When I was younger I had a lot of friends who used the i-ching (a Chinese divination book, also called The Book of Changes.) It is believed also that Phillip K. Dick used it plotting the Man in the High Castle.
Anyway, there is one line that keeps surfacing in there. It will predict/describe a bunch of horrible things and end with “no blame.”
Which goes to prove that an ancient Chinese oracle is saner than the Marxism that’s been inculcated into most of the minds in the West since the turn of the twentieth century, just about.
And if you’re going to tell me there’s no Marxism in your head, think again. I still keep finding bits of it in my own head, though I’ve done all I can to clear it out. It’s in the history you were taught, it’s in the reasoning of various agencies that have power over us, and a bit of it trickles into our head also.
The Marxism I keep finding on the right is the bizarre idea that the elaborate plans of the planners are coming through perfectly; that something planned by he Soviet Union in the sixties is now coming to fruition. For the love of Bob, give me a break. Those people could never make anything they wanted happen, which is why life in the Soviet union was brutal and miserable. Yeah, some of the breakage might look sort of kind of like that, but it’s not. Not if you dig behind. What you’re seeing is people on the left taking credit for the working of their plan.
They work that way. They might be learning to do it ahead of time Now there’s something calling itself a name I can’t recall but which amounts to “Market ruin socialism.”
The other thing that infects the right, and honestly probably is amplified by connecting to some of the more miserable Christian puritan strains, is the bizarre idea that being wealthy is bad and leads to ruin and downfall.
Rome fell not because it was wealthy, but because it had a large, oppressive, centralized state that trampled all over citizens. No, that’s not what they taught you. Because the Soviet Union put out the idea that wealth itself was bad and would destroy a country. They did it to defend themselves against the accusation we were more wealthy. You’re not required to believe it. And you shouldn’t. Because frankly we’ve been crazy-wealthy for about 100 years. And by Roman, or medieval, or even current Chinese standards, even the Soviet Union was wealthy. None of which had anything to do with any kind of decadence. Equaling wealth with decadence ties in with making envy a virtue, which is pure Marxism.
However, the Marxism running rampant through our society and creating strife, and driving most of us insane is the idea that “there always has to be someone to blame.”
No, I’m not going to tell you that no one is to blame for the mess that the Bidentia has made of the nation and world. We were all here, we all know the blame. And we know who the blame lies with for the stolen election too. That’s not the point.
The point is the big movements of history. Equity makes sense to the left, because, if someone had it badly in the past, some other group — not an individual or a small group, not a system of belief but another group, definable as a group by some characteristic the left gives a hang about, like skin color, or sex, or who you like to sleep with — has to have been oppressing them.
This is crazy cakes.
Instead of seeing humans who at times, in some places, had a terrible time due to this or that, they see that if a group — say black people — were enslaved the fault must be of another group, as Americans in the 20th century would identify a different group.
So, for instance, slavery, they’re convinced was invented by white people to enslave black people. Because– I don’t know. Because the only way to triumph is to drive someone else down?
This ignores the fact slaves were abundant when they were because of vast tribal wars and movements in Africa. As in most tribal societies, the people taken prisoner were either enslaved or killed. So, arguably black people were enslaving black people in Africa. The fact that there was some place to sell them after might have saved their lives. (Though mostly slaves only survived well in the US and maybe parts of Europe. Being sent to South America or the Caribbean was a death sentence, just slower like being sent to Siberia would be later.)
So while there were massive injustices committed, the worst were committed by the group that the left identifies as all one, against itself. These things happen. Again, from the top, every race has enslaved every other race at some time. And it is only in our country right now and in other parts of the west that it’s illegal. (Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. That wide open border is very useful for human trafficking, as well as drugs. And it’s not any particular race, even.)
Or take the “women have been oppressed throughout history.” I agree. Women have. But the problem here is that men were oppressed too.
Most of the things they point to as female oppression came from the fact that there was no way to stop a woman of fertile age from getting pregnant — by rape even — except by circumscribing her to a small circle of people who knew and cared for her. Women didn’t go to war (yes, a few did under cover, and yes, there were always camp followers, and yes, those sometimes fought in ancient and medieval battles, but it’s not the same thing) because a battalion of women if captured became breeders for the enemy, something that people didn’t want happening to their wives and daughters. Women didn’t go to war, because pregnant women are not as functional as men. Women didn’t go to war because our upper body strength is smaller. Etc. Etc. Etc. Women could command in war, and often did, if born to a position that enabled them to do so. But they were profoundly unsuited to the scrum.
Women didn’t learn in general. There were exceptions. But yeah, the vast majority of women weren’t educated.
Here’s the secret: neither were the vast majority of men.
Even in the early twentieth century in Portugal a lot of older adults had never been taught to read and write. They had jobs that didn’t involve writing, and women in particularly were often almost bizarrely busy, because minding the baby, cooking (not to mention gathering the food and often growing it) and weaving it were all activities of normal every day women, in addition to brewing (water not being safe most people drank alcohol all the time, even if “just” beer.) In addition, wives of craftsmen often helped in the craft in various ways.
Yes, women were oppressed.
But the left, infected with Marxism, imagines that this is because men stood around, twirling their moustaches and plotting the next point of oppression.
I can’t tell you how many times, when I was in lefty chat groups, some woman would wring her hands and wonder how we could keep men from “taking us back there again”, “back there” being some hell of submission and un-personhood.
When I’d started to open the door to the political closet, I’d say things like “by giving as much freedom and rights to each individual regardless of sex and making everyone equal under the law.” You know that cartoon where the guy saying the obvious thing gets tossed out the window? That’s what happened.
Because in Marxism, due to the fact Marx’s mind was small, and probably rat infested, In his small, grifty (totally a word) if someone was a victim, someone else was victimizing them. And the someone was a different class. (Which in the hands of Gramsci became a skin color or being female. And in the hands of the current craziness extended to sexual preference or coming from a country they approve of or–)
And our educational institutions being soaked with it have taught generations to think “Women had it bad in the past because men were oppressed. Then heroic feminists marched shoulder to shoulder, and now we’re free, but those evil men are gathering and plotting and will enslave us again any minute.”
The problem with this type of thought is that it works in a movie (maybe. Barely) but it can’t work in reality. It’s like that stupid meme on facebook saying that since the middle ages women’s garments were forbidden to have pockets, because men were afraid the women would put spells in them!
People with an education. People who read and think and try to have a life of the mind share that meme and piously believe it. Now think about it for two seconds.
The middle ages WHERE? because even if you restrict it to Europe, culture and clothing were radically different. Also WHO forbid it? Not “men”. In the middle ages the average man as much say in governance as the average cat. And suppose a king was crazy enough to dictate women’s garments should be made without pockets. How is he going to enforce it? the fabric was spun, cut and sewn by women. It was mostly a private activity of women for women, often themselves and their families. Sure, there were fashions, but they might actually be hyper-local. If a fashion spread it was usually because of an advance in either fabric or dress making technique that made the clothes more becoming, more comfortable, or preferably both.
Also, most women had pockets. The pockets were usually tie-on and hanging from a belt. Also, if you read anything written by pre-modern women (yeah, some knew how to write.) they carried stuff in their sleeves, and … well…. between their boobs a lot, depending on the level of security they wanted. If they really were carrying spells, (or poisons, or whatever) that’s where they’d put them, not their pockets. The pockets were for money, keys, a drop loom, or knitting or whatever they were doing at the time.
But women who are educated and smarter than the average rock share that meme and feel so smart, because it plays to the idea “women were oppressed” (or are, due to the lack of pockets in most modern female clothing) so it must be the men’s fault. REEEEEEEEE.
In point of fact, the lack of pockets in most female clothing is because most women don’t like their silhouette with bulges. I’m old enough and fat enough I couldn’t care less, and I’m also ADD AF and have locked myself out of the house enough that I carry my keys in my pockets everywhere. I also carry my phone, because if I grabbed the wrong keys (say) that way I can call Dan.
However, I remember being young and attractive and not wanting bulges on my person.
So in the matter of pockets, the people oppressing women are mostly women.
For a lot of the other stuff, from the fact that we’re more likely to get raped, to the fact that we give birth in pain, etc. the culprit is biology. And you can rail and scream about biology all you want to. The only modifications you can do are after-market and they don’t work.
Thinking that in the middle ages or at any time, women were enslaved by a male conspiracy is both hilarious and sad. Do they imagine all men know each other? communicate through mental telegraph? Send notes to each other? “Bob, we understand you haven’t beaten your wife in three months. Do better.”
Yeah, women had fewer of the rights we consider important — not necessarily them, though — because their functions were less public, and more having to do with keeping the household running, and keeping the kids alive. If you value the public stuff over the household stuff, it’s because you’re living in a post-contraceptive world of such abundance that you know you can birth a single child and your odds he’ll outlive you are enormous. It wasn’t so. Arguably women had the more important job.
Were they beaten and treated like chattel?
Oh, you sweet summer child. Everyone was beaten and treated like chattel. Maybe not the king or the prince heir. (Even then depended where and when.) Men who worked for others could and did get beaten and abused. So did apprentices who were basically sold to their masters and if they got a bad one were treated like little better than slaves.
It is the sad tendency of humans to hurt other humans. Not all humans, of course, but a significant enough majority to cause untold tragedy. And when life was closer to the bone and resources scarcer, the tendency to abuse others was higher. But this wasn’t something done or decided as a group; it’s not passed on by some corruption of the blood; and ALL of us are descended from victims and perpetrators, who were all races, sexes, creeds and orientations.
So… Sometimes things suck. No blame.
Take the places where the Marxist thinking is outright insane today.
Take science fiction. (Remember to give it back. I’m running a month late, so still doing mystery, but sf will be next.)
We hear much about how women were/are terribly discriminated against because the percentage of them who are published/do well is tiny, compared to 51% of the population.
But I was the weird girl who read science fiction, before I wrote it. I wanted to talk about space travel and the best way to create space colonies, and the pitfalls, and– I wanted to discuss if time travel was even possible, and how it could be implemented, and– I wanted to discuss robots and artificial intelligence. I wanted to discuss how if aliens existed we might not even know they were there, because they’d be so different…
Yep, it’s the cartoon with the guy being tossed out the window again. Most of the women in my classes — and I was in gifted classes from 7th grade on — read either romances or historical fiction. Sometimes mystery. Keep in mind that reading for pleasure was already a minority thing (still is. Has always been.) Most of them actually only read newspapers, magazines and non-fiction in their subjects. So the ones who read for fun were already considered weird. But those of us — who am I kidding, for most of that time it was one of me — who read science fiction were the weirdos own weirdos, looked at as though we’d spontaneously grown extra heads and tentacles.
Most of my science fiction reading friends were male, and for a while older. Most of them I met waiting outside book stores on Heinlein release day, but I’ve seen pictures of that time. It wasn’t as stark in the Us, because it’s a huge country, so even a small interest group is big enough to make a showing, but most SF conventions until I want to say the eighties or so were mostly guys.
And even today, you find most women are fans of the TV shows, or of anime, or of fantasy. If you had an SF only con, written only con, it would still be 75% male. And a few of us weirdos.
My question is: why should people who have no interest in reading the stuff be well represented among its writers? What sense does that make?
Well, because if there’s fewer women, they’re oppressed. And that means that someone is oppressing them.
… Because Marxism is a binary and infantile view of reality, and therefore it doesn’t realize that “no blame” exists.
What set me on this path of thought was some disabled activist claiming that difficulties the disabled face would be much less without the normal people.
Think about this for a moment. it’s a group that’s literally defined by being less able to move/do stuff in the real world. But of course, if they are a group, and things aren’t wonderful for them, someone has to be to blame, and it must be their polar opposite. So, if the disabled (differently abled is a lie) have problems, it must, perforce be because the able-bodied are conspiring to keep them down.
Only a mind exquisitely indoctrinated in Marxism can think that way.
Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes there’s no blame. In fact, probably most of the time.
Every time you come across one of these, ask them in logical steps how this can be the other group’s fault, and what evidence they have.
Because it’s important to get at the cult programing of Marxism and dig under.
Particularly in your own mind.
According To Hoyt 