Altered Consciousness

I've never tried narcotics because they represent cowardice, a desire to flee reality rather than face it. Besides, I achieve altered states of consciousness on my own, and reality is far more captivating than fantasy.

Case in point, I was competing in a chess tournament this weekend hosted by a local expert popularly known as "the Octopus," a name he acquired by playing exhibitions against multiple players simultaneously. The Octopus's tournaments are fun because they are unrated, so I can let my mind wander down various rabbit holes to explore creative possibilities that I wouldn't ordinarily pursue. After winning my first round, it fell upon me to play the Octopus himself, whom everyone presumed would win our game and the tournament. The few times I had managed to beat him were in speed games of five minutes per person, but this was to be a pitched battle with no refuge found in a clock flag. As we played I saw the pieces and the board in a way I never used to, a galaxy of possibilities now laid bare to someone previously blind to them. He was tightening the noose around my king, so rather than die a slow death fending him off, I sacrificed my knight near his own king -- which opened up a file for my rooks to come after him. Before long he sacrificed his own knight to defend himself, and next thing I knew the position was drawn. I won my remaining games, but the Octopus drew again when playing against another expert, so at the end of the day I finished first and the Octopus second. This was the completion of unfinished business from three years ago, when I arrived in Missoula and won an Octopus tournament without having to play the man himself.

This was also the realization that reality and its workings fascinate me more than fantasy ever could. I had a brief conversation with a young man also competing in the tournament, and we shared stories about how unlocking the key to stronger chess is so much like unlocking the key to languages, engineering, martial arts, and just about any other endeavor. We catch brief glimpses of the mind of God, the ordered genius behind all things, and we feel divine. No flight of fancy could ever compete.         

Sickly Musings

This past weekend I was hit with stomach flu and had a limited range of activities, chief of which was lying in bed and stewing in my own juices (figuratively).  Despite the nausea, intermittent chills and sweats, and pounding temples, I managed to derive some enjoyment from the ordeal.

For one, I prided myself on taking no medications whatsoever. This wasn't just to relish the pain -- which I do value, incidentally -- but because medication suppresses symptoms and thereby disrupts the body's immune response. This led me to consider how the supposed fixes for the economy are nothing more than symptom-suppression; the "experts" are so afraid of falling asset prices that they are doing everything in their power to artificially prop them up, which disrupts the natural process of excreting out economic waste and allowing supply to re-adjust to demand -- and which guarantees that things will be even worse later on.  Then I decided to dwell on the more specific news of late about the Boston Marathon. I could just imagine the media's frustration that the prime bombing suspects are not angry white homegrown conservatives, but rather young Muslim immigrants, and I ventured to guess that a leftist narrative would be constructed to give them a pass that the desired suspects never would have received (if what I've heard on the news today is any indication, I was right -- I didn't see "childhood bullying" coming, but that's a stroke of genius because it might place fault on white conservatives anyway!). Then I drifted from the specific back to the general, as is my tendency, and I recalled the infamous Boston marathoner Rosie Ruiz. Here is someone who got caught red-handed hopping into the race near the finish to claim a superhuman victory time, and more than thirty years after the fact she doggedly maintains that she won the race fair and square, and I'll bet she actually believes that she's the victim. The brain has an amazing ability to construct comforting fantasies; apparently, the pursuit of truth represents too selfless an undertaking for most people, but perhaps that's why an entire religion had to be founded to encourage it. Then I paused to notice that some of my chess buddies are reluctant to play me anymore, which mystified me at first because I always enjoy having someone stronger to practice against; for example, I've been invited to the state closed championship for the second year in a row, and I will enjoy the experience despite knowing that I will likely get my butt kicked.  But I remembered so many other times in life when something like this happened; the world belongs to charming mediocrities, and I guess I never have made peace with that fact.

It was almost unfortunate that I got better so quickly and had to bring these and other musings to a (temporary) halt.    

Why I Oppose Feminism

At last I will explain my beef with feminism, something I've addressed only humorously or tangentially until now. There are several good reasons for my opposition.

First, the doctrine by its very essence is hostile to me as a man. The bedrock tenet of feminism is that women are oppressed and that men are their oppressors. Sorry, but I've never oppressed anyone, and I reject the notion that I owe anyone an apology for something I did not do. (And "oppression" does not mean to annoy or anger; that's part of life, and if you can't handle it, you need to grow up.) I also reject the notion that the average woman historically had it worse than the average man. When you consider the countless numbers of men who have been mutilated or killed in wars; wasted away in mines, factories, and fields performing back-breaking work; or had their lives and property stolen by tyrants, it is downright offensive to argue -- nay, to take as a given -- that men have had it better. Feminism commits the "apex fallacy" by focusing on a few powerful men and extrapolating that status onto all men. While feminism claims that this apex of men is cause enough for revolution, feminism has done nothing to challenge those men, but rather increases their power. Powerful men love feminism, and with good reason because it makes ordinary men easier to harangue and control.

Second, consider that feminism reached its zenith precisely at the historic moment when the mind of man created such incredible technologies that idleness -- or "the problem that has no name," as Betty Friedan put it -- became women's biggest problem. This truly shows that no good deed goes unpunished.

Third, I'm against feminism because it is tyrannical. For instance, the mere fact that I'm on this blog exercising my right of free speech and offering a different viewpoint would be deemed hateful and "oppressive" by feminists, even though they're the ones espousing an entire ideology based on their sex. Couple that with how feminism wields the power of government to destroy private property, freedom of contract, and freedom of association -- not freedom of speech yet, but they're working on it -- and it's easy to conclude that feminism fosters oppression rather than combats it.

Fourth, I'm against feminism because I'm in favor of women. That's right, I said it: feminism hurts women. A good deal of the harm is psychological in that feminism tells women they must measure their worth by male standards. As the great G.K. Chesterton once observed, feminism represents abject surrender; whereas women previously looked on men's affairs as pretentious rubbish, now men's affairs are viewed as so important that to miss out on them is deemed a crime. A standard response is that feminism at least created choices for a woman, who now can choose whether or not to engage in previously male activities. This is false, for the vast majority of women today have no choice between home or career -- they must pursue both because by doubling the labor force, feminism has driven wages down and made it virtually impossible for a family to thrive on one person's income. Surely there are exceptions, but by and large women are pushed into the mind-numbing world of men's work regardless of whether they want it. And by all accounts, women are far less happy about this state of affairs. And yet another source of female misery stems from the sexual revolution, which feminism portrayed as liberating because it shredded all taboos, yet which allows men complete license to "come and go" as we please. If I truly had a grudge against women, I would shut up about this and simply enjoy the new status quo. 

Fifth, I'm against feminism because it harms boys and men. Boys are harmed in the slaughterhouses known as schools, be they public or private, because feminism predominates there and perceives boys' strongest qualities -- independence, spontaneity, and thinking outside the box -- as defects to be ironed out, often by pharmacology that produces headcases and mass murderers. Feminism thus is strangling in the cradle the dynamic male qualities that fuel a healthy civilization, opting instead to churn out waves of emasculated conformists who dutifully absorb their lessons, always follow orders no matter how outrageous, and faintly recall their manliness by watching sports or engaging in other mindless pleasure-seeking (i.e., nothing that might upset the applecart). Even if boys manage to resist this programming and emerge relatively unscathed into manhood, what awaits us isn't very promising, for there are no longer any social spaces that we can claim as uniquely our own; we can get into serious trouble or tossed in jail just for saying "boo" to the wrong woman; we are constantly mocked and denigrated in the media while being expected to laugh it off; and if we marry, we run a high risk of getting swallowed by the family-court gulag, which can occur at the drop of a hat even in the absence of fault.

Sixth, of course, are feminism's flagrant double standards, many of which I humorously discussed once before. We are to be "equal."  Yet, for example, only men are conscripted into military service. Only men are expected to lay down our lives for others if danger is afoot. Only male adulterers are evil and self-serving. Only women may complain about the opposite sex; if a man does so, there must be something "wrong" with him. Only a male pervert who abuses children is duly punished, but female perverts who abuse children get a slap on the wrist or are hailed as heroines. The list goes on and on.    

Seventh, one of the crown jewels of feminism -- the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the vote -- has done little more than advance the dangerous notion that government is vital to every aspect of society. In a free and healthy society, government is mostly irrelevant and comes out of the woodwork only when violence is absolutely necessary to keep the peace, resolve disputes, or defend the nation. Not participating in these occasional, necessary evils is no cause for palpitations or sleep loss. Yet the feminist narrative makes these incidents all-important, portraying government as synonymous with society and the vote as a ticket to participating in society, which has paved the way for government to become the ubiquitous monstrosity it is now. Violence by means of politics permeates every nook and cranny of American life because feminism (and leftism in general) tells us this is liberating; now there is no refuge from government violence, and we are all worse off for it. Both men and women had far more control over our lives before this supposed golden age descended upon us. I myself refrain from voting in federal elections because I refuse to participate in unlawful enterprises, and this abstention makes me feel healthier, happier, and far more dignified. You should try it too.

I suppose that's enough "oppression" for one evening; it's not nice that I actually defend myself against an ideology proclaiming me the enemy.

I Couldn't Have Said It Better

If only I could claim credit for the following remark, which I stumbled upon after reading an article on how sex-obsessed modern life has become in just a few decades.

Re:."Who would've thought that Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" would eventually lead to gangster rap?” In 1955 my steady girlfriend and I did foresee something like that. We saw the substantive subliminal message in Rock and Roll ("Rock Around the Clock") immediately. Music, the most powerful of the arts carries its own more potent message quite apart from the lyrics. The Pre-TV generation of Eisenhower Administration and the 1950s were more free thinking and "liberated" than the conformist useful-idiots of all succeeding decades. We were not prudes, we just had self-control and a sense of the sacred. This freed us. The mass media provided a channel for the injection of a suicidal subversive culture into our populace and rendered them vile. They are now prisoners of the tyranny of their urges. I know no one that "lost" their faith. I know many whose faith was assassinated.

At least the remnant still lives and breathes, which means there remains hope for civilization to re-assert itself. 

"Intimidated By Intelligence" Works Both Ways

In the neverending saga of the gender wars, a frequent refrain is that men are intimidated by intelligent women. I won't deny it; many men indeed are. But I should pause to mention that women are often just as intimidated by intelligent men. The past forty years of relentless feminist indoctrination, coupled with the equally relentless portrayal of men in movies and television, has led many women to take it as a given that 1) men are horny idiots, and 2) the only way a man could possibly be superior to a woman is by oppressing her. It must be comforting to hang around with a lustful lowbrow who fits this stereotype, since he is easily manipulated through his libido and his simplicity reinforces the woman's fierce conviction that she is superior. An intelligent man whose thoughts originate above the waist poses a serious threat to this rewarding and delusional existence.

Here is one case where equality manifests itself. Only a confident and secure man can enjoy the company of intelligent women, but only a confident and secure woman can enjoy the company of intelligent men.