A World Without Consequences

The Z Man blog ^ | 8/25/2018 | The Z Man

[Noumenon]

A World Without Consequences

When I was a kid, serendipity landed me in a very nice prep school for boys. The student body was mostly drawn from the upper middle class. There were a few genuinely middle class kids and a few kids from very wealthy homes. The handful of poor kids, who got there on their wits and dumb luck, naturally stood out from the crowd. At that age, kids are keenly aware of differences in class. That’s because the awareness of group status is strongest at that age. As a result it was rough going for the poor kids initially.

My first taste of it was in the locker-room for gym class. A snotty little rich kid started giving me the business. He was smaller and weaker than me and it was obvious, at least to me, that he would not fare well in a fight with me or with anyone probably. He was not tough. He persisted and when he put his finger in my chest, I put his face into a locker a few times. The one thing poor guys know is that soft men do not react well to the sight of their own blood. My nemesis started to cry and then ran for a teacher.

His friends volunteered to tell the head master that I was the villain, so I was hauled away for interrogation. That was when I discovered that there was such a thing as bourgeois values. Poor kids never rat and they never run to the authorities. In the upper middle class, it is exactly the opposite. The winner is the guy who runs to the authorities with the most convincing tale of woe. It’s just assumed that some authority with the power to pass judgement will adjudicate matters, based on a set of unwritten rules I’d never unriddle.

Lucky for me, the school was not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. My adviser was a man who had come up from the lower classes, so he understood what it was like for us. This was why, most likely, he was assigned the poor kids. This was not obvious to me at the time. He just seemed to know what was in our heads, like he was magic. That made him extremely effective at convincing all of us that we had to adapt and learn how to outwit our enemies. By resorting to violence, I had given the others a reason to dismiss me.

The lesson we were supposed to learn is that in a civilized society, verbal and cognitive skill counts for more than physical skill. The lesson I learned is that the people populating the ruling classes of American society had decided violence was no longer a concern for them. They were never going to face a physical challenge. Instead, theirs would be a life of verbal jousting, while someone else guarded the walls. Later, I came to understand that they did not even think much about the walls or the people guarding them.

This is what I suspect is at the core of the problems vexing America. The Progressive ruling class lives in a world in which real risk, physical risk, is so alien that it may as well not exist. In fact, for them, it does not exist. The worst thing they can face is ostracism, which is why they obsess about the prevailing morality. That’s not a real concern, as long as they are aware of the boundaries. For most of the people in the elite, they have plenty of money, so losing a job is not a threat in the same way it is for the Dirt People.

Nicholas Taleb would say they lack skin in the game, but I don’t think that’s right. These people are not playing a meaningless game. It is very serious to them and they are ruthless in their execution.Those status points they hope to cash in at Davos or Jackson Hole mean everything to them. When Tim Cook walks into the bathhouse in Davos, he wants everyone to know that he is the guy leading the charge to purge dissidents from the internet. It’s important to him that he be seen as the most pious of the pious.

In a world where physical violence is a real possibility, the hierarchy of concern starts at the most personal and works outward to things like financial and reputation risk. In a prior age, the King had to worry about being killed or having his heirs killed. That was a sobering thought that led to a natural conservatism. In the current age, the rulers have no fear of physical violence and little fear of losing their stuff. That leaves them playing a game of school yard politics, in which status is set by words and signalling.

This seems to be the issue with the rising tide of censorship. They keep following a pattern. One platform bans a heretic and then it is a race for all of the others to do the same. Despite the overwhelming support for gun ownership, for example, the ruling class is racing to de-platform anything gun related. It’s monkey see, monkey do, as the Judeo-Puritan ruling class signals to one another their piety and then reacts to those signals with their own acts of piety. They are like lightning bugs on a summer evening.

What never crosses their mind is what could happen if they terrorize the wrong person and he decides to take action. They never think about what could happen if the public begins to turn on them in large numbers. No one in the ruling class thinks about the mob showing up with torches and rope. They don’t even think the mob will show up at the voting booth and cast a protest vote. Instead, they assume bad election results are the doings of gremlins and magic fairies with sinister names like Boris and Natasha.

The world they have created for themselves is one that is surrounded by high walls and armed men that are invisible to the people inside. It is just assumed that the walls will hold and the guards will never turn their guns on the people inside. It’s never considered because they never think about it. It’s why the silly airheads on Progressive media sites can viciously attack people they claim are Nazis. They never think about the possibility of the person they ruined showing up outside their door looking settle things old school.

This is why they will keep pushing with the censorship. In fact, it is accelerating, as they furiously try to out signal one another in what has become a piety festival among our ruling classes. Some of the girls at Progressive sites, with heads full of rape fantasies, dream of provoking a response, but most simply don’t think a response is possible. They no longer see any humanity in the Dirt People. We’re just here as props in their endless morality plays they stage for one another in the land of the Cloud People.

[Noumenon]

As another observer has pointed out, they (the Cloud People) need to see a little of their own blood, and as a direct consequence of their own choices and actions. They have become so accustomed to their comfortable, non-violent existence; they live in a virtual Disneyland.

Even the violent Antifa types are merely playing at it - they fancy themselves to be in the vanguard of the proletariat or some sort of People's Hero. All of that can and will change in a heartbeat once the lead starts to fly.

[seowulf]

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

Albert Camus

[A_perfect_lady]

I don’t usually like blog posts, but this was really good. A very good assessment of the situation.

[Noumenon]

The Z Man is a keen observer of our times.

[RedStateRocker]

It’s funny; a generation, maybe two ago, ‘conservatives’ were all about censorship.

As a first (and second) amendment extremist, I agree with a lot of the author’s sentiment. However, he’s not the first person to be ideologically informed but seemingly unaware that freedom of the press is limited to those that own one, and that no social media entity owes any particular political paradigm spit.

[Noumenon]

It’s monkey see, monkey do, as the Judeo-Puritan ruling class signals to one another their piety and then reacts to those signals with their own acts of piety. They are like lightning bugs on a summer evening.

An apt description.

[bluejean]

When the world the Dirt People live in reaches the Cloud People (violence, crime, mobs, etc), the Cloud People will get hysterical, surround themselves with merceneries, reinforce their already-existing compound walls, and get the Cloud Rulers to smash the Dirt People down. The winner will be the side the Cloud Army decides to support. Who controls the Cloud Army’s paychecks?

[DoodleBob]

I agree. This was an excellent post.

I'll go a step further, and pull out some data on who these snobby kids become once they grow up - they become Solid Liberals as defined by Pew:

Defining values: Highly educated and politically engaged, Solid Liberals hold consistently liberal values. They back a robust role for government and are strong advocates of the social safety net. Large majorities view the current economic system as unfair and see economic inequality as a major problem. They take broadly positive views of immigrants, and fully 99% think being open to people from around the world is an essential part of the nation’s identity. Most say more needs to be done to address both racial discrimination and obstacles to women’s achievement. They support same-sex marriage and believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. Solid Liberals are the most Democratic of all typology groups: nearly two-thirds (64%) identify as Democrats, another 35% lean toward the Democratic Party.

Political attitudes: Solid Liberals are the most engaged Democratic group – 89% say they vote always or nearly always, and fully 97% say it matters a great deal or fair amount which party wins control of Congress next year. Their opposition to Donald Trump is overwhelming: 97% say they strongly disapprove of his job performance, and 91% say they disagree with Trump on all or nearly all issues. A 71% majority identify as liberal.

Who they are: The most highly educated of the typology groups, 57% are college graduates and nearly three-in-ten (29%) have a graduate degree. Non-Hispanic whites make up the vast majority of this group (73%), and the group is more female than male (59% to 41%). Solid Liberals are financially satisfied and among the most likely to live in urban areas.

Lifestyle notes: Most Solid Liberals (72%) say they enjoy going to museums a lot, and 75% say artists contribute a lot to society – the highest shares across typology groups. They are less likely than other groups to have a religious affiliation, and just 15% say they attend religious services weekly or more, by far the lowest share of any typology group.

[Thumper1960]

The money ultimately upwells from the labors of the Dirt People.

[GOPJ]

This sounds more like it was written by a paranoid ‘elite’ or someone who wants to sell them a higher fence.

It's delusional.

[bluejean]

“The money ultimately upwells from the labors of the Dirt People.”

And the Dirt People have zero say in how it’s actually spent. Hence the U.N., the support of jihad countries, “Planned Parenthood”, NPR, PBS, “school” propaganda camps, big money to take care of “immigrants”, “welfare” for life, etc, etc, etc. They can fund or de-fund the Cloud Army. They do it all the time.

[A_perfect_lady]

Yes, snobbery is an integral part of liberalism. Liberals are intensely class conscious, and although they speak of equality, they don’t believe in it for a second. They are against any hierarchy built on skills that exclude them (as in, useful skills: manual labor, engineering, physics, military or fighting prowess). But they are adamant proponents of hierarchies that affirm THEIR skills. Of course, for most of them, their only skills are artistic or linguistic. And even if they have no particularly artistic, musical, or linguistic skills of their own, they believe their ability to identify superior skills in others sets them up as judges and therefore even above the artisans themselves. And this “natural aristocracy of the intellectually gifted” is the one that should be reinforced by a government-backed hierarchy.

[null and void]

Ayn Rand — ‘We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’

[Thumper1960]

Starve the beasts.

[null and void]

Great article!

[Fiddlstix]

[Oatka]

[lightning bug allegory] An apt description.

That jumped out at me as well. I used to use the Can You Top This phrase in describing the Left's lunacy, but this one goes one better. Gonna use it.

[Noumenon]

Who controls the Cloud Army’s paychecks?

More to the point, who produces and delivers power, water, food and sanitation? Could that be the Dirt People?

[aquila48]

“In a world where physical violence is a real possibility, the hierarchy of concern starts at the most personal and works outward to things like financial and reputation risk. In a prior age, the King had to worry about being killed or having his heirs killed. That was a sobering thought that led to a natural conservatism. In the current age, the rulers have no fear of physical violence and little fear of losing their stuff. That leaves them playing a game of school yard politics, in which status is set by words and signalling.”

I don’t agree with this. Perhaps we on the right don’t use physical violence on the mighty, but the left sure does! They have an army of brown shirts, antifa, BLM, SJW, ready to physically descend on their enemy (us) on a moments notice.

Why do you think so many CEOs of major corporations cave so quickly to their demands. The last thing they want is to have a mob of goons descend on their headquarters and make their lives hell.

Also remember that they forced Trump to cancel his Chicago rally during the campaign due to physical violence orchestrated by the DNC itself!

If anything this guy’s thesis has been flipped on it’s head. It is the elite using physical violence on the “poor”.

[aquila48]

I’m not sure I understand that quote...

Is Camus saying that a society that lets unvirtuous people slide (forgives them) results in an eventual tyranny?

A bit like allowing a spoiled brat to go unpunished will eventually result in a holy terror?