On the Character of Conspiracy

A Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

This seems to be the seminal question of our time. That conspiracies exist is self-evident. In the immortal words of Col. Gathers, “By the time God crapped out the third caveman a conspiracy was launched against one of them!” It is part of man’s nature to form groups, to create exclusive collectives, and to organize plans for mutual benefit. While it might be comforting to believe otherwise, there is no fine line demarking this quotidian form of socializing from more ominous confederacies. Criminals and businesses alike require oaths of loyalty and non-disclosure, and both are capable of unethical acts. For the victim of said acts, it matters little whether they were performed within or without of the aegis of the law; no more than it matters to the soldier whether he dies during a police action or a declared war.

The term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is nothing but a comforting bulwark designed to avoid important questions. Widely believed to have been seeded into the public consciousness by the CIA following the Warren Commission as part of Operation Mockingbird, the term implies that there are limits to the conspiring which powerful organizations will engage in, and that to suppose otherwise is madness. Intelligence agents may lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their ends – but these ends are ultimately for good. Police might go undercover, traffic drugs, and lie during the interrogation – but only to bring the guilty to justice. Businesses might cut corners, exaggerate the benefits, and use psychologically manipulative tactics to sell their products – but at the end of the day their products will still offer the benefit they claim.

To assert that conspiracy theories are a priori false is tantamount to asserting that there is honour amongst thieves. That there are certain lines which nobody but a lone maniac would cross. That large organizations filter out the psychopaths, and prevent them from rising to the top. That somehow – even though all and sundry are demanding that nobody be held to an objective moral standard, while late-stage capitalism focuses with perfect myopia upon the bottom line – that somehow, in spite of all of this, we can trust our institutions to hold themselves in check.

Article continues here: staresattheworld.com/2023/02/on-the-character-of-conspiracy/

#2023 #LeoMJAurini #World #Americas #Canada #Conspiracy #CIA #DOJ #FBI #Intelligence #Gathering #Infiltration #Espionage #Spying #Morality #Ethics #Government #Politics #Psychology #SSH #SocioSexualHierarchy

Breaking the First Rule of Fight Club

"The Club That Dare Not Speak Its Name"

This is an essay that appears in the new and wide-ranging SmartPop anthology, entitled You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I Am Jack’s Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection. The anthology was edited by the brilliant media ecologist Read Mercer Schuchardt and features a forward by Chuck Palahniuk himself.

The Physics of Fight Club

There is a savage joy in violence. The secret of the success of Fight Club is its acceptance of that basic and uncomfortable truth, which is as well-known to every martial artist, gang member, and football hooligan as it is completely alien to the sedentary sort of middle-aged individuals favored by those who publish novels. For as men have known since long before the Colosseum’s sands were first soaked with blood, there is no adrenaline rush so great as the moment when two men put one another to the physical test.

Fight Club is a fascinating little book which not only embraced that truth, but in doing so, translated surprisingly well to the cinematic medium. This should probably not have been surprising, given that the author’s witch’s brew of male fury and raw but stylized violence is almost perfectly suited for that male audience which so enjoys the cinematic adventures of Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude van Damme, Jackie Chan, and a host of other aggressively oriented male leads. The combination of that visceral appeal with the brilliant casting of a ripped and shirtless Brad Pitt for the ladies all but assured Hollywood hit status.

When viewed from a technical perspective, Fight Club is nearly as absurd as any wuxia extravaganza featuring aerial acrobatics and mad dashes through the treetops, whereas from a psychological perspective, it is impressively accurate. To the combat-aware reader, the book raises the interesting question of how the author could have gotten the latter so right and the former so wrong.

Fight Club subscribes to the common conventional fiction that it is not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but rather the size of the fight in the dog. Although in Fight Club terms, this might be better described as the size of the proverbial canine’s violent sociopathy. As with most aphorisms, there is an element of truth to this; all things being equal, the tougher individual will usually prevail. But outside of the formalized structure of the boxing ring, all things are very seldom equal.

The most basic truth of unarmed combat is that F = M x A: Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Since Force is the measurement of what is smashing into your face and is the primary variable determining exactly what the effect of that blow will be, it is very important to understand the significance of this equation. Since Mass is a function of size, this means that a larger individual will usually pack a more powerful punch than a smaller one. Usually, but not always.

Review continues here: voxday.net/2008/08/04/fight-club-anthology/

#2008 #Voxday #Essay #Review #Books #Adapted #Film #FightClub #US #America #Propaganda #Media #SSH #Lambda #FemaleHeaded #Household #Promiscuity #Predditors #Grooming #Homosexuality #SamesexAttracted #Sodomites #Pedophiles #Noncery #Pederasty #Pedophocracy #GenderDysphoria #MentalIllness #MoralIllness #ChuckPalahniuk #DavidFincher #JimUhls #ReadMercerSchuchardt

"'Wicked' portrays a woman discovering her own exceptional power and reveling in it. This is a terrible example to present to young women―not just because women have terrible judgment as mentioned above, but because power itself does not actually satisfy women. It will not make them happy. Any joy it brings is fleeting and empty. For women, when the power they acquire does not come bundled with a man, it leaves them horrendously bitter and angry. They were not designed to be able to handle it on their own. They are the “weaker vessel” after all"

― ArtGainz, *Source

#2024 #Quotes #Artgainz #Critique #Review #World #US #America #Massachusetts #Books #Wicked #TheLifeandTimesoftheWickedWitchoftheWest #GregoryMaguire #Writer #SSH #Lambda #Sodomites #Adaptation #Musical #Film #FemaleHeaded #Household #MentalIllness #MoralIllness

The Socio-Sexual Hierarchy

The original definitions of the SSH profiles

ALPHA: The Alpha is the tall, good-looking guy who is the center of both male and female attention. The classic star of the football team who is dating the prettiest cheerleader. The successful business executive with the beautiful, stylish, blonde, size zero wife. All the women are attracted to him, while all the men want to be him, or at least be his friend. At a social gathering like a party, he's usually the loud, charismatic guy telling self-flattering stories to a group of top-tier women who are listening with interest. However, Alphas are only interested in women to the extent that they exist for the Alpha's gratification, physical and psychological, they are actually more concerned with their overall group status.

BRAVO: Bravos are the good-looking guys who aren't as uniformly attractive or socially dominant as the Alpha, but are nevertheless confident, attractive to women, and do well with them. At the party, they are the loud guy's friends who showed up with the alcohol and who are flirting with the tier-one women and cheerfully pairing up with the tier-two women. Bravos tend to genuinely like women and view them in a somewhat optimistic manner, but they don't have a lot of illusions about them either. Bravos tend to be happy, secure in themselves, and are up for anything their Alpha wants to do. When they marry, it is not infrequently to a woman who was one of the Alpha's former girlfriends.

DELTA: The normal guy. Deltas are the great majority of men. They can't attract the most attractive women, so they usually aim for the second-tier women with very limited success, and stubbornly resist paying attention to all of the third-tier women who are comfortably in their league. This is ironic, because Deltas would almost always be happier with their closest female equivalents. When a Delta does manage to land a second-tier woman, he is constantly afraid that she will lose interest in him and will, not infrequently, drive her into the very loss of interest he fears by his non-stop dancing of attendance upon her. In a social setting, the Deltas are the men clustered together in groups, each of them making an occasional foray towards various small gaggles of women before beating a hasty retreat when direct eye contact and engaged responses are not forthcoming. Deltas tend to put the female sex on pedestals and have overly optimistic expectations of them; if a man rhapsodizes about his better half or is an inveterate White Knight, he is almost certainly a Delta. Deltas like women, but find them mysterious, confusing, and are sometimes secretly a little afraid of them.

GAMMA: The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the Gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, Gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there... sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects.

OMEGA: The truly unfortunate. Omegas are the social losers who were never in the game. Sometimes creepy, sometimes damaged, often clueless, and always undesirable. They're not at the party. It would never have crossed anyone's mind to invite them in the first place. Omegas are either totally indifferent to women or hate them with a borderline homicidal fury.

SIGMA: The outsider who doesn't play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The Sigma is hated by Alphas because Sigmas are the only men who don't accept or at least acknowledge, however grudgingly, their social dominance. Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. In a social situation, the sigma is the man who stops in briefly to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a tier-one girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas like women, but tend to be contemptuous of them. They are usually considered to be strange, but cool. Gammas often like to think they are Sigmas, failing to understand that Sigmas are not social rejects, they are at the top of the social hierarchy despite their refusal to play by its rules.

LAMBDA: Those men who have quite literally no interest in conventional male-female sexual relations. They clearly have their own hierarchy of sorts, but I can't say that I know much about it other than it appears to somehow involve youth, free weights, and mustaches.

Now, it is important to keep in mind that it serves absolutely no purpose to identify yourself in some manner that you think is "better" or higher up the hierarchy. No one cares what you think you are and your opinion about your place in the social hierarchy is probably the opinion that matters least. There is no good or bad here, there is only what happens to be observable in social interaction. Consider: Alphas seemingly rule the roost and yet they live in a world of constant conflict and status testing. Sigmas usually acquired their outsider status the hard way; one seldom becomes immune to the social hierarchy by virtue of mass popularity in one's childhood. Bravos... okay, bravos actually have it pretty good. But the important thing to keep in mind is that you can't improve your chances of success in the social game if you begin by attempting to deceive yourself as to where you stand vis-a-vis everyone else around you.

For more information: sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy

#2024 #Voxday #SSH #SocioSexualHierarchy #Men #Males #Rank #Education #World #CultureWar #EconomicWar #PsychologicalWarfare #SpiritualWarfare #BiologicalWarfare #KineticWarfare #UnrestrictedWarfare

The Socio-Sexual Hierarchy

The original definitions of the SSH profiles

ALPHA: The Alpha is the tall, good-looking guy who is the center of both male and female attention. The classic star of the football team who is dating the prettiest cheerleader. The successful business executive with the beautiful, stylish, blonde, size zero wife. All the women are attracted to him, while all the men want to be him, or at least be his friend. At a social gathering like a party, he's usually the loud, charismatic guy telling self-flattering stories to a group of top-tier women who are listening with interest. However, Alphas are only interested in women to the extent that they exist for the Alpha's gratification, physical and psychological, they are actually more concerned with their overall group status.

BRAVO: Bravos are the good-looking guys who aren't as uniformly attractive or socially dominant as the Alpha, but are nevertheless confident, attractive to women, and do well with them. At the party, they are the loud guy's friends who showed up with the alcohol and who are flirting with the tier-one women and cheerfully pairing up with the tier-two women. Bravos tend to genuinely like women and view them in a somewhat optimistic manner, but they don't have a lot of illusions about them either. Bravos tend to be happy, secure in themselves, and are up for anything their Alpha wants to do. When they marry, it is not infrequently to a woman who was one of the Alpha's former girlfriends.

DELTA: The normal guy. Deltas are the great majority of men. They can't attract the most attractive women, so they usually aim for the second-tier women with very limited success, and stubbornly resist paying attention to all of the third-tier women who are comfortably in their league. This is ironic, because Deltas would almost always be happier with their closest female equivalents. When a Delta does manage to land a second-tier woman, he is constantly afraid that she will lose interest in him and will, not infrequently, drive her into the very loss of interest he fears by his non-stop dancing of attendance upon her. In a social setting, the Deltas are the men clustered together in groups, each of them making an occasional foray towards various small gaggles of women before beating a hasty retreat when direct eye contact and engaged responses are not forthcoming. Deltas tend to put the female sex on pedestals and have overly optimistic expectations of them; if a man rhapsodizes about his better half or is an inveterate White Knight, he is almost certainly a Delta. Deltas like women, but find them mysterious, confusing, and are sometimes secretly a little afraid of them.

GAMMA: The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the Gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, Gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there... sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects.

OMEGA: The truly unfortunate. Omegas are the social losers who were never in the game. Sometimes creepy, sometimes damaged, often clueless, and always undesirable. They're not at the party. It would never have crossed anyone's mind to invite them in the first place. Omegas are either totally indifferent to women or hate them with a borderline homicidal fury.

SIGMA: The outsider who doesn't play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The Sigma is hated by Alphas because Sigmas are the only men who don't accept or at least acknowledge, however grudgingly, their social dominance. Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. In a social situation, the sigma is the man who stops in briefly to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a tier-one girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas like women, but tend to be contemptuous of them. They are usually considered to be strange, but cool. Gammas often like to think they are Sigmas, failing to understand that Sigmas are not social rejects, they are at the top of the social hierarchy despite their refusal to play by its rules.

LAMBDA: Those men who have quite literally no interest in conventional male-female sexual relations. They clearly have their own hierarchy of sorts, but I can't say that I know much about it other than it appears to somehow involve youth, free weights, and mustaches.

Now, it is important to keep in mind that it serves absolutely no purpose to identify yourself in some manner that you think is "better" or higher up the hierarchy. No one cares what you think you are and your opinion about your place in the social hierarchy is probably the opinion that matters least. There is no good or bad here, there is only what happens to be observable in social interaction. Consider: Alphas seemingly rule the roost and yet they live in a world of constant conflict and status testing. Sigmas usually acquired their outsider status the hard way; one seldom becomes immune to the social hierarchy by virtue of mass popularity in one's childhood. Bravos... okay, bravos actually have it pretty good. But the important thing to keep in mind is that you can't improve your chances of success in the social game if you begin by attempting to deceive yourself as to where you stand vis-a-vis everyone else around you.

For more information: sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy

#2024 #Voxday #SSH #SocioSexualHierarchy #Men #Males #Rank #Education #World #CultureWar #EconomicWar #PsychologicalWarfare #SpiritualWarfare #BiologicalWarfare #KineticWarfare #UnrestrictedWarfare