for rock. By the mid-2010s, hip-hop, R&B, pop, and EDM were dominating the airwaves and the charts. This, despite the fact rock remained the most popular genre in music.
It’s important to contextualize this popularity, however. It remains the most popular genre among older Americans, and older Americans comprise the majority of the population. However, the music industry is always focused on the youth. We now have a generation with barely a memory, at best, of a time when rock music was still prominent in our culture. This generation has been brought up in a world where rock music was either for old people or “alternative” music, literally.
But why did youth music preferences shift so markedly away from rock? Trends rarely shift overnight. Rock was, within living memory, hugely popular among youth as well as older adults. Even in the early 2010s, rock was still sharing space on the chart with other genres. As Billy Corgan says, however, rock wasn’t really permitted a voice in the cultural discourse. If anything, rock became the ultimate “shut up and sing” genre.
Why does this matter? It matters because it proves how American culture isn’t organic. It’s manufactured. It’s become entirely commodified, and what’s been commodified can be sold and replaced at will. Corgan points out in the same interview that rap is now losing prominence, an observation I’ve made as well. Why things gain and lose popularity isn’t exactly something that can be scientifically explained. But I also think there’s a reason why what you see and hear is referred to as “programming.”
When there’s a divergence between what’s popular among the people and what’s promoted by culture, something’s up.
The Folly Of Free
Speaking of rock, ever notice they don’t do free concerts anymore? I’m not talking about some local cover band comprised of Boomers or Xers playing in the park every weekend. Once upon a time within living memory, big-time acts put on free shows, until one day, they didn’t. Why’d it stop?
There are many reasons. The most important one, in my view, is the fact they’re free to begin with. I’ll let YouTube channel Rock N’ Roll True Stories explain (video cued to start):
He’s right. Paying for something means you’ve invested something, that you’re assuming risk. We treat their own property with more regard than that of others simply because it’s ours to lose. Obviously, we all know better than to treat what belongs to others with total disregard. But we don’t treat it with the same level of attentiveness and care as we do with our own stuff, either.
It’s the same reason why public spaces don’t seem as nice as private spaces. If you had a public swimming pool and a private swimming pool side-by-side, it’s more likely the latter will be much cleaner and of better quality. Since public spaces belong to everyone, nobody’s really responsible for it, either. Except the government, maybe, but since when does the government take responsibility for anything?
Sure, not everyone treats their investments well. People’s homes and cars are messy. But those messy in private tend to be just as messy out in public. There isn’t as big a gap between public and private behavior as we like to think. We may be loathe to admit it, but we’re all a little messier when using a public restroom than our own bathroom, because, well, someone else is supposed to clean it up. It comes at no loss to us if we make a mess. It’s a terrible way of thinking, but we are who we are. Likewise, if we have to pay to attend an event such as a concert, we behave ourselves because if we get kicked out for not following the rules, we’ve lost the investment.
We’ve come to regard giving away free stuff as an act of virtue. Sometimes, it is. But not if it comes at the cost of reinforcing people’s worst inclinations. In fact, one of the best arguments against giving anything away for free is the bad behavior it incentivizes. If you don’t need to pay for something, why wait in line for it, either? Might as well just cut in front of everyone else and take what you want. It’s the same in the end, either way.
If you want people to value something, you need to make them pay for it. Everyone, liberals included, would prefer to live in a high-trust society. But a high-trust society also promotes honor as a chief virtue. You cannot build a deep reservoir of trust nor honor in a society unless people believe they have something to lose. A society where people feel as though they have nothing to lose will instead breed entitlement.
Once you incentivize a culture of entitlement, then not only does nothing hold any value, nothing’s truly yours or mine, either. The saying “There’s no honor among thieves” rings true here. They feel no guilt about stealing because the fact it belongs to someone else means nothing to them. This feeling is amplified when they don’t see anyone around to claim something. If that bike is left unattended, there’s no way to establish ownership, therefore, it belongs to whomever comes along to take it, right?
In response to a video from an unattended roadside egg and produce stand being ransacked by thieves who leave without paying:
Again, only an honor-based society that enforces a strong moral code can operate by… the honor system. Otherwise, as the post says, you need to remove low-trust people. If you’re not going to remove low-trust people, as America and the West have collectively opted to not do, then the only alternative is to charge for everything to create barriers for entry. The logic is that this creates a filtering system where the only people who get to enjoy something are those who can afford it. This works - for the most part. It’s just that there’s no end to it. A society that cannot manage even the simplest affairs without the exchange of money will eventually become a society where civilization itself becomes a commodity which must be paid for. What becomes of those who cannot afford to pay out of pocket for civilization’s benefits?
Oddly enough, the rise and fall of free concerts in America has much to say about what kind of society we’ve become and are evolving into. Free concerts were a thing back in a time when the brief, high-trust period of our history was still within living memory of most Americans. It was in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, as the video pointed out, that everyone discovered what kind of country America had become, and promptly stopped giving away live performances for free.
Turns out you can test the character of a society much the same as you would with an individual: offer something for nothing.
Space: The Next Ideological Frontier
Once more, liberals make it clear that even when it comes to great accomplishments such as space exploration, ideology comes first:
Again, when liberals speak about gender representation in the space program, they ignore everything that happened between the end of Apollo and the beginning of Artemis. Women have been working at NASA and going into space for well over half a century now. But the entire representation debate is, again, all about holding an eternal grudge, a grievance to hold over others. Sounds like an abusive relationship, doesn’t it?
This has to be like what the space program meant in the Soviet Union - it was a great accomplishment for communism, not for the country, not the world, certainly not mankind. The fact is, without the men on the left, you don’t get the women on the right. I get that many find that fact inconvenient or deplorable, but too bad. You don’t get to erase or re-write history. The women of NASA today are following in the footsteps of their male predecessors, following their example. They’re proud of it.
Another fact which shouldn’t be inconvenient:
Of course, someone has to have a problem with it:
The question they never seem to be able to answer: what percentage constitutes mission accomplishment? As scientists and engineers, you have to be able to answer that question. Otherwise, this is exactly what it’s always been: a never-ending moral panic and grievance game. Anyone in STEM should prioritize meritocracy. Meritocracy means trading off representation. If you’re going to prioritize representation, you have to acknowledge the risk of trading off merit. But they can’t, because they’re not speaking scientifically, they’re speaking ideologically.
Playing the gender or race-percentages game is a no-win proposition because nobody will ever agree on what percentage represents equality or equity. Not only that, life doesn’t work based on manufactured percentages. Life operates entirely by its own logic, meaning those who can, will. Those who can, won’t. There’s not much more to it than that. It’s also interesting to see liberals and feminists argue that we’re not a meritocracy because in a true meritocracy, women would be even better-represented in STEM. This is as fallacious as saying that in a true meritocracy, there would be no women in STEM. You can never win.
“We Will Always Choose Earth. We Will Always Choose Each Other”
Let’s close on something positive. After successfully orbiting the Moon, emerging from communications blackout as they came out from the dark side of the Moon, Mission Specialist Christina Koch shared these words:
Wow. What’s it about astronauts and their flair for eloquence? They just know how to tug on our heartstrings, don’t they?
The thing about astronauts is that they’re not only doing work advancing the cause of mankind, but they’re ensuring the continued survival of our species, of everything we know and love. They’re fully aware of it. This gives them a perspective on things few of us ever get to see. These are engineers and scientists flying up there, yet space exploration is very much a spiritual journey. The Artemis II astronauts represent the best of us, they are the best of us, and I couldn’t have picked a better crew if I tried. God bless them all.
In closing, I’ve attempted on at least two occasions to start a “mailbag” series, like many other Substacks, to answer reader questions. Both attempts to do so fell flat. I’m beginning to think “Max’s Musings,” serves as a nice substitute for mailbag entries, a chance to discuss anything and everything, without any real connecting theme. So maybe I don’t need to write mailbag entries?
Anyway, what are your thoughts on anything discussed today? Share your thoughts
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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Jordan Peterson: "Correctly interpreting the world is a very complicated problem. The way evolution solves that problem is producing a tremendous number of variants and then killing off all of them that interpret the world badly enough to die."
https://youtu.be/UnpB49iP5uU?t=188
Evolution applies to groups, individuals, and cultural practices. Based on birthrate, secular liberalism is an evolutionary dead end. Modernity itself may be, as the only society to embrace it without falling below replacement (yet) is Israel.
This is a wonderfully astute observation: "If you select for only intelligence and not strength, you end up with weak men and women leading the rest of us. Select only for strength but not intelligence, you get brutes running the show." Making this transition may be the challenge of any intelligent species.
As is this one: "I realized none of our lives really matter, even as women, even as people of color, even as immigrants, unless they can be politicized."
Feudalism formally ended centuries ago, but the life of a plebe is still only of value when it serves the nobility's interests. Whether in the Islamic slave markets, the Medieval villages, the pike vs cavalry charges, the trenches of WWI, or the battle for Ukraine... that basic rule never changes.
I have been very impressed by this bunch of astronauts.
The gaggle asking them questions, not so much.