Vegas is on par with the worst parts of Southern California for trading in human misery and desperation. Phoenix actually is a *pretty* city despite being in the Sonoran desert, between the sunsets, the strata and shapes of the mountains around the valley, the sparse but abundant vegetation. Arizona is a beautiful, but stark state. 

There are some places in Nevada that approach this kind of beauty - but most of it looks like it was the scarred site of a prehistoric nuclear battle. Desolate, drab, dusty, and monolithic. 

The weirdest part of that is that it is surrounded by Utah, Idaho Oregon, California and Arizona. It is just this dead spot surrounded by much more beautiful regions where people go to let their souls die.

 

Wed May 26 2021 09:13:39 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I lived in Henderson for five years and only went on the strip once because I needed to go to the bus station. They're both disgusting places. 

Sedona is in my top 5 places to purchase another single family dwelling. My goal is to maintain 6 "homes". Maine, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and Arizona. So far I have two checked off, need to buy 3 more houses. Working on Texas now but prices are  ridiculously inflated at the moment. My thinking is that I can spend 2 months of the year in each place, or mix it up. When I get bored I can just go live elsewhere. Then repeat.

Wed May 26 2021 09:48:20 MSTfrom ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

Phoenix actually is a *pretty* city despite being in the Sonoran desert, between the sunsets, the strata and shapes of the mountains around the valley, the sparse but abundant vegetation. Arizona is a beautiful, but stark state.

That is kind of our goal. My wife can work remotely. I need to figure out a way to bring in sufficient income without being tied to one location. 

Sun Jun 06 2021 00:37:44 MST from smashbot64

Sedona is in my top 5 places to purchase another single family dwelling. My goal is to maintain 6 "homes". Maine, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and Arizona. So far I have two checked off, need to buy 3 more houses. Working on Texas now but prices are  ridiculously inflated at the moment. My thinking is that I can spend 2 months of the year in each place, or mix it up. When I get bored I can just go live elsewhere. Then repeat.

Wed May 26 2021 09:48:20 MSTfrom ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

Phoenix actually is a *pretty* city despite being in the Sonoran desert, between the sunsets, the strata and shapes of the mountains around the valley, the sparse but abundant vegetation. Arizona is a beautiful, but stark state.

I would happily farm any part of Nevada that they're willing to give me, but 98% of the state is owned by the federal government.  Boo.  Meanwhile I really like Arizona.

See - here is the problem with your interpretation of libertarian principles. 

98% of the State of Nevada is owned by YOU - by us, by EVERY American citizen. That is what you say when you say, "owned by the Federal Government." But you say it like you mean some evil entity that has what should be yours. It is YOURS. They don't own it. You do. When the Federal Government manages land - it is the whole THIS IS YOUR LAND/MY LAND part of the song. 

The trustee is not managing that trust correctly - but that isn't a reason to dissolve the TRUST. We need to replace the trustees so that we are better represented in how OUR land is managed, allocated and in how we are able to utilize it. 

Someone has to administer and manage OUR land - we can't, all 330 million of us, each manage it individually by deciding what portion of that State's Federal land is DIRECTLY ours. That won't work. Where it has been tried, at much simpler times in American history, "Show up, stake a claim, and take up occupancy and it is yours..." things have inevitably been a shitshow free-for-all. 

You should spend less time focusing on convincing people to dissolve the trust - and more on convincing people to appoint trustees that will better serve all of our interests. 

Tue Jun 08 2021 21:21:38 MST from TheDave

I would happily farm any part of Nevada that they're willing to give me, but 98% of the state is owned by the federal government.  Boo.  Meanwhile I really like Arizona.

The Bundy standoff was a huge win for the trust AND for individual sovereignty.

And according to respectable social science about pandemics we're due for an upswing in conservatism. Luckily in America (and only in America) that means more individual freedom. Hopefully we'll see some Tea Party stuff and more Ron Pauls coming down the pike. And maybe an increasingly conservative DeSantis presidency. 

Well, the Clinton era was certainly a correction from the far-right conservatism that came after Reagan's administration - where even Tipper Gore was getting into the act by trying to protect our nation's youth by putting stickers on albums notifying parents that there were naughty words in some of the songs. 

Bush was a terrible, incompetent, unlikeable President. Orrin Hatch was also a Republican PR trainwreck who got himself into the spotlight far too often when he should have been kept on a short leash by the GOP. I recognize that a lot of the swing Left in America is the result of things swinging arguably too far right in the 80s and 90s - and we've clearly gone too far Left in the counter-swing - and are hopefully due for a counter-swing in the opposite direction soon. 

Ideally, we won't overcorrect for the swing LEFT - resulting in a swing right with such momentum that we end up going back to the Post-Reagan extremes that we saw prior to the Clinton years - but I have little faith in the voters or the politicians to have that kind of foresight. It is just an unfortunate endless cycle of our political framework that we constantly lurch to the far-left from the far-right and then back again. 

Fri Jun 11 2021 22:24:20 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

The Bundy standoff was a huge win for the trust AND for individual sovereignty.

And according to respectable social science about pandemics we're due for an upswing in conservatism. Luckily in America (and only in America) that means more individual freedom. Hopefully we'll see some Tea Party stuff and more Ron Pauls coming down the pike. And maybe an increasingly conservative DeSantis presidency. 

But yes, the Bundy standoff was a win for liberty, and a win for the solid foundation of the US values of libertarianism intrinsic in our system of Government. Practiced right - it is the *closest* thing to a Libertarian ideal - with the idea that those who are appointed as trustees operate as public *servants* - not as leaders or independently authoritative decision makers who TELL US what we can do - but as *representatives* of our will. 

Instead of opposing the values of the United States and trying to tear the system down - embrace it and try and make it work as intended. That is *actually* what Libertarians want. Too many of them have bought into the Leftist doctrines and dogmas that it is so hopelessly oppressive and repressive that it must be torn down, dismantled and replaced with something entirely different. That makes Libertarians unwittingly useful idiots for the goals and agenda of the collectivists and Marxists. 

"Every correction is an overcorrection."

- Andrew Schultz

If we get back to a revival of individualism, it'll be worth 10-15 years of BS rah rah 50s nostalgia. But only because the alternative is the death of individualism for un-guessable generations. 

That is a great quote. 

Yeah... I don't know if we'll ever have the return of widespread Reagan Style "Traditional Family Values" American patriotism again. They've poisoned the well pretty deeply and befouled an entire generation at a foundational level. 

I mean, TheDave "gets" it - but at the same time, his instinctual mistrust of the US Government supersedes a lot of the things he *gets* in a way that feels nearly insurmountable to me. Fighting him on those things is futile - you can only hope as he gets older, he sees the transparency of how programmatic a lot of those beliefs are. I mean, I've been watching a lot of "Know Your Rights" videos (which go hand in hand with watching guys in exotic sports cars going to car rallies all over North America.) And quite often I go... "Yup, that cop is a complete moron, an authoritarian, and should be removed from the force - and the problem is that SMART guys don't become patrol officers and beat officers..." But I see videos of good cops too... and I also see people doing stupid shit. It isn't JUST bad cops. It is... as usually, the 80/20 rule. The problem with cops is... Often both the cop and the suspect are part of the 80%, not the 20% - and that goes REALLY bad... but sometimes the problem is that the cop is part of the 80% and the suspect is in the 20% - but can't conceptualize that the guy with authority over him is 20 points lower in IQ, minimum. That is a frustrating place for a smart person to be... having to bend the knee to a moron - but the reality is, if you're REALLY smart - you'll realize that you're not going to argue or reason with a guy who can't actually understand the logic and reason you're speaking to him. In that case - appease the moron and figure out how to win the LONG game instead of the immediate one. 

 

Wed Jun 16 2021 12:54:23 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

"Every correction is an overcorrection."

- Andrew Schultz

If we get back to a revival of individualism, it'll be worth 10-15 years of BS rah rah 50s nostalgia. But only because the alternative is the death of individualism for un-guessable generations. 

Wed Jun 16 2021 20:48:53 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

That is a great quote. 

Yeah... I don't know if we'll ever have the return of widespread Reagan Style "Traditional Family Values" American patriotism again. They've poisoned the well pretty deeply and befouled an entire generation at a foundational level. 

I mean, TheDave "gets" it - but at the same time, his instinctual mistrust of the US Government supersedes a lot of the things he *gets* in a way that feels nearly insurmountable to me. Fighting him on those things is futile - you can only hope as he gets older, he sees the transparency of how programmatic a lot of those beliefs are. I mean, I've been watching a lot of "Know Your Rights" videos (which go hand in hand with watching guys in exotic sports cars going to car rallies all over North America.) And quite often I go... "Yup, that cop is a complete moron, an authoritarian, and should be removed from the force - and the problem is that SMART guys don't become patrol officers and beat officers..." But I see videos of good cops too... and I also see people doing stupid shit. It isn't JUST bad cops. It is... as usually, the 80/20 rule. The problem with cops is... Often both the cop and the suspect are part of the 80%, not the 20% - and that goes REALLY bad... but sometimes the problem is that the cop is part of the 80% and the suspect is in the 20% - but can't conceptualize that the guy with authority over him is 20 points lower in IQ, minimum. That is a frustrating place for a smart person to be... having to bend the knee to a moron - but the reality is, if you're REALLY smart - you'll realize that you're not going to argue or reason with a guy who can't actually understand the logic and reason you're speaking to him. In that case - appease the moron and figure out how to win the LONG game instead of the immediate one. 

 

Wed Jun 16 2021 12:54:23 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

"Every correction is an overcorrection."

- Andrew Schultz

If we get back to a revival of individualism, it'll be worth 10-15 years of BS rah rah 50s nostalgia. But only because the alternative is the death of individualism for un-guessable generations. 

 

I always appease the moron so I can leave as soon as possible.  That's only failed me once, and I ended up pleading out to "delaying a peace officer" for riding my bike home at 3am.

It's not an instinctual mistrust of the government, it's learned mistrust.  I was raised to be hyper-patriotic.  I'm an Eagle Scout.  My dad will stop on the freeway if he sees an american flag on the ground.  My mistrust of the government is the result of the betrayal of the standards they're supposed to uphold and literally NEVER ONCE have done.  You mentioned on facebook that the American Experiment failed because of the Civil War and I agree entirely.  When I say that the Federal Government owns the land, I KNOW that it's supposed to be "our" land but I also know that you're be shot if you try to use it like it is.  The government isn't misguided, it's actively evil, and we're just fucking lucky as hell that it's not as actively evil as other regimes.  There are good people out there, and there are even a few politicians who don't deserve to be shot, but government attracts corruption because that's what power does.

Fuck the government.  It's shit, and every single argument in favour of it is an argument based on bullshit.  There are better ways to organize for literally every purpose.

As I've said, they've poisoned the well pretty deeply. I think the Marxists don't *care* why you hate the Government so much you want to abolish it. They want a void they can fill - they don't care what ideology gets them to the void. It is the liability of the more conservative side. Some of the conservative libertarians are ultimately aiding the Ultra Leftists. They know with US removed, there aren't enough of YOU to resist their numbers and desire to replace OUR ideal of Government with their, much worse vision of it. But like you said, there is NO argument that will convince you otherwise. 

This is the troubling thing. That, multiplied exponentially across the population - indicates that Wangsis's theories about things improving because of tech and market economies are probably naively optimistic. We're probably going to see things get a lot worse. 

The Government may be full of corruption - but the IDEA of the Government is solid and proven. You may have never seen an example of it working in your LIFETIME, but it has worked in the history of our nation. So throwing OUT the government isn't the answer. Throwing out the corrupt in our Government and returning it to what it was supposed to be is the answer. 


And - the telling thing is if you said that to a Democrat - they would call it insurgent and revolutionary - the rhetoric of "terrorists". Saying that we should return to the model of American liberty on which the country was founded is something they think should be criminally subversive. That alone is evidence that what you say about the corruption of our Government is *true* - but at the same time, it is evidence that abolishing our government completely as you would like isn't the right answer, either. 

Returning it to the vision of what it was supposed to be is the answer. A representative republic that serves the people. 

Thu Jun 17 2021 05:31:31 MST from TheDave

 

Wed Jun 16 2021 20:48:53 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

That is a great quote. 

Yeah... I don't know if we'll ever have the return of widespread Reagan Style "Traditional Family Values" American patriotism again. They've poisoned the well pretty deeply and befouled an entire generation at a foundational level. 

I mean, TheDave "gets" it - but at the same time, his instinctual mistrust of the US Government supersedes a lot of the things he *gets* in a way that feels nearly insurmountable to me. Fighting him on those things is futile - you can only hope as he gets older, he sees the transparency of how programmatic a lot of those beliefs are. I mean, I've been watching a lot of "Know Your Rights" videos (which go hand in hand with watching guys in exotic sports cars going to car rallies all over North America.) And quite often I go... "Yup, that cop is a complete moron, an authoritarian, and should be removed from the force - and the problem is that SMART guys don't become patrol officers and beat officers..." But I see videos of good cops too... and I also see people doing stupid shit. It isn't JUST bad cops. It is... as usually, the 80/20 rule. The problem with cops is... Often both the cop and the suspect are part of the 80%, not the 20% - and that goes REALLY bad... but sometimes the problem is that the cop is part of the 80% and the suspect is in the 20% - but can't conceptualize that the guy with authority over him is 20 points lower in IQ, minimum. That is a frustrating place for a smart person to be... having to bend the knee to a moron - but the reality is, if you're REALLY smart - you'll realize that you're not going to argue or reason with a guy who can't actually understand the logic and reason you're speaking to him. In that case - appease the moron and figure out how to win the LONG game instead of the immediate one. 

 

Wed Jun 16 2021 12:54:23 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

"Every correction is an overcorrection."

- Andrew Schultz

If we get back to a revival of individualism, it'll be worth 10-15 years of BS rah rah 50s nostalgia. But only because the alternative is the death of individualism for un-guessable generations. 

 

I always appease the moron so I can leave as soon as possible.  That's only failed me once, and I ended up pleading out to "delaying a peace officer" for riding my bike home at 3am.

It's not an instinctual mistrust of the government, it's learned mistrust.  I was raised to be hyper-patriotic.  I'm an Eagle Scout.  My dad will stop on the freeway if he sees an american flag on the ground.  My mistrust of the government is the result of the betrayal of the standards they're supposed to uphold and literally NEVER ONCE have done.  You mentioned on facebook that the American Experiment failed because of the Civil War and I agree entirely.  When I say that the Federal Government owns the land, I KNOW that it's supposed to be "our" land but I also know that you're be shot if you try to use it like it is.  The government isn't misguided, it's actively evil, and we're just fucking lucky as hell that it's not as actively evil as other regimes.  There are good people out there, and there are even a few politicians who don't deserve to be shot, but government attracts corruption because that's what power does.

Fuck the government.  It's shit, and every single argument in favour of it is an argument based on bullshit.  There are better ways to organize for literally every purpose.

Thu Jun 17 2021 07:06:09 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

As I've said, they've poisoned the well pretty deeply. I think the Marxists don't *care* why you hate the Government so much you want to abolish it. They want a void they can fill - they don't care what ideology gets them to the void. It is the liability of the more conservative side. Some of the conservative libertarians are ultimately aiding the Ultra Leftists. They know with US removed, there aren't enough of YOU to resist their numbers and desire to replace OUR ideal of Government with their, much worse vision of it. But like you said, there is NO argument that will convince you otherwise. 

This is the troubling thing. That, multiplied exponentially across the population - indicates that Wangsis's theories about things improving because of tech and market economies are probably naively optimistic. We're probably going to see things get a lot worse. 

The Government may be full of corruption - but the IDEA of the Government is solid and proven. You may have never seen an example of it working in your LIFETIME, but it has worked in the history of our nation. So throwing OUT the government isn't the answer. Throwing out the corrupt in our Government and returning it to what it was supposed to be is the answer. 


And - the telling thing is if you said that to a Democrat - they would call it insurgent and revolutionary - the rhetoric of "terrorists". Saying that we should return to the model of American liberty on which the country was founded is something they think should be criminally subversive. That alone is evidence that what you say about the corruption of our Government is *true* - but at the same time, it is evidence that abolishing our government completely as you would like isn't the right answer, either. 

Returning it to the vision of what it was supposed to be is the answer. A representative republic that serves the people. 

 

Jefferson thought we should have a revolution every ten years, if I remember right.  We didn't do that.  Lincoln killed America.  I'm willing to revert to the Articles of Confederation.  The Constitution could work if we fixed it so they have no wiggle room to make something like Wickard v Filburn happen, and states are legally allowed to leave the union, and Gun Rights are formally and permanently and irrevocably enshrined.  Corporations aren't people and Ranked Choice Voting is mandatory and Political Parties are banned on penalty of dismemberment.

Yeah, I could see a way for government to work.  I've already solved most of the problems, but I don't have any way to make it happen yet.  This is supposed to be 50 countries loosely federated.  And honestly, we should give Hawaii back to its natives.

Fuck government.  Last decent president was Reagan, until Trump came.  Even then he fucked up by not firing everyone who was already there.

Simple solution: If you are an incumbent and you lose your re-election, you get executed, preferably drowned.  If you don't run you can't lose so you live.  Choosing to be part of the ruling class should make you afraid for your life.

I'm good with that. The strength and weakness is that it is a dynamic framework. We could make it what you envision without throwing everything out. The problem is we've made it what OTHER people envision without throwing everything out. 

The solution is to throw THOSE people out - but the 80% is too dumb to ever recognize that, leaving the other 20% of us frustrated. 

Thu Jun 17 2021 09:03:56 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I'm good with that. The strength and weakness is that it is a dynamic framework. We could make it what you envision without throwing everything out. The problem is we've made it what OTHER people envision without throwing everything out. 

The solution is to throw THOSE people out - but the 80% is too dumb to ever recognize that, leaving the other 20% of us frustrated. 

 

Exactly.  It was always supposed to be a dynamic framework.  NATO states could be ACTUAL states and leave when they get annoyed.  Russia could be a state.

Duels should be legal.  There are too many stupid people and we need to let them weed themselves out.  

I don't disagree - but... 
Interestingly: 

The duel was based on a code of honor. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it, and as such the tradition of dueling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era, it extended to those of the upper classes generally. On occasion, duels with pistols or swords were fought between women.^[1][2]

Legislation against dueling goes back to the medieval period. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlawed duels,^[3] and civil legislation in the Holy Roman Empire against dueling was passed in the wake of the Thirty Years' War.^[4] From the early 17th century, duels became illegal in the countries where they were practiced. Dueling largely fell out of favor in England by the mid-19th century and in Continental Europe by the turn of the 20th century. Dueling declined in the Eastern United States in the 19th century and by the time the American Civil War broke out, dueling had begun to wane even in the South.^[5] Public opinion, not legislation, caused the change.^[5] Research has linked the decline of dueling to increases in state capacity.<sup>[6]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel</sup>

Fri Jun 18 2021 03:06:36 MST from TheDave

 

Thu Jun 17 2021 09:03:56 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I'm good with that. The strength and weakness is that it is a dynamic framework. We could make it what you envision without throwing everything out. The problem is we've made it what OTHER people envision without throwing everything out. 

The solution is to throw THOSE people out - but the 80% is too dumb to ever recognize that, leaving the other 20% of us frustrated. 

 

Exactly.  It was always supposed to be a dynamic framework.  NATO states could be ACTUAL states and leave when they get annoyed.  Russia could be a state.

Duels should be legal.  There are too many stupid people and we need to let them weed themselves out.  

"Wangsis's theories about things improving because of tech and market economies are probably naively optimistic. We're probably going to see things get a lot worse."

Things will get a lot better and a lot worse. This has always been the case. If you believe the Bible, the City of Enoch got it right so it wasn't left on Earth. If you simply take that as a parable, this planet isn't really for perfection.

The sexual revolution made spousal rape illegal. That's wonderful. But it also made divorce so catastrophic that men don't find marriage worthwhile. Now half the kids are fatherless because those ladies aren't going to stop biologically craving marriage (and no, I don't just mean sex). Everything has pros and cons. As Saint Sowell teaches, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

The American revolution destroyed the Divine Right of Kings from Western philosophy. But Europe didn't "get it" so I they eliminated their monarchies and created superstates, making world wars possible for the first time.

Pros and cons.

On balance, I'll take the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence is one of the best pieces of paper in human history, as was the Magna Carta before it. I'm looking forward to the next big paper. Maybe it was penned by Satoshi Nakamoto. Maybe it'll be penned by some kid born this year. But I'd rather live in 2021 than any year previous, and I think the decades will continue to improve for blokes like me until we round the corner of Kali Yuga again. 

I think what your optimism misses is that it hasn't been all forward progress, for all places, at all times. 

We had World War I and II in there - we had the Spanish Flu - where one out of 4 people on the EARTH died. Sit at your table. How many people are there? If there are less than 8 - pick which one you would want to give up. That happened to EVERY family of 4 or more, basically - globally. 

The Russians had things pretty bad with the Tsar. They thought they had fixed that - it was way worse, and that lasted for a *long* time. 

America has generally been the wedge that kept this isolated to places like North Korea, Cambodia, Russia, China. But we're losing our way - and worse, most of our allies have long since lost their way. I think we caught the tail end of a period of global human enlightenment - and we may live to see the fall back into a global time of darkness. 

There was some Roman or Greek or Egyptian citizen that felt that in all of known human history, they were living in the most advanced society ever to exist - and they saw only forward progress for the glory of their Nation. 

And, in some of their lifetimes - they say their Nations collapse into chaos and anarchy and darkness. Many of them died in the transition - but some of them survived. For some of them, having the yoke of the State off them may have freed them to achieve things they never could have under the oppression of the authority of their State. These generally weren't *good* people. The good people - if they survived, things got worse for them. 

We've had checks and balances for the last 400 years or so keeping those collapses isolated - in part because there wasn't a monolithic single world power that encompassed ALL of the civilized world. If dark ages didn't consume the globe in the past - it was only because some thriving societies were isolated from the ones that collapsed. We have ALL been connected for a while - but the Western European Patriarchy has been making sure that any collapsing society was isolated and contained - we all rallied together to stop the threat of that collapse spreading globally. 

But we also respected a diversity of ideologies, philosophies, and Governments that were all independent of one another and did not generally meddle in one another's internal politics and policies. 

Globalism has created - already, a largely monolithic global society - a house of cards - or a Jenga tower - where one important card or plank removed may bring the whole thing down. 

Technology will contribute to the speed at which that collapse happens. 

We survived the Russian/US cold war - but we may still live to see entire cities, entire States, entire nations, erased from the planet in mushroom clouds. 

We're tampering with the environment - and it is possible that the Governments know that it really really IS real and everything they've tried has failed. Maybe the cloud seeding and weather control and trying to increase cloud cover to decrease temperatures is based on them being *certain* of something - and if they've failed and failed - maybe we're already a dead-man-walking and they won't tell us because the die off will be *catastrophic* and soon. That thought occurred to me just a couple of days ago. With all the other lies - if we've already gone past the tipping point in the models - they would never tell us. They would let us continue on as if nothing was amiss until it was undeniable - and even then, they would lie to us. 

But - there are far more troubling things afoot right now. I think it is a naïve time to be an optimist about the future of humanity. I think there is a good chance we'll set ourselves way back before we achieve the singularity. In fact - you know me - I think a lot of the myths and scriptures are about us being right at the point of the singularity before - and setting ourselves back 10,000, 15,000 maybe 35,000 or even 350,000 years. The myths and scriptures we have speak of feats that sounded like miracles until recently - but now many of those things seem completely plausible with *technology*. Those myths and scriptures go WAY further back than just 2000 years. What if they're not parables and myths - and what if our timeline is WAY off. 

But... before we have a Great Reset like that... we may have to suffer through a great reset that is more immediate - and there is a general intent to make that happen. 

We're entering into very dark times - ones that make the legacy of both world wars and the rise of the soviet union seem like temporary and minor inconveniences in the great scale of things. 

Tue Jun 29 2021 14:11:54 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

"Wangsis's theories about things improving because of tech and market economies are probably naively optimistic. We're probably going to see things get a lot worse."

Things will get a lot better and a lot worse. This has always been the case. If you believe the Bible, the City of Enoch got it right so it wasn't left on Earth. If you simply take that as a parable, this planet isn't really for perfection.

The sexual revolution made spousal rape illegal. That's wonderful. But it also made divorce so catastrophic that men don't find marriage worthwhile. Now half the kids are fatherless because those ladies aren't going to stop biologically craving marriage (and no, I don't just mean sex). Everything has pros and cons. As Saint Sowell teaches, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

The American revolution destroyed the Divine Right of Kings from Western philosophy. But Europe didn't "get it" so I they eliminated their monarchies and created superstates, making world wars possible for the first time.

Pros and cons.

On balance, I'll take the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence is one of the best pieces of paper in human history, as was the Magna Carta before it. I'm looking forward to the next big paper. Maybe it was penned by Satoshi Nakamoto. Maybe it'll be penned by some kid born this year. But I'd rather live in 2021 than any year previous, and I think the decades will continue to improve for blokes like me until we round the corner of Kali Yuga again. 

I think you overestimate my global optimism pretty regularly. Probably because I'm a happy person and expect things to go well for _Me In Particular_. But you have to remember I'm a relatively literal reader of the Bible.

Before Adam even died, the world had fallen into global degeneracy. Enoch had to restart civilization once even in the first thousand years of the Abrahamic history of mankind. And they achieved a functionally ideal society. And the people around them hated them and when they left the entire world devolved into barbarians again. And we do this at least once every thousand years on each continent.

It's been a good run. We brought back the social technologies of the Greeks and hybridized it with the Dutch experiments on republicanism. We abolished the divine right of kings. We found a local maximum of the utility of materialism. No real spiritual progress since 1500AD.

It's just a mediocre Renaissance so far. If we get back to commonplace space travel it'll be the best Renaissance in 5,000 years and Richard Branson just advertised that to me on a YouTube interstitial. So it could happen. But the social justice crew is getting hyphy and I'm not here for it.

I prayed for some new revelation and I've had some really helpful thoughts. None of it makes me hopeful for the human race, but I'm seeing better what my contribution looks like for my lifespan, and it's beautiful. So I'll probably keep sounding optimistic. But it's because I know the meaning of life, not because I'm delusional enough to think our civilization does. We might get back to that. Start resurrecting people again. I hope so. I don't see it happening for 120-300 years but I love pleasant surprises.