July 14, 2009

Anti-Awareness Campaigns

Stuff White People Like picked "Awareness" as #18 on the list:
An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through “awareness.” ... What makes this even more appealing for white people is that you can raise “awareness” through expensive dinners, parties, marathons, selling t-shirts, fashion shows, concerts, eating at restaurants and bracelets. In other words, white people just have to keep doing stuff they like, EXCEPT now they can feel better about making a difference.

Yet, even more than the "Awareness Campaign," it strikes me that the pervasive leitmotif of our age is the "Anti-Awareness Campaign," the semi-organized efforts to keep people from connecting the dots.

Consider how the facts in the Ricci case are repeatedly described as some weird anomaly, when they are simply business as usual in most big cities, barely distinguishable from, say, the Biondo case that dragged on for years in Chicago. But pattern recognition is despised.

The goal is not to impose hypocrisy, but stupidity.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human mind -- forever.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

44 comments:

Tom Regan said...

I wonder whether stupidity is being imposed.
It seems to me that it is something that is naturally accruing through increased breeding among the stupid and decreased breeding among the intelligent. See the start of Idiocracy.
We are at least two generations into a genuine de-evolution.
There's some on the left who espouse their ideals for 'who/whom' reasons, but the vast bulk of them are just naive, gullible and unintelligent, as you will soon find when trying to have a cogent argument with them.
To the extent that such leftist silliness is promulgated in the media, schools and colleges, it is only flourishing because of the reduced intelligence of the populace.

king obama said...

But, Steve, Obama is going to cure all that, and we will all live in a post-racial utopia.

Right?

Right?

Why do I hear crickets chirping?

Anybody?

Anonymous said...

Once the press has made up its mind, you are skrooed. Here's more about a very 'aware' woman who finds herself on the wrong side of a public brouhaha.

http://gothamist.com/2009/07/09/arrested_pug_owner_fired_over_anti-.php

Anonymous said...

Only stupidity about certain subjects and among certain peoples is sought.

The elite knows where its bread is buttered (or does it?).

Anonymous said...

Awareness and Education are the anti-bugbears of SWPL. Anything can be solved through Awareness and Education. Don't ask who's being educated or whose awareness is lacking -- if you have to ask, it's you!

Anonymous said...

A litmus test to determine if an AWARENESS CAMPAIGN is truly useful or simply a SWPL-peacock display: do they raise awareness in dangerous areas where the problem largely exists or simply bang pots and shout at other SWPL or their lessors in safe SWPL venues.

For example, why did gay and lesbians infiltrate and disrupt mormon churches in CA instead of black and hispanic churches which was the unexpected swing vote that defeated the Gay Marriage amendment and represents the larger, long-term demographic voting threat to gay rights?

Why do college womens groups march on campus to Take Back the Night? Is the real threat to women from male middle class college students or the 17-34yo NAM males in the many poor communities surrounding some of the most liberal campuses like Yale, Berkeley, UChiago, Columbia, etc?

Anonymous said...

This post on Anti-Awareness got me thinking about the place where I live, Berkeley, CA. The heavily white areas remind me of the Star Trek episode, The Return of the Archons. Bringing up race realist topics in conversation evokes not so much anger as a strong fear reaction, as though at any moment law givers in robes will appear to take everyone away to be "absorbed by the body." (Obama would make a convincing Landru). White believers in PC often take on the mindless happy expressions of Beta III humanoids when talking about their commitment to diversity.

But more often than not, they put their kids in one of Berkeley's expensive competitive private academies with 85% white enrollment (as I did), then join the schools Diversity Committee (which I didn't), where at meetings everyone sits around eating takeout ethnic food and complaining about how hard it is to get diversity in places where the annual tuition is $22,000 a year.

Anonymous said...

Keith, in a comment over at the overlawyered article on Biondo says:


Is testing the correct way to determine who should be promoted to leadership positions? This practice is quite rare in the corporate world.


The highlighted portion is extremely ironic.

Because of supreme court decisions, testing is not used, so applicants are tested at the coal face.

Of course, in some areas they have to promote minorities (or should that be moronities) so that they look good. Eg, in the financial world for a while there the gravy train was so good it didn't matter that they had an idiot at the helm.

Simon said...

Given the tendency of IQ to regress to the population mean, i don't think there has been enough time for dysgenic effects on IQ to manifest. I think the stupidity we witness is environmental - primarily education-based.

Anonymous said...

Tom Regan wrote:

"To the extent that such leftist silliness is promulgated in the media, schools and colleges, it is only flourishing because of the reduced intelligence of the populace."


Tom my friend, I think the leftist silliness is promulgated in the schools because one has to get a degree to have good life-chances these days, and one has to get past some left-wing profeSSors to get that degree. If we didn't mandate that kids had to take college English, History, Sociology, Psychology, and Philosophy, but only take the courses that directly led to their degree, many leftists would be put out of business. College professors get these kids when they are young and impressionable and use fear (social and academic) to indoctrinate them or to at least so the kids give leftism "mouth honor" despite their private inclinations.



I actually blame wealthy conservatives for the media. They didn't band together and start center-right newspapers in their own cities as they could/should have. Sports pages/Entertainment pages used to sell newspapers. Those wouldn't be hard to underwrite successfully. FoxNews has shown everyone that right-wing news (neo-con news admittedly) does indeed sell well.
However everyone sees newspapers as dying now, so only Murdoch is bothering to proffer competition to liberal papers. We have been beholden to leftist newspapers for an entire generation now.

The net shows how thirsty the public is for unbiased news and commentary.



We have -got- to figure out a way for the public to go around leftist professors to get professinal, educational accreditation. Will online-colleges start being the answer over the next decades in lieu of how high student loan costs are going to get to be?

Anonymous said...

I wasn't aware of that.

Anonymous said...

My parents were Catholic New Deal Democrats. They were intelligent and educated people but their minds functioned within very proscribed limits- not narrow exactly, but there were things they just didn't think, places they just didn't go. I think for them the church was the more important source of control than any secular agency, but obviously that has changed over the decades.

According to Orwell the properly trained mind can hold two contradictory ideas but the new system does not even have that feature- only the politically correct idea is held and the mind is helpless to deal with contradictions

read it said...

This may be off topic, but I have found that if you just try to ask questions or stir the pot, sometimes people get mad and insult you as stupid or ignorant. In an age such as this where it is not possible to know everything you want to know, it seems helpful when people give reasons and cite evidence so that we can all avail ourselves of insight and research. Mostly people here are friendly and will share what they know and link etc. However some people who know a little more seem angry at others who are uninformed but wish to be more informed. I am sure some of my opinions suffer from incomplete info, that is why I am here to expedite learning from hearing from others. I am looking to find out not just sit smugly ignorant.

Peter A said...

Let's remember that there is no AA in any jobs that matter - there is no AA at the upper levels of the corporate world, in finance or in law, none. And oddly you will meet very few NAMS occupying senior positions in any of those sectors. AA is a fraud - it's a sop to pretend that we're giving blacks a chance, but they never get any real power - they might get shunted to be "director of diversity" or some such nonsense. Only the white lower middle class pays a price for AA, not the upper. So it's hard to see why it's stupid for elites to keep it in place. It's actually in the interest of elites to have AA - it coopts more intelligent blacks who might otherwise cause trouble and gives them a stake in the system, and AA keeps potential white lower class competitors busy fighting with NAMs rather than trying to advance into the elite. Don't kid yourselves for a second that the elites are becoming stupider, they know what they're doing.

Dutch Boy said...

It isn't easy to be wise. Years ago I reacted against the then nascent PC in college by searching for ideological alternatives. I discovered National Review style Movement Conservatism and was hooked. Alas, it took many years and plenty of life experience to disenthrall myself from that blind alley. I was helped along by alternative perspectives not available in my youth (e.g, the internet). So keep posting, Steve S. et al, your work is not in vain!

Anonymous said...

Anti-Awareness and suppression of public dot-connection is the fulltime job of the financial media in this broken country. The Zero Hedge blog is all over this fiasco of oligarchy in America.

America's economic collapse is, of course, at its core an intellectual collapse.

headache said...

I agree with Steve. I think he was talking of the operatives, not the run-o-the-mill lefties. Those people have always been naive. Anybody that truly believes what a socialist party sez must be dumb as shit.

Socialists are basically Communists in slow motion. They have absolutely no interest in giving you anything. They want your vote, your freedom, your money and your life. Their eventual goal is also total control. Except they realized the inner viscosity of western society was too high to just march through as they did in Russia or China. In fact the inner viscosity there was also high, but they just bludgeoned everybody to death. The physical, intellectual and spiritual carnage during the communist takeover of those nations is daunting. I cannot understand why no large-scale trials have been held in those countries yet.

ricpic said...

There comes a tipping point (I hope) at which the huge cohort that is apolitical begins to waken to what is being done to it. Not that a light goes on and leftist thuggery is seen for what it is. No. Only that a point is reached when the apolitical say to themselves, "This crew isn't working, let's try that crew" and vote accordingly. In that sense a boot can't go on squashing a brain forever.

Anonymous said...

I think the leftist silliness is promulgated in the schools [...] If we didn't mandate that kids had to take college English, History, Sociology, Psychology, and Philosophy

Actually, philosophy is largely free of that sort of nonsense. The philosophy courses I took were very abstract and concerned with rigorous logical arguments about very abstruse matters. Reciting PC pieties wouldn't have done you any good.

nostrum said...

silly girl sez:
"I am sure some of my opinions suffer from incomplete info, that is why I am here to expedite learning from hearing from others. I am looking to find out not just sit smugly ignorant."



You made a good choice to come over to iSteve! I have been working through some issues related to religion and race, which the church and to a lesser degree the media had me feeling bad about. From Steve I learned to start working with facts and see through the posturing of most liberals and even churchmen. These people are usually not prepared to pay the price of their own ideas. They want us to be the guinea pigs and they want to cash in on the "moral" benefits. Even the few who are prepared to pay the price are usually on some sort of self-glorification trip.
I'm feeling much better about things, even though I realize that by iSteve standards most people around me are ignoramuses. I suggest that you spend more time reading Steve's articles than following the discussions. Unfortunately there are some loud characters on iSteve who talk a lot but listen less. Steve has most of the data that you need, so read his articles. The threads are just for letting of steam.

Lucius Vorenus said...

headache: Socialists are basically Communists in slow motion.

They're all nihilists - there's not a dime's worth of difference between any of them.

headache: ...they just bludgeoned everybody to death. The physical, intellectual and spiritual carnage during the communist takeover of those nations is daunting...

Which is precisely the purpose of nihilism, namely: Death.

Ian said...

Can never repost this particular bit of wisdom enough:

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect, and is intended to." -- T. Dalrymple

m said...

Agree with Dutch Boy- National Review got me into conservatism then lost me when they didn't realize what a mistake Iraq was....used to love the Corner now it is a mish mash of too many weak opinions- Derb is only saving grace and still like Steyn but a tad less so now.

Did we ever find out who the War Nerd was? My guess is Les Steckel- the old Vikings head coach.

Unknown said...

et al, your work is not in vain!

I think a lot of the despair evident in "our" circles is misplaced.

My real fear is the inevitable war for eyeballs on the net. Right now it's like the wild west but we all know frontiers don't stay wild forever.

But let's face it, the longer it stays open, the more TPTB bleed. The peasants are making mock of the emperor in ever-increasing numbers. Never healthy for the regime.

People are curious and seek the truth. Being on the wrong side of that isn't a good place to be, long term.

Maybe the emperor made a mistake when he threw hackers to the H1B wolves?

Anonymous said...

"National Review got me into conservatism then lost me when they didn't realize what a mistake Iraq was"

I only turned on to NR after 9/11 and in its online form. It astounds me that this was once considered conservative, and is considered conservative by some.

I like to joke "which nation does National in National Review refer to? Israel? Iraq? Afghanistan? Judea as diaspora?" These people have less attachment to America than your average just hopped the fence illegal.

I'm not surprised to learn that WFB Jr. was a CIA officer, the whole friggin' publication just reeks of entryism, an obvious CIA black op to destabilize conservatism that would make a KGB agent blush.

Steyn was recently "surprised" that Obama wants to expand hate speech laws. It's not like it was on his website clearly listed under "Policy" for nearly two years and it's not as if Steyn isn't one of the highest paid journos in the world.

Seditious doesn't begin to cover what I think of the NRO gang.

Big Bill said...

silly girl sez:
"I am sure some of my opinions suffer from incomplete info, that is why I am here to expedite learning from hearing from others. I am looking to find out not just sit smugly ignorant."

Re: Nostrum's comment, My turning point was finding La Griffe du Lion and, yes, finding and abandoning David Horowitz and National Review.

Anonymous said...

Don't kid yourselves for a second that the elites are becoming stupider, they know what they're doing.

True, but the very intellectual dishonesty of their stance eats away constantly at the strength of that position. The one thing they cannot do is defend it on its own terms. For that they have willing leftsists to do it for them.

Anonymous said...

I cannot understand why no large-scale trials have been held in those countries yet.

One of the things I haven't understood is why there were no large scale investigations in Western Europe or the United States on Soviet penetration of western institutions like the media. After the SU collapsed there should have been South African style truth and reconciliation hearings where former paid communist agents could step forward and confess without fear of being tried later.

In fact, such commissions were needed in the US more than they ever were needed in SA.

Anonymous said...

Really, you don't understand it, Ronduck? Cause it seems to have a pretty simple explanation....

Anonymous said...

Really, you don't understand it, Ronduck?

Ok, I admit that was a dumb way to phrase my statement.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

You made a good choice to come over to iSteve! I have been working through some issues related to religion and race, which the church and to a lesser degree the media had me feeling bad about. From Steve I learned to start working with facts and see through the posturing of most liberals and even churchmen.

I can distill a lot of iSteve down to a few paragraphs:

Steve has looked at the data, and concluded that we are not going to have proportional representation of racial groups across the board, whether we're talking about violinists, bouncers, structural engineers, or 100M sprinters.

So rather than passing totalitarian laws that contradict each other and do nothing to change reality in any event, we should be thinking about a society where the members of an incredibly biodiverse population can each strive for their little place in the sun.

Such a society is not possible with the government set-asides and civil rights laws that take away everybody's safe harbors.

Dead Cossack Kin said...

I'm with the last Anonymous. Funny how Sailer can close this post with a paraphrasing of Orwell, who grasped the complete farce of the "Cold War", yet some of his loyal readers don't quite get it. Your big "Soviet vs. U.S." competition was, in essence, just your equally silly "Democrat vs. Republican" contest, writ large. Heads, tails, same coin.

Lucius Vorenus said...

C'mon - Mark Steyn is one of the good guys.

Toadal said...

A recent example of SWPL unawareness that comes to my mind is Barack Obama's nomination and the Senate's confirmation of John P. Holdren as Science Adviser. While I think a "Let's Explore Science" advocate would be a cool role, unfortunately, what Dr Holdren really wants to become are Abortion-Sterilization Czar and World Wealth Redistribution Czar. He is the co-author, with Paul Ehrlich, of of the 1977 book "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment".
Dr Holdren writes that adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods to prevent human conception would not be outside the framework of our present US Constitution. Dr Holdren also endorsed a surrender of United States sovereignty to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime" that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits.

We soon have a more frightening repeat of the late 1960s population scare. A federal 'global swarming' studies program where the most educatable, orderly, and impressionable (high IQ) small children are frightened into sterility by teachers and administrators doomsday scenarios of mass hunger and social chaos. While the least impressionable, stupid small children can't really imagine what's portrayed or think a savage existence would be cool, ignore their teachers, and have babies at even earlier age.

Lawful Neutral said...

"Right now it's like the wild west but we all know frontiers don't stay wild forever."

You've got that right, Svigor. It's only a matter of time until our betters put an end to this nonsense: all they'll have to do is make broadband access a "free" public service. We'd all better enjoy this freedom while it lasts.

Big Bill said...

I saw a cute "awareness" thing in Haaretz today. Some 2000 college kids got together and built 75 rafts to go float across Lake Kinnaret in Israel. The rafts had big sails that said "Free Gilad Shalit" and stuff like that. (Gilad is the soldier who was taken by the Arabs three eyars ago.]

They were allegedly "raising awareness" of Gilad's imprisonment ... while smoking dope, drinking wine, enjoying some beautiful Jewish babes' fine bikini'ed T&A and drifting slowly across a big lake. Now THAT is my kind of awareness raising.

Anonymous said...

War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength



No, Ignorance is Bliss. Diversity is Strength.

Anonymous said...

Toadal, do you ever go outside?

First, when you tell women - feminist women who supported Obama even - about John Holdren they go NUTS. They go, like, maenad-nuts. What a huge mistake that was.

Secondly, the really smart kids 1) aren't available for indoctrination and 2) their lines stopped breeding in large numbers when birth control became available to them a century ago (the diaphagm has been in use among educated married women for that long.) The important dysgenic distinction isn't actually intelligence anymore, it's fecklessness. The calm, orderly, and foreward-thinking are being swamped by their opposites.

Anonymous said...

You've got that right, Svigor. It's only a matter of time until our betters put an end to this nonsense: all they'll have to do is make broadband access a "free" public service. We'd all better enjoy this freedom while it lasts.

Hmm. What about p2p wireless networks? If there's content, they will come. Hackers are going to be a big problem for Big Brother, if he decides to shut down the party.

~Svigor

Anonymous said...

Or P2P wired networks, for that matter.

What good is the gatekeeper to the average Joe, really?

~Svigor

Truth said...

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength

Ladies and Gentlemen, Barack Obama welcomes you to Oceania."

We've been living in Oceana since WWII, Fool.

Anonymous said...

Right on, Truth. I'm with you again.

Anonymous said...

Toadal:

the most educatable, orderly, and impressionable (high IQ) small children are frightened into sterility by teachers and administrators doomsday scenarios of mass hunger and social chaos.

Why bother? Already a good many high-IQ small children are frightened into suicide by tard-bullying, not to mention boredom, tyrannical teachers, and the like.

And the lucky ones who don't kill themselves usually end up devoting so much time to their studies and career that they have none left to compete in the dog-eat-dog struggle to breed.

While the least impressionable, stupid small children can't really imagine what's portrayed or think a savage existence would be cool, ignore their teachers,

If their dumb mean teachers also believe that a savage (but carefully regulated) existence is cool, then the dumb mean kids will treat them as heroes.

and have babies at even earlier age.

Nuff said.

Anonymous said...

"What good is the gatekeeper to the average Joe, really?"

The point of a gatekeeper is to protect those who are not average Joes, from average Joes, while yet permitting the ravaging of average Joes.